A busy week last week: I started out on a two-day day retreat with a dozen HR leaders from large, global businesses, exploring the steps towards building the Socially Dynamic Organisation. I liked them: they were smart, unafraid to challenge, and future focused. Much like most people I work with in organisations. The challenge we face may not be legions of resistance, but rather our own inability to forge trusted bonds outside our immediate network, and to admit that we need to co-create solutions. A Socially Dynamic Organisation must be grown, and it starts with you. And me. We have to build it, together.

 

In other news: the MOOC on ‘Foundations of the Social Age‘ launched last week, with around 250 learners engaged. So far, very successful, but I will write more about this over the coming weeks.

 

In the News

Sergei Polunin, the ‘bad boy of ballet’, is in the headlines again. I like this story as it highlights new types of power. Where once the power lay with the ballet company, now, the democratised collaborative spaces of Twitter and other social media enable the dancer to maintain a more synchronous and effective relationship directly with his community. This leads to new opportunities, and an ability to directly hold a socially moderated reputation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-39082475

 

An Upside to MOOCs

I enjoyed the slant of this piece, looking at how MOOCs can identify tenacious learners. I believe that many formal elements of our education system are spending far too much effort belittling and avoiding the true impacts and portents of the MOOCs. They will demolish the older models of education and find new, monetised, but lower cost alternatives. And completion rates may be low, but there is still radical innovation in form and content. Watch this space to see how the fight turns out.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-02-22-the-flip-side-of-abysmal-mooc-completion-rates-discovering-the-most-tenacious-learners

 

Slightly Afraid of Robots

If you search hard enough, you will find the full range of views about the coming of the robots: some who think the revolution will never happen, some who foresee the apocalypse. I would hesitate to hold the first opinion and am too optimistic for the second. But there is a fallacy that seems to persist: that there will be little impact from AI, Robots, and machine learning because we will simply adapt to ‘higher end’ jobs. I don’t buy that: automation, AI, and robotics, will transform everything, and making ourselves feel too comfortable will not divert the significant social decisions coming our way. What replaces work?

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/jobs/a-robot-may-be-training-to-do-your-job-dont-panic.html?_r=1

 

My Writing

Part of my focus this week was on developing the work around Learning Architecture: this will develop previous work in the books on ‘Social Learning’, ‘Learning Methodology’, and ‘Mindset for Mobile Learning’, into a broader ‘template’ for organisational learning teams. It’s intended to highlight aspects to consider, such as learning design, modalities of delivery, and effectiveness and engagement.

https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2017/03/02/developing-a-learning-architecture-a-workingoutloud-post/

 

I also reflected on whether ‘Projects are the enemy of change’. This caused some debate, which I enjoyed. A true value of #WorkingOutLoud:

https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/projects-the-enemy-of-change/

 

Finally: change runs in small steps, and this piece considers how we should measure it over six weeks:

https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2017/02/28/six-week-change-small-steps-to-transformation/

 

What I failed to do this week: I failed to complete the illustrations for Social Leadership 100. It was always a long shot, but I did precisely none of them. Small steps to big goals… but you have to take them every day.

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