Pokeshot GmbH

Our in-house example of user-generated learning content has attracted great interest at recent events and discussions on change and knowledge management. Therefore I’d like to share with you the story of how we implemented the Learner as Creator concept at Pokeshot. The following example ties in with our last blog article about possible change measures that can lead to a successful implementation of the concept.

 

View Part 1: Learner as Creator

 

Pokeshot is a small company with 27 full-time employees. Because of our size we have no one who is specifically in charge of staff development, nor do we have the financial means to hire an outside company to produce sophisticated training programs for our products and processes. In addition, our core business is in constant change and demands that we acquire knowledge and facilitate learning in a highly dynamic and flexible way. By the time this current knowledge is gathered together by various experts in the company, prepared by a third-party and then made available to all our employees in the form of a professional training, it is already outdated.

 

Transforming workshop results into a Learning Path

A few months ago, two of our colleagues conducted a workshop with an external consultant. The workshop’s aim was to define key industries and messages for our product SmarterPath. It was extremely important for all employees to be made aware of the results that came out of this workshop, so as to ensure that consistent language is used when communicating with existing and future clients – across all channels. The two workshop participants therefore decided to approach one of our social learning consultants, who helped them compile all the important results from the workshop into a compact learning path in SmarterPath.

Workshops such as these cost money – because of both the external resources and the time they require. Our CEO was therefore also eager for the results to be made available to whole team and utilized in as profitable a way as possible. To ensure beneficial output, he asked all employees to take 30 minutes of their time over the following two weeks to complete the specially created “Smarter Path”. Friendly reminders were given over the course of those two weeks via various in-house channels.

The Smarter Path began with a task that unexpectedly prompted a very interesting discussion among our in-house community (Jive). In retrospect, the insights gained from this discussion is extremely important, as the product was discussed from many different perspectives – including that of developers, consultants, and other positions.

 

  

 

The last challenge on the path was an optional exercise: “Partner up with another colleague to create a video pitch using the key messages that have been identified.” The employees were given six weeks to complete the challenge and were even offered extra incentive in the form of a €50 voucher of their choice per team for all those who participated. You can watch some of the video pitches here. And the winning video is featured below:

 

 

What our team is saying

Stephan, CEO:

“I am really amazed by the useful output we gained from participants. The time they invested in this project has definitely already paid off.”

Sandra, CPO:

“I personally believe that the long-term sharing of knowledge is extremely worthwhile. I was really happy to see how the others engaged with the workshop results and what they learned from it.”

Julia, CMO:

“In the future I can compile learning pathways on interesting and current topics myself, even though I am not an instructional designer. This exercise, together with other internally created paths, provide the perfect blueprint.”

I wanted to use this example to demonstrate how SmarterPath projects can cover all aspects of the 70:20:10 model. The workshop participants, video creators, and path participants all learned through their own experiences (70%). Access to the workshop results and the opportunity for lively discussion also resulted in participants learning from others (20%). With this best practice, we therefore closely linked the 70% and 20% with the 10% of structured learning (the specially created path). If you now imagine how this approach could be used to reach hundreds of employees across an entire organization, with optimal speed and minimal effort, the impact is substantially greater.

 

About the author

Linda joined Pokeshot GmbH in March 2016 as a consultant for social collaboration and learning management. Her primary responsibility is the product management of our award-winning social learning solution SmarterPath.

 

 

 

 

 

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