Learning is in our DNA !
How on earth did we survive ice ages, middle ages, hunger, epidemics, … for centuries and ages? Darwin would say it’s due to the fact that we know how to evolve, but what does that mean? It simply means you had the right information to help you adapt to an ever changing environment and move on in a successful way.
Dying is not an option!
Originally a biologist, media theorist Arjen Mulder would say ‘interact or die’! In short, his book will tell you ‘we need to talk to each other in order to survive’. Lets agree on this, because with all due respect, even the most successful amongst us will have to admit, we can not do it all alone.
We are social creatures, just because we understood that others can provide us with the right information in order to take the next leap forward. We have Facebook and LinkedIn or Twitter to prove it. Ver wondered why the most popular (intranet) softwarecompanies are so interested in hooking up with the social networks? Everybody knows we need to engage people, going passed the simple exchange of bits of information.
Information is only what you make of it.
Lets face it, you and I we both know the information society has become so 2012. Since this year we know it’s all leading towards clouds of ‘Big Data’. Great! We have got all the data we could dream of and more. The only question that remains is, what do you do with those silos of information? The only right answer, is that you learn from them and improve your knowledge and skills for the better to become the most successful version of you that is ready for centuries to come.
Enter the learning society.
Even though the time of the data society is not completely dawning on us, as big as your data can be, they are only useful if you learn from them. And most of the time we simply learn from each other. Only 10% of what we know is passed on to us by some kind of teacher in a classroom. Learning is not just a school’s business. People study, but they learn almost nothing. They find out right after they have entered the professional field through your company. So what do you do? Most managers send them of to classroom trainings, just to repeat the same mistake all the colleges make. The classroom is not the real world and how would we even remember something we have never really experienced through interaction with that world? How do we expect to survive just by learning from one teacher?
Why don’t we recognize our own nature and connect all the people of our organization in order to learn and improve their skills? Assess the competences of your people, find out each person’s expertise and connect them in order to make your company thrive on the knowledge that is there towards the success that you and your people deserve.
Turn your intranet into something more social and connect it to your LMS and other data silos. Generate success through the implementation of a learning ecosystem. Make sure that knowledge flows between peers, juniors and seniors, newbies and champions. Add informal and experience based learning to your 10% of classroom training and obtain a 100% of success.
Your instinct knows that you will always have the choice to learn or die. Get the information, exchange the data and learn to evolve.