Show Me the Money, Chapter 3 of Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance, begins:
INFORMAL LEARNING IS THE PATH to organizational capability, agility, and profits. It also respects workers and challenges them to be all they can be.
“Fine,” you say, “but my company is not going to go for any of this unless I can show them a solid return on investment.” Tell them about the examples of informal learning in this chapter….
Let me lend you a hand. I just posted the Show Me the Money chapter to the Informal Learning page. (Chapters 1 & 2 were already there.) It is free. No registration is required.
Informal Learning already goes on all over your organization, as confirmed in this study published by McKinsey last week:
In any professional setting, networks flourish spontaneously: human nature, including mutual self-interest, leads people to share ideas and work together even when no one requires them to do so.
As we studied these social and informal networks, we made a surprising discovery: how much information and knowledge flows through them and how little through official hierarchical and matrix structures.
The download (Chapter 3) describes a dozen cases where informal learning has generated a huge payback. I am not out to sell informal learning; you’ve already got it. Rather, I want to show you the profit inherent in nurturing informal learning instead of neglecting it.
It’s high time to legitimize team members’ learning from one another, to provide pull learning instead of push, and to cease trying to micro-manage what goes into employees’ heads. Continuing to jam formal training down the throats of resistant knowledge workers is like trying to teach a pig to sing. You’ll be frustrated by your lack of success, and the pig won’t care much for it either.
This is not rocket science. You can do it yourself. If you need outside assistance, my colleagues can give your team an adrenaline shot in a day or less.
Forgive the poor quality of the pdf of Chapter 3. I don’t have OCR software on this Mac and will re-post this when I do. Suggestion: zoom, zoom, zoom in until the font is gigantic; that makes it easier on the eyes.
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