The 21st Century Learner, You Tube videos

Thanks to Ron Weisenburger for sending me off to You Tube to see the first video linked in this blog. The second video I discovered while checking out associated videos.

Click the links to see what 21st Century Learners are looking for, what they are doing

Youth (and only youth??): 21st Century Learners.


Us: A View of 21st Century Learners

The inter connectivity we take for granted with the Internet and new technology tools is causing a profound cultural transformation. We assume the World Wide Web (www) means Whatever, Whenever, Wherever.

It affects us in our learning. It is the air our children breathe daily. It affects the clients we interact with as we coach and point to change.

It's about conversation. It's about the co-construction of information and knowledge. We are experts. Yes ....and No. We co-construct our most useful knowledge with our learning community, our clients, our peers, our gurus of expertise and experience.

It is about conversation. Knowledge management is about enabling really good conversations. If you are helping people engage in conversations, you are a knowledge manager.

Knowledge is volunteered

And now you know why the words “a culture of trust” always comes up when you start discussing knowledge sharing, communities of practice and innovation.

This kitty won’t be back in your lap for a couple of days.

"Knowledge can only be volunteered, not conscripted". (David Snowden)

This is is one of David Snowden's heuristics, rules of thumb, for knowledge management. David Snowden is one of the gurus of knowledge management and worth paying attention to.

Building relationships, a culture of acknowledgement (giving credit where credit is due) are essential to building trust.

So if you talk about knowledge sharing in an organization long enough, the discussion will inevitably arrive at a statement like "Knowledge sharing is part of our organization's culture" or just as likely "is not".

Follow the conversation further down the lines of why the organizational culture around information sharing works or doesn't and "trust" pops up.

"Culture, trust and communications" all start to appear in the conversation. Why they interplay well in successful organizations and badly in dysfunctional organizations is a function of how well internal communications people and managers understand:

Sharing really good information and know-how requires trust. If the recipient has a history of behaving badly (especially a recent history), trust is low and the expert holding the really good information or know-how does just that. They hold onto the really good information. They will appear to conform if pressured to deliver good information. They can, with justification, deliver the conventional wisdom of the day. They can tell you enough about their work for you to write a detailed job description. In Larry Prusak's words, they "are canny, they will appear to conform".

Meanwhile the organization suffers because really good information does not emerge nor does a real understanding of the expert's know-how reside in the organization. The classic Joni Mitchell truism: "Don't it always seem to go. That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone". And when the expert leaves, you arrive at the succession planning crisis.

So it is about trust. Trust is not given. Trust is earned. And being trust-worthy is where knowledge sharing begins and ends. Internal communications are most often focused on avoiding generating fear. What the focus has to be is what generates trust.

So where there is information sharing issues in an organization, "we don't do a good job of sharing information necessary for our work", is usually a sign that there is also a trust issue to be dealt with as well as information sharing processes and tools. Don't assume that a knowledge management initiative will solve trust issues. That requires an astute facilitator to have a careful conversation with staff and managers about what more trustworthy communications would look like.

At the core of many trust issues around information sharing are recognition issues.

For that reason, a good knowledge management initiative starts by working with human resources to improve employee recognition processes. I spent my first three years in KM on a employee recognition team. It still is one of the most important staff voluntary teams in our organization. The fact that it thrives by recruiting volunteers and not by staff assignment is a vivid illustration of this truism.

So David Snowden's truism explains why the mind dump collected from the departing expert does not work. It explains why reward based contributions to a knowledge library don't work. It explains why some communities of practice work and others are still born.

If you have problems with information sharing and a "culture of trust", start examining what the organization does for recognition and trustworthy communications.

Knowledge Sharing: It's 80% about people and 20% about tools

Ron Weisenburger was the Government of Alberta's first Chief Knowledge Officer. He is the author of the heuristic (rule of thumb) in this blog's title. I had the good fortune to work with Ron for five years in knowledge management. He had the reputation of being one of the "wise men" in the department of agriculture. He also is one of the best networked individuals I have ever met. He has a dazzling I.Q. and a capacity to bring good ideas to cutting edge implementation. He set a bar for knowledge management practitioners that continues to challenge me and others who know Ron. He's retired but still engaged. And he provides advice to organizations that are intelligent enough to listen.

Onto Ron's heuristic: "Knowledge sharing: it's 80% about people and 20% about tools".

It is the first, the primary, the most important guide on what to pay attention to when cultivating knowledge sharing in an organization.

I return to this rule of thumb regularly to review my KM action plan and activities. When I find myself spending too much time down in the weeds making tools work, I know it is time to switch gears. Time to do advocacy, communications and coaching. You don't often find a coach in the office during working hours. And you have to interact with staff to coach knowledge sharing. We never could track down Ron. He was always in someone else's office learning about their information sharing challenges, reminding them of the tools that already existed and then brainstorming with them on how to make the information sharing process and tools work better for them in their work.

Do this and the need to practice elevator speeches to executive team about why knowledge management matters to the organization is reduced.

Ron's heuristic also puts to bed debates about different tools and the debate about the generational war between knowledge management and Social Media. Most of the early innovators in KM would acknowledge that the tools in the early days did not work very well. And most would also acknowledge Marshall McLuhan's: "The medium is the message". So tools do matter.

And if you think we have figured out the implications of the Internet and "connectivity" in the last 10 years, then give your head a shake. Because the reason the "Medium is the message" is because it is the "medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action."

But all the attention and discussion about how tools shape and transform human interactions can lead us away from the essential. Knowledge sharing is a rich, complex human activity. Focus on the people side of knowledge sharing and the tools (and their importance) fall into place.

Now start the conversation again with; "Knowledge sharing: It's 80% about people and 20% about tools".

Tom Davenport rediscovers Knowledge Management in Enterprise 2.0

In 1998, Tom Davenport and Laurence (Larry) Prusak wrote Working Knowledge. It came to be recognized as the primer for knowledge management a decade ago.

So where do the new Web 2.0 tools, blogs, wikis, tagging, Facebook, fit together with organizational knowledge sharing? Tom Davenport had positioned himself as a skeptic until recently. And yes he blogs on Tom Davenport, the Next Big Thing.

Here's an interview with Tom Davenport: "Talking Social Media with Tom Davenport" (Nov. 12, 2008). Tom's views on knowledge management has always been influenced by his focus on process management (he is responsible for overall management of Babson's College's "Process Management Research Center" ). But he also smart enough to recognize and advocate that innovations also result from knowledge sharing that do not follow along the organization's regular business processes.

Here's Tom's original commentary on the subject from his own blog: "Enterprise 2.0, The New, New Knowledge Management" (Feb. 19, 2008).

In the discussion of "old wine in new bottles", we get back to a foundational heuristic in knowledge management voiced by Ron Weisenburger, ex-Chief Knowledge Officer, Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development:

"Knowledge sharing, it's 80% about people and 20% about tools."

Davenport and Prusak repeat this rule of thumb midway down in this article, "The Knowledge: Tom Davenport". "If you’re spending more than a third of your efforts in KM on the technology, you’re probably neglecting the human side".

So the tools have gotten better. So knowledge sharing is easier to do.

For those trying to organize our companies for effectiveness and efficiency, the messiness of knowledge sharing that the new tools enable is a source of angst. Hence, Tom Davenport's question: "Is Web 2.0 Living on Thin Air" .

But if we listen to Tom Davenport, we recognize the power of the new tools to promote a new wave of knowledge sharing in our organizations. It is noteworthy that the blog interview, "Talking Social Media with Tom Davenport" came from a staff member's blog at SAS (the statistics software company) and was included in their e-mail newsletter.

So what do we do to coach and support our people to help them discover what know-how and really good information they need to share in our organizations?

Rules of Thumb for Knowledge Sharing

Heuristics

Heuristics are useful rules of thumb. Coming from trial and error or experimentation, heuristics succinctly describe key principles without elaborating a model or explanation.

A common one is: “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning”. Weather systems in the northern hemisphere generally catch a ride on a jet stream travelling west to east. So, a red sunset at evening indicates a clearing sky to the west; whereas in the morning, a red sunrise indicates a storm system is approaching. Which is easier to remember and captures the essence of knowledge about weather and sailing? The rule of thumb of course.

Knowledge management has its heuristics too. There are five that I keep close. When a KM project heads off the rails, or I need to get back to some first principles:

Here are the five rules of thumb (or common sense) about knowledge and knowledge sharing that I keep rediscovering:

1. Knowledge sharing: It’s 80% about people, 20% about tools.
(from Ron Weisenberger, the first CKO in the Government of Alberta)

2. Knowledge can only ever be volunteered, not conscripted.
(from David Snowden, Cognitive Edge Pte)

3. I only know what I know when I need to know it.
(again from David Snowden). David’s corollary: “I don’t know what I need to know until I need to know it” is just as insightful.

4. I know more than I can say and I will say more than I can write down
(The third rule of thumb from David Snowden)

5. People are canny; they will appear to conform.
(from Larry Prusak)

These heuristics of knowledge frame how we should approach knowledge management. I wish I could offer the links to the models of human behaviour and how humans learn. But in the end, it may be more useful to return to these rules of thumb as we try to navigate the seas of collaboration, innovation and learning in our communities and organizations.

I’ll try to summarize what I’ve learned about these KM rules of thumb next time.

Knowledge Management Essentials: Beginnings

I've been asked to speak at the "Knowledge Management in Public Health" conference, Hamilton, Ontario, Nov. 3, 4. Sponsored by the National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools, the conference intends to bring together leaders and change agents in knowledge management and public health. Here's the link to the NCCMT website for information about the conference. Here's the irony. Trained in physics, a practicing engineer, regarded as primarily as a semi-IT person in my organization for collaboration tools and software, I'm speaking in the "culture" stream. How does "culture", knowledge management and I have a good fit? You have to know that I became an engineer so that I could work with people. In 1975, as a farm boy graduating with a physics degree, I went with CUSO to east central Africa, Malawi, to teach high school. I taught lots of geography, mathematics and a bit of science. I also learned lots about third world development, which is mostly rural development and realized that was primarily agricultural development. Yes, roads, schools, hospitals are all important and essential. But economic development was at the core (to provide a tax base to support these other infrastructures) and farmers were the key. Farmers are great for driving an economy. Give them a bit of money and they spend it. I came back to Canada convinced that agricultural development was critical. When a country ignores its agricultural economy, it is on the road to ruin. This includes Canada. So I became an agricultural engineer as the easiest way to leverage my physics degree towards agriculture. As I started to practice agricultural engineering with farmers as clients, I discovered that my exposure to third world development and high school teaching was formative. I was talking to farmers about changing their practices and I was dealing with adult learners, who mostly learn by doing. Change and adult learners. Agricultural land grant universities in the USA and the provincial departments of agriculture in Canada have a rich tradition in developing the theories and practices of adult education, innovation and community development in a practice called "extension". "Extension" and I hit it off. From the viewpoint of practitioners of agricultural extension, knowledge management is just one component of support for adult learning and helping change happen. Successful extension helps with fast learning. The "fast" in fast learning is predicated on acceptance of change. So understanding how people learn fast (the coaching that prepares and supports change by an adult learner) is key to knowledge management. Understanding how you can coach, advocate and influence change in behaviour leads you to the "culture" side of knowledge management. So as an "extension" practitioner, I have spent lots of time thinking about culture and behaviour in knowledge management. What will follow in subsequent blogs is a summary of some of the key points from of my presentation on KM Essentials.

Photo Radar and Adult Learning

This is a public service announcement. Photo radar is out there and it will get you. Traffic tickets are a consequence of not learning.

For those Albertans reading this, the warning is personal. The Town of Devon has reinstated photo radar on Highway 60. For those of us who take the west bypass around the City of Edmonton and travel past Devon, BEWARE. Last year, Devon collected over a million dollars from photo radar.

This is also a story about how adults learn. Last year, as a Devon resident, I contributed significantly to the photo radar fund. My story about how I learned from photo radar illustrates the steps in adult learning.

There are some fundamentals that apply to our work. If you work with partners on growth opportunities, do research, develop information products, deliver programs to clients, develop policy information, you are dealing with adults who are learning. Here are the steps as they learn.

How I Learned from Photo Radar:
Awareness: How many time do I have to see the speed limit sign before I see the speed limit sign?

Seven, 7, IIII II, VII, 7, 7, 7. By the way, the speed limit is 70 km/hr.

Recognition: The first photo radar ticket arrives. I am aware and this is important. The innovator in our household, my wife, tells her story about how she uses cruise control and has no traffic tickets.
Internalization: The second photo radar ticket arrives. This is important; this applies to me and I need to change. My Executive Coach, my wife, points out that the family budget is on a sharp nose dive. She tells me a success story about how innovators use cruise control and consequently avoid traffic tickets.
Testing the Practice: Let's try it out. I try cruise control (occasionally). My Executive Coach, my wife, reminds me regularly (every time) when I pull out of the garage.
Practice Adoption: Practice change starts. I regularly (but not always) turn on the cruise control when I pull out of the garage. My Executive Coach, my wife, gives me a look (gentle nagging) when I don't turn on the cruise control.
Yep! It Works: The practice change has taken. My neighbour complains about photo radar tickets. I tell him my story about how I avoid photo radar tickets by using cruise control. I occasionally get the "look" from My Executive Coach, my wife, when I pull out of the garage. I also get praise from My Executive Coach every time we pass a grim-faced driver pulled over in front of a police car with flashing lights.

Why This Story? In our organizations we will hear words like initiatives, growth, industry consultations, practice change, marketing, development and program review. These words all require Change. Change requires Learning. The people we see as clients in these activities are adults. We are dealing with adult learners. In these activities, we are very often coaches to our clients (acting in the same way as my Executive Coach, my wife).
We ourselves are adult learners. You are asked to solve new problems regularly at work. To do that well, you need to learn ...., quickly.

Knowledge management is about helping staff to learn fast.

Elaboration on the Fundamentals:
Awareness: If you haven't said it seven times, or put your message in 7 different places for your clients to see, they haven't seen or heard your message yet. Just about the time you get tired of saying it, your clients start to see or hear your message. Don't quit. Say it once and you are speaking to an audience of one.
Recognition: It takes a success story (or a disaster story; guess which is more riveting?), told by someone credible (usually not the coach, usually a successful entrepreneur), for your adult learner to start to pay attention. The story has to speak to the element, "what's in it for me?", before the adult learner starts to engage.
The Recognition Stage and Denial: What was my reaction to the first photo radar ticket? ...... *&@%!! photo radar ...... Denial. The meaning of Denial ......... (Don't Even Know I am Lying (to myself)). The coach's role is to keep asking the tough questions: "Is this important? Is this going to go away? Can you afford to ignore this?" Coach for honest answers.
Internalization: Get this to happen and you have gotten to first base. Internalization takes place after the demonstration; the workshop, the meeting. You, the coach, need to follow-up with more than "What did you think of our meeting?" to get clients to do the imaging to see themselves making the change. Good coaches at this point 'gently nag" to repeat the reasons for change, remind the client about the success story (or disaster story), and encourage the client to set a deadline to make a decision about the change.
Measuring Success: Want to know the effect of your program, your initiative, the industry's development? Survey your clients to find their level of behaviour change. Each of these adult learning steps has an associated behaviour change. You can measure how far you have gotten by asking (surveying) your clients on what their behaviour change is relative to what is being learned.

Much of what we do involves communications for adult learning. Be very clear at the start of your project what outcome you are trying to achieve. And then choose the right communication strategy.

Number One Lesson in Adult Learning: You can't get "Practice Adoption" without the previous steps.
Adult Learners Need Coaches: Adults learners do not commit, change and continue to practice the change without a coach. Change is never a journey of one. I needed a coach. So do your clients. Do you know how to coach? For the kinds of changes we are trying to influence, we have to be very good coaches. Go for training. Keep training. Keep learning.

The Role of the Coach: A project management coach with whom I worked closely said that "Coaching is about helping your client see the possibilities". It is also about being a gentle nag. My Executive Coach reminded me (regularly) throughout the steps of "Testing the Practice", "Practice Adoption" and "Yep, It Works" to commit, to try, to keep doing, to not quit. Positive images helps; so does praise. You do not coerce change. And there are those who will not. Work with the willing (always). The coach's best revenge: Observe those who resist change carefully; they will supply you with engaging stories of disaster .... or they will show you another way.

Learning Styles:
Know your customers’ learning style(s). Educational background and the way they work are important factors. We each have preferred learning styles:
Learn by doing: Active, influence through action, get things done, take risks.
Learn by feeling or talking: Concrete, learn from specific experiences, relating to people, talking out what they are learning
Learning by watching and reflecting: Reflective, observe before forming judgments, looking for the meaning
Learn by thinking and analysing: Abstract, logical, look for models, planning
Ask your clients how they like to learn. Tailor your communications and coaching to their learning style.

Fast Learning:
There is a model of change leadership that can be summarized as fast learning:
State what you are committed to,
Act,
Learn (Sense and Respond).
This is the leadership process for change and crisis management. People’s reactions to this learning process will depend on what learning style they are ingrained with. Learners who learn by doing will be supportive. Feeling learners will look for consultation. Learners who learn by reflecting will be terrified. Logical learners will look for patterns (there are none).

There is a caution about expecting your adult learners all to be willing to welcome the fast learning style. My analogy is diving off the high board for the first time:
Commit (climb the ladder)
Act (Dive)
Learn (How was the dive and what to change).

I am an engineer. I am analytical. My first experience diving off the high board was to carefully watch other divers and visualize the steps, the bounce, the rotation of the hips and the entry. Then I climbed the ladder and realized the fallacy of my model. Only a fool bent on self destruction hurls himself headfirst to the water 3 metres below. Only the embarrassment of retreating back and down the ladder sent me over the edge. So be cautious about expecting people all to welcome and behave as fast learners. To some it will feel like coercing change.

You are a coach. The people we work with are adult learners.