Another “Suite Spot” Takeaway

Tom Kelly hit a few notes I could harmonize with in his article for T&D’s September issue, “Hitting the Suite Spot: How Learning Leaders & Executives Can Speak the Same Language.”

Not only did he get me thinking about how we need to communicate to the two bosses about results (see previous posts), but this quote of his from a 2007 Forrester Research report got me thinking along different lines:

“[I]nformal learning continues to gain ground in the corporate training environment…. But there’s a disconnect: most organizations still spend the majority of their training dollars on formal learning even though most employees now learn primarily through informal activities.”

Cost of Formal Training

Associations are living the same disconnection: investing thousands of dollars — millions, for large associations — on one-time events that will reach a relatively small percentage of members. Think about it: if you spend $300,000 on your annual conference, and 700 people attend, you’ve just provided a one-time event that cost almost $430 per attendee.

If you keep in mind that the cost of an event isn’t just the dollars spent, but the time spent as well, then you can begin to see how much your formal training is actually costing.

Let’s also say that your annual conference requires one full-time meeting planner, and the part-time assistance of another three staff members. Let’s say the full-time meeting planner costs the association $50,000/year in salary and benefits, and the combined hours of other staff members (hourly rate x number of hours they spend preparing for and attending the conference) is another $50,000.

The real cost of your conference is now $400,000 and the cost per attendee is over $570.

Cost of Informal Training

Now let’s say you implement some ways your members can connect informally, over distance, using Web-enabled tools. You provide blogs, wikis, forums, and discussion groups, all using free Web applications.

You allocate one staff member to monitoring and guiding these informal, online activities. Maybe sometimes the blogs generate continued conversations about a topic from a live event, for example.

Now let’s say you hire that person full-time and their total cost (salary and benefits) is $50,000/year.

Let’s say these informal activities reach 1000 of your members.

Do you see where I’m going?

So here’s the real question:

If you can justify $500,000 to benefit a small percentage of your members, why can’t you justify a smaller investment to benefit a larger number of members?

Social Networking Providers

If your assocation has decided to incorporate an internal social network (“white label network”) — a network that resides in your Web space, attached to your Web site and usually connected to your AMS, as opposed to FaceBook, LinkedIn, and other publicly-available systems — then you’ll want to get your hands on this new white paper from Socialfish.

Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer have pulled together a great starting point for anyone considering implementing a system. Drawing from interviews with key vendors, the 50 or so page document summarizes the companies and their systems, with details about the features, backend structures (important to make sure members will be able to access the system and you’ll be able to provide it), pricing models, and contact information.

They intentionally didn’t provide one of those checkmark charts, but you might decide to create your own in order to sort through the narrative comments.

And keep in mind that these are vendors Socialfish knew to contact — rather than a comprehensive representation of all available vendors and systems. Keep your eyes and ears open to any other companies you hear about, because this is not a complete list. The white paper provides a good model for the sorts of questions you can ask to begin exploring those companies.

More than that — make sure you have done your homework! You won’t know what you’re looking for if you don’t know what you need.

It’s like ordering at your favorite restaurant — you could order everything on the menu (it all sounds so good, right?!), but that gets expensive and you’ll be full before you get through everything.  Going in with an idea of “what you’re hungry for” will help you narrow your choices and make the best decisions.

Get your copy of the white paper here: http://socialfish.org/wp-content/downloads/socialfish-vendor-whitepaper.pdf

Mentoring vs. Training — Why Social Networking Isn’t Enough

Let’s say you’ve been spending the last few years on the other side of Mars and just tuned into the blogosphere to find out where online learning is today.

What would you discover?

With all the focus on social networking and social media (SN/SM) you might conclude that online learning — especially asynchronous elearning — had gone the way of the manual typewriter, 8-track tape, and those TV dials that used to change the channel and adjust the volume.

Advocates of SN/SM probably don’t see a problem with that (who wants to get up, walk over to the TV, and change the channel anyway?!?).

But here’s the thing:

Mentoring and training are not the same thing. They serve different purposes, take different amounts of time, and require different skill sets.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say your fundraising for program development in your association is conducted by volunteer members from a committee. The committee of five rotates 2 or 3 members off and on each year.

Which is the most effective way to prepare your volunteers for their responsibilities? (Select one answer.)

A. Call each individual and explain to them what’s expected.  This is individual mentoring.

B. Convene a general call with the full committee and explain everything. This is group mentoring.

C. Create a brief tutorial that covers all the essential information, and make sure all committee members complete the tutorial. This is training.

D. None of the above.

Best answer? D. Why?

A& B are more personal, but you risk leaving something out that could have significant legal or financial implications. A requires a lot of patience and time. B requires you to decide whether to have the entire committee on the call (with some attendees who have heard the information already) or just the newcomers (who won’t gain from the experience of those who served on the committee the previous year).

If planned carefully, a tutorial will ensure you have covered the essential tasks, requirements, legalese, etc. But even the best online training can’t anticipate every question that could come up.

So the best way to prepare this committee is to provide an asynchronous tutorial that gets everyone on the same page followed by individual and/or group mentoring to answer questions that the volunteers might still have.

If you expect your volunteers and members to learn everything from you (as a staffer) and each other via SN/SM, you’re guaranteed to discover gaps and misunderstandings.

There is no mistaking it: online social networking sites (whether they are interal or public) provide for excellent mentoring.

But mentoring is not the same as training, and shouldn’t be substituted for it.

Social networking/social media are not the same thing as training, and shouldn’t be substituted for it, either.

So let’s not let the big discussion (necessary though it is) to cloud over the continuing importance of online training.

eLearning is not the 8-track tape. It’s the electric guitar you could hear on the 8-track and the cassette, and now hear via CD and digitally in other ways. The guitar will likely change over time, and the delivery of how you access it will certainly change, but the instrument itself is here to stay.

SN/SM is the tape deck, the turntable: it’s the platform. It’s another way of delivering content.

Don’t mistake the CD player for the music you hear when you turn it on.

eLearning Learning Adopts aLearning!

With many thanks to Tony Karrer, the aLearning Blog is being added to the eLearning Learning community. Not familiar with it? Check it out with a simple click in the lower right badge!

Powered by Browse My Stuff, this is a very cool aggregate of all the latest elearning information in one spot. And it aggregates a LOT! Just a few days away and there are dozens of new posts from an array of sites. The set-up makes it easy to view through Google Reader so you can quickly scroll past the items that aren’t of interest or clear all if you’re really feeling behind.

It’s hard to stay up to date on the latest when you there’s so much to keep track of. If you’re like me, I was reading about the foodservice industry  (our association’s industry), membership, training and HR devlopments, elearning, meeting and events planning, management (budgeting and all that), communications and marketing… Anything that makes getting through the morass of information faster was a welcome thing.

eLearning Learning’s feed of information will do that for you!

Flip the Financial Model

Dan Pontefract, in his Trainingwreck blog, has a great idea related to his Learnerprise 2.0 model: “Rather than investing 2/3 or more of a corporate learning budget to formal ILT and eLearning, why not flip the model and invest 2/3 on informal and social learning components and initiatives.”

If you buy into these beliefs (and you should):

•  most learning is informal, rather than attained via ILT (instructor-led training) and formal e-learning courseware
• social media (SM) and social networking (SN) are tools that help open the pathways for efficient informal learning
• informal learning has been at the heart of most associations since the day they were founded — “networking” isn’t just about connecting members for business reasons, but what they learn from each other, consciously or not

THEN

You should look hard at your overall educational budget, making sure that you have more invested in informal learning opportunities than formal ones — perhaps at the 2/3 level Pontefract suggests.

Josh Bersin, discussing the results of the Bersin & Associates report, High-Impact Learning Practices: An Operating Guide for the Modern Corporate Learning Function, says, “The shift from traditional training to informal learning requires organizations to retool and develop new skills, add new technologies, and reorganize resources. Our research shows that learning organizations with expertise and skills in areas such as knowledge management, information architecture, community management, and performance consulting outperform those still focused on traditional training solutions.”

So here’s the good news: associations have traditionally been way ahead of corporations because networking, sharing of knowledge, and connecting have been so central to our missions.

Even so, it’s a good idea to ask:

• What role does informal learning play in your association’s education strategy? How are you handling informal learning at face-to-face events? Online offerings? Social media/networking?
• What should you be doing differently? What does this mean for the structure of your annual conference?
• How will doing things differently affect your budget? How your volunteers contribute? Your sponsorship opportunities?

Should you be flipping your budget to divert more funding to informal learning than traditional events?

Are you already doing that?

What do you think?