Also worth noting that numbers of people are now learning for themselves learning what they want, when they want, how they want and with whom they want without having to get time or budget approval. My doing 20+ MOOCS and now Working Out Loud Circles with complete strangers has revolutionised my life and my learning. All for free apart from time.

Agreed. I am a raging zealot for this as per my online learning profile above.

Yet another reminder to me that L&D pros have similar issues to what we IT pros had many years ago. Come on (L&D) people this is not rocket science.

THAT word again :)

A reminder to me of first-mover advantage

Yet to use these in a learning or any context!

I am not a Zero Email raging zealot BUT not convinced we should pander to the non-ESN users, ideally we should be moving over to ESNs in ways appropriate to the organisation in question.

My challenge is to carve up groups appropriately by subject or tool. I do have a General Resources group. I also find that the Slack and Trello blogs have great tool-independent content too.

See my earlier reference to RSS feeds in some of my Workplace by Facebook groups

Happy memories of photocopying articles for colleagues as far back as mid-1980s. I have never stopped! I have got "worse" !!!

Must be in low hanging fruit and quick win territory!

but are more likely to have the collaboration platforms to enable and make this work? Yes per "catalyse" in same sentence ... oops :)

This is back to classic and obvious business case stuff re what do we need and when and costing options

I am back to looking for evidence of learning in these ways both inside and outside of workplaces

Implies you know who those people are and you may not know but for some of us that is the whole point of an ESN

I have been community manager for a global learning community on Workplace by Facebook since November 2017. The groups include resource groups for many different subjects including tools, some populated in part by RSS feeds.

This could be written for Working Out Loud and the "generosity" value in WOL !!

Scary how many e-newsletters I still get that I no longer need! I have started unsubscribing to lots ....

Strong resonances with Cal Newport's Deep Work

Never used, will check out

Some of my deepest learning is when I rabbit trail :)

• wondering what Josh uses as bookmarking tool? *

I am increasingly doing this when I am reading books and note taking. I have started doing a "research later" section for my book notes.

Don't think I have ever done one of these formally BUT my year of reading 2018/2019 lists of books is based on what i want to learn, I do this at the start of a specific course e.g. Working Out Loud circle.

Ideally feedback should be given routinely cf meeting assessments at the end of each meeting/call etc against a checklist. Beware of only doing feedback session when there is a massive issue!

Questions are definitely great for learning.

also need to suss out experience and not just head knowledge

especially handy for showing screen and key strokes when struggling with MS Office functionality that you need!

A fave model

is this reported anywhere?

I assume this is mainly for medium-term capability learning but also for immediate need training ....

Making me think how recruitment processes can assess candidates' ability to lifelong learn, what would you use as evidence, I have done a learning profile that is completely separate from any CV/resume-type document: Online learning profile

interesting to read this, in my admittedly limited experience I do not see this priority in lots of people's lives.

a "Core Part"?

Carries connotations of paid work. Would prefer this to say "Work and Life" cf the definition of "work" in Designing Your Life book

An HBR tag for the article

What led me here was Rachel Happe's comment in LinkedIn when she shared the article in Jan 2019: "Go: How many times did McKinsey use the word community in this article? Truly glad they are coming around but don't act like you invented this approach, please 🙄" https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6489967342771073024

If you need any help, just contact Simon in Workplace :)

Probably worth including audience para; who is this article aimed at? if I was responsible for a 1,000 seat Slack site should I read this?

I believe I have seen this model once before. This is the first time I have crawled all over it. I do not find it that accessible. The explanation helps. I am an operational person looking to get real work done. I would expect to see those kinds of activities present and explicit. Or is this all covered under "ERP"? I am a WOL fan but clearly I can use ESN without using WOL.

is it not the ESN that decreases email dependency?

I would put headings before the quadrant references

how are they tracking?

any feedback on my comments? any howlers in my lack of understanding of ESN?

You may have seen it but there is a video of our circle's use of Slack @ https://www.facebook.com/groups/workingoutloud/permalink/1313813068685917/?match=c2ltb24gZm9nZyxzbGFjayB6b29t

so is it worth adding a short para intro re purpose of article?

have just been

you mean from a biz email addy?

see earlier comment

see earlier comment and other places where this is used

people can still use ESNs in that kind of way if they use DMs, private channels

and presumably any emails involving a person not on ESN will live outside or someone needs to drag into ESN, not looking clean to me

not sure i understand, if it is like Slack you can add your own channels but presumably any organisational structure to ESN has to be worked within and if you are posting in wrong channel they will get moved by admin

book? attributing a quote or the gist of the para?

is that word right for all following terms? just one example: "enables/facilitates/encourages serendipity"?

so without wolan there would be no ESN adoption?

does this mean that there a cross-functional group that manages the ESN?

how?

demonstrate? but how is it doing that? what are you looking at and aggregating to make that point to the Board?

lots of nurturing going on ... good word ....

can still search without # and in some cases can be better as if I use esnchat I will get back all tweets with @esnchat and #esnchat

may need to use hashtag-ing as I believe some systems also have tags.

"The #wolan"

area of interest for me is whether ESNs are actually replacing any operational systems at all eg is a Purchasing system being replaced by ESN?

and not strategic?

is this meaning that people's inputs to ESN will be used in evidence etc?

does every org have one of these?

how do they demonstrate that?

I thought at first in pic and now in text that this was BI reporting related. Looks like you mean hashtags that are named according to terms familiar in the org.

what is that? I can obv Google it ...

a bit negative! "opportunities" also??

misunderstood at first, is this strategic goals for the ESN or for the organisation? if the former OK, BUT if the latter, I would not be happy for ESN to drive biz strategy. After all, ESN is "just" an enabler! #controversial

does this mean that goals are channels in the ESN?

I am a Slack fan .... #youknowitmakessense

The pic says "align". Is this actually "implement" or "configure" or "set up" etc?

Should the headings not be the same in the numbered list as they are in the pic

do you need to define the 5 WOL terms? I assume some will be seeing WOL used for the first time here.

re "behaviors", I assume that you are using American spelling - I hate it! :)

I am not familiar with the formal definition of an ESN but my limited use of Slack (which I assume is now an ESN) to date indicates that "alerts, confidentially (sic) and 1:1 conversations" are all possible in Slack. My huge issue is that ESNs are typically within one organisation. For those of us that communicate with suppliers and customers. I do not see email going away any time soon.

"other areas where ...."

missing "indicators" or "?" ?

what performance is being measured?

does this mean only within one organisation?

how does it do that?

so is doing WOL on the public internet is not #wolan? ditto with doing it in a private FB group or G+ community etc?

you could put 3 links here for John, WOL and book. I am a link junkie, they always add value for me. Re book, I tend to link to the Google Books page e.g. https://goo.gl/NJt09z. I assume that the page changes based on country of viewer's IP address so you don't have to worry about chosing Amazon US vs Amazon UK etc.

wolan's might be better

does the reader need to know what "agile" and "lean" mean? worth adding a definition for each? The assumption is that these are both good things to be.

I suspect that this is not happening BUT given the confidential nature of the circle then it would not lend itself to this kind of validation. Our circle is self-running, I can imagine for circles running in organisations there would be some oversight by the manager/leader of all the circles in the organisation.

This has only been done by me as facilitator to set up the circle infrastructure and the broad structure of each call but beyond that it is a free for all.

Anyone in our circle can say anything. We have a structure for the calls but that often gets overtaken by the ebb and flow of the discussion.

The key decisions are taken by individuals for their own goals. The only pressure comes really from each person to achieve their own goal. There is an element of peer pressure to have done the weekly tasks and to demonstrate progress.

As part of the circle, external contacts are being named and contacted who are experts in their fields who can may be help with achieving our goals.

All of the above comments are from me as leader/member of a virtual WOL circle of strangers so for me groupthink is not even relevant. I have an increasing interest in eg circles comprising close friends and strangers, or staff from one organisation who all knew each other or of each other. I am also interested in how circles would work where personal goals have to directly relate to the overall goals of the organisation. Assuming that the circle guides we are using are used by all and if the individual goals are decided by the individuals themselves then I do not believe that groupthink is an issue.

Already had some amazing examples of contacts/resources from across the group helping each other that the individual being helped has not expected.

So, my conclusion, is that having accepted the challenge to assess WOL circles against groupthink defined in detail in this paper, I am even more confident now that my original view remains true ie WOLcircles are not susceptible to groupthink given that there are minimal substantive decisions to be taken as a group that would impact the "success" of the circle, namely that all indviduals achieve their goals.

As per tweet, I encourage you to read the circle guides (http://workingoutloud.com/circle-guides/) e.g. the Overview one as a minimum. I would also urge you to do a circle and ideally a virtual, global one for the full experience.

I am more than happy to field any further questions on circles on the basis that I am still doing my first one and therefore have limited experience.

Does this address your question to your satisfaction?

I enjoyed the exercise!

PS I have a limited understanding of mastermind groups but someone asked about how they compare to WOL circles. Answering that is on my someday/maybe list ...

The group is more cohesive and committed than most teams I have been a part of for this 4 week period. All info is welcomed and shared.

There does not appear to be a transfer window-type system in operation to swap out poorly-performing circle members ... ;)

Circles are not in competition with each other and in lots of cases outsiders would not even know the circle was in existence and meeting,

I certainly do this as facilitator of the group but all the circle have asked questions of each other to understand motivation and nature of the goals.

There are no substantive decisions to be taken by the group. The key decisions are taken by individuals against their goals. I do sense us wanting validation, confirmation and challenge to get best possible outcome for each of our goals.

I do not detect people holding back, I do detect some cultural dfferences in our call input eg style in giving feedback!! A bit direct even for me. :)

No "enemy" sighted so far. These would be blockers to us meeting our personal goals and we would marshal the circle's resources to address.

We are all volunteers not conscripts. No one has withdrawn from the process. All views are readily expressed.

Fair to say that the group is very diverse in terms of background, age, work experience, aspirations and so on. Whenever discussion leads to next steps, there is a rapid airing of views and a decision taken collectively.

I am being personally challenged by what my fellow circle-ers are doing eg changing continents for 2 years, "giving up "3 businesses to go zen, moving out of the city to live in countryside and build a house on a plot of land that they own. All seems eminently diable and defo not foolhardy.

I do not see this happening. I can see people flexing approaches to goals as opportunities arise.

As a Christian and hot on these issues, nothing I have seen to date gives me any concern on this front. Ignoring some of the alternative medicines that one of the circle has mentioned!

All rules are clear. Individuals are progressing towards their goals. We are each our own decision maker for our goals but we are being challenged by others in the circle for e.g. better ways of doing things for the goal and chasing more progress.

One of the major drivers in circles is to network widely in a variety of ways to meet your personal individual goal so depending on the goal any opinion globally that helps that goal is taken on board.

Already spoken to part of this. I would say that we are all professionals in "white collar" type jobs. We are globally and nationally diverse.

The Circle process is not competitive for us as we started as a single circle with no connections to any other circle. We are not contaminated by what other groups are doing. We do not have plenaries with other groups. We are completely independent working wihin the scope laid down in the circle guides.

Defo hard to see any Circle dehumanising other Circles. That may come later when we start saying how epic our circle was!! ;)

I am a terrier when it comes to rationality. "Why" is my fave question. So we have a relentless drive to complete things.

Nothing in the process would appear to challenge these principles. I am aware that morality is a personal issue - we all have a line! - but no decisions/suggestions have been made that would come close to challenging these.

re "faulty" given that we are staying "pure" WOL, it is hard to see how decisions taken could have been faulty e.g. we have not become a mastermind group thereby invalidating calling ourselves a WOL Circle. re "pressures", the group decision making as been open with all views expressed and decisions taken as a group. No one has bailed out :)

A rapid brainstorm of the decisions that the group has taken to date and will take collectively:-

who would be in the group (no one has been excluded by the group, some candidates excluded themselves for time availability reasons across the timezones)

timing of group calls (there were 2 x 90 min blocks that we could all do over a week, we picked a 60m slot)

tools to use (I proposed Zoom/Slack, none of us had used them, we all agreed, has all been fine, no issues)

choice of an individual personal goal (each person explained their goal(s) to the circle, the only amendments that the group has encouraged is to make them manageable in 12 weeks)

the agendas for each call (i have produced these based mainly on the action guides with some tailoring based on the fact that we do not do the individual exercises on the call due to wanting discussion in the group as a priority; we also had a challenge in week 4 with our new 6th member to get her up-to-speed and onboarded)

input to each other's goals (this is a personal ongoing activity, we all know what each other's goals are. they are listed in goal-specific Slack channels, we chip in comments, questions, challenges, resources to assist as we each see fit

end of circle process (I can see their being a decision for us to take at the end of the 12th call as we have got into the swing of the call being a start of week activity so arguably and I will be pitching for a 13th call to close us off cleanly ALSO I can see their being a conversation around whether the Slack assets stay or are exported and how people want to stay in touch after the circle)

cross-circle activity (I have mentioned to the circle whether we want as a closing activity to have a call with an IRL circle to share experiences of a full circle; I have already reached out to a German leading his in-company circle with that suggestion)

I cannot think rapidly of any other decisions that the group has taken or needs to take as a group

I am addressing this question as part of my sense-making - understanding - of the WOL circle process. I am currently in week 4 of my first ever WOL circle that I recruited mainly within the WOL FB Group. We ended up as a 5 strong circle in 5 countries/timezones. We were all strangers 4 weeks ago. A 6th person was added when we recruited her after she popped up in the FB group saying where she was from and that place being where one of the circle members is looking to move to and work in ASAP for 2 years. We thought that would be good from a contacts etc point of view. We are following the WOL Circle action guides as closely as possible as I want a "pure" WOL experience unadulterated by any past experience. Consequently, we have each formulated a personal goal that we are working towards over the 12 weeks. Apologies to John S if I misunderstand any of the process!

Background: The "exam" question was set in this stream: https://twitter.com/ChangeContinuum/status/827606024769126402 "Not convinced that shared/unshared goal(s) is the denominator of groupthink.... would be genuinely interested if testing against this would surface anything".

I come to change from a programme/project management, business process as-is/to-be and benefits management perspective. Everything else hangs off these. If you would like further review on later chapters, just ask. Happy to talk also if that would help (including how to use Hypothes.is :) It does appear to be a good tool to use to get Word-like comments on a public web page!

My thoughts at the end of my review are that this is a good start. Structuring such books is a huge challenge as everything is inter-related but for clarity things have to be scoped clearly and the overlaps higlighted and built on as the book progresses.

are these in place or are they planned?

are these peripheral or are they current hot topics that may stick or pass away?

Programme/Project Management has not been mentioned explicitly. Comms Plan templates may help here re audience, type of comms, frequency, format etc.

some of this may be covered earlier re change roles/tasks and change leadership may be covered by numerous roles at various levels.

I am not an expert in this area but am now in my first WOL circle. My concern with these kinds of sections in books as they will age the book as trends come and go or strengthen. Thinking out loud, worth pointing to a book-related book for this material?

agreed! but do you not want to paint a more optimistic view as the guide is here to help the reader, how about "challenging"?

some examples would help here, I do not know what you have in mind

Cranfield covers stakeholder analysis including for each stakeholder if they are pro/neutral/anti the change, where they need to get to on that scale and how you propose to get them there.

Will this include tasks as well as skills required to do those tasks?

may be worth doing the CMI but as a later chapter as I assume this will look at all the change processes in the organisation and this section is listing/explaining them all. Ideally, this section will be one that explains the processes as if it is a blank canvas. As and when you cover the CMI, it would be good to have a survey questionnaire type thing to help people assess their orgs.

which ones are you planning to include?

Understand. So my earlier comments re tasks and competencies may better apply here.

my stakeholder analysis comments earlier probably apply here although this may be the hard work on the change re new/changed processes, tools, roles etc

so this will be the definition of the to-be position and include the business benefits? This is a key part of business change. I am a fan of the Cranfield benefits management approach. Happy to point you at that if that is of interest. It pins down which specific business changes will yield the business benefit,

Not sure what this will cover. Will this not be so organisation-specific that it will make it hard to cover this generically?

is "roles" better?

assume this means DIY (do it yourself)? that would be a great book to do, if you use this book you will significantly increase your chances of implementing significant business change

these will be key to the book, be great to have some that are cost reduction, revenue generation; may need to work back from the end of the book to make sure you have examples that are needed for the rest of the book's content

this means from outside the organisation but I assume that some managers have some capability in some area of business change or is that me making heroic assumptions?

I assume this is an ongoing business team and not a change team "doing" change to others?

be good to be more assertive, "will" :)

"buzzword-laden"

rogue spaces

wondered whether good to have more business context especially if speciifics some later e.g. service, mfg company just to lead people into the case study

Google

are they the manager's employees? wondered whether staff is better

re convo, this may come later but who is in the conversation?

wondering whether you can have a convo and a guide unlesss the two are connected in the title

"minimum"

Hi, Jen. I suggested I review your content with Hypothes.is in case you wanted to use this for all your review feedback. I have used this once before so I am not an expert. Re me, see my LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonfogg/. Change and leadership are 2 of my main areas of interest.

great idea :)