An essential element of social media is about bringing people together and creating communities. A community may be built on commonality, personal or professional interest or cause. Most recently I was in a discussion with a friend about online education and the value of informal and formal education resources. In most businesses, formal training is a key element for building knowledge and skills, but the informal paths to learning are equally important and effective. While online learning is often a formal initiative it doesn’t often include an outlet for tribal knowledge and shared learning. Given the pace of change and the need for businesses to do more with less, can you effectively harness this information through a social community?
Online education may be expanded today to include the tribal knowledge and real-time education. Certainly there are formal programs for this but social networks can also aid in reaching this goal. Most formal training has its AHA! moments when people are in the field and apply it. There is sometimes a lead-lag effect between the teaching and actual learning.
Consequential learning aka the teachable moments can often be more effective than formal training. It happens at a moment in time, and can be captured through creative online interaction, asking questions, sharing best practices and learning. You can build upon consequential learning by maintaining an environment of continuous learning. In today’s workplace you can benefit from both by creating real-time, continuous learning through social communities:
- Create online forums centered around key topics. Allow for real-time exchanges and archive the conversation as a reference.
- Emphasize best practices and shared learning.
- Use the social community as a means to get feedback, just as many brands do today.
- Reward new and creative thinking: Use the social community to create inquiry and challenge traditional methods.
- Create an environment for consequential learning: Center dialogue around issues and challenges in the workplace (safety, employee turnover, hidden costs of doing business, productivity, customer loyalty, customer service, sales successes, etc).
Social communities are both global and local in nature. They open up the universe of participants but localize the content based on commonality or interest. When you capture a wider audience you subsequently gain the value of diversity in both knowledge and experience. Teachable moments happen every day but the residual benefit of sharing that information is often lost. Those are the benefits of real-time learning and coupled with traditional methods they can help to optimize learning.
