At the moment I'm reading “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (NNT)*.  He describes a Black Swan as a highly unpredictable event that has a massive effect.  To make sense of it, we are programmed to rationalize it as being far more predictable than it was.  From the moment we are born, we develop rules to guide us.  Once we develop those rules, we hang on to them viciously, only seeking to confirm our view of the world, rather than keep an open mind.  Even when staring at evidence to the contrary, we figure out a way to make the rule stand, more inclined to rewrite our memory of things past than to adjust the way we think in the present.  But once in a while, a seemingly random Black Swan event will come along that forces us to rethink our rules, and when we do, our typical response is, “I should have seen it coming.”  We then rewrite how we thought we thought to reinforce our (slightly adjusted) rule-bound worldview.  In a sense, we're like turkeys.

Borrowing from NNT (who in turn adapted from Bertrand Russell): “Consider a turkey that is fed every day.  Every single feeding will firm up the bird's belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race 'looking out for their best interests,' as a politician would
say.  On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey.  It will incur a revision of belief.” p. 40

As you can see from the graph adapted from NTT, day 1001 is dramatically different from all the days preceding it.  If the turkey could, would he have adjusted his thinking to “I should have seen it coming?”  How often do we extrapolate the future from the trends of the past, assuming no Black Swans will appear?

“But in all my experience, I have never been in an accident ... of any sort worth speaking about.  I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea.  I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.”
                E.J. Smith, 1907, Captain, RMS Titanic (p. 42, NTT)

Now, to my own field.  The learning field, like many others, is full of rules that are self-reinforced by an industry filled with consultants, vendors, professional societies, and technology products that build their products and services in support of those rules.  Should a disruptive technology or way of thinking come along, of course the industry itself would be inclined to reject it should that disruption require an alteration of all the products and services sold in the marketplace.  Incremental adjustments would be fine, but disruption would be too threatening to this $100 billion dollar industry**.  Here are some widely accepted, but not formalized coda:

For every hour of instructor-led training, it takes 40 hours of design and development to create it.  Computer-based training (deliberately using an old-fashioned term) takes 5X as long but pays out in the long run for large audience size.

People need to interact when learning “soft skills” and that can only be done in live face-to-face sessions.
Executives learn differently than everyone else.
The job of the trainer is to control the learning environment so that learners can learn.
The process of learning is as important as the results from learning.
Learning is an event.
And so on ...

Here in Sun Learning Services (SLS), we are experimenting, we think successfully so far, with breaking all of these paradigms.  We've presented some of our thinking at ASTD, a CLO webinar, and at a few other symposia.  We think the world is changing dramatically, and as learning practitioners, we must change with it.  I'll describe some of these changes in an upcoming blog, and how we are using Web 2.0 tools to create Learning 2.0.  For a sneak preview, go to our new hire site.  If you're an employee, log in and participate.  If you're external to Sun, you'll be able to see about 60% of the site, but enough to get a sense for how we believe the world of learning is changing.  (You won't see the cloud tags, be able join the community of new hires, visit certain confidential sites, or get a leader board score for playing “Rise of the Shadow Specters.”)

Citing the SLS vision statement, “Learn to be open ...”

*Note: I think it dangerous to supercondense the views of an author, especially NTT, as he carefully and logically builds a compelling, well-researched argument that takes 300 pages.  If you disagree with his views represented here, consider them my poor interpretation and kindly read for yourself before passing judgment.
** Including educational spending.  Exact numbers are hard to verify, but GE claims to spend $1B a year in training and development.

Thanks to those of you who wrote to ask where I've been.  About six months ago I decided to shorten the commute and sell my house in San Jose, a 100-year-old Craftsman, and move up the peninsula.  I'm a very slow decision maker on real estate, and didn't even know what zip code I wanted to live in, so I rented a home on the water in Redwood Shores, a subdivision created where Marine World used to be, apparently.  As you can imagine, selling and moving have consumed all my spare time for months, but I'm now settled in and ready to blog again.

Of course living on the water calls for having a boat, since sitting on the dock and watching the sun set over the Oracle databases was getting old.  On Saturdays during the school year, the Stanford crewing team practices right off my dock, so I decided that something I could row would be just the thing.  After a month or two of searching, I came across the perfect boat, good for flyfishing (a hobby) and stable enough to take out the dog.  Lightweight Kevlar, so I could handle it on my own, with optional sculling seat to do a poor mimic of the Stanford crew team.  Here's a picture of the boat I purchased, and the accompanying vision I had of what life would be like:

:

Note the very obedient dog at the helm, the perfectly balanced weight in the boat, and the smile on the woman rowing the boat.  Uh huh.

The boat was unpacked on my driveway completely encased in a wooden crate.  Good thing I still had the tools from my last house for prying off trim to refinish.  Two hours later, the boat was uncrated and hauled around to the back.  It weighs 65 pounds, so no easy feat for a woman on her own.  End of day one.

This is the point that Learning 1.0 kicks in.  There's a training maxim that states: If it's easily caught, it shouldn't be taught.  Getting into a boat should be easy, right?  Uh huh.

Lesson #1: remember to tie the boat to the dock when getting in.  Feet were in the boat, hands were on the dock.  Boat floated away from dock; rower dunked into the lagoon.  And in case you're wondering, the Bay water is cold.  Fine.  Got it.  Tie boat to dock.

Lesson #2: remember oars.  I successfully got into the boat, untied it from the dock, and then it slowly floated out.  Ready to go.  Now lock oars into place.  Oars would be a good thing.  As you can see from the picture, it's a wide enough boat that leaning over and padding with my fingertips was not viable.  Before I got too far out, I decided to jump out, and in the process, sinking the boat.  A 65-pound boat filled with water in waist-deep water is another interesting exercise.  Boat and me back on the dock ended day two.

This is the point that Learning 2.0 should kick in.  Wet clothes off and hot shower later, I went on a google search for “how to get into a boat.”  I'll be interested if you find something better than I did, but after an hour or two of searching, I found nothing really helpful.  This will be the subject of a future blog – how we provide learning that is just in time, just enough, and just for you.  But it wasn't there for me.

Eventually through trial and error, and thankfully no more dunkings in the bay, I became proficient enough to really enjoy the boat, and take Harry the Labrador along with me.  Unfortunately, Harry doesn't stay quietly at the helm and that takes an interesting continuous blend of weight shifting while sculling, which I've mastered to the point that we can row about 3 miles in an hour.  Certainly not a competition speed with the crews, but it is a peaceful time.

Which leads finally to the amygdala, or why we learn so much from failure and mistakes.

See how close the amygdala is to the brain stem?  If we have a strong emotional (usually negative) reaction to something, the amygdala is the part of the brain that triggers that same emotional response--especially fear--should we ever encounter a similar situation.  Which means it's unlikely I'll ever forget to keep the boat tied to the dock or to leave the oars on the dock.  And that's a good thing ...

Technorati Tags: Learning2.0