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Beyond Learning Management
June 04, 2009
By Massood Zarrabian
A company's products and services are its core, competitive advantage. But today's learning management technologies only partway help employees and customers learn about organization's wares. Why are we giving people a partial solution?
Mainly, it's because of the way vendors and training professionals have thought about learning.
For more than a decade, learning technologies have concerned themselves with organizing learning and making the administration and delivery of training efficient.
In 2008, Gartner defined a corporate learning system as a:
•learning management system (LMS);
•learning content management system (LCMS) and content authoring tools;
•virtual classrooms; and,
•professional services.
But what do these systems really do?
Simply put, an LMS stores and tracks training. It's like a car, enabling us to load and carry passengers. With GPS, we can even track the car's location. If an LMS is a car, then an LCMS is the gasoline and fuel-injection system that runs the LMS.
Learning technologies perform a valuable function for those who manage the nitty-gritty of developing, delivering, and tracking training. For example, the LCMS lets developers and subject-matter experts capture content, so employers can reuse or repurpose it. The LCMS takes all the bits and bytes of content an employer has and allows him to shape and give it context.
But in spite of the value to employers, learning management technologies leave learners wanting when it comes to exchanging knowledge about a company and its products.
Some pundits have said knowledge management (KM) software brings people the rest of the way to gaining know-how about an employer's products or services. But KM vendors often define things around taxonomies, or orderly classifications. And these taxonomies aren't always aligned with the way people really learn, and aren't necessarily beneficial to gaining know-how.
That's because people don't acquire knowledge about products and services in a document-centric way.
To truly understand an organization's wares, learners—whether employees or customers—need a tool that takes the best from learning systems and then goes beyond these solutions. Learners need a new combination of technologies that let loose the frictionless exchange of knowledge.
Going From Managing Learning to Acquiring Know-How
Training and development organizations have been responsible for delivering the formal component of knowledge (e.g., classes, training manuals, study guides, etc.) and collecting data. And the informal part done in an ad-hoc manner through collaboration between peers, e-mail threads, and impromptu talks in office hallways.
In fact, the training and development industry has spent too much time capturing the data around the learner. In spite of the hype to the contrary, all an employer really gets from an LMS is the grade the learner received; the employer doesn't know what the learner's experience is. And the LMS can't tell the employer.
The workplace presents employees—whether salespeople, marketing managers, or training directors—with stacks of data. For example, sales force automation software tallies where in the buying process prospects are. Marketing software counts the number of sales leads a company nets. Learning management systems store how many training courses an employee takes.
Does the sales force automation software tell a manager if someone really wants to buy his product? Can the marketing software qualify buyers? Does an LMS help employees share knowledge? Of course, the answers are no.
But with the maturation of social software, informal learning now can happen across time lines, and disparate locations. Employers now can create a way for collaboration to augment formal learning.
That's why training professionals owe it to themselves to rise above reporting on data and instead look at the tools employees, business partners, and customers need to effectively exchange knowledge.
Data Isn't Know-How
Most companies are drowning in data because of how efficiently technology collects it. But most of the software systems that tally, count, and store data are like massive filing cabinets filled with documents. And this is what vexes employees in search of know-how.
Employees want to find colleagues with the knowledge to make sense of all the data before their eyes. What good is learning about the existence of a new competitor if you don’t have the know-how to determine how much of a threat this newly identified competitor poses?
Employees at all levels ask: Who in this organization can help me learn about the issue I am trying to address and answer the questions I have? Workers need an efficient way to find an experienced colleague who can help them navigate a challenging business situation.
In his best-selling book, "Blink," author Malcolm Gladwell writes "…everyone knows it's better to have an expert show you—and not just tell you—how to play tennis or golf or a musical instrument." Employees, too, need to be shown the way.
Here's an example of how knowledge-exchange technology could work. Let's say a newly minted sales rep could engage with his company's sales team via an online community (filled with experts) from day one on the job. Then, everything the sales rep learned could be wrapped with the firm's collective experience. His more seasoned peers could show him how they closed—or lost—a deal. As he formed assumptions about what he was learning, he could vet those assumptions with the larger community. The virtual community would give him and his co-workers a way to collaborate as though they were in the same office, and take data or training and put it into context. The sales executive could combine his learning with other people's experience to model smart decisions right away.
If all this sounds far-fetched, it's not. In fact, we are finally at a point where organizations can merge distinct knowledge management, social networking and learning delivery into one platform. The technologies have developed in a way that each can be melded into a single platform and used when and how a company sees fit. The convergence of these technologies already is happening.
Uncle Sam Puts Together the Pieces
I know of a U.S. government agency that uses OutStart's knowledge-sharing technology to help its staff find, collect, and share expertise that makes each person more effective in their work overseas. An online knowledge bank enables the agency's workers to find answers. Think of it like Twitter—a social networking site driven by people's updates and observations about their comings and goings—but, instead, for business. As part of its knowledge-sharing technology, this government organization also offers real-time, online access to experts. Experts show "newbies" the way to work effectively. And virtual communities provide staffers an easy and immediate way to tap veterans' expertise if the knowledge bank doesn’t hold the key.
This blend of knowledge management, social networking, and learning delivery software:
•organically captures know-how (e.g., the experience we have between our ears) and training;
•stores knowledge; and,
•reuses know-how in whatever way people need.
This is but one example of how employers are reaching beyond traditional learning management technology to transfer knowledge. With these knowledge-sharing technologies, companies can help employees and customers capture and immediately draw on an organization's collective wisdom about its products and services.
It's a powerful, new way to ensure learning is put into the context of experience, so people can gain the know-how to act swiftly, smartly, and decisively.
Massood Zarrabian is chief executive officer and president of OutStart,Inc., a maker of social business software and learning systems. He has more than 25 years of technology and management experience.
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