Hands Off: Facilitating Informal Learning

Check out Hands Off: Facilitating Informal Learning by Agatha Gilmore in the current issue of CLO. Self-serving excerpts:

Secrets to Leveraging Informal Learning
The first and perhaps most important step in leveraging informal learning is creating a collaborative culture within the company, Cross said.

“Corporations will not survive if they keep expecting to be able to do things to their people rather than inspire their people to do things,” he said. “It’s got to be a cultural change.”

Cross gave an anecdotal example of how corporate culture influences the quantity and quality of informal learning that occurs: “I’m talking to a bunch of people at [a large computer company], and we’re in an area that’s close to [the CEO’s] office. The cubicles are really small because people are fighting for real estate to be close to the center of power,” he explained.

“And I’m saying, ‘Look, a lot of learning can happen if you just let people have conversations. All you’ve got to do is rip out a third of these cubicles and put in sofas and espresso machines and areas that are inviting for people to meet in, and they will start meeting and talking. And they’re not going to talk about the ball scores — they’re going to talk about the problems they have at [work].’”

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“The way that [formal] training and learning take place is not fast enough for today’s world, where product releases and things like that are happening by the day instead of by the year,” Cross said. “So how else but informal learning are people going to learn about this stuff?”

He pointed to Intel as an example. Not long ago, a learning professional in the organization downloaded free wiki software and developed a site for employees to post stories, anecdotes and other tidbits. It soon became the unofficial place to go to for enterprise-wide information, Cross said.

“All of a sudden, people said, ‘Hold it, this is the only place you can go where it’s Intel-wide. Everybody can get to it,’” he said.

The wiki even replaced knowledge management systems that cost millions of dollars, Cross said. [Here's a short video interview with the fellow at Intel who set this up.]

“People create value by essentially improvising services or by innovating, figuring out new ways to do stuff,” he said. “Now more than ever we need people who can think for themselves, figure it out and take action — not go looking in the rulebook somewhere — because the rules change so fast now. You’ve got to learn how to learn for yourself if you’re going to keep your head above water.”