#SLCONF 2012–Social Learning in action

Last Thursday I attended the #SLCONF Social Learning Conference in London. It largely practiced what it preached – in that it proved to be a highly social discussion and effective forum for sharing ideas and experiences with an experienced group of professionals and practitioners.

Good use was made of alternative formats and seeding conversation between groups. I think the fact that this was a relatively small group of people (80 odd?) helped ensure that everyone had a voice and an opportunity to contribute.

You can find Martin Couzins review of the event here which covers the key presentations made by Nick Shackleton-Jones (BBC and BP experiences), Tim Drewitt (Eversheds) and Priya Banati and Clare Norman (Accenture). Also Jon Ingham’s audio review of the event.

Ben Betts facilitated a session on Mobile Learning which managed to yield a list of 96 Mobile Learning App Ideas. Not all unique by any stretch, many already covered by existing apps out there, but it demonstrated that there is a real appetite for mobile learning support. There was a subsequent discussion around the difficulties of developing for mobile given the fragmented platforms and software environments, as well as the typical corporate security challenges currently raised by most IT departments. This led to the question of tools that can simplify this process, and Epic’s GoMo Learning platform struck a particular chord, given it’s ability to enable non-technical people to build learning apps – both web and native apps – to all major platforms (Apple iOS, Android, Blackberry) and form factors (smartphone, tablet, whatever next comes along).

Twitter adds value

I was an active user of Twitter to capture key points and contribute my own ideas as they arose from the discussions which I will summarise here. In conferences where this type of immediate social sharing and reflection is welcomed and integrated within the format, then it can add value for all participants and the wider virtual audience. By breaking down the traditional “lecture” format of most conferences, a much more interactive experience is provided for the those present, while offering virtual observers the opportunity to contribute further references and comment that can be fed back into the live event. Indeed, I benefitted immediately as a late train meant I physically missed the first 15 minutes but could contribute straight away with those tweeting and could enter the debate in sync with the room.

So what were my main contributions? Italics indicate some additional explanatory notes:

@shackletonjones talking about #sociallearning and his struggle with understanding what really underpins effective #learning

Emotion is key element #learning RT @bbetts: @shackletonjones I'm a fan of the affective context, check it out http://www.aconventional.com #slconf (Nick is right to focus on the emotional connection to lasting learning impact and memory formation)

70:20:10 model misused and misunderstood. Agree with this.

#informal #learning driven by culture. However technology beginning to influence culture. (Just see the effect of social media on the Arab Spring, marketing/advertising, entertainment and increasingly as the primary medium of social interaction especially amongst young demographics).

@shackletonjones another video you can't live without!youtube.com/watch?v=0d3oc2… (How to peel Garlic in less than 10 seconds) Nick shared a video related to breakfast cereal.

50%+ millennials are contributors not just passive consumers - key difference to productivity generated by #some #sociallearning (what this  means is that we are on the cusp of a big surge in creative productivity that if harnessed appropriately will lead to a huge acceleration in innovation itself but more importantly its real world application and sharing of what works and what doesn’t).

Focus on content generation strategy - need to foster contributors. Go to where the activity already is. Integrate. Seed & excite. (a pithy shorthand for acknowledging the need for some quality content and contribution that will stimulate a wider audience to participate in an authentic and sustained manner).

BP theHub being demo'd - seeded with 800 video clips from across the organisation globally. Works on iPad as well. Good reach. (good example of the Seed & Excite principle).

Unisys found that 3 min leadership videos generated more behaviour change than a 5 day exec training programme. Properly evaluated. (Will now follow this up with Nick for the full case study).

Learning styles brought up and @shackletonjones rightly doesn't believe in it. (that old chestnut came up again…so I promptly clarified…)

Learning PREFERENCES exist but the way we learn most effectively is broadly the same for everyone. The rest is about individual habits, skills, motivation (emotional engagement). (asked the wider HR community for comment)

Thx for retweet see my blog for more http://larsislearning.blogspot.com RT @CaribThompson: #slconf Lars mantra @larshyland "Less learning more often" (A long standing truism which is only getting more and more relevant)

For those interested I mentioned Lynda Gratton book The Shift - how the world of work is changing. (This book demonstrates the forces in the world that are changing the way in which we work, collaborate, communicate – namely the shift to the East, the disintermediation and connectivity of technology which circumvents traditional hierarchical models.)

@mikecollins WARNING social netWORK AHEAD http://bit.ly/zneyoL > quite apt this is published today given the great stuff coming out of #slconf (good contribution from Mike Collins at RBS Insurance injected into the discussion even though he wasn’t physically there.)

Discussed permission and context key to successful mobile learning support - Just in Time, context sensitive and valued content. #mlearning seen as supplementary to other learning support. (There is always a need for a variety of methods delivering interaction over an extended period of time – another of my mantras – Campaign not Course  comes to mind. People liked this at the event.)

Content, Connection, Collaboration, Community - Accenture model for building sharing culture #some #sociallearning (as Ben Betts pointed out “a lot of Cs”)

Accenture case study and book here #slconf

 

In Summary

A good conference which had the courage to allow a less structured conversation to emerge, collectively generating a lot of practical value amongst the participants.

If you also attended, I’d welcome your comments on this post.

The catalyst to accelerated learning and performance

Here's my article just published on Trainingzone, recorded here for your comment.
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Lars Hyland explores how social tools can be harnessed to deliver a more engaging and effective learning experience.

• The experiential divide between using online technology externally and internally within organisations
• Using the crowd to accelerate learning and innovation
• Three ways to begin nurturing self-learning, self-motivated communities

It seems not a second goes by without some form of social media clamouring for our limited attention, whether it is on our desktop or smartphone. The speed at which we have access to the latest news and information is now literally instant (I assume most of you will have by now experienced the spooky nature of Google Instant search, if not give it a try). The irony is that while this may be true for us as internet consumers, in a workplace context the pace and access to available knowledge and tools is often much slower, hidden behind confusing interfaces and bureaucratic barriers. As a result it can lose much of its value when it comes to that crucial moment of application. 

The experiential divide

The learning management system (LMS) can often fall into this trap, struggling to be perceived by its intended audience as valued learning gateway, instead relegating itself to a distributor of tracked learning events, typically compliance related. Clearly this still plays an important role but perhaps, like plumbing, the LMS should be invisible and increasingly vendors do allow more distributed access to the valuable content it holds. However too often users are forced to engage with systems and content that just doesn’t sustain the required motivation to learn and apply as intended.

This experiential divide is beginning to create real tensions, as employees look for and find ways to circumvent sanctioned communication channels. Many of these are social tools (such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin) and the very fact that these are being proactively searched out and used suggests that organisations are missing out on huge productivity benefits.

Crowd Accelerated Learning

A worldwide exemplar of the catalytic effect of social learning is TED (www.ted.com). TED has grown from a fairly exclusive gathering of thinkers, artists and experts sharing their latest thinking in 18-20 minute talks. Under the stewardship of Chris Anderson, TED opened up access to these using online video which has led to vast, self-fuelled growth in participation through an extended network of TEDx events held around the world. This experience has led Anderson to notice a definite acceleration effect in the learning process for those involved – he calls it Crowd Accelerated Learning or Crowd Accelerated Innovation. As more and more people around the world create videos sharing their expertise/skills/latest thinking which in turn is inspiring others to be better. As a result, he reflects on the wider implications this has for education and training:

“We’ve actually got to bring back real creativity and find a way of nurturing that in the education process. In the age of Google the notion of having to cram all these little brains with facts is bonkers. What’s needed is to build skills like how do you stimulate people to ask the right questions? How do you stimulate people to have a meaningful conversation? To think critically? What are the lenses you give people to think about the world?”

These are big questions, and are just as valid to consider within organisations, teams and across your own professional network, as it is on a societal level. Consequently, as learning professionals we need to be mindful of what behaviours social media can catalyse within our own domains of influence, and determine what these mean for how we design learning experiences going forward. A more specific example is Jove (www.jove.com) an online Journal of Visualised Experiments aimed at the scientific community. It uses videos to show in detail the method and results of experiments. This sharing is rapidly accelerating innovation as there is less duplication of effort and the community builds on each others efforts in a healthily collaborative, yet positively competitive basis.

So how can we foster similar virtuous circles within our own communities? Well it would be misleading to say it is easy, especially when working within a corporate culture that may have deep-seated aversions to sharing its knowledge and capabilities in a more open fashion. But here are three suggestions on how and where to begin nurturing self-learning, self-motivated communities.

1)      Start with the new joiner experience

New employees can be catalysts for wider culture change across your organisation. Delivering a social learning experience as a backbone to your onboarding experience can dramatically reduce the time to competence, reinforce best practice behaviours (sidestepping accepted common practice), while allowing new staff to much more rapidly build their professional networks across the organisation. One US insurance company redesigned the onboarding experience for their underwriters which included active participation within an online community across an eight month period, including weekly assignments, online coaching and shared experience roundtables. This resulted in a drop in attrition levels from 50% to 10% and crucially, each successful participant was underwriting $40 million of business, which previously would have taken nine years of experience to reach. That has the capacity to be truly transformational in terms of business performance.

2) Think “campaign” not “course” in all your designs

When designing a training experience break it down into a more extended campaign of activities that are aligned with opportunities to practice and share the results with a network of peers, mentors and experts, transferring learning into active performance. Putting a social thread throughout the programme can help identify those who need additional encouragement and support and enable those who can move faster to build their expertise and experience at their own pace.

3) Bring staff and customers together in a shared learning experience

Social learning can be used to cut across silos and bring fresh thinking to communities. The most radical approach is to open up to the customer and involve them in the learning process of improving your products and services. Providing a forum for listening, contributing, explaining and reaching a new level of shared understanding reinforces both customer loyalty and staff engagement. Starbucks has had tremendous success with its My Starbucks Idea (http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/) site where customers can contribute ideas for improvement and see them being seriously evaluated and implemented. This concept can be taken inside the organisation too. We all have internal customers and using similar tools to draw out what really makes a difference in real and perceived levels of service focuses limited time and resources on what matters most. This could transform your standing within the organisation.

Opening up

So as Chris Anderson of TED says, it is time to “invite the crowd, let in the light and dial up the desire”. In other words, leverage social tools and techniques to open up access to knowledge and expertise, remove unnecessary barriers and nurture a community that sees the powerful value of creating and sharing. A more fitting definition of accelerated learning, don’t you think? 

How to roll out knowledge to contact centres

Just published on the popular Trainingzone site. Comments welcome.
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In a real-time business environment, how do you ensure staff are kept fully up to speed on new products and services, while also keeping customers happy? Lars Hyland outlines ways in which technology can improve knowledge, learning and communication in the pressurised environment of the contact centre.
It's hard to keep up, isn't it? Product cycle times are shrinking, in some industries down to a matter of weeks, with the frequency of product and service launches growing each year. Customers are demanding ever more variety and choice, with competition fierce for their money and attention.
Large organisations often struggle to communicate in as timely and consistent a fashion as they would like. Meanwhile, marketing pushes ahead, sometimes leaving sales and service staff struggling to service the resulting enquiries.
With the advent of the internet and the seemingly unstoppable race towards real-time communication, the stakes are raised even higher. So it's not surprising to read the results of the Customer Contact Association's 2009 membership survey indicating a strong trend towards customer self service. Essentially, this means providing the customer with information and services to answer their basic queries and conduct interactions with an organisation, without picking up the phone.
Interestingly, the expectations were not a huge reduction in call volumes, but more of a shift towards agents handling more complex (and emotional) calls. These are more demanding and support another expectation that contact centre staff need to be much less process driven and become knowledge workers who can flexibly address a wide range of issues for the customer.
So how do you keep knowledge workers knowledgeable? That requires a learning culture, regular and effective communication, as well as efficient performance support tools that staff can reliably trust and use with confidence. Let's take a look at how learning technology can be applied to deliver a more agile and dynamic customer service culture.

Build and maintain a product knowledge elearning portfolio

Every product and service your organisation offers to the market can be effectively explained using engaging interactivity, covering the key features and benefits, presenting how they sit within the wider portfolio. There is a commitment required to maintain and update this suite of knowledge modules, but when structured in an easy to access and intuitive fashion they can provide much improved consistency of understanding across your workforce.
The process needs to be fast, flexible and fit with the speed of product development and launch in your organisation - internal processes must be aligned with the e-learning for it to be engaging and responsive.

Virtual practice builds confidence and competence

Simulating customer interaction can help agents and advisors practice and model best practice behaviours. There are often significant constraints that will affect the call outcome based on what can be said, when and how. There is a fine balancing act to be struck between inflexible scripted responses and offering more flexible, "human" conversation, while remaining compliant.

Compliance/regulatory training can be automatically tracked and audited

Keeping compliant is a significant undertaking with high administration costs. Learning management systems automate the collection and reporting of completion data for later auditing purposes. Going beyond the letter of the law it is possible to have employees understand the spirit of the regulation to which they must comply. For example, no-one would argue with the need to protect data and treat customers fairly, but sometimes the regulation can overshadow the core message. Good e-learning design can address this.

Give customers and staff a shared learning experience

In the true spirit of self service, it makes sense to offer a similar experience for your customers and staff that ensures there is a shared understanding in place. A higher budget is often spent on 'superficial' customer communication and marketing than on staff training, often leaving the customer wanting more detail to inform their decision.
Staff also need detail and knowledge in order to serve customers well. Perhaps sharing these budget pots in a more balanced way will result in high quality learning and communication deliverables that will enable customers to self-serve, and contact centre staff to be more enthused and self-motivated about the products and services they offer.
Note that elearning content doesn't just have to sit inside an LMS - it can be on the external website, directly linked to applications your staff and customers use.

Less learning more often - focus on performance support

Product knowledge dates quickly. Pulling staff away from their jobs to sit in training sessions that do little to inspire, much to confuse, only for them to forget most of what was presented is not a productive use of time. Building learning opportunities into the everyday work flow is an essential part of a modern day contact centre environment. (See Less Learning More Often article for more on this).

Start staff learning before they arrive

The pre-induction learning portal is proving to be an excellent tool to dramatically improve new staff engagement and productivity from their very first day. The Aberdeen Group Report on Effective Onboarding Techniques and Strategies made this one of its key recommendations for organisations looking to reduce training costs and improve employee engagement.
As we move out of recession, there will be further pressure to retain talented staff at all levels. There is much evidence to show that staff decisions to stay with an organisation for the long term are strongly influenced by the experience they receive within their first three months of employment. The pre-induction learning portal is an excellent way to bridge the chasm of communication between accepting a new role and arriving on the first day.
Brightwave and Sky, the satellite television and media communications provider, worked together to build a highly engaging pre-induction experience that includes many of the recommendations made above, to good effect. Up to ten hours of learning covering product knowledge, compliance topics, as well as sales simulations, have led to staff arriving confident and competent. This has reduced induction training by one week and measurably improved sales and customer service performance. The portal also won the Most Effective Training Programme award at the recent Customer Contact Association Global Excellence Awards. It's a best practice model well worth replicating.

Serving a wider community

In a globalised and outsource driven economy keeping a consistent level of knowledge amongst suppliers, resellers, customers and your own internal staff can only be managed using technology. E-learning is a cornerstone of that strategy and, with the right design, deployment, and content management practices in place you can keep pace with the rate of change we are all experiencing.
In many respects as we hurtle forward, we need to manage knowledge in new ways. In the future it is less about "know-how" and more about "know-now". That means searching, finding, and acting at the moment of need. Hold on to your hats, it's only going to get faster.

Summary points

• Current trend to customer self-service will lead to a shift in agents handling more complex (and emotional) calls – a positive learning culture with regular and effective communication is essential to keep contact centre staff knowledgeable
• Give customers and staff a shared elearning experience - engaging elearning helps build and maintain product knowledge
• Simulations can help improve customer service and interaction
• Help staff understand the purpose of compliance and regulation with good e-learning design
• Less learning more often – focus on performance support
• Get staff learning before they arrive - the pre-induction or onboarding