Can social networking provide a practical way to help prepare new managers for their duties? Considering the rapid growth of social networking adoption among younger workers, this is a question well worth asking.
Creating a curriculum for training new managers and supervisors is a common task that falls to instructional designers. The typical approach for many decades has consisted of a combination of classroom events, each lasting from one to five days (or more). This default design has many problems, including travel expense and time away from the job for the managers. Not infrequently, there are severe mismatches between what is taught and the actual practices supported by the organization’s culture.
There is an increasing number of companies and online service providers who are convinced that social networking can help overcome at least some of the issues common to the classroom-only approach. You could think of the concept as a variation on so-called “blended learning.” By combining formal classroom instruction and online reference and performance support with online coaching, mentoring, and informal learning through social networking, a new manager can gain a solid theory foundation, just-in-time help, and culturally correct application pointers.
Some history
This is not to say that this will happen just by setting up a wiki and making all new managers open a Twitter account. Technology alone will not suffice, and especially not indiscriminately applied, unsupported technology. In fact, it could aggravate the new manager’s confusion and performance problems.
Are there any precedents that offer best practice principles to guide implementation? Let’s start by going back a century or three.
Informal learning in 1727
Formal structures to support and leverage informal learning have been around literally for centuries. Two early examples, from the eighteenth century, are the Lunar Society of Birmingham (whose members called themselves “lunaticks”) in England, and Benjamin Franklin’s Junto (pronounced “june-toe,” “juhn-toe,” or “who-n-toe,” depending on whose account you are reading) in Philadelphia. They did not call themselves “informal learning groups” (Franklin described his Junto as a “club of mutual improvement”), but if you look at what they did and how they did it, the description is accurate.
How did these early groups function?
Many of the early informal learning groups were around for decades (Franklin’s Junto survives to this day as The American Philosophical Society), and their members were not all in the same geographic location. Their survival, in spite of the geographic separation of their members, was due in large measure to:
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Focus on a defined area of activity: Franklin’s Junto was concerned with “Morals, Politics, or Natural
Philosophy [physics].” The Lunar Society, at least at first, concentrated on
science and its practical applications.
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Ground rules and process:
Franklin provided a list of 24 basic questions to guide discussion, but he described the
heart of it this way: “The rules that I drew up required that
every member, in his turn, should produce one or more queries on any point … to
be discuss'd by the company; and once in three months produce and read an essay
of his own writing, on any subject he pleased. Our debates were to be under the
direction of a president, and to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry
after truth, without fondness for dispute or desire of victory; and to prevent
warmth, all expressions of positive opinions, or direct contradiction, were
after some time made contraband, and prohibited under small pecuniary
penalties.”
What does this have to do with informal learning online?
If you look at the groups that survived in the days when “communications technology” consisted of handwritten letters delivered on foot or by horseback, and then look at today’s online groups, many of which do not last more than a few months, it is clear that we can learn something from those who came before us.
First, the group members shared strong common interests within a specific scope. Second, the process assumed that each member had something to contribute, and it also ensured that each would contribute. Third, the technology (paper and ink, hand-delivered letters) didn’t matter as much as the social context.
Our technology in 2010 is vastly different from what Franklin and his colleagues could ever have imagined, but it is still less important than the specific scope, mutual contribution, and the accepted ground rules and process.
Fast forward to the Third Millennium
Informal learning, as an object of attention by researchers, is not a new topic. However, it only appeared on the radar screens of instructional designers less than ten years ago. The emergence of online social media has led to the notion of somehow tapping into the potential of this channel, that carries so much of the real learning that goes on in organizations. For some, it has become a “top of mind” concern. You can see how the use of informal learning within organizations was emerging by 2006 in The eLearning Guild’s Informal Learning Research Report of that year.
In our current age, we have plenty of channels in which informal learning can take place: everything from microblogs (Twitter), to communities (LinkedIn Groups, discussion forums), to user-created content (wikis, Weblogs, YouTube), to social bookmarking (Delicious), and surely more to come. And we have plenty of discussion and debate among instructional designers as to whether learning actually does take place in these channels, even though the efficacy of informal learning is well established. Do a Google search on “informal learning research” if you need specific evidence.
But we also have plenty of examples of attempts at use of these channels in which the attempts failed. The virtual landscape is littered with the remains of abandoned wikis, content-less and comment-less Weblogs, and LinkedIn Groups where the spam has driven out the discussion and all but eliminated any possibility of learning. (As the administrator of The eLearning Guild’s Group, I am happy to say that this fate has NOT befallen our Group, due in large part to a strict no-spam policy as well as an outstanding group of over 12,000 members.)
Existing informal learning groups online include a surprising variety of formats, including some modeled on the Junto (for example, The Montreal Junto http://montrealjunto.com/). A more typical example is Jay Cross’ Internet Time Community, formerly on Ning but now on Grou.ps (http://grou.ps/internettime/). Participants in the Twitter #lrnchat sessions also comprise an ongoing informal learning group.
Clearly, if informal learning is going to take place online, it must be self-sustaining. What factors support this?
What makes informal learning online work?
Looking at the groups that are successful, here are the factors that seem to drive participation and commitment by members.
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Focus: By definition, informal
learning is that which takes place between individuals who self-identify in
some way as members of a group with a common interest.
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Payoff: The most successful groups
provide an inherent incentive for participation; this may be tangible in nature
(personal development that leads to advancement in position or compensation),
or it may be intangible (increase in reputation, appreciation by others).
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Dialogue: The group norms encourage
participation.
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Leadership: There are leaders who
organize what needs to be done and keep things moving; sometimes these are
well-known people, and sometimes they are people who are known within the group
to be reliable.
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Membership: The group is large enough,
and members are active enough, and there is a sufficiently diverse base of
experience that most questions draw a response in a short amount of time.
If a group lacks focus, or focus is too narrow, if the group’s process is too complicated, if there are not enough members, and if there are no rewards for participation, the group will fail. Informal groups are a lot of work to establish and maintain, and the work falls equally on all members.
Setting up a social network for manager training
The first task is to establish a design for the social interaction. This must come before technology selection, so that the limitations of the technology do not drive or constrain the interaction. As with Franklin, the setup begins by defining the focus for the network. Is the group meant for new first-line supervisors or for new mid-level managers? Is the objective of the network to support development of leadership and communication skills, or to support application of critical policies, such as those relating to ethics? Next, provide some general guidelines or principles that will serve to support a healthy group process. Again, Franklin’s rules and 24 basic questions may provide you with a starting point.
Getting to the technology
When these tasks are completed, start identifying which technologies will best support the focus and the process. Jane Hart provides some excellent resources to help you in this:
- http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/Directory/Tools/social-L.html
- http://janeknight.typepad.com/pick/2010/04/115-social-networking-and-collaboration-spaces.html
- http://c4lpt.co.uk/Directory/Tools/communication.html
You may also want to look at platforms that allow you to configure a collaborative space. These include:
- Ning http://www.ning.com
- Grou.ps http://grou.ps
- SocialGO http://www.socialgo.com/
A purpose-built platform for manager development
Although the name sounds like a riff on an Adam Lambert song, What Do You Want From Them (WDYWFT) is a Charlotte, North Carolina-based service designed from the ground up to enable organizations to create private social networks that facilitate the professional development of low- to mid-level managers. This platform (http:// www.whatdoyouwantfromthem.com) leverages social media and networking specifically to provide training and support for new managers.
The features of WDYWFT make it possible for an organization to help new managers learn about policies, ask questions, receive mentoring and leadership training, and discuss career advancement opportunities. It also provides the organization with a way to explain legal issues, provide ongoing feedback to managers, and demonstrate commitment to professional development initiatives. Configurable social software in WDYWFT can also foster peer-to-peer learning, collaboration, and innovation.
While WDYWFT is primarily a private group, it also makes it possible to extend access to a global community of managers around the world. This makes it possible for new managers to expose themselves to different leadership styles and perspectives, share knowledge, ask questions, and find support.
Why consider a social network for manager training?
Anna Smith, the principal of WDYWFT, points out the fact that workers in their 20s and 30s expect to be able to use the latest IT applications in their workplace. They are used to social networking online, and to online learning, often preferring these to classroom instruction. As Smith says, using social networking leverages technology tools that young managers already use on a daily basis. “By engaging them on their terms and in their language, we’re taking an inside approach to training and developing the potential of tomorrow’s business leaders. In addition, this also will encourage open communication between companies, employers, HR departments, owners, and managers.”
These are the workers who will be your new supervisors and managers. Without appropriate technology tools and resources available in their work environment, they may look for help from non-work related services such as Facebook.com. Integrating social media into the development environment eliminates this potential challenge and at the same time increases the potential for success of the development effort and of the new managers.