Blog - Learning Pro

Manifesting Digital Leadership in Learning

learning — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 08:58:12 +0000

We are now living in an accelerated change time in all aspects of our lives: social, professional and eventually, personal. These changes, whether we perceive them or not, are induced mostly by the dramatic technological advances that 10 years ago were unthinkable. This speed of adoption of new technologies and the exponential rate of change makes us as individuals and as organizations to be confronted with the decision of two types of strategic postures: we can either lead the change through disruption or constant innovation, or we choose to be followers and try to cope with change.

It is not only the rate of emergence of new technologies that is impacting organizations by trying to update their processes constantly but also the pace of technology adoption is speeding up with direct consequences on the organizational learning. This setting drives increased competition as more players appear due to fewer barriers to entry and on the customers’ and employees’ side it means more pressure for organizations to satisfy their expectations of technology-enhanced experiences and to offer higher quality products at lower prices and, hence, to adapt to a new dynamic of the customer buying behaviour.

Therefore, digital transformation is the name of the game nowadays in almost every organizations, especially those established ones. Even more, leaders across any organizations, public, private companies from start-ups to global ones or non-profit are struggling to respond to the decision pressure regarding exploiting the opportunities and evaluating the risks brought by the new technologies. The pressure is coming either from the client’s side who is already using experience platforms like social media, Amazon, Uber etc. and they are expecting comparable seamless customer journeys from any other organization that they are interacting with, or from the competition side who is already doing what they are not doing yet in the digital field. The pressure is coming also from the so-called FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) syndrome that we feel in the personal life, transferred into the professional life of a leader: “I know that I should be doing something to be a digital leader, but I don’t know what”.

This kind of pressures have already created a new set of competencies and skills called Digital Leadership, which are not replacing the traditional leadership skills and competencies but they are adding to them. Josh Bersin stated in a Harvard Business Review article titled Digital Leadership Is Not an Optional Part of Being a CEO that “One of the keys to this kind of digital leadership is an ability to morph the company as the business changes.” (2016, www.hbr.org)

Lead the company’s digital transformation

Learning managers were always well positioned at the forefront of the organizational knowledge architecture and creation; however, they are now facing a huge opportunity to lead their company’s digital transformation through taking the initiative of driving the change in the mindset of the organizations’ leaders and equipping their staff and even partners with the right digital skills to be successful. Nevertheless, like any change endeavour, the change starts from within.

Lead the company’s digital transformation

So, what does it take to be a successful Digital Leader in the learning field?

Managing successfully the organizational Learning processes in the digital age does not mean that it is enough to adopt new learning technologies that look shiny and seem easy to roll-out, but it is so much more.

For a learning leader to position strategically, she and the learning function in the organization need to manifest new behaviours, the same way that all the other business leaders need to change themselves.

These new behaviours (based on the Deloitte digital leaders’ capabilities matrix) are on the spectrum of THINKING differently, ACTING differently and REACTING differently.

Conceptualizing possibilities in a virtual world

The growing volume of knowledge, which is becoming obsolete at a higher rate requires us to select from boundless digital information and decide what to consume and when. New technologies can provide more accurate data for decision-making than learners can appraise through their own self-perception. That lead to further questions: Who makes the best decisions about the right learning process and content—the learner or the system? How much self-regulation should be left to the learner? Learning leaders have to answer those questions and to decide what kind of different approaches of formal and informal learning are best suited for their learners.

Virtual reality used in onboarding new employees where they are exploring their workplace and meet their peers are starting to appear every day in companies, augmented reality for technical training at the point of need is becoming essential for blue collars staff like field service workers. Consumerization of learning should drive learning leaders to shape new approaches to the learning journeys and experiences that they are creating for their learners.

Handling ever-increasing cognitive complexity

We live in the so called “VUCA times”, a term that has been used a lot in business now, but originated in the military. Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity describe the attributes of the environment and circumstances of our today’s world. It is becoming increasingly clear that to thrive amidst these challenging circumstances requires developing our capacity to flip or transform the VUCA elements into their opposites elements of Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility that can help us to build up a resilient mindset in this new digital age.

How can Learning leaders can enhance their Flip VUCA associated behaviours?

By being brave and curious through getting out physically from their offices, talking to other functions people in the organizations, to their company’s customers, to their business partners, to the vendors, to other L&D Managers, to university leaders, to students, to other industries employees, to Digital Leaders (both companies and individuals). This 360-degree view helps Learning leaders to formulate an intention that is seeking to create a future state of how their organizational learning is functioning, looking and feeling. These behaviours, in fact, build the leader’s capability of being brave in challenging how things are done.

Understanding what kind of jobs are doing the new technologies, how they are operating, what are the potential implications on their business, both on the work processes and on the customers’ offering and experiences is an essential skill, that being not just an act of knowledge but a continuous and structured process of the Learning Leader. It is not about only the learning technologies but all new technologies as innovation and disruption happens a lot by juxtaposing different industries, practices and insights from different realms and, then, extracting and applying them in your own setting. This capability will help the learning leader to REACT differently by having the confidence to take the lead in driving change.

Investing in information in conjunction with structural changes such as adding information analysis networks can reduce uncertainty. That approach can allow the learning leader to make decisions quickly without all the information.

Getting clarity to the complex environment is achieved by mind-mapping, restructuring, bringing on or developing specialists and building up the adequate resources to address complexity. Experimenting in projects that allow you understanding the causes and effects requires generating hypothesis and testing them so that the lessons learned can be broadly applied with Agility. This THINKING differently approach will enforce the leader’s ACTING differently capability of investing huge amount of energy into getting things right; trying, failing, trying again and her REACTING differently behaviour of tolerating an environment of risk and ambiguity.

Thinking divergently about new ways of doing things

Lateral leadership counts among a manager’s most essential skills encompassing a constellation of capabilities like networking, constructive persuasion and negotiation, consultation and coalition building. Many times a learning leader is not necessary at the top of his organization chain of command thus lacking the required formal leverage to induce the change in practices of technology adoption and more essentially in the digital mindset that can create an inner and outer environment which let go the fear of chance and accept it and embrace it.

One of the most important shift to be made by learning leaders is from the service supplier perspective to the experience facilitator. Personalization of the learning experience through AI supported learning paths or chatbots, microlearning, mixed virtual reality, user-generated content and preparing learners for their future challenges can only be achieved if learning leaders have a structured approach to following constantly and understanding the tech trends and by challenging the way things are currently done.

Adapting to constantly shifting power and influence

Envisioning and building learning and developmental ecosystems that are not limited to technological infrastructure like LMS, gamification apps, VR, collaboration platforms etc. is critical not only to build a vision but to implement it. Expanding learning to include all the stakeholders of the organizations create value by identifying human and material resources that once put together can innovate new products and services, and can contribute to the increase of employees’ engagement and retention through offering a framework of continuous development of a liquid workforce. Collaborating with ease across many different teams, learning leaders can contribute to new work partners and different interest groups. This capability will help the learning leader to REACT differently by showing resilience in the face of constant change.

Ultimately, how these new behaviours would look for the learning leaders, starting with the understanding of the opportunities and risks of new technologies, to creating a vision for a future state, to facilitate working in ecosystems, and even to challenging business to initiate disruption or adaptation strategies, will profoundly affect the chances of success, survival, or failure of a business. The fate of companies might be more than ever in the hands of learning leaders either they realize it or not. We are living this amazing time, so let’s get rid of our fears and embrace the future with fun and joy. It is always a recipe for success!

Articolul Manifesting Digital Leadership in Learning apare prima dată în Learning Pro.

Learning to learn – or how to thrive as an organization in the digital age

learning — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 14:31:58 +0000

When was the last time you have studied a foreign language? During the study, which was the most effective form of learning, where you noticed the best results? In terms of words memorized application of grammar rules or ability to have a conversation. Was it the self study, was it after a test, was it after writing a composition, after classroom, after a conversation with a native, after seeing a movie in the respective language or after a trip in the country where that language is spoken?

The recent presentation of Ulrich Boser at the Learning Technologies 2018 Conference in London The key commandment of “learning to learn”, or how to become an expert in just about anything has inspired me to reflect on how organizations apply the science of learning to their learners.

Because as long as a recent research by Deloitte found that corporate L&D received a net-promoter score of -8 from more than 700 HR professionals, this clearly shows that some big changes are required of L&D, at least in terms of focusing on employee needs. This NPS (net-promoter score) being actually negative means that people are going elsewhere to learn.

Most learning is not modern, not personal and not agile, according to Fosway Group. Its research of 1,300 L&D professionals across Europe showed that 20% of learning teams often personalize learning, 20% are thinking about agile learning and 20% often gamify the learning experience.

As Fosway Group’s director of research, David Perring, said: “We know that people don’t do great blending. We know that they don’t think about measurement. And I think it’s easy to try to steer away from those topics. But I think as we get further into digital transformation in organisations, we actually need to face those a little bit more.”

Perring’s advice to L&D was also to put employees centre stage and to help solve their problems.

“My take-away from the research really is that we need to use it as a call to action to think about doing things afresh. And it’s not about adopting more technology. It’s just attending to the needs of our employees, the people that we need to help,” he said.

For example, Ulrich Boser, the author of Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School, or, How to Become an Expert in Just About Anything, Amazon Editor’s Pick for Best Science Book of the Year 2017, thinks that L&D professionals should give people the opportunity to relearn. He said: “The more you retrieve information from your memory, the better you remember. So don’t be put off by the fact that people might forget but make sure you design in opportunities for people to learn and relearn information because it will stay with them for longer.”

Now you are maybe making sense why some of the best form of language learning are speaking with a native, or immersing yourself in a foreign context, where you have no other option than to remember some essential expressions like amount of money, ordering for food or water and so on, depending on your proficiency or engagement with the local culture.

I highly encourage you to watch the recording of Ulrich Boser keynote presentation here:

His main takeaways (without spoiling his vivid presentation) are:

We can get much better to learning by using specific tools and techniques like:

Make Meaning
The blessing and the Curse of Knowledge
Honor Short-Term Memory
Think about Thinking
Promote Feedback
Remember to Remember
Respect Emotions
Gain deep Features
Uncover Connections
Reflect, Reflect, Reflect

And now I invite you to reflect on what have you learnt through this article that you can apply in your personal or organizational learning.

I am looking forward to have a conversation with you! Please write your thoughts below.

Articolul Learning to learn – or how to thrive as an organization in the digital age apare prima dată în Learning Pro.

You Never Know Who You’ll Meet

learning — Tue, 22 Dec 2015 09:06:02 +0000

Tomorrow, first hour in the morning, when you will be in your office elevator with your cup of coffee in your hand you will encounter Richard Branson. He will ask you:

“Hey, how are you doing?”

How you will react? Did you expect that surprise? If you had expected it, would your reaction be different?

The recent Christmas ad of Barnes & Noble starring the legendary Tony Bennet and in vogue Lady Gaga is titled You Never Know Who You’ll Meet.

For the generations that might have not heard about him, Tony Bennett is the man Frank Sinatra once acknowledged as the king, the “real” best singer of his generation. I had the opportunity to see Tony Bennett live and even to be in his close proximity, by chance, when after concerting in Perugia, Italy, he was in a shop asking curiously about the different kinds of cheese exposed there.

Since then I am fascinated by his attitude towards life and learning at his age of 89:

“I paint every day and I’ve still got my voice. I’m in good health and I’m still learning. I heard somebody being asked once if they were going to retire and they said ‘retire to what?’ That’s how I feel.”

Probably this attitude determined letting himself surprised in this highly rewarding artistically and financially, yet unlikely collaboration between two distant generations and music genres. This year, his “Cheek To Cheek” album, together with Lady Gaga won a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, being number #1 on both the Dance/Electronic and Jazz Album Charts in the same year.

Also, I was surprised to learn that there is a rising science on surprise, a lot of research onto the subject being already done within the disciplines of behavioral psychology and neurosciences.

“Surprises point us to dangers, opportunities, and new information,” said LeeAnn Renninger, co-author of the book Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected.

“Research shows that surprise intensifies our emotions by about 400 percent, which explains why we love positive surprises and hate negative surprises.”

Tania Luna, the other co-author of the book gives here an enlightening speech on the specifics of our behavior when faced to a surprise.

Of course, we don’t like all surprises. But what is a surprise? “An emotion arising from a mismatch between an expectation and what is actually observed or experienced” (Ekman P., Davidson R. J.,1994. The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions. Oxford: Oxford University Press). Surprise has been identified as one of the six basic, universal emotions, as it is associated with a distinct bodily reaction over widely divergent cultures. It is the emotional response yielded when one receives information that does not cohere with one’s current representations. As such, surprise leads one into a cycle of questioning and, possibly, discovery.

So if surprise is how we feel when certain conditions are met, what are the mechanisms behind eliciting those conditions? Because if we can decode those mechanisms, we can create surprises, and ensure that they are pleasant. For that, I will explore this from the perspective of learning, which is the closest to my professional experience, but the mechanisms can be heavily applied in marketing, customer experience, sales, customer education, leadership, management, employee engagement.

What role surprises play in learning?

According to research, novelty seems to promote memory. Living in an attention economy, when transferring knowledge or trying to influence, we should start any learning endeavor with a surprise as an attention grabber.

Surprise and novelty underlie core intrinsic motivations that allow organisms to acquire useful knowledge and skills in the absence of explicit instruction and externally supplied rewards and penalties.

Surprise plays a key role in theories of classical, or Pavlovian, conditioning. This idea that an organism learns only when events violate its expectations, that is, when the organism is surprised. Progress also is linked to surprise, as those of you who are going to the gym or making any kind of physical training know already, that you have to surprise regularly your body with new exercises, new routines from time to time. Otherwise, progress won’t show up!

Watch an example on surprises applied in learning, fighting to the boredom that we all experienced when flights are airborne:

The Head of People at Google, described in his book Work Rules, that after the newness and excitement of all the great perks in the Google environment (endless swimming machines, micro kitchens, colorful bikes, free sushi, etc.) wear off, engagement can drop unless the employee takes proactive steps to consciously choose mindfulness and gratitude.

If we define mindfulness as “the awareness of events and potentialities within an environment” we all may win from more attention to novelty and unusual patterns in our systems, as unexpected good experiences might appear in our lives.

I have read here about the experiment of surprise journaling in science, self-improvement and innovation. Noticing the moment of surprise, why it was surprising and the learning out of it can help us to lower the bar of how is felt the experience of “unexpectedness” and become better prepared for further surprises. Surprise is actually something that will happen in spite of our efforts to eliminate it, as uncertainties and risks conditions are part of life on Earth. Becoming rigid and stable, in fact, is no way to adapt to change; however, encouraging diversity and possibility through interactions in dynamic ways and in dynamic spaces drive to a better way to deal with a constantly changing world.

How organizations can benefit from designing surprises? See here how a bank has designed such surprises for its customers:

Airbnb is a business designed to produce surprises and this company is disrupting the hotel industry. Every time when you take an accommodation with Airbnb you are expecting a surprise as for sure you will not receive a standard hotel room with a fake smile staff. With Airbnb you can make connections with real people, locals who can share with you some of the most exquisite experiences that you could never receive from a hotel or a normal travel agency.

The good news is we can design ourselves our own travels as sources of surprises if we seek at least novelty and learning in an aware mode. Because, you know, You Never Know Who You’ll Meet, here on LinkedIn, in your life or even in yourself.

Happy holidays and a prosperous 2016 with many valuable connections that you will meet!

Articolul You Never Know Who You’ll Meet apare prima dată în Learning Pro.

Who owns the learning? (part 2)

learning — Thu, 03 Dec 2015 09:03:29 +0000

In my previous article I have discussed about the ownership of the learning process at the individual level of the first two main actors involved in the learning process:

The learner
The educator (teacher, professor, trainer, facilitator, coach, manager, leader, mentor). See Who owns the learning?

Now what about the ownership on the learning process of the other two main actors mentioned in the article: The group (class, team, organization) and The society?

As my professional background include managing all the learning process of a 13,000 employees organization (a bank) and running them under a corporate university umbrella, I was able to notice first-hand the influential power that the group has on the individual learning process. It takes really special skills, resources and a lot of free time to enable your own learning path designed by yourself, while you’re part of a group. Once we are aware of those constraints, why don’t we, as individual members of the group, make a conscious effort to design all of our learning paths aligned to the organizational objectives but at the same time directed to satisfy our individual learning needs? And this way learning could be even “light, desirable, and fun” as Adidas Group, Chief Human Resources Officer, Matthias Malessa considers. In fact, this company has embarked on a journey to tackle this challenge by developing “adidas Group Learning Campus”, acknowledging thus the belief that at least 80% of learning happens informally, as described in this article by Jeanne Meister. We already know that there are better performing outputs of the collaborative and social approach of the group learning, compared to the individual learning. What I have found fascinating is the implementation of sort of a knowledge market where “as employees develop their skills, they rank and rate the training content as easily as they would a video on YouTube or a book on Amazon.” This kind of open knowledge infrastructure could in fact create a culture of self-driven life-long learning that could be a solution to become a purpose driven organization where its members could benefit at individual level the group ownership of the learning process.

What about the society ownership of the learning process?

In their book “Creating a Learning Society – A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress” the authors J. E. STIGLITZ, and B. C. GREENWALD are talking about the learning economy as spurring from the knowledge creation achieved typically by individuals working within organizations. As “some societies are better at learning than others – both in ensuring that the gap between best and average practices is smaller and in the pace which the knowledge frontier moves out”, creating a dynamic learning society that can ripple its benefits to the individual’s learning process is not an easy task. Just to give a concrete example from my country Romania, one can notice the asymmetric foreign investments corresponding to the regional learning hubs, determined by the knowledge creation sources, universities. Moreover, this different corporate concentrations lead to different and sometimes unfair learning opportunities at the individual level. Learning motivation is also a major determinant at the society level, and we can see the effects of an outdated and disconnected to the work space educational system all over in the world.

I conclude this two parts article that has explored only roughly the question Who owns the learning? with a positive note that, in the age we live, the person who is able to read this article (meaning s/he has access to a computer) has all to capabilities to take consciously the necessary steps to take as much ownership of her/his learning process that will lead her/him to fulfillment.

What are your views on how to take ownership of the individual learning process?

Articolul Who owns the learning? (part 2) apare prima dată în Learning Pro.

Who owns the learning? (part 1)

learning — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 08:24:50 +0000

Who owns the learning?

Who owns your learning, more precisely? Your learning, as a process oriented towards whatever objective you currently have. Of course, the first intention of an answer would be “I do, of course”.

Still, if we give some moments of reflection we might find that the apparent simplicity of this question get us to the complexity of the answer. As our learning, even if we do not have a specific objective, is highly influenced in different ways and amplitudes by other factors. In their recent book “Creating a Learning Society – A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress” the authors J. E. STIGLITZ, and B. C. GREENWALD describe the “major determinants of learning: (1) learning capabilities; (2) access to knowledge; (3) the catalysts for learning; (4) creating a creative mindset—the right cognitive frames; (5) contacts—people with whom one interacts—which can catalyze learning, help create the right cognitive frame, and provide crucial inputs into the learning process; and (6) the context for learning.” (STIGLITZ, J. E., B. C. GREENWALD, Creating a Learning Society – A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress, Columbia University Press, 2014).

If we take the main actors involved in the learning process

The learner
The educator (teacher, professor, trainer, facilitator, coach, manager, leader, mentor)
The group (class, team, organization)
The society

we may find various levels of the learning process ownership, levels that are dynamic, moving with the velocity of change, which ultimately lead to a greater need for self-learning.

The abilities output of the learning process

However, if we look just at the learning output of knowledge acquisition, self-learning need might be resolved in the near future, as “We’re heading towards a world of perfect knowledge. With a trillion sensors gathering data everywhere (autonomous cars, satellite systems, drones, wearables, cameras), you’ll be able to know anything you want, anytime, anywhere, and query that data for answers and insights.” (The World in 2025: 8 Predictions for the Next 10 Years , by Peter Diamandis).

The abilities output of the learning process for the technical skills is already partly ensured by augmented reality technologies. Yet, for soft skills, I believe we still have a long way to render the necessary finesse in the learning technologies that could change a customer care behavior in an empathic one or to make a leader inspire his team. As Jane Hart puts it when she speaks about the shift ‘From “knowledge worker” to “learning worker”[…]: What is far more valuable than knowledge is the ability to learn new things and apply those learnings to new scenarios and environments. This is what the employee of the future needs to focus on, “learning to learn.”’

For the educator actor, even if it looks that every day he owns lesser of the learning process, once with the MOOCs appetite in students and all other learning technologies like e-learning, his role changes in a facilitator, not only in flipping classrooms, but by using more a model with active learning as this research finds. He can also enhance his role as a constant needs identifier at individual or group level and as learning guide, showing the learner the optimal way to change his behavior, attitudes, skills and knowledge.

As I will leave the group and society actors implications for another article, I am asking you: Why do you think it is important to assess and understand at a certain moment in our professional life, in our organizational development cycle or even at the society level Who owns the learning?

Articolul Who owns the learning? (part 1) apare prima dată în Learning Pro.

7 mistakes in Training Needs Analysis

learning — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 08:06:19 +0000

Training Needs Analysis

If you think that Training Needs Analysis is just a formality just imagine the following scenario.

Line manager comes to the learning manager and says: “I need a training for my team because I think they are little bit demotivated. I want them to have a training, but not a boring one that tells them the same staff in another format, but something that will really change their performance.”

More or less, for training managers this is business as usual scenario. This kind of approach set many times a cultural background where the corporate training managers face a subtle pressure to satisfy his corporate customer, the line manager, by taking the order from she, without making a deeper analysis in a consultative manner. Of course, like in sales, the corporate customer’s satisfaction or, even more, her engagement with the learning solution offered and with the company learning function can drop to a low level when the real needs are unmet.

Whilst the training needs analysis is an entire process that is not to be described here, I am pointing out here some common mistakes to be avoided when training needs are captured either yearly, for designing the training plan, or just occasionally when a demand is rising due to an unforeseen project, product launch or such:

1. Non strategical approach of the analysis. So, you talk to your internal client, you have a consultative approach, by active listening, preparing your homework on the department/line manager’s challenges etc. However, you should also ensure the strategical alignment of the future learning solution, starting from the phase of the collecting the needs, valuing thus the opportunity to have a first hand info from the requester, to understand her business objectives.
2. Assuming that the last year needs will continue to exist so we just have to enlarge our actions (for example, more sales, sales, sales skills…). The incremental budgeting approach, which is widely used in organizations, leaves no much space for creativity and innovation within the learning department. The pressure for more and better from the business is so high that sometimes the wiser way may be ignored.
3. Not following a process with beginning and end and with a distinct schedule that is transparent for all stakeholders drives sometime confusion to the organization, with potential negative impact even in the implementation. For example, if the training manager has forgotten to collect the training need from a regulatory department that has to run mandatory training, she can face an organizational mess when participants are supposed to be in two different and distant locations for two days in a row.
4. Not using the flows of information, data and knowledge in the organization that can be obtained through the stakeholders’ involvement in the training needs analysis process. One can have access to huge information that can help a training manager to understand the real needs and to shape the best solution for the identified need. By neglecting this information, which in fact sometimes could be a very critical strategic direction, lead to missing the so critical alignment with the organizational goals. Say that your company is starting a new business line or trying to enter into a new market and you are kept in the dark, as a training manager. Your so much coveted strategic role starts with the value you can offer to the business. This value begins with the knowledgeable understanding of what the organization really needs to fulfill its strategic goals.

5. Not segmenting your target audience, like a marketer. You choose the criteria: demographic, geographical, professional (expertise), functional etc. and for the most prevalent categories in terms of investment you can even create a “Business persona” that you can test it for the relevance of the solution. That could seem quite like an effort; however, for the corresponding sizable investments the savings from not applying the wrong solution could be significant.

6. Training = Learning. This understanding would be a huge mistake and it is the role of the training manager or consultant to clarify this distinction to her internal clients from this needs identification phase. Otherwise, the expectations of the internal client to have her needs covered through a single shot solution called X training days, can lead to disappointments.

7. Trying to be the universal solution bias is probably the most important aspect that training managers / learning consultant should pay attention in the needs identification and analysis phase. Firstly, understand the environment context of the requester department and how her performance is measured. Secondly, search together with the requester for alternative causes of the problem that manifests like lack of performance, bad attitude etc. Waiting for the learning solution to be implemented and evaluated to find out that it could have been solved through other organizational measures leaves again a taste of dissatisfaction on the learning solution. And nobody wants that.

I will continue to explore other processes of the corporate L&D realm, so if you found this article interesting follow me for the next ones!

Articolul 7 mistakes in Training Needs Analysis apare prima dată în Learning Pro.

10 years of LinkedIn membership and 10 things I have learned

learning — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 08:16:05 +0000

LinkedIn trainings

Being a curious person, in 25 January 2005 I have become one of the first 100 Romanians on LinkedIn and one of the early LinkedIn adopters. I remember that for the first two years the dynamic of membership growth among my co-nationals was almost zero. Only after Facebook penetrated and changed the social behavior, LinkedIn started to take its share. I was glad about this, as I saw the value of LinkedIn from day one, and this value could not exist without a large enough membership base.

Whilst there are many LinkedIn trainings on the market that are mostly teaching you “how to” skills, I thought that I could share with you my top 10 things that I have learned during these 10 years of LinkedIn membership:

Investing time and care into LinkedIn pays off. And I am not saying to invest time and care only in activities meant to “decorate” your profile, or “share” and “like” activities, but to really digging in or contributing into knowledge creation. This means working, of course. However, the benefits for your career, your business, your sales results, your recruitment work or your reputation are immensely leveraged by this live and well-structured social network platform.
People do not connect on LinkedIn. Only profiles of people connect on LinkedIn, as people connects in real life. No connection I have thought I have made on LinkedIn became real until I had a physical contact, either voice or face to face. A real connection on LinkedIn means that you can put a social value on it, and this social value is derived not from the position of the person in his/her company, but from the interests you share and the value that you both can create from your relationship.
Keeping pace with the LinkedIn platform evolution helps your professional evolution. LinkedIn is a smart tool made for professionals. I have followed and tried during time almost all features of LinkedIn, some of them being already retired like for example LinkedIn Answers. Trying all these features challenged my skills, by trying to give the best of me in my contribution, by designing and nurturing groups that serve other professionals and myself, and, not lastly, challenged my self-awareness by making me to reflect constantly to my achievements when I present myself into my profile.
Just having a profile on LinkedIn and some groups’ memberships does not mean you are “present” on LinkedIn. Being active on LinkedIn means that you are present. What does it mean to be active on LinkedIn? To check it daily, at least in weekdays (except holidays, of course), to like, share, recommend, endorse, ask, contribute, publish, document yourself, build and manage groups, and not the last,

If the new currency is Trust, then LinkedIn helps you build it plenty. Just by seeing your name by someone, your credibility in the eyes of that person is being consolidated even at a subconscious level. Even more, by showing your expertise, not only in your profile, but also by expressing some angles as comments to articles or even by publishing on a subject that highlights your expertise, helps you define your professional profile and skills’ offer.
Volume or quality? That is the question when building your network! Whilst at the beginning of LinkedIn you were urged through a message to connect only with people you know and trust, as a founding principle of LinkedIn, in time I have noticed that LinkedIn itself encouraged you to bypass this principle by building tools to stimulate you to grow your network without considering the quality principle. During these 10 years, this was probably the biggest challenge for me: to grow my network significantly, to have enough exposure to serve my professional interests, but at the same time considering the quality of the network principle.
There are still professionals who have either not heard about LinkedIn or they don’t use it almost at all because they are not aware of its benefits or they lack the “how to“ skills. In fact, I have recently read about a proportion of 80% who might fall in this category of people who do not exploit the LinkedIn tool for their benefit.
If you’re thinking you are too important to be on LinkedIn, than either you’re part of a Mafia organization, or you’ll be out of your job soon… If trust is the new currency, having influence is like you own the bank of trust. As a CEO, you need to influence your employees, the shareholders, the media, the civil organizations etc. If Facebook have already proved to be the main driver for political changes, like in Romania at the last November presidential elections, than I won’t be surprised if in the near future LinkedIn is the main driver for changing multinational leadership.
Lesson No 1 for me: Keep your eyes open as the next thing you will read or write on LinkedIn might change your career and your life. And this is the real adventure…
Encourage conversation! It is not easy, but it’s worth it, as connecting ideas stimulates every participant into the conversation even someone who is just “listening”. I would like to hear your thoughts and experiences with using LinkedIn.

What lessons have you learned?

Articolul 10 years of LinkedIn membership and 10 things I have learned apare prima dată în Learning Pro.