The problem

She used [Shakespeak to ask us a set of questions about whether we sometimes feel overwhelmed by information coming our way and whether we are sometimes distracted. Most people in the room answered these questions positively. She then asked how this made us feel: most people seemed to feel confused, stressed or oppressed. Why is this?

• There is too much information
• Too much replication of information (Joyce Seitzlinger pointed out that is actually also a signal for its importance)
• Difficulty in separating the relevant from the irrelevant
• Lack of time

The first solution: train people

Julie has done a few informal learning projects, setting up portals, microblogging (Yammer) and discussion forums. Initially this took off like a rocket. But suddenly it stopped working: people were starting to say that they liked it, but that they . She started solving the crisis by using Shirky‘s adagio “It isn’t information overload, it is filter failure”. She started to train people in how they should work with information through aggregators, filters and all kinds of other tools. This actually made the problem worse: people only got more information coming their way. Shiffman wrote in Wired in 2008:

Now that the first burst of enthusiasm for social networking has died, people are realizing that web 2.0 is actually a huge time sink. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Plaxo may have helped foster community and communication, but they’ve also added immensely to the flow of often-interruptive messages that their users receive, leading to information overload and possibly a nasty internet addiction.

In The Shallows , there are two types of information overload:

1. Situational overload: searching for a needle in a haystack (of information)
2. Ambient overload: a haystack-sized pile of needles (information)

The second is the problem her clients had. There really was too much good information.

The second solution: curation and a curation framework

Berners-Lee described three principle functions of the Internet:

• Allow anyone to access any type of document
• Allow everyone to disseminate their own documents
• Allow every to organize the entire collection of documentations

The last element is now actually happening on the web in an organic way. We are curating the content organically through our Tweets, likes, shares, etc. We should curate to link the content to business/learning initiatives, identify what is relevant in a particular context, see what the right signposts are.

They implemented this very explicitly through “listening centers”. Small teams would listen to all the information sources and tried to match things to themes that relate to business goals and then assign “theme” curators.They then created a curation framework. For each piece of information they decided in what theme it would fit, for who it would be relevant, how much time it would take to review and when the data would expire.

Julie then gave us some practice exercises: we had to curate three pieces of content. Her advice is to really make things really time sensitive, really add value to the piece of content that you curate and it should actually showcase learning. It is also important to find subject matter experts, work with the communication department and external organizations.

Some tools to help with information overload

Julie recommends a few tools that might help with information overload. Readitlater or Instapaper can help you get more reading done. Another tool that is interesting is Symbaloo which allows you to create a visual and shareable set of favorite links around a topic. Her “mix” for content curation is available here. She uses Scoop.it! a lot. Learnfizz is in beta and similar to Scoop.it!, but will eventually work inside organisations.

My thoughts on this

This was an excellently prepared session: properly designed with a good mix of activities and information. I have to admit though that I don’t believe that her curation framework solves the problem of information overload for the true knowledge worker (i.e. for somebody like me) because it is just an extra information source. It is an interesting extra layer on top of internal social networking tools though: basically a slower and more focused source. Three things worry me:

• Scalability. What happens if the internal information become so big that it can’t be manually curated effectively anymore? Would it be possible to automate this? Could we use something that is similar to Summify.
• Quality. How we know that the curator is doing a good job and the most important thing isn’t missed?
• Specificity (i.e. how personal is it). We all know that everything is miscellaneous and to me a “recommendation” should be to an individual not to a group.

Martin Moehrle

Martin Moehrle, the ex Chief Learning Officer of Deutsche Bank AG titled his talk “The Learning Function as a Performance Improvement Business”. He started by rehashing the traditional way the the learning function proved its value to the business. The old arguments work pretty well in the “industrial” age. In these times of crisis, we have to again discuss the causal chain from learning to performance and we might need some new arguments.

Three things need to change:

1. The learning function as we it today is a product of the industrial age, however as we move into the knowledge age the performance logic is changing. The modern enterprise is a mix between industrial and knowledge-based contexts. In the industrial context you can manage workforce mastery through prescribed work procedures. In the knowledge-based context you manage via connectivity, commitment and inspiration. The workflow is not predetermined, it is at the discretion of the individual. The ownership of the means of production moves from the organisation to the individual. The traditional way that learning works is much less relevant on this knowledge-based side. The learning function currently has multiple roles like: helping to create a learning culture that is trustful and based on shared perspective, an enterprise change agent, business development and innovation, governace of the enterprise learning space. This is all very much formal learning with high control from the learning function. The informal part of learning where there is a low control is a space that the learning function doesn’t like to go. Moehrle thinks that the learning function does need to take some responsibility there, else it will become irrelevant.
2. The learning function needs to have both a macro-view on performance along the value chain as well as a micro-view that focuses on the individual and the team. If you do not have the macro-view you will not be able to get the most out of the performance improvement potential.
3. The performance management process needs to center much more on performance improvement than on assessment of past performance. We need different metrics for the learning function to be able to do this. We cannot focus on the throughput measures and the happy sheets.

Monika Weber-Fahr

Monika Weber-Fahr from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) gave a talk titled: “Where the Rubber Hits the Road: Building Performance Cultures for Delivery”. She is an economist and strategist working for a finance organisation. Her organisation operates in around 90 different countries, mostly in emerging markets. They do private development sector finance with a mission to provide opportunities for people to escape poverty and improve their lives. They not only invest, but also advise and consult. Her talk was quite far removed from the standard scope of the learning function and was therefore sometimes hard to contextualise for me.

She shared three stories from three different companies in these emerging markets. One characteristic is that these markets grow very fast and so are these companies. In these markets there are big disparities in energy access, education and technology (she India as an example: normal Internet access is still not very dispersed, but mobile subscription is now very high). For education these emerging markts are now about 20 years behind where the leading markets are.

Some things are working for emerging markets: cost advantages, well managed quality and profitable in their own right. But certain things are still hard: access to finance, still unclear and non-transparent managed. The IFC’s focus is moving away from a single company to disaggregated global networks of companies.

They have identified a couple of success factors in this space:

• Balance standardization and customization. One interesting example was the SME toolkit that they developed. This is highly standardised content (developed together with IBM) but at the same time highly localisable.
• Connect operations and training
• Build partnerships for reach

Fabrizio Cardinali

Fabrizio Cardinali is the chair of the European Learning Industry Group (ELIG). His talked was about what he now named “The Sputnik Effect” and titled “The Learning Industry Sputnik Challenge: How Can We Get Europe’s Learning Industry (First) to the Moon and Back in the Next Decade?”. He started his talk by showing how scared people in the US were in the late fifties during the cold war, followed by Kennedy talking about putting a man on the moon. Kennedy said: “Do it right and do it first before the decade is over.”.

To Fabrizio this can also be a wake-up call for our industry. We have a couple of big issues facing us and we need to reduce our “missile gap”. According to him we need to understand creativity and genius. He showed us a book written by Frans Johansson, The Medici Effect and Gelb’s book How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci. Two of terms from that second book that are very relevant in our current situation are “Sfumato” which is managing ambiguity and change and “Connessione” which is systems thinking.

He talks about a renaisssance 2.0 where there are dichotomies like local diversity versus global normalisation, intersectional creativity versus monosectorial innovation, public leadership versus public debate, new Entrepreneurship trust & risk versus old bank bailouts and open co-opetition versus blind competition. His main point seems to be that you need to be fully adaptable to change to be able to survive global competition.