Harold Jarche writes an interesting posting about his experiences in helping people develop personal knowledge management systems. As he observed, only 1% of participants actually adopted the tools he presents in his workshops. He concludes that the best path is to start with one tool and then incorporate more tools as the person’s comfort level rises. This is also what I encourage my audience to do when I present on personal knowledge management in higher education.

This reminded me of an earlier blog posting about knowledge ecologies. As Nardi and O’Day write in Information Ecologies:

“Healthy information ecologies are characterized by technology use in a social matrix consisting of services, norms, and conventions. These establish appropriate usage, core values, support, and a growth path for users that become more competent with technology over time if they so choose. These social practices are an important element of diversity in an information ecology, providing nut just the actual technologies themselves, but ways to use them.”
(p. 67).

Personal knowledge management systems are an intimate form of knowledge ecologies but the growth path is the same. Users have to establish their own norms and conventions to shape the tools and, in turn, the tools shape the users. Thus, it makes more sense to start with one tool and allow the personal knowledge management system to grow and evolve with the user. Merely shoving someone else’s knowledge ecology at another person is akin to shoving one ecosystem into another environment (such as throwing a rain forest into the middle of the Sahara). That is why I present so many options for tools because I want to encourage participants to find one or two foundational tools that will be the keystone species for their knowledge ecologies.

I finally received my invitation for the Beta test of Twine which promises to be the major web app for the Semantic Web. I especially like the feature of having items recommended to me based on my browsing habits but (and I fully realize this is a Beta) there is a lot of work still needed to make the interface work better. For example, their Basic Bookmarklet tool just doesn’t work while the Advanced Bookmarklet seems to hang. I have created my first Twine around mental models and I am anxious to see what recommendations Twine comes up with.

It took me some time to find this book because it’s Library of Congress classification has it shelved in Military Affairs when it is really about building a highly-effective corporate university. Whatever it takes, do read Leading a Learning Revolution by Anderson, Hardy, and Lesson because it is the best book I have seen on building a training organization.

As the authors write, the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) started off as the typical training department in the Department of Defense. The DAU had great teachers, committed staff, and followed the standard practices for the training industry. It was well-suited for its role as the traditional 20th Century training department.

But, the new president (Frank Anderson) wanted to transform DAU as a key component of the “Total Learning Environment” which uses the new technologies to create on-demand training that is in alignment with the DOD’s strategic goals.

Here are the key takeaways that I found most useful:

1) Chapter Two: Organizational Alignment – “Alignment is the single most important action a learning enterprise should take to optimize performance” (p. 21). The authors describe a great process for doing just this.

2) Chapter Five: Establish A Learning Architecture – Starting with an actual idea on a napkin, the authors tell the story of how they created the “Performance Learning Model” which guided the transformation of the DAU. Surrounded by a ring of “Continuous Learning”, each level of training is reinforced by job experience leading up to a capstone class. After the structured training is over, communities of practice and “Performance Support” reinforce the training and make it stick.

And for anyone who has to lead a transformation project can appreciate the pain of the three years it took to make the transformation work. Of course there was incredible resistance against the new changes (up to a few folks filing formal grievances) but, as the results proved, the effort was worth it. The most valuable lesson here: “It’s the people, not the technology, that determine the success of a twenty-first-century learning organization. That may be a surprise, but it’s true.”

3) “New Technology + Old Organization = Costly Old Organization”

4) Chapter Six: Develop A Smart Evaluation Strategy – It’s not about ROI; it’s about “progress toward the vision and the mission execution.”

There is a lot more in this book from building a good reporting system to the importance of delivering training in different formats. If you are planning on building or reinventing your training department, I would use DAU as the template for the project.

Thanks to Presentation Zen for the pointer to this great book and site.  Twelve simple rules on making the brain work more effectively.  What is especially to educators are Rules 4, 9, and 10 which concern grabbing attention, using multiple senses, and realizing that vision is the dominant sense.  Great guidelines for developing a presentation.

The May 2008 issue of T+D has a provocative article by David H. Maister where he argues that “the majority of business training - by me and everyone else - is a waste of money and time because only a microscopic fraction of training is ever put into practice with the hoped-for benefits obtained.” After reading that sentence, I feared that Maister was going to extol the “virtues” of informal learning but, luckily, he takes the more effective approach of embedding training in the larger issue of change. As he writes, “The correct approach to training is to sit top management down and ask, ‘What are people not doing that we want them to be doing? And do we really know why they aren’t doing it?’” He then explains that it is top management’s responsibility to support and encourage the newly-desired behaviors and to change the measurement systems to reward the new behaviors.

This sounds a lot like Wick, Pollock, Jefferson, and Flanagan’s Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning which also encourages a broader view of training and how it fits in with the organization’s goals.  Using the 6-D method, the trainer first starts with the business outcomes of the training and links that to the objectives of the formal training.  Wick, et al even have an entire system of follow-through management that reinforces the effects of training which corresponds with Maister’s arguments on how to more effectively set-up the training environment.

This is why I feel that much of the criticism against structured training is misleading.  Of course, you can’t expect too much success from a single training event when you don’t support or encourage the person’s acquisition of new skills and knowledge.  I remember taking a two-week course in PowerBuilder and then, when I was back at my desk, being handed a copy of Visual Basic and told to work with that.  Do I remember much of PowerBuilder let alone even knowing how to program in it?  Of course training is useless (structured or unstructured) if there is no reinforcement or encouragement of the new behaviors.  But that is an issue with the organization’s actual purpose in having the training rather than an issue with the form of training.

I picked up two training classes and a three-week course for May so I’ve been much busier than I thought I would be. Currently reading Leading a Learning Revolution: The Story Behind Defense Acquisition University’s Reinvention of Training which I will review in the next day or two.