What's the ROI on ROI?

A few weeks ago I participated in a panel discussion arranged by the network Swedish Learning Association. The subject for the discussion was Competence Development and we who was in the panel came from two furniture dealer companies from Sweden, IKEA and Kinnarps. It was really interesting to learn from another company working in the same field.

But what really caught my interest was a discussion that started way too close to the end of the gathering. One participant started asking us questions about how we proved that our competence development initiatives were successful. Did we prove it with showing the ROI? My response was that I have never calculated ROI in my life. But the participant wasn't happy with that answer, because how can I prove the right for an L&D department, if I don't show the management that they get something for the money they invest.

On the way home I reflected on my views on ROI and came to some conclusions. So here they are:

Is the future of Learning either/or?

I have been enjoying reading "The New Learning Architect" by Clive Shepherd. I am not through it yet as I try to keep the pace of the #lrntect book chat on the book. The main reason I really enjoy the book is that it takes a very humble approach to different types of learning (such as formal learning, informal learning, Top-down, Bottom-up). Often when I follow and participate in discussions on these topics I get the feeling that you have to be either/or. Either you believe fully in formal learning and a top-down approach or you believe only in informal learning and a bottom up approach.

Response to Question 8 in the lrnbook chat on The New Learning Architect.

Ok so I am trying out the Essay function in HootCourse. Let's see how it works.

In this post I will respond to the following question:

Shepherd suggests that people don’t resist change, but do resist being changed. What strategies do you employ to help people buy into/embrace changes?

Suggestion for Hootcourse on "The New Learning Architect"

In a few weeks time there will be a #lrnbook chat about the book "The New Learning Architect" by Clive Shepherd, that I will participate in.

Our course leader @britz asked a question on Twitter today on how to divide the reading of the book over the course period. Here is my suggestion:

1. We skip the Profile chapters as these deal with one individual per chapter. I am not sure if it's interesting to discuss these peoples work.

2. This is how I would chunk the chapters:

1. Week 1: Introduction, Time for a rethink, One more time, how do people learn?
2. Week 2: A contextual model for learning, Top-down learning, Bottom-up learning
3. Week 3: Formal learning, Non-formal learning, On-demand learning
4. Week 4: Experiential learning, Putting the model to use

Ok, that is my suggestion. Take it or leave it :-)

Thanks for taking the time,
Mattias

Change of behavior - Response to @janet_frg

Earlier today I participated in Marcia Conners (@marciamarcia) webinar on "The New Social Learning". It was a great seminar with a lot of interesting points. During the webinar there was also a backchannel discussion going on at #newsociallearn. During the session Marcia got a question on how Social Learning can create behavioral change. To me that seemed like somewhat a strange question. So I threw out a tweet saying:

Isn't the goal with all learning, social or not, behavioral change? 

It didn't take long before I got a question what I meant with this tweet from Janet Laane Effron (@janet_frg). Here is our conversation:

Three reasons why some companies are scared of Social Media.

For some time now there has been a lively discussion about why so many companies are not allowing Social Media to be a part of their employees IT-environment. After reading the great book "The New Social Learning" by Marcia Conner and Tony Bingham I have learned how to respond to the skeptics of Social Media. I have used these tips a number of times when discussing these issues with different people from different companies. And to be honest it has worked every single time.

But as these discussions pops up again and again I started wondering WHY so many companies (or actually people within these companies) have these attitudes. Because if we really want to make a change I don't think it is enough to have answers to questions. I need to understand where these ideas come from in order to really work with the needed change.
So let's start with the first reason:

Reflections after the "Stupid Bloody System (Jävla skitsystem in Swedish)" seminar

Last week I attended a seminar at Linnaeus University in Växjö, Sweden. The title of the seminar was "Jävla Skitsystem" or in English "Stupid Bloody System". It was facilitated by Jonas Söderström who has written a book with the same title as the seminar. The sub heading of the seminar was "Cognitive stress from today's fragmented digital work environment - the users' view" which in many ways sums it up quite good.

In the seminar Jonas talked about how users get frustrated by badly designed IT-systems and how that can be a major influence of stress in the work life. I think we have all experienced how some systems we use in our work can be quite frustrating to work with simply because of the way they are designed. Jonas gave us some examples of systems that were just plain stupid.