We all know that the US economy (as valued by Wall Street) has grown a couple of trillion dollars since 1994, and that this has not been industrial growth. You don’t see new oil refineries and steel mills popping up all over the landscape.
But it has been real growth, real wealth, not only share issuance. It has come largely from knowledge-based activity. We have created hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalization - in real growth - as we shift gradually from an industrial age, to what has been called the Information Age, the Digital Age or the Age of Knowledge.
At the same time, there has been on-going growth in our scientific knowledge about learning. This comes from research using both MRI-neurologically based and from other testing/experimental-type work, and it has given us hugely enhanced insight into how to create knowledge and learning.
We now know how to build the metaskills which lead to effective organizations, and how to develop the underlying base-skills, attitudes, values and collaborative behaviors which are already powering the world’s most successful companies.
We know how to build collaborative knowledge communities, and how to support them as they create wealth.
We have a very good idea of how to scaffold learning to create the on-going development of competencies across all industries and managerial structures.
We also know how to stop wasting money when creating learning. We still spend billions on canned talk-and-chalk, death-by-powerpoint and click-and-forget training, but we’re getting smarter. For example:
a. Most people in an organization understand that “if behavior didn’t change, the training didn’t happen”.
b. We’re assessing learning transfer (more than 72 hours after training).
c. Learners themselves are asking about what they need to learn, whether content is useful, and whether there was a front-end analysis (especially GenY, aka Gen-Why?).
d. We’re using the right kind of channels and modalities to create learning. Finger-tip learning and performance support when that suits the situation, group work in other situations…
A lot of newer business thinking now places learning front-and-center in any effective business process. You’ll also see practical plans for implementing wealth-based, growth-through-knowledge, and analysis or benchmarking of how this is being done by the most successful companies of our time.
Great read: L Bryan and C Joyce’s Mobilizing Minds: Creating Wealth From Talent in the 21st Century Organizations. (Yes, it’s from McKinsey (who produced the famous Allstate document from the 1990s.) It’s also a fascinating look at how organizations can design themselves to maximize the knowledge-based development of wealth.
The authors focus mainly on large companies, but the principles are applicable right down to small business.
They tackle a lot of big, common problems, such as the dilemma of line-managers being focused on the tactics of making budget, which often prevents an organization’s benefiting from long-term strategic initiatives. They map each solution (e.g. the structures and processes that nurture a portfolio of developmental and entrepreneurial possibilities, at low cost and low risk.)