About a month ago, I decided that I wanted to start experimenting with Blab, the latest entry in the video-streaming world. I had loved Google Hangouts, but found that it was pretty unstable, so moved about 6 months ago to using Zoom for the webinars and private video-conferencing that I do. I also experimented with Periscope--that is, I looked at what was happening on Periscope--but it felt very limited in its capacity to actually engage people. It would basically be me talking and then people tapping on the screen to show love and submitting questions/comments through chat. It felt like a lot to manage for not a lot of real return on engagement.  So when Blab popped up, giving me an opportunity to have up to 3 other guests coming in and out of the Blabs, that seemed way more appealing to me. I like to TALK with people if at all possible and with Blab, anyone can join into the conversations. I liked the serendipity of that.  We've been using Blab to run "Career Clinics"--I put out a topic, like "How to find a Mentor" or "Navigating Your Career in your 50's" and then we go into Blab to share ideas, talk about the issues, etc. As part of my commitment to doing more "working out loud," I wanted to share some of what I'm learning from running these sessions. What I'm Learning from (and on) Blab  Blab is less about "presenting" and more about conversation.  One of the reasons I was interested in Blab in the first place was because it seemed to invite more engagement from the audience. Any participant can ask to join the conversation and with a click of a mouse, I can accept them into the video discussion. I knew this, but for the first few Blabs we did, I was still in "presentation" mode, so had prepared extensive notes and outlines. Very quickly, though, I learned that kind of extensive preparation was not only unnecessary, but also tended to kill the energy of the conversations that were happening. Now I've learned to go with the flow and to allow the conversations to emerge. I prepare a few notes and thoughts, but focus much more on how I can try to ask questions and draw in the audience to participate.  Work with a "co-host" or have guests.  Because Blab is about conversations, it's a good idea to work with a co-host or to have scheduled guests join you on Blab. That way if you aren't getting engagement from the participants, you can still keep things active and interesting through your engagement with your co-host and/or your guest. I've seen a few Blabbers that do it alone, but I've found that my own attention tends to stay with Blabs where there are people having a conversation.  A lot (most?) of the "aha's" come from the participants.  I don't know if this is true for other Blabs, but in the Blabs we've been having, our participants have been amazing sources of information, ideas and inspiration. We're in Philadelphia and we've had people join us from Houston, Montreal, Portland, Atlanta, Scotland and even Pakistan! We put out some questions or ideas, but then they come in and take things to another level. It's been incredibly interesting, engaging and rewarding to make these new connections and learn so much from other people's experiences. Again, this is part of what intrigued me about using Blab and it's definitely been living up to what I wanted.  Where you start isn't necessarily where you're going to land--and you learn more when you're OK with that. I know that some Blabbers are using Blab to share specific content. But that wasn't what interested me about the platform. I wanted to share ideas and also to get a feel for how other people are thinking about different career questions.  I set an initial topic, but have found that most of the time, the participants take the discussions in some new and sometimes surprising directions. In one of our first Blabs, we wanted to talk about navigating your career in your 50's, but ended up spending a lot of time talking with one woman about what she was doing in her 40's to set herself up for success in her 50's. We got a lot of great info there and she opened up some good discussion about how we can do a better job of preparing ourselves.    In last night's discussion on creating your career from inspiration and appreciation, we talked about topics ranging from how to inspire pre-schoolers at a museum to how someone is managing a career split between Montreal and Brooklyn and the differences between the two cultures.  For me, all of this is grist for the mill, as well as a way to build relationships and see where other people are coming from.  Where I'm Going From Here on Blab November was a month for experimenting with Blab- seeing how the tech works (well, especially considering that it's in Beta) and getting a better feel for how I might want to use it to engage and learn.  One thing that's emerging for me is that I don't necessarily want to use it as a platform for "how to's" as we've been doing. What I'm observing is that there's a hunger for human connection and conversation about deeper issues. So part of what I want to do is explore how it works to use Blab to talk about some juicy questions--some related to work, maybe, but also questions that are bigger than that, as I'm more than just career stuff.  I also need to experiment with doing some Blabs during the day. We've been doing evening blabs because that's when my business partner/husband is available to be a co-host, but in December, we'll have the chance to do some sessions during the day and I'm curious to see if we'll get more involvement and engagement during working hours.  Right now I'm in the curiosity stage of learning about Blab--still being open to exploration and not quite sure where things might be going or where I want them to go. It's an interesting space to be in. I will say that I think it has a lot of potential, which is part of why I'm sticking with it for another 30-day experiment. 

One of the worst pieces of advice we give to people about pursuing a meaningful career is to "follow your passion."  In my experience, most people have a very narrow sense of what they are passionate about and, in many cases, they've lost touch altogether with any sense of passion in their lives. That is often what brings them to seek career advice in the first place. They essentially feel dead inside. Passion is nowhere to be found.  A better plan is what John Stepper calls "purposeful discovery." This is a form of goal-oriented exploration that opens up possibilities and reconnects you to the juiciness of your life.  The Purposeful Discovery Process You start by defining something you care about.  What questions are keeping you up at night? What do you feel yourself drawn to? What big problems do you want to solve? How do you want to grow your "sparks"? Open yourself to your own curiosity. Follow the energy of what seems interesting or exciting. Pay attention to what you want MORE of in your life.  Recognize that if you are feeling dead inside, you may need to be on the alert for the tiniest seeds of possibility. They will be small sparks, not a raging blaze, and you may have to spend some time intentionally learning about what captures your interest.  Also be aware that what piques your curiosity may have nothing to do with your actual job. Not only is this OK, it's probably preferable. The most fulfilling, profitable work in today's economy is a mash-up of skills and opportunities, bringing together different interests and ideas to form something unique. And frankly, you are less likely to find your calling when you are following a path already well-worn and defined by others. Be willing to go off-road for awhile.  As you identify avenues for exploration, you can begin to set goals for yourself.  At this stage I suggest loose goals--"I want to learn more about X" or "I want to develop my skills in Y." I love this goal that John Stepper suggests: "Explore what's out there." It's the ultimate goal for when you aren't really sure where you're going.  The point of your goal is to give some sense of purpose to your discovery process, the smallest nudge of guidance to your search.  Once you've set your goal(s), it's time for the discovery portion of "purposeful discovery."  Here, John's Working Out Loud Circles can be really helpful. He provides 12-weeks of purposeful activities that will guide you through a process to  achieving the goals you've set, working with others who want to commit to the Working Out Loud process. There's an emphasis on making your work visible, connecting to others with generosity, expanding your circle of connections, and improving your work as you go.  Part of what makes John's Circle process powerful is that you are doing it in community with other seekers. Although this is certainly something you can do on your own, I think you get further faster if you do it with others. There's also a lot to be said for the accountability that a group can provide. Sometimes it can be too easy for other parts of our lives to intrude, making it less likely that we'll persist.  If 12 weeks feels like too much of a commitment, consider an initial 30-day commitment to discovery. What can you do in 30 days to expose yourself to new possibilities and allow yourself to explore? Treat it like an experiment, where you are just trying some things out to see where they lead.  If you're struggling with how to get started on inspiring yourself, try what The Artist's Way author, Julia Cameron calls Artist's Dates. These are regularly scheduled dates you keep with yourself to explore and try out new things. This is about play and inspiration and does NOT have to be directly related to work. Again, you may find that it's better for you to explore realms outside of what you consider to be your normal work activities. You don't know where it might lead. (Here's a list of 101 Artist Date ideas to spark your imagination).  And don't think that the purposeful discovery process is only useful if you're considering a career change or are unhappy with your current job. It's also an incredibly valuable strategy for life-long learning and development, leading you to grow your skills and create new projects and ideas.  Ultimately, purposeful discovery is about expanding your horizons and exploring new possibilities with intention. I think it's far more powerful advice than just "follow your passion" that will get you much better results in the long run.   

I'm currently working with a colleague to create a Professional Learning Community and experience we're calling "Leadership Lab" that we plan to launch in January. As part of the planning, we're thinking very deeply about the skills and attitudes of Leadership that we feel are important.  This work is opening up a lot of questions for me about the nature of leadership, my own beliefs about what it means to lead and the kind of leader that I want to be. As part of my ongoing plan to do more working out loud, I thought it would be helpful to share some of this thought process here.  Leader as Hero, Leader as Host Four years ago I wrote a post about moving from being the hero to being the host, based on the work of Meg Wheatley. Essentially she talks about how America worships heroes--how we are always looking for a hero (i.e. a "leader") who is going to have all the answers and lead us out of our problems. This breeds passivity and dependency, of course--we turn our problems over to the leader and wait for him/her to figure it out. It also sets up a hierarchy of leaders and followers that leaves large numbers of people on the outside when they should be right in the thick of things. My personal belief is that everyone is a leader and that everyone's job is to help that inner leader emerge.  Most of the people I work with in other leadership programs have fully assumed the responsibility to be the hero. Many of them love it. These are the people who have a psychological need to be the rescuers (something I suffer from myself).  Sometimes they resent it. Usually they are exhausted by it. But everything they've been told about being a leader has communicated to them that they are the one who is responsible for finding and executing solutions. They operate under the principle that "the buck stops here" and their entire worth as a person is dependent on their ability to be the hero. This is admirable on some level, but also completely unworkable. We live in a complex, ever-changing world where problems have become so complicated and interwoven that it's impossible for any one person--or even a small group of people--to know the right answers or to be able to "save the day." And frankly, it's too much pressure for most of us.  Wheatley suggests that the solution is in moving from thinking of leaders as heroes into thinking of leadership as hosting the space for people to come together to discover solutions through meaningful conversations and structured exploration and action.  There are many things that appeal to me about this notion of leadership, but probably what I think is most important is that this is a non-hierarchical idea of what it means to lead, one that is far more effective for today's networked ways of living and working. When you are focused on hosting space, you are creating opportunities for new relationships, new ideas and new solutions to emerge. This is fundamental in today's society.  For me, this idea of leader as host has become absolutely CORE to my beliefs about leadership. I start here and build out.  Leadership as "Doing the Right Things" Another idea that has been percolating for some time is from Peter Drucker's quote about management vs. leadership: I have found that many of the conversations I have with people about "leadership" are really questions of management. People are under a lot of organizational pressure to conform to their employer's demands, especially when they are in managerial/supervisory positions. They are obsessed with doing things right--of crossing all the "t's" and dotting all the "i's" and understanding "best practices" in both areas.  But in all of this work to do things right, they spend very little time thinking about whether or not they are doing the right things. This capacity to step back, to ask better questions, to question assumptions and to make sure that you are working with good information--these are the essence of leadership in my mind, but we consistently lose sight of that.  As we are developing the Lab concept, finding ways to have people step back from their lives and work to ask this critical question ("Am I doing the right things?") is also core to how I'm thinking about leadership.  The Skills and Attitudes of 21st Century Leadership Since we're developing a Professional Learning Community, one of the questions we have to ask is "what are the skills and attitudes of Leadership we want people to be developing?"  There are several articles and schools of thought that are influencing my thinking here.  One is Umair Haque's How and Why To Be a Leader (Not a Wannabe).  He makes the case for a new generation of leadership this way: We’re in the midst of a Great Dereliction — a historic failure of leadership, precisely when we need it most. Hence it’s difficult, looking around, to even remember what leadership is. We’re surrounded by people who are expert at winning — elections, deals, titles, bonuses, bailouts, profit. And often, we’re told: they’re the ones we should look up to — because it’s the spoils and loot that really matter. But you know and I know: mere winners are not true leaders — not just because gaming broken systems is nothing but an empty charade of living; but because life is not a game. It isn’t about what you have, and how much — but what you do, and why — if you’re to live a life that matters. His notion that we are venerating the "winners"--people who have figured out how to game broken systems--rings very true to me. If we go back to Drucker's notion of leadership as "doing the right things," then currently we are honoring the managers in our society, not the leaders.  We are not in need of people who know how to win in systems that are broken. We are in need of people who can create systems that work better for more people.  Another major influence on my thinking has been the work and reading I've done over the years with social artistry. In going through my notes and bookmarks, I re-found Etienne Wenger's 2009 article on Social Learning Capability. He devotes one of his essays in the article to the idea of social artists as leaders. Many of the points he makes are feeding my own notion of leadership, including: Social artists are leaders who do not invite followership. Instead, they invite participation, drawing people into a learning space that encourages them to find their own internal sense of "leadership" and their best selves.  Social artists don't seek control. They can tolerate chaos, uncertainty and dissension and they can help channel this necessary part of the creative process to generate the energy for new thinking and problem-solving.  Social artists can create environments of high trust and aspirations. These are essential to engaging with complex problems and issues for the long haul. Social artists help people see their best qualities and to do work they never thought was possible.  Social artists are activists--they don't accept the status quo. They are unimpressed by "We've always done it this way" or "We can't change that." Social artists have visions and aspirations, but they are deeply practical, aware of both internal and external obstacles to change and the need to work with those very real barriers.  Social artists are extremely willful. They want to make things happen, but they do so in collaboration, looking for ways to host the right kinds of space to create change.  All of these skills and qualities seem essential to new notions of leadership, especially in a complex, networked world. As Wenger points out, this is a type of leadership that is more subtle than our typical "hero" ideas, but one that to my mind is much more in tune with how the world is moving.  Also influencing my thinking are Janna Q. Anderson's ideas of skills for success in a disruptive world. (Thanks to Tanmay Vora for this image)    Interwoven in all of this are my own ideas about the 4 Patterns of thriving and resilience--Clarifying, Connecting, Creating, and Coping and also the idea of Sparks and how we help people find and express their inner fire. (Leadership as kindling an inner fire, rather than as filling a vessel).   With all of this as backdrop, these are the skills and attitudes that are beginning to emerge for me as essential to modern leadership:  Hosting space/convening-- "from hero to host"--creating space for  powerful conversations about the things that really matter. This includes using more creative facilitation techniques and the arts as a means of exploration/discussion/expression. It also includes the ability to create space that can tolerate uncertainty and dissension and that will ultimately draw from people their best selves.  Observing and Listening with an open mind and an open heart. Engaging people mind, heart and soul. Asking powerful questions--game-changing questions, questions that challenge our assumptions, questions that create possibility and energy. Constant, self-directed learning Connecting--people, ideas, groups, etc.--ability to get work done through collaborative networks "Future-mindedness"--horizon scanning, strategic foresight, looking for possibilities in the problems. "Kindling and fanning an extravagant hope"-- "acts of radical imagination Co-creating with the people we are trying to help (design thinking-empathy, ideating, prototyping, testing) Transparency and "working out loud"--- purposeful discovery, public sharing/reflection on works in progress Media literacies--telling stories, using images, using social media Working in-person and virtually (we are citizens of both the physical world and the digital world and we need to develop competency in both) These are a work in progress--we are designing the Learning Lab experience in part to test our ideas of these as essential leadership skills. But they are moving me in new directions about my own understanding of what it means to be a leader and how I personally hold space for leadership to emerge in the people around me.  UPDATED: I'm also reminding myself that part of my need to re-define "leadership" comes from the problems I wrote about in this post a few years ago, We Have a Leadership Problem. And this realization in particular: at the heart of any notion of leadership is a fundamental power imbalance where the leader wields power that followers do not.  This is its fundamental flaw. "Leadership" marks some as "special" while others are not.  I'd love to hear your thoughts, comments, ideas, etc. How do these ideas of leadership resonate with you? What am I missing? 

Out of 24 participating posts and nearly 40 comments on those posts, not a single person predicted that they would answer all 12 of The Big Questions in 2007 - how disappointing.Well your first chance to redeem yourself comes in the form of January’s The Big Question:What are the trade offs between quality learning programs and rapid e-learning and how do you decide?Please answer this question by posting to your own blog.(For further help in how to participate via blog posts, see the side bar.)Points to consider:Quality learning experiences involve having fun, better interactivity in e-Learning or interacting with fellow learners, possible use of games or simulations, richer blends, but designing and developing higher quality programs cost more and take longer.Rapid e-Learning often involves paring back training to the minimum amount and minimal treatment, quickly building those training elements, and providing the remainder of content as reference. This reduces time and cost and may improve scalability because the skills required for development can be easily spread.Most every learning project involves deciding what to treat in what way. So, what ends up on the design room floor by the time of implementation? What are the potential risks of these decisions? Has there been fat that could be cut without risking quality?Participating Blogs:Once you’ve posted your answer on your blog, please report your post using the form below. Your post will be automatically added to the list that will appear below the entry form.NOTE: If the forms do not appear below, please hit your browser’s refresh button. If the forms still do not appear, please use the Dear Blogmeister form which can be linked to from the top of the sidebar.The form for submitting posts regarding January's The Big Question has been closed. However, if you have a post in response and would like to have it added to the list below, contact the me using the Dear Blogmeister link at the top of the sidebar.Comments Digest:By clicking on the MySyndicaat button below, you can see a reverse-chronological listing of all of the comments made to all of the participating posts. Ah, the wonders of Web 2.0!Got an idea for a Big Question?Use the form found in the side bar to submit your idea for future conversations.

Just a quick note to let everyone know that because of lack of time during August, I'll not be posting a Big Question for August. See you again in September.As always, if you have thoughts around the big question, feel free to leave a comment here or send me an email (akarrer [at] techempower [dot] com).

This month it's time for a truly BIG question. The inspiration for this question comes from the recent posts discussing the future of workplace learning:Jay Cross and Harold Jarche - Future of the Training DepartmentJay Cross - eLearning is not the AnswerTony Karrer - Corporate TrainingDave Wilkins - The Future of Training Started YesterdayThus, for March 2009 Big Question is:Workplace Learning in10 Years?If you peer inside an organization in 10 years time and you look at how workplace learning is being supported by that organization, what will you see? What will the mix of Push vs. Pull Learning; Formal vs. Informal supported by the organization? Are there training departments? What are they doing? How big are they as compared to today? What new departments will be responsible for parts of workplace learning? What will current members of training departments be doing in 10 years?How to Respond:Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below. This may be hard given the complexity of the topic.Option 2 -Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0or you could also include your blog name with something like:Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnologyPosts so far (and read comments as well):The Learning Revolution: 2019: A workplace learning odysseyPiotr Peszko: Will "training" exist in 2019 ?MinuteBio Big Question - In the Year 2019Quinnovator (at Learnlets) - Workplace learning in 10 yearsDavid Wilkins - Social Learning Blog: "Workplace Learning" in 10 Years?Harold, Clark, Jay - YouTube discussion. Jay Cross - my personal thoughts on the matter.Karyn Romeis - March's big question - worplace learning in 10 yearsMohamed Amine Chatti - The future of the training departmentClive Shepherd's predictions - http://tinyurl.com/d7qakmLisa Meece The Big Question: http://www.bottomlineperformance.com/lolblog/?p=689 Here's a vision of technology in 2019 that will stretch your thinking.Adventures in Corporate Education - I answered the big question with a question. :)Jacob McNulty: Learning & Development in the FutureAnthony Montalvo - El aprendizaje en la empresa en 10 añosMatt Moore: Learning + Knowledge = ?Sreya Dutta: Big Question: Workplace Learning in 10 yearsKen Allan's ResponseTony Karrer - eLearning Technology - Workplace Learning Professionals Next Job - Management ConsultantIgnatia/Inge de Waard gives a Belgian/Indian/American two cents of a human/machine interface for the future (that is now)Rodolpho Arruda - Workplace Learning in 10 YearsRyan Tracey - E-Learning in the Corporate SectorWorkplace Learning and Me - 10 years from now...Upside Learning Blog - The Future of Workplace LearningSaul Carliner - Long Live Instructor Led LearningTony Karrer - Long Live

Where do I start? This week I went to Washington DC for a couple days, so have been trying to get through all the updates that weren't otherwise posted on mLearnopedia.com. I haven't read through all of the following, but wanted to share these great resources. Stanford University started an iPhone Application Programming course this week and has made the slides and video available through iTunes U here. You can subscribe to the new lectures which are posted each Wednesday and Friday for this ten week course.A new 320-page book entitled "Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training" edited by Mohamed Ally and published by Athabasca University is available for sale or as a free PDF download. (Click on eBook for the PDF download.)The International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies (iJIM) has released issue Vol. 3, No. 2 (2009) with some very interesting papers. The objective of the journal is to publish and discuss fundamentals, applications and experiences in the field of interactive mobile technologies in learning and teaching as well as in industrial and other applications. There is no fee, but you will need to register. The abstracts from the 3rd WLE Mobile Learning Symposium: Mobile Learning Cultures across Education, Work and Leisure in London, UK, on 27 March 2009 have been posted.Weeding through all the joke posts on April 1st, I am glad that I didn't miss Tom Kuhlmann's blog titled "Here's What You Need to Know About Mobile Learning." It definitely is a lot of fun!For an overview of all the major mobile stats, check out Tomi T Ahonen's post "The Size of the Mobile Industry in 2009," a short overview of major stats. AT&T announced its second annual Big Mobile On Campus Challenge, a national higher education contest for mobile application development with a $10,000 Scholarship award available. "The contest recognizes innovative and creative mobile applications that enhance academic performance, build campus community and help to improve campus operations." There are three categories: mobile learning, mobile identity and student system integration. Lot's of reading for the weekend and beyond...

With mobile learning getting a lot of interest recently (roughly 50% of businesses surveyed say they have plans to implement some form of mobile learning in the foreseeable future), it’s becoming clear that many companies don’t have a plan to successfully create a sustainable, robust mobile learning strategy. This is evidenced by the quick jump from talking about goals and roadmaps to the proverbial "We need an app for that!" conclusion that is being reached in meetings and boardrooms across all industries and company sizes.This rush to deploy without proper planning is a big oversight and will ultimately make it difficult to understand if your mobile efforts are successful. A mobile learning strategy can help give your work grounding and a solid base on which you can build. This approach helps you bring mobile in where it will provide the biggest impact. A metered, reusable framework is far more useful than a scattershot approach. When apps are pumped out and then discarded it’s often because they didn’t perform as expected. These apps likely don’t fix the problems that were considered but not dealt with fully during the design phase. Perhaps the app shouldn’t have been built at all. Maybe its focus should have been narrower, or altogether different than what it turned out to be.A mobile learning strategy's importance is not only limited to savings during the design and development of the applications that may be created. Real, actionable metrics can only be established for individual efforts when the bigger picture is considered. What will you measure? How will you know when you are successful? What sorts of changes are you able to and prepared to make when you start to get data back from your learners?The creation of a strategy will allow outside stakeholders to help weigh in on your anticipated mobile learning efforts to come, giving your work a much needed validation. The strategy’s strengths will help build support throughout your organization, creating trust between your partnering departments and content creators allowing them to create great work. The concerns that could arise about the focus of the efforts or how it fits in with or aligns with other work will already have been addressed. This proactive approach works with other facets of business planning, why would mobile learning be any different? Over the next few weeks, we’ll investigate topics related to this, covering the building blocks for a mobile learning strategy, the effects of creating one, what happens when you neglect to create one, and then finally how to get started on implementing your completed strategy. Come back and check out our next installment.

Last week we established a few baseline expectations of the benefits of a mobile learning strategy. We talked about how it affects your immediate team, your external stakeholders and how it improves the long-term success of your mobile learning efforts. With those points in mind, you’re probably ready to get your efforts underway in creating a strategy. Hold on there, partner. Before venturing in this direction it’s vital to get a good understanding of what components comprise a great mobile learning strategy, what you need to avoid, the basics on what it takes to get started and what resources are out there to help you on all of this.What’s in a Strategy?In essence, a strategy is a comprehensive high-level view of your mobile learning roadmap and technology landscape. The roadmap for a successful mobile learning should take in account your learners, their goals, the organization’s pedagogy and value on training/learning, the focus placed on just-in-time learning and performance support, and the companies views on augmentation. These topics should be considered in terms of where they are now, but also with an eye to the future, possibly thinking out 6 months, 1 year, or maybe 2 years. Planning much further out than that would be very difficult due to the constantly quickening pace of the mobile landscape. The practicality of estimating where technology will be that far out, when you yourself are not one of the technologists inventing it is a fruitless exercise. The technology landscape can be comprised of the Six P’s of a Mobile Technology Strategy, published by Float, here. These six P’s are: Platform, Procurement, Policies, Provisioning, Publishing, and Procedures. By carefully weighing your options in these areas, completing the necessary analysis, and then choosing a recommended path or paths in each of them, you will know you are making the correct steps to achieve success.A strategy is useless unless it can be implemented, so in that light, be sure to ground your planning in the practical and don’t get too theoretical. You’ll need to make sure that scope, schedule, and budget are always aligned with your business strategy, resources, and funding you have available to you.What’s Not In A Strategy?It should be clear that a strategy should be full of big ideas tempered with implementation practicality as a backdrop. A strategy is not an app, or really for that matter a series of apps (though it could potentially be, depending on your analysis outcome, natch). A strategy is not an edict of platform nor policy, though these are likely to be components of your larger effort.A strategy should not be a dead tree. This mobile world moves quickly. What was once unthinkable becomes reality with the next major keynote by a hardware or software vendor. What was once only the territory of an app becomes possible on the next OS revision’s improved webbrowser. Mergers happen, OSes evolve, consumers’ buying habits change.Speaking of consumers, your strategy needs to take into account the likelihood that your learners will be bringing their own devices into the workplace, and that this pattern is likely to increase as IT deals with pressure to support more and more smartphones, tablets, and other form factors. A strategy missing this point will be seen as having a gaping hole in understanding the learners’ profiles.BasicsMake no mistakes, an effort of this scale takes time and hard work. You’re going to need to dig in. Research the market place. Investigate where your competitors are going. Talk to other like-minded departments in your organization. Survey your learners. You’ll likely find common threads in your discovery process. It’s important to be expansive in your thoughts at this point.Then once you’re ready, start the analysis. We’ll go deeper into detail on this topic in a subsequent post in this series.Finally, you’re going to have to consider how to present your findings, curating, and then collating the important content. Keeping the deeper findings in order to back up your analysis and provide a sold foundation for the team that will implement your strategy is crucial. Business cases, estimations of the work to be done, and considerations on the skills and whether or not you will need to enlist outside vendors to produce the work should also be included in this body of findings.Until Next TimeWell, we’ve covered a lot of great ideas here. Be sure to come back next week, when we’ll discuss the effects you’ll start to see after you’ve created and begun the implementation of your strategy.

Well, alright. We have the rationale behind creating a strategy, we know what to avoid, and we understand what can happen when you fall of the tracks. What’s next you ask? It seems that it’s time to get started on the creation of the strategy!Creating the teamAs with any project, you’re going to need to assemble a team of experts that can assist you in the creation of the end product. In this case, the team needs to be dedicated, focused, and ready truly contribute. You don’t need experts in mobile, but you will need people with domain expertise in a wide variety of disciplines. Depending on your organization size and overall goals a typical team like this will be headed up by people from the following areas of your company:you (project management)senior management representative (aka project sponsor)learning and development (this may be you, but I recommend getting a backup)branding/marketing (ideally someone with a bit of UI/UX experience)legal/compliance (find someone looking to make a name for themselves)technology (pick a progressive, solution-oriented person with buying authority)Each one of these individuals may have a number of people working under them to assist with surveying, research, and resource or information gathering. That said, I would recommend not having any more than this core group of individuals at any single group status meeting. Plan for a recurring status meeting during the course of this project, with you leading the meeting and providing the agenda to the core team.If follow-up or "off-line" discussion needs to be done with sub groups later in the week, that’s great, but always keep those meetings focused and make sure that the agendas are always hashed out in advance. You don’t want drive-by meetings or sightseers popping in to these meetings. Everyone there needs to have a purpose.If there are "to-dos" from any of these meetings, you will also be ultimately responsible for sending the recap of the meeting along with the results or findings from any previously resolved content.Setting goalsWith your team in place, the first conversations should be centered around framing what a successful effort looks like when completed. How will you, your team, and their managers know when you have hit the target? Each group is going to have distinct priorities and your major responsibility will be weighing these and prioritizing them in overall big picture. Make sure these goals are largely quantifiable and can be distilled into talking points when you are called on to report on your progress.ResearchYou can’t create a strategy in a vacuum. You and your team will likely need to survey and *gasp* talk to people in order to learn more about where you need to go to achieve your goals. When framing up these discussions keep a few things in mind:1. People are usually terrible at articulating the best solution, but are great at identifying their problems. Get people to talk about how certain aspects of their job are painful and you’re destined to find some great nuggets you can build on.2. Keep implementation details off the table. People will inevitably start to say things like "We need an app for this," or "How will IT get that information to us?", but your job must be one of constant redirection.3. Keep things positive. If you can’t keep people from referencing a botched attempt that everyone remembers the last time your company tried something like this, you may need to preface the conversation or survey with a bit of a change management effort first. Remember, here, you are the dreamer of dreams and the makers of music… Not the harbingers of doom and gloom.4. Always use your bigger picture goals as a foundation for the survey. People’s time is valuable, don’t waste their time or your time on a lot of "What-ifs" that are never going to happen. Remember from our prevous post that this strategy MUST BE IMPLEMENTABLE. If it’s not realistic that your IT department procure 1,500 iPhones for your entire company, don’t hinge your strategy on that. If you have no competency internally in Android development and have no intentions to train or hire your developers to build apps, then don’t propose that.Off to the racesHere we are! Ready to get started? You have a solid team, have outlined your goals, and created a lot of great research, now it’s time to distill that information and make your pitch. You’ll need to find a way to weigh the pros and cons of what you’ve found and then turn it into something you can use. Don’t get hung up analyzing which "measuring stick" is the best, just line up some options, talk it over with your team, and then choose one and stick with it as you firm up for your results. Approach this step with confidence in knowing you’ve done your best work and always keep an eye towards establishing ROI and you’re bound to make a mark for yourself.It’s a big step, but you can do it! If you are looking for more information on how to build a mobile learning strategy, continue to read our posts at Floatlearning.com. We’re posting regularly on topics like this.-In closing, a note of thanks to the fine folks at Learning Circuits. It’s been great working with you over last few weeks.