Facts and figures everywhere…not a drop to drink (my apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge). We are inundated with information and advice about what leaders should and should not do. Books and blogs are full of ideas. The problem is in having easy access to the best of this information when and where we need it.
Mobile tools have promise in this regard. In their simplest form, mobile phones and PDAs of various types provide ready access to the Web. Wally Bock identifies some Web sites that are rich resources of information. Clark Quinn writes about mobile learning and also formal social learning and informal social learning as formats that open up tremendous possibilities for providing information where it is needed. He argues that integrating these technologies will do things for us that our brains can’t do. It’s not only about accessing information; it’s also about processing that information in creative and useful ways.
RealTime Performance has a product called Inspire which is an example of making information useful to
leaders. Inspire is “…a web-based tool that empowers employees to take ownership of their leadership development by enabling them to build, drive and track their own leadership development plan.” From that tool, RealTime Performance has created something that they call Inspire 10X10 which is 10 tips matched with 10 resources on topics that are most important to managers and leaders in organizations today.
RealTime Performance has done the work of taking mountains of information on leadership/management skills and synthesized it down to short, useable suggestions and then paired those suggestions with books, videos, and other materials that a manager can use to delve into in more depth. You can download a free example of Inspire 10X10, the one on Building and Developing Talent.
However, even with a tool like Inspire, to really learn, that is, to really internalize these tips and make them part of the way we work, most of us need help from others. We need to understand in conversation with others how managing in this way will help us be successful, we need opportunities to practice these skills, and we need feedback on how we are doing. This is where a boss, supervisor, or coach comes in. They can provide a relationship that facilitates and reinforces learning. Knowing what to do is only part of learning; we also need others to help us with goal-setting, practice, and feedback.
