Working out Loud and Serendipity

I started my day reading a post by Rawn Shah called Work Out Loud because Everyone is Figuring Out Their Job. The post of course struck a chord and reminded me that this is #wol week. It is serendipity that I also happen to be reading Austin Kleon's Show Your Work! at this time. All of this made me think I should write a post on working out loud and its place in workplace learning.

As is my wont, I tend to look at everything mostly through my L&D lens, especially when it comes to learning and sharing at the workplace. I have been thinking for a long time about what we, as L&D, need to and can do to foster a culture of sharing and collaborative learning to meet the challenges of a distributed workplace with dispersed expertise and complex work situations. In my mind, working out loud can be one of the means to strengthen organizational learning. 

Working out loud not only helps people to share their "work-in-progress" but also enables sense-making by building a keen awareness of the processes being followed, decisions taken, mistakes made, and learnings thus gleaned. When we choose to "work out loud" as a sharing mechanism, we tend to do some of the following:

1. Analyse our own work more critically
2. Evaluate what we are doing and why we are doing it 
3. Break down the constituent parts so that we can share meaningfully
4. Make our work "narratable" so that it becomes a living document of our competencies and capabilities
5. Begin to take greater pride in our work -- not only in the finished product but also in the ongoing process, the struggles and the wins

As John Stepper has aptly described:

"Working out loud is working in an open, generous, connected way so you can build a purposeful network, become more effective, and access more opportunities."

His post on the 5 elements of working out loud has good practical suggestions on getting started. The key word is "purposeful". Here, sharing takes on a different flavour from beating one's own trumpet. Sharing purposefully implies making my work visible as not only an end outcome but also the messy processes and thinking that goes behind it. Thus, working out loud is intrinsically linked to two critical aspects of becoming a good learner -- Personal knowledge Management (PKM) and building one's Personal Learning Network (PLN). Austin Kleon points out in his deceptively simply written book mentioned above, "Share something small everyday." He goes on to explain this: 

"Once a day, after you've done your day's work, go back to your documentation and find one little piece of your process that you can share."

I find this simple advice very powerful. As an L&D person, if we can inspire and motivate everyone to share one little piece everyday--be it a method for project execution or an insight gathered from the day, over a period of time this can build up to be an immensely rich repository of knowledge and tacit experiences. More than that, the individuals thus sharing acquire the skills of sense-making through narration of their work. 

Sharing invites sharing. When we create a space and expose our vulnerabilities and challenges, we invite others to do the same. Such sharing can trigger serendipity and meaningful conversation -- two of the critical factors that can shape organizational learning. Sharing brings each one's unique strengths and perspectives to the surface. It is a great way to encourage the coming together of diverse minds thereby creating a space and opportunity for innovation. Only when perspectives and processes are out in the open can the combinatorial aspect of innovation and creative thinking come into play. Organizations that invest time in coaching people how to work out loud and do it consistently can reap huge benefits. 

Serendipity is another by-product of working out loud. We serendipitously encounter others who are similarly passionate, have overcome similar failures and taken similar learning journeys. Working out loud shapes serendipity. Finally, as Austin Kleon says in his book, sharing can "take people behind the scenes." 

"A lot of people are so used to just seeing the outcome of work. They never see the side of the work you go through to produce the outcome." ~ Michael Jackson.

Coming back to the role of L&D, and the need for collaboration and continuous learning, and engaging workers on the ESN--working out loud could be a good beginning. It takes practice and initial support. But I believe this could be achieved through modelling the desired behaviour. If senior leaders, members of the L&D team and other influencers (experts, senior and respected workers) engage in sharing their work by practising #wol, it would foster similar behaviour in the org. By inculcating and encouraging a culture of working out loud, organizations can gradually begin to see greater engagement on their enterprise social networks as well. Meaningful engagement! 

Week's Learning #3: Hyperlinks, Serendipity, Learning

I have been collating interesting tweets and bits of learning from my Twitter feed. I aim to be more regular but somehow the postings have been erratic thus far. Here are some snippets I found especially interesting this week. 

From Hopscotch by Richard Martin:

The hyperlink. It is the bridge that builds connections. The symbol of choice and decision making. The glue that binds networks of information. The hyperlink represents a path that connects a breadcrumb trail of clues. It invites investigation and detection. As with Dr Who or Bill and Ted, the hyperlink enables us to travel through space and time. Or, like Sherlock Holmes, to skip and jump through the mind palace of accumulated memories and knowledge.

He goes on to write about the subversive and fluid nature of hyperlinks comparing it to a metaphoric game of hopscotch. This aptly describes the disruptive and non-linear nature of hyperlinks. And this is how the web works. 

From Knowledge, Trust, Credibility and a Focus on Results by @jonhusband

Basically, in an interconnected and hyperlinked world (henceforth the new conditions in which we live in much, but not all, of the world) the incessant flows of information increasingly define key aspects of what we do and how we live.  These flows of information are occurring in a public space, and are beginning to be a key ingredient of communal, societal (and perhaps global) opinion and cultures.  

From  Serendipity, discretionary energy, and the Harlem Renaissance

These days, we’re bombarded with stories about purpose, intent, planning, and goal-setting. The economy is or isn’t going according to plan, the military is developing a new strategy, the new CEO will head in a different direction to revive a struggling company. And yet, no matter how much plans and strategies accomplish—and it’s a ton—they cannot command individuals to commit their discretionary energy to a project, and they can’t produce serendipity at a moment’s notice.

Most organizations fail to tap into the discretionary energy of their employees. "The discretionary energy and enthusiasms of your workforce can lead to serendipitous breakthroughs, thus producing the resilience and adaptability that organizations most need today."

From @gapingvoid 

From Digital is Just a Means to Reach People by +Brian Solis 

The problem is purely philosophical. Social is part technology but it is what social unlocks and also empowers that is truly transformative. It’s a great equalizer. Social flattens markets and connects people to other people. As we become more connected we become more informed. With information comes power and empowerment. And with empowerment, consumers become more demanding.

Serendipity and Learning are two of my favourite words. I am a firm believer in serendipity. 

Week's Learning #2

I am continuing with the summary of what I have learned from Twitter the last. I realize it also helps me to curate and aggregate with greater focus.

@networkingCEO: "Happiness is not an accident. Nor is it something you wish for. Happiness is something you design." http://pinterest.com/pin/57632070206981726/ …

What Great Companies Know About Culture - @HarvardBiz http://blogs.hbr.org/2011/12/what-great-companies-know-abou/ … #culture

Although this post is more than 3 years old and #culture has been discussed ad infinitum, it’s still one of those elusive organizational aspects that everyone talks about in vague terms. The article is a short one and a good read but the most telling section for me was this:

They’re upgrading. Old-fashioned benefits like health insurance, family leave, and flex time ranked only 15 percent when considering most valued HR offerings. Traditional onsite benefits, such as cafeterias, childcare, massages, and volunteer opportunities ranked a mere 5 percent when determining what benefits provide stability during economic uncertainty. Instead programs that offer the most stability, as reported by 75 percent of respondents, are those that communicate brand mission and provide career development opportunities.

Six Components of a Great Corporate #Culture - Vision. Values. Practices.  People. Narratives. Places. @HarvardBiz http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/05/six-components-of-culture/ …

Growth Mindset: A Driving Philosophy, Not Just a Tool | Edutopia http://edut.to/1wABmbd 

I believe in the value of strong outcomes that represent high expectations, but I know that if we aren't applauding the processes along the way, we're setting ourselves up to fail -- some people's efforts will be devalued because they aren't achieving the defined goals in the given time.

Talk about open. @davegray has all 60 or so interviews for his new book, "Principles of Agility," up on @YouTube. #Delight2014

"I want you to think about storyLISTENING. It's way more important than storyTELLING. Empty your mind and listen." @davegray #delight2014

Week's Learning #1

Following Harold Jarche's example of Friday's Finds, I thought where better to collate and synthesize my week’s learning from Twitter than on my blog. Here’s the first of the series...

@jhagel: The paradox of organization - @davegray: paradox fuels power to rethink, reframe, and see more than one side of things http://bit.ly/1rEX1vU

“For example, an organization must have a way to attract and retain members, or it will cease to exist. At the same time it must constrain people’s behavior, or it won’t be able to get anything done. This means any organization has the oxymoronic goal of being an attractive prison.”

@charlesjennings: The role and value of learning content is changing. (article in TIQuarterly) @TrainingIndustr #learning #training http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/trainingindustry/tiq_2014fall/#/10 …

“The role and relative value of learning content is changing fast… A second driver for a new use of content is the jettisoning of the idea that training is primarily about knowledge transfer. It is not. Training is primarily about “enabling to do.”

@Forbes: What it takes to create a strong corporate culture: http://onforb.es/1shII2f

@edutopia: Growth Mindset, Jedi edition: http://edut.to/1sWB33V . #Pinterest #YodaWisdom

@socialmediaweek: "@iZoliswa: #QuoteOfTheDay 'Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories. #SMWJHB #SMW14"

@kaushikcbasu: When at last you meet a man with solutions to all your problems, the chances are you've met a man who doesn't know the meaning of solution.

@kaushikcbasu: "Same law for all" is no guarantee of fairness. A law that prohibits all from sleeping on park benches is clearly not targeted at the rich.

@kaushikcbasu: Those who say that a more equal world would be boring don't realize that the bottom 90% of the world would give anything for that boredom.

@AbhijitBhaduri: When CEOs tells HR to learn the "language of the business" why does it includes everything except people issues. #SHRMI14

@Josh_Bersin: How Diversity Makes Us Smarter. Very important read. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/ … #diversity #HR @sciam

“Members of a homogeneous group rest somewhat assured that they will agree with one another; that they will understand one another's perspectives and beliefs; that they will be able to easily come to a consensus. But when members of a group notice that they are socially different from one another, they change their expectations. They anticipate differences of opinion and perspective. They assume they will need to work harder to come to a consensus. This logic helps to explain both the upside and the downside of social diversity: people work harder in diverse environments both cognitively and socially. They might not like it, but the hard work can lead to better outcomes.”

@Forbes: When you're really learning, you're going to be a novice: http://onforb.es/XoPBRl

“And becoming comfortable in that situation – staying curious and open and continuing to explore and improve – that’s the essence of real learning.” 

Re-thinking Workplace Learning and Performance

Yesterday, I wrote a post on Learning vs. Performance – the Dichotomy. It was more of a theoretical exposition on why learning doesn’t necessarily translate into performance, and delved into some of the psychological and behavioral aspects of the same. A friend rightly pointed out that while theories and hypothesis are all good, how does one actually deal with the challenge in practice? Why is it that learning and training don’t translate into performance? Where are all the training rupees, euros, dinars and dollars going? Why are employees still not performing as expected? Why are businesses failing? What should L&D do about it?

In today’s post, I have tried to analyze the learning – performance dichotomy from a more practical standpoint. For a business leader / CEO or anyone else responsible for the bottom line and for sanctioning the training money, learning doesn’t really matter. It’s the business continuity and profit that are the yardsticks of successful performance. Yet L&D squirms at the question of ROI. ROI remains as elusive and mysterious as ever, a veritable unicorn of the L&D world. I won’t say I have debunked the myth of the ROI here. I have just tried to explore various reasons as to why even well-designed programs fail to achieve the desired business results.

We tend to forget that training is just one of the means to achieve business outcome (at least that is the hidden hope in the hearts of a business person). HR might take the “number of hours of training provided to employees” attitude in the interest of employee engagement and Gallup polls. These number of hours typically show up as statistics in the annual HR report and is of very little interest to either the CXOs or the employees. If anything, ironically these statistics further confirm the inefficacy of training. What does matter – critically – is performance and the impact on business. The outcome of the training programs. Today’s employees cringe at the thought of having to attend training programs when they know that they can figure out how to get the work done more quickly and effectively – either by asking their network or by going to Google.

From this standpoint, there are multiple reasons why learning and training – no matter how well designed – don’t necessarily lead to performance. The premise of training is very different from that of performance. Training looks at the knowledge and skill gaps that exist in the employees. Performance looks for the gaps in business. The approach to both are dramatically different.

It’s common knowledge that L&D typically begins by taking a TNA a.k.a. Training Needs Analysis approach; the assumption that training is required having already been made. Instead, imagine a situation where one begins by analyzing gaps in business goals and objectives, i.e., which goals and objectives have not been met and why. A thorough Root-Cause Analysis may reveal various reasons behind the failures to achieve business goals. Some of these could be: 

1. A lack of skilled individuals or wrong people in the wrong role 
2. Ineffective recruitment process leading to gaps in core skills (I have often encountered this situation) 
3. A churn in teams such that employees don’t get the time to acquire the skills required 
4. Lack of experienced individuals to lead effectively 
5. Past experiences holding people back with the “this is how we've always done it” attitude 
6. A fear of failure leading to lack of experimentation and innovative thinking 
7. Inability to keep up with the rapid churn in technology and use it optimally 
8. Hierarchical organizational structure causing silos in orgs blocking knowledge sharing 
9. Managers or supervisors are unable to coach and mentor their team 
10. Organizational culture causing dissatisfaction or loss of motivation

Now, no amount of training will lead to improved performance except in the case of point #1 because none of the other problems are related to training or skills gaps. Hence, treating training as a panacea for all ills is highly unlikely to work. And business is left asking the question, “What happened to the money we spent on that training program?”

Training only works where there is a skill gap to fill. And that too, only when the gap is well-defined and known. Even then, to see a behavioral change large enough to have an impact on business goals, it is essential to provide other means of support through coaching, mentoring, on-the-job feedback, opportunity to observe and shadow experienced peers, providing stretch assignments, access to performance support tools, and so on. I wrote about this in my post here. Ensuring performance and business focused outcome calls for a different approach.

An understanding of the crucial business goals and vision become the first step in a performance-focused approach. L&D – as a partner to business – not only has to understand the challenges of business but also needs to be able to analyze and define the root cause of the gaps. While some of the solutions may be beyond the purview of traditional L&D role, it is important to don the mantle of OD (organizational development) specialists also with businesses and the environment becoming increasingly complex and interconnected. 

This approach should help both L&D and business recognize where training can play an important role and show visible business benefits, and where other interventions (beyond training) are required. Most often, the perfect solution lies in a combination of interventions. Organizational challenges today are multi-pronged and taking a single approach doesn’t work. It is entirely possible that while training may be a requirement, other concerns also need to be simultaneously addressed, like the removing of organizational silos, enabling managers to become coaches, ensuring that the right person is in the right role, and so on. 

L&D cringes at the mention of ROI because we know that training is not the only solution and employed in isolation is not likely to show visible benefits. However, most L&D folks are not confident enough to venture into realms beyond that of training and learning design, and thus don’t bring up other organizational factors. But the pitfall of not doing so are many. L&D gets a bad name and business doesn’t really consider us as partners. OD, HR and L&D must come together to enable organizations to realize their potential. 

In summary, not all problems can be solved with training. There are challenges beyond skill gaps. Putting the onus of professional development in the hands of employees by providing them with the appropriate infrastructure in the form of enterprise collaboration platform might work to some extent but not always. Challenges mentioned above require different interventions and approaches. Only through a holistic mingling of methods and by taking a systems thinking approach is it possible to see a visible impact on performance and business outcomes.   

Related articles

• Do Not Split HR - At Least Not Ram Charan's Way

#CCK11: Connectivism-MindMap

Putting together the points from the different sources on Connectivism in the form of a mindmap:

#CCK11: Week 1 Highlights - Connectivisim Defined

Given below are the highlights from the readings for the first week of the CCK11 course. 
Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age

1. Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed)
2. In today’s environment, action is often needed without personal learning – that is, we need to act by drawing information outside of our primary knowledge.
3. What adjustments need to be made with learning theories when technology performs many of the cognitive operations previously performed by learners (information storage and retrieval)?
4. …chaos states that meaning exists – the learner's challenge is to recognize the patterns which appear to be hidden.
5. The capacity to form connections between sources of information, and thereby create useful information patterns, is required to learn in our knowledge economy.
6. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.
7. Connectivism also addresses the challenges that many corporations face in knowledge management activities. Knowledge that resides in a database needs to be connected with the right people in the right context in order to be classified as learning.
8. Connectivism presents a model of learning that acknowledges the tectonic shifts in society where learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity.

What Connectivism Is

1. Connections form naturally, through a process of association, and are not 'constructed' through some sort of intentional action.
2. Hence, in Connectivism, there is no real concept of transferring knowledge, making knowledge, or building knowledge.
3. What you are talking about as 'an understanding' is (at a best approximation) distributed across a network of connections.
4. “To teach is to model and demonstrate, to learn is to practice and reflect.”

Connectivism and its Critics: What Connectivism Is Not

According to Connectivism:

- learning occurs as a distributed process in a network, based on recognizing and interpreting patterns

- the learning process is influenced by the diversity of the network, strength of the ties

- memory consists of adaptive patterns of connectivity representative of current state

- transfer occurs through a process of connecting

- best for complex learning, learning in rapidly changing domains

The learning process is influenced by the four elements of the semantic condition:

• Diversity
• Autonomy
• Openness
• Connectedness

Learning is not a process of ‘transfer' at all, much less a transfer than can be caused or created by a single identifiable donor.

 

What is the unique idea in Connectivism?

1. Tools augment our ability to interact with each other and to act. Tools are extensions of humanity, increasing our ability to externalize our thinking into forms that we can share with others.
2. Connectivism is the application of network principles to define both knowledge and the process of learning.
3. Connectivism focuses on the inclusion of technology as part of our distribution of cognition and knowledge. Our knowledge resides in the connections we form – whether to other people or to information sources such as databases.
4. Connectivism recognizes the fluid nature of knowledge and connections based on context. As such, it becomes increasingly vital that we focus not on pre-made or pre-defined knowledge, but on our interactions with each other, and the context in which those interactions arise.
5. Making of coherence in a subject matter one is new to is about dialoguing with other learners. Make conversations a priority and let learners interact with the content, with each other, with the technology they will use for sense-making.

What is Connectivism?

1.       Connectivism focuses on:

• Our need to externalize to make sense
• Our need for frameworks/structures for sense-making
• Our need to socialize and negotiate around knowledge
• Our mind is a patterning mind: we are attuned to note, recognize and draw patterns from complex systems
• Our desire to extend our humanity through technology

2.       The experience of learning is one of forming new neural connections and conceptual frameworks.

3.       Learning occurs in continually fluctuating space.

4.       Connectivism is focused on the primacy of connections and networks.

5.       Types of networked learning:

• Neural-biological: neuroscience and AI states that learning is the formation of new neural connections.
• External-Social
• Conceptual

 6.    Connections create meaning: how we put together ideas is our conception of a particular field or state of knowing in that field.

 7.   Learning in a network sense is a function of:

• Depth and diversity of connections
• Frequency of exposure
• Integration with existing ideas and concepts
• Strong and weak ties (weak ties bridge separate worlds)
• Different types of networks with different types of attributes will serve different types of learning needs

Technology increases our ability to dialogue with others which results in a complexification of opinion.

#CCK11: Introductory Post--Reasons for joining

I joined the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (CCK11) MOOC a tad late. It is a 12 week course that started on January 17 and will continue till April 11. I am really excited to see what it holds. This is my introductory post. I am a bit worried that I am lagging behind in my reading but not too worried since many of the articles and posts that are linked are stuff I have already read. I am eager to go through this journey as a part of a group of people who are passionate and keen about the same things that I am.

The course syllabus was especially intriguing, and my special interest is the Adaptive Systems which is coming up in Week 7.

Week 1: Connectivism
Week 2: Patterns
Week 3: Knowledge
Week 4: Unique?
Week 5: Groups, Networks
Week 6: PLENK
Week 7: Adaptive Systems
Week 8: Power & Authority
Week 9: Openness
Week 10: Net Pedagogy
Week 11: Research & Analytics
Week 12: Changing views

Key reasons:

1. I have been reading and am highly influenced by the writings of George Siemens and Stephen Downes.
2. The theory of Connectivism fascinates me, and I see its absolute relevance in this age of networked learning.
3. I am also intrigued by complexity and chaos theory and do quite a bit of reading around these topics, which gets random at times. I tend to stray on the web. This course provides focus and a “guided” yet flexible path that will help me to do concentrated reading.
4. I wanted to experience the feel of a MOOC. I think MOOCs will increasingly become a way of sharing and learning together.
5. Dave Cromier’s video on What is a MOOC? pushed me to join. It rocks! It made me want to be a part of this learning experience.
6. The fact that I don’t need to read everything but the more I do cover, the more I can participate. This is a great motivator for me to cover as much as possible because I hate to feel left out.

10 things that Dave Cromier says about a MOOC that inspired me to join CCK11

1. The key characteristic of a MOOC as a participatory, open and distributed course
2. It’s an event around which people who care about a topic get together (although learning is not an "event")
3. All the course work gets done in areas accessible to everyone—absolute transparency of the learning process
4. Everyone gets to learn from everyone’s work
5. A MOOC promotes network creation and facilitates engagement with other participants (a key learning skill of the 21^st C where knowledge resides in friends and “knowing where is more important than knowing how or when”)
6. There’s no single path through the course—I can choose my learning path and different ideas can coexist and new ideas emerge
7. A MOOC is a lot like being on the web but it is paced, which also gives me a good reason to keep focused
8. The need to “declare” myself and create artifacts that will help me to make my learning process transparent (this post for example is a start)
9. It is a perfect blend of curated content and emergent knowledge, ideas and viewpoints
10. The 5 steps to be successful in a MOOC—Orient, Declare, Network, Cluster and Focus—are also the key learning skills required in the networked age. This, I thought, would be a great place to hone these skills. 

The points are synthesized from the following 2 videos:

• What is a MOOC?
• Success in a MOOC

So, I signed up.

What did I do next?

1. I joined the Google group here.
2. I went through the webinar recordings.
3. Saved the Twitter search for #CCK11
4. Scanned through the paper.li creations for CCK11
5. Subscribed to the CCK11 Daily

This has been my Saturday morning so far. I am now settling down with another cup of coffee to watch the 2 webinars:

• The Course Introduction and Overview
• Educational Data Mining: A Methodological Review

I will try to follow these up with some more readings from the daily. Will be back soon with my next post. 

Wicked Problems, Complexity and Learning

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well-informed just to be undecided about them. ~ Laurence J. Peter

Recently, while doing a keyword search for complexity, I stumbled across an article called Wicked Problems.  The term was coined by Horst Rittel, the inventor of the Issue-Based Information System (IBIS) structure upon which Dialogue Mapping is based.

The first paragraph of the said article caught my attention. It defines wicked problems thus:

A wicked problem is one for which each attempt to create a solution changes the understanding of the problem. Wicked problems cannot be solved in a traditional linear fashion, because the problem definition evolves as new possible solutions are considered and/or implemented.

Wicked problems always occur in a social context -- the wickedness of the problem reflects the diversity among the stakeholders in the problem.

Most projects in organizations -- and virtually all technology-related projects these days -- are about wicked problems. Indeed, it is the social complexity of these problems, not their technical complexity, that overwhelms most current problem solving and project management approaches.

This description seemed cannily similar to the description of Complex problems in the Cynefin framework.

The article further elucidates the characteristics of wicked problems. I have listed down the characteristics verbatim but the interpretations are mine.

1. You don't understand the problem until you have developed a solution: According to the Cynefin framework, a problem that falls in the realm of the complex or chaotic cannot be analyzed or categorized without first being acted upon. Only when one acts on the problem does a solution emerge.
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule.**: By definition, a wicked problem arises out of a condition that cannot be clearly defined. Hence, it solution or end-point can’t be foreseen either.
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong: These problems are unique, complex, and non-linear. There is no direct cause and effect relationship that exist when problems are simple. Without a one-on-one relationship between the cause and effect, it is not possible to have a single solution. There can only be better ways of solving it but never the best or the only way.
4. Every wicked problem is essentially unique and novel: This is self-explanatory. That is precisely why they are called wicked.
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation,"
6. Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions: At any given point of time, an approach to solving a wicked problem will lead to the problem morphing into something else—not necessarily a worse state but just a different one. This precludes the possibility of there being multiple ways of solving this problem at the outset. One needs to keep adapting and evolving solutions to address wicked problems. 

**By this definition, putting a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth was a tame problem albeit with a lot of complexity. It required complex heuristics and problem-solving approaches to come up with ways and means of achieving success; however, the problem per se had a definite end point and it was possible to know when the mission was accomplished.
 
Wicked problem is compounded or created out of fragmentation. The paper on Wicked Problems and Social Complexity defines fragmentation thus:

Fragmentation can be hidden, as when stakeholders don’t even realize that there are incompatible tacit assumptions about the problem, and each believes that his or her understandings are complete and shared by all.

Since wicked problems defy codification and clear articulation and yet they are the ones that plague the work environments today, a team working on a wicked problem often faces a major issue of collective understanding.

The following image depicts what typically happens:

 Image taken from: The Agile Warrior

This pain is one of fragmentation because the tools, methods, and approaches used are more suited for “tame” problems—what Cynefin framework slots as simple or, maybe, complicated at the most. What further compounds the problem is that people directly involved in the transactions fail to realize that their tools are inadequate for the issue at hand. 

The aforementioned article describes a “tame” problem thus:

A ‘tame problem’ is one for which the traditional linear process is sufficient to produce a workable solution in an acceptable time frame. A tame problem:

1. Has a well-defined and stable problem statement
2. Has a definite stopping point, i.e., when the solution is reached
3. Has a solution which can be objectively evaluated as right or wrong
4. Belongs to a class of similar problems which are all solved in the same similar way
5. Has solutions which can be easily tried and abandoned
6. Comes with a limited set of alternative solutions

The Traditional wisdom for solving problems follows a typical classic Waterfall model. It is linear, logical, and analytical.

Image taken from: http://cognexus.org/wpf/wickedproblems.pdf

But trying to solve a wicked problem using such tools is like trying to tame a tiger using a dog leash. Wicked problems require creativity, expertise, and sometimes that leap of faith to solve. It also requires adaptive thinking abilities. 

The Agile method of problem-solving with its iterative steps, continuous feedback, test driven development and retros come close to an ideal way of, if not solving, at least approaching wicked problem for the following reasons:

1. It allows for self and course correction
2. Mistakes are caught before they become too expensive
3. Early detection of mistakes leads to prompt feedback and associated learning
4. Iterative development process allows for application of that new learning
5. The opportunity to apply the learning prevents the forgetting curve from becoming dominant

The approach, if plotted on a graph would look like this:

Image taken from: http://cognexus.org/wpf/wickedproblems.pdf

The article describes this jagged line of opportunity-driven problem solving as a picture of learning. And as delineated above, it comes very close to the Agile approach.

To the non-initiated or the inexperienced, this looks chaotic and there appears to be little progress, but the experienced knows that this reflects the deeper order of a cognitive process and learning. The Waterfall method depicted above is a picture of already knowing where one applies pre-defined steps to solve simple or known problems following sequential steps.  

My Personalized Agile or What I have Learned from It

I complete exactly 3 months at ThoughtWorks today. While this has been a momentous career shift for me, I may not have written a blog post on it except for the learning. Needless to say, an understanding (albeit very rudimentary) of the Agile philosophy supersedes all other learning (and that has been plentiful too).

Coming from a very traditional, waterfall-driven background replete with all the drawbacks (what I perceive as drawbacks in comparison now), it took me quite a while to assimilate the philosophy—even the basics of Agile. A dictum like “Just deliver; don’t document unless the document is going to add value” would throw me into a tizzy. Don’t we need to document so that in case a point comes when the blame-game starts (I assumed it would), we have our backs covered? Apparently not because there is no blame game! There is no one to blame. Everyone is in this together—the team, the client, and all other remaining stakeholders. 

As I mulled over these rather shocking, almost blasphemous, aspects of Agile, I thought it would be a good idea to pen down my thoughts and put them forth for inspection and feedback. And to track my understanding over time…

The original Agile Manifesto, which is my source of inspiration, can be found here. 

My interpretation of the Agile philosophy

I am trying to acquire better ways of learning and building personal knowledge networks and helping others do it. Through this endeavor, I have come to value:

Adaptive over predictive

Collaboration over documentation

Continuous feedback over periodic reviews

Generalization over specialization

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, I value the items on the left more and have found them to be in synch with what is required today to build a learning organization, an organization of motivated, passionate individuals.

Unpacking each claim

Adaptive over predictive

Ruth Clark describes adaptive in relation to expertise in her book Building Expertise: Cognitive Methods for Training and Performance Improvement, and I think it reflects my understanding of Agile philosophy very well. Being adaptive means to be flexible, open to change, reacting to situations just as the situation demands. Adaptive expertise brings open-ended inquiry to the problem and not a pre-defined solution. Being adaptive is to be always ready. In this context, I am reminded of the phrase “a mind like water” by David Allen. Paraphrasing from Getting Things Done below: 

Water neither flinches nor ignores the impact when a huge boulder hits its surface. It welcomes a boulder just like it would a pebble. The ripples it generates are in direct proportion to the size and impact—neither more nor less. Water neither underreacts nor overreacts. And very soon, water goes back to its natural state—open and clear—ready for the next impact. 

This is the state of being truly adaptive and agile. With the unknown and the complex becoming the norm in knowledge work, adaptability is the key to dealing with challenges, to be comfortable with ambiguity, and to move to a state where we are constantly learning.

As Eric Hoffer very aptly says (the highlights are mine):

We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs subordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.

Collaboration over documentation

Going back to my roots in traditional organizations where documentations supersede communication, conversations and listening, I can appreciate the value of collaboration. Please note that I am not advocating doing away with documentation, but documenting only what adds value and when it adds value—to the project, to the team, to the stakeholders or to oneself. I am using the Minutes of Meetings (MOMs) as an example to make my case. 

Coming from a culture where minutes of meetings were more important than the meeting participants, I can truly appreciate the need for collaboration. Unlike any of the methodologies that fall under the umbrella of Agile, in traditional orgs most meetings are conducted as rote and many of the crucial stakeholders are missing. Hence, a stringent documentation is required to capture what transpired and to keep everyone in the loop (so to speak). Needless to say, many of the subtleties of discussions are lost, and the minutes become more of a “save our backs in the future” documents with little of value coming out of them.  

Let me take this a little further. When I claim that under the aegis of Agile philosophy, collaboration is more valued, this is what I imply. First of all, collaboration for me implies disciplined collaboration—a term popularized by Morten T. Hansen in his book Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results. Disciplined collaboration is to collaborate for results. And this is precisely what the philosophy of Agile supports. Some of the quotes from the book that supports my understanding of effective collaboration are:

1. The idea of disciplined collaboration can be summed up in one phrase: the leadership practice of properly assessing when to collaborate (and when not to) and instilling in people both the willingness and the ability to collaborate when required.
2. Disciplined collaboration requires that organizations be decentralized and yet coordinated. To build this model, leaders need to detect the barriers to collaboration and overcome them without reducing the benefits of a decentralized structure.
3. Collaborative companies run on networks, those informal working relationships among people that cut across formal lines of reporting. If the formal org chart shows how work is divided into pieces, networks reveal the informal organization-how people actually work together.

Finally, a collaborative company can do away with unnecessary documentation, remain lightweight and agile because the concerned people are all in it together. Everyone is in the loop, always!

Continuous feedback over periodic reviews

This is my biggest learning from Agile. The very environment and processes—pair programming, TDD, retrospectives, continuous integration, whatever else you will—support continuous feedback, one of the keys to learning. In this environment, a mistake becomes a stepping stone to excellence. A philosophy that   centers on feedback also encourages mistakes by default. I think of these as bunkos where a “bunko” means - “to make a mistake from which the benefits of what you learned exceed the costs of the screw-up” as described in The Adventures of Johnny Bunko. Because one knows that feedback will be immediate, one is not scared to experiment, think big and explore. Imagine the reverse of this—where feedback comes in the form of yearly appraisals that tell you how many times you have screwed up far removed from the time and the context of the screw up itself. It leaves one mentally screaming, “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? How does it help now?”

Here’s one of my sources of understanding and clarity on the purpose of feedback and the way to deliver as well as receive it: Tightening the Feedback Loop by Patrick Kua.

Generalization over specialization

With the edges of our roles and jobs disintegrating, it is of utmost importance to be able to wear multiple hats. While we will definitely have our specializations (that after all is what we were hired for), this should not make us incapable of playing multiple roles. Generalization helps in a number of ways (I am referring to generalization around one’s core skills).

In a world and world economy where situations throw us into unpredictable circumstances and poses unknown problems, being a specialist with crystallized intelligence can be a bit of a hindrance. Ruth Clark in the aforementioned book talks about this at length. I have described it briefly here. To remain adaptive and responsive to changing situations, it is important to develop a fluid intelligence, one that enables us to take on the role of inquiring novices when required, which in turn helps to view a problem from different perspectives. 

To quote Ruth Clark: 

Fluid intelligence is the basis for reasoning on novel tasks or within unfamiliar contexts; in other words, it gives rise to adaptive expertise. In contrast, crystallized intelligence is predicated on learned skills…and is the basis for routine expertise. 

It is clear that adaptive expertise is the basis of being a generalist. A generalist, according to me, is one who can explore, venture into unknown territories and domain, learn from new experiences and apply that in areas beyond one’s specialization.  

My sources of inspiration and knowledge:

1. thekua.com@work

2. The Agile Warrior

3. The Learning Generalist

4. The Agile Samurai: How Agile Masters Deliver Great Software

5. Martin Fowler: The Agile Guide

6. Making software is about making people

Context is King: Excerpts from posts and articles - Part I

For the paste one week or so, I have been reading up on the importance of context as opposed to content. "Context is King" is fast becoming a mantra; hence my focused reading on the topic. Then a tweet by @sumeet_moghe on the same topic today prompted me to put up excerpts of the articles and posts I have been reading here.

The tweet: It’s not about the tweets; it’s about the context. @marcjrosenberg on #lsmag http://bit.ly/a6H7IK #lrnchat

The excerpts:
We need context to understand complex issues and this can be provided by those we are connected to. The reach and depth of our connections become critical in helping us make sense of our environment and to solve problems. ~ PKM: our part of the social learning contract

Creating good content on a platform that lets users (teachers & learners) add context may be the the real killer application in education. Content developers and institutions have been so concerned with protecting their content that they don’t see where the real value lies. Letting others add more context will only increase the value of their content. ~ User Generated Context for Learning


The real value of Twitter and other social media (or, the more secure, IT-approved corporate equivalents) is the ability to target messages at specific audiences and tune your filters to the topics that interest you the most. Short fast messaging among people with common interests and objectives can be a real boon to performance and productivity. ~ Marc My Words: OMG, I'm Tweeting!

Most user generated content, is, in fact, context. The bulk of what connected consumers create isn’t content: its context – information about the value of goods and services. Context, in turn, lets connected consumers search and navigate the exploding universe of media more effectively, and massively amplifies incentives for quality.

By conflating the content and context, we mistakenly assume that what connected consumers create is inherently worthless –when, in fact, it’s by letting connected consumers contextualize content that tsunamis of new value can be unlocked (just ask Google).


Third, context isn’t truly “generated” – a term which implies something algorithmic, substitutable, mass-produced. Rather, it’s often deeply culturally specific and socially bound: often, outsiders can’t even make head or tail of what’s really deeply powerful context, because they don’t understand the signs or language connected consumers have evolved. ~ The New Economics of Consumption: User Generated Context

The tacit resides in action, most often in participation with others. As a consequence, tacit knowledge can be
distributed as a shared, socially constructed understanding that emerges from collaboration. ~ Learning in the Digital Age by John Seely Brown

Legitimate peripheral participation is . . . an analytic viewpoint on learning, a way of understanding learning. We hope to make it clear that learning through legitimate peripheral participation takes place no matter which educational form provides a context for learning, or whether there is any intentional educational form at all. ~ Jean Leave and Etienne Wenger

People generally learn words in the context of ordinary communication. This process is startlingly fast and successful. Miller and Gildea note that by listening, talking, and reading, the average 17-year-old has learned vocabulary at a rate of 5,000 words per year (13 per day) for over 16 years. By contrast, learning words from abstract definitions and sentences taken out of the context of normal use, the way vocabulary has often been taught, is slow and generally unsuccessful. People generally learn words in the context of ordinary
communication.

Teaching from dictionaries assumes that definitions and exemplary sentences are self-contained "pieces" of knowledge. But words and sentences are not islands, entire unto themselves. Language use would involve an
unremitting confrontation with ambiguity, polysemy, nuance, metaphor, and so forth were these not resolved with the extralinguistic help that the context of an utterance provides (Nunberg, 1978).

Learning from dictionaries, like any method that tries to teach abstract concepts independently of authentic situations, overlooks the way understanding is developed through continued, situated use. This development, which involves complex social negotiations, does not crystallize into a categorical definition. Because it is dependent on situations and negotiations, the meaning of a word cannot, in principle, be captured by a definition, even when the definition is supported by a couple of exemplary sentences. ~ Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning

The notion that news comes in and stories go out — text and photos come in and paper goes out — is an artifact of the means of production and distribution, of course. Now a story never begins and it never ends. But at some point in the life of a story, a journalist (working wherever) may see the idea and then can get all kinds of new input. But the story itself — in whatever medium — is merely a blip on the line, a stage in a process, for that process continues after publication.

…In this new ecology, I think newsrooms will need to be organized around topics or tags or stories because the notion of a section is as out of date as the Dewey Decimal System… Stories and topics become molecules that attract atoms: reporters, editors, witnesses, archives, commenters, and so on, all adding different elements to a greater understanding. Who brings that together? It’s not always the reporter or editor anymore. It can just as easily be the reader(s) now. ~ The New News Process