HESSELBEIN & COMPANY
FLAT, SPIKY, AND CURVED IS NOW OPEN
These are times of transition in perhaps every aspect of our lives. As happens in such moments, people step forward and offer to help make sense of what is occurring. Back in the spring of 2005, award-winning author Thomas Friedman attempted to lead us through these times by contending that we had entered a flatter economic world. His book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, drew wide acclaim and many ardent followers.
By the following October, however, Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, countered in the Atlantic Monthly that the world we are in is actually fairly spiky, not flat. He pointed out that innovation and economic development was happening largely in certain key hubs around the world, places brimming with masses of intellectual capital and creativity. Florida made the case that people were gravitating to creativity-rich centers and cities such as Seoul, London, Tokyo, San Francisco, Dublin, Helsinki, Chicago, Berlin, Sydney, and Bangalore. With extensive data, he argued that the geographic place you find yourself in does matter. His arguments stood in sharp contrast to Friedman’s flatter world.
More recently, David M. Smick threw another variable into the equation by claiming that the world, at least the financial one, is, in fact, curved (in The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy). Each of these perspectives has found its way into strategic planning as well as board meetings, vision statements, and retreats. Leaders are expected not only to know what each book or perspective on the world contains, but to anticipate the next major set of trends or “world” predictions.
Flatter worlds. Spikier worlds. Curvy worlds. Round worlds. Completely doomed worlds. Who are we to believe? What do we prepare for and why? It depends on which world you want to better understand. Is it the financial world? The economic world? The political world? The social world? Perhaps it is the religious world? So many worlds to pick from!
The Changing World of Training and Development
And what does all this mean to those focused on the world of training and education for knowledge workers? The existence of a huge digital divide indicates that the educational world is far from flat. And I am not so sure that spiky or curved are the best ways to describe it, either. However, I do think that it is more open than at any moment in the history of the human civilization. We hear terms such as open source software, open access journals, open information communities, open educational resources, open courseware, open education.
In contrast to this age of openness, during the last century, the emphasis in business settings was on competitiveness and guarding scarce knowledge assets. Hierarchical management structures were purposefully created to preserve and protect information. In my previous role as an accountant and corporate controller, I saw my share of locked-down file drawers and cabinets and “for your eyes only” secret files. Simply put, we accountants were the corporate watchdogs who served to analyze, scrutinize, summarize, and report information for a select few.
As I moved from the world of accounting to the world of learning, I found similar controls over educational content as well. It is just in the past few years that the shift toward learning openness has created innumerable new training delivery formats. Employees can take advantage of open content when at work, home, or on the road. They can access files and enter discussions on a company server. They can receive audio-or video-based training downloaded to their laptops, iPods, MP4 devices, or perhaps their mobile phones. Companies such as Sun Microsystems, IBM, and Cisco train hundreds of thousands of learners online in both blended and fully online formats. As an example, IBM executives have shifted the majority of the company’s management and leadership training to the Web. It uses open access cases, scenarios, and simulations in the introductory phases of this training.
In the midst of these changes, employees of Hilton-run Homewood Suites receive their training events without leaving their jobs. How? It’s packaged in two-minute modules delivered via video iPods. Video components are included in this training to help illustrate different features related to new food and beverage standards. Apart from the delivery format, what is key here is that employee training needs to be more flexible, on demand, employee selected, practical, and easy to apply on the job. Moreover, it needs to be open.
The Open Learning World
Instead of Thomas Friedman’s economic flatteners, therefore, I view these new ways to learn in an organization as “openers.” Ten of these openers form the basis for my new book, The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education. If any one of these learning openers had emerged in the 1950s or 1960s, it would have been deemed a revolution. With all ten active today, this is an amazing time to be a learner and a citizen of this planet. These ten openers coalesce into an easy-to-recall acronym, WE-ALL-LEARN.
Ten Openers: (WE-ALL-LEARN)
Leaders can take advantage of these openers in many ways. They might endorse company wikis (collaborative Web sites that allow the easy creation and editing of Web pages, typically used for community Web sites, personal note taking, corporate intranets, and knowledge management systems) to share information, support project management, or educate employees about emerging technologies, trends, and practices in their industries. Companies like Pixar use wikis to coordinate film production, whereas IBM and Sun Microsystems use wikis to support their software developer community’s sharing of valuable information. Along these same lines, Best Buy has adopted wikis as a way to allow its 150,000 employees to contribute ideas on business practices, training approaches, employee benefits, and industry trends. From a learning perspective, in a wiki, employees can participate in their own learning. They might help gather information resources as well as links, online videos, and documents about customers, markets, and products.
At the same time, there are more mobile forms of learning for company road warriors as well as those with hectic schedules in a single location. Mobile learning grants employees power over their own learning. Much content for this mobile learning is available today from podcasts, learning portals, freely available online classes, open access journals, and e-books. Leaders need to be aware that such content exists as well as grasp how it might be used.
Podcasts, wikis, and blogs are only a part of what is now possible in this more open learning world. As most realize, there are virtual worlds to explore like Second Life and Kaneva. The training of doctors, nurses, architects, artists, lawyers, teachers, and accountants, among many other disciplines, takes place in Second Life. Virtual learning training modules can be used over and over. And they can be made open for anyone else in the world to use. For learning collaboration, people can take advantage of Groove, SharePoint, Google Docs, and Google Groups. Using such tools, employee ideas are openly shared with peers around the world.
Leaders in an organization can open up training environments in many ways. Training might be embedded in YouTube or Google videos that employees can play at their leisure or post on their own. In the summer of 2009, training guru Elliott Masie sent out his Learning TRENDS newsletter outlining several sites that aggregate short, instructional types of videos. One of these sites, Howcast, includes videos that teach “How to Use Google Ad Words to Grow Your Business.”
In tapping into the potential of shared online video, consulting firms like Deloitte are sponsoring YouTube video competitions related to working at the company. These competitions simultaneously foster collegiality, communication, and sense of connectedness among geographically separate employees of the firm. Additionally, such employee-designed products often find application as recruiting and retention tools.
With these new technologies at the ready, employees can decide on a path to explore those resources in a personally meaningful way. They might even select the particular tutors or mentors who will help them in that journey. As one example, Triple Creek Associates, located in Denver, has designed a program called “Open Mentoring” to match up mentors and mentees within a firm or organization. The employee decides on the skill areas or competencies to work on. These might include diversity training, career management, or succession planning. An internal database of mentors can then be used to generate possible matches.
Informal Learning
As should be clear by now, those in leadership roles in corporations, foundations, government and military agencies, and educational institutions of any type all must rethink their strategic planning to include this more open learning world. Web technologies are pushing the limits of education and training environments. In his 2007 book, Informal Learning: Rediscovering Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance, Jay Cross pointed to significant changes in corporate training environments brought about by the increasing importance of informal learning and virtual conversations.
Learning today is much more informal and on-demand than in the past. Hundreds of millions of people have Facebook and LinkedIn accounts for their personal and professional correspondence. More than one billion people have cell phones, with tens of thousands more being added every hour. At the same time, over 100 million people in China alone have blogs, while hundreds of millions more people are becoming comfortable downloading videos and podcasts to watch or listen to on their computers or portable devices.
In the 21st century, the learning activities of employees are apt to be informal, self-directed, and on-demand. Instead of sitting through prescribed courses with preset times and places for attendance, learners select from a palette of learning options that they can conquer when and where they want and along with the people they choose. This is the age of the learner. Using Thomas Friedman’s terms, the learning age has been “turbo-charged” by collaborative, wireless, and virtual technologies. I predict that in a few decades, we will label this the “learning century.”
Supporting This Open Learning World
As documented in The World Is Open, there are many ways to take advantage of the educational changes taking place today. Here are a just a few things that leaders can do to help an organization navigate through this open learning world:
Create a Learning Landscape
The learning landscape includes those working for your organization around the globe. Learning partners are no longer just those in the office next door or in the same unit or department. If the world is open, then those who might influence your learning can come from anywhere. Organizational leaders must determine when and where communities of practice might be nurtured and global learning initiatives successfully promoted. A climate of collaboration and mutual respect for the learning and the potential of learners at all levels within the organization needs to be created, promoted, and supported. And with that comes more awareness and understanding of the potential of this open learning world.
Model, Endorse, and Support
Leaders should demonstrate and support online mentoring and coaching as well as peer interaction and collaboration. Learning-oriented leaders value and model the use of social networking technologies for interaction, communication, collaboration, and information exchange. In addition, they should champion and celebrate successes, both along the way and when final destinations have been reached.
Open Course Development
An organization can create open courseware—freely accessible courses for employees, vendors, clients, and others. This is one way to jump into the open education movement with both feet. Keep in mind that there are many open educational resource supplements for your online courses. Most are freely available around the clock. Some are in learning portals. With all these free portals and other online resources, an organization can design multiple methods and resources for delivering learning when and where the learner requests it.
Web 2.0 Experimentation
In the open learning world, learning leaders can never be totally satisfied with training. There is a continual experimentation with new resources, methods, and technologies for learning. They can encourage the use of blogs and podcasts in the workplace as well as technologies such as Twitter, wikis, Second Life, and social networking technology. And with Web 2.0 technologies, you can find, index, remix, and share online resources and tools found online for personalized educational experiences.
Learning Focus
Every decision about open educational resources should directly address those in need of learning. With the employees’ needs truly in mind, the organization can begin to make sense of the open educational resources available to it.
New Learning Vistas
There is much a leader can do in this free and open learning landscape. Any good leader wants each person in the organization to push toward the highest goals and competencies possible. Open education can bring such goals closer to reality. We live in a time when much learning, both formal and informal, is possible. Leaders can accelerate acceptance of learning as well as access to it.
Even with innovations in learning openness announced daily, some will continue to argue that the world is flat, spiky, curved, or environmentally doomed. In a time filled with learning opportunities, the open world is one that every leader needs to consider. With timely and thoughtful reflection, you can open windows and doors to countless new learning vistas.
Curtis J. Bonk is a professor of instructional systems technology at Indiana University. Drawing on his background as a corporate controller, CPA, educational psychologist, and instructional technologist, Bonk offers unique insights into the intersection of business, education, psychology, and technology. A well-known authority on emerging technologies for learning, he has written more than 225 articles and coauthored several widely used books, including “The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education.” He is also president and founder of SurveyShare and CourseShare. He can be reached at [email protected].