Recent Trends in Social Learning and Implications for Leadership

Many of us may wonder if the recent trend in social networking and learning is a fad that’s going to deepen further or fade away! Though social learning is no new thing but given the context and meaning with the widespread reach of networking tools, it’s being hotly debated. Many of the old-guard organizations (read GE and IBM among others) along with their more contemporary and networked peers are embracing enterprise social use. However, even a greater number of corporates and their leaders are staunch nay-sayers!

A recent global survey^# of 10000 respondents from 38 countries by Microsoft does throw open very interesting observations and key learning on enterprise social use. It provides a certain roadmap for today’s leadership in organizations.

 Let’s sample a couple of observations made by these information workers and what these mean for the leaders of today?

      Impact on Productivity: These respondents felt that use of social tools have improved their productivity at work. Most notable observations were from China, India, Turkey, Mexico and Russia. Their mean % respondents who agreed (70% of all) on ‘greatly to somewhat increased’ productivity outstrip the average of 46%

      Social tools at work resulted in higher order collaboration among the employees.

Despite the above upsides that the respondents opined, there were some critical concerns when it comes to organizational perception of social tools at workplace.

§  Disclosure of sensitive information:  While in Japan where social tools are not as widely used, respondents claim that their employers have a lower fear of disclosure. In contrast, in India where social tools are relatively more encouraged by employers, survey reveals that employees often get into trouble for using these tools at work.

§  Workplace distractions: Respondents claim their employers view such tools as workplace distraction.

§  Concerns with workplace productivity: Respondents claimed that their employers view enterprise social tools having productivity impact than influencing efficiency at workplace.

Given these somewhat apparent concerns, let’s critically analyze what they mean and how the glass

can be viewed as half-filled rather than half-empty. Various socio-economic and political developments have established beyond doubt the power of social tools such as Facebook, Twitter and their clans. Who can forget Arab spring and Occupy Wall Street so easily?

·         Revealing organizational proprietary information is a sensitive matter, however, such behavior is more of an attitudinal and values issue rather than an outcome of use of social networking. Moreover, a disgruntled employee has possibly many other avenues to affect such damage.

·         Organizations across the globe face sub-optimal employee engagement and productivity through various workplace behaviors such as gossiping, politicking and absenteeism among many others. Informal chats and water-cooler discussions are major learning sources and help shape organizational culture and help change management initiatives.

·         Studies and surveys have established the role of social tools at workplace in fostering collaboration and innovation. These platforms harness the power of collective intelligence and help unlock tacit knowledge that might be residing in employees head.

Business Application                                                        

Rise of social networking tools has been transformational in many ways and this trend is going to intensify further. Smart and suave organizations are already reaping benefits with these innovations. In this backdrop, organizational leadership is assuming a new format. As author and founder of Altimeter Group, Charlene Li claims in her book ‘Open Leadership’ that social technology can transform the way leaders lead their organizations.

The key is to educate your employees on technology, use and certain codes of behavior rather than regulating these tools. A tentative road map in adopting enterprise social tools might look as under

·         Engage and Educate your employees regarding right use of such platforms

·         Create Champions in your organizations who will take the initiative and create the critical mass and momentum for your initiatives

·         Start small, Scale up

·         Integrate with mainstream learning platforms to drive sustainability of interventions

·         Showcase early wins!

As Gartner projected that by 2018, almost half the organizations will have Facebook like enterprise tools, such a disruptive change is demanding a new leadership approach that’s more open on collaboration and collective intelligence.

(^# Source: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/download/presskits/enterprisesocial/docs/ESCResearchSum)

International Coach Federation: What do I need to know about Neuroscience as a Coach?

International Coach Federation: What do I need to know about Neuroscience as a Coach?

Social Media Tools: Icing on Your Learning Cake!

Look inside any publications or resources of workplace learning & performance and chances are that you’ll be surprised to see social media featuring with almost unprecedented regularity. Questions that might crop up in a learning professional’s mind could sound like-

Is it yet another fad? Is the trend sustainable? Are we going for a overkill?

And possibly, some more like these!

Speak to people in the fraternity and possibly you find the opinions divided. But no one seems to disagree on one thing- Social media’s compelling trend has already set in the workplace and one can ignore it at one’s peril!

Still few companies encourage their employees to go active on social media and harness its power for organizational effectiveness. Majority of them, in fact, hold a cynical outlook towards such platforms. Generational gaps make things even more distinct- Baby boomers downplay social media and its power to transform workplace whereas Gen Y employees will go to the extent of snubbing off companies as prospective employers who hold unfavorable social media policies at workplaces!

I was pleasantly surprised hearing one of the hiring managers narrating this interview process wherein she was literally quizzed by one of the interviewees asking about her company’s social media practices when she offered the candidate to ask any questions if he had at the end of the interview. This is just an example and a precursor of things to follow in coming years at workplace.

The question that needs to be asked of learning and performance professional is - ‘How do you usher in Social media in workplace learning with least disruption and resistance?’

Before I try to answer the question, let me provide a perspective on social media. Social media is a broad term that encompasses wikis, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, twitter, Pinterest of the world. They are the creation of web2.0 technologies. Despite their apparent omnipresence, an article from T+D magazine cites ‘So far, only a minority of firms are actual “power users” of Web 2.0 technologies for the purpose of enhancing learning. Just 9 percent of learning professionals surveyed said Web 2.0 technologies play a major role in the learning function in their company.’ So it’s evident that when it comes to formal learning plans most of the L&D professionals would rather fight sigh of these platforms.

Think of company intranet and Sharepoint sites- if there were any studies conducted to establish how motivated employees are visiting and taking formal classes, participating on discussion boards, posting comments and seeking work-related solutions, I am sure results would be far from encouraging for those running such LMSs.

 Let’s try to understand the factors behind such an attitude.

·         Learning through such platform is perceived to be too formal and rigid in format- Andragogically not very encouraging.

·         They appear to be intruding into learners space

·         They’re uni-directional in the sense that content flows in one direction- from company repository towards learners. Little scope for collaboration in learning!

Now let’s attempt to see how social media platforms such as micro-blogs, twitter etc. overcome the above challenges. By the very nature of being informal learning platforms they are received more openly by the learners if positioned in a right manner and with due seriousness accorded by executives.

Why so? One need not split hairs to see the logic-

§  Once given right thrust, these media are informal and less time consuming- they are ‘non-intrusive’ as one executive summarized them

§  Learners have the freedom to collaborate on any given topic- in a sense, co-create the whole learning experience. One gets a sense of being creator and contributor

§  Learners are motivated to learn from peers’ experience and offer their own solutions to people who need them

What kind of learning is most suitable to such informal tools?

While formal and structured learning would continue to be delivered through various traditional modes- class-rooms, e-learning or blended, these social media will play out synergy in terms of reinforcement tools thereby enhancing learning sustainability. They add learning effectiveness of such formal tools. The challenge for learning professionals is to strategically integrate such informal tools into their mainstream training.

A critical success factor here would be buy-in from executives and functional leaders. The seriousness will be top-down and initial success will largely depend on how committed are your executives and leaders in driving such learning collaboration. Many executives have natural penchant for such new technologies and avenues while even bigger population of theirs will have love-hate relationship with social media. The key is to know their disposition towards social platforms and try to work around it instead of rushing in with such tools blindly.

Culture and beliefs do change albeit slowly.

Go on and read the following real-life experience of a mind-shift. Names and identities have been changed to keep anonymity.

An initiative to bring about a mind-shift in coaching & mentoring using micro-blogs: A case study

MedDevice is a 163 years old medical equipment and devices company with global operations. Traditionally, the company had been a pioneer of several medical equipments and enjoys tremendous equity among medical fraternity. Recently, it has entered into Indian market and has strategic commitments to grow the market which contributes miniscule to its global sales. The start-up in India has a team of 65 sales consultants with 12 people managers. Keeping up with its strategic vision, they have hired professionals from various established competitors and the team brings in diverse background experiences and practices. Managers have different experiences when it comes to people management and practices in coaching & mentoring people. In order to achieve strategic objectives both on business and people front, the country leader realizes the importance of bringing a uniform people coaching and mentoring culture within the unit.

After a thorough consultation with business leaders and identifying the training needs, a two-day formal course on Coaching is developed in house and delivered by its L&D function to all people managers.

The course comes with a pre-work survey, pre-read and pre-work materials. The workshop got local and global praise and recognition for being meticulously designed and effectively delivered.

The head of L&D of MedDevices, however, is far from being contended. His work has just begun. Sustaining initial excitement and learning of participants is the litmus test. After all, it’s similar to bring about cultural changes, shifting established mindset of leaders and creating a self-sustaining drive for coaching and mentoring. He contemplates Social learning tools such as micro-blogging and discussion boards. After initial thoughts, he zeroes in on existing BlackBerry technology that every manager has access to. Using BlackBerry messenger, he creates a platform titled ‘Confluence: The convergence of ideas’. To initiate, he started with a particular discussion query pertaining to Coaching & Mentoring over Confluence to which participants are expected to express their thoughts and comments. Gradually but steadily, all participants are drawn into this micro-blogging activity and the momentum builds up. Six months later, there is a definite shift in the mindset of all people leaders with their coaching roles. The qualitative improvement of all people managers in their interactions with team members is all there to see. This innovative effort was also recognized through a best practices entry in a training award category of a reputed magazine.

A Case for Spreading Training Lingo among Business Leaders!

A Case for Spreading Training Lingo among Business Leaders!

Talk of the effectiveness of learning interventions, level-4 & ROI and you see workplace professionals scurrying for covers. With business leaders getting more demanding about the returns on every dollar spent, it’s getting tighter.

But, what’s the real issue? Most of the learning professionals will admit that training effectiveness for business leaders means business impact of any form of training on their business metrics. ‘They are interested in seeing impact on numbers only!’ would be the most common refrain. No wonder, long ago ‘Abraham Maslow said, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” Has ROI become that hammer?

I see this as more of a symptom than a well diagnosed root-cause. It doesn’t take the brain of a genius to trace back the origin of such a cause. We, as workplace learning professionals, keep the effectiveness measures and metrics too closely guarded.  Ask any learning professional and chances are that he assumes that the measures of effectiveness for any learning initiative for him and the business stakeholders are in the same currency. For you, it’s more to do with behavioral impact (read level-3) while for the stakeholders it’s all about higher orders- level-4 and 5 (read ROI according to Jack Phillips model). The topic of discussion here isn’t about various models of evaluations and their eternal debates of superiority but it is centered around the ‘disconnect’ between learning & development professionals and their business stakeholders.

So, where does lie the real disconnect?

Training professionals really live in a secluded world when it comes to training effectiveness. We have debates and discussions around various models- their pros and cons either as a community or even among professionals within an organization. If we poll such professionals regarding the awareness of such models and metrics among all stakeholders they cater to, the result will be abysmal.

The moot point here is- how knowledgeable are our stakeholders about the very yardsticks that we intend to apply for measuring training effectiveness? Various papers and authors have concluded that possibly ROI and stuff of that nature could even prove to be an exercise in vain and at times counterproductive.

Tony Bingham, President and CEO-ASTD, in his extensive interviews with prominent business leaders of the world found them expressing their clear expectations from learning interventions- these are more to do with sustained impact on behavioral front rather than an effort to showcase business improvement results. These leaders surmise that any sustained behavioral modification post training, will eventually lead to business improvement.

Question then needs to be asked is how do we bring our stakeholders on a common language for training effectiveness?

Several years of performance consulting with key stakeholders has made me believe that the following approaches might be of help

• §   Educating business stakeholders about various metrics of evaluating training effectiveness. They should make all levels of measure part of their vocabulary when it comes to learning intervention. Business has its lingo like MS%, Evolution Index, Growth, CAGR etc. which we are expected to be well versed with , hence, they must reciprocate adopting and adapting to the language of Level-1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 as well wherever required.
• §   Begin with the end in mind- Setting a clear expectation of training outcomes in terms of impact on behavioral parameters of desired performance. How does the success look like?
• §   Making leaders realize their contribution to the table when it comes to sustaining a certain behavioral modification from individuals. It’s a team game and immediate managers are the primary drivers of such change initiatives.
• §   Last but not the least, ask a lot of incisive and thought-provoking questions pertaining to the core business issues rather than settling with whatever symptomatically they infer. Ask enough, ask deeper.

The challenge and onus then, are with us as a community of workplace learning professionals. Appreciation of our worldview of training effectiveness will greatly be enhanced by making business adopt and align with this vocabulary.

Are you ready to rework your stakeholders’ vocabulary the next time you are consulting with them?