27 Books for L&D Folks...

I have listed down a few books that have shaped my thinking over the last one year. I believe they are all very essential reads for today’s learning and development folks. They are not predominantly directly related to learning or instructional design or theory (except for one or two); however, they all helped me to see the larger picture, to understand where workplace learning and training fits in, and why and where change is needed. There are many more that can be added to the list but I will keep that for another post…You can see some of them in the picture of my bookshelf above...

Some of the might seem out of place in a list for L&D folks, but I think it is important to read around a subject to understand the context, and the emerging patterns...

Sr. #	Subject	Title	Author
1	Instructional Design	Multimedia Learning	Richard Mayer
2	Workplace Learning	The Fifth Discipline	Peter Senge
3	Workplace Learning	Informal learning	Jay Cross
4	Workplace learning	The Working Smarter Fieldbook	Jay Cross
5	Workplace Learning/Training	Social Media for Trainers	Jane Bozarth
6	Knowledge Management	Cultivating Communities of Practice	Etienne Wegner, et al.
7	Knowledge Management/Workplace learning/Innovation/Business	Collaboration	Morten Hansen
8	Design/Presentation	Presentation Zen	Garr Reynolds
9	Training/Performance Management/HPT	First Things Fast	Allison Rossett
10	Design/Communication/Business/Presentation	The Back of the Napkin	Dan Roam
11	Communication/Presentation/Business	Made to Stick	Dan and Chip Heath
12	Change management/Communication/Self management/Innovation	Switch	Dan and Chip Heath
13	Self management/Change/innovation	Linchpin (audio book)	Seth Godin
14	Management/Innovation/21st C thinking	The Future of Management	Gary Hamel
15	Marketing/Communication/Innovation/	The Cluetrain Manifesto
16	Motivation/Change management/Innovation/Performance Management	Drive	Daniel Pink
17	Philosophy/Psychology	Flow	Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
18	Philosophy/Education/Motivation	The Element	Sir Ken Robinson
19	Philosophy/Psychology/Science	A Brief History of Everything	Ken Wilber
20	Web 2.0/SoMe/Collaboration/Workplace learning	Enterprise 2.0	Andrew McAfee
21	Collaboration	The Wisdom of Crowds	James Surowiecki
22	Innovation/Management/Creativity	The Blue Ocean Strategy	W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
23	Creativity/Psychology	Five Minds for the Future	Howard Gardner
24	Creativity/Thinking/Mind Maps	Mind Maps at Work	Tony Buzan
25	Network/Web 2.0	Here Comes Everybody	Clay Shirky
26	Network/Web 2.0	Cognitive Surplus	Clay Shirky
27	Economics/Innovation	The Black Swan	Nassim Taleb

 

Related articles

• 21st Century L&D Skills (charles-jennings.blogspot.com)
• Workplace Learning: Beyond Training ... Continued (janeknight.typepad.com)
• The Social Media Cigarette Break (internettime.posterous.com)
• LSG Webinar - Development Driven Performance Management (learninggeneralist.com)

Building learning organizations require a paradigm shift!

We are in the performance business, not the knowledge-gain business. The learning leaders who understand the difference are the ones who succeed.

1. Lead with a performance strategy, not a learning strategy. For far too long we have designed learning approaches to every problem. When a business unit approaches us with a new learning issue, be it technology- or business skill-based, we immediately begin thinking of ways that fall back on traditional approaches such as the classroom, be it virtual or bricks-and-mortar, and e-learning. What if we first considered strategies that enabled knowledge gain, sharing and maintenance in the workplace and then backfilled with the appropriate training to support the gaps that remained?

The above is an excerpt from the article Selling Up, Selling Down by Bob Mosher. He goes straight to the point by emphasizing a need for performance-focused training instead of a knowledge focused one. He also stresses the importance of:

1. Building learning tools that both support and teach.

2. Fostering understanding of performance strategy with front-line managers. 

 

This article reminded me of Harold Jarche's post, You need the right lever to move an organization. He summarizes Klaus Wittkuhn article on Performance Improvement and writes:

A key concept in the article is that you cannot engineer human performance. Human performance is an emergent property of an organization, and is affected by multiple variables. Therefore Witthuhn suggests to first address the “Steering Elements”. These “ensure that the right product is delivered at the right time to the right place”, and include – Management, Customer Feedback, Consequences, Expectations and Feedback. Once the steering elements have been addressed, then look at the “Enabling Elements” – Management (again), Design, Resources and Support.
Only after the steering and enabling elements (the non-human factors) have been aligned, should we look at work performance. The rationale here is that it is only within an optimized system that we can expect optimal human performance.

Both the ideas, I felt, are closely linked. Just as it is futile to training learners for the sake of learning, it is equally futile to train them if the conditions are not conducive to performance. To build a "learning organization", one that can hope to survive the flux of the future, much more is needed. It will require a mental overhaul on the part of the strategic decision makers and probably a re-hauling of the reward system in an organization.

The mismatch, I believe, happens at least at two levels.

1. ~The training does not map to the actual performance need and hence does not show result.
2. ~The context of the performance is not conducive.

The line managers/supervisors responsible for "getting the job done" are not rewarded for showing patience and sustaining learning. They are conditioned to respect the language of productivity, efficiency, resource management, output, and the like. Hence, any time spent away from the "actual" delivery work is effort wasted and not encouraged. OTOH, the employees required to show improvement in performance post a training session do need time to adapt to a new way of doing something. It is that initial extra time that all new approaches require before the sudden spike happens; once it happens, the effect is lasting. 

However, berated by their supervisors for wasting time, the employees soon slip back to the old ways of working with a "that training just didn't work"! attitude. Training gets a bad reputation. Supervisors continue to harass frustrated employees. Productivity remains the same or may dip. The management thinks of further cutting down training cost during the next budget (since it doesn't work anyways!). Training never gets a chance to speak. Frustration is rampant. In the meantime, employees turn to each other for support and to get their daily job done.

The training department and management needs to stretch training to the actual performance by "training" supervisors to support and sustain skill acquisition. Any learning will have a long-term impact only if applied, given the freedom to make errors, reflect, correct, and reapply...This can be expedited with support and mentoring; coaching and peer programming. The supervisors need to be introduced to tools they can use to sustain learning. They need to shift focus from "short term productivity" to long term skill acquisition. However, they also need support. 

Thus, supporting learning must be built into an organization's DNA, into its strategic plan, into its appraisal and feedback system, into the reward system. Leaders and supervisors also need to become mentors and teachers. And that can only happen when the organization undergoes a paradigm shift.

Quoting from Senge:

“Leader as teacher” is not about “teaching” people how to achieve their vision. It is about fostering learning, for everyone. Such leaders help people throughout the organization develop systemic understandings. Accepting this responsibility is the antidote to one of the most common downfalls of otherwise gifted teachers – losing their commitment to the truth. (Senge 1990: 356)

    

Related articles 

• peter senge and the learning organization  

• kurt lewin: groups, experiential learning and action research  

• 21st Century L&D Skills (charles-jennings.blogspot.com) 

• The NEW Workplace Learning Professional - new role, new skills? (janeknight.typepad.com) 

• Performance Consulting: finding the best solution from the training, informal learning, performance support mix (janeknight.typepad.com) 

• Getting Strategic (internettime.posterous.com) 

• Workplace Learning: Beyond Training (janeknight.typepad.com)

Molotov cocktail = Weak ties x complicated knowledge

Preamble

Some time back, I was asked to conduct knowledge transfer sessions for a new team member. Here is an outline (rather cryptic) of the situation. The italics are intended to draw attention to points of note.

1.       She was experienced but came from a very different domain from mine. We lacked a common frame of reference to begin with.

2.       I didn’t know her, and that was the first time I got to meet her. I was in a dilemma.

3.       I knew that the kind of work experience I had to transfer contained more tacit knowledge than explicit, and the problem lay in being able to codify everything  and do a successful “transfer” in about a span of two weeks. The whole “mini project” gave me quite a few sleepless nights.

4.       Instinctively, I enlisted the “help” of another team member asking her to sit in during my KT sessions since “we shared a common frame of reference.” I was afraid that most tacit knowledge would be lost unless I had someone with me who “understood” what I meant.

5.       Anyhow, the sessions were duly completed. We made brave attempts to capture the tacit knowledge in the form of mind maps, checklists, excel sheets, questionnaires, and video recordings. I maintained a standard disclaimer. “Everything I share here is generic and will need to be made context-specific when dealing with a client or a real situation. To be used as guidelines only.”

At that time, I was unaware of the Molotov cocktail concept.

Yesterday night, rather this morning around 3:00 a.m., I finished reading the book Collaboration by Morten T. Hansen. I had my Eureka! moment when I read about the Molotov cocktail concept, and that is the topic of my post. 

Hansen’s research sheds light on many aspects of collaboration, which will be the focus of later posts.

He refers to the Molotov cocktail concept as a part of Network Building rules. With years of research and data to back his discovery, he hits the nail on the head when he mentions how “weak ties” between teams/units/individuals can hinder the transfer of complicated knowledge. On the other hand, there are ample evidences here and by other researchers that show how weak ties are more “useful” than strong ones because they bring in that much-needed diversity and breadth, bridge the structural holes, and move people away from homophily.

Knowledge that is concrete, codified, and data-and-fact driven can be easily transferred; however, any knowledge that is hard to articulate orally or in writing, that presumes a common frame of reference—in short is tacit and complicated, more experience based with fine nuances—needs strong ties for the transfer. And this is where I ran into my dilemma. How do I even begin to share what I know?

Instinctively, we started out not with sharing knowledge but with getting to know each other. Just sharing our work experience and beliefs—unknowingly moving towards a common ground and thus building a strong tie. Only when I read the book did I realize that what we had done to increase our comfort level with each another in fact has scientific backing.

Perceptive leaders keen on facilitating collaboration and helping their teams and organizations move toward a collaborative mode of working, would do well to focus on these aspects.

With the need for cross-functional teams across diverse locations to work together on product development, sales, innovation, business processes, software development and other such work requiring the sharing of complicated knowledge rapidly increasing, leaders have to be skilled in facilitating network building of the right kind to prevent the Molotov cocktail from exploding.

The Molotov cocktail exploded for Sony and their Connect, leaving Apple with their iPod the sole market winner.  

Related articles

• Harold Jarche " The Evolving Social Organization (internettime.posterous.com)
• The Evolving Social Organization (jarche.com)
• Social Learning isn't all about the Tools - 4 Factors to Consider (learninggeneralist.com)
• Changing times (jarche.com)
• How John Chambers Learned to Collaborate at Cisco
• Preventing the Terrorist Attack: Massive Failure in Collaboration