Take a back seat
However much they admire Web 2.0, managers need to be careful just how they go about encouraging social learning.
Everyone seems to want to talk about social learning. There is a realisation that since we all learn from each other – and not in isolation, individually looking at a computer screen – then social networking must be embraced as soon as possible.
But opinion about the Web 2.0 phenomenon is divided. Some people are convinced that time spent on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn is time wasted; while others regard it as the most natural thing in the world. Since they spend so much of their leisure time finding out from the people they know what others are doing, what’s happening out there and who knows what, the confirmed social networkers are wondering why the same principle can’t be applied in a working environment.
But can these two extremes of opinion be reconciled? And if they can, what can management do to make it happen?
The virtual shopfloor
Social learning is sometimes equated with what used to be called the virtual shopfloor. Those who used the smoking room or gathered around the water-cooler or coffee machine knew far more about the workings of the organisation than those who didn’t. In fact, these were learning communities and the participants were able to share information that would not otherwise have been passed on.
Few would dispute the value of sharing knowledge and experience even if it is mixed in with lots of irrelevant social interaction. But surely, some people say, it must be controlled and monitored by management; otherwise no one will know if it is working, providing a return on investment and sufficient data for those who need it.
Such people are utterly wrong; their protests are the last paroxysms of the command and control learning structure, which I predict will be obsolete within a few years.
Learning through social networking is another way of learning informally, which is the learning that takes place when learning is not the intention of the participants. Remember that in informal learning the learning and development department has nothing whatsoever to do with the process, whereas in formal learning it is in firm control.
For learning to take place through social networking, management must let learners control their own learning. Going further, it is very clear to me that any attempt by management to create social networking opportunities are doomed to failure.
Years ago I was told a story, almost certainly apocryphal, about a pub landlord who was so fed up with all the graffiti on the walls of the toilets that he installed blackboards and provided chalk. The next day someone had scrawled on the wall next to the blackboard, “Get lost, you patronising *!?%.” It aptly illustrates the folly of management trying to take control of social networking sites: it won’t work because that is not why they are being used in the first place.
So how do you embrace social networking in an organisational context?
One possible answer is in the learning culture of the organisation, that intangible but very important quality of any company nowadays. If in your organisation, people at all levels share information and their knowledge across departments, admit their mistakes and failures so that they and others learn from them, then you are well on your way to supporting a learning culture.
But this sharing of knowledge and information cannot be managed, enforced or even requested by management. People do it because they want to, extract value for themselves from it and have means to do it that they find effective. This latter point is key. No one was told to use Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Spotify or YouTube. The sites were viral and because users found they suited their needs, they told others about them and the rest is history.
What management must do is quite simple: provide the freedom for learners to pick up or ignore the tools they find useful in their work. The common practice of blocking social networking sites will not create a diligent and responsible workforce but accentuate the insularity between departments, making the sharing of knowledge unlikely at best.
Managers must come to terms with the fact that to embrace social networking they must act merely as facilitators, providing whatever tools are technically feasible and cost-effective, giving up any notion of command and control. All they should do is make it very plain to all that they will not be tracking or monitoring activity and that everyone is tacitly trusted to act professionally and stay within the IT acceptable use policy, if they have one.
Not everyone will use these tools, but sooner or later the use of the technological equivalents of the smoking room will find a place in every organisation and we will all be better off for it.
Vaughan Waller is senior instructional designer at accountancy firm Moore Stephens