It’s ironic because I advocate setting goals all the time; but when I do it for myself, I almost never reach them. Goals do leave me dissatisfied with my present (as Stephen Shapiro notes in his book Goal Free Living.) The idea of having  a theme, an idea that guides your decisions for the upcoming year, that acts as your compass is simple and achievable.

• What was my theme for last year? It would be stability: in my finances, where I live, building a community, in my new job, and in my health. It’s been a tough year.
• What would be my theme for next year? I’m thinking the word that feels right is flexibility. I want more flexibility in my work, how I work, in my travel schedule, social schedule, in my blogging and in my relationship (okay, that doesn’t quite mean what you might be thinking — I do not envision becoming a swinger.) I’ve been so rigid this past year, so focused in getting it right, and making my personal relationships suffer, now I need to flex. Let’s see where it takes me. I’ll check in again in a few months.

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.

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.

Have you ever experienced learning design failure? It’s pretty easy to spot — the primary “tell” being the utterly confused or disgusted looks on the faces of your learners. Or it’s when your stakeholders or learners actively start sabotaging the design and doing whatever they want. Or they just get up and leave. That is a failure of learning design.

Having recently gone through a design failure, here’s some tips for avoiding this gut-wrenching experience.

Tip #1 – Make sure there is ONE owner/sponsor

The hardest thing for an outside consultant (or an inside L&D employee for that matter), is to make sure there is ONE person who owns the design. One person who will give you the sign-off, the go-ahead, the buy-in, the responsibility. If you find yourself in a situation where the owner or sponsor isn’t really owning the project — RUN, don’t walk, in the other direction. Ease your way out, or find a way to address the situation. To be honest, by the time you realize this, it’s often too late.

Tip #2 – Get your stakeholders’ attention

We all lead busy lives and our working lives seem to never let up. Learning initiatives often take a backseat to making the end-of-quarter numbers. So when you have your stakeholders review the information, make sure you are getting them at a point where they can pay attention and really try to understand what’s going on. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a nasty surprise just as you’re ready to launch, and where they will claim to have never been consulted.

Tip #3 – Make sure they understand the what the learning experience will feel like

Remember Tip #2 above — first get people’s attention. In addition, if people don’t do learning stuff every day, they will not easily understand the learning experience. Once you have their attention, do whatever it takes to help them understand the what the learners will be doing in the module, what it will feel like, what they will be doing, how the learning sequence ties together. Help them enter into the experience in your head. Then they will be able to give you honest, and grounded feedback on whether or not your learning design will work.

Don’t design alone

The hardest thing to do is do design alone without feedback. Do whatever it takes to get that feedback from your owner/sponsor, your stakeholders, your learners. Consult other learning designers if available. Do whatever it takes to get involvement and avoid surprises.

But sometimes, you just make mistakes. You make errors and there is no one to catch them. Or your design doesn’t quite fit expectations. Admit your problems and if there’s time and money, fix them. Otherwise, take a deep breath, do some meditation, and move on — and don’t forget the lesson you’ve learned.

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.

One of my biggest struggles right now is how to get my spouse to clean up his “stuff” in the living room. I’ve tried to set boundaries, command, cajole, bribe — all to no avail. What I really want to do is go in there and throw all that “stuff” in the recycling bin. But then again, I value my relationship… and that might not go over so well.

How do I influence him and get him to do what I want?

This question is not so different from what I hear from some trainers and educators. How do I influence my learners? … and get them to want to be there, want to learn, do what’s good for them, do what I want? Ok, maybe the way that last phrasing is a bit manipulative, but essentially it’s the same question. How do I shift and influence behavior?

Small acts of commitment

Get people to make small acts of commitment, and that will lead to larger acts of commitment, according to Robert B. Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. So what does that mean exactly?

An experiment: a volunteer asked  homeowners to put a 3″ sign in their window stating “Be a Safe Driver”.  Most complied. A couple weeks later, another person came to their door asking them if they could put a house-obscuring billboard on their front lawns with the words “DRIVE SAFELY”. A full 76% of the people who had agreed to the small sign, then agreed to the large billboard. A control group, people who had never been asked to put the small sign in their window, refused 83% of the time. What happened?

Small acts of commitment can lead to larger acts of commitment. Small acts of commitment can alter self-image (“I am a publicly minded person who cares about safe driving.”) When self-image is altered, we adjust our actions in the world to be in-line with our self-image.

Small acts of commitment for learners

Some of these small acts may already be familiar:

• learning contracts
• writing down goals for learning session (or merely even copying down goals…)
• raising hands in answer to a question affirming the reason one is at the session
• testimonials after the session
• videotaping people at the beginning of the session re: goals
• agree to have them act a certain way for a short period of time (examples: blog, but only for a month; eat healthier, but only for a week; hand over your Blackberry, but only for an hour)
• let them know that there will be a report out on what everyone is doing differently (learned/changed behavior) 2-3 weeks after session is over
• have them construct an ideal learning persona for the group
• Give out small prizes for the “best” answer. If prizes are too big, individuals won’t be doing to get the best answer, they’ll be doing it for the prize. It’s about the person owning their actions.

These small acts seem trivial, but it was  by small acts that American PoWs were broken down by their Chinese captors in the Korean war and willingly collaborated. This had never happened to a large extent before. What did the Chinese do? They had they write essays or statements on what was bad about America, even if the PoWs  just copied them out. And they offered small prizes for the best essays.

Choose small acts that help create the self-image you want people to have.

Back to the “stuff” in the living room

So what small acts of  can I come up for my stubborn spouse?

• create a list of what needs to be done to make a clean living room
• work together on cleaning up the stuff, but just for an hour
• take a picture of living room to put on Facebook to show to our friends
• have a big party so BIG that the living room *must* be cleaned up

I’ll let you know how it goes. If you have any suggestions for learners or for my spouse, let me know. Hopefully he won’t read this post and launch a counter-strategy.

Personas - courtesy galiciaCAD.com

Having been on the job market for several months now, I’ve noticed that Captivate and Articulate are required for almost every e-learning or instructional design position that I see posted. Having used Captivate, and having seen Articulate being used – I now understand why so many consider e-learning boring. These two software tools are designed to rapidly convert PowerPoint presentations into e-Learning. They also make it easy to tack a quiz onto the end of the learning. The metaphor behind the software design is “book”, is “page-turner”. The result is boring e-Learning.

Now hold on, am I just blaming the tools — especially since I haven’t really used Articulate? Am I limited by my own vision of what these tools are capable of? Possibly. Am I asking too much of e-Learning designers? Maybe. It is hard to create engaging e-Learning. Just look at my own portfolio — can’t say the learning is *that* engaging.

Research, Think, Write, Design

So here I come to my tag-line: research, write, think, design. Will this make learning more engaging? Perhaps, perhaps not. But it might make it more relevant.

• Research the business outcome. Why are you creating this learning course/widget/thing? What business outcomes are you trying to effect? What behaviors are you trying to change? What do you want people to do?!? Not just “We want people to learn this new financial software” — but “We want people to increase their efficiency and accuracy in expense reporting (or budget planning or budget management)”. This leads the question: “Well, heck, what are they doing now? Who are THEY?”
• Research the learners. Are they novices? experts? do they have different roles/needs? can you create personas from these needs? Is it possible to actually collect data on them? How technically savvy are they? How do they get their information? How do they interact with their LMS? Do they interact with the LMS? Examples of defining personas and how to use personas can be found on the Cooper Journal website. One can think of personas as meaningful customer segmentation made real by colorful descriptions — see the description of how Best Buy uses personas in designing their stores and interacting with their customers in my review of The Deciding Factor.
• Think about the research – well, can we just call this analysis? Sure, analyze you data. Concept. Examine the correlations. What can we learn from these data patterns, without making correlation errors. Clearly this is one of the areas that I need to address, in addition to designing better research.
• Write about it – does it seem redundant to write about your research and analysis? I think not. The process of writing and having to explain your research analysis is key to communication and deepening the understanding. The writing process forces the assumptions to the surface. It exposes the flaws in your argument. Writing is also key to the design process.
• Design – for me this is where you begin to explore methodologies, tools, techniques. This is where you think about learning outcomes, the learning experience. I also strongly believe that the basis of good learning design is good writing — understanding the subject matter, finding good examples, writing good scripts. The quality of the discourse matters. The writing underlying the learning design is often where it all falls apart — maybe the writer can’t imagine the learner persona. Maybe they do not fully understand the subject matter or business outcome. Good research and analysis don’t always lead to good design, but directs the design, channels the creative energies.

Yes, then we have development, where we use whatever toolset (choosing of which is part of the design process) or perhaps organizational constraints dictate what tools to use. Then the implementation, then the evaluation. Well, the evaluation should actually be a part of the research phase — if we know the business outcome, how will we know when we got there? Define success at the beginning and figure out how to effectively measure it.

For example, “We want people to increase their efficiency and accuracy in expense reporting (or budget planning or budget management)” — well there may be measurements in time required to do X, or accuracy in X (how many times to redo), or how many people to do X, what is the cost of doing X — then see if these metrics change after/during the learning. Of course, this assumes these metrics were collected in the first place for you to measure change against.

A role that incorporates this level of thinking, research, design would be ideal. Writing this down helps.

My question – Are Training & Development departments  thinking this way? Are organizations thinking this way? Is it that people just “don’t have time!” to do this level of research? You know, I don’t think so. I think much of the information is there, easy to get, is we ask the right questions. User-experience designers are already doing this. Product Management is already doing this. Let’s do it internally and not just for clients/customers. This is low-hanging fruit – but a big mental adjustment.

Predication and plans for 2010

In response to the ASTD big question this month – I offer the following

Predictions:

• Design thinking will be the buzz word for 2010. To be honest, I’m still figuring out what it means for learning. I think this all started with Tom Kelly’s IDEO: Art of Innovation book back in 2005 (see my review of this book) and continues with Tim Brown’s Change by Design. On IDEO’s blog, design thinking is described by 3 ideas: Inspiration, Iteration and Change
• Analytics will rule. I think the learning profession, especially online learning folks, will have to collect more specific data on how people are using the learning, finding patterns in the data to describe different “types” of learners. Again, still figuring this one out. (See post on analytics book review.)

Challenges:

• Finding new metaphors for learning. The metaphors of the book, and of the the classroom/course still dominate learning. What are the new metaphors? How do we move beyond these old metaphors? I think the big tool sets out there (Captivate, Articulate) push us towards these metaphors. Will there be new tools that move us in a different direction?
• Aging workforce. We’ve heard much about Gen Y. However, I think we are also dealing with an aging workforce. I need to research more stats.

Plans:

• Get work, get paid. Let there be work! Looking forward to being more fully employed in 2010, whether that be employment or more contracts: 2009 was not the best year to graduate :-}
• Design more games. Been focussed so much on the employment thing, forgot to do the thing I really wanted to explore.
• Learn more about:
  • Design thinking
  • Analytics
    
  • Metaphors for learning
  • Workforce statistics
  • Tools that break the mold(s)

Hmmm… I see many blog posts coming out of this. Happy 2010 everyone – may it be filled with blue skies and new possibilities!