Core Digital Competency: Learning
Organizations cannot achieve digital maturity without learning
Digitally mature organizations operate differently. Technology plays a role, but it’s just part of the recipe. The technology available magnifies the impact of how the organization operates, however, technology alone is never the answer. Being digital is about embracing new ways of working, which requires an aligned culture and mindset. How do digital organizations work differently? These organizations are flatter; people are empowered, they embrace experiments, transparency is prominent and team-based models abound. With this foundation in place, digital organizations are then set up to move nimbly, innovate and leverage technology.
We often discuss the competencies needed for “being” digital and one that receives less attention than it should is digital learning. Digital learning is a core competency for a digital organization and to succeed we need to “mind the gap”. Organizations that lack this competency will struggle with digital, will lag behind competitors, and disappoint their stakeholders (shareholders, customers, and employees). Digital transformation is not a one-time event, rather it is an on-going, ever-lasting new mode of operating. Success with efforts to improve, learn, adapt and innovate demand digital learning. A less mature organization that is “doing” digital, may encounter and embrace a definition of digital learning like the following:
“Digital learning is any type of learning that is accompanied by technology or by instructional practice that makes effective use of technology. It encompasses the application of a wide spectrum of practices including: blended and virtual learning.[1] Digital Learning is sometimes confused with online learning or e-learning, digital learning encompasses the aforementioned concepts.” — wikipedia.org
What jumps out is the focus on the technology. Digital learning is about much more than technology — and any pursuits that focus only on technology will fall short (which in turn will limit overall digital maturity). So, if being digital is about embracing new ways of working, then digital learning is about embracing new ways of learning. In the past, we’d find that learning in organizations is centrally managed, hierarchical, formal and infrequent. Digital learning needs to be optimized to align with the needs, pace and operating model of the Digital organization. Digitally mature organizations embrace the new ways of learning that are decentralized, democratized, informal, social, team-based, learner-driven, and continuous. There needs to be harmony between ways of working and ways of learning.
In exploring digital learning, we consider the topic from multiple perspectives including culture, literacy, scaling, analytics, mobile, gaming, design, and architecture. These are our keys to success! Let’s take a closer look at each perspective:
- Culture: Being digital and succeeding with digital learning starts with culture. There’s more to culture than just coffee and cupcakes. For many organizations, there’s a focus on creating a nice place to work (who doesn’t like coffee and cupcakes?), but little interest in changing the larger aspects of the system itself. Putting up posters, bringing in coffee or having a potluck won’t do anything to align the culture of the organization with the systemic changes needed to support continuous learning (digital learning!). We’re asking our stakeholders to see the world differently, to learn new skills, to revisit the definition of success. But unfortunately, as a leader, there isn’t a simple, direct way to establish a new culture. There isn’t a “culture button” we can push to get the adjustments needed. Culture is an outcome from the organization that we design — adjusting and balancing changes across multiple dimensions. Some interesting models to consider include the Star Model and McKinsey’s 7-S framework.
- Digital Literacy: We need to establish digital literacy across the organization. These literacy efforts further the definition of our organization and establishment of our culture. With this literacy we have the means to think, plan, discuss, experiment and create our stories.
- Scaling: The pace of change is fast and accelerating. And, we must help everyone in the organization learn. The net of the situation is that we need to figure out how to scale considering both frequency and volume. Success requires us to thoughtfully use technology to meet this need. Beware advice or thinking that you can hire your way to digital. Yes, you can gain some momentum and have impact bringing in new talent. But such efforts have limits as you can’t replace everyone with a new hire. Further, even if a new hire has the skills of the moment, they still may lack the ability and mindset to stay up to date.
- Analytics: In the pursuit of scaling learning in organizations, analytics is going to play a key role. The technologies we use day-to-day for collaborating, building and consuming content provide a digital footprint — one that we can examine and consider as we consider how learning is (or isn’t) occurring in the organization. And, as we further orient toward a decentralized and democratized view of learning, we still need insight on impact and where to invest in potential interventions.
- Mobile: We have our mobile devices with us all the time, we’re always connected, and learning happens continuously. Ubiquitous access meets ubiquitous learning! It is especially interesting to consider the individual, their personality and interactions with personal digital assistants (PDAs, Bots, Chatbots). We’ve all had interactions with Siri, Alexa or similar. Having the ability to easily access and use an intelligent assistant is straight out of a sci-fi future. It is exciting to think about having such support for learning with a PDA that can easily be accessed, is intelligent, recognizes you, knows you, and is always getting smarter.
- Gaming: Games, simulations and gamification offer creative paths to support learning. Building games, playing games and generally finding more effective ways to engage and enable need to be included in our efforts. We can and should embrace gaming.
- Design: Design and design thinking are key components on the path to improving the learning experience. Sometimes, there is a need to design learning experiences. And sometimes, we need to think about how we design an environment and provide the support to help others design (and create) the learning experience. Such a path of embracing empathy, reframing challenges and working in ambiguity is meant to be inclusive and leads to both buy-in and innovation.
- Architecture: Technology is going to play a critical role and to that end we need exceptionally strong approaches to our enterprise and solution architectures. Poor technology choices and implementations can hinder progress and doom our efforts.
These perspectives help us establish the learning capability needed for maturing digital organizations. This maturation is needed as organizations succeed not based on remembering answers to known problems, but instead by finding the best answers, in limited time, to new questions and problems. Organizations don’t find themselves lagging the industry due to a specific technology or isolated skill — they suffer from a systemic inability to scale learning.
So, what does good look like? Ideally, every team member sees the world as their classroom and laboratory. They learn from experiments and interactions with colleagues, partners and customers. There is a dynamic network of learning that they contribute to and leverage. Each day, they find and share discoveries and ideas via blogging, micro-lessons, lunch & learns, YouTube, texting and a healthy dose of mentoring and pairing. Doing so sets the stage for maturing the digital organization.
