Chief Learning Officer - July 2008 - (Page 44)

And the problem was ampliﬁed, at least partially, by an inordinate strength in organizational asynchronous capability. That is, people just weren’t talking to each other. They were communicating through complex, overly trained processes, within complicated frameworks and unwritten standards of conduct. So given this climate, what program do we create, and what’s the blend? I wholeheartedly believe learning modality should be secondary to creating engagement and the resulting effect. Circulatory issues, such as at ACME, frequently beneﬁt from process-driven solutions, in which the process of delivery ultimately becomes the change. So in this case, the modality, the physicality, becomes the engagement. ACME is very good at asynchronous. So to include any asynchronous activity into the learning mix would be counterproductive at best. Instead, give them something that requires interaction. A ﬁeld trip to reveal ACME 2.0 processes? Play-by-play live management meetings during company lunches? Delivering effective programs meant reconsidering the entire learning toolbox — even throwing out the box itself. Synchronicity in the New Web World We all have a new toolbox to consider, if not an entirely remodeled workshop. Google and others have made a new world for us, a world that is overlapping with the world of real organizational problems in sometimes wicked, and sometimes welcome, ways. This leads me to why I’ve been so wildly excited in reconsidering those two words. I’m like Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch. Synchronous and asynchronous actually can mean something new and powerful and actionable in this renovated world of learning and enablement. Let’s consider some newer technologies, with the “Is it synchronous?” test. Really think about each one for a moment: Web site. Online class. Blog. Wiki. It’s a frustrating exercise because I’m no longer sure what the right answers are. At the scale of today, with its swell of skilled consumers and creators, the Web has very rapidly moved from the asynchronous, self-paced column to the synchronous, group-paced one. Web 2.0 tools have made creation a simpler skill. And Web 3.0, according to some, will be at least partially driven by an ongoing shift toward the “semantic Web.” What this means is that tools that create connections around people and data are now more plentiful. This is a good thing. Web 3.0 quickly is making knowledge consumption and connection more intuitive and specialized. And within this scale, learning continues to democratize itself. Authoritative experts on any range of topics have multiplied like tribbles, and Google serves it up better than many learning management systems. Systemic constraints to adoption, such as unforesee- DATA POINT Five of the 10 bestselling novels in Japan in 2007 were written on cell phones. able liability and nearly unachievable pace, may stiﬂe the transformation, but only slightly. Why? Because India, China and others aren’t concerned with the same systemic constraints, and not advancing at or beyond their pace will cost too much for the rest of the world. It’s happening whether you’re on the bus or not. Nobody can compete with the global synchronicity of ideas. The pace of change is consistently unfolding itself in new and unpredictable ways. Ideas evolve differently when millions of people advance them at once. When knowledge has a short shelf life, knowledge operations — knowledge channels — are everything. There are a few blogs I read on a daily basis that have other bloggers who also read them. These consumercreators then comment on their own blogs, in a virtuous (or vicious) cycle, extending the ideas geometrically and shape-shifting them in a matter of hours. It’s a conversation. Wikipedia, for acutely current topics, changes shape dramatically in seconds — faster than a phone call in most cases. Certainly faster than a meeting. Imagine having a meeting with 20,000 people, experimenting with an unknown idea and reaching a consensus in two hours. It’s wildly asymmetrical, and it is experienced as asynchronous, but it is erected with all four walls at once. I, for one, ﬁnd it incredibly overwhelming. It’s a different human experience, and it’s synchronous in a completely non-programmatic and uncontrollable way. As a contrast case, let’s consider the classic synchronous experience: a classroom. Many people take a class at once. Students have conversations with instructors and among themselves: synchronicity. But isn’t it also wildly and lamentably asynchronous? Isn’t the proximity between problem and outcome more important than the proximity between student experiences? And what about scale? Isn’t the entire concept of synchronous that it happens at once? If 500,000 people take a self-paced course over a 10-day period and converse with each other informally afterward, isn’t that closer to the true meaning of synchronous? I’ve seen wikis in engineering groups that communicate a problem, triangulate a solution and deliver that solution in minutes. This is the right learning, just in time, for a problem unknown 10 minutes earlier. There is no LMS to help build their core skill, just immediate access to 80 other people with that skill to walk them through: crowd-sourced mentoring. Ultimately, asynchronous and synchronous are words that describe the meeting of two ends. In traditional design, the ends are experienced as learner-teacher or learner-learner. But ongoing scale and new technology continually adds new ends: learner-organization, learner-ideas, organization-strategy. In a world of nearly instantaneous access to and continual shifting of ideas, and of incredible growth in organizational ecosystems (employees and partners), learning must continue its 44 Chief Learning Ofﬁcer • July 2008 • www.clomedia.com http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - July 2008

Chief Learning Officer - July 2008 Contents Imperatives Selling Up, Selling Down Strategies Take Five A Customer-Driven Approach to Molding Tomorrow’s Leaders The Home Depot: Accelerated Leadership CLO Profile Birth of a Salesman: Selling Learning to Solve Business Issues Selling Learning’s Potential at Siemens Transform Corporate Learning With a User Network Wiki Training Increases Productivity for RMC Vanguard Mortgage Lessons From the Feds: Mapping Learning to Strategic Initiatives Department of Labor Centralizes Content Synchronous and Asynchronous: What’s in a Name? Coping With Cultural Barriers to E-Learning The Manager’s Responsibility for Employee Learning Case Study Business Intelligence In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - July 2008

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