Off Course-On Target

List with a Twist: My Best Learning Books in 2009?

I am always looking for the next great book to read and thought I’d tap into the collective intelligence, the annual end-of-the-calendar-year trend for lists, and the power of new tools such as Twitter to find the next great book to read. Below is some of the why, how, and what I have in mind.

Mashup of Old and New

I continue to be intrigued by the power that comes from creating mashups of old and new. In this case, it is about finding the next great book to read (how old can you get?) using a new means such as Twitter, blogs, etc.

In short, what I’m asking you to do is reflect upon books you’ve read this past year, choose one or more that you found to be the best learning book for you, and share this with the rest of us via a tweet.* Ideally you can also articulate with more detail on why you chose this particular book and post this to your blog, Facebook page, or otherwise share your thoughts with the rest of us.

I considered making this more wide open and going for “best learning resource” that could include books, websites, blogs, tweets, slides, presentations, etc., and perhaps we should expand this idea and format to other resources.  But for now, I have purposely limited this to that oh-so-yesterday medium—books—as I’m interested in finding more in-depth and detailed exploration of ideas, concepts, techniques, models, and the like. I not only find myself reading more than ever from a greater diversity of sources, dates of publication, and formats than ever, but as a voracious eBook reader, I find myself reading more books than I ever have (something which I already did a lot) and am finding exponentially more value in doing so. I’d like to continue that trend.

Vaguely Focused

I have also purposely focused on “learning books” and have left the definition and interpretation of what a learning book is in this context to be open-ended and up to you. You can treat learning as a verb or a noun, just make it personal and passionate. For example, you can decide to choose the book which was the best at:

• Stimulating your personal learning, was most provocative, made you think the most, perhaps one you disagreed with the most?
• Causing the most change in your thinking, your perspective, your behavior.
• Stimulating new ideas, new questions, new paths to pursue.
• Being most helpful in your personal learning and/or with learning in your organization—personal or professional.
• Affecting a change in learning as a topic/subject.
• Any other way you want to interpret what “learning book” means to you.

Like to learn by example?  Check out this list of “Books that Changed My Life” (and a very cool library pictured here as well) from Kevin Kelly.

List with a Twist

This is not an attempt to create a new top ten list, and least of all, any kind of most popular or bestseller list! There are lots of these and there are more to come I’m sure. And by all means, mention them here if you find some good lists that helped you find a great book for learning in 2009. 

While I would not want to stifle more input, rather than creating an echo chamber of agreement with someone else’s #myBLB09 tweet, I’m hoping you will either add your own book or tweet about an additional benefit you got from reading a book someone else listed. I will not be compiling a summative list, I won’t be taking votes, or in any other way trying to categorize or rate these books. The #myBLB09 will help enough with that. Rather I’m trying to stimulate more sharing of what you found to be the most valuable for you.  My assumption is that we will all benefit from our individual sharing of personal great reads.

However, I’m actually hoping to see hundreds or thousands of books listed here, which will enable each of us to add a new book to our own personal top ten list for 2009 before it ends all too soon.

Here’s how I’d suggest we can all help make this a productive and valuable resource and use of our time:

• Create a tweet with one of the best books you have read in 2009, which had a profound effect on your learning and perhaps that of others around you. 
• I’ve created a Twitter hashtag #myBLB09 and be sure to add #myBLB09 to your tweet so others can find, follow, and benefit.
• Avoid the temptation to list a book you plan to read, have skimmed, think you should read, or ones you think everyone else is reading!
• Reflect upon books you read in 2009 and do not limit this to books which were published in 2009. In fact, I’m hoping that we’ll see more old, obscure, forgotten books than those on any bestseller lists.
• Write less about why you think others should read this book and more about why it was so beneficial and influential for you. 
• Bonus points for a link in your tweet rather than text regarding the author, book, etc. so you can use more of the 140 characters to state why this is a great book for you! 

  Tip: Use the “custom naming” option in the URL shortener (bit.ly, snurl, tinyurl, etc.) that you use to make the link text more descriptive and part of your tweet text.  Search on “custom naming URL shortening” or the like for help with this such as:

  • http://www.seoconsultants.com/twitter/shorts/
  • http://www.geekpreneur.com/the-top-10-url-shortening-services

• Consider writing a more detailed account of how and why this was such a great learning book for you and posting this on your blog, Facebook page, or other ways you can share these thoughts with the rest of us. Then send a tweet with a link to your notes and include the #myBLB09 hashtag.
• If, as will often be the case, you have more than one great learning book you read in 2009, consider creating and posting your own personal list of “My Best Learning Books in 2009” and tweet a link to your list, adding #myBLB09 as well of course.

Help Me, Help You by Helping Me Help You

In the wonderful ways of the cyclical benefits of gifting, I’m hoping that by asking you to help me find my next great book to read, you will find your next great book to read. And at this time of year, if you are looking for a gift for friends and family, perhaps this will provide you with some gift ideas. However my real hope is that by doing this, I may in some small way be able to give a gift to you by asking you to consider giving yourself a gift—the gift of time for reading, thinking, and reflecting, which I find books to be great catalyst for. How’s that for circular!

While the end of year certainly brings with it lots of demands on your time, it can also provide an opportunity for the luxury of time to read. Consider it an investment in the future and an investment in yourself such that you can in turn be that much more useful and effective in helping others in the upcoming New Year and beyond. For those of you who use calendars and schedulers—electronic or paper—to help organize and manage your time, consider simply scheduling time for you to read something stimulating and provocative and the time to reflect and think about it all. It is no coincidence that in my experience with others who I regard to be extremely successful, I’ve discovered that they specifically carve out time for just this kind of activity at least annually and often more so. Why not you too?

You’ve done your best to be good all year right?  You not only deserve this gift, but in the end it will enable you to better gift the rest of us with an even more powerful and passionate you in 2010.

Looking forward to your help in finding the next great book to read.  Thanks!

Wayne

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* If Twitter and tweeting is new to you or you have been trying to figure it out, my experience is that this is one of those things that you can only learn experientially. Use it for a month and you’ll know if it is valuable for you. See my previous post “Twitterpated” for more details. Why not use this opportunity to start your experiential learning of Twitter now?

What if the Impossible Isn’t?

As I mentioned in my recent post “Reflective Reduction Sauce”, returning to my work universe after months at sea has led me to reflect upon some themes I encountered as a result of my attending the Learning 2009 conference. One theme I’m delighted to see more attention on is “What if the impossible isn’t?”

This theme is about the need to understand that we are living at a time where almost anything is possible. While I would still wager that the majority of people are not quite believers yet, I continue to have great fun exploring  what is the current “state-of-the-art of the possible” with others in my presentations and conversations.

What makes something possible includes such factors as:

• Does it exist? (invented/discovered yet?)
• Am I aware of it?
• Is it available to me? (out of private beta, out of the research lab, etc.)
• Is it ready for me?  (good enough for my use)
• Can I afford it?

Fundamentally, my sense, my message, and my belief is that the only thing holding us back anymore is our assumptions of what it possible, what we should be demanding and expecting as consumers, and the overall attitude we need to take that if something is not possible today, it will be tomorrow—almost literally. 

Living in the Age of Abundance

But I am not suggesting that just because something is possible or available, you need to use it. Quite the opposite actually. Our choices should be driven by our needs, our passions, and our curiosity. Yet this habit of trying anything new is a holdover from the previous era of scarcity whereby we would often feel a need to use something just because it came to our attention, arrived on the market, or was pushed at us as new and improved. 

As we transition into the age of abundance, I believe we need to assume that everything and anything is available and possible, and work from there. In doing so, I find it necessary to invert these earlier approaches and avoid the tendency of starting with a solution in search of a problem.

As many of us* start living in an era of abundance where anything becomes possible, it puts a wonderful pressure on us to think and focus more on:

• What do we really need?
• What are the essential characteristics we are looking for?
• What are our top priorities?

In grossly oversimplified terms, the way we have historically planned and designed is:

• To start with some ideal end state in mind and then develop back from that based on what is impossible.
• To build a solution based on what we think is possible and accept what is often a very significant degree of compromise in the process. 

In doing so, most of our sense of what is possible is quite dated and is based on unconscious assumptions.   Both of these problems are causing us to squander opportunities to improve and do things we believe are still only dreams, and the way to change this is to go after both of these problems.

Learning to Adjust Our Sense of What is Possible

With the rate of change increasing exponentially, our sense of what is possible and what is impossible requires almost constant real-time updating, and necessitates a new planning and project management model. This new model allows for dynamic updating when something that was impossible when the current plan was developed becomes possible. When this happens, the project should start using it and taking advantage of it.

This kind of updating can largely be addressed through technical means if all such requirements are well-articulated in the initial planning process, such that the needed capabilities and other requirements are quantified and stated and can thus be tracked for relevant changes.

However, our unconscious assumptions are a much more troubling and challenging problem because they lurk below our level of awareness and because they become indelibly ingrained into our habits, behaviors, and thinking. For example, my focus on the Snowflake Effect—the transition from an era of mass production to one of mass personalization—includes many such assumptions. Mass production is not reserved for the domain of manufacturing, but rather has permeated most societies and our overall way of thinking. 

When I talk about this meta theme of the Snowflake Effect, one of the most common and provocative questions that I ask is, “If we all seem to agree that each of us is unique, and furthermore that each moment and situation is unique, then why do we live in a world that is designed for sameness?” 

When we design something, we typically start by identifying the “target audience”, a group of people who are  defined by a set of common characteristics. The larger this audience, the better. Think about this for a minute. Imagine you are designing and developing any new product, such as a lesson for students, a book, a website, a car, or service. Do you find that designing all of these involves the same basic model based on an assumption of sameness?

And I get it. This model used to make complete sense. Mass production was a brilliant model in its time and we largely got to where we are today because of it. However, the great news is that most of the conditions and constraints which made mass production such a successful model have changed or have been eliminated, yet the model persists. Add to this the equally wonderful dynamic that truly amazing new capabilities, products, and services are becoming possible and available every day. We are increasingly moving to the point where the impossible isn’t.

It’s Time to Get Good at Believing in the Impossible

What to do?  What needs to change? First and foremost I think it is we who need to change—our thinking and our assumptions. We need to get good at believing in the impossible. In true synchronistic fashion, I recently received this quote from my good friend Murry Christensen which resonated strongly and added to my sense that this meta theme I’m discussing here is growing:

"We must learn to deal with possibilities instead of probabilities."

-- Verna Allee

And one of my favorite thinkers and writers is Kevin Kelly and he has been making these same kinds of observations for many years now. One of my favorite Kevin phrases is:

“Impossible in theory, possible in practice”

Kevin makes this observation in light of the many capabilities we are now immersed in  yet which only a few years or months previously we would have regarded as impossible. You can read Kevin’s piece on “Believing the Impossible” or watch his TED talks such as “The next 5000 days of the web” (included here), and “How Technology Evolves”.

Still not convinced?  Watch these other TED talks and see if you change your mind a little or a lot:

• Pranav Mistry demonstrating his “Sixth Sense” device

• Juan Enriquez’s tour of some views of “mindboggling science”

• David Hanson showing his robots that “show emotion”

Believing that “the impossible isn’t” is what has led me to conclude that the dream of being able to seize every “teachable moment”, to have personalized learning experiences available for every person on the planet multiple times every day, and get to a “just the right” end state where we can get just the right stuff to just the right person at just the right time in just he right context, has become an achievable goal.

What about you?  When it comes to capabilities, products, services, etc., what is on your “wish it were possible” list? What, were it to be possible, would make the most significant difference in your professional or personal life?  My experience in pursuing these questions is that by articulating and sharing them, we will discover that many are already possible and those that aren’t can be put on our watch list, so that we will be notified in days, weeks, or months that it has just become possible. 

Sound impossible?  Just watch, it isn’t!

Wayne

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* Let’s keep in mind that in terms of world population (almost 7 billion), we are still the privileged few who live in in this era of abundance, and although this group is also growing exponentially, we all need to continue to work to distribute abundance.

What It’s All About

Want to see what it is all about? Want to see a real live humanitarian and all around great person?

Check out this video of my dear friend Linda English, a founder and Director of Membership Development, Learning for International NGOs LINGOs, www.lingos.org

This is from the Microsoft Alumni Foundation, Honors 2009 Integral Fellows ceremony on Wednesday (Nov.18, 2009).

You GO girl!

Write You Are!

For many years now, I’ve more often than not taken great exception to those traits and characteristics which  the “experts” and pundits say are the norm or the coming trends of our societies. They just don’t seem to match up with the reality I see all around me and what my sense of these trends are.

For example, I still keep reading about these grave concerns that we (especially the younger generations) are becoming isolated individuals who:

• Live in dark rooms lit only by the glow of our computer screens
• Have no social life and only limited “real” human contact
• Read less and write less
• Passively sit there all day clicking our mouse and watching endless video

I don’t know where all these masses of people are who the experts say are out there and are becoming the norm. I see mostly the opposite among all of the many groups, ages, nations, and cultures that I’m privileged to spend time with around the world. I see people of all ages, classes, and cultures who are more social than ever—communicating, sharing, reflecting, observing, analyzing, and otherwise engaging more than I think we may have ever done.

I think the reason for this vast difference in observations is mostly because these interactions don’t look and feel like they used to. Behaviors have changed and they don’t fit the norms and definitions of the past. But make no mistake—from all indications and observations I can make, the fundamentals of socializing, interacting, communicating, writing, probing, being curious, and other such fundamental traits are not only alive and well, but they are at an all time high and are increasing exponentially.

You can therefore imagine my delight in finding more and more examples in the past few months of others who have been noticing this same counter-trend. Even better, some of this has now been formally studied and evaluated, so it is no longer just a matter of opinion and a collection of anecdotal observations.

The “Stanford Study of Writing”

One of the more recent examples is the massive study called “Stanford Study of Writing” that was recently completed by Andrea Lunsford, professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University. Clive Thompson did a good synopsis of this study in a the Sept. 2009 edition of Wired magazine called “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy”. Lunsford studied college students from 2001 to 2006 and used over 14,000 samples of their diverse writings including formal assignments, emails, blogs, and chat sessions. Tellingly, 83% of their writing took place outside of their academic assignments. One of her conclusions particularly rang true to me when she remarked, “I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization.”

Perhaps most importantly, this study showed that it is not just volume but effectiveness of writing that has increased so dramatically. I picked up a new word (always a great find for me) in Clive’s article that Lunsford uses to quantify a critical competency that her study showed had dramatically increased. Kairos is the ability of a writer to “assess their audience and adapt their tone and technique to best get their point across.”

New World Encyclopedia notes that in Panathenaicus, Isocrates wrote “educated people are those who manage well the circumstances which they encounter day by day, and who possess a judgment which is accurate in meeting occasions as they arise and rarely misses the expedient course of action.” Sounds like a pretty important skill to me!

According to Clive (something of particular note to those in education), Lunsford observed in her study that “students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn't serve any purpose other than to get them a grade.”

My Lessons Learned

Here is a short spur-of-the-moment list of some of my recent observations and learning regarding writing— both my own and that of those around me. I would be most interested to hear from you about how well these match or conflict with what you are seeing when it comes to writing and communication skills now and what you think will happen to them in the future.

• The diversity and quantity of outlets and motivation for writing and sharing is increasing at an exponential rate. It is easy to forget how much the pace of new forms of writing and distribution is accelerating. Not that many years have passed since many of us switched from paper-based writing of letters, books, and articles to the much more prolific digital forms of word processors. In the last few years, we saw the exponential growth of connectivity via the Internet and saw the rise of email and online forums. Laptops and mobile phones became mainstream and provided some of the catalyst for more outlets, such as instant messaging and SMS text messages. And in the past few months, we’ve seen even faster growth of phenomena such as Facebook and Twitter (to name but a few). Each of these provides yet another outlet and demand for writing, and we seem to be answering the call in droves.
• There is an equally rapid growth in the diversity of types and styles of writing. If you have been reading much of my writing, or worse had to listen to me, you know I graduated with honors from the University of Never-a-Sentence-When-a-Paragraph-Will-Do. For me, the brevity which outlets such as “tweets” and SMS texting ruthlessly enforce has been helped me to write (sometimes) with greater clarity and conciseness. As my dear friend Marcia Connor recently put it in an article she wrote about social media,  “If my friend Wayne can tweet, anyone can!”
• The motivation factors for writing are also increasing at similar rates and for more and more people. When I talk with others who maintain blogs, journals, websites, and email lists, and have a presence on Twitter and Facebook, most of them mention that knowing people are reading what they write, often commenting on it, adding additional points of view, etc., significantly motivates them to develop the habit of writing more often and sharing more of their experiences.
• Writing is becoming more immediate and more authentic. It resembles a conversation in terms of its characteristics—it is more spontaneous, more serendipitous, and more personal. And as with a great conversation, these tend to be much richer in their content and context.
• Writing is becoming more and more personalized, another example of “The Snowflake Effect”. This writing trend reflects firsthand experiences—writing about what you know, reflective writing, and writing that is much richer in value.
• Skills in analysis are becoming less important since this is increasingly automated and done for us with a mouse click. But  having skills for synthesizing is growing in value as we consume ever larger quantities of disparate information sources and types, reflect upon them, and put together our thoughts and ideas on what they mean and what trends and patterns we see.
• These changes in our writing provide more examples of how we are increasingly becoming societies of prosumers. For example, I don’t regard myself as a writer or a reporter, but when I recently found myself in the midst of the tsunami in Pago Pago American Samoa a few weeks ago, thanks to the wonder of modern communications technology, suddenly I was just that: an on-the-scene reporter, able to provide firsthand, immediate and very personalized reports via my tweets, emails and my blog.  You can read my accounts of this experience by following these links:
  • Doing the Tsunami Tango in American Samoa: Part I
  • Doing the Tsunami Tango in American Samoa: Part II
  • Doing the Tsunami Tango in American Samoa: Part III

  These accounts were subsequently picked up by news services around the world, many of which were able to call me on my sailboat via my satellite phone and do a live interview as I was literally in the mist of the tumultuous effects of the tsunami in real time. This is not only something that was technically impossible a few years ago, but serves as a dramatic example of just how much we are becoming the “prosumer” society which Alvin and Heidi Toffler so presciently described in their book “The Third Wave” wherein we are no longer either a producer or a consumer, but are both at the same time.

• These changes in our writing skills and habits are not at all limited to the younger generation. This is a phenomenon affecting all of us who are living and writing at this time and in these environments.

Your Turn to Write!

I’m sure you can come up with many more examples of other trends and directions, skills, and consequences of the changes happening with our writing and communications. I therefore hope and encourage you to add yet another example of this trend by either posting some of your observations on your own blogs, tweets or Facebook pages, or directly here. I hope that my  own writing here is reflecting the positive traits of this exponentially accelerating trend.

Referring back to the Wired article I mention at the start of this posting, I thought Clive made a great point in closing when he noted: “knowing who you’re writing for and why you’re writing might be the most crucial factor of all.” Write on Clive!

Wayne

Time to "Tearn"?

For a number of years, I’ve been pondering how the Snowflake Effect¹ could influence learning. For those who are new to this concept of the Snowflake Effect, in essence it’s about the transformation of society from a model of mass production to one of mass personalization. Think of it as providing just the right things for just the right people at just the right time in just the right context.

Many times everyday, we all have the need to learn about things that are just right for us, and ideally the perfect learning resources are available at just the right time. We hope for the Buddhist saying “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

Since a very young age, I’ve been fascinated by the “teachable moment”, when someone is perfectly ready, willing, and able to learn something new. How can we develop more ways to foster teachable moments every day, and how can we provide just the right resources (people, content, and environment) exactly when we need them?

A Growing Demand for Teachers

When you start to think about this on a worldwide scale, the demand for teachers and teaching forums is increasing exponentially. More than 6.6 billion people have the need to learn everyday, yet the learning assimilation gap (the gap between what we know and what we need to know) is widening.

What’s driving this need? There has always been much more to know than we ever could learn, and we always discover that the more we learn the more we understand how much we don’t know. This situation, however, is being exacerbated by the exponential growth of new “stuff”: technologies, techniques, content (text, audio, visual, etc.) and new concepts, as well as additional means of communication (anything from email to podcasts to Twitter). Add to this the need to solve problems (and challenges!) that are also growing at matching rates and you can see why the demand for learning is increasing exponentially.

Traditionally, the model for formal teaching and learning has been one where a single teacher instructs multiple students. Now this model is inverted. Today, most learners (we still have much to do in many regions where this is not true) are essentially surrounded by multiple resources, instructors, coaches, and trainers.

Initially then, we reach the point where, oddly, we need more teachers than there are learners. If we multiply this by the number of learning experiences everyday, then we find ourselves needing “n” times more the number of teachers than there are learners! And those numbers start in the billions and rapidly increase from there.

Rethinking the Relationship Between Teachers and Learners

Are we really to the point where we need many times more teachers than learners? If so, then we have to start rethinking the relationship between teachers and learners. And where would all these teachers come from? The answer is quite seriously “in the mirror". In this new world, we would start thinking and acting as both teachers and learners simultaneously. We would all become “tearners”.

Let me give you a reference point for this term “tearners”. I’ve borrowed the idea of blending existing terms to create a new one that represents a new concept from Alvin Toffler, who you might remember as the author of several books from the 1960’s and early 1970’s, including Future Shock and The Third Wave. His term “prosumer” blended producer and consumer into a single word that represented the concept of a society where the functions of producer and consumer would be combined.²

Now, I’m not suggesting that we’re all going to quit our jobs and become teachers in a formal sense. Rather, we’re going to augment our ability to learn by making all of us adopt this role of being a teacher whenever it is needed. In this context I am using the word “teacher” to describe the situation where one person is helping others learn something new. This could be anything from answering questions, suggesting a new technique, recommending a new tool, referencing some useful resource, etc. In this context, teaching is not necessarily an in-person real-time event. Today we can capture and publish our individual and collective “intelligence” through the use of blogs, podcasts, wikis, email, Twitter streams, and all of the more traditional means such as books, movies, songs, etc. We can continuously create teaching/learning resources for others to benefit from when their “teachable moments” arise.

The vast majority of our learning today is already done informally, that is, outside the bounds of a formal classroom setting. According to most estimates about 75% of the time, our sources of learning come to us this way. So this would suggest that we need to have about the same percentage of “informal teachers” as well. And as all of us become “tearners”, how can we dramatically increase the effectiveness and rate of learning?

In the past 20 years, we’ve certainly seen an increase in our focus on learning. Yet if we really look at our learning effectiveness (the speed with which we can acquire new skills, knowledge, and abilities), we don’t seem to have achieved an appreciable increase, despite the addition of new tools and new technologies throughout the entire e-learning and technology-enhanced learning era. I’m not suggesting that this era has been a complete failure. Certainly technology has augmented the number of learners who can be reached and it has increased the number of resources available, but I’m not convinced that it has increased the effectiveness of learning in any significant way. Thus, I am interested in not only the quantitative side, the idea that all of us can become teachers, but also the qualitative side, that all of us can become better teachers (and learners).

Part of the reason why I think this tearner model is possible is because we’re already redefining what “expert” and “expertise” means. Historically, experts have been recognized by their credentials. We’ve had degree programs, certification awards, and other formal means for acknowledging someone’s expertise in a tangible way. We still need this kind of verification of expertise, but since new technologies are being introduced at a more rapid rate all the time, we’re also seeing a transformation of what an expert is. In many cases, an expert is simply someone who knows more about a product or a technology than you or I do, and can therefore be an effective teacher.

We no longer have sufficient time to create the formal learning tools and environments, such as masters and doctoral programs, textbooks, and credentialing systems, to address these significant changes in technology or methodology. We need experts to teach us about new programming languages, new equipment, new approaches, and new ways of communicating no matter how quickly they appear on the scene.

I also think there is a relationship between this new definition of “expert” and this new way of teaching and training. Can we get better at attaching the responsibility for teaching to the idea of “expertise.” Many countries I have visited or lived in—Germany comes to mind—have an ingrained understanding that as you become an expert or master in a craft or profession, you inherit the responsibility, formally and informally, of becoming a teacher as well. What if everyone who mastered a competency, skill, or knowledge area also accepted the responsibility of helping others learn in these areas?

The historical model of formal education as the sole means of producing experts and providing teachers is not scalable. But maybe we can take the essence of it; that is, someone with expertise in a craft or profession not only has the potential to become an effective teacher of others who want to acquire those same skills, but also expects that teaching is simply part of what their “expertise” is all about.

So, What If We Were All “Teachers”?

What would it mean for each of us to think of ourselves as teachers? How could we become more effective in this role? First, we’d need a change of mindset. Every one of us would assume the responsibility of helping others to learn. We would also need to develop new skill sets. Some of the skills that would make us better are:

· Capturing and sharing what we know.³

· Being able to articulate our thoughts and ideas to others well through storytelling, metaphors, visual illustration, and problem-solving.

· Being more empathetic—improving our ability to see what the other person really needs to learn effectively.

These would be good skills for us to have anytime! It is intriguing to me to note that all of these skills are predominantly “right-brained” and that this scenario adds to the arguments I’ve made previously in my OCOT entry “Getting It Right” about the increasing need for right-brained skills in business.

This idea of all of us becoming teachers to help others learn is not just a one-way street. All of us as teachers gain the added benefit derived from the old adage, “The best way to learn something really well is to try teaching it to someone else.” When you have to explain it to someone else or help someone else become competent at doing something, you almost always learn more and become more competent yourself. Therefore, we can also look at being tearners from the standpoint of enlightened self-interest. If taking on the role of teacher causes us to learn something even better, then our collective learning will go up. We all stand to benefit in this role as “tearners”, since in the process of teaching others, we are addressing some of our own learning needs.

New Tools, Technologies, and Techniques for “Tearners”

As we move toward this model of tearners, let’s also look at ways to enhance teaching. What new tools, technologies, and techniques for teaching would we need? For example, search engines and recommender systems have mostly been focused on content thus far. Just as the exponential increase of content on the Web drove the need to develop these tools, so too might the exponential increase in teachers drive the need for better “expert-finding” tools. For example, we could develop tools that would help us find the experts we need in any given situation. I think a lot of the same technology that we apply to content could be applied to people. Metadata, such as characteristics, words found within, the audience it was written for, who else looked for this content, etc., could be applied to people and skills. Could we have more metadata about us individually? Could we get better at itemizing what each of us knows: our skills, knowledge, abilities, experience, expertise, to enable us to find people who are just right for us at just the right time and in just the right context?

Unlike the current mass production model of learning, which often assumes we are all somehow the same and need the same things at the same time in the same way, this new model of tearners, which supports mass personalization, draws upon our uniqueness as “snowflakes”. This model is sustainable because each of us can take on these roles of learner and teacher mutually. This model is also one that can grow exponentially because as each of us learns more, we can teach and share more, so the supply of “teachers” will naturally grow to meet the demand for learning.

And as teachers of others, we learn more ourselves so we have a built-in form of self-motivation and another multiplier to the overall effect. It all starts with you. Could it be time for you to tearn?

___________________

NOTES:

¹If you’re interested in learning more about the Snowflake Effect, check out the The Long Slow Chat, my joint effort with friend and colleague Erik Duval, and this collection of articles from Off Course – On Target.

² I’ve written about this prosumer concept often on Off Course - On Target including:

• Redesigning Rather Than Crying Over Spilled Milk?
• New Perspectives: The Third Wave?
• Jumbled Joomla: there is no "B" in Joomla!

³ I see the increased amount of capturing and publishing that we are witnessing via email, blogs, wikis, social media such as Facebook and MySpace, video on YouTube, and comments and opinions on Amazon, as signs that more people are sharing what they know, though in relative terms it is still only a small percentage of people who do so and only a small percentage of the expertise and knowledge that people have is actually captured and shared.

Great Thoughts

Here's another posting derived from my ever growing list of items to blog about.  This one springs from an article I read in the IEEE Spectrum back in Jan 2007.   

Did I mention I’m behind in my postings and the list is growing? However on the plus side I like this delay because it acts as a check on just how relevant and useful things are.  If it stands the test of time, it gets posted, and this one passed the test with flying colors.

The title of this posting “Great Thoughts” is the same as the article by Robert W. Lucky (IEEE Fellow), now retired. In it, he wrote: 

“There is a theory of creativity that holds that creativity is most often the product of the unexpected intersection of two previously unconnected thoughts. If you are thinking very hard about one such thought, perhaps you are suppressing the other thoughts that could connect with it. On the other hand, if your mind is a perfect blank…”

This is an interesting conundrum: not focusing too much on one thing yet not shutting out all thought, something that my ADD riddled brain can't even comprehend!

But for me, the takeaway here has more to do with the question of what constitutes “new” these days?  What makes something original?  What constitutes plagiarism or copying?  What is at the heart of innovation and creativity in the world today?

In this era where more and more things are mashups, a new assembly of previously existing things, is there any such thing as an original idea, song, drawing, text, etc.?  The answer is more "yes" than "no", I think, but it is worth noting that most of the time what is new and what makes something unique is not the bits and pieces that it is made from, but the selection of certain items and the way they are assembled into a new whole. And most often, the value of this new assembly is much greater than the sum of the parts.

This concept is nothing new really. Think of some fundamental examples such as text, where we have almost all existing words available in the dictionary (although the list is growing and evolving all the time), yet from this finite set of letters and words we can create an infinite number of written documents (e.g. articles, books, poems, and scripts). Or music where we have another finite set of notes and chords that enable us to create an infinite number of new songs, melodies, and even ring tones!

This combining of existing things to create new things, the heart of the Snowflake Effect is what makes it a scalable model. Not that we won’t also be creating new bits and pieces along the way, such as the new words which are added to dictionaries every year, but for the most part I think most of what is new and valuable, most of the innovation and creativity we are and will be seeing, comes from the serendipitous intersection of two or more previously existing things, be they thoughts, ideas, notes of music, letters and words, lines, arcs or circles.

So here’s to celebrating and fostering the creativity in all of us by focusing on being the unique snowflakes we all are and designing more and more new original ideas and “stuff” from what we already have around us.

Finding More by Looking Less

For the past 2 weeks, I’ve noticed that I’ve been recalling a favorite metaphor many times in a great variety of conversations and communications with different people so I take this as a reminder to post a bit more about it. 

Many of you know my fondness for serendipity, which I describe simply as the unexpected discovery of something better while searching for something else. I’ll leave the topic of serendipity to another longer exploration and explanation, but for me serendipity is the way I live my life, both professionally and personally, and I believe it is the most powerful way to success.

Today I wanted to just mention one technique I have found to be very useful in the pursuit of more serendipitous discoveries and that is to purposefully NOT focus directly on whatever it is that you are looking for at the time. I think I first hit upon this  technique when I learned about an interesting fact about the way our eyes work and, specifically, why we have a “blind spot” in our vision.  As I understand it, because of the way the optic nerve attaches to the back of the eye, we have a blind spot where it attaches. The best example of how this comes into play is what happens when you are looking at the stars. The next time you get a chance to look up on a starry night, try to find either a faint star, galaxy, or a cluster of stars.  What you will find is that you can only really see these when you do NOT look directly at them but instead focus your attention off to one side.

I thought this effect was quite fascinating and as usual, I’ve turned this into a general concept which seems to hold true in other instances, not just with sight. Ever notice that when you get stuck trying to remember something or are solving a tough problem, the harder you try to focus on it or solve it, the less you succeed?  And then when your mind has wandered off onto something else or you do something completely different, the answer or solution comes to you in a flash?

On an even more general scale and conceptual level, I have observed that this same phenomenon is true. For example, as I’ve studied people and organizations who are exceptionally successful, I’ve noticed that they are usually the ones who focus the least directly on what other might see as their main goal. In business, for example, the most successful and profitable businesses seem to focus the least on profitability itself and more on such things as figuring out a fundamental value proposition for their customers and finding as many innovative ways as possible to deliver on it. 

Or in other cases, an organization starts out assuming it is going after one thing and discovers that the real value is in something else. Netflix, the “DVD in the mail” subscription company comes to mind as a good example. You’d think that their focus would be on the movies, having the most available, getting the ones you want to you the fastest, etc.  And these are indeed important elements of their success. However, their greatest value is helping people find “just the right movie” to watch. This capability comes in the form of their recommender system known as Cinemax. This technology takes the input you provide on which movies you like and don’t like and uses this information to create recommendations that become almost frighteningly accurate. If you’re interested in more on this, I wrote up a longer explanation recently on the Long Slow Chat called “$1 Million Dollar Snowflake Prize”, which details a fascinating competition Netflix is running for the first person who can increase the effectiveness of the Cinemax system by 10%. 

Most recently, my friend Marcia Conner sent me a note to her amusement on serendipitously discovering some recent research by Paul Whitmore Sas that seems to essentially support this same model of indirection. Paul titled his work descriptively as “How to spot your life’s guiding star” and you can download the full dissertation if you want more.  He talks about the Delmore Effect (named after the apparently failed poet Delmore Schwartz), which is the situation where:

“most people tend to set much more explicit goals for low priority domains than for their most important ambitions.”

To prevent this from happening, Paul’s research was based on the same star gazing example that I cited earlier and which Paul referenced as follows:

"Astronomers know to look slightly away from the point at which they expect to locate a star. Analogously, when a person aims to most clearly articulate her own guiding goals, she would be more successful by calling to mind the values which are peripherally related and supportive of her complete self.

Instead of directly confronting the value of greatest import, a person can become more articulate about their central life goals by taking a slightly less direct approach."

Interesting reading.  I recommend you give this method of indirection at try and see if you don’t find more by looking less.

Cool Translation Tools

As you may recall, I’ve been focusing on my fascination with language learning for the past few months, and I'm finding that many of you share similar interests. So I wanted to share some of the Cool Translation Tools I’ve been using to help with my language learning and usage.

The first two are relatively recent offerings from Microsoft, and they work with their Instant Messenger and Internet Explorer programs respectively. The last two are similar online translation tools offered by Microsoft and Google. Even if you choose not to use these tools, this summary will give you a better sense of what is now possible and readily available for mass use.

I remain convinced that the use of ever better tools and technologies to augment and support our personal efforts to learn and use multiple languages is one of the best ways I know to truly make a difference. This combination will serve to make us better as individuals and collectively make this world a better place.

Tbot

First up is a form (or robot) who goes by the name of Tbot, which is short for “Translation Robot”.  He (I figure he has to be a guy as he’s not really all that bright and still makes some mistakes) is the child/product of Microsoft Research. you can learn more about him and the technology he works on, known as machine translation, on the  Microsoft research machine translation blog.

There is no “install” per se, you just add “Tbot”  mtbot@hotmail.com to your contacts in Microsoft Instant Messenger and from then on Tbot is available on your “buddy list” so you can invite it to join in with any of your IM conversations. To explore and experiment with Tbot, you can type in “Tbot?” to get this list of commands he understands.  These will enable you to configure him as you like.

1  TBot lang - Show the current language pair
2  TBot change - Select translation languages
3  TBot stop - Stop translations
4  TBot start - Start translations again
5  TBot set - Set your preferred language
6  TBot ? - Show this list of commands

Tbot has a reasonably impressive range of languages available including:

1 Arabic
2 Chinese Simplified
3 Chinese Traditional
4 Dutch
5 English
6 French
7 German
8 Italian
9 Japanese
10 Korean
11 Portuguese
12 Spanish

Obviously many more languages are needed, but they've made a good start.

In addition to being able to add Tbot into your IM conversations with other “real people”, I have also found it handy to have conversations just with Tbot, in essence using him as a language “instructor”. I will sometimes do this just for practice or to help correct my wording and spelling when I’m typing  emails or other documents in another language. Here are two ways I do this:

1. I type out what I want to say in English, and then I type out my best way of saying the same thing in the other language (for me lately, it's been in Spanish or French). Then with Tbot set to a language pair of say, English > Spanish, I cut and paste my English sentences into my IM chat session with him, and then see what vocabulary and structure he uses. Sometimes I find his better, sometimes I choose to stick with mine, but either way, I learn a lot from the process and from checking into some of the new words, phrases, and grammatical structure he comes up with.
2. I try the same process in reverse by setting his language pair to Spanish > English and then cut and paste what I have typed in Spanish and see what he comes out with in English.

There are certainly some instances where the translations are quite comical, since Tbot suffers from the current limitations of machine translation; that is, doing mostly literal translation word by word, rather than determining much in the way of contextual understanding to choose the right phrasing and meaning.  However I’ve been playing with machine translation for many years and I'm seeing a marked improvement of late. 

I always let those who are receiving my emails and documents know that I’ve used these tools to help me compose and translate and ask for their reactions and corrections whenever they have the time. I've noticed that I get similar comments from them: that these tools are indeed getting better and are producing very readable text which communicates the meaning quite well. Of course, I’m also hopeful that some of the improvement is due to my improving language skills, but there is no question that I am able to do much better and much faster translations with this tool, rather than without, by extending and augmenting my vocabulary and grammar.

Windows Live Translator toolbar button for IE

When you have a situation where you need to translate web pages that are in another language, there is an extremely handy add-in for MS Internet Explorer available at Windows Live Translator toolbar button.  Once it is installed, clicking on this button vertically splits your IE screen in two, displaying the original page on one side and the translated version on the other. This split screen mode has proven to be particularly effective according to many of the people who have been using it.

Or you can choose from a number of options when you have this translator running, such as the option to NOT split the window and instead have a “hover” feature that translates whatever you hover over with the cursor. For those who are curious, Firefox offers some similar services and features, but I’ve not yet tried these myself, so if you have, please send me your comments and experiences.

Online Translation services

Online translation services, such as those offered by Google and Microsoft are very helpful when you are composing and translating text. 

· Microsoft Live Translator

· Google Translate

Both work the same way and have the same interface: two initially blank boxes set side by side. You type or paste your text into the box on the left, choose the language, hit the translate button, and the translated text shows up in the box on the right side. You can then copy and paste this text into your email, documents, etc.

In addition to being useful when you are the author, these online translation services are also very useful when you receive emails or documents from others. You can just cut and paste their text into the window and have it translated into whatever language you’d like. Again, to improve my learning, I make it a habit to first try to understand the text myself and then use these tools to see how well I understood the original, check for key words I might have missed, and other ways I can learn from the whole process.

Es su turno ahora!

Of the above options, I find that although I use all three,  I choose the one that seems to suit my needs at the time, depending on how much text I have to translate, how much time I have, if it is a conversation or a document, etc. I expect that your style of work and other personal preferences will certainly determine which of these to use. 

While I hope this encourages you to try out some or all of these translation tools, my greatest hope is that they will encourage you to try using and learning other languages more and interacting with others around you in their native languages. In my experience, this leads to a wonderful increase in the richness of my experiences with others, as well as improving my skills for articulating my thoughts and ideas in any language, including my native English. I pick up new phrases, new metaphors, and other extremely helpful ways of more clearly communicating my thoughts and ideas.

Bonne chance avec vos traductions!

Babelfish Requires Babbling Too

For those of you who were around then, remember the arguments for Esperanto back in the 1970's?  According to Wikipedia, "Esperanto is by far the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language in the world. "

Developed in 1887 by Polish physician Ludovic Zamenhof, Esperanto as stated in "The Decline and Fall of Esperanto: Lessons for Standards Committees"  was supposed to be  "a simple, easy-to-learn language. His goal was to erase communication barriers between ethnic groups by providing them with a politically neutral, culturally free standard language." The authors go on to say:

"... by the 1970s, Esperanto was receiving serious attention from linguistic scholars, with numerous publications appearing in academic journals.

[But] "Despite the logical concept and intellectual appeal of a standard language, Esperanto has not evolved into a dominant worldwide language."

While I agree that anything we can do to increase communication is a plus, this notion of inventing an artificial language, and then all of us acquiring a new one that we would have in common, makes no sense at all.  It has no history, no future, and no culture and these aspects of language are not only important for communication, but I believe for acquiring a language.

For many years I've proposed that technology would play a major role in our ability to communicate with one another.  And in fact, language translation capabilities are growing and getting better.  But while I would have formerly thought that we won’t need to know more than one language since given enough time, we'll have the Babelfish, an idea put forth by Douglas Adams in his book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, my recent experience with learning a new language, specifically Spanish, has changed how I view this.

I realize now that my ability to communicate effectively is not limited to just saying the right words, it’s about semantics; communicating meaning.  A Babelfish would not address the cultural contexts that are so important to communication. Acquisition as humans of multiple language capabilities involves more than technology. Technology will indeed play a role, but it will not be sufficient in and of itself.

Given that a Babelfish won't solve all of our communication problems, what can we do to make it easier and more efficient and effective for all of us to acquire more languages? My most recent experience of one-to-one instruction in Spanish is a model we all should be looking at because my sense is that it is quite scalable, effective and has many indirect benefits.

The Power of Conversation

For one thing, this method of learning a language was quite effective and amazing. Three times I started with a new instructor in three different locations.  Not once was there any discussion over the methodology or how we were going to teach me Spanish. Most striking was my experience with the first instructor Axel, because I had no Spanish capability whatsoever (not counting commonly known phrases, such as gracias or buenos días).

From the beginning, Axel and I started talking in Spanish and never stopped during our five hour daily sessions together for two weeks.  We didn't have a conversation about this, but the unwritten rule was that we were not going to use any English beyond that which was absolutely necessary. I'm not quite sure how we managed to do this, but I know we used a lot of Pictionary and Charades techniques.  Our interaction worked really well when the other person understood it was a game of "guess what I'm drawing/acting out"

Early on, one of the most important phrases I learned was "como se dice" (How do you say), but what really made it effective was how I used it as a signal for starting the guessing game. Instead of tacking on the English word at the end, such as "como se dice binoculars", what worked well was for me to have to describe binoculars in whatever limited Spanish I had supplemented with drawings and diagrams.  There's something about having to work at it more and taking the time and effort to acquire the words. Plus I had to use what little vocabulary I already had to acquire more vocabulary. That's a really effective model.  More importantly and as things advanced,what I was asking for was not a word but a phrase, a saying or a sentence that would convey my meaning rather than a translation of my words.

One reason why I think this model can scale so well is that the only real requirement of the instructors is that they are fluent in the language being learned, Spanish in this case. I don’t think instructors need to know much of the other language...in this case, English.  Nor did I find any need for the instructor to have any significant instructional skills beyond patience because for our sessions, my instructors and I were literally “just” having a conversation. Since the whole model is immersion-based, we're not going to use English, then knowledge of my language was not required.  So I've concluded that any two people can use these techniques for language acquisition.

There are some limitations or concerns within this model. For example, what if the conversation occurs between two people who do not speak "proper" English or Spanish?  To share well, all of us will need to have more consistency in the way we speak a language. Jargon and slang are always a problem in an isolated group.  But the solution is simple.  You need to get out more.  The more you expand your circle of people, the better chance you have of learning a form of the language that is understandable by many.  This is not a new phenomena: as the audience grows, so too does the need for a common way to speak a language. Take broadcasting or something like national news for example. In Canada, national radio and TV broadcasters speak “proper English” or as my mother would say "the Queen's English" that is devoid of the local color, accents, and jargon of what you would hear on the streets of any one province or geographical region.

The Topic Doesn’t Matter at All; It is All that Matters!

For this model of language learning to be really effective though, I think the two people need to feel that there is a value in both of them doing so. In the case of the instructor, it's about getting paid.  But also, having something in common other than the language is a huge factor in effective language learning. All of my tutors said how much they were enjoying the teaching because the conversation itself was interesting.  I think it's because we had a real conversation...they were interested in WHAT we were talking about.  What might have made it more valuable too was that I took the lead.  While I was interested in learning Spanish, I also had an ulterior motive. I had a zillion things that I wanted to talk about because I was interested in learning more about them, their culture, their city and region such as "What's family life like?" "Do you have a computer at home?" "What kind of music do you listen to?"  So it took some of the pressure off of the instructor to provide topics of conversation and also engaged the instructor in some authentic conversation that was interesting, relevant, and engaging to them irrespective of the language.

Following along with the theme of Off Course - On Target: how effective is it to get to a goal indirectly? Obviously I wanted to learn Spanish.  But by just having a real conversation, we approached this goal in an indirect sense.  A conversation about the importance of authenticity in musical performances for example, in one sense, has nothing to do with Spanish.  It just happens to be that we agree that the only way we're going to talk about music is in Spanish.  No stilted arbitrary "Look, look! See Spot run" or "today we're going to turn to Chapter 3 and talk about what clothes to wear in the morning."  In fact, during our informal sessions, we used no books other than a dictionary, and we talked very little about grammar. Instead we were both actively engaged in a conversation of mutual interest.

One-to-One is a Scalable Model

So, if two people were to share a common interest in a work project, they would already have the context and content of the conversation. Now, can we add language to it?  Can we say, "I need you two to solve this work-related problem, and oh by the way, one of you only speaks French so you’ll have to do all your communicating in French?"

So how is this method of language learning scalable?

1) It isn't limited to people with instructional capabilities. If everyone of us can be a teacher as well as a learner, here's a wonderful example of it happening.

2) It can be applied to any situation so long as both individuals see a shared value in having the conversation.

3)  It leads to higher performance as the choice of people increases dramatically and we are able to get just the right people matched up with just the right jobs, roles and teams.

IF we really are living in a global economy or a global existence where our location doesn't matter so much anymore and our work is more conversationally related, more idea related, then here is an opportunity, if not a need, to be able to communicate more effectively.  Think of the richness of our experiences and our ability to communicate if we were all acquiring the ideas and concepts that come with using words or phrases that do not have equivalents in other languages...words like gestalt, zeitgeist, schadenfreude, or phrases like joie de vivre, crème de la crème, or c'est la vie which English speakers have adopted to convey ideas that were not originally part of the language.

So here's what I’ve learned from my recent language learning experiences and want to leave you with:

• Words are a means to an end, and the end goal is the ability to effectively communicate our ideas, concepts and opinions.  Therefore, it is all about semantics, meaning, and common understanding.
• Phrases, sayings, references are key to conveying meaning.
• If a common language is removed from the requirements of choosing team members, this dramatically increases the ability to find “just the right people to pair up or to have on a high performance team.
• Language helps us learn more about each other, broadens our awareness of other cultures, models, metaphors, stories, and perspectives.
• Common understanding leads to less conflict from misunderstandings.
• Almost anyone can be a language instructor in this model since there are very limited teaching or language skills needed.
• Authentic conversation, relevant to all involved, is key to language acquisition.

Unfortunately for you I’m just warming up on this overall topic of languages, learning, and living, so stay tuned for more of what you’ve come to expect from OCOT: unexpected paths that lead to great discoveries!

Update from Guatemala

Not that I’ve ever had a schedule in any typical sense of the word, but now I will have a very different one for the next month or so, and it will have some spillover effect on my writing and recording here on OCOT. I’m currently in Antigua, Guatemala completing the first of what will be four weeks of intensive immersion Spanish language learning.  More on this in an upcoming post. Here are just some related updates for you now.

I suspect that I’ll become more fascinated with languages than I already am and always have been, so be prepared for a focus and theme on languages in many of the postings for awhile. I’m already getting more and more excited and passionate about some of the enormous demands and potential opportunities I see for increasing our multiple language capabilities and competencies at a rate to match the world of exponential change that I see us living in.

Immersion language learning is also very cognitively exhausting (especially when you don’t have a very big cog!), and between my actual “class time” and homework (which is taking up 6-10 hours a day or more), it’s a bit more of a challenge to fit this into what’s supposed to be a part-time job. And so I’ll not be writing the long (lucky you!) or deep articles that have been my custom. That in itself will be a fun change for me (and you too), since I’ll try to do more frequent and shorter postings that are simply meant to make you aware of something new and allow me to just pose some provocative questions based on things I’m pondering at the time.

Who knows, maybe I’ll not only learn Spanish, but I’ll learn to how to talk and write in English with greater brevity and clarity!

Hey, stop that snickering! I can hear you all the way over here in Guatemala!

¡Hasta la próxima vez mis amigos!