Contributed by regular guest blogger Gareth Murran, ThirdForce Innovation Team

If you’re a regular reader, you will know from my previous posts I’m a firm believer in the power of informal learning tools both inside and outside the workplace. In short, I’m convinced.

But what do you say to someone who doesn’t get it? Maybe you have a colleague who thinks collaborating online is a waste of time or chatted with your marketing person who doesn’t believe that Twitter can help build the company brand. It’s possible that these people may have no idea what informal learning even is? Next to “Web 2.0″ it might be the most commonly used, vaguely defined term I hear in technical and e-learning circles today.

In terms of learning in the workplace, where everything is focused on performance and performance is everything, the informal element of learning needs to be factored into the equation for any real learning to take place. Companies need to foster informal moments of knowledge transfer, making use of accidental, informal intersections of learning and performance as part of the learning process. They need to understand that the informal side of the equation requires real people in real time mentors, coaches, guides, subject-matter experts, communities of practice.

Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen has recently completed a new report that highlights how real execution of informal learning tools in the enterprise or “Enterprise 2.0″ is still rare at this point. The issue is that in order to use informal learning tools the organisation must “cede power” in the quest to break down communication barriers. The opposite take would be that new technologies enhance existing hierarchies of communication and do little to disrupt business as usual.

Nielsen‘s report stresses how pilot projects and trials might be quick to create, but real change takes time, 3-5 years in the case of IBM and Microsoft. In fairness, Jakob is correct. Informal learning tools can be a big time drain. Both personally and company wide, work patterns need to be established in much the same way companies adjusted when email and FedEx came along. And just as those inventions saved time in new ways, we will need to maximise the time you save in these new mediums.

No Enterprise2.0 tool is a black box technology that on its own will radically change an organisation’s knowledge sharing, communication and/or working practices. Cultural change must go hand-in-hand with the right tools in order to transform the organisation into one that is truly collaborative in nature. A great presentation from the University of Toronto paper describes the characteristics of a collaborative organisation:

A collaborative organisation is one that has the following characteristics:

• The values and objectives of employees and management are aligned.
• A climate of mutual trust and respect exists.The knowledge of all the staff, customers and suppliers is shared and pooled to optimize the organisation’s operations and opportunities.
• Decision making is more decentralised than it is in most current organisations and more stakeholders in the organisation play a role in defining the direction in which the organization moves.
• Hierarchical structures are kept to a minimum. The company is managed democratically by consensus rather than by command and control.

Informal learning or  Enterprise2.0 tools will undeniably assist with aspects of the list above (particularly the pooling of knowledge and decision-making), real in-depth and sustained analysis of the organisation’s culture, business practices and leadership will be required in order to make any of these desired characteristics into reality.