Informal Learning and New Managers - Nothing?

Dave Lee just posted on LCB - I'm a little verklempt! - where he points out that this month's big question -March Big Question: Supporting New Managers? - didn't get as many posts as in the past few months. He wonders what's the cause. A couple of the responses got me fired up...

Harold Jarche tells us ...

Yes, I'm busy but more importantly, the question was not of interest.

Wow, this is a surprise to me. This question really spawns from what I thought was a great question at a session with Harold and Jay Cross. Someone asked how informal learning might apply to new managers. I thought - wow, this is going to be great. Lots of good ideas will come out. Instead, we went onto something else. Does that mean that informal learning doesn't apply to new manager training? Or are we powerless to help make informal learning happen? What's the deal? Where's some help? Maybe we just need to visit Ray Sims - What To Do On Behalf of Informal Learning? that suggests lots of informal learning approaches and think about how these might apply to new managers.

Donald Clark said...

From what I have seen of various training industry reports, managers already get about 25% of the training budget. When you add on the approximately 15% that the executives get, then that means the leadership team is already sucking up close to half of the training budget. And I don't know of any organization that comes even close to that percentage of their staff being composed of the leadership team.Thus personally, I did not think the question held that much relevance due to them already getting more than their fair share of the training resources. I know that their role is important, but with all the talk about their employees being the most important asset and organizational charts being turned upside down to put their employees on top.

I'm not sure I'm in position to comment on whether we should be spending more or less on different employees, but my guess is that lots of people believe that some of the 25% spending on managers (not sure how much of that is new managers) could be rearranged into solutions that have the possibility of being more effective.

The bottom line here is that I'm not as concerned as Dave if we don't get responses. Some questions are going to spark discussion, others are not. This one clearly hasn't sparked as much as previous questions. But, it really surprises me that people are so satisfied with how organizations are supporting new managers. I personally have lots of questions here which is why I thought there would be more discussion. A couple of these right off the top of my head are:

• What are three relatively low cost, out-of-the-box things you might try to help new managers?
• How does informal learning apply to new managers?
• What can we do with the direct reports of new managers? And the managers of the new managers?
• How would we know at the end of the day if any of this is more effective?
• How could we foster a community, on-going mutual support system for new managers? Can this extend outside of the organization?

If you have thoughts on these, feel free to contribute to: March Big Question: Supporting New Managers?

Web 2.0 Tools in the Enterprise

I first saw Andrew McAffee's post on uses of Web 2.0 approaches inside of corporations - quite good at identifying some different patterns. Then I saw Bill Ives Is Blogging Inside the Firewall an Oxymoron? where he talks about some of the issues with blogs within the enterprise and ends with:

Wikis seem to have less baggage attached to them and that might partially (and only partially) explain their recent rise in use within the enterprise.

I'd also suggest that part of the reason that I always suggest that Wikis will get faster uptake than things like Blogs and Social Bookmarking is that Wikis can be a better replacement for something else without much behavior change. The first uses of Wikis is as an easier content management system that houses reference material. It could be information about how to use some software, or interesting content that people have collected about a topic, or whatever. It's just a really easy way for a group of people to put up web pages. And, it's easier than dealing with your IT department's CMS package. It's easier than using an HTML editor and publishing your pages somewhere. It's easier than RoboInfo.

Is it widespread among eLearning Professionals? Not really - see Use of Wikis as Compared to Other Tools.

See also:

• Wikipatterns - A Pattern to Emulate
• Why Wikis Are Conquering the Enterprise
• Do You WANT an LMS? Does a Learner WANT an LMS?
  

Missed one Brandon Hall Blogger

In my last post: Brandon Hall Researchers Blogging - Implications? - I missed

Richard Nantel - example post: Information Overload

By the way, he's the CEO of Brandon Hall research, and he does a brief explanation of what he'll cover in: The focus of this Blog, but it doesn't necessarily answer how they will differentiate paid and unpaid information.

Brandon Hall Researchers Blogging - Implications?

I just saw that several of the Brandon Hall researchers have started blogs:

• Tom Werner - example post - Why Learning Professionals Shouldn’t Just Focus on Learning
• Tim Sosbe - example post - Pop Quiz: What Do Learning Leaders Care About?
• Janet Clarey - example post - Why blended learning is not BS
• Gary Woodill

First, let me say that I applaud this move, but it's a bit of a curious development to me...

1. Does this indicate that that Brandon Hall Network is not going to be the central hub for them to have discussions? I previously predicted that in its currently form the network wouldn't really work. If Brandon Hall or the eLearningGuild had used a distributed hub model, then maybe they would have a chance. But creating a closed model is very hard, especially when you are a paid-research firm.
   
2. How does blogging jive with paid research? Is this going to only be teaser content? Any real meat will need to be paid for? I've gone to several presentations by researchers (not Brandon Hall) and they basically just tell you the same information you can see in their executive summary. It's a tease to get you to buy. It appears that the Brandon Hall folks are diving deeper than that, but it certainly is going to be an issue for them.
   
3. Will these bloggers be full participants? Compare their blog rolls. A couple just list each other. Others list lists similar to mine: Top Ten eLearning Blogs. Again, if they are primarily thinking of this as a marketing exercise, then it's natural to restrict who you will link to and what bloggers you will cite.

Again, I'm happy to see this move and the content so far is quite good and is going to spark some good conversation.

International eLearning Usage Pattern Differences

Saw CBT/WBT - who likes it ? where the author states:

In Europe and USA many of our on-line students seem to take courses outside work hours. But they do it in short bursts of activity.

In Asia (and particularly Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia) we note that students do much longer periods of study in one session, but mostly during work hours. The same is true in Africa.

While usage patterns vary quite significantly based on the individual and the content, I've seen similar general patterns.

The author then asks:

Why is this the case? Is it that Anglo-American employers just give minimal learning time on-the-job? Or is it that Asia/African employees are more hungry for technical learning?

I would be curious what people believe on this topic. Certainly people are pressed for time. But I've always believed that a big part of this are cultural learning differences that change the expectation of how learning will be done. Again, as a sweeping generalization with lots of individual differences, students from Asian countries are much more deferential to the instructor and diligent in their studies than their American counterparts who are likely to challenge the instructor and find every angle to reduce their effort.

These differences appear to carry through to eLearning.

Get Together at Conferences - F2F Still Matters

Just yesterday, I posted about Conference Preparation and I'm preparing for a couple of conferences so I definitely looked back at: Be an Insanely Great Professional Conference Attendee. One of the questions I often ask attendees - especially as we are discussing virtual classroom tools and virtual environments (e.g., Second Life) - is:

Why did we come to this conference? Couldn't we all do this from home?

Well today, Kathy Sierra, posts: Face-to-Face Trumps Twitter, Blogs, Podcasts, Video... and she provides this picture: It shows that while we slowly approach real-time, realistic virtual conversations, it still isn't quite the same thing as being there.

As an aside, I personally question that view. In the long run - 25 years - we will all be walking around with devices that attempt to make in-person as good as doing it via online. Online you will have an incredibly realistic experience (think how good virtual actors are these days - add 3D - presence based audio - first person shooters). And because you are online, you will have access to all sorts of information about the people, what their interests are - it will be easily captured. The challenge will be getting people used to this - hence the 25 years.

But for now, Kathy expresses something quite true:

The point is, face-to-face still matters. And in fact all our globally-connecting-social-networking tools are making face-to-face more, not less desirable. Thanks to the tools y'all are building, we now have more far-flung friends--including people we've never met f2f--than ever before. We now have more people we want to connect with in the human world, often after years of electronic-only contact.

In Las Vegas (at ASTD TechKnowledge), I met up with bloggers who I really only knew online. In Boston, I'm going to do it again. I'm finding that conferences are a great way to get together with folks I already know but don't have as deep a personal relationship.

Kathy then tells us:

The most underrated benefit of the face-to-face effect of conferences is INSPIRATION.

There certainly is something powerful about getting together at conferences. You do get inspired. And, I think that people often walk away inspired from my presentations with the intent to go off and make something happen, try something out.

Kathy suggests that we should really be working to:

Get people together in the real world.

Point taken ... and I really do want to meet up with readers of my blog, with folks who are passionate about the use of technology for learning and performance. Unfortunately, it's difficult to know who is going to Boston (eLearningGuild) or Atlanta (ASTD). If you are, please drop me a note.

Cisco Buys Webex

Just saw this:

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced it was finally adding voice capabilities to its Live Communication Server. And now Cisco is adding hosted collaboration to compete with Microsoft's hosted service known as Live Meeting.

This makes me wonder what these systems will start to look like in a couple of years and whether folks like Elluminate will be able to compete.