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Charles Good, president of IMS, embodies 'Curating Knowledge, Amplifying Impact.' With over a decade at IMS, he is key in delivering transformative learning experiences that drive results and career growth. Charles also hosts a popular leadership podcast and writes on leadership and learning, focusing on mid-market companies. He previously spent over a decade as a lecturer at the University of Nevada’s Business School. 

Charles Good

By leveraging AI-driven tools alongside traditional coaching, organizations can make leadership development more scalable, effective, and data-informed. 

The Future of Leadership Is Personalized, On-Demand, and AI-Powered 

Gain control of your bad habits to master your full potential.

How to Stop Bad Habits and Start Good Ones

Reviews the book 'The Age of Unreason,' by Charles Handy.

Being Unreasonable Good

No amount of luck, talent, brains, or good decisions can compensate for your habits and your routines.

Four Simple Habits of Top Performers

Every profession requires tools for its trade. Accountants use spreadsheets and financial formulas; physicians use MRIs, lab results, and checklists; machinists use lasers. Most professionals pride themselves on having access to and using the finest tools because it facilitates their ability to produce their best work. Executives take a different tack. They prefer to make decisions, plan projects, execute change, and evaluate progress with minimal use of tools. Despite the abundance of high quality methods from organization scholars and expert practitioners, business leaders are more naturally inclined to rely on personal judgment and past experience. Executive point of view Executives seem to believe that they don’t need tools to make decisions, solve problems, and engage others in planning. It’s as if to use a tool is to admit that they personally don’t have all the knowledge and skills. But, of course, they don’t. And executives don’t want to expose this perceived “weakness” to their co-workers. Although, executives wouldn’t want their physician to diagnose without a stethoscope and they wouldn’t want a carpenter to remodel their house without a hammer, for some reason, they have this mindset that an organizational leader should be able to do the work without tools. When input from others is sought in meetings and alternate points of view are invited, the process tends to be unstructured with those individuals with the most organization power, most strident voice or financial support, the most likely to prevail. As a result, organization performance is sub-optimized. Without the use of good working methodologies, it becomes more difficult for leaders and managers to demonstrate those behaviors that have been shown to create a positive working environment and increase productivity. It seems that the higher one travels up the organization chart, the less likely it is that leaders use structured methods to help them address the critical issues before them. Instead, senior leaders are more likely to be influenced by broad ideas of strategy and general concepts rather than structured thinking and best practices to attack the challenges before them. Unfortunately, it is here that the greatest value could be wrought from using structured methods. The issues higher up the hierarchy have larger ramifications, and they are less likely to have clear answers, require greater cooperation across internal silos and between external entities, and are fraught with greater risk. It is here that issues require input from many sources—and available information is scant and must be teased out. Ironically, it is here that the use of strategic leadership tools can provide the greatest power. Leadership needs art and science We believe that leadership is both art and science. Charles J. Palus argues this point in his 2005 Leadership in Action article. Palus says that both art and science are based on careful observation, awareness of personal bias, inquiry, and experimentation. And these are also the processes of effective leadership. However, like the scientist and the artist, leaders need tools to observe organizations, to become aware of their own biases, to conduct systematic inquiry, and to experiment for the purpose of improving performance. The vast majority of leadership advice is cast toward the art side of the equation. However, the greatest advances in leadership effectiveness can be made by focusing on the discipline or science side of the equation. The most expedient way of making that happen is for organizations to adopt those leadership tools that can most easily and effectively help their people address the specific challenges before them. Complexity of organizations makes tools necessary Margaret Wheatley, author of the bestselling book Leadership and the New Science, makes the case that in these chaotic times, authoritarian, controlling leadership doesn’t work anymore. Leaders need to help workers bring order to their lives but this is not done by telling them what and how to do things. Wheatley says that leaders must help organizations examine themselves and use that information to learn and improve. We think this self-examination and change can only be accomplished by teaching people how to use the tools of self-study, problem-solving, and decision-making. In an article titled, “Teaching Smart People How to Learn,” Chris Argyris, considered by many to be the father of organizational learning, describes a tool he used to help leaders learn how to surface the “undiscussables” that are blocking good decision-making and problem-solving in an organization. Argyris wrote: “The key to any educational experience designed to teach senior managers how to reason productively is to connect the program to real business problems. The best demonstration of the usefulness of productive reasoning is for busy managers to see how it can make a direct difference in their own performance and in that of the organization. This will not happen overnight. Managers need plenty of opportunity to practice the new skills. But once they grasp the powerful impact that productive reasoning can have on actual performance, they will have a strong incentive to reason productively not just in a training session but in all their work relationships.  “One simple approach I have used to get this process started is to have participants produce a kind of rudimentary case study. The subject is a real business problem that the manager either wants to deal with or has tried unsuccessfully to address in the past. Writing the actual case usually takes less than an hour. But then the case becomes the focal point of an extended analysis.” The senior manager’s “case study” followed by a structured analysis is a tool that is used with the leadership team to have an open and free-wheeling conversation about the incorrect assumptions and misperceptions that have been blocking communication and understanding. By using a highly structured process, Argyris has used a tool to give permission to talk about the topics defined by the task. To simply initiate a conversation about problems would not result in the learning that comes about as a result of using the tool. Bottom line In the past, you were to be able to lead an organization by virtue of a title and an org chart. You could control information, rewards and recognition, and behavior by giving orders, edicts, rules, and regulations. Not anymore. Today information is accessible to everyone nearly instantaneously. Employees are demanding control of their own reward and recognition structure. The modern employee doesn’t respond well to micromanagement. Leaders need other ways of encouraging and facilitating learning and change.  By employing structured tools, leaders can help their teams successfully address organizational challenges.

Strategic Leaders Need Strategic Tools

While preparing today for a future speech on learning trends at a Belgian government organization, I was interrupted by Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake's funny hashtag video. This prompted me to add hashtags to each trend during my speech, as if to say, "These are the things you should be talking about."Here are hashtags for 11 learning trends learning and development professionals should be thinking about today.#CharlesToldMeSoAccording to Charles Jennings and the Internet Time Alliance, most learning doesn't happen in a formal structured organized (training) way. Most thought leaders agree that some 70 percent of learning comes from unstructured experiential moments. If learning managers can encourage, capture, and share this learning to the benefit of the wider organization, they can really improve results.Watch the 70:20:10 video introduction by Charles Jennings on YouTube.Visit www.702010forum.com for an introduction and numerous resources.#WithALittleHelpFromMyFriendsEven if you don't buy into the 70:20:10 possibility (why wouldn't you?), you can't live in the learning world these days and not realise that both social media and social learning present massive opportunities to improve learning efficiency and results.Get more ideas on how to use social media for training.Check out 100 examples of social media for learning by Jane Hart.#KnowWhoYouKnowAndKnowWhoAndWhatTHEYKnowIf social learning is important, so are social networks—and the ability to evaluate them and create more influence from within them. Learning professionals must stop considering the organization as a bunch of functional hierarchies and seek to understand the informal learning networks at play and how to profit from them.Read Multipliers by Liz Wiseman.Read my ASTD2013 notes on “Analysing and Evaluating Informal Learning Networks” with Shari Yocum (lots of references and questions at the end).#WhoAreYouCallingImpatient?Real-time learning is becoming increasingly more important. People can’t wait six months for training when they have a problem today. In order to increase speed to learning, we need to think about quick and easy ways to get people the answers they need to improve their work. The range of tools, expertise and resources available is ever growing and L&D people must support usage, sharing, and effectiveness in order to help people get what they need quickly.Read Jane Hart’s blog post on learning trends and learning tools.#IFightForTheUser or #OneSizeDoesn’tFitAllEverything learning professionals do to support or structure learning has to be user-centric. This implies granularity and consumerization. Granularity is all about creating diverse chunks of learning content on different platforms and using different styles—the user can serve herself and take what seems suitable in the format she prefers. Consumerization is about letting people get their hands on learning information and content on whatever device they like.Read about the problems with BYOD (“Bring Your Own Device”) and five app solutions.Read my ASTD2013 notes about Google and MOOCs—a granular approach to learning.#SizeIsntEverythingBig data is getting a lot of press because of its apparent ability to give a better understanding of the reality, create better strategy and achieve more results. Applications within the consumer world are both various and scary. (Yes, they track everything you do on Facebook and use it to sell you stuff!) But the learning world may also be able to profit. If you can capture and assess all performance metrics in the organisation quickly, you will be able to see trends and create better approaches to improving performance through learning.Check out the conceptual example of big data for learning in a call center.#IMovedYourCheeseOkay, I stole the title of this hashtag from Deepak Malhotra’s great book of the same name L . In today’s VUCA business environment, things change all the time. Our learning approaches need to be equally adaptive. In training, although we may have designed for 12 people (and even if we may have a set plan of learning activities), to have real impact we need to be able to incorporate flexible strategies to account for different previously unknown needs that “appear out of nowhere.”In workplace-based learning, we need to be able to quickly identify need news and reply with relevant and timely adapted learning. Challenges to adaptive learning include “data-mining” and “scaling.” If we are going to continuously adapt to the environment, we need to be able to plough through massive amounts of available information in order to assess changes and trends and reply with the right answer for all the right people, right now!Read about Knewton’s Adaptive Learning Platform.#InAtTheDeepEndImmersive and authentic learning is likely to grow in importance, as learning professionals understand the needs of the business and how learners interact with content. Models and theories in classroom environments are good for the many things, but there are other ways to create a more engaging and authentic learning environment.Learning platforms that combine rich digital media with simulation and virtual reality may be one answer. Gamified learning is another. Augmented reality also has potetional.Join the Immersive Education Initiative and help define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems.Read about what to consider before starting with gamification.Have a look at Mashable’s posts on augmented reality.Check out five existing augmented reality apps for education.#ShowMeTheMoneyIf CEOs hate learning and development people, the mostly likely reason is lack of business acumen and poor marketing/sales skills. In many organizations, the learning function grew out of an administrative part of HR that managed sending people to training. The work and measurement of those people were based around how many people went to training and whether or not they liked it.Today, even if learning people all know that it’s the result that counts and not the method, many are unable to understand core business problems and articulate proposed learning solutions. L&D people must have good business acumen and marketing/sales skills.Read more about business acumen and the five things everyone in a business needs to understand to have impact.Learn what are the only three questions that count and how to be FAB when you pitch a learning initiative.#InYouWeTrustL&D people need to stop doing things for themselves and get people from within and around the organization more involved in learning design, support, and delivery. And sometimes, we need to realize that not everything has to be designed and structured for the learner—he can do some things himself!Find out why it’s also very important to make sure people are competent to learn by themselves.#WishIWorkedInAMuseumGiven the massive amount of information and resources available for our people to learn, it can be helpful to have someone filtering, contextualising and sharing information for different target groups. The skill of curation is becoming more and more important in the learning world.Read about the importance of curation and different approaches, according to David Kelly.Other hashtags that didn’t make the list today—but may be used in the future include:#SpoonfulOfSugarHelpsTheMedicineGoDown for gamification#MyThirdHand for mobile + iPad#7BillionLearningStyles because “learning styles” is a myth#BlokeInThePubSaidItSoItMustBeTrue for 70:20:10#AustralianEducation for “flipped-classroom”

Alternative Learning Hashtags for Today's Learning Trends

Artificial Intelligence (AI) stands at the forefront of technological innovation, holding immense promise for the future. It’s shaping industries, revolutionizing healthcare, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible in science, automation, and communication. But one of its most profound impacts will be in talent development, where AI-driven learning platforms, personalized coaching, and intelligent training systems are redefining how we grow and adapt in our careers.That paragraph was written by ChatGPT©, an artificial intelligence chatbot. I asked it what the benefits and potential dangers of AI were, particularly in our field of talent development.Artificial intelligence can be defined as any system that mimics human behavior and produces comparable results. It’s been around in one form or another since humans began doing science. The abacus, for example, was in use in Sumeria as early as 2600 B.C.E. In the early 19th century, Charles Babbage introduced the first mechanical computer, while IBM brought us the first general-use electronic computer (the ENIAC) in 1945. Technology presses on.Today, we engage artificial intelligence in nearly every aspect of our lives. Pressing an elevator button, doing an internet search, and setting a destination on the GPS in our cars are all forms of modern AI. These are known as “special use” forms of AI. But that’s not the kind of AI grabbing everyone’s attention these days.What has our attention now is Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). This is the type of AI that mimics human intelligence, behavior, and thinking. That conversation with ChatGPT© is a good example. I asked it a question, and it gave me an answer. But it wasn’t just a technical question with an objective answer. I asked for its subjective opinion—and it gave it to me.AGI holds incredible potential, harnessing the whole of human knowledge and applying it to myriad challenges: medical diagnoses, more efficient manufacturing processes, and education, to name a few. But perhaps nowhere is AI’s influence more evident than in talent development. AI is transforming how we learn, reskill, and advance in our careers. Intelligent tutoring systems and adaptive learning models now make professional development more accessible and tailored to individual needs. Organizations can analyze workforce trends, identify skills gaps, and even predict future training demands with unprecedented accuracy.However, with all these advances come valid concerns. It’s not just the “machines are taking over” fear, although that remains a popular talking point. There’s the issue of AI-driven assessments—are they accurate, unbiased, and fair? There’s also the risk of over-relying on AI for hiring and promotions, which could reinforce existing biases rather than eliminate them. And, of course, the impact on jobs: AI is streamlining processes but also replacing roles, a trend that has repeated throughout history. If you doubt that, go ask your town crier, elevator operator, or milkman!So, what’s the solution? Like any other form of technological advancement, we must treat AI like a tool—a sharp knife, if you will. It can do a lot for us, but we’ll need to handle it with care. We’ll also need to master it, using it thoughtfully and ethically to support human progress.Beyond job displacement, AI presents ethical risks, including its potential for misuse in surveillance, misinformation, and biased decision making. As AI continues to evolve, organizations must implement responsible practices to ensure fairness and transparency in workforce development.Another challenge is AI’s increasing complexity. As these systems grow more advanced, they may operate in ways that are not fully understandable or controllable by humans. This unpredictability is particularly concerning in education, career planning, and corporate training, where clear decision-making processes are essential.So, I went back to ChatGPT© and asked for its advice. It said:The future of AI is full of potential, but it must be approached with caution. By harnessing its power responsibly, AI can become an invaluable tool for progress. However, without careful management, its rapid advancement could lead to unforeseen challenges that require proactive solutions. The key will be ensuring that AI enhances humanity without compromising our values.Who can argue with that? As we navigate this evolving landscape, particularly in talent development, let’s make sure we’re using AI as a partner—not a replacement—to help people learn, grow, and thrive in the future of work.

The Future of Artificial Intelligence: A Double-Edged Sword

There’s a popular notion that innovation arrives like a bolt out of the blue, as a radical departure from previous knowledge—when really, most new ideas are extensions, twists, or variations on what’s come before. The skill of generating innovations is largely the skill of putting old things together in a new way, or looking at a familiar idea from a novel perspective, or using what we know already to understand something new.I say “skill” because we don’t have to leave these encounters to chance; we don’t have wait for lightning to strike. One key skill we can hone to help us generate new ideas is our ability to deploy analogies. Analogies—comparing one entity to another, apparently different entity—is one of the most powerful tools humans have for understanding our world and for generating new knowledge.In their book Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought, cognitive scientists Keith Holyoak and Paul Thagard point out how many intellectual advances through the ages have been built upon analogies:The first-century Roman architect Vitruvius compared the sound of actors’ voices in an amphitheater to the movement of water in a pool, the first of many thinkers to compare sound waves to water waves.  The seventeenth-century scientist William Gilbert compared the earth to a magnet, advancing knowledge of the earth’s gravitational force. The eighteenth-century chemist Antoine Lavoisier compared respiration to combustion, clarifying how breathing turns oxygen into carbon dioxide.Even the great nineteenth-century biologist, Charles Darwin, built his theory of evolution on an analogy between artificial selection—the deliberate mating of animals by breeders—to the natural selection that goes on in the wild.Analogies are still frequently used by scientists working today, as University of Maryland professor Kevin Dunbar discovered when he observed firsthand scientists working in four microbiology labs. Dunbar found that the scientists used as many as 15 analogies in a one-hour laboratory meeting, and that the more successful labs employed more analogies in discussing their work.How Analogies WorkLet’s look more closely at what is happening, conceptually, when we make an analogy. “The essential requirement for analogical thinking,” Holyoak and Thagard write, “is the ability to look at specific situations and pull out abstract patterns that may also be found in superficially different situations.”That’s important, so I’ll say it again in a slightly different way: A useful analogy reveals the deep commonalities beneath superficial differences.We can think of analogies as having two parts: the base and the target. The base is the thing you know about; the target is the thing that’s new. Analogies are created by elaborating the similarities and the differences between the base and the target. When we use an analogy, we take what we know about the base and move some of it over to the target. Northwestern University psychologist Dedre Genter calls this process “bootstrapping the mind”—elevating ourselves into the realm of new knowledge, using the knowledge we have already to pull ourselves up.What does this allow us to do? The scientists Kevin Dunbar studied used analogies, first, to formulate hypotheses that they could then test. Their thought process went something like this: “If we know that X does Y when Z, is it possible that A does Y when Z, too? Let’s find out.” That’s often how innovations get their start, in the lab and elsewhere—by taking a familiar starting point and using it as a launch pad to explore new territory.Psychologist and author Steven Pinker, who has composed many illuminating analogies himself, notes that “carefully interpreted, analogies are not just alluring frames but actual theories, which make testable predictions and can prompt new discoveries.”Case in PointDunbar’s scientists found analogies useful as sense-making tools when they encountered anomalies or unexpected findings in the course of their work. This was also the case for another group of scientists whose use of analogy became the subject of study: scientists working on the Mars Rover mission.A team led by University of Pittsburgh professor Christian Schunn analyzed transcripts of the discussions the Mars Rover scientists carried on while the mission was underway. Schunn and his colleagues found that the Mars Rover scientists used analogies more frequently when they felt confused or unsure. The appearance in the transcript of words indicating uncertainty, such as “maybe,” “I don’t know,” and “I don’t understand,” was often followed by an attempt to draw an analogy—to compare the ambiguous situation to a situation with which the scientists were familiar.At such moments, the scientists were employing analogies as a different sort of bridge—a conceptual catwalk that provides just enough space to move forward and keep searching for solutions. As Schunn writes: “Scientists and engineers do not always seek to completely eliminate uncertainty (and indeed, sometimes it is not possible to do so) but often drive problem solving with the aim of converting it into approximate ranges sufficient to continue problem solving.”Putting Analogies to Work for YouWe’ve now seen two good reasons to employ analogies: They can provide us with new theories to test, and they can help us make sense of unanticipated results so that we can keep moving forward. So, how do we go about generating a useful analogy?The first step is to choose the base and the target carefully. They should be similar enough to offer the possibility of building a serviceable bridge. If the target is too wildly different from the base, there won’t be any productive similarities to draw. In addition, these similarities must be deep and not merely superficial. Harvard Business School professors, Giovanni Gavetti and Jan Rivkin, have found management teams can easily be seduced by an analogy with similarities on the surface but differences at a deeper level (the opposite of what innovators should be seeking).At the same time, the base and a target have to be different enough to offer a revealing insight. In a study led by researcher Diane Halpern of the University of Louisville, students who compared the movement of lymphatic fluid through the lymph system to the movement of blood through veins gained little from the comparison. The target and base were too close, and the analogy didn’t shed much light. Comparing the lymph system to the movement of water through spaces in a sponge, however, was a bigger mental leap, and it produced more learning in the students Halpern studied.To aid in finding just the right analogy, it helps to have a deep pool of potential targets. The Boston Strategy Group, a consulting firm, has created an online gallery of sources of analogical inspiration for its consultants and their clients to use.  We can do this, too—bookmarking or pinning websites that inspire connections, keeping a folder of ripped-out articles or pictures from newspapers and magazines. A class or a workplace team can create a shared repository of analogical targets.The second step in using an analogy is to thoroughly draw out the similarities between base and target. Just posing the comparison isn’t enough; we need to think carefully about how and why the base and target are alike.Third, we must define what doesn’t carry over from base to target—the places where the analogy “breaks down.” This is important, because it’s easy for us to allow prominent similarities to overshadow real differences. For example, education professor Rand Spiro of Michigan State University found that medical students—and even doctors—were sometimes misled by the common comparison of blood flowing through blood vessels to water flowing through pipes.The students and physicians erred by attending to the similarities between blood vessels and pipes while failing to factor in the differences: the flow in blood vessels is affected not only by the diameter of the blood vessel, but also by the flexible contractions of the vessel and by the heart’s beating. It’s not that the medical students thought that blood vessels actually were rigid, like pipes. It’s that, focused on the similarities in their analogy, they weren’t even thinking about the differences.The fourth and final step is to draw insight from the analogy—and then to put it aside. This can be hard to do. Harvard’s Gavetti and Rivkin note that business students often become attached to the details of the case studies they examine, instead of abstracting from them the more general patterns that the case studies share. The best use of an analogy, as we’ve seen, is as a bridge—and once we’ve crossed over the bridge, we can leave it behind.

Where Do New Ideas Come From?

 Constructivists have long argued for a more learner-centred approach to learning and development. And although many would argue that workplace learning still focuses on command and control from the powers that be in an organisation, there is evidence that we are becoming more learner-centric. According to Towards Maturity Benchmark 2012: Bridging the Gap, there is now greater user-experience design in e-learning, more focus on the usability of learning tools and technologies, and 91 percent of L&D managers seeking to improve staff engagement to aid retention and motivation.This comes at a time when the wider world has become decentralised. The Internet has given people more choice and opportunity than ever before for connecting with others, many of whom would previously have remained unknown or out of reach. What’s more, the Internet has given people access to information and knowledge that was hitherto more difficult—or more expensive—to acquire.And so we find ourselves in a period of transition. In our personal lives, we have become accustomed to accessing information and connections within nano-seconds, and barriers to communication and information continue to tumble thanks to technology. But organisational structures and working practices are still lagging behind and internal silos abound, despite some progress towards a more learner-centric approach.  The 2012 Towards Maturity Benchmark study revealed that 90 percent of learning and development professionals are looking to integrate learning into their company’s different functions, such as sales, customer service, and operations.  And it’s little wonder, given the speed of innovation and change that organisations now have to contend with.  In today’s world, information transfer, teaching new skills, and left hands talking to right hands can be the difference between success and failure. In short, we need to collaborate.A collaborative approach"It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed." - Charles DarwinAt a basic level, collaborative learning is a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together. Increasing opportunities to work and learn collaboratively is one of the key ways we can help meet the many challenges we now face. Not just within L&D, but more broadly—in terms of our own performance and that of our organisation. Internally, it starts to break down silos and enables us to share knowledge and good practice too. So how does this work in reality?The democratisation of learningFor too long we’ve relied on formal training, or a ”push” rather than ”pull” approach. But times are changing, and  the move towards learning online and access to more informal resources is already well underway. However, much of what exists to support online learning has its roots in the sluggish corporate models we’ve already discussed.Enterprise learning management systems are designed specifically to handle the scale of data and information within large organisations. This is great if you’re a large organisation. But more often, the experience is not so great for all those learners within those organisations. Even less great for the tens of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses out there with little hope of accessing this type of solution.Social learningOn the flip side of the enterprise coin, there is already a wealth of learning available online, much of it free. But the reality is that most social media sites are designed for just that—social interaction —chatting, sharing views, and so forth. It’s all those great things we love to do, but it’s not learning.Actually finding what you need to learn online, can be difficult. An IDC whitepaper on the hidden costs of work, suggests the average employee spends around nine hours each week just searching for information they need to do their job. That is hardly productive. And even if they can find what they need, it can be difficult to establish the authority and provenance of that information.Crowd sourcingBut in 2012, a blend of technology and a collaborative approach began to really change the face of learning. Crowd sourced learning projects were the flavour of 2012, particularly in the United States, with around $70 million committed by venture capitalists to just nine start-up projects, aimed at varying social and business sectors. These online sites, like Udemy and Skillshare, and U.K.-based mylearningworx, take the wisdom of the crowd, validate it, and share it with everyone in one easy to use place. There is real belief in the value of opening up the process of both learning and educating.Other big names have also joined the fight. At the launch of Articulate’s Storyline, its community VP Tom Kuhlmann said he hoped the software ”would encourage the democratisation of e-learning.” He went on to explain: ”In the same way that anyone can now make videos and put them onto sites such as YouTube, anyone can now create elearning content using a tool like Storyline and make it available to others.” And these new crowd sourced learning sites are using cloud-based technology and simple authoring tools to put the production and broadcast of powerful online learning into the hands of the subject matter experts.This takes the existing learner-centric approach and moves it up a level. The focus becomes not just about communities of learners, but expands to include communities of experts. This is actually quite an exciting idea–not least because learner communities so often turn out to be communities of those who know nothing and waste time following up their own red herrings. But now there will be groups of authors and subject matter experts creating huge amounts of better, cheaper content for every learning eventuality.>It is interesting to think how this change of focus and new democracy will affect our current view of the battle. Consider, for instance, the 70/20/10 theory which suggests that learning typically takes place in a mix of approximately 70 percent on-the-job experience, 20 percent from feedback, and about 10 percent from formal learning. Even though there is not much evidence to back this concept up, it feels intuitively right to many practitioners.Based on this theory, it would seem reasonable to move the focus away from formal instruction and learning in favour of freewheeling ideas, forums, and practice. However, converted democratic learning professionals would point out that the low 10 percent figure is probably  a result of the following sort of circumstances:Most corporate online learning solutions are still not good or extensive enough, nor updated regularly enough, because we are collectively rubbish at enabling people to share their valuable knowledge, andThe cost of creating useful online learning is still much too high for most companies, which still see training as a cost centre, not a profit-making service.But putting the means of the production of learning into the collective hands of the of subject matter experts changes all this. And it is a process happening now. For example, code designers now have codeacademy.com another U.S.-based democratic-style learning start-up that is bringing information to the masses. One of its initiatives called Code Year had 100,000 users sign up in 48 hours. And that number continues to grow at a rapid pace.Breaking down barriersTo be sure, today’s technology is breaking down the barriers to creating online learning. There is a growing acceptance that production values no longer have to be Hollywood movie standard. Some uncut video captured in minutes on a smart phone is likely to be of as much use to learner as an overproduced film that takes days or weeks in the making.Indeed, quick and dirty is becoming acceptable – the results and impact on performance are now more important than finesse and polish. This freer approach combined with tools such as the new Mozilla Popcorn Maker to create content, and crowd sourced platforms to publish it, means everyone can begin to unleash their author and share their expertise on any subject.Vive la revolution! Let’s change learning together.

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