Best Buy, a renown electronics retailer perhaps better known for its khaki pants and blue shirt dress code, could be viewed analagously with that of an evolved corporate learning structure.

Imagine that you’re at one of their corporate stores. What do you see when you enter the store?

There she/he is, the greeter: “Hello sir, how are you today?”

As you pass the greeter in this vivid, brightly lit and humming environment there are a number of learning sherpas … the guides on the side not pestering you to buy something, rather, able and available when you require assistance. There are no commissions at Best Buy to make a sale. Employees are there, quite literally, to help you as necessary.

Sure, it’s a formal environment with walls, electricity and so on, but it is not a dogmatic, force-fed curriculum. Those learning sherpas do not prescribe the pedagogy. They guide your meandering requirements, your personal learning environment wishes, your own path on an as-needed basis.

In the corporate learning space, why can’t our formal learning requirements (and there will always be formal learning requirements) be more like the Best Buy store? Why can’t it be simple, open, flexible and built on user choice?

Now, picture yourself at an airport, scurrying down the powered walkways to make it on time to your gate. If you’re at Charles de Gaulle airport, start praying. Those walkways are debatable at best.

Peer to the right, against the wall. What do you see?

That’s right, it’s a Best Buy Express kiosk. It’s at this kiosk where you can purchase and thus pick up electronics at your convenience. Of course the selection is refined from that of the big blue shirt nation stores, but aren’t these bite-sized chunks made available in a convenient format for times when you need it most? For example, at an airport?

Why doesn’t the corporate learning sector think like this? Why can’t it introduce the concept of bite-sized learning chunks? Why can’t it grasp the notion that we all would like to learn at the speed of need? Couldn’t it introduce a concept like Best Buy Express kiosks (metaphorically of course) into the corporate learning space? Isn’t this a nice informal option?

Our last example, as you might suspect, has us venturing over to BestBuy.com.

It’s at this site where I can peruse the entire catalogue of Best Buy products, but I’m able to do so at my own pace, at my own interest level, and in whatever order I choose. Even more important is that I now can utilize knowledge and expertise from my colleagues (in this case, the Best Buy crowd) to gauge whether they like the product through comments and rankings.

Want more?

Through the magic of repeat shopping and business intelligence within BestBuy.com, you are provided with recommendations on products you might be interested to purchase. Bought that 80 inch SHARP TV last week? Sweet screen, but did you forget the HDMI cable to connect your Blu-Ray player to the fancy new monster TV that your neighbours are already complaining about? Don’t worry, the site will advise you on this important component. The next time you’re online at the site, it might recommend a new sound system to accompany your massive LED light factory where those same neighbours have now lodged a formal complaint at City Hall.

The site is an example of social learning. Thus, why aren’t more corporate learning functions taking charge of their own fate by employing this type of social learning strategy? It boggles my mind to be honest. There are too many goalies in the corporate learning space. There need to be more center forwards trying to score goals.

In summary, if you were to think about Best Buy and compare its physical stores, its kiosks and its website to the corporate learning function, you might agree with me. It’s time for everyone in the learning space to start wearing khaki pants and blue shirts and echo the formal, informal and social construct of Best Buy.

Perhaps it’s simply another way of looking at the Connected Learning model.

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The higher education online learning gloves are now officially off.

Let’s first recap the dizzying pace of change, announcements and launches that have occurred since the Fall of 2011 between Udacity, Coursera, MITx and the latest free-learning darling, edX.

• October 10 – Official launch of Introduction to AI (origin of Udacity) as well as Introduction to Databases and Machine Learning (origin of Coursera)
• December 19 - MITx is announced 
• January 1 – Charles West Ventures invests $5m into Udacity (or is it Know Labs?)
• January 23 – Professor Thrun officially announces Udacity thus breaking away from Stanford
• February 20 – First official Udacity courses launch - CS 101: Building a Search Engine and CS 373: Programming a Robotic Car
• March 5 – MITx launches first course 6.002x (Circuits and Electronics)
• April 18 – Coursera (founded by Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng) announces $16m in funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and New Enterprise Associates
• April 18 – Coursera announces university partnerships with Princeton University, University of Michigan and University of Pennsylvania (yes, the same day)
• April 23 – First official Coursera courses launch 
• May 2 - MIT and Harvard announce edX, a $60m venture between the two Boston area universities with the first courses set to launch in the Fall of 2012

It was a mere three months ago in February when I questioned whether Udacity and Coursera were in fact reforming higher education. (Udacity even has a new funky logo since last February)

Arguably they already have, based not only on the launch of edX in the academic vertical but continued (perhaps competitive?) innovations occurring in the corporate learning space from Skillsoft, Pearson and Saba among others. And let’s not forget other great ideas like 3D GameLabs at Boise State University or of course Khan Academy and the recently launched TED-Ed or Google’s Search Education.

But let’s focus our attention on edX, MITx, Udacity and Coursera.

Some of you may be thinking this is reminiscent of the 1990′s West Coast versus East Coast rapper wars with a stand-off between Silicon Valley and Boston-based universities. Thankfully the recent additions of Princeton, uPenn and uMich to Coursera have alleviated that theory. This is not a Stanford vs. Boston Ivy League coastal duel.

So what is going on?

Money.

That’s not a bad thing, but I believe it is about money. How so?

Collectively, we know that $81 million dollars has been invested in the three (or is it four MITx?) fledgling online entities thus far. Thrun even put $200k of his own money additionally into Udacity. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the new Academic partners in Coursera have also funded the endeavour, perhaps behind the scenes.

Some of that money is being invested by venture capital firms. Unless the purpose of a VC has changed and pigs can now fly, it reasons to stand these funding partners have their eye on a bigger prize downstream. When Harvard realized the Bruins were out of the Stanley Cup playoffs, they decided to get cozy with MIT and their MITx initiative. With each institution investing $30m into the pot (when MITx launched a mere 6 months ago) shows you how much potential new money is at stake. This is a classic example of investing for the long term by all stakeholders from each of the projects.

Harold Jarche’s observation with me over Twitter was a classic Jarche-ism. Data; those hundreds of thousands of people enrolling into courses, for free, are submitting an awful lot of data, and perhaps it’s the data that can be sold at a later date by the partners. Think about companies who may be keenly interested in analyzing the online studying behaviours of people. It’s those learners who are receiving a free course that will be (unknowingly?) providing data points to companies in search of trends and the like.

There is the possibility that edX and Coursera in particular are using these non-credentialed courses as loss leaders. (see the FAQ of edX – no Harvard or MIT recognition comes with a completed course nor are any credits issued) If the courses are free, and they lead to nothing more than a certificate of completion (affiliated by no university whatsoever) students may want an actual official degree or designation from one of the Academic institutions at some point for their efforts. Do you really think Harvard is simply going to give away their crest for free? MIT? Princeton? Highly unlikely. I see these projects as opportunities to upsell fee-based programs and degrees that otherwise might not have occurred due to the lack of a sales channel.

Or possibly the online free courses can add up to an official credential at some point, but the student would have to purchase the actual articulation. For example, a student completes 120 articulated credits via Coursera over a 6-year period, and she wants a degree now to show for her efforts. Through the magic of the partnerships, the student can be provided the degree for a fee. Brilliant if you think about it. What originally was free could now be a revenue stream for the academic institutions and both parties are happy.

This approach might even allow for the mash-up of a degree. If I’d like a Bachelor’s Degree from Princeton in the Humanities, perhaps I can come up with my own choose-your-own-adventure curriculum via Coursera and after the articulation has been completed (and I pay the fee) … voila I’m a Princeton grad.

What about the corporate learning space?

Well, if I were some of the companies listed above, I might be a little worried. I’d at least pay closer attention to what is going on.

Where there are VC’s there is (usually) money to be had. And if Coursera, edX and Udacity prove me right, they eventually will get into the corporate learning platform space. I see a day where corporate customers will utilize a cloud-based version of their platform but in a secure, private manner. Those same customers may even utilize content from the academic institutions - whether it’s the free options or aspects of executive education that is highly sought after by corporations and lucrative to those academic institutions noted above.

Think about corporate access via edX to Harvard Business School Executive Education and its talent pool. Egads, that’s luring.

This disruption that is occurring in the academic space is foreboding; I see it as the potential merge of corporate learning with academic institutions. Either way, the gloves are off.

Stay tuned for a wild ride ahead.

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In 2003, when Nicholas Carr penned the piece “IT Doesn’t Matter“, an overlooked definition of what he referred to as ‘infrastructural technologies‘ may now be, in 2012, unintentionally defining the relationship between IT and the organization.

“The characteristics and economics of infrastructural technologies, whether railroads or telegraph lines or power generators, make it inevitable that they will be broadly shared – that they will become part of the general business infrastructure. In the earliest phases of its buildout, however, an infrastructural technology can take the form of a proprietary technology. As long as access to the technology is restricted – through physical limitations, intellectual property rights, high costs, or a lack of standards – a company can use it to gain advantages over rivals.”

In the Web 2.0 world of today, arguably the infrastructural side of a more collaborative technology-based society, where we introduce terms such as Consumerization of IT, Shadow IT or SoMoClo to depict what is happening to organizations, employees and the CIO’s office, we’ve perhaps lost sight of why we’re at this junction. (10 years ago we called it ‘Rogue IT‘ if you can believe it)

Further fodder for your consideration:

• By 2015, Gartner predicts that 35% of enterprise IT expenditures will be managed outside the CIO’s department and budget
• PwC indicates that at their “top performer” companies, IT controls less than 50% of corporate technology expenditures
• Diamond Digital IQ suggests 41% of organizations witness 30% or more of IT expenditures residing elsewhere from IT

So … what’s happened? What’s happening?

Organizations and its employees outside of IT have begun to, well .. “Occupy IT“.

Not on purpose, mind you. At least that’s what I think.

Those ‘infrastructural technologies‘ that Carr referred to circa 2003 have actually become the de facto technology, choice and user experience expectation of workers inside the organization. ‘Proprietary technologies‘ are becoming extinct, and an organization will now yearn to begin future planning with an ‘infrastructural technology’ mindset first. Business units and its constituents are now employing an “Occupy IT” movement due to, in part, the belief (whether right or wrong) that IT has morphed into the 1% and the rest of the organization is viewed as the 99% when it comes to control of the technology to perform one’s role.

The 1% is controlling the experience for the 99%. They are the proprietary mindset.

And as a consequence, the organization is pushing back.

Shadow IT, Rogue IT, Consumerization of IT … call it whatever you like, is back, growing and not going away.

This is not merely about BYOD (bring your own device), nor the recent success of Apple nor is it because Facebook is getting close to one billion users.

The organization wants a seat at the IT table; it wants to become part of the solution, part of the infrastructural conversation. The organization, in essence, is camping out in the park trying to be heard, trying to help IT shift to, as Dion Hinchcliffe calls it, the “everythingization of technology“. It is at its root a case study in behaviour change.

For years, perhaps decades, IT has controlled. Be it the infrastructure, technology roadmap, innovation, ERP, human capital systems … and of course devices, PC’s and laptops, IT was the gatekeeper of technologies and the organization was the recipient. One might argue that they (IT) were the benefactors of Fayol or Taylor in so much that the hierarchical way in which it (IT) was allowed to operate with the organization ensured its proprietary technology plans remained steadfast and unadulteratedly in control. It may never have reached the infrastructural stage for some companies.

“Most important is the culture,” says Tim Bray when referring to IT and how it must reverse trajectory when designing and implementing enterprise systems.

I agree.

There may be an upside of shadow IT out there, but the staid, industrial revolution-like way in which IT operates must evolve.

The organization doesn’t want to “Occupy IT“, per se, but its inadvertent occupation is growing. I can assure you that any organization would be better suited to have IT as a collaborative, proactive and engaging partner rather than viewed as an OPEX cost centre simply in charge of keeping the lights on or, worse, launching roadblocks at any “Occupy IT” intersection.

To avoid the current predicament, to avoid the ‘occupation‘, IT might create history by looking back to history. It’s no secret IBM’s longevity and its 100+ year history is as a result of being able to reinvent itself in spite of depressions, recessions, revolutions and dissolutions.

Although a marketing effort, the following words from IBM’s “THINK: Our History of Progress; 1890s to 2001” encapsulates my point:

Entering the 1990′s,moves into major new growth businesses, principally services and software, and embraces open standards for computing. The company also fundamentally reshapes its culture to refocus on clients and to be more agile, responsive and collaborative.

Perhaps IT might look to one of its own and lead the charge to becoming an infrastructural proactive and community driven business unit as opposed to one based on proprietary close-minded thinking.

This would ensure the “Occupy IT” movement subsided and cooler, more collaborative heads prevailed.

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There is something fascinating going on at Boise State University and specifically the Department of Educational Technology.

Let me introduce you to 3D GameLab, arguably an actual example demonstrating the evolution of today’s antiquated learning management system.

The brainchild of Lisa Dawley and Chris Haskell, 3D GameLab is an online game-based learning environment facilitated by what are known as quests. What are quests, you ask?

Quests are individual learning components such as short videos, diagrams, activities, text, audio, etc., that (when combined together) can make up the learning requirements of a traditional class. Students, however, have choice in what quests they want to gobble up. Imagine students having a say in what aspects of a topic like cellular biology or World War II history they are interested in that can make up the pedagogy of the overarching learning outcome of a traditional course. The students are in charge of constructing their road; the teacher provides as many interlocking bricks as is necessary for the students to build their own meandering path to reach the destination.

Students can rank, rate, comment and provide feedback on each of the quests for others to view as well.

As an added bonus, dependent on the learner, those quests can be accomplished in isolation, cooperatively or competitively within the friendly game environment. As the learner completes each quest, he or she is not awarded a percentage or letter grade, but experience points instead. These points need to add up to the total point requirement for course completion.

And yes, in-game badges and awards are a big part of the environment as well.

The project, although conceived by Dawley and Haskell, seems to be intellectual property of Boise State University and through research it completed, a go-to-market business model looks to be in discussion. There is a closed beta under way and thus far, teacher feedback is positive and perhaps glowing.

In a comment titled, “I don’t want to go back, ever” Poison Shirt (a teacher in the beta) remarked:

Students are moving beyond the standard curriculum to delve into new material, because they have choice, control and self-motivation to keep going. I am spending lots of my time creating new quests to stay ahead of them than I ever anticipated I would have to. This is a good problem to have.

Could it be that 3D GameLab has cracked the bottleneck code? Is learning only found in an LMS or classroom? Or can it be portrayed and conducted in a manner such as the 3D GameLab initiative?

Quoted in Converge Magazine, Haskell stated:

“We do a pretty rotten job at the university level of demonstrating a variety of teaching techniques. [It’s] kind of a way of deconstructing education and making it available to people in a new way.”

I believe Haskell and Dawley have developed something I’ve been seeking for the past few years. Chunks or small nuggets of learning, available in many different formats, able to be pieced together at the user’s discretion, backed by collaborative-based social learning concepts through a gaming engine could well be the future of learning.

Maybe it already is.

They would be wise to put together a strong group of advisers to help them through the next few years as I see 3D GameLab making a strong and successful foray into the corporate learning world.

It will be one project to watch in the coming months.

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My, how times have changed. Two years ago, people were scoffing at the term social learning. Three years ago, social learning was solely for the nerds like me, whereas four years ago it was a term used solely in academic circles. But during the past year and a half or so, social learning has become cotton candy at the fair. Everybody wants some.

In particular, there has been a fair amount of shuffling, repositioning, flanking and acquiring going on in the vendor space as it relates to our fluffy, sugary snack known as social learning. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane to recap and provide some analysis on a few of the notable moves.

• SuccessFactors (SF) buys Jambok, SAP buys SuccessFactors
  • If the SF move to buy Jambok didn’t start the “what’s my strategy” drumbeat in early 2011, the SAP move to buy SF was a full-on drum roll in late 2011.
  • It’s no secret the SAP LMS system needs a fair bit of TLC and I fully expect the SF product stack to find its way into a new and improved SAP LMS, although I suspect it will become more of a true social collaboration platform (on the cloud) for SAP customers.
  • SAP has other opportunities to beef up its social learning story including, but not limited to, Streamwork.

• Taleo buys Learn.com, Oracle buys Taleo
  • Learn.com was a big boost to the product stack of Taleo by way of the Taleo acquisition move in late 2010, but that boost didn’t last long because just more than a year later, Oracle took a look at its horrendous LMS, talent management and social learning story and bought Taleo in February 2012.
  • Some may argue it’s a defensive play against SAP; that may be true, but I suspect it has more to do with Salesforce and wanting to get properly aligned to the budding cloud strategy on all things talent and human capital.
  • Yes, I believe Rypple was but one acquisition by Salesforce and I fully expect them to take a run at other social learning entities by the end of 2012.

• SkillSoft re-releases SkillPort with inGenius
  • One of the dark horse social learning platforms out there is SkillSoft and its SkillPort cloud-based LMS. The latest enhancements come in the form of inGenius, a social feature previously found only within its Books 24×7 service.
  • inGenius, as it should, permits users to rank, comment, follow, search and generally interact in the social sphere of usage. Cloud-based LMS with social features? Hello Salesforce?

• Saba, the “people cloud” company, upgrades and acquires
  • Not to be outdone in the acquisition frenzy, Saba CEO Bobby Yazdani recently purchased HumanConcepts, an organizational modeling and visualization company.
  • You’re asking yourself, “what does this have to do with social learning” right about now, but my bet is that Saba’s social learning story will be improved by the visualization component immensely. Imagine the semantic layer of social learning for a second displayed with out-of-this-world (and collaborative) visuals … all on its new People Cloud? Scrumptious cotton candy indeed. (Oh, and hello Salesforce?)

• And what is going on at Blackboard and Desire2Learn?
  • First, Blackboard not only begins acquiring companies like Moodlerooms and NetSpot to keep its feet firmly planted in the academic vertical, but it also doubles down on the corporate sector by a) improving its social learning feature set and b) partnering with … you got it, Salesforce to launch Blackboard Learn – an integrated Blackboard social LMS experience into the Salesforce experience.
  • Not to be outdone, Desire2Learn not only completely updated its platform to become a true social learning engine (including integration with Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn), but it also recently hired Dennis Kavelman as COO to complement visionary CEO John Baker. This Canadian outfit is one to watch in the social learning space.

There are others I’m watching as well, but I’ll save those thoughts for another trip to the cotton candy counter.

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A truly collaborative organization will become a productive force to behold when contribution, in its many different forms, becomes the de facto behaviour of everyone.

Give Piece a Chance.

To be more specific, give a piece of content, a piece of feedback, a piece of knowledge, a piece of your experience a chance.

You have wisdom. You have intellect. You have opinion.

You should give that piece of whatever the chance to help others (and the organization) with various goals and objectives, be it individual, team or enterprise-wide.

Let others know that your piece might help build an ecosystem of improvement in the organization. In return, encourage others to do the same. You never know what may happen. (remember about reciprocity and interlocutors)

Marcel Proust once claimed,

“The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes.”

It is with the new eyes of being a contributor, of giving piece a chance where I believe we will build organizations capable of addressing the chronic disengagement levels, lack of innovation and levels of productivity.

Over at HBR, Scott Keller and Carolyn Dewar wrote a wonderful case study involving ANZ Bank in a post entitled, “Three Steps to a High-Performance Culture” on January 26th, 2012.

One key paragraph stood out for me:

ANZ Bank offers an example: a decade ago, the bank embarked on an effort described as a “unique plan of eschewing traditional growth strategies and recasting the culture of the bank to lift efficiency and earnings.” In the initial two years, the share of employees having the sense that ANZ “lived its values” went from 20 to 80 percent, and the share seeing “productivity in meetings” from 61 to 91 percent, with similar rises in the shares seeing “openness and honesty” and a “can-do culture.” In parallel, revenue per employee increased 89 percent and the bank overtook its peers in total returns to shareholders and customer satisfaction. A full ten years after those initial efforts, ANZ has sustained its results: its profit after tax has grown at a cumulative average growth rate of 15 percent, putting it well ahead of its industry.

It’s a great example of how an organization, in this case an otherwise historically organized hierarchical bank, employed the ‘give piece a chance’ motto to great and sustained success.

ANZ might once have been a culture that was closed and disengaged. It might never have given piece a chance. But, through some organizational re-engineering and focusing on a concept like ‘give piece a chance‘, amongst other collaborative and engagement inducing actions, it demonstrated bottom line business results.

All we are saying, is give piece a chance.

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… clocks.

It’s a tad important to know the time. Well … unless of course you believe being punctual is poisonous, but that’s a post for another day.

If you own an iOS device like an iPad and you travel, like me, you may not have noticed that when you step off the plane in a different timezone, malnourished and groggy, the second you connect yourself to wifi … presto, your iPad’s clock is updated. (sorry gals, not your biological one)

When I plug in my (somewhat) archaic Dell laptop powered by Windows 7 and connect to overpriced hotel wifi, my laptop still thinks I’m in the land of Pacific orca whales.

One small point which I’m sure will be mitigated in Windows 8.

Right?

Right???

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They are the weak, the bullies, the ruthless

They become and personify the finger that points at a scapegoat, gleefully abdicating any responsibility for erroneous outcomes or missed targets.

They ascend to positions of power through matador like precision. Their sword is not metal, rather a behavioural style that aims to demean, command or enforce.

Collectively there are hundreds of thousands of them occupying roles in organizations across all sectors and geographies. They too are implicated in the woeful levels of employee disengagement.

This cohort should be renamed the Mysterium Tremendum Leader; a leader, I propose, that uses their positional power to invoke fear and trembling in its team members. A leader who looks up to Weber, Fayol and Taylor as the triad of perfected management definition.

These leaders have no place in the organization of 2012 and beyond.

These Mysterium Tremendum leaders, if they are unwilling to reflect on how destructive their leadership style is and who are unable to shift to the TEAM model or the Collaboration Cycle or new Leadership Tenets must be weeded out and replaced.

They are not the leaders of today or tomorrow that organizations need in order to build a connected, collaborative and engaged workforce.

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Imagine for a minute, if you will, a Dad entering the en suite bathroom to find his girls in the bath.

Nothing out of the ordinary if your girls are 9 and 5.

But imagine if your girls have propped up an iPad on the counter and are listening to jazz.

When you ask, “why are you listening to jazz” and the response is, “Dad, it’s relaxing, calming and like a spa” … do you:

• Smile, like a proud father?
• Wonder if their mother has actually taken them to a spa before?
• Beam because they’ve brought an iPad into the bathroom to play jazz music?
• Back away slowly hoping you’re not in the wrong house?
• Fully expect an asteroid to hit you because your good fortune is up?

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Víctor García-Morales, Francisco Lloréns-Montes and Antonio Verdú-Jover published a paper in the British Journal of Management (December, 2008, Vol. 19 Issue 4) entitled, “The Effects of Transformational Leadership on Organizational Performance through Knowledge and Innovation”.

In it they set out to prove the following hypotheses:

• Transformational leadership will be positively associated with knowledge slack (prior knowledge), absorptive capacity, tacitness, organizational learning and innovation.
• Knowledge slack will be positively associated with absorptive capacity.
• Absorptive capacity will be positively associated with tacitness.
• Tacitness will be positively associated with organizational learning.
• Organizational learning will be positively associated with innovation.
• Tacitness, organizational learning and innovation will be positively associated with performance.
• Size will be positively associated with strategic variables that affect organizational performance.

In summary and at its core, the authors wished to prove the relationship between transformational leadership, learning and organizational performance.

The authors worked with 408 Spanish firms in food farming, manufacturing, construction and services industries interacting with CEO’s and other personnel, including on-site visits and conference calls.

In my opinion, the sample size was not only large, it was thorough.

And what were their findings?

The word ‘compelling’ comes to mind.

Firstly, the research proved that organizations must pay attention to the development of transformational leaders. That is, leaders are people who should be inspirational, coaches, collaborators and explicit motivators. Failing to have this archetype in leaders predicts the future demise of a non-performing organization.

Secondly, elevating prior knowledge in the organization is critical. In the author’s words, “it must thus devote continuous and substantial investment to developing knowledge slack in the organization.” Performance, therefore, will increase if barriers are eliminated between leadership and learning, such as organizational structure, compensation policy issues, and general flexibility and access to acumen.

Thirdly, to increase organizational performance, leaders must not only make deep investment, they must scream from the hilltops that it’s an important piece of organizational culture. Collaborative learning in a positive environment is critical to success. The authors state, “the leader should be a good mentor, capable of guiding the other members of the firm in their professional trajectories, supporting their growth because he or she has faith in people’s capacity to learn and innovate.”

And lastly, a leader must project a culture of innovation (through learning) otherwise performance will suffer. “Because innovation is not an individual act but a collective achievement, it takes work to create a context that legitimates innovative behaviour, dedicates resources to innovation and assumes the structure and culture that nourishes the development and implementation of innovation.” In a nutshell, leader’s better link innovation with learning otherwise organizational performance will lag or default.

Although the research focused solely on Spain and but four industries, it clearly paints a Picasso like picture that I’ve been discussing for years.

When an organization truly embarks on a plan to create an open, connected and collaborative leadership framework (for both leaders of people and individual contributors) with a learning model that is also open, connected and collaborative, organizational performance will be positively impacted.

Leadership is linked to learning. Innovation is a part of the leadership and leadership partnership. If assembled correctly, organizational performance is the benefactor thereafter.

Originally posted to CLO Blog. Reprinted with permission.

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It turns out we all should be having vodka cranberries at work.

In the March 2012 issue of Consciousness and Cognition, Professors Andrew Jarosz, Gregory Colflesh and Jennifer Wiley proved that alcohol intoxication facilitates creative problem solving.

They state:

The results of the current study supported the prediction that moderate alcohol intoxication would improve performance on a creative problem solving task. Intoxicated participants not only showed an improvement in accuracy compared to sober, but they also solved problems more quickly. Additionally, participants in the intoxicated condition perceived their problem solving to be less analytic and more intuitive than the sober controls.

I wrote this while having a glass of 2010 ‘Cycles Gladiator’ Petite Sirah Lodi.

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Yes, I do believe badging has a place inside the enterprise.

If you’re not familiar with badging as a concept, you would be wise to visit the fantastic HASTAC community entitled “Badges for Lifelong Learning” for a primer and then further your understanding with information provided by Mozilla’s Open Badges; one of the pioneers in the fledgling badging field.

How can badges play an effective role inside an organization?

1) Credibility

When an employee is able to demonstrate levels of knowledge, experience or acumen to others in the organization via badges, they are instantly gaining credibility with their peers. Employees might not otherwise know that someone has a certain intellect, however, badges can provide this and in return, a level of credibility is gained in the eyes of the knowledge seeker with the badge holder.

2) Awareness

Badges can help bring awareness to other employees that knowledge, experience or acumen actually exists in the organization itself. For example, if an employee is seeking ‘Java’ skills, and the system has been set to display certain levels of competence through badging (and search is enabled) this brings an awareness to employees that was otherwise missing.

3) Motivation

It’s rather obvious, but badges can also be thought of as motivational opportunities. If an employee is interested in a higher degree of credibility or wants to contribute to organizational awareness, employing badges could help push the employee to higher levels of skill, knowledge or other traits. If, for example, your goal is a higher degree of collaboration in the organization, perhaps you could establish participation-based badges in your system to help motivate employees to contribute more.

4) Recognition

Some employees may want to utilize badges as a way in which to highlight how they have been recognized in the company. A ‘badge of recognition honour’ is not out of the question. For example, what if an employee has crossed the 5-year mark at your organization; couldn’t he or she display a 5-year badge on their home profile page to denote the significant achievement? There are many more to consider as well.

5) Career

Career development itself is a badge, isn’t it? Let’s say, for example, an employee enters the organization as a Level 1 Engineer. Over the next four years, she progresses to become a Level 4 Engineer, whatever that means in terms of the job description. Each step of the journey could have a badge associated with it, and the employee can prominently display it on their home profile page as well.

In summary, I’m not tying academic credentials to badges inside the organization; rather, I’m linking the concepts of work-based knowledge, experience, recognition and career development as ways in which to enhance the employee experience.

I’m also not at the stage where external badges may find a home inside the organization.

But when badges are used inside the organization for internal only purposes, there could be fantastic results culturally, collaboratively and educationally throughout the digital walls.

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I’m amazed to see how far collaboration has come in the organization.

It amazes me even more how much further it has to go.

I recall a conversation I once had in a public gym which went something like this.

“Hey Dan, how is that ‘collaboration’ thing going?”

“Pretty well, I think.”

“Well, I believe it’s overhead, so I’ve asked my team to get back to work. We’re not ‘collaborating’ going forward.”

Maybe Edwin Land was right … “Politeness is the poison of collaboration.”

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According to ComScore, we are spending more and more time glued to a screen reading and collaborating on the Internet.

No matter what country you live in, the digital golf cart has long left the clubhouse and it is gaining speed on the high-speed golf greens en route toward 100 percent pervasive participation.

What’s missing?

Dare I say a caddy?

Personally, I’d like to see far more senior executives and leaders gripping the social media (and by extension the social learning) 3-wood and driving participation balls as far as they can.

Enough of the putt-putt mini-golf shenanigans; just grip it and rip it.

By virtue of becoming more participative and thus collaborative with their internal and external social media presence, I reckon senior executives and leaders will begin to demonstrate “sideways leadership” in their organizations.

Sideways leadership is like it sounds – leading horizontally and not just vertically. Social media cuts through hierarchy, or as Chairman Harold Jarche of Internet Time Alliance suggests, “hyperlinks subvert hierarchy, and networks subvert standardization.” To be an effective senior leader in any organization going forward, those who hold positions of high authority should begin to lead sideways and join the conversation as peers of the organization.

Rest assured, everyone else in the organization not in positions of power will continue to respect your title, your experience and your authority. You need not worry about your amplitude; the mere fact you are participating in social media and thereby demonstrating sideways leadership will spread at the speed of a tee shot. Think about children who just found out there are free cookies at the back table of a second grade function. That’s how fast news will spread that you’re now a “sideways social media leader.”

At the Yammer corporate blog, author Maria Ogneva has found there to be significant benefits of social networks and social media within the organization, specifically as it relates to CEO priorities. McKinsey believes social media technologies are already in fact extending the organization.

But we’re not quite yet at the tee box, ready to yell “fore.”

In Too Big To Know, author David Weinberger states:

“Whether or not the Web tends to make us more insular, we know that human beings have a tendency toward homophily; we prefer to be with people who are like us. All the participants in this debate agree that excessive homophily is a bad thing.”

By extending this argument to senior leaders, I professionally argue that the reason we don’t yet see the internal or external social media participation uptake we yearn for is due to (at least in part) the natural crowd that has formed with senior leaders.

They have to unlearn what they’ve learned. As they spend most of their time with other senior leaders, who is going to break the homophilic cycle that prevents social media from crossing the chasm of increasing senior leadership sideways participation levels?

Fast Company posits people and culture are the biggest barriers to digital transformation inclusive to the use of social media. Not surprisingly, if we don’t have senior leaders practicing sideways leadership through social media, that barrier is going to remain. Heck, we still have 44 percent of organizations blocking the actual use of social media at work.

In summary, we know that people (define as you will) are using the Internet more. I’ve got a hunch this isn’t going to suddenly nose dive or erratically stop. Employee habits, therefore, are changing. Not only are they using the Internet more, it is becoming a natural extension to the way in which business is conducted, how learning and communication occurs and how performance is achieved.

It’s time to introduce sideways leadership into the golf bag of all senior leaders.

Originally posted to CLO Blog. Reprinted with permission.

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As I’ve said before, micro-blogging inside an organization could be coined the ‘liquid knowledge network‘.

There is so much to like about it.

The following 6 use cases are intended for nascent users who might not fully appreciate the myriad benefits to micro-blogging inside an organization.

1) I’ve got a question

When an employee is tapped into the micro-blogging platform, he or she now has access to the collective intelligence of the entire organization in ways email, phones and meetings will never reach. Ask a question on the micro-blogging platform and the spirit of human collaboration will surface with an answer more readily than if trying to find the ‘right person’ to answer the question in more traditional ways.

2) I’ve got something to share

Putting paper notices on the bulletin board is nice. Sending an email to a distribution list attaching a PDF article is thoughtful. Leaving a voicemail about a new book to read is cute. But, these are all walled garden approaches to sharing. By sharing a link, an article, a document, a video or a photo via a micro-blogging platform, you are a) sharing one-to-many, b) ensuring it can be searched (and found) by others and c) adding to the collective intelligence of the organization.

3) I’ve got an opinion

Whether constructive or positive, whether deep or shallow, whether it leads to a new idea that brings in a new revenue opportunity or not, micro-blogging can be a very effective and powerful opinion sharing mechanism. If your organization is close minded, doesn’t believe in open feedback, and reeks of top-down, command and control ordering, maybe enterprise micro-blogging isn’t for you.

4) I’ll be in town

With travel dollars tight for many organizations, micro-blogging is a perfect way to proactively announce to employees that you will be ‘in town’on a given date. Think of the Vice-President or other senior executive who might only travel to a particular location once in a while. Imagine if she sent out a few micro-blog posts announcing she’s available for in-person fireside chats at the canteen or open gathering area. That would be open and collaborative.

5) Chats

Twitter has revolutionized the art of succinct, focused online chats … in this case using Web 2.0 micro-blogging. There are all sorts of great examples such as #lrnchat, #leadchat, and #tchat where users congregate for 30-60 minutes discussing a topic (usually through a series of set questions) through micro-blogging. This concept could be extended to your internal micro-blogging platform with the exact same benefits, but focused on organizational issues instead.

6) Recognition

Although some introverts or readers might not be so enthused about public recognition particularly on a micro-blogging platform, there are those who would love it. When used correctly, recognition of effort could be conducted via the platform and the benefit is that the entire organization can be in on the action that caused the recognition in the first place. That itself may trigger others to carry out the act, not for recognition, but because it has been exposed and they now can emulate. Recognition via micro-blogging could also help overall employee engagement.

In summary, micro-blogging inside the organization is a wonderful albeit under-utilized application. From the use cases above, I hope to hear of many more instances where organizations have made it available to its employees.

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Gump’s a trailblazer.

He’s willing and able. He’s got pizazz. He doesn’t mind being open and sharing; some call it bravado, I call it courage.

Mr. Shun wasn’t always this way.

He had to work at it.

Being collaborative wasn’t his thing in the old days. He knew no different. He did what they all did; command and control was where it was at.

But along came a revelation.

“Maybe“, he said to himself one day, “I could be the opposite of those people. Maybe I could ask for their opinion instead of simply giving mine.“

It had moxie. It was brave. It demonstrated mettle.

And so, Mr. Shun became who he is today. A collaborative, open leader, not afraid to ask before executing.

Gump was now the new breed.

But, in retrospect, it did take a little gumption.

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I was fortunate to recently present at The Conference Board of Canada and its HR Executives forum in my backyard of beautiful Vancouver.

In that 60-minute discussion I presented the relationship between the theories and frameworks that I strongly believe in; connected learning, open leadership and collaborative technologies.

Over the past decade I’ve been in positions to publicly speak, both internally and externally, well over 200 times. I get such a thrill out of the experience, of giving back, of dancing around on stage pretending I know what I’m talking about.

But the most important part of any speaking engagement is the interaction with the audience, the questions and dialogue that occurs during or after, not to mention the opportunity to add more people to my strong and weak ties network.

I cherish each and every opportunity I get.

But this past week, at The Conference Board of Canada session, for whatever reason I couldn’t stop thinking about Apple’s 1997 television commercial that launched the ‘Think Different’ campaign.

You know, the one that asked us to pay tribute to:

“the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the trouble-makers, the round pegs in the square hole.”

It might have had something to do with the iPad announcement. It might be due to my audience participation request when I asked everyone to hold up five fingers high into the sky and yell ‘Happy Birthday Cate” (my youngest daughter’s birthday was the same day) while I panned and filmed using my iPad 2. (she loved it by the way – thank you audience members)

This commercial kept attacking my train of thought throughout the 60 minutes.

I didn’t bring it up and I didn’t try to weave it into the delivery, but it wasn’t until the weekend when I figured out why it may have been happening.

Maybe we need HR to be a little crazier.

It’s a profession who has the singular task of ensuring the organization is engaged, properly staffed, learned, paid, and appropriately leading.

But if it wants to be a truly demonstrable and effective engine of change for an organization grappling with competitive forces, external Web 2.0 technologies, globalization and ‘do more with less’ campaigns, it ought to make a little more trouble, rebel rouse a bit and look at the function of HR in a much different light.

Perhaps, in a ‘round peg in square hole’ manner.

What would Jobs have done if he could have reinvented HR?

What would he have done to ‘think different’?

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Reporter: Mr. Pontefract, I understand you recently crossed the decade mark of not having an office. Is this true?

dp: Is bald the new black?

Reporter: Ok, ummm. sure. Why haven’t you used an office over the past 10 years?

dp: Offices get in the way. I like to mingle. I like the freedom. I like the change.

Reporter: Where do you put your photos, degrees and certificates?

dp: Seriously?

Reporter: Alright, how do you hold private meetings?

dp: There are these things called ‘meeting rooms‘. I use my fingers to book them when necessary.

Reporter: Do you get tired of hoteling stations, moving around and not being in one place all the time?

dp: If you truly are going to be collaborative, adopting a mobile working strategy is helpful. I like to think of my lack of an office as a cause for celebration. I work from home on occasion as well. Maybe someone will give me a new laptop bag for 10 years of being office-less.

Reporter: We don’t have any budget.

dp: Typical.

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Are you a tweet king or a pretty thing?

The crux of that argument is whether you believe micro-blogging is an active behavior or whether you treat it as passive oversight.

Micro-blogging — to truly become effective whether personally or organizationally — ought to become both a personal and an organizational habit.

“Habit refers to the extent to which behavior has become automatic as a result of prior learning.” Limayem, M., Hirt, S.G., and Cheung, C.M.K., “How habit limits the predictive power of intention: The case of information systems continuance,” MIS Quarterly (31:4), 2007, 705-737.

The intention of micro-blogging, ergo, is to share.

The act of sharing, therefore, should become a behavioural habit, irrespective of where you sit on the chain of command hierarchy.

Quite simply, when it comes to micro-blogging then … intention = share = habit.

I’m not alone either. My instinctive hunch about habit has company.

Martin Bohringer of Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany and Stuart Barnes of University of East Anglia in England set out to prove the use of continuance theory and related theories of habit and critical mass specific to the micro-blogging service Twitter.

The most telling point from the 11-page academic paper came from the final summary:

 “Practitioners need to design high quality micro-blogging services that provide clear benefit and that provide a satisfying experience, but that also become permeated within users’ daily routine activity to such an extent that usage becomes habitual. Incentives to build a core of users may be valuable in creating a self-sustaining body of users and in building perceptions of universal access. Clearly organizations will need to expend considerable effort in trying to create habit.” Modeling Use Continuance Behavior in Micro-blogging Services: The Case of Twitter. Barnes, Stuart J.; Böhringer, Martin. Journal of Computer Information Systems, Summer2011, Vol. 51 Issue 4, p1-10

Their research proved that:

• There is benefit to micro-blogging services in the enterprise or externally (like Twitter)
  • Better access to information, learning, reputation and engagement are cited
• Experience is satisfied only when micro-blogging is embedded into workplace routine
  • Therefore, micro-blogging (like Twitter) should become a habit to be truly successful

Two years ago, I wrote that ‘Micro-Blogging is Good For Leadership, Good for Your Culture’ and I haven’t flinched since.

Two years later however, I am altering my thoughts somewhat. I now believe micro-blogging must be positioned as an organizational habit for employees. (whether for internal or external purposes)

Micro-blogging; it’s truly the liquid knowledge network that (when immersed in daily work routines) can help expedite many work processes as compared to an organization without micro-blogging services and without the all-too-important habit of micro-blogging itself.

Try to be a tweet king. Stop being a passive pretty thing.

(Note: this blog title pays homage to The Tragically Hip and their song Wheat Kings)

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