I have this book of excerpts from the renowned management consultant, educator, and author, Peter Drucker, that I picked up from one of those community libraries.
I love the serendipity of book swaps.
As I was paging through this one, I came across an entry in which he describes his view of knowledge workers as mobile assets. These days there are many more knowledge workers in the economy, so his insights were quite ahead of their time.
I share my thoughts on this entry in this short video.
According to Drucker, increasing the productivity of the knowledge worker requires addressing a number of key factors.
The 8th factor he identifies is Continuous Learning.
He goes on to identify a few guidelines for addressing this factor that I’d like to share with you and discuss.
The first two relate to the discovery of learning needs.
- Knowledge workers should be proactive in identifying what they need to learn to keep up with the things they are paid to know.
- Knowledge workers should request their own training and development.
This is so true today, don’t you think?
I discussed this previously – in today’s economy, professional training is dominated by demand-driven needs for knowledge in the moment it’s needed. This has huge implications for developing learning content.
Learning content needs to be easily:
- searchable,
- accessible,
- consumable (think bite-size, video-based, with the option to pause and repeat), and
- shareable (to discuss with and learn from colleagues).
This is indeed the shift from macro learning to microlearning, where:
Macro learning is:
- I want to learn something new
- Whole courses or classes
- Definitions, concepts
- Exercises graded by others
- Social interaction
- Coaching and support if needed
And microlearning is:
- I need help now
- Topic- or problem-based
- Search by asking a question
- Rated by users for quality & utility
This shift is important these days since a large part of the day is spent looking for information and answers. We’re constantly distracted by emails and messages. Josh Bersin research revealed modern learners spend only 24 minutes a week learning.
We have to make it count…