Social Learning Helps Define an Organization’s Leaders

My strategic initiatives (SI) team at Bellevue University has been involved in developing and deploying a social learning strategy since July 2010. The experience has produced some valuable lessons.

The original catalyst for our social learning initiative was experience gained by one of our colleagues during her Ph.D. thesis work involving an in-depth study of a nationally known nonprofit organization. As a result of extensive interviews with the organization’s leaders, it became clear that an important part of the organization’s strength is grounded in its tacit knowledge. From that thesis work a desire to capture this knowledge of strategic initiatives was born.

As with most organizations today, the social learning conversation rapidly migrated into a debate about what technical platform to use. The university IT operation threw its hat into the ring, claiming responsibility as the keeper of computer software. At about the same time, marketing jumped in with its favorite technical tool. While these domain-based debates were under way at the committee and senior leadership level, SI made a choice. We licensed Jambok, a software approach developed by Karie Willyerd and her learning team at Sun Microsystems.

The platform choice was based on system design. Content stored includes competitive information, product information, forms, processes and commentary from clients including testimonials. Security was built into the design, and we had the option to create lots of communities.

Early in the implementation it became clear several priority decisions were critical. We needed a champion — someone with leadership ability, ease with technical systems and above all a passion for the project and its goals. We also needed to embrace and align the organization through broad-based involvement in design and deployment decisions. We did this by creating a governance board made up of representatives from across SI and from other interested university departments.

One last decision critical to the launch was made by the leader and the governance team. Rather than invent the system from the ground up, we decided to build on an existing model — the method of knowledge management systems as deployed by the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC).

Finally, we branded the social learning initiative the KnowledgeCafe to create a larger umbrella concept. We wanted the system to be viewed as more than a piece of software. We wanted a grander vision, a broad concept of a place where employees could go for knowledge of all kinds. We wanted to create a brand.

We learned that choosing the APQC model and creating a governance board took the initiative in a content direction and away from social. KnowledgeCafe is an active place where hundreds of contributors from across the university publish information. That information comes from both inside and outside the university.

Along with business priorities, one of my personal priorities was to use KnowledgeCafe as a way for my team to know me better. Knowing who our leaders are as human beings helps motivate and align our organizations. Without a lot of deliberation I posted two personal pictures. The first is a picture of me and my son Jason standing with arms across each other’s shoulders attired in colorful jerseys and bike shorts. It was taken on an annual bike ride across Iowa, and it remains on my KnowledgeCafe home page.

The other picture is a shot of me holding a large Arctic char while standing along a river on the Katmai peninsula in Alaska. I removed the picture, because while the majority of the SI team reacted as though the pictures were valuable, discussions within the governance committee got hijacked by debate about the image. The contention was that KnowledgeCafe is about business and should be focused on serious business-related content. It was argued that a fishing picture is detrimental to the business objectives, so at the request of the project leader, I removed it. I leave it to you to derive your own lessons from this experience.

Michael E. Echols is the vice president of strategic initiatives at Bellevue University and the author of ROI on Human Capital Investment. He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.