Social Learning, Do I Have It (and is it catching)
Each morning I wake up; go to a job I love and experience an open door policy for learning. Is there ever a day you don't learn something new from someone; whether it is a colleague, client or even the janitor. No matter what your core personality or job position is, you are constantly getting information delivered to you in many informal ways. This informal exchange is possible in many facets during the day, while in a meeting, a coffee break or walking to your car.
With the adjunct of consumer social technologies like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to name a few, informal learning has taken on a new face for organizations; Social Learning.
Social Learning is the means by which day-to-day learning happens and the ability, through a technology like CustomerVision, to capture those learning moments and to reduce the amount of time necessary to answer one-on-one questions. Social Learning provides a mechanism for many to share ideas, processes, procedures and know-how in a quick and easy manner that is immediately searchable and responsive to real-time business needs.
Information is overwhelming most of us today, whether on email, news, portals, etc. The quick ability to find an answer or connect with a subject matter expert when a knowledge user needs something is critical in today’s changing marketplace and overwhelmingly important in differentiating a company among its competition.
Social learning can be a critical success factor in organizations that are:
Servicing customers on a real-time basis,
Dealing with a distributed sales organization,
Knowledge rich, but information poor; the ability for users to find information they need without interacting continually with subject matter experts, and
Dealing with too much email
Learners set their own objectives so social learning can just happen as part of your organizational being. The social learning approach can set the stage for cultural change that will strengthen the organization over time by enabling the:
Ability to recognize areas for improvement,
Flexibility for change,
Learning by all learners, all the time,
Knowledge within your business to become an asset
Reduction of intellectual capital walking out the door without retaining it; i.e. employee retirement, down-sizing or job changing.
The goal is to engage and enable everyone in the organization to be involved with learning. It is informal and can connect the learner on their timeline, when they need to know or have time to learn. Deployment of social learning takes days and not months like traditional technology solutions and can be completely controlled by business users.
Yes, we all have it, that desire to learn, whether we openly say it or not. The ability to seek information and share knowledge is inherent to everyone in the organization and it is catching. People build off others thoughts, ideas and expertise, why not utilize that to your advantage?
