Believing is NOT everything

Logic and hard facts are not always valued as much as they should be.

Oftentimes people believe that if they just “feel” or “think” something then reality shouldn’t really be taken into account…
I’m sure you all know examples where beliefs and feelings have substituted hard facts whether we are talking economy, environmental issues or politics.

– well, I can’t do much about that, but I can promote research and facts within my area of expertise: e-learning and content creation.

In e-learning and content creation a lot of people have a lot of (different) ideas on how to do certain things.

Therefore it was really refreshing to witness Saul Carliner from Concordia University in Canada talking about his findings about what is scientifically proven to work and what are just beliefs when it comes to Learning.
So here are some common beliefs in e-learning and content creation and whether there is scientific proof underneath or they are just that – beliefs.

“If an instructor narrates an asynchronous learning program, you should not display the text of the narration at the same time. “  –  TRUTH!
This is supported by two empirical studies. Called modality effect, the duplicate message causes confusion in the system.  Instead, just use bullet points (like a Powerpoint slide).
My comment: I was surprised by this and will take notice of this in my future work.

“Providing learners with control of the e-learning experience increases learning.”  –  MYTH!
No empirical evidence supports this point and 2 empirical studies support the opposite. As the extent of learner control increases, learning decreases except for a very small number of the most advanced expert learners.
My comment: This is what I have always said (without knowing if it was true…). We, as content producers, know how to structure the content in the best possible way and we should use this to help the learners learn in the most efficient way.

“Because digital natives tend to multitask, we should incorporate multitasking into our designs for learning. “  –  MYTH!
No empirical evidence supports this and several empirical studies support the opposite.
Multitasking may not be as beneficial as it appears, and can result in a loss of concentration and cognitive ‘overload’ as the brain shifts between competing stimuli .
My comment: This is no surprise to me. I have never seen multitasking implemented in a meaningful way in e-learning.

“Young people of the digital native generation possess sophisticated knowledge of and skills with information technologies”  –  MYTH!
No empirical evidence supports this and several empirical studies support the opposite.
My comment: This is probably the most surprising fact for most people and could be used by older people to not give up on all the new gadgets and trends.

“Completion rates are highest for e-learning programs that have associated tangible impacts, such as certifications or compliance. “  –  TRUTH!
This is supported by research.
My comments: This is probably the least surprising fact and something many of our customers have been doing for years.

“As a business strategy, Training groups should transition from training dominated by formal programs to training dominated by informal learning efforts” – MYTH!
This is not supported by any research.
On the other hand research indicates that informal and formal learning interacts in important ways.
My comment: This underlines that both way of learning has its place and should be part of any learning strategy.

“Line drawings are more effective than photographs for teaching technical procedures.”  –  TRUTH!
This is supported by research.
People learn better from multimedia messages when extraneous words, pictures, and sounds are excluded rather than included.
My comment: Maybe only a small subject, but good to know if you are creating content yourself.

You can read more about this and Saul Carliner on http://education.concordia.ca/~scarliner/

Mobile Learning

(photo by Gary Woodill)

Some time ago I participated in a webinar by Dr. Gary Woodill from Brandon Hall on the topic Mobile Learning.

Mobile Learning is something we have all been talking about for a long time, but now it seems something is really happening in this field.

He defined a set of categories that will be important to the future of Mobile Learning.

Here is a list of the ones I find most interesting and relevant:

1. User controlled learning apps – think Apple or Android Apps
2. Micro-blogging and text messaging – Facebook, Twitter etc.
3. Mobile research tools and data collection – geotag a picture of a rare flower taken with your mobile
4. Trend tracking and analysis – HealthMap, Google etc.
5. Just-in-time Information – your baker twitting when the bread is ready or the manual for your car build into the infotainment system
6. Augmented reality – Learn about the architect when you point your GPS enabled and direction sensitive phone at an old building
7. Contextual learning – personalized and location sensitive. Point your phone at a subway station and see when your train leaves
8. User controlled media production – most phones and even an iPod have a build-in camera these days
9. Performance support – a doctor operating a patient in a remote area guided by text messages from a colleague
10. Social networking and communities – Facebook, Wikipedia
11. Collaboration – made possible by the easy availability of communication devices
12. Haptic feedback – think Nintendo Wii
13. Self-organized collective behavior – think smart mobs e.g. recent demonstrations in Iran

To me they paint a very exciting new way of learning in the future – and they point to some interesting trends and truths in learning.

Often it is not technology that is limiting our possibilities but our minds
– only #6, #7 and #12 have been held back by technology – the rest is our minds catching up 

Learning gets embedded in our everyday life
– #2, #3, #5, #6, #7 and #10 are good examples 

The teacher is no longer always the focal point in future learning
– look at #1, #2, #8 and #12 

The old line between gathering information and learning becomes even more blurred in the future
– #2, #5, #6; #10 and #13 are examples of this 

Welcome to the new world of learning!

Some Great Books from 2009

Here are some very good books and if you haven’t read them yet, you might want to check them out. The list is restricted to books published in 2009 that I read (there are several others published in 2009 that I still have on my reading list). The list is grouped somewhat by topic. Enjoy!

Enterprise 2.0 / Collaboration

Driving Results through Social Networks: How Top Organizations Leverage Networks for Performance and Growth by Rob Cross and Robert J. Thomas

I referred to this book in Not One of Us, When More Isn’t Always Better, and Is Bacon at the Center of the Universe? It covers the whole range of scale from individual performance and productivity impact of collaboration to the impact of collaboration on organization innovation, projects, and processes as well as the impact of organization culture and strategy on collaboration. There are many solid use cases provided. Cross focuses on social network analysis as a way to understand how information flows through an organization, how it goes into decision making, etc. I wrote about his work being done through manual surveys at Fortune 500 companies prior to leveraging social networking software two years ago in Finding Value in Enterprise Social Networks.

Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results by Morten T. Hansen

I wrote about this book in When More Isn’t Always Better. It is primarily focused on large-scale collaboration and paints it in the starker colors of “good vs. bad” collaboration, highlighting the hidden costs of collaboration without some kind of business purpose and understanding of tradeoffs. Hansen lays out the hidden traps companies fall into with collaboration, identifies the barriers to collaboration, and three levers to avoid the traps and overcome the barriers. It has many use cases as well. Oliver Marks has a great post about this research and our colleague Christine found this great Economist article about the book. Hansen recently wrote about collaboration failure in the intelligence community due to persistent issues regarding incentives, workforce mix, and talent mobility in this Harvard Business Review article.

Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges by Andrew McAfee

McAfee coined the term “Enterprise 2.0” a while back as a way to identify not just the technologies of Web 2.0, but the way in which organizations would use them to get improvements in productivity, innovation, etc. I wrote about McAfee’s work two years ago in Finding Value in Enterprise Social Networks. McAfee has a great way of presenting four different, real business value based use cases that were not being addressed adequately by existing (pre Web 2.0) collaboration technologies (i.e. “Groupware” and “Knowledge Management”), then sort of leaves you hanging (a great “sticky idea” mechanism), then introduces the concepts of Web 2.0 in an accessible, non-techy way, and finally comes back around to show how the four use cases were successfully addressed by various Web 2.0 tools. Furthermore, each of the use cases focuses on a particular level of interaction from close-knit workgroups out to people with shared interests who may not even know each other.

Social Media at Work: How Networking Tools Propel Organizational Performance by Arthur L. Jue, Jackie Alcade Marr, and Mary Ellen Kassotakis

I wrote about this book being published in Talking about OraTweet in Social Media at Work. This book is similar to McAfee’s in that it is less about the technologies themselves as it is about how companies can best adopt and exploit them to gain competitive advantage through increased productivity, innovation, and engagement. This book is also loaded with relevant, real-life use cases that demonstrate how Web 2.0 tools were able to address a tricky problem, trigger innovation more rapidly, etc. It also addresses the organizational adoption issues head-on, such a threats to power and status quo and offers advice on how to tackle those issues.

Risk

The Failure of Risk Management: Why It’s Broken and How to Fix It by Douglas W. Hubbard

I referred to this book in HR: Why Improve Your Analytical Intelligence? and HR: Why Broaden Your Risk Perspective? Hubbard’s book is an eye-opener about how badly most companies are handling risk, due in large part to misguided comfort in following supposed “best practices.” Hubbard pulls no punches and is especially vehement in targeting “fluffy” risk analysis approaches that use things like “heat maps” that are based on “scoring.” His main objection is that these approaches have no way to be really tested as to whether they work because there really isn’t a testable measurement being used. He refutes those who object by saying that some things just aren’t measureable by providing examples of how to do it (some of which are taken from his previous book, How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business.)

The Flaw of Averages: Why We Underestimate Risk in the Face of Uncertainty by Sam L. Savage

I also referred to this book in HR: Why Broaden Your Risk Perspective?. It’s a great companion book to Hubbard’s but takes a lighter approach. The first thing that Savage does is dispense with the arcane terms used so often in statistics that drive most people away. He correctly identifies that as a leading cause for why so many people miss out who could benefit from actually understanding what statistics really has to say about uncertainty and risk. He then goes into a whole series of examples to show what he means about how people get themselves into trouble. The book weighs in at 360+ pages, but it’s divided into 47 bite-sized chapters, some of which he signals can be skipped if you don’t want to do math.

Workforce Strategy

The Differentiated Workforce: Transforming Talent into Strategic Impact by Brian E. Becker, Mark A. Huselid, and Richard W. Beatty

I wrote about this book in HR: Why Improve Your Analytical Intelligence? It is a continuation of their “HR Scorecard” and “Workforce Scorecard” books, although reading them is not a prerequisite, nor is the book a rehash of the previous material. Instead, it introduces enough of the basics from them and expands on them to focus on how to best invest in your workforce so as to maximize its impact on your strategic success. In many ways, I saw this book as a companion to Beyond HR: The New Science of Human Capital by John W. Boudreau and Peter M. Ramstad. Between the two, you’ll have an excellent framework from which to construct or modify your HR strategy.

Photo by by mrkathika

Talking About OraTweet in Social Media at Work

Jake from our friends at AppsLab, posted earlier this week about the soon-to-be-released book, Social Media at Work: How Networking Tools Propel Organizational Performance. It’s authored by three of our Oracle colleagues who specialize in organizational development: Arthur L. Jue, Jackie Alcade Marr, and Mary Ellen Kassotakis. Connect is cited frequently and there are quotes from both Paul and Jake.

There’s a quote in the book from me related to how we use OraTweet, written by Noel Portugal, internally to help developers improve their productivity. I had first written about OraTweet a year ago in a post describing how companies were finding business value in using Twitter, both externally as well as internally.

Arthur, Jackie and Mary Ellen have put together a practical, use case-based guide that provides strategies for how to effectively deploy these tools in order to achieve your productivity, innovation, development and engagement objectives.

If you are attending the upcoming Oracle OpenWorld, you can find the authors at two 30 minute book signing slots:  Tuesday 1:00 – 1:30, and Thursday 1:30 – 2:00. The book is available for preorder now and should hit store shelves mid-October.

When More Isn’t Always Better

There have been a series of excellent posts, particularly Yuri’s, the last month dealing with the issue of getting value from Enterprise 2.0. Some companies are finding value while some are not having as much success doing so. Part of the problem is that there is an error in assuming that more collaboration is always better, when what’s really needed is more effective collaboration. As Hutch Carpenter points out, collaboration itself is not a benefit, but rather a means to an end. The objectives a company might be after vary greatly and could include higher productivity, enhanced innovation, increased employee engagement, etc. which in turn deliver business results in the form of increased revenue or lower costs (i.e. more profit). Collaboration is effective when it supports those objectives and results.

It’s possible to have collaboration that’s not effective. This can range from small-scale collaboration problems such as an overloaded key technical resource that becomes a bottleneck to the progress of several dependent teams to full-blown turf wars between two departments that results in a huge project being cancelled because the window of opportunity passes.

Collaboration tools by themselves don’t cause these ineffective, or even destructive, collaboration problems and by themselves won’t solve them either. However, these tools can be used by an organization that wants to address these types of problems, as part of the process. For example, they can help identify where overloaded key resources are and how to offload work to somewhere else. They can help find where the breakdown and conflict between two departments is centered so that it can be addressed (e.g. not starting the joint project at all under the current conditions, better prepare the organizations prior to project start, adjust the respective objectives of each department, etc.)

The point is that the tools and platforms in Enterprise 2.0 are only as effective as the organization is motivated and prepared to put them to good use. That use could be either or both addressing current obstacles to effective collaboration as well as enhancing current collaborations. What’s great about these tools and platforms, but sometimes overlooked, is that not only can they enhance collaboration, but they also can measure it. Organizations can use this measurement to find and test ways to make collaboration more effective. And that requires motivation and action by the organization and its leadership.

Two excellent books that are out now that cover these issues are:

Driving Results Through Social Networks: How Top Organizations Leverage Networks for Performance and Growth by Rob Cross and Robert J. Thomas – This covers the whole range of scale from individual performance and productivity impact of collaboration to the impact of collaboration on organization innovation, projects, and processes as well as the impact of organization culture and strategy on collaboration. There are many solid use cases provided.

Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results by Morten T. Hansen – This is primarily focused on large-scale collaboration and paints it in the starker colors of “good vs. bad” collaboration. Hansen lays out the hidden traps companies fall into with collaboration, identifies the barriers to collaboration, and three levers to avoid the traps and overcome the barriers. It has many use cases as well. Oliver Marks has a great post about this research and our colleague Christine found this great Economist article about the book.

Photo: barnism

Rich social network = rich productivity

I was browsing through last month’s Harvard Business Review and lo and behold there’s a short article on social networking. The article was about the types of social networking interactions that are required at different times or for different purposes. A centralised structure works for discovery; but a richly connected network supports integration and decision making.
But that wasn’t the important bit! The important bit was recent research from MIT showing the productivity of poorly connected workers versus richly connected workers. Those workers with the most extensive personal digital (i.e. electronic) networks were 7% more productive than their colleagues. Of course, there’s no substitute for face to face, so the same study also found that workers with the strongest and most cohesive face to face networks were 30% more productive.
So I see corporate social networks as places for:
– gathering to share information
– gathering to integrate information and make decisions communally
– building a virtual network that supports and extends the face to face network

Reese’s and Enterprise Social Networks

Continuing the food analogy of the “Web 2.0 Oat Bran” post (it’s the holiday season), let’s say we’re all agreed that better integration of social networks with enterprise applications is a good thing. In that post, the assumption was that the enterprise application would incorporate the social network information. But is that the only way to look at it? Does it make sense to flip it around and have enterprise application functionality within the social network? This would be akin to having an Amazon Facebook App instead of an Amazon site with access to the social network. The oft-used “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup” analogy comes to mind:

Person A: “You got peanut butter on my chocolate!”
Person B: “You got chocolate in my peanut butter!”

In other words, the combination of social networks and enterprise software is good, but which of the two ingredients is the container and which is being contained? In the case of Reeses, they choose chocolate as the container ingredient for very practical reasons. With software, though, we aren’t so limited. Perhaps it depends on the perspective of the user and what they are trying to do that drives whether it’s an app that has social network information or a social network that contains apps. Does it matter much which way it is, as long as it serves the purpose? Does the purpose vary depending on the user’s way of doing work and/or the task they are trying to accomplish? Should both approaches be available then?

Beyond Web 2.0 Oat Bran

We’re starting to see more acceptance, adoption, and even demand for Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise. Rather than being viewed as a threat to productivity, the technologies are being seen as key to innovation, employee and customer engagement, and other competitive advantages. As folks have pointed out, though, companies are now starting to look for better integration of Web 2.0 with their enterprise software. As it stands, we’re seeing mostly the equivalent of “Web 2.0 Oat Bran” today.

What is Web 2.0 Oat Bran?

A bit of background – in the early 90’s, studies found a link between ingesting soluble fiber and a reduction in “bad cholesterol.” Oat bran turns out to be a good source of soluble fiber, so there was the expected avalanche of foods being labeled as “high in oat bran!”, “20% more oat bran!”, “beat cholesterol!”, etc. Now, for products that already contained oat bran, this was a natural way to highlight their perceived health benefits. What got a little carried away were the products that added oat bran so that they could be seen as healthy solely due to the presence of oat bran. First, there are more factors than simply how much oat bran one consumes related to cholesterol levels, and if the product with the added oat bran contains enough other ingredients that negate the benefits of the oat bran, then there’s really no benefit compared to alternatives.

So it is with Web 2.0. Currently, most “social” enterprise activity takes place apart from other business processes or activities. Employees access their enterprise social network, view profiles, view connections of connections, etc. Then, when it’s time to work on defining a goal, update their development plan, locate a supplier, etc. they access a separate app. There might be a chat icon thrown in and perhaps embedded BI. What is missing is the potential to significantly enhance the app by incorporating your social network into the process. So in effect, we have good, useful social network software being used in the enterprise, but it’s like added “Web 2.0 oat bran” – good for you, but maybe we need to be looking at making the apps themselves more “social-healthy.”

Making enterprise applications more “social-healthy”

Charlene Li touched on the potential of using social networks more effectively within applications in part of her talk and presentation about “Social networks will be like air.” In it, she talks about four components in the ongoing evolution of social software, including a “Social context for activities.” She gave the example of seeing reviews from your social network on a book you are browsing, instead of today where you see all reviews. In effect, your social network is being integrated into your shopping task. Of course, we are seeing an advent of “social shopping” sites and so forth lately, but that starts getting into Charlene’s other points about single social graphs and so forth.

So what enterprise activities can be enhanced by incorporating your social network? They might include such things as: improving decision-making by accessing your network’s take on your issue at hand (e.g. goal definition, customer support), improving your productivity by seeing what related tasks your network is working on (e.g. goal execution, project planning), improving your development and growth prospects by getting immediate feedback from your network (e.g. creating a development plan, learning), etc.

Using social network software within the enterprise is making companies more productive, innovative, and competitive and at the same time helping employees learn and grow. Let’s keep exploring where social networks can be effectively integrated into the enterprise business processes so that we get even more value from this technology.

The Adoption Conversation at Office 2.0

Office 2.0 2008 was last week and the reviews have been mixed. The upshot is that the parts that supported “The Conversation” (e.g. the “Unconference” and “hallway meetings”) and the “Real World” (use cases) were enthusiastically applauded, while those that did not (e.g. vendor pitches) were derided. Given the theme and attendance of Office 2.0, this isn’t surprising. For an excellent recap over the whole conference, see Susan Scrupski’s post. Susan was also a key reason for the good things that came from the conference. Sam Lawrence had some good observations about the challenges that conferences like Office 2.0 face now.

 

One of Sam’s points was that it’s no longer a “new” market and the tendency is for the same session topics to be played over again. While this is true, we also saw the natural shift of focus towards the next phase: i.e. now that you’ve heard about the promise of these new technologies, how the heck do you get your (or your client’s) organization to adopt them? As Susan pointed out:

 

“…the focus had shifted away from the shiny newness and more toward a traditional focus on proof-of-concept, success stories, and genuine demonstration of the application of these ideas in a business context.”

 

And here we had some terrific cases (of which three were quite good) and discussion (in the form of one Unconference session and one panel) around how to make that happen (with links to videos): 

• GE Case: Dr. Sukh Grewal (a rocket scientist, no less!) from GE described extremely well not only how they successfully created a Community (Support Central), but connected it to the concepts of Knowledge and Processes.
• Wachovia Case: Pete Fields, SVP and Director of Enterprise Web Services at Wachovia, described the huge effort undertaken to get 110,000 employees connected, including:
  • Behind the scenes look at the multiple stages it underwent.
  • The four business drivers of –
    • Working more effectively across distance and time.
    • Better connecting and engaging the workforce.
    • Capturing better the knowledge of workers leaving the workforce.
    • Rapid engagement of Gen Y entrants
• Sun Case: Charles Beckham and Jan-Hendrik Mangold from Sun showed how to use Web 2.0 and video to greatly enhance knowledge sharing through both the capture as well as dissemination of informal but relevant learning. This included a wide range of employees in terms of tech knowledge as well as access.
• Unconference “Barriers to Adoption” Session: A wide-open discussion covering culture, generations, security, as well as technology. Ross Mayfield of SocialText made the cogent observation that the intended purpose has to be understood in order to have a reasonable chance at adoption, and that a goal of using collaboration to solve a specific business problem in a measurable way has been shown to be the most effective approach, with the beneficial formation of communities being a consequence.
• “Changing Face of the Enterprise” Adoption Panel: Michael Pusateri from Disney, Greg Biggers from Chordiant, and Len Devanna from EMC were hosted by Jive Software’s Sam Lawrence, where they described:
  • What drove their adoptions efforts and who were their sponsors.
  • How they built business cases and handled obstacles.
  • How they executed their projects.
  • Lessons learned.

The overall takeaway was that adoption is not a “one size fits all” situation. Every company’s goals, culture, politics, competitive environment and level of technology guides how it can best utilize enterprise social media and in turn how it should be introduced so as to increase its effectiveness and chance for successful adoption. The adoption efforts described seemed to fall into smaller, more focused efforts around collaboration to solve specific, measurable business problems or big, enterprise-wide community efforts with lots of exec sponsorship (which are sometimes broken down into smaller, focused efforts). Whatever the approach, these efforts followed fairly closely with the “POST” framework outlined in “Groundswell”:

 

• People – Asses your employees’ social activities.
• Objectives – What do you want to accomplish?
• Strategy – Plan for how the relationships will change in order to achieve the objectives.
• Technology – Choose the social technologies to use.

In other words and confirmed listening to the sessions, People are key in that if they aren’t ready, it won’t work since Social Media is, by definition, about People. With Objectives, you must know what you are after or you won’t know if you’ve made it. Once your Objectives are identified, you must have a Strategy to get there. Finally, that Strategy, your Objectives, and your People will determine what Technology is best suited to your needs. In addition, there was some evidence of folks thinking about Objectives in ways similar to what Groundswell laid out: Listening, Talking, Energizing, Supporting, and Embracing.

 

All in all, Office 2.0 2008 offered huge value to all involved in transitioning 2.0 technologies from the “Wow, this is cool. I wonder how we could use it?” stage, to the “Here’s how we could use it/have used it” stage, and now to the “How can we get [more] people to use it?” stage. Thank you to all the participants, especially those willing to present their real world use cases. And a very special thanks to Ismael Ghalimi for making this and the previous conferences happen and for collaborating with everyone to make them truly valuable to our community.

 

HR Carnival 38

Be sure to check out the latest HR Carnival hosted on Changeboard. The focus of this edition is Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Justice. Topics include:

• What defines a great leader?
• How do I expect to lead change?
• Gang culture, poverty, discrimination: let’s tackle it together.
• What is CSR?
• Power of Web 2.0.
• Why should you care about CSR / social justice?
• CSR business case.
• Measuring productivity.   (Louise gets mentioned in this section!  Way to go LB!)
• Engage your employees through teambuilding.