There are lots of ways to learn things. School is but one of them.

You say learning and managers hear schooling. Training mimics school. Teach a class; give a test. Get the event over with.

Schools rarely validate non-school ways to learn. Learning that takes place outside their walls doesn’t rate grades or gold stars.

Jesuits say, “Give me the child for seven years, and I will give you the man.” Schools had their way with our brains for sixteen or more years. Little wonder top-down training is the default option for corporate learning.

Corporate learning professionals wring their hands when managers demand training when what they really want is performance. Experience is often a better teacher. Mentors have more impact than instructors. Optimal learning takes place on the job, not apart from it

Isn’t it our responsibility to point out that training is an expensive way to learn? That workers aren’t empty-headed novices? That learning’s a never-ending process? That’s there’s a better way?

(more…)

Sloan Management Review has a great interview with Andy McAfee on What Sells CEOs on Social Networking. CEOs excitedly agree with Lew Platt’s old observation about Hewlett-Packard: “If only HP knew what HP knows, we’d be three times more productive.” They understand the power of weak ties in enterprise social networks. They appreciate the incoming generation’s new approach to working without limits. Sure, there are fears of losing control, the fact that hierarchy and social networks are not comfortable bedfellows, and the inevitable paradigm drag. But in the long run, people are eager to express themselves and enterprise collegiality is the path to “knowing what HP knows.”

Yesterday IBM presented a compelling case for social business excellence at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Paris. Social networks are so patently good for business that managers are routing around IT to put them in place. The social business captures value through capturing tacit information, fostering collaboration & discovery, filtering information flow & finding patterns, and transforming exception processing & making processes resilient.

David Weinberger’s Too Big To Know convinced me that networks have radically changed the notion of what constitutes knowledge. Lots of our previous concepts about knowledge were due to the limitations of paper, not that there’s some absolute truth out there. On the net, facts don’t stay on the page. There are no isolated ideas; there never were; there are only webs of ideas. We can improve those webs through open access, good filters, metadata, linking everything, and opening up institutions.

David describes leadership as an emergent property of an organizational network. Leadership resides more with the group being led than the purported leader. Strong leadership is simply a means for a group to accomplish its objectives.

Yesterday on Dan Pink’s Office Hours, Gary Hamel described the irrelevance of 100 year old models of management and the growing impatience of disgruntled workers, customers, and shareholders. Hamel has said that the future model of management looks a lot like web 2.0.

So networks underpin leadership, business performance, knowledge, and management.

It’s undeniable that the internet is an unprecedented game changer. People and ideas and knowledge and happenings are connected as never before, and there’s no end in sight. The omnipresent network makes us look at processes instead of events: everything has a precedent and an antecedent. Murphy’s Second Law kicks in: You can never do just one thing. Institutions that block connections, be they schools or close-lipped corporations, are increasingly out of step with the times.

But I have a question about this: Why isn’t anyone talking about learning networks?

Neither McAfee nor IBM nor Weinberger nor Hamel talks about networks for learning. This parallels the situation with informal learning and eLearning. Even after people accepted that informal learning is the primary way people learn to do their jobs, few corporate training organizations lifted a finger to do anything about it. eLearning — the boring, one-way, content slapped on pages for self study variety — was a total flop because learning involves more than exposure to information. Two major opportunities to boost performance were squandered. I don’t intend to stand idly by as business thought leaders repeat the same mistake with learning networks.

Networks were made for learning. And in a ever-changing world, learning is a survival skill.

This is hardly a new idea. I wrote about it in Informal Learning in 2005:

ENGINEERING THE INDIVIDUAL’S LEARNING NETWORK
Learning originally meant finding the right path. Paths are connectors; people are nodes. The world is constructed of networks. We’re back where we started.

In networks, connections are the only thing that matters. We network with people; we use networks to gather information and to learn things; we have neural networks in our heads.

Learning is optimizing our connections to the networks that matter to us.

This satisfies both the community concept of learning (social networking) and the knowledge aspect (gaining access to information and fitting it into the patterns in one’s head).

To learn is to adapt to fit with one’s ecosystems. We can look at learning as making and maintaining good connections in a network. Cultivators of learning environments can borrow from network engineers, focusing on such things as:

• Improving signal-to-noise ratio

• Installing fat pipes for backbone connections

• Pruning worthless, unproductive branches

• Promoting standards for interoperability

• Balancing the load

• Seeking continuous improvement

This echoes a white paper, Informal Learning – the other 80%, I wrote nine years ago.

We need to think of learning as optimizing our networks. Learning consists of making good connections.

Taking advantage of the double meaning of the word network, “to learn” is to optimize the quality of one’s networks.

Learning is optimizing our connections to the networks that matter to us.

A sustainable social business provides the means and motivation for workers to learn what they need: the know-how, know-who, and know-what to get things done and get better at doing them. This takes more than access to social networks, blogs, and wikis. Organizations must provide the scaffolding that focuses on discovery, practice, sharing, and reinforcement. Organizations that lack a clear understanding of their learning architectures are doomed to descend into an aimless world of social noise and meaningless chit-chat. Facebook-itus.

Next week I’ll release a white paper on the Internet Time Alliance site on how to develop an enterprise learning network.

In the early 90s, before the web entered our consciousness, I envisioned plugging into a virtual world of shared imagination. A sci-fi fan told me I had to read Neuromancer. Science fiction is not my thing, so I listened to tapes of William Gibson drawling his way through Neuromancer while commuting from Berkeley to Sausalito. The image of the crazed main character Case jacking into cyberspace with his deck found a permanent home in my neural circuitry. Now it feels as if the fiction is becoming reality.

Touch-typing was far and away the most useful course I took in high school.  I gained the autonomic muscle-memory that lets me riff at the keyboard without thinking about keys. Ideas come; text appears. It’s marvelous. Occasionally I flash on Gibson’s damaged anti-hero Case, connecting to cyberspace for salvation and a fix. (Gibson invented the term cyberspace to describe the virtual world of Neuromancer.) He’d grab his deck (my deck is usually the keyboard on one of my Macs or my iPad) and jack in.

At this moment, I’m tapping keys on a Mac in Berkeley. Characters are pouring into the Cloud. I’m jacked in. I am not really concerned whether I’m entering text into one of my blogs or a shared blog or a comment on someone else’s blog or a wiki or whatever. It’s going into the cloud. If the message warrants repeating, someone will Tweet it or Digg it or Diigo it or share it in a public space. It’s all in the Cloud somewhere. You can find it with a search if it’s worth finding. I don’t have to choose a pigeonhole for it. You or I or anybody else will be able to retrieve it from cyberspace when the time is right.

From here on out, I don’t intend to waste brain cycles speculating where to put things. My business blog, my informal learning blog, one of my wikis and so on. Who cares about where I’m standing when I pitch a new concept into cyberspace?

When I first attended TechKnowledge six or seven years ago, the content was all stuff I’d heard before. I grumbled. Lance Dublin set me straight. This conference wasn’t for me; it was for newbies. They hadn’t heard the Bob Pikes and Bill Byhams (and the Lances) give their stump speeches before, and they were enthralled to hear them. The first time you heard these guys, they knocked your socks off. (The fifth time, you admired their stamina.)

This taught me to segment conferences by the audiences they appealed to. Some event are bleeding edge confabs for learning professionals at the top of their game; others are designed for newcomers. While it bored me to tears, my first TechKnowledge was a great experience for most of those in attendance.

Conferences aren’t good or bad; it’s whether they are designed for you or for a different group of people.

ASTD held TechKnowledge in San Jose this year. Committee chairperson Ellen Wagner demanded they pick a spot with wi-fi. (TechKnowledge’s habitual hangout was the Riviera Hotel in Vegas. Casinos don’t have decent wifi for the same reason they don’t have clocks on the wall; it might divert gamblers from throwing their money away.) Needless to say, the “capital of Silicon Valley” has a different take on providing wifi. The event has morphed. It’s not just for newbs any more, although the event is conflicted about ditching training for learning: for taking taking the game into the 21st century where pull replaces push.

Over the course of three days, I attended all of two sessions. One was precisely what I was looking for. It was, as the Michelin Guide would say, “worth the journey.” Dan Pontefract and David Mallon’s presentation on creating a culture of collaboration at TELUS was one of the most useful things I’ve ever heard at an ASTD event, and I was making presentations at ASTD events thirty years ago.

I also attended the keynote by a couple of Googlers. Google provides a lot of the infrastructure social learning rides on; they own Blogger, YouTube, GoogleDocs, GoogleAnalytics, and so forth. I mentioned to Tony Bingham, sitting next to me, that Google lacked the problem most corporations face: cultural drag. You want to do something with social learning in most corporations, you better have a switchblade in your pocket, for you’ll find enemies in every corner. Entrenched managers and staff will have nightmares about what might go wrong and give you a thumbs down. What if somebody spills company secrets? Or leaks private information? Or posts something that’s not accurate? How can we trust these people? (We’re paid to control them, aren’t we?)

Google doesn’t have those problems. It’s open. It’s transparent. They worship innovation above all. They like crazies. They trust their employees to do what’s best — with minimal oversight. So the presentation was very interesting but couldn’t describe the greatest challenge for most L&D professionals, bringing the corporate culture into the 21st century. Turns out one to the Googlers lives right down the hill for me; we’re going to continue the conversation at a tapas bar tomorrow night.

But only two sessions over the course of three days? Did I recoup my investment of time, not to mention the price of a fancy suite atop the Fairmont? Yes, yes, yes.

It fit where I’m at in the lifecycle of conference attendance.

When I was a newcomer, I attended conferences to build my foundation knowledge. I attended ASTD, eLearning, Online Learning, Elliott Masie’s TechLearn, Training, ISPI (then NSPI), and many others. I went to as many sessions as I could pack into the day, taking voluminous notes (even before computers went personal. Remember ballpoint pens?) This is where structured learning shines: give me your framework. I’ll use it until I develop my own.

As time passed, I became choosy. I sought out speakers who had new ideas to offer, perspectives I was not familiar with, or great delivery and entertainment value. Instead of trying to cover it all, I was a man with a mission. I became a “pull” learner, pursuing what I wanted aggressively and bypassing the rest. I checked the backgrounds of the speakers and decided in advance who I’d like to hob-not with. (Were I doing it again, I’d try to contact those I wanted to meet before the event.)

In the early 2000s, Elliott Masie’s TechLearn (he came up with the name; ASTD’s TechKnowledge shamelessly ripped it off) was a fertile field for networking and sampling new concepts. Everyone who has known Elliott for a while has mixed feelings. Elliott brought together exciting ideas, great people, and a prophetic vision. His annual get-togethers at DisneyWorld were great for networking and meeting up with others. Maybe they still are. Elliott’s ego may suck all of the air out of the room, but when people needed someone to lead them out of the woods, he has illuminated the path.

My relationship with Elliott is like my relationship with Tom Cruise. I never hear from him and don’t expect to. We live on different planets. But it was at TechLearn that I learned how to learn outside of the main tent, and I’m grateful.

Back to San Jose. I spent half the time working my tail off from my room at the Fairmont. First things first. Client priorities trump attending conferences.

While I attended only two sessions, meetings with friends old and new more than made up for it. These reunions and check-ins were fantastic. Quick reconnections refresh forgotten but important memories from times past. Sometimes our rapid-fire 140-character conversions conveyed what was important and conveyed the right links for making progress.

(Click the image for the photos)

Chats with Allison, Lance, David, Pat, Tony, Nancy, Ellen, Jos, Vivian, Alicia, Aaron, Martyn, Dan, Reuben, Chris, another David, Koreen, Karie, Charles, Michelle, Karl, a third David, Bob, Scott, Sam, Jennifer, Ryann, Michael, and oodles of other kindred spirits — that list is off the top — lit up my panels, flooded my consciousness with fresh ideas, and taught me more than anything I could have learned in a workshop. Thanks, gang.

If you know the analogy, I’m entirely off the bus, having more fun and learning more because of it. People have called me a “guru.” Right. Un-huh. As if. I only have few clues. Now I’m involuntarily becoming a wise elder instead of a smartalec. I’m wryly enjoying a growing appreciation of the flow of time. The deeper you go, the better it gets.

I find silent PowerPoint presentations (except for those that only use words) about as useful as a Rorschach ink blot. Heaven only knows how many silent PowerPoints decks have screwed things up because people read their own meaning into them to fill the void.

For example, that’s a real psych-test blog above. See any weird stuff? It’s all in your head. The blot’s neutral.

Some people think mute PowerPoints constitute training. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Hence, this deck includes sound.

This is practice for a presentation I’ll be delivering in Sao Paolo next month. I’m sick as a dog, sicker, actually, so don’t listen if sniffling and heavy breathing offend you. A healthy version will come out later.

How to embed sound in a SlideShare deck: Record your words as you run through your deck. I used Garage Band and saved the spiel as an mp3. Upload your presentation to SlideShare. Click Edit. Syncing sound to slides is intuitive.

Any feedback? My audience includes business training managers and teachers; they don’t understand how people can be expected to learn without a teacher.

Increasingly, posts about learning will appear here, in the Informal Learning Blog. I’ll post most personal and out-of-the-box items at Internet Time Blog.

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Ivan Illich

Forty years ago, Illich wrote about the need for learning networks, peer-to-peer webs, and learning objects. We have yet to catch up with his vision.

In preparing a presentation I’ll be delivering with Paul Pangaro in Brazil next month, I’ve just re-read Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society.

Deschooling Society (1971) is a book that brought Ivan Illich to public attention. It is a critical discourse on education as practised in “modern” economies. Full of detail on programs and concerns, the book’s assertions remain as radical today as they were at the time. Giving examples of the ineffectual nature of institutionalized education, Illich posited self-directed education, supported by intentional social relations in fluid informal arrangements:

Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue’s responsibility until it engulfs his pupils’ lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educationalwebs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. We hope to contribute concepts needed by those who conduct such counterfoil research on education–and also to those who seek alternatives to other established service industries.^[1]

^[Wikipedia]

In other words, Illich is saying what Bill Gates means when he says that even if high schools were working perfectly, they’d still be missing the boat, for they are fundamentally trying to do the wrong thing. (Note to self: call Bill.)

These words from Deschooling Society could have come from Informal Learning:

“Such criticism leads many people to ask whether it is possible to conceive of a different style of learning. The same people, paradoxically, when pressed to specify how they acquired what they know and value, will readily admit that they learned it more often outside than inside school. Their knowledge of facts, their understanding of life and work came to them from friendship or love, while viewing TV, or while reading, from examples of peers or the challenge of a street encounter. Or they may have learned what they know through the apprenticeship ritual for admission to a street gang or the initiation to a hospital, newspaper city room, plumber’s shop, or insurance office. The alternative to dependence on schools is not the use of public resources for some new device which “makes” people learn; rather it is the creation of a new style of educational relationship between man and his environment. To foster this style, attitudes toward growing up, the tools available for learning, and the quality and structure of daily life will have to change concurrently.”

The following passage got me thinking about how institutionalized learning has gotten in the way of my own learning. I’m sad things turned out this way.

Simple educational objects have been expensively packaged by the knowledge industry. They have become specialized tools for professional educators, and their cost has been inflated by forcing them to stimulate either environments or teachers.Simple educational objects have been expensively packaged by the knowledge industry. They have become specialized tools for professional educators, and their cost has been inflated by forcing them to stimulate either environments or teachers.The teacher is jealous of the textbook he defines as his professional implement. The student may come to hate the lab because he associates it with schoolwork. The administrator rationalizes his protective attitude toward the library as a defense of costly public equipment against those who would play with it rather than learn. In this atmosphere the student too often uses the map, the lab, the encyclopedia, or the microscope only at the rare moments when the curriculum tells him to do so.

I had the good fortune to attend some fantastic schools but I squandered many of the opportunities they offered me. I thought I was there to meet academic requirements, get good grades, and get the sheepskin. Learning was not part of the deal. Curiosity? Not much of that either.

One’s memories are always fuzzy. In time, they distance themselves from what was really going on. However, one example haunts me. I’m sure this one happened. Or, more precisely, didn’t happen.

Princeton has a fine art museum. I walked right by the entrance every day for two years on my way to the classrooms where I studied sociology and public opinion polling.

Mind you, I have since discovered that I really enjoy art. I’ve paid many a visit to the Louvre, Orsay, Prado, Uffizi, MOMA, the Met, the National Gallery, BFA, etc., etc., etc. But art was not one of my courses at college. In four years on campus, I never once set foot in the university art museum.

I missed innumerable opportunities on campus because they weren’t on the official, academic agenda and I was too sheepish to have an agenda of my own. I’m about to weep as I write this.

Here are some quotes that spoke to me as I re-read the book this week.

Cue Paul Simon…

When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It’s a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of education
Hasn’t hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall

Seminal documents.

Three dozen wonderful presentations, free books, and funny videos about how people learn.

You might also be interested in these links.

In mid-September, I plan to participate in this production from Stephen Downes, George Siemens, and Dave Cournier.

George writes:

Though billed as a course, it’s not the sort of course you’re used to.

Why am I interested? For one thing, Stephen, George, and Dave are very bright guys. They also give good show. For another, I’m revisiting what I’ve come to know as Personal Knowledge Management.

PLEs, PLNs, PKM, or whatever else you may call it have learning in their DNA but I sense there’s a lot more going on. These are structures that can improve our learning but they can also improve our lives. I’m interested in exploring ways to increase our happiness, sense of fulfillment, meaningful citizenship, health, relationships, and more. Why limit the inquiry to learning? I hope PLENK will be a catalyst to my thinking through this.

People who are told a story is controversial remember it better than those who are told it is fact. I chalk this up to my belief that “Uncertainty challenges the mind.” This delightful article from the July 2010 Scientific American Mind goes one further: too much obedience to task stunts breadth of vision.

The Willpower Paradox

Setting your mind on a goal may be counterproductive. Instead think of the future as an open question
By Wray Herbert

Psychologist Ibrahim Senay of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign figured out an intriguing way to create a laboratory version of both willfulness and willingness—and to explore possible connections to intention, motivation and goal-directed actions.

The difference is subtle, but the former were basically putting their mind into wondering mode, while the latter were asserting themselves and their will. It is the difference between “Will I do this?” and “I will do this.”

The results were provocative. People with wondering minds completed significantly more anagrams than did those with willful minds. In other words, the people who kept their minds open were more goal-directed and more motivated than those who declared their objective to themselves.

These findings are counterintuitive. Think about it. Why would asserting one’s intentions undermine rather than advance a stated goal? Perhaps, Senay hypothesized, it is because questions by their nature speak to possibility and freedom of choice. Meditating on them might enhance feelings of autonomy and intrinsic motivation, creating a mind-set that promotes success.

In this study, he recruited volunteers on the pretense that they were needed for a handwriting study. Some wrote the words “I will” over and over; others wrote “Will I?” After priming the volunteers with this fake handwriting task, Senay had them work on the anagrams. And just as before, the determined volunteers performed worse than the open-minded ones.

…those who were asserting their willpower were in effect closing their minds and narrowing their view of their future. Those who were questioning and wondering were open-minded—and therefore willing to see new possibilities for the days ahead.

Perhaps I should be saying that “Freedom engages the mind.”