No one ever talks about what's around the iceberg....

I mean, they're not just floating in air right?

So recently a colleague, Gerard Kurpke from Yen Tan, shared the image above. I like it. It’s suggestive rather than prescriptive - e.g. it leaves open room for other activities. It did get me thinking though. I'm willing to bet we’ve all seen tons of iceberg images used as visual metaphors, I know I have. Like a lot. When I saw this one today though, I realized that one thing on all those images went unlabeled and unremarked on - the water that the icebergs were floating in.

So what should the water be labeled as? I’m going to think of it as the borderline that so many in our industry won’t see past. When I speak to people/companies/orgs with mu anthropologist hat on, I’m often talking about culture. I also usually get questions about how those same teams can create a culture. I then explain that a culture already exists. Cultures just happen when people come together. I think of it, in a corporate sense, of the sum of the daily, lived experiences of people in the group. So that shifts the dynamic from we need to “create” - to build something where nothing exists - to “influnce or change” - to shape a thing that is already there. Same here. Too many L&D groups tend to think that learning only takes place in their products, courses, workshops, etc. The more forward-thinking ones will talk about “informal learning” and that’s good but I don’t know if we’re thinking about that the same way.

Look at Jane Hart’s list of the top learning tools for 2023 -

Let’s see - number one is where you can watch just enough of a video to learn what you need - number two is a search tool that let’s you find just what you need and number three - a platform that let’s you chat with people just enough to get what you need. Those are elements that make up the water that the iceberg is floating in. They are the context in which your learners live and those tools are the most popular ways that people learn on their own. That makes those tools, in one sense, your competitors.

In a business sense, the competitors for companies that provide learning services or products are other companies in the same space. Once those products/services are deployed within your org, the tools from that list are the competition for the systems that you just paid a lot of money for. That’s what L&D teams often don’t consider - all that learning that people are doing on those tools - that water - that context - dwarfs even the biggest iceberg. So the learning that people are doing on their own, with tools that they chose, is the vast majority of learning that people do. We’ve seen that breakdown before but I haven’t seen it talked about in the sense of competition. AI will change that.

I’ve said before that I believe that AI is coming for your To Do list. I mean that we typically fill those list with activities that sooner rather than later will be automated to one degree or another, by AI. Then how will you determine your value? One way is maybe to stop thinking about the iceberg and think about the water. Think about influencing the culture instead of trying to replace an existing one. AI is an opportunity as well as a threat. So how do we move toward the opportunity end of the scale? I think our customers/clients/learners are already telling us that with their top tool choices.

Ever heard of “Miss Excel”? She started making TikTok videos to explain various functions in Excel. She now is her own company making videos and providing corporate instruction on how to use Excel. She makes million$. Why did she catch on? Because she was smart, and funny and used music and because she gave people what they needed - the two-three minutes of instruction on how to do a pivot table. She did not start with a preconceived idea about what her output should be - she didn’t go viral by creating courses. Maybe there’s a lesson in there for us. Maybe we need to let go of an output (the course) that we think defines our value but is really just an activity.

This is a chance for L&D to redefine the ways it provides value to the org. We can serve both as a function (we can produce content in a lot of ways) and as a service - we can teach everyone in the company how to produce and share and vet content. We just have to let go of past activities that defined us and embrace new ways to provide value.

Be the water.