MIKE TAYLOR – CRYSTAL BALLING WITH LEARNNOVATORS (PART 3)
ABOUT MIKE TAYLOR:
Mike Taylor advises organizations and consults on learning strategy, technology and implementation for Change4Growth, Ohio. He has also been serving the role of a Facilitator for Association for Talent Development (ATD) for over two years. Mike is known the world over for his role as the Community Manager at Articulate.
Mike has over 20 years of experience successfully developing and deploying a wide variety of learning strategies and technologies. He is known for his practical, street-savvy style of communication that helps him easily connect with his audience. He is popular for curating the best of the learning, design and technology news on his website.
Mike holds an MBA degree from Ohio University and a master’s degree in Learning Design and Technology from San Diego State University.
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:
Please note that this is Part 3 of the interview… Click HERE to read Part 1 and HERE to read Part 2 of the series.
36. LEARNNOVATORS: We’re great fans of John Stepper who developed the Working-Out-Loud approach, and have been inspired by his shout-out to “Google yourself to see how visible your work is”. In his book ‘Working Out Loud: For a Better Career and Life’, he quotes ‘Ikigai’, which is basically described as a sense of purpose, or as he defines, “the reason you get up in the morning”. You say, “I’ve always liked sharing knowledge… I unpack topics into easy to understand learning.” As an ardent practitioner of this approach and as someone who is religious about continuously sharing all his learnings with the community, can you let us know:
How is this approach helping companies and its employees succeed? How is this enabling them to make a difference at work? What are some of the challenges people face while following this approach? What techniques could you suggest to help learning professionals and their best work ‘easy to find’? What strategies would you suggest to inspire L&D to practice and encourage ‘Ikigai’ in their profession?
MIKE TAYLOR: This is one of my favorite concepts and so easy to get started with. I highly recommend that everyone go and read this book. In short, sharing the things you are working on benefits both you and your organization. I’ve seen this in so many places and in so many ways. It is one of those things that you sort of need to see with your own eyes and John’s book makes it super easy to get started.
One common challenge is that, many people think they don’t have anything worth sharing. You don’t have to be a genius, you just have to be yourself, and as long as you are learning, you will always have something to share. One of my key mantras is that, when I find something helpful, I share it so that it might help others. Think about how great it would be to work in a place where people think and work that way.
37. LEARNNOVATORS: According to Julian Stodd (from his ‘The Community Builder Guidebook’), “Communities are our primary ‘sense-making’ entities: we use them to discover new information, share knowledge, and figure out what on earth is happening in the noisy world around us. We are effective through our communities, and we are held in the arms of our communities.” You are known to be a passionate community builder who believes in the enormous power of communities in learning. According to you, “…it’s so important for us as learning leaders to be intentional and cultivate these (communities) within our organizations.” Here, we are reminded of the vibrant role you played as one of the Community Managers at Articulate for a few years managing the world’s largest online learning community. However, we see many instances around where communities wither away due to various reasons. From our own experience, we agree that building and managing an online community is extremely challenging, and demands special skills to make them engaging. In this context, please tell us:
- What are the critical success factors for sustaining learning communities? What are some of the best practices you follow to sustain and grow your communities with high engagement?
- What advice would you offer learning professionals for successfully building and managing communities at work?
- What are some ideas to ensure a high engagement level and a sense of interconnectedness amongst the members?
MIKE TAYLOR: A community, like a business, needs a mission statement and a reason for being. A community for the sake of having one is a recipe for failure. Like any other solution we propose, to be successful, communities need to serve a purpose and solve a problem.
Communities are not a “set it and forget it” type of operation. Creating a vibrant community requires regular nurturing and tending to. It is important to check in regularly, and while you can find a lot of great information on what makes a successful community, I think there are three key things that go a long way no matter what you’re doing:
- Be your authentic human self,
- Listen, and
- Show appreciation
38. LEARNNOVATORS: As he continues his investigation on the meaning of games, gamification and play around the world, it’s fascinating to hear Karl Kapp say, “In life, we are never done (with) training or learning so we should never be done with play – not as children and not as adults. To continue learning is to continue playing.” As a learning organization committed to bringing innovation to learning in order to make learning as natural as possible, we at Learnnovators have been leveraging the power of gamification in many of our solutions, and found this strategy to be ‘working’. However, it has been intriguing for us to explore views that negate the effectiveness of gamification such as this revelation by Donald Clark, and wish to find out your take on this view that ‘gamification does not work’? What were your observations from your own experiences?
MIKE TAYLOR: I believe gamification works in the right situations. Gamification or anything else cannot be a silver bullet that works for everything. I agree with Karl’s statement that we should never stop learning and playing. I haven’t looked into the research and tend to follow the lead of experts like Karl Kapp when it comes to this topic.
39. LEARNNOVATORS: When it comes to learning innovation, we believe that debunking today’s pervasive myths about learning is a key challenge. We concur on the significance of questioning the status quo on our traditional beliefs about organisational learning (what, how, and why), and work with industry leaders to debunk these in the best possible manner. We are reminded of this quote from Clark Quinn from our interview with him, “…certainly in situations like school and the workplace, we need to apply what’s known, not what’s believed.” As a learning professional known for your stand against learning myths:
- What are some of the things ‘that’s believed’ and not ‘that’s known’ that are still prevalent in workplaces?
- What are some of the new learning myths that you would like to debunk in addition to the ones from experts you have already discussed in your weekly recaps?
MIKE TAYLOR: Unfortunately, the learning styles myth is not only still believed but is still being taught by some colleges and universities. That is a big one that needs to be retired. Everything should be looked at with a critical eye. There is no shortage of myths and urban legends that get passed off as facts everyday.
Maybe the tendency for some in our field to put technology ahead of people in the experiences they design. Technology can be a fantastic aid but only when it is appropriately applied with sound instructional strategies.
40. LEARNNOVATORS: You feel that ‘though content curation is rapidly becoming an essential skill for learning professionals, many are yet to take the step of putting it into practice’. We too believe that, competence in content curation is a significant skill for L&D to support the learning or performance need of today’s self-guided learners in the ‘flow of work’. Though there are numerous views on this topic, we find this thought from David Kelly (from a dated post that’s still relevant) inspiring: “For learning and performance professionals, curation is a skill that fits into the growing shift towards bringing learning into the flow of the work people are doing”. However, today there is also a school of thought on the ‘risk’ associated with content curation as ‘its inability to foster an active learning process due to its focus on promoting the consumption of static content’.
What’s your take on the view that content curation does not foster an active learning process?
MIKE TAYLOR: Fostering active learning via curation is similar to any other medium. It requires a thoughtful process that considers factors such as the action you want people to take, and how, when and where they are going to take it. Curation is another form of content delivery – the active learning comes from whoever is designing the learning.
41. LEARNNOVATORS: How do you go about curating content for your learners? What are the different approaches to content curation? What tools and techniques do you use?
MIKE TAYLOR: I don’t have a master strategy other than being passionately curious. I’ve built a pretty efficient process for keeping up with my interests and the leaders in our field. When I find something useful or valuable for me, I assume that it will be helpful for others, so I share it. It is really a pretty simple approach.
42. LEARNNOVATORS: What is the future of content curation? What does it look like?
MIKE TAYLOR: I think curation is going to continue to become more important, particularly for personal knowledge management. With so many new sources and the rapid increase in the amount of information available, it will become more and more important to focus on what is relevant and filter out the noise from the avalanche of information we face everyday.
43. LEARNNOVATORS: To quote Karen May (VP of People Development, Google), “Googlers tell us that when they really need to figure something out, they ask each other. They turn to their colleagues for information, advice, and support”. Here’s another thought from Josh Davis that perfectly aligns with this topic: “In order to adapt to the future of work, we’ll all have a lot to learn–not just once but continuously. And access to great content from robo-instructors won’t be enough…the ones best suited to help us solve that problem aren’t algorithms but other people.” As we understand, ‘peer learning’ is of great significance in the process of continuous learning. We too would like to agree on the significance of ‘humanised learning’. However, in this age of chatbots, smart devices and intelligent assistants that offer personalized learning and performance support to a large audience, and a future where even our minds would probably be uploaded on the cloud, when trying to gaze into the future workplace, we can see robo-instructors being busy there.
- What are your thoughts on this? Would you like to see intelligent devices capable of offering support to employees at future workplaces better than their colleagues?
- Are there any interesting stories you could share with our readers to emphasize your beliefs on this topic?
MIKE TAYLOR: I think there will be untold ways we can learn from a host of yet to be invented sources. Usually, the key to these approaches is not in finding enough information but being overwhelmed by too much. Like today, the key will be to filter out the noise and tune into the valuable information you want and need.
I’ve seen long-standing organizational issues solved very quickly simply by connecting the right people in an organization via enterprise social platforms. This is a great example of the power of networking and connection.
44. LEARNNOVATORS: For you, work is all about ‘helping people become more awesome at what they do’. You say, “I love finding new shortcuts so people can work smarter and no harder than a task requires. It’s refreshing when I can take what I’ve learned and help somebody do their job better. And every success story just inspires me to keep pushing further in the quest for more learning and better results.” It is inspiring to note that you had the honor of being ranked #11 in the Learning Carnival’s ‘Top 25 Socially Influential Learning Professionals of The Year-2019’ in recognition of your inspiring work in sharing learning.
How do you look at this achievement? And, how do you think such recognitions will help fuel your vision for the L&D community?
MIKE TAYLOR: Of course, being recognized is a nice honor. Yet, I don’t put a lot of stock in these types of rankings – it doesn’t change anything I do or how I do it. Recognition is nice to help keep me going and can be a little bit of confirmation, but I don’t think it has any significant impact.
45. LEARNNOVATORS: You say you’re on the constant lookout for ‘great people and organizations who want to help people learn and work better’. It is great to see you on this inspiring journey to help drive change. Just like you, we too are excited visualizing the future of learning; it looks very bright. We believe that learning will evolve much further leveraging the amazing power of emerging technologies to some incredible dimensions.
- What according to you is the future of workplace learning? What would it look like?
- What are the trends that will shape the future of workplace learning in 2019 and beyond?
- What is your vision for the L&D community?
MIKE TAYLOR: My view of workplace learning in future includes many people creating and sharing with each other as a much larger percentage than today when the majority of knowledge sharing is created and published by a training department.
I believe the increasing speed of change in our organizations will eventually lead us to a more social way of working and learning. The ability to learn quick and apply that to our businesses will be the ultimate competitive advantage.
I’m not sure if it qualifies as a vision, but I hope everyone learns how to be a ruthlessly efficient learner in the everyday context of the work they are doing. And that everyone readily shares with each other in a way that creates a self-sustaining learning ecosystem.
LEARNNOVATORS: Before we sign off, we thank you so much for your time today; we’ve had an amazing time listening to some great insights with many valuable take-aways. We’ll take these learnings to foster our commitment to practice and promote continuous learning and innovation at work. We eagerly look forward to collaborating with you on some exciting initiatives in future. Thank you!
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Here are links to all three parts of this interview:
