Have a casual idea that I want to put up here for your consumption. If you believe you’re really brave enough to consume such impractical-sounding ideas, lap it up and let me know what you think.
Assume we are talking about an organization where everyone has at least a small white board for themselves. What if we introduce a practice – let’s call it “tell me what you learned” - wherein employees are asked to write down 2-3 things that they learned that particular week, on every Friday morning. The writing has to be big, bold and visible. (A marker of a particular colour could be recommended for this purpose.) And there’s no compulsion to participate. If the employee has really something significant that he/she learned and really wants to share it, he/she does so. For example, if someone learns about how to identify areas for Best Practices Sharing, she could write this on her board – Best Practices-Identification of Areas. People, who find the topic interesting and want to learn more about it, can just walk in and ask for a few minutes and discuss the topic with the ‘sharer’.
In a given block/building, the person who seems to be sharing good stuff every Friday would be quite evident. Such people from each block/building could get some additional recognition and be referred to as “This month’s learning guru” on a common office notice board. This may or may not work based on the organizational culture…but without such practices, informal learning would be left to networking events and chance.
5 comments:
That's an interesting idea, worth a try I'd say. I expect there would be a few participants, the people who do that kind of thing naturally. It will likely not reach a significant degree of popularity, except in small working groups where the group culture can easily make it a behavoural norm. I've tried similar things in the past - challenges for people to post their personal mission statemements, inspirational quotes, and even a flip chart with their personal contact networks drawn by hand - all with marginal results. Why? People are motivated by different things - a desire to contributed to the "grater good" philantrophy, personal gain, coersion, pain avoidence. And sometimes, despite best intentions, there are more pressing priorities and needs on a professional or personal level. But I'm not trying to be gloomy here. In complex organizations, sometimes you can predict the positive impact of a simple initiative...
Hey Dave!
Thanks so much for responding to my post/idea. It makes so much of a difference to hear another perspective - be it complementary, supplementary or opposite. :)
Meanwhile, I looked up your blog and 'am going to add it to my blog-feeds right away! :) Hoping to learn from you and see you on my blog again....
Oops, Dale....not Dave! I've got used to seeing so many 'Dave's in the world of KM that.... :)
Don't worry Nimmy, I'm used to being confused with a Dave.. as a matter of fact, when I met my wife fifteen years ago, for a while I had to wear a golf shirt with my name on it so her parents wouldn't call me by her ex-husband's name.. you guess it.. "Dave"..
;-)
Is this what is called D(av)eja vu? :D
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