I’m presenting a new deck tomorrow at a pretty big company. I’m not sure that I can name them so I’m going to err on the side of caution. The basic gist of the talk and the follow-up workshop is “”typing” your social learning initiative.” Many months ago I came up with this idea of “typing” learning needs in a similar fashion to a Myers Briggs. I’ve chronicled the history of this idea and related ideas in other posts.
So I’ve taken this to the next level and created a kind of learning needs assessment framework. I call it the ECCO model, borrowing from the terms Harold and Jay used in describing some of the underlying concepts. ECCO is Emergent, Codified, Collaborative Opportunity Model. You use the framework to determine whether your primary learning needs for any given opportunity or initiative are Emergent, Codifed or Collaborative. From there, you map to interventions. It still needs work, but I think it’s a good start.
The deck and the Word doc provide some additional explanation and descriptions, but I’ve also included the raw text here to make it easier to find via search:
The ECCO Model
(Emergent, Codified, Collaborative Opportunity Model)
- For each of the questions in each category, answer on a 1-10 scale. For percentages, round to the nearest 10% and reduce to a 1-10 number.
- Average the score for each overall category by adding the score for each question and dividing by 10.
- Plot the score for each category on the provided chart.
Emergent Questions
- To what extent will your business or initiative be dependent on the creation of new ideas, new processes, new products, or new services to drive key performance indicators? (10%, 20% etc…)
_______
- How much of your team’s intellectual effort will be expended in solving novel challenges or problems?
_______
- How much of your team’s intellectual effort will be spent creating new solutions to existing problems or new problems?
_______
- What percentage of your team’s best practices will need to be based on principles and theory (as opposed to concrete steps and rote processes)?
_______
- What percentage of your best practices will emerge “from the trenches”?
_______
- To what extent will you need to rely on knowledge sharing among diverse groups either within or outside the company walls to drive key performance indicators?
_______
- When you think about a core contributor on your team, how much of his or her expertise is a result of superior synthesis, invention, or sense-making sorts of skills?
_______
- For the majority of your core initiatives, how important is a diversity of perspective or expertise in achieving your project goals or key performance indicators? (1-10 with 10 being the highest)
_______
- In terms of succession planning and talent identification, what percentage of your existing “experts” and leaders were identified because of the admiration and esteem of their peers?
_______
- How often do coordination and issue resolution happen through the ad hoc assembly of networked teams or individuals (versus through formal hierarchies)?
_______
Total Score for Emergent Questions
_______
Average Score for Emergent Questions
_______
Codified Questions
- To what extent will your business or initiative dependent on the efficient execution of known best practices or processes to drive key performance indicators? (10%, 20% etc…)
_______
- How much of your team’s intellectual effort will be spent training on known best practices and processes?
_______
- How much of your team’s intellectual effort will be expended in ensuring adherence to known best practices or processes?
_______
- What percentage of your team’s best practices will need to be based on established steps and rote processes?
_______
- What percentage of your best practices will emerge “from on high” – SME’s, senior leaders, compliance officers etc…?
_______
- To what extent will you rely on efficient execution of homogenous, geographically co-located teams to drive key performance indicators?
_______
- When you think about a core contributor on your team, how much of his or her value is a result of the correct application of accepted processes, rules, or physically repetitive actions?
_______
- For the majority of your core initiatives, how important are a shared perspective and acceptance of authority in driving key performance indicators?
_______
- In terms of succession planning and talent identification, what percentage of your existing “experts” and leaders were identified through longevity, established metrics, or manager opinion?
_______
- How often does coordination and issue resolution happen through existing teams and formal hierarchies?
_______
Total Score for Codified Questions
_______
Average Score for Codified Questions
_______
Collaborative Questions
- To what extent will your business or initiative be dependent on collaboration to drive key performance indicators? (10%, 20% etc…)
_______
- How much of your team’s execution is dependent on specialized knowledge?
_______
- How much of your team’s execution is dependent on the sharing and coordination of distributed expertise?
_______
- How much of your team’s intellectual effort will be expended in collaborating to develop known best practices or processes?
_______
- What percentage your best practices and domain expertise are known in “pockets” organized by geography, shared interest, or network affiliations?
_______
- What percentage of your best practices will emerge “from group consensus”?
_______
- To what extent is your team organized around common job roles and functions? (Retail or early childhood education would be 90% or more – identical job roles in multiple physical locations. A biotech or high tech would likely be far less – similar jobs in some cases, but dissimilar responsibilities.)
_______
- What percentage of the problems faced by your team members are likely faced by other team members in identical job roles?
_______
- When you think about a core contributor on your team, how much of his or her value and influence is a result socially recognized expertise?
_______
- To what extent are key performance indicators driven by socially-validated domain knowledge?
_______
Total Score for Collaborative Questions
_______
Average Score for Collaborative Questions
_______
CEC - Codified, Emergent, Collaborative
Wow. What a week! It’s been a long, long time since I’ve on-boarded anywhere, and I’m feeling it. It sort of like if you haven’t been to the gym in awhile, you know? That first work out leaves you sore for days. In this case, it’s my brain. Ding, ding, ding… I’m full. LOL. It’s a good feeling though.
The team continues to impress, and I keep finding little nuggets that I love. Two examples: Learn gives out reward “tokens” to clients when they act as a reference, refer prospects our way, speak on our behalf, write on our behalf… and on and on. These tokens can be used as cash to buy services or solutions from us. How cool is that?
They have a similar program around employee performance. Learn.com employees who are caught doing outstanding work or who are identified as key contributors by clients can receive cash awards or non-monetary awards like additional time-off.
Needless to say, Learn has really nailed the concept of “rewarding performance.” The rewards aren’t so big as to become an extrinsic motivator, but they aren’t too small to go unnoticed. Rewards can be tricky; for most people, they’re not really about money as much as they are about recognition and feeling appreciated. And for the company, it’s not only about acknowledging and rewarding good people, it’s about identifying exemplars and models of behavior that result in desired performance.
Another nice aspect of the program is that any employee can nominate any other, which brings a nice peer-to-peer, social aspect to the model. After winning an award, the employee is listed on an internal LearnCenter site (our intranet) so that others can see who won.
This week I suggested that we interview these top performers with a Flip and then post the videos to YouTube. From there, we can link the videos back into our Facebook site and into our LearnCenter listings. That way we can share these great folks with the world, and our own internal Learn.com employees can learn more about their ass-kicking colleagues. Do you know what happened when I suggested this? They said, “Awesome idea; let’s do it…” Have I mentioned how much I love it here?
Yeah, so that’s my first week. Good stuff. By the way, it turns out that I’m going to be at SHRM next week in New Orleans. Hopefully, I’ll have an opportunity to live blog or live tweet a session or two. If anyone wants to connect while there, leave me a comment or hit me up on Twitter: @dwilkinsnh.
So a few days ago, I talked about my departure from Mzinga and alluded to the loss of some talent over the last couple of years. I’m sure some may have interpreted this as griping. I’m equally sure that my former colleagues at Mzinga weren’t so thrilled with me… ; ) But I think after 12 years, I get to have a little fun, right? Today, Randy Saari, Senior VP of Sales wrote this as a comment / rebuttal:
I also agree that some amazing talent has left Mzinga…like all companies. I feel compelled to point out that amazing talent still remains at Mzinga. With the changes at Mzinga we have promoted a whole new generation of “A” players in services, customer support, marketing, finance, solutions architects, product management, engineering, analytics, advanced engineering and operations. These are experienced professionals that continue to get high marks from our customers. When you layer on some uniquely competitive products and concept to completion services, Mzinga will continue to deliver world class solutions with some of the highest customer retention rates in the industry.
Great stuff right? In reply, all I can say to this thoughtful, well-written comment is “Well done.” And “I agree.” Those who remain at Mzinga are pretty kick-ass too – the Jody’s, Matt, Meredith, Joel, Mel, Annie, You, Eve, Alicia, Mike… I never meant to imply that there isn’t a deep pool still there. Or that the product isn’t impressive and well-positioned for the coming changes in the market. It is. And I have no doubt that under your leadership, the sales team will deliver and fulfill the promise of what’s been built there over the last few years.
I’m gonna miss you, my friend.
Ok, so I made it through my first two days at Learn. You know that expression “drinking from the fire hose”? Make that four fire hoses. I’m simultaneously trying to get a handle on product, sales, marketing and overall company vision and strategy. Thank god I don’t also have to learn about the LMS part of this equation as well…
What’s it been like at Learn? Three things have really jumped out at me:
- The company here is very team-oriented. I got a few dozen heart-felt “welcome to the company” messages today, and this evening, I was having simultaneous email conversations with about 10 different people at around 10:45 pm. To a person, everyone I met has been gracious, passionate, and relentlessly focused on winning. It reminds me a lot of the amazingly fun and kick-ass times I had at Knowledge Impact just after the launch of Firefly. There is a “can’t lose” attitude here that is infectious, even for an old salt like me.
- The product is way better than I assumed. Virtually all paths forward from where we are right now lead to all sorts of kick-assery for the competition which is exciting.
- On several occasions so far, I’ve been briefed about the future direction and overall strategy for the rest of 2009. And in all cases, for want of time, I’ve heard maybe 20-25% of the story before getting pulled into something else (normal new hire craziness). So for two days, I’ve done what I’m inclined to do in these scenarios: I’ve filled in the blanks with logical next steps, future evolutions, connections to other features.
This evening, for the first time, I saw the complete, high-level PPT overview for many of the product features and themes that I had been building in my head. In every case, the existing product strategy and direction mapped pretty much exactly to my “fill-in-the-blanks” product strategy and direction. What does this mean? Just two things – 1) the team here knows their stuff, and 2) this is a really good fit for me.
So after two days worth of demos and conversations, I’m happy to report that I’m even more jazzed about my role here and Learn.com’s potential to achieve true greatness in our space.
As to this blog, once I get my sea legs, I will be fine, but the next few weeks are going to be busy busy so don’t be surprised if I go dark for days at a time.
On a totally unrelated note, does anyone know of any good talent management, workforce 2.0, or competency / performance blogs to follow? I need to re-immerse myself in this world as quickly as I can, but I’m a bit out-of-touch on the best blogs in these arenas.
- So I guess the title gives it away, right? ; ) Today I start a new job at Learn.com as Executive Director of Product Maketing. I realize that this may surprise some, especially given my leadership of Mzinga’s social learning strategy.
- It’s about talent management. They offered me an attractive pay-for-performance compensation package that appealed to my “kick-ass and take no prisoners” competitive side. And they didn’t pussy-foot around the details. They offered me a good package out of the gate and practically dragged me to headquarters by the scruff of my neck. It felt nice to be wanted. Who doesn’t like that feeling? But they also moved fast and executed well which, coupled with the pay-for-performance comp plan, also suggested a culture built around perfomance and flawless execution. I’m ready for a team that will come up with a plan and then kick it’s ass over and over until it’s done.I was also impressed by the extent to which Learn “eats it’s own caviar.” In the first five minutes of my interview, JW (COO) showed me how they use LearnCenters® internally as intranet sites through which they drive most of their internal collaboration and knowledge sharing. Did you know that over 60% of Learn.com employees work remotely? This isn’t just social media fun and games, it’s how they actually coordinate and do most of their real day-to-day work. This is workforce 2.0 kind of stuff.
They also showed me how they also use their LearnCenters®, not only as client portals, but as the platform driving their entire externally-facing website. First, how cool is that? Second, think about what this means in terms of their world experience with new models of client support, client engagement, and communication and sharing across the extended enterprise. They also talked to me about their committment to execution and client satisfaction. Did you know that Learn typically signs clients to six month contracts, after which they can switch to month-to-month contracts? Why? Because if you are committed to client satisfaction and client success, you earn it day in and day out. And if you truly respect your clients, you empower them make the choices that are best for them, even if that means a parting of the ways. Powerful stuff. Attitudes like these are also probably why Learn continues to be the most highly rated vendor in terms of client satisfaction and why so few of their clients ever feel the need to leave.
So ok, you get it, they seem like a good company. What about all that social learning stuff I’ve been talking about? My committment there is unwavering, and from what I’ve seen already, Learn has some pretty crazy possibilities in this regard. Do you know that they have a B2C offering called Learn.com Personal Edition (LPE)? It’s basically a site where job seekers or existing employees can “skill up” in a particular job or role. Learners earn a Skill Score® which then indicates some level of competency in that job role. Imagine if we married this to some of the ONA concepts I’ve been talking about? Or maybe we marry it to reptuation management? In either case, the idea is to connect individual achievement with group dynamics – cool stuff.
Learn also has a customizable form builder, FormFlow®, which provides all sorts of intriguing options around new models for blogging, discussions, wikis, microblogging, idea sharing, and FAQ engines. They have deep social profile technology which is already being extended, and web services hooks into multiple entrprise level apps. So again, think about the big picture – personal HR data, CRM data, ERP data all feeding a central profile via web services, a profile which is further enhanced through social and personal data added by the employee. They are already very far down this path.
Suffice to say, I’ve already had like a bajillion ideas of how some of the social concepts I have been kicking around for around nine years now could find their way into the Learn.com platform. The ideas above are the obvious ones. I’ll share the less obvious ones once they come to market… ; )
So am I excited? Hell yeah. I’m going to miss some key people at Mzinga, most notably Randy Saari (who is hands down, the most impressive leader and sales VP I have ever known) but I’m excited to meet my new team at Learn.com. And I’m anxious to get the party started. For the first time in many years, I have that nervous, “the game is about to start” feeling in my stomach. The good news is that I’ve been training and preparing for this moment for the past 15 years, and it’s no longer a question of being ready, it’s only a question of many goals we’re gonna score. Based on how I feel right now, I’d put that number at a “whole shitload.” Hoo ra!
Where am I going?
- Someplace sunny.
- Down the rabbit hole of talent management.
- Down the rabbit hole of performance management.
- To a company where intranets and portals are a de facto part of the business culture.
- To a company where over 60% of the workforce works from home.
- To a company that uses it’s own platform as the basis for both its intranets and its public website.
- Into a role where I will be the Executive Director of Product Marketing.
That’s it. No more hints. Any guesses? In keeping with the suspense and intrigue, I won’t tell you if you are right until Monday. So don’t guess unless you can suffer through the weekend… ; )
Are you one of those people who jumps in the pool without dipping a toe in first? Me too. I also like to rip off my band-aids real quick. Suffice to say, I’m not a “take things slow” kind of guy. Want some proof?
I’m leaving Mzinga. [ d r a m a t i c p a u s e ]
Yeah, it’s still a bit surreal to me too. I’ve had a pretty amazing run. I’ll be forever be grateful for the opportunities that Mzinga and its predecessors have provided in developing my professional skills and my career.
When I started here more than a decade ago, I was an online help expert with an interest in creating computer-based training (no web-based training back then). In year one, I helped develop dozens of hours of courseware for clients. In the years since, I’ve overseen the development of EPSS engines, social knowledge portals (way back in 2001!), software simulation technology (the award-wining Firefly tool), and most recently, the Mzinga Social Learning Suite – the first deep integration of social media and LMS technology. I’ve overseen development teams, patent processes, OEM partnerships, even reseller and channel sales partners. I’ve been fortunate enough to be published on multiple occasions and have spoken at dozens of industry conferences.
It’s been a good run, and I have been fortunate to be surrounded by colleagues whom I respect and admire, and in many cases love like family. It’s going to be tough to leave, but I’m confident in Mzinga’s continued success and the company’s future direction. It is my sincere hope that Mzinga becomes the stuff of legend. To the extent that I can, I will always be a friend to the company and its team. I wish my friends at Mzinga nothing but continued success in the future.
I’ll let you know on Monday where I’ve landed. For now, feel free to speculate and start wild rumors… It’s part of what makes the intertubes so much fun. ; )
I had a conversation with smart guy today. His name is Navdeep Alam. He is quite possibly the smartest guy I know personally. His Masters work at MIT is about genetic algorythms, adaptive AI, and the semantic web. I like talking to Nav. I don’t always understand every word he says, but I do understand the basic gist and more importantly, I understand the possibilities in what he’s doing. For this reason, I think Nav likes talking to me too.
But a lot of people (maybe most people) aren’t like Nav and I. Some people don’t “get” what he’s talking about. They don’t even know where to begin. In some cases, they lack the foundational knowledge to put his work in context. In other cases, they simply lack the intellectual chops that are required to see the grandeur in what he’s doing. Many simply don’t want to put in the time to understand it.
So what’s a guy like Nav to do? He’s constantly asked to “simplify, simplify, simplify.” To “frame it in a way that other people can understand.” But here’s the problem: at the alter of abstraction, meaning and nuance are the sacrificial lambs. And the more you abstract, the more you lose: implications, impacts, possibilities, risks. I can tell you that calculus is math. I can tell you that algebra is math too. So is trigonometry. And on and on… They’re all the same yet they’re all different.
If I know that you want to calculate the height of the pole based on it’s shadow, I can easily tell you which math to use. Simplicity and framing is easy. But what if you only know the math side, and you’re not sure yet what you can do with it? What if you need the help of colleagues and other conceptual, smart folks to figure it out? That gets a lot trickier when your audience isn’t able to wrap their brain around what you’re doing.
One final analogy to drive this point home. The number 4.678921 rounds up to 5. So does 4.72. So does 4.57999929. If I’m ballparking whether I have enough room for a new deck bench that’s 5 feet long, I don’t give a crap where the “2″ is in any of the above measurements. None of them will fit. On the other hand, if I’m measuring in millionths of an inch when building a part for the space shuttle, it matters a great deal. I can’t even use the number 4.72 because it’s not accurate enough.
In a lot of life, we manage to get by without needing to employ the intellectual rigor necessary to distinguish between 4.678921 and 4.57999929, but sometimes, when you’re onto a big idea, the “2″ matters. It matters where it is in relation to other numbers and where it is in it’s absolute position. Sometimes it’s not enough to say that 4.678921 is 5; just like it’s not enough sometimes to say that calculus is math.
Knowing when to abstract and when the details matter is a tricky thing, but assuming that all things can be astracted and simplified to be understood by anyone and everyone is a kind of intellectual laziness. Anyone with even a cursory understanding of logic, math, or the sciences knows that the granularity and depth of measurement accuracy matter. The same thing is true of ideas. Sometimes simplification obfiscates meaning to the point of no return. Sometimes, especially when dealing in the realm of potential paths and future states, abstraction is counterproductive. Just as in the world of science and math, in the world of ideas, there are irreductible truths. And I’m grateful everyday for the opportunity to know a guy like Nav who thinks them up.
What does this have to do with community and social learning? A lot actually. Would love to hear your comments.
