Catching a Wave

Upon Adobe's news about the demise of Flash, I was reminded of my (now very old) blog, Flash for Learning. Back in its heyday of 2004-2007 (pre-Twitter), I connected and upped my skills with several other Learning-Flash professionals through blogging. Flash as a technology is well past its expiration date, but Flash as a canvas for exploring ideas about how to connect ideas with people interested in learning about those ideas -- through Flash, and through writing and talking about Flash in that way, I learned a lot as part of a global community that took to using Flash for eLearning.

This memory is resonating with me a lot today. When I was last actively blogging (as opposed to publishing), I was developing ideas around social and informal learning approaches, which led me to ask questions about the design of learning experiences. Before xAPI became a thing, when my head was full of ideas in need of development, blogging was an invaluable canvas to express and develop those not-fully-formed ideas. My ideas around xAPI as an enabler for experiential learning are pretty well-formed now. I've ridden that wave pretty far.

The next wave I'm looking for is about what the future looks like for Talent Management, or L&D, or Operations. However it is formalized in your organization, there's a group that's either matriced out or consolidated into one function that is concerned with training people. If you're the person responsible for that function, the tools and the practices are changing as I write. As a former CLO, I'm thinking much more now about what I would need to know to effectively lead a transition -- a transformation -- into a data-wise pillar for my organization.

A few weeks ago, a colleague shared that a data-wise Learning function skips several steps from wanting a seat at the table to being one of the legs of the table itself. I think that metaphor is really apt. The conditions look right to start working this out together. So, consider this the first of (I hope) many posts where we have the conversation about how we get to being so clutch to the C-suite that not only do leaders know how much they value learning -- it simply becomes a necessity.

Looks like this is our wave, friends. Are you ready to catch it with me?