How to “[Lead] a Learning Revolution”: The Story of the Defense Acquisition University

It took me some time to find this book because it’s Library of Congress classification has it shelved in Military Affairs when it is really about building a highly-effective corporate university. Whatever it takes, do read Leading a Learning Revolution by Anderson, Hardy, and Lesson because it is the best book I have seen on building a training organization.

As the authors write, the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) started off as the typical training department in the Department of Defense. The DAU had great teachers, committed staff, and followed the standard practices for the training industry. It was well-suited for its role as the traditional 20th Century training department.

But, the new president (Frank Anderson) wanted to transform DAU as a key component of the “Total Learning Environment” which uses the new technologies to create on-demand training that is in alignment with the DOD’s strategic goals.

Here are the key takeaways that I found most useful:

1) Chapter Two: Organizational Alignment – “Alignment is the single most important action a learning enterprise should take to optimize performance” (p. 21). The authors describe a great process for doing just this.

2) Chapter Five: Establish A Learning Architecture – Starting with an actual idea on a napkin, the authors tell the story of how they created the “Performance Learning Model” which guided the transformation of the DAU. Surrounded by a ring of “Continuous Learning”, each level of training is reinforced by job experience leading up to a capstone class. After the structured training is over, communities of practice and “Performance Support” reinforce the training and make it stick.

And for anyone who has to lead a transformation project can appreciate the pain of the three years it took to make the transformation work. Of course there was incredible resistance against the new changes (up to a few folks filing formal grievances) but, as the results proved, the effort was worth it. The most valuable lesson here: “It’s the people, not the technology, that determine the success of a twenty-first-century learning organization. That may be a surprise, but it’s true.”

3) “New Technology + Old Organization = Costly Old Organization”

4) Chapter Six: Develop A Smart Evaluation Strategy – It’s not about ROI; it’s about “progress toward the vision and the mission execution.”

There is a lot more in this book from building a good reporting system to the importance of delivering training in different formats. If you are planning on building or reinventing your training department, I would use DAU as the template for the project.

Brain Rules for a more Personal Knowledge Management

Thanks to Presentation Zen for pointing out this new book which are twelve rules for better working with your brain. Dr. Medina has distilled the latest neuroscience research into twelve principles that will help optimize your brain power. I believe these rules have a real impact on how to be a better knowledge worker and for creating a great personal knowledge management system.

Google Prediction Coming True?

Back in January 2006, I wrote a letter to Business 2.0 (no longer around in print but has been archived at CNN Money) about their cover story on four scenarios concerning Google. These laudatory scenarios ranged from Google just becoming the whole Internet to Google acquiring Heaven. In response, I wrote a scenario in which Google just becomes another small company after surviving it's overhyped reputation. The scenario was published in the March 2007 issue with little notice (except for a colleague at work who thought it was "cute"). Ironically, soon after that, I was invited by Google to start using their tools in my classroom because I was perceived as a "cutting-edge educator" (as were the thousands of other teachers who received the same email :-) ).

Flash forward to the May 26, 2008 issue of Fortune which has a story concerning the mass migration of talent from Google. To sum it up:

1) Yeah, Google is a nice place to work but the smart people want to start their own Google rather than just work at one. "It is better to rule in Hell, than to serve in Heaven," Khan.
2) Google's cash cow is the ad service but they don't have any other successful technologies out there. I actually disagree here because I believe that Google has an interesting technology that is yet to receive widespread attention. Termed "Google Glue" by Stephen Arnold of KMWorld, this is a unique application environment in which anyone can use Google technologies to create great business solutions. I predicted this was Google's lasting contribution to the Internet but it would lead to the destruction of the company itself.
3) And Google is just becoming too big and is taking less risks than it used to. This is echoed even by Page and Brin.

So, is my scenario coming true? Well, I see Google becoming yet another small company in the third incarnation of the Internet ("Uninet") in 2020, so they still have a good ten years ahead of them. ;-)

Back to Blogging

I picked up two training classes and a three-week course for May so I've been much busier than I thought I would be. Currently reading Leading a Learning Revolution: The Story Behind Defense Acquisition University's Reinvention of Training which I will review in the next day or two.

See You on May 1st

Need some time off to finish up grading, close out the spring semester, and work on two new training classes.

Playing with Flexible Rails

I picked up a copy of Flexible Rails which finally convinced me to adopt Ruby on Rails. For the last two years, friends of mine have tried to convince me to switch from Fusebox to RoR but I was never impressed with the clunky way to build interfaces using RoR. Meanwhile, I have been playing with Flex and Open Lazlo which have great interfaces but take a lot of work on the backend.

Like the old commercial where an accidental collision created Reeses Cups, combining the power of RoR with the design ease of Flex makes for powerful Web 2.0 applications. What makes this possible is the WebORB which bridges the gap between the applications. Knowledge management folks should spend the time learning about this technology because it makes creating powerful knowledge management applications relatively easy compared to the other frameworks.

2008 - The Year of Social Aggregators?

Hinchcliffe is calling 2008 the "Year of the Social Aggregator." Something needs to be done to stem the tide of fragmented virtual identities floating around. As I work with my students to create positive and professional online identities, their past profiles on Facebook and MySpace pop-up at the worst times.