John Mitchell’s introduction included a quote from Friedman, we need to be “working smarter and smarter rather than cheaper and harder”

new ideas need to be connected back to the fundamentals

‘70% of Australians now produce something you cannot drop on your foot’ - Dale Spender

At the start of Nigel’s session he asked us to put down in writing what we wanted from the day - my phrase was “to generate ideas about organisational development using existing and emerging tools and techniques, both internally and with our clients”. After I committed it to a Post-it note, I immediately changed it to “to explore how to support an environment that provokes and promotes personalised and networked learning both internally and with/for our clients”. By the end of the day I am sure it will change again. :-)

Dilemma in the workforce is the generational changes - loyalty and long term commitment to jobs is not happening in the large organisations - it is appearing to centre in the smaller, nimble organisations. Mismatch between the characteristics of the modern organisation and the approach to training. Need to move the world of training closer to what the modern organisation now represents.

So far, Nigel has been setting the scene, ie where is the world going, what challenges does that bring. Some other talkers tend to talk about these sorts of issues as a problem, but he is presenting it more as a challenge, and emphasising that we have to catch up quickly. Creativity and imagination are critical to making things work - ‘it is the heart’ of what we need to be doing, it is what drives the economy now.

Myth of innovation - from Charles Leadbeater
Myth

• flash of insight
• brilliant idea
• individualistic
• new knowledge
• invention
• originality
• look to the future
• internal R&D
• product pipeline
• all about learning

Reality

• comes from immersion
• fail early but often
• collaborative
• admitting ignorance
• mostly development (sometimes you can’t afford to wait until things break)
• borrowing
• look sideways and backwards
• networked, open innovation
• consumers as innovators
• but unlearning is just as vital

Simplicity in innovation
simplicity as luxury

In the increasingly complex world, a worthwhile innovation creates simplicity - think of this in terms of our interfaces with learning management systems compared with blogging.
What
Nigel highlighted the video example which is available on the BBC site which is about shooting an interview. In this you get both the final product and also commentary from the director for each shoot about how they went about doing it. This was achieved through asking the directors to share their expertise - a great tribute to draw on your own staff as experts, that staff responded to extremely well.

Next example was Elgg…

Imagine what could happen if the organisation gave a certain amount of web space or server space to each individual. To deal with infobesity, need to get better at saying no, I won’t read that, rather than not getting it in the first place, goal is to be ‘info-slim’ rather than have a ‘poverty of ideas’. Need guidelines to manage how information is circulated eg providing brief summaries. (These points are going to feed into my thinking about an internal ‘teaching and learning’ information service that is percolating in my mind at the moment).

Nigel then showed James Wilson’s ‘Future VLE’ graphic. For the first time looking at it I was prompted to think about what my current and then future VLEs might look like. Something to think about, maybe on the plane home.
Coffee time.. more to come