The emails went out inmid-December: “I’m looking to put together a set of participants for a pilotprofessional-development workshop we’re putting on in January. Your name cameup as a strong learner and an influential person.”
Who’s going to turn that down?
As a global leader in the quick-servicerestaurant industry, Domino’s Pizza has a concentration of jobs requiring abroad base of connections to people and information. The people in these jobsprobably used traditional learning to help them attain key roles in supplychain, operations, marketing, or information services. However, an overlookedkey to their success, and their future growth, is a type of learning in whichthey may not have even known they were engaged.
As defined by Harold Jarche,principal of Jarche Consulting, personal knowledge management (PKM) is “a setof processes, individually constructed, to help each of us make sense of ourworld and work more effectively.”
Through transforming this set ofprocesses from instinct and gut feeling to an intentional, tangible practicefor its learners, the company wanted to help them find new ways to developtheir capabilities and increase their productivity.
Eric Parsons, Domino’s VicePresident of Talent Management and PeopleFirst Support, says, “For many people,being effective at these skills is essential. We want learners who are activeand engaged in their own development.”
Pilot
Domino’s engaged Jarche tocollaborate on a hybrid online and face-to-face learning experience tointroduce a cross-functional group to the concept of PKM and put some conceptsinto practice.
The experience began with theparticipants downloading a worksheet that helped map out the makeup of theirpersonal network. By seeing how key contacts were grouped, according to factorssuch as gender, age, and geography, each individual could identify strengthsand opportunities to diversify their network. The participants discussed theirfindings on a discussion board in the week leading up to the face-to-facesession.
At the session, Jarche leddiscussions on his trademarked “seek-sense-share” model and performed livedemos on how to best use feed readers and Twitter for professional development.Many of the participants brought laptops and mobile devices to try out newtools.
Following the session, a participantset up a wiki on the company intranet to continue the discussion, where participantscould post their takeaways and action steps.
Faster, better, cheaper
The potential of PKM in corporatelearning is vast. The McKinsey Global Institute defines interaction workers asthose with “occupations requiring complex interactions with other people,independent judgment, and access to information.” McKinsey’s analysis of researchby International Data Corporation indicates substantial potential productivitygains for interaction workers through streamlining the ability to search for,and gather, information.
For Domino’s, the learningexperience clarified how productivity gains can happen on an individual basis. Peopleexperimented with finding vendors, getting instant answers to questions from abroad network and organizing articles, blog posts, and news sources by topic ina feed reader.
Results
Using the post-class discussionforum, participants shared their thoughts and started several discussions abouthow to use existing company channels to connect teams. Several participantscited the RSS tools overview as a practical solution they could immediatelyimplement. Others posted links and resources related to the workshop. Managersin the group shared the ideas with their teams in staff meetings.
What they learned
The process of the pilot revealedseveral insights that will help Domino’s bring PKM to more people.
First, learners want some guidanceabout the changing boundaries of professional development. Traditional modelsof learning involve taking a chunk of time to step out of the workplace. PKMmakes learning a real-time activity within the flow of work. The company needsto clarify what people are allowed and expected to do in terms of learningduring the workday.
Second, information services,particularly information security, needs to be a partner in the effort. Thedirector of information security consulted throughout the effort and attendedthe workshop, where he was able to offer some valuable insights.
Finally, as learning practitioners,we’re awash in information about social tools and technology-enabled learning.It can be easy to overlook how unfamiliar busy professionals are with some ofthese technologies—especially in a work context. We need to take the time tohelp familiarize them with new tools, using practical, realistic examples.
Next steps
Thenext step for Domino’s in bringing PKM to the organization will focus onidentifying more people who fit the profile of interaction workers. The companywill be modifying the learning experience, based on the pilot, to create asustainable program to reach further into the organization.
