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By Dan Pontefract, 04/25/2010 10:00 AM

Learnerprise is the combination of Enterprise 2.0 and Learning 2.0 concepts.

The use of emergent social software platforms as well as formal and informal competence exchange processes, between companies, partners and employees, to improve both productivity and business results.

We’re all in charge of our careers, whether we’re employed by an organization, or employed by ourselves, so I occasionally visit bookmarked employment sites to review potential roles.

Some of those searches involve Chief Learning Officer titles and at this point in time, I still believe some change is needed to augment the new intent of the 2010 CLO.

To me, the CLO needs to be renamed. No longer should the term learning be the only adjective used to describe this new 2.0 function; it needs to be representative of Learnerprise, and in doing so, the title should reflect all things related to collaboration:

• Enterprise 2.0
• Social Learning
• Collaboration Technologies
• Flat-based culture innovation

Thus, the title could (and should) morph to become the CCLO – Chief Collaboration and Learning Officer – where duties and experience are reflective of a formal, informal and social learning AND collaboration cause. Inherent in the activities is driving a connected workforce, ultimately delivering on a more productive and engaged ‘culture of collaboration’ organization.

No disrespect intended with the following job descriptions, but review them and ask yourself if the CLO job description outlined showcases this type of visionary thinking:

• US Treasury
• TD Bank University
• Fifth Third Bank
• Health Care Example

Mike Petersell recently posed a great question on the CLO Media site entitled “Who should Lead Social Media Integration in Workforce Collaboration?” Of course I’m completely biased and believe it should be the newly titled CCLO because it is this individual (and corresponding virtual team) that should have the following traits:

• Deep partnership with IT/CIO office
• Thorough knowledge of both learning AND social collaboration technologies
• Responsibility for a connected culture (of collaboration)
• Duty to ensure the organization is ‘smart’ and more ‘efficient’
• Visionary of the new Learning 2.0/Learnerprise mantra (formal-informal-social)

The CCLO, (and corresponding virtual team) therefore, needs to become the key cog in the wheel of organizational cultural change. This cultural change is predicated on the CCLO being able to fluently speak both Enterprise 2.0 and Learning 2.0 seamlessly.

As a previous CEO of mine used to say, “Be Fearless”.

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By Dan Pontefract, 10/04/2009 10:03 AM

Imagine you had the opportunity to design a conference from scratch, without ever having attended a conference in the past, without knowledge of what a conference actually is, without a clue as to what the expectations are of attendees at <ahem> the conference.

What would you do?

This is the challenge I’m putting out to CLO Magazine, and obviously by association, the CLO Symposium organizers for their 2010 event.

At the 2009 CLO Symposium in Colorado Springs, there are good things to report back with. There was no talk of corporate universities, competencies, Kirkpatrick’s levels of evaluation, ADDIE and thus instructional design, or ILT / classroom training for the most part. Hallelujah.

The discussions focused almost entirely on the ‘coming out party’ of informal and social learning, along with pertinent leadership opportunities for a flat-based connected workforce. It was fabulous, and I really enjoyed my time throughout the two days. (kudos to Cushing Anderson’s birds of a feather session – very engaging and interactive)

Now, the challenge for CLO Magazine the next time the conference is in the planning stages. In 2010, I’d like you to ensure every speaker (be it keynote or breakout) follow the guideline presented below:

In a world that is rapidly augmenting an all Instructor-Led (sage on the stage) approach to learning in favour of formal, informal and social learning concepts, why can’t the CLO Symposium adopt this model for the conference itself? A perfect example in 2009 was the keynote presentation delivered by Ted Hoff, VP of L&D at IBM. Whether on purpose or not, Ted spoke for roughly 20 minutes and the entire audience then became engaged in an interactive question and answer forum thereafter (and for roughly 30 minutes) that complimented his initial thoughts, and introduced new ones for everyone. In a nutshell … it was spectacular.

Imagine if every session was delivered this way. We, the attendees, would be able to engage in such rich and detailed collaborative dialogue (facilitated by the ‘speaker’) that our proverbial socks would be knocked off. Let’s drive towards this model for 2010 and act as ambassadors of an informal and social strategy, using the CLO Symposium as but one of many examples we should be employing as leaders.

(and I hope attendees are more versed in Twitter – or another micro-blogging tool – next year, because that needs to become a firm social learning extension of the CLO Symposium as well)

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By Dan Pontefract, 07/16/2009 9:09 PM

It reasons to stand that if an organization wants to truly build a connected and collaborative culture (moving from command and control to cultivate and coordinate as Malone has taught us) the CIO and CLO need to become strategic partners.

I don’t necessarily care where the CLO reports into per se, but I do suggest these two individuals seek out a union not dissimilar to John and Yoko.

Why?

• Training is an event thinking lends itself to classic ID and a classroom/eLearning model only – CIO doesn’t really care about this
• Learning is a connected, collaborative and thus continuous process is the merging of formal learning with informal/social learning with all social computing applications – CIO is definitely interested in the latter and the CLO is immersed in the former
• CLO wants to ensure people are smart … CIO wants to ensure people are connected and able to do their jobs efficiently and effectively
• Employees don’t care where content, SME’s or knowledge resides in the organization – they just want to consume or contribute to it quickly and efficiently (and both the CLO and CIO are critical stakeholders in this type of scenario)

I would make the case that the CLO and CIO offices might actually merge one day. We’ll still need a CIO, don’t get me wrong, but the CLO might become the CCLO (Chief Collaboration and Learning Officer) and ensure the human element remains prevalent as these concepts merge. Perhaps the CCLO reports into the CIO.

Cross and Quinn call it a Chief Meta Learning Officer, but I’m not 100% comfortable with that term, as I don’t think anyone knows what it means. (their concepts – yes – 100% agree)

Regardless, the formal-informal-social learning paradigm quest begins with the CLO reaching out to the CIO and stating “let’s be the new Band of Brothers”.