I’m organizing marketing material for a new business product my partner and I are developing. The product is an easy to manage, low cost web platform that can be easily set up to help organizations tap into and support the collaboration and innovation resources of their staff. My marketing task includes integrating a few examples from my 25 plus years working as an employee in a wide variety of management roles in the non-profit sector.

As I reflected on the many roles I’ve held, a new insight about my current role identity has emerged.

Throughout my successful career in the non-profit sector, I held roles with a title and a set of responsibilities. Operating as a consultant for the past 3 years has given me a new perspective about my early role identity. Before I became a consultant, I was constantly moving from one non-profit contract to another, holding down very challenging roles but firmly entrenched as an employee in a hierarchical, command and control work structure.

Looking back, I characterize my role identity in the non-profit sector as a time when I had a J.O.B. mindset. A lot has changed over the past few years. I am not attached or operate with that mindset anymore. What now makes the most sense to me is recognizing and accepting that my role identity is one of functioning as a node in the network.

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Brent Uncategorized cominghome, learning, network, node

Etienne Wenger captures why and how a community of practice can help an organization succeed. This is a timely post as I’m in the midst of a series of talks about learning and collaboration in the workplace. He describes the larger vision of understanding communities of practice as an integral component of an organization’s strategic capabilities. I’ll certainly use his message in my talks with organizational leaders.

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Jane Hart’s posts are helping me make sense of what’s happening in the world of workplace learning. Her posts give me a deeper understanding of how big that command and control elephant is in the non profit sector.

As I’ve spent most of my life in that sector. Reading Jane’s posts on workplace learning gives me stronger language in my discussions with Executive Directors about how their organization is responding to the realities of living in a hyper connected, digital world.

Jane’s posts focus on performance outcomes, not social tools or technology period.What a relief. I can focus on real tangible outcomes that matter to Executive Directors.

I know that many Senior managers and Board Directors are challenged to make sense of the endless array of technology options available to the organization. In truth, the myriad number of tech options is not the issue. How their employees are learning, connecting, creating solutions and innovating is the issue.

Consumers are more advanced than the organization’s staff at using (and expecting) technology to choose services and add value to their everyday lives. If Executive Directors understand how their communities are changing, I believe they must change their work place culture to match the new realities in the marketplace.

Here is the rub – no surprise. Like the commercial sector, the default culture of the non profit sector is characterized by a top down, command and control system for running the organization.  In small to medium size non profits there is no Learning and Development Department. Workplace learning is “catch as you can” and a workshop or two each year – if there is a budget for the workshop.

The management’s mindset is what determines the learning culture of the organization and typically workplace learning is not a high priority (or just not on the radar).

I really like how Jane frames the mindset needed by organization leaders. It’s “encourage & engage” that will drive the organization in the 21 century, not command and control.  Visit Jane’s website to learn more about the New Workplace Learning and the Smart Worker posts that break things down into bite size chunks.

Thanks for your provocative posts Jane. I look forward to your new book.

Brent

Brent Uncategorized

I’ve put together a list of goals that are fairly common for any organization that is seeking improvements to its business outcomes, practices and purpose:

These goals are generic to any organization regardless of social media. As you integrate social media as a method to achieve those goals, the results can be exponentially realized.

1. Improve how employees learn from eachother so they can be better at their job;
2. Improve how employees share their knowledge so that they and the organization can capture that knowledge for documenting best practices, innovating or creating new practices, replication, adaption etc.
3. Improve how employees can connect to eachother across a disparate workforce;
4. Modernize communication systems to increase innovation and advocacy among employees and meet demands of tech savy workers and consumers;
5. Improve user/visitor satisfaction with services and engagement with employees;
6. Improve response time to changing demographics and consumer needs;
7. Improve relationships amongst employess and with consumers, supporters, partners, funders, volunteers (trust & transparancy);

I found some very useful information on the Forrester Research – Forrester Wave: Enterprise Social Platforms Q3 2011 Report. You can get it here but you do need to leave your contact information with Newsgator.

I didn’t make them smart goals as to do that is an a process you follow to drill down into your specific circumstances.

There are others that could be added but 7 seems like a reasonable number. What do you think? If you have a few to add, please put them in a comment.

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Brent Uncategorized goals, methods, socialmedia

Organizations across all sectors are understanding that their sustainability is directly related to how well staff learn from each other, create solutions that are vital to the organization success and innovate so the organization can better meet the challenges of operating in a fast changing and complex work environment.

I’m a strong advocate of the Open Atrium platform. As a collaboration tool it keeps me connected with my clients and enables me to engages staff in learning new skills, creating content and developing strategies that improve performance results for the organization.

Open Atrium is a free out of the box package. I love it because its features can outperform many high priced similar products designed to help organizations with their collaboration needs.

This is a list of the Open Atrium features:

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Brent Uncategorized learning drupal openatrium webdesign

I’m very pleased to launch “The Working Smarter Video Series“. The videos (not sure how many yet) will be of interest to any leaders wanting to learn how to improve their organization’s performance and outcomes by creating a supportive workspace where staff learn and collaborate together.

The videos are brief and will give viewers a basic introduction to the working smarter core concepts. The three concepts (more like pillars) are social learning, collaboration and leadership.

The working smarter concepts are not difficult to understand because “it’s all about doing the job  better” (Jane Hart – Social Learning Handbook).

My goal for the video series is to encourage viewers to learn more about how this model can help them improve performance outcomes, in and outside the organization. Any practitioner, manager, Board Director or Executive Director will see themselves in this framework.

Here is how Harold Jarche describes working smarter in the Working Smarter Fieldbook.

Working smarter is the key to sustainability and continuous improvement. Knowledge work and learning to work smarter are becoming indistinguishable. The accelerating rate of change in business forces everyone in every organization to make a choice: learn while you work or become obsolete.

On a personal note, I’m discovering that producing videos is fun but takes a lot of time. What’s even more satisfying is the positive responses I’m getting as I integrate the working smarter framework into my work with organizations.

The working smarter framework is in permanent perpetual beta. Harold Jarche and other members of the Internet Time Alliance are the primary writers and publishers.

You will learn more about how the framework can help your organization meet 21st century challenges by visiting their websites.

Related Posts:

Introduction to the Working Smarter Video Series

20 Questions about Social Learning, Collaboration & Leadership in the Workplace

Resiliency & the Working Smarter Framework: Building on Strengths

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I have a holistic dentist and just love how his methods are so pain free and take into account my overall health. At a  recent dentist appointment for a tooth extraction, I discovered how the working smarter framework is similar to holistic dentistry.

Here is how my Doctor describes his dentistry practice .

” We take a holistic approach to dental treatment, primarily caring for our patient’s health and safety from both a conventional as well as alternative health care point of view. As such, we are a mercury-free dental practice. We examine the relationship between your oral health and the rest of your body, focusing on overall harmony – not just your teeth!

Dr. Chris (my holistic dentist) explained to me that it was very important to remove a dead tooth because that tooth was steadily affecting other parts of my body, particularly the internal stomach organs.

After my pain free extraction, I told him how glad I was to have taken his recommendation to extract the tooth.  Knowing my interest in naturopathic approaches to health, Chris offered a few comments about dentistry.

Chris explained that in general dentists are trained to solve problems, usually by removing it or patching it up. They are not trained to think about the total and long term health of the person. He said that many dentists recommend just leaving the dead tooth and mention nothing of the long term health implications of that option. He also emphasized the importance of asking probing questions to bring underlaying issues to the surface.

His comments got me thinking about my own adoption of the working smarter framework in my work with clients. That approach calls for a more comprehensive understanding of the organization’s internal and external communications and then implementing a social strategy that supports staff learning and collaboration. The end goal of this approach is a stronger, more resilient organization, creating new solutions and deepening relationships with all stakeholders.

I think the tide is turning as organizations are discovering that supporting staff to work smarter is the best way to address long term sustainability needs. The quick fix approach of signing up for a social networking sites without having a plan or even understanding why this might help the organization is coming to a close.

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Brent Uncategorized jarche, social-learning, workingsmarter

I’m producing a series of videos called  “Working Smarter”. Harold Jarche and others in the Internet Time Alliance (ITA) are the lead thinkers and writers on the working smarter framework.

Members of the ITA are publishing books, posting articles and making presentations around the world about how the business world is inexorably moving to a working smarter model.

Since immersing myself in the “working smarter” framework, I’ve become a full fledged advocate for this way of thinking about learning and working in a world transformed by digital technologies.

The framework has become my lens for making sense out of my own professional development as well in my work of mentoring or guiding organizations in their integration of social media strategies.

The videos will be posted over the coming weeks. This post is meant to give a “heads up” to those in my network and share a little bit why I’m doing the video series.

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Brent Uncategorized leadership, work_smarter ita social_learning

I am immersing myself in the “working smarter” framework that Harold Jarche and others in the Internet Time Alliance write about on the web and in their books.

The three pillars of this framework are social learning, collaboration and leadership, with social media tools energizing the processes operating within these pillars.

To help me in my work, I often use surveys to discover how people are learning and collaborating in the workplace. These questions also reveal the workplace culture and a sense of how the leadership supports learning and collaboration.

These are the 20 questions that I used for creating my working smarter survey. I left out the question choices and various check boxes as it wasn’t my intention to post a full survey.

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Introduction:

As I work with organizations and leaders on developing and integrating social media programs into their business operations, I often mention how these new communication technologies can increase the resiliency of their organization.

Reflecting on those discussions led me realize how closely the concepts within the resiliency framework parallel the working smarter framework that Harold Jarche discusses on his blog and work with the Internet Time Alliance. I provide an overview of Harold’s working smarter framework later in this post.

I am a firm proponent of the working smarter framework as a means to help Executive Directors (leaders) bring about essential improvements to their organization. My post is about utilizing the resiliency framework as a plug and play tool that can work with Harold’s working smarter framework, when and if needed.

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Brent Uncategorized jarche, resilience, worksmarter