synergy… learning… it’s all goodness but it is a LOT of change to prepare for. Good thing we are “learning” people right?

For one, it’s all very pertinent as I don’t see the link between learning management and other talent and business processes becoming much tighter, despite what we are being told. The competency table is still the integration point, and, as important as that is, it just doesn’t get you far enough.

Other forms of learning that are of ever-increasing importance, particularly collaborative ad-hoc/informal learning, require social networking functionality rooted in much more robust information on individuals and what they know and do, and that just hasn’t lived in the learning management module to date.

Secondly, to be fair, I don’t believe lecture-based learning will ever go away. It will always make sense as a method for distributing information from the core to the far corners of an organization, including information on key strategic initiatives, new products, etc. But we are already seeing how that form of knowledge distribution is being destroyed by the internet and web 2.0 technologies, so we would be foolish to think that “teaching” will remain the sole or even primary form of learning in our companies, and we need to start preparing for that transition.

Lastly, if learning and development folks give up control of what is being delivered, how, and to how many people - some of their primary measures of success and progress - they need to have new measures by which to judge themselves. Perhaps those measures should be aligned around whether people are actually applying new skills on the job! In other words, start holding people accountable for learning, empower them to explore different learning options (including, for example, finding and meeting with a SME over lunch or coffee), but then let them figure out how best to acquire the knowledge.