Scalable Learning in the 21C Workplace

Back after a long break! With the intention to write regularly again…

Wicked problems and their role in organizational learning have always fascinated me…so here are some more thoughts on the same topic.

Organizations are increasingly facing wicked problems in a complex and, often, a chaotic world. I wrote about this almost three years back in my post Wicked Problems, Complexity and Learning. Automation, robots, and ubiquitous technology have left very few jobs that require mindless following of processes and instructions for humans to do. Even outsourcing—once considered only for mechanical and tedious work—is taking on a very different flavor in a globalized economy. Vivek Wadhwa wrote about it in this short and insightful post, Outsourcing Will Grow and Even You Will Do It, where he says: 

Outsourcing is being superseded by crowdsourcing — which is enabling anyone to take a job anywhere. Having people all across the world collaborate in this way will not only disrupt industries but also change societies. 

Ross Dawson in this brilliant infographic called out the trends that will affect the Future of Work from connectivity, crowd-sourcing, and remote work to work fragmentation, social expectations to economy of individuals—each a key trend in its own right.

The very nature of the game is changing. Past rules no longer hold good. Problems are truly wicked in nature and answers cannot be found in one place. And to scale and survive, organizations must facilitate scalable learning.

When I (re)read John Hagel’s post, Defining the Big Shift, I was reminded of these trends and the way the future of work demands new learning and performance modalities. More than 4 years ago, John Hagel wrote about the need for institutions that can drive learning: 

From institutions driven by scalable efficiency to institutions driven by scalable peer learning. Today’s large institutions are more often than not barriers to effective participation in scalable knowledge flows so it is no wonder that passionate and creative talent is increasingly fleeing established institutional homes to set up shop as independent contractors and entrepreneurs. On the other hand, institutions can provide unique opportunities to scale pull platforms and build ever growing networks of long-term trust based relationships on top of these platforms.  If institutions viewed their primary rationale as fostering scalable peer learning, they could create “learningscapes” that would help individuals develop their talent much more rapidly than these individuals ever could on their own.

 In my POV, the onus of enabling organizations build scalable learning or become learning organizations lies with the L&D department. The need for training programs to cater to a set of fixed requirements will/has already diminished. A set of fixed skills and a stock of knowledge no longer suffice in the workplace today. The days of routine expertise is over. Adaptive expertise and a growth mindset are the needs of the hour. And unless L&D can gear up and help organizations make the move from delivering training programs to designing a more holistic learning ecosystem, and facilitating the growth of adaptive expertise to foster scalable learning, L&D runs the risk of becoming redundant at worst or be seen as a cost center to complete tick-mark activities at best.

Charles Jennings brings up very pertinent points in The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: opportunities and challenges for the L&D profession regarding the capabilities that L&D needs to cultivate to add value to an organization. And he specifically calls out these four:

• Performance Consulting 
• Content Capabilities 
• Social Media Capabilities 
• Workplace Learning Capabilities

He also stresses the importance of promoting a development mindset. I strongly recommend you read the entire post for a thorough understanding.

How do we move from designing training to building organizations that learn?

Technology can definitely be roped in as an enabler and a crucial partner in the entire endeavor. With mobile learning finally coming of age, wearable technology making coyly seductive appearances, tablets, phablets, and smartphones gaining omnipresence, and IT moving from considering BYOD policy to accepting that there had better be a policy, the world of tech is wreaking havoc in the workplace. The way we work defies all preset norms; the way we learn must follow suit. Organizations have to become “creation-spaces” that will nurture rapid learning, sharing and innovation.

A few things predicted by farsighted individuals like John Hagel, John Seely Brown, Harold Jarche, Jay Cross, Jane Hart, Jon Husband, Charles Jennings, Dave Snowden, et al have finally come to pass, like the automation of simple and even complicated work--Automation is out; Innovation is in. How will L&D address this? How can L&D enable people to innovate and work, perform and learn in the Complex and Chaotic zones?  (Refer to the Cynefin Framework) Because that is where work that matters is going to be.

Charles Jennings, in his post, Workplace Learning: Adding, Embedding & Extracting, points out the importance of helping people “extract learning from work: 

The model of ‘learn then work’ is replaced here with ‘work then learn, then work in an improved way’. Learning is not only embedded in the workflow, but new learning is continually extracted from experiences and exchanged with colleagues, customers and the entire value chain.

This is true of the Cynefin Framework where learning in the Complex zone follows the sequence of Probe-Sense-Respond and is retrospectively coherent, i.e., understood only in reconsideration. This maps to what Jennings says regarding extracting learning. However, this necessitates L&D to don the hat of facilitators and architects and to enable people develop the skills of extracting learning. The key skill required is the ability to narrate one’s work. 

In 2010, Bryce Williams wrote: Working Out Loud   =   Observable Work   +   Narrating Your Work. And by enabling this narration and sharing, L&D departments can play a key role in supporting an organization move to scalable learning making it capable of dealing with change and complexity. Harold Jarche writes about this here in Ensuring Knowledge Flow through Narration: 

Narration is turning one’s tacit knowledge — what you know — into explicit knowledge — what you can share. … Narration of work is the first step in integrating learning into the workflow.

More on the different models and frameworks that can facilitate narration of work as well as peer-to-peer learning in the next post. Heutagogy and Peeragogy are likely to be the premises of workplace learning in the future. 

Umesh

I know it's a strange title for a post in this blog. And with this post, I am coming back to blogging after a longish hiatus. I had planned a month's "blogging leave" which has stretched to almost four for various reasons--some of these being the absolutely new and challenging world of work I am currently in. And this new world brought me into contact with Umesh--the inspiration behind this post.

But before I sketch out who or what Umesh is and what I learned from him, I have to set the context of my work. I currently head the Learning Design and Development for Future Sharp which is one of the partners working with National Skills Development Corporations (NSDC), India to design vocational skills programs to achieve the "overall target of skilling/ upskilling 500 million people in India by 2022, mainly by fostering private sector initiatives in skill development programmes and providing funding". This is far removed from my earlier world of corporate workplace learning and community management but that is the subject of another post.

To cut back to Umesh, suffice it to say that in the course of my new work, I travel a fair bit and meet individuals I would normally not meet in the humdrum routine course of my neat and predictable life. One of the current projects I am working on required me to meet the well-known Neelam Chhiber of Industree/Mother Earth fame. During my visit, I was fortunate to meet Umesh at the Mother Earth workshop. And got insights into life, learning and leadership from him.

My first impression of Umesh is of his bright, inquisitive eyes. He appeared to be not more than 28 or 29. He is the group leader of one of the Self-Help Groups (SHGs) working at Mother Earth. The group is involved in creating exquisite mats, boxes and other gift and household items from natural fibers like river grass, barks of the banana tree, etc. It would be an understatement to say I was floored by the beauty and intricacy of the work as well as the dexterity demonstrated by the women working in the SHG. The purpose of my visit was to understand their workflow and process and speak to the group leader to understand how s/he inducts/trains members into the group. When I asked to meet the group leader, a tall, slim young man with bright, inquisitive eyes set against chocolate dark skin and a head full of well-oiled, curly hair stepped up. "I'm the group leader. My name is Umesh" he said in his broken, highly south-Indian accented Hindi.

After preliminary introductions, he informed me that he had dropped out of school after the 10th standard because he didn't feel like he was learning much (sounds familiar?) and that it was boring (read not relevant to his life). Subsequently, he undertook a series of odd jobs from selling newspapers to working in the construction industry as a daily wage laborer. "How was the experience," I asked him. "I learned a tremendous amount," he said. "Much more than in school." What he went on to say after that completely blew my mind.

Umesh's Story and Lessons I Learned
He joined Mother Earth about 7 years back as an SHG member. He had come to the workshop with his elder brother and decided he wanted to work there too. The sight of 100+ people working together making mats, baskets, and other knick knacks excited the young boy's imagination and imbued in him a deep desire to learn everything that those 100 odd people were doing. Umesh had found his calling though he didn't know it then. I was watching him closely as he narrated his story. Seven years down the line, his eyes still sparkled with excitement and enthusiasm for the learning and the adventure. I am not skilled enough a writer to do justice to his simplicity, passion and drive through narration; hence, I have summarized what I learned from him.

Spotting Talent and Leadership: One of Umesh's responsibilities as a team leader is to induct new people into the group, help them learn the skills and get them started. The workshop requires people with varying skill sets ranging from cutting and sewing to doing quality checks. He has a unique way of gauging who has a natural aptitude for what. He lets each new individual work at each of the tables (each table in the workshop is devoted to a specific kind of task) and observes them. To my question of how long does it take for him to identify someone's aptitude, he gave me a rather quizzical look and said, "Sometimes 5 days, and sometimes 5 months." He goes by the premise that everyone has some talent or the rather and it's the responsibility and duty of a group leader to spot the potential. He keeps rotating a new joinee from job to job--within the workshop or even without--till he finds what the person is good at/enjoys doing. 

I asked, "Isn't it time consuming to spend so much time and effort on one person just to spot their skill/potential?" His remarkably simple and profoundly deep response came in the form of a question, "It took me more than five years to find my own talent. Why can't I give a person five months?" I was awestruck before this boy who didn't have any formal degree under his belt but had all the makings of a leader--natural empathy, persistence, vision and a willingness to grow his people. 

Learning: "What excites you the most about your job, Umesh?" I asked. "The learning of new things," was his short and simple response. Here was someone who had gone from cutting squares and rectangles and following instructions to leading a team of more than 20 people. His keen desire to learn had not only helped him to pick up the required skills but also understand the complex operational process of manufacturing. He now knew everything about sourcing of raw materials to shipping of the finished goods to the retail outlets and all the steps that go in between. 

"In your role as group leader, what is the most critical aspect of your work," I asked, expecting him to say planning, prioritizing tasks, allocation and so on. Once again Umesh completely knocked my socks off by saying, "To help others do their work as smoothly and effectively as possible." I silently chastised myself for my presumptions. 

"How do you keep track of all the orders, who is doing what and all of those things?" I inquired looking around for a ledger or something similar. He smiled and beckoned to me to follow him. I went with him to the back of the room, away from the work area to a small table in the corner. On the table was a desktop, and he showed me the excel sheet he was using to capture all the necessary workflow related information. I came back humbled and inspired.  

Here was someone unspoiled by institutionalized education. Someone who had the gumption and courage to follow through and turn his work into his passion. And embodied what Harold Jarche says: Work is learning. Learning is work. 

Although used in the context of knowledge work, I realized it applied very well to what Umesh did. He had acquired all his skills through observation, apprenticeship, feedback loops, questions and conversations. He had not been formally trained and he didn't train anyone either. He observed, gave feedback and coached. He was a natural at growing and developing people. 

I have finally done it...

I have finally done it. After months of soul-searching, rationalizing and deploying all other tactics we humans typically do when we don't want  to take a decision, I have finally done it. Taken the decision to leave ThoughtWorks. My fellow ThoughtWorkers will know why this took me months and why it's perhaps one of the toughest decisions I have ever taken...

But this post is for those who don't know ThoughtWorks. On the surface, it's a software development and consultancy firm, best known for bringing Agile to the world of s/w development. But that's only the surface. Under it, it's one of the most humane and ethical organization I have known. It's an organization where social and economic justice are not espoused as a mere formality...It's an organization driven by a desire to do right--right by its clients, right by its employees, and right by the world. I am proud to have been a part of it. A part of me I guess will always remain a ThoughtWorker.

Why did I leave you may be wondering...I had to move back to Mumbai where my family is. After years of being a weekend mom and wife, I did some soul-searching and retrospection. And I think the values instilled by TW helped. I realized I had to come back and balance out my work life and home life.

So here I am...back in Mumbai ready for a new start. I guess the prospect of looking out for a job feels a bit daunting at this point, especially after TW. Ready to start all over...Wish me luck!

10 Books from My Reading List

I have spent the last couple of months reading--reading and reflecting, scribbling random ideas in my tattered moleskine but not really blogging. My thoughts felt more scattered than usual...and I wondered if it had to do with the books I was reading. A couple of months back I made a conscious decision to move away from pure L&D, Instructional Design and Performance Consulting stuff to those which would challenge my thinking and perhaps force me to question myself and the choices I am making. I picked up some of those mentioned in the list below after reading reviews, receiving recommendations or just browsing. I haven't regretted a single choice.

I am putting up the list here to share with my friends and communities. These books have moved and challenged me, made me feel guilty and exhilarated--all at the same time, provided insights, changed how I think and have often left me feeling confused--at many levels. I am profoundly grateful to the authors for penning these...for opening up doors and windows for the likes of us.

The list for you to pursue...

1. How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen
2. Dumbing us Down by John Gatto
3. The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyenger
4. The Social Conquest of Earth by Edward Wilson
5. On Violence by Hannah Arendt
6. Alone Together by Sherry Turkle
7. Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
8. The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown
9. Quiet: The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain
10. Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz

Managing Diversity through Community Management

It's taking me a while to get back on track with regular blogging after an almost 4 months hiatus. And I don't like it at all. But I am slowly getting back on track. On the positive front, I have been doing a lot of reading—mostly around organizational behavior, organizational development, culture and diversity, motivation and communication, and how these relate to social business and knowledge management. As a community manager and social business evangelist in a highly distributed and diverse organization, I’ve begun to realize not only the value of but the critical need to understand these aspects.

What did I learn during the last fortnight?

It’s essential to understand the fundamentals of how to facilitate cross-cultural communication in order to be an effective community manager.  

I think my biggest Aha! moment occurred when I came across Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory while researching diversity as a part of organizational behaviour. I’ve referenced the model here from Flat World Knowledge book on Organizational Behaviour. I highly recommend this book and others on this site for their clear, concise, well-written and referenced matter. And one can read them for free!

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension Model

 

Needless to say, culture is hugely significant in how people communicate, take decisions, interact with teams and clients, and approach their work and the workplace.

As an enterprise community manager and a proponent of collaboration, knowledge sharing and dialogue as a means and tool for learning, I found that this model provide substantial insight into the communication style and preferences of individuals. Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that this is a model that Hofstede came up with after conducting a large survey-study of IBM employees across approximately 90 countries. And, the dimensions may not be true for each and every individual in the country. It’s quite possible to find a submissive Austrian or an individualistic Chinese.

When I look at this model through the lens of an enterprise community manager in a distributed, highly diverse and rapidly growing organization, it’s worth remembering how diversity can impact cross-cultural communication.  Even as organizations begin to embrace the tools and technology of becoming a social business, exhort their employees to participate and collaborate, urge their customers to share feedback and float job descriptions to hire social media and community managers, it seems worthwhile to reflect on this.

 It’s common knowledge that in today’s organizations with a globally distributed workforce, collaborating on cross-functional projects across countries, partaking in distributed decision making and more are the norm. This necessitates meaningful, timely and transparent communication. And a successful social business is nothing if not an organization that communicates seamlessly and transparently at all times. However, this open communication is easier said than achieved and often, a lack of understanding of cross-cultural dimensions can be the barrier. It often becomes a case of:

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” Robert McCloskey

Someone hailing from a culture that extols/practices collectivism might be more willing to see the commonalities in a forum thread discussion and respond to those, drawing together the collective ideas of the participants. To someone from an individualistic culture, this may smack of conformance or groupthink and drive them to see the differences and add their own perspective to the debate. It’s important to remember that neither is good or bad in and of itself—both debate and consensus have their place and are necessary for healthy communication and interaction. What is important is to maintain a balance and see the virtues of both.

An organization that seems to uphold one over the other--e.g., an overly debate-oriented culture may run the risk of leaving out/alienating those hailing from a country where collectivism is valued. This, of course, is an extremely simplistic inference used merely to illustrate what I mean by being sensitive to the impact of culture on one’s communication style and preference.  However, given that many organizations are focusing on inclusivity and embracing diversity, it’s important to keep this in mind.

Where does an enterprise community manager come in?

An enterprise community manager will typically be aware of what’s taking place at an organizational level via the discussions, debates, blog posts, status updates, etc. on the org’s collaboration platform. And through skilful facilitation and community management seasoned by an understanding of cross-cultural communication, they can not only uphold a culture of diversity but actually act as a connector or glue that bind together people of varied background, skills, race and nationality. They can play a critical role in helping the Human Resource department meet the challenges of diversity creatively and meaningfully, helping to create an organization that benefits from the different aspects of a diverse workforce.

I will be writing about this topic for a while as I mull over the hows and the whys…I would love to know if any research exist around the impact of cross-cultural communication on community management. 

Taking Stock and Making Choices: Working from home and other such stuff

I have come back to blogging after a hiatus of almost 5 months. Mostly, business as usual at work and crisis situations at home took my time and attention. My father’s heart attack and the subsequent rush to Kolkata taught me a few things—about myself and my priorities. It forced me to take a long hard look at myself and what I’ve been focusing my energy on over the last few years. Because I love what I do (and I am hugely fortunate in that sense), it’s very easy to let my work consume me and my time. 

Much has been written about priorities and work life balance—especially for women. And it is increasingly becoming evident to me how difficult it is for a woman to pursue a career (that is do everything it takes to grow and keep up) and also be the mother and wife and daughter she wants to be. I didn’t realise how deeply this constant tussle and tug of war have been affecting me at a sub-conscious level till I had to sit down and weigh some of the choices.

To be connected to colleagues and co-workers, be in office as much as possible. Skype and Hangout are second best. Face to face is different, and it matters as Simon Sinek points out in Restoring the Human in Humanity. Bonds don’t form over a Skype call but over coffee and lunch when conversations veer to the personal and discussions revolve around interests. Luis Suarez summarizes the key point in the para here:

… we need handshake leadership; we need to have handshake conversations, handshake friends, handshake dialogues, handshake meetings. You name it. We just need to bring back the human spirit into all of the interactions we keep getting involved with. It’s eventually what makes us all more humans…

But I have a problem. To be in office, I have to be in a different city altogether and this means I can only be a weekend wife and mom.  I did that too for a very long time…close to about 4 years till I decided not to.  

To strike a work-life balance, work from home as much as possible (most of the time). This taught me a few things about work, technology and myself. Technology—is great for exchange of information, updates and other transactional stuff. But not so great for building bonds and trust. Work—complex knowledge work requires solitude as well as collaboration. Working from home offers me plenty of solitude but not the intellectual stimulation and those over-the-shoulder conversations so crucial to serendipity, ambient awareness, and informal learning.  Activity streams and collaboration platforms can enhance and support such awareness but not replace it. Myself—I am a true blue introvert and while I had kind of known this all my life, Susan Cain’s Quiet. The book revealed me to myself, clarifying why I made some of the choices I did.  How does working from home affect me as an introvert? Immensely! For someone who cringes at the thought of social small talk and just picking up the phone to have a chat, being an introvert coupled with working from home puts me even more on the periphery of things than ever. I realize that I run the risk of just hovering on the edge—an onlooker but not quite a participant. 

To let people know about my work, socialize it as much as possible. In today’s non-hierarchical, networked organizations with fluid job roles, conversations over coffee are often how people find out about skills and common passions. In the absence of such conversations, I have to consciously make an effort to write about and communicate what I do within the organization. Now, if you are as old as I am (that is 41), you will remember growing up on the adage “your work should speak for itself”. This makes socializing (publicising?) what I do (when I do it) out of character and especially hard. It’s definitely a skill much needed in today’s extrovert oriented, non-hierarchical workplaces. 

To grow myself, go that extra mile—always. Ever since I started working primarily from home, I realized (even more so than before) the importance of online communities—within my organization and without. As a practitioner in the adult learning and development space with specific interests in social business and community management, knowledge management, capability building and organizational development, I have started tapping into different online communities where I can “meet” practitioners. While I have always been an advocate of informal learning (immensely grateful to Jane Hart, Harold Jarche, Jay Cross and the ITA for showing the way) and communities of practice, I am now becoming an evangelist of both. Without the support of various online communities, I doubt if I would have had the fortitude or the skills required to do my work effectively.    

To add value, do the work that puts me in flow--always. Now this seems like an obvious statement. But this is especially significant when one works most often in solitude which requires a great deal of internal motivation. It would have been impossible for me to keep going if the work itself didn’t drive me. If anyone reading this is a knowledge worker and is thinking about working from home, read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow.  While it may seem idealistic to say “I will only work where my passion lies,” it is also intrinsically honest. If I am passionate, I will strive to deliver my best—not because of external reward and recognition but because of my internal drive. And as Daniel Pink has pointed out in his now legendary book, Drive, internal motivation is one of the driving forces of creative knowledge work.  

Are you a knowledge worker working from home? I would love to learn from the challenges you’ve faced and overcome…

In Delhi: EDGEX2012

I am siting aboard a Jet Airways flight on my way to attend and present at the EDGEX2012 conference in Delhi. It's officially starting from tomorrow. But we--the speakers and the organizers--are meeting today. I am sure Viplav Baxi has already started his day and the folks are already meeting at the Habitat Center, the location of the conference.

Am I excited? I guess that would be an understatement. I am looking forward to 3 days of insights, learning and most importantly, getting to meet others similarly passionate about education. Viplav calls it the Disruptive Educational Conference. I must say I agree. Vehemently!

Yesterday, as I added a few final touches to my presentation, some random thoughts fleeted across my mind.  I jotted these down as they occurred to me and have copied them here. Without edits.

1. I wouldn't be attending this conference if it weren't for social media.
2. I was introduced to the work, ideas and blogs of most of the speakers via Twitter.
3. What I have learned in the last 3 years have been completely via social media. Social, informal learning.
4. I am a part of a huge global network of educators and learned, a virtual community of practice.
5. Knowledge in this community is constantly being reconstructed through dialogue, conversation, and debate.
6. There is no knowledge repository. It is a construct of the network, a constantly flowing and shifting set of paradigms and practices.
7. There is no one place where this knowledge is stored. It resides in the network.
8. The network itself is constantly shifting. The edge becoming he center and vice versa.
9. If we cease to converse, we will cease to create. Conversation is the key to continuous learning which is our key to survival today.
10. We are, in a way, going back to our roots when our forefathers gathered around the fire to exchange stories.
11. These stories were not merely means of amusement but keys to survival. By sharing experiences, the elders of the tribe passed on their knowledge about an unknown, unpredictable, dangerous world full of chaos and novel challenges (think of the Cynefin Framework).
12. This is where we need to go back to. Albeit in a different manner. However, the situation is not very different. The business world is changing, becoming unpredictable and chaotic.
13. There is no time for an individual to learn from his or her own experiences. We have to go back to the story swapping days, capture tribal knowledge and build on it.

Today's linear, structured, syllabus-and exam-driven model of education is uniquely unsuited to meet the needs of this volatile, changing, chameleon like world. Linearity needs to be replaced by holistic focus on pattern matching, exploration and creative thinking. Think of how the divers learns in the example JSB cites in the power of pull.

I think we can all feel the coming of a huge change. It is already beginning in pockets with parents choosing to homeschool their children, open courseware gaining popularity, adults opting for meaningful work over just jobs. These are tiny facets of a much bigger wave sweeping across different sectors and it's presence is being felt.

I am looking at this conference to highlight some of these changes, to think about what we as educators can do.

Wheels down, Delhi! Time to get off.