The Orwell Prize (”Britain’s pre-eminient prize for political writing,” if they do say so themselves) is publishing George Orwell’s diaries as a blog.

They began a few weeks ago and will post his entries in real time, 70 years to the day after each was written. He began the diaries on August 9th, 1938 and kept them till October, 1942. So we’ve got a just-started blog that’s guaranteed to last for the next four years. Get your feeder ready.

A splendid joining of technology (blog software) with one of the most observant writers of the twentieth century. As a partner for The Elements of Style, it’s hard to argue with Orwell’s Politics and the English Language (1946) — and I’m not talking just about politics.

More than one blogger (including me) could take on board advice like this:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

A while back, I read the four-volume George Orwell: Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters, edited by Ian Angus and Sonia Orwell (George’s widow). Different content from his diaries, but just as widely ranging, from book criticism to short notes to friends to a letter suggesting four possible pen names to use on Animal Farm. (He seems to have left the choice up to his agent and his publisher. )

Here’s his model (click for a larger version on his site):

I think Will’s focus here is more on what I’ll call scheduled learning (rather than “informal,” which is too loose a term). And that works well in many cases in organizations: if you’re managing properly, then you’re finding out where someone may need or want to gain additional skill; you determine ways that can happen; and — the key part of Will’s model — you connect that learning to the job, both in terms of performance and in terms of desired results.

For example — maybe I want to learn how to create cascading style sheets. Or maybe I want to make technical sales presentations to clients. That’s fine for me as an individual — but in the context of the organization, I need to figure out how that’s going to contribute. Am I trying to gain more responsibility in my current position? Do I want to have different responsibilities in the same general area? Am I trying to take on something entirely new?

And, does this make sense in terms of the organization? For most of the time that I worked for GE Information Services, the bulk of our revenue came from applications that ran on a proprietary operating system GE had developed. Many people had built impressive skills with Mark III, as we called it. In later years, though, both IBM mainframe applications and the PC came along, followed by the web.

As the company’s goals and needs changed, it had less and less use for Mark III skills, no matter how strong they were. If you wanted to stay only in that realm, you were in a sense closing out your own options.

Going back to Will’s chart, one of the additions I’d like to see (and Michele Martin had a similar opinion that I failed to read before adding my own comments) is a column for the learner.

After all, the individual is the pivot point for the performance system. Not only (as Will points out) do learning processionals need to understand business needs, not only do managers need to clarify them, but the individual needs to understand them as they related to that person’s own job.

I have other thoughts on Will’s chart — for example, I am mulling over ways it could reflect not only the somewhat linear sequence of preparation –> learning situation –> on-the-job, but also just-in-time learning.

Maybe it’s it’s just-after-time learning. I’m thinking of unplanned occasions in which the individual realizes he or she needs to learn about something, usually with a timeframe that precludes a more scheduled learning event (like a workshop or synchronous training). That’s much more learner-centric, and the “learning professionals” are not as likely to be able to help unless they’re well informed, flexible, and willing to aid the individual in making intelligent judgments on his or her own.

More on this in a future post.

I don’t have any formal background in science, so a good deal of the time I was swimming (or dog-paddling) in water over my head. (And mighty polysyllabic water at times: “a chronic increase in proinflammatory cytokines can induce a state of resistance to anti-inflammatory glucocorticoids.”)

Moynihan’s main topic was the link between the immune system and the brain. Each influences the other. This sounds straightforward — but for centuries “common sense” told people the earth was flat. Moynihan provided evidence for the connnection… and some possible implications as well.

For example, one study showed that exposure to acute stress prior to a flu vaccination enhanced the body’s ability to create antibodies — but only in women. ( “Acute stress” here means a brief, one-time experience, such has having to subtract backwards from 1,000 by 17.)

Chronic (long-term) stress produces what’s called allostatic load. “Allostatic” refers to the body’s complex balancing act. If you’re walking in the desert, you’re stressed by the head. The body could sweat, but eventually you’d dehydrate. So rather than that simple, homeostatic adjustment, the body will reduce urine output, dry out mucous membranes, decrease sweat output, constrict the circulatory system in order to maintain blood pressure with a lower volume…

An increased allostatic load can have negative consequences:

• Impaired cognitive function
• Suppressed thyroid function
• Decreased bone density
• Decreased muscle mass
• Higher blood pressure
• Decreased adaptive-immune function

That last point reference to the adaptive immunity you’ve acquired — e.g., through vaccinations.

In other words, chronic stress can reduce your body’s ability to protect itself.

This was a summary of a complex field, but at least for me, one worth tracking.

Stressful work photo by alexanderljung / Alexander Ljung.

• More people are learning independently in ad hoc, asynchronous fashion.
• As options for learning have expanded, employees feel they have less time to learn.
• People want job rotation and stretch assignments, but rarely get them.

Michele sees great potential for addressing the high-tech / high-touch desires of employees. For instance, she believes that employers could use much more virtual mentoring.

I agree, though mentoring is not one of those make-it-so solutions that senior managers are so fond of.

The Masie Center probably didn’t explore the topic of seelou training, though I believe this is the single most common approach to learning on the job.

“See Lou?”
“Yeah?”
“Do what Lou does.”

People can learn on the job, of course — that happens all the time. The question is whether it makes sense, organizationally, to look for factors that increase the likelihood of learning. If you’re going to have mentoring, for example, how do you choose the mentors? What’s in it for them?

Allison Rossett tells of a mentoring program for a real estate brokerage. Experienced, successful agents seemed like the ideal mentors for new hires. But not every senior agent wanted to be a mentor, and not everyone who wanted to worked out well. The firm discovered it needed to provide training and support for the mentors, as well as for the new hires.

(There’s a difference between a war story and a real-life example; that difference isn’t always obvious.)

One organization change that this company implemented: compensating the mentors not only for time taken from their own selling activities, but also as a way of sharing in the success of the people they mentored.

I might be a skeptic, but I think it’d take quite some time for individual mentors to make that happen.

The idea of a carnival is a regular collection of posts with some common thread. In this case, we’re talking about posts relating to the theme of work at learning; learning at work.

So if you’ve got something to say about how people go about their own learning, or how individuals and organizations try to foster learning at work, you ought to think about taking part.

If you don’t know much about blog carnivals, there are three mains parts:

• Participants write a post connected to the overall theme, publishing that post on their blogs on the designated day.
• One blogger acts as the host for the carnival, publishing a short description and a link to each participating post. (In return, each participant posts a link to the “host post” so readers of the one blog can find the rest of the carnival.)
• The carnival appears on a regular basis.

Once a month seems good for now. Past editions of the Working / Learning carnival appeared on the third Monday of the month. If I can get at least four hosts to step up, we’re covered for the rest of the year.

Can’t have a blog carnival without posts, though. Our process hasn’t been very bureaucratic: if you want to participate, just write a post ahead of time (or, if you must, recycle a hit from the past) and send the permalink and a description to the host. You don’t need an invitation; you don’t need to make a commitment to join each time.

It’s a good way to discover other bloggers you might not follow, and someone might discover you as well.

More details on these pages:

• Hosting the Working / Learning carnival
• Participating in the carnival

“Alive” poster photo by eqqman / Eric Hart.