In 2009 I had participated in a class in social media and branding at Stanford, and was invited to speak at the new class the following year. I was struggling to define myself in the post-crash world and in a new world called California (oh so different than New York or Durham, North Carolina). The thinking and exercises I did on social media and brand as a part of that class were incredibly helpful.

It was helpful to remind myself of what I said then as it is still relevant and possibly even more important today: think about your value-add, what you bring to the marketplace, understand your “feature-set”, as well as think about an aspirational future and what you bring to that future — do you have the skillsets to support that future?

Watch and enjoy — would love to hear your comments on is it still relevant? What makes sense or doesn’t?

First, a few definitions of transmedia storytelling:

• “Telling a story that extends across multiple media platforms” (Lisa Hsia of Bravo Digital Media writing for Mashable)
• Where “elements of a story are dispersed systematically across multiple media platforms, each making their own unique contribution to the whole.” (Henry Jenkins debunking transmedia myths in Fast Company)

Lisa Hsia’s point is that interactive social TV is changing the way audiences engage with television. Henry Jenkins takes it further and adds that shows such as Glee “model new transmedia strategies to attract and sustain audience engagement.” You watch the show, you engage with the characters on Facebook, you read the Twitter stream, and maybe even add to the story.

Henry Jenkins makes a key point (you really should read his article) “Transmedia storytelling is still about the stories and if the stories do not capture the imagination, no amount of transmedia extension can repair the damage.”

And now to learning….

So why the heck does this excite me? Well, can you just imagine the possibilities for learning/organizational change?

• Say you’re trying to get a group of people to behave differently or think differently about a particular topic. Well, write an engaging storyline for them. Start with a set of characters that personify their lives.
• The audience watches the stories of the characters’ attempts to learn on a particular topic, then in the classroom the audience/participants engage in deconstructing the story and saying how they would have done it differently, what resources they should have used, what they should do next.
• At the close, they then pitch that idea to the “producers”, who then decide on the next story segment. And so it goes on for each class.
• The learning experience starts with each new cohort (defined as a group coming into the organization in a similar time frame.)
• Add in a fan page, a twitter stream, a game element, t-shirts, etc., all of which tell one aspect of the story or allow the audience to engage.

Back to Henry Jenkins: “Transmedia represents a strategy for telling stories where there is a particularly diverse set of characters, where the world is richly realized, and where there is a strong back-story or mythology that can extend beyond the specific episodes being depicted in the film or television series.”

I just have to keep reminding myself, start small, grow it over time. Time to make the ideas I’ve been exploring on creating the eLearning graphic novel into a franchise. Next episode coming soon….

A year after stepping through the looking glass into the world of full-time employment in a large company, I ask myself, “What was I thinking?”

I know exactly what I was thinking — the need to establish credibility, get a strong brand on my resume, support for my work, and opportunities to work on interesting problems. As I  re-read Part 1 of Through the looking glass I remember the apprehension I felt about going to work for a very large company. I remember being worried about how I would have to conform, change my identity and pretend to be what I was not. I remember thinking I would have to let go of my independent contractor identity as I accepted the rules of this new game. That was my main worry. None of that really came to pass in the way that I imagined.

• First, I did not expect my work to be so very virtual. Now, hear me out — I have done virtual. I love virtual. I’m a telecommuter. I believe that virtual is here to stay, and is the future of work. But whoa! Starting all your relationships virtually because you’re on a national team– now that’s hard. Not having any work reason to connect with people in my local office, that’s also hard. I realize now that I’ve always started face-to-face.
• But then it gets more interesting — I also am never on a consistent project team. That’s right – no intact teams. Not only are you relationships virtual, but you’re always remaking them as you move from project to project. That’s even harder. It means that on every project you are re-negotiating your role, understanding how others define their roles, and getting a good handle on their skills and capabilities. Most of the time, project teams don’t bother to do that “teaming” stuff because there’s too much work to do. They don’t bother to really understand each other as humans with 3-4 other projects going at the same time. Yet we come into these project teams loaded with expectations. At some point, always, you run into a snag, a bump, a wall of frustration.
• The work is lonely. I did not expect to feel so completely alone in my work. Yes, I’m on a project team, but as a learning designer/instructional designer — I’m suppose to be an expert, so all that “content-development stuff” or “working with SMEs stuff” is left to me. Very little collaboration. A lot of loneliness in the work. And even though I love working virtually, being a telecommuter, diving deep into the content, living in my introvert world — I deeply miss collaborating. To me, that’s the whole purpose of a team. Without that team collaboration, I might as well be on an assembly line. And you know what — it hurts. I miss it dearly.

That last paragraph was really hard to write.

Heres’ the good stuff -

• I do get to work on interesting projects and let my ideas run as wild — if I can convince others to run with me.
• I do have amazing people that I work with and for on a daily basis — I just don’t always get to collaborate with them.
• I am learning so much — about my capabilities, my value-add, what I do and don’t like doing, what I need to learn more about, about eLearning, and most importantly — about the dynamics of working in a large organization and the effort it takes to get alignment and stay on message.
• My identity has not been that changed — except that they require me to use my full legal name for my email – which sucks. And I have learned to filter my words and think about my intent in a given situation; and that’s all for the better, IMHO.
• I’ve also learned to appreciate the value of my past experiences — I’ve had incredible teams in the past, incredible mentors, incredible leaders. I deeply appreciate that I experienced those others in my life.
• I get to travel some, but not too much — so far.
• I meet incredible facilitators and coaches as a part of my work, and yes, get to work with them sometimes.
• I get the benefits that come from working in a large organization (yes, health, dental and a 401K are a nice to have). I never thought I’d say this — but I like that I have a number to call in case of a natural or other kind of disaster. It’s that paternalism of a large organization because it’s to their benefit that we are all healthy and taken care of. I’m a dual-citizen American/Canadian , so don’t get me started on who I think should really be providing that safety net.

As long as I’m still learning, and the good balances or even outweighs the bad, then it’s worth staying. But if that starts to shift, or if the work that I do is not longer aligned with my goals, then back through the looking glass I’ll go.

• The battlefield was more complex than originally anticipated. Remember that documentary with Robert McNamara – The Fog of War? He lists 11 lessons from the Vietnam War one of which is: “Our misjudgments of friend and foe, alike, reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.”  I misjudged the the history, culture and politics of the organization in which I work. There were more “stakeholders” involved than I ever imagined; there was a “history” of negative results and repercussions emanating from those negative results that I was not fully aware of; and the importance of the organizational message outweighed the importance of the learner’s experience.
• My intentions were not clear. I intended to create a better learning experience for new joiners. But what was my intention for my team? I was
  not clear on those intentions. Had I been more aware of *who* was actually on the team, and making connections with them, then it probably would have helped to a certain degree.
• I didn’t want this battle and therefore cared less about it. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be in this space called on-boarding, therefore, I cared less. This impacted the two items listed above.
• There was simply too much going on in my working life. This is the usual excuse — I was overworked. Nothing new, most people who have jobs are overworked. So what I need
  to do is create space to reflect — daily or weekly — so I can control the emotions associated with being overwhelmed, and I don’t get lost in frustration.

The biggest learning for me —  I just have to be clearer on what projects I choose to be involved in, and which ones I choose not to be involved in, to the extent that I have a choice: don’t choose leaderless projects where you have the responsibility but no power. That is the definition of frustration.

Most organizations look like the seaweed picture in this post (a.k.a. Orbiting the Giant Hairball). Most organizations are a giant mess of tangled STUFF, in which people get tangled anytime they try to change anything or do creative work. How does one keep creative integrity and not get tangled and trapped?

The keys for me are: reflection, get clear on intentions, and be concious of the battlefield.

Unfortunately in this one, both I and the learners lost. The organization got airtime for it’s messages. People get to say “I consulted the right parts of the seaweed pile.” But the ultimate goal of the organization — retention and engaging new joiners in a positive way — gets lost.

We often do not get voluntary participants. People are forced to come to programs and consequently, it undermines the implementation of other game mechanics. How do we overcome the challenge of voluntary participation?

My response:

• First, there’s an assumption that participants DON’T want to go to training — I think they do. I think their work gets in the way. If they had their druthers, they would volunteer to come, but the system they are a part of (aka, their work environment), prevents/hinders/discourages them from doing so. If it’s choice between learning and utilization, utilization wins (particular to professional services.) Examine the SYSTEM they are a part of.
• Motivation comes from goals. Perhaps if were to get clear on the learner’s goals, we could more clearly map to motivation. If they don’t know their goals, their motivations will be fuzzy, IMHO. If their goal is to figure out their goals, then even that helps.
• The tension in most learning, as was noted in Joe’s post, is that is about the “message” that the organization wants their employees to learn/regurgitate/live. So absolutely, there are training situations where there is a need for compliance and people are forced to go. We look for ways to make those trainings more palatable (like gamification) rather than stating quite clearly, in this GAME of WORK, here are the rules. This is what you must know to survive and thrive. If your goal is to keep your job, guess what, you gotta play by these rules.
• The medium in which this message is given (yes I’m channeling McLuhan, he is Canadian after all) usually kills the motivation (yes, I’m thinking death by powerpoint)
• The challenge is the capture the energy in a forced training situation. Where is the energy? In onboarding (new hires or acquisitions), the energy has to do with anxiety of joining a new organization. The motivation is to understand the lay of the land – expectations, tools, etc. How does one channel the energy into something positive — either connections with each other, with their new organization, or voicing/airing concerns in a safe way. This is not new.

I think with gamification and voluntary participation we are perhaps asking the wrong question. It’s not just about the individual but the system they are a part of. Use gamification, but use it in a way that makes the experience more authentic — bring in randomess and the gaming aesthetic it creates rather than a point system. Allow rules that channel and focus the energy in the room — rules that open up the experience rather than shut it down by someone “telling” you what to do. Create teams that support collaboration rather than competition.

Gamification can be useful with the right framing.

Through the Looking Glass is an apt description of what it feels like to enter into a new organization. With every organization you  step through the looking glass, into a world that is defined by its own set of rules. Sometimes the rules make sense, most often they don’t – that is until you have a better understanding of the system, and how it relates to the world around it.

I find myself asking “whose mind is mirrored inside this looking glass?” What minds, or aggregation of minds have created this world? And always, always, the questions — what is the game, what are the rules, who are the players? It’s in my nature to not just try and understand systems, but to try and change them. To find the places where you can shift the game to a new level — the leverage points or “magic key to the secret door.”

My problem is that I get so excited and awed by this new world, that I forget to ask the basic questions about the game. I forget to remain in that place between believing and non-believing, between being a dancer and watching the dancing from a higher ground, between playing the game and playing the rules. This time I’ll try to remember.

I excerpt it below for you reading convenience.

The Book

Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus: Capturing Knowledge for Gen X and Y Employees by Ken Ball and Gina Gotsill examines the “knowledge vacuum” that is occurring in the business world as Baby Boomers retire or leave the workplace, and take with them, their soft skills an practical wisdom.

Summary

At first glance, this book appears to be about the sea-change that we’ve heard so much about in the context of social security — retiring Baby Boomers. The book then quickly takes a deep dive into the specifics of those generational differences, examines different types of knowledge, and looks at the impact on specific industries. A large part of the book outlines on what you need in order to design a program that will effectively help transfer and retain knowledge.

This book is based on both primary research — talking to people in companies who are dealing with this very issue — and well-grounded secondary research. There’s a special focus on industries such as aerospace, manufacturing, oil, gas and utilities. Some snippets that resonated with me:

• One-third the youngest boomers do not want to be known as Baby Boomers– in fact, most identify as Gen X.
• Baby Boomers like telling stories, but GenX often wants to approach Boomers in a less “adoring” manner than they would prefer.
• GenX consider themselves “free-agents”, often mentor each other, and just want to be left alone to get the job done.
• Younger generations expect exceptions — they lack patience for a “must do this way” approach to learning.
• Data with interpretation becomes information, and with context and experience becomes knowledge
• Information exchange does not equate to knowledge transfer.

In order to understand the most appropriate methodology for transferring knowledge, you must first understand your audience, and the difference between the types of knowledge. Is it explicit, implicit or tacit, and how do you know the difference? The core challenge of the Boomer Exodus is transferring tacit and implicit knowledge from boomers to younger generations.

Mentoring is one of the key strategies to knowledge transfer. In order to do this effectively, consider the audience, your metrics, and the nature of the job (e.g., sales coach vs. leadership mentoring). Supporting tools may include supply toolkits, worksheets, forums for networking, orientation and training the creating a mentoring program. It can be 1:1 mentoring, or perhaps even the creation of mentoring circles. Additional means of knowledge transfer include using social media, communities of practice, narrative storytelling, and even after-action-reviews.

Why read this book?

If you’re looking to establish a knowledge transfer program within your organization this book will help you create a process around a knowledge project. It goes through the specifics of designing, developing and implementing and nurturing a program with mentoring at the cornerstone.

If you’re looking to understand differences in generational learning preferences and the characteristics of these generations, this book provides well-researched basics in the subject. It has a textbook feel to its approach.

The authors come from an instructional design perspective and so use the ADDIE process to guide you through the creation of a program. The authors may not be “traditional” OD practitioners, but the process of creating a knowledge transfer program is OD in practice.

In general, practitioners who are faced with the challenge of an aging workforce, retirements that loom large, will find this book to be a useful, practical guide to structuring and implementing a solution.

If you’re interested in learning more, come hear Ken Ball speak with his colleague Vic Passion at an upcoming BAODN event on Oct. 27, 2010.

——————–

The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media by Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner is a good book. It does exactly what it purports to do — provide a comprehensive guide to social learning. It’s one of those books that is going to become a must-have for learning folks — for the next couple years anyways before it all changes again. But by then, perhaps they will have built it into a franchise, bringing out a new book every year.

This book covers: workplace trends, online communities, making the case for social learning, micro-sharing (aka twitter and Facebook), collective intelligence (wikis, blogging), immersive environments, and blended learning.

Good points: it’s easy to read, it has nice tidbits (“Microsharing is an serendipity engine”, p.98). I can easily imagine it as a reference when making a game-plan for social learning in your workplace. A great place to start if you’re learning about social learning.

Downside: It didn’t inspire me. Perhaps it’s just me — I’m familiar with most of the stuff in the book and I’m looking for something else. It talks about nuts and bolts, and it has quotes from people who implement, people who manage it, there are many interesting stories, but not compelling stories. I wanted to hear more about how that small group of guys changed the culture of the CIA, FBI and the rest of the intelligence community and got them to use social media.

If you’re working at the intersection of social media and learning, you need this book in your shelf. End of story. So I’ll make it easy: here is where you can buy it. And don’t worry, I don’t get a cut, not even through Google ads.

But if you’re looking for the in-depth story of how social media creates cultural change in organizations, you won’t find it here.

Check out the New Social Learning website for more info.

Maybe not the shortest book review ever, but close.

For those of you not yet in the know, an open space meeting is essentially a gathering, spanning one day or several, around a common topic, where there is no preset agenda. The participants create the agenda on the day by putting up topics for small group discussion. The facilitators provide a grid of time slots and meeting spaces, and people put up the ideas or problems they would like to discuss. At the appropriate times, people vote with their feet and go to the small group gathering that interests them most. They can stay at one group, or flit between groups. Meeting notes are captured, and then published in a wiki or some other format.

The quality of the conversations depends on the participants, the topics, and the energy of the space. It’s a different way of having a professional conference. You are responsible for creating your own experience. Ok, I buy into that. But still, I find myself wanting more. What’s missing for me?

For me it’s the difference between formal and informal learning, where structured conferences are the former, and unconferences are the latter. There is a place for both. One is about learning in a designed path, in a structured way, to a particular outcome. The other is about exploring a topic.  So it depends what I need at that time. Am I exploring or wanting to get somewhere?

What I love most about the open space meetings is going places where I never thought I’d go. What I don’t like is when I’m looking to plunge deeply into a topic, and be taken to place I didn’t know I could go, by someone who has explored and thought about it in depth — when I need a guide.

Now that I’ve written this it seems obvious, but it’s not so obvious in the moment when you’re having great conversations and still find yourself looking around for the sage. I want both. I want to dive deep with a guide, and then explore, with others, and find my own way. Like improvisational jazz — structure and unstructure within the same experience.

Can’t we design a middle way?

What shape might this take?

• Learning as search

  • I have an immediate learning need and I search for something that will help me.
  • Text search  is limited — there is too much noise that comes from searching. Search engines may improve their algorithms, but there’s too much data out there.
  • Company channels - I go to my company’s learning channel (most likely an app) I look up a word and see a set of linked concepts – something like this:
  • Rating systems – I have the option to add layers or re-sort the data so I can see popularity, rating, recommendations by the Learning Group; recommendations by the CEO; or how they link to being a part of a learning series (aka curriculum). It also recommends others who may want to be taking the course at the same time and suggests them as learning buddies.
  • Learning solo or in groups: I also have the option of learning on my own, learning with a group, or with my team where we learn parts of a complex set of information (distributed cognition), or just learning with others who are taking this or have taken this recently.
  • Choosing & Follow-up  – I choose the learning chunk I want. This is followed-up by an email that asks me to  rate it, whether I want it put towards my performance goals and also send me related links for more learning. Maybe I take advantage of this, maybe I don’t.
  • If I don’t find what I need, I tweet internally. Hopefully someone in the Learning Group responds and sends me a link to the relevant information. I smile, they’re just like ComcastCares.

• Learning as part of Business/Talent Management

  • My company has set strategic goals. This translates into competencies. This eventually turns into learning goals at the group and individual level. Or maybe it’s just that my manager has set learning goals for the group.
  • The business management/talent management system sends me reminders on expected courses.
  • I take courses online/in-person. Or maybe I test out of them. Only successfully completed courses go on the record.
  • For bonus points I create learning modules and advertise internally. This goes towards my learning points. I check my learning points against those as colleagues on the leaderboard. Learning as gaming.
  • My learning points come up as part of my review process.

In 2015 we will still be recovering from this economic downturn. Whether companies will be able to invest in an infrastructure that brings together all the pieces of their business so that there can be a coherent learning plan remains to be seen. Or whether the management of this infrastructure goes to the cloud and software as  service can step in to fulfill this role remains to be seen.

I imagine workplace learning technology that is not that much different from today — I imagine it better integrated and linked to my personal objectives and my company’s strategic business objectives.

Workplace learning technology in 2015 will help me customize my learning experience to my needs and my company’s strategic goals.

Whatever happens — people will still need help separating the signal from the noise.