Can community building be industrialized?

Part of my work is focused on looking at the skills we need to build to enable Social Learning in an organization. Often we look to how we do this in ‘Formal Learning’ and seem to assume that the same can map over to ‘Social Learning’ approaches.  The word I get to hear a lot is ‘Industrialize’ which then makes me think of processes, roles, responsibilities … and then I find all my creativity levels drained as I come up against the big ‘HR’ word.

I cannot remember a time when I liked the word HR. However I have not been always able to articulate why I do not like this word. Today, I am going to try to.

I believe that human beings have sufficient intelligence to learn and perform complex tasks. Over time, most individuals if provided with the right social environments will not only continue learning but also continue improving their performance. When we socially learn, there are different behaviours at play that push us to do better, be better, appear better.

Now – in come in HR – not the people – but an idea, that focuses on individuals being less important than the business. Where an individual is more fickle than they are intelligent.  This idea fosters fears – what if half our workforce up and leaves? Then what do we really have to keep this business going? As a result there’s all this focus on process, industrialization, documentation, etc etc etc.  The new employees who are hired in are not allowed to learn and perform and socially grow – they are instead ‘trained’ with the processes, documents etc.  HR will come up with new innovative ways to save cost of furniture, lighting and heating such as ‘Home-working’ and further isolate individuals from one another. Over time, human beings become dependent on job aids and process guides and flow charts. We are afraid to think or respond – even if a given situation or problem falls out of scope for the training we’ve received. Over time we’re not in the happy la la land HR would believe they have created for an organization – the angst and frustration that comes from living a trained life is immeasurable.

Social networks and online communities help break these systemized silos that we are continuously being boxed into by our HR mindset. The last door we need to be knocking to realize human potential is that of HR departments.  The HR mindset steers away from humanness – complexity, ambiguity, emotional intelligence, relationships, trust, vulnerability – All of the above are ‘out of scope’.  Instead there are performance factors, core values, laddering processes, job aids, training plans, development plans (LOL) that are over-engineered around the individual and seem to pull apart the natural ecosystem that makes us a collective.

Social Learning and Social Media is about unleashing the potential of the collective. The industrialized dogma of formal learning is NOT a good starting place for us to figure how we are going to enable social learning in an organization.  We need a new framework to help enable social learning. It needs to come from a study of natural systems – the Amazon rain forests or Android Developer Networks… It needs us to re-engage with human beings and help them build & nurture relationships.

How are you enabling social learning in your organization? Do you have a pov that is different to mine?