The most frequent questions I am asked by corporate Learning and Development managers who are seeking my services in skilling up their teams for social learning are:

• “Can you help our Learning Development team implement social learning into our current programs?”
• “Can you run a short social learning workshop/webinar/session/presentation for us?” and,
• “What’s the best social learning system out there? Is it Yammer? We have Yammer but don’t use it for learning. Any others?”

The performance consultant in me always wants to take a step back and inquire why they are asking these specific questions. I’m curious to find out what the actual performance problem is that they’ve identified and how they’ve come to the conclusion that social learning would solve it.  At worse, tack on social learning activities to content, courses and programs they already have.  In all of these cases, I kindly ask them some questions to ascertain the need and then explain that social learning is really another method or solution – we first need to find out what problem is rearing its ugly head that needs to be solved. Social learning may be the solution – but it could also be something else.

We need to define the problem first because from what I have experienced, simply “wanting social” hoping that people would start to collaborate, share knowledge and work together is fallacy.  It cuts a lot deeper than that.  You soon get into the murky waters of questions around organisational culture, leadership and pecking orders aka hierarchies.

You’re going to be touching nerves.

So while people ask me the above questions, what I have floating around in my head is…

• Maybe they’ve identified a gap in knowledge, skills and experience around social learning in their team (read: the “rationale, principles, tools, technology, apps, networks and platforms”)?
• Maybe they’d like to know how to effectively use the enterprise social and collaboration tools and networks already in place in their organisation?
• Maybe they want to help their internal business clients work smarter by enabling them to extract learning from the work through collaboration and knowledge sharing with other teams?
• Maybe they want to role model transparency, openness and accountability with some business processes they’ve identified to show Learning and Development’s true value to their business?
• Maybe they’ve identified some significant cost savings by allowing their staff to manage their own professional and personal development and are currently, hopefully (fingers crossed) putting a business case for the open use of public social networks across the company to IT?
• Maybe they’ve identified some synergies with the Marketing team around providing learning to a wider community such as their customers so presenting an entirely new business model?
• Maybe they’ve identified that they can streamline some business processes because their L&D team members are highly networked across their organisation and identify trends, patterns and possible new links for new relationships (new relationships = new ideas = new products and services to connect people to people?

In the majority of the cases, it’s none of the above.

There is simply a need to find out what social learning is about, undertones that it is yet one more delivery method to bolt on at the end of the current suite of workplace training programs –  and sometimes viewed with scepticism.

Don’t get me wrong. Based on my experience working with various businesses, I believe that this thinking comes from a position of uncertainty, ambiguity and a confusion over the true meaning of social learning and its impact to the current work practices of Learning and Development.  It’s also a massive mindset change as it impacts how we do business with our clients.  It questions how we’ve done business with them in the past and it and it spotlights the need for immediate change in how we work with them not tomorrow, but today.

Our raison d’etre is being questioned.

So one of my personal challenges with my clients is to, in some small way, influence a change in their mindsets in particularly this one:

Social Learning means alarm bells to some. Is it time for this?

Social Learning = Social Media = It Must Be About Facebook = I Don’t Like Facebook = We Have a Social Media Policy = And a Firewall! = Can We Trust Our People? Ergh…Unsure about this….Explain Again How This Helps Me, My Team and My Organisation?

ALARM BELLS.

Part of me thinks that I may be missing the mark or there could be ways I could be doing my own job in supporting L&D teams better.  I wish I was a compelling story teller, a charming orator or an influential writer to be able to evoke imagery around a narrative that shows the possibilities when it comes to making our work human again. Instead, I am practical, maybe even a tad boring, sometimes anxious but ever hopeful that learning and development teams realise that they are now in a great position to take charge and create a new destiny for themselves.  Dare I say it, even have a new and critical role to play in the new networked organisation?

So I plug away, explain and demonstrate in my own ways and examples that social learning is something that we have been doing all along but now we have to consider ways to extract learning from the work itself and use different networks and tools at our disposal to share what we’re learning and working on as well as be given the freedom to explore and create our own meaningful contexts.  It’s not about instruction anymore – nor control.

Learning and Development new role is to help the business help themselves.

Are they ready for the challenge?

Certainly I am to help them in any way to get rid of their alarm bells.

************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
 Are you interested to learn a new tip, tool or app to activate your learning?  

On the first of every month, I email out a newsletter with four tips, tools and ideas that get you learning and applying these to your own work, personal or professional development called Activate My Learning. This month it’s all about “Telling Stories”

Share what you create and learn from others on how they’ve used the tools through posting your creation on social networks using the hashtag #activatemylearning.  Subscribe here.