An interview with Jay Cross, the author of Informal Learning

Jay Cross, Chief Scientist at the Internet Time Group, is the author of Informal Learning: Rediscovering the natural pathways that inspire innovation and performance, which was published in 2006.

I asked Jay why he wrote the book and he told me that little had been published on informal learning in the workplace in spite of the fact that's how most learning happens. The numbers showed that about 80% of workplace learning is informal but many training professionals were not interested in it. Informal learning was a fringe idea for corporate training and education. The ideas in the book began much earlier, around 1999, and included visual learning and the best use of graphical representations. By the time Jay had started writing the book he had already compiled about 30 notebooks on the subject.

Jay's book was ground-breaking. The accepted wisdom was that corporate training was focused, no-nonsense training for core skills.  Jay was one of the thought-leaders who helped change that attitude. In a comment on my blog in 2006, Jay wrote, "I’m bumping into the basic skills questions in my book. My reviewers (all three of them) said I should delete material on storytelling, speaking in public, etc., because they were personal, and therefore not relevant to corporate learning." In 2010 it is getting more difficult to say that storytelling is not part of workplace learning.

 

Jay talked about how things have changed since 2005. At that time, the Web was still on the fringe of many workplaces and the tools we take for granted today - wikis, blogs, social networks, micro-blogging - were not being used on any real scale. He also said that the informal learning graphic that accompanies the book has really taken hold and resonates with more people [the image above is a detail from that graphic]. By 2009, ASTD's President, Tony Bingham was encouraging members to embrace informal learning during his conference keynote. Informal learning, at least the idea, has arrived in the mainstream of the training field.

When asked if we should try to formalize informal learning, Jay responded by saying that it's the wrong question. It would be like asking if we should "informalize" formal training. A key understanding that Jay wants to get across to everyone in the workplace learning arena is that it's not an either/or proposition, but rather how much informal and how much formal learning should we support and who is determining what's to be done. All learning is a bit of both. His promotion of informal learning is not to replace formal training but to open up the possibilities of supporting the other 80% of learning that has been ignored for far too long.

Two core themes in supporting informal learning are control and trust. Managers and supervisors need to give up some control and organizations must learn to trust their people, says Jay. Embracing, encouraging and supporting informal learning is part of a greater workplace cultural change. 

"For instance, corporations that don’t find social networking compelling are living without a clue. Many lack the stamina to survive the trials ahead. For the clued, workplace literacy, or the ability to learn informally, is a no-brainer. Of course you want people in your organization to share ideas, collaborate, take control of making customers happier, and so forth.

For the unclued, trying to sell the new culture is a waste of breath. Better to attack a few things piecemeal. Chop back on email with wikis. Use RSS to share news. Set up ways to collaborate with customers. Implement some self-service learning. Adopt new techniques that show a high payback compared to traditional means. The unclued will not reap the benefits of the flexible, fast-moving, transparent, empowered corporation, but they will be better off than those who condemn everything on the internet as worthless."