The Great eLearning Research Panel

November 12th, 2008 | general

The Great eLearning Research Panel, Session 101 here at DevLearn

Kevin Oakes, Institute for Corporate Productivity
Claire Schooley, Forrester Research
Chris Howard, Bersin & Associates
Kevin Martin, Aberdeen Group
Will Thalheimer, Work-Learning Research

Will Thalheimer

Kevin Marks

Chris Howard

Chaire Schooley

Kevin Oakes

My observations will appear in red.

WT: Steve Wexler has left the post of director of research for the Guild.
KO: The Institute for Corporate Productivity was born in the sixties, founded by George Odiorne and Rensis Likert.
CS: Claire, describing Forrester’s independence, says they don’t do white papers for clients.
CH: Chris Howard is next, describing Bersin & Associates as an amalgam of Kevin’s and Claire’s approaches. (Bersin does write white papers for clients. And endorsements. But I don’t consider this a taint on Josh’s reputation.)
KM: Kevin Martin has done Human Capital Management for Aberdeen since before it was called eLearning.

What are the top trends?

CH: Learning 2.0. Get informal out sooner, get people working with one another. It addresses the informal and on-the-job.
CS: It’s collaborative. It’s also putting the learner in charge.
KM: Learning finally come to the point where learning is the strategic driver. Talent management. This is the year when Learning and Performance Management converge.
KO: 86% companies more likely to use 2.0 than they do today. 41% respondents using informal learning to a high extent. Learning is getting left behind as talent management becomes the new focus.

I had to jump into the conversation. 41%??? Every company has informal learning going on. Some are better at it than others. KO said the 41% referred to companies that support informal learning with technology.

CH: Talent management and learning 2.0 are antithetical. Talent is organized; learning 2.0 is chaotic.

Learning 2.0

KO: Trust is a big barrier. Culture of knowledge hoarding retards it. Silos. Time issues.
CH: Culture is the big issue. Sharing information is the key.
KM: Start small, go to CEO.
CS: (Seconded by others). It must be top down.

Hold it, folks. Web 2.0 is about empowerment, bottom-up, start small and grow, and beta-beta-beta. While it’s great to have the backing of senior management, it’s no longer an imperative. Intelpedia became a success before managers ever heard of it.

The imploding economy
Auto sales in the 3rd quarter off 32%. Yuck.

CH: Training budgets already down.
CS: Still a lot to do with technology. People getting creative about use.
KM: Economic crisis pushing learning agenda. Lower retirement rates in store. Focus on improving productivity.
KO: 99% of the companies cut training in economic downturns.

Talent management: leaving training function behind?

CS: Learning and talent management are peas in a pod.
CH: Makes learning more important, not less.
KO: “About us” descriptions of LMS vendors — all of them say they’re into talent management. Talent function and learning functions fight one another for scarce corporate resources. Innovation is hot, hot, hot.
KM: Definition of quality hire: new employee retention, performance reviews, informal reviews, time to productivity.

Measurement

KO: Top priority, but using business measures
CH: Not a top priority
WT: Only 17% happy with their measurement process now
KM: They are not doing it…

What proportion of a learning professional’s time should be devoted to informal learning?

Uh, do people not understand what this means?

Let me spell out what I think is at work here:

KO: Informal learning good for process, not for things like leadership.

Argh. Leadership is best learned experientially and informally, is it not? Anyone have an example of a leadership course that’s worth its salt? At Crotonville, they tout the informal sessions at the big house as the secret sauce.

What should elearning professionals be doing differently?

CH: Recognize that things are changing all the time.
CS: You have to listen to the employees today, to understand their needs. What are their interests?
KO: To get funding, you must clue in senior management to what problems you are solving.
KM: Be business problem finders as well as solvers. Use business metrics and review against performance. Set up a process for gap identification and analysis. Web 2.0 is a learning style thing, not a generational thing.

0 comments ↓

#1 Kevin Oakes on 11.12.08 at 6:35 pm

Jay, I love it when you parse words from a panel! First, thanks for attending and blogging – it was good to see you. However, let me defend the “not for things like leadership” comment you said “Argh” to. The question (I think) was where is informal learning best and what isn’t it great for. OF COURSE a lot of great leadership learning happens around the water cooler, at the bar, in any informal situation…but the reason they have Crotonville at GE is to start their high potential leaders off with formal learning taught by senior executives. You wouldn’t say to anyone looking for leadership skills “oh, just pick it up informally here and there” – I was trying to point out that for anyone looking to begin formalizing informal learning – according to our research – the first place to look is areas helping employees navigate the company. The majority of companies we’ve surveyed say they use informal learning to cut across political lines, figure out how the “real” work gets done, who to go to, etc.; stuff you would never learn in a class. You can get a lot of leadership learning done informally, but it probably wouldn’t be the first place I would counsel someone new to this (which is what I viewed the person who asked the question) to start and try to get funding for it. Is that clearer?

#2 Jay Cross on 11.12.08 at 10:34 pm

Kevin, as has usually been the case over the dozen or more years we’ve talked about this stuff, we agree on the big picture entirely. However, we diverge on what constitutes informality. In my book, informal doesn’t mean haphazard; it might include, for example, mentoring, coaching, selective job rotation, and so forth. These can be planned in advance and monitored. For learning to qualify as formal, however, it would probably include a set curriculum, a predetermined timeframe, and some sort of measure of accomplishment. Leadership development requires elements from both the formal and informal sides.

In my experience, which admittedly amounts to a mere sliver of the broad range of companies you talk with, informal learning is sort of like breathing. You only become aware that you’ve been doing it when you stop.

#3 Kevin Oakes on 11.13.08 at 8:36 am

Thanks Jay. I don’t think we diverge at all; we’ve done a great deal of research on coaching and mentoring which I will send to you (Marshall Goldsmith is our Chairman Emeritus so coaching is fairly intertwined in our thinking). As I stated on the panel, I think many people would rather learn informally from internal experts – I used a sales example – than in a formal setting. The problem for many in the learning group though is how to organize / automate / develop a program for informal learning – just saying “you already do it and it’s like breathing” is fine (and I don’t know how you’d ever stop it – it happens constantly whether you like it or not) but what that audience was looking for were ways in which they could embrace it more, and foster it. Hopefully some pick up a copy of your book in order to get ideas.

#4 Chris Howard on 11.13.08 at 9:45 pm

Hi Jay,

While I agree that senior manament approval is not necessary for organizations to begin using some aspects of “Learning 2.0″ as we are calling it (just like it’s not necessary to get senior managment approval to ask your co-worker how a process works), there are cultural shifts that need to happen in many organizations to make it widely adopted.

Technology companies (to cite your example) are always ahead of the curve in adopting new ways of learning. There are thousands of other organizations, however, that don’t have the culture needed to encourage workers to share what they know.

#5 Josh Bersin on 11.14.08 at 7:20 am

Jay, thanks for doing this. I’d add a few comments. Even though “informal learning” goes on all over companies, most training professionals do not know what to do yet, only about 18% of the people we surveyed (and these are more advanced companies) feel they have “mastered” collaborative learning, and more than 56% havent really started.

Its a real problem of change in the role of L&D. Instead of being a “teacher” we have to think of ourselves as “facilitators” and “information architects.” New disciplines and new role in organizations.

On Leadership Development, I’d add that every single successful leadership development program we’ve looked at (and we focus in this area) has many highly collaborative components. Part of being a “leader” is having a network of other leaders to work with.

Thanks again for doing this.

#6 Learning Pulse | Xyleme Learning Blog on 11.18.08 at 2:20 am