Manifesto

The connected world—with its new ways of working and new ways of thinking—puts an unprecedented emphasis on the value of learning. Learning is the premium core process at the heart of what business is about: performing to the max, going faster, and disrupting old rules. The connected world is also about reinventing community, connecting talent, searching for meaning in the workplace, and combining the professional with the personal. It’s the paradox of values and innovation, and also one of technology and social relationships. It’s about know-how, know-who, and know-why.

It’s damn complicated, and the people and organizations who figure how to learn faster and better to make everything work together will win. Knowledge is power. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. The meek who get smarter and share what they know have the power to tilt the world.

Learning is more important than ever. But in this connected world, it’s also different than before. The new learning requires individuals and organizations to fundamentally change the way they talk about, work with, and act on what is known and what needs to be known in order to change, move, and grow.

There is no time to cling to outmoded metaphors of the classroom or even the Gutenberg Bible. It’s time for some fundamental challenges to the status quo. Here’s my starting pick list—and the rallying beliefs that will guide this blog. In the future, with your help, I may change or add others and strike a few—but since I mean to make a revolution of it, let it begin here.

1. We have no time or patience for regarding learning as an event, outside the stream of work, separate from life itself. It is the core process that allows us to evolve.

2. There’s still room for “learning for its own sake”—but decision-oriented intentional discovery will increasingly dominate the stage.

3. Metrics of success for the connected world will be traditional financial and performance measures, not fancy, academic concepts.

4. Speed and performance demands will shift starting assumptions from just in case courses to just in time connections—and that’s just fine.

5. The word social will win a place on the educator’s mantel along with informal, formal, and elearning. It doesn’t mean they are more than learning, which can be facilitated and attained in 1000 ways.

6. Learning will be pursued cross-boundary, virtually, synchronously and asynchronously, and be provided by people we didn’t know until they appeared in our activity stream with precisely the answers we needed.

7. Technological innovation will accelerate in step with growing emphasis on approaches that understand learning exists in both individual and collaborative contexts. Every person’s lessons are also relationship-driven, embedded in communities and their organizational cultures.

What do you think? Challenge the challenges then add your own below.

{special thanks to Brook Manville for challenging me on these items nearly a decade ago.}