[Take 1: How We Learn] 

Any of us that are driving the social / open business conversation at work have experienced the following, upon trying to sell or introduce a new (enterprise) social channel for collaboration, learning, engagement:

Reaction A – “Ooooh! A new opportunity to relate, connect, commune.”

Or,

Reaction B – “Ohhhh! Another way for me and my team to waste time at work. I just don’t have time for this…”

For the lucky /skilled social practitioner, there are 2 Reaction As for every Reaction B. For the rest, maybe the other way around?

If you want your social learning channel to work across your organization you have to persuade the B group to (re)learn and (re)engage anew. But here’s the real challenge: not only must they commit to (re)learn and (re)engage. They must do so by embracing the very time-wasting they are reactionary toward.

Because social learning requires redundancy and repetition. This is how tacit knowledge becomes explicit, by working and reworking the data and ideas and information and understanding, in a network with multiple nodes configuring and reconfiguring, until new methodologies, opinions and positions emerge.

It is worth it in the end, but how on earth do you describe that to a non-believer? How do you turn the fear into the joy? The only way I know how is to practice it myself, work out loud, and keep inviting others in to experience it for themselves. It is a matter of working through the network, one node at a time. It is worthwhile and human, painstaking and deep-breath-taking!

Many social practitioners have recently been frustrated by the lack of uptake in social tools, behavior and commitment. I wonder if at the heart of this is the need for embracing the very thing that non-believers dislike so much…

←This Much We Know.→