The eLearning Management Online Symposium — eLearning Guild — October 2005
Creating an e-Learning Culture by Looking Inward
Marcia L. Conner 1075Old Greenville Road, Staunton, VA24401 540-885-5111
The eLearning Management Online Symposium — eLearning Guild — October 2005
DEFINITIONS /
A culture is the sum of the distinctive behaviors, intentions, and values that people develop over time to make sense of the world. It includes the shared history, expectations, written and unwritten rules, values, relationships, and customs that affect everyone’s performance.
A learningculture is a self-sustaining organizational culture that produces more energy than it consumes. It constantly gets better at getting better because leaders and employees are learning and changing, modeling their willingness to adapt and adopt with one another in all situations.
An e-learningculture is a learning culture where leaders at all levels are enthusiastically engaging one another through available technologies to learn and prosper in an increasingly turbulent world.
/
Linkto More
All session links and slides online:Organizational Culture and Leadership.Edgar H. Schein (3rd ed. Jossey-Bass, 2004) ISBN 0787975974
Summary:
Various learning culture-related resources
theLearningMoment.net: Turning silos of knowledge into fields of learning.
Learning in the New Economy Magazine
Learn More Now: 10 Simple Steps to Learning Better, Smarter, and Faster. Marcia L. Conner. (John Wiley & Sons, February 2004) ISBN 0471273902.
Creating a Learning Culture: Strategy, Technology, and Practice. Marcia L. Conner & James G. Clawson, editors. (CambridgeUniversity Press, Sept 2004) ISBN 521537177.
Marcia L. Conner 1075Old Greenville Road, Staunton, VA24401 540-885-5111
The eLearning Management Online Symposium — eLearning Guild — October 2005
Develop a Value for Learning
Picture a company cafeteria with overhead projectors, pads of paper, and pencils on all the tables. Is this the sign of an organization in desperate need of more conference rooms? No, it's the cafeteria at Siemens Power Transmission and Distribution, designed by senior managers to help employees capture what they learn during casual conversations and impromptu knowledge-sharing sessions.
Now picture a meeting during which everyone describes the biggest mistakes they’ve made during the past year. Is this some kind of support group? Sort of: it’s a gathering of WD-40 Company’s global brand managers, who take the opportunity to share their “learning moments,” the times when they mess up and learn something as a result.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 70% of learning experiences in the workplace are like the examples above: informal or accidental, not structured or sponsored by an employer or a school. This kind of learning is pervasive, continuous, and profoundly social. It happens wherever people do their work: on a shop floor, around a conference table, on site with customers, or in a laboratory.
Informal learning can support the day-in and day-out culture building and skills development needed in an economy fueled by distinctive information and sparkling innovations. What we learn informally can move ideas through the organization and help everyone in it create something new.
Despite such a noble responsibility, informal learning receives little attention. Perhaps that’s because it appears to be the way it sounds: ad hoc, unplanned, and unmanageable. Although you cannot usually schedule informal learning, you can encourage it in the people around you. It might sound paradoxical, but you can create an organization-wide “discipline” of informal learning without destroying its spontaneity. Here are some steps to get you started.
Acknowledge It in You. Ask yourself where and when your most valuable learning takes place. Is it usually at a formal event or might it be during a walk around the block, a friendly argument with colleagues, or a hard look in the mirror? Become mindful of every impromptu opportunity. The next time you share war stories with acquaintances, notice that you’re probably learning what to try the next time you’re in their situation. Announce to the organization that you’re learning from many means and are dedicated to creating a culture in which everyone learns every day. Challenge colleagues who tell you that you’ve something to learn by asking, “How can I learn it now?”
Uncover It Around You. Gartner Research estimates that the typical knowledge worker spends more than 25% of his or her time in face-to-face encounters. For a CEO, the figure reaches 95%. When people interact, the question isn’t, “Is informal learning going on?” but “About what?” Ask people what they discovered today that would enable the company to outshine its competitors tomorrow. Invite them to share lessons they’d like everyone to learn. Get a sense of where and when informal learning happens. Wander down hallways and listen. Get involved in conversations, whether with direct reports or with colleagues you barely know.
Liberate It in Others. People are natural learners—asking, observing, searching, speculating, and experimenting all the time—but many adults have little confidence in their learning abilities. Circulate learning-style assessments to help people understand their strengths and ask the training department to offer follow-up discussions on learning techniques. Ask the research group to publish search tips and librarians to help people find what they need.
Access It Wherever You Can. Find opportunities to disseminate the information already in your organization. If you use a knowledge base, ask someone to edit materials and find new items to include. If you have an intranet, establish guidelines about how to represent information and how to link it so that people can find it. Encourage people to publish the department job aids and cheat sheets they create for themselves. Assemble frequently asked question lists and make them available in a format that everyone can add to and edit.
Promote It with New Practices. Find and encourage new ways and times for people to talk about the work they share. Post a whiteboard near the water cooler, in the stairwells, and by the printer or copy machine so that people can capture conversations where they hold them. Provide a guide to informal learning opportunities as part of your everyday meetings and new-staff orientations. Create ten-minute overlaps between shifts so that people can get to know one another. Encourage people to send instant messages to colleagues across the enterprise or those they can learn from around the globe.
Follow Its Influence. Informal learning may be difficult to quantify, but you can qualify it. Consider unconventional methods, such as job-readiness reviews and peer appraisals, to reveal what’s being learned. Track informal learning by keeping individual and departmental logs that answer questions such as: What have you learned today? Who helped you? How will you apply what you learned? Ask managers to report regularly not only on business metrics but also on what their groups have discovered.
Celebrate Its Pervasiveness. Talk about the ongoing nature of informal learning and the improvements the organization has made as a result. Honor success by citing examples of learning from the executive suite to the manufacturing floor. Don’t change the essence of informal learning by trying to codify too much, though. Some people prefer the loose nature of their contributions and should have the opportunity to decide how much attention and praise they receive.
To elicit the potential of informal learning, find out what learning lurks on your walls and in your halls right now. In addition to helping people find innovative new ways of working, informal learning offers increased confidence and motivation, a feeling of security, personal growth, a sense of community, and rewarding relationships.
------
Marcia L. Conner is managing director of Ageless Learner and a fellow of the Batten Institute at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia. She authored Learn More Now (John Wiley & Sons, 2004) and co-authored, with James G. Clawson, Creating a Learning Culture (CambridgeUniversity Press, 2004)
.
Marcia L. Conner 1075Old Greenville Road, Staunton, VA24401 540-885-5111
The eLearning Management Online Symposium — eLearning Guild — October 2005
Learning Culture Self-Audit
Pro-Learning Culture
/1–5
/Anti-Learning Culture
/1–5
People at all levels ask questions and share stories about successes, failures, and what they have learned. / Managers share information on a need-to-know basis. People keep secrets and don’t describe how events really happened.Everyone creates, keeps, and propagates stories of individuals who have improved their own processes. / Everyone believes they know what to do, and they proceed on that assumption.
People take at least some time to reflect on what has happened and what may happen. / Little time or attention is given to understanding lessons learned from projects.
People are treated as complex individuals. / People are treated like objects or resources without attention to their individuality.
Managers encourage continuous experimentation. / Employees proceed with work only when they feel certain of the outcome.
People are hired and promoted on the basis of their capacity for learning and adapting to new situations. / People are hired and promoted on the basis of their technical expertise as demonstrated by credentials.
Performance reviews include and pay attention to what people have learned. / Performance reviews focus almost exclusively on what people have done.
Senior managers participate in training programs designed for new or high-potential employees. / Senior managers appear only to “kick off” management training programs.
Senior managers are willing to explore their underlying values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations. / Senior managers are defensive and unwilling to explore their underlying values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations.
Conversations in management meetings constantly explore the values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations underlying proposals and problems. / Conversations tend to move quickly to blaming and scapegoating with little attention to the process that led to a problem or how to avoid it in the future.
Customer feedback is solicited, actively examined, and included in the next operational or planning cycle. / Customer feedback is not solicited and is often ignored when it comes in over the transom.
Managers presume that energy comes in large part from learning and growing. / Managers presume that energy comes from “corporate success,” meaning profits and senior management bonuses.
Managers think about their learning quotient, that is, their interest in and capacity for learning new things, and the learning quotient of their employees. / Managers think that they know all they need to know and that their employees do not have the capacity to learn much.
Total for pro-learning culture / Total for anti-learning culture
This assessment appears in the Afterword of Creating a Learning Culture: Strategy, Practice, and Technology by Marcia L. Conner and James G. Clawson (Cambridge, 2004) and online at
The Imaginal Cell Storyf
The caterpillar’s new cells are called imaginal cells. They resonate at a different frequency. They are so totally different from the caterpillar cells that his immune system thinks they are enemies...and gobbles them up — Chomp! Gulp!
But these new imaginal cells continue to appear. More and more of them! Pretty soon, the caterpillar’s immune system cannot destroy them fast enough. More and more of the imaginal cells survive. And then an amazing thing happens!
The little tiny lonely imaginal cells start to clump together, into friendly little groups. They all resonate together at the same frequency, passing information from one to another. Then, after a while, another amazing thing happens!
The clumps of imaginal cells start to cluster together!...A long string of clumping and clustering imaginal cell, all resonating at the same frequency, all passing information from one to another there inside the chrysalis. A wave of Good News travels throughout the system — Lurches and heaves...but not yet a butterfly.
Then at some point, the entire long string of imaginal cells suddenly realizes all together that it is Something Different from the caterpillar. Something New! Something Wonderful!....and in that realization is the shout of the birth of the butterfly! Happy Birthday Butterfly!
Since the butterfly now knows that it is a butterfly, the little tiny imaginal cells no longer have to do all those things individual cells must do. Now they are part of a multi-celled organism — a family who can share the work.
Each new butterfly cell can take on a different job. There is something for everyone to do. And everyone is important. And each cell begins to do just that very thing it is most drawn to do. And every other cell encourages it to do just that. A great way to organize a butterfly!
From Norie Huddle’s children’s book Butterfly.
Marcia L. Conner 1075Old Greenville Road, Staunton, VA24401 540-885-5111