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This has been a common conversation for me over the last 5 years or so…

Most People: What is it that you do again?

Me: I help companies operate and compete in a knowledge-based economy.

Most People: Huh?

Me: I work with companies on their learning,development, knowledge management, innovation, marketing, HR and other processes to help them do business now – which is much different than how businesses have ever operated in the past.

Most People: [blank stare]

Me: I’m a consultant.

Most People: Oh…I know what they do.

Although the above is exaggerated I’m not naive enough to think that the label ‘Social Business Design’ will cause the conversation to be too much different than it is now – but I strongly applaud the team at Dachis Group for coining the term and providing a rallying cry for a whole industry [software suites, authors, consultants, etc.] of folks that will contribute to transforming organizations for a landscape that has no boundaries and relies on relationships, ideas, conversations, knowledge and all things intangible.

Social Business Design may become the next buzzword but I think it’s a simple yet eloquent and descriptive term for the results required to compete in a knowledge-based economy.  So much so that we’re incorporating it in our communication about Orbital RPM’s offerings.

And while I lend credit to Dachis Group and Altimeter Group for energizing this arena I also thank and credit the following fields for their work in what I feel provides the foundation for a transformation to operating socially [representative honorees shown in brackets - there are way too many to list]:

• Social Network Analysis [i.e. Rob Cross/Cross Networks Analytics, Valdis Krebs]
• Value Network Analysis [i.e. Verna Allee, Value Networks and team]
• Systems Thinking [i.e. Peter Senge/Pegasus Communications, iSee]
• Industrial/Organizational Psychology [i.e. Kurt Kraiger]
• Organizational Design [i.e. Peter Drucker]
• Scenario Planning [i.e. Art Kleiner]
• Organizational Learning/Knowledge Management [i.e. Etienne Wenger, John Seely Brown, Jay Cross]
• Leadership Development [i.e. Reg Revans, Steve Kerr, Michael Marquadt]
• Workspace Design [i.e. Frank Becker, Charlie Grantham, Jim Ware, Camille Venezia]
• Innovation [Peter Skarzynski, Rowan Gibson, Clayton Christensen]
• Social Marketing [i.e. Charlene Li, Peter Kim]
• Social Software developers/vendors

Combining insights from these [and other] fields brings a comprehensive solution to organizations wanting to become social businesses.  The timing is right to combine the best of what’s new [i.e. web 2.0 & social marketing] with age old approaches [i.e. communities & action learning] that will help with this transformation.

This is what we’ve been doing for the last 5 years.  Now we have a name for it.

Well I’ve been noodling [aka procrastinating] on this post awhile – given my recent interview with Inc. Magazine on selecting collaboration tools, though, I thought it was time…

For many of the organizations that I speak/work with regarding knowledge networks/communities of practice they have [or are planning on implementing] a collaboration software package with many slick bells and whistles but without a clear path and strategy for getting up and running – this often results in an empty knowledge landscape with little showing except for some bells and whistles strewn about.

Even in the CIO world it’s popular to say that collaboration and innovation isn’t about the software but what do you do in addition to buying software? 

The Iceberg in IT

The delimna I frequently witness is what I call the ‘Iceberg in IT’ conundrum.  Someone decided that people needed to collaborate more and told IT to implement a package that enables collaboration.  While a good software package is certainly a required step, I prefer to put it near last instead of first. 

Using the admittedly cliche and ubiquitous iceberg metaphor above, social software is simply the visible thing that enables collaboration to happen.  When IT is told to purchase it when there is no strategy to generate adoption, it will feel cold and barren [sorry - couldn't help it].  In order to truly affect how this can help people do their jobs there is a large amount of work that needs to done behind the scenes…hence the 7Cs of success:

• Capturing:  the notion of collaboration is foreign in many organizations so people often need to be shown what potential is there if they were to collaborate.  We always visit different geographic locations and capture [via video, audio, memory stick, etc.] what people are working on so that we can determine common topics and have some seed material to begin populating the software system.
• Connecting:  even software that’s designed to connect people will do little in that regard if left on its own.  People [especially when at the early phases] need some help connecting with one another – simple things like setting up bridge calls and facilitating conversations serve to build trust and awareness and provide nuggets of content that can be housed in the platform.
• Combining: in a dispersed organization you’re bound to find bits and pieces of similar work living in a great many places.  Helping the users combine that information using the wiki feature of a platform, for example, will show users the efficiency in working together while training them on what in the world a ‘wiki’ is.
• Contextualizing: the most effective collaboration initiatives will integrate members from an organization’s suppliers and customers and related academic institutions.  Translating that into compelling content that will make sense to your users will be critical in getting them to absorb and leverage it.
• Confirming:  similar to above, if you’re getting knowledge from various sources, care must be taken to ensure that what’s being provided is accurate information so that it can be acted upon.
• Circulating:  what good is the best information if no one knows about it?  The role of a community/network coordinator is essential in circulating news about what’s new, recent questions, etc.
• Communicating: having someone dedicated to getting the word out about the success stories in your knowledge network will go a long way in generating interest, excitement and ,of course, additional funds that will be necessary to continue operations.

Having an effective Web 2.0 collaboration platform at the center of this activity certainly will make it much easier to coordinate but the software alone [today's versions anyhow] will never replace the behind-the-scenes efforts required to start and sustain collaboration and innovation.

BusinessWeek just published an article about how groups around the world are preparing for the Knowledge Economy.

Notice the focus on the design of the physical space that they’re proposing and how that will help foster the necessary community that will be required for collaboration, learning and innovation.

Now I’m clearly a little biased in my support for this message – but that bias first came from all of the other sources that turned me on to this trend.

Using the ideas in the article, what can your organization do to prepare for the knowledge economy?  How can your workspace be configured to best support the way work happens?  How can you integrate the collaboration of your customers, suppliers and employees into the learning and innovation that will drive your organization forward?

I just signed up to participate in a project going on at KM.gov – their aim [informally] is to bring knowledge management to the U.S. government so that collaboration, lessons learned, innovation, etc. can all help with the implementation and long-term success of the major changes our country will be undergoing as a result of the coming stimulus bill.

Here’s their mission as they say it:

Inform and support federal government departments, agencies, organizations, and  their constituencies in the research, development, identification, and implementation of knowledge management (KM) activities, practices, lessons learned, and technologies.

To accomplish this mission, the Federal KMWG will mobilize and leverage thought leaders and KM practitioners from government, quasi-government, academia, non-government, non-profit, and the private sector around the globe.

Anyone can sign-up and contribute – go to the site to request an account and you’ll soon have a voice in helping shape the [hopeful] future of how our government operates in our knowledge society.

I haven’t participated for quite some time but this month’s Big Question on the Learning Circuits blog was too intriguing…

If you peer inside an organization in 10 years time and you look at how workplace learning is being supported by that organization, what will you see?

The Knowledge Economy

I’ll preface the rest of the post by saying that I feel we’re currently well into a knowledge economy and that in ten years this transition will be even more apparent so my response will hinge upon that being true.  I view a knowledge economy as one being populated by workers creating and relying upon quick access to, and acquisition of, information that they need – organizations can range from construction to IT…as long as they depend on the acquisition of relevant info/knowledge in order to perform and improve they are staffed with knowledge workers in my opinion.  I do feel that the knowledge economy will bring with it different learning and development needs for the knowledge workforce.

The Truthful Answer

Quite frankly, I think the honest answer to the Big Question listed above is…not too much different from what we see today.

Just like other societal transformations, I think our move into the knowledge economy will take a long time to cement itself into the philosophies and methodologies of organizations – this includes learning departments.  There are so many factors ranging from mental models of those that have been in the industry for a long time to infrastructures and contracts that are entrenched and cannot be uprooted quickly that will prevent a speedy transition to fully supporting the needs of the workforce in a decade.

I recently wrote about the 2008 Chief Learning Officer [CLO] Magazine report on trends in the industry and the Executive Summary of this report shows no signs of much movement in the field. Do I think this will change substantially over the business landscape in ten years?  No.  I certainly feel that there will be pockets of progressive organizations that will make some great shifts [as indeed there are already several examples of this today] but for the overall learning industry to fundamentally change how it sees the world of L&D I think will take much longer.

The Wishful Answer

I hope I’m being cynical and that the above proves not to be true because I feel that the next 10 years presents an enormous opportunity for L&D to ramp up it’s organizational credibility to a place where we’re not yearning for a seat at the proverbial table…it’ll just be there waiting.

What I’d love to see of L&D departments in 10 years is one that oversees knowledge in the organization.  Departments that acknowledge that the vast majority of learning and development takes place outside of the classroom or computer [although some is better delivered in those places as well] and implement methods that reflect this ratio.

To me this looks like departments that ensures communities of practice and knowledge networks are thriving, active and supported by the right IT tools.  Ones that takes the role of redesigning the workspace [wherever it may be] of employees so that knowledge flows freely, ones that assesses the entire value network of an organization so that learning strategies can be extended to members whose performance affects that of the organization, ones that effectively integrate new-hires into their new network and provides the content they need when needed, ones that develops leaders to lead in a collaborative web and ones that promotes innovation throughput by running off of the energy created by the aforementioned methods.

The End

As I said above, I think that L&D Departments have a golden opportunity at the moment – to make this transition and show their organizations the value they can add by truly supporting the business workforce.  If this transition isn’t made I’m afraid other disciplines such as knowledge management may rush to fill the gap left by L&D.  I really see these fields merging as I think the lines between them will begin to blur – so after all this rambling, maybe that’s what things will look like in 10 years…

CLO [Chief Learning Officer] Magazine released their 2009 Business Intelligence Industry Report today.  In full disclosure I have not read the detailed report [which is being sold for $495] – I just read the free Executive Summary but from the pieces in there I received a good enough overview to be disappointed.

A common lament in the L&D world is how to get a ’seat at the table’ – in other words how can the L&D function be seen as being strategic enough to warrant participation in the C-level strategy interactions that determine the direction and operation of the organization.  Based on what I read in this summary it’s not surprising that the ‘tables’ out there don’t have many name tents with ‘L&D’ on them.

Before I provide specific examples I’d like to offer some context on my viewpoints and philosophy.  I believe that we are currently living/working/playing in a knowledge-based economy, or one in which know-how, experience, networks, tacit knowledge and who you know provide the real competitive advantage to improve efficiency, bring products to market, deliver to clients, etc. – and it doesn’t matter if you’re in consulting or cement.  Assuming this is true, the approaches used by L&D need to transition to support this new world as well and what I read in the CLO report indicates that they haven’t.

There are multiple examples in the summary of ways that L&D departments haven’t adapted to support a knowledge-based organization in an information society – from methodologies to analytics to perceptions of the C-level.  Some examples below…

Learning Delivery Methods

In an age where informal learning/knowledge networks/collaboration is known to be the source of the vast majority of learning and information for workers of all types one would think methodologies to support these would be creeping [if not entrenched] into corporate learning portfolios.  Rather, formal classroom training “clearly remains the most common method used.”  In a close second place, “the combination of live and self-paced e-learning is the second-most common delivery modality used by organizations.”

The nature of learning ‘delivery’ is flawed from the start when a knowledge economy dominates the market.  Organizations that commit most of their L&D resources to prescribing, designing and delivering everything that their workforce needs to know rather than reallocating those resources to help support and facilitate the exchange of the collective intelligence that already exists are missing a key competitive advantage in the information society.  Dispatch those trainers to begin creating learning histories to prevent brain drain, to act as facilitators/knowledge brokers between geographically dispersed teams with similar objectives or to help redesign the office layout so that informal exchanges can happen more effortlessly.

Learning Analytics

This section was the most shocking to me.  Not only do the methods being used by most of these organizations sound outdated, the report acknowledges that the metrics [when they're gathered] are proving that they’re providing little value.  Some notable quotes/stats…

• “Not surprisingly, little progress  has been made during the past year with the correlation of learning to various other business metrics…”
• “Approximately 1/5 of organizations correlate employee productivity to learning.”
• “Less than 1/10 of organizations correlate extended enterprise performance to learning.” [umm - wow!]
• “In reality, most organizations measure little beyond the basics, such as course enrollments, completions and learner satisfaction rates.”

Learning & Development Staffing

The report then talks about staffing – mentioning that “heads of HR and corporate education and chief learning officers represent the largest groups that believe the enterprise does not have enough staff to support the learning initiatives.”  What does the C-level think? – “only 12 percent of CEOs, COOs and presidents believe the organization does not have enough staff.”  Based on this chasm in perceptions the report concludes that this “obviously highlights a lack of communication between learning executives and senior-level business executives.”

Does it really?  If I were an executive at one of these organizations what I would see is our L&D department using methodologies suited for a past era, applying useless analytics to those ineffective methods, complaining because they need more staff and then saying that I’m out of touch with them because I think they’re staffed just fine and that I’ll likely trim their department if we hit a rough patch.  I don’t blame those executives one bit for their views of these L&D departments.  After all, let’s review a stat from the Analytics section above – “Less than 1/10 of organizations correlate extended enterprise performance to learning.”  Any other department that boasted those stats would be lucky to have a seat period – let alone one at the Executive table.

Where to now?

I think this should serve as a wake-up call to the L&D field as a whole – the world we live and work in has changed…we need to change with it.  There is a burgeoning field of knowledge management/learning communities/knowledge networks/social networking/workspace design/collaboration/etc. out there that is primed to take on the L&D role in organizations that are preparing themselves to compete in a knowledge society.  The lines between knowledge management and L&D should be becoming very blurry in my opinion.  If not, when you leap for the L&D seat at the table you may land on the lap of someone setting up their KM table tent.

MIT Sloan Management Review has rebuilt their site using a Wordpress platform and is integrating two blogs within it – one of them focused on innovation.  This is a self-declared work in progress and they are seeking feedback in order to optimize it for their readers.  Go have a look and let them know what you think.

MIT SMR has produced some great material/thinking on approaches to learning, development, knowledge management, learning communities, new-hire integration, leadership development, workspace design and, of course, innovation.  This latest iteration of theirs displays an internal commitment to eat their own dog food.

Incidentally our entire site is built on Wordpress and we’ve really enjoyed its versatility as a Content Management System [CMS].  I’m looking forward to seeing the results of MIT’s new progressive efforts.

CNET recently reported a story about the forthcoming Apple University.  Apple has recruited Joel Podolny [former dean of Yale's University's School of Management] to be the Vice President and Dean of the new Apple U.

In typical Apple style, not much is known about what this will incorporate although the author of the CNET article linked above speculates on a few different areas.

If you read this blog you know I’m already a big fan of Apple’s current approach to learning.  What I’ve focused on in my writing about them has mainly been the inclusion of their value-chain [namely their customers] into their learning strategy.  With the addition of Podolny at the helm of the newly formed Apple U I suspect the learning experience for those at the hub of the Apple value-chain [the employees] is about to get a whole lot better.

P.S.  On a semantic note I’m wondering why the uber-progressive Apple is using the [IMHO] passe moniker ‘University’?…and calling Podolny the Dean instead of Chief Learning Officer [CLO]?

Ever feel like this in training?  I’ve been noodling on this analogy for months – I need some data to really verify the point but the premise is there…

At a basic level, the purpose of a sprinkler and a fire hose is essentially the same: distribute water.  The manner in which each accomplishes this task, though, is vastly different.  Because of their respective designs it may take a sprinkler a month to distribute the same amount of water that a fire hose can unleash in an hour (this is where I need some data).

Training is often designed to function like a fire hose – expelling the maximum amount of information in a constrained amount of time.  The challenge with this design is that fire hoses are meant to douse…they are not intended for things that will absorb the water they distribute.

I feel that learning/development design needs to better align with the analogy of a sprinkler.  Choosing instead to distribute the same amount of information but over a longer period and in smaller chunks so that participants can truly absorb it.

This philosophy can be used to extend new-hire integration programs beyond one (or a few days), incorporate communities of practice in learning strategies or leveraging action learning for leadership development efforts.

I urge readers to take an unbiased looked at their learning portfolio and ask themselves if they more resemble a sprinkler or a fire hose…

CLO Magazine just published an article in today’s newsletter about new-hire orientation or on-boarding.

This is more fodder that the process constructed for new-hires is another opportunity for competitive advantage as we move further into our knowledge economy.  Organizations that understand this transition and embrace it are developing employee on-boarding programs that target two critical areas: informational and relational.

The informational element addresses the ’stuff’ that new hires need to know.  In the information age this cannot be a data dump though – this information needs to be assessed in terms of when someone needs it (i.e. week one, month two, etc.) and how it can be best delivered (i.e. e-learning, podcast, face-to-face, etc) and accessed in the future.

The relational element acknowledges that no matter how good the information is that is provided, people will eventually come to get most of their questions answered through their network of relationships.  Therefore on-boarding programs that incorporate activities and assignments that help new hires meet other people in the organization and form relationships with them have been proven to allow new hires to be productive faster and also to retain them longer.

‘Knowledge Worker’ is certainly a popular buzzword these days but there is merit there.  How these new additions to the workforce acquire, retain and access the information they need is fundamentally different than is was a few decades ago and most orientation programs haven’t yet adapted to that shift.

Organizations that continue to use the precious few first days of someone’s new role to have them fill out paperwork and watch corporate videos are missing a crucial opportunity to prepare their newest team members to help them succeed in their mission…whatever it may be.