Thursday 16 June 2011

My day out


On Tuesday I took myself off to Olympia, and tried not to be tempted by sneaking in to the Doctor Who exhibition. I have belonged to the Learning and Skills group for nearly 2 years now, and I find it is a real lifeline for my personal development and work life. I was reminded as I sat there at the end of the day, that whenever the question comes up at the end of my appraisal about any development needs, I always express adamantly that I do not need to go on any courses. In fact, attending a conference like this is better than a course. I get to share with my peers and be motivated and inspire, and developed. Far more powerful than any course for me. The Key message from the day is to listen to what people want and to know your audience.

Anyhow, here’s my summary, or sound bites if you will, of the key points I took away from the day, and I am sure there are many others!

A fantastic and engaging opening. Chris amused and challenged us.
  • The challenge of the digital age, is knowing where to find the answer.
  • The academic case study is dead!
  • Now you must be an authority on the process and not on the content
  • Old world solutions are still being used for new world solutions
  • We need to become leaders of finding the solution
  • Link learning development with organisation strategy and goals
  • End of the heroic leader – now it’s all about collaboration
  • Technology doesn’t build skills or change behaviour
Chris resonated with my own experience, as my job involves enabling volunteers to find their own solutions, and truly believe that it is only when everyone is involved in the process, that you get proper buy in and work toward team goals and solutions. In fact the last few weeks have been very enlightening for me personally, as I realise that my approach is very ‘of the moment’ and ‘forward thinking’. Maybe this is because, having spent ten years as a pub manager, that’s how I used to work. We had to be a team and work together, and the only way for people to learn was to experience it for themselves(even if I was in the office just in case!).

Cathy Moore then took us through her well developed approach to scenario building – which reminded me of the build you own adventure books Fighting Fantasy, that I used to spend hours reading as a kid. Cathy’s tip’s can be found on the Elearning Blueprint site. She can explain it much better than me! The key thing here is about making it real, and once again, making the learner the centre, making the decisions. Again this resonated with my own experiences, as I hate created case studies or scenarios. I was inspired to reconsider this and put some structure behind my content. Cathy also introduced us to TWINE, software that can help us to create the different routes through the story, and link them up in an online environment (Like build your own adventure)

The most exciting (only just) session of the day was Julie Wedgwood. Julie spoke with ease and excitement about her experience supporting business in developing User Generated Content.(UGC) There were lots of little nuggets to be had here, and lots of lessons to learn. My head was buzzing at the end, with lots of ideas about how to adopt the approach for my context.
Basically (and this is a poor paraphrase of a fantastic story) she was/is working with a client who adopted the UGC approach, however it was so successful it created too much information and content. So they decided to filter it so that people only got the important content, but this still didn’t work, as now they knew that the content they were getting was good content. So they have created a very successful content curation system, from which many lessons can be learned.

In the first instance they set up a listening service to hear what people were saying, they then appointed theme curators and a curated content framework.
The categories for curation included relevance, review time (how long it would take the reader), shelf life snippets (what’s in it for me). Regular round ups tell people what’s new, highlight testimonies from others or outstanding stories.Getting others involved makes it more relevant and based on real life experiences that are useful. It helps to create networks and true experienced based knowledge. By getting others to become content providers they become part of the process and involved in the cycle.
“Capturing knowledge in the business, for the business”.

The learning point for me here is the need to take one step at a time when open the floodgates. Think systematically. There are hints of the kind of ideas we already want to foster, so it’s a delight to learn some lessons. Better to be a lock than a dam!
The final session of the day, I naughtily swapped groups and went to the learning debate – What matters most in workplace L&D? Led by Charles Jennings, Andy Tedd and Donald Clark .
Some snippets……
  • Attitudes change behaviour
  • When a big wave comes you have 2 choices, run away or put on your swimming gear
  • Social media as a weapon of mass distraction
  • Learning needs to be built on real life needs
  • Learning needs practice, conversation and reflection – there is never enough time given to reflection
  • Corporate life forces a realistic approach and you need to convince senior management that what you want to do fits with their strategic direction – speak their language
  • Learning needs to engage with people in their intellectual and cultural context and level
  • Are old learning theories still relevant? Should we be looking for new, tangible theories based on scientific studies? (how the brain works, social and cultural theory)
The closing points…….
  • Less really is more
  • Make it as easy to learn as possible
  • Think about what else people are doing in the day
Also, if you have an hour to spare or want some background listening, listen to Donald’s speech ‘Don’t Lecture me’. I love this guy!