We continue to be interested in the applications of LearningEdge to broader organizational issues, in particular change projects as these seem to dominate our organizational lives. We were fascinated, therefore, to find the work of Dr. Carol Beatty of the Queens Industrial Relations Centre, who has just completed a research project which involved looking at the success factors of 200 change management projects of various types. Her results are organized into three categories: areas of strength, areas for improvement and areas of weakness. Interestingly, only one area of strength was identified - celebrations of small wins.

Of real importance to us, however, were the areas she suggested were weaknesses including management of resistance, training, and alignment of systems with the change, as these findings are consistent with the ideas of many learning organization theorists. As Senge in the Dance of Change says, "change initiatives are doomed from the start to achieve less than their potential - until building learning capabilities becomes part of the change strategy."

The LearningEdge toolkit directly addresses these areas of weakness and provides a roadmap to building the necessary learning capabilities to ensure that change initiatives make it past the visioning stage.

Calliope Learning partners with Hi-Performance Learning (HPL) to provide LearningEdge in South Africa.

As you might imagine there's an interesting story behind this ... and a lot of learning. We met Ryan Falkenberg at the ASTD conference in Washington, DC in May. He was very interested in LearningEdge, but he was based in South Africa (just outside Johannesburg) and we're based in Victoria, Canada. Our initial conversations revolved around our schedules and some very long flights. Although the potential for Safari was very attractive, it was clear that we probably wouldn't be able to get together until the fall and that the trip would be costly and time consuming. HPL also had a client who was ready to do some work immediately!

Here's the learning ... we were forced to rethink how our LearningEdge certifications were delivered and to return to our own expertise in e-learning. We provided the certification workshop to Ryan and Randall Falkenberg (both of HPL) via a combination of streaming video, self-directed exercises with the tools and telephone conferencing. There was a lot of preparation required and materials needed to be couriered half way across the world, but we learned that we could still find new ways to do things when we have to.

The benefits to HPL included not having to wait for the workshop to be delivered face to face and a big saving in travel expenses (both time and money). Later this month HPL are presenting a seminar, "Learning Organisations - the evolving reality" at the Johannesburg Country Club. We wish them all the best.

Calliope Learning is now in a position to seriously consider this method of delivering workshops to others. It still may not be our first choice, but we've learned to do something new, and would be very happy to explore doing it again.

While most of us may ask for an org chart to orient us to a new organization, most of us also realize that it's the people not on the chart who are related to an organization's performance, the way it develops and executes strategy, and its ability to innovate. Based on their study of over 60 informal networks within organizations across the world, Cross and Parker outline a model for helping leaders identify and use social networks.

We were interested in this recent book because of its conceptual overlap with communities of practice work, and again because of its implications around implementing change. Going through a social network mapping exercise (which involves mapping lines of communication among people) can reveal the following types of people in networks:

1. Central connectors - These are the people who have the most arrows pointing to them. There are two categories - the unsung hero who, for whatever reason, is able to keep information flowing through them and two, the bottleneck who despite their own intentions may end up holding the group back because they can't keep up.
2. Boundary Spanners are those who provide links between two groups of people with different functions, locations or positions in the hierarchy.
3. Information Brokers affect information flow disproportionately because they're close to many other people who don't have formal contact with the organization.
4. Peripheral People are isolated from the organization and the challenge is to identify how that is affecting the organization.

We feel that these hidden social networks account for most of the informal learning that takes place in an organization. Becoming aware of how to tap into these informal networks would help learning and training professionals make the most of their initiatives.

We've got two face to face certification workshops scheduled for the fall that still have space available:

Victoria - October 18-20
Toronto - Nov 29 - Dec 1

Don't hesitate to get in touch if you want more information or visit our Web site to register.

As we mentioned above, we now have experience in delivering the certification workshop at a distance. We'd love to talk with you if you'd like to explore this option further.