Who will drive us?

Pulling together a few strands of thought on the bus this morning (my beloved Vespa having been stolen 10 days ago my commute is longer) I was wondering where the motivation element of learning will come from in the future. If collaborative learning and P2P learning really do put the learner in control. How will the learner deal with those days when he/she just can't be bothered?

I think there is a parallel with gym memberships. Gyms dont actually want you to get fit. They want you to pay membership and not use the facilities. That way they can make more profit. People who can afford them, use personal trainers but lots of people cant.

I wonder if there is a model for a personal learning trainer? I think this will be distinct from life coaches or executive coaches as there is a different skill set.

Will greater choice and freedom to learn actually inhibit action? A learning equivalent of slacker culture. Are we becoming mentally as well as physically obese? Do we actually need the harridan teachers and psychotic PE teachers in our lives to push us over the wall?

Customer servile

As my last post earlier this week provoked a repsonse, I thought I would return to it. Clearly my suggestion that the American way of service is to be aspired to was too much for Kevin who,

"couldn't think of anything worse than an american telling me the value of service"

Interestingly, Lucy Kellaway whose article originally prompted my thoughts had a follow up in which she experienced some great service (The pen is mightier than high-tech gadgets). So as Zine and Zein highlighted in their comments, I was generalising and my suggested course would probably not sell to them.

I had the additional thought that the internet might be responsbile for an overall decline in customer service, in the same way that text messaging has destroyed conversation. In that it has moved human beings further apart and therefore further away from an immediate reaction to what thay say or think. Being face to face with someone tends to temper most extremes of communication (think about how often you shout expletives after you have hung up the phone or walked out the door).

But then I immediately challenge myself that this could just be further evidence of myself getting older and heading towards the inevitable day when I moan in exasperation about, "The youth of today!!" (Incidentally you can shoot me when I start doing this). The Internet is not bad in and of itself. The point is what is facilitates (see Michael Wesch's original film "The Machine is Us" for more on this) and it should facilitate even better service.

Maybe it is the fact that 25% of us are unhappy in our jobs and a third of us do not feel engaged. The people from whom I have had the best customer service are the people who seem to care or show an interest, whether in the UK, the USA or elsewhere. Those who feel they are wage slaves are unlikely ever to serve the customer genuinely.

As to whether this is the responsibility of the employee to move to a job that they enjoy and fell valued in or the employer to make the employee feel valued and content, I fear the debate will never end.

Is it really that difficult to smile?

I have been thinking about Lucy Kellaway's article last Monday, "Turning customer delight into disgust" and I have finally conceded to my wife that the British just don't know how to do customer service. My wife, a Serb who has lived in Russia and America and thus experienced the extremes of the customer experience, has long been baffled about how badly we, the British, treat our clients.

I have generally curled my toes in embarrassment and tried to shuffle away from my wife as she berates the latest unfortunate for failing to provide even an adequate response (I don't think what we receive on the whole in this country even qualifies as "a service"). But the point is I am at fault not her. I think the root of it may be generational and lurks within the phrase, "Mustn't grumble".

This spirit was admirable when the Blitz was on and was indeed admired throughout the world as being evidence of our tenacity and spirit. It seems however to have evolved into never complaining to the people at fault and developing a sarcastic streak a mile wide to moan about our unfortunate lives with our friends. It is perhaps why comedy flourishes in the UK. We are not prepared to get off our behinds and confront poor service we would rather create jokes about it.

Lucy's experience at the hands of a low cost airline I have had with other low costs airlines and with flag carriers. I cant remember the last time I had a retail experience that could be classed as enjoyable - indeed my wife and I stormed out of a major electrical supplier at the weekend after wasting half and hour on the completely unreasonable expectation that there would be someone employed there who knew something about anything... I have had to threaten legal action against the company that sold me my scooter before I got what could be called service. And hotels and restaurants leave me cold. I went to a pizza restaurant in Balham with my family and next door neighbours on Saturday and there was a nail in one of the pizzas.

Had the nail been in my pizza or that of my wife or daughter we would have addressed it. However, it was in my my neighbours' elder daughter's pizza and they would not make a fuss. In fact she apologised to the waiter, after I had drawn attention to it and the waiter was already grovelling. My neighbour paid the bill, possibly to stop me from extracting a significant discount and causing further embarrassment.

Now I don't say this to ridicule my neighbour or their daughters, they are amongst the nicest people in the world. But this behaviour in the face of dreadful service goes to show that in the end we get the customer service we deserve.

I have been thinking of developing a training course, "Customer service: the American way" for some time but have held back for fear of offending people and it not selling. But now I think maybe that was just another way of avoiding embarrassment. What do you think?

As a service lead economy should we sort out our act to have a future or am I becoming just another grumpy old man?

Are you sitting comfortably?

Reading George Siemens' blog, "Story telling: Why we love a good yarn" yesterday my thinking about the future of the learning and development industry moved on a notch.

It is difficult to know how far to deconstruct the idea as am I far from expert in any of the areas I am about to pillage and generalise (cognitive psychology, post structuralism, politics and psephology, anthropology and the list goes on). But I think that the reason that we humans like stories is that they make life easier. Our brains are essentially pattern finding systems (I told you I wasn't an expert! If you want to know more read Stephen Pinker) they even find patterns where there are none - think of seeing animal shapes in cloud formations or dreams which are you mind trying to make sense of unconnected impulses, thoughts and emotions.

I stumbled across a remarkable programme on BBC radio 4 earlier this year called Jackonory Politics (there is even a link for the full transcript on the page if you're keen). The programme showed how politicians who spin a good yarn win because they are doing the electorate's thinking for them. It explained quite succinctly why politicians don't talk about issues. Because the electorate don't understand issues and don't want to hear about them. I often accuse one of my friends of never letting the facts come between him and a good story or opinion but it seems the same is true for all of us. Never mind the fact that crime rates have fallen consistently in the UK for years and we live in a society that is safer than ever, every single political party jumps on the "hoodies are going to stab us in our beds" bandwagon. Why because fear gets the vote our more than statistics.


We like stories because they tell us what to think. They have structure (which is annoyingly absent from life) which make it easier for us to understand them. They appeal to the emotions which make it easier for us to remember them. They let us sit back and switch off.

So what does all this have to do with the future of the learning industry?

Well, I think we are the storytellers of change. Behavioural change is what we are about; or at least it should be. Helping people do new stuff. But change is painful, complex, seemingly irrational. Facilitating learning (any good instructional systems design) is about putting the required behaviour in a context, helping students practice the new stuff in a supportive environment and then giving them the confidence and motivation to go out and use it in their lives. Making it comprehensible, digestible, less scary.

The traditional classroom methods of teaching may evolve or even fall by the wayside but the process of helping people deal with difficulty in their lives will never end. It is after all why we tell bedtime stories to our children (and if you don't tell stories to your children, start now!). It helps them make sense of the world.

But we must also teach them to question the storyteller and that is where life starts to get difficult. Maybe I'll go back to reading the Daily Mail and have my thinking done for me.

Old dogs and new tricks

On Thursday I took my management team out of the office to rural Wiltshire for an "away day". The subject under dicussion was our course portfolio; which courses do well, which one not so well, what new products should we develop, what new partnerships... You get the gist.

I have done this many times in my life but never before with such a sense of the sheer vastness of possibilities for learning and personal development (see my previous post for more on this). However, this feeling of awe is coupled with enthusiasm. I have also rediscovered Mind Maps. I've been aware of mind maps for years and have met a number of advocates but have never really got on with them.

But while I was waiting for the meeting to start I was looking through some of Jane's recent posts and decided to download "FreeMind". Interestingly this is one of the things you find yourself doing more of when you get into web 2.0. The dead seconds while you are waiting for meetings to start get used catching up on your RSS feed or following the latest trail of virtual breadcrumbs through the internet. As a learning professional and a man I decided to work out how to use the software by getting on with it rather than reading any instructions and set about using it to create notes for our meeting.

Interestingly, I quickly found that FreeMind was a much better way than standard taking of notes. It forced me to use some kind of structure when considering what to write and more ideas were generated when I showed the other members of the group my notes thus far.

For those who work for me you can go and look at our strategy mind map in our Google group (if you dont know where it is ask Alex). I'm afraid everyone else will have to take it on trust.

On reflection the process of re-examining old ideas in a new context and uncovering previously unimagined success could be a metaphor for all connectivist business models.

How do you eat an elephant?

The old answer is, "Piece by piece" but I think I will add to that, "You've got to really want to eat it". You have to be motivated!

Today, amongst other things, I had an excellent one-to-one training session and all-round discussion on web & learning 2.0 with Jane Hart (click on the link to find her blog). At the end of it I felt that there was more in the world that I was ignorant of, not less. If you want a quick visual summary of social media applications out there, simply look at Harold Jarche's recent post. I have been introduced to Twitter, Ning, Moodle, PollDaddy and Jing... (Spike Milligan, "Ning nang nong" anyone?).

The "elephant" of social media is ever-expanding (although fortunately not infinite). This, I think, is the problem for those who have remained on the sidelines, those who say, "It's just too big" or "Yeah fascinating, but how are we going to make any money out of it?".

Many of the discussions on Tony's page recently have turned around whether people are developing new forms of learning; a brain 2.0 to accommodate all these new tools. I think that the bigger issue is motivation and fear of failure. Strangely, I find that my increased ignorance is motivating rather than demotivating. But perhaps that is because I am less concerned about making a fool of myself than when I was younger.

Perhaps the future for learning professionals is more one of cheerleader and performance coach than fount of all wisdom. To go back to one of my all time favourite quotes about learning from the 19th century polymath Wilhelm von Humboldt, "We cannot teach language, we can only create an environment in which language may be learnt"

Anyway, at Jane's suggestion I have lifted posting restrictions on my blog so you can post anonymously (makes it easier) and for those "lurkers" who would rather not, why don't you click on the poll?

Time for reflection

I have just returned from holiday in the mountains of Serbia with my family where I successfully avoided the information age for a week, read books, went for walks, played with my daughter and had time to think.

On my way to Serbia I stopped in Germany to go to a friend's 50th birthday party which was a delightful affair at a schloss on the Rhine. This made me wonder about what are the measures or values that matter in life. How can you say you have lived a good life? The only obvious measure left in today's post nationalist world is money. Yes I know there is a nationalist war going on in South Ossetia and the Olympics are on (which might give the lie to this thought). But I think that nationalism is on the wane and the rising religiosity and conflict in the world is partly driven by a lack of identity. Unfortunately, business and large supra-national organisations have not in the past been very good at filling this vacuum as values are things that companies tend only to pay lip service to. But I wonder if the rise in interest in CSR and Environmental issues may herald and end to this?

So what does matter? I think positive choice and responsibility. I suppose that is what the existentialists meant by acting in "good fath". Which is annoying because I've never liked Nietzsche and find Keirkegaard depressing. Why aren't there any decent philosphers anymore? Is it because there is too much reality television?

On micro-economic level, during my holiday, I rediscovered the pleasure of reading. Like the slow food movement, there is much to be said for slow information. I am a relative newcomer to cloud computing but am already needing new strategies to stop my RSS feeds from getting on top of me.

So if you haven't had your holiday yet (and inspired by Kevin who liked my last post [incidentally Kevin you can call me Hugh]) here are a couple of recommended reads:

Dan Ariely, "Predicatably Irrational" - similiar to "Freakonomics "and the "Undercover Economist" this a a wonderfully readable book for those interested in how people actually make decisions

Louis de Bernieres, "The Partisan's Daughter" - a great tale from the author of Captain Corellis Mandolin that examines story telling and truth, read it in a day it was that good

Wilf Self, "The Book of Dave" - hard work to begin with but brilliant and dark reflection on society set up by the conceit of a mad London cabbie accidentally founding a religion

Irvin Yalom, "The Schopenhauer Cure" - a dying therapist re-examines his life and tries to help his biggest failure

And for those of you who think this looks like a politician's summer reading list compiled by his/her publicist

Ian Rankin - any Inspector Rebus novel
Janet Evanonvic - any Stephanie Plum novel, v funny
and for cry laughing cynicism anything by Christopher Brookmyre

Time to think is good... Maybe I'll switch off the Crackberry more often.