So the Learning Ecosystem is a year old.
What it looks like in action?
Daily project work.
I am currently involved in two major projects linked to potential delivery and development tools: Unified Communications (which completely changes all of our synchronous communications) and SharePoint (which I hope to later leverage for support and training delivery and maybe getting one step closer to making it easy for folks to find what they need to help them do their jobs.)
I am also doing the usual day to day operational tasks and talking to folks. Looking and listening for trends. What do people want? What do they want to accomplish? What do they see happening?
Weekly reviews of the IT project and proposal listings
Any new requests and projects that might impact the ecosystem?
I’ve been looking at all of the projects related to identity management (for assignment and curriculum development), potential delivery and development tools (we have a couple of doozies happening now), as well as anything directly related to our existing systems in our environment.
You will notice that I am NOT fixated on items specifically tagged “learning” or “talent development”
I want my environment to map as closely to where people are (or will be) actually working as possible.
I am also keeping an eye on what’s going on in Business Intelligence since what is going on there now we can leverage later.
Quarterly updates to my management chain
I re-do the PowerPoint every quarter. I update the projects I am tracking, new trends I am seeing in the environment (both what is being asked for technologically and what I am hearing when I talk to people)
Annual re-evaluation of the direction of the ecosystem
– What is the political environment right now? We’ve had a lot of changes in players – people coming and going, people changing jobs and departments.
– Who do I need to loop in? What networks do I need to build?
– Who do I need to update and get feedback from regarding our efforts? (I’ll admit, this is going to be WAY overdue by the time I get to it)
– Do the guiding principles still apply? Are they moving us in a direction we wish to go in? What changes need to be made? (I am putting in our slide below….I’ve been re-thinking some stuff here recently – though this is far from complete.)
– Are our critical success factors accurate?
– What other changes need to be made to the general single sheet?
I’m doing this now, though not in as concentrated a manner as I would like – mostly because I am tied into two really large projects that are eating a lot of my time and energy.
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I probably spend about 10% of my formal work time (and at least 30% of my “thinkin’ about nuthin'” time) working on the strategic part of this.
I’d like it to be more. Especially as I become more and more convinced that the core of being a strong organization, being an agile (in the “able to move quickly and easily” sense) organization, is a culture of “learning”.
And I think that culture needs to permeate EVERYTHING.
Because change requires learning.
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