Building on the work shared in ‘Engines of Engagement’, I’ve been developing something of a framework to explore the integration of Generative AI tools into Social Learning and sense making structures. I shared some of this new work at the World of Learning conference this week and I think it went ok for an early story. I am also publishing a video series around this work.
In the context of the Social Age, I’ve previously described how ‘knowledge’ is evolving, and putting a primacy onto the ‘creation of meaning’. This perspective posits that ‘what we know’ (historically a source of power) is eclipsed by the ‘meaning’ that we create from it - and that today the individual and collective ‘creation of meaning’ is a differentiating team and organisational feature. If we can manage it…
The work on Social Leadership explores this, and considers - through aspects of social metacognition - how we create shared meaning. Under this view, ‘meaning’ is created both individually, and collectively, and hence there is a tension within learning as the two never fully align.
Understanding the importance of ‘meaning’ is about recognising that we create it, and then act within it. The meaning that we author forms the context we operate within, and hence we can understand how knowledge, understanding, meaning, can all be aspects of our constraint when it comes to future sense making, diagnosis and action. We are blinded not by ignorance, but rather also, or partly, by what we already know to be true.
Another interesting feature is that we often assume others share our ‘meaning’ - that we operate in the same context and understanding - but we do not. Meaning is always an inherently individual feature.
I fin this a useful reminder of how much of our constraint is held in our certainty, and this points to the notion of ‘interconnection’, something else that I explored this week.
The relevance of Generative AI in this is that the creation of meaning is both individual and dialogic, and GenAI creates dialogue as an individual feature, but with a different type of intimacy and emotional context that dialogue with humans.
Essentially it gives us a dialogic environment that is abstracted from judgement and consequence. You really can say nothing stupid to AI.
To me, this indicates that what matters is less the specifics of the technologies adopted, so much as the capability of individuals to adapt the emotional context of the dialogue - whilst I am generally wary of conversations about ‘learning how to learn’, in a real sense we do have to master new mechanisms of dialogue and enquiry.
New Writing
The essay I wrote on a ‘Planetary Philosophy’ is something I’ve been revisiting, and hope to publish in Q4 this year. I’ve playfully shared a sketch for a cover design, which you can find here.
In parallel with that, Sae, Geoff and I have been making progress with the Learning Science work.
Quiet Leadership - Self Directed Programme
I’ve guided Quiet Leadership journeys for four years no, to over 5,000 people in live sessions, and over 48 countries so far I think.
And I’m often asked if there is a recorded version. I’ve resisted doing this, as the purpose of the journey is the dialogue. But I have now created a self directed programme on Udemy: it follows the same structure, and the same eight questions, but can be done alone.
You can find the new course here, and if you are interested to have a go with it, ping me a note and I’ll send you a voucher code for free enrolment. All feedback welcome!
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