A presentation about the fact that Learning and Development is broken. How we are all navel gazing, focused too much on benchmarking and best practice and not aware of the Cynefin framework. The solution is to go to the edge. There are three examples of "edges" here: Automattic as an example of distributed virtual teams really working, experimental academics finding out how to scale personalised education in Massive Open Online Courses and Mozilla coming up with Open Badges as an alternative to competency management. The story closes with the lean startup methodology as a way to set up your own experimentation.

1. Learning from the Outside
Hans de Zwart
Irish Centre for Business Excellence
19 April 2012

2. I am from the Netherlands, so it
is great to be in a country that
actually has some culture!

3. Increasing serendipity
Books, books, books, social engineering, the
Big Lebowski, juggling, digital civil rights,
open source, innovation, learning, Internet as
a transformative source, humane design

4. 3 things:
1. What we are all doing wrong
2. Why we should look to the edge
3. How to experiment with that edge

5. 3 things:
1. What we are all doing wrong
2. Why we should look to the edge
3. How to experiment with that edge

6. L&D is broken

7. “Learning to date still
operates mainly among the
old models, it hasn't flipped
(yet). It still focuses mainly on
knowledge content (which
changes fast and is available
on the Internet anyway), is
facilitated by paid experts,
away from actual work. [..] In
fact, while more and more
industries see the flipping
point coming when digital
becomes the new normal' and
new market dynamics arise,
the education and corporate
learning systems seem to be
lagging far behind.”
Bert De Coutere

8. Why?

9. Omphaloskepsis

10. Benchmarking and
Best Practices

11. Is your organization providing the right
learning in the right way to the right
people? Our study will tell you – and tell
you what you need to do next. How can
your organization persevere – and win?
Our study will show you.
The data and information sets will then be
used to populate our findings and
recommendations. This will allow the
client to baseline each functional area as
Emerging, Developing, Best Practice or
Best in Class.
Benchmarking and metrics to compare
your organization against others

12. Benchmarking is great
when you lack vision

14. “[When] you benchmark yourself against
your competitors. Over time, everybody
starts to look the same.”
Harold Jarche

15. “[..] As the number of products within a category
multiplies, the differences between them start to
become increasingly trivial [..] If martians were to
land in this country, they would think there was a
conspiracy of brands colluding.”
Youngme Moon in Different

19. Cynefin Framework

21. “In a complicated
context, at least one
right answer exists.
In a complex con-
text, however, right
answers can’t be
ferreted out. It’s like
the difference be-
tween, say, a Ferrari
and the Brazilian
rainforest.”
David Snowden in
Harvard Business Review

22. 3 things:
1. What we are all doing wrong
2. Why we should look to the edge
3. How to experiment with that edge

23. Finding your edge
(edge is a question of perspective)

24. 3 examples
Consumerisation, Experimental
Academics and Open Source

25. 1. Automattic
“How to make distributed/
virtual teams work”

26. “I will never stop learning. [..]
I will never pass up an
opportunity to help out a
colleague, and I’ll remember
the days before I knew
everything. I am more
motivated by impact than
money, and I know that
Open Source is one of the
most powerful ideas of our
generation. I will communi-
cate as much as possible,
because it’s the oxygen of a
distributed company. [..]”
Matt Mullenweg in the
Automattic Creed

27. “Everyone works from their own home or
office, and we’re spread out all over the world”
Automattic Website

28. “We get the whole company
together once a year to
brainstorm the broad strategy
for the company for the coming
months, and also just to hang
out and enjoy the company of
the people we work with all
day.”
Automattic Website

29. “For every feature we
launch, we gather
metrics about its usage,
interaction, and growth
in addition to listening
to the masses of
feedback we get on our
blog and through
support. We have a one-
button deploy system
for WordPress.com, and
we push code to the site
30-50 times a day.”
Automattic Website

30. 2. MOOCs and Edupunk
“Low cost personalised
learning at scale”

31. What is a
Massive Open Online Course?
(MOOC)

32. MOOC principles:
aggregation
remixing
re-purposing
feeding forward

34. “I don’t believe in technology, I believe in people. And that’s why I
don’t think our struggle is over the future of technology, it is over
the struggle for the future of our culture that is assailed from all
corners by the vultures of capital.”
Jim Groom

35. “Edupunk is student-
centered, resourceful,
teacher- or community-
created rather than
corporate-sourced, and
underwritten by a
progressive political
stance”
Stephen Downes

36. Teaching at scale is
now mainstream
(100,000+ students in 1 course)

40. 3. Mozilla
“Badges as an alternative to
competence management”

41. I have issues with
Competency Management
(not with being competent!)

42. “Our mission is to promote
openness, innovation and opportunity
on the Internet.”

44. Openness at the core

46. Creating infrastructures
without any lock-in

47. 3 things:
1. What we are all doing wrong
2. Why we should look to the edge
3. How to experiment with that edge

48. Bonus edge: Startups

49. “[..] The first step is to
enter the Build phase as
quickly as possible with a
minimum viable product
(MVP). The MVP is that
version of the product that
enables a full turn of the
Build-Measure-Learn loop
with a minimum amount of
effort and the least
amount of development
time.”
Eric Ries in The Lean Startup

50. That is all, so...
To what edge will your
first experiment take you?
It will be the only way to fix
Learning and Development

51. Please be in touch:
h@nsdezwart.nl
@hansdezwart
Download the slides and
find background links:
http://hdez.nl/icbe2012

52. Image Credits and License This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands Licentie,
Except for the images, they each have their own license see:
Automattic Geography:
http://automattic.com/map/
Automatticians in Budapest:
http://en.wordpress.com/about/
Bert De Coutere:
http://ignatiawebs.blogspot.com/2010/03/are-you-homo-competence-bert-de-coutere.html
Cynefin Framework:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin
Dave Snowden:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Dave_Snowden.jpg
Eric Ries:
http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2011/08/16/8709028/EricRies.jpg
Firefox :
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/brand/downloads/
Focus on Weakness/Play to Strength:
Made by Hans de Zwart, inspired by http://www.youngmemoon.com/home.html
Harold Jarche:
http://www.jarche.com/
Ireland:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ireland_(MODIS).jpg
Jim Groom:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Edupunk.jpg
Matt Mullenweg:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Matt_Mullenweg.jpg
Mozilla:
http://www.mozilla.org/img/press/mozilla.png
Navel:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Human_navel,_female.jpg
Open Badges:
http://openbadges.org/en-US/
Sailing Race:
http://web4homes.com/ofest/Boats%20Turning%20Small%20file.jpg
Stephen Downes:
http://www.downes.ca/me/index.htm
Youngme Moon:
http://www.harbus.org/