Work and the Web Are Converging

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Work and the Web are ConvergingBy Jay Cross

Trends often emerge in California before jumping to the East Coastand spreading to the rest of the United States. Surfing, Jacuzzis,skateboarding, designer pizza, varietal wines, organic produce, andthe Whole Earth Catalog are a few examples. Now add to that listblogs, mash-ups, and innovation on the web. Over lunch at an Indian restaurant in Berkeley last week, a geekfriend told me about his recent two-week trip to New York. “They justdon’t get it,” he said. For most of us in the San Francisco Bay Area,the Internet is as basic as bread. Conversations brim with chatterabout Mash-Ups, social software, Google’s next move, great hacks,

and Microsoft’s latest snafu. But in New York, my friend felt is thoughhe might as well have been speaking in Sumerian. Few people knewwhat he was talking about. The trend has yet to hit in full force. Since seeing the first website (Tim Berners-Lee’s site at CERN) in theearly 1990s, I’ve been ecstatic about the web. Having spent theprevious 14 years in the corporate training business, it was onlynatural for me to speculate about its potential for learning. With theweb, information was available everywhere. I could share a singlecopy of a document, eliminating the hassle of distributing updates.The system could keep track of goals and progress. FAQs andmentors were a click away. What’s more, you didn’t have to be in ITto create and post your own content. A cyber campus I could access

from my home office. I was in heaven. Fifteen years on the web have made me less starry-eyed and morereflective. I’m still excited, because we’ve only scratched the surfaceof what the web will become in the next 15 years, but I’m able torealize that the web is doing a lot more than making communicationinstantaneous and information available to all. The web is changingculture. Aided by the web, school children work with one another to completeassignments. Confined to the indoors because of random crazinessand violence outside, kids maintain continual contact with friendsthrough Instant Messenger. They get to know one another by sharing

photos and thoughts on communities like MySpace. They areaccustomed to learning by assembling snips of knowledge on the webinto coherent papers and presentations. They work in the now, andthey are starting to enter the workforce. Culture shift First we shape the web; then the web shapes us. E-learning hasshown me that it is easy—and often okay—to skip subjects or

Jay Cross is a strategist,speaker, consultant, anddesigner of corporatelearning and performancesystems. He is theco-author of ImplementingE-Learning and founder of Internet Time Group;

[email protected].

Internet Time Group is

hosting “Unworkshops” tohelp learning practitionersuse web technology to

improve theireffectiveness.




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presentations that don’t seem to be taking me anywhere. Click.Good-bye. My online behavior now shapes how I act in real life. Forexample, when listening to a presentation at a conference, despitethe fact that I usually sit in the front row, if the presenter is notdelivering the goods, I leave. I think of it as clicking on a fresh link. The ways of the web are changing corporate behavior, too. Peopleexpect organizations we deal with to have a website, to explain howto use their products, to give us an email address or two for getting

in touch, and to provide fresh information. The web is spreadingvalues and expectations that we’ll call “Internet culture.” Here a fewexamples:

Customers expect a response to a query within a day or two,and sometimes immediately. However, when snail mail was thevehicle, a week was an excellent response time.

Many managers assume that workers are aware of what is goingon in their organizations, which was not the case wheninformation was always sent via memo.

We are less tolerant of pointless information—one-sidedpractices and officious PR-speak.

The old notion of “us” and “them” no longer applies. Haughtycompanies will be called on it. We are all nodes on the net.

Nothing is set in stone. It’s tough to recall a book, but easy toedit a webpage.

Many presume that keeping something secret is probably acover-up.

Unfortunately, the typical corporate manager is unfamiliar withInternet culture. They consider the web as “a marketplace for massspeech, a jungle where children are prey, a mall or concert hall, asafari for surfers, a commercial space much in need of zoning,” writes Wesley Cooper in “Information Technology and Internet Culture.”

Corporations must embrace the web, however. Organizations cannotonly reap the tangible benefits of connectedness, they must alsointernalize the memes of Internet culture. It is internet culture that

can reinforce the values of collaboration, sharing, rapid response,innovation through prototyping, openness, authenticity, and agility.

The role of learning Corporate learning can be an ideal place to initiate this Internetacculturation. In addition to providing a framework for learning themetaphors of the web, organizations can receive a large and quickpayback in cost savings and improved performance.




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Today’s work is knowledge work. Try to imagine working in thisenvironment without Internet culture. Workers are challenged tomake their own decisions, on the fly. The boss is spread too thin toanswer questions. No one has time for workshops and courses.Real-time learning is replacing learn-in-advance courses. Networksglue teams together and promote two-way relationships withcustomers and suppliers. Increasingly, people acquire the skills theyuse at work informally—observing others, trial-and-error, Goggling,

and checking the Net so see what people have done in the past. Here are some concrete examples of how using these webapplications have business value.

Web Application Description Business Value

Blogs Everyone can createlearning objects,find informationonline rather thanlosing them in a file

cabinet

Capture ongoingknowledge, give voiceto workers

Tags Informaldescriptions addedto blogs and otherdigital data

Recall by topic,hassle-freeknowledgemanagement

Team blogs Shared space online Coordinate projects,share rules of thumb

Wikis Collaboration overtime, share ideas,co-create practices,share insights

Cooperativedecision-making anddocumentation

FAQ Answers to the

most commonquestions peopleask

Don’t reinvent the

wheel, single-sourcereference

Screencasts Electronic show andtell, “look over theshoulder” demos

Explain “how to” byshowing the real deal.

Communities of Practice (wiki, RSS,blogs, etc.)

Create and shareprofessionalknowledge

Realtimesubscriptions,knowledge retrieval

Guided tours Simple tours of websites withnarration

Great discoverylearning tool

Collaborativesoftware Converse, create,and shareknowledge

Circuitry for learning,innovation, andchange

Simple web toolset Frequent, no-riskprototypes

Innovation

“Internet inside” Internet softwarebehind thecorporate firewall

Interoperability, lowertotal cost of ownership




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Instant Messenger Immediateconnection toselected colleaguesand customers

Text or voice. Cantell when someone’savailable

Wizards and helpsupport

Provides just theinfo you need

In lieu of reading themanual

Jams Mass rally withoutthe travel cost

Creates team spirit,rapid roll out

Podcasts Download in-housenews, expertise toiPod

Use commute ortreadmill timeproductively

Storytelling Memorable, naturalway to spreadvalues and goals

More sophisticatedthan text. Oraltradition reinforcesmeaning.

Published: June 2006

Work and the Web Are Converging

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