CivieBlog

I was just reading a post - Top 5 tips to gain buy in for learning with social media.  The tips were many of the usual suspects (click on the link for details):

1. Build a solid measurable plan
2. Do your research and put it to the test
3. Choose your words carefully
4. Blitz the stigma
5. Educate the decision makers

This is good stuff, but it also got me to thinking that this might be way more complicated than it really needs to be.  Instead, one of the things that I Learned about Learning in 2009 and was an important eLearning Predictions for 2010 was to “Be a Jack”.  What does this mean?

I detailed it in Selling Learning Communities – Not Everyone Will or Wants a Group Hug.  Go listen to Jack and how he describes what he does.  And the key in selling social learning / learning communities was the simple explanation of what they are in a value proposition.  Here’s what Be a Jack sounds like:

If I can bring together outside experts and/or people from across the organization with expertise and facilitate a conversation on the critical business issues you are facing and help you capture that so that it can get distributed in the organization – is that something you would want?

Absolutely!  In fact, we all want that all the time! 

As an example, the way that I should have described a SharePoint Social Learning Experience if my audience was a CLO or VP Learning would be:

If I can bring together people from across your learning organization in a facilitated discussion possibly with outside peers or experts so that they can explore the implications of social learning, informal learning and Using SharePoint in the organization as both a system for facilitating the work of L&D and as a tool to be used as part of learning solutions – is that something you would want?

Or the HP example out of that same post:

Help marketing professionals understand the implications of Web 2.0 for HP’s marketing efforts.

Am I wrong, or doesn’t it make a lot of sense to simply Be a Jack?