Actually, both have their place. I just get worried when they’re the default “methodologies.” Yeah, yeah, we’ve each got to take ownership, become self-actualized, and I suppose move our own cheese. Here on earth, though, people just want to get their job done.

Heyjoe training is a quick-and-dirty approach to JIT — but what happens when nobody you can say “hey” to knows the answer? I’ve been helping my wife plan training for her organization’s new content management system.

(And you know you’re in trouble when the name of the system is a noun gang.)

Although we’re comfortable with HTML, CSS, and things like that, the quirks of this system (or those of its designers) imply that WYSIWYG means “what you got is what you get.”

Your comment about creating structure was an “Aha!” moment for me in identifying some of the resistance I have to totally self-directed learning in the workplace. For many of us, time that was formerly self-managed is now filled with “self” service. We pump our own gas, scan and sack our own groceries, re-balance our own retirement plans, read our own electric or water meters, file our own health insurance claims, etc.

It theoretically would be nice for each employee to choose his/her own learning path, but this adds to their self-service load. They have to have good online search skills to navigate the LMS, then evaluate the choices they find without manager guidance. As a result of HR outsourcing, managers are too busy filling out the latest quarterly goals report in the performance management system or filling out their own hiring or termination documents to hold conversations with their employees.

So, what I’m seeing is that, more and more, employees rely on the “Hey, Joe” method, as in “Hey, Joe, do you know how to do xxx in the new version of PPT?” Or, if there’s a training staffer with a customer service mindset, employees rely on that person for hand-holding and decision-guidance. For one thing, conversations with other people are still faster ways to get just the right information than searching a computer, no matter how good the EPSS design.

Are we doing the necessary force field analysis to plan effective learning in the workplace? I think we need to re-frame corporate training as a component in an entire life system, rather than a support service in a lighthouse, with the waves of social networking and web 2.0 lapping at its feet.

I may be a little pessimistic, but I’m inclined to think the average person (or average worker) doesn’t want to create his own structure for everything. He’d like to find good-enough structures on which to build. That’s why, to the consternation of some, most workers, most white-collar workers, even most knowledge workers don’t have blogs: they don’t want them, they don’t have any need for them. And these folks manage to keep working productively.

You both are making excellent points.

I thought about adding columns for learners and for senior learning executives and for senior line managers, but that would have been unwieldy and wouldn’t have fit. Perhaps I’ll add to the model someday, although it is my experience that when model’s get too complicated they lose their power to communicate and persuade.

This version of the model was specifically designed to help learning professionals decide what to do and to communicate what is required of non-learning professionals (especially learners’ managers).

In some sense, the model covers the learners’ responsibilities in that it tells us (learning professionals) what we must do to motivate, prepare, and energize those learners. It is understood that learners have responsibilities, but I kind of think that we will produce better outcomes if we take responsibility to encourage learners to take responsibility–along with our partners out in the workplace.

Maybe one of the missing pieces in informal learning, for me, is its connection to the workplace. I understand completely that people learn elsewhere, and learn for reasons not connected to their work. That’s fine; I’m just not dealing with that.

It’s more that “informal” or “2.0″ doesn’t mean “will have a positive effect” or even “will happen.” If wishing made things so, there’d be no market for diet books, no health clubs, and no in-search-of ads.

Although as you know I’m fond of the term “workplace literacy,” I do agree that people in general need skills for collaborating, communicating, and so on at work. There’s a related set of skills for me as an individual to manage my own learning, as well as skills and processes for the manager and the organization to help me maximize my learning and align it as well as possible with the organization’s goals.