Afterword

Now what?

Social media has arrived, regardless of your participation. People are social and will connect with the new technologies. You have two choices for involvement—get in the way or get on board.

Harnessing social media to facilitate the new social learning in the organization has only just begun. It takes intention to create a culture where learning is part of the fabric, core values, and infrastructure. Sure, we can learn by bumping into the obstacles we encounter in our work. Sure, people can and will learn when they must. However, the cultural shift that occurs when social learning is designed into the work process is life changing. It doesn’t just add new tasks to your workload. It literally changes the way the whole company learns, works, and succeeds.

Once you move away from the push of information to the pull of learning, you liberate creative powers in your people to succeed in this rapidly changing environment. Once you make it easy for people to inquire and announce activities and projects and you create an environment where people are not afraid to fail, you allow them to ask the really hard questions. And you begin to get answers you never could have found otherwise.

In a simpler world, what we needed to know to do our jobs well was reasonably well defined. It made sense to broadcast both orders and information from the top down. These days, it’s not so easy. We have more information, more stakeholders, and more complexities. And we have less time to train. Learning research is quite clear about this: The more engaged people are, the more effectively they learn. In other words, the more questions they ask, the stronger their learning process becomes. Social learning is about making it easier for people to find both their questions and their voice.

We are not a passive blank slate or an empty cup waiting to be filled with wisdom. We are meaning-seeking creatures. Constructing an understanding based on what we find important is proving to be a far richer and more productive model for learning. The theory of knowledge called social constructivism—that reality is constructed by people acting on their interpretations and knowledge of it—is proving to be quite useful.

The challenge of the modern organization is no longer how we can simply beat the competition. We now have to look at issues of sustainability and take a global perspective. We need to attend not only to planetary survival but also to the vitality of whole industries and financial markets. Frankly, we can no longer just sit alone and come up with grand solutions that will work seamlessly across industries, across generations, and across innovations. Our world has simultaneously become too complex and too small to do that.

What we need are new ways to make sense of the mountain of information coming in our direction. We need new ways to filter content, to save information, and to pose questions to trusted sources. What we need is a more complete way to learn. It is our hope that the new social learning we have begun to identify in this book will take us all in that direction.

Amazing things are happening with collaborations that only a few years ago would have been impossible. We have pointed out pockets of excellence in disparate places, from the Mayo Clinic to Chevron to the CIA. And we made suggestions for how you might proceed.

Remember, though: Social learning is not just about being social. It’s not just a matter of having the right tools. It’s about making learning a priority and using the tools of social media to facilitate a culture where we get better at getting better. It’s no longer about just being a better competitor. It’s now about being a stronger contributor and a savvier learner.

We walked a fine line in this book between being alarmist and simply expressing our excitement about the radical changes occurring. We have given countless action steps you can take. But it was never our intention to overwhelm. The great thing about the new social learning is that you can start small. There is no need for mass adoption, for total buy-in, or for group consensus. It doesn’t have to be done the same way others do it. Once you begin to ask the big questions, a workable model will arise. All you need is the courage to begin the journey. It might be as simple as noticing where social learning is already working in your organization and asking what you can do to improve on that.

Start from where you are. Do what you can. Ask for help. And enjoy the ride. It has been an honor to take you on this journey. We hope the journey of social learning transforms you and those you serve.