Today I embark on my own adventure in learning - blogging. Web 2.0, a topic all the rage for some time now, has huge impact on learning. Many learning professionals, myself included, are guilty of attending webinars and conferences to gather information on this phenomenon only to return to our "real lives" and continue our normal routines. Sometimes we become inspired, and we write business cases and story boards for the way our organizations could start using this technology. We become very excited at the prospect of blogs and wikis and forums (oh my!). Finally, proposal in hand we are asked by the business owner, "How will this increase profits? How will you know they've learned anything? Will they be certified in anything? What's the ROI on all this technology?" Deflated we return to our work spaces and wonder, how do you convince the business that informal learning is a sound investment, especially in times like these?
For those interested, I have a few thoughts on the way you begin to convince your clients, the business owners, that the collaborative tools of this generation are more effective, more cost-efficient, and easier to use and implement.
1. People already have the knowledge you need. There are already people in the organization performing at a high level. Learning Managers must document how high performers create success and develop ways to package them into consumable/deliverable chunks. Whenever possible, involve the experts: it lends credibility to the outcome. Find out what they know and, more important, what they need to know to be successful. Often there is a large gap between what they know and what they need to know to be successful. Help the experts hone down the knowledge and required skills to reach maximum performance. The icing on the cake: once the experts are identified you have a learning advisory board, the beginnings of a succession plan and a collection of mentors for new people in the organization.
2. You probably already have the resources in-house. Most organizations have some type of intranet that supports document sharing and communication. Everyone these days has a network and at least one or two "IT guys" keeping the wheels on the tech of the organization. For a bit of web server space you can set up a wiki or a blog (like this one). Chances are, your tech people can even build a web page that you can edit yourself to create learning news of the week and keep track of discussion threads on various business topics. If you've never heard of a wiki, check out wikipedia.org. The idea is simple, everyone who views the page can add content or edit it. Blogs can be powerful tools to have leaders in the organization communicate with the lines of business. Not only that, the lines of business can communicate back up the chain and provide feedback.
3. You have to get over the idea that you have all the answers. In short, see #1. Wikis, blogs, discussion threads and all the other ways to post user generated content, are designed to be iterative. Will bad info make its way onto your boards? Probably. The role of the Learning Manager becomes even more critical in filtering out the distracting information and educating people on how to use the tools to greatest advantage. The Learning Manager should partner with the business experts to validate the best practices shared in the wiki. She should make sure that forum topics are appropriately placed and screened. She should make sure that blog posts are well archived and searcheable. She must communicate to the organization the wealth of information that exists and how users obtain it.
In our current economy, we need the best people, doing the best work, with the best information, and the best tools. We have to set aside our fear that "someone else may know how to do the job better than me" and start sharing information and making it available, all the time. Competition is too fierce to wait for a class, online or instructor-led. By providing the information in easy to use chunks, easily read from a computer, or better yet, a mobile device, users can access learning all the time. And once they get a taste of learning in that way, they'll want it more and more.
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