Great thoughts on how learning is changing

This is an outstanding video "Learning to Change, Changing to Learn." It opens with a shocking statement, "The US Department of Commerce ranked 55 industry sectors by their level of IT intensiveness. Education was ranked number 55, the lowest. Below coal mining."



Favorite quotes:

"Education is focused on getting kids to produce vending machine answers. While after they leave school and begin employment, they will be doing work that calls on their artistic abilities, their ability to synthesize, to understanding context, and will require them to be multidisciplinary, multilingual, and multicultural."
-- Daniel Pink ("Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us", http://www.danpink.com/, twitter: danielpink)

"The coin of the realm will be 'do you know how to find information?' Do you know how to synthesize it, how to leverage it, how to communicate it, to collaborate with it and to problem solve with it? These will be the new 21st century set of literacies."
-- Ken Kay (http://www.p21.org/, twitter: kenkayp21

The rich cultural heritage that is Germany

I’ve never seen Goethe’s “Faust” used to describe expat training, but this says a lot about Germany. It’s a description for expat and/or multicultural team training that refers to the “Gretchen question” in Goethe’s “Faust”. For those of you who have forgotten your college lit courses (or perhaps used one too many Cliff Notes instead of doing the required reading), the charachter Gretchen asks Faust if he believes in God and he does not know how to answer the question satisfactorily. The Gretchen Question (“Gretchenfrage”) is used ideomatically in modern German to refer to a question of great importance with a difficult answer.

But that’s not the point of this blog post. The point is: Germany has a great wealth of cultural heritage that they are justifiably proud of. In just about every art that you can think of, the greats that Germany produced throughout the centuries make one realize that there must have been something in the water, so to speak, that led to genius. This is not at all taken lightly by present-day Germans and, when doing business in Germany, is something to be respected, even revered.

What the business world expects from intercultural trainers

This article, on Xing, is written by Robert Gibson, who has been responsible for intercultural training at Learning Campus, the educational organisation set up at Siemens AG. He very succinctly outlines what businesses see as necessary attributes of intercultural trainers.

Companies expect experience and expertise. No generalists! Not only do you have to talk the talk, you also need to walk the walk. In short: companies want their money's worth. No surprise, perhaps, but good to get this advice from one of the pros inside the business.

Cultural differences? There’s an app for that!

It seems as though we have iPhone applications for pretty much everything these days. The spectrum runs from some outstanding business-related apps that can go a long way to improving your productivity, and some beautifully designed apps to enhance your creativity, to many apps that leave one wondering, “Why?”

Where the CultureGPS app fits for you on this spectrum probably depends on how useful you find the cultural dimensions model of Prof. Geert Hofstede. For those unfamiliar with Prof. Hofstede’s work, you can read more here. But in brief, Prof. Hofstede, while employed as a researcher by IBM in the 1960’s, did studies comparing national and organizational cultures. The result was a 5-dimension model that has been used by culture and organizational experts for many years in classifying differences in culture. While still controversial, it nevertheless offers a modicum of structure for those looking for patterns in behavior that match to national differences. According to the Wall Street Journal raking 2008, Geert Hofstede is one of the top 20 most influential business thinkers.

The application, developed by Sales-Genetics Ltd & Co. KG of Düsseldorf. Germany, is currently available only for the iPhone. According to their website, other smartphone OS platforms are being developed.

"Leadership is overglorified"

With thanks to @sifowler (http://bit.ly/bJ5dBD) for the reference:



Transcript can be read here

This video, originally a TED talk by Derek Sivers, talks about the value of "first followers." These are the ones that transform leaders from "lone nuts" into people with a following.

My question is: what cultural aspects are at play here? This was filmed at the Sasquatch Music Festival (the original video can be viewed here) in Washington State in the US, roughly 250 km east of Seattle. The audience, as you can see in the video, is predominantly white, young, and have a reasonable amount of disposable income, considering the remote location and the fact that tickets a 3-day pass for this event start at €120. Sivers uses the film as a classic example of how first followers define what leadership is, but how would this scene develop in other cultures? Would it develop in other cultures? In a society with a very strong group culture, what would the reaction be to one person dancing alone, if it would happen at all? In a culture with a strong hierarchical structure, would a single, shirtless guy be followed, without any symbols or other signals that would denote his hierarchical status?

Great session #lrnchat yesterday

#lrnchat is an online chat over the social messaging service Twitter that now happens twice every Thursday: first at 4:30-6pm GMT  and then again at 8:30-10pm ET/5:30-7pm PST.

It is for learning professionals who come together to exchange ideas and thoughts that are prompted by questions posed by a moderator. The sessions last 1.5 hours, and in yesterday evening's first session the overall topic was "The Intersection of Online and Inperson Education" and within this framework four questions were posed:

Q1) What are some great techniques for online educators to bring a personal element to their facilitation?
Q2) What are some modern techniques classroom educators can use to add digital depth to their programs?
Q3) Would you rather train online or in person, and why?
Q4) What do you prefer learning online or in person, and why?

It was a wonderful exchange with many great ideas. Online learning at its best!!!

Are you taking your expatriate talent seriously?

To exploit overseas opportunities, multinational corporations must usually transfer executives into them. Yet these expatriates—a scarce and very dear resource—often fail, and many leave their employers even after they succeed overseas. What can multinationals do to protect their investment (which, according to data provided in the article, can run upwards to $500,000 per year)? Some solutions proposed in this article are:

• Unlocking talent by having clear partner-family policies for expatriates, such as adequate and in-depth preparation, rewards for local interaction during the assignment, and easy access to housing, schooling and feedback mechanisms as an ongoing policy. 
• Sourcing creatively such as finding talented expatriate managers in previously run joint ventures, sourcing outside of the corporate home market, and having permanent on-site teams to help facilitate operations. 
• Considering that 70 percent of failed assignments result directly from personal and family difficulties rather than incompetence on the job, having an early assessment program in place is essential. 
• Keeping the expatriates and their families well connected with corporate home base by facilitating a two-way transfer of knowledge. 
• Clear evaluations by involved senior management with visible and well-explained metrics for performance are essential. 
• Retaining the talent within the company: according to one survey, a stunning 91 percent of returning expatriates felt that their companies didn't value their international experience. The result of this is repatriated managers in the US leave their companies at twice the rate of managers with purely domestic experience, usually within one year of returning. 

The article has a great deal of data to substantiate both the problem as well as the proposed solutions. Even though it was published in the McKinsey Quarterly over 10 years ago, the lessons are now more valuable than ever. Considering the increased trend towards globalization and the even scarcer resources because of the economic downturn, it is ever more important to make the small investments necessary to protect the larger business equation.

"Are you taking your expatriate talent seriously?"" by Tsun-yan Hsieh, Johanne Lavoie, and Robert A. P. Samek, The McKinsey Quarterly, 1999 NUMBER 3, p. 71 - 83.