The are many ways we can add value to information and knowledge. I have described 14 ways of sense-making as part of personal knowledge mastery. One of these is the use of infographics, such as one on PKM published here. Recently, Tanmay Vora created a visual description of learning and leadership, based on an article by Kenneth Mikkelsen and me. "One of the crucial leadership skills for today and future is ability to learn constantly from various high quality sources, synthesizing information and collaborating with a community to get a better grasp of the constantly changing reality." - Leadership, Learning & PKM Here is Tanmay’s infographic. Image: Tanmay Vora Tanmay Vora’s visual synthesis adds value by showing connections that may not have been obvious in our HBR published article. When we create content and publish it in an open form, we invite opportunities to further contextualize it, seeing it from different perspectives. The network enables us to co-create new context and add meaning. I have never met Tanmay but we have become knowledge co-creators. This is the power of social learning in digital networks, enabling knowledge to flow in directions we cannot know in advance.

I’ve worked as an organizational learning & performance consultant since 1998. Every year I get new challenges but usually I have something in my toolbox that fits the requirement. Then one day in 2012 I was asked to solve a problem for a client that I did not have a clue how to even begin looking at. This involved complex knowledge about information technology, organizational behaviour, knowledge management, and social media. The client required a model to determine how their suite of IT platforms aligned with a newly developed learning & performance model that was being implemented across the enterprise. In short, they asked me "simplify the complexity". I was a bit nervous, not knowing where to begin. But I put my faith in my knowledge networks and communities of practice where I had been involved for the past 14 years. I went out to my networks, looking for as wide and diverse opinions as possible. I also checked my collections of social bookmarks and blog posts to see if I had come across anything useful in the past few years. As I found a few models and ideas, I tested them out with some trusted colleagues, including the client team who were keen on solving the problem. Over several weeks, many conversations, and a lot of searching and probing, I developed a working model that the client accepted. It was only through working out loud, learning out loud, and engaging the networks and communities that I had already developed, that I was able to accomplish the objective. In the end, I realized I was only as good as my network. This is the new world of work today. It requires us to not solely focus on our jobs doing regular work and projects. The network era rewards people who can bring their communities of practice and professional networks to bear on complex problems. Nobody’s individual toolbox is big enough. Image: finding perpetual beta If you want to hear more about what I learned from this project, watch the 30 minute video. This new world of work means that we all have to constantly dance between our work teams, communities, and networks. But when we are faced with a complex problem it’s too late to start engaging in a community of practice or building a knowledge network. These have to be in place beforehand. This approach is a challenge for many people who are too busy in their own workplace to look outside. But it is essential, and this is becoming clear to many business leaders. They just don’t know how and where to start. Developing individual skills, like PKM, is a good start. Then changing daily habits, like working out loud, shows that the organization values knowledge sharing. Finally, many of our organizational practices have to be removed or changed, in order to shift away from the still dominant scientific management framework to a networked management approach.

Governance, business, and learning models are moving from centralized control to network-centric foundations. For instance, coalition governments are increasing in frequency, businesses are organizing in value networks, and collaborative and connected learning is becoming widespread. In these cases, collaboration (working for a common objective) and cooperation (sharing freely without direct reciprocity) flow both ways. There are advocates for a dual operating system to deal with the complexity of the networked era: one that is hierarchical and another that is networked. This makes more sense than an elaborate 8-step model but the duality misses an important connection between structured work and cooperative networks. That space is the community of practice, which is neither project team nor professional network. Networks provide new ideas and perspectives from their diverse weak social ties. Work teams often have to share complex knowledge, and this requires strong social ties. Communities of practice are the bridge between these two, where we can test new ideas in a trusted space. This trinity is not three separate operating systems. It is one, that without the others is ineffective. This is the Triple-A organization, as proposed by Valdis Krebs. It is structured to take advantage of the complexity and noisiness of social networks, allowing information to flow as freely as possible, and affording workers the space to make sense of it and share their experiences and knowledge. The underlying concept of a Triple-A model is that organizations and their people are members of many different types of networks, communities of practice, and close-knit collaborative work teams. The Triple-A organization supports both collaborative and cooperative behaviours. That framework is one of overlapping networks, communities of practice, and work teams. It differs from the traditional organization chart in that it incorporates relationships outside the organization. Like the web, it is about talking to one another. What I see with my clients is the challenge of connecting social networks, with communities of practice, and with work teams, while also maintaining privacy and security. The Triple-A model shows the need to communicate (and learn) across these boundaries. Inspired by Valdis Krebs Awareness To let knowledge flow, people first have to become responsible for their own sense-making. This reverses the existing practice of corporate training that is designed centrally and distributed through the hierarchy. Personal knowledge mastery (PKM) is a set of processes, individually constructed, to help each of us make sense of our world and work more effectively. People can learn more and connect to diverse knowledge networks outside the organizational walls. The first step is connecting to external knowledge networks, a key part of PKM. Increasing connections, developing meaning, and improving autonomy are necessary skills in the network era. PKM ties these into an easy to understand framework: Seek > Sense > Share. Alternatives With every worker actively practicing PKM, seeking new knowledge and making sense through experimentation, then communities of practice can form to promote knowledge-sharing. Professional communities of practice connect the work being done with the ever-changing external world. They are an essential safe place to fail. Organizations need to support and reinforce existing communities, not build these as if they were project teams. People only share complex knowledge with others whom they trust. This takes time. Action Hierarchies can be temporary agreements to get work done, but the general organization structure has to be much more flexible, enabling self-directed work teams. A structure of loose, mutually agreed-upon, hierarchies within strong networks can help build the Triple-A organization. With the individual as the primary operating unit, each person needs to master sense-making and then people have to organize in communities to make sense together. They cannot wait to be told what to do, which is why ‘awareness’ is essential. A guiding principle is that collaboration must happen at the organizational level, not the process level. This means everyone has to be connected to the overall mission, and not just focused on their part (job). Goal oriented conversations, especially in communities of practice, keep people and the organization connected. One challenge for traditional organizations is that a core aspect of PKM is critical thinking, or questioning assumptions, which may be threatening to command & control management systems. But as Valdis Krebs states, "Awareness and alternatives are useless without the ability to take action on them." Finally, giving up control, and promoting self-governance, is the essence of the Triple-A organization that enables action. Networks enable organizations to deal with complexity by empowering people to connect with whom they need to, without permission. Network thinking means that anyone can connect to another colleague, and the default permission to get access to information is public. Networks are in a state of perpetual Beta. Unlike hierarchies, they can continuously change shape, size, and composition, without the need for a formal reorganization. Our thinking needs to continuously change as well. Hierarchies were essentially a solution to a communications problem. They are artifacts of a time when information was scarce and hard to share, and when connections with others were difficult to make. That time is over. Markets, competitors, customers, and suppliers are already highly connected. The Internet has done this. It is why a Triple-A enterprise needs to be organized more like the Internet, and less like a tightly controlled machine. Continue to next post: the trinity model

Following up on my last post, the network era trinity, I have put together two images to synthesize the multiple concepts behind them. These images are my attempt to create a simple model that explains how networked organizations need to operate differently. Individuals must be supported in interacting with diverse social networks, as part of their work, to enhance the possibility of serendipitous connections. This is the practice of PKM. Communities of practice must be supported as safe places to test out new ideas. This is where HR and L&D departments can play a significant role. Working on complex or creative projects is the realm of human activity in the network era. These teams are effective as temporary negotiated hierarchies that can be reformed as the situation changes. Every worker is involved in all three of these spaces continuously, therefore working and learning are not separate activities. Knowledge flows from implicit personal knowledge and is socialized while learning with communities or working in groups. The organization can curate knowledge from the flows of discussions among its workers and codify it in systems of record.

Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"  — Upton Sinclair - via @jerrymichalski "They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds." - Mexican proverb - via @LalitBhojwani "What we want most as free & independent human beings is agency." - @dsearls - via @katrynadow The Atlantic: Good jobs aren’t coming back While wages of $12 an hour are much higher than Tennessee’s minimum wage of $7.25, they represent a significant drop in pay for jobs in manufacturing, which were once a pathway to America’s middle class. This is the disappointment of 21st-century onshoring: Though some of the jobs coming back to the U.S. require advanced degrees and skills, and are the good jobs pundits predicted would return, many are not. Today, more than 600,000 manufacturing workers make $9.60 an hour or less, and one in four make $11.91 or less, according to the National Employment Law Project. Manufacturing workers once made more than average U.S. wages, but by 2013, they made 7.7 percent less than the median wage for all occupations. And when adjusted for inflation, wages for manufacturing workers have declined 4.4 percent between 2003 and 2013, according to NELP. The Life and Death of an Amazon Warehouse Temp: What the future of low-wage work really looks like. - via @michelemmartin When it comes to low-wage positions, companies like Amazon are now able to precisely calibrate the size of its workforce to meet consumer demand, week by week or even day by day. Amazon, for instance, says it has 90,000 full-time U.S. employees at its fulfillment and sorting centers—but it plans to bring on an estimated 100,000 seasonal workers to help handle this year’s peak. Many of these seasonal hires come through Integrity Staffing Solutions, a Delaware-based temp firm … This system isn’t unique to Amazon—it pervades the U.S. retail supply chain. Many companies choose to outsource shipping work to so-called third-party logistics providers, which in turn contract the work to staffing companies … For employers, the appeal of this system is obvious … For employees, though, it means showing up to work every day with the knowledge that you are always disposable. You are at least one entity removed from the company where you work, and you are only as good as your last recorded input in a computerized performance monitoring system. In the event that something goes wrong in your life—illness, injury, a family crisis—you have few, if any, protections. Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus of VISA on capitalism and spirituality - via @janhoglund The primary principle in monetized corporations is that whoever has money and can buy shares takes everything they can get and all other parties are given as little as possible. That prostitutes the meaning of capital by restricting it to money. It ignores natural capital-that is the value of what the earth produces for us at no cost. It ignores the value of community, and that is a form of capital. It ignores intellectual capital-that is the intrinsic ability and intelligence of people. It ignores every form of capital that is not reducible to the mathematics of money. Money is just alphanumeric data-a means of measurement. It has no intrinsic value … … There is a place for control. If you want a perfect silicon chip, you need a total dust-free environment. If you want to do some intricate laser surgery on my eye, I don’t want a chaotic situation in the operating room. The fact is there is a role in nature for control. Something regulates your heartbeat. But the fact that this is useful for a limited set of purposes by no means implies it is the best way to run a complex, dynamic, fast-changing totality. But that’s what we’ve done. 14,000 Free Images from the French Revolution Now Available Online - @openculture Last words and death of the aristocracy - French Revolution Digital Archive

I first got to know Jay Cross through his blog (it was before we even used the term) in the late 1990’s. I was one of the few people to comment on his posts and that was the beginning of our friendship. Several years later (2002) I got an email from Jay saying he would be in Moncton, New Brunswick, asking if that was near where I lived. Our first face to face face meeting was in a pub, 50 km from my house. Jay started the conversation saying that since we already knew each other so well, there was no need for small talk.  "Let’s figure out how we can work together", he said. Our first venture together was the ‘Informal Learning Unworkshop’ series, where we used a different web conference platform each time, sometimes changing in mid-course when the technology broke. I learned to fly by the seat of my pants with Jay. Later we spoke together at an ASTD conference, where we received feedback from some participants that  it was the best presentation ever. We were told by others that it was worst presentation ever. I learned to take immediate feedback with a grain of salt. I worked on several consulting projects with Jay over the past decade: Canadian Textile HR Council, Cigna, AstraZeneca, Canadian International Development Agency, and the Oberkotter Foundation. Jay initiated the creation of the Internet Time Alliance, and brought together Jane Hart, Charles Jennings, Clark Quinn, and myself. He introduced me to his worldwide network, which sometimes required that I sleep on the floor of his hotel room, due to my limited travel budget. It was always an adventure with Jay, such as the time we were asked to leave the Pergamon Museum in Berlin for ‘illegally’ filming. Jay was a deep thinker and a man of many talents, never resting on his past accomplishments. His 2006 book on informal learning changed the course of an industry. This year, he was working on his next book on ‘Real Learning’. Jay Cross died last week, and I will miss him greatly. He taught me to seize the day, and I will.

"essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful" - George Box The shift to the network era will not be easy for many people and most organizations. Common assumptions about how work gets done have to be discarded. Established ways of earning education credentials will be abandoned for more flexible and meaningful methods. Connections between disciplines and professions are growing, and artificial boundaries will continue to crack. Systemic changes to business and education will happen. There will be disruption on a societal level as we enter what is looking more and more like a post-job economy. Learning is a critical part of working in a creative economy. Being able to continuously learn, and share that new knowledge, will be as important as showing up on time was in the industrial economy. Continuous learning will also disrupt established hierarchies as no longer will a management position imply greater knowledge or skills. Command and control will be replaced by influence and respect, in order to retain creative talent. Management in networks means influencing possibilities rather than striving for predictability. We will have to accept that no one has definitive answers anymore, but we can use the intelligence of our networks to make sense together. Here is an excerpt from Frederick Winslow Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management (1911): "It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with management alone." My Principles of Networked Management use a similar format to show how different the network era will be: It is only through innovative and contextual methods, the self-selection of the most appropriate tools and work conditions, and willing cooperation that more creative work can be fostered. The duty of being transparent in our work and sharing our knowledge rests with all workers, especially management. A new economy and new management principles require new models for getting work done. When I speak with progressive managers they intuitively understand the usefulness of the 70:20:10 model that is based on observations that generally, people learn 70% of what they need to do their job from experience. About 20% is learned from exposure to new tasks or environments. Only 10% is learned from formal education. While these numbers are not firm, they provide a rule of thumb, especially for resource allocation to support learning at work. Basically, more resources are needed to support learning while working, and fewer for formal courses. Convincing management of the usefulness of this model is not difficult. However, the 70:20:10 model challenges the traditional domain of the Learning & Development (L&D) discipline. Many people in this field only work in formal education & training, most particularly designing courses. The reference model implicitly says, you are only being 10% effective in supporting learning at work. Of course many would react strongly against such a model. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"  — Upton Sinclair It may be even worse. Training may be only 5% of organizational learning.  For a long time this small slice has been the primary focus of most L&D departments. The other 95% was just taken care of by the informal networks in the organization. On-job-training in some cases, or just observation and modelling in others. Then the Internet arrived. All those informal networks became hyper-connected. First with hyperlinks and later with ubiquitous mobile devices. While the 10% (Education) is the domain of the L&D discipline, the other 90% (Exposure & Experience) could be supported by people from sales, marketing, communications or many other areas. It is not a foregone conclusion that these roles will be filled by trainers, and that is unsettling for ‘learning’ professionals who have most of their experience in designing formal training and education. In my experience, trainers are often let go during a transition to a more performance and social focused L&D function, replaced by people with other skills from varying backgrounds. The network era enterprise does not need ‘Training 2.0’ but rather a new organizational learning approach, where learning is integrated into the workflow. Many departments outside L&D are already staking this new ground and building their expertise. They understand the usefulness of the 70:20:10 model. Image: @gapingvoid

"Apprenticeship is the way we learn most naturally. It characterized learning before there were schools, from learning one’s language to learning how to run an empire." - Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible In the apprenticeship model, novices learn under the tutelage of a master, but for the most part are assisted by journeymen, who are qualified in their trade but not yet masters. The amount of formal education in this model is usually around 10%. "The journeyman license certifies that the craftsman has met the requirements of time in the field (usually a minimum of 8,000 hours) and time in an approved classroom setting (usually 700 hours)." - Wikipedia A cursory look at several Canadian trades programs confirm this general ratio of 10% education to 90% field experience. When looking at the 70:20:10 model (Experience, Exposure, Education) the 10% formal education component is easy to understand, as is the 70% experience component. Less obvious is what makes up the 20% exposure component. Given the dominance of knowledge work in the modern workplace, the cognitive apprenticeship model may provide some insight. It includes six methods: Modeling Coaching Scaffolding Articulation Reflection Exploration While cognitive apprenticeship was originally designed for teachers working with students in a formal setting, it can be used in the workplace as well. In organizations where experts may be significantly more advanced in their skills than novices, there is a role for a knowledge journeyman. This person’s role would be to provide the six components of cognitive apprenticeship, and be a bridge between the experts and novices. Too often experts forget how they learned the basics and find it difficult to coach novices. Novices need the support of sense-makers as companions on their journey to mastery. In many organizations formal instruction is provided for basic skills or compliance training. But the path to expertise is not made clear. Appointing journeymen to provide the 20% exposure is a way to recognize the importance of learning as a part of work. Supporting these journeymen in how to be good coaches can be the role of the Learning & Development department. This is not course production or delivery. It is helping organizational knowledge grow. Organizations should have systems in place so that non-supervisors are required to coach less experienced coworkers. This will build resilience into the knowledge networks that drive organizational performance. When work is learning, and learning is the work, we cannot leave the bridge between education and experience unmanned.

Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. I am currently in Toronto, returning from speaking at the Institute for Performance and Learning where my topic was ‘Humanity: the killer app’. "One reason I find it a revelation to read newspapers, listen to radio: Human-curated news is tremendously more varied than machine-filtered." - @mims "the people driving for Über are doing R&D for automatic cars!" says @rushkoff at #platformcoop - via @jerrymichalski "I’m not a human resource. Certainly not an asset. Don’t even mention a human capital. I’m a human being, period." - @Mintzberg141 via @rachelbotsman Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus of VISA, on capitalism and spirituality - via @janhoglund "So, if you really think deeply about such things, you come to realize that every organization is nothing but a mental construct, an idea around which people and resources are assembled theoretically in pursuit of common purpose and in accordance with a belief system of some sort. So I became convinced that it is really the ultimate design problem. If an organization is really nothing but a mental construct, then anything you can conceivably imagine in putting together the relevant materials, which include people and their relationships, is possible. And this construct will either bring out the best in people or the worst in them. In the long run, the command and control model rewards and brings out the worst in people instead of their best." Transforming an Organization, even when that organization is a country, by @markfederman ‘Everyone in an organization connects to everyone else via a set of valence (uniting, combining, reacting) relationships. Change a person and you necessarily change the interactions among those relationships. Change the quality and nature of those interacting relationships and you change the organization. Thus every new arrival and every fresh departure is a transformational act. Contemporary hiring strategy is less of "what skills do we need?" and more of "who, what, and how do we want to become?"‘ "Planning automobile cities focuses on saving time. Planning accessible cities focuses on time well spent."— R. Cervero via @grescoe A Human City

[Note: this is a repost from medium.com and a combination of two previous posts] Governance, business, and learning models are moving from centralized control to network-centric foundations. For instance, coalition governments are increasing in frequency, businesses are organizing in value networks, and collaborative and connected learning is becoming widespread. In these cases, collaboration (working for a common objective) and cooperation (sharing freely without direct reciprocity) flow both ways. There are advocates for a dual operating system to deal with the complexity of the networked era: one that is hierarchical and another that is networked. This may make more sense than an elaborate 8-step model but the duality misses an important connection between structured work and cooperative networks. That space is the community of practice, which is neither project team nor professional network. Networks provide new ideas and perspectives from their diverse weak social ties. Work teams often have to share complex knowledge, and this requires strong social ties. Communities of practice are the bridge between these two, where we can test new ideas in a trusted space. This trinity is not three separate operating systems. It is one, that without the others is ineffective. The networked organization trinity is based on the Triple-A organization, as proposed by Valdis Krebs. It is structured to take advantage of the complexity and noisiness of social networks, allowing information to flow as freely as possible, and affording workers the space to make sense of it and share their experiences and knowledge. The underlying concept of the trinity model is that organizations and their people are members of many different types of networks, communities of practice, and close-knit collaborative work teams. The trinity model supports both collaborative and cooperative behaviours. That framework is one of overlapping networks, communities of practice, and work teams. It differs from the traditional organization chart in that it incorporates relationships outside the organization. Like the web, it is about talking to one another. What I see with my clients is the challenge of connecting social networks, with communities of practice, and with work teams, while also maintaining privacy and security. The trinity model shows the need to communicate (and learn) across these boundaries. Essentially, networked organizations need to operate differently. Individuals must be supported in interacting with diverse social networks, as part of their work, to enhance the possibility of serendipitous connections. This is the practice of PKM. Communities of practice must be supported as safe places to test out new ideas. This is where HR and L&D departments can play a significant role. Working on complex or creative projects is the realm of human activity in the network era, as this work cannot be automated. These teams are effective as temporary negotiated hierarchies that can be reformed as the situation changes. Every worker is involved in all three of these spaces continuously, therefore working and learning are not separate activities. Knowledge flows from implicit personal knowledge and is socialized while learning with communities or working in groups. The organization can curate knowledge from the flows of discussions among its workers and codify it in systems of record. Awareness To let knowledge flow, people first have to become responsible for their own sense-making. This reverses the existing practice of corporate training that is designed centrally and distributed through the hierarchy. Personal knowledge mastery (PKM) is a set of processes, individually constructed, to help each of us make sense of our world and work more effectively. People can learn more and connect to diverse knowledge networks outside the organizational walls. The first step is connecting to external knowledge networks, a key part of PKM. Increasing connections, developing meaning, and improving autonomy are necessary skills in the network era. PKM ties these into an easy to understand framework: Seek > Sense > Share. Alternatives With every worker actively practicing PKM, seeking new knowledge and making sense through experimentation, then communities of practice can form to promote knowledge-sharing. Professional communities of practice connect the work being done with the ever-changing external world. They are an essential safe place to fail. Organizations need to support and reinforce existing communities, not build these as if they were project teams. People only share complex knowledge with others whom they trust. This takes time. Action Hierarchies can be temporary agreements to get work done, but the general organization structure has to be much more flexible, enabling self-directed work teams. A structure of loose, mutually agreed-upon, hierarchies within strong networks can help build the networked organization. With the individual as the primary operating unit, each person needs to master sense-making and then people have to organize in communities to make sense together. They cannot wait to be told what to do, which is why ‘awareness’ is essential. A guiding principle is that collaboration must happen at the organizational level, not the process level. This means everyone has to be connected to the overall mission, and not just focused on their part (job). Goal oriented conversations, especially in communities of practice, keep people and the organization connected. One challenge for traditional organizations is that a core aspect of PKM is critical thinking, or questioning assumptions, which may be threatening to command & control management systems. But as Valdis Krebs states, "Awareness and alternatives are useless without the ability to take action on them." Finally, giving up control, and promoting self-governance, is the essence of the trinity model that enables action. Networks enable organizations to deal with complexity by empowering people to connect with whom they need to, without permission. Network thinking means that anyone can connect to another colleague, and the default permission to get access to information is public. Networks are in a state of perpetual Beta. Unlike hierarchies, they can continuously change shape, size, and composition, without the need for a formal reorganization. Our thinking needs to continuously change as well. Hierarchies were essentially a solution to a communications problem. They are artifacts of a time when information was scarce and hard to share, and when connections with others were difficult to make. That time is over. Markets, competitors, customers, and suppliers are already highly connected. The Internet has done this. It is why an enterprise based on the trinity model is more like the Internet, and less like a tightly controlled machine.

"If we emphasize Autonomy, the Node Artifact, Autonomy as the core organizing principle, this will result in individuals, small groups and tribes, forming complex responsive flows e.g. through conversations and flexible ad hoc structures." - John Kellden In the triple operating system (Awareness>Alternatives>Action) work gets done by self-governing work teams with a degree of autonomy operating in temporary, negotiated hierarchies. Self-organizing teams are more flexible than hierarchical ones, but they require active and engaged members. One cannot cede power to the boss, because everyone is responsible for the boss they choose. Like democracy, self-organized teams require constant effort to work.  Hierarchies work well when information flows mostly in one direction: down. They are good for command and control. Hierarchies can get things done efficiently. But hierarchies are useless to create, innovate, or change. Hierarchies in perpetual beta are optimal for creativity and to deal with complexity. What is autonomy in the workplace? Employees are given different degrees of autonomy in terms of the decisions they are allowed to make within the confines of organizational power. Discretion for action is usually accorded by virtue of one’s place in the hierarchy. Usually the higher one goes, the more autonomy one has. One way to look at autonomy is the type of action people are allowed to take without permission. The self-governance maturity model shows five levels of autonomy: where you work, how you get things done, what you work on, who you will work with, and why you do the work in the first place. Each one builds on the other, so that people need to be able to decide for themselves where to work before they can be autonomous in how they work. The constraints of space and place must be released in order to find the best ways to get work done, such as the selection of the appropriate tools. Once people can decide where and how they work, they can make informed decisions on what they will work on, as nurses at Buurtzorg do. Given this autonomy, workers can then decide who they work with, as employees at Semco do. Finally, when business strategy is informed by the emergent activities of all employees with their customers and environment, the the ‘why’ of work truly reflects the organization and is not imposed on the people doing the work. This is full autonomy, aligned with the principles of networked management: It is only through innovative and contextual methods, the self-selection of the most appropriate tools and work conditions, and willing cooperation that more creative work can be fostered. The duty of being transparent in our work and sharing our knowledge rests with all workers, especially management. Image: adapting to perpetual beta Note: This post, like hierarchies in a self-governing organization, is in a state of perpetual beta.

Most best practices are self-evident, whereas the problems that consume our time and efforts are usually complex. Instead of looking for best or good practices, we should take the time and money to invest in an experiment. What works for one organization often will not work for another. There are too many variables, and the environment keeps changing. However, examples of emergent practices can inform us, as long as we see them as guide posts, not rule books. Currently, I offer online workshops on personal knowledge mastery and social learning. These have been highly successful and involve cohorts of participants from a wide variety of backgrounds. As one of the objectives is to learn from each other, this diversity increases the potential for serendipitous learning. Taking these workshops and running them inside an organization would not yield the same results. That is why I offer co-creation as a service. If you see value in my workshops, my books, or the subjects I discuss here - such as innovation,  leadership, and the connected enterprise - then I can help you create your own programs. We can use my experience with a number of organizations, from the inside and outside, to coach and guide your organization in creating your own professional development programs or transition projects. This is not a cookie-cutter type of service. There is no recipe book to follow. This is a journey where we work together for a set period of time, and then you go on your own. I provide resources, coaching, advice, and access to a worldwide network of professionals. "What the Internet Time Alliance group brought to the table in our engagement, in the person of Harold Jarche, was not only his extensive experience and network, but also the expertise of the rest of the Alliance and their networks as well. While we in our organization have networks of our own, the quality and extensiveness of the ITA network added a value that we would not have been able to tap alone, and led us to a superior solution that will better serve our customers." (Corporate University Manager within Fortune 500 Health Insurance company) If you realize that buying ‘off-the-shelf’ will not address the complex and unique requirements for learning and working in your complex organizational environment, then let’s talk about taking a journey together. Let me share some of my blood, sweat, and tears with you. Mastery takes time. Mastery by Amy Burvall

Highly successful people (HSP) don’t need help making sense of their days. "What if you could rely on others in your life to handle these things and you could narrow your attention filter to that which is right before you, happening right now now? I met Jimmy Carter when he was campaigning for president and he spoke as though we had all the time in the world. At one point, an aide came to take him off to the next person he needed to meet. Free from having to decide when the meeting would end, or any other mundane care, really, President Carter could let go of those inner nagging voices and be there. A professional musician friend who headlines big stadiums and constantly has a phalanx of assistants describes this state as being ‘happily lost’. He doesn’t need to look at his calendar more than a day in advance, allowing each day to be filled with wonder and possibility." - Daniel Levity, in The Organized Mind The rest of us have to figure out some other way to manage our daily lives, as well as how to stay in current in our fields. The idea that HSP’s live a different life from the rest of us helps to understand why it is difficult to sell cooperative and social learning to senior executives. They may understand that non-HSP’s need compliance training, and that skilled workers need training. However, it is likely they don’t internally understand that many people need to keep up with as much new knowledge and information as HSP’s do, but the rest of us do not have the staff to outsource our cognitive loads. I was attending a lunch for senior learning and development (L&D) folks in Canada, while speaking at the Institute for Performance & Learning’s annual conference a couple of weeks ago. The subject of conversation was a recent report on the state of L&D. One of the questions that was posed to the group of about 30 professionals was how to convince organizational leaders of the return on investment (ROI) for workplace learning. I proposed that if executives ask for the ROI of an initiative, it really means that they do not believe in it. If they think something is important for the business, they don’t ask to see any ROI. If those in leadership positions are to really promote workplace learning (not just compliance courses) they have to believe that it is good for them. HSP’s have to be practicing cooperation in knowledge networks to develop emergent practices, in order to truly understand any inherent value. Selling the concept of cooperative workplace learning for non-HSP’s does not relate to the special life of the HSP. In order for executives to believe in workplace learning and support frameworks like personal knowledge mastery, necessary for the rest of us, they have to see it for themselves. All of the effort put into preparing business cases for organizational learning initiatives should instead be focused on getting the leadership to adopt new practices. After that, there is no longer any need to sell the idea. Justifying ROI is selling to the wrong part of the HSP brain. Source: perpetual beta series  

Critical thinking - the questioning of underlying assumptions, including our own - is becoming all-important as we have to make our way in the network era. Critical thinking can be looked at as four main activities: Observing and studying our fields Participating in professional communities Building tentative opinions Challenging and evaluating ideas Critical thinking must be practiced. It should be encouraged in the workplace by freely sharing what I call ‘half-baked ideas’.  In this way, professionals can engage in problem-solving activities at the edge of their expertise, where they should be in order to deal with complex issues. One way to build a cognitive toolbox would be to start with each of the four critical thinking categories described above, through the applied use of social media Social media are tools that can help us develop emergent practices. They enable conversations between people separated by distance or time. Social media can facilitate the sharing of implicit knowledge through conversations to inform the collaborative development of emergent work practices. Conversations that push our limits enable critical thinking, and the questioning of our assumptions. Critical thinking takes practice. Living in such a state of perpetual Beta can be uncomfortable. The key is to be engaged in your learning. It requires strong opinions, loosely held. That means going out on a limb knowing you may criticized. It also means putting forth your half-baked ideas, which over time and exposure may develop into something more solid. Finding and weaving our knowledge networks is getting easier with billions of people connected by the Internet. This scale and diversity is an advantage, not something to be concerned about. There is no such thing as information overload. I have yet to see someone completely filled with information. The real challenge is finding the right information. The more I learn, the more I realize I have to learn even more. Our networks can help us think critically: if they are are open, transparent, and most importantly, diverse. From our external social networks we can discover new ideas and opinions, though in a chaotic, unstructured, and random way. This is where serendipity often beckons. In our communities of practice, which comprise a mix of strong and weak social ties, is the ideal liquid space for mixing learning and work while sharing advice and knowledge. Social media are the enabling technologies that can connect external networks, communities of practice, and project teams. Social learning flows on these networks, which is how critical thinkers seek, make-sense, and share their knowledge using frameworks like PKM. Image: finding perpetual beta  

Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. "A job is an artifact of a renaissance era scheme to prevent us from creating and exchanging value among ourselves." - Douglas Rushkoff, via @fer_ananda The Case for No Bosses and a 4-Day Work Week, via @rogerfrancis1 ‘As we do not have bosses in our organization, we decided to have just one meeting every 6 months in order to share amongst us all where we are going as a company, defining a maximum of 3 primary objectives. The important thing here is that we don’t determine "how" we will reach the goals, we simply decide on the objectives to reach. Later, each team member is responsible for finding out "how" we will get there.’ 3 Lessons on L&D from Tesla, via @jclarey "Inevitably people are always asking the CEO for more formal training, tuition reimbursement, some form of more formal training- some individuals believe that if they’re not in a class they’re not learning. I communicated firmly that my overall goal was to never have ‘more formal training’ be asked again. So how do we do that? Two ways: we help people change their perception that formal training is the only way you learn, and then we have to get other stuff out there so they realize formal isn’t the only way." - Beth Loeb Davies, Director L&D The System vs the Medical Doctor, by @fewererrors "But most of my errors have not been from lack of knowledge.  When I miss a pulmonary embolism, it’s not because I don’t know how a pulmonary embolism presents.  No, when I reflect carefully, most of my errors have been triggered by the factors Dr. Meagher identifies in his book.  I was in too much of a hurry to really settle down and be present with the patient and listen to their story.  Or I was distracted by an earlier patient’s anger after I refused his request for more oxycontin.  Or I was tired from broken sleep the night before my shift.  Or I was impatient and irritable and judgemental, all of which interfered with really attending to the patient I was there to help." - Dr Allison Dysart The Trains to Hope, by @mintzberg141 & @wolfgangmuel11 "At first, we in the city administration were very surprised. But then we realized that this was not uncoordinated. It was a highly professional, high speed performance. That is when it dawned on us that here was the self-organizing plural sector in action. So we in the city administration decided to give The Train of Hope all the technical support it might need, including background support on call. We then invited The Train of Hope to join the city’s crisis management network, an offer that was accepted. I am delighted to report that this cooperation has continued to perform consistently well, with no end date yet clear." - Wolfgang Müller, Chief of Operations, City of Vienna How to Choose a Model of Self-organization, by @aarondignan

Apologies for it being a number of months since the last post.  Summer is Higher Ed IT busy season and between new management and a really big project, the blog got neglected.At least I got some of this in.....I need to do MORE of that....--------------------- Once we have the rough requirements, my next step is to organize the requirements in a way that makes more sense.When I was looking for a template for requirements elicitation, my current director recommended that I look at them in terms of Actor / Action / Acted Upon.Sounded to me a lot like the foundation of xAPI.Development Version - xAPI Spec 1.0.3----------------------------I decided to leverage the following definitions from the xAPI SpecActor - an individual, a group, or a thing / system (like a software application or a server)For Actors, I am focusing on roles that people will play in the solution. I'm still fine-tuning the list, but these are some of the patterns that I have seen appear across projects.User or Student (depending on context)Power User or Instructor (depending on context)System Administrator (does the technical administration of the solution)Program Administrator (helps run the human process around the solution and often does some technical activities within a solution) Verb - the action between the actor and the activityOne of the things I am trying to do is come up with a standard list of verbs for each scenario.Doesn't apply in all situations - I still occasionally have outliers - but narrowing verbs down a bit allows me toeasily see requirement duplication or...see trends across various stakeholder groups (am I seeing the same requirement across different sources?)find gaps in the requirements that we have collected organize the requirements list more easilySome verbs go across scenarios - such as "accesses".Other verbs are unique to the scenario or solution.A new controlled vocabulary verb list is out there.I'm not limiting myself to this list.   Object - what the actor is performing the activity on. This can be another person or a group or a thing or an object.Object as person - Wendy called Dave Actor - WendyVerb - calledObject - Dave (and I'm sure any one of the Daves I know love being called an object)Object as group - Wendy interviewed the Payroll DepartmentActor - WendyVerb - interviewedObject - Payroll Department Object as a thing (Activity) - Wendy wrote about xAPIActor - WendyVerb - wrote Object - about xAPIObject as a thing (Statement or sub-statement) - Dave commented on 'Wendy wrote about xAPI'Actor - DaveVerb - commentedObject - 'Wendy writes about xAPI'------------------------------This video explains how I am leveraging these ideas in my requirements document:

The next step is taking that list and prioritizing it into nice to have and need to have.For the Survey tool...what are the principles that guide that decision?Mine are:Can people get to the survey easily and using their preferred method of access?If it is a pain for them to get to the survey, they won't take it and I get no information.Can surveyors develop a survey quickly? Ease of useIdeally, they will have spent quality time thinking through what questions to ask and the type of answers they are looking for.  A tool won't fix that.Can surveyors quickly view and distribute the results?Because if there is a survey being developed, it is likely because management has a question they want answered.Warning: if you are doing the requirements collection for a project you are going to have lengthy arguments discussions with the other stakeholders about the difference between "nice to have" and "need to have".Best for everyone to get real clear on the problem that the project is solving and the principles you are using to guide solution design first.Here Be Monsters

....though it has not been for lack of trying......----------------------- Wendy - why are you worried about this?One of the biggest issues we ran into during our Unified Communications project was the development of test scripts.As you are implementing your learning ecosystem, chances are you will be asked to create test scripts. Or at least participate in that process.Spending time defining testable requirements (as much as possible at this point) will save time later on.Like...when you are also trying to develop training materials and prep for go-live.--------------------------- In Wendy's Utopian Fantasyland:Test scripts are based on requirements. The requirements are based on what the user needs to be able to do. And we wind up with a system that works for humans. Test scripts should have two levels:Functional - do the buttons workMost test scripts focus on the functional IT folks will focus on this.  Functional testing is useful TO A POINT!  Procedural - can someone actually complete a task All of the buttons can work and it passes the functional test, but if you try to walk through a series of steps - you can't complete the task. When I see solutions fail, it is because they tested whether the individual buttons work but didn't bother to walk through what humans actually do when they use the tool.I haven't seen a solution yet where I push just one button to perform a task.---------------------------------- Not all requirements have testable components.Some are just "does it exist - yes/no". So I figured it would be easier to identify what could be tested and what couldn't up front.You may need an IT friend, or two for this.How I'm approaching this (moving forward, because I learned my lesson) is explained in the video below.

I received my MA in History in 1994 from the University of Georgia.Back in the day....those index cards were the way we organized our notes and thoughts so we could ultimately write our thesis.The idea was that once we had enough index cards, we can organize them and the thesis would "write itself". (ha!) No EvernoteNo "internet".  We did have computers. And email - kinda.I studied what I could afford to study  - which equaled something close to where I was since I didn't have a lot of money for travel.Mentors included whoever was close at hand, and maybe the occasional phone call or letter to someone else.Hence a thesis on Black Drink in Colonial Georgia. Because I was in Georgia.And near an expert in the Southeastern Indians.And the plant grew on campus.Back in the day, we killed trees.  Lots and lots of trees. I am so grateful for the internet.

This is one of my first web sites - developed in 2001.  I chose the topic because it was controversial (still is) and it allowed me to use lots of pictures in buttons.  Because in 2001, that was advanced.Note the matrices and the fact that the instructor printed out every page of the web site.As I sifted through my papers from my Instructional Technology Masters degree, it occurred to me that we are having the same conversations that we did in 2001.Despite lots of research, we are still designing the same stuff.Still asking how we can develop the same stuff FASTER vs how we can design effective solutions that better map to the way people learn and the environments we work in.The solutions I see now are very similar to the solutions I saw back then.Because when we are actually faced with having to DO something, we revert back to the same habits.Thinking in terms of courses.Thinking in terms of how fast we can develop a course vs whether a course is an appropriate solution in the first place.Thinking in terms of "training" vs helping people become more comfortable with change.Thinking in terms of events vs the small, distributed experiences that are proven to work. We have over 15 years worth of research - people!!!!Let's use it!!!!!

Of course, life does not always provide time to come up with a strategy after careful consideration of requirements and capability.Sometimes, you just have to rely on prior history and gut feeling - as well as take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves. Behold! Our current content strategy!I can use this both for my own reference (where should I stash my stuff) and for the rest of the team (where should they stash it too). To create this, I had a working knowledge of the bits and pieces we had been using so far and what we did.  In Wendy's Utopian Fantasyland - there would have been detailed requirements and capabilities much like with the survey.  Um...yeah...didn't have that.I also tested some functionality with the movie files to see whether the proposed solution was feasible (otherwise known as spending time storing and retrieving movie files in various places to see what happened).This document was created in response to a gap I had been complaining about for a year now in regards to our functionality - ie, where do I stash my movie files if I am not supposed to stash them in our designated document management system or on my YouTube account?It was also created in response to a sudden proliferation in places where we COULD stash our stuff.  Before we had our LMS (for stuff requiring tracking), our little corner of a web server (for interactive videos that did not require tracking), and a shared drive.  Now we have a lot more options and places to put things.  It got complicated. The headers were in response to the key capabilities and scenarios I encounter in this space:- What type of file or file package am I creating?- What type of reporting do I need?- Who is the audience?- Where are we stashing this file?- Other concerns or issues that have surfaced around this solution?- Potential next steps?- New / temporary solution options as we hash stuff out (the unlabled column)Eventually - there will be a detailed requirements and capability matrix for this space much like the Survey requirements.  Eventually..... 

We have talked about Capability Matrices before.Application Architecture: Capability MatricesWhere do I stash my files?Capability Matrices: Functionality ReplacementDoing the translation between requirements and capability is actually fairly simple:1) Copy the actor/verb/object columns to a new sheet within your spreadsheet2) List the tools you have available across the top3) Ask - does it have the feature? Yes / No.  This also allows me to comment if the answer isn't so black and white.Example of an incomplete capability matrix is below. This can be used either for applications that you have existing in the environment (like the one shown here) or ones that you are evaluating.In this instance, we are looking at the capabilities that are in our environment.Notice that this is incomplete.  I still need to sit down for a quality day and go through each line for each tool.  It'll happen....eventually :)  --------------------------------------You will notice in this particular requirements / capability matrix, I have also added any survey / assessment / evaluation capabilities housed in LMSs.Mostly because often when training groups use surveys, they are in the context of a particular course (smile sheets, tests etc.).   Once I get a full evaluation of what each one of these systems has - I can then start putting together a use strategy.ie - I use Google Forms when I am trying to do x for y audience.  I use SkillPort when I am trying to create a test attached for a particular course for staff. etc.  I'll flesh that out later.

As you may have discovered, we have multiple tools that do similar things.We have multiple tools that provide survey capabilities.So now we can sit and figure out what tool is best for a particular scenario - and come up with a clear set of guidelines for the team.This will allow us to better evaluate what is actually being used, whether we should be using one of the other tools instead, and what is not needed.-----------------------------In this example, I have taken the capabilities and developed a strategy based on careful evaluation of those capabilities. The most salient requirements and capabilities I used to create this are- Reporting and my audience for reporting (higher the level, the prettier the pictures need to be)- Whether I have to (or can) connect a survey to a particular learning object- Whether I can create anonymous surveys The most difficult part of this exercise is defining the scenarios. I just listed the ones I either encounter frequently or have seen recently. Like other educators, we commonly use survey tools for smile sheets, testing and pre-testing.However, we've also been using surveys to help us see measures of whether particular solutions have been creating change and the role of training in that change (the Solution surveys).  Those surveys are not connected to a particular course - so using the LMS survey tools (which forced me to connect a survey to a particular item) was out of the question.  I also have a Skills survey scenario. One of my projects last year was to do a skills inventory for a segment of our division.  This helps us see what human capability we had in-house and how it potentially measured up to certain planned activities.. From that exercise, I learned why vendors have expensive skills evaluation solutions.  Again, the way I approached (requirements to capability to strategy) generally occurs in Wendy's Utopian Fantasyland. The reality normally looks like this.