- Corporate E-Learning
- How Virtual Self-Study Content Can Add Value for Businesses –
Key Findings at E.ON - ‘Speed Learning’ for Financial Market Professionals
- Managing an “Alphabet Soup” of Donors – How Oxfam Established Strategic Business Change
- Conversations about the future of training
- Training Mobile Services Staff in the Virtual Classroom – The Telefónica o2 Germany Experience
- The Power of Wow - IBM Leadership Training Goes ‘3D’
- How to Make Change Happen – Challenges in Implementing E-Learning in Organisations
- One Size Doesn’t Fit All
- A new Universe for E-Driven Learning Architectures
- PechaKucha at OEB
- ELIG Workshop: Innovation and Change Powered by Learning Solutions
- Training Figures That Speak for Themselves
- Workplace Learning at OEB
- E-Learning Supports European Customs in Fight Against Drug Traffickers
- Learning Languages at Work: The Best Case Scenario
- ‘Wyse up’ to Thin Computing - ICT Workplace Solutions not Thin on the Ground
- E-Learning in Retail
- The Expansion of Moodle
- How to Turn Students Into Producers
- Best Practice: Hands-on Legal Practice via E-Learning
- Competing in a Global Economy Through Open Education
- Microtraining for Dutch Truck Drivers
- Industry Round Tables on Corporate E-Learning
- A Need for Clarification, Validation and Inspiration
- Listen to the Company’s Story
- eCollaboration – Efficient Teamwork Made by IBM
- Four Questions on Corporate Learning: John Hudson, Eedo Knowledgeware
- A New Learning Service Concept for Thales Netherlands
- WikiWelten – Learning in Sync with Corporate Life
- Tackling the SME Sector
- Global Benchmarking Survey for Leadership Development at OEB
- Berlin – City of Knowledge
- Speed It Up: E-Learning in the Semantic Age
- Learning at the Workplace
- The Next Wave – Viewpoint by Jonathon Levy
- Back to main
A new Universe for E-Driven Learning Architectures
OEB: Mr Deiser, you say that corporate learning should not get stuck in people qualification and HR but has to become a business practice. Could you please explain what you mean by that?
Deiser: I would say that the essence of corporate learning lies in providing tools, systems and mechanisms to develop the strategic and organisational capabilities of an organisation. People qualification – which has its traditional home in HR – is only one element in a much more complex game. I think we all agree that there is no great organisation without great people, but the best people cannot unfold their potential if they are hamstrung by poor organisational structures and cultures. And even great organisations with great people are doomed to fail if they rest on their laurels, i.e. if they do not develop the strategic competence to creatively deal with an ever-more-rapidly-changing environment.
This more comprehensive view of learning puts the practice right where it belongs – in the core of the value-generating processes of a corporation. Leaving learning in the people qualification box moves it to the fringes of this process, disconnected from work, disconnected from where the action is. If you see the objective of corporate learning and development as assuring sustainable competitive advantage, learning must not stop at the level of qualifying individuals; it must become a pervasive capability that addresses all aspects of a complex system.
OEB: In your new book Designing the Smart Organization, you also address the issue of how disruptive change can be addressed through learning. Could one alternatively say "how best to deal with a crisis"?
Roland Deiser is an internationally acclaimed expert on strategy, innovation, and organisational design, with a focus on building strategic capabilities into large-scale systems. He was the founding Dean of DaimlerChrysler’s Corporate University and is founding Chairman of the European Corporate Learning Forum (ECLF), a consortium of currently more than sixty corporations from more than twelve countries that have teamed up to share practices and shape the future of corporate-learning practice (www.eclf.org). Dr Deiser is also an Associate Professor of Political Science and serves as a Senior Fellow with the Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg in Los Angeles (www.digitalcenter.org). In additional, he serves on the editorial board of the Academy of Management Learning and Education Journal (AMLE). He lives with his wife and two children in Los Angeles, California and can be reached at rd@rolanddeiser.com.
Mr Deiser: Yes, I think you could say that. After all, the etymological meaning of the Greek word krisis is “a turning point of a disease, requiring a decision” – pretty much what we face in times of disruptive change. Most people would agree that the pace of disruption has been accelerating over the last few decades. Today we face major paradigm shifts in virtually every industry, mostly driven by leapfrog advances in technology and the globalisation that has accompanied it. These developments open up tremendous opportunities to reshape how we deal with the world, but they are also threatening and potentially destructive as we lag behind in our ability to deal with complexity, assess the systemic impact of our actions, and govern global phenomena such as global warming. In this situation, learning is not an option; it is an imperative. We have to learn as individuals, as organisations, and as political systems so we can better understand the emerging opportunity spaces and capitalise on them in ways that will lead us to a new quality of a global society in ecological balance with the planet. We cannot afford to fail here.
OEB: Is this a topic you are going to introduce in the course of the ELIG Workshop on December 2nd?
Mr Deiser: At the ELIG workshop, we want to explore how a new paradigm of learning may be helpful in addressing the burning issues we face in business and society. To do this, we will look at the challenges and possible answers through various lenses. My contribution will deal with the transformational forces that lead us to redefine our understanding of learning, the resulting shifts in practices, the required new internal role configurations, and the consequences of these dynamics for the stakeholder universe of the learning industry. I think it will be an exciting debate that will help setting the agenda for the future of the practice.
OEB: What role can e-learning solutions play here? Are there any current
e-learning developments that you find particularly promising in this regard?
Deiser: I think that the practice of e-learning itself is in the midst of disruptive change and that the e-learning industry faces a tough learning challenge when it comes to developing the capabilities required in the new world of large-scale participatory learning. In the old paradigm, e-learning offerings were typically a one-way distribution channel of more or less well-designed instructional content. The attractive value proposition was scalability and virtualisation. The quality of offerings was primarily defined through the quality of content design, and advances were focused on providing ever-richer media, designing user-friendly interfaces, and distributing knowledge just in time to the right audience. But excellence in these virtues is no longer the primary key to competitive success.
With the advent of social-media technology – commonly referred to as Web 2.0 – we enter a totally new age of true interactivity that opens up a new universe for e-driven learning architectures. For the first time, the learner has the opportunity to take charge, to create content, to connect with peers, and to generate self-organised learning networks – all on a global scale. In the new and emerging paradigm, the quality of e-learning offerings will be determined not so much by content solutions but by the elegance of a socio-technological architecture that enables collaboration and self- organised discourse. The old model of distributing content will remain, but it will become smaller and not dominate any more. In addition to instructional design excellence, e-learning providers will need a much deeper understanding of the social infrastructure of an organisation that fosters (or inhibits) informal and learner-driven learning. They will have to migrate from producers and distributors of content to technologically savvy social-network architects. To be successful, they will also have to help their clients to achieve the required media literacy, i.e. help them to achieve the ability to use the possibilities of the new media across the whole chain of design, production and interactive distribution as they become the owners of the process.
That’s quite exciting if you think about it, but it requires new competencies, will shake up established revenue models, and we will see a shake-out of the industry, as well as the emergence of new players. Which gets us back to disruption…
OEB: Thank you very much for your time!
At OEB 2009, Roland Deiser will participate in the workshop "Moving beyond the Crisis Powered by Knowledge and Learning Solutions - What is the NEXT Practice?", which will take place on December 2nd, 2009 from 14:00 – 18:00. For more information on the pre-conference event, please click http://www.online-educa.com/pre_conference.php?id=a4
More information on Roland Deiser’s book Designing the Smart Organization: How Breakthrough Corporate Learning Initiatives Drive Strategic Change and Innovation is available at www.rolanddeiser.com and http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470490675.html
November 25, 2009
