Leading a Horse to a Fire Hose ...

From a post - Professional Cat Herder -

In my line of work, corporate training, I have seen this first hand several times. Management scratching their heads because people aren’t taking advantage of the resources that are available. We have all heard the saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.” We just haven’t done a good job of telling the horse that it is hot and drinking now will prevent thirst in the immediate future. Its not the horse’s fault for not knowing this, its ours for not sharing this information.

I think this is something that we've all seen and lived. But this is becoming more and more challenging of an issue. As Harold Jarche just pointed to in his blog - Learning 2.0 Value Chain -

Reward attention, because it’s everything on the Web

Attention is a big issue. There is a fire hose full of information available to everyone today and we all think our part of the fire hose is important. So we can lead the horse to the fire hose, but should we expect them to drink it all? And can we really say that the information we are providing is particularly important? And is it important right now? Or should it be available in the minimum about just when they need it as a reference? And how would they find it at that point? Oh, and keep in mind that they won't find it through the LMS?

It's a funny change that's going on ... quite a change of mind set - of course, it's hard to break habits. I find myself grappling with this all the time. In the messages in this blog and in my speaking about the importance of building new learning and work skills - growing personal work and learning environments - etc - should I expect to get some attention? Should I expect to get some change of behavior? Or is this a futile effort that's a small part of the fire hose that is a nice to have in a world of have-to-have only?