Over the past year we have been publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. We start the new year with the second part of chapter 9:
The abundance of information is weighing heavily on the knowledge worker. The statistics are frightening, as Jay Cross reports:
- “In many professions, knowledge workers spend a third of their time looking for answers and helping their colleagues do the same.”
- “Only one in five knowledge workers consistently find the information they need to do their jobs.”
- “Knowledge workers spend more time recreating existing information they were unaware of than creating original material.”
While we’re doling out statistics, let’s add some more from Charles Jennings:
- “The information available to humans is currently growing at a rate of 30% per year. This growth is increasing year on year and showing no sign of slowing.”
- “Ninety percent of the new information generated each year is stored on magnetic media of some type.”
The message hasn’t necessarily got through to the l&d department, as Jennings explains: “Even though we are all aware that we are operating in a world awash with unstructured information, many learning professionals and managers are still obsessed with the task of transferring information into the heads of learners/employees. They, and many of their managers, see that as the end-game of their endeavours.”
The inability to find the right information at the right time has a huge cost, as Paul Strassman, former VP at Xerox, reports: “Most businesses that are well endowed with technology lose about $5000 a year per workstation on ‘stealth spending’. Of this, 22% is for peer support and 30% for the ‘futz factor’. The second includes the time users spend in a befuddled state while clearing up unexplained happenings and overcoming the confusion and panic when computers produce enigmatic messages that stop work.”
So how do we respond to these pressures? Well, according to John Seely Brown and John Hagel: “Because you don’t know what to expect, planning is folly. It’s better to be as responsive as possible when the future arrives.” That’s on-demand learning.
References:
Learning is strictly business by Jay Cross, 2007
The Point-of-Need: where effective learning really matters by Charles Jennings, article in Advance series from Saffron Interactive, 2008
Quoted in The Social Life of Information, by John Seely Brown and Paul Duquid, Harvard Business School Press, 2002
The only sustainable edge by John Seely Brown and John Hagel, Harvard Business School Press, 2005
Coming next: The argument for on-demand learning
Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8
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