Getting Formal About Informal

By Clark Quinn

Informal learning, social learning, innovation— they’re all good terms. However, too often, we don’t get specific about what we mean when we say them. It helps to get concrete, getting formal about informal learning. It’s also necessary, if we want to start making an impact.

The thing is, innovation is more than specific steps. It’s also about the leadership, and beliefs, and the culture. There’s much that won’t really get traction if, say, you’re in a Miranda organization (where anything you say can and will be held against you). Ideally, you work at both the tactical and strategic level. But there are specific skills involved.

For instance, at the individual level, you talk about how to continue to learn, essentially learning to learn skills. How do you set up feeds, and tune them over time? How do you make sense of what you have? Should you share, and if so, how? There are ways to do this effectively, and not. We know, for example, that just highlighting and underlining isn’t that effective. What is?

There’s also coaching; here one person is helping another develop. It can be very domain specific, or it can be more general, but it’s facilitating folks learning. Coaching similarly can be done badly, or well. Tone matters, for instance.

At the team level, there are the ways you interact. How do you brainstorm, effectively? What sorts of exercises can we do to unpack issues, and spark innovation? Again, there are good and bad ways to brainstorm, and to discuss issues.

There are also the tools you use at each level. Which do you use, and how do you use them? Some are more effective than others, and there are practices that can make such use more effective as well.

All of these are specific skills which can be facilitated and developed, and should. Even without addressing culture, there can be benefits. However, addressing the strategic environment in which these are introduced can vastly improve the outcomes.

Importantly, I believe this is a role for Learning & Development. The skills mentioned are learning skills, but not about formal learning. They’re instead about individual development, and organizational innovation. As I’ve argued, when you’re doing trouble-shooting, research, design, etc., you don’t know the answer when you start, so they are learning. However, it’s not a situation where someone has the answer. So it’s about the practices you use. That is, the practices above. Yet, developing practices is L&D’s job! Plus, these are the skills that are increasingly necessary for organizational success, so this moves L&D from the periphery to the center of activity. That’s valuable!

This is all more than can fit in one post. Which is why we’re running a workshop to address this topic. Fortunately, I’ve been able to get some of the best folks in the world to contribute. We have Harold Jarche, Emma Weber, Kat Koppett, and Mark Britz (each of which alone would be worthy of learning from!). They’re supplementing Matt Richter and myself. We will cover the necessary skills as well as the strategic picture. We’ll talk evaluation, and tools, but specifically talk about each of the component elements. That is, we’re getting formal about informal (and social) learning. I hope you’ll join us.