I talked to her yesterday about ways to ease the collaboration amongst her team - a wiki being at the top of the list.  She told me they were using SharePoint but it was limited b/c only one person could work on the document at any given time.  SharePoint is a Microsoft product, though, so they have no choice but to use it and don’t have any wiki options.

While the next few weeks are still sure to be hellish for my wife and her team, the future is looking bright.  In this month’s edition of Fast Company, Robert Scoble writes about Microsoft’s Office Live Workspace - their entrance into the Web 2.0 world.  This is great news b/c it’s bringing these technologies to the mainstream and making them accessible to the vast majority of the corporate workforce.

Scoble is “betting Office Live will be a gateway drug for workgroups and companies to explore the full possibilities of office 2.0–and not just Microsoft’s products” and I’m sure he’ll win that bet.  I’m hoping so b/c I would like a greater population to have easy access to the features that will be provided with this.  Some of the roadblocks we’ve encountered in projects that require the use of these informal learning tools certainly include lengthy discussions with the IT department on the compatability of external vendors with their in-house products (usually Microsoft) - not having that as an issue will make the process smoother for all involved. 

That’s precisely what Tony Burgess of Company Command noticed was happening in his learning community.  In this community of practice (CoP) with thousands of members Tony noticed a very small group (i.e. 20) were generating most of the activity and sustaining the momentum.  So he decided to dedicate his doctoral thesis to taking a closer look at the inner workings of this core group.

Tony was generous enough to share his findings with some member of CPSquare in an online discussion that lasted about a week and also via a conference call where he talked about his findings.

In his research Tony discovered that the members of a community’s core group have similar characteristics.  He boiled them down into four areas:

• Who are they?  What are their values? 
  • Driven to learn
  • People person
  • Service and ‘giving back’ ethic
  • Hard wired to develop others
• What do they do as core group members?
  • Contributor
  • Connector
  • Facilitator
  • Social Catalyst
  • Steward
• How do they become core group members?
  • Find and use the community of practice
  • Initial interaction in the community
  • Assuming a role
  • Participating
• What is meaningful to them
  • To contribute
  • To connect
  • To develop

Tony’s findings resonated with me professionally - we typically focus our initial efforts just on building a strong core when setting up CoPs with organizations and that foundation provides solid footing for the rest of the community to morph. 

A big thank you to Tony for the insights and generosity of time and knowledge for sharing with us.

I found David’s points to be applicable beyond tech implementations and to all of organizational learning.  I like reading articles where I find myself subconsciously nodding my head in agreement as I read and that happened numerous times throughout this article.

David calls on the combination of the usuals for learning such as “telling the learner, showing the learner and letting them try” and adds to that the elements that will support the more informal channels that allow people to build on what was formally designed for them.  He suggests strengthening the network, cultivating communities of practice and providing just-in-time access to information that people can call upon at the moment it is needed. 

Doing the above creates what David calls a “culture of shared experiences” allowing organizations to capture the often elusive tacit knowledge of how work really gets done.  This results in people having access to the information they need as opposed to “sterile, clinical information found in manuals and training courses.”  This concept can be applied to any training, regardless of the topic.

Follow David’s advice and you’ve got the diverse learning and development portfolio that will do more than just allow you to implement technology effectively - it will put you on the fast track to being a true learning organization.  How will you know if you’ve done it correctly?  David advocates the use of a balanced scorecard for establishing and assessing the metrics associated with the learning initiative (nod, nod).

Their first guest was Tracy Cox, Director of Performance Consulting for Raytheon Professional Services.  He led a webinar titled “Creating Business Value Through Social Network Analysis” for TrainingOutsourcing.com recently.  (A free registration is required to view the webinar or participate in the forums mentioned above.)  Since the webinar, Tracy has been visiting the Training Outsourcing.com forums and discussing social network analysis and how it can help with communities of practice, knowledge transfer, informal learning and the overall corporate learning function.

I actually just returned from FL last night; just ahead of the impending Tropical Storm Ernesto.  During my years in FL I saw my fair share of heavy rain storms.  They typically came in quickly and often resulted in flash floods through the streets in my neighborhood.  As a child it was always fun to ride your bike through flooded streets and look for the high water marks on homes and trees. 

As an adult I learned that these downpours were little fun and little benefit for much of anything, though.  Sewers couldn’t handle the volume of water, hence the flooding and runoff.  Plants weren’t able to do much with it either; many of them wound up washed away or damaged as a result of the current or the sheer volume of water. 

We don’t typically experience that kind of rain in CO.  Prior to my latest FL trip we enjoyed some (unusual) days of drizzling rain here in Denver.  Although not enough to quench the thirst of many plants in Denver’s arid climate, it got me thinking about the contrast of these two approaches of nature and how it relates to organizational learning.

Many organizations provide their employees with a downpour of learning.  Coming down in sheets, these learning downpours cause the drainage systems of participants to overflow and the majority of the learning ends up as run off.  It does little to provide the knowledge needed to grow; rather it typically floods people with too much information and can be an intimidating current.  Have you ever been prepped for a session by the words ‘firehose’ or ’slingshot’?  You probably experienced a downpour.

Just like rain, the best method for learning to be absorbed and utilized is when it is delivered as a drizzle.  Falling lightly, in small drops and over a longer period of time, a drizzle of learning ensures that participants have ample time to absorb one drop before having to consume another. 

Organizations can transition from a downpour to a drizzle of learning by investing their training dollars in things that support people’s natural tendency to learn.  Communities of Practice, informal learning, nano-learning, action learning, JIT learning, podcasting, rapid e-learning and mobile learning are just a few examples of different approaches that can be blended to create the ideal mix that can be absorbed by participants. 

This is the basic underpinning to the concept of Net Present Value (NPV) in finance.  Given the option, businesses are going to want their money in their own hands until the last possible second.  The more time a company can hold on to their money, the more of a return the money can generate for the company. 

This is the reason for some magazines offering subcriptions that steadily reduce as the years go on if you pay for them today.  They want that money now!  Even if it’s less than the full subscription you would have paid in three years, they would rather have it today to improve cashflow, invest, etc.

We discussed NPV in the Level 6: Beyond ROI class while I was at the CLO Institute in January.  Ever since then I’ve been playing with the idea of NPV and how it relates to methods of learning that don’t fall under the category of ‘traditional.’ 

I decided to write after reading the July edition of Education Signals.  One section of the report was about the ’Top 20 Companies in the Training Outsourcing Industry’ that is compiled by TrainingOutsourcing.com.  In it, the authors share the following data points:

“The largest percentage of revenue from the leading players came from content development (35%) and training delivery (30%) services.”

Content design/development obviously comes at or near the beginning of a training outsourcing initiative.  That means that over 1/3 of the money of contracts is in the hands of the training supplier soon after the project begins.    

If I were in a position to be hiring a training outsourcing firm, I would look for a deal where the fees weren’t so front-loaded.  I would want to keep my money as long as I could and let it make more money for me. 

Enter informal learning (i.e. communities of practice, blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc.).  As illustrated in this post from Jay Cross, and as others have been preaching, much of learning doesn’t come from ‘content.’  It comes through the informal and unscheduled channels of an organization.

Informal learning may have an additional advantage.  Since there isn’t near the level of design/development required for informal methods as there is for more formal events such as workshops and e-learning modules, a company that was buying these services from an outsourcing company would pay less up front.  This allows them to keep their money longer and let it make more money for them.

Although I’ve only cited one report that I’m basing this post on, I came from the instructional design world.  We charged crazy fees (usually way more than 35% of the total contract) for design/development at my old firm and that was the first thing the client paid for.  I also realize that there is a need for some structured content in a company’s learning and development plans - I just think it should be provided in minimal chunks.

I’m suggesting services that would be a double win for companies purchasing training outsourcing.  With more informal elements in the mix to create a more diverse learning portfolio the client would not only receive more effective learning and development, they would pay less up front and get to make money from the money that they would have spent on instructional design and development fees.

Note:  I’m consciously not addressing the area where training outsourcing firms make the second most amount of money - the 30% from delivery of training services.  Informal learning, by nature, requires less delivery than its traditional counterpart.  For this post, though, I wanted to emphasize the benefits of not paying design/development fees up front.