Tim O'Reilly has been asking people to "work on stuff that matters":
"I'm a strong believer in the social value of business done right. We need to build an economy in which the important things are paid for in self-sustaining ways rather than as charities to be funded out of the goodness of our hearts."
His thoughts are worth reading in their entirety, so check the link above for the full article.
I want to focus, though, on his second point:
"Create more value than you capture"
Organizations and systems that seek to capture more value than they give are doomed to eventual failure.
How does this apply to elearning and training?
I've been around in the industry for over a decade now. I've seen training departments who were more interested in their own bottom line and their perceived importance in the organization than they were about what they actually contributed to the people. They were more interested in controlling information, than they were about growing knowledge. Maybe you've known a department like that? Maybe you're still working in one...
Good organizations need to keep an eye on the bottom line, but their "big goal" needs to be about more than simply making money.
When we are thinking about systems to support "training" (or learning, performance support, skill growth, whatever we want to call it), we should be thinking about creating simple tools and structures that will create value for the user.
The Web itself is a great example of this, as is Twitter: simple structures that give value.
In terms of the development of content, remember that the content is not really the goal.
O'Reilly notes about his own publishing business, that he is never upset to find that others have used his ideas to make themselves wildly successful. Even when he finds that his direct competitors have "stolen" from him to make their businesses better. Because his goal wasn't to control all his ideas:
"If my goal is really "changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators," I'm thrilled when my competitors jump on the bandwagon and help me spread the word!"
What's the big goal of your department?
What's the big goal on your current project?
Does it create more value than it captures?
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