Take that first step

This week a colleague sent me a blog about why recruiters don’t blog (see the end of this blog for a list of links to blogs I’m talking about here).

There were a couple of interesting points or questions that this blog raised for me. The first point is that recruiters don’t blog because it is not necessarily a social activity, and I quote from this blog: “to write a blog post you need to sit and think and write”. However the blog also makes the point that the best recruitment bloggers end up teaching and training. Hmmm ok, well then L&D specialists should be right in there with the blogging because that’s what they do, they sit and think and write.

Secondly, with that in mind, why don’t more HR people blog? L&D is often seen as an extension of HR (although I’m sure there are some people who would argue otherwise) so it stands to reason, if recruitment people don’t blog because of the sitting, thinking and writing, both L&D people and HR people should be proficient bloggers, right?

Well, Brad Power in the Harvard Business Review suggests that HR people are not necessarily innovators in business (which you might argue otherwise - and I hope you do!), which I infer means they might not be up with the play with something like blogging. However, there are a number of HR blogs out there, most of which are written by actual HR people. There is even a list of the top 25 HR blogs. So HR people do blog, so perhaps it’s a personal thing rather than a business-orientated thing?

However, there are still not that many HR people, particularly in New Zealand that are out there writing a blog. Why? Are we scared of that tall poppy syndrome? Anecdotally, we don’t blog because it’s scary. “What if people don’t like what I say?” I think that every time I do my blog, but I go ahead and post it anyway.  I’m no expert on blogging, this is blog number 16, but I’m already getting comments, engaging with people that I might not have otherwise, and getting involved in further discussions. This is invaluable to my own learning and hopefully to others.

So to all those people thinking “oh that’s cool you’ve got a blog, but I could NEEEVER do that” do it anyway. It’s not that bad, and it’s not that scary. You just have to do it, take that first step and then do it regularly. And if you’re wondering how to write a blog, my wonderful colleague Tanja Gardner from Crystal Clarity Copywriting has an awesome blog about how to write a blog. She’s also bringing out an ebook on the series that will be available for sale from early April with a discounted introduction price.

How’s that for a blog about blogs with lots of links to other useful and/or interesting blogs?

The blogs I’ve referred to for your reference:

Why recruiters don’t blog http://www.jobsblog.ie/Jobs/why-recruiters-dont-like-blogging/1105?goback=%2Egde_1879984_member_101098249

Brad Power, HBR Blog http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/11/its_hard_to_find_leaders.html

Top 25 HR Blogs http://www.hrworld.com/features/top-25-blogs-121907/

Tanja’s blog http://www.crystalclaritycopywriting.com/blog (scroll down on the right-hand side, you'll see the very last category at the bottom is "Wtdbp Series").

The value of social learning

The photo below is my view today. It’s a holiday view rather than an everyday view, but I’ve been going to bed with the sounds of waves crashing on the beach and curling up in front of this massive window and reading books on my Kindle. Jealous much?

I often get asked by well meaning parentals and grandparents why I don’t consider moving over seas. Not that they are trying to get rid of me, but they consider places like London and Sydney as providing more opportunities for someone my age, and better money as a result.

But every time I travel (thus far Italy, Mexico, USA, Vietnam, Australia) I always enjoy coming home to little ol’ NZ. And, when I look out my window and see views like this, I’m glad that I live and work in the country that I do.

Aside from being on holiday, I can drive 15mins from my home in Auckland and be in the country, the bush, and/or the beach. These places are clean, free to access, un-crowded and just beautiful. I love my work, but it is not all I do. My work enriches my life, my life enriches my work, and I like having a life. 

However, living and working in New Zealand does have its limitations. Apart from our proximity from Australia, we are geographically separated from much of the western world. The main limitation of this that concerns me is the transfer of knowledge. I see social learning through the use of social media as a way to break down the barriers in the transfer of knowledge. I talked about my husband Gareth’s tequila story a couple of weeks ago. Geographical location has not stopped him learning so much about tequila and this is all through social media.

New Zealand is still a bit behind in social learning, but it just means there is so much cool stuff to be learnt. Social media is a tool we can use to keep up with countries such as the US and Europe. As an example, I participated in my first tweet chat last week and I came away with several really valuable things to play with that have enhanced my own learning. Tweet chatting is something really new and seems to be really new to most other people to. But I found the opportunity to connect with like-minded people across the world simply awesome.

There is so much potential in social media to break down communication and geographical barriers, to learn from different people, different cultures and different ways of seeing the world. I think it’s so exciting, and look forward to my next tweet chat so I can keep on building my own learning.

Support for social learning

In last weeks blog I argued that social media was there to support social learning rather than be what social learning is all about. Support is a key word that I want to discuss a bit further in this blog, because support is required for any learning to be effective. This includes e-learning, social learning, and more traditional methods of learning such as workshops and assessments.

Social learning, from what I can gather so far, requires more intrinsic motivation than ‘regular’ forms of learning. Social learning requires an individual to seek out information on his or her own accord and engage in social media tools. There is no sitting in a classroom here, you’ve got to get your own bum off your own seat.

Because social learning is a lot more organic (and potentially more delicate) than traditional forms of learning it requires more support. The business culture is crucial to provide this. What I mean by support is a business culture that supports learning.

It doesn’t matter so much what is written down as the businesses learning strategy. The business could come up with all the most new fangled, fancy, cutting edge strategies and write them all down but they are worth nothing if those strategies are not being displayed in the culture.

In Leading through Values Thompson, Thompson and Henderson (2006) are argue that business culture, including shared beliefs, values and customs contribute at least 17% to performance variability, written strategy only contributes 2%.

Culture is important and it will stifle or support learning and development. The line managers and how they perceive and enact the learning strategy, for the most part, creates this culture.

I attended an interesting seminar yesterday on the ‘Black Box’ of HR strategy implementation by Professor Peter Boxall. And yes, I am slightly biased, it was an awesome seminar, because it happened to include references to some of my research. The main point was that managers have a significant influence on the motivation and opportunity for people to learn.

Motivation and opportunity to learn are created by the culture that managers demonstrate in their own behaviour. Furthermore, a support for learning must be ingrained in the business culture, particularly where social learning is concerned. Managers are the first place to start with this. Any learning strategy requires managers to be onboard in terms of their abilities, priorities and motivations in order for support to be provided.

Social learning, an example

Ok, so I don’t seem to have a problem finding things to write about each week. Through following links in Twitter, LinkedIn, and various blogs (that I’ve discovered through following other people’s recommendations in Twitter and LinkedIn) I’ve discovered numerous bits of information that have challenged and enlarged my thinking around learning and development. This week it was a great article by Jane Bozarth entitled ‘From Traditional Instruction to Instructional Design 2.0’.

After delving into various articles about instructional design, e-learning and learning through social media, I had been asking myself “how does one use social media and e-learning tools to facilitate learning?” “How do you start to develop something like Charles Jenning’s 70:20:10 model in the workplace?” and “What part do L&D specialists play in this?” I found that Bozarth’s (not sure if it’s appropriate to use first name or last so I’ll stick to my standard academic labeling) article provided practical examples on how to apply social learning, such as identifying performance gaps, a no-brainer but crucial, considering what the business environment is like and their receptiveness to social media, and examples of how to leverage social media to support and enhance existing learning avenues.

Support is a key word here, rather than replace. Social media is not social learning. Bozarth defines social learning as “learning with and from others by moving within one’s culture, workplace and world.” Social media are the tools to support this. In a similar vein, another article I read this week from Forbes online entitled ‘The top 10 ways to become truly social’, makes a point that  “we can’t automatically make employees interact in deep and sustainable ways simply by hitting the on button, creating a Facebook page, launching internal social communication or real-time performance feedback platforms and replacing e-mail addresses with hash tags”. In a lot of respects social media can provide opportunities for interaction but not necessarily the motivation to learn.

I want to share a great example of social learning that I have observed recently that captures the motivation, ability and opportunity to learn. My husband Gareth is really into his tequila and I’m talking the real tequila here. No shots with salt and lime, and no worms. These being the first things people not in the know ask about when either one of us mentions good tequila. We do seem to have some backward notions of tequila drinking in NZ, but that is slowly changing.

Now aside from a trip to Mexico a couple of years ago, most of Gareth’s knowledge about tequila comes from what can only be described as social learning. He learns from live-streamed videos, Facebook discussion groups and whatever else he can glean from the Internet. He’s passionate and motivated about it and he’s connecting with like-minded, passionate and motivated people to share ideas and ask questions. Obviously, New Zealand is geographically isolated from Mexico, but social media provides the opportunity to learn without necessarily being there.

As Bozarth says social learning is “often unconscious and unintentional, and it often looks more like solving a problem or working together to make sense of something”. Like what Gareth is doing. I think it’s helpful to pay more attention to these unintentional methods of learning, as we might learn something ourselves.

Here are the links to these two articles if you’d like to read them:

Jane Bozarth, Traditional Instruction to Instructional Design 2.0

http://www.astd.org/TD/Archives/2012/Mar/Free/Mar12_Feature_ID_2.0.htm?utm_source=weejeemedia&utm_medium=hootsuite&utm_campaign=weejeemedia

Dov Seidman, The top ten ways to become truly social

http://www.forbes.com/sites/dovseidman/2012/02/24/the-top-10-ways-to-become-truly-social/