If you have a corporate job, you most likely have experienced being required to take some type of online training courses. If you’re like me, you try to get through them as fast as possible so you can focus on your real work.
The crazy thing that I’ve found in the corporate world is that even as important as knowledge and learning are for the business, the way it’s facilitated is as if people are back in grade school.
Once an organization is large enough, say around 200 employees, they may have a Learning Management System where employees take quizzes and training courses. The reality though is that people are busy with their work so these training courses are only a required nuisance to ‘check the box’ than actually learning.
Real people learn from real experiences. I personally find it so much more valuable to look someone in the eyes and hear about how they dealt with a situation in a real-world setting.
Companies have a huge untapped asset regarding the knowledge and experiences of their people. The big question is how to effectively share knowledge in a way that is meaningful for both the individual and the business.
I believe the best way to share knowledge inside an organization is through Social Learning. Think back on the last time you went to lunch with someone you looked up to. That person may have shared experiences about a problem that you are dealing with. This intimate conversation has your attention and you’re engaged because someone is sharing knowledge about a topic that matters to you.
What if we applied this same scenario inside a company in a way that is more scalable? Instead of a lunch meeting, what if that person with experience and expertise shared their knowledge with 10 to 15 other employees in a meeting room. What if the business determined certain skills and knowledge that was critical for employees to have in order to achieve company goals and scheduled a series of such events to focus these topics?
A learning focused organization is a critical competitive advantage. Technology can help maximize knowledge sharing to occur across teams that is aligned back to specific business goals.
I believe there is a huge opportunity to disrupt the current stale model of corporate training. Organizations that invest in social learning across teams will benefit from employees that are engaged in learning skills and knowledge that better themselves and the business.
At Cooleaf, we’ve found that our product works very well to organize and manage employee knowledge sharing events. One customer example is Daugherty Business Solutions, who uses Cooleaf to create team events focused on sharing knowledge about specific skills and other categories that help grow their business.
Below is a snapshot of Daugherty’s community dashboard and a sample knowledge sharing event.
open to doing an interview. Here is a short summary of the interview I did with Kevin.
Startup Lessons Learned 