When Employees Hack Learning — And Why That’s a Good Thing

In large part, learning technology has enabled employees to adopt more of a hacker mentality. With the right hacks, technology can open the door to new learning solutions for people who are moving at a hurried pace.

Hacking is also synonymous with combining, condensing, compressing, coordinating, coalescing and working around. All are aimed toward creating the fastest processes possible. Most people don’t have time to read the whole newspaper daily or consume 10 business books annually to gain all the information they need. Successful workers absorb short bursts of relevant knowledge as needed from all the resources they can reach. They multitask, multisource and micro-consume throughout the day.

For many, ongoing development remains fluid, an accumulating sum of short learning moments drawn from traditional and non-traditional information sources, social networks included. Learning often means consuming chunks of data on-demand as a utility to fulfill the constant need to get the job done.

And if learning leaders embrace new technologies and emulate the company’s more tech savvy employees, they can combine traditional best practices with such a “hack” mentality.

Michel Koopman is CEO of business book summary provider getAbstract Inc. He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.