Off Course-On Target

Giving Thanks for the Past and Giving Back for the Future

Over the years, I’ve received a surprising number of requests for my popular 2002 blog post that is no longer available online. Since it was about giving thanks and because the Thanksgiving holidays have just wrapped up in North America, I thought it would be fun to repost this old message. It still seems very relevant.

I also want to use this post as a jumping-off point. Several topics mentioned within it are worth exploring in depth in posts and podcasts that I’ll put together in the coming weeks. These include:

• Dealing with the wonderful but nonetheless challenging problem of more and more choice
• Living in a world of exponential change, such as increasing choice
• Equalizing the distribution of choice
• The economy of abundance and plentitude (as opposed to scarcity)

But for now, I hope you enjoy this earlier post and that you will use it to reflect upon your situation, and give thanks for the things we all have to be thankful for. Let's make this a source of new energy for improving our decision making and our abilities to deal with our exponentially increasing choices. And use it to work on equalizing the distribution of this wonderful problem of choice and abundance. I know I will.
________________________

Friday, November 29, 2002

Giving Thanks for Living in the Land of Plentitude

If you are reading this, it is likely safe to assume that you too are blessed to find yourself living in a world of plentitude. I am noting this for two reasons. First, having finally made it back home for a few days, I am with my family in California where we are heading in to my only favorite holiday, American Thanksgiving(I'm Canadian and "up there" we celebrate it in October. It's an agricultural-based holiday, remember! Winter arrives much sooner in the northern climes) So one of my reasons is to simply take advantage of this special day to give thanks for all that I and so many of us truly have to be thankful for. As we are easily reminded if we look around us, we truly do live in a world of great plentitude and have SO much to be thankful for.

Secondly, I have been struck for several years by the degree to which living in plentitude in general, stands in such stark contrast to times not too long ago when scarcity was the norm and what made things valuable. The more scarce it was, the more valuable it was. Now to be clear, this value by scarcity certainly remains true: think of gold, diamonds and rare minerals, think of time! What could be more rare and thus more precious to us that the gift of time! Surely we have all come to realize that Human Attention is becoming the scarcest of all resources(to say nothing of my severe form of ADD or Attention Deficit Disorder, but that is a whole other story!)!

Yet many of us, (well I guess in light of the population of the planet of 6.27 billion and rising, it is really the chosen few), live in a wonderful world of plentitude where choice is almost all there is. We are coming to understand as someone once remarked, that choice can be its own prison. Now, lock me up in this one please(!) but to be sure, when put into this situation of great choice, the new problem becomes how to make fast, smart decisions. Tried to buy a new stereo system lately? A new car? A new computer? If so, you know this all too well. Tried to help someone else do this? You also know this situation as you face your job and try, on a daily basis, to choose the right things to spend your time on from the infinitely expanding list of very good choices. Do I send that e-mail out? To how many others? Is that meeting really the best use of my time right now?

Hence, you hear me talk so much about "decision support" as a key category needing to be addressed for learning. Isn't it wonderful WE say that there are all these growing number of choices for learning; from books, classrooms and tutors, to virtual classrooms, online learning, synchronous, asynchronous, chat, IM, and more arriving by the minute. However, spend a moment imagining what this looks like to the learner or their facilitators (a.k.a. teachers, instructors, managers). It's like going to a restaurant when you are really hungry and being given a menu that has 138 pages of choices!! Arrrrrrrrrrggggggggg They all sound great, but which one is best for me to choose right now??

To make matters worse, eating choices are much easier to make than learning choices. NOT because they are any easier or less complex, rather because the food service industry has been able to reach a state where the choices are well understood and differentiated. We know what to expect at a fast food outlet compared to a full service restaurant. We know the pros and cons of frozen foods, microwave, toaster ovens, instant meals and home cooked ones. We know cuisine categories like French, Italian, Vietnamese, Thai and Californian (well, OK that latter one is still a question mark). As a result, when presented with a need to eat, we quickly factor in all the variables from how much time we have, how hungry we are, what we "feel like" what we ate yesterday (no more turkey please!) etc., and we make a decision relatively quickly and relatively well.

Now think about the equivalent learning need and related decisions: how much time do I have, how long will it take, where will it take place? Paper or on screen? Text or video? Synchronous or non? At my desk, on the airplane, in the car, on the train? Just the facts, a full explanation, the concepts, etc. Not so clear nor so easy is it? Now, "do the math": every person needs to be able to do this (= 6.27 Billion), several times every day (n X 365), in changing conditions(add another multiplier) and pretty soon you have a REALLY big number with LOTS and LOTS of zeros behind it!!

Enough for today, let's go back to my initial purpose: to take the time to give thanks and be thankful that we should have such problems! Let's all tell someone how much we care for them, how much we appreciate them and what they do. Let's take this time to remind ourselves how truly fortunate and blessed we are in the grand scheme of things and how much we need to work on equalizing the distribution of such choices and opportunities to everyone everywhere. Then let's start next week with renewed vigor, conviction and passion to go after making it easier to make decisions, keeping it simple (and YES the important things really ARE all very simple!) and making it easier and easier for EVERYONE to make better, more informed and competent decisions on a daily basis!

You can start by adding YOUR comments, ideas, questions here (click the comment button below).

In future posts I will put some focus on these issues of "Decision Support", keeping it short and simple (KISS), dealing with choice and on making every learner a competent decision maker.

In the meantime, I sit here thankful for being THE most privileged individual on the planet. I have forums like this filled with peers and, I have a great family, I am surrounded by great teachers and learners, I live in a world that makes me more curious every day and one with great problems in life to pursue. Could one ask for anything more? I think not and I thank you all!

w
a
yne
=====

ZDNet’s "At the Whiteboard" Sessions

In my prior post “Virtualization and UNlearning”, I mentioned the ZDNet (Ziff Davis Network) At the Whiteboard video series. I want to explore them a bit further with you now because I think they are very effective and a great example of how to blend the old with the new to get “just the right” type of solutions. They are relatively easy content to produce, so you may want to try creating some of your own. If you have not seen one of these At the Whiteboard sessions, you can check out a recent one called “What is a Wiki” by Joe Kraus CEO of JotSpot (recently acquired by Google).

These At the Whiteboard sessions are aptly titled because that is just what they are—a video of a person explaining an idea or concept using a whiteboard. Hardly “high tech” but, at least for me, they are surprisingly effective, and they deliver a great experience. I suspect this is in part due to the use of a very familiar scenario (a person at a whiteboard), so it feels very “natural’ and comfortable to watch. It is also worth mentioning that just as we do with our podcasts here on Off Course – On Target, a full transcript is provided with each session so it's easy to refer back to what was said in the session. For example, you can find the full transcript of the "File Virtualization" session here.

This video format is also relatively easy content to create, though they are not completely do-it-yourself since they require at least one more person than the presenter to operate the camera. But this use of a separate person on the camera is critical to the success of this format, so do not be tempted to just set up a camera and let it film you while you present at a whiteboard. THAT is boring! Did you know for example that it apparently took seven years after the advent of TV news programs before they were anything more than a stationary camera on an equally stationary person reading the news, just as they did when it was radio news?!

Instead, the rapid and rather constant changing of the camera view as it moves from the presenter to the content on the whiteboard, along with zooming in and out, is very effective. The camera rarely stays still for more than a few seconds, but it works because I think it is similar to the way our eyes do the same thing in the natural setting—constantly moving back and forth.

You would think that this constant movement would be rather disorientating or make for that bothersome jerkiness you sometimes see on cheap videos. But in this case there are none of these effects. It keeps your attention and add lots of value by being a video and not just a set of slides with audio, or just an audio recording or podcast.

I am also attracted to this format because those of us who are familiar with doing presentations using a whiteboard or any other writing surface can adapt to talking to a camera instead of an audience quite easily. Moreover, when you are having a great conversation or explaining something to others, don’t you often find yourself needing to go to the whiteboard or grab a piece of paper to draw on? And don’t you just love those restaurants that have simple white paper table covers so you can draw all over them as you are having your pre-meal discussions with your meal mates?

OK, maybe it's just me. In any case, I find that the use of the whiteboard avoids the sometimes overproduced and “slick” presentations we see in slides, though there are many situations or graphics that are complex and detailed enough that pre-produced slides are the better choice. The use of the whiteboard allows for much more spontaneity and keeps the focus on the topic rather than on the graphics. Once again, it is a matter of matching the medium to the message.

Check out these At the Whiteboard sessions and see what you think. If you like them and start making some of your own, please let me know so we can see the results and learn more from your experiences.

w
a
yne
=====

Virtualization and UNLearning

One of our biggest challenges going forward is the need for all of us to “UNLearn” our lifelong habit of putting things in the right “categories” or places. We were often told while growing up, "A place for everything and everything in its place." We’ve consciously or unconsciously transferred this metaphor and model to our digital life in the form of files with well-thought-out names that are filed in well-named directories (folders) and subfolders. We have done this for everything from e-mails to documents to photos.

This works well enough for a while, but at some point, the volume exceeds the model. Do you have problems finding the e-mail, document, or photo you need? Do you have problems remembering what you called the file or directory that made SO much sense six months ago? Most of us do, and the solution is to STOP trying to solve the problem through well-named files and directories and take a metadata or “tag”-based approach instead.

With this in mind, I thought you would enjoy checking out a recent video that ZDNet (Ziff Davis Network) posted as part of its At the Whiteboard series (see my next post for more on these whiteboard sessions). This session by Jack Norris, EMC's director of virtualization marketing, explained how file virtualization allows storage administrators to do more with less. However, even if you don’t have “storage administrator” in your job description, aren’t we ALL desperately trying to manage our storage more efficiently? In the few minutes it takes to view this worthwhile video, you’ll learn more about the suggestions I outlined in the podcast on how to change your thinking about files and how to store them.

Jack actually has two sessions and I’d recommend that you watch the one on File Virtualization first  and then if you like that, learn a bit more about Global File Virtualization. Jack does a very good job of outlining why we are all facing the challenge of how to scale our solutions as we start to have stores of millions (and soon billions) of files.

Our challenge though is not so much about how to manage the information, since this will increasingly be done automatically. Rather, it is about how to UNLearn what we have spent lifetime learning about how to put everything it the “right place” and instead adopt a model of assigning all the characteristics and attributes about everything. Remember the point is NOT searching, its FINDING!! Moreover, to do that we all need to do a LOT of UNLearning and relearning.

w
a
yne
=====

Trust as a competency?! - Part 2

In Stephen Covey’s book The Speed of Trust: The one thing that changes everything, he focuses on the role of trust in the context of leadership and business or professional situations. One of his most fascinating points is the notion of treating trust as a competency—something that we can do something about. Covey makes a strong connection between trust and confidence (as opposed to suspicion, for example).

His reference to “speed” in the title is about how he relates trust to speed and cost. Specifically, he notes that as trust goes down, cost goes up and speed goes down. When trust is low or absent, things take longer because more time is spent gaining sufficient confidence to make decisions and move forward; hence costs go up accordingly. This is what Covey refers to as a “trust dividend”.

Continuing with my common theme about the value of breaking things down into very small parts, I want to point out how Covey breaks trust down into 13 behaviors that can help to build trust. These include:

• Talk straight. Be honest and tell the truth. The opposite of spin for example
• Create transparency. Operate on the premise of "what you see is what you get."
• Demonstrate respect. Treat everyone with respect, especially those who cannot do anything for you.
• Show loyalty. Acknowledge others' contributions. Speak about others as if they were present.
• Deliver results. Accomplish what you are hired to do on time and within budget.
• Practice accountability. Don't blame others when things go wrong.
• Keep commitments. When you make a commitment, you build hope. When you keep it, you build trust.

In his onstage interview, Stephen picked out the first two of these behaviors (Talk Straight and Create Transparency), and when we talked  later he added two others:

• Get better. Seek feedback. Staying current.
• Listen first. We usually listen with the intention to reply, not to listen to understand.

There is nothing new or revolutionary about any of these behaviors and in spite of the more questionable actions we see around us, most of us were brought up learning about these constructive behaviors from parents and others, yet their application seems all too rare. I'm reminded of one of the great book titles of all time, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum.

However, one of the major benefits of breaking trust into all its constituent pieces is that you can deal with each one individually or in smaller groups. Treating trust as a competency enables you to identify those components that can be learned or are “trainable” and use these to actually build and improve upon the trust in a relationship or within an organization or group.

What I particularly like about Stephen’s perspective on trust is how he challenges the age-old characterization of trust as some vague social virtue. I found it particularly positive and empowering to remove trust from the constraints we often attach to it—as being something people have a fixed amount of or they are born with and thus is something you can’t do much about.  This view renders us helpless to do anything more than look for as much of it as possible. Instead, by treating trust as a competency, trust can be a solid economic driver as well as a learnable and measurable skill. While the focus in the book is largely on the professional application almost all of this can be applied at the personal level and produces deeply advantageous and sustainable success in all dimensions of life.

This is all very much worth reflecting upon.  Read through Covey’s list of trust behaviors above and consider the rating for:

• Yourself personally in your dealings with family and friends
• Yourself professionally at work and with your business colleagues and dealings
• Your team or department
• Your overall organization or company

And most importantly, what can you do to improve these? Given that almost all of our interactions with others—our communications and our leadership abilities—hinge upon trust, don't we want to have this as one of our greatest competencies?

w
a
yne
=====

Trust as a competency?! - Part 1

I had the great pleasure of meeting with Stephen M.R. Covey at the Learning 2006 conference last week in Orlando, FL. Stephen is the son of Stephen R. Covey, the best-selling author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Stephen was one of the featured speakers at Learning 2006, and Elliott Masie did his masterful job of replacing the typical keynote model with an up close and personal interview with Stephen. Afterwards I met up with Stephen for some additional discussion about the points he raised on stage and in his new book called The Speed of Trust: The one thing that changes everything.

Frankly, the book has its ups and downs, BUT the points that Covey raises are extremely important and very worth considering. The whole area of trust is becoming more and more important it seems, and I think this is great and long overdue!

In spite of how often we think we are more enlightened, intelligent, and evolved than ever before, and “Oh so high tech”, isn’t it interesting how often we end up coming back to basic human attributes and values as the thing that really matters and makes a difference. Along with values such as honesty, integrity, and authenticity, TRUST seems to emerge at the top of the heap. Consider, for example, something as seemingly technical as the Web. Tim Berners-Lee, the acknowledged father and parent of the Web, has always had the vision for what he refers to as the “Semantic Web” wherein the Web incorporates not just data and information, but meaning.

There isn’t space here to go into more details on the Semantic Web, but if this concept is new to you, it would be well worth your time to do a bit of research on this topic. My point, however, is to note that when Tim lays out his explanations and blueprints for the future of the Semantic Web, you will find that at its foundation or pinnacle is what he calls the “web of trust”. 

Perhaps what is more readily visible to most people today is the fundamental role that trust plays in our so-called new economy and new world. Examples include needing to know how much we can trust what we read and who we interact with on the Web. Is that entry in Wikipedia true or fictional? Which of the millions of blog postings can you believe? When is the e-mail you receive really from your bank and when is it a thief trying to get you to divulge your account information or other personal identification details? These are all very real issues that bring us back to trust.

There's lots more to say about this topic of trust and Stephen's new book, so I'll talk more about it next time.

w
a
yne
=====

The Future is a Monstrous and Marvelous Mashup

Boy, did I have fun doing my session called “Life is a Monstrous and Marvelous Mashup: Want to Join?” at the Learning 2006 conference last week in Orlando, FL. Better yet, the standing room only audience seemed to enjoy it even more!

My primary point was that by seeing mashups as a powerful concept, we can further advance towards  massive personalization of learning and performance. For me, mashups are just a fun new term for the Lego block models I’ve championed for the past 20 years. In essence, mashups are about taking small discrete individual bits and pieces and assembling them into a larger unique assembly that matches the context and needs of the individual.

You can find most of my other points in the slides shown below or you can download the slides here.

The most common use of this term “mashup” is limited to its application in computer code along the lines of the following definition in Wikipedia:

A mashup is a website or web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience.

However ,restricting “mashup” as a term that applies only to code is “so yesterday” as my daughter would say in her teenage years, and completely arbitrary as far as I’m concerned, but it becomes truly powerful and profound when we treat it as a concept and apply it to many other things. As such, Wayne’s definition becomes simply:

A mashup is a unique assembly of bits and pieces from more than one source into a single integrated whole.

Considering mashups conceptually like this means that they can and already do apply to almost everything. Some of the examples we explored in the session included:

• Music:    Pandora.com, LastFM.com
• Content: wikis, blogs, rich media
• Events:    Mashup Camp, O’Reiley’s FOO camp
• People: Finding the right ones via their competencies, preferences, etc.

We also had a great discussion about how this plays well and is enabled further by the Long Tail phenomenon.

Here are some additional resources about mashups.

• Article on Mashup Camp Feb.21, 2006 ZDNet

• David Berlind “Mashup Camp captain” has does an At the Whiteboard session to sketch out his definition of “mashup” and explain his prediction that by 2007 there will be 10 new mashups per day.

Also I will be circling back around to this topic of mashups in future articles, blogs, and podcasts. In the meantime, start thinking about how you can embrace and extend this powerful concept to your content, your events, and your life professionally and personally to enable more massive customization and personalization.

w
a
yne
=====

UNLearning about UNLearning

Speaking of UNlearning, a topic I just covered in a recent podcast, I wanted to note that I am not the only one pursuing this topic. Marcia Conner, my great colleague and co-founder of Learnativity.org, wrote an article for Fast Company in February called “Learn, Unlearn and Relearn”
As Marcia noted in her comment about the UNLearning podcast, “Great insight! I'm amazed at how few people think about what they need to unlearn themselves, let alone talk about unlearning. Maybe we ought to UNLearn that habit, too.”

Marcia is extremely passionate and articulate about almost all topics related to learning. She’s been a champion and true thought leader in these areas for a very long time. I would STRONGLY encourage you to check out some of Marcia’s other great words and work at her Ageless Learner website. You will find Marcia’s many articles, as well as her keen eye for picking other sites and links, extremely valuable. These include topics such as adult learning, andragogy, attention, and learning styles.

Marcia and I have found that we have very synchronized thought patterns and you will see this in the strong relationships between many of the topics on her site and the complimentary thinking and “attitude” that you find here at Off Course – On Target. Very much worth your time and highly recommended!

w
a
yne
=====

UNLearning: the New Skill of the Future

I get a lot of my concepts and ideas from talking and listening to others, and in this case, I came upon a new idea  from a conversation I had with Dean Kamen—inventor, entrepreneur, and tireless advocate for science and technology.

While we were conversing at a conference, Dean happened to say that he thought young people and children are probably not necessarily faster or better learners; they just have less to unlearn. His comment really struck me, and I have been working on developing this idea ever since. So let's take a closer look now at this new skill of the future that I'm calling "UNLearning".

 

---

                                 

DOWNLOAD                     Size: 16.7 MB          Duration: 23:46                                  Transcript:              350 KB

In this podcast, Unlearning: the New Skill of the Future, I show you how our inability to "UNLearn" prevents us from taking full advantage of new innovations and technologies—making it the single biggest obstacle to our future productivity and performance in a rapidly changing world.p>

Erik and Ecuador

While our time together in Guayaquil Ecuador only overlapped by a few hours, it was a treat as always to meet up with my great colleague and friend, Erik Duval. I won't even start to try to list Erik's many accomplishments, positions, and leadership, but suffice it to say that Erik is easily one of the brightest stars I know (and I mean that both figuratively and literally!).

In his "day job" when he is not out traveling, leading and speaking, he is professor of the research unit on Hypermedia & Databases, at the Computer Science Department of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven located just outside Brussels. You can find out much more about Erik on his home page.

Erik is largely responsible for the recent development of a Latin-American network of learning object repositories. One of his many talented grad students, Xavier Ochoa is from Guayaquil and he organized the first Latin American Conference on Learning Objects (LACLO). As per my previous posts, I had the privilege of being asked to give the opening keynote at this event last week and Erik was the other keynoter on Thursday. Erik's presentation on "Open Learning" has some excellent points, and you can find his slides (using the very handy new SlideShare utility BTW) and his comments on his blog.

Be sure to check out Erik's other posts and sites. I think you'll want to subscribe and be a regular visitor. I know I am!

w
a
yne
=====

Perfecting the Irrelevant

For quite some time now, I've been particularly concerned about the way many organizations (and the individuals within them) do not always see the difference between their value proposition—fulfilling the needs of whomever they are trying to serve—and their everyday activities. This is a problem that I think most of you will be able to see examples of in your own life, and it requires some attention on our part to see what we can do about it.

---

DOWNLOAD Size: 9.6 MB Duration: 13:45 Transcript: 326 KB

In this podcast, Perfecting the Irrelevant, I explain in more detail how many organizations and most individuals within them are "perfecting the irrelevant" without even knowing it. Yet evidence shows this misplaced attention may be the root cause behind the failure of most organizations. Are you and your organization very busy "perfecting the irrelevant"? Listen in and find out.

---