Justification for Mobile

I was giving a presentation for the Chicago Chapter of ISPI last week on mobile learning and one of the questions that was asked was how do companies justify the need for mobile learning.  As I went through my usual response of tying it into a specific business need, we also discussed the fact that the next generation of employees simply use mobile devices for standard day to day communications.  So I thought when were we faced with a similiar situation in regards to conforming a work process based upon technological advancements?

If you think about it, how significant was the PC's impact on work productivity.  In a research paper written in the Journal of technology and management innovation, they examined both the pros and cons of PC's impacted the workforce and business process improvement.

One story that illustrates how the next generation of talent views the use of mobile devices-- we talked about the news story of 2 girls in Australia who fell into a storm drain.  With mobile phones in hand-- rather than calling for help, they updated their Facebook status to inform people of their situation.  This may sound like a ridiculous situation but in their minds, the phone's primary use was for connecting to their social network-- not as a phone.  So when we circled back to the question of justification for putting training or performance support and job aids on mobile devices, the justification will be easy-- because that's where the employees expect to access if from.

Technology was Blogo's enemy again

I was watching the TV show Celebrity Apprentice and observed how the use of Mobile Devices gave the winning team an edge.  The team's project managers were sent on a private jet to find out what their assignment was for this week's episode.  The project manager for the women's team was Selita Ebands, a runway model and the men's team project manager was Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of IL.

Due to the fact that the were not informed of the task when they left, the teams were left to fend for themselves until word came in from the PM what they task was.  Upon finding out what their task was, Selita, sketched a rough drawing of the 3-D Disney display she had in mind for their project, used here phone camera to take a photo and then sent it to the team to print out and get to work.  She also emailed additional details from the phone and computer in order not to have verbal discusssions that might be overheard by her opponant.

Rod on the other hand- is a technology cripple-- unlike our current president who is very tech savvy, this former governor couldn't figure out how to use the phone to make a call let alone send a text or email.

This was a very key factor in why the men's team lost the task.

There are two lesson's here
1- By using mobile devices, teams can learn how to collaborate very effectively and decrease delays in taking action
2- By not teaching people how to use mobile devices properly, it can impact productivity

So when you think about moving into using mobile devices for performance support or as job aids, make sure you provide the users with coaching or hands-on experience on how to use them, not everyone is adept as using the newer technologies but once they see the benefits, they will quickly adapt.

Here's a highlight from the show