Sims Learning Connections

A first sampling of what others are saying in this subject area, along with a (surprise, not) bit of my own commentary…

Jay Cross, in his comment on my Part-1, notes our latest ESP moment when yesterday we simultaneously, but independently, worked on this topic. My result was another of my numbingly-long lists; while Jay’s were these nine crisp slides (grin), which provide a nice historical context and glimpse at a possible future (slide 9):

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As I mentioned in my comments at Jay’s blog this morning, a remaining concern for me is the possibility that the two historically distinct disciplines go after this future independently, producing slides 7 and 8 in isolation. I’m hopeful that these blog conversations and other intentional cross-pollinating (e.g. drinking together) will reduce that chance.

Joe Horvath. Doug Cornelius previously summarized Joe’s presentation to the Boston KM Forum on this topic. To recap:

• Joe notes the traditional distinctions as Knowledge Management is “seen as providing information to support performance of an indeterminate task at the moment of need,” whereas Learning is “seen as creating a more enduring change in the learner to enable him/her to perform better across a specified range of future tasks.” (emphasis added)
• From the Learning-side, convergence is being driven by the desire to address the long “training development lifecycle,” inability for employees to take time away for training (the “time crunch”), and historically poor knowledge transfer from training.
• From the KM-side, movement towards Learning is being driven by the need to be more connected to the key roles in the company (an historical strength for the L&D organization), compliance, and desire for a “single version of truth.” Reminder: Joe’s perspective is from the highly regulated pharmaceutical industry.
• Joe sees the results as: “a continuum of performance support to the learner,” “more granular training content delivered within web-services architecture,” “more employee generated content…”, and the learning management system (LMS) as “a hub for post-training reference & linkage to on-line content.”

Regarding the last bullet-point, I believe the first three results are likely outcomes; however, the role of the LMS is an open question given movement towards ‘performance support’ (contrast to ‘courses’), informal learning, employee generated content, and how far the major vendors are missing the mark today. Going forward, the LMS might just become (or stay) a minor architectural component that provides course catalog, registration and completion tracking functionality for formal learning; whereas the real hubs (plural!) are at/within the business process — with links into the LMS. Regardless, we still do need to address the scenario Joe mentioned: an employee that vaguely recalls the course she took a year ago and thinks first to go back to the LMS, versus to a more topic or process-centered location within the broader internet.

Mohamed Amine Chatti contributed a well footnoted article in April: Learning and Knowledge Management are 2 sides of the same coin.

Mohamed also advocates for the convergence of historically separate disciplines:

[We] argue that LM and KM solutions have to fuse and that we should speak about union and fusion of the two fields rather than intersection or complementary relationship between them.

and claims that “the two fields are increasingly similar in terms of input, outcome, processes, activities, components, tools, concepts, and terminologies.”

I accept the already present similarity in the idealized input (in one word, ‘knowledge’) and the desired output (in one word, ‘performance’); however, for the rest of the items I see more variation and less convergence to date than Mohamed appears to claim. This isn’t a critical difference since wherever we are along the convergence path now, Mohamed and I agree that more movement in this direction is suggested.

Elliott Masie in 1999 was already writing:

Knowledge Management and Learning Function target same goals. Our email is filling with parallel content from the world of learning and the world of knowledge management. Different populations, different vocabulary, but similar goals, aspirations and dreams.

That said, when I attended Elliott’s own Learning2006 conference last year — one of the more cross-functional conferences targeted at Learning professionals — it still felt like I was among a pretty small group of attendees that either had roots in KM, or had moved beyond their L&D roots to acquire significant understanding of topics such as communities of practices, expertise locating, collaboration (beyond as used to create learning artifacts), content management, enterprise search, taxonomy and folksonomy, etc. (i.e., KM staples.)

ASTD. When I did research for this post, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of KM content I found at this organization’s site. A search on the term “knowledge management” returned 3450 results, plus ASTD maintains this knowledge management category within their product listing. I have to admit I didn’t take advantage of any of this KM content when I was officially a Learning professional as I was busy using ASTD to help ramp-up in the Learning discipline. I’ll need to do some further digging prior to having an opinion on how “integrative” versus “complementary discipline” in approach the content is.

So, after another longer than it should be post, what do I conclude from the above, plus my additional anecdotal observations?

1. Convergence has some significant mind-share already
2. Convergence is actually happening in some organizations
3. There is more to do (together) to support the outcome suggested

Closing questions:

1. How far have you personally journeyed in being cross-disciplinary between the historical L&D and KM? Do you aspire to go further? If so, what gets in the way?
2. Can you think of examples of other disciplines that have come together to create a new future? The one admittedly imperfect example I can come up with is the emergence of Information Architecture that I witnessed first-hand in April 2000 at the ASIS (before they added the ‘T’) Defining Information Architecture Summit in Boston. Web Design meets Library of Science. Oh my, that was a heady time.