"Power of Pull" chapters 3 & 4 Part 1

Chapters 3 and 4 address "Access" and "Achieve".  


[Partial recap of Chs 1 & 2 courtesy Barbara Smith-- see link in previous post. Nice discussion of "The Edge" from Mark Britz (@britz) at http://learningzealot.blogspot.com/2010/12/you-can-position-yourself-for.html)


Q9. How would you explain the difference between "push programs" and "pull platforms" to your boss/other?


Q10. How many "surface areas" do you have? How many would you say most people in your immediate world have? How can we increase those?


Q11. What do you think of the idea that we have a certain "disposition" to access and attract attention? Does that mean some will always be excluded?

Q12. Chapter 4 offers extensive discussion of the move to pull platforms. What are the implications for L&D? Consider things like traditional HR and management roles and training. 


Q13. From Steve Maul: "Arguments against “push” seem to focus on zero-sum game and that they were borne out of a contrived scarcity of resources.  Unfortunately, scarcity does actually exist in some circumstances - whether it be materials, human knowledge, skills or finance." Your response?

Reminder: We are discussing via HootCourse, but you can choose to publish to Twitter. If you are enrolled in the course, anything Tweeted with the hashtag #lrnbkpull, including quotes from your Kindle, will appear in the HootCourse feed. 

HootCourse can also be accessed via a mobile device at http://hootcourse.com/course/973 . 

Power of Pull Chs 1 & 2 Wrapup; Recap of Early Discussion

The first part of the Power of Pull discussion wraps up today. New questions tomorrow on Chapters 3 (my favorite so far!) and 4. 


Thanks to Barbara Smith for stepping up and recapping the first part of our discussion on her Collaborative Learning Today blog. She said it was ok to copy her post here, so here's an overview of our conversation on the first 4 questions.

"The first week’s questions from the LrnBk Chat on “Power of Pull” included the themes: Passion, Serendipity, Learning, and Creating Change. Seehttp://lrnbk.blogspot.com/.

How do we help others find, leverage, and kindle passion?

To help others kindle passion in their work we need to address their entire environment: provide support, tools, and enable connections.  Convince people they can "pull" the information they need.  Show them how to go out and figure out how to do their jobs best.  Let’s help others marry their passion with their profession. 

According to John Seeley Brown, organizations must be re-crafted to serve the needs of individuals.  That will require serious change.  That sort of serious change can't come from the top down (that's PUSH).  It must come from within the organization with leader support.

How can we map passion to profession?

Let’s ask people what attracts them to the job and find out how the organization can facilitate connections that help foster that passion.  Perhaps we need to be doing “stay” interviews; find out how we can make the profession one someone can be passionate about.  Let’s invest time in genuinely *knowing* people in the organization, in the work path and outside of it. 

What did the Grommets learn about learning?

Grommets didn't focus on learning. They focused on their passion, their joy and through this they learned and improved their skills.  They learned by learning together, studying their performance and the performance of others.  Grommets made learning fun; learning happened as a byproduct but drove success.

What are lessons for those of us in learning and development (L&D)?

Learning requires performance feedback and practice. Collaboration and support are key elements. We need to build a way for employees to get access to knowledge flows when needed.  L&D needs to set up two way communication and sharing of best practices.  L&D must support and provide the platforms - creation spaces really moving away from command and control.  We are better together then we are apart.

How can we 'create' serendipity?L&D can create serendipity for our employees by sponsoring events that bring people together who share the same passion.  Serendipity requires being "out there" constantly, in search of new ideas.  If you follow your passion, you'll be in a place to learn when it happens. You may not be expecting a payoff in your search but all of a sudden you have a serendipitous encounter.  L&D needs to facilitate learning experiences that allow for serendipitous encounters.

Creating change:  Saying "The edge transforms the center”, the authors assert that we need to start by working to change individuals, not institutions.  Do you agree?

We must change individuals.  Change comes from individuals working from the ground up.  How can an institution change if the individuals do not? Start with the people who display their passion and branch out from there."

We are using HootCourse for this discussion (we're course number 973). If you have joined the course, tweets with the hashtag #lrnbkpull will also appear there. You can likewise tweet from your Kindle using the same hashtag. And you can access HootCourse from your mobile device http://hootcourse.com/973 .

Discussion of questions 5-8 is still is still underway so please add your thoughts on facilitating the move from push to pull, how a leader can promote "pull", how organizations can foster "creation spaces", and how networking has changed. 

Check in tomorrow for new questions! 

Power of Pull Chapters 1 & 2, Part 2

This is proving to be a fun discussion with lots of participants!  Here are some more questions, with help from Karen Burpee and Steve Maul. Remember to join us at HootCourse http://hootcourse.com/course/973/ .


Q5. How can edge participants help to facilitate the move from push to pull? How to establish trust relationships between edge participants and organizations?

Q6. When an executive (or leader) wants to promote "pull" - what actions or behaviors best demonstrate the commitment? 


Q7.What are the ways organizations can foster “Creation Spaces” for optimal Pull?

Q8.Authors talk about 'old style' networking v. new. What has been your experience of that? What's changed, and what's been the result? Wrap-up questions Monday. We'll start chapters 3 & 4 next Wednesday, 8 am ET.


Can I get a volunteer to write up a recap of the conversation?

Thanks, Jane

"Power of Pull" Discussion Intro and Chapters 1 & 2 (part 1)

Here we go! Remember to join us via http://hootcourse.com/course/973/ . You can choose from there to post your comments to Twitter-- or not. Hootcourse will add the hashtag #lrnbkpull . Most seem to be using Kindles so we will go with location numbers. Those with paper copies: there is no reliable calculator yet for matching Kindle location to page number, but we'll try to make sense of where we are!

As the introduction proved so interesting let's include comments from there here as well. The first questions are arranged around some general themes of the book: Passion, Learning, Serendipity & Creating Change:

Q1 Passion:  20th century institutions saw passion as disruptive and unpredictable. What arguments does"The Power of Pull" make in encouraging passion (think of the Grommets). How do we help others find , leverage, and kindle passion? How can we map passion to profession?

Q2 Learning: What did the Grommets learn about learning? What are lessons for those of us in learning and development (L&D)?

Q3 Serendipity: Think back on times in which you learned, really learned something. Or think of a significant moment of success. How much depended on serendipity-- a chance encounter with someone or an idea or event. What are lessons there for those of us in L & D. How can we 'create' serendipity?

Q4) Creating change:  Saying "The edge transforms the center”, the authors assert that we need to start by working to change individuals, not institutions.  Agree/no? Why/not?

More questions on Friday, 8 am ET. See prior post for details re rest of schedule.

New book chat on "Power of Pull" #lrnbkpull

Time for another Twitter-based book chat! Since his opening keynote at DevLearn 10, people have been fired up about John Seely Brown's "Power of Pull". It's available in hardback and for Kindle.

In order to keep from flooding the Twitter stream (and to keep others using the lrnbk tag from flooding ours) we'll use Hootcourse. You can sign in w/ your Twitter account at http://hootcourse.com/course/973/ .  You need to choose whether you want to publish your comments to the Twitter stream (easy to turn this on and off).  Hashtag is #lrnbkpull; HootCourse will add this to your tweets.

To accommodate folks in different time zones discussion will be asynchronous. I'll post questions here (please send me your ideas for questions), then people can join in conversation via the Hootcourse link,

The book has 7 chapters of about 30 pages each, and people  agree that 2 chapters at a time will be manageable.

SO:

--Discussion of Chapters 1 and 2 will start on Dec 15. I'll post questions here at 8 am ET.

--Discussion of Chapters 3 and 4 will start on Dec 22. I'll post questions here at 8 am ET

--We'll skip the week after Christmas.

--Discussion of 5 and 6 will start on Jan 5. I'll post questions here at 8 am ET

--Chapter 7 and wrap-up on Jan 12. I'll post questions here at 8 am ET

OK? Details on this blog.

Discussion via HootCourse http://hootcourse.com/course/973/ .Hootcourse will add hashtag #lrnbkpull.

Let's rock!
Jane