I find myself in the center of an intellectual tempest. The traditional ‘learning’ folks are trying to sort out how to revolutionize the industry by augmenting their formal learning strategies to incorporate social media, social learning, social networking and the like. It’s a good thing to witness, but slow as molasses in some circles. The Human Resources and Organizational Development folks are mulling over their competencies, values, leadership development programs, amongst other elements trying to embed flatter, more connected ways of working. Also good to see, but at times I see these folks in other companies plodding along without involvement of the Learning side of the house, or the technology outfits. The technology groups (be it IT, Systems Analysts, ERP groups, etc.) are busy trying
2.0 adoption council Archive
I’m lucky to be a member of the 2.0 Adoption Council, founded by Susan Scrupski. As a member, I have access to a plethora of sharing, information and intellect as it relates to how individuals are driving Enterprise 2.0 in their respective organization. Naively, it donned on me recently that the members come from everywhere in the organization; IT, Learning, HR, Consulting, Customer-Facing and even Social Media specific teams. And then it struck me – the Org Structure of Enterprise 2.0 should be exactly what Enterprise 2.0 calls for, which is a cross-functional, collaborative, open and seamless environment that enhances organizational innovation, productivity and engagement. But what should that look like? Andrew McAfee, in Enterprise 2.0, New Collaborative Tools For Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges pens
Since 2001, Microsoft has sold well over 100 million licenses of SharePoint generating more than $1 billion / year in revenue. It’s quite amazing, in my opinion, considering the product is relatively archaic and institutionalized. Enter SharePoint 2010, due to release in Q2 of 2010. As customers begin to appreciate the delta between previous versions of SharePoint and the 2010 enhancements, it’s my belief that more and more organizations will utilize it as a basis for becoming the ‘employee gateway’, or, as I wrote earlier, a window into the organization. It could be that the social computing and learning capabilities outshine the other functions of the platform itself. Why? There are three reasons in particular found below, and one bonus reason at the conclusion of this
In the last two companies I’ve worked for (including present day), I initiated something called the Social Learning Network or SLN for short. This was a group of individuals, united across the business, formed to help push the proverbial sticks forward as it relates to the shift from an all formal model of learning, to one that incorporates formal, informal and social learning. In hindsight, the name was right for the moment, but wrong for today and the future. The intention of the group though remains the same, although I would argue slightly augmented due to the meteoric rise of Enterprise 2.0 concepts, cultures and applications. We are trying to augment the current business climate to one that is less ‘command and control’ to one