ID and Other Reflections

In Response to Collaboration Provides Autonomy

sahana2802 — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 16:33:00 +0000

Last week I started a new Making Strategies Stick project with a large IT company. The guys I’m working with are the technical sales folk and as we were working out their strategic story they mentioned that the passion that was once there for their products seemed to be waning among some of their technical specialists.

From: Anecdote: Collaboration provides autonomy

A very short post from Anecdote, the para jumps out at you, not only because it is the first para in a post that is 3 paragraphs long, but because of the underlying message it conveys.

As soon as I read it, I told myself, “Those guys are losing motivation, they are not feeling involved.”

The post gives a classic example of where instruction was replacing involvement. I mentioned in an earlier post–Collaboration: A mantra that makes work play!–how typical knowledge workers do not appreciate being instructed; involvement is the key to motivation.

In today’s networked world of the Concept Age where ideas connect and bring together people, where knowledge workers thrive on collaboration, leaders have to change their style.

As mentioned in another post from Anecdote: Book review: Switch—How to Change Things When Change is Hard, “A leader cannot afford to stay aloof. For change to occur they need to get into the detail as well as stay strategic.”

Both the posts referenced here from Anecdote are a must read for anyone who wishes to grow a motivated and enthusiastic team where knowledge is freely shared, learning and collaboration go hand in hand, and these get reflected in the work the team puts forth.

For the truly keen, there is also a white paper from Anecdote, Building a collaborative workplace.

Filed under: Collaboration, communication, Reflection

My Learning Tools

sahana2802 — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:48:00 +0000

I just finished reading Harold Jarche’s post: Seek, Sense, Share

In the post, he talks about how seeking information, then applying our personal sense-making filters to it, and finally sharing it helps us to see the interconnections, patterns and the larger whole. This is why the process of “seek, sense, share” becomes so important in one’s personal learning and knowledge management.

This set me thinking about how I manage my personal knowledge and from there it led to the tools I use to do in this networked world.

Lately, I have started using a number of Web tools actively. The post made me pause and reflect on the position/use of each in my PKM. And this is what I found after some random scribbling, reflection, dialogue with self, and head scratching…

I have listed the tools in their order of frequency of usage (at least now and this is liable to change)…

What do I receive (tangible and intangible)/how do I use each of the tools…

Twitter:

Resource links, suggestions, insights that have taught me more in a year than I learned in the previous five
Responses to queries
Opportunities to participate in global conversations like #lrnchat (my favorite activity)
Access to collective wisdom helping me to make sense of all the information flowing endlessly
A real-time editing of the web that filters the most useful bits with comments, suggestions, additional thoughts that add to my sense-making
Send out 140 ch thought chunks where I force myself to summarize what I have read (my ability to see the essence/core of a piece is improving with this)
Opportunities to lurk on interesting conversations that erupt in an atmosphere where most are seeking to learn
Ability to participate or just “be”, depending on my mood and still benefit
A feel of the “pulse” of what is happening, how the world and worldviews are shifting, and how these can impact learning/training/organizations/interactions—in short everything

Amplify:

1. I have been using Amplify to not only share what I read and like but also to share (to some extent) my take on the topic.

Amplify bridges the gap that micro-blogging seems to have created in the blogosphere with people sharing links to great posts and maybe a few words on Twitter.
Using Amplify is forcing me to go beyond superficial skimming and read more deeply before I post the link. While my sharing on Twitter may have reduced, I feel that I am doing so more thoughtfully now.
It’s a step beyond Twitter and I feel will help us to make greater sense of the information coming our way—at least from an “analyzing to internalize” perspective.

5. This may also take care of some of the fears many have expressed about Twitter encouraging superficial/no reading. The way Amplify works, one has to dig a bit deeper…probably a move toward sharing more thoughtfully…

Blog:

As Harold Jarche has said, my blog is where I hammer out my ideas. For the most part, my posts are an outcome of some theoretical understanding (a beginner here) combined with experiential learning. They are more often than not reflective in nature. Blogging has helped me to:

Pin down sometimes elusive thoughts
Rationalize my reactions and even hunches
Analyze any new theories/concepts I come across (those that fall within my areas of interest)
Concretize my understanding and make new concepts my own (I can beat these around till I see how they all fit into my overall understanding)
Connect old ideas to new learning and information—thus adding layers and depth to my knowledge
Come into contact with wonderful bloggers and be a part of the blogosphere
Trace the emerging pattern of my writing to see what is driving me (though I started my blog as an instructional design blog, most of my posts pertain to informal learning, interaction and collaboration. This was an unconscious move and only now apparent in hindsight)

Posterous:

A place for my half formed ideas—those that are too big for Twitter and too scrappy to be a post. I kind of jot them down here (need to use this more frequently) and then go over a collection of them to see the pattern in my thought process. Some of these evolve into posts after reflection, more reading and referencing. Sometimes, I also quickly publish a find that has added to my learning significantly. The best part is that it pushes out what I publish here to Twitter and also saves it as a Delicious link (these options are configurable).

Readernaut:

A very recent addition to my list of tools (thanks a lot to @mrch0mp3rs Aaron Silvers), I can see that this is going to soon become very important. Once you create an account here, you can:

Add the book that you have read, plan to read or buy
Add notes, comments, thoughts, and reviews of the books and keep adding to these
Post comment to other people’s notes, books…
Follow others whose reading list interest you

I have to get down to using this more actively, one of my goals this weekend.

Evernote:

This is another tool I use very frequently and actively. It allows me to:

Save posts, articles, notes I want to go back to and read again, reflect upon
Add my comments and thoughts as I read them (these comments later become my posts in some cases)
Edit, print out, e-mail directly and also share (the way I have done with these notes)

In short, Evernote allows me to filter the web, take what I want and create my own notebook. I can also synch it so that I can access my notes when I am offline. I have found this feature immensely useful when traveling long distances and it has helped me to catch up on my reading.

Xmind and Freemind:

These are FREE! Free is good to use Cammy Bean’s words.

These are free mind mapping tools that helps to me to structure my thoughts and lay them out visually. I use mind maps to:

Take minutes of meetings
Kick start a discussion
Capture a brainstorming session (sometimes these are done by sketching a mind map on a whiteboard, but the result is the same)
Capture the key points I wish to cover in a document with all the hierarchies and sub-sets visually laid out
To lay out a PowerPoint presentation before actually creating one
During the content chunking phase when I can group the content easily (a typical pre-storyboard phase of an ID’s job)
To storyboard and do design thinking
To sometimes capture the key points of a post I am planning to write
And anything else in between

Delicious:

Usually where I save my links with my tags. However, this is a bit on the decline with Evernote proving more useful for me.

I have not gone into LinkedIn here as I don’t really (as yet) use it to “learn”. I use it as a platform to connect to people I learn from via their blogs, Twitter sharing, and such. LinkedIn has some great discussions but participation there is as yet negligible.

There are also Ning and Wikis but I have not started using these very actively. The activities here are still sporadic, and I think will not pick up speed for the next 6 months. By then, it will be time to revisit this post and note the changes.

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Filed under: Knowledgemanagement, Learning, Reflection

eLearning Learning Featured!

sahana2802 — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:38:00 +0000

I subscribe to eLearning Learning feeds because of the quality of the posts that it brings together.

A few days back, when I received the feeds in my mailbox and scrolled down to read, I saw my post there. Taken aback, I told myself, “Naa, some mistake!” And went right back to work.

When my next post appeared in the next day’s feed, I decided to explore a bit. I dropped a mail to Tony Karrer.  He must have been amused, and I am probably the first person who doesn’t know when she is being featured.

I was overjoyed and also humbled and definitely feel motivated to write more often and more thoughtfully.

eLearning learning, to me, has always meant insightful, thought-provoking writing on not only elearning but learning in general—learning in today’s networked world, learning through collaboration, learning about learning.

I hope to do justice to my passion for learning and to the readers of my blog…

Filed under: Blogs, elearning, Instructional Design

Collaboration: A mantra that makes work play!

sahana2802 — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 01:02:00 +0000

“Collaboration is a process through which people who see different aspects of a problem can constructively explore their differences and search for solutions that go beyond their own limited vision of what is possible.” from: http://www.anecdote.com.au/whitepapers.php?wpid=15

The last one month or so has been a “learningful” one for me—experiential as well as conceptual. Incidents and events have forced me to reflect. I have (more correctly, still trying to) unlearned and relearned and have gleaned an insight into myself, my expectations, and perceptions that I hope will stand me in good stead moving ahead.

This learning is closely related to Collaboration (my favorite word as people who know me will recognize).

Background:

I think most knowledge workers approach work from two perspectives.

One where we see what we have to do on a daily basis as our commitment and call of duty towards projects, clients, team, and the business. These are the fixed/assigned tasks that are more often than not part of our KRAs, are top driven, and we have little choice over, especially if we are working for corporate organizations. These require discipline in execution and delivery, sincerity, dedication and also a passion for excellence. An ability to innovate in the implementation adds to the self satisfaction. However, most often, these are short term tasks with short term goals that we want to get done with so that we can focus on what really inspires us, what signifies long term goals in terms of self growth and learning, and where we feel our contribution can actually make a difference.

This second aspect makes work meaningful and much more than the work we are paid to do. Work becomes play! Work becomes exciting, invigorating, stimulating! And one of the key sources of our personal learning. When this happens, we forget those late nights, the backbreaking hours in front of our laptops, the late and sometimes missed lunches! We look forward to the brainstorming sessions, to connecting and collaborating, to that feeling of involvement and of doing something together that matters—to each individual and to the team.

The second aspect of work also gives rise to innovations and is the seat of collaboration. This is the place where complex ideas take shape and patterns emerge showing the road map for the future.

I have always been a sucker for this kind of work opportunity. Who isn’t? When such opportunities arise, I don’t much care whether I will get a promotion or an increase in my salary, whether I have been in office for 8 hours or 12. It is immensely fulfilling just to know that I can contribute to my work in ways and areas that matter to me most.

However, one of the endeavors that should have been the flagship of collaborative effort failed—not from the perspective of the outcome—but from my personal standpoint. Failed to involve all team members and thus demonstrate the true spirit of collaboration.

Here’s an excerpt from the post Anecdotes: Putting stories to work that comes close to the kind of endeavor this team was trying to put forth.

“Team collaboration often suggests that, while there is explicit leadership, the participants cooperate on an equal footing and will receive equal recognition. An example is a six-member team working together to develop a new marketing strategy in a month, with a deﬁned set of resources.”

Because the venture was so close to my heart, the lack of involvement left an impact that remained with me and called for an analysis.

Today, I was going through posts and articles to research for a paper on Collaboration, Networking and Social Media—some of my passions—when I chanced upon this article. Pure serendipity!

I have quoted liberally from the article to substantiate my points. I would recommend to all that you read the original one. I have taken those points that talk about Team Collaboration. The paper also discusses Community Collaboration and Network Collaboration.

Excerpt:

Team Collaboration

The highlights are mine and indicate what ultimately, for me, became the points of disconnect in the overall effort.

Common purpose or goal

An outcome that is valued

Pressure to deliver (a due date)

Complex problems that a single person could not resolve on their own

An explicit process for getting things done (no ESP required)

Clearly deﬁned roles

Knowledge of each other’s work, communication and learning styles

An admiration of the skills and abilities of fellow team-mates

Enough resources to do the job but not so many that the team loses its resourcefulness

Regular social activities to build trust among team members

The Role of Leadership

Leadership is a keystone for establishing supportive collaboration cultures, especially in teams and communities. This is based on how leaders mainly embed their beliefs, values and assumptions in the fabric of their organisation. There are six main behaviours that leaders display that mould the organisation’s culture.[3]

What leaders pay attention to, measure, and control on a regular basis—are they paying attention to collaborative strategies and behaviours from team, community and network perspectives?

How leaders react to critical incidents and organisational crises—are they sacriﬁcing long-term goals for short-term ﬁxes which sabotage collaboration? Does fear of connecting to the larger network keep them from tapping into it?

How leaders allocate resources—are they investing in the collaboration capability? Is it attentive to all three types of collaboration?

How leaders express their identity through deliberate role modelling, teaching, and coaching—as our leaders collaborate, so do we!

How leaders allocate rewards and status—are your leaders rewarding individual or collaborative behaviours? Or both?

How leaders recruit, select, promote, and excommunicate—are collaborative talents sought and nurtured?

The excerpt shows that it is not enough to expect collaboration without setting in place a mechanism that enables it.However, the incident has taught me a few things about myself that I am grateful for.At the cost of sounding egoistic I have realized that like most experienced knowledge workers, I don’t appreciate being informed, I have to be involved. Most managers and management make the mistake of conflating information with involvement. They wrongly assume that if somehow information has been conveyed to a team member, s/he should rightfully feel involved.

Just turning the famous quote by Albert Camus a little to reflect what I, as a knowledge worker, feel about work:

Inform me; I may not listen…

Instruct me; I may not comply…

Involve me; I will be there right by your side…

Filed under: Collaboration, Informal Learning, Networking

Organizational Network Analysis: Impact of Proximity on Collaboration

sahana2802 — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:48:00 +0000

Where I work, the e-learning team occupies 4 large rows with instructional designers, graphic designers, programmers, technicians, project managers spread out and rubbing shoulders in happy abandon. The team’s manager sits within 3 feet of the team and can not only observe every member but can also walk up to offer quick assistance/advice whenever needed.

A few weeks back, there was talk of moving a part of the e-learning team working on a specific project to a different building altogether. This information disturbed me deeply, and I raised this concern with the manager and a few other members as well. Somehow, to me, this seemed to be the opening up of a severe fault line in the project. However, I could neither quantify it nor rationalize it. But the hunch was so intense that I could not ignore it either.

Ironically, it was not going to affect me at all as I was already scheduled to travel. But I could almost sense the negative impact such a shift would have on this critical project.

Today, as I sat reading (once again) Informal Learning by Jay Cross in a distant hotel room in Westbrook, Connecticut, the point on Organizational Network Analysis hit me. I wish I had recalled it in time to support my hunch with facts.

I have paraphrased a few points from the book (pages 69-71):
Rob Cross is the founder and research director of the Network Roundtable, a consortium of 40 learning organizations working with UVA faculty to apply network techniques to critical business issues.

Using Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) to pinpoint the vulnerability of the informal organization, one of the key findings was that:

“…the ONA demonstrated the extent to which the production division had become separated from the overall network. Several months prior to the analysis, these people had been physically moved to a different floor in the building. On reviewing the network diagram, many of the executives realized that this physical separation had resulted in loss of a lot of the serendipitous meetings that occurred…“

These informal meetings are part of the shadow organization that runs behind (under the radar of) every formal organization. While the formal organization facilitates systematic, process driven work, the informal enables innovation, learning, just-in-time information, productivity and quality improvement, improved job satisfaction….

And analysis also shows that most knowledge workers are likely to turn to their neighbor to discuss a problem than consult a database. By facilitating such “turning to one’s neighbor” possibilities and ensuring that the right contacts are closely located in the workplace, an organization can immensely improve quality, productivity and morale.

Many forward-looking companies have redesigned their work space to enable interaction and collaboration, to connect people who need to be connected.

For a deeper understanding, read: What is ONA? and of course, Informal Learning.

Filed under: Informal Learning, Organization, social networking sites

My first scraplet

sahana2802 — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:26:00 +0000

I have just started my Posterous…Snippets of thoughts, ideas, conversations—and other similar stuff that I have been adding to my blog with happy abandon will now find their way here. I hope you will read and comment…

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I have seen a thousand faces…moments in life captured!

sahana2802 — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 01:33:00 +0000

The post, “I have seen a thousand faces” left me wondering and reflecting for a long time. It was my discovery of the morning…It is a visual representation of moments captured, moments that make up everyone’s life, moments of pain, love, laughter…

The human face has always been the teller of tales, and here you will see a beautiful rendition of that ageless story–the story of life. You will see courage, fortitude, strain, laughter, love–all frozen by the camera and made meaningful by the author’s comments.

Go to the original post: I have seen a thousand faces…

Posted in Personal, Reflection

Why some smart people are reluctant to share? | Life Beyond Code

sahana2802 — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 01:33:00 +0000

A post from a blogger I admire, this one set me thinking this morning.

We have often experienced this phenomenon where someone we hold in regard for their knowledge, expertise in a particular area, skills, insight and analytical abilities, just does not seem to share the knowledge.

As humans, our first instinct is to run such a person down–label him/her selfish or a snob.

Rajesh Setty goes beyond that and analyzes how the mind of such a person could be working. And what is seen as selfish could just be a case of the expert taking his expertise for granted and not thinking of it as something worth sharing.

The diagram below depicts how an expert perceives his/her own knowledge…

A definitely good read…
Why some smart people are reluctant to share? | Life Beyond Code

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Posted in communication, Reflection

Project Management for Trainers: Key Concepts and Learning

sahana2802 — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:51:00 +0000

I have just finished reading the book, Project Management for Trainers by Lou Russell. At the outset, let me admit that this is a somewhat unusual book for me to read. I am more into books about learning and performance, training, design, creative thinking, innovation and management, writing, and the like.

However, increasingly in my role as an Instructional Designer (ID), I have run up against the necessity to not only multi-task but also to think beyond training solution, learning needs and design. I have also realized that to be an effective ID, there are certain aspects of a Project I would need to understand better and get a handle on.

With this thought in mind, I took some time out to sit down and take stock of the tasks I have found myself doing in the last three months (in varying proportions). I have listed the broad categories of the tasks below (each task has many and varied sub-tasks that I will take up in subsequent posts):

Business Needs Analysis
Performance Consulting
Learning Solutions Design and Development
Project Management (PM)
Communication (both internal and client facing)

Having arrived at the list above, I did the next level of analysis to find out my weakest area. Project Management jumped out at me in a font size 10 times larger. I admitted to myself that I sucked at PM…no, not sucked…had no clue about PM.

This self-analysis became the stepping stone for my research into the kind of books I need to be reading and the resources I should be referencing.

And I picked up the book I have mentioned above. This engagingly written, practical, interactivity-filled, slim book is a wonderful introduction to the basics of Project Management. It covers all the fundamentals in a manner that is easy to understand and does not overwhelm with details. It gives you enough space and opportunity to think over what you have read and apply that practically. The book also provides a list of references and resources and is a must have on the shelf if you want to learn how training projects need to be managed and executed.

Some of the key concepts explained in the book that I have found particularly useful are:

Differences between project and process
Project Management Activity vs. Project Development Activity
The Dare Approach (Define, Plan, Manage, Review)
Arriving at Business Objectives mapping to IRACIS (Increase Revenue, Avoid Cost, Improve Services)
Creating a visual scope document/project charter as baseline
Risks and constraints analysis (measurable methods)
Risk-scenario planning (extremely useful, especially for high-risk project with changing busienss needs)
Building the project plan–step-by-step (creating the Work Breakdown Structure [WBS])
Creating the schedule using the Critical Path anlaysis
Difference between and measurement of Project Duration and Project Elapsed Time (Two Types of Time in Project Schedules)
The Learner First Approach for accelerated learning
Managing change and change request (everybody’s bug-bear and a must know)
Time, Cost, Quality: what’s the most important?
Post-project review process–using Systems Thinking
Using the PACT model to carry out Performance Consulting
Differences between Learning Event Development and Performance Consulting
Managing external suppliers and vendors

I am planning separate posts on each of the topics above–mainly for my clarity and depth of understanding.

One self-discovery I had post reading the book: I immensely enjoyed reading it. And I can see how if one truly gets involved in managing a project, it can be a challenging, innovative, analytical and highly satisfying task. There are a multitude of variables one can play around with, and these keep changing from point to point within the same project. I have seen it happen and now reading about the levers that can be used to control these make the task so much fun…I also feel it could be addictive…

Some of the resource and reference links from the book:

Posted in Books, project management, Reading

Learning Resources from Informal Learning (Jay Cross): Part 1

sahana2802 — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 07:33:00 +0000

I am re-reading Informal Learning by Jay Cross and was going through the resource links he has provided. Apart from the book, which is a must read for anyone interested in the field of learning, the resource links are gold mines of knowledge, information and insights.

I am putting some of my favorite sites from the list here for reference.

Ageless Learner: Marcia Conner
Verna Allee Associates: Great resources on value network analysis, intangible asset management,organizational networks, and collaboration
Beyond Bullets: Cliff Atkinson
Cognitive Edge: Dave Snowden
eLearning Center: Access a vast collection of selected and reviewed links to e-Learning resources
eLearning Forum: The intersection of learning, technology, business and design
EPSS Central: A set of free resources on the different and many disciplines that comprise performance centered design…
Gurteen Knowledge Center: Knowledge Management, learning, creativity, personal development, innovation…
Internet Time Group: Jay Cross
Meta-Learning Lab: Dedicated to increasing people’s capacity to learn and improve the performance of individual’s and organizations…
Orgnet.com: Social network analysts…also look at their blog: The Network Thinker
Quinnovation: wonderful resource site on games, mobile learning, performance support, content models–all based on sound cognitive background, vast technology and business experience…
Stephen Denning: Steve Denning is the Warren Buffett of business communication says Chip Heath…Also look at his blog: High-performance Teams
Work-Learning Research: Will Thalheimer–Wisdom for Wildly Enhanced Learning & Performance…
Communication Nation: Dave Gray’s Blog. Dave is the Founder and Chairman of XPLANE, the visual thinking company…

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