The Power of Pull

In preparation for the LrnBk Chat starting 12/15/10, I started reading "The Power of Pull" this weekend.  I took my book to BooksaMillion, bought a grande mocha latte, and found a comfortable chair.  Three hours later I looked up.

"Small moves, smartly made" keeps running through my head. It may become my mantra.  I am fortunate to have a role in my organization where I can influence others to become passionate about collaborative learning.  I certainly am passionate about it.  I have always had a passion for learning.  I've found that collaborating with others who share my passion has definitely increased my knowledge at a faster pace.  I now want to convince others that collaboration can propel them forward and get them passionate about their own work.  "Small moves, smartly made" is the way to make this happen. 

Until I started reading "The Power of Pull" I was attributing the focus on collaborative learning solely to the rise in social networking through 2.0 platforms.  It is so much bigger than that.  It's so much more about the rapid change we face every day.  The technology is just the platform by which we make our connections and find the answers to our questions.  The power to deal with rapid change is the key to helping others understand the value in spending time asking questions, connecting with others and looking for new solutions to new issues.

Pull is about finding people and resources at the time we need them.  It is also about our ability to attract people to us who share our passion.  Most importantly it's about pulling from within ourselves knowledge and insight required to achieve our potential.  As we pull to learn quickly we translate that learning into improved performance.  That improved performance helps us, our organizations and others with whom we interact.  It's all a collaborative learning cycle.

The world has changed.  It used to be we were taught what we needed to do our jobs and that was that.  That used to be enough.  It's not enough anymore.  We need to constantly refresh our knowledge to stay on top of the rapid change the world is facing.  We can do this by collaborating with each other, sharing ideas and trying new things to address new challenges.

I'm looking forward to collaborating with others starting 12/15/10 as we discuss our impressions of the book, "The Power of Pull."