Tag: learning strategy

Mentoring

Fostering relationships that enable and sustain collaboration and inquiry requires building trust about both technical competencies and each person’s interest in dialogue.

Therefore, two contexts require special attention. First, when newcomers come onboard to the team, they may or may not be familiar with the general organizational context or the specific working conditions. This requires thinking through how they are brought on board (“onboarding”). Second, when a performance gap is identified, in-service coaching and mentoring may be considered, especially if stopping work is not a possibility or the gap covers tacit knowledge that is not taught formally.

Although coaching and mentoring require specialized skills, most of us recognize that the mentoring and support we receive helps develop our capabilities. Having received support, we are also willing to provide it, with or without institutional support. When we identify a gap in knowledge, skills or experience in a new colleague, how do we provide support to address this? When and how do we mentor colleagues?

Yet, like other dimensions of informal learning, mentoring may no longer be assumed to “just happen”. Despite our recognition of its importance, it is seldom included in formal tools such as job descriptions or performance reviews that are supposed to identify competencies, experience and achievements. This needs to change.

Photo: Benjamin West, Calypso’s Reception of Telemachus and Mentor (Daniel Reinberg/flickr.com)

April 3, 2015
I have no idea

What do we do when we cannot achieve certainty?

We increasingly accept that we need to make decisions without the comfort of certainty. It is okay to not know. It is healthy to accept the unknown as we no longer seek certainty. It is when we are no longer certain that we learn.

In some cases, uncertainty opens the door to knowledge that we were not seeking. This is incidental learning.

The organization still expects certainty. Some of our leaders demand it. As working professionals, we are expected to provide answers, i.e. to know. Yet our expertise is increasingly in our ability to respond when faced with new contexts (for example, new technologies, reduced budgets, or changes in political leadership), new challenges (for example, Ebola or noncommunicable diseases) where learning is the process of constructing viable but context-specific answers.

We straddle between expectations that we know (as experts) and the unknown that is part and parcel of our daily work. There is some comfort in certainty, as well as lower risk we may value because of the political nature of our environment. This is, in part, why we may pull back, as we may fear others seeing that we do not know.

April 1, 2015
Patterns and trends

How do we navigate these rules while achieving intended purpose? When we need new knowledge, where do we go? How do we go about it? How do we limit our exploration to ensure that we can still deliver on our tasks? What if we need to upset or question assumptions about how we work in order to find the answers we need (learn)?

Wherever we may sit in the organization – from the headquarters in the capital city to the field –, our field of vision cannot possibly span the global complexity we face.

When we analyze a situation or a new problem, we are looking for patterns. We build the “muscle” of pattern recognition through practice. This is where we mobilize our experience, which sometimes manifests itself as intuition. As we gain experience, we learn to trust our intuition and deepen the insights we bring to dialogue with our colleagues.

Patterning is the process of recognizing the nature and organization of various types of information and knowledge. As we walk forward with an adaptive mindset, we recognize trends and patterns in a changing environment.

Our ability to recognize patterns is a critical skill that the organization must both foster and support, in order to make learning strategic.

Photo: Islamic mosaic pattern (Jörg Reuter/flickr.com)

April 1, 2015
Dialogue and inquiry

We learn from each other through dialogue and inquiry. We are excited that we can participate in a rich, diverse world of different perspectives and opinions. Conversation, as George Siemens says, is the “ultimate personalization experience. We ask questions and offer views based on our own conceptions. We personalize our knowledge when we socialize” (Siemens 2006:42).

Newcomers may find dialogue and inquiry to be lacking, but this may be in part that they have yet to learn the unwritten rules of our learning culture. These unwritten (tacit) yet sometimes rigid rules of engagement frame how we may respond to each other’s knowledge needs, especially in group contexts. Confusion or even anger may result when breaking this culture of consensus.

In formal settings, our organizational culture of consensus prevails. Disagreements are seldom expressed overtly. Decisions may be made in informal settings, and meetings then serve to make public what has already been agreed upon.

The task orientation dictated by our learning culture and by the pressure of workload and line management expectations also leads to suspicion when one asks too many questions.

Siemens, G., 2006. Knowing knowledge.

Photo: Conversations.1 Stills from a music video for The Hole Punch Generation (Gwen Vanhee/flickr.com)

March 31, 2015
E-mail is formal learning

Technology has enabled new conversations across time and space. Yet e-mail, for example, has become a formal medium, subjected to some of the same rules of consensus that prevail in other formal spaces for dialogue. It can be argued that reading and responding to e-mail requires stopping our (other) work. We also have to figure out how to apply what we learn from e-mail to your work – the applicability problem. (The fact that it is equivalent to a postcard in terms of security is a different issue). Etiquette for a new medium must be negotiated over time, and confusion persists as different people apply differing assumptions about what can be said and how to say it.

Photo: Express (Darien Law/flickr.com).

March 31, 2015
Eureka
If informal learning constitutes an important way in which we learn, adapt and grow, it is important to be able to describe when, where, and how such learning occurs. Only then can we determine how the organization might provide or improve an enabling environment.

We can begin such a process by recalling “aha” moments of significant learning or problem-solving that occurred outside of formal training contexts – and then asking questions about how we identified the problem, what strategies we used to tackle it, what surprised us, and, of course, what were the outcomes.

The “aha moment” is a point in time, event, or experience when one has a sudden insight or realization. It has also been referred to as the eureka (“I found it”) effect. The “aha” moment is a kind of coming together of learning, made compelling because the solution identified may allow for perfect alignment with work. For most “aha” moments that we can recall, the problem at hand is recognized to be exceptional in some way.

Such incidents are significant because they demonstrate:
- the central relevance of informal learning to solve real-world business problems we face;
- the ways in the “aha” moments of incidental learning often represent significant leaps in our ability to reframe, tackle or solve problems;
- that informal learning is embedded into the work and therefore does not require stopping work to learn; and
- informal learning outcomes foster complex, sometimes profound growth of individuals and teams, improving performance not just for the problem at hand but for a set of capabilities that can then be applied to future problem-solving.
We have difficulty recalling the sequence of events and learning process that lead to such moments. The “process of learning through experience is so routine, that it becomes almost automatic and part of our tacit knowledge” (Watkins 2013:18). There is no time to reflect on what or how it happened, and no obvious incentive to do so. The sudden realization and its implications are so strong that the context for it is promptly forgotten. We retain lessons learned and are able to describe how these were applied in their work, but find it more difficult to identify and reflect on the learning processes at work. Our minds focus primarily on the take-away or the lesson and their implications, the knowledge outcome we can use.

And yet, “if we are to capture and retain such lessons, deeper reflection is essential so that we can tell others what we learned” (Watkins 2013:18) and so that our organization can recognize the value of such insights and provide an enabling environment for them. Any learning that is retained solely by the individual is likely to be lost if and when the individual leaves, and unlikely to improve the knowledge performance of the organization.

Watkins, K., 2013. Building a Learning Dashboard. The HR Review 16–21.

Photo: S.S. Eureka, paddle steamer “Eureka” seen at the San Francisco Maritime Museum (Dave Wilson/flickr.com)
March 30, 2015
Learning habits

What are the learning habits that we perform on a regular basis to stay current? As professionals, we organize our personal learning habits in different ways that reflect our interests, personalities, and career paths. We rely on a variety of information sources, engage in reading, attend seminars and conferences, or take MOOCs or other online courses. And, of course, we connect with others. The content we seek may be directly related to our work – or conversely we may seek to acquire knowledge outside our immediate realm and field of vision.

Some or if not most of our reading of work-related content takes place outside of work, even though some of us may choose to cordon off our private lives and succeed in doing so at least some of the time.

We use these information sources in different ways, striving to question what we learn, sorting and organizing what we gather. We recognize the deeply personal nature and diversity of these learning habits. Informal learning is not limited to the context of work. We may mobilize modes of inquiry or specific values to approach a problem in work, drawing on our personal lives, faith or culture, or family contexts.

Each of us organizes such mostly informal, continuous learning in different ways. Making this strategic is not about prescribing best practice, but about recognizing the value of such practices. Our ability to quickly make sense of new knowledge – and to make it a habit – may be more important than the knowledge itself.

Photo: 10 habits (Audrey Low/flickr.com)

March 25, 2015
How do we solve problems in work?

What do we do when we are confronted with a problem? Problem solving begins when we encounter a new experience. We do this out of necessity, but also because we enjoy it. We also need to be able to solve problems fast. We develop our ability and willingness (including on a political level) to identify, analyze, and solve problems. We accept that tackling problems is painful. It involves risk-taking that may not be supported by the organization. Yet so much of how we learn and grow stems from such experiences.

We know that our organization does not necessarily recognize – much less reward – uncovering problems. We need our line management and leadership to support this willingness to tackle problems. Even with supportive management and great colleagues, in many cases we are alone in confronting a problem, if only due to resource and time constraints. Yet we know that our ability to solve problems depends on the quality, depth and meaning of our connections to others.

We strive to reframe our problems by questioning our assumptions and those of others. The way in which we frame our understanding of a problem and the degree to which we are open to re-framing that view depends on the context and the organization. Our organization’s culture and pressures, including time and resource constraints, may reinforce our reluctance to take time out to reframe, rethinking, and reconsider.

Photo: Casse-tête (Frédérique Voisin-Demery/flickr.com)

March 25, 2015
The value of learning embedded in work

Learning that is embedded into work resolves the dilemmas of (formal) learning that requires stopping work. What we learn as we work, we learn in order to apply, and such a learning process does not usually require dedicated resources.

For those of us who see ourselves as “doers” and oppose our way of doing to that of “thinkers”, we may only reluctantly acknowledge that what we do involves continual learning. It is context, we insist, that provokes a more explicit search for new knowledge, validation, or solution. And that is, in fact, the point: doing is a form of knowing. We rely on experience to address what is familiar. However, even when taking on a task that is similar to one we have done in the past, we may need to adjust, adapt, and change.

When we become mindful about learning, we can use any assignment – even mundane tasks – to more explicitly trigger learning.

Photo: VIA VB7009 Embedded Board – Rear I/O (VIA Gallery/flickr.com)

March 24, 2015
Should we trust our intuition and instinct when we learn?

How much of what we learn is through informal and incidental learning? When asked to reflect on where we learned (and continue to learn) what we need to do our work, we collectively come to an even split between our formal qualifications, our peers, and experience. As interaction with peers is gained in the workplace, roughly two-thirds of our capabilities can be attributed to learning in work.

We share the conviction that experience is the best teacher. However, we seldom have the opportunity to reflect on this experience of how we solve problems or develop new knowledge and ideas. How do we acquire and apply skills and knowledge? How do we move along the continuum from inexperience to confidence? How can we transfer experience? Does it “just happen”, or are there ways for the organization to support, foster, and accelerate learning outside of formal contexts (or happening incidentally inside them)?

Most of what we learn happens during work, in the daily actions of making contextual judgements. Such learning is more iterative than linear. Informal learning is a process that is assumed (without requiring proof), tacit (understood or implied without being stated), and implicit (not plainly expressed).

The experience we develop through informal learning shapes our sense of intuition, guiding our problem-solving in daily work. Our narratives reveal that most of the learning that matters is an informal process embedded into work. The most significant skills we possess are acquired through trial, error, and experimentation. Informal learning has the capacity to allow us to learn much more than we intended or expected at the outset. This makes such learning very difficult to evaluate, but far more valuable to those who engage in it – and potentially to the organization that can leverage it to drive knowledge performance.

The lack of mindfulness about informal and incidental forms of learning is a byproduct of the fact that such learning does not require overtly thinking about it. Undoubtedly, though, there are tangible benefits to reflecting upon individual or group learning practices. As George Siemens argued in Knowing Knowledge, informal learning is too important to leave to chance (2006:131). This is why we need the organization to scaffold the processes and approaches that foster learning in the informal domain.

Reflection aids in informal learning, but carries the risk of embedding errors in the learning process when such reflection is private or too subjective. We must be connected to others to make sense of what we learn. When the institutional environment is highly political, this diminishes the incentive to learn more than the minimum needed in order to satisfy the demands of our senior management. Informal learning requires us to be mindful (to care) about what we do.

Photo: Smoke (Paul Bence/flickr.com)

March 24, 2015