Sunday, August 14, 2011

From Instructional Design to Enterprise Community Facilitation

This is a long overdue post, the draft of which had been languishing in my dropbox for some time--half forgotten. But finally I felt this needs to see the light of day. I have reached something of a cross-roads in my career, and I wanted to document the process of this arrival. It has been a long and exciting journey so far, dotted with exciting projects, some wonderful clients, and a tremendous amount of learning. But now I am traversing down a new path--albeit one I have wanted to travel for a long time.

An instructional designer by profession who started her career anlayzing learner needs, creating micro-design documents, writing story-boards and discussing the nitty-gritty of course navigation with visual designers, I have long been interested in the power of social, collaborative and informal learning. This interest was initially triggered by Jay Cross' seminal work, Informal Learning, Morten Hansen's Collaboration, Wenger, et al's Cultivating Communities of  Practice, Wenger, White, et al's Digital Habitats, various blogs--primarily those by the ITA members and others like Michele Martin, Nancy White, Dave Pollard, Dave Snowden, Nick Milton, George Siemens--and later, books like Marcia Conner and Tony Bingham's The New Social Learning, and John Hagel and JSB's The Power of Pull. And my own foray into the world of social media with Twitter. And over all of this hovered the Cynefin Framework that Shawn Callaghan's video had introduced me to. So, even while I scripted storyboards and designed programs for corporate elearning courses, consulted with clients on the best possible means of rolling out elearning in their organization, and suggested elearning solutions befitting their problems--from training engineers and mechanincs on fixing motorbikes to navigating a new software--I was on the constant lookout for an opportunity to put into practice the social and informal learning blend into workplace learning.

Learning--especially in today's workplace beset with complexity, rapid change, and new challenges--as we knew it was changing. It had to change for an organization to survive. There was scant time to design courses to address needs that evolved from moment to moment, that was undefined, needed creative solutions, and innovative daring. The age of Connectivism was truly upon us. One's ability to solve a problem or find an answer to a burning issue via one's network was fast becoming the measure of one's success. The age of social learning is here. The age of Collaboration and Participation is here. Powered by enterprise2.0 tools and technology, laden with social media tools and apps, fueled by the Pods and the Pads, social business burst upon the scene. It soon became a buzzword but also showed organizations the path to survival, a way to remain on top of things, to face complexity with agility, to meet cusotmer demands with inovation.

Folks like Andrew McAfee, Dion Hinchcliffe, Sameer Patel, Bill Ives, Riitta Raesmaa, J.P. Rangaswami, Venkatesh Rao, et al. showed the direction to the future of work  All of this led to my growing interest in communities, communities of practices and the art of community managment,  further fueled by Jono Bacon's The Art of Community.

Therefore, when an opportunity to dabble in communities and play a part in designing and enabling a social and collaborative learning environment as an enterprise community facilitator presented itself at ThoughtWorks, I jumped at it with alacrity. My interest in social business expanded beyond the by now well-defined benefits of reduced time to market, increased scope for innovation, customer engagement, and such. I wanted to understand how communities within an enterprise can help build capabilities, enable expertise, and truly transform an organization into a learning organization.

I have seen how thoughtful use of social media can transform individual learning, help build one's PLN, and fuel one's passion. I wanted to now explore the impact of social media, communities and collaboration on orgnizational learning, on the building of a learning organization. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to experience what I had so far been reading and dreaming about.  

Communities would be the building blocks of a successful move towards being a "social business". Cultivating communities would help to build capabilities, develop skill sets and enable the move from being a novice to an expert easier and quicker. However, theoretizing is always easier than practice. And only as I began to actively help set up communities did I realize the challenges, the needs, and the perseverance, patience and hard work required to put into play what I envision.

My ongoing learnings from helping to set up communities will be topics of other posts. However, I couldn't have started on those without setting the stage so to speak... For the foreseeable future, this blog is going to focus on my experiences and stories around setting up communities, enabling collaboration, and learnings. I am grateful for my Instructional Design background which is standing me in good stead on this new road...like a trustworthy friend.     

3 comments:

  1. I look forward to more blog posts about how you tackle this change to community cultivator! I would love to hear more about it as I might end up tackling the same thing soon :)

    Good luck!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Meg! Sorry about the delayed response. Here are some community management related reference reading I have bookmarked on Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/sahana2802/community_management

    I am going to share more of my experiences and learning soon. I look forward to your comments and to learning together...

    Thanks,
    Sahana

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes it is true, innovation is a powerful tool to help retain and attract the best talent. This has become a huge issue in fast growing economies..
    Enterprise Innovation Management

    ReplyDelete

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