The world has changed — people now live and work in a world where Google gives the answers, where a mobile phone is the lifeline to the Web and to your GPS location, and where Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter link people to each other in their own way. By leveraging these tools and putting them into meaningful parts of the learning experience, social learning tools enable organizations and their people to make sense of this radically changed day-to-day world and achieve their business and learning objectives.

How to leverage social learning

Enterprise social networking provides organizations with an unprecedented level of knowledge about its talent. Management can look at who are the most valuable contributors and where knowledge lies. It provides the organization greater agility in responding to a changing business environment.

Onboard new hires: how long does it take for people to get up to speed? 

Onboarding via social learning provides a getting-started experience tailored to the need and role of the individual. Supplemented by search, social learning enables new employees to discover and succeed almost immediately.

Cultivate knowhow through sharing informal knowledge: why wait for people to figure out what is trusted information and what is most important to learn? 

What it takes to succeed in a job is more than a job description. After all, why don’t people just read the instructions and then immediately know what to do? The reason is that knowhow is transferred through insight, behavior, and trade knowledge not necessarily reflected in a formal training document.

Accelerate effectiveness and increase performance: what can be done to create additional levels of success for high performers? 

High performers produce 10x or more the business results of average employees. They have learned that the law of success includes knowing what to ask and of whom, rather than ―knowing it all‖ themselves. Connecting people of deep knowledge on specific areas of interest makes the strategies and efforts of high-performing employees multiply in the business outcome. If a high performer can produce more effectively by networking with just a handful of key connections, imagine what can be accomplished through access to groups of hundreds of other high performers.

Harness informal learning: why spend money to create content when the highest-quality and most trusted content can be incorporated into learning for free? 

The industry is aware that 70 to 80 percent of training budgets are spent on formal learning, but as many studies indicate, nearly 80 percent of what people actually learn within a job role is achieved informally. Learning is ultimately a change in behavior — and people learn through a triangulation of people, context, and need. Social learning funnels trusted content to the fore of learning’s view and can even be used to transition key informal learning objects into formal processes.

In other circumstances, a community’s knowledge need flares up and is a hot topic for but a few short days, weeks, or months, and then burns out. Formal objects will never meet the needs of these flares. But informal schemes of user-generated content, wikis, blogs, threaded conversations, and ad hoc virtual connections via meetings and conversations can meet the demands of these transitory learning experiences.

Transform your workforce: Do hierarchies really reflect the “wirearchy” of your business? 

Identify key nodes in your organization by analyzing your social networks using dynamic network analysis. Who used what resources with what frequency, and with whom did they share? In the maps of teams, see what competencies and skills map to those teams and networks. Get beyond the skill level of individuals and start to identify team, group, and organizational competencies. Identify which collections of people are most skilled at solving the problems of the day. The hierarchy can’t reveal the difference between two regional groups of identical solutions consultants, but network analysis can reveal that one group excels at user interface customization while the other group excels at CRM integrations.

Prepare for succession: Why can’t organizations figure out who will succeed when they are advanced in the organization? 

The formal measures of slating people for advancement miss the key textures of why people succeed at the next level. Creating a social fingerprint of the type of person that succeeds at the next level and then matching that pattern against those that meet your formal criteria is a start. In addition, social learning fast tracks people to connect to the networks and sources of learning that will accelerate the right people. For example, in nominations for leadership development, people can learn these skills from mentors with matching learning histories. Internal recruiting can match social learning experiences with transcript and profile information to meet internal need for talent.

Nurture employee networks: Why don’t people connect inside their current organization with people formerly in their role? In the learning they are undertaking? With people who went to the same school they did? With those who want to achieve the same career goals? 

From the unified profile made visible as the hub of interaction in social learning, the workplace opens up because now instead of people seeing their world as a job role with colleagues and a manager, they see their workplace as a world of connections to people who share their experiences. For example: 

• If I am a new hire, then I may want to connect to recent new hires. 
• If am taking on a new role, I can access people across the organization who currently or previously held my role. 
• Through “alumni” of different types, I can pursue the learning that was most effective for those before me and I can discover learning experiences that interest me most.

People and social learning

No aspect of people’s careers is untouched by the social learning experience. In today’s world, the shelf life of knowledge is short. People understand that what they learn, the knowledge they harvest, is perishable. People seek modern working environments where they are encouraged to stay current and connected. Business outcomes depend on the speed of such knowledge transfer and sharing of knowhow. Social learning tools keep employees engaged and empowered through the most powerful learning tool in the marketplace—each other.

Traduction:

Yes, I know that Facebook has 23 million users. Yes, I see people on Facebook everywhere I look – on the trains, at traffic lights and when at work. Personally I spend more time than I should on LinkedIn and Facebook, much to chagrin of my family. Yes I am believer  a believer of social media and social learning. Who  wouldn’t be ? Have a look at some the statistics:

• Facebook. - More than 800 million active users, each with an average of 130 friends. More than 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day.
• LinkedIn - 100 million professionals worldwide.(March 2011). Impressively there are 17.8 million members in LinkedIn Groups who post 1.2 million posts and comments per week .

In terms of the social learning flavour, what better example than Wikipedia, where people generously give their time and expertise to build this impressive knowledge base. Check out the discussion forums at www.whirlpool.net.au. I have benefited numerous times from the in depth knowledge shared by that community about IT hardware and software issues (highly recommended that you check the forums before a hardware or software purchase).

An easy assumption to make in light of these success stories is that social learning at work will work. Certainly this is what social learning technology vendors will have you believe from their marketing efforts. Case studies of success of social learning at organisations such as IBM are compelling.

However beyond these few but well publicised success stories, I have struggled to hear about other social learning initiatives have been sustained beyond the initial launch.  I have been involved in setting up social learning for customers and this first-hand experience has led to a healthy scepticism about the predicted success of social learning at work. Four reasons for this healthy scepticism are:

1. The ingredients for successful of social learning go against the grain of traditional organisations.

Working at IBM and Google is very different from working at, let us say a bank or a mining company. People and their intellectual outputs is the lifeline of businesses (technology and professional services). The culture, processes and the reward systems reflect this and tend to be more “employee centric”, open and based on shorter power distance (Geert Hofstede’s model).

Organisatons in more traditional industries tend to less open and more hierarchical. They are characterized by the need to manage risk and the predominance of top down communication. Social learning which is based on more democratic principles struggles to establish itself and grow in this environment. Many social learning initiatives in such organisations begin with a flourish and usually end up being another channel for top down communication with very little participation from the employees.

Another barrier to social learning in organisations is the low tolerance for risk. While social media in general tends to be self-regulating, the possibility of a post being inappropriate is real and too risky for many organisations. Some organisations approve comments before they can be published to remove the risk but it takes way the spontaneity and authenticity of the participation. I hasten to clarify the difference between the approval and moderation. Moderation adds value to the discussion and increases the rate and quality of participation

2. The employment social contract has changed

In world of increasing retrenchments and outsourcing the message sent to employees is “fend for yourself”. Employees have less motivation to contribute to the success to the organisation beyond what is mandatory or what is incentivised. The success of social learning depends on employees taking the time to participate and contribute their insights, knowledge and expertise without any extrinsic rewards. As mentioned people contributing to wikipedia or whirlpool.net.au don’t have any monetary incentives but they are generous with their participation but when it comes to contributing to social learning in the organisation, the state of mind is likely to switch to a “mercenary” or “what is it in for me” mode.

3. Underestimating ingredients for success

Many organisations see the deployment of technology to enable social learning as the “silver bullet” and the “end game”. Some of this misconception is created by technology vendors but mostly it is due to organisations failing to understand that selecting and deploying technology to enable social learning is probably the easiest part of the process.  One thing makes social learning a different beast – it is not mandatory for employees to participate but its success entirely depends on their participation.

Lack of “business purpose” is another common reason for failure. Many social learning initiatives are commenced for the sake of trying “social learning”. The success of social learning depends on the ability of the community and its contribution to provide value add. At its best it acts as a performance support system for employees trying to solve a business problem.

Another grossly underestimated aspect is the effort and skill required to nurture and sustain a community. Initially communities may need a dedicated community manager or a moderator (part time or full time) who provides the necessary energy and structure in the forming stage. This is rarely catered for.

4. Where is the time?

Ok let me ask you a question. In between your growing workload and the need to maintain work life balance do you have time to participate in social learning? Would you rather spend time on Facebook with your social community (friends and family) in an environment you can express yourself with very few rules or would you sacrifice some of that time to participate in social learning at work. For many employees the choice is not very difficult.The acceleration of pace of work compounded by information overload means that employees have very little down time to participate in “non-essential” work  activities and social learning.

In conclusion, social learning is unlike anything organisations have experienced. It is a double edge sword. If you can make it work it produces results like nothing else can by harnessing knowledge and insights of your employees. If you can’t it will die a quick death or may even be counter-productive.

When you commence on the social learning journey, go there with your eyes open and your expectations tempered. Be prepared for that 99% perspiration.

Jeevan Joshi is one of the most experienced practitioners of technology based learning and collaboration in Australia. For over 18 years he has combined a strategic and “hands on” approach to assist organisations understand, design, deliver and improve technology enabled solutions and processes.  His expertise is fuelled by his passion for learning, anticipation of technology trends, and a focus on costs effective solutions. Jeevan developed his consulting skills while working for PricewaterHouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, IBM and Deloitte. He has worked in a variety of roles across various industries.as a senior manager, vendor, project manager and consultant, developing strategy and driving implementation. Jeevan has a passion for technology based learning and its ability to achieve bottom line results and social change. He is a regular speaker on the conference circuit on emerging trends and the smarter execution of learning and collaboration for business results.  Jeevan is the founder of learning Cafe, a blog magazine for senior learning professionals.

A social systems view on learning: communities of practice as social learning systems

A community of practice can be viewed as a social learning system. Arising out of learning, it exhibits many characteristics of systems more generally: emergent structure, complex relationships, self-organization, dynamic boundaries, ongoing negotiation of identity and cultural meaning, to mention a few. In a sense it is the simplest social unit that has the characteristics of a social learning system.

It is useful to start by looking at the assumptions about learning in communities of practice that give the concept such a "systems flavor."

Learning as the production of social structure

Engagement in social contexts involves a dual process of meaning making.¹ On the one hand, we engage directly in activities, conversations, reflections, and other forms of personalparticipation in social life. On the other hand, we produce physical and conceptual artifacts - words, tools, concepts, methods, stories, documents, links to resources, and other forms of reification - that reflect our shared experience and around which we organize our participation. (Literally, reification means "making into an object."). Meaningful learning in social contexts requires both participation and reification to be in interplay. Artifacts without participation do not carry their own meaning; and participation without artifacts is fleeting, unanchored, and uncoordinated. But participation and reification are not locked into each other. At each moment of engagement in the world, we bring them together anew to negotiate and renegotiate the meaning of our experience. The process is dynamic and active. It is alive.

Participation and reification represent two intertwined but distinct lines of memory. Over time, their interplay creates a social history of learning, which combines individual and collective aspects. This history gives rise to a community as participants define a "regime of competence" a set of criteria and expectations by which they recognize membership. This competence includes

• Understanding what matters, what the enterprise of the community is, and how it gives rise to a perspective on the world
• Being able (and allowed) to engage productively with others in the community
• Using appropriately the repertoire of resources that the community has accumulated through its history of learning.

Over time, a history of learning becomes an informal and dynamic social structure among the participants, and this is what a community of practice is.

Through active and dynamic negotiation of meaning, practice is something that is produced over time by those who engage in it. In an inalienable sense, it is their production. Assuming that practice is an active production is not romanticizing it. It is not to deny, for instance, that there are all sorts of constraints, impositions, and demands on the production of practice - external factors over which participants have little control. Nor is it to assume that the production of practice is always a positive process. Practitioners can be deluded or myopic. Subconscious forces can undermine the best intentions. A community of practice can be dysfunctional, counterproductive, even harmful. Still there is a local logic to practice, an improvisational logic that reflects engagement and sense-making in action. Even if a practitioner follows a procedure, it is not the procedure that does the following. No matter how much external effort is made to shape, dictate, or mandate practice, in the end it reflects the meanings arrived at by those engaged in it. Even when they comply with external mandates, they produce a practice that reflects their own engagement with their situation. A practice has a life of its own. It cannot be subsumed by a design, an institution, or another practice such as management or research. When these structuring elements are present, practice is never simply their output or implementation: it is a response to them - based on active negotiation of meaning. It is in this sense that learning produces a social system and that a practice can be said to be the property of a community.

Learning as the production of identity

The focus on the social aspect of learning is not a displacement of the person. On the contrary, it is an emphasis on the person as a social participant, as a meaning-making entity for whom the social world is a resource for constituting an identity. This meaning-making person is not just a cognitive entity. It is a whole person, with a body, a heart, a brain, relationships, aspirations, all the aspects of human experience, all involved in the negotiation of meaning. The experience of the person in all these aspects is actively constituted, shaped, and interpreted through learning. Learning is not just acquiring skills and information; it is becoming a certain person - a knower in a context where what it means to know is negotiated with respect to the regime of competence of a community.

Participants have their own experience of practice. It may or may not reflect the regime of competence. Learning entails realignment. When a newcomer is entering a community, it is mostly the competence that is pulling the experience along, until the learner's experience reflects the competence of the community. Conversely, however, a new experience can also pull a community's competence along as when a member brings in some new element into the practice and has to negotiate whether the community will embrace this contribution as a new element of competence - or reject it. Have you ever come back from a conference with a great new insight or perspective? It can take quite a bit of work to convince your community to adopt it. Learning can be viewed as a process of realignment between socially defined competence and personal experience - whichever is leading the other. In both cases, each moment of learning is a claim to competence, which may or may not be embraced by the community.

This process can cause identification as well as dis-identification with the community. In this sense, identification involves modulation: one can identify more or less with a community, the need to belong to it, and therefore the need to be accountable to its regime of competence. Creating an experience of knowledgeability (or lack of knowledgeability) involves a lot of identity work. Through this process of identification and the modulation of it, the practice, the community, and one's relationship with it become part of one's identity. Thus identity reflects a complex relationship between the social and the personal. Learning is a social becoming. The concept of identity is a central element of the theory, just as fundamental and essential as community of practice. It acts as a counterpart to the concept of community of practice. Without a central place for the concept of identity, the community would become "over determinant" of what learning is possible or what learning takes place. The focus on identity creates a tension between competence and experience. It adds a dimension of dynamism and unpredictability to the production of practice as each member struggles to find a place in the community.

The focus on identity also adds a human dimension to the notion of practice. It is not just about techniques. When learning is becoming, when knowledge and knower are not separated, then the practice is also about enabling such becoming. Being able to interact with our manager is asmuch part of your practice as technical know-how. Gaining a competence entails becoming someone for whom the competence is a meaningful way of living in the world. It all happens together. The history of practice, the significance of what drives the community, the relationships that shape it, and the identities of members all provide resources for learning - for newcomers and oldtimers alike.

Of course, by the same token, these resources can become obstacles to learning. Learning, once successful, is prone to turning into its own enemy. The long beak that made a species successful can be its downfall if circumstances change. Communities of practice are not immune to such paradoxes. Remaining on a learning edge takes a delicate balancing act between honoring the history of the practice and shaking free from it. This is often only possible when communities interact with and explore other perspectives beyond their boundaries.

¹ Note For more in-depth discussion of this polarity, see Chapter 1 in: Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice; Learning, Meaning and Identity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Etienne Wenger-Trayner is a globally recognized thought leader in the field of social learning and communities of practice. He has authored and co-authored seminal articles and books on the topic, including Situated Learning, where the term "community of practice" was coined; Communities of Practice: learning, meaning, and identity, where he lays out a theory of learning based on the concept; Cultivating Communities of Practice, addressed to practitioners in organizations who want to base their knowledge strategy on communities of practice; and Digital Habitats, which tackles issues of technology. His work is influencing a growing number of organizations in the private and public sectors. He helps these organizations apply these ideas through consulting, public speaking, and workshops.

I’m responding to the Ecollab’s question – “can we formalize the informal?”

Yes, you can formalize informal learning. Formalizing informal learning doesn’t mean that informal learning now becomes formal learning.   It means that somebody has put thought and effort into creating conditions that help informal learning thrive.  Here are a few examples of formalizing informal learning:

• Providing tools (e.g., wiki, blog, microblog) for people to share knowledge
• Provide learning for how to use these tools for sharing
• Creating an OJT guide that describes events that someone must experience as part of their learning (e.g., going on a sales call with a sales representative)
• Developing a mentoring program
• Facilitating a working session on helping customers solve a real business problem

So, we can formalize informal…but should we?  If there is a skill or knowledge gap that is deemed critical to your business goals and formalizing informal learning will help meet these goals, then yes.

To improve, we must know our biggest failings.

In the training and development field, our five biggest failures are as follows:

1. We forget to minimize forgetting and improve remembering.
2. We don't provide training follow-through.
3. We don't fully utilize the power of prompting mechanisms.
4. We don't fully leverage on-the-job learning.
5. We measure so poorly that we don't get good feedback to enable improvement.

1. Minimizing Forgetting, Improving Remembering

It is not enough to help people understand new concepts or even to motivate them to utilize those concepts. If they don't remember concepts when they encounter situations in which those concepts would be useful, then previous understanding and motivation is for naught.

There are three powerful mechanisms that support long-term remembering, (a) aligning the learning and performance contexts, (b) providing retrieval practice, and (c) utilizing spaced repetitions. Most of our learning interventions do a poor job of providing these mechanisms resulting in training that may create awareness but doesn't support remembering or performance improvement.

We need to give our learners more realistic practice using scenarios and simulations. We also need to space repetitions of learning over time - much more than we do now. Instead of trying to teach everything at a basic awareness level, we need to cover less content - but not just present it - instead giving our learners opportunities for deliberate practice.

2. Training Follow-Through

Providing training but no effort to ensure that learners will apply what they've learned is the height of professional malpractice. If we assume that learners remember what they've learned (which as we just saw is not a given), learners still must (a) remain motivated to apply what they've learned, (b) feel that there is some benefit to applying the learning, (c) have the resources and time to put their learning into practice, (d) get feedback and guidance to improve their performance, and (e) be prepared to overcome obstacles and frustrations in applying the learning.

Note how the first two failures create an additive effect - both significantly lessen the likelihood of on-the-job application of the learning. If learners don't remember, they're not going to apply what they've learned. If learners don't receive after -training follow - through support, they are unlikely to provide the continuous and persistent focus needed to apply the learning in a way that creates sustainable success.

To reach a credible level of training follow-through we need to (a) engage our learners managers to enlist their support, (b) provide reminders to apply the learning, (c) provide relearning opportunities for that which has been forgotten, (d) enable additional learning to improve and elaborate on the performance, (e) ensure our learners have the resources and time they need to apply the learning and integrate it into their behavioral repertoire, (f) provide coaching support to guide the learning-and-performance process, (g) ensure the learners are incentivized either tangibly with money or perks or intrinsically by aligning efforts with personal values and sense-of-identity, and (h) encourage persistence even in the face of obstacles and frustration.

3. Prompting Mechanisms

Prompting mechanisms rely on one particularly powerful foible of the human cognitive architecture - that our working memories are triggered easily by environmental stimuli. Prompting mechanisms include things like job aids, performance support tools, signage, intuitive cues in our tools and equipment, and some forms of management oversight. They work because they prompt certain strands of thinking, and thus performance. For example, a job aid that lists 5 key interview goals, 10 key interview questions and their rationales automatically triggers in the interviewer a certain way of thinking about interviewing. For example, an interview template might remind its user that interviews are more telling if interviewees are asked to perform a work task or describe how they would perform a work task. Without such a prompt, the interviewer might focus only on how well they think the person would fit into the work culture, etc.

While we are aware of these prompting mechanisms, we are not aggressive enough in their use. If we utilized prompting mechanisms more often with our training and more often as a replacement for training, we'd create better outcomes. If we went looking for grassroots prompting mechanisms already being used and helped spread their use, we'd be more effective. If we evaluated learning facilitators on their use of prompting mechanisms, we'd be more likely to encourage the use of prompting mechanisms. If we asked learners in training to practice with prompting mechanisms, we'd see more being used on the job - and our learners would remember more of what they learned.

4. On-the-Job Learning

We as learning professionals tend to focus almost exclusively on the creation and delivery of training interventions even when we know that our learners are doing a great deal of their learning on the job without any training. Employees learn through trial-and-practice, getting help from others, through social media, by reading task instructions, by using help systems, and so forth. While we have much less direct influence on on-the-job learning than on training, we do have some influence and we ought to use it if we are serious about getting results.

Often the biggest impact we can have is by accessing managers and encouraging them to actively promote learning. Managers can improve learning in their direct reports by (a) making it a point to monitor their employees competencies and guide them toward learning opportunities, (b) being approachable and available for questions and advice, (c) creating a culture of learning and information sharing, (d) encouraging data-driven decision-making instead of opinion-driven decision-making, (e) utilizing an experimental mindset, for example by encourage pilot-testing and rapid prototyping, and (f) giving direct reports time for learning and exploration.

We can also have an influence on on-the-job learning by creating and maintaining social-media mechanisms that can be tailored to particular needs. For example, wikis can be used by project teams to get input from various parties and blogs can be used by senior folks to lay out a compelling vision.

We can encourage better on-the-job learning by improving people's ability to coach their fellow employees. Too often people asked to coach others do a poor job because they just don't know what good coaching looks like.

We can utilize diagnostic tools to help people in the organization see things about themselves - or about the organization -that they might not otherwise see. For example, if the organization engages in an effort to improve coaching ability, those being coached can be asked to take a short diagnostic survey on how well their coach is doing in coaching them. If an organization wants to change its culture to one that is more flexible and creative, we can utilize a diagnostic to track progress. We can also use a diagnostic to get the organization talking about specifics - so that employees know what behaviors represent the past culture and which represent the new culture.

There are, of course, other things we can do to directly influence on-the-job learning. In addition, we can change our brand by stopping our tendency to be order takers for training. By changing the way we define our role, we can encourage the business side to be fuller partners in organizational learning.

5. Measurement and Feedback to Spur Improvement

We as learning professionals suck at measurement, creating a vacuum of information that pushes us to make poor decision after poor decision in our learning designs. By only seeking learner opinions about the learning, we encourage a bias toward entertainment and engagement and away from content validity, remembering, and application. By measuring only when the learners are in the training context, we don't learn whether the learning intervention would generate remembering in a work context that is not like the training situation. By measuring only during the learning event, we measure the learning intervention's ability to create understanding, but we do not measure the learning intervention's ability to support long-term remembering. We also fail to examine whether any training follow-through is utilized. By utilizing only low-level questions in our tests of learning, we fail to measure the ability of our learners to make decisions that relate to workplace performance. In short, we don't get the feedback we need to make good learning decisions.

Maintaining ourselves in a state of permanent darkness, we continue to make terrible decisions in regard to learning design, development, and deployment. We design primarily for engagement and understanding, while ignoring remembering, motivation, and application. We hire and promote trainers and training companies who get great ratings but who don't help learners remember or apply what they've learned. Because our measurement is focused only on training, we fail to engage our business partners to ensure that they are adequately supporting learning application - we also never learn what obstacles and leverage points face our learners when they go to apply the learning in their jobs. We build e-learning programs that encourage learners to focus on low-level trivia instead of focusing on the main points. By abstaining from diagnostics, we leave employees blind to conditions from which they might benefit. Poor measurement enables the first four failures.

The bottom line on measurement is that measurement should provide us with valid feedback. Unfortunately, because we haven't taken the human learning system into account in our measurement designs - and in our measurement models - we are getting biased information and drawing inappropriate conclusions from poor data.

The Five Failures are Fixable

We as learning professionals - as a whole - though working honorably and with good intentions, are too often failing to maximize our impact. Our job is work-performance improvement. We can start by improving our own work performance.

But instead of focusing on everything - which will certainly overwhelm us - we should focus on the things that really matter. We should focus on our five failures. Instead of following willy-nilly prescriptions that pop like fads from a popcorn popper- we should focus on five things that are fundamental - and inspired by the learning research. We should focus on the five failures.

In this brief article, I have provided strong hints about how to rethink and redirect each of the five failures. While such a brief synopsis is certainly not sufficient to enable you to completely redesign your learning efforts, it should, I hope, motivate you to get started.