April 2011 in Review

My 2011 Reading List

Lots of interesting articles and blog postings appeared last month – but here are are few I’ve marked as must-reads.

1. Trust and networks, Gideon Rosenblatt, Alchemy of Change, 16 April 2011

“Trust makes networks work. When trust is high among members of a network, there’s a wonderful cohesiveness and capacity to get work done. When trust is low and relationships are plagued by suspicion, networks collapse into brittle organizational structures that rarely offset their operational costs in real world outcomes.”

1. The cultural imperative for a social business.  This is a two part posting by Maria Ogneva, Head of Community at Yammer: Part 1 appeared 18 April 2011, and Part 2 on 21 April 2011

“Culture is the hardest element of success, because it’s 1) hard to define, 2) takes a long time to change, and 3) there are serious disincentives to changing it. With any kind of internal social networking, you are effectively changing behavior from everyone working inside a silo to a more open, transparent and collaborative environment. And as we all know, every time you attempt to change behavior, you run into resistance. The better you can anticipate resistance and channel it into positive energy, the higher the chances of success.”

1. The other side of learning: “performance is everything“, Conrad Gottfredson, Learning Solutions Magazine, 26 April 2011

“today’s work environment doesn’t tolerate learners stepping out of their workflow to learn unless it is absolutely vital to do so. And the actual nature of 21st century learners is resistant to learning options that are delayed and removed from the here and now. They are self-directed, adaptive, and collaborative in their approach to learning. These kinds of learners will ultimately abandon outright our formal learning solutions if what we provide them fails to efficiently prepare them to effectively perform at their moments of “Apply.” Why? Because when facing a traditional course that fails to do this, today’s learners are predisposed to simply walk away and look elsewhere for the shortest path to successful performance.”

My 2011 Reading List can be found here.

I’ve also updated my State of Learning in the Workplace Today article to include links to some of these new postings

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2011

As I write this posting, there have now been 125 contributions to this year’s Top 100 Tools for Learning list.  Although the usual suspects head this list, there are some new names  on it again this year!  You can also contribute to the list by sharing your Top 10 Tools here.