I will be contributing a regular column to the national weekly newspaper Campus Review, starting in the next edition, under the by-line ‘John Mitchell’s INside VET’. My overall interest in writing this column will be in answering this  question: how is the VET sector going about continually improving its national contribution? In the column I will focus on micro or local developments that contribute to the macro impact of VET.

My aim in this column is to push past the curtains of policies, regulations, jargon and media spin that may prevent us from clearly seeing into the sector. My intention is to provide an alternative set of windows to view how VET practitioners and organisations go about improving their performance. Implicitly, my interests are organisational strategy, performance improvement, customer service, new practices, leadership, strategic management, change management and  professional development – the same topics addressed in this blog.

The column will show that we need multiple windows to view the breadth of VET experience. Depending on which window we look through, we will be able to see transformational leaders, strategic managers, entrepreneurs and innovators, visionary corporate services personnel and highly adaptable teachers and trainers. We will also see a vast array of students, from apprentice to degree level, with a variety of learning styles and social needs. 

But almost every window will show that VET organisations consist of human beings who have different perspectives and different capabilities. Hence the column will point to the multiple goals, pressures, anxieties, hopes and achievements of the people and organisations in the sector. I enjoy working deep inside this sector and intend to use this column to bring to life the richness, complexities, tensions, excitement and humaneness of VET.

A regular column can only capture a slice of the variegated nature of the VET sector, so I propose to connect the column with this blog site, where I can extend my commentary and cover other related matters.

One of my strong interests in e-education is assisting educational organisations to effectively market online.

I work with some groups in the adult and community education (ACE) sector who are actively exploring this topic. For instance, members of the groups have experimented with co-branding, as in the case of one member who has his College's courses listed on Lastminute.com and part of the deal is that Lastminute.com has its logo on his Community College’s website.

Look at this home page http://www.mwcc.nsw.edu.au/docs/index.php and you will see not only the logo of Lastminute.com but the logos of 13 other suppliers and partners of Manly Warringah Community College, with space for more. Personally, I find this home page very attractive and all the more interesting for its links to other parties. This is using cleverly the valuable real estate on one’s home page.

There is still more we can learn about web advertising. I was interested when I read in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald a story about the cost effectiveness of web-based advertising and am now thinking about its implications for my education clients. The article by Paul McIntyre was called ‘Net threat to other ad media can only get bigger’ (p.25, SMH, 22 July 2004) and discussed an event in the US two months ago when the Ford motor company demonstrated that there are mass audiences available on the net for a fraction of the cost of TV advertising.

Instead of buying up TV time for massive advertising on a single day, Ford bought advertising space on major US web portals such as Yahoo!, MSN and AOL. The result was exceptional: in one day Ford reached 40% of all American men between the ages of 25 and 40 – its target market. And it was ten times cheaper than TV advertising.

Marketing experts are now predicting that web-based advertisements will increase, bringing about a reduction in the amount of television advertising.

Now what are the implications of the Ford story for my education clients? Of course, trends in the US by massive corporations such as Ford may have little connection to small to medium sized educational organisations in Australia. However, the Ford story raises some broad issues which I would like to share with you. 

I believe that educational organisations would be wise to actively monitor the domain of web-based advertising and to consider the following points:

• Are educational organisations using their own web pages effectively as marketing platforms? My answer is a resounding no, at the moment. Most of our web sites are dull, flat and frozen. They meet a standard set about three years ago, and are off the pace now. Look at www.smh.com.au if you want to know where the high jump bar is for home pages.
• Are educational organisations actively exploiting co-branding opportunities to host advertisements on their web home pages from their partners, in lieu of their partners hosting the educational organisations' logos? The opportunities are immense: think about who are the partners or suppliers of Australian educational organisations and you might start listing some of the mega-US companies that are bigger than Ford.
• Are educational organisations thinking about the pivotal role of commercial web portals like Google and Yahoo and how these commercial portals (not government portals) provide access to mass markets? And if educational organisations cannot afford to have prominent advertisements on such web portals, what are the second and third and fourth cost options?

We are surrounded by and love the web but have we worked out how to use it effectively for educational advertising?

Yesterday I received some fascinating emails from Garry Traynor, Principal of Sydney Community College. He has a facility on his College web site which lets him know which other web sites are referring people to his site. He innocently clicked on a number of these URLs and found they were blog sites for what he called Generation Y – twentysomethings or thereabouts - born between 1979-1994. The blog sites included active discussion among groups of friends about the language courses at his College and which ones the bloggers thought interesting and worth taking.

Garry sent me a note about it and when I looked at these same blog sites, I felt like Mark Latham might have felt the other day, looking through the windows into the 'Big Brother' household: curious, voyeuristic and a bit invasive. The young adults’ blogging discussions about language courses were mixed in with other idle chatter and flirting.

What to do with such information is the question the Garry Traynor asked himself. As he said to me in an email (which he is happy for me to share with you):

The Gen Y thing has been happening for some time. A lot of our marketing effort is focused at that target. Seems like blogs could open a new method to promote... But on the other hand... like SMS, a blog is very private and in there is its strength. If we lever in... I feel we will be snubbed and probably punished.

Interesting new issues are emerging for e-marketing about blogs, SMS and the Y Generation.

Garry and I and many others in the world of adult and community education (ACE) are very interested in the thinking, lifestyles and learning-style preferences of the Generation Y, as they represent the next wave of ACE students - provided ACE understands them and can cater for their evolving needs.

It seems timely for educational marketers in the ACE and VET sectors to start  understanding more about Generation Y and blogs...without being invasive.

I have asked Garry to share his thinking about these areas at the next meeting of the ACE NSW Business Development Group, of which Garry is a member and I am the facilitator/consultant.

If I was to suggest that change agents are inevitably involved in organisational politics, some senior managers might be horrified. Surely there are no politics in our organisation! Read on.

Last night I received the following email from a professional I am currently mentoring in a change agency program. He has given me permission to reproduce this section of his email, to illustrate the political judgment he needs to exercise in his work:

Progress to date has exceeded my expectations. The change model I documented has remained sound, but the way I've had to work it has required the maximum in flexibility with some stages not fully completed before I've moved on to the next. Tomorrow will be a challenge in precisely the way I thought - the tension between facilitating and directing. The CEO is keen for me to undertake some negotiations with other key stakeholders on his behalf (a desire shared by others involved). I've resisted thus far as I know this will require me to make some agreements on behalf of the organisation. I have a plan to avoid this while not totally walking away from it, however the likely issues are so technical in nature that my superior understanding of VET will probably force my close involvement at the very least.

The above email is an excellent description of a change agent balancing conflicting tensions; managing the client and the senior stakeholders; and jockeying with the client as to when he will become involved in internal negotiations within the client’s organisation. This level of professional reflection and judgment and sensitivity, combined with a knowledge of organisational politics in VET, is a fine basis for a change agent.

Buchanan and Badham (2000) provide a strong argument that change agency is inevitably involved in the politics that are a normal part of organisational life. They promote the concept that the change agent is a ‘political entrepreneur’ as this term rightly emphasises the following:

the risk-taking and creative dimensions of the role of the change agent, and also the personal commitment, extending on occasion to passion, toward the change agenda (p.5).

Burnes (2000) agrees that managers and change agents have the legitimate right to introduce changes, ‘but to do so they must use political skills in a pragmatic way to build support and overcome or avoid resistance’ (p.300). While Burnes advocates avoiding resistance, Buchanan and Badham (2000) suggest that the change agent who strives to be politically neutral or ‘squeaky clean’ will be ineffective:

The change agent who is not well equipped, or not willing, to deal with political issues and power plays is thus likely to be outmanoeuvred – and will probably fail. This argument is based on the presumption that organisational politics are pervasive, and cannot be ‘wished away’ or ‘managed away’ (p.5).

Buchanan and Badham (2000) suggest that because change generally stimulates both support and resistance, it is naïve to deny the political dimensions of change:

The ‘squeaky clean’ approach which ignores, avoids or otherwise denies the political realities of organisational life could be viewed as unskilled, incompetent, unprofessional and unethical (p.5).

Read more about the political nature of change agency in Chapter 1 of my recent report The Skilling of VET Change Agents (ANTA, 2003) available at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ and then click on ‘sub-program 2’).

I find it takes professionals whom I mentor about two-four months to become aware of the range of skills and knowledge they need to become effective change agents. To their surprise, they also find out that being a change agent requires them to perform multiple roles.

Currently I am mentoring ten change agents who have completed two months of a six month program in change agency. The participants are becoming increasingly aware of the raft of skills and knowledge they need to perform the various roles of a change agent.

Let’s look at what some theorists say about the traits and skills that they require.

Kanter (1989) suggests that change agents or 'change masters' need to become business athletes, with the following traits:

Able to work independently without the power and sanction of the management hierarchy
An effective collaborator, able to compete in ways that enhance rather than destroy cooperation
Able to develop high trust relations, with high ethical standards
Possessing self-confidence tempered with humility
Respectful of the process of change as well as the substance
Able to work across business functions and units – ‘multi-faceted and multi-dextrous’
Willing to take rewards on results and gain satisfaction from success (in Paton and McCalman 2000 p.51).

Buchanan and Badham (2000) find that the behaviour repertoire of the 'change driver' is as follows:

A combination of change and project management skills, interpersonal skills in negotiating, persuading and influencing, and political skills, combined possibly with knowledge of the substance of the change itself (p.24).

Buchanan and Badham (2000) also find that during a change project, the agent will need to change roles:

The ability of the change driver readily to switch roles will depend largely on the substance and goals of the change initiative in hand, the formal position, power base and personal attributes of the change driver, and the positions adopted by other players in the game at any one time (p.183).

In summary, the literature suggests that change agents need many skills and a deep knowledge of organisations, people and change. One key skill is the ability to perform many roles.

These findings in the literature fit with my own research. Read more about this in Chapter 3 of my report on The Skilling of the VET Change Agents (ANTA, 2003)available at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ and then on ‘Sub-program 2’).

In an earlier posting I reported on an evaluation I conducted of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC, UK) trainee schemes in early 2004. As part of that evaluation, a benchmarking activity was undertaken with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), comparing its experiences with trainee schemes with the BBC’s experiences. Some points from the study of the ABC follow.

Over the last two decades the ABC has conducted entry-level workbased trainee schemes, combining paid work and structured training, irregularly: the last major intake was in the mid 1980s, when a total of around 20 operational trainees and 10 technical trainees were taken on in TV and radio. Smaller intakes have been accepted since then and graduate-level trainee schemes have been conducted even less consistently.

Jenny Ferber, Head of Training at the ABC, and who approved this posting, has encouraged discussion of the issues around trainees within the ABC, originally tabling a discussion paper. Currently she is leading the development of a new policy on the matter. The new policy is expected to suggest more efficient processes, such as common reporting and linking all trainee schemes, where possible, to the national qualifications.

Jenny Ferber is supportive of national qualifications for a number of reasons, including the fact that they ensure a minimum but satisfactory and consistent standard. However, she will withdraw her support if the national qualifications framework, particularly Training Packages, fails to ‘keep up’ with changes in the industry.

Key findings from the benchmarking included the following:

• There are many more similarities between the ABC and BBC trainee schemes than differences.  Key similarities include the needs such as replacing existing staff; hindrances such as a lack of jobs for every trainee; a commitment to diversity; and the use of internal accreditation.
• Some differences between the ABC and the BBC include the stronger commitment to national qualifications by the ABC – provided the Australian national training framework remains current.
• The ABC is undertaking a review of its trainee schemes in 2004 and will produce a new policy paper shortly. Like the BBC, the ABC intends that its new policy will clarify the value of different types of schemes and will ensure consistently high standards of outputs, partly through central coordination of some aspects of the schemes.

Given the way it is continually seeking to improve itself, the ABC meets the criterion for a high-performing organisation that I identified in relation to the BBC: humility. In the case of the ABC, humility means continually seeking to improve systems and impacts.

This study reinforces a number of other issues current in VET:

• The BBC is benchmarking with the ABC because the UK and Australia are both part of the global economy.
• For Australian companies to be on the pace internationally, our training needs to be world-class.
• Training in the ABC is comparable in quality to the BBC, which is encouraging for Australian VET, but the ABC, like the BBC, is seeking to improve its training even further. The high jump bar for Australian training keeps rising.

TAFE frontiers is continuing its series of online discussions around the report I wrote in 2003 with Berwyn Clayton, John Hedberg and Nigel Paine, Emerging Futures: Innovation in Teaching and Learning in VET.

See details of the July 2004 forum at the following site:

http://www.tafefrontiers.com.au/networks/emerge.html

The July 2004 forum focuses on a topic from the report: 'lifelong learning provides a rationale to be innovative'. The forum uses as its starting point the following ideas from page 31 the report:

The lifelong learning model provides teachers with a rationale to be innovative.

Lifelong learning is likely to become an expectation or entitlement, with individuals considering the right to continue learning as important as the right to work. Adult education will move away from the ‘content model of education’ based on teacher-designed curriculum. Educational programs will include technical and, generic skills (i.e., learning to learn, problem solving) as well as the opportunity to develop personal skills and attributes unique to the individual. Lifelong learning will provide the individual with renewable competence to address the future of work, respond positively to personal and social change, and have a much stronger sense of community.

The July online discussion forum in the TAFE frontiers special series is hosted by: Cathy Papalia, Swinburne University, TAFE Division.

The July forum will share some of the challenges and benefits of fleximode delivery. Full-time employed learners, enrolled in the Diploma of Business Human Resources at Swinburne TAFE Division, enjoy the benefits of project learning on weekends.

To participate, join The Source now and go to the forums at:

http://source.tafevc.com.au/forum_panel

I recently visited Scotland to compare the findings of my Australian research for Emerging Futures:Innovation in teaching and learning in VET (Mitchell, Clayton, Hedberg and Paine; ANTA, June 2003), with Scottish research on innovation. The Scottish Further Education (FE) system undertook an extensive action research project on innovation called Focus on Learning: New Approaches to Improving Learning and Achievement.

The Focus on Learning - Final Project Report (May 2003) explains that:

• the two-year project was funded by the Scottish Further Education Funding Council and led by four Scottish FE colleges
• the primary purpose of the project was to develop, pilot and evaluate strategies designed to enhance student retention and achievement
• the principal aims included motivating staff to explore new approaches to raising achievement; raising staff awareness of recent developments regarding effective learning; and enhancing staff skill levels with regard to change and to planning, delivering and evaluating effective learning for their students.

These purposes and aims have some similarities with those of the Australian project, described below.

Scottish FE staff were encouraged to develop their own proposals for the project and fourteen interventions were planned and implemented during the two year project. The projects were entitled:

• A case study for electronics non-advanced provision – emotional intelligence, thinking skills and computer-aided learning
• Developing personal effectiveness and emotional intelligence
• The effects of physical factors and learning styles
• Think Positive! – emotional intelligence and professional studies for design students
• Can’t Remember – memory and recall
• Integrating study skills in the classroom
• Learning styles and achievements in Information Technology
• Using emotional intelligence and students with learning disabilities
• Facilitating adult learners to achieve
• Early intervention to increase student motivation and achievement
• Practical approaches to electronic engineering
• Study skills
• Physical factors and learning in media studies
• Thinking skills in business management programmes.

Many findings emerged from the fourteen projects. For instance, to raise the quality of student achievement FE staff can do the following: use emotional intelligence and reinforcement to build and support students’ self esteem; make students aware of their own learning preferences and styles and help them learn how to learn; and empower students to manage and assess their own learning.

Other findings include the value of helping FE lecturers to recognize the consequences for their own learning, of their learning preferences and style; to recognize that a narrow view of assessment and learning outcomes can limit achievement; to recognize that ‘soft outcomes’ and the ‘distance travelled’ as learners are real, if difficult to measure, achievements; and to understand the impact of emotional intelligence on the motivation and capacity to learn.

Finally, the Scottish study found that the FE system can be harnessed to help students and lecturers to recognize and overcome potential and actual ‘barriers to learning’ and help staff and students to re-focus on learning.

The Australian study, Emerging Futures, was funded by ANTA, managed by OTTE and published by Reframing the Future.

There were two aims of the Australian VET project:

• First, to provide a national review of good practice in innovation that is drawn from current provider activity and achievements. This aspect is addressed by the report Emerging Futures.
• Second, to investigate the development of a suitable national mechanism for ongoing information and support for the dissemination of teaching and learning practice and to strengthen and broaden innovation in the future. This is the subject of a second report which is with ANTA. 

The final report of the Australian project, Emerging Futures, is organised around six key questions: 

• Why is innovation in VET teaching and learning an issue?
• What is innovation in VET teaching and learning?
• How does innovation occur in VET teaching and learning?
• What fosters or impedes innovation in VET teaching and learning?
• Who gains from innovation in VET teaching and learning?
• What can be done to further support innovation in VET teaching?

Similar questions were asked in the Scottish study.

The titles of the fifteen case studies and vignettes in Emerging Futures provide insights into the breadth of innovative activity in the VET sector and are as follows:

• Learner-focused, continually-improved programs for 15-18 year old youths at risk
• VET in Schools program delivered in the workplace
• Assessment and training customised to meet the client’s strategic goals
• Re-engineering the teaching of textiles
• Simulation for assessment in trade areas
• An integrated approach to supporting and motivating distance students
• International benchmarking underpinning the assessment of key competencies in electrotechnology
• Multi-faceted innovation in teaching heavy vehicle mechanics in regional Western Australia
• Use of workplace-based mentors for training delivery of across a region
• Embedding innovation across the organisation
• Managing innovation in teaching in response to photography students’ and industry’s needs
• Simultaneously fostering multiple innovations
• Innovative training solutions in the metals area for trainees with cerebral palsy
• Innovation in teaching remote Indigenous students about mining operations
• Best practice delivery led by a national enterprise.

The titles of these fifteen case studies and vignettes show that the Australian study was different from the Scottish study in focusing on existing examples of innovation, while the Scottish project was based around new interventions. However, the findings from the two studies were similar, particularly that there is no one way to be innovative and there are multiple needs for innovation.

Copies of Emerging Futures: Innovation in Teaching and Learning in VET are available from http://reframingthefuture.net (click on 'Publications' and then click on 'General Publications').

The central importance of professional judgment by practitioners emerged as a key finding from 2003 reports in Scotland and Australia on innovation in teaching and learning in vocational education and training.

The two reports were Emerging Futures:Innovation in teaching and learning in VET, which I prepared with Berwyn Clayton, John Hedberg and Nigel Paine (ANTA, June 2003) and Focus on Learning: New Approaches to Improving Learning and Achievement (Scottish Further Education Union, May 2003).

Emerging Futures found, like the Scottish study, that pressures for change are flowing with increasing force into teaching and learning practice within VET. As a consequence of this ongoing change, wider, deeper and more frequent innovation is now needed in VET teaching and learning practices.

However, as with the Scottish study, the Australian report shows that there are good grounds for optimism about the quality and scope of innovation in teaching and learning practices in VET. Positive futures for VET are emerging, as a result of practitioner innovation, in both countries.

The Australian and Scottish reports imply that the challenge for Further Education (FE) and VET is to work with and manage its practitioners in such a way that innovation can be supported to ensure new or improved outcomes for FE/VET’s constituents, including FE/VET organisations themselves.

The findings from Emerging Futures provide the basis for a conceptual framework for understanding and supporting innovation in VET teaching and learning. The framework shows that innovation in teaching cannot be reduced to a formula of step-by-step actions, as innovation in VET teaching and learning cannot be reduced to simplicities.

The framework demonstrates – as do the findings from the Scottish research – that extensive professional judgment, improvisation, experience and wisdom are needed by practitioners contributing to innovation in FE/VET teaching and learning.

The Scottish and Australian research projects show that:

• both further/vocational education systems are aware of the importance of not just identifying but also promoting innovation in teaching and learning
• there is value in understanding the complex nature of innovation and of highlighting the features of good practice
• we are at the start of a long journey in embedding and sustaining innovation across whole sectors.

One key message that emerges from the two national research projects is that innovation in teaching is a necessity if we are concerned with improved student achievement. Another key message is that a range of models for staff development is needed to engender innovation in teaching, as innovation has many dimensions.

A copy of Emerging Futures:Innovation in teaching and learning in Australian VET is available from http://reframingthefuture.net (click on 'Publications' and then click on 'General Publications').

Professor James Dalziel from Macquarie University is presently in the UK launching a tool he developed in Sydney called the Learning Activity Management System (LAMS). 

LAMS is a software program that allows teachers to design, manage and deliver online collaborative learning activities. Teachers using LAMS can sequence individual tasks, small group work and whole class activities, and incorporate 'learning objects' into sequences where appropriate.

The launch announcement and details are provided today by Stephen Downes in his OLDaily newsletter. Subscribe at  <http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/website/subscribe.cgi> and look for his article for 15 July ‘UK Department for Education and Skills Hosts Launch of LAMS Roadmap’.

Last month I invited James to address a group I facilitate for the Board of Adult and Community Education in NSW, the Entrepreneurs' Group. The charter for this group is to drive e-business and e-learning through the ACE sector.

A live demonstration of the tool by James convinced the Group that LAMS has great merit. Of some interest is that LAMS is based on open source software and free trials (with perhaps some cost for technical support) may be arranged with the James’s Macquarie E-Learning Centre of Excellence (MELCOE). See www.melcoe.mq.edu.au

LAMS is an easy-to-use but powerful tool for a teacher to create an online learning course. The teacher can pull down from a menu a range of twelve different templates. For instance, one template provides the framework for an online test and another template provides a framework for online discussion.

Some other features of the tool that caught the interest of the Entrepreneurs’ Group included the following:

• the tool enables the teacher to arrange online activities in an order to suit the group of learners and the learning tasks required
• there is no desktop software to install as the tool runs through your Internet browser and connects the teacher automatically with his or her class for real-time communication
• the tool integrates with existing learning management systems.

Best of all, the LAMS product makes it easy for the teacher to quickly use sound instructional design principles, hence freeing the teacher to actively interact, guide and mentor students. Research and experience shows us that content will regularly need updating, but human communication – sometimes via technology – remains a vital key to effective e-learning.

A member of the ACE Entrepreneurs’ Group, who is well-known to many VET practitioners around Australia, Sandra Gray from Central West Community College, is presently liaising with MELCOE to trial LAMS within industry in regional NSW, on behalf of the Entrepreneurs’ Group. 

If the trial timing suits, I will be including this trial as one part of a research project I am currently undertaking for the Flexible Learning Advisory Group program 'Engaging Industry Applied Research Projects 2004' .

See http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/projects/research2004.htm

In a recent blog entry I highlighted the emergence of a new characteristic of high-performing organisations: humility. 

I take humility to mean a willingness to listen to staff and clients and to review all current and past structures and assumptions. Humble, high-performing organisations willingly embrace new ideas, new approaches, new systems and new relationships. People guiding high-performing organisations continually learn and are agile in their response to their new learning.

I saw an excellent example of organisational humility when I undertook an assignment for the BBC in London earlier this year. My task was to frame up and commence an evaluation of the long-cherished in-house training within the BBC.

The corporation has delivered trainee schemes for several decades and spends around AUD$25m per annum on these schemes and a total of AUD$125 pa on training and development. Although the claim that one was ‘BBC trained’ is respected around the world, the BBC wanted a thorough analysis undertaken of BBC internal training. Humility at work.

In interviewing a range of BBC trainees, both current and past, and a range of staff, I was struck by a number of responses to the evaluation:

• the desire of BBC management that the existing trainee schemes be benchmarked against the best in the world, to make sure the BBC was still on the pace
• the determination of BBC management that the trainee schemes be critiqued to make sure there were consistently high standards of training delivery
• the attitude of interviewees that the reputation of the BBC trainee schemes could only be maintained by continuous improvement, not clinging on to past glories. 

For me, the BBC is high-performing because of such humility.

A fascinating article appeared in the national press today, Thursday 15 July 2004, about Australians’ habits in using web news sites such as News Limited’s www.news.ninemsn.com.au and Fairfax’s www.smh.com.au

The article called ‘The way the web was won’ by Sheena McLean featured in The Australian’s Media and Marketing section, pp. 17-18.

McLean notes that the web is unique in that news editors can measure what stories are being read and how long people spend reading them. The results 'can challenge conventional judgments about news values’. My mind is focused on how the insights from sources such as these can be of relevance to educators.

Research released last week by Fairfax’s f2 shows that online news has come into its own as a significant source of information for a growing number of Australians during the working day. There are 5.3m unique visitors a month to the f2 sites and 4.8m to the News Limited sites. This includes all sites, not just online news. In the light of the survey, f2 sites are being updated at least 100 times a day and are incorporating more breaking news.

One industry representative commented on users’ habits:

The big thing about the web is choice…I think it is a more serious medium. Five years ago there were a lot more quirky stories at the top… to me it’s done a total reverse. The regular audience that keeps coming back to us every day is coming back for news.

But users want news of all different types: news about politics, sport, entertainment and science. Readers want both hard news and lighter entertainment.

Some other findings from the research are:

• news online is mostly used by people in their office, with lunchtime a peak period;
• the belief that online readers prefer shorter stories is confounded by the new evidence;
• preferences of online news readers vary markedly from Brisbane to Adelaide to other capital cities;
• Australian stories that get picked up by Google news in the US get massive hits.

One interesting finding about our values is that an article about a woman’s struggle with depression is news.com.au’s top story nationally so far this month.

How can educators use this intriguing information about people’s habits in viewing online news? I am not sure. But at the very least it is an encouragement for educators to revisit their market research about how students like to use the web and whether their tastes and habits are different from a year ago. There might be significant implications for the design of online learning.

I completed several years ago for the Flexible Learning Advisory Group some extensive market research around preferences of online learners which now could be revisited and extended, given this new evidence that online users’ habits are changing. 

See http://flexiblelearning.net.au/national/np_news.htm

One of my professional activities involves assisting educational organisations to develop goals and strategies for knowledge management.  

I begin by tabling a range of definitions of knowledge management, such as the following:

• Knowledge management is not the mechanical organisation of knowledge; nor is knowledge management solely about content (Gamble & Blackwell, 2001, p.13).
• Knowledge management is a system and a process, not just content (Cordata, 2001, p.104). 
• Knowledge management is the systematic processes by which knowledge needed for an organisation to succeed is created, captured, shared and leveraged (Rumizen, 2002, p.9).

An alternative definition to Rumizen’s is provided by Standards Australia (2001):

Knowledge management is a multi-disciplined approach to achieving organisational objectives by making the best use of knowledge—it focuses on processes such as acquiring, creating and sharing knowledge and the cultural and technical foundations that support them. The aim of knowledge management is to align knowledge processes with organisational objectives (p.7).

Reasons why organisations commit to knowledge management include:

• to improve the quality of available knowledge within the enterprise and share it across the operating units;
• to improve responses to competitive forces;
• to reduce or control costs;
• to accelerate rates of innovation within an enterprise
• to reduce the loss of intellectual assets caused by turnover in employees (Cortada, 2001, p.110).  

All the above goals are relevant to educational organisations who are improving their businesses.

These ideas are developed further in Mitchell & Young, 'Knowledge Management and the National Training Framework: Core Ideas', available at http://reframingthefuture (click on 'Publications' and then on 'General Publications').

In my work as a strategist, I find that educational organisations are becoming increasingly aware of the nature and value of knowledge. I asssist organisations to go beyond broad-stroke definitions of knowledge and to develop strategies for managing knowledge that suit their specific context.  

Standards Australia (2001) defines knowledge as follows:

Knowledge is the body of understanding and skills that is mentally constructed by people. Knowledge is increased through interaction with information (typically from other people) (p.7).

Gamble & Blackwell (2001) suggest that there are three different types of knowledge:

• Embodied knowledge: undocumented information in human beings such as the intuition, empathy and experience that enables us to make decisions.
• Represented knowledge: knowledge mostly contained in data and documented information that is rightly the basis for much decision-making.
• Embedded knowledge: the knowledge that exists in processes, products, rules and procedures (p.13).

Standards Australia (2001) identifies five different types of knowledge, partly overlapping with Gamble and Blackwell:

• Tacit knowledge: knowledge that includes aspects of culture about ‘ways of doing things’.
• Explicit knowledge: knowledge that is recorded, e.g. in a document or other medium.
• Non-declarable knowledge: tacit knowledge which people use to do things but find difficult to articulate.
• Embedded knowledge: knowledge contained in the routines or procedures of an organisation.
• Other dimensions: e.g. individual, group or organisational knowledge (pp.7-8).

All these different types of knowledge exist within Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) and are relevant to VET organisations implementing the national training system, and all these types of knowledge need to be managed in VET.

Davenport and Prusak (1998) provide a definition of knowledge that integrates the different types of knowledge outlined above:

Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, expert insight and grounded intuition that provides an environment and framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. It originates and is applied in the minds of knowers. In organisations it often becomes embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organisational routines, processes, practices and norms (p.5).

The Davenport and Prusak definition reminds us of two matters relevant to educational organisations:

• first, that knowledge is fluid, so managing it is a process that never stops;
• second, that knowledge is embedded not just in individuals, but also in organisations, so organisational processes need to be managed as well as individuals. Organisations exploit knowledge by building capabilities and competencies (Carlilse, in Little et al, 2002, p.126).

These ideas are discussed further in Mitchell & Young, 'Knowledge Management and the National Training Framework' available at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on 'Publications' and then on 'General Publications')

From my work around Australia, I know that Harvard Business School's John Kotter is among the most popular change theorists. However, informed organisations modify Kotter's change management model to suit specific contexts.

A proponent of emergent change, John Kotter is the author of books such as Leading Change (1996) and John Kotter on What Leaders Really Do (1999). Kotter advocates eight steps in the change process, from establishing a sense of urgency, to creating a guiding coalition and more. Kotter considers the eight stages to be a process and not a checklist and that most major change efforts comprise a host of small and medium-sized change projects (Burnes, 2001, pp.296-297). 

Burnes (2000, p.280) explains that the emergent approach to change starts from the assumption that change is a continuous, open-ended and unpredictable process of aligning and re-aligning an organisation to its changing environment. Burnes (2000) explains that the emergent approach is increasingly popular in the contemporary world:

Advocates of Emergent change argue that it is more suitable to the turbulent environment in which modern firms now operate because, unlike the Planned approach, it recognises that it is vital for organisations to adapt their internal practices and behaviour to changing external conditions (p.280).

The external environment for sectors such as VET and ACE are continually changing, suggesting that the use of an emergent change model like Kotter's will often be appropriate.

While Kotter’s approach is popular, there are a number of criticisms or cautions about his approach which deserve mention:

• First, the Kotter approach assumes that every manager can be a change leader, while overlooking specialist skills required of change agents (Burnes, 2000, p. 297). In response to those situations that need a specialist change agent, the national professional development program Reframing the Future <http:reframingthefuture.net> launched a new sub-program in early 2003 called National Training Change Agents, to highlight the specialist skills required of change agents.
• Second, the Kotter approach is sometimes criticised for not showing enough concern for the reasons why resistance to change emerges (King & Anderson, 2002, p.203). It is odd that Kotter is seen as downplaying resistance to change, as he was initially famous because of his insights into resistance. Perhaps books on resistance will sell less well than books on how to bring about change.
• Third, despite his claim that he does not have a set against managers, Kotter often portrays leaders as transforming organisations while he views managers as they were depicted in 1970s behaviourist texts, as focusing on planning, budgeting and controlling. Contemporary literature on management, such as that provided by Cusumano & Markides (2001), views managers as ‘value creators’ and strategists, far removed from the behaviourist manager of the 1970s. Kotter seems to over-emphasise leadership and under-state the importance of management.
• Fourth, Kotter's popularity in Australia shows an Australian bias towards USA change models, as my recent work in the UK showed me there is much less interest in USA models there. Australians need to question whether the Kotter model, predominantly based on USA examples, is entirely transferable to the cultures of Australian organisations.

In summary, Kotter is not without his critics. While Kotter's model has value, it is not suitable in every instance and needs to be critiqued and modified to suit each setting.

While Kotter’s model is popular in VET, a range of other models is available and are used around VET, as the nature of change will be different not only from one  organisation to the next, but from one section of an organisation to another section. It is appropriate that different groups of managers use different change management models to suit their particular contexts.

I discuss various adaptations of Kotter and other change management models in chapter 4 of Mitchell, J.G. (2003), Strategy-making in Turbulent Times, ANTA, Melbourne (available at http://reframingthefuture.net click on ‘Publications’ then click on ‘Sub-program 2').

I note with interest the words ‘change agent’ creeping into Duty Statements, along with dozens of other requirements. The inference is that change agency is just another standard skill, like the skill to negotiate with industry or to liaise with the community, that will be acquired over a career by aspiring leaders and managers. But what if only a very small proportion of personnel will ever be effective change agents?

My own research on change agency suggests that change agency is a high-order skill, not acquired by the majority of personnel. Paton and McCalman (2003) suggest that the change agent needs to be competent above all in dealing with people and helping an organisation find solutions, a skill which few have:

To help solve a problem, the change agent has to be able to offer some form of expertise. Traditionally, this is based on knowledge of the subject. However, for the organisation development agent, the knowledge, more often than not, is in dealing with people and helping the organisation find its own solutions …This is a skill that few have, and fewer still use effectively (p.191).

Buchanan and Badham (2000) summarise the complexities of the change agent role, including taking career-shortening risks:

The change-driving role is not an easy one. Major change makes the driver more visible, and more vulnerable. The role requires a behaviour repertoire that extends into different forms of Machiavellian actions, and other managerial character styles. This can involve the conscious switch from one position in relation to change implementation to another, to reduce risk and maximise personal advantage. It also requires energy and commitment – perhaps even passion – as well as creativity. It involves the acceptance of personal risk in career terms (p.207).

Is it time to re-work Duty Statements so that ‘skills as a change agent’ are only in the ‘nice to have’ not ‘must have’ category, as such skills are rare?

I recently prepared a research report on how an intensive six-month program, conducted by Reframing the Future, provided the conditions for eleven VET managers to develop a range of change agency skills. Note that a range of skills – not every possible skill – was developed over six months, and only as as result of structured, guided, intensive practice. To develop such skills involved hard work and high-order application on the part of the trainee change agents.

See The Skilling of VET Change Agents (ANTA, Melb, 2003) available at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ then click on ‘Sub-program 2’).

In mentoring change agents in the vocational education and training (VET) sector, one of my practices is to table with them a range of different models for how change needs might be diagnosed and change introduced. I find that aspiring change agents greet these models with enthusiasm. They also are comfortable taking up my suggestion that any text-book model for change management needs to be modified to suit the organisation they are seeking to change.

However, I find aspiring change agents are much less comfortable when I ask them to postpone the examination of 'how to do it' models, and to first examine the model they have in their head about how organisations work. Mostly this request draws a mystified look from the trainee change agent and I often get the response that 'I don't have a model for how organisations work'.

I use a range of different techniques to help practitioners see that we all have models in our heads of how organisations work. Sometimes it is easy to detect the model, based on the language practitioners use to describe their own organisation. Metaphors are a key.

Gareth Morgan (1997), in his seminal book Images of Organisations, summarises the most popular models or images that we have of organisations. These include the image of an organisation as a machine – an image popular with those who see the different parts of an organisation as the interlocking parts of a machine. Other popular images of organisations are as follows: 

• organisations are like organisms,
• or brains,
• or cultures,
• or political battlegrounds,
• or psychic prisons.

Morgan finds that each of us brings models such as these to our analysis of organisations, although our model may not be so clearly formulated and we may not be very aware of our model.

Such personal models of organisations influence the way each of us views an organisation and will influence how we go about planning and managing change. It is advisable for change agents to identify their own models of organisations before seeking out other people's 'how to do it' change management models.

If we are unaware of our existing model for how organisations function, we will select a model for change which suits our view of the world, but not other people's. Change management is about understanding multiple views of the world, including our own.

I explore these issues in chapter 2 of the report Mitchell, J.G. (2004), The Skilling of VET Change Agents, ANTA, Melbourne (available at http://reframingthefuture.net click on 'Publications' and then click on 'Sub-program 2').

In 2004 I am mentoring an educational manager who is developing an innovation strategy - in teaching and learning - for her large, metropolitan technical and further education (TAFE) Institute.

Developing an innovation strategy is a fascinating topic but it raises a raft of issues, which we are exploring together. Just one of the issues is what motivates practitioners to be innovative.

One of the findings from research I have undertaken recently is that innovation can be influenced by practitioners’ motivations or personality traits or sense of personal or professional identity.

My research indicates that VET practitioners have varying motivations, personalities and identities. For instance, VET practitioners may be motivated in one of the following ways:

• by a desire to model originality;
• or by a determination to provide improved services; 
• or by a desire for deserved recognition from peers.

Personality traits influencing innovation can include a preference for being unconventional; or a preference for operating in an ambiguous and challenging situation. A practitioner's sense of identity – say, as a humanist, an industry specialist or as an oracle or facilitator – may also influence her or his response to a proposed innovation in teaching.

The critical role of motivation has significant implications for an innovation strategy and for those managing such a strategy.

I discuss these and many other challenging issues around innovation in Mitchell, J.G. Clayton, B., Hedberg, J. and Paine N.,(2003), Emerging Futures: Innovation in Teaching and Learning, ANTA, Melbourne (available at http://reframingthefuture.net click on 'Publications' and then click on 'General publications')

Daniel Boud from the University of Technology Sydney provided me with these links on blogging on education, if you are interested in searching further.

Blogging Glossary
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/glossary.html

Weblogs – a history and perspective
http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html

An introduction to weblogs
http://www.dynamicobjects.com/d2r/archives/002399.html

Blog Search Engines
http://feedster.com/

http://www.daypop.com/

http://www.technorati.com/

Educational Bloggers Network
http://www.ebn.weblogger.com/

Online Learning Update
http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/onlinelearning/blogger.html

Blogging to Learn – Anne Bartlett-Bragg
http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/knowledgetree/edition04/pdf/Blogging_to_Learn.p
df

Using Weblogs in Education
http://www.weblogg-ed.com/

Elearnspace
http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/

Blogger.com
http://www.blogger.com

It is always enriching to provide mentoring services to colleagues in education. Currently I am mentoring a range of senior executives and senior managers in different educational organisations, around topics such as managing flexible learning, managing change, developing strategy and managing evaluation.

When I think of mentoring an Eastern saying comes to mind: ‘The teacher and the taught together create the teaching’. This saying will mean different things to different people. One thing it means to me is that the mentor and the mentee create a new whole: the mentor and the mentee both contribute to the learning that is occurring.

 For me, other angles on this saying are as follows:

• the mentee learns from the mentor and the mentor learns from the mentee 
• neither knows in advance all that will be learnt
• together, the mentor and the mentee create new knowledge
• if there is time, the mentor and the mentee can develop a collective consciousness.

I am sharing these thoughts about the mentoring experience for a number of reasons, one of which is to make the point that mentoring is more than the pursuit of models or solutions: it can be a journey full of discoveries. Many of these discoveries are about the discoverers: about their previous mindsets, prior expectations and openness to new perspectives.

Such a highly reflective approach to mentoring suits educational practice, because educational practice is a rich human experience containing surprises and complexities waiting to be discovered.

Bookstores are often crammed with ‘how to do it’ guides to change management. Some of these books reduce change management to five or ten or ‘n’ easy steps, mischievously suggesting that the same 5-10 steps can be applied in every situation.

I mentor many change agents who commonly find that the models for change that are so prominent in the literature don’t ever fit neatly with the change agents’ complex environments (Mitchell, 2004, p.33). 

Collins (Organisational Change. Sociological Perspectives, Routledge, London and New York, 2003) criticises management theorists who produce programmatic or schematic guides to managing change in organisations: what he calls ‘n-step guides for change’ (p.83). His typical example of the schematic n-step change model is as follows:

1. Develop strategy
2. Confirm top level support
3. Use project management approach
• Identify tasks
• Assign responsibilities
• Agree deadlines
• Initiate action
• Monitor
• Act on problems
• Close down
4. Communicate results (p.83).

Collins suggests there are three key features of simplistic n-step change models:

A rational analysis of organisational change
A sequential approach to the planning and management of change
A generally up-beat and prescriptive tone (p.84).

Collins criticises n-step guides because they downplay the existence of conflict and the breadth of personalities in organisations and they sanitise the change process (p.127):

Unlike the organisations assumed to exist in n-step guides, organisations are not peopled by workers who naturally share a common consensus. Instead, people adhere, to a greater or lesser degree, to their own value system…We must, therefore, be realistic about the extent to which managers (or the state) could effectively erase such a complex, plural, deep-rooted and socially maintained set of values (p.127).

These comments are a reminder that simplistic recipes for change management  will rarely be appropriate.

I report on this matter in Mitchell, J.G. (2004), The Skilling of VET Change Agents, ANTA, Melbourne at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ and then on Sub-program 2).

Three different clients have asked me in the last week about the definition of a high-performing organisation.

I believe the definition is always changing, as organisations find new and different ways to respond to their environment and to improve their internal processes. But there are few definitions of a high-performing organisation in the Australian literature.

Four years ago, a valuable definition of a high performing organisation was provided by Dr Ken Moss, in the Business Council of Australia’s report on workplace reform (BCA, 2000), in setting out a range of questions and challenges facing Australia. He also provided a description of high-performing enterprises, as characterised by creativity, innovation, flexibility and competitiveness:

How can Australian enterprises grasp and create new opportunities emerging from globalisation, technological change and the knowledge economy? How can we create leading, high-performance workplaces that are characterised by creativity, innovation, flexibility and competitiveness? Workplaces where people choose to work and give freely of their energies and feel a sense of achievement, satisfaction, individual purpose and security. Where there is synergy between personal missions and work challenges, and organisational achievement. And where the workplace sense of community contributes to social cohesion. (p.1)

The BCA definition was pre-September 11 2001 and the Ansett collapse three days later. Since 2000 whole industry sectors have experienced shake-ups, driven by new technologies or new competition or new products, such as banking and IT, tourism and transport. Also since 2000, customer expectations for personalized and electronic services have soared, evidenced by the way century-old over-the-counter services by banks have been replaced by a raft of new electronic services.

Given the changes since the turn of the century, I believe that the BCA definition needs to be extended and sharpened to fit the contemporary world of 2004.

In my work with many organisations around Australia and overseas, I see emerging a range of new characteristics of high-performing organisations. Driven by the ever-increasing trend towards being more customer or client-focused, one of the key new characteristics of high-performing organisations is a surprising one, and jars with the BCA word ‘competitiveness’. The new characteristic is humility.

Ten years ago, humility would have been seen as a sign of a weak organisation. Back then, high-performing organisations were characterized by an arrogance; by a competitive, dog-eat-dog streak; by the need to say we are the best. I have collected vivid examples of such attitudes, which I use in my workshops.

In outstanding organisations nowadays, humility enables senior managers to do the following:

• to listen better to customers;
• to listen better to staff;
• to review all assumptions underpinning current company processes;
• to treat no previous organisational structures as sacred.

My research finds that humility by senior managers also has the following benefits:

• humility leads to the valuing of the tacit and explicit knowledge of staff;
• humility provides a basis for talking to one’s competitors, to investigate possible partnerships;
• humility encourages companies to network and collaborate.

In contemporary Australia, high-performing organisations proudly announce that, on the basis of recent and comprehensive client feedback, the organisation has refurbished last year’s strategic plan and is developing less grandiose and more responsive strategies. Humble, high-performing organisations willingly embrace new ideas, new approaches, new systems and new relationships.

Humility is only one of the new characteristics of high-performing organisations I am tracking, but it is a fundamental one.

A common delusion of the command-and-control school of strategic planning is that the organisation can always align itself with the external environment, achieving a snug 'strategic fit'.

One of the reasons I find it interesting to assist registered training organisations (RTOs) in the vocational education and training (VET) sector is because of the inevitable tensions that exist between the RTO and its external environment. Let’s look at two frequent tensions in the sector:

• firstly, the normal tension between government hopes and the capability of registered training organisations (RTOs);
• secondly, the understandable tensions between industry and RTOs.

There are often tensions between government strategies and what is happening inside of registered training organisations (RTOs), because of the gap between high-flown government goals and difficulties on the ground, inside the RTOs. The legitimate business of government includes aiming high, inspiring the citizenry, moving the country forward, making gains and achieving publicly declared goals. A legitimate aim of government-funded RTOs is to be a vehicle for these government goals: to implement government policies and to demonstrate success. In practice, there is often a large gap between how government aims and RTOs' achievements.  

Tensions arise between government policies and RTO performance for a multitude of reasons. For example, the Government might have changed its policies – say, because of a change of government – and the RTO might have restructured to align its resources with these new policies, but the RTO’s staff might not have the full quota of appropriate attitudes, skills, knowledge or previous experiences to implement the new policies. Also, tensions might arise because the RTO's community may not want what the government policies are promising, at least not as much or as quickly as the government wants, leaving the RTO juggling government hopes and community acceptance rates.

How can RTOs respond, caught between the conflicting demands of government and the community, especially when an RTO's workforce capability is normally calibrated to suit government policies of a previous era?

There are always tensions between the needs of industry and the ability or willingness of RTOs to respond. Because ‘industry’ is often at the mercy of forces beyond its control, including changes in the market such as the entry of new competitors or new products, industry cannot wait until February each year for the local RTO to re-work its long-term strategic plan before the RTO provides relevant training options. RTOs are regularly confronted by the fact that industry is not a neat, homogeneous or static phenomenon:

• old industries disintegrate;
• different industries converge;
• splinter industries emerge;
• new vested interests gain a voice in industry associations.

Industry can appear disorganised, ravaged by conflicting agendas and impatient for RTOs to change.

How can RTOs respond to industry, if industry is regularly in flux? How can RTOs respond if RTOs are locked into rigid, annual strategic planning, which leaves few resources for responding to inconvenient, impatient demands from industry?

One answer to the questions posed above is that RTOs need exceptional skills in continual strategy-making, urgently and from now on, for addressing the everyday tensions in VET.

I provide examples of effective RTO strategy-making in my 2003 report for Reframing the Future, Strategy-making in Turbulent Times, at http://reframingthefuture.net (Click on ‘Publications’ then click on ‘Sub-program 2’).

E-education is much more than the provision of e-learning. E-education involves the use of e-business – that is, conducting business electronically – in the front office, back office and supply chain of educational organisations.

My research for the Commonwealth Government indicates that e-business can, potentially, provide a range of benefits for educational organisations: improved efficiencies, additional value for clients, increased speed of transactions, enhanced business partnerships and, sometimes, reduced costs.

See http://www2.dcita.gov.au/ie/publications/2002/06/eb_education for my report E-business in Education.

Ten days ago, the benefits of e-education were articulated clearly in a presentation from Garry Traynor, a member of a Business Development Group I facilitate for the Board of Adult and Community Education. Garry Traynor is Principal of Sydney Community College and an Australian pioneer in the use of e-business in education, commencing in 2000 with a comprehensive plan to integrate the College’s online enrolments with the website and back office processes. See http://www.sydneycommunitycollege.com.au

A major achievement of the College’s e-business initiative was to build a website which is simple, secure, fast, reliable, cost effective, attractive and easy to update. The website provides students with up-to-date information about courses and whether classes are full and enables the student to enrol and pay online.

The benefits of e-business for Sydney Community College are substantial. Improving efficiencies by reducing double handling of enrolments was a key goal achieved by the College’s e-business system. Other benefits include reduced staffing costs for processing enrolments and the provision of additional value for clients.

What is most impressive about the College is that it continually seeks to improve its e-business strategies and systems. For example, the College’s next project is to enable each tutor to electronically update course information on the website.

Sydney Community College confirms some of the findings from my study for the Commonwealth, including that:

• e-business is constantly changing, as new technologies enable the development of new business processes;
• e-business is primarily a business issue, not a technological issue, driven by business goals;
• e-business raises the bar in terms of customer service, in terms of speed, convenience and the breadth of possible services.

While e-education is exciting, it is also continually changing, requiring educational managers, like Garry Traynor, to develop new business knowledge and skills. The role of managers is a key.

It is interesting to see the way the corporate sector is quickly discovering the value of an email database, while the education sector remains hesitant.

I recently arranged for a speaker from an online marketing company to address a group of senior educational managers. The speaker explained how his company helped a large hotel chain acquire an email database of 110,000 Australians in a number of weeks, mostly by offering people the chance to win free accommodation for a weekend. A raffle. People submitting their email addresses were asked twice whether they would be happy to receive future emails, promoting special offers from the hotel chain. Transparent process. Voluntary participation. The customer can choose to be removed from the database at any time. No tricks.  

One of the senior educational managers I work with followed the advice of the marketing expert and placed a similar promo on his college's website, offering visitors to the website the chance to win a voucher to an educational course. He collected 525 email addresses in the first nine days. He is now using these email addresses to market new courses to his database of customers.

This same educational manager, Gerard Newcombe, Executive Director, Manly Warringah Community College, had 40 people on an email database three years ago and now has 5,000. Gerard has reduced his college's annual expenditure on coloured brochures by around 33% and, for almost no cost, emails sections of his brochure to people on his database. He only sends them the sections which they have previously expressed an interest in. Personalised service. Everyone wins.

See the website of Manly Warringah Community College at the following URL: http://www.mwcc.nsw.edu.au/docs/index.php

A challenge I am working on is to persuade other educational managers that compiling and using a database of customers can be undertaken in an entirely ethical manner, while delivering the customer with services he or she wants, and helping the educational organisation achieve more efficiencies and enrolments. But as I find with much of my work, education organisations are often more conservative than their customers.

It was interesting to see an article in this morning's The Australian (5 July 2004; p.10) called 'Old School Ties Bind Again' by Jane Fraser. The article describes the extremely successful SchoolFriends.com online service for linking you and I to our old school mates, or army mates, or university friends, or work mates. For instance, you might be able to find out what your old work mates are up to, if they are at one of the more than over 200,000 workplaces listed on the site.

As Jane Fraser notes, the concept “arises from the simplest (of) concepts - curiosity, the urge for networking, getting back in touch with old school friends and seeing 'what people are up to'.“

The site has more than one million registered members in Australia, out of a population of 20m. Not bad for an operation which started in a programmer's bedroom. A dotcom success story. The founders recently sold the business to a UK company for $3m.

Late last year I invited one of the founders of SchoolFriends.com, Rob Barron, to speak to a group I facilitate for the Board of Adult and Community Education (ACE) in NSW, the Entrepreneurs' Group. I invited Rob to speak, as I believe that ACE is sitting on a gold mine: the desire for its current and previous customers to connect with the local ACE community college for more than just learning. I still believe it.

SchoolFriends.com has shown ACE and TAFE and other educational providers that we human beings have a yearning to belong, to associate with the institutions we have inhabited and to connect with the other people who were there too. 

This need to belong is a fundamental human characteristic that educational systems sometimes overlook, preferring to relate to students through compliance-related frameworks, such as attendance records, assessments, competencies and qualifications. Sometimes we also think that students might be so enraptured with the wizardry of technology, they might be happy to forgo a human connection.

This need to belong is one of the reasons why many online learning programs struggle to keep their students interested if the programs do not provide some human interaction between teacher and student and between student and student. From my many years working in VET, I also know that many ex-students who look to sign up again are looking to re-connect with the person at the front desk or in the library.

This need to belong suggests that educational systems might do better to relate to ex-students as human beings who primarily want to keep in contact with their ex-class mates and ex-students, rather than relate to ex-students as prospective online learning students. Maslow revisited. The message is: think about meeting your students/ex-students' basic needs before selling them a product. Think about all that e-education can provide, not just e-learning.

I investigated the range of different services that educational organisations could provide electronically, beyond just online learning, in the report I prepared for NCVER in 2003: E-business and online learning: connections and opportunities for VET. Like SchoolFriends.com, the report finds that students want much more from their educational organisations than just e-learning.

The challenge is for educational organisations to work out what services their ex-students want and how the ex-students want to access those services. Organisations could start by relating to the ex-students as humans with needs, not as prospective repeat business. If basic needs are satisfied, the repeat business could come later.

Given the volume and popularity of US publications on how to manage, one of my recurring interests as a strategic management consultant is determining whether strategy-making techniques developed in the USA are applicable in Australia – particularly techniques pioneered at massive Fortune 500 companies.

For instance, from my current work with Australian organisations, I know there is some interest in an article about honest strategic conversations published in the February 2004 issue of the HBR. The article by Beer and Eisenstat is called ‘How to have an honest conversation about your business strategy’.

They present a concept called the ‘strategic fitness process’ which senior executives can use to engage their staff in an honest conversation about the barriers blocking strategy implementation. Ideally, the process leads to an increased corporate capacity to impement strategy quickly and effectively.

I recently examined their strategic fitness model with a group of senior VET managers I was assisting and found that one of the attractive features of the model is the way it elicits frank responses from managers, who might otherwise be hesitant to comment on corporate strategy.

As a participant said to me in a recent strategic planning workshop I was conducting, some of the guidelines underpinning the strategic fitness process are also attractive:

• A conversation about strategy needs to move back and forth between advocacy and inquiry.
• The conversation has to be about the issues that matter most.
• The conversation has to be collective and public.
• The conversation has to allow employees to be honest without risking their jobs.
• The conversation has to be structured. Start the conversation with the leadership team.

However, my analysis of the strategic fitness concept has also revealed that the process is not for the faint-hearted: to be effective, it takes conviction, stamina, patience and a high level of facilitation skills. Also, given the depth of resources the process requires, it is unsuitable for small organizations.

I have negotiated with my clients a worthwhile compromise: that is, to develop a customised strategic conversation process that is applicable to their context and to their resources. Same principles, different steps.

In this case, a USA model, with modification, has strong merit.

Much of my work involves strategy-making with VET managers. One of my passions in VET is to expose the limitations of the command-and-control approach to strategic planning: an approach which evolved at and suited General Motors in the USA in the 1930s.  

The command-and-control approach is characterised by a confidence that all necessary strategies for any of our diverse VET organisations can be rationally identified, in a top-down, methodical fashion, like a (nineteenth century, set-piece) battle plan. These long-range strategic plans can then be frozen in a publication for, say, three years, for implementation by the lieutenants and foot soldiers. Heirarchical control. Calculated delegation. Logical implementation. A popular variation of the command and control approach is to say that minor reviews of the three year plan will be conducted annually.

Recently I tried a new technique to challenge the command and control approach, while in Kununurra ten days ago, facilitating a professional development workshop for the Executive of the Kimberley College of TAFE, and assisting with the development of their strategic planning.

I split the Executive into four even-sized groups and gave each of them a different perspective to bring to strategy-making. Besides the command and control perspective, one of the other perspectives included the fatalistic view of the world - that no matter what we do, not much changes.

To put the four perspectives into operation, we agreed on a subject of importance to the Executive - Indigenous training - and each group spoke to the subject from their nominated perspective. I then asked the groups to critique each other, while maintaining their allocated perspective.

To the great credit of the participants, the ensuring debate was extraordinary: the VET managers enthusiastically maintained their appointed roles and the Indigenous issues were suddenly being viewed from four completely different perspectives.

This professional development exercise contributed to the identification of a multi-dimensioned set of strategic objectives for the College, in addressing the very complex set of issues around training for Indigenous people, in a region of Australia with many challenges, including vast distances, heat, floods and sparsely populated settlements. A command and control rationality will never allow us to see the complexities of Indigenous training or any other VET area requiring a corporate strategy.

While it is interesting to see the term innovation appearing in more strategic plans and in more duty statements, there is a concern that the complexities surrounding innovation may be underestimated.

The complexities of innovation are being addressed directly by a current initiative in Victorian TAFE. I am pleased that the report on innovation for which I was the lead author, Emerging Futures: Innovation in teaching and learning in VET (Mitchell, Clayton, Hedberg and Paine; ANTA 2003) is the focal point of a practitioner network in Victorian VET. Each month, this network organised by TAFE frontiers is taking a key idea from each chapter of the report as the basis of online discussion. See http://www.tafefrontiers.com.au/networks/emerge.html

The discussion in late June was around some ideas in Chapter 2  - What is innovation in VET teaching and learning? - of the report:

In response to the pressures for change, VET has established a reputation for being sensitive to shifts in community and industry needs and providing flexibility of educational content and provision. The scale, magnitude and diversity of ongoing change has created a need for wider, deeper and more frequent innovation in VET teaching and learning practices. The sharper focus is on learning that leads to better outcomes and performance for learners, including ensuring relevance, ensuring personal service, providing 'just for me' training, supporting 'learning in context' and supporting performance support systems.

In June 2004, two case studies were discussed online, in relation to the above ideas. Over a one week period, staff from the Fashion Department at Gippsland TAFE shared some of their innovative methods for engaging students. This forum had particular appeal to teachers involved in assessing practical subjects. Over a second week in June, another forum was based around a series of Gippsland TAFE case studies that have been compiled for TAFE frontiers.

By unbundling and dissecting specific innovations, Victorian TAFE practitioners are teaching themselves more about the variable nature of innovation in the world of teaching and learning. This analytical approach will set them up for future success in fostering and sustaining innovations.

TAFE frontiers is to be commended for the way it has constructed this focused practitioner dialogue.

The report ‘Emerging Futures’ is available at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on Publications and then click on ‘General publications’).

Two of the ideas I advocate strongly within the VET sector are, firstly, that we are only just beginning to come to grips with e-business in education and, secondly, we need to give much greater attention to continuous strategy-making, not just to the two-three year strategic plan.

See my report on E-business and online learning: connections and opportunities for VET, at http://www.ncver.edu.au/teaching/publications/954.html  and my report on Strategy-making in Turbulent Times at http://reframingthefuture.net - click on ‘Publications’ and then on ‘Sub-program 2’.

Both of these ideas - about e-education and strategy-making - are reinforced by a useful article that appeared in the media last week.  VET can learn from industry about the need for strategy-making skills, particularly from those industries that are caught up in the maelstrom of digitisation and converging technologies.

The need for companies to continually craft new business strategies was the focus of a well-written article which appeared in The Weekend Financial Review 19-20 June 2004. Written by Stephen Baker from New York, and sourced from BusinessWeek, the article is called ‘Digital revolution sets tech industries on collision course’.

The article identifies a heightened push towards convergence, due to ‘faster chips, broader bandwidth and a common Internet standard’. For instance, the market for personal digital assistants, so strong in recent years, is vanishing ‘as customers get the same functions in a mobile phone’. Similarly, new televisions have enough computing power to grab streaming video off the net. An executive from Phillips comments: ‘Digitisation is creating products that can’t be categorized as tech or consumer electronics. The walls are coming down.’

Three forces are driving the change: increased broadband access to the Internet; wireless home computer networks; and the expanded functionality of the mobile phone. These forces will result in new networked ‘machines’, incorporating televisions, computers and mobile phones.

As a result of the convergence, three industries are about to collide: computer and software business; consumer electronics; and the communications industry. Baker notes that none of these industries, much less a single company, can put all the pieces together. ‘They all need help. For this they venture into adjoining territories, where they forge new partnerships and take on new rivals’.

Businesses involved in the convergence will grapple with new questions, such as ‘Will people buy their programming and machines? Or will they rent and subscribe?’ Baker notes that innovative companies will sort out these questions, leading the way in building new business models: ‘Those who figure out how to reach through the networks will be the architects and kings of the converged economy’.

Baker concludes that the clock is ticking, pushing companies into bruising markets far from their roots and their expertise: ‘As the giants struggle to adjust, they’ll face swarms of upstarts that enjoy powerful advantages’. Baker notes that history is on the side of the upstarts: ‘Few companies have made the leap from one generation of technology to the next’.

Baker's article identifies the need for enterprises to undertake continuous strategy-making and to develop fresh business models. If VET organizations are to provide up-to-date training for such enterprises, they may need to up-date their own organizations, strategies and business models.

Measuring the value of training is an elusive goal, unless considerable rigour is brought to the exercise.

I am the lead presenter of a paper on this topic at the Australasian Evaluation Society 2004 International Conference, Adelaide, 14 October 2004 www.aes.asn.au . The title of the paper is 'The comparative value of three different methodologies for measuring the return on investment from a leadership program'.

The paper is based on an evaluation I conducted of a major leadership program within a large government agency in 2003. The evaluation consisted of three separate studies: a sample Return on Investment (ROI) study, a sample Return on Training Investment (ROTI) study and a sample Value for Money (VFM) study. The paper reports on the comparative value of each of these three different approaches.

The three studies focused on the pilot group who participated in a residential program in March-April 2003 and follow-up activities, including participation in coaching and peer partnering. In addition to other data collection, six of the twenty participants in the pilot program were interviewed after three months and seven were surveyed after three and six months. To ensure validity, seven colleagues of the seven participants were also interviewed, to check their assessment of the impact of the leadership program on the participants.

The ROI study investigated whether the pilot program generated returns which outweighed the costs. The ROTI study focused on a small number of expected outcomes and related performance measures. The VFM study investigated whether the leadership program provided the organisation with value for its outlay.

In addition to making a range of recommendations, the overall study highlighted the different nature and benefits of each approach. This comparison of a diversity of evaluation methodologies was designed to assist the organisation's staff to make informed decisions in future as to whether they use any one or more of these three approaches.

A focus on innovation in teaching and learning is growing in popularity within educational organisations.

I am currently preparing a presentation on innovation for a conference to be convened by CURVE (Centre Undertaking Reseach in Vocational Education) and held in Canberra on 8 October 2004. The conference is called "New Thinking on Teaching and Learning" and more information is available from Thea Fisher at CURVE: Thea.Fisher@cit.act.edu.au

The title of the presentation is 'Innovation in Teaching and Learning in VET: what we can and can’t change'. The title is a deliberate play on the title of the well-known book by psychologist Martin Seligman, What you can change and what you can’t, in order to emphasise the complex challenges of deliberately seeking to bring about innovation in VET teaching and learning.

The presentation will focus on key findings from the ANTA-funded OTTE-managed project that resulted in the 2003 report Emerging Futures: Innovation in Teaching and Learning in VET (Mitchell, Clayton, Hedberg and Paine), particularly the finding that managing innovation in teaching and learning requires high levels of knowledge and skills, including extensive professional judgment, experience and wisdom.

The presentation also draws on findings from my recent research for Reframing the Future in two related fields: how VET practitioners can develop skills in change agency and how VET practitioners can improve their practice.

Key references:

Mitchell, J.G., Clayton, B., Hedberg, J. and Paine, N. (2003), Emerging Futures: Innovation in Teaching and Learning in VET, ANTA, Melbourne (see particularly Chapter 6)  (http://reframingthefuture.net click on Publications, then click on General Publications)

Mitchell, J.G. (2004), The Skilling of VET Change Agents, ANTA, Melbourne (http://reframingthefuture.net click on Publications, then click on Sub-program 2)

Mitchell, J.G. (2003), Effectively Structuring Communities of Practice in VET, ANTA, Melbourne (http://reframingthefuture.net click on Publications, then click on Sub-program 4)