Internet Time Blog: Workflow Learning Gets Realfile:///Macintosh%20HD/Users/jaycross/Documents/sites/jaycross.c...1 of 53/10/08 10:32 PM

Workflow Learning Gets Real

Monday, February 14, 2005

Jay Cross, Internet Time Group, andTony O'Driscoll, IBM

Given That…

Workers in most American factoriesspend just 20 percent of their time making things.Supervisors spend no more than 20 percent of their time doing things that appear in their jobdescriptions. Knowledge workers spend just 20percent of their time adding core value; the rest of the time they're looking for information, re-writingreports that have already been written, trying to gettheir computers to work, or attending meetings.

And That…

This same 80/20 rule applies to training. Ask workers wherethey learned how to do their jobs, and 80 percent of the time the answer is "at work." Most learning takes place on the job, outside the purview of formal learning. When we do conduct formal training, 80 percent of it iswasted effort: Workshops progress at the pace of the slowest participant,content is dated, the learner needs little of what's being delivered, themethod of delivery is not tuned to the needs of the individual worker,motivation is absent, or timing is off. The half-life of newly learnedmaterial is three days; if learners don't use it immediately, they lose it.

At the same time that…

Networks are spewing tidal waves of informationthat workers must absorb to make sound decisions, yet their mindsprocess no faster than in primitive times. As if speeding things up weren'tenough, the world is growing more complex. The collision of complexsystems yields unpredictable results. A butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyoand causes three hurricanes in a row in Florida. Boundaries betweendisciplines crumble. We can no longer rely on specialists who "know moreand more about less and less." We must all be generalists who mustknow more and more about more and more.

It all adds up to…

An era of real-time enterprise that will set the 80/20

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Internet Time Blog: Workflow Learning Gets Realfile:///Macintosh%20HD/Users/jaycross/Documents/sites/jaycross.c...2 of 53/10/08 10:32 PM

rule on its head. Changes afoot in commerce, information technology,network interoperability, and how work is organized will wring much(though never all) of the slack out of work. After decades of job stress,frustration, wasted effort, and disengagement, we have an opportunity torewrite all the rules.

The New Imperative

All humans are learners—and workers learn every day. If the trainingorganization in every company evaporated into thin air or disappearedthrough a wormhole to teaching heaven, individuals would continue tolearn.We are not the reason employees learn; we are here to help them learnmore effectively. But instead of helping them where they are, too oftenwe make them come to a class or interrupt their work to engage incontent they find frustrating. Traditional courses are an albatross aroundour necks, and if we don't change our delivery mechanisms, we will besidelined.We are in the midst of the greatest migration of labor in the history of theworld. Service work is crowding out manufacturing, much asmanufacturing replaced farming in the last half century. We don't meanservice work as in hamburger flippers or janitors; we mean everyone whocreates an offering that is consumed as it is produced. Doctors, lawyers,system administrators, and police officers are all service workers.We are more accustomed to production workers who have jobdescriptions and follow a script. Future workers will be value-drivenbecause there is no script. Everything will be improvised. Learning will befused into work, delivered in small fragments ("right size") on whatever device tethers them to the Internet ("right device" and "right place") justwhen they need it ("right time"). In other words, we will have what we callworkflow learning.How does this vision of workflow learning differ from Gloria Gery'sconcept of electronic performance support systems (EPSS)? Thephilosophy is exactly the same: performance-centered design. Workflowlearning is networked EPSS, operating in an environment where theworker is plugged into the job and learning is delivered in small chunks asit is needed. Workflow aggregates at the work-process level, while EPSSlargely compensated for poor application design. By moving up the valuechain, we can dramatically increase workers' productivity whilesimultaneously reducing their frustration.HP's Carly Fiorina suggests that the future will be digital, mobile, virtualand personal. John Chambers of Cisco asserts that Internet technologywill change the way we work, learn, live and play. Terry Semel of Yahoo!contends that search, personalization, community and content is thefuture of the Internet.In the not-very-distant future, workers will:•Have a unique, personalized view of their work, based on their role

Internet Time Blog: Workflow Learning Gets Realfile:///Macintosh%20HD/Users/jaycross/Documents/sites/jaycross.c...3 of 53/10/08 10:32 PM

in the enterprise.•Have learning snippets embedded in work.•Be alerted when needed.•Directly connect to experts as necessary.•Have easy access to peers.•Have smart FAQs and simulations for guidance.•Be location aware (GPS).•Always be online wirelessly (ambient computing).•Have support for understanding work in its strategic context.

Networks Rule

Networks come in many forms: the Internet, intranets, financial networks,the human brain, social networks, communications systems, the centralnervous system, and more. The value of any of these networks increasesexponentially with each new member.In

The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style and Your Life

(Harvard BusinessSchool Press, 2004), Thomas W. Malone observes that all networks arealike in that they form and grow in similar stages. At first, nodes areunconnected. Then, when communication becomes feasible, they evolveinto a hub-and-spoke arrangement around a single source of power. Ascommunication becomes cheaper still, all nodes begin to take on power.For example, early humans organized in bands of 30 to 40 people (larger groups would have over-hunted the local area.) When spoken languageand writing came on the scene, kingdoms formed. And when printing andmass communication appeared, democracies replaced them. Similarly,business networks evolved from mom-and-pop shops to national chainsto today's decentralized behemoths. Computing evolved from standalonemainframes to client-server networks to the distributed Internet and whatIBM calls On Demand computing.Training is no exception to these network rules. In past times, trainingwas individualized; people learned at grandma's knee or in the studio of amaster craftsman. With printing came instructor-centric schools. As weenter an age of informal and workflow learning, authority is lesscentralized than ever before. "Learning is best understood as aninteraction among practitioners, rather than a process in which a producer provides knowledge to a consumer," says Etienne Wenger, a socialresearcher and champion of communities of practice.We've essentially outgrown the definition of learning as an individualactivity. We've moved back to the apprenticeship model, albeit at ahigher level. We learn in context, with others, as we live and work.Recognizing this fact is the first step to crafting an effective workflowlearning strategy.We humans exist in networks. We are part of social networks. Our headscontain neural networks. Learning consists of making and maintainingbetter connections to our networks, be they social, operational,commercial or entertainment. Rich learning will always be more than a