Group items tagged

Jane Hart - a major shift "In this post, however, I want to consider the Individual's Perspective of Workplace Learning. First of all, please note, I have not used the word Learner here, because for the Individual - the employee, the worker - it is clear it is not all about the learning but about the work. It's primarily about getting their work done, addressing performance problems, and being part of a functioning team - and in fact learning is often an unconscious activity here! But it is also about personal improvement through both company-organised and self-initiatives, and about keeping up to date with what is happening in their industry or profession so that they remain relevant. So, here is a graphic that shows 10 ways how an individual might learn at and for work."

"The first one, It's the Company's Job to Help Employees Learn written by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Mara Swan (HBR 18 July) made a number of significant points. Here are a few soundbites: "most jobs today demand … the capacity to keep learning and developing new skills and expertise, even if they are not obviously linked to one's current job" "a major pillar in Google's recruitment strategy is to hire "learning animals"" "Sadly, most organizations have yet to wake up to this reality, so they continue to pay too much attention to academic qualifications and hard skills, as if what entry-level employees had learned during university actually equipped them for today's job market." "workplace learnability is far less structured and formulaic than college learnability, and employees must juggle the tension between the demand for the short-term efficiencies of productivity with the long-term quest for intellectual growth" "So how can managers do a better job of fostering learnability in the workplace? Select for it … Nurture it … Reward it""

Good summary of why social learning in the workplace is a business necessity. "Dealing with people, and their organizations, is complex. These types of complex circumstances, confronting us more frequently in many walks of life, require emergent practices in order to try the new. They should be based on solid explicit knowledge in addition to networked implicit knowledge. To deal with complex issues, social learning at work is a business necessity."

"What Skills will Self-Sustain Digital Workers? To be fair to IT and HR departments around the world, the digital workplace target does move incredibly fast and is picking up speed. And there never was a finish line. Fortunately, I believe there are novel, effective and increasingly well-understood new ways for most organizations to address their current digital workplace gaps, and it's not (just) by "giving up non-essential control", deploying liberal BYOD/BYOT programs to cultivate employee-led change, figuring out how to do things like learn or change behavior faster, or any of the ten strategies I've previously recommended."

Great Why statements and response that delve into innovation, network era and more. Also excellent links to resources "The network era workplace requires collaboration and cooperation because complex problems cannot be solved alone. Tacit knowledge, that which cannot be codified or put into a database, needs to flow. Social learning, developed through many conversations, enables this flow of tacit knowledge. This is not "nonsense chat", as traditional management might view it, but essential for creating stronger bonds in professional social networks. Companies have to foster richer and deeper connections which can only be built over time through meaningful conversations. This is why social learning in the workplace is necessary for business."

Unpacks social - learning in the workplace. good quotes from Marcia Conner "Between now and then, though, we have some growing up to do. We must get comfortable in our social shoes. Overcome personal and professional discomfort with relying on relationships to get work done. And do that publicly, as an intentional mindful function rather than something we've always done without notice or acknowledgment. It's not as though relying on relationships is new. People have worked together, learned together, and made buying decisions together for centuries. What makes social a hot topic today is that light mobile tools and vast digital networks extend our access and conversations with all our connections-in our workplaces, our communities, and online. We can stoke a conversation's fire from the subway, 36,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, or even during a workout at the gym… And unlike anytime before, the people we converse with need not be beside us or even awake."

Democracy in the Workplace "Leadership will emerge in the network era, and history will likely remember those who were able to hold the space so that a new way of work could be co-created. So far, those numbers are few. Like the earliest democracy, democratizing the workplace requires intelligent and aggressively engaged people. This is where we can find our leaders."

Change is hard, especially in a large organization. Numerous studies have shown that employees tend instinctively to oppose change initiatives because they disrupt established power structures and ways of getting things done. However, some leaders do succeed-often spectacularly-at transforming their workplaces. What makes them able to exert this sort of influence when the vast majority can't? So many organizations are contemplating turnarounds, restructurings, and strategic shifts these days that it's essential to understand what successful change agents do differently. We set out to gain that insight by focusing on organizations in which size, complexity, and tradition make it exceptionally difficult to achieve reform.

Important points on leadership and trust in the organization. "Culture is an emergent property of people working together. For example, trust only emerges if knowledge is shared and diverse points of view are accepted. As networked, distributed workplaces become the norm, trust will emerge from environments that are open, transparent and diverse. As a result of improved trust, leadership will be seen for what it is; an emergent property of a balanced network ["in-balance" may be a better term for this changing state] and not some special property available to only the select few."

"First of all, it is becoming obvious that the fundamental nature of work is changing as we transition into a post-job economy. The major driver of this change is the automation of procedural work, especially through software, but increasingly with robots. The drivers behind the post-job economy are also changing our work structures. Organizations will need to become more networked, not just with information technology, but how knowledge workers create, use, and share knowledge. This new workplace also will require different leadership that emerges from the network and temporarily assumes control, until new leadership is required. Giving up control will be a major challenge for anyone used to the old ways of work. An important part of leadership will be to ensure that knowledge is shared. But moving to a knowledge-sharing organizational structure will be difficult, because of the knowledge sharing paradox; which is that the more control is exerted, the less knowledge is shared. All of these challenges need to be addressed, and rather quickly, as software continues to eat jobs, and income disparities get wider."

"As we learn to think for ourselves, we must also connect with others. We are only as smart as our knowledge networks. But we do not need someone to manage our connections. The simple guideline of self-direction, often enabled by network technologies, can create beautifully complex relationships amongst interconnected people. "

Professional Eco System "There's no longer such thing as a job for life; people are constantly moving around, and we are now seeing the early-stages of the so-called Freelance or Gig Economy. Individuals need to be ready to drop in and out of jobs with up-to-date skills and knowledge, as required. In order to do that they need to take responsibility for their own career development; they can't rely on their company to support their career aspirations - so they need to be constantly learning in many different ways, not just for their current jobs but for their future jobs. "

Learning Worker - good quotes from Jane "Peter Drucker coined the term, "knowledge worker", back in 1959 as a way to describe workers who were involved in non-routine problem-solving. I think, this is one reason why organisations have believed that training knowledge workers is all about "knowledge transfer" - pouring knowledge into peoples heads. Whereas, in the past, individuals were trained to do their jobs once and this would last them their whole careers, over time, as job roles became more sophisticated or new technology or procedures were introduced, training became a full-time operation to keep people knowledgeable, skilled and up to date. But the world is changing fast, and we are now living in a era of exponential information growth. (Huge amounts of data are being created every day).  But what is more, the half life of a piece of knowledge today is just around 5 years. (It is said that a college degree will be out of date before the loan is paid off).  But all this means we need to be continuously refreshing what we know."