Get Out of the Training Business, my last column for Chief Learning Officer, called for the abolition of corporate training departments. Help me write the next installment.
Some instructors and instructional designers now see me as a job threat. They needn’t worry. Enlightened eLearning requires more people, not fewer.
Ten years ago, venture capital firms issued lengthy reports explaining why eLearning would take the world by storm. Their underlying economic argument was cost-cutting: less travel, fewer facilities, and no more salary expense for instructors. It was a classic industrial-age proposition: replace humans with machines. That first round of eLearning largely failed for precisely this reason: you can’t remove the humans from learning. You can, however, change their roles.
Companies should embrace network-supported informal learning because it works better, not because it reduces direct costs. People learn more efficiently at the time of need, in the context of work, from people in the know, and through virtual conversation. The organization receives improved performance on the job, continuous improvement, and increased innovation.
When my colleagues and I advocate cutting back on workshops and classes, we don’t suggest firing the instructors. Rather, we recommend redeploying them as connectors, wiki gardeners, internal publicists, news anchors, and performance consultants.
In their forthcoming book, Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities, Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John Smith describe the role of the community technology steward. Technology stewards are people with enough experience of the workings of a community to understand its technology needs, and enough experience with technology to take leadership in addressing those needs.
A steward’s initial task is to assess the vision of the community along such dimensions as conversations, projects, content, access to expertise, relationships, and meetings. The steward then selects the simplest technology to advance the community as both the technology and the organization mature. The steward continuously assesses the needs of the community and how well they are being met. Like all living things, communities eventually die; the steward assures that community artifacts are preserved.
Digitial Habitats also assigns these duties to the steward:
- bringing new members up to speed with the community’s technology
- identifying and spreading good technology practices
- supporting community experimentation
- assuring continuity across technology disruptions
- “keeping the lights on” (including back-ups, permissions, vendor payments, and domain registrations)
These tasks won’t happen by themselves. Furthermore, people throughout the organization will need to share the burden of helping everyone learn. Distributing learning throughout the social fabric of an organization will also require storytellers, mentors, bloggers, community elders, schedulers, and editors.
What other roles are required when you shift from instructor-led training to networked learning? Give me your thoughts and pointers.
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Jay, you talk about tech skills, but how about collaboration and communication skills? Another role is to help develop the culture and skills for sharing, communicating clearly and fairly, accepting others, etc. I reckon that without developing those skills, the communities won’t develop.
Also, collecting new learnings and transforming them into resources (whether courses, media files, what have you), to facilitate individual development along the path into the community.
The way communication has evolved has opened up a black hole between what had previously been three related but distinct categories, internal comms, knowledge management and training. I see the end result as all three of these positions largely being the same – tending to and encouraging the active peer-to-peer communication of staff within an organisation.
That said, there will continue to be a residue of the old roles – managing discussion of corporate issues, creating and maintaining the structure to support the new discussions or helping people be a part of the resulting conversation – after all, we are all happy with this technology, but there are still a lot of people out there who are less so.
I touched on this in a recent post myself (http://tinyurl.com/cpulfb) but I’m not sure the response from an IC specialist really showed that IC training has fundamentally changed its stance any more than training departments understand the substance of your message either, Jay.
Dan
Hey Jay,
I like this a lot: “…we recommend redeploying [trainers] as connectors, wiki gardeners, internal publicists, news anchors, and performance consultants.” Some other thoughts:
I’d add “Producers” which is similar to what Clark is driving at in his second paragraph. Just as with movie producers, Community Producers might manage the contributions of others, drawing out the best in them while also opting not to include contributions that aren’t as good. The end result is something new assembled from the best contributions from the crowd.
I’d also add “Moderators.” These could be moderators in the traditional sense – individuals who help ensure an environment of high trust through the enforcement of the TOS. But in workplace communities, they might also be SME-ish moderators who ensure accuracy and quality of content in similar ways to wiki gardeners but with a broader scope across all social media types. A third type of moderator might be one that seeds discussions to channel conversations in ways that might provide insight to the org.
You already have “news anchor,” but what about “reporters”? I think of a news anchor as someone who reports news created by others; I think of reporters as those who go out and find what is newsworthy. Particularly as Boomers retire, it’s going to be a useful skill to interview and capture unique expertise through the stories that define a company culture – the history of products or services, ESPN-like re-tellings of heroic moments or tragic defeats, biographies of important people, exposes on new ideas and unique expertise. And of course, this is a useful skill on it’s own even in the absence of Boomer departures.
Ok, one final one and then I’ll shut up — “Community Managers.” I’m not sure if this is different than Steward. A lot of how you describe a steward seems techy (as Clark mentioned too). I’m thinking more about someone who looks at community metrics and analytics, who seeds and directs community focus, and who basically works to ensure the health and growth of the community through programming, SME outreach, reward and competition models, reputation management and recognition programs etc…
One of the things that I think is interesting is that a lot of trainers and instructional designers have some these skills already as part of the larger skill required to train or design courseware. They also have one of the most critical skills anyone is going to need in this new world: the ability to transform technical, niche expertise into information and learning that can be consumed by the masses. I’m not sure there is a role associated to this per se, but this may be the most important skill we have to convey as we move toward a world of UGC.
I assume that at this stage we are only talking about a classroom environment where knowledge (and it’s application) and the ’simpler’ skills are transferred to the student.
What about real world training? In OJT who then demonstrates the complex application of multiple skills or contingency management? Who assesses which areas of the student are weakest and identifies a remedial plan? Who takes over when the workload increases beyond the student’s capability so as not to burden the rest of the team or risk operational viability through safety infringements or customer complaints?
Hey don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the concept and I endorse the social / distributed learning through the most effective tools. But, if we are going to do something with the redundant instructors, I say ‘it’s to the front lines’ for them.
P.S. You can tell who the OJT instructor in the room is
I have been talking about ‘repurposing’ trainers for years. As was best said by Marc Rosenberg way back at the turn of the century (and sorry but I’m paraphrasing): “Training needs to realize it’s in the performance improvement business, not the classroom business.”
Thanks to everyone for the helpful comments. I’ve factored them into the column for CLO.
The salient additions:
TogetherLearn’s Clark Quinn sees the need for a Learnscape Architect who nurtures the health of the learning network for collaboration, communication, and learning opportunities. More a leader than a technician, the Learnscape architect is the network champion who carries the vision, monitors metrics, promotes network participation, and encourages continuous experimentation. Harold Jarche notes that learning is moving from content delivery to connecting and communicating; his community manager is a well-connected node in many networks of importance to the organization.
Mzinga’s Dave Wilkins describes several production roles. Producers manage the contributions of others, drawing out the best in them while also opting not to include contributions that aren’t as good. The end result is something new assembled from the best contributions from the crowd. Moderators help ensure an environment of high trust by ensuring that people play by the rules. Expert moderators may vet the accuracy and clarity of information in their domain. Yet others moderators seed discussions to channel conversations in ways that might provide insight to the organization. Reporters and bloggers unearth what is newsworthy and document it for the community.
Traditional instructors and instructional designers are ideally suited to excel in these roles. They understand how adults learn and how to transform information into learning. It’s important for corporations to benefit from their learning people, not give them pink slips.
Pointers to a few other sources on this topic.
As a trainer in a sales organization, and web 2.0 “addict, one of my main activity is to “filter” the tons of information produced inside and outside the organization, select the right tools, media and ways to provide this information, check that the information is processed, into meaningful knowledge, that will be used to build skills, and measure how those skills impact individual and collective performance. The Moderator role described by Dave Wilkins is definitely one of my top activities.