HELEN BLUNDEN – CRYSTAL BALLING WITH LEARNNOVATORS

ABOUT HELEN BLUNDEN:

Helen Blunden is the Managing Director of Activate Learning Solutions and has over 23 years of experience within learning and development across private, public and not-for-profit organisations.

With a specialty in performance consulting and social networked learning, she believes that organisations need new skills to navigate through a complex world of constant change.

Helen has a passion for enabling people to learn beyond the traditional tools. She believes in the power of networks and communities supported by social tools that drive collaboration, meaning and engagement in the work.

Helen believes that the “learning is the work and the work is the learning” – the tools are instruments that enable us to connect with peers who can inspire us with fresh new ideas so that we can apply them into our own personal or professional contexts.

With experience across all forms of learning, from facilitator-led instruction, online and blended, virtual and social, she practices what she preaches. She is an active user of social tools and emerging technologies and uses these with her clients to put the fun, exploration and curiosity back into learning.

Helen presents at various conferences around Australia on how people can use social media to build and create global peer networks for personal and professional development as well as build their online reputation. She is also an Associate Member of the Learning and Performance Institute in the UK as well as the Member of the International Performance Improvement Society in the USA.

Helen is the founder of Third Place www.meetup.com/Third-Place an informal social networking community of Learning Professionals across Melbourne, Sydney, Newcastle, Adelaide and Brisbane to meet, share and learn from each other in person and through social media.

ABOUT THIS INTERVIEW SERIES:

‘Crystal Balling with Learnnovators’ is a thought-provoking interview series that attempts to gaze into the future of e-learning. It comprises stimulating discussions with industry experts and product evangelists on emerging trends in the learning landscape.

Join us on this exciting journey as we engage with thought leaders and learning innovators to see what the future of our industry looks like.

THE INTERVIEW:

1. Learnnovators: You have been through a rather unique professional journey, studying organic chemistry to being a Naval Officer and then working in various roles in Learning and Development to now helping people and organizations look at ways to incorporate more peer learning experiences in their workplace as a Social Learning Consultant. Could you please explain how these shifts in your career happened? How do these diverse and varied experiences help you in your current role?

Helen: Funnily enough, I got the taste of a variety and experiences in the Navy where every day seemed to be different and exciting. Once I joined the corporate world and got into Learning and Development, I had to actively seek those experiences out by choosing to work with clients from different businesses or industries so that I could expose myself to people who didn’t think like me. I also had an active out-of-work hours life through my community voluntary service activities with Rotary and other not-for-profits, which exposed me to different people, places and experiences that fed my desire of just being “out there”.

Coming from a background of migrant parents who left their country to pursue a better life in Australia, I grew up with a strong ethic of education and a job for life. At times this was a struggle for me because I was doing what was expected of me. It didn’t take long for me to be in a job and within a year start getting itchy feet to move on but I was hesitant to make the move myself in the early years. Instead, being in L&D, it’s the first department to be scrutinised when the company is going through cost cutting. As a result, many of the shifts in my career came about because of such organisational changes.

In my 24 years of working life, I’ve had four redundancies, been on hundreds of job interviews (at one stint between jobs I applied for 117 jobs), been on the ‘dole queue’ (unemployment benefits) for some months and lost count of how many times my job has been outsourced, restructured or downsized. Each time I felt I was on a merry-go-round with work. I doubted myself, pondered why my qualifications and experience meant nothing. I took things personally. Something had to give.

When I started to blog things changed. I used social media to connect with people around the world who were going through the same issues in their lives. My blog and social media gave me a voice. It made me realise I wasn’t the only one feeling this way and that’s when I started taking positive action to take charge of my own career shifts and not let others dictate them.

2. Learnnovators: You founded Third Place, a co-working and networking community of over 380 learning professionals across six Australian cities to meet, network, learn, co-work and share with each other for their professional and personal development. What inspired you to come up with this idea? And how do you look at your achievements through Third Place?

Helen: I had two inspirations for Third Place, an informal and social meet up group for Australian learning professionals.

The first inspiration came from when I decided to stop my demoralising job hunt and instead, travel for 5 months. I was staying with relatives in a village on the island of Crete in Greece; it didn’t matter what time of the day or night, I could walk down to the local square and meet locals for a coffee and chat.

The idea of going somewhere that’s not your home or your workplace, a ‘third place’ a piazza, a village square – in the community really appealed to me. It’s something basic and human to meet and be with others where you’re connected by the place itself and where you could meet friends and make new friends. I believe that this fundamental aspect of community is missing in the western world with our isolating urban designs and shopping malls.

Secondly, my husband and I were visiting London in 2006 and a member of my Personal Learning Network (PLN) contacted me to organise a tweet-up. I’ll never forget the day because it was the first time I had met my PLN in person and it was like meeting long lost friends.

As I sat there looking at the gathering, I decided that I was going to organise a meet-up when I got back to Melbourne. Within days of being back home, I was participating on a tweet chat and out of the blue, someone from San Francisco had sent me a link to read. It was about a book called “Third Place” by Ray Oldenberg. The concept resonated with me instantly and I knew I had a name for my meet-up.

I’ve been running Third Place for a few years now and it’s a great way to meet friends and make new ones. We have over 380 people although the number attending events will vary. Sometimes one person attends – other times more. Numbers don’t matter to me – it’s the idea of you going to a ‘third place’ to meet someone who you may or may not know and enjoy the experience of a chat, co-work, have breakfast, lunch or a drink.

People have wondered why I have not formalised Third Place and run it as a business itself. That is, and will never be my intention. My whole aim is in the spirit of mutual connection, learning and experiences and to have the community run by the members for the members – and be free.

3. Learnnovators: You are immensely passionate about sharing your knowledge and skills with the community, and do so through various channels, including your website. How significant is ‘sharing’ for learning designers in this age of informal and social learning? What are some tips that you can share with those who would like to get started? Can you share some of the best practices you follow to build, grow, and sustain your blogs and other social media platforms with high engagement?

Helen: As you can see from the answers above, the work and experiences that have come my way have come from a realisation that I had to let go of control.

Too often as learning designers, we are bedded to our processes, our templates, our methodologies and we follow them exactly and apply them to each and every problem in an effort to create order.

Also, we have so many people within and external to our field in L&D bombard us with information on what they think we should be doing and we end up confusing ourselves and comparing ourselves to others. It’s not surprising that people will revert to what they know and understand.

“We must get our people to start blogging!” “Live video is the next big thing!” “If you’re not on Twitter, you’re not connected!”. “If you do a Google search on your name and nothing comes up, you’re a nobody!” “You don’t have a LinkedIn account – have you been living under a rock?” “How do we push our people to use Yammer?”

One of the ways I want to steer away from in my blogs is to dictate or tell people what they need to do, how they need to do it and in exactly what format. Just because I started to blog doesn’t mean that this will work for others.

My way is to role model and share my work and learning in my own unique way. If I inspire others to seek their own way to share and show their work and learning then this is wonderful. It means having to be open to sharing your knowledge, skills and experience and being generous with your time and your response to people. It means being helpful, humble and empathetic – you’re driven by a desire of having an experience with others over profit.

This is where the lines between organisational learning and personal learning start to get blurred.

As learning designers, I believe one of the ways we can support our business to share is to first start role modelling these social behaviours ourselves; and to have gone through the transformative personal learning journey ourselves first. It means taking risks, it means speaking up, it means not fearing the organisational culture or what your boss and colleagues may think.

Ask questions, listen more, build personal networks across and outside your current business, connect ideas and share them publicly, connect and introduce people to each other so that they can solve problems themselves, be open to opportunities and let people express their own way in finding answers for themselves.

Let go of the control, help people find their flow and see the business outcomes be achieved in the end.

4. Learnnovators: You say that Snapchat exposed you to people who were pushing boundaries outside of mainstream social media, and connecting with them on various aspects made you appreciate Snapchat as a tool for storytelling and personal learning. Could you please share your experiences with us?

Helen: If you had asked me this question earlier this year, I would have said that it was a stupid social medium that simply didn’t make sense to me – and it was pointless but I’m now proud to admit that I was wrong.

I kept seeing all these people using it and I thought, “What are they seeing that I’m not seeing?” “Isn’t it about crazy filters?” “Why would I use something where the snaps disappear after 24 hours?”

That’s when I resolved that I had to put aside my personal prejudices and ignored the naysayers who said that I was wasting my time with this tool. I had to figure out ways of how I could use it in my work and personal learning and made a commitment to learn it – and to share my findings through my blog.

I had nothing to lose.

If you know Snapchat, you know that it’s hard to discover people unlike Twitter. For a few months, I followed and unfollowed people. I watched their stories. I connected with each of them through audio or video (you record messages to each other) and asked them to make recommendations on who I should follow.

In the process of talking to people directly, I started conversations with people across fields and a strange thing was happening – my own Snapchat community was forming. Snapchat was like the conversations in Twitter in the early days. I have made a few collaborations with people outside my field and the countless hours spent on Snapchat to curate my feed means I now have a list of people who inform, educate and inspire me – and I can watch them anytime and anywhere on the go.

The added bonus of Snapchat is that it has saved me hours of video editing for my vlogs because it has a function where you can record 10 seconds to ‘My Story’ which then collates snaps chronologically over the previous 24 hours so that you have a visual portfolio of your work and reflections during the day and which you can download to your camera roll.

I was so impressed with Snapchat and how it could be used for cross purposes such as marketing, public relations, learning and development, recruitment and business development that I created a detailed infographic and am now in the process of writing an e-book about it.

5. Learnnovators: For social learning to thrive, the most important thing is to have the senior management ’walking the social talk’. At the same time, insufficient buy-in from senior executives is touted as the primary reason for Enterprise Social Networks to fail in today’s organizations. As a workplace learning consultant and an expert in this area, how concerned are you about this? How do you think we can tackle this issue?

Helen: This is an interesting question especially for someone who had a background starting her work life in the Navy and working in traditional corporate hierarchical structures. I came from a background where people were valued on what rank they wore on their shoulder; what pay level they were working at; whether they had a Dr. in front of their name; the length of their post nominals or whether they had a corner office.

Thankfully, this has all been obliterated for me – now it’s all about trust.

Now, your value as a leader is seen by how much you give back to your network, help others achieve their personal aims and goals, how generous you are of your time, knowledge and experience, showing your vulnerability, being open and doing what you say you will do.

Otherwise, I will not be led by you. At worse, I will ignore you.

We can tackle the issue by helping leaders build trust with their people and see that it’s not about their position or their authority anymore.

Social networks (which make no mistake, their people are on and talking about them) will find them out immediately. Their absence in social networks speaks volumes for those who are socially and technologically savvy.

They can’t hide by choosing not to be part of it.

6. Learnnovators: Where do you think the world of workplace learning is heading, and what is your vision for the learning community?

Helen: If you mean workplace learning in the traditional way as we know it structured as corporate training teams designing and delivering standard courses in one way, top-down, the same way applied to every situation, I make no secret of the fact that this model is redundant.

I’m sure there’ll be a need for some formal training especially when there is a knowledge, skill or competency gap but the delivery method will be radically different. It will not be ‘cookie cutter’ approaches to building workforce capability.

If you mean making work into learning experiences – then this is a whole different ballgame.

Actually, I’m quite excited about what corporations will look like in the near future because I see their entire workforce demographic changed which will also impact their people policies and culture.

How wonderful to have five generations in the workplace – can you imagine the possibilities and opportunities to be out of your comfort zone, finding new and innovative ways of doing stuff, working with people of all ages, backgrounds, networks and experiences, testing your assumptions and most of all, letting go of your ego?

I see that modern workplace learning practitioners play a pivotal role in supporting the organisation through this change by helping people and managers make these transitions only if their organisation supports and trusts them – and if they are social leaders and role models themselves first.

Learnnovators: Thanks so much for sharing your valuable insights and experiences, Helen. We wish you the very best!

Check out these video bytes from Helen: