Introduction

SIX YEARS AGO, WHEN WE WROTE the first edition of this book, mobile and social technologies were still new. Many senior leaders didn’t see their value to the enterprise. At best they were considered a broadcast marketing channel—at worst, annoying interruptions in the workplace. In corporate settings and schools alike, educators viewed these social tools as a distraction and a threat to how students learned.

Times have changed. Worldwide, people have more access to mobile phones than they do to running water. Across the globe, people rely on mobile and social technologies to connect and collaborate, share information and often create change. You need only look at organizations like Kiva or change.org to see how people are using social media to make a difference. People unite around ideas and experiences without regard for geographic boundaries. They connect us with colleagues and friends across the planet. As we connect and build relationships, what captures our attention is more highly valued and relevant because it has been pre-screened by people we trust.

Popular opinion about the value of mobile and social technologies has shifted dramatically. Many of us would feel lost without the swift connections these tools afford. Thousands of organizations and the millions of people within them have made this shift, strengthening and widening a global culture of learning. People ask important questions, observe subtle patterns, and connect previously disconnected groups. We, collectively, are stronger for it.

New Approaches for a Complex World

After the first edition of this book was published, people told us that we brought light to a largely missed opportunity—to learn more, to teach more, and to be more with the aid of new tools. Hundreds of organizational leaders we’ve met with have discovered that technology that was once considered a distraction is in reality a vital means to engage people in very human ways. Social learning moves organizational practices from rote and mechanical to agile and interpersonal. Social learning becomes learning for a connected social age.

Now it’s time to take the next step. It’s time we as leaders, educators, entrepreneurs, and intrepeneurs become catalysts—elevating social learning as a key means of achieving more impact. We must shift our perspectives from considering learning across social media as a supplement to our organizations’ existing learning initiatives, to one where social learning plays an integral part of how people work together effectively, building upon their individual and collective potential.

It’s time to adopt a healthy, inclusive, and resilient perspective of learning where a collective of leaders, workers, customers, and interested onlookers—the people who make up every organization’s ecology—generates great ideas and introduces innovative practices. This doesn’t take away from the achievements of individuals or small groups of peers. It doesn’t take away from the value of face-to-face interactions or formal professional development. It acknowledges that good work isn’t created in a vacuum, and that creativity is always in some sense collaborative, the result of unique minds connecting together.

The value we contribute comes not from how smart or talented we are, but rather from the ideas that we share, the quality connections that we make, the emotions we touch, and the conversations we start. Each of us can become an expert curator of interesting stories and facilitator of important ideas.

Beyond Organizational Boundaries

Learning is a never-ending process. It always has been and always will be. The Internet and new social tools provide nearly unlimited access to knowledge and people around the clock, across the world.

To truly create a better world each one of us needs to bring our skills, our talents, and our questions to the conversation. Harvard University professor Howard Stevenson once defined entrepreneurship as “the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.” In the social age, learning is no longer resource constrained. We can be—we must be—learning from everything and everyone possible in order to see the world in new ways and face challenges never before seen.

The best way to get started on the path to social learning is to think about what we want to learn, make a commitment to learning it in front of others, and to share what we learn. This becomes a generative cycle that will keep us informed and curious for the rest of our lives.

It’s up to every one of us to model for others how learning can be—how learning should be—and how learning will be far into the future. In the end, the opportunity isn’t even about learning, rather it’s about what we experience from working with each other, helping one another, and becoming more effective together.

Our hope is that to face today’s increasingly complex challenges, society embraces an approach to learning that elevates diverse voices, pursues wide perspectives, encourages collaboration, and values real-time experience. When we grow and improve what we know, organically we create a collective wisdom that can lead to real progress.