Who is the Digital Learning Coach in your company?

Preface:

Today is the first article in a 4-part Series for our Sunday Mālama in February:

We will kick off our Braver Experiments [with] Digital Learning initiative for Managing with Aloha Coaching (MWAC) in 2008.

I am part of the Baby Boomer Generation, and I must say, I am pretty proud of myself for all that I have learned about electronic communications in the past few years, less than five to be exact.

To frame this for you pretty quickly, best as I can recall it, I was about forty years old when I first opened up an internet browser. When I started Say Leadership Coaching in 2003 and figured out I should have a website, I had never dared to do anything digital, much less online, without Tony, the IT guy we'd had at the Hualalai Resort, standing right next to me. Actually, to be completely truthful, I was the one standing behind him as he sat at my keyboard and did whatever magic he did to keep it working. I was this hot-shot VP, and Tony even entered my address book in my cell phone, and programmed the speed-dial numbers. If anything remotely electronic needed fixing, or just some tender loving care, I called Tony and he took care of it.

Tony was my hero. What he really took care of, was me.

That first day in the summer of 2003 when I was officially self-employed, was the first day I opened my internet browser, and no longer routed through a company network, got on the internet without having to type in a password that got me past the formidable firewalls Tony had installed. I was amazed at how quick and instantaneously it happened. I had hated that firewall, and hated typing in a password for each and every new window I had to open. I should have been thrilled, and you'd have thought I would do a little hula dance of joy. Instead, I sat there and cried. What in the h#!! would I do without Tony?

SLC and HP trade places

The tears didn't last too long. I had work to do.

In 2004 Ho‘ohana Publishing was born as a small division of my company taking care of the distribution of my book. Today, HP is the big gun, and SLC (Say Leadership Coaching) is the little guy.

Within HP I have created eight websites, all which I still administer, and have purchased over a dozen more urls, most under assorted stages of development. I publish a monthly newsletter for a really good number of subscribers, I'm a pretty prolific blogger, and the administrator of a Google Group. I have helped a few of my clients better design their intranets, and taught a few others how to start up and write a business blog. I run about a half-dozen project management sites and ILE's (interactive learning environments) using Basecamp and a few other user-friendly programs, and I set up virtual coaching environments for all my customers.

What I am most amazed by and grateful for, is a humbling joy called the Ho‘ohana Community, a global network of people who believe in my Managing with Aloha workplace philosophy enough to help me foster a movement.

I'm the hot-shot for both HP and SLC, and frankly, I still don't know how to use all the bells and whistles on my cell phone. I can program the speed-dial by myself though. I consider my laptop a drafting board and launch pad, for all my work is now web-based, and backed up on web-based servers instead of my hard drive. *HCer and technology queen Leah Maclean tells me I'm now in saas company with my love of “Googly-apps” and web-based vs box-based software (so I had to find out what saas meant!)

Braver Experiments [with] Digital Learning

I've just joined a new social network on Ning in the past week. Have been on LinkedIn for a while now, have a Tumblr lifestream, but I'm not a Twitterer and have said no to Facebook on purpose (Yeah, you can say no. What's hard is to stop second-guessing yourself about it.) Have discovered some contextual and social construct strengths I never realized I had, but am lost within learning how to actually apply them now.

I am feeling like I am really getting behind. I'm not being facetious: Read between the lines for what I still don't do, or think about what your kids already do. Think how much longer it takes you to learn the same things. Think about Brex.

Meet Brex

One thing the Ho‘ohana Community has taught me through all this, is not to go it alone in my learning now. This is how I introduced the need I felt for Brex Digi-Learning (I like that better than B.E.D.L... didn't think about acronyms when I phrased this) in the January issue of Ho‘ohana ‘Ōlelo, my monthly newsletter:

It may sound a bit cliché, but as a workplace coach, the truth of this statement is beginning to scream at me: The way we learn is changing every day. Take a look at this 4-minute YouTube video about the 21st Century Learner: A Vision of K-12 Students Today.

[You may have seen it before, however I hope you didn't just dismiss it as merely interesting. See footnote below for more about the video.]

I love doing one-on-one coaching and working with people in person, but today's reality is this: Many managers are asking for other options both for them and for their staff. They want to learn the way they live, and coaches like me have to make adjustments.

What can you expect from me at Managing with Aloha Coaching in 2008 as I learn to adjust?  Four words: Braver Experiments [with] Digital Learning. I cannot yet tell you what they will be, but they are sure to happen.

Brex is the curious, brave, and loves-to-experiment offspring of brash young American Sam Learning, and his globe-trotting, trend-setting (and quite exotic) wife Aurora Digital.

Brex has never seen something that looks like this,

Or like this.

Or like this.

I am guessing that most of you who are reading today's Sunday Mālama aren't the same age as Brex. You are friends with Sam, or with Aurora, but mostly you are Brex's older aunts and uncles, or (gulp) grandparents.

We all love Brex. Truth is, we are thoroughly enchanted with the young whippersnapper. However we have come to realize that Brex doesn't have to learn about we used to know, the old-school knowledge we've been feathering our comfort-zone nests with. Oh no. It is we who have to learn what Brex bravely experiments with, so we can keep speaking the same language and remain in the conversation.

To Brex, www doesn't stand for world wide web. It means whatever, whenever, and wherever communication.

The wind has picked up, and our once comfortable nest is starting to feel a bit creaky. A wee bit of fear is creeping in with the wind as we realize the storm is just getting started.

Now we have a bit of a problem

We aren't in school anymore, which was where we used to most think about our learning. Yet we find we need teachers again. Something else has changed though. The teachers can't look like Mr. Lincoln, who so brilliantly got me to understand 6th grade Algebra, or even like Mr. Facsimile, who somehow managed to keep me awake during that Entrepreneurial Economics class I decided to take in night school long after I graduated from college.

We just can't believe this, and can hardly fathom it, but the teachers we need have to look, think, teach, and communicate with us like Brex does!

There's another complication though... the teachers need to be more like Brex, so we can learn from them like Brex, but they still look like Mr. Facsimile (yeah, that's him, he's still there hogging the power strip.) Going back to school isn't really a good option... now what?

“You mean me? The name is Digi-Learning.”

So. We're wondering if forging ahead at work is a better option than going back to school anyway, and the guy we've taken for granted in IT doesn't look as nerdy as he used to... in fact, he's starting to be kinda popular all of a sudden.

After all, work is where we learned how to use email. Work is where we learned how to dial in to the network from home, and when we're on the road. Work is where we learned how to scan stuff so we could find it when our admin assistants got cut from the budget, and we decided we hated filing paper (no wonder she didn't smile all that much). She was the one who had it in-like-Flint with the IT guy, and nothing went wrong then, so maybe that's the friendship we need to start cultivating.

He seems to have an accent, or is it just my imagination that when he says my name, Digi-Learning comes out sounding like Did'ya Learn it?

“What was that? Who taught me to IM and text? Uh, my kids did.”

Next Sunday Mālama: February 10th
Maybe the IT guy isn't the teacher we've been looking for either... Do we need Digital Learning Coaches at work? What do they do? How can Sam, Aurora, and the rest of the Digi-Learnings become more confident Digital Learners? What will be required of them before that nest of theirs falls apart in the storm?

Footnotes:

• The history and intention of Sunday Mālama is explained here: Sunday Mālama: A Beginning.

• About the video, A Vision of K-12 Students Today: "This project was created to inspire teachers to use technology in engaging ways to help students develop higher level thinking skills. Equally important, it serves to motivate district level leaders to provide teachers with the tools and training to do so." My question then, became, what about the adult learner at work? ~ Rosa

• HCer stands for Ho‘ohana Community member, and if you are a practitioner of the Managing with Aloha workplace reinvention, or consider yourself a part of the MWA movement, you are an HCer too!
  If you don't feel like you are a very active HCer right now, there are a couple of easy ways to get there almost instantly:
  ...and you don't have to do all of these, just the ones you'd like to...

1. Comment here right now. Just say hello. You never know which other HCer will say hello and “Aloha!” right back atcha.
2. Buy a copy of Managing with Aloha and Subscribe to the feed for this blog. This one is a both-parter, for this site is written assuming you have the book or have it on order, and are ready to apply it. We have a new coaching program for a fee too, but it is optional for those wanting more help with the 5-Beat Rhythm we create our monthly habits with here, and it is NOT required.
3. Subscribe to the feed for Talking Story, where I concentrate on giving you ideas on having better conversations at work: ‘Talking story’ is a local expression in Hawai‘i meaning exactly what it sounds like; talking through stuff to get the whole story told —or created! We believe that despite all the time we spend in the workplace, most people don’t get past small-talk chatting, politically-correct banter and unproductive silences. We don’t talk to each other enough about the important stuff that counts —the stuff that can give us the best work/life stories possible.
4. Subscribe to the feed for Joyful Jubilant Learning, Aloha shared in Learning with the Ho‘ohana Community, where we were thrilled to be described by another HCer and passionate learner recently this way: “It’s a real gem and with numerous contributing authors, it delivers diverse valuable views about the art and process of learning.” ~ Amir Ahmad
5. This one is worth repeating: Comment and get in the conversation at any of the places I have linked to above. A community is more than just one person, and we'd love to connect with you!

If you can't decide between all these feeds yet, I'd say go with the one for my Tumblr log, Ho‘ohana Aloha. It aggregates everything I publish online (and find that I want to share with other HCers), and as time goes by you'll discover where you “nalu it” (go with the flow) and get involved best.

Photo Credits: The Keys of Relentlessness by Olivander, Talking Story Gift Card by Dwayne Melancon, Telephone Dial on Flickr by Leo Reynolds, Cassette Tape by Status Frustration, and Turntable by Huro Kitty. Bill Gates selling windows circa 1985 by niallkennedy.

Comments

[Leah Maclean]

You have come along way Rosa and you are out there leading to baby-boomers not just that technology can be embraced but more to the point that change is to be embraced. Changes in technology is just like any other change - it challenges us to learn new things and change perspectives sometimes.

And with any change sometimes we can do with a helping hand from the people that understand what's going on a little better than us. And that is what you are talking about with the Digital Coaches. Like any coach the real benefit comes not just in the information but also with the coaches ability to communicate and share ways to learn it.

I've worked in technology for over 20 years now and even though I've learnt a great deal from many of my "IT-super-geeky" colleagues, many of them are best suited to be ultra clever with the hardware and software. Unfortunately they aren't teaching communication and relationship skills to enough geeks. (Which is a good thing because that leaves me a space to fit a special skills of technology AND design AND coaching - yay!)

I'm just waiting with excitement to watch all the ways that you will use Digital Learning to coach your clients Rosa.

[Rosa Say]

Good point Leah, it is all a matter of embracing change rather than fighting it. I've always thought this adage was such straight-forward common sense: "If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll just get what you've always got, and nothing more."

Not that more is always better, but learning about it can be great fun too! That's why I enjoy coaching so much, as I know you do :)