What's in my head today?

OK, I promised a short summary of my LearnX presentation for those who were interested, so here we go.

A simple premise: the nature of work changes, and the pace of that change has never been faster

I doubt anyone will argue with the straightforward premise. In the past few hundred years, work has moved from subsistence farming and craft professions, through industrialisation and on to knowledge work (and beyond). These days, the value of many public companies rests mainly on the knowledge and skill of their workforce, expressed in patents, innovation and greatly accelerated product cycles.

In the early days of the 20th century, Frederick Winslow Taylor published the seminal book The Principles of Scientific Management. This work became the standard text of management for decades (and you can still see some of Taylor’s thinking expressed in many workplaces even today). 

Taylor’s basic argument was that workers were not paid to think. Work was a simple series of steps that, if followed correctly, led to a known and desired outcome (think of a widget coming off a production line). The role of managers was to ensure those steps were followed correctly and that people didn’t slack off when they should be working.

To paraphrase Dan Pink, that system worked well for many organisations - right up to the point where it didn’t work anymore.

Good decisions in the face of uncertainty

When a job just consists of following a series of steps toward a known outcome, training is as simple as the job itself. These days, however, fewer and fewer jobs can be shoe-horned into that category of work. More often, people at all levels of organisations need to make sound decisions, based on incomplete information, in response to situations that may not have arisen before (or at least, situations where there are circumstances that present in a unique combination). 

Formal training, as most people know it (pre-existing courseware presented as self-paced material or as part of a group training session) can only go so far in preparing people to thrive in modern organisations. After all, things like procedural training can only really address problems that have been seen before. When people are dealing with novel situations, they need support to be able to make wise decisions - and they can’t afford to take time out to complete some kind of training intervention before they make their choice.

In organisations that face these kind of issues, training departments need to become stewards of corporate knowledge - and this requires that they are brave enough to hand off a large portion of control to the very people who confront the problems on the front line.

Technology meets good old fashioned discussion

Allowing workers access to knowledge tools such as wikis, blogs, discussion forums and short messaging services carries many more benefits than risks. When used wisely, these tools can help capture critical organisational knowledge (everything from procedural knowledge to simple tips from the old hands) and serve it up when and where it’s needed. Full-text search combined with user-based tagging of content can help the cream rise to the top.

Of course, technology isn’t the be-all and end-all of knowledge sharing; organisations should also be mindful of the value of setting aside discussion spaces in their offices - places where people can gather and talk in a comfortable environment. After all, multiple studies have shown that people learn somewhere between 70% and 90% of what they know about how to do their job from their day-to-day exposure to the work. This includes discussions with colleagues, asking questions, trial and error and observing others. Giving people a chance to codify that knowledge so that it’s accessible from anywhere within the company is a wise investment.

Combining wikis, blogs, video, audio and old fashioned sit down and chats has the potential to speed a new starter’s journey toward proficiency, while also carrying benefits for the proven performers. Sometimes, we focus so much on new starters and those who require additional assistance that we forget the value we can derive from helping those who have already reached proficiency get a little bit better. If the true high performers are encouraged and willing to share what they know works in a place where it can be accessed even by people they don’t have a chance to speak to day to day, think of the potential for performance improvement across an organisation. Think also of the knowledge that could be saved within an organisation when good people move on or retire.

But who has the time, and who will take the leap?

Yes, time is an issue for many people; however, selling the potential benefits well will help you draw out the innovators and early adopters who will make the effort early on. After that, it’s a case of making others aware of the benefits that are being found through the use of the tools and marketing the value of collaboration more widely.

An understanding of the concept of diffusion of innovation can help here:

I could waffle on with a long-winded explanation, but I much prefer this one: http://innovateordie.com.au/2010/05/10/the-secret-to-accelerating-diffusion-of-innovation-the-16-rule-explained/

Basically, your innovators will leap into using the new tools because they love trying out something new - you won’t need to exert much effort to attract them. Your early adopters require some coaxing, but represent fairly easy converts also. Attracting the early majority and beyond, though, is a case of marketing the wins (the demonstrated benefits you have found and taken the time to record and measure) and explaining how the tools will help them in their day-to-day work (the old What’s In It For Me - WIIFM -proposition).

Getting permission (and resources)

One presenter at LearnX this year addressed this question in the following way: “I’d much rather ask for forgiveness than permission.” Personally, I don’t subscribe to that theory, and I don’t recommend it to you. Winning support for an initiative like this takes planning and a sound sales pitch to the right person or people. Ideally, you want a high-level executive sponsor who can drive through resistance for you. Winning that sponsor is a matter of speaking the language that execs understand - and speak themselves: bottom line results.

It’s no good (in most cases) floating an initiative like this based on better access to information, increased support for people or any other nebulous terms. You need to sell it on the basis of those core business measures that execs are measured on in their performance reviews. Is it decreased product cycle times? Improved contractual compliance? Increased revenue through greater proficiency, and greater speed to proficiency? Decreased staff turnover through more responsive and relevant decision making support? If you don’t yet know the core measures at the operational coal face, you need to learn them, and then understand how they come about - what is it that can be improved to drive them forward further? At that point, you need to sit down and work out how your planned initiative contributes.

Fortunately, you can roll out many of these tools for very little investment; there are any number of free open-source software offerings that may cover what you need them to do. The greatest cost will likely be the time of the people involved in developing and deploying the tools themselves. 

You may also find that some managers (especially those responsible for compliance and quality) blanch at the thought of opening up an environment where anyone can contribute information. Well, there are differing levels to that proposition. Changes to certain areas of knowledge (e.g. procedural manuals) may need to be approved by certain staff. For the most part, though, companies that have taken the leap find that the communities that develop become self-correcting quite quickly. People identify erroneous or incomplete information and correct it. And let’s be honest, if anyone thinks poor information doesn’t get sent around their company in the absence of wikis and blogs, they’re kidding themselves. At least when it’s available to be seen and corrected, you know where that bad info is coming from and you can help that person (and others) by correcting it.

If anyone really doubts the value of information that comes from the people who do the work (as opposed to the L&D team or somewhere else), point them somewhere like the SAP Community Network. You can Google a number of other options, including acrobatusers.com or any one of dozens of companies who use software from Bright Idea. These sites will also give you some idea of the possibilities available to your organisation if you haven’t yet had much exposure to this kind of approach.