Few people ever recall who finished in second place. This is most evident in automobile racing, whether it is the international Formula 1, the annual “greatest spectacle in racing” at Indianapolis, the thundering NASCAR circuit, or the more than 250,000 dirt tracks around the United States.

Automobile racing draws more spectators than any other sport. It’s not because of the danger, although the prospect of a crash certainly holds the crowd’s interest. What brings people out, time and again, is the simple demonstration that “he who learns fastest wins, but winning once does not guarantee winning again.” The spectators as well as the drivers understand that principle intellectually, emotionally, and viscerally. Although most spectators do not apply that rule in their own lives after they leave the track, the winners do, 24 hours a day, until the next race. They exemplify the difference between learning by watching, learning by miming, and learning by doing.

The rate of learning in automobile racing is probably the highest of that in any organized human endeavor, including in the world’s best research labs, because winning—or even finishing—requires a wide variety of successful “doing.” Each race track is unique. Each lap around the track presents different traffic conditions. Each turn on a lap presents varying road conditions. Drivers, builders, and pit crew members all have “bad hair days.” The variety, excitement, and suspense of automobile racing is why Dennis Buede of the Stevens Institute of Technology and Bill Mackey of the University of Maryland believe that it provides the ideal learning environment for their graduate students in systems engineering. Others interested in learning cultures likely would discover new answers to their questions by spending 12 hours at a race track with Roger Penske, Richard Childress, or Virginia’s own Leonard Wood.

Winning doesn’t guarantee learning. Winning can stall learning if winners begin to think they are superior or pay more attention to garnering praise and fame than to continuing to learn. Arrogance is a sad harbinger of a has-been.

Although winning is preferable, learning by losing is another good way of learning by doing. After Vic Edelbrock, Sr., founded the Edelbrock Corporation in 1938, one of his favorite sayings was, “Buy three of each part. After we have ruined two while learning what won’t work, we will have one left for building the winner.” Sixty-four years later, Edelbrock continues learning by doing as the innovation and sales leader in the automotive high-performance aftermarket.

In racing, the consistent winners have learned that assembling the most knowledgeable and motivated people is not sufficient. Rather, the key is whether the working group becomes a learning group. The diagnostic ability of the driver–crew chief pair is critical to making the right choices in more than a dozen adjustments on the car. The pit crew, through its elaborate choreography, seeks to save a tenth of a second. Back at the garage, the 20 or more engine builders, chassis builders, test and instrumentation people, and their respective suppliers must collaborate at the idea level regarding design and fabrication as successfully as the pit crew does at the physical level.

The challenge in creating a team learning culture is to harmonize competition and collaboration. Many a highly talented person, fiercely dedicated to winning in competitions, simply cannot collaborate in doing, let alone in colearning by doing. Transforming a person’s values to team winning without suppressing the urge to innovate is key. Personal and group learning must meld into a specific “feel” that permeates the team.

To carry the automobile racing analogy just a little further, consider that an engine uses air and fuel to produce horsepower for the drive wheels, which, barring loss of traction, overcome both inherent inertia and motion-induced drag to maximize the speed of the racecar. Often the fastest car does not win because the engine fails, the tires overheat, or some other weak link becomes overstressed. The winner is the fastest car that finishes. In business, air is ideas, fuel is cash, drive wheels are the products and services that carry value to customers, and traction is the strength of the network of relationships throughout the team. Horsepower feels a lot like enthusiasm, which can overcome both structural inertia and dynamic drag, also known as fear. Enthusiasm, coupled with a learning culture, can even transform negative energy into increased motivation, which leads to superlative results.

Where is the learning? Learning is everywhere and happens every time someone wonders which ideas to pursue, what proportion of profits should be used for what purposes, how to generate enthusiasm, or whether the wheels are spinning because the right relationships do not exist. However, lack of knowledge or integrity—or too much greed—can overstress any one of these factors and create a loser.

Most organizations cannot get a grip on learning. Learning is necessarily multifaceted, but most organizations are filled with linear thinkers (this event causes that result) or scenario thinkers (these related events combine to cause that pattern of results) but few thinkers who consider entire systems (when salespeople overcommit our production, the factory output is actually below full capability). Besides, when joining the race, most organizations believe that business is about generating profit, not about learning.

Types of Doing, Types of Learning

Doing does not guarantee learning. Performing mindless activities by rote takes a long time, and the doer ends up learning little. Achieving a straightforward goal that is well within reach contributes more learning, but not all that much. When a person takes on a challenging goal at the edge of the unknown, learning accelerates.

There are at least three types of learning by doing. One type takes place at the visceral level, as demonstrated by the choreography of the pit crew. Another type exercises the mental level, as can be seen by drivers who learn as much or more between races and during the off-season as they do out on the track.

Of course in this instance the driver is learning through reflection, examination, and practice—a kind of doing and learning that is very different from that which takes place during an actual race. This type of learning is also reported by golfers, who watch instant video playback to study their swing.

Doing is what causes all types of learning to occur. Other ingredients of learning are purpose, nourishment, tenacity, and time.

The third type of learning by doing is less tangible. It involves formulating propositions and vetting them in order to delete the ones that do not make sense. This kind of learning is often mistaken for abstract thinking or the dialectic of logicians. However, it is different in two ways. First, the effort is to understand a system of relationships and their dynamics, and to develop several propositions and focus on how they interact. Second, it is more than a mental exercise because the person becomes one with the physical world and arrives at a heightened understanding and sense of harmony. This phenomenon is reported not only by racecar drivers but also by musicians and other performers. And in a group setting, the ability to share this “feel” determines who becomes a part of the team and who does not.

Doing is what causes all types of learning to occur. Other ingredients of learning are purpose, nourishment, tenacity, and time. But without the doing part, as is well known, retention suffers and the ability to apply what was learned degrades quickly. And the vetting of doing helps ensure that what is applied makes sense.

A good alternative to practicing doing in the real world is to practice doing in a simulated world, especially for the second and third types of learning. An effective learning culture arranges for the joy of achievement while immersing participants in realistic environments that protect them against undue penalty for error (no sense discovering gravity by being the apple). This aspect of a learning culture creates opportunities for the learner to discern, firsthand, without chance for denial, the results of his or her decisions. Such objectivism is essential. Just as scrimmaging is a valuable form of doing, realistic simulations hasten learning.

An airline pilot is not allowed to fly a real jet without first spending hours in a flight simulator. The same should be true for CEOs, who all too often are hired without anyone testing whether they can cope with the challenges of the job. This insanity is slowly coming to an end. GE’s manager development program has used business simulations for more than 40 years, most authored by David Sims. Also, several rudimentary management games are now commercially available. As managers begin to emerge from the video game generation, this way of learning by doing will become standard practice, probably even featuring tournaments on the Internet. In fact, the technology exists with which managers can build business simulations by describing their own enterprises. Such descriptions can be translated to a computer-executable program that exhibits the characteristics of the enterprise as if it were actually operating. Beyond allowing team members to scrimmage in a “war games” fashion, this software can be executed as a situationally sensitive TelePrompTer that guides managers and nonmanagers alike as each acts out his or her role. It can even ensure that legal and ethical guidelines are honored while business is carried out on behalf of all stakeholders.

Such software will also show what is not happening. Quality guru Phil Crosby has noted that as organizations get larger, managers find it increasingly difficult to know what is happening and practically impossible to know what is not happening. Realistic business simulations that let employees play the roles of competitors can help this situation. Further, because simulations lead to a high-fidelity representation of the enterprise, minute by minute, such folding of planning and reflection onto operations allows managers to perform, adapt, and align simultaneously, which is the ultimate in learning by doing.

Who is qualified to prepare such simulations and models? Only those involved. MYOB, model your own business, is the best advice any manager can receive. When managers set out to see their business as a system, to describe the entities and relationships and to reach consensus on what actually goes on in the business, they pursue a challenging goal that pays great rewards when achieved. An amazing number of viewpoints and disagreements that have been corroding business processes rise to the surface. No wonder larger companies are less productive and innovative than smaller ones are. They have exponentially more unresolved, even unrecognized, conflicts that interfere with their attempts to learn.

Modeling fosters the third type of learning by doing described earlier: the doing that develops systems thinking. When people construct a model of their organization, they come to a deep understanding of the elements at work and how they interact. They realize, for instance, that responses to requests are determined more by the nature of the interactions than by the competency of an individual. However, we do not want to engage in just intellectual systems thinking. We want systems doing—systems thinking that is grounded in real-world results, as in the first and second types of learning by doing. To return to automobile racing, for example, we may decide that a greater angle on the aerodynamic lip at the rear of the car will shorten the time through Turn 4. It does, but it causes the car to push, thus putting wear and tear on the tires during Turn 2. This vetting of hypotheses is accomplished in minutes at the race track instead of hours in the wind tunnel or at the computer-aided-design workstation

In this way we shall learn to model, and thus manage, the key entities in a business system: the people and, more important, their relationships. We now have the technology to do so. Rudolph Starkerman has produced a model of robots in groups engaged in a process. He has associated the 23 parameters in this model with the attributes of a person involved in a one-on-one interaction.* We can now explore how these parameters implicitly interact to establish the trajectory of the microculture that will be created by any set of people. We can anticipate the effects of environment, nourishment, and purpose on colearning. Further, we can show people what they are doing for, and to, one another that is at odds with their best interests. In this way they can understand both the best learning culture and how to encourage it.

The third type of learning by doing, systems doing, is a prerequisite to arranging, implementing, and sustaining a culture for tripartite learning. No longer must we manage with linear archetypes, which allowed the multibillion-dollar debacle known as business process reengineering. No wonder all those employees with common sense rebelled. Ironically, their rebellion gave rise to programs for quelling resistance to change, which, based on further linear thinking, proved equally futile.

Doing While Learning

With systems doing, we can observe a set of people voluntarily bound by mutual purpose. Each acts independently, no two alike, such that the combined effect takes them closer to their goal. Each coadapts as his or her individual situation changes so that together they are still pursuing their goal. Such coadaptation necessarily involves colearning, which, of course, happens fastest through collaboration. This is not a picture of a utopian company. This is a description of the moment by moment doing while learning in today’s few leading-edge enterprises.

Some managers are still convinced that the organization is too busy to take time “away from work” for learning. Once we understand the self-aligning and self-cleansing power of learning by doing, we will be able to create true learning cultures. When we all spend our days learning by all three types of doing, then we will all be winners.

* Starkerman’s work is summarized in William L. Livingston, Friends in High Places (Stuart, FL: FES Publishing, 1990), Appendix 1.

This article was written by Jack Ring and originally published in Transforming Culture: An Executive Briefing on the Power of Learning. It is reprinted here with permission.

Jack Ring lives in Arizona and has 50+ years of experience as an intrapreneur and executive in a variety of businesses. He applies systems thinking, dynamics, and management to making enterprises intelligent is currently co-founder of Kennen Technologies LLC to commercialize semantic technologies, OntoPilot LLC to foster knowledge exchange and choice making and Educe LLC to accelerate leadership of learning.  He is a Fellow of the International Council on Systems Engineering, an Industrial Fellow of the Stevens Institute of Technology, School of Systems and Enterprises and a Senior Analyst with Cyon Research. He earned a BA, Physics and continues formal education in systems, innovation and management.

[Photo credit: NASCAR,  Pranavian via Flickr]

(c) 2002, The Darden School Foundation.

We have become obsessed with formal learning in the workplace. In our zeal to learn, we have transferred the formal model of learning into the collective mind of our corporations. Even e-learning is simply less-expensive formal learning at a distance.

Our obsession began when we decided we were in the knowledge economy. We concluded that human assets are the most important element of our collective P&L. The only way to attract, improve, and retain those assets is to offer learning. Learning makes brains physically bigger. Learning also makes them smarter. Smarter translates into faster, newer, better, and more competitive. And the competitive advantage of smarter in a Darwinian business ecosystem eventually leads to more profits. If people in your company learn what your company needs to know and do, you can get smarter. You can have a higher corporate IQ than some other company, and you can win. The only problem is that we have very little idea how real learning occurs. We spend billions of dollars on formal training and education, and then we wonder, where is the payoff?

Sometimes people do learn. They change and improve. Performance temporarily increases. Mistakes on the production line start to decrease. Safety records seem to get better. But most of the time, it’s hard to see why anyone has bothered. Organizations provide the formal learning, but little changes.

Here’s a true story that may shed some light on the matter. I was working as a mailroom clerk (“mailboy” in those days) in a giant Boston insurance company, paying my way through college. The company had no formal mailboy-training program. I just walked around for an unspecified number of days with a senior mailboy, watching and learning, asking and listening. I was a young apprentice on the move. Then, one day, when I was deemed fit and ready, I walked around on my own. And if I had a question, I went over by the water cooler (yes, they did have them back then), where the mailroom supervisor waited. After a few moments of idle chitchat, I asked, trying not to look too dumb, “So, how do you refill that postage meter stamp thing?” From that moment on, I learned everything I really needed to learn by the water cooler.

Real learning, the kind of “aha!” moment that signals the brain has connected the dots, is an absolutely wondrous and amazing mystery. It involves memory, synapses, endorphins, and encoding, and, more often than not, those accidental and serendipitous moments we call informal learning. Most real learning—the kind that sticks to the walls of the brain—is informal. That’s true even in a formal setting such as a school. Informal learning is what goes on around our formal learning process. It’s a hitchhiker sitting unobtrusively in the back seat of the school bus—a place where pedagogy has yet to go. It’s the opposite of the shining and hallowed place where teachers, instructors, professors, and even graduate assistants proudly pontificate, as the Wizard of Oz did before his hot-air balloon took off for a star called Kansas.

Let’s step back here and define “formal” and “informal” learning. Formal learning happens when knowledge is captured and shared by people other than the original expert or owner of that knowledge. The knowledge can be captured in any format—written, video, audio—as long as it can be accessed anytime and anywhere, independent from the person who originally had it. Examples of such formal knowledge transfer include live virtual-classroom courses with prepared slides, self-paced off-the-shelf instructional CBT courses, books, video- and audiotapes, team rooms in which documents are stored, digital libraries and repositories, a real-time seminar on the Web (or webinar), electronic performance-support tools, programs accessed during a job or task, instructor- led courses that follow an outline, repeatable lecture labs, a recorded Web-based meeting, or even e-mails that can be forwarded. Formal learning often requires prerequisites, pre- and post-assessments, tests, and grades, and it sometimes results in certification. It is often presented by an instructor, and attendance and outcomes are tracked.

Consider the limits of formal learning in the workplace. Because of time and cost pressures, people who teach in the corporate environment often do not have the same relationship with learners as can be found in some of the more traditional school environments. In those increasingly rare places, teachers and learners can work together over time, and the formal and informal learning begin to blend. Once you are done with a course in a company, it’s quick back to work, with the assumption that your attendance has translated into knowledge. I recently chose a course only because the marketing brochure promised that learners would have unlimited and extended access to the instructor after the course to make sure we were applying what we learned. Such access was a first for me.

Informal learning is what happens when knowledge has not been externalized or captured and exists only inside someone’s head. To get at the knowledge, you must locate and talk to that person. Examples of such informal knowledge transfer include instant messaging, a spontaneous meeting on the Internet, a phone call to someone who has information you need, a live one-time-only sales meeting introducing a new product, a chat-room in real time, a chance meeting by the water cooler, a scheduled Web-based meeting with a real-time agenda, a tech walking you through a repair process, or a meeting with your assigned mentor or manager.

Virtually all real learning for performance is informal, and the people from whom we learn informally are usually present in real time. We all need that kind of access to an expert who can answer our questions and with whom we can play with the learning, practice, make mistakes, and practice some more. It can take place over the telephone or through the Internet, as well as in person. But if informal access is not built into the formal learning process, the chances of getting past knowing to doing will be difficult at best.

Here’s one of many examples. In the early days of the personal computer, we would all go to the same course to “learn” how to use an application or operating system, and then we would go back to our desks, usually with a thick how-to manual. The problem was that we never used those manuals. Instead, we found the local “power user,” the person who for one reason or another had spent more time playing with the computer, or had taken more courses, or had learned directly from an expert, and we began to pepper that person with phone calls and show up frequently at his or her doorway or cube entrance. Two things quickly became apparent. First, the power user was teaching what people had not managed to learn in the class, and second, the power user had learned how to use the PC in a very different way: what he or she showed you was often not the way it had been taught. But it was the time I spent huddled in front of the power user’s screen when I really learned the word processing and spreadsheet and graphics programs I needed in my work. My learning may have started in the course, but it ended in the huddle.

A study of time-to-performance done by Sally Anne Moore at Digital Equipment Corporation in the early 1990s, and repeated by universities, other corporations, and even the Department of Health and Human Services, graphically shows this disparity between formal and informal learning.

To illustrate the difference between formal and informal learning, let’s consider the game of golf. If you want to learn to play golf, you can go to a seminar, read a book about the history and etiquette of golf, watch a videotape of great golfing moments, and then you can say you know something about golf. But have you really learned to play golf? You can then buy and enjoy a great e-golf game, find a golf pro, take lessons, take a simulated swing on a simulated golf course, practice putting, slice and dice balls at the driving range all weekend. After all this, you think you can do it, but have you really learned to play golf?

From your first tee shot on your first hole, it takes hours of adopting and adapting, alone and in a foursome, in all sorts of weather and conditions. You discover what you know and can do, swing all the clubs, ask all sorts of questions, fail and succeed, practice and practice some more, before you have really learned to play golf. Real learning, then, is the state of being able to adopt and adapt what you know and can do—what you have acquired through formal learning—under a varying set of informal circumstances. It accounts for about 75 percent of the learning curve. In the mailroom, it was 100 percent of my learning curve.

I call this the 75/25 Rule of Learning. We get only about 25 percent or less of what we use in our jobs through formal learning. Yet the majority of companies are currently involved only with the formal side of the continuum. Most of today’s investments in corporate education are on the formal side. The net result is that we spend the most money on the smallest part of the learning equation.

The other 75 percent of learning happens as we creatively adopt and adapt to ever changing circumstances. It happens when we ask someone a question at the water cooler—and get an answer. So the informal piece of the equation is not only larger, it’s crucial to learning how to do anything. Do we take it into account when we think about teaching someone how to do something? Do we consider it in the workplace when we collectively spend billions of dollars on training, learning, and e-learning? Of the hundreds of corporate executives and managers I’ve spoken with and interviewed, the answer today is invariably no.

In the workplace, where everything is focused on performance and performance is everything, we need to add the informal piece into the equation for any real learning to take place. We need to factor those accidental, informal intersections of learning and performance into the process. That’s the whole point of what you are reading, what your eyes are taking into your brain, and hopefully what you are beginning to see and learn. We need to understand that the informal side of the equation requires real people in real time: mentors, coaches, masters, guides, power users, subject-matter experts, communities of practice. We need to foster informal moments of knowledge transfer.

How? There’s an old workplace joke that goes, “See that person? She’s the smartest person in the company. And do you know who is the next smartest? The person sitting next to her.” If we want to become smarter companies, we need to encourage informal learning. We need to create what I have been calling collaborative learning environments, where we seamlessly knit together formal and informal learning. We need to use technology to facilitate the informal as well as the formal transfer of knowledge by including expert locators, e-mail connections with instructors, real-time Internet meeting places, virtual-learning support groups, instant messaging, expert networks, mentor and coaching networks, personal e-learning portals, moderated chats, and more. We need to start taking advantage of the tools and technology that exist today and those coming online tomorrow. We need to create the 100 percent learning solution, in which the proscribed formal learning events and the serendipitous learning moments are given equal value.

Formal learning is only the beginning of the challenge, not the end. I think I’ll go back to the water cooler and see what else I can learn.

David Grebow lives in Northern California and heads KnowledgeStar.  He was a founding Executive Core Team member of the IBM Institute for Advanced Learning, where his research focused on collaborative learning environments. David has an MS in communications from Boston University. He recently published A Compass for the Knowledge Economy Business: How-to Succeed in the New Knowledge Economy available for free on Kindle.

This article was originally published in ”Transforming Culture: An Executive Briefing on the Power of Learning” June 2002. It is reprinted here with permission.

(c) 2002 The Darden School Foundation.

[photo credit: Watercooler by Jacqueline (LensENVY)]

Sitting in Judee Humburg’s garden you get the distinct impression that this usability and user-centered design expert has no trouble designing an ideal environment for herself to learn and live. The land around her cottage is filled with sweet-smelling trees and colorful bushes reminiscent of the grounds around Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio. The natural tones and butterfly-attracting foliage help center the man-made structure in its almost natural habitat. To talk with Humburg about her vision for education is an equal treat because she, like her home, is grounded in nature and the esthetics of her environment, talking more about her days as a Montessori teacher than of her time founding and building Intuit and Hewlett Packard’s Usability departments. This is a woman who indeed sees learning as a natural part of being and has devoted her life’s work to helping people feel that their work matters and that their efforts should not be held back by the contrived systems society has almost grown accustomed to.

Conner: You’ve been a student of education, technology, and human nature for a long time. When we look at the potential to work at their intersection, why haven’t we come further, faster?

Humburg: Albert Einstein theorized that we couldn’t use the same thinking to solve a problem as we used to create the problem. I think this is a deep truth that gives us a clue to all sorts of things, including education. Applying technology to help people gain new knowledge, skills, and insights in a flexible, on-demand, just-in-time context is just not enough: achieving the potential of elearning’s promise is really about throwing away a lot of old assumptions about education and approaching learning in a new way. It’s fundamentally not about passing along information that is organized and presented in a slick new format via a new technology. It’s about tapping into and transforming the learner’s existing knowledge and belief systems with the experience of playing with or exploring the new information and almost kneading it into a present problem or situation.

Too often organizations only replicate a classroom system that is set apart from the flow of everyday life situations. Experts present courseware like pearls of knowledge without offering interaction or practicum experience—that’s not new or better. Technology is used in service of an old education paradigm. Intermixed with the experts’ wisdom is little or no peer-to-peer exchange or exploration of the natural synergies between shared experiences and insights. How far can we get with that?

Look at it purely from the learner’s vantage point. We always seem to come to situations with our history firmly entrenched, our minds partially made up, our own perspective strongly in view. And often that creates blinders in terms of what data or information we’re able to openly receive from the new situation.

This inhibits design and usability in a product development process, too. Developers and designers are really learners when it comes to the user’s perspective about how a product could and should work to delight them. The best method is to get new information directly from customers who want to share their experiences and explain their needs. But when we do that, we interpret their responses in terms of our own history instead of being truly unbiased to see and hear what they’re really trying to tell us. We need to be alert and open to the freshness of new information so that our perceptions, our way of thinking about an idea or problem, become different as a result of receiving them.

It’s our willingness to take the risk, to walk into territory we’ve never been before, and challenge our own belief system that allows us to do our jobs differently by producing products, services and things of real value, usefulness and delight to people. That’s always a difficult thing to do.

Montessori said learning should “educate the human potential” by creating interactive environments and orchestrating firsthand experiences that enable learners to “spontaneously explode into new awareness and insight or skill” on the basis of their own interaction and exploration of the new. This goal extends beyond teaching a new skill or concept to empowering the evolution of the learner as creators of their own future reality.

CONNER: Have you found specific techniques you’d encourage people to try in order to remove some of those blinders and see things with fresh eyes?

HUMBURG: I work between the customers, who will benefit from all the incredible effort that goes on inside companies to create products with real value, and actual teams of people who design and develop and document the products. I get to see the whole truth from the customer’ side and try to understand how to communicate that in a way that can be openly received by people inside companies.

The most compelling situations for me are those where designers and engineers have really been able to get out of their own idea boxes (their own belief systems) enough to embrace something new in themselves and move into a new perceptual space, from the standpoint of a particular design situation such as designing something useful and fun for someone else who is different than them. It often helps if I, as a communicator, begin by first calling attention to what may be silent bias.

I’ve tried a couple of different exercises as simple as asking people to tell me whether they’re right or left-handed, and they almost always raise the hand of their handedness. That, in itself, is a physical expression of a silent, pervasive bias that rules our behavior. Also, when you fold your arms, you almost always put that same hand above the other because that is the way you are most comfortable. If you actually, consciously move to fold them in the opposite way, it feels a bit awkward. This quickly shows people have a bias to do or see in the same old way even when they think, cognitively, they are open to try new things.

Learning is often about feeling a bit awkward with the new information at first. That physical experience can remind us that we may need to be a little uncomfortable and we should push ourselves to a place that feels a little bit different and then kind of revel in that. It’s in that awkward place of new association where your past knowing doesn’t bind you but informs you and where you can truly accept something that’s different and integrate it with what you already know to get into a creative space that takes you to a new level of understanding. It all sounds very abstract, describing our experiences this way.

CONNER: It does but it may provide us a bridge into talking about learning. Adult learning is so much more than just receiving content from others. It includes throwing our own belief systems against the wall, challenging what we know and being receptive to, as you said, “Move past the blinders and bindings.”

HUMBURG: We have to create a climate for people that allows them to go with the flow, like water. Water never loses its integrity, but it also follows the shape and form of whatever it’s around. We have to become like that. We should hold on to our values but not necessarily what we know. We should use what we know to be a springboard but it’s not the only reference point.

If I think back to my teaching days, I can see it was a deep exploratory curiosity that drives children to learn. Montessori’s work gave children a rich environment full of opportunities to interact firsthand with objects, with others, with themselves in a way that allowed them to begin to see the world, the environment itself, and their actions, as the way to learn. Just being in the environment and interacting with things is a way to learn—and as part of that process, you change.

It’s a cyclical model. That iterative engagement takes us to new levels because there’s a bit of trial and error, a lot of observation, and a lot of incorporating those observations into making different choices the next time.

CONNER: Are there ways the Internet has helped to extend that?

HUMBURG: I believe the Internet is the first technology—and I do mean the first—that by its very nature is capable of engaging our brains at the level where we can actually learn, grow, change, and keep on going in real time and on-demand. There are qualities about the Internet that take advantage of our highest qualities as human beings. The Internet’s global nature can rather effortlessly incorporate the diversity of human perspective and information from everywhere. As we move into broadband where it’s not just text, but we have access to more multi-sensory and moving images, we’ll be able to capture evolutionary movement that will provide us the capability to archive our own iterations to look back and learn from.

The Internet also has the ability to bring us an incredibly robust list of references that would take any human being years, if ever to amass together at one time. That will allow us to see new patterns and make meaningful connections.

The Internet can be the technology that binds all this together and allows the information to flow, be collected, stored in an organized way, and retrieved in an organized way on demand, as needed. The ancillary tools still need to be developed to give us this kind of access to and ability to play with this information. As Doug Engelbart says, we have to challenge technologists to create tools that can really enhance people’s ability to collect, apply, access, re-access, use and reuse the kind of experiences and intelligence that individuals have when they come into a collaborative group situation.

The Internet also has the ability to simulate and evaluate our experiences, the firsthand kind of interaction that we need to have in a learning situation. One of my concerns, though, is that for society to take full advantage of the Internet’s opportunity, I think it’s also going to need to involve the real world in some way. It can’t just all be flatland stuff because the 360°, firsthand manipulation, 3-D engagements are vital to problem solving.

Almost every kind of breakthrough has come from some free association of hitherto related but unpaired pieces of information or learning. British journalist, James Burke’s PBS series of several years ago documented the cumulative inter-relationships and associations of the world’s greatest inventions and advancements in knowledge across civilizations and generations. While the Internet has the capability to introduce us to those hitherto unrelated things, many of those converging moments also come from a glance or a reminder of a past event from a friend or associate. Some of this peer-to-peer exchange will be enhanced further when chat includes video and sound, others will come when we still meet in person. Many of the ancillary tools for cross-fertilizing creative idea sharing still have to be developed but I’m encouraged by the potential.

CONNER: Where will this apply to learning?

HUMBURG: eLearning seems to me to be doing the same thing that was done in the early days of the Internet. It’s really been nothing more than re-purposing stuff. It doesn’t yet take advantage of the array of multi-sensory, multi-modal possibilities that the Internet can offer. We’re still in the crawling stages… we may not even be crawling yet. The challenge is to develop learning products in a way that truly will help to educate the human potential (going back to Montessori’s challenge to us as communicators and educators). There’s a misconception that teaching is like talking at somebody. True learning comes from within. What we’re all really aiming for is a kind of personal growth that moves the receiver, the student, the learner to a different space than they were in the beginning. Montessori said there is no such thing as teaching.

For me, the seminal experience that helped pull together my own abilities and a real excitement around a profession came from reading the original diaries of Piaget as he observed very specifically how human experience impacted future behavior. This parallels Montessori because she talked about fulfilling human potential rather than teaching children. She always said, “Don’t look at me as being an innovator; you have to look at the children because they are the ones who are doing the innovation on a daily basis.”

That mirrors the potential for elearning because it also can provide access to the global amount of information, experience, and knowledge that’s been built up and the power of computers to store all that stuff in an organized way and the ability for us to access it and use it. It’s just too bad that so few of the products I’ve seen give the learner access to that information. They usually keep the learner within the confines of their program instead of helping them see so much more and bring together what hasn’t been brought together before. Paralleling Montessori, “Don’t look at the producers as the innovators; look at the potential of learners who could innovate on a daily basis with the help of the products and plans and problems they are working with.”

CONNER: How does this fit with your work in usability and user-focused design?

HUMBURG: I see so many companies that think they have great ideas and they know exactly what the user wants—without ever going out into the real world to understand how users think and act. Then companies go ahead and implement their idea, but it doesn’t work exactly how users need it to work. It doesn’t create that “Wow!” value that supports users’ real potential in some way. The same could be said for the elearning programs I’ve seen. I don’t care whether these programs are building a skill, adding to a general knowledgebase, or simply piquing someone’s curiosity that ultimately leads to one of those other things, you still have the same problem. “Is the product designed for the producer or the real user?”

CONNER: Are you saying that some products are not addressing the real needs of users but instead have almost their own agenda?

HUMBURG: Software and elearning designers often set up their performance standards based on some third party—usually management’s—description of what needs to happen in terms of performance criteria, and a lot of times there has not been any firsthand investigation into what the current situation and knowledgebase are like. The right information is not available to inform developers how to build on the existing knowledge, skills, and information base to get to new levels of knowledge and skills. There is not the right amount of equilibration.

With Montessori, I was fortunate enough to witness what Piaget called equilibration—the natural learning process of human beings taking in new and related information through first hand experiences that transform their old knowing into a new, greater knowing at a greater level of knowledge equilibrium. On a daily basis, I was able to observe little human beings building whomever they were going to become in very minuscule ways across multiple activities as they manipulated educational materials and talked with each other about their experiences.

eLearning, and most training, tries to teach one particular thing that has a certain organization or order we can put structure to. When management says, “These are the performance objectives,” there is, in fact, a whole bunch of indirect knowledge or skill that has to pre-exist inside the learners before they can actually take in that new material and reach the desired goal new level of knowing could provide. What they have to do is not so difficult that they can’t recognize it, work with it, play with it, manipulate it, practice with it, use it, and then actually have their behavior, their understanding, their knowledge, their intelligence raised or changed as a result. It takes that equilibration, the integrating of new skill or knowing into the pre-existing knowledge base, to get to a new level of balance with an enhanced skill set.

CONNER: Would you say more about direct and indirect learning?

HUMBURG: Think of direct learning as that skill or information being targeted in the educational experience and indirect learning as the ancillary knowing that enables richer, more delicious understanding and our ability to apply new skill creatively in many different contexts.

Let’s use how Quicken fit into our customers’ whole lives as an example. People don’t want to balance their checkbooks in isolation. They’re not balancing their checkbook because they love to balance their checkbook. They’re balancing it because it has a greater purpose in their life. As they gain that skill, it becomes easier. When Quicken first came out it was sort of an accounting-based way for people to take charge of their life. It was related enough to what people were already doing that they could actually pick it up and use it. What we found out was that people wanted to have their dreams come true and money is the sort of commodity in our society that makes a lot of that kind of stuff happen.

The product was for balancing your checkbook but it also helped people gain control of their lives, be more confident in themselves, give their families what they wanted—what they dreamed of, and could experience together. If you look at it in that broader context you start to see what people learned along the way. The result of doing something like balancing their checkbook is that they will learn a lot more about themselves and about how money fits into their life and about how the financial institutions handle their money. It’s all interrelated. That’s what I call relational learning. Nothing in life is independent of anything else—nothing.

In the learning context (and too often it’s the same thing in software design) designers target a certain kind of activity and isolate everything from everything else. They never observe real users to understand the context of people’s lives in which they are doing these tasks—all the ways in which people will deeply value their new abilities because they’re using a product to help them. These indirect benefits of usage create real value. Designers don’t appreciate the real purpose and value these activities have and, as a result, they also miss a lot of the innuendo around how features should really work and the outcomes they should really produce in people’s lives.

If we’re wise about how we choose different delivery methods to present information to people and allow them access to tools that help them relate it and associate it to activities in their life already, people can actually use the fullest scope of their intelligence around taking in new bits of material and apply them in truly creative ways. That’s what human potential is about. It’s not about rote, spit it back, yes you learned it, check it off, and go on to the next item on the list. It’s about making people more creative and more intelligent in a more innovative way that solves the problems of the future. As I said earlier, Einstein encouraged us to find new minds to solve old problems. Tim Gallwey, who wrote The Inner Game of Tennis, explains that when you expose a student to some guided firsthand experience, get out of the way for them to respond to the immediate environment, and offer ample practice (with feedback), people do the rest.

CONNER: Do designers just not give people enough credit to learn more than one thing?

HUMBURG: My guess is that very few instructional designers actually go out into the environment of the learners they’ll be writing for and observe the job or how these new skills and understandings actually have to fit into the everyday work. If they did, they would probably do something radically different than what they end up doing based on a conversation with management up front about what management wants which may be totally unrelated to the real exigencies of the learners having to apply the knowledge in their jobs to creatively solve problems.

When they first founded Intuit, Scott Cook and Tom Proulx spent an inordinate amount of time with anybody they could grab who would look at different prototyping designs. That volume of user feedback they received, over a period of time, strongly influenced what they ended up doing. This is very different than coming up with great ideas on their own. That is why the company maintains such a customer focus. When you really want to wow, you need a tapestry of data and different views of the user: not just what they say they want but some observations into what they’re doing so you know—you understand—what they mean when they say this is what they want. You begin to understand how they think about the problem, their habits around how they’re currently doing things and an understanding of the technology and how they can use it. Then you mesh those together to create a product that can actually change people’s lives.

CONNER: What steps should people take to get started in this user-centered approach?

HUMBURG: It’s not really that simple. I don’t want to be like the history teacher who emphasized dates and people’s names versus the context of something and the cause or effect of the different events over time on the population or the culture. What’s most important for people to pay attention to is analyzing the situation and actually looking at how people are working. You can talk to the people in focus groups but actually going into the field and recording how people do, act, communicate and work, yields the best results. You have to go get the specific details from somewhere and apply them. Nobody will use every feature or function of every product (or need to know everything right away in an elearning product) so see how they work, listen to how they think, create, and problem-solve and which things are most important.

CONNER: So you’re describing some of the qualities of understanding or focusing on the user. I would love just to hear how you do it.

HUMBURG: It doesn’t need to be a hugely expensive, monumental effort but it does mean that you have to think through the parts of people’s environments and their activities, their work habits, and the context of those habits whatever they are. You need to know what they’re doing, what’s working, what’s not working, what tools they’re using, what activities they do in what frequency, and what their perspective is for satisfaction about outcomes and results of these various activities so that you have a pretty good idea about what you’re trying to solve from a number of different perspectives.

Based on the kind of data you define, you can start to design because you understand a little bit about how your users think, act, and communicate. It’s really only then you can get down to putting things on a screen, chunking information, labeling it (putting names to things) and finding ways to navigate through it. To create the information architecture, you’ve really got to understand how your users think about the relationships between tasks and information because that’s what they’re going to be coming to your product with whether you like it or not. The odds they’re going to be thinking like you think—if you’re not a part of their environment—are probably pretty small.

CONNER: I’m reminded of that great line by Lorraine Hansberry (and I’m paraphrasing), which says, “You may think you know me but you don’t know the hills and valleys I have traveled to get to where I am today.”

HUMBURG: That’s right. When we were working on the first on-line banking product for Intuit, we did some different kinds of phone surveys up front and we did a lot of informal surveying of people on the team and their friends and family through a kind of structured interview. It was very short and we actually asked eight of our friends how they might use the product. That gave us a core set of anecdotal, informal data that helped us to scope and prepare us to bring real users in and ask them to walk us through what they were doing. Based on a lot of really intense work with people to describe how they think, what they’re currently doing, what they’re using, what’s working, what’s not working, what results they want, what’s going to satisfy them, and what their goals were, we were able to identify a whole feature that none of us had ever thought of but that all of us would have used immediately had we thought of it or had it available that day. I can’t remember the exact name we gave to the feature but it related to letting users easily create a kind of real-time balance across all their accounts—like what they would see if they had a scratch pad where they could add in planned deposits, subtract out bills that would be due within a period of time, and debit checks that were already in the mail but not yet charged against the bank’s balance. That feature was especially important because it provided some ‘what-if’ analysis in situations where they were deciding if they could afford a big purchase or something. And, to my point, it was something we really hadn’t thought of but was something that made on-line banking quite different from what people were able to do with just regular bank statements, telephones, ATMs, and that kind of thing.

That’s just one example of how you can inspire your design decision process based on data and a rich understanding of who it really is you’re designing for. It gives you a whole different way of defining and even designing the feature than you would have ever come up with on your own no matter how creative and intelligent and experienced your team is because they’re just not the user.

CONNER: And even if they did think of some new things or offer some perspectives, they are not users. Even in the optimal situation where the designer could be a potential end-user, they won’t know all (or even most) of the purposes that other people will really use it for.

HUMBURG: No skill or fact works in isolation. As I’ve finally accepted over the years, everything builds on everything else and the inter-relationships are just incredible. The whole concept of direct and indirect preparation, and the need for association works in all creative processes. It usually is where your greatest breakthrough comes. You take something that you have always known and twist it slightly and apply it in a new context. And suddenly you have an incredible breakthrough.

This is why I am pretty excited about the technology potential we can see right now. Especially with broadband and wireless. Soon enough costs will come down and the ways that people can exchange information with one another at different levels, the ways they can manipulate and play with the information in different ways, and reuse their own practice to understand will be endless. I don’t believe that schools are currently available to do that. Technology is moving at such an incredible pace but we need to stretch ourselves to find ways to apply technology in service of educating the overall human potential, to help human beings to learn and work together more effectively, collectively and individually. And it’s not just to change how we do it but also advance our understanding of the best practices, too.

CONNER: You’ve helped us advance along the way. Thank you.

From www.flowtown.com

Periodically I see something on a social network site that’s so compelling I want to share it with everyone — and hope everyone I share it with actually reads it. That seems unlikely but still worth every bit of effort.

Today I stumbled across one of these sorts of gems. It’s a simple image that was shared in my Facebook stream, which I re-shared, and was then commented on wildly from my circle of friends.

Clearly it’s based on a simple concept taught by the Dalai Lama XIV.

“If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry.”

From A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology of Writings By and About the Dalai Lama.

If you’ve read Byron Katie’s Loving What Is, I suspect you will also appreciate its perspective.

As I attempted to find the original source, I learned that it’s been circulated around the web since the spring. I found many related tidbit but not (yet) the illustrator.

Enjoy. Print. Post it on your wall. Share it widely. Then… well… you know.

CC Maybii

When my husband was leaving a long-time job, the exit interviewer asked if a different role would make him stay. He had envisioned one, but he didn’t mention it.

He imagined himself outfitted with a piece of deadwood. When he found someone who no longer added value to their teammates or another part of the company, he’d tap them on the shoulder, listen for an echo, then say the magic words, “It’s time for you to go.”

We’ve all visited a workplace (if not your own then a store, a courthouse, a school, the DMV) where the light in people’s eyes have gone out although they haven’t left the building. Garry Ridge, CEO of WD-40 Company, describes them as, “People who could be more magnificent elsewhere.” They serve as a reminder that retention programs and sabbaticals have their place. So do sunset clauses, exit strategies and friends who care enough to say things we don’t want to hear.

If we are committed to learning and growing, we must be equally committed to unlearning and stopping. Without actively letting go and moving along, where will we find room for something more?

Just as tree leaves fall to create space for something new, every organization has people who would do better elsewhere. Likewise, each of us has habits, processes, policies and beliefs worth changing with the season. Some changes require a radical departure from what’s come before. Others may only need a few steps, but steps toward leaving things behind nonetheless.

While this might seem like common sense, our practices are anything but common. It’s as if leaving a job or ending a venture necessitates talking in hushed tones. Heck, disconnecting from anything for long — be it email, twitter, or social network de jure — has somehow become taboo, a politically incorrect dénouement. Are we so stuck on the playground that we always equate quitting with failure? Those who stopped smoking or eating too much, or even flipping out over getting onboard an airplane would tell you that an end was their beginning.

What happened to trusting ourselves and the world? When we believe in ourselves, trusting the universe to handle the rest, we’re ready to experience freedom. Think Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as he steps off the cliff in the cave, faithfully believing a bridge will appear.

Todd Parker of Taproots shared with me this Zen aphorism: A well-read professor was on vacation in the Far East searching for knowledge. He visited a wizened monk the professor had heard knew the secrets of life. As the professor chronicled his journey and everything he had heard about the monk, the monk quietly smiled and boiled water for tea. The professor continued with his stories as the monk began to fill the man’s cup. The professor signaled he had received enough tea but the monk kept pouring, and pouring. The professor cried, “My cup is overflowing. You see it’s full. You can’t add any more!” yet the monk kept pouring. The man, whose pants were now wet with spilled tea, stood up about to leave when the monk finally spoke. “Your cup was full, and there was room for no more. You must first empty your cup if you wish it to be filled.”

Who amongst us hasn’t sought one more piece of knowledge, snuck in one more call or stayed in a role past the point where we knew we should go? When do we make time to empty the cup? How do we expect to innovate, lead or even thrive when we’re stuck.

Not taking action is usually an unconscious decision to go with the flow and hang on to what we have. Finishing something, or even ending prematurely because we know in our hearts it should be done with, requires a different skills, another view of our priorities and a conscious effort to be someplace else.

This month I’ll close down a project I’ve been advisor to for years. I’m both uneasy and energized by the prospect of bidding it farewell, reminding myself daily we can no longer afford the emotional and financial drain, simultaneously knowing I’ll miss the people and the work very much. What prevents me from abandoning wrap up is a realization we made a difference, we learned, and once on the other side, we’ll make way for something new in newfound time.

While I don’t suggest full-scale dropping out for the sheer thrill of fewer things to do… (although let’s all take a moment to fantasize about what that might feel like. Ahhh.)

…perhaps we should adopt one more practice. If we’re not ready to change up a few big things, let’s get rid of at least one less-than-stellar something a month.

Less is more and all that.

Years after my husband imagined his perfect job, our friends Anne Derryberry and Ellen Wagner put the idea to use in their own way. After time served in the roll-up firm that had acquired their company, they found themselves sticks and tapped one another on the shoulder. Then they called us and told us it was finally their time to go. They’ve never looked back.

In the comments here, tell me what you will leave behind this year.

———-

Originally published in Fast Company’s Learning Resource Center on 2/18/08

Even those smart enough to rise to positions of influence sometimes think the forces of good are only available from order (control) and the forces of evil are epitomized by chaos (kaos). I’m no Agent 99, but when anyone tells me they will get through a possible recession or the school year by clamping down on employees, students, customers, markets, or even time, I feel an urge to shout into my shoe.

Some aspects of leadership and learning will always be uncertain and out of our reach. Chaos is not our enemy; it accounts for the immune system, nature, boiling water, honey, the stock market, motherhood, and innovation. Chaos is change at work.

Chaos theory doesn’t avow the universe lacks order. It reminds us order is intricate and changeable, and that we ought to stop constantly trying to direct and predict.

Statesman and futurist Harlan Cleveland (1918–2008) — one of the smartest people I have ever met — offered some hints from his own experience on how to conceive, plan, organize, and lead organizations in ways that best liberate ingenuity and maximize choice:

No individual can be truly in general charge of anything interesting or important. That means everyone involved is partly in charge. How big a part each participant plays will depend on how responsible he or she feels for the general outcome of the collective effort, and what he or she is willing to do about it.

Broader is better. The more people affected by a decision feel they were consulted about it, the more likely it is that the decision will stick.

Looser is better. The fewer and narrower the rules everyone must follow, the more room there is for individual discretion and initiative, small-group insights and innovations, regional adaptations, functional variations. Flexibility and informality are good for workers’ morale, constituency support, investor enthusiasm, and customer satisfaction.

Planning is not architecture; it’s more like fluid drive. Real-life planning is improvisation on a general sense of direction, announced by a few perhaps, but only after genuine consultation with the many who will need to improvise on it.

Information is for sharing, not hoarding. Planning staffs, systems analysis units, and others whose full-time assignment is to think should not report only in secret to some boss. Their relevant knowledge must be shared, sooner rather than later, with all those who might be able to use it to advance the organization’s purpose.

The most productive organizations flex enough for people to follow their heart while everyone does enough of what other people need them to do. If we demand people only do as they’re told, critical work goes unnoticed. If people have the authority to think for themselves (and could anything be more chaotic than that?), there’s a good chance they’ll see more broadly about their job than anyone else could.

Humans are capital not in the sense that they exist, like a five-axis machine sitting on a factory floor, but in the sense they can transform information and energy into more useful forms.

If someone tries to sell you control by clamping down on chaos, make sure you don’t get suckered into paying too dearly. For organizations to thrive, we need to figure out approaches, technologies, models, and systems which honor our whole-selves in the board room as much as in the lunch room and that generate enthusiasm, if not outright joy.

Nothing could be smarter.

Learn more about Harlan Cleveland from his book Nobody in Charge: Essays on the Future of Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2002) and the opening chapter (exerpt) of my book, Creating a Learning Culture (Cambridge, 2004)

———-

Originally published in Fast Company’s Learning Resource Center on 6/20/08

If you seek specific resources and ideas for the training department, I encourage you to check out a different book: Social Media for Trainers by Jane Bozarth (Wiley, 2010). To get a taste, the first chapter is available for download on Amazon, and an excerpt is available from Training Magazine.

Jane writes widely on the theme in articles, and blogs, too. Most references can be found on her resource-rich SoMe4Trainer Facebook page. For example, she addressed Personal Learning Networks in Learning Solutions Magazine. (Here’s a full list of all of her Nuts n Bolts posts to Learning Solutions Magazine, some on social media, many more on elearning in general). On twitter @janebozarth she’s action-packed too.

This topic is especially timely right now because it seems a slew of people in the training & development field have begun to profess themselves as experts on this topic. Better than putting their heads in the sand. Some of the things I hear them say, however, lead me to want to smile, then run in the opposite direction. To help you determine if you should run, consider this list of things I’ve heard said in the past few weeks. Each is followed with how I responded, and how I suspect Jane would also respond.

• “Social learning is the new e-Learning.” eLearning (aka online or electronically-delivered training) can connect people and create a social interaction, but it can also be done in complete isolation, sometimes because that’s appropriate. Social learning can be done online, but it can also be done face to face without the aide of any social media.
• “Social learning is new.” Huh? Social software has been around for almost 50 years, dating back to the Plato bulletin board system. Networks such as Compuserve, Usenet, discussion boards, and The Well were around before the founder of Facebook was even born. Only technology enthusiasts used those systems, though, because of clunky interfaces that didn’t readily surface or socialize the best ideas.
• “Social media is social learning.” Social learning doesn’t require social media… and social media can be as easily ignored as learned from.
• “Social learning is the same as informal learning.” Using social media to assist in the learning process is often informal (not learned in a program or class), but some instances of informal learning are not social—for example, search and reading. And many instances of learning in a social way can be organized in a very formal way.
• “Social media should replace all training.” Training is well suited for compliance and credentialing. Formal development programs are still needed to prepare employees to progress through the organization. Social media can augment training and development in the classroom or online. It complements training and covers knowledge that formal training can rarely address. Supplement, yes. Replace, not completely.

Now armed with a few counter-arguments that you’ve learned with the assistance of social media (this blog post), consider encouraging anyone who says these silly things to read Jane’s book, too. It’s loaded with techniques for enhancing and extending how everyone can learn.

Research and Analysis sites

Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, provides free data and analysis on the social impact of the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world.

Trendspotting focuses on internet trends in marketing research and predictions (they are one of many of the terrific trend sites noted in the TrendBlog for Business & Web)

IBM 2010 Global CHRO Study. Insights on what Chief Human Resource Officer leaders say are their most important workforce imperatives, how those align to what the business environment.

IBM 2010 Chief Executive Officer Study. Valuable insight into the agendas and actions of global leaders.

Online Database of Social Media Policies. The largest online database of social media policies from companies, governments, non-profits.

Web Strategy open research from Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group

Strategic Organization research from McKinsey & Co.

Monthly Labor Review Online from The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Employment Projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Occupational Outlook Quarterly from The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

O*Net Online includes a variety of occupation-related statistics and resources

Constant Contact Fall 2011 Attitudes and Outline Survey [.pdf] of almost 2,000 small businesses finds they are becoming more comfortable with social media marketing and are using it more when engaging with customers. (newly added)

Specific articles and posts

“Social Media: What Most Companies Don’t Know.” Harvard Business Review. (newly added)

“The New Conversation: Taking Social Media from Talk to Action.” [.pdf] Harvard Business Review Analytics Services, sponsored by SAS. (newly added)

“What Americans Do Online: Social Media and Games Dominate.” NielsenWire. August 6, 2010. (newly added)

“Rethinking knowledge work: A strategic approach.” McKinsey Quarterly. Knowledge workers’ information needs vary. The key to better productivity is applying technology more precisely.

“The New Media Skills.” Fast Company. It’s time to review the new set of skills people of all ages require to succeed. Here’s a list.

“2Do.Over.” Fast Company. What if 2.0 were an authentic chance to revisit and do over what came in 1.0?

“kids are heavy social network users, they don’t say no to relevant marketing efforts: online surveys and tips for marketers.” TrendSpotting.

Teenagers feel social media websites are expanding their awareness for ways in which other people could use some help. “More than half of teens (55 percent) say social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have made them more aware of the needs of others.” Harris Interactive. (newly added)

“2010 marks the year women’s voices will carry greater influence in social media.” Examiner.

“Kids’ Social Networking Study” from Grunwald Associates was a national study (sample of 1,277 aged 9-17)

“The Future of Social Media” from Grunwald Associates is a brief article addressing our social media research findings and a glimpse of the future.

“Generational Competence: A New Approach to Human Capital Management,” Ceridian, July, 2005

“Preparing Your Business for the “New Retirement,” Merrill Lynch, 2006.

Changing Demographics in the workforce:

• According the U.S. Census Bureau, single Americans now outnumber married couples with children.
• Married couples currently make up only half of the population, married couples with children account for less than a quarter of U.S. households (US Census).
• Foreign-born workers are more likely to be younger, male, without a high school diploma, and employed in service occupation than is the U.S.-born labor force (US Dept of Labor).

Mitra Toossi, “Labor force projections to 2018: older workers staying more active ” (PDF) [All Labor Force Predictions]

Sources of General Stats

World Population Summary data brought to you by the US Census Bureau.

World Population by age and gender.

“Foreign-born Workers: Labor Force Characteristics in 2005,” April 14, 2006.; U.S. Department of Labor, News Bureau of Labor Statistics. (newly added)

U.S. Census Bureau, “Families and Living Arrangements in 2003,” pg. 2, Figure 1. (newly added)

General fun

@HR_Said_What twitter account

Social learning is not just the technology of social media, although it makes use of it. It is not merely the ability to express yourself in a group of opt-in friends. Social learning combines social media tools with a shift in the corporate culture, a shift that encourages ongoing knowledge transfer and connects people in ways that make learning a joy.

Social learning thrives in a culture of service and wonder. It is inspired by leaders, enabled by technology and ignited by opportunities that have only recently unfolded.

If a culture is focused on service, the most pressing question is, “How can I help you?” How can I help you succeed? How can I help you ask strong questions, take wise risks and deliver great content? How can I help you prosper? Most importantly, how can I help you learn and make new connections? How can I help you serve the larger group, of which we are both a part?

Yet in most classrooms, young people are prevented from helping each other learn and succeed. In some communities, concern for property values and yard maintenance outweigh assisting neighbors. In many companies, talk of competitors and departmental politics overshadow someone’s need for mentoring or gaining fresh perspective. Over 60 years ago, W. Edwards Demming encouraged management to drive out fear and break down barriers between departments, and still worry and walls are the two constants that most organizations share.

Part of why we are not better at helping one another learn and grow is that our attention is spread thin. There is so much going on. We haven’t built this notion of serving into the business cycle; into our daily work. Nor have we dismantled the myth that fear and embarrassment somehow motivates people to learn. By choosing wisely where we place our attention, we have more attention and enthusiasm to give. Or as Clay Shirky put it at Web 2.0 Expo NY, “It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.”

Social learning is accelerated when we give our attention to individuals, groups and projects that interest and energize us. We self-select the themes we want to follow and filter out those that feel burdensome, all with impunity. No one gets offended when we don’t follow a project outside our domain. No one notices when we temporarily filter out the rants of people beating their own drum.

It’s the technology of social learning, and social media in general, that allows us to regulate our attention to those areas where we can gain the highest return on investment, and put our best contributions out into the world. It’s the culture of social learning that helps identify how those contributions are important to us all.

Requests for help, feedback and insight can be made without burden, without coercion, without fear. It takes time, though. You don’t simply announce a culture of service one day in the hope that everyone will figure it out.

Growing a culture of service is more like planting a garden than building a shed. A garden requires tending, whereas a shed is built once. A social learning culture requires design, training, guidance, leadership, monitoring and celebrating successes, large and small. People need to know where the organization is headed and why it matters. It’s not easy for people to make the shift from a culture where they fear they are not good enough and need to improve, to one where they feel safe enough to want to improve for the enjoyment of it. Some will think it impossible for a whole culture to shift from fear-based fixes to joy-based learning, from coercion to inspiration. Others have witnessed it and will cheer along.

The trail is being blazed by some unexpected players, including IBM Lotus and the CIA. We do not know all of what it takes to make this cultural shift work. There is still a kind of magic in the soup. But from our own work and the illustrative examples from groups like the 2.0 Adoption Council, we are seeing stunning examples of where it works. When done well, the results are nothing short of magical.

Think of asking someone out. A trip to Spain is a larger request than a local dinner, which is larger than meeting for coffee. The larger the request, the more pressure and the more difficult it is to back out. The smaller your request, the more fun you make it to participate. Whether courting customers, friends or romance, demonstrate your interest by listening and connecting. Help them succeed.

The easier the tools make it for people to tell us what they need, the easier and more enjoyable it is to be genuinely helpful. The technology and culture of social learning can create an environment where you are enthusiastically supported, where your sense of wonder returns and creativity blossoms — where people thrive.

[lassi_kurkijarvi/CC BY-NC 2.0]

Originally published on Fast Company’s Learn At All Levels by Marcia Conner and Steve LeBlanc.

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Steve LeBlanc (@sleveo), public speaker, corporate trainer and holistic healer sees opportunities everywhere for learning and helping people connect.

Marcia Conner (@marciamarcia), works with senior leaders to put collaborative technology into action. Her new book, The New Social Learning with Tony Bingham address how to thrive with social business and more.