Jay Cross's Informal Learning

MARCH 11, 2010

Organizations that focus on the supply side of the training they provide are looking at the wrong side of the equation. This webcast addresses the paradigm shift learning professionals must make to tap the enormous power of informal learning by the organization’s knowledge assets- their people.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

APRIL 20, 2010

Organizations that focus on the supply side of the training they provide are looking at the wrong side of the equation. This webcast addresses the paradigm shift learning professionals must make to tap the enormous power of informal learning by the organization’s knowledge assets- their people. Need more Jay?

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

FEBRUARY 2, 2009

Appearing in today’s issue of Axiom News, Building Better Organizations : Better to begin from positive assumptions about employees. One of his articles, Informing Learning – the Other 80 Per Cent , Cross makes the point that training is inherently pessimistic. by Michelle Strutzenberger.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

MARCH 31, 2009

The Web trained me to click past unrewarding pages and spend my time where it will do me the most good. Transparency : Seeing the inside of an organization enables us to collaborate with it to make things better. You’ve got to know an organization or person to form a relationship.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

JULY 5, 2009

Next month I’ll be conducting several onsite workshops to inject informal/social learning practices into hidebound organizations that are anxious to ramp up to the future. My intent is to challenge a couple of dozen managers to each come up with a major change project and shape up a pitch to sell the idea to their organization.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

DECEMBER 13, 2009

Chief learning officers (CLO s) are dealing with organizations the same way they did 25 years ago—focusing on full-time employees. They are in old-style organizations that are grappling with a crumbling hierarchy. But those organizations that have jumped on board and are working with (Web 2.0 By Rex Davenport. That is suicide.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

OCTOBER 20, 2009

If you’re still relying on formal training to develop managers, you might want to give this one a read. Formal training occurs in the absence of action; learners are removed from the day-to-day work to engage in lectures, discussions, simulations, role plays, and other instructional activities. 4, Winter 2003.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

FEBRUARY 12, 2010

A social learning culture requires design, training, guidance, leadership, monitoring and celebrating successes, large and small. People need to know where the organization is headed and why it matters. Growing a culture of service is more like planting a garden than building a shed.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

DECEMBER 24, 2010

My contribution has been pointing out that overemphasis on formal learning in organizations is dysfunctional, uneconomic, bad business, and not a whole lot of fun. Corporate training focuses on novices. Schools neglect alumni, and training departments neglect the experienced people, those who generate the profits.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

FEBRUARY 20, 2010

Managers who used to deal with training are focusing on whatever it takes to get the job done. Organizations are going around yesterday’s confining corporate boundaries to form closer ties with customers and collaborators. (I dubbed this the Helicopter pattern recently.).

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

OCTOBER 7, 2010

A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media. Our people need training, not socializing. Re: Second Life) It all seems too sic-fi, too unreal for my organization. The New Social Learning. By Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco. People will say inappropriate things.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

MAY 29, 2009

George Siemens echoes my feelings exactly in his post today on elearnspace titled Modernizing corporate training. I generally resist linking to organizations that monitor and use the ideas generated in the social/learning/tech space, and then produce reports that fail to acknowledge sources of inspiration.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

JANUARY 26, 2010

Training programs. Training programs 8%. Formal: - Training programs. This knowledge since then is at Sara Lee leading in the decisions about investing in learning within the organization. Refer to manuals and instructions. Networking. Mentoring & coaching. Special assignments (e.g. temporary job rotations).

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

FEBRUARY 3, 2010

I’ve been ranting about informal and computer-supported learning in organizations for twelve years now. You’ll find it discussed in training forums, featured in conferences and the subject of many presentations. Coach: Formal and structured learning can potentially promote efficient organization in long-term memory.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

JUNE 26, 2009

Learnscaping , Getting Things done in Organizations , is now available on Amazon for $25 + shipping. Learnscaping describes a dozen learning patterns, e.g. processes that organizations are using to improve performance through networked informal learning.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

FEBRUARY 8, 2009

It’s about eliminating training bureaucracy and sacred cows that have failed to keep pace with the times. While learning is ascendent, training is in decline, for workers are embracing self-service learning; they learn in the context of work, not at some training event divorced from work. Learning is not schooling.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

MARCH 27, 2010

The sooner workers are productive, the larger their contribution to the organization. Sun’s most vigorous competitors in the workstation market, IBM and Hewlett Packard, were training new sales reps for eight and six weeks respectively. Couldn’t Sun provide at least one more week of sales training? Time Matters.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

AUGUST 19, 2010

Anthony Bourdain decided he needed to accelerate his development, so he attended the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) for formal training. Don't you wish your organization had dedicated communities of practice that nurtured newbies, helped everyone get up to speed and advanced the professional knowledge of the field?

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

AUGUST 25, 2009

The culture, training, organizations, tools, artifacts and physical infrastructure all determine the capability of any individual or group to perform. Models for prolem-solving do not address the needed complexity. The solutions are too big for any one individual or any one discipline.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

MARCH 23, 2009

Unfortunately, the majority of companies that provide training today are currently involved only with this side of the continuum. Jay Cross has advised hundreds of companies for over 30 years, this is your chance to ask him questions to better understand how your organization should be thinking about learning. Return on Investment.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Starting virtually from scratch, America had to train millions of men to be soldiers and millions of civilians to make ships and armaments. The training film was born, soon to be followed with the ADDIE model. but ADDIE is beginning to show its age: Training is only part of the learning equation. Because she’s in training.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

MAY 25, 2009

Blurb : Chief Learning Officers and training directors are struggling to convince executives they are making a difference. This un-book explains what a training director must do to get budget, keep her job, and make solid contributions to the bottom line. If you can do that, convincing your organization shouldn’t be a problem.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

FEBRUARY 21, 2009

Why not just cut the training budget? On the organization’s income statement, however, the good, the bad, and the ugly learning experiences all look the same: they are costs. Take a new training initiative, for example, a new product rollout. Picture the training in your mind’s eye. Outcomes matter.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

JANUARY 11, 2009

This fluid state affords re-organizing, re-arranging, and replacing the status quo. The challenge for organizations is to use smart delivery, to replace classes with technology, to embrace open source, and perhaps to adopt a software-as-a-service model. Tough times will force the training function to focus on value.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

FEBRUARY 17, 2009

Note : The vintage photos in this post are from training conferences circa 2000. The organization refunded registration fees for the handful who had signed up, and offered a credit toward a future event to offset the expense of canceling their flights. How can organizers make things better? Same boring approach.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

DECEMBER 22, 2008

It is particularly important to motivate people who have little education and who do not ask for education and training. The subtitle to the unbook is “Getting Things Done in Organizations.&# It can help to create new jobs, ensure quality of life and prevent new class distinctions. Charlemagne, “the first European&#.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

DECEMBER 22, 2008

It is particularly important to motivate people who have little education and who do not ask for education and training. The subtitle to the unbook is “Getting Things Done in Organizations.&# It can help to create new jobs, ensure quality of life and prevent new class distinctions. Charlemagne, “the first European&#.

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Performance Support Policies Education Performance 36

Jay Cross's Informal Learning

JANUARY 24, 2010

We all know that you shouldn’t use training jargon (e.g. Learner is banned because no one but the training community uses the term. You have probably stopped using the word training , but just in case, let’s review why it’s inappropriate. Training is something you do to someone.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

JANUARY 10, 2009

Machine-age managers complained when employees had downtime because they were in training. A corporation investing in training is analogous to a consumer buying a new computer. Why can’t the Training Department handle this? Focus shifts from inside organizations to outside. Learning has become a corporate survival skill.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

JANUARY 3, 2008

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

JUNE 26, 2009

Learnscapes are the factory floor of knowledge organizations; they are where workers connect to create value and learn from one another. What about brain training games and software? If you seriously want to increase your organization’s collective brainpower, you owe it to yourself to visit the SharpBrains site.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

SEPTEMBER 17, 2006

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

JULY 12, 2010

Emerging eLearning (Abu Dhabi), Training (U.S.), organizations spend so much money on formal learning but spend little (if any) in support of informal learning? Command-and-control is giving way to bottom-up organizations where everyone shoulders responsibility. They are currently refining informal/web 2.0

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

AUGUST 28, 2009

Learnscaping — taking a systems view of learning in an organization — necessarily addresses a broad array of topics and disciplines. Hence, the articles and posts from Informal Learning Flow aren’t confined to what you’ll find in training magazines and learning conferences. August 1, 2009 to August 30, 2009.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

DECEMBER 17, 2008

Organisms only stop learning when they die. Training consisted of supervisors showing workers how to run things. Brinkerhoff and others find that only 15% to 20% of what’s learned in a corporate training event shows up on the job. Training programs are events; learnscapes are longterm processes.

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

FEBRUARY 6, 2009

The Fortune 500 would be ill-advised to implement 18-year job rotation training or to train assembly-line workers through campfire stories. Might mutual respect and a common worldview enable our organizations to do away with rulebooks and management mechanisms? They are correct. Why do we need the corporate equivalent of school?

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Jay Cross's Informal Learning

JUNE 13, 2010

Yet were corporations to embrace the Brain Rules, they would raise their organization’s capacity to learn and also improve the efficiency of current training efforts. It’s a classic case of paradigm drag: put off the new stuff until the old stuff has been completed.

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