We know how to learn: it’s a natural process, obfuscated by organisational intent and obstinate design. The future of learning is not in technology, although it will be all about technology, and it’s not about video, although it may be filled with video. It’s not about ‘millenials‘, or ‘digital learners‘, although both young and old people will learn, and do so online. The future of learning, is learning: the removal of barriers, to creation of experiences, of spaces to learn, spaces to explore, spaces to play, to reflect, to create.
The future of learning is individual and co-created, it’s local and geolocated, it’s dynamic and adaptive. Organisations will no longer ‘own‘ the learning, because there is too much to own, and because it slips and flows all the time: knowledge itself is adaptive, facts evolutionary, our sense making entirely contextual and fluid.
Recently i’ve been writing about the Socially Dynamic Organisation, an idea i will most likely expand to a full book next year, once the Change book is published. There’s a key concept in there, that the Socially Dynamic Organisation will be ‘guided not governed‘. It will learn, itself, not to own and control, but to facilitate and enable. It will be humble, fair and equal, not because these are nice things to be, but because they are the only way to be. They will be engaged because they earn engagement. They will be trusted because they earn our trust. They will be ‘learning organisations‘, not because they bluster, rant and aspire, but because they are full of people who learn, freely, and openly supported.
This is neither a fiction nor a dream: it’s a challenge and route map. The only way to become Socially Dynamic, to transform the organisation, is to transform it. As someone said to me yesterday: this is a massive piece of work. It is, and you are the person do to it: within and alongside your community.
We build the future of learning by transforming the organisation, starting with ourselves.
julianstodd
Julian Stodd's Learning Blog 
I am struck by the contrast between your vision and the authoritarian rhetoric that many Americans are rallying around as this side of the pond prepares to vote for our next president.
Yes… good luck…
Julian. I really enjoy reading your articles. I’ve one wish. I’d like to see these ideas applied to solving a real world problem that I have focused on for the past 20 years.
“What are all the things we need to know and do to help non-school, mentor-rich, support systems be available to k-12 youth in every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago and other cities with high concentrations of poverty? And as programs become available, how do we create a flow of talent, ideas, operating dollars, etc that helps each program constantly improve their ability to help kids move through school and into jobs and careers?”
Since this problem persists in every urban area of the US, as well as in many rural areas and reservations, there should be people in each of these areas using ideas you and others share to build an information base and network of problem solvers who are focusing on this question.
Part of “all the things we need to know” includes finding these people and connecting them, and their work, to each other. Another part is finding resource partners, research teams, funders, etc. who will support this as on-going process for 20-25 consecutive years.
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