1. Have something interesting to say that’s worth talking about – not sure I’m in that place.
2. Write well – my style is more brain vomit than comfortable prose.
3. Ultimate litmus: Would I read it – I probably wouldn’t.

That said, I think for nothing else but improving performance for #2 – if I can find folks that will provide great feedback – I might get something setup.

Have been tossing around the idea of a set of pieces on toxic leadership practices and the contexts where the level of impact of the practice varies. Maybe it’s time for me to start writing for personal development purposes.

Most have no background in learning theory, or in the history of education and training, so they can’t avoid the mistakes of the past. They are the “true believers”, and for that reason (and their ignorance about things they need to know about), that I don’t want them anywhere near children, schools, or in any position of influence in fostering learning, because, also as I said before, we can’t afford them.

We harmed countless people with the shift to “self-esteem” in education, not realizing that true self-esteem comes from accomplishment, not protection from failure!

And, now we will shift to “nobody knows best about what and how to learn than the learner”, which is clearly a pile of horseshit (no offense to my neighbor hourses). We can’t afford this.

There are certainly elements of usefulness in all fads and trends, but as I said elsewhere it is the vocal experts who are damaging their own causes by linking to political agendas rather than learning ones, and making almost daily errors in the material they put forth.

Steve, do you have a blog or website?

I’ve been trying to make my own sense of all this talk and I am not quite there. I think there’s something to just about everything that ends up as a trending topic. But I can’t yet make the logical connections between the terms, conceptual theories of application, and the practical application in my contexts.

Perhaps this wave isn’t about a grand new scheme of control, technology, and change. Maybe it’s an opportunity for folks to reconnect with the things we’ve forgotten about. That it’s not about the technology or about the shift in control, it’s about remembering that we are dealing with people. That the learner and performer are centric elements (the centric element) in the end game. The concern for the dollar has outweighed the concern for long term impact to the detriment of both the dollar and people. There are few that don’t feel the overwhelming drive to change ‘something’.

Maybe the talk of social and informal are just a way for folks to say ‘hey, it’s about people, stupid – wake up.’ I see a great force multiplier in preparing and empowering folks to take control of their own direction. Giving folks the tools to learn. Empowering performers at all levels to share what they know with others. Making it easy and acceptable to connect with peers and mentors. Making it clear how to seek out feedback and the many ways to process that feedback for improvement. Stuff we should be doing all along, but have made excuses for not doing so. There’s seems to be a focused opportunity to confront those excuses and barriers.

There has to be something to it. Maybe that something isn’t anything new at all. But there’s value in figuring out how to fit new opportunities to old problems. I agree we need to use real supported cases and unexaggerated claims, but I’m unconvinced that the trend doesn’t hold some value.

Good discourse either way. Let the debate rage on.

The reality is doing formal definitions is a incredibly mind-bending process, the complexity of which, none of these people grasp.

As for what they would agree with, I don’t know. It’s hard to take any of them seriously, so I’m not sure I care.

As for common meaning, I think we can actually examine that empirically, so I might give that a go. At least it would be fun, and if it works out, we’ll all have things to think about.

I’m not sure that the “recognized” thought leaders are backing off from the zeal that makes them sound incredibly ignorant and stupid. The particular thought leaders I come across are adept at using social networking platforms to get their messages across, and as a result have developed large followings, based on 1) their zeal and 2) their manipulative expertise.

I suspect the real thought leaders are working more quietly in the background, and hence they don’t have and may never have the influence of the expert zealots, simply because they aren’t interested in marketing themselves via social media.

It’s amazing. I was looking at Josh Bersin, and have also looked at Jay Cross and Elliot Masie, and after spending less than 30 seconds on their sites or reading quotes, I’m wondering why people don’t catch their errors.

The most common is misinterpreting data, but, golly, you must want to be a true believer to swallow the swill these folks dish out.

If so, do you think that the informal/social learning crowd would at least agree with you on the point that learning and being social are inherent human traits?

I think that the views of thought leaders (and real leaders:)) are maturing to the point of regression away from techno-zealotry and refocusing where they need to be – on people and what people need. I believe the new terms (L2.0, Informal, Social) indicate a latent epiphany (one I hope we will soon see.) There’s a lot of crap out there. I built some of it. Admitting to fault is a necessary step to evolving perspective.

Within my organization, I’m working out some conceptual materials that I hope will articulate the stovepiping and result of snake-oil sales over the past couple of decades. The maturation processes and churn have served to compartmentalize solutions and have marginalized the healthy things that happen in the organization.

I categorize things like this:

1. Traditional (the solution classes that the organization is most used to)
2. Non-traditional (emergent stuff that the organization hasn’t integrated into the traditional set)
3. Natural (the stuff that happens regardless of strategy or resource allocation)

I’m trying to express to the organization that our focus on traditional and our flighty focus on non-traditional elements, without a systems focus, has caused us to lose grip with natural structures. We’ve convinced ourselves and our customers that we own learning. This, combined with other factors, has caused the erosion of the apprentice journeyman master structures in the organization and we’re losing top end qualifications (and the people that are able to propogate and grow more solid performers) at an alarming rate.

We shouldn’t try to control the stuff that occurs naturally, necessarily. But we should work to adjust the culture to make things work smoothly. We should fish for people when that works best, teach people to fish when that works best, restock the pond if needed, and just leave things alone the rest of the time – while maintaining awareness of the needs and reality of the worlds of work that we serve.

I can dig it, Robert. But I do think there’s value in exploring how we can best serve each of these categories. This might include exploring, validating, testing, and evaluating emergent technologies that support the things we’ve been doing for centuries without technology. And as you point out, it’s always good to connect what we think we know, or think we have discovered, with what has been proven by previous efforts.

Steve