Comments on: ASTD Big Question: What will workplace learning be like in 10 years?

By: Bill Kirwin

Bill Kirwin — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 14:42:40 +0000

While ideas happen at the speed of light they take 10-20 years to become mainstream. This gestation period may be shrinking, but is nowhere near the optimistic projections that accompany them. Some like the flying cars projected in the 1950s have yet to come to fruition.

Having been a “pundit” at Gartner for 20 years, I learned that no matter how long we would project a trend to become mainstream, it always took longer. The mouse took over 15 years to come into its own. Voice recognition is now becoming mainstream after over 30 years of development. At Gartner there is an analytical tool that plots the life of a technology. There is a steep curve at the beginning called the “rise of inflated expectations” followed by a drop into he “trough of disillusionment.” Then there is a maturation phase that rises to a “plateau of productivity” that is about 1/3 as high as the peak of inflated expectations.”

So I guess the recommendation is to set your timer appropriately, look about 10 years back into history and look for enablers that will accelerate or slow down the adoption rate of an opportunity. Y2K was an enabler that accelerated the adoption of ERP solutions well before they were ready for prime time.

At Cohesive Knowledge Solutions we are seeing knowledge work (communication and collaboration) just beginning to rise from the trough. This is proven by the rapidly emerging corporate awareness that they have a problem with email, file and document management and meetings which consume about 75% of the kworker day. This is 60 years after Drucker invented the term and at least 15 years after we entered the knowledge economy!

By: MadKat97

MadKat97 — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:36:05 +0000

One further question to ask is: where? Some organizations will have embraced Web 2.0 technologies and their predecessors; others will still be spreading “death by PowerPoint.” Also consider that it is the culture of the organization that will help determine the outcome: in some cultures, attempts a meaningful use of technologies and “informal” learning will be stillborn because at base the organization is closed, hierarchical, authoritarian and controlling.
As regards training departments: we need to be the plumber, not the pipe. IT will own the pipe: we need to add value to the process and the content, and advise as to where the bandwidth and cycles should best be spent.

All motion is relative. 10 years may be forever in Web years, and a mere moment in the evolution of an organization.

By: Candi Imming

Candi Imming — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:49:05 +0000

Interesting thoughts. I agree that some things around education/learning are hard to change, but I actually could see that some technologies could help with that in the future.

I do think it could be possible to have education consultants similar to your librarian idea. They help diagnose and then prescribe a curriculum to help people accomplish their job training goals, perhaps certifying them as part of the service.
They might be much better then this then a manager would be for several aspects of job training. Training experts understand how people learn and acquire skills.

I do not see how people will ever really be out of the training solution. Another possiblity could be trainers assigned to teams for specific skill builiding in an area like agile development. Think how much faster a team could be up to speed if one member was focused on building skills, monitoring, analyzing proficiency, providing feedback, and helping people to learn. This does not happen today.