The New Social Learning
A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media
By Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco
2010

Yesterday afternoon, an acquaintance who was appointed chief learning officer of one of the UK’s major banks three weeks ago asked me where to find some great examples of social & informal learning. He knew from experience that the way to sell the new learning is through examples rather than logic. It’s easy to pooh-pooh “social learning” but impossible to argue with success.

The first thing that sprang to mind was The Working Smarter Fieldbook. The Internet Time Alliance will be announcing a new edition in a matter of days. Believing in the power of examples (and the facile misinterpretation of labels), we beefed up the Fieldbook with dozens of new stories about successful implementations. Then I bit my tongue. On the flight to Europe, I’d read Marcia’s new book.

The New Social Learning has the best examples of humanizing learning and leveraging network effects I’ve read anywhere. Better than ours. Examples of what? Communities. Story sharing. Twitter. Collective intelligence. Immersive environments. Organizational transformations. The usual suspects.

Wait – there’s more. After succinct descriptions of what’s going on and why it matters, the book addresses the organizational roadblocks that inevitably arise and provides logical workarounds.

If you follow the posts of The Internet Time Alliance, you know we are generally in the front lines of the struggle to wrest control from industrial-age fuddy-duddy managers who perpetuate obsolete people practices. We take a lot of crap for trying to force staid companies to wake up and smell the coffee. Marcia’s book gives us the ammunition to respond to these slams:

• Is this learning?
• People will say inappropriate things.
• People will post incorrect information.
• Our people need training, not socializing.
• These systems compromise classified information.
• This can’t be governed.
• Our management team will never sign off on this.
• People will waste precious time.
• Employees will give away company secrets.
• Some people will just lurk.
• People will post inappropriate videos.
• The value of media sharing can’t be measured.
• In person is always best.
• Video isn’t for serious businesses.
• Videos are for fun, not real knowledge transfer.
• (Re: Twitter) I have too much to say.
• I don’t have time.
• It’s only for young people with ti eon their hands.
• It’s overwhelming.
• Answers are hit or miss.
• I don’t know how to use it.
• Finished content is more valuable to works in progress.
• It’s risky to let anyone post anything.
• Our information is unique. There’s no way to share that.
• We have a wiki but few people contribute.
• (Re: Second Life) It all seems too sic-fi, too unreal for my organization.
• This is all too expensive.
• This doesn’t create lasting change.
• It’s not natural.
• No one will be interested.
• People aren’t paying attention.

Tony and Marcia give well-reasoned rebuttals to these slams. They have more patience (and tact) than I, for my response to most of these would be “Bullshit!” Or “You don’t know what you are talking about.” The loudest criticism emanates from people who have no experience with what they are criticizing.

They close out each chapter with sound, practical recommendations.

If you want to link arms with those of us who are out to change the world for the better, read this book.