Web 2.0 (blogs, wikis, Twitter, social networking, etc.) and the learning tools it gives us are bright, shiny new toys. They're easy to think of as fads or things that only the youngest generation or biggest techies are using. But these tools are having a deeper effect on all of us that's subtle but powerfully important to us as trainers and organizational leaders.
We no longer control information. This applies across every industry.
- The movie and music industries are desperately trying to keep control of their content and are losing their battles.
- News organizations are doing their best to embrace this change: almost every newspaper and TV news web site now devotes tons of space to allowing everyone to post their own news and comment on stories.
- Most major online retailers now allow people to post reviews of products, even when those reviews are unflattering.
For us as training professionals, more learning is happening outside of classrooms than ever. Anyone can Google just about any question from whatever coffee shop work is taking place in. Hallway conversations and cubicle visits are the predominant learning system in almost every workplace. Our work is shifting from being the primary provider of knowledge to facilitating its spread and use.
The truly successful training professional/manager/department of tomorrow will be able to:
- Make information available to people in the organization at any time, from any location where they're working at the moment.
- Provide answers to questions with as little interruption to workflow as possible.
- Capture the information that people accumulate and share in ways that make it easier for everyone to handle ad hoc questions and information needs.
We're never going to lose the need for in-depth classroom training for learning new skills. But that has always been balanced against the learning that goes on everywhere else, and it's becoming more and more critical as our population gets more and more attuned to immediate access and interaction with the information they need.
What do you think - what are some helpful ways we as learning professionals can facilitate needed information "going viral" in our organizations?