Andrew begins a recent blog post by stressing the inefficient ways employees of the federal government experience training and education, and by suggesting three forces that will shape the future of learning for federal government. These include:

1. Informal learning is the new normal (i.e. Google searches, YouTube videos, LinkedIn / Quora / GovLoop question and answer).
2. The real experts are in cubicles, not classrooms (meaning that we learn less from people who stand in front of us in a classroom and more from our colleagues online and in-person).
3. Social networks are the perfect, perpetual classroom (you don’t need to wait for the next training – you can learn right here, right now).

Social Learning Boot Camp Modeled Social Learning

With that background as context, Andrew participated in the Social Learning Boot Camp hosted by    Future Workplace at Georgetown University. First Andrew shared how the Boot Camp was not just another conference, but really an executive education session which successfully modeled a new way of learning, one that is social, collaborative and mobile.

Here is what Andrew had to say about his experience at the Social Learning Boot Camp:

• Participants were encouraged to engage in pre-work that got them to interact with one another and primed them for in-person engagement
• Pre-work was incentivized through gaming and that online interaction was incorporated into the in-person session.
• Each participant received an iPad and was taught how to use it throughout the session.
• Participants broke into teams and used the iPad in a hands-on, real-time activity where they created a sample learning video to explain a concept or challenge – in under an hour!

In addition to these practical elements of the training, participants heard from practitioners who shared case studies about enterprise-level learning through internal social networks and gaming. I’d like to give a special shout-out to the Defense Acquisition University, who presented on their cutting-edge gaming endeavors.

Key Learning Points from the Boot Camp

Some other gems I heard in conversations and presentations throughout the day:

• “We are canceling more instructor-led, classroom-based courses than we are putting on due to tightened budgets and restricted travel.”
• Employers are increasingly expecting their potential hires to demonstrate social media literacy (or training them in that subject)…and applicants are increasingly expecting an open, social environment that welcomes online engagement as part of work flow.
• The top 3 barriers to adoption of social learning in an organization are: a culture that’s not ready for it, confusion about its value, and lack of training on its use.
• It is not fear of technology, but fear of transparency that inhibit social learning.
• Culture change happens when an organization identifies the committed leaders, communicates the benefits, and creates social media literacy training programs
• Social media / learning policy should explain the value, not just the do’s and don’ts (see socialmediagovernance.com for examples)

Why the Real-Time Video Project Was Successful

The videos created by participants were great examples of how quick, easy and effective it can be to prepare video for the purpose of training as they were:

• Created in real-time for just-in-time learning
• Authentic because it wasn’t over-edited
• Involved focused, fast production (vs. a long, drawn-out process)
• Fostered collaborative, social work to get it done
• “…not just a tech thing” as most of the production process was a dialogue about challenges (45 minutes) that culminated in a tech-enabled product (5 minutes)

One of the groups even used an app called Magisto to add music and some editing – all in just a few minutes – to take their video to the next level.

The next Social Learning Boot Camp is scheduled for:

March 7-8th, 2013

Georgetown University

Washington DC

Learn more and register here:
Social Learning Boot Camp

Top line findings from this research include:

• 70% of all CEOs have no presence on any social networks
• Only 7.6% are on Facebook
  • Of this, only TWO have more than 500 friends
• Only 3.8% use Twitter
• 25% of CEOs have not updated their LinkedIn profile with a current job title or company (What would you think if a prospective candidate did this!)

So what exactly does a Social CEO look like? What does he or she do and what are the implications in marketplace? As the infographic below illustrates, A Social CEO first and foremost believes in the value of learning from employees and customers in social ways. And Social CEO’s can demonstrate this in several ways one of which is by using social media to:

1) Gain market intelligence

2) Engage with current and prospective & current customers

3) Source & recruit top talent

4) Demonstrate transparency and openness

View the infographic and then read below to view the questions to ask yourself about what this means for your CEO?

Questions to ask yourself:

1) Will the demographics of the 2020 workplace change this? As more CEO’s assume office at a younger age, will they bring their social media habits to the job and insist on learning from employees and customers?

2) Will consumers vote with their dollars and decide between two brands based upon the “social literacy” of senior management? Are CEOs who have a social presence–defined as being active on some social media sites and sharing their beliefs and comments about the marketplace and industry–seen as better able to understand consumer needs and wants? According to BrandFog, a survey of CEOs who use social media found that CEOs who tweet are held in high regard by consumers. CEO activity on social networks also appears to influence employees’ faith in their company. The study’s findings indicate that 82% of employee respondents trust a company more when the CEO and leadership team communicate via social media.

3) Will HR and Corporate Learning professionals set the bar high and be the pioneers in building a social HR department and lead the way here?

Share your thoughts with me in the comments section!

The infographic below, entitled “How Do We Spend Our Live Online,” was created with data from comScore, Pew Internet, The Digital Life and Nielsen.  Some interesting top line data points include:

We spend a typical hour in the following way:

• 22% on social networking sites
• 21% on searching for information
• 20% on reading content
• 19% on emails
• 13% on multi media sites
• 5% on online shopping

Social networking activities win a clear lion’s share of people’s attention, with this set of data suggesting that Facebook captures an average of more than 465 minutes of people’s time each month.

Highest growing trends of online usage:

• 27% Location based services
• 27% Time shift TV
• 19% Internet Banking

Least growing trends of online usage include:

• 12% User created videos
• 12% Live internet videos
• 12% Professionally created videos

So here are three of my surprises after viewing the Infographic:

• With growth of internal social networks in companies, more employees will be encouraged and see value in creating user-generated videos. Is this really on the downward shift?
• Forrester predicts the social enterprise software industry will become a $6.4 billion market by 2016. What happens to email? How long will it be taking up almost 20% of our typical hour during the day? Will this go down to 5% and how fast? If you listen to what companies like Jive, Moxie say, the death of email is right around the corner.
• The Global online population is exploding with 30% of world’s population. If Chinese users spend five hours a week shopping online, what does this mean for emerging markets in Africa, Vietnam and Indonesia, will they follow suit?

Here is the How We Spend Our Time Online Infographic.
Share your surprises with me here on the blog.

It’s a fact by the year 2020, there will be five generations working side by side with Millennials representing 50% of the workforce.

Working on a multi generational team is already commonplace among many organizations and an increasingly number of managers should prepare for this and yes embrace it.

Here are five suggestions to keep in mind when managing a multi-generation team:

1. Offer coaching and mentoring opportunities to GEN X: They are often referred to as the “lost generation,” as a result of being sandwiched between the Baby Boomers and the impatient motivations of Millennials. Gen X’ers want to be recognized for their expertise while at the same time worry they may suffer from Prince Charles Syndrome: Being passed over with promotions and recognition going to Millennials There are several ways to engage and retain Generation X: mentoring, customized career planning, flexible work arrangements and having succession planning conversations early and often.

2.    Anticipate That Millennials will ask about social media access during a job interview and have an answer for this or risk losing a prospective new hire. Millennials to ask about social media access, choice in technology usage at work and flexible work arrangements. According to the Cisco Connected Technology World Survey of 2,800 college graduates and young professionals, One third of respondents would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to device choice, social media access, and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility, Two thirds of respondents will ask about a company’s social media policies during the job interview and 56% will not accept a job from a company that bans social media access from work or the will circumvent around this policy.

3.    Offer Boomers and Traditionalists the opportunity to share their expertise as coaches, mentors or faculty at corporate training programs. After all, Boomers are now referred to as Generation Ageless since Boomers are redefining what it means to age and grow old. In fact, The World Health Organization predicts that if a male is 60 years old and healthy he can continue to work in a full time job until the age of 74 and a female can continue until the age of 77 years old. As our older workers either want or need to stay in the workplace adopt a strategic view of how to use their skills and offer them continued training to keep their skills up to date as well as the opportunity to be faculty in a company’s corporate training programs.

4.    Consider customizing benefit packages for each generation. We live in a mass customized world of customized blue jeans, music and newspapers. Why not benefits? In their book, Workforce Of One, Susan Cantrell and David Smith argue that companies should adopt a “workforce of one” approach meaning applying customer segmentation practices to employees. Using this approach, can lead to a personalization of benefits. For example, rather than offer a standard package of health, wealth and paid time off for all employees, more companies should consider segmenting benefits by generation. So, a company might consider offering Millennials benefits in “life skills,” training in areas of financial literacy and learning a new language while benefits targeted to Boomers may focus on elder care or financial planning for retirement.

5.    Be proactive in creating a multi generational team. This means deliberately involve employees from a mix of generations, cultures, and gender on a project team. They will each approach the problem at hand with their unique mental map and this will make team projects that much richer. Consider this: By 2030 minorities will make up 42 percent of the U.S. population;

In the end, a multi-generational and multi-cultural team will help a company better prepare and understand the needs of a customer base, which increasingly will mirror your multi ethnic and multi generation employee population.

Share with us what your company is doing to manage a multi-generation workforce.

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE) — Future Workplace will present its Social Learning Boot Camp, an exclusive, two-day event that provides senior executives in corporate learning, human resources and talent management the tools to design and launch collaborative learning platforms. The boot camp is March 19 and 20, 2012, at the IESE Business School (165 West 57th Street) in New York City.

“Forward-looking organizations are adopting collaborative learning to improve employee productivity and the speed of innovation”“Forward-looking organizations are adopting collaborative learning to improve employee productivity and the speed of innovation,” said Jeanne Meister, Future Workplace partner and co-author of the best-selling book, The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow’s Employees Today (HarperCollins, 2010). “This is our fourth Social Learning Boot Camp, which attracts chief learning and talent officers and their teams. As we head toward 2020, we will see more organizations using social media to attract, retain and develop their employees, as well as to collaborate with their customers and suppliers.”

Talent development and training is evolving from the classroom-based model to a more-collaborative one that leverages a range of social media tools. During the Social Learning Boot Camp, participants gain a deeper understanding of best practices, benefits and barriers in designing and implementing social learning in their organizations. Participants receive an iPad 2 and use this during the boot camp to experience the power of social learning, tweet insights and questions to #slbootcamp during presentations, as well as develop a business case for social learning in their organization.

The boot camp features the following sessions, among several others:

• Learn how Cerner Corporation created UCern, a collaborative platform to connect all members of the Cerner network (employees and customers) to better innovate and quickly adopt new ideas throughout the enterprise.
• Examine how companies such as AT&T, AXA Equitable, Marsh and Jarden Consumer Solutions are re-imagining corporate learning to be social, collaborative and peer driven.
• Explore why corporate learning needs to adapt to the digital needs and expectations of Millennials (born between 1977 and 1997).

Meister and the Future Workplace team will offer continual recaps and debriefs to help participants build a plan they can take away from the boot camp to implement in their own organizations.

Partner companies who are working with Future Workplace to produce the Social Learning Boot Camp include Jive, GP, Kaplan University, DeVry University’s Keller Center for Corporate Learning, Ashford University and Badgeville. In addition, IESE Business School will share original research on the use of iPads in executive education programs.

For more information about the boot camp and to view the full agenda, visit www.sociallearningbootcamp.com.

About Future Workplace
Future Workplace is an executive-development company that works with human resources executives in Fortune 1,000 organizations to provide continuing education, peer networks and leadership development. Future Workplace runs the 2020 Workplace Network, an ecosystem of innovative chief learning officers, chief talent officers, and directors of global human resources who are rethinking, reinventing, and re-imagining the role of human resources, corporate learning and talent management to drive business results. For more about Future Workplace or the 2020 Workplace Network, visit www.futureworkplace.com.

About IESE Business School
IESE is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world by publications, such as The Economist and the Financial Times. In 2007, IESE became the first European business school to establish a permanent presence in the United States. Its state-of-the-art New York Center, located in Midtown Manhattan, offers diverse programs for executives. For more about IESE, visit iese.edu.

Contacts
Amy Briskin, 212-794-6644
amy@futureworkplace.com
www.sociallearningbootcamp.com