Embedding Indigenous perspectives into learning

I came across this wonderful 8-Ways learning approach to integrate Australian Indigenous perspectives into the classroom and beyond. Although this model of learning is targeted at Indigenous kids, I think it also provides some very powerful principles for delivering learning experiences to the broader community. Both in a school setting and in workplace learning.

Workplace culture, social learning & workforce homogenisation

I often see talented people come into a business, recruited for their transferable skills and potential to contribute to a team. We talk up their existing skills and experience, and reassure the new starter that they bring something very valuable to the job - you're going to be alright in this new job because you largely already have the fabric to succeed!

And then we send them to the front-line, where the prevailing culture and influence of their colleagues, socialise them into assuming homogenised work practices and ways of thinking. The new starter understands that to gain acceptance they need to largely conform to a way that is defined by certain parameters - often it's the only way. Ultimately the new starter becomes part of a stifled approach that struggles to find the solutions and drive the outcomes that the business demands.

The intersection of human resources, management and recruitment typically centres on appointing people who are a 'good fit' for an organisation. This rationale perhaps makes sense where a skill set is perceived to meet the demands of work limited to relatively low complexity process tasks. However this 'good fit' principle shouldn't be about sourcing people with a view to homogenising your workforce.

Increasingly work is now being undertaken in dynamic environments where people need to 'think on their feet' and adapt their skills to novel situations. People need to collaborate in order to synthesise solutions to meet complex business challenges. This requires high level analysis, creativity and innovation. These attributes may be overlooked and under-expressed in an organisation based on 'good fit' principles and a homogenising culture.

'Good fit' for complex work should perhaps be linked to the potential of an individual to bring diversity to a team. Diversity of skills, experience, ways of thinking - a degree of uniqueness and capacity to share something different across the network.

Social learning through the interactions across a diverse workforce has the potential to be a melting pot and fermenter of ideas. This is in contrast to the narrow perspectives you observe in a homogenised workforce.

It is not 'social' when a workplace culture limits or even punishes diversity, punishes difference. 'Social' to me, has its foundation in the connection of 'like-minded' people, in the sense that there is a spirit of sharing, augmenting, refining and applying ideas that are distilled through the coalescing of diverse perspectives.

Organisations promote the importance of shared values. However, shared values does not mean conformity of opinion. Further, diversity and difference does not imply a lack of shared purpose or shared vision.


"Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.”  


James Surowiecki (2005), The Wisdom of Crowds

Diversity can bring a richness of ideas and a creative climate. A flourishing creative climate potentially drives innovation. Well positioned innovation can provide business with a competitive edge and sustainability. Let's value difference and support diversity as a means of facilitating individual and collective success.

Shifting from push to pull

Recently I've 'discovered' some wonderful contemporary thinking around workplace learning. I suppose you could call this a social learning movement - it's a kind of post-modern interpretation of how we best learn to do our jobs.

The social learning paradigm is driven in no small way by the shortcomings of the traditional L & D model premised on just-in-case, push learning (top-down training). In today's rapidly changing business environment the argument for radically altering our approach to workplace learning is compelling.

The social learning approach is a revelation, in the sense that it provides a cohesive narrative and confirms my observations, thinking and frustrations with the 'default' training model. What a breath of fresh air for someone embedded in an organisation locked into an L & D program from a bygone era! It's enabled me to extricate myself back into some sort of parallel universe of progressive thinkers and possibilities. So I'm currently unlearning - relearning and evolving - crawling my way out of the viscous quagmire of 'training'!

I'm talking to people about the 70/20/10 model, social/informal learning, just-in-time, pull learning, Wikis, workscapes, collaboration, learning networks, social media tools and beyond. Charles Jennings cohesively captures much of this in a beautiful piece of storytelling.

So what might be some of the essential  ingredients to create a climate where learning is blended into the workflow - in the spirit of 'work is learning and learning is the work'?

1. Provide pull learning resources and promote collaboration so people can experience the value of self-directed learning through success on the job
2. Support networked learning through structured and informal opportunities for sharing information and higher level collaboration, including social media tools to facilitate learning networks
3. Recognise that performance is limited if based on individual expertise and enhanced by collective thinking - network knowledge
4. Promote information sharing and collaboration through physical workspace design, social media tools and a culture of conversation
5. Provide a cohesive range of multimedia resources that can be pulled from a user friendly platform to suit individual needs and learning preferences
6. Create a Wiki driven by bottom-up contributors to provide an agile learning and performance tool to meet a changing business landscape
7. Scale back push learning events into engaging bursts of two-way dialogue closely aligned with the context of work
8. Shift to a leadership model that facilitates a degree of autonomy to drive self-directed learning, collaboration and performance

The challenge is to integrate these elements into the fabric of work, in a way that inherently supports and fosters  learning, and enhances performance on the job. Ultimately the organisation needs to recognise that learning sits at the core of everything its people undertake on the job.

No talking in the classroom!

I've recently observed just how much my children share and collaborate as part of their own learning at school. My 11 year old is fortunate enough to find himself in a group of like-minded smart kids. His teacher has a wealth of experience and a talent for creating a learning environment, often centred around group activity, where talking and energetic conversations are the norm. This is in stark contrast to the oppressive classroom etiquette that I endured through the 1970s!

I recently commented to a few friends recently - what can you really 'teach' a bunch of smart kids anyway? Isn't it more about creating this fertile collaborative environment, rich with competing ideas and lively debate, including peer assessment of each other's efforts in a positive spirit.

Yes the teacher does guide the children's learning to a considerable extent. However, once kids have consolidated the fundamental 3R's, surely the teacher's role should look more like a facilitator. This type of learning will increasingly revolve around kids pulling the learning to meet the demands of interesting, relevant challenges. Sharing and collaborating then become a key strategy for kids to solve complex problems, not unlike the work they may undertake in the future.

My 13 year old has taken this collaborative approach to learning a step further by utilising social media. I was surprised to hear about a study group on Facebook. The students are using Facebook out of school to work through problems set as homework. To some extent this learning strategy was borne out of a need to compensate for perceived shortcomings in the classroom. The teacher is unaware of this study group on Facebook and it's interesting to see the power of social learning grow organically across a group of connected people.

This collaborative learning, commonplace across this generation of children, and further enhanced by social media tools, provides a strong platform for the workforce of the future. The value of collaboration and the emerging social tools should also be a model for learning at work. The potential influence of these digital natives on the way people should learn at work now and will in the future, is exciting and thought provoking.

So what is 'collaboration' and how does it fit with 'sharing'? I think that sharing and collaboration form some sort of continuum between a simple exchange of resources and high level interaction that translates into a solution.

Although most of us crave connection with other people, even those of us who are introverts, it's challenging to create an environment at work that leads to a collaborative culture. I believe a major challenge for developing a collaborative workforce is management consent to explore your work with others.

Managers need to embrace a paradigm shift from a position of supervision and control to the role of leader and facilitator. This transition is going to be difficult for managers with a perception that sharing and collaborating, particularly with the enhancements possible with social media tools, is too spontaneous, disordered and chaotic. It's difficult to control and surely all this conversation distracts people from their real work!

On a macro-level it's a shift from 'organisation as a machine' to organisation as an organism where a business is designed around networks of connected people. The wirearchy is replacing the traditional hierarchy by introducing collaboration-based knowledge work that incorporates the Web and social media tools.

Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner in The New Social Learning highlight the dimension that collaboration brings to learning and performance in the workplace :

"Training often gives people solutions to problems already solved. Collaboration addresses challenges no one has overcome before."

Let's not have a 'no talking in the classroom' mentality at work - let's enjoy the richness of sharing at the highest level.

Smart workers!

The other day I was discussing the idea of social learning with a colleague and suggested that we were an organisation based on 'knowledge workers'. My colleague looked at me incredulously and asked me what's a knowledge worker? Of course I launched into a spiel around what constituted a worker in the knowledge economy and promoted the view that we should all be identifying ourselves as knowledge workers.

Predictably my colleague insisted that she would never be anything as disdainful as a 'knowledge worker' and there was no way people in our organisation would ever consider themselves to be knowledge workers! My colleague didn't object to the description and how I defined knowledge workers. However, she totally rejected the label of 'knowledge worker'.

This got me thinking about the power of language and the important role that words and phrases play in the introduction of new ideas into an organisation. These new terms can be perceived both negatively and positively depending on their interpretation. The introduction of new descriptors into an organisation as part of a process to enhance knowledge management, collaboration and social learning is no arbitrary matter.

The words and catchphrases are integral to marketing a new approach and engaging the very people you need to take on the journey. The new language creates a convention and framework for communicating the new way - it needs to be received positively - it also lets people signal their intention to embrace and adopt the new way.

Although I like this term - knowledge worker - it's the concept that Peter Drucker introduced in 1959, more than the name, that appeals to me. Perhaps 'knowledge worker' has too much of an academic flavour to be absorbed into the language of our organisation? We need something that's  lighter, more contemporary, maybe sexier and a bit more fun!

Jane Hart promotes the concept of  Smart Workers who are "clearly web-savvy but they are also highly motivated, committed and dedicated to their work and have a clear desire to do their job as well as they can and improve their own performance wherever possible".

Smart workers approach learning at work as a modus operandi and utilise social media tools in a variety of ways to meet the challenges of work. Jane Hart identifies 8 key features to characterise what makes a smart worker:

1. Recognises that she learns continuously whilst doing her job
2. Wants immediate solutions to his performance problems
3. Is happy to share what he knows
4. Relies on a trusted network of friends and colleagues
5. Learns best with and from others
6. Keeps up to date with his industry and profession
7. Constantly strives to improve her productivity
8. Thrives on autonomy

These are qualities worth aspiring to, and I'd certainly  like to see our people break out of their cocoons and emerge from a metamorphosis as smart workers. So perhaps I'll start spreading the idea of redefining our learning culture with - 'Smart Workers'!