Learning Portal

Alignment Accuracy

2008-03-25T02:01:00.000+07:00

"More is better" is a reliable rule of thumb when it comes to potato chips, but not necessarily so when it comes to training. Training is a good thing, but more training is not necessarily better, says Riaz Khadem, coauthor of "Total Alignment: Aligning Vision, Strategy, and Execution for Organizational Success." What's missing from many corporate training programs, he stresses, is alignment.

Training budgets are tight and shouldn't be wasted on training that isn't aligned with unique contribution to the bottom line, Khadem argues. Effective training begins with clarifying accountability and identifying the specific skills needed by each person, and ends with insuring high competency in those skills and correlation with results.

Here's how he says you can do it:
• Identify each person's unique accountability. Exactly what each person is accountable for should be clear. Khadem says to ask, for example, who is accountable for sales—the salesperson or the sales manager? It should be the salesperson. "The manager of sales should be accountable for such results as a percentage of salespeople over quota," he explains. "'Total Alignment' introduces a methodology for defining unique and non-overlapping accountability that is aligned with the organization’s vision and strategy."
• Identify the skills that match each person's accountability. The aligned skills for the salesperson could include prospecting, qualifying, presenting, and closing. But for the sales manager, he suggests, different skills are needed such as training, motivating, accompanying, and strategizing. "While the sales manager has interest in increasing sales," says Khadem, "his main focus is not sales, but supporting the salespeople so they sell."
• Design and deliver training to increase competency in identified skills. Once the core skills are identified, an effective process is required to increase competency. A simple evaluation tool can be used to assess competency on a scale of one to four, he says. "Once the existing level is determined, each person develops a plan for increasing competency in consultation with his or her boss," Khadem points out. "The plan could include receiving specific training available within the organization or from an external source."
• Practice of the skill should be an integral part of training. Remember the old adage: Practice makes perfect. “The practice component of the training is so important that training programs should not end without practice, reflection, and more training," he notes. "Since the skills are aligned with accountability for results, reflection should include correlating skills improvement with results, and enhancing the training program to improve results."

source: inside learning newsletter

Tempering Turnover

2008-02-06T11:20:00.000+07:00

Your company's "revolving door" may be a joke by now, with no one sure who's coming and who's going, but with unemployment rising, and concerns about a possible recession growing, it's more important than ever for employers to control costs related to employee turnover.

"In a slowing economy, it's critical employers more closely manage their expenses," says Annie Stevens, managing partner with ClearRock, a Boston-based outplacement and executive coaching firm. "
One cost they can get better control over is turnover. It costs between two and three times a worker's salary to replace a departing employee, including recruitment, training, lost productivity, and severance costs."
Stevens and Greg Gostanian, managing partner with ClearRock, offer some highlights from the firm's recent turnover research:
• The top way to reduce the turnover of front-line employees is to screen them more carefully before they are hired. "Companies need to invest more in pre-employment screening and testing, and better interviewing processes and procedures," says Gostanian.
• Better orientation for front-line workers also can help. "New employees need to know, right from the start," says Stevens, "what their roles and responsibilities are, the type of business their employers are in, who their customers are, and how each individual worker fits into the big picture."
• Don't neglect exit interviews. "Exit interviews give employers insight into potential problems with management, workplace conditions, and the competitive nature of their compensation and benefits," says Gostanian. "Exit interviews should be offered as often as possible to employees who are leaving, and their comments should be closely considered and evaluated."
• Better training of front-line workers can help slacken turnover. "Better training programs are the hands-on component of better orientation programs"” says Gostanian. "In addition to knowing why they are working there, and what their duties are, employees need to know how to do their jobs as best they can, who they can go to in case they encounter any problems, and where to find answers to their day-to-day questions."
• Giving better pay and benefits also doesn't hurt—especially when coupled with a bigger-picture approach. "Employers," says Stevens, "are using more broadly based methods that will give them longer-term results than a temporary increase in employee morale and engagement resulting from monetary incentives."

source: training magazine

three tips to avoid vendor snafus

2007-09-07T05:26:00.000+07:00

TDF e-Net recently asked Judith Hale (http://www.haleassociates.com/ or haleassoci@aol.com), the author of Performance-Consultant's Fieldbook, 2nd Ed. (Pfeiffer, 2006) and Outsourcing Training and Development: Factors for Success (Pfeiffer, 2005), among other titles, for advice on avoiding vendor snafus. Here's what she had to say:

Create operational protocols. When entering into a relationship, both clients and vendors tend to spend a lot of time and energy defining the terms of the contract and attempting to think of every possible contingency in advance, but they rarely put any thought into defining how the two parties will actually work together once a contract is in place.
How will you communicate, for example? How will you settle disputes? How will you deal with changes? And how will you handle development needs that are outside the scope of the current contract?
It's a given that almost all vendors and clients will run into these and other issues at some point during their working relationship, yet the majority of clients and vendors continue to ignore this reality -- then act surprised when problems arise. The key is to recognize upfront that change is inevitable and to stop writing contracts that are so tight, they don't allow for future adaptation and innovation. My advice? Write your contracts for intent, and acknowledge within each contract that ongoing collaboration will occur to create additional protocols as time passes. Also, be sure to write in protocols that detail how you will work together, how you will communicate and how you will handle disputes.

Decide what you want –- and be specific. As the client, you need to decide what you want from the relationship and fully define your expectations from the get-go. Do you have an expectation of independence, for example, or do you expect the vendor to grow capability within your company?
There's a big difference between the two. If all you want is to hand off the project and have someone else do all the work and send you a bill, that's one type of relationship. (If you go this route, however, you can't complain when the vendor is done with the project and you find out, three to 12 months later, that you can't maintain the program on your own.) Content is volatile. Learner profiles change. Technology gets faster and more sophisticated every day.
So, how will you upgrade, modify and maintain the program over the long term? If you will assume responsibility for doing so, you need the in-house skill sets necessary to make it happen. And if you expect the vendor to assume responsibility for transferring that knowledge and those skill sets to you, be sure to outline those expectations on the front end.

Do your part. Too many companies think that outsourcing means they are absolved of responsibility and don't need to manage the vendor relationship. They find a vendor, hire them, hand off some information, and then walk away, thinking that a miracle will somehow occur without their involvement. Not surprisingly, most clients are disappointed with the result –- and they have only themselves to blame. Why? As the client company, you sit on all of the knowledge the vendor needs to succeed.

I have seen companies appoint a single reviewer to work with their vendor. The vendor then builds an entire learning program based on the input of this one reviewer –- only to have the final program rejected by the client company. The problem? The reviewer didn't represent the holistic customer point of view. If you don't want this to happen to you, ensure that your vendor has access to all of the right people and all of the knowledge it needs to succeed. Make the right people available, and ensure that the people you do appoint understand what you are looking for.

The 10 Most Wanted Features in Tools to Create Online Courses

2007-08-22T08:26:00.000+07:00

In the early days of e-learning, content developers had few choices regarding the tools they could use to create courseware. Although the features found in these early programs were limited by today's standards, training content developers did the best that they could with what they had. Today, hundreds of tools are available to developers of online training content. Best of all, today's authoring tools are rich in features and easy to use.

The fact that there are so many authoring tools on the market is a clear indication that different organizations have different needs. It's also an indication that many organizations are creating different types of e-learning content.

What are the most common business and technical requirements for people selecting an authoring tool? Based on our research, the following are the top ten things people want:

Novice friendly, yet still has underlying extensibility for complex interaction types.
No plug-in required (with the exception of Flash output).
Adherence to SCORM specification and AICC standards. (The real need is full interoperability with many LMS solutions.)
Short learning curve for new content developers.
Extensive library of very interactive question types (beyond multiple choice and true/false).
Robust testing engine (with features such as randomization, drawing from a test item pool, etc.).
Rich media support.
Ability to repurpose content quickly from other sources, such as PowerPoint, Word, and specialty authoring tools (i.e., simulation tools).
Minimal time spent creating navigational control structures (i.e., navigation buttons, menus, etc.).
Low cost (for stand-alone authoring tools).

source: BrandonHall.

What your employees really care about

2006-07-27T09:00:00.000+07:00

What your employees really care about

A hefty bonus affixed to the last paycheck of the year may do wonders for employee productivity, but to really motivate your workforce, you may need to think a little harder about what your staff truly values. Doing so will help ensure that their interests are aligned with company goals, says Jay Lorsch, professor of human relations at Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Mass., and faculty chairman of the college's Executive Education Corporate Governance Series of classes (http://www.exed.hbs.edu/programs/).

"Individuals come into these jobs with certain motivational sets, and what you've really got to figure out is how to take advantage of those motivational qualities, and align [the motivations] to what you want [employees] to do for the firm," Lorsch says. To accomplish this, he says you need to start with a clear understanding of your workers. That could mean starting off with a personality assessment, but it also could simply mean having the kind of understanding that comes from regular interaction with employees.

Face time with workers can be kept casual, but it might help to keep a mental checklist of questions you'd like answered about them. "I think it's got to do with really listening to them in the broadest sense," Lorsch says. "Who are they? Why are they working there?" For example, he points out that beyond a fatter paycheck, a flexible schedule can be a motivator to a worker trying to balance home and work life. For others, the right motivation may be the opportunity to learn, he says. So, giving them assignments that keep them stimulated would be essential, and a tuition reimbursement program might even be worthwhile.

Once you know what really moves your workers to push themselves, they can more easily be motivated to meet company goals such as maintaining your corporate culture. Rewards can be established for those who exhibit the behavior, or work practices, the company has communicated as its ideal. "What people feel rewarded for will reinforce the culture," Lorsch says.

If you can't get employees to get to work on time, for example, try taking away all the reserved parking spots and make it first come, first served. Or, if being a "team player" is important to your company, make it one of the criteria formally evaluated each year in your workers' performance reviews. "If you're going to talk to people about the culture and teach the culture, you can't just talk it, you've got to live it."

Sourfce: INSIDE TRAINING – Training Magazine

The Good Part About It Being a Jungle Out There

2006-07-27T08:47:00.000+07:00

The Good Part About It Being a Jungle Out There

For all those who have likened a co-worker to a snake, or couldn't help but picture their new parent company as a swarm of rapidly descending locusts, there's some heartening news. Though your fellow employees are often guilty of acting like the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz, there is much to learn by the jungle example when it comes to workforce management. Larry Dressler, president of Boulder, Colo.-based leadership and organization development company Blue Wing Consulting (www.bluewingconsulting.com) and author of the book Consensus through Conversation: How to Achieve High-Commitment Decisions, has culled a slew of management tips from his experiences in the Amazon rainforest.

The "jungle out there" has given the real thing a bad rap, but in actuality there's also a lot of cooperation going on in the wild, says Dressler, who lived in the Amazon for a year in 1994, and goes back periodically. "In rainforests, cooperation is rewarded," he points out. "When you walk into a tropical rainforest, you don't experience it as a place where species are competing, per se. You see a system of really diverse and very interdependent players." Dressler, who also operates Batavia, N.Y.-based One World Projects, a company devoted to bringing the crafts and goods of local Amazonians to market in the United States and Europe, says symbiosis is a way of life in the jungle. For example, he says a tree may produce a kind of sap that attracts a certain kind of ant, whose presence then protects the tree's bark from fungus and other kinds of insects that would harm it.

Similarly, workers can be taught a corporate culture that emphasizes cooperation rather than competition, Dressler says. "Biologists have found nature favors cooperative traits over competitive traits," he explains, "because cooperation takes less energy, so if you think about how organizations work, how much energy gets sapped up by [being territorial], by internal competition or by withholding information and resources?" To remedy the sense that workers are pegged against each other, Dressler recommends assigning them group projects that force them to collaborate to be successful. And so much the better if the teams draw workers from other business areas. "I'm a huge advocate of cross-functional conversationsnot the usual suspects winding up in a room together to talk about new ways in which their disciplines, their resources and their goals could come together to create something entirely different than existed before when they operated independently."

Companies also can learn from the positive role played by change in the rainforest, Dressler says. "What we learn from nature is when we spend too much time in our comfort zone, we die," he says, explaining that the nearly constant environmental change of the rainforest forces species to adapt or die off. The same is true of the business worldorganizations that don't adapt to changing times will eventually lose profitability, and employees who don't acquire new skills will find themselves out of work. For this reason, he says, employees should be challenged with new assignments that encourage them to acquire new competencies. "As a trainer, the thing I have to ask myself is, 'How do I create an impetus for people to be positively disturbed?' " he says.

One course Dressler and his team teaches, "Fierce Conversations," forces workers to constructively discuss touchy subjects. Instead of "role-play," he calls this "real play" because participants are asked to bring real situations to the table, such as a worker's dissatisfaction with her boss' micromanagement, or another employee's frustration with a co-worker who keeps falling through on group projects. Or, a worker might express his feeling that the business needs to change its approach to a particular challenge.

"If we don't have this constant tension moving us toward change," he says of the need for a dynamic corporate environment, "we're not growing."

Sourfce: INSIDE TRAINING – Training Magazine

working with SME

2006-07-06T13:59:00.000+07:00

SME HELP

"One of the most difficult challenges I face is working efficiently with subject-matter experts (SMEs) to create online courses," says a reader. "I'm constantly trying to identify better ways to work with new SMEs, to motivate them, and to make their task of communicating the necessary content easier." Can others offer advice, insights, and/or tips regarding how to work effectively with SMEs?

Here's your advice:

"I spend a lot of time working with SMEs," says Paul Hart (paul.hart@dynamex.com). "I usually encounter reluctance to get involved; perhaps the individuals don't want to share what they know because they feel threatened, or they are too busy and don't see the value in making the effort to help."

To combat this, Hart takes a "holistic, three-pronged approach" when soliciting help from SMEs:

1. Be firm and clear regarding the reasons for the intrusion into their work life -- that is, to capture their skills and experience to train on processes and procedures; how their job impacts other teams in the organization; and how the organization will function better if everyone understands the role of others in the "big picture."

2. Offer an avenue for improvement. There may be disconnects in their current tasks, and you can help SMEs out by bringing their suggestions for improvement to those that can affect change. Training, remember, has a unique role in the organization: It can interface with many groups and bring them together.

3. Go for their ego! Massage SMEs' self-image ("but be subtle!") by explaining that they possess valuable information that the rest of the company needs to know.

"I find myself building communication bridges among many roles within the organization. In the end, everyone has a clearer understanding of how we work together to improve."

Hart is an instructional designer at Dynamex Inc., a courier and transportation company in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

FIVE KEYS

At Greg Friese's ( gfriese@eps411.com) company, five keys for engaging health-care SMEs to develop rapid e-learning include the following:

1. A shared vision about the content format, production process, and the SME’s role.

2. Templates, which serve as a map for the SME regarding how to develop the topic.

3. An asset library, which includes clip art, images, audio and video that can be inserted into the content.

4. An assigned spot in the process for the SME, which is depicted within a clear process map for the entire project.

5. Honoring time demands by engaging SMEs at one of three spots in the process, including content review and comment; expert interview; or content development.

www.elearningguild.com
Click on the above link to view a session Friese presented recently for the eLearning Guild Rapid E-learning Online Symposium. See session 701: "Engaging Healthcare SMEs to Deploy Rapid E-learning."

Friese is president of Emergency Preparedness Systems LLC in Plover, Wisc.

Source: Online Learning - www.vnulearning.com

WIKI WIKI: THE LEARNING LAB EXPERIMENT

2006-07-06T11:07:00.000+07:00

WIKI WIKI: THE LEARNING LAB EXPERIMENT

Unable to join the Wiki clinic at Training magazine's Training Directors' Forum earlier this month in Palm Springs? No problem! You can still take part in the Wiki-Wiki Learning Lab Experiment.

In a keynote presentation at TDF, Bryan Chapman, a learning strategist at Brandon Hall Research in Sunnyvale, Calif., explained that a wiki is a group Web page were readers also become content contributors. In the onsite clinic at TDF, 20 participants built a group Wiki and added examples of training "best practices" to it -- either from their own company or from examples that were shared during conference sessions.

To view the Wiki and to add your own examples to it, visit http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Training_Best_Practices.

Chapman notes that there is a link in the introduction section where users can go to download instructions on how to edit the Wiki and add their own information. "Please note that this is work in progress," adds Chapman. "You may click on a topic, only to be taken directly into the Wiki editor. That's because the page doesn't exist yet. It's waiting for you to build out the content. The table of contents was built around the major Training Directors' Forum themes, but you can even add you own topics."

Source: Online Learning www.vnulearning.com

TRAINING ON PODS

2006-07-06T10:57:00.000+07:00

TRAINING ON PODS

A reader delivers sales training to a group of approximately 130 sales and customer-service representatives and is considering using podcasting to broadcasting product-development updates, time-sensitive information, content that is subject to change, and other items. "If successful, we might even do a monthly 'radio talk show' broadcast focusing on items that are important to the field."

"Is anyone out there doing this in a corporate setting? If so, what are they using it for? What equipment are they using? Did they purchase a high-end system, or did they use freeware and an inexpensive microphone with their existing PC? What are their lessons learned/success stories?"

www.vnulearning.com/learninggroup/search/index_taxonomy.jsp
We ran responses to this query in our last issue. Here are more:

DON'T HIGHJACK YOUR CASTS

A number of sales organizations are podcasting successfully to their reps, including EMC, Xerox and Prentice Hall, says podcasting vendor Anders Gronstedt (anders@gronstedtgroup.com).

"The reason (podcasting) hasn't grown more (in popularity) is that many training organizations hijack this medium for time-shifted lectures, which is a sure route to failure."

The most successful podcasts, he says, are carefully crafted "edutainment" shows that sound more like talk-radio programs than training sessions. "The casts can be 'theater of the mind,' complete with field reports, exotic imaginary locales, humorous 'commercials,' inspirational vignettes and subtle spoofs on the competition. Some programs we custom-develop for sales organizations feature running themes, jokes and cliffhangers that make reps look forward to the next program."

Among his other tips?

Don't take a course approach; make it a regular program.
Don't hide podcasts in your learning management system (LMS); make them available on a blog to transform them into a two-way, listener-driven medium.
Don't expect your reps to use their own players; give them each an iPod or other MP3 player.
Don't put out audio books and other generic content; custom-develop the casts for your organization. "Generic off-the-shelf programs only work for generic off-the-shelf companies."

www.gronstedtgroup.com
Gronstedt is president of The Gronstedt Group Inc. in Broomfield, Colo. Prices for the firm's custom podcasts typically range from $1,000 to $3,000 for 30-minute programs.

PODCASTS GAINING GROUND

In the two years since Duke University pioneered the use of iPod learning, the medium has caught the imagination of both the academic and business sectors, says Mark Aberdour (markab@epic.co.uk).

"It has become clear that digital music players are being used by learners to listen to much more than just music, with spoken-word content becoming firmly established on the iPod. Education and learning have become common categories on Web sites such as Podcast.net, and many major universities have signed up to Apple’s iTunes University to deliver podcasts on everything from campus life and current affairs and events to faculty lectures and books. iPod learning is now widespread."

For sales and product training, Aberdour suggests considering personal digital assistant (PDA) delivery -- "particularly for product-knowledge topics where graphics and animations may add value. (Flash on PDA is coming on in leaps and bounds.)"

At Epic, where he works, Aberdour has seen the corporate world moving "enthusiastically" into the wider mobile learning space over the past 12 months, and the company has completed an increasing number of PDA and iPod learning projects for clients. "Some projects have been prototypes for clients evaluating new learning ideas and devices in their organizations; others are for wider rollouts where mobile devices already are well-established." Management, sales, product-knowledge and compliance content, he says, appear to lend themselves particularly well to PDA and iPod delivery.

Finally, some advice: If the reader wants podcasts to supplement his or her PC-based e-learning and instuctor-led training, a good deal of thought must go into achieving the right blend of content for each type of delivery. On the equipment side, the reader mentions wanting staff to record their own podcasts. "In my experience listening to (these) podcasts, the quality can be poor (e.g. low volume and muffled), but I will happily listen to a low-quality podcast if the content is thought-provoking and engaging." Development of some simple guidelines for staff to follow on effective audio-recording techniques, he says, should enable decent-quality podcasts with a fairly low-end kit.

Aberdour is a technical producer at Epic, a learning consulting company in Brighton, U.K.

Source: Online Learning www.vnulearning.com

Training Cuts Waste

2006-07-06T10:24:00.000+07:00

John Wieland Training Cuts Waste
Atlanta-based homebuilder John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods looked beyond its financial and accounting divisions to training when it wanted to control costs. The company began teaching financial management as part of its Signature Builder certification program. By teaching builders to avoid wasteful spending and control margins, Wieland's average margin per built home rose by 9 percent.

John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods ranks #34 in the 2006 Training Top 100, Training magazine's annual ranking of organizations that excel at training and development.

Source : INSIDE TRAINING – Training Magazine

Must-See (Training) TV

2006-07-06T10:04:00.000+07:00

Must-See (Training) TV

E-learning from home, or the office during a worker's spare time, is undoubtedly efficient, unless, of course, the employees in question lack the requisite computer skills. With the fast food/casual dining sector so heavily populated by recent immigrants, a good portion of whom are Hispanic, Minneapolis-based TV Trainer (http://tvtrainer.tv/), a company specializing in providing culturally targeted training via video and DVD, has come up with a New Hire Kit to speed up the transition to American work life.

The product, in the form of three DVDs and VHS cassettes, allows learning to occur from employees' TV sets, with no Internet connection or computer necessary. A handset with a remote control through which learners can interact with the programs is also included. Each New Hire Kit costs $399, "but we're assuming in quantity, they'll [the kits] get down to around $250 each," says Craig Evans, chief marketing officer and co-founder of TV Trainer. Besides its simplicity of use, the fact that the programs are viewed from the Latino living room may help with your company's future recruitment efforts, he explains. It is likely, Evans notes, that more than just the employee new to your payroll will be trained. Centering training in the heart of the household allows those surrounding him or her to get a positive introduction to U.S. work life. "We're not only training them. We're training their family, their relatives and neighbors who come over," Evans stresses.

There is a primer on safety and hygiene, focusing on sanitary do's and don'ts in the kitchen, for instance. "It's very important to set a precedent upfront that there's a difference between cleaning and sanitizing," Evans points out, "and what constitutes contamination, how long you should wash your hands and what you should do if you cut yourself."

Developed over the last year, the programs highlight the expectations workers will be faced with in their new job. In addition to a tutorial on work schedules and pay periods, the message is imparted that employees will be expected to keep themselves busy even after their assigned task has been completed. Workers learn it's OK to take the initiative, Evans says, and that's how they'll get ahead in their new country.

Source : INSIDE TRAINING – Training Magazine

Top Tips: How to improve training sessions using interactive technology

2006-06-21T01:24:00.000+07:00

Top Tips: How to improve training sessions using interactive technology

editor :Annie Waite

Training requirements are now more varied – for example, on-the-job or off-site training may require more flexible, interactive approaches. This five-step guide details the various training technologies available.

1. Assess the scenario
The type of session (Is it with large or small groups? What topics are to be discussed?) will affect technology choice. Consider whether group understanding needs to be assessed throughout, or if it's mainly to raise general awareness of a subject. Once the circumstances have been assessed, the most appropriate interactive solution can be identified.

2. Select the technology
Where training sessions need to be mobile, interactive pads offer a portable solution. Audience response systems are transforming training sessions. Using individual handsets, they're ideal for sessions where tests are taken or where feedback is required on training delivery. The additional benefit of these systems is that they can be used in conjunction with, or independent of, other interactive solutions.

3. Prepare materials
A blank page or a diagram prepared in an electronic flipchart is useful to illustrate a point to a group. This can be annotated over during the session, then saved and distributed later. Some audience response systems plug directly into PowerPoint rather than using interactive software. As such, existing presentations can be enhanced by introducing live Q&A sessions.

4. Practice your training delivery
Practice makes perfect. Familiarize yourself with the information before the presentation. Software provided with interactive technology is usually intuitive, and often provides electronic versions of existing presentation tools, including annotation features and hide and reveal.

5. Develop the program
If a particular element of the presentation is well received, this can be re-used or adapted for the next time. Groups can be provided with personalized notes, rather than a standard handout, so they can take away annotations from their own session. Training evaluation has also become much easier with voting systems instead of time-consuming questionnaires, as immediate feedback can be gained at the touch of a button.

Source: Steve Dracup, managing director, Promethean (AV Distribution)
source: The Source - Melcrum

ROI - Perspective of Training Manager

2006-06-21T00:44:00.000+07:00

ROI - Perspective of Training Manager

Return on Investment (ROI) is a buzzword in the corporate houses today. It is very interesting to see that small organizations tend to get more obsessed with ROI as compared to bigger business houses. This is equally applicable for training function. There are instances when the CEO asks curt and crisp question to the Training Manager "Your training plan is fine but what will be my Return on Investment". They want to see the dollars coming in out of dollars invested in the training function.

It is also a widely seen situation that, whenever an organization embarks upon austerity measures, training budget is the first casualty. This is primarily due to the ignorance of the CEO regarding the value of the training function. For a Training Manager, the goal is to bridge the skills gaps among the employees, which can be assessed through individual and team performance, before and after the training.

However, the goal of the CEO is to gain competitive advantage and/or transform the organization to ultimately increase the shareholders value. There have been instances where the organizations allocate 20% of their revenue expenditure on the training function year after year. At the same time, there are examples where the corporates spend as low as 2-3% on the training function. The budget allocation itself is an indicator of how the management thinks about Training. The question now arises as to how to measure the ROI. There could be lot many mathematical formulae to calculate ROI.

Fact, however, remains that return on training is intangible, to begin with. Being the training functionary myself, I can say with confidence that the ratio R/I can be more than 1 also, depending on the efficiency of training function. Following indicators can be used to appreciate the effectiveness of training:

1. Inspired performance by the employees
2. Availability of leaders at all levels in the hierarchy of an organization.
3. Lesser conflicts between the management and employees.
4. Lesser conflicts within the employees group and management group.
5. High incidence of useful suggestion coming from employees towards organizations improvement/ development.
6. Smooth career plan and succession plan
7. Healthy counseling and feedback system.

It is now left for the organizations as to how they measure these parameters and calculate ROI. To summarise, I find it adequate to say that higher productivity is the best indicator of training function. Let training give us the ROI rather than our getting fixed with ROI and working overboard to clip the training function. Drawing inspiration from a famous quote of Shakespeare, let me say -- - For measuring ROI , let the economists contest !! Whatever is administered best , is the best !!

About the Author - She can be reached at lucydoss@yahoo.com.sg

Out to Sea with the Human Resources Forum

2006-06-08T15:26:00.000+07:00

Out to Sea with the Human Resources Forum

The ninth annual Human Resources Forum, recently held for three days on board the Norwegian Dawn cruise liner off the coast of Atlantic City, N.J., provided insights to best practices in human resources and training. Keynoter Alex Gibney, writer/director/producer of the documentary Enron:
The Smartest Guys in the Room, talked more about what not to do than what to do when it comes to business practices. Incorporating clips of his film, which also was broadcast continually into attendees’ cabins during the conference, Gibney highlighted the culture of abuse that made Enron infamous, and ultimately, criminal.

Gibney spoke of, for instance, how Enron practiced a corrupt form of forced ranking in which workers battled against each other only to find their ranking often had as much to do with who they knew on the evaluating committee. The Machiavellian culture had exactly the effect Enron execs were hoping for, Gibney explained. It allowed Skilling and chairman (and later CEO) Kenneth Lay to efficiently cover up the company’s abuses and its declining financial performance. “If you’re battling with co-workers, you’re not going to share information,” he noted.

Gibney said workers and associates may have felt as if it were OK to be unethical because authority figures, namely Skilling and Lay, were giving them permission. Gibney said the effect Enron management had on its employees and business partners was similar to that exhibited in the famed “Obedience to Authority” experiment conducted by social psychologist Stanley Milgram.

Subjects were encouraged to continue administering electrical shocks to what they thought was a person actually suffering the effects (they were in fact actors). Despite the screaming they heard, they kept pressing the levers to electrocute because those were the orders they had been given. Similarly, Gibney posited, Enron employees and cohorts continued doing what they may have suspected or even known was unethical because they were “following orders.” As everyone knows now, it wasn’t until whistleblower Sharon Watkins spoke up that the company’s wrongdoings came to light. “The truly powerful message that comes out of Enron,” Gibney said, “is to treasure the people who ask ‘why?’”

Dell HR Makes Waves

Steven Helmholz, outgoing director, executive talent acquisition, global human resources for Round Rock, Texas-based computer manufacturer Dell, shared the secrets behind Dell’s talent procurement and corporate culture.Like all efforts at the company, talent acquisition reinforces the ethic espoused by founder Michael Dell that “we can always do better.” Even when the company made the cover of Fortune, for instance, there was no celebration, Helmholz said, “because it wasn’t part of our culture.”

Human resources, he explained, is no exception to the mantra of constant improvement. There have been some cultural shifts, though, as Helmholz pointed out. Until recently, applicants have had the responsibility to court Dell as a prospective employer. “There was a mentality that they were privileged to be here in this room,” he noted. “Not a good idea.” The tide is changing in Dell’s approach to talent recruitment, Helmholz said. “We’re now trying to sell [to] a candidate, not just put an offer out there,” he pointed out.

It was this shift in approach that gave rise to the global talent management department Helmholz headed, and coupled with an emphasis on talent retention, is indicative of Dell’s “organic growth” strategy. The company now has a 1:1 ratio in how often it fills slots from within vs. finding new talent from outside. The attrition rate at the non-executive level is at 20 percent, and at 9 percent among executives. Look for more information on this year’s HR Forum in the June issue of Training.

Initial Sales Training Preps TAP Reps

2006-06-08T15:23:00.000+07:00

Initial Sales Training Preps TAP Reps

Sales reps at TAP Pharmaceuticals, a Lake Forest, Ill.-based pharmaceutical company, head to work armed with an abundance of practice. Reps are required to complete a five-week initial sales training requiring them to pass two exams as well as 25 role-play exercises. These introductory lessons are followed up with additional three-day training programs at six and 12 months after their hire.

TAP ranks #33 in the 2006 Training Top 100, Training magazine's annual ranking of organizations that excel at training and development.

THE COST OF E-LEARNING INTERACTIVITY

2006-06-08T11:56:00.000+07:00

A reader asks: Does anyone have information about how to break down the cost of e-learning by level of interaction? In addition, "Is there any evidence that higher-interactivity-level courses are worth the cost?" www.vnulearning.com

We ran responses to this query in previous issues (April 20 and May 18, 2006). Here's one more:"I was intrigued by this comment in the April 20th edition of TDF e-Net," says Henry Stewart (henry@happy.co.uk): A Level I course, for example, might be classified as one that contains an interactive object (e.g., video, animation, or a quiz). "I'd say some folks have different definitions of 'interactive,'" says Stewart.

"Interactive surely means where the learner is actively engaged in interacting with the e-learning, not just pressing a button to make something happen. A quiz creates that sort of interaction. Video, however, is just about the least interactive media around. You press 'Play' and sit and watch -- similarly with animation." "Many people seem to define 'interaction' as 'something different and interesting that happens on screen.' Nope, I don't think so." "Comments are welcome. Are we unusual in relating interactivity to the active involvement of the learner?" Stewart is chief executive of Happy Computers, an IT training company in London, England, U.K.

Source: learning Inside - VNU

MORE BULLET POINTS BALLYHOO

2006-06-08T11:52:00.000+07:00

In response to “Beyond Bullet Points,” a Q&A with author Cliff Atkinson that ran in this newsletter on March 9, 2006 (visit www.vnulearning.com to view the archived issue), reader Dale Werth (dawerth@earthlink.net) says, “There are some very real myths, oversights, and gross distractions still perpetuated in most training circles regarding this tool. These have to do not just with ‘bullet points,’ but with PowerPoint in general.”

His thoughts?
PowerPoint is always a tool, not an end to itself. "This should be the true mantra of every ISD proponent and instructional designer alive. The more obsessed you are with color schemes, fonts, customized templates, bullet lists, dancing pigs, and audios of yourself looking cute in conjunction with the matter being discussed, the less likely will be your practical use of PowerPoint or any other electronic visual learning tool as a means to an ends -- but rather the other way round. Taking your eye off the learner in this way is, in my mind, unforgivable. E-tools have their place, but when they become the altar to which we sacrifice all time, budget and creativity, we are all in serious trouble."

Bullet points, schmullet points. "They, like anything else in PowerPoint, are only overdone when you ignore rule no. 1. Bullet points, like many other aspects of PowerPoint, are not in themselves evil, but become so when presenters or trainers become so dependent/obsessed/addicted to them that they start finding themselves 'bullet-pointing' their personal letters, their family e-mails, and so forth. Indeed, I knew an instructor who pled guilty to this very professional liability. (I offered to take her to PowerPoints Anonymous -- but, well, I digress ... .) Truth is, I spend much of my time teaching/mentoring novice trainers in getting used to (gasp!) turning PowerPoint off during key parts of their presentations so that their audience can actually have a chance to think out loud and share in and actually shape the discourse. Show me a trainer who knows how to do this, and you will not have the feared 'bullet-point coma' syndrome to which Atkinson referred."

More bullet points ballyhoo. "I am a great proponent of fewer lists and more open-ended core learning item sheets (sometimes referred to as golden-nugget pages) that invite the audience to truly fill in new, unanticipated or previously unknown items -- and therefore truly engage learners and expect them to actively seek new knowledge and professional discourse, as well as incorporate their real-world knowledge with what has been pre-assumed to be reality. Using only pre-fabricated lists (i.e., 'Here is the gospel according to ME.') is a sure way to make your audience feel/ act like helpless zombies -- even when they really aren’t."

The real kicker. "I once had a well-intentioned, but obviously misguided, young designer who sought to introduce three minutes of audio/visual film into a PowerPoint for a customized training presentation. She eagerly showed me this part of the presentation, and all the while I sat there in confused incredulity. At the end of her demonstration of this creative insert, I asked her, 'And do you really think your professional audience wants to sit for these three minutes of your feature film when they could have gotten the same point in less than five seconds with a quick side graphic, after which you would have moved on to the next meaty slide?' She looked at me as if I had pricked a bubble from her PowerPoint bubble pipe. (Oh, what a villain I can be!) What’s my point here? Because PowerPoint allows you to do entertaining things, that doesn’t mean you actually should."

"Truth be told, my audience experiences over the years have taught me that all audiences will truly learn when they are realistically and practically engaged at all levels -- not just during the first or the last five minutes of a learning experience, but during the entire session. Whether we’re using PowerPoint, e-learning or any other electronic tools at our disposal, the fact is that we are all overusing them. Active learning, coupled with actual practice and engagement, equals a better chance for true learner ownership and, ultimately, opportunity to practice/ perform/realize outcomes. Once a learner owns the content and fully grasps the positive behavior outcomes that such learning attempts to engender, the world becomes a much better place for us all."
"One of the best PowerPoint commandments I have heard over the years, and which I have seen in print in this newsletter and others regarding such electronic tools, goes something like this: 'Function first. Aesthetics second. Entertainment third.' Clearly and simply communicate your message –- and, I might humbly add, equally make it a true dialogue of learning. Then, make it functionally clean, attractive, and ultimately audience-interactive within the timeframe available. Only then (if at all), consider adding touches of cleverness and entertainment. Edutainment is definitely neither. Go Hollywood at your own risk -- and definitely to your learners’ disadvantage." Werth is a senior consultant with "20 years of experience in training and development, organization building and redefinition, and advanced project/program management." He is based in Springfield, Va.

Source: learning Inside - VNU

Training Helps Close the Deal at Reynolds and Reynolds

2006-06-08T11:49:00.000+07:00

There's a correlation between sales success and training at Milwaukee-based consulting firm Reynolds and Reynolds Co. Reps who received the company's redesigned sales training closed 85 percent of all deals in the three months following the program. During that same time period, reps who hadn't received the training only closed 55 percent of deals. Reynolds and Reynolds ranks #24 in the 2006 Training Top 100, Training magazine's annual ranking of organizations that excel at training and development.

Trust Busting in the Office

2006-06-08T11:39:00.000+07:00

Trust Busting in the Office

Gossiping employees, workers who don't feel like their manager is always acting in their interest, and those of your workforce who sense they can't take co-workers at their word, are all issues that can mean a big headache for human resources. More than that, though, they all stem from a lack of trust, says Dr. Michelle Reina, who co-founded The Reina Trust Building Institute in Stowe, Vt., with her husband, Dr. Dennis Reina.

The institute conducts research on the underlying causes of broken trust in organizations and also specializes in developing tactics for repairing it. "Business, regardless of size, shape, form or industry, is conducted through relationships, and trust is a critical foundation to the effectiveness of relationships," Michelle Reina says. While the importance of trust is widely recognized these days, with many organizations incorporating it as part of their mission statement or even adopting it as a core competency, there are still plenty of problems for companies in this area, she notes.

Step one is making workers aware of how trust is built, violated and, whenever necessary, repaired, Michelle Reina says. Training programs that define trust for employees and provide them with instruction for preserving and fixing it should be given on an ongoing basis, but primers may be necessary at certain critical junctions in a company's life such as during mergers and acquisitions. "When an organization is going through change and transition, people become unclear of what is expected of them and of their roles and responsibilities," she stresses. "When they're not clear of their expectations, they're also not aware of what agreements they are being expected to honor."

Training that emphasizes the importance of communicating fears and concerns directly with managers and co-workers, rather than relying on the old gossip mill, therefore, is essential. "Our research over the last 10 years has found that gossip and backbiting is the number one breach of communication trust," Michelle Reina points out. "Nine out of 10 employees experience it." In addition to unclear (or unused) channels of communication, workers may feel their manager doesn't trust them if they end up doing work that doesn't take advantage of the skills they were hired for, Michelle Reina says. "When people have skills, abilities or insights they are not able to offer, they often feel as though they are not being trusted by their leaders. They feel as though they are not being perceived as trustworthy, and not feeling trusted, they are not trusting in return."

Trainers and HR execs who are able to effectively match employees' skill sets to their work may see an organization that's not only more efficient, but one that suffers a lot less from interpersonal problems. If you're communicating directly with workers who are well suited to the tasks they've been given, another tip to keep in mind is leaving off the blinders. You need to trust your managers and employees, but not with tunnel vision, Michelle Reina explains.

If a manager complains repeatedly about an underling, for example, it does more harm than good to fall back on the age-old wisdom to simply "trust your manager." A protocol should be in place for grievances so the gossip and backbiting mill isn't fed, and the charged employee is given a fair hearing. "When we follow an age-old wisdom like, 'You always trust your manager,' that is an idealization that comes under the category of what is most desired," she notes.

"It is most desirable to always trust our managers and team, however, when we exercise blind trust, we open ourselves up to being vulnerable to missing the fact that there is always the human element at play."

A manager who cries to her boss repeatedly that she isn't being treated right by a subordinate and simply doesn't want to work with him anymore should be pressed for specific examples of wrong-doing that can be discussed openly with the supposedly errant employee. "It is the responsibility of a leader to be aware there will be some people who at some point in time may become vulnerable and lose their sense of themselves, and may behave in a way that is untrustworthy," she says.

"We are human beings, and even those of us who are highly trustworthy do trip up. We do lose our way. We do mistakes. We do lie, and we do violate trust." For more information on building trust in the workplace, including a Web-based assessment to gauge the level of trust in your organization, visit http://www.elabs2.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=cc4,lzz,21,id9e,ap5c,bv7k,fy01.

Source: Inside Training - VNU

WORKING WITH SMES

2006-06-08T10:52:00.000+07:00

WORKING WITH SMES

"One of the most difficult challenges I face is working efficiently with subject-matter experts (SMEs) to create online courses," says a reader. "I'm constantly trying to identify better ways to work with new SMEs, to motivate them, and to make their task of communicating the necessary content easier." Can others offer advice, insights, and/or tips regarding how to work effectively with SMEs?

www.vnulearning.com
We ran responses to this query in previous issues (April 25 and May 9, 2006). Here's one more:

Lyn Maize (lyn.maize@ey.com) offers these tips, which are excerpted from her company's self-published white paper entitled "Working With SMEs."

When it comes to communication, the white paper says, the Intellinex team utilizes four interventions with SMEs to make the most of SME's available time and to achieve optimal learning results. These interventions include the following:
• Design Sessions: "We have found that intensive time spent with SMEs in a formal design session early in a project's life during the design phase pays significant dividends in the efficient and successful completion of the learning development initiative and accelerating the overall development process. A design session typically takes one to three days and requires some prior preparation time on the part of both the [learning] project team and all SMEs supporting the project. During the design session, the [learning project] team drives and facilitates the creative exchange of ideas between customer SMEs and instructional designers and documents the outcome of the exchange. The participating SMEs are pushed hard to provide a comprehensive view of the content in order to arrive at a content design that is appropriate for the learning audience, yet creative enough to accommodate their unique learning styles. The result of this interactive session is that the entire team leaves with content consensus, saving an enormous amount of time in what might otherwise be numerous iterations and review cycles. Also, the entire project team typically participates together -- customer SMEs and the [learning] project team -- building a solid collaborative foundation for the remaining work."
• Deliverable Reviews: "During each learning development initiative, a number of deliverables such as roadmaps, graphics, and draft online or classroom course materials are prepared, each of which requires careful SME review. The ... project team may send these materials to SMEs via e-mail, or they may be made available for SME access via a shared server. For each review, SMEs are provided checklists and forms to use to document their review comments and critique. These materials are returned to the [project] team to take any corrective action and continue progress toward project completion."
• Project Status Review/Milestones: "The [project] team conducts periodic project status reviews with customer SMEs. The frequency of these regularly scheduled sessions is determined by the amount of interaction the SME prefers in the creation of the deliverables. The [project] team primarily interacts with the customer project manager and/or sponsor, and the SME may choose to leave the status review at that level."
• Online Community: "All project materials are collected and stored in a Web-based online resource accessible to the entire project community -- the [learning] project team as well as customer stakeholders and SMEs. This easy-to-use resource is continuously available throughout each project as a ready reference. It promotes document version control and includes online facilities for discussion and exchange among the project team. Any SME may go online to do reviews and check project status at any time at his or her convenience."
Maize is director of market research and analysis at Intellinex LLC, a spin-off of Ernst & Young LLP in Irving, Texas. Intellinex recently announced that Affiliated Computer Services Inc. has signed an agreement to acquire the company.

Source: learning - VNU

HOW'S MY E-LEARNING?

2006-06-08T10:45:00.000+07:00

HOW'S MY E-LEARNING?

A reader's organization currently offers synchronous and asynchronous e-learning. His questions? "What sort of formal processes/steps should my department follow/take to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of its e-learning offerings?

Do others who have gone through the same process have advice to share as to how to go about doing something like this?" Here are responses:

Linda Fitzgerald's (linda.fitzgerald@cheetahlearning.com) company recently underwent a review by the American Council on Education (ACE) in Washington, D.C. "The ACE review is a way a company can have the effectiveness of its courses evaluated by an outside authority," she says. "It was a time-consuming process (the whole process took months), but at the end of the day, our e-learning and classroom courses all were sanctioned by ACE for college credit.

The four-person ACE committee that audited each and every course had a few minor recommendations to further increase the value of our courses, but overall, they gave the seal of approval." For more information about ACE, visit www.acenet.edu. Fitzgerald is president of Cheetah Exam Prep in Hartford, Conn. DON'T WAIT!Don't wait until instructional materials are complete to analyze quality, says Patti Shank (patti@learningpeaks.com).

"Rather, develop a checklist/rubric to be used during design and development to ensure that quality is built into design and development."

Good Web sites where one can find examples of quality indicators and metrics to potentially adopt include the following:
ASTD E-learning Certification Standards
Quality On the Line
The Institute of IT Training's Standards
Principles of Good Practice for Electronically Offered Degree and Certificate Programs
Open eQuality Learning Standards
Guidelines for the Design of Educational Software

Shank's two cents?
Don't ignore higher-education metrics, where one can find "lots of good ideas for making online training more effective." Shank also recommends that the reader's team work together to "jointly build a checklist and determine how to use it during and after the design and development process." The reader "may also want to add project-management metrics.

Effectiveness metrics should center on whether learners met the learning objectives (learning assessments) and whether learning transferred to where it gets used (performance metrics)." Shank is with Learning Peaks LLC, an instructional design and instructional technology consultancy in Denver, Colo.

Source: learning VNU

On-Site Training Saves KLA-Tencor Customer and Company Dollars

2006-06-08T10:39:00.000+07:00

On-Site Training Saves KLA-Tencor Customer and Company Dollars

KLA-Tencor Corp., a semiconductor company based in San Jose, Calif., did its customers—and itself—a favor when it decided to offer on-site training. Using local field engineers who have been certified, instead of sending trainers from headquarters, has reduced training costs for customers by 40 percent, and saved the company almost $2 million dollars. KLA-Tencor Corp. ranks #9 in the 2006 Training Top 100, Training magazine's annual ranking of organizations that excel at training and development.

When Leaders Get It Wrong

2006-06-08T10:32:00.000+07:00

When Leaders Get It Wrong

Nobody—least of all those in positions of power—like to admit they’ve goofed. So, you may be surprised to learn that more than 1,400 leaders, managers and executives opened up on the subject to Escondido, Calif.-based training and development consultancy The Ken Blanchard Companies (www.kenblanchard.com). The findings of the study, released last month, reveal these leaders’ views on their most-needed skills and biggest mistakes.

An ability to crunch the numbers and meet the bottom line may have played a huge role in securing them that coveted corner office, but survey participants have a strong appreciation for the more subtle art of interpersonal relations—an area that also causes them some trouble. Forty-three percent, for instance, identified communications skills as the most critical skill set to possess, while 41 percent said that inappropriate use of communication or listening is the number one mistake leaders make.

Many agreed that a much too heavy-handed approach was sometimes used. Twenty-seven percent cited under- or over-supervising, giving directions or delegating as a problem when working with others. Fifteen percent said that empathy and emotional intelligence are critical to leadership success.

Interestingly, when asked to identify the five things that leaders most often fail to do when working with others, high percentages of respondents targeted the same handful of issues. Eighty-two percent, for example, cited failing to provide appropriate feedback, praise or redirection as a personal shortcoming; 81 percent weren’t satisfied with their ability to listen or involve others; 76 percent said they fail to use a leadership style that is appropriate to the person, task and situation, which then leads to over- or under-supervision; 76 percent cited failure to set clear goals and objectives as a problem; and 59 percent said people in their position too often fail to train and develop their people.

source: training magazine

WANT BETTER TRAINING? SPROUT A SUIT-HEAD

2006-05-22T10:45:00.000+07:00

WANT BETTER TRAINING? SPROUT A SUIT-HEAD

-By Patti Shank

When we were in our 20s, my friends and I vowed to never become suits. Too conventional! And dull! So I have been known to flinch when someone accuses me of crossing over to the dark side when I ask about things like cost and impact on problems. Cost? Impact? Problems? When I talk like this, I can see by the look on others’ faces that they're concerned because I have sprouted a business head where my instructional designer's head should be.

But we need to sprout suit-heads because what we do as instructional designers has to make sense business-wise. It has to solve real problems and generate real results. Otherwise, we lose credibility, influence, and the right to have much of a say in anything -- and these outcomes are far too common in our profession.

When is a suit-head needed? Let me explain through some examples.

Someone shows me an online course his group is building. It’s really attractive and has a highly complex Flash interface. It's clear (because of the content) that the course will regularly need updating. I ask him what provisions were made so that the client can easily keep it updated. "They'll need to pay us big bucks to keep it updated for years to come," he explains, while laughing. I scoff because (with my suit-head on) I know that no one has unlimited resources.

Someone else shows me an online course for an audience that typically doesn't have access to the Internet during the work day. I ask when learners will be able to use it and she explains that that isn't her problem. She was asked to put it online and that's what she did. My suit-head thinks it would be better AND cheaper to make the course print-based so that learners can tap into it when they have breaks on the job.

Potential clients even fall into this trap. The operations director from a software company inquired about putting training for his company’s complex software application online. He explained that new users had to wait too long to get into classroom-based training. While they waited, they used the system and regularly screwed up the data because they didn't understand how the system worked. So, training them quickly was a major need, he said.

With my suit-head on, I asked him to explain how people came to screw up the data. He logged in and showed me how easy it was to create double or triple entries for each person in the system. After watching him use the system and asking additional questions, I agreed that online training for new users would likely be beneficial, but it likely wouldn’t solve the screwed-up data problem. That seemed to be caused by a usability flaw. I asked if I could watch real users use the system to gather more data and he was visibly annoyed with me. Someone else got the work (and the solution didn't solve the data problem). I felt sad because this problem needed to be solved and the solution wasn't difficult.

What do all these examples have in common? The solutions were wasteful, didn't solve the problem, or both. My suit-head is heavy and often uncomfortable (How do suits stand wearing ties?), but when I use it, it helps me provide better results.

Understanding the real business need isn't a nice-to-do but a need-to-do. This means knowing how the business works and what it needs to be successful, asking respectful questions, analyzing data, watching people work, and not building “solutions” until the problem is clear and what's needed to solve it is apparent. Training may not be the right solution or may be only part of the solution. And often, there are cheaper and more effective solutions than what folks originally have in mind.

In the end, being a problem-solver trumps being a training builder every time. And while I might sprout a suit-head as needed, I'm far from conventional. I wear a tie-dye shirt underneath!

Shank is an instructional technology and instructional design consultant, trainer, writer, and co-author of Making Sense of Online Learning (Wiley, 2004). She can be reached through her website: www.learningpeaks.com.

source: vnu learning

THE COST OF E-LEARNING INTERACTIVITY

2006-05-22T10:43:00.000+07:00

THE COST OF E-LEARNING INTERACTIVITY

A reader asks: Does anyone have information about how to break down the cost of e-learning by level of interaction? In addition, "Is there any evidence that higher-interactivity-level courses are worth the cost?"

www.vnulearning.com
We ran responses to this query in a previous issue (April 20, 2006). Here are more:

Higher intaractivity levels do not imply more or better learning, says Sanjaykumar Jain (sanjay_jain@sify.com). But "yes, higher interactivity-level-learning does cost more to produce." Keep in mind that some subjects require less interactivity, Jain notes, and introduction of interactivity can cause student distraction in these courses.

His advice? "Examine the need for interativity -- some of it may never (or rarely) be used by students." Jain is a program coordinator at YCM Open Umiversity in Nashik, Maharashtra, India.

MORE INTERACTIVITY = BETTER KNOWLEDGE? The more interactivity, the higher the transfer of knowledge, says Paula Sauvé (paula@xstreamsoftware.com). In the end, however, "only the learner can decide whether the resulting knowledge transfer suits his/her requirement. Furthermore, what one learner may find effective is not necessarily effective to another learner.

Therefore, designing/conducting formative evaluations is essential in order to measure your success." Sauvé is manager of training and instructional design at XStream Software Inc. in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

2006-05-22T10:36:00.000+07:00

CREATING PASSIONATE LEARNERS

As co-creator of the award-winning Head First series of programming how-to books, Kathy Sierra has spent years examining what inspires "passionate users" -- research, she says, that has produced some "surprising, counterintuitive, and immediately usable results" for training professionals. Sierra will share those results in a keynote address at Training magazine's upcoming Training Directors' Forum conference, which is slated for June 11 to 14, 2006, in Palm Springs, Calif.

Here's a preview of what she has to say:

TDF E-NET: Can you tell our readers a bit about the Head First series? What's its purpose, and how is it different from other books that teach users how to master programming languages?

SIERRA: Learning a new programming language (or other tough technical topic) is something most people dread, even when they really want to learn. My co-author Bert Bates and I were fed up with our own struggle to learn new languages -- both as software developers and technical trainers.

We both had a background that included artificial intelligence, game design, entertainment (film and radio), and advertising, combined with an interest in cognitive science. We recognized that these other non-teaching domains had a whole lot to offer, and that perhaps we could synthesize an approach to learning hard topics in a way that readers/learners would find more effective and less painful.

Our real goal was based on a rather obvious assumption: "People won't learn unless they actually read the book." We all know how rare it is for someone to read all -- or even half -- of a technical textbook. So, that was our job, to answer the question, "How can we keep them turning the pages?"

We asked, "How can we motivate/seduce/entice them into being curious about what happens next?" And the answer came from advertisers, filmmakers, and game designers (with some help from cognitive scientists). We knew we could use learning theory to make sure they were learning the content, but the best learning in the world would be meaningless if we couldn't keep them turning the pages.

We were also especially interested in the phenomenon where both kids and adults will work like mad to learn something they're passionate about. They'll spend hours with a book on gardening (or airplanes), but can't stay awake for five minutes with a textbook. And people reading about their passion aren't just "reading" (or taking a class), they're learning. In other words, they're applying and retaining it.

So, we did the geeky thing. We "reverse-engineered" passion. We wanted to see what the common characteristics are across the things for which people have a passion, and how people behave when they're passionate about something. We wanted to know what you could do to take advantage of that kind of passionate drive to learn even when the topic is not something that learners are already passionate about. And at the very least, we wanted to reduce the amount of time and pain it took for people to learn a normally painful technical topic. We had a lot of detractors in the beginning. Two publishers turned us down before O'Reilly agreed to publish the first book in the series three years ago.

The first book (Head First Java) has been in the top 10 of all computer books each year since its release, and we usually have at least five in the top 30 best-seller list. Half of O'Reilly's top best sellers today are Head First books. Each book in the series almost immediately took over the top slot in whatever its category is, so we know that given a choice between a traditional book and a Head First book, the majority of people buying books in these categories are choosing a Head First book.

Nobody, including us, expected this. We all thought that the format would appeal to those with a particular learning style, but we did not imagine that this would reflect the majority of people. Unfortunately, the format is fairly difficult to produce ... it doesn't scale well, so the pace of new books in the series will always be really slow.

It's been a great research project, though -- almost a quarter-million of these books have been sold, and we've received thousands of reader e-mails. What we have learned from the feedback is that there is an 80/20 effect -- that is, about 20 percent of the things we use in the format account for most of its effectiveness. If we'd known that earlier, we could have created a format that was much easier to produce.

TDF E-NET: How does your ongoing research into what inspires "passionate users" tie into the series?

SIERRA: Nobody can truly have "passionate users" unless the users are learning and becoming better and better at whatever that thing that you offer is, whether it's a product, service, or cause. Nobody is passionate about something she isn't good at. We associate passion (as in, "He really has a passion for gardening ... ") with a person who is always trying to get better and meet the next challenge, whether through learning new knowledge, practicing a skill or both. In other words, where there is passion, there is always a user kicking butt. Being better at something gives you a better experience with doing it. So, part of our mission with "creating passionate users" is to help companies become better at helping their users LEARN.

We're helping these companies apply some of the principles we used in our books to whatever it is they're doing -- from product design and documentation to marketing. Small companies and start-ups, especially, love the idea that they can beat their well-funded competition by being better at training their users. When it comes to marketing, if you can't out-SPEND your competitors, you can out-TEACH.

Our advice to most of our clients who want passionate users is to stop thinking about marketing and start focusing on helping their users get better (and better leads to "more into it") more quickly.

TDF E-NET: What do most organizations typically get wrong when it comes to creating "passionate" learners? What SHOULD they be doing instead?

SIERRA: Sun Microsystems asked me that question: "If you could change just one thing about our courses that would make the biggest difference, what would it be?" My answer was, "Cut the course content in half, but keep the training time the same." Learners are "exposed" to a lot of "covered" content, but they don't get the chance to learn the key things at any deep level.

And that means learners never get to feel that they have nailed something. They never get to experience any of the pleasure that comes from solving the puzzles, meeting a challenge, and putting the pieces together in a creative or useful way. They never get anywhere near the "kicking butt" stage.

Passion requires a certain amount of that "I Rule!" feeling. Most learners we see coming out of a training course are either overwhelmed, or they're feeling good but in a temporary way. (If they had fun but didn't REALLY learn to do something useful, the good feeling wears off quickly.) The only "good feeling" we want learners to have is the feeling of real accomplishment, which comes from meeting a challenge.

For some topics that simply take a long time to come up the learning curve, it may not be reasonable to think that in a day or even a weeklong class the learners will "kick butt" by the end, but they should at least be able to "taste" it.

Learners should leave with a picture in their mind of how cool it would be if they "were" really good at whatever they're learning. The lessons learned about "passionate users" apply here. If organizations want "passionate learners," they need to focus on helping their learners achieve that "I Rule!" feeling, and that comes only from real accomplishment, not from exposure to material.

There are many, many ways to help make this happen, but it often looks very different from a traditional classroom experience (or book). Game design has a lot to teach us here, but one big misconception is that we need to create or USE games in order to make the learning as engaging as a game. We don't; we just need to apply some of the same underlying principles that make games so compelling.

TDF E-NET: What are five "surprising, counterintuitive" results from your research that training professionals can put to immediate use?

SIERRA:

1. When it comes to learning, the "brain" and the "mind" are usually at cross-purposes. The brain has no idea you're living in the 21st century. Your BRAIN wants to scan for tigers or potential mates, while your MIND wants to pay attention to the textbook so you can pass that crucial exam. The brain spends a great deal of biochemical energy making sure that you do NOT pay attention and retain these non-life-threatening things like programming languages and phone systems and server configurations.

We must trick the brain into thinking that learning Java, for example, is just as important as watching for tigers! Thus, we must realize that no matter how inherently interested learners are in a particular topic, if they are a flat line on the emotional Richter scale, the brain never gets the message -- which means that regardless of the topic, if we can't spark a feeling in learners -- just about ANY feeling can work -- their mind is in for a huge fight with their brain.

Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes we make as trainers is to assume that if the learner is inherently interested in the topic, we don't have to worry about keeping their interest and motivation.

But it doesn't matter HOW strongly they care about the topic if we can't get that message to their brain as well. So we look for ways to communicate with their brain as well as their mind, and sometimes those look very different.

2. Being "nice" to learners is not helping them. By warning them in advance of all the pitfalls, problems, and tough parts, we're just robbing them of a much more powerful learning experience: the one where they bump into these things like brick walls at 70 miles an hour. We actively seek out garden paths we can take the learner down, knowing that when the big explosion comes, the learner will never forget it.

We see too many trainers (course developers, tech writers, etc.) who think that this makes learners frustrated and angry. But if done correctly, it makes the learning not only more memorable, but a lot more engaging.

3. Learners don't need to be explicitly "entertained" in order to make the learning experience engaging. Learning doesn't need to be "funny" in order to be fun. Chess players find chess highly engaging and "fun," but there's nothing "funny" about it. In order to create fun that's based on being engaged and in flow, rather than by offering entertainment, we have to apply the principles of game design.

4. The most logical ordering of topics is often the "least" effective for creating compelling experiences. A more organic, often "messy" flow of topics can make it much more engaging, so we design learning around a kind of "hero's journey" model.

5. "Establishing credibility" at the beginning of a course often does more harm than good. In fact, the less a trainer describes his background and bio and experience up front, the better learners' experience can be. Starting a course off with the trainer's background sets the tone for the learning experience (no matter how friendly and approachable the trainer is), and the tone is wrong -- it makes it more about the trainer than the learners in a very subtle but important way.

We did a study at Sun, and the less the trainer introduced himself, the higher his post-class ratings were. In the extreme, we had trainers not introducing themselves at ALL -- just launching directly into learner introductions -- and giving their name only by writing their e-mail address on the board. There was no point at which we went too far in reducing the trainer's bio.

Related to this, we found that the less the trainers said to "establish credibility," the higher the learners rated them on credibility scores. The less they said about their real-world experience, the more likely it was that the learners rated them as having real-world experience.

TDF E-NET: What makes for a killer learning experience?

SIERRA: When learners are "getting it," and they KNOW that they're getting it, and they believe the thing they're getting was a challenge. When they're having a genuine "I Rule!" experience. This can't be faked by dumbing down the content or giving them the answers. The learners must be meeting a challenge that is continually just beyond their skill and knowledge level, but which they believe they have the tools (their own ability combined with the course resources and tools) to keep acquiring new levels of skill and knowledge.

A killer learning experience is one that offers the most opportunity for the learner to spend time in flow, kicking butt. And when that happens, it doesn't much matter "what" the content is. Solving a puzzle is inherently pleasurable to the brain, and the best learning experiences tap into that natural reward system.

New Numbers from the T&D Outsourcing Front

2006-05-19T10:25:00.000+07:00

New Numbers from the T&D Outsourcing Front

As if you hadn’t gotten the message already, here’s even more evidence of the impact globalization is having on training and development (T&D) priorities:

According a survey of 3,100 senior human resources executives by Boston-based consulting and training organization Novations Group, globalization and overseas outsourcing have affected T&D priorities at 15 percent of companies, while the trend is being studied by 25 percent of said organizations. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you stand to profit, of course), a majority of organizations do not anticipate any changes in employee development programs due to globalization in the year ahead.

While there’s little debate that outsourcing overseas is a presence to be reckoned with, companies still don’t seem to know what to make of it. Of those organizations reporting changes in their T&D programs, there wasn’t much agreement on what form the new priorities would take. Stepped up training in core skills was reported by 60 percent; more focus on creative skills and intellectual development was reported by 45 percent; and increased training in new technologies was cited by 30 percent.

Indeed, there really doesn’t seem so far to be much consensus on how best to respond to the pressure placed on T&D priorities by outsourcing. “So far employers are responding differently, the findings tell us,” Novations Group President and chief operating officer Mike Hyter said. “While core skills always seem to need improvement, we’re most struck by the emphasis on encouraging creativity and a higher level of intellectual development. If more mundane jobs are being exported overseas, then organizations appear to be seeking to build capacity in terms of promoting employee innovation and talent.”

from : learning circuit

Top 100 Best Practices: Aflac Trains for Better Communication

2006-05-12T16:39:00.000+07:00

Aflac, a supplemental health and life insurance policy provider based in Columbus, Ga., ensures its employees have optimum communications skills through targeted training sessions. Topics covered include "Giving and Receiving Constructive Feedback," "Telephone Techniques," "Presentations that Work," "Effective Communication" and "Business Writing I, II and III." At the leadership level, additional courses, such as "Communicating to Manage Performance," also are available

Initial Security Shares E-Learning Strategy

2006-05-05T09:25:00.000+07:00

Initial Security Shares E-Learning Strategy

When San Antonio, Texas-based Initial Security launched its Initial Online Academy in February, it learned a few pointers on creating an effective e-learning program for its employees that it doesn’t mind passing along.

Working with Macomb, Ill.-based e-learning provider Etico Solutions, the company, a service provider to the physical security sector, took more than two years readying itself for online training. During that time, all training materials were reviewed for content and relevancy before being converted to an interactive Web-based format.

Here’s what they learned about the value of e-learning and some do’s and don’ts of the medium:
• Avoid the "binge and purge" mentality. Instead of force-feeding security officers as much information as possible during a scheduled "training day" for conventional induction and recertification training, the Online Academy, like most e-learning systems in use today, allows officers to review the material as much as necessary.
"The ability to review and re-review material can make every available hour a 'training hour' where officers can learn in digestible portions and make immediate application of what they have learned," says Leonard Courtright, regional vice president for the company’s southwest region.

• Train with authenticity. In order to emphasize the practical use of the materials the student is learning, the Academy includes simulations such as its course on Report Writing in which students are given 3-D pictures of six vehicles, and are even able to spin the vehicles on the screen using their mouse in order to see all sides as they undertake the exercise.

• Don’t forget about the classroom. “Web-based training doesn’t mean that supervisors no longer need to manage,” Courtright adds. "The Web-based medium offers an easy way to stay involved with an electronic audit trail that verifies participation and progress. Vigilant managers gauge how their officers are doing and offer counsel and extra off-line assistance as needed."

• Don’t bore them. "Static text on a Web page needs to be complemented by a variety of courses and interactive exercises that holds the student’s interest," says Doug Fogwell, vice president of marketing.

• Keep in mind the ultimate benefits of e-learning. As you struggle with the pros and cons of constructing a thorough e-learning system, consider what you and your students will gain once the hard work is over. "In a classroom setting, you are continually judging your work against your peers," Fogwell says. With Web-based training, students are competing against themselves and able to learn at their own pace.

source: Inside Training Newsletter

TEAM-BUILDING ONLINE

2006-05-05T09:13:00.000+07:00

TEAM-BUILDING ONLINE

"I am looking for a team-building exercise that I can use when doing online learning," says a reader. "Any suggestions or ideas?"

Here's what you said:

Build teams online with breakout rooms, recommends Anne Palmer Johnson (annepj@bmra.com). "Frequently, during a live online class of 30 to 60 students, a handful of students interact with the lead instructor and the 'silent majority' merely learn by observation, as opposed to learning by doing.

The 'breakout' feature in Web-conferencing software, by contrast, promotes full participation and team-buiding online by providing the capability to divide participants into smaller groups, thus encouraging increased interactivity, engagement and opportunity for learner-centric learning and team-building."

How does it work? First, says Johnson, the instructor provides the background for an exercise and sets the ground rules for engaging in a 10- to 15-minute brainstorming session. Then, participants are grouped together in breakout teams (generally three to six individuals per team) and allocated to private chat/whiteboard rooms to collaborate on their assignment.

Toward the end of their private session, they are given a three-minute alert to arrive at a solution and elect a team leader/spokesperson to present their case. All participants are then reunited in the main session to explore the different outcomes arrived at by each team.

The teams then break out again for a follow-up session. "This time around, there's apt to be more camaraderie and bonding, lending itself to a more relaxed breakout session affording greater participation by all members on the team. They then return to the general session, which will include feedback and wrap-up by the lead instructor."

Note that not all online Web-conferencing companies offer the "breakout room" feature, says Johnson -- i.e., the capability to enable private audio, whiteboard, quizzing and application sharing and to easily (and instantaneously) move participants and content between rooms. Some companies that offer the breakout-room feature, she says, include Elluminate Live! Virtual Classroom; Centra Virtual Classroom; and iLinc Virtual Classroom. Johnson is director of distance learning at Business Management Research Associates Inc. in Fairfax, Va.

source: TDF e-Net

MORE ON RAPID E-LEARNING HOW TO'S

2006-05-05T09:04:00.000+07:00

MORE ON RAPID E-LEARNING HOW TO'S

A reader seeks ways to conduct rapid production of e-learning effectively. "I continually strive to find new ways to make the revision cycles smoother and faster, and I've been experimenting with some rapid prototyping procedures.

These have proven helpful, but I am confident there are more solutions to learn (or to discover) in this area." Any advice?

www.vnulearning.com
We ran responses to this query in a previous issue (April 20, 2006). Here's one more from a rapid e-learning software vendor: "The reader asks for rapid prototyping procedures to make revision cycles faster. I would argue that if the reader is doing prototyping before content implementation, he or she is still doing traditional e-learning (not that there's anything wrong with that)," says Al Moser (al@readygo.com). "Faster development of traditional e-learning can be a cost-effective way to increase ROI. From my point of view, however, rapid e-learning has the following characteristics:"

You can go from outline to implementation directly (or the authoring system you use allows you to build/rearrange the outline as part of your implementation).

It involves SMEs. "They should be responsible for implementing and maintaining content. That is, a stronger separation between the graphic/multimedia and the textual content can let each group concentrate on its specialty. Give the SMEs a tool that allows them to maintain, correct and republish the content. The graphics team should provide them with higher value-added elements as components to add to their courses. This way, the graphic artists aren't responsible for correcting or rearranging content, and the SMEs aren't trying to create graphics."
Course development cycles are counted in days instead of months.

Courses are generally shorter, get posted faster, and are updated more frequently.
Courses can be searched and indexed, just like other Web pages. "This means that workers can find the content they need faster. (Therefore, 'rapid' refers to 'learning' in addition to development.) This also means that content is not restricted to linear presentation. If users have to go through every page to get to specific content, then it is not 'rapid.'"

Your authoring system allows you to reuse chapters, sections, and other elements from one course to another, the same way you re-use PowerPoint slides.
Based on all this, says Moser, the reader should review his or her deployment procedures, review staffing, and review course designs.
www.readygo.com/isd
www.readygo.com/demo3 www.readygo.com/aicc

Samples of courses designed as rapid e-learning can be found at the above URLs, notes Moser. "All of the above courses involve tracking. Yes: rapid e-learning can also involve tracking such that the author can update his or her content based on how users perform on the assessments. Also, rapid e-learning courses should still contain instructional design -- more than just chaining slides together and posting them on a Web site." Moser is VP of engineering at ReadyGo Inc., a rapid e-learning software provider in Mountain View, Calif.

source: TDF e-Net

FROM TRAINER TO PERFORMANCE CONSULTANT

2006-05-05T09:03:00.000+07:00

FROM TRAINER TO PERFORMANCE CONSULTANT

Jean Barbazette, a train-the-trainer specialist from The Training Clinic in Seal Beach, Calif., and the author of The Trainer's Jouney to Competence (Pfeiffer, 2005), will present a Performance Consulting certificate program, June 9-11, at Training Directors' Forum, which is slated for June 11 to 14, 2006.

TDF e-Net recently spoke with Barbazette about performance consulting and its role in today's organizations.

TDF E-NET: What is a performance consultant?

BARBAZETTE: A performance consultant helps employees improve their work performance whether or not training is "the answer." A performance consultant finds the gaps in what an employee "should" be doing and what he or she is doing through a performance analysis and by looking for barriers to performing as expected. The solution to a particular issue may or may not involve a training session.

TDF E-NET: And how is he or she different than a trainer, training manager, instructional designer or other human performance professional?

BARBAZETTE: The performance consultant may function as a trainer, training manager, instructional designer or other human performance improvement professional, but generally, the role she chooses for a specific issue tends to be broader than those other roles. If a trainer's skills are helping employees develop skills, then the solution usually involves a training event.

Since some sort of assessment is appropriate, the performance consultant focuses on finding information about the deficiency, what causes it, and what solutions are most appropriate, and then helps implement the variety of solutions. A performance consultant will be most successful when helping the internal client reach a desired result and not just putting on training events.

TDF E-NET: What are some common misperceptions about performance consulting? Is it a commonly misunderstood term/practice? If so, why do you think that is?

BARBAZETTE: Some years ago, the consulting field, in general, got the reputation of all "sizzle" and no "steak" and focusing on process, rather than on substance. Process consultation is effective when it is balanced with a knowledge of the organization's core business.

TDF E-NET: Is this a job category that is growing in popularity and opportunity recently -- and if so, why?

BARBAZETTE: With the growth in certification programs for performance consulting professionals, trainers are taking a broader approach to performance issues. Many now realize that training alone is usually not "the answer" to a performance problem.

TDF E-NET: What skills does one need to become an effective performance consultant? Why are these particular skills so important to success?

BARBAZETTE: The most important skill for a performance consultant is the ability to do a thorough analysis to get to the root cause of the performance deficiency that impacts the business and then recommending appropriate solutions that can demonstrate a specific result.

TDF E-NET: What sort of value does performance consulting provide to an organization, especially with today's focus on bottom-line results and aligning training with business strategy?

BARBAZETTE: The performance consultant provides value to the organization by responding with the appropriate remedy to performance issues. The bottom line is improved because training is only done when necessary. A major part of any performance improvement plan is to align activities with the business needs.

TDF E-NET: Can you give an example of exemplary performance consulting in action? B

BARBAZETTE: One of my clients asked me for a "Time Management" course and the manager wanted his team to work "smarter, not harder." Through an informal assessment of supervisors, I learned that different people were using different project management tools and not communicating with one another, and work took twice as long as necessary as a result. Solutions involved settling on one project management tool, creating a job aid, and training the group on using that tool, AND how to pass off a partially finished project when needed. "Time Management" was not the answer. If we had just done the requested training, it would have wasted everyone's time.

TDF E-NET: If you had to convince an organization or training department to take the performance consulting route, what would you say?

BARBAZETTE: The major benefit of using a performance consulting approach is to get the best result (improved performance) by applying an appropriate solution that saves everyone time and money!

source: TDF e-Net

WORKING WITH SMES

2006-05-03T23:23:00.000+07:00

WORKING WITH SMES

"One of the most difficult challenges I face is working efficiently with subject-matter experts (SMEs) to create online courses," says a reader. "I'm constantly trying to identify better ways to work with new SMEs, to motivate them, and to make their task of communicating the necessary content easier."

Can others offer advice, insights, and/or tips regarding how to work effectively with SMEs?

Here's a response:

Tita Beal (anntares@yahoo.com) has used the following strategies with subject experts including private-banking department heads, oil-drilling product managers, pharmaceutical-company scientists, telecommunications engineers, and others.

1. Do your homework carefully so you can begin an interview with a clear explanation of what you want to discuss, why, and how long it will take (under 30 minutes), as well as a list of questions with space to write answers.

2. Train yourself to take continual notes while making eye contact in case your experts balk at a tape recorder. Make code symbols (e.g., asterisk, check, etc.) as you write to remind yourself where there's an important point, a follow-up question you need to ask, or a "to do" item.

3. Begin the interview by setting the right collaborative tone. For example, "I'm going to ask you some questions that will sound simple, but sometimes are hard to answer. And don't worry. If you want, I'll show you my first outlines and drafts so you have a chance to correct anything I didn't get right, and add anything you may not think of today."Beal learned to do this the hard way when an expert got furious at her for asking "stupid questions" but later had the good grace to apologize and say, "Your questions about needed results and assumptions were so simple, I should have already thought through the answers. I felt stupid so I called you stupid. Apologies. Can we start again?"

4. If you need the experts' support and "buy-in," consider giving them credit in the materials or an invitation to speak in an on-site or online panel to the participants. ("I reshaped a long discussion into 10 tips, gave the expert a byline and invited him to moderate a session in a two-day seminar," says Beal. "He beat the bushes to make sure people attended 'his' seminar." (Keep in mind the Taoist definition of leadership, recommends Beal: "When the best leader's work is done, the people say, 'We did it ourselves!'")

5. Don't make busy experts teach you their expertise. They'll become very impatient and exasperated. If you can't understand a technical term but sort of understand what the expert is talking about, spell it phonetically and ask someone else or do some research. If you need to understand a concept or term to make any sense of the conversation, ask something like, "If we have to explain this to new hires or newly promoted people, how would you define that in plain English?"

6. Don't get into semantic arguments. You may need to develop "behavioral objectives" a certain way or you may have strong opinions about what is a benefit vs. a feature. However, just listen to the expert's discussion of needed performance, results, and ways to assess quality of performance. You can create the perfect statement of objectives or list of features/benefits later.

7. Listen for generic concepts and skills underneath the specific details that experts will discuss. For example, have in the back of your mind questions like, "What results must they produce? What conceptual framework guides their thinking? What's their 'Choose from Column A, B, C mental menu of options' that they refer to unconsciously when they make a decision? What are the experts' underlying assumptions/evaluations in that case example?"

8. Finally, a last resort: If someone refuses to answer your questions with dismissive comments like, "Sales reps know all that," start packing up and say very politely, "I guess this training program isn't needed. I'll explain that to X." (X = the expert's own manager or a senior executive who has requested or approved the proposal to develop the training program.)

Beal is an instructional designer and consultant based in New York, N.Y.

THE COST OF E-LEARNING INTERACTIVITY

2006-05-03T23:04:00.000+07:00

THE COST OF E-LEARNING INTERACTIVITY

A reader asks: Does anyone have information about how to break down the cost of e-learning by level of interaction? In addition, "Is there any evidence that higher-interactivity-level courses are worth the cost?"

Here's what you said:

There are two ways to break down e-learning interactivity, says Keith Koh (keith1303@hotmail.com): by learning outcome and by media creation. In Koh's organization, interactivity levels are typically defined using learning outcomes based on Bloom's Taxonomy. Learning outcomes and their corresponding levels are as follows: knowledge and comprehension (Level I); application and analysis (Level II); and synthesis and evaluation (Level III).

"Using this model, we focus on what learners would accomplish after completing the course. In a Level I course, which represents the lowest of the three interactivity levels, learners will 'know' and be able to 'recall or summarize' the content.

A Level II course will allow learners to attain a higher learning outcome, where they will be able to 'apply' and 'associate' what they learned in a new situation or scenario. Lastly, a Level III course, which has the highest level of learning outcome, will make learners 'semi-experts' in the field of study."

Typically, one can use ball-park figures or guidelines for Level I and II courses, says Koh, but Level III courses are too customized and pricing and interactivity can range widely -- from scenario-based learning (where there is no clear, structured path) to simulators (both simple and complex). "Hence, for Level III courses, we usually need to do a detailed scope before defining the cost." As for Level I and II courses, he says, the cost usually depends on the cost of development and the duration of the completed product. In Koh's organization, the cost of developing a one-hour Level I course is $8,000 (U.S.), and the cost of developing a one-hour Level II course is $12,000 (U.S.). As mentioned, another way to define interactivity is by media creation. A Level I course, for example, might be classified as one that contains an interactive object (e.g., video, animation, or a quiz) on every 10 pages; a Level II course might boast an interactive object on every five pages; and a Level III course might feature an interactive object on every page.

The latter definition (by media type), says Koh, is more straightforward -- "as the more interactivity you need to build, the higher the effort, and hence, the higher the cost." Last but not least, is interactivity worth it? In Koh's experience, more interactive objects do not necessarily mean better courseware, "as the interactive objects could, at best, be bells and whistles and, at worst, be distracters."
"On the other hand, defining the learning outcome, and then designing the courseware based on that, will keep the instructional designer very focused on the outcome, and hence, [more apt to] attain the objective set out in the needs analysis of the courseware.

And if you are able to meet the needs that are to be met by developing the courseware, wouldn't the cost be worth it, regardless of the interactivity level? And if you are teaching something more complex in order to resolve a more complex problem, then wouldn't that warrant a higher-value solution?" Koh is a senior consultant at eLearning Consultants Pte Ltd, a content development solution provider in Singapore specializing in information and instructional delivery.

TEXT TO SPEECH

2006-05-03T23:02:00.000+07:00

TEXT TO SPEECH

Mike Kemmler (mdkemmler@yahoo.com) recently began using text-to-speech conversion with clients in order to rapidly create audio files for early prototypes. Kemmler's organization's rapid prototyping approach employs Articulate Presenter to create narrated online presentations that eventually boast professional audio.

"Up-front, however, I have begun using text-to-speech to create a rough narrated first prototype for client review. At this point, the presentation is kind of flat, but it allows the reviewers to see and hear the rough content to make sure the messages are on-target. Then, we take it up to the next level on the second prototype (adding in more graphics, review exercises, tests, animations and builds synchronized with the audio -- plus making any requested changes to the narrative and sound files)." www.nextuptech.com

To accomplish this, Kemmler uses TextAloud 2.0 from NextUp.com in Clemmons, N.C. He also uses the AT&T Natural Voices add-on "to get a much nicer (more human) result." "The price tag in total was close to $50, so it didn't take long for the purchase to pay for itself. End result is significant time savings. The recording of scratch audio for early prototypes, which could have taken hours before, now takes minutes. Plus, there is no human error; what is in the script is what is recorded!"

Kemmler is an e-learning architect at Computer Mediated Learning NOW! in Chicago, Ill.

conduct rapid production of e-learning effectively

2006-05-03T22:59:00.000+07:00

When doing rapid development and revision, store your content in a database, recommends Jeff Rhodes (jrhodes@plattecanyon.com). "The basic idea is for instructional designers to lay out the types of training pages required (interactions) and for programmers to configure the development tool to dynamically configure itself to each of these page types/templates.

Subject matter experts (SMEs) then create the actual training by selecting the page type and entering the desired content into the database. There is more up-front design/programming time with this approach, but the payoff is overall reduced development time, easy revision, and increased control over your content," says Rhodes.According to Rhodes, "powerful tools" such as ASP.NET, Flash, Dreamweaver (with server-side programming), or ToolBook are most well-suited to this approach.

Why ISD important ?

2006-05-03T22:57:00.000+07:00

Instructional design is how one organizes, structures, lays out, and presents material so that learners learn as much as possible, says Al Moser (al@readygo.com). "When someone writes a book, she needs to organize the material so that concepts build on previously presented material. With presentations, you have to figure out what goes on the slide and what the speaker is going to say. Both of these cases involve generally 'linear' instruction.

With PowerPoint, you have to break up your content based on what fits on a page. With a book, you're limited to what the publisher will allow." Web-based training (like encyclopedias), says Moser, is more about non-linear instruction. "Here, you need to consider that students will want to skip over the material they know and spend more time on the material that is new and important to them." "

The Web provides all sorts of new media possibilities that can be beneficial or harmful. Books and presentations are typically limited to text and pictures. Instructional design is about choosing how to use the various media, how to lay out the content for different learners, and how to deliver it for greatest impact and reuse." Moser is VP of engineering at ReadyGo Inc. in Mountain View, Calif.

Competency Based Management Tools

2006-05-03T20:30:00.000+07:00

There are several CBM tools that can integrate and be utilized with an LMS, says Bray Brockbank (bbrockbank@geolearning.com). To determine which solution would meet the reader’s needs, there are a few additional questions to ask:
• What is your budget?
• How much of a CBM tool do you think you need today vs. down the road? What will you really need to use the CBM tool for (e.g., performance management, talent and succession management, career development, 360 feedback, and/or compensation planning)?
• Have you built or will you build the foundation (mapped competencies to job codes, evaluated internal practices, received senior management buy-in, and so forth) within your organization for such a tool?
• How immediate is your deployment need?
There are generally three main business types in the CBM business space, says Brockbank, including ...
• Pure-play CBM vendors (e.g., SuccessFactors Inc. in San Mateo, Calif., and Exceed (which was acquired by Workstream Inc. in Ottawa, Canada, earlier this year), both of which offer out-of-the-box as well as custom-fit CBM solutions). "This is all that they do."
• Vendors offering modular or add-on solutions in the CBM space that could meet the reader’s needs. "This is an add-on service or product to their core business product and offering."
• Custom-build companies that specialize in building tailored solutions and systems through consulting or professional services. Their specialty is consulting services around enterprise training or human-capital management.
When searching for a solution, be sure to engage your LMS vendor to determine which, if any, CBM solution vendors they have worked with in the past or are currently working with, recommends Brockbank. "Also, keep in mind that though both the LMS and CBM tools have inherent value and overlap in the human-capital-management market, they are not necessarily developed with the same logic or business value proposition."

Brockbank is a business and marketing management consultant at GeoLearning Inc. in West Des Moines, Ia.

Training with the Fab Four

2006-05-03T17:51:00.000+07:00

Training with the Fab Four

Who knew when John, Paul, George and Ringo made their fateful appearance on Ed Sullivan on that fateful day in 1964, corporate trainers would benefit from it more than 40 years later? Yet that’s just what Andrew Sobel, president of Santa Fe, N.M.-based management consultancy Andrew Sobel Advisors, suggests.

In a newly released white paper on the subject, The Beatles Principles, he points out a surprising number of workforce development lessons trainers can learn from the same group that got teeny boppers bopping—much more than “Love Me Do.”

For one thing, Sobel says, the Beatles had notable chemistry that may have at least partly stemmed from the vast amounts of time they spent together, practicing material face-to-face. At a time when virtual meetings often supplant live gatherings, that might be something trainers should think about, Sobel maintains. They worked so well together, in fact, they achieved what most corporations strive for in employee relations.

“The whole was greater than the sum of the parts,” he says. “The four of them together created greater music, were better entertainers than any of them could have been, or were, as individual performers. And, of course, that’s what most corporations are trying to do.” That’s what all those team-building mantras and exercises happen to be about, he notes.

At the same time, each member was known as his own brand, so to speak. Unlike other rock bands of the time—say The Rolling Stones or The Who—most people you ask on the street will be able to name each member of the Beatles. They melded together seamlessly as a team, but still were the recipients of individual recognition, a nice balance to remember as you consider how best to heap accolades on your workers.

Build teams and encourage partnership, but don’t forget about the importance of individual achievement. Also worth noting is the attention the group made sure Ringo Starr, as the drummer, received. While not one of the leading songwriters or singers, he was literally given a platform of his own with his place on the stage typically raised up high in the backdrop behind his bandmates.

Similarly, both he and George Harrison, also not a leading player in the group, were given a chance to sing on their own—Starr, for instance, on “A Little Help from My Friends” and Harrison on “My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Something.” The blending of dissimilar personalities is also worth remembering when thinking of those lovable mop tops. Despite their cheery exterior, there were some formidable differences under the surface.

John Lennon was an idealist, but also angry and tormented, while Paul McCartney tended toward a cheery optimism. Sobel says to remember when putting work groups together that contrasting personalities don’t have to clash into disaster. They just may create a beautiful harmony together. “Together they helped constrain each other’s excesses. When putting teams together, we tend to pick members in our own image,” he says. “But, where you get the really creative explosion is when you get different kinds of people, one who’s introverted and analytical, for example, and the other more of a sales type.”

The Beatles were also great innovators, a principle you might want to remember when working to establish corporate culture. Despite the mega-success of their first album, the second was such a departure, some fans even—albeit temporarily—bolted. “With each record that came out, they added to their fan base; they wanted a new sound,” Sobel stresses. “If you want to keep your customers, you have to treat the 100th meeting like the first; otherwise why would they stick with you? Complacency sets in. You don’t want to go back year after year singing ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand.’”

For information, visit http://www.elabs2.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=cc4,kko,21,ewlj,iz3f,bv7k,fy01.

PARTNERING PROBLEMS

2006-04-04T22:09:00.000+07:00

PARTNERING PROBLEMS

"My company recently purchased an LMS, and we are in the process of purchasing other tools (authoring, etc.) and content (custom and off-the-shelf) as well. These 'other' tools are from other vendors -- not our new LMS provider."

"Does anyone have any tips or words of advice to share regarding how to handle all of these players to ensure that at the end of the day, everything -- content, tools, and the LMS -- works together? What about negotiation tips for getting those from several separate companies to work together well, so that I'm happy with the finished product?"

http://www.vnulearning.com/learninggroup/search/index_taxonomy.jsp
We ran responses to this query in our last issue (March 14, 2006). Here are more:

Purchasing an LMS BEFORE analyzing course development and content needs puts one at a disadvantage, says Mark Undeberg (marku@mediapodium.com). One would hope, he continues, that the reader has not also already purchased authoring tools.

"If not, your path is simple. Just ask prospective authoring tool vendors and/or course suppliers to give you a sample course that you can test by plugging it into your LMS. If the implementation isn't cost-effective ... move on to another vendor or have the vendor adapt its materials."

Assuming the reader's LMS is SCORM- and/or AICC-compliant, he or she should be able to easily implement any SCORM- and/or AICC-content. "If you're working with vendors who are not SCORM-or AICC-compliant ... well, you probably shouldn't be."

Any vendor with integrity will help the reader integrate with other vendors and will do it for a reasonable fee, says Undeberg. "However, if you have purchased products that are not compliant and are not compatible, you're going to have to share the blame and expense for creating a situation that is hard on everyone."

"If you have already purchased your products with no thought for compatibility and your vendors are behaving unreasonably, your best option is to hire a consultant who can call their bluff."

Undeberg is president of MediaPodium LLC, an e-learning provider in Seattle, Wash.

PUTTING THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE

Unfortunately, many companies make the mistake of purchasing LMSs long before they have any content to serve, agrees Al Moser (al@readygo.com). "This is like building a highway system before owning any cars or trucks."

That said, when looking at authoring tools, here are some of Moser's recommendations:

1. Make sure that your LMS supports the same specifications (AICC, SCORM) as the authoring tools you are considering. Many LMSs have an internal authoring system that uses proprietary specifications, notes Moser. These systems may offer some advantages over third-party tools, but they don't always allow users to deploy their content on another LMS or Web server should they encounter problems with the LMS.

2. Make sure that your LMS vendor promises to give your authoring tool's support department access to the LMS's technical development department. "My experience is that tech support departments at many LMS [vendors] don't know what SCORM and AICC are. Their usual response when a course is not launched/tracked properly is that the problem is the course, not their LMS." The real problem is usually more subtle, says Moser. For example, there is perhaps something in the course that is not supported by the LMS. Or the issue may be that something is compliant with the specification, but the LMS does not gracefully handle it. This can occur, says Moser, for both courses and content that are officially "certified."

3. Verify that your authoring system supports more than one behavior. "Within the e-learning specifications, you can get different behaviors based on how the LMS handles different information. For example, some LMSs will prevent students from returning to a course once their status has been set (by the course) to 'complete.' If you want to avoid this, your authoring tool should be able to instead set the student's status to 'passed' when he reaches the desired benchmark." If the authoring system only offers one version of SCORM or one version of AICC, it means that you will be restricted to the one behavior envisioned by the authoring tool's developers, says Moser. Thus, check that courses built with a tool are capable of reporting more than just score, lesson status and elapsed time. "The course should also report every answer provided by the student, though many LMSs don't store or report this."

4. Ideally, the authoring systems you are looking at can give you a list of the LMSs with which they already have integrated. "If they haven't integrated with the one you purchased, what is their support policy? Will you be able to get the LMS's technical development people to assist the authoring tool's personnel?"

5. Find out what plug-ins are required by the authoring system. "If it requires plug-ins that conflict with the plug-ins required by your LMS, you could run into trouble."

6. If possible, create a demo course with your candidate authoring systems and post it on your LMS to see what you do and don't like. "You'll be amazed at how much you learn about your LMS, the authoring system, and, in many cases, about your e-learning assumptions and processes."

Moser is VP of engineering at ReadyGo Inc., an e-learning authoring tool provider in Mountain View, Calif.

as published in Training Magazine

WHY IS MONA LISA SMILING?

2006-04-04T22:03:00.000+07:00

WHY IS MONA LISA SMILING?

In his best-selling book How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day (Delacorte Press, 1998), author Michael Gelb draws on Leonardo's notebooks, inventions and legendary works of art to introduce seven principles for thinking like history's greatest genius. OLN&R recently spoke with Gelb about his work:

OLN&R: What are three practical things that Leonardo did in his daily work that might help learning professionals to not only improve their own work, but the work of those they train and teach?

GELB:
He kept a notebook to record his observations, musings, insights and inspirations.
He found an optimal balance between concentrated, focused work and relaxation/incubation time.
He disciplined himself to consider all his subjects from at least three perspectives.

OLN&R: What inhibits great thinking at work? What steps can individuals take to overcome these obstacles?

GELB: Great thinking is inhibited by the belief that it is reserved only for those who are especially gifted. And most people don't understand that thinking is a skill that can be developed. In other words, they aren't aware of their true capacity to think and they haven't been trained to access that capacity.

OLN&R: Similarly, what inhibits learning at work? What steps can we take to overcome these obstacles?
GELB: The number one inhibition to learning at work is the fear of failure and embarrassment. Individuals can cultivate their understanding of the nature of the learning process by, for example, modeling the behaviors of Leonardo Da Vinci, but in most cases a major organizational culture change is required.

OLN&R: We know Leonardo was a great thinker, but how would you describe him as a learner? How did he approach learning, and what made him a particularly effective student?

GELB: Great learning and thinking go hand-in-hand. Leonardo was a committed, passionate lifelong learner. He taught himself Latin when he was 40 so he could read the classics. In his notebooks, he records the definition of more than 9,000 vocabulary words. He wrote, "Iron rusts from disuse, water that does not flow becomes stagnant. Thus it is with the human mind!" Freud wrote that, "The great Leonardo continued to play as a child throughout his adult life, thus baffling his contemporaries."

OLN&R: If you could only give one piece of advice, based on your work, to training professionals on how to make their training more effective, what would that advice be -- and why?

GELB: Always be engaged in learning something new! If you are stretching your own comfort zone with new learning challenges then you'll nurture the "beginner's mind" that inspires the best teaching/training.

OLN&R: Why is Mona Lisa smiling?
GELB: Because she knows how to think like Leonardo, and after this presentation, you will, too!

as published in Training Magazine.

Who's Coming, Who's Going and Why

2006-04-04T21:47:00.000+07:00

Who's Coming, Who's Going and Why

There will be no rest for trainers in 2006, if the latest hiring projections are on target. According to the latest quarterly survey conducted by Milwaukee-based employment services provider Manpower, payrolls will continue to be added to throughout the second quarter. Of the 16,000 U.S. employers surveyed for the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, 30 percent foresee an increase in hiring activity for the second quarter of this year, while just 6 percent expect a reduction in staffing.

Fifty-eight percent report no change in hiring plans, and 6 percent have yet to determine their staffing needs. No matter what sector you're in, the stream of new hires to orient and train should remain strong. Employers in sectors such as construction, durable and non-durable goods manufacturing, transportation/public utilities, wholesale/retail trade, finance/insurance, real estate and services, all report little change in hiring as they look toward the second quarter, Manpower reports. To learn more about the study, visit www.manpower.com.

Meanwhile, the employees you do let go may just make a comeback, a 2005 survey conducted by Philadelphia-based workforce consultancy Right Management, reveals. A poll of more than 14,000 displaced employees from more than 4,900 organizations throughout North America who found new jobs last year using Right Management's services, found that 13 percent who had previously been laid off were rehired by their former employers. The survey found that 54 percent of employers are at least occasionally rehiring former employees who were displaced by earlier downsizings. For more information, visit www.right.com.

And what about those who leave of their own accord? They often do so for reasons that go beyond their wallet, Los Angeles-based executive search and workplace consultancy Korn/Ferry International reports. Based on a global survey of executive respondents from more than 80 countries who had registered online with the firm between December 2005 and February 2006, only 5 percent cited inadequate or inconsistent compensation as the primary reason for leaving their last job. To learn more about this study, visit www.kornferry.com.

as shared in Inside Training.

A Simulation Success Story for the ABA

2006-04-04T20:29:00.000+07:00

A Simulation Success Story for the ABA

Banking is one of the world's oldest professions, no doubt, but when Washington, D.C.-based banking trade group the American Bankers Association (ABA) wanted to sell primers on topics such as financial, estate, retirement and tax planning to the financial advisers it serves, it turned to one of training's newest technologies--simulation. "They were looking for engaging and interactive, scenario-based simulations, something that would be in the neighborhood of maybe 30-45 minutes," says William Geheren, marketing director for Pearson Performance Solutions, a training provider in Chicago that creates custom solutions for clients, and which the ABA turned to for help.

More than merely watching life-like instructional scenes play out before them, the association wanted users to be able to practice and test themselves within the simulation. "They wanted us to help them [users] highlight gaps in knowledge," Geheren says. The result was the creation of 70 assessments built around simulations that users and their managers could access to create instruction followed by tests on areas they might need boning up on.After sitting down together to work out the details, Pearson and the ABA agreed that it was important to create a tool that wasn't just impressive from a technological bells-and-whistles perspective. The organization needed simulation-based assessments that would be versatile and practical, meaning able to instruct and test users at a range of skill proficiencies on each of the topics it addresses.

"Something that no matter what level they were at, they would be able to relate to and grad a hold of, and, again to make sure the results from that demonstrated their competencies and weaknesses," Geheren explains. Each scenario is based on a financial challenge faced by a fictional family that the user of the simulation assessment is asked to advise. Descriptions are provided for each member of the "family," including what the head of the household does for a living, Geheren says, as well as details such as the kind of schooling given to the children. One scenario, for example, might focus on the couple Sarah and Jack, who lead very busy lives, but want to make sure they're planning adequately for the future in terms of their taxes.

The quandary presented to the financial adviser user of the simulation could be this: given the goals of this couple, when should their trust tax be filed? Options are then given for the user to choose from including "at the end of the calendar year," "one year from the date of so-and-so's death," "at the end of a two-year period" or "the 15th day of the fourth month following the close of the taxable year."The program, which was made available to employees around the beginning of this month, has not yet had its effectiveness measured, but Geheren says Pearson will be working with ABA to create measures of the program and make adjustments as needed.

"I've been told that so far they've received positive feedback from several of their banks," he notes, "primarily regarding how interactive the simulations are and just how realistic the quality of the content is."For more information, visit http://www.elabs2.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=cc4,j8r,21,93w5,4pws,bv7k,fy01.

J.B. Hunt Limits Accidents with Training

2006-04-04T20:25:00.000+07:00

J.B. Hunt Limits Accidents with Training

When Lowell, Ark.-based transportation company J.B. Hunt Transport Services wanted to find a way to reduce accidents, it turned to training, emphasizing the issue of safety in its fleet management and operations classes. It also launched ongoing safety awareness initiatives. These measures have made a difference, with preventable accidents as defined by the Department of Transportation falling from .41 per million miles to .36 per million miles in 2004.

as published in Learning Tools

Philip Morris Shares Secrets of Sales Training Success

2006-03-16T14:48:00.000+07:00

Philip Morris Shares Secrets of Sales Training Success

Richmond, Va.-based tobacco manufacturer Philip Morris USA may be the most well-known cigarette company in the country, but that doesn’t mean there’s not room for improvement in its sales leadership training program, says Andy Lupo, director of national sales training. Over the past 18 months, the company has invested nearly $10 million revamping the system, and has established an annual $8 million budget for it. Its new get-on-board program, Foundations, designed for workers at every level at the company, exemplifies the new approach.

Naturally, Morris, an industry stalwart, had a system in place already; the problem was it didn’t reach out to the whole organization equally. While the previous system, Lupo explains, focused mainly on the 10 percent of employees who are new hires, “the whole premise behind the [new] system is everyone within the organization, regardless of tenure with the company, your promotable status—whether you’re high potential or well placed—you’re going to get continuous, consistent and connected, ongoing development in our system.”

With Foundations, each group of new or newly promoted employees has a program designed solely for its needs. For the entry-level position of territory sales manager, employees during their first week on the job receive training on leadership, skill development and the company’s corporate values, Lupo says. “It’s all about the fundamental, key skills they’re going to need to hit the ground running.” Participants are armed with the basics on sales skills, such as best practices in pitching to retailers.

The Foundations program, in a tinkered form, also exists for new unit managers as well as new senior account managers. “The unit managers’ Foundations program is all about people because these folks for the first time in their career are going to be leading five to six territory sales managers,” Lupo says. With that in mind, these employees are taught such skills as how to connect and engage their workers, how to identify behaviors and link them to development plans, how to set up an effective training day with employees, how to provide an effective written and oral feedback and how to build effective development plans “so when you’re not with them, they can focus on changing a behavior to improve a skill and drive a result,” Lupo points out.

For senior account managers, or those who are taking on accounts as big as, say, a Wal-Mart, Foundations provides a program steeped in training on issues such as strategic thinking, two-way business planning, or “game planning,” and financial acumen, including lessons on analyzing income statements, balance sheets and cash-flow information, Lupo says, namely “all of the high-level financial stuff they need to be able to understand when dealing with large customers,” he notes.

How to create a high performance coaching culture

2006-03-13T21:05:00.000+07:00

How to create a high performance coaching culture

It's amazing what people can achieve with the right support. These fivepointers emphasize the fundamental role that HR can play in embedding acoaching culture to unlock untapped talent and potential.

1. Clarify drivers for change and get buy-in from senior managementTo make a compelling case for coaching, it's important that a coachingcompany work closely with HR and business leaders to identify areas in needof improvement, challenges, missed opportunities and hidden costs - forexample, costs associated with high staff turnover.

2. Agree relevant ROI measures that can be tracked from the outsetThese might be revenue/profit-focused or centered around retention levels,employee or customer satisfaction, as well as behavioral measures which canbe monitored through 360 degree assessments and employee health surveys.

3. Create a coaching vision and integrate coaching with strategic plansAsk senior management to think about when a coaching culture is in place.What results will be achieved? How will people feel? What difference will itmake to individuals and the bottom line? The greatest results are achievedwhen organizations commit to a long-term program and integrate the visionand key performance indicators into their strategic HR plans.

4. Communicate quick winsTry one-to-one coaching with a select group of individuals, or start with aregional pilot program. These activities can be publicized to gainengagement for a full coaching plan. Work with marketing and PR tocommunicate success stories, both internally and externally.

5. Sustain momentumSenior management need to walk the talk and continually inspire learning andgrowth. Look at creating programs that not only coach individuals but alsoteach them how to coach the people they manage. Progress should be assessedon an ongoing basis to help to ensure key objectives continue to be met.

Source: Carole Gaskell, Full Potential Group. For further information,please visit: http://www.fullpotentialgroup.com/

Live from Training 2006: Creativity and Strategic Thinking Enhanced

2006-03-10T10:20:00.000+07:00

Live from Training 2006: Creativity and Strategic Thinking Enhanced

If the words "heterogeneous workforce" conjures images of staffers doomed to constantly butt heads rather than meet deadlines, Ann Herrmann-Nehdi, who led a Monday session at the Training 2006 Conference and Expo, wants to enlighten you. According to Hermann-Nehdi, CEO of Lake Lure, N.C.,-based learning research and development consultancy Herrmann International, diverse teams are not just the doable, accepted practice, but actually the way to go.

"Heterogeneous groups are capable of significantly greater creative output than unbalanced or homogeneous groups," Herrmann-Nehdi emphasized, citing four major creative approaches that she said you should be able to recognize among your workers. Those driven by purpose look at work from a "factual, rigorous, research, analytical, financial" perspective; possibility-driven employees are "holistic, playful, intuitive, visionary, experimental;" those attracted to process are "disciplined and organized and primarily interested in capturing, verifying and planning;" while workers who are mainly drawn to the "people" aspect of any project tend to like the "interpersonal, aesthetic, spiritual, sensual and tactile."

If your group of seemingly disparate workers isn't functioning well, it's probably due much more to the problem-solving strategy you're employing than to their differences, if Hermann-Nehdi is to be believed. The researcher has developed tools, or project management approaches, that might put an apparently insurmountable task into proper perspective. "Sometimes our subconscious knows more than we do," she pointed out. Getting in touch with that hidden realm of handy solutions, she explained, can begin by asking yourself questions such as, "What does the 'the problem' look like" and "What does 'the problem' feel like?" After that, she advised writing down any thoughts you have and drawing a picture of 'the problem' in its current state and then another of it solved. When this process is complete, she said to share it by describing it to another person.

Similarly, ideas that seem "crazy" shouldn't be discounted and forgotten. While impossible to implement in their current state, many of these ideas have potential for use in the brainstorming process, Hermann-Nehdi said. Your team, she suggested, might sometimes have luck using an exercise she calls "Magic Wand Thinking."

"Ask, 'What if I had a magic wand and were able to solve this problem with no constraints on what the solution might look like or how off the wall it might be, what would the solution look like?' " To do this, ask yourself what's tempting about the idea, what it's lacking and what you need to change about it to make it work.

For more information, visit www.hbdi.com.

Wells Fargo Grosses Millions After Sales Training

2006-03-10T10:17:00.000+07:00

Wells Fargo Grosses Millions After Sales Training

San Francisco-based bank Wells Fargo & Co. may be one of the country's largest financial institutions, but the company doesn't rest on its laurels. Through a program known as Planet Wholesale, sales partners are provided with training sessions to learn abut products in other departments and cross-sell them. Attendees of these sessions generated 462 cross-sells and $5.5 million in revenue.

SPRING FEVER

2006-03-01T09:48:00.000+07:00

SPRING FEVER

By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

You develop your jam packed “to do” list the night before. You awake tothe new day ready to conquer the world. But the sun is shining after along winter. It warms your soul. The birds are singing and the freshscent of new flowers breaking ground is all around you.

Ouch! You just got bit by the spring fever bug and all the ambition ofyour plans from the night before go out the window as you proceed tofill your day with unimportant stuff like shuffling piles of paper anddusting your desk again and again. Sound familiar?

It should because it happens to all of us from time to time.When you get bit by the spring fever bug, one of two things will happen.
First, you may give in to it, blow off the day and then feel guiltyabout it.
Or second, you will give in to it, blow off the day and feelgood about it. Either way, you’re going to give in to it.
What to do, then? Give into it, blow off the day and feel good about it.

The spring fever bug bites you for a reason. You are not some robot or machine. You need an occasional break from the stresses of highperformance. Give in to it. Blow off the day.

Now, if you have made commitments to others about getting something donetoday then you have to honor that obligation and let the spring feverbug come back another day. But most of the things you have to do canprobably be pushed off to another day. Give into it. Blow off the day.Think about this.

Will your overall productive output for the year begreatly diminished because you took a goof off day in April? One daylost out of 365? Probably not.

When you get the bite, give in to it. Use the day to recharge yourbatteries while taking time out to literally smell the flowers aroundyou.
But what if every day you get bit by the spring fever bug? Then you’vegot a problem. But every now and again? Take advantage of it. Youroverall productivity will be enhanced in the long run.

I Have Some Bad News for You…

2006-02-26T06:25:00.000+07:00

I Have Some Bad News for You…

Giving bad news to your workforce is never good, but there are ways to make it less damaging to both employees who will feel the brunt of it and those employees left behind in its wake, says Julie Freeman.

Freeman is the president of the San Francisco-based International Association of Business Communicators, a professional organization committed to enhancing the quality of business communications.

“First of all, it’s important to recognize the sensitivity,” Freeman says, especially when it comes to what she considers the hardest news to deliver—namely job cuts and benefits reductions. She says that before the announcement, you should reflect ahead of time on employees' potential concerns.

For example, if a company is doing layoffs, a natural question may be when it’s going to happen. Also consider if there will be any way to soften the blow with severance packages or continuation of benefits. “So, step number one is thinking through what the attitude of employees is going to be about it, and how can I address their concerns,” Freeman advises.

To gauge employee reaction, the announcement can be made first to a small group of trusted employees, but Freeman says a human resources team that truly understands its workforce should be able to figure out on its own how the company will likely react.

Delivering bad news in the most sensitive way possible, Freeman argues, is more than a matter of moral behavior. There are practical ramifications from handling it clumsily. For instance, she notes that a company that has announced layoffs will occur slowly still wants the workers in the affected department to be productive in the meantime, and doesn’t want to worry about them sabotaging the company somehow.

Lastly, Freeman says a company’s rough handling of an already difficult problem may affect how the public, or its clients, perceive it. “An ex-employee has an enormous power, if he or she is disgruntled, to bad mouth the company,” she explains. Freeman points out that while this was always the case, today’s technology, including blogs, e-mail, and the relatively easy creation of personal Web sites, makes an angry ex-worker all the more powerful in turning away future business from the company behind his or her wrath.

For more information, visit www.iabc.com.

Leaders confident of growth prospects for 2006

2006-02-17T16:59:00.001+07:00

Leaders confident of growth prospects for 2006

Three-quarters of senior executives in North America, Europe and Asiabelieve their companies and industries will grow in 2006, according to theresults of an online survey by Accenture.

The annual survey, which identifies the business outlook and major concernsof 1,000 executives worldwide, found that nearly 78% of companies will behiring in the next six months. In addition, nearly half the companies expectto increase spending this year.Some other highlights of the survey include:

- Most senior executives expect their companies to expand by buildingdeeper relationships with current customers and by launching new productsand services.

- Chief operating officers and HR directors are the most optimistic aboutthe growth of their organizations, with nearly 80% predicting businessgrowth in 2006.

- 98% of respondents in China predicted growth for their industry this year.

- Respondents in government were the least optimistic, with only 57% ofthese respondents expecting growth this year.

The survey also reveals what the respondents believe are the top threats totheir company’s success in 2006:
1. The competition: 72%
2. The health of the global economy: 67%
3. Inability to attract and retain the best talent: 60%
4. My company’s reputation: 59%
5. Inability to develop new products/services: 48%
6. Terrorism: 39%7. Low employee morale: 39%
7. Compliance with govt. regulation: 38%
9. Inability to focus on core competencies: 37%
10.Instability of senior leadership: 35%

Source: http://www.accenture.com

Leaders confident of growth prospects for 2006

2006-02-17T16:59:00.000+07:00

How to motivate people to learnMany

2006-02-17T16:50:00.000+07:00

How to motivate people to learnMany

costly training initiatives fail to yield the desired outcomes. This isnot because of poor instructional design or weak facilitation, but becausemany people are reluctant to change their methods of working.

But, if theycan see how things could be better for them, they're more likely to committo learning. Here's five steps for encouraging your workforce to learn:

1. Go on the campaign trailCommunicate the importance of a training initiative in meeting businessobjectives. Research the practical difference it’ll make to employees'productivity and any perceived or genuine barriers.

2. Reinforce learnings via regular updatesBuild a linked series of learning installments to boost and reinforce eachlearning. Follow up with post-course assignments, action-learning projectsand sustain them with online tools for ad-hoc support.

3. Equip your managersLine managers have to be engaged in the learning process and given the rightskills and tools. Make sure managers know what their people will learnbefore they attend training and cascade development programs from the topdown, so managers model the required behavior to teams.

4. Make measurement visibleHelp managers see that the biggest contributor to achieving all of the otherobjectives is their ability to build teams of capable and engaged people.Gauge team members' engagement levels and performance ratings, and ensuremanagers know this data will be shared and used to evaluate their ownperformance as leaders.

5. Build communities, forge networksFoster loose networks by bringing the same group together several times overthe year and have them share challenges from different parts of theorganization. Celebrate career advancements publicly with stories of thedevelopment challenges individuals accomplished to get where they are.

Source: Lucy McGee, DDI. For the full article see the forthcomingMarch/April issue of Strategic HR Review.

Effective training ?

2006-02-01T16:21:00.000+07:00

The goal for any trainer is to present effective training.

This is especially true in a newsroom where time is short and newsroom people are quickly turned off by ineffective training. Adult learning theory makes two points over and over about effective training design. The material should be practical and the training should be active.

Education professor Malcolm Knowles says it is essential to recognize that adult learners are different from students. Adults are more self-directed and expect to take responsibility for decisions. The familiar information dump, classroom lecture format will not work with adults. According to Knowles, effective training designs for adults must take into account: Adults need to know why they need to learn something. Adults need to learn experientially. Adults approach learning as problem solving. Adults learn best when the topic is of immediate value.

As part of his "Conditions of Learning" theory, psychologist Robert Gagne developed a sequence of nine "instructional events" that he found provide effective adult learning. Gagne's outline is a good starting point for designing effective newsroom training.

The nine steps are:

1. Gain attention

2. Identify objective

3. Recall prior learning

4. Present stimulus

5. Guide learning

6. Elicit performance

7. Provide feedback

8. Assess performance

9. Enhance retention/transfer

Sample program Here is how Gagne's nine-step model might be applied in a program on anecdotal leads:

1)Gain attention: Share examples of a good and a bad anecdotal lead.

2)Identify objective: How to write good anecdotal leads.

3)Recall prior learning: Ask participants to list other types of leads, their strengths and uses, and reasons to use an anecdotal lead.

4)Present stimulus: The how-to lecturette: List the four elements of a good anecdotal lead.

5)Guide learning: Evaluate examples of weak anecdotal leads using the how-to material.

6)Elicit performance: Ask participants to evaluate and rewrite weak anecdotal leads with the how-to material. (Alternative: Present raw material for another story and ask participants to construct an anecdotal lead.)

7)Provide feedback: Share and discuss their anecdotal leads.

8)Assess performance: Identify successful examples.

9)Enhance retention/transfer: Ask participants to share potential anecdotal leads from stories they are now working on.

Timing When planning such a program, block out times for each of the nine sections with an eye toward limiting lecture and facilitating self-directed learning. Below is how the anecdotal lead program might look in a 60-minute outline. (10 min.)

1. Gain attention: Share examples of a good and a bad anecdotal lead.

2. Identify objective: How to write good anecdotal leads.

3. Recall prior learning: Ask participants to list other types of leads, their each strengths and uses, and reasons to use an anecdotal lead. (15 min.)

4. Present stimulus: The how-to lecturette. List and explain the four elements of a good anecdotal lead.

5. Guide learning: Evaluate examples of weak anecdotal leads using the how-to material. (25 min.)

6. Elicit performance: Ask participants to evaluate and rewrite weak anecdotal leads using the how-to material. (Alternative: Present raw material for another story and ask participants to construct an anecdotal lead.)

7. Provide feedback: Share and discuss their anecdotal leads.

8. Assess performance: Identify successful examples. (10 min.)

9. Enhance retention/transfer: Ask participants to share potential anecdotal leads for stories they are now working on.

Note lecture time is short. More time is spent on applying the how-to material to solve problems. Active training plays to adults' learning preferences by providing time to practice new skills and learn by doing. This increases the likelihood new skills will be learned and applied on the job - the test for effective training. In a program outline, a long lecture segment is a warning the program is trying to cover too much material. When a program tries to cover too much material, and does not allow time for practice, it will be ineffective. This is by no means the only way to design a newsroom training program. But Gagne's model does provide a basic outline that can be applied to many newsroom topics. When you develop your own training designs, Gagne's model is still a good reminder of the basic ingredients for effective training.

By Michael Roberts

Creating Culturally Relevant Training

2006-01-12T07:13:00.000+07:00

Creating Culturally Relevant Training

Culture matters when it comes to learning content, says Massood Zarrabian, the CEO of Boston-based OutStart, a company that provides formal, on-demand learning, knowledge sharing and community/expert collaboration solutions. It’s with that belief in mind that the vendor announced a partnership last week with Italy-based Allos, an integrated e-learning solutions provider and consultancy, to offer content specific to regional needs. OutStart’s technology has been integrated into that of Allos to power the creation of tailored learning content. The contract between the two companies allows for OutStart’s solution to be resold by Allos as a part of Allos’ total solution, Zarrabian says. The partnership will begin with the development of specialized content for Italian and South African companies, but Zarrabian says the offering will likely be expanded eventually to other regions as well. Developing learning content particular to each region’s needs is key, says Zarrabian, who points out, for instance, that compliance-training requirements differ by country, as does software usage for tasks such as conferencing. “There are market preferences when you go outside the United States and become global,” he notes, “where the preferences of customers in, say, Italy or South Africa, are different than preferences [in the U.S.] where a lot of people use WebEx, for example. So, when you look at the world, it is really too big, and there are too many products for a single vendor to do everything.” It was for that reason, Zarrabian says, that OutStart and Allos decided to work together. Regionally tailored learning content goes beyond simply translating the material into the users’ language, he says. “Traditionally, when Americans think about localization of a technology, they think about it behaving in a local language, but a bunch of things are way beyond the local language.” Zarrabian notes that a software that only provides content to aid American compliance laws won’t be much use abroad, where there may be no required sexual harassment training, for example, or where the financial regulations are much more stringent, and so necessitate a more rigorous training than that used in the U.S. to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. “You all of a sudden are faced with the issue of having features in a product that are features you would not do for a product in the U.S., and if you did would make your product not look normal or standard for U.S. companies,” he says. “But, those features still need to be developed.” Beyond differences in laws, learning content needs to take variances in cultural perspective into consideration as well. “Somebody told me in Italy, people are much more visual in terms of how they get training. If that’s true, then the development of training is very different than what we do here.” That would translate into a need for content featuring a greater number of simulations than would usually be included in software designed strictly for use within the U.S., he says. The simulations allow for a palpable representation of the principles being taught that would appeal to visually oriented learners. “It’s not about translation; it’s about creation,” Zarrabian says of the cultural differences that sometimes require extensive changes or additions to content. “As somebody told me, it has to be developed with the goals that Italians have, by Italians, for Italians.”

coaching tips

2006-01-09T12:20:00.000+07:00

John Blakey, director of coaching at LogicaCMG, describes the four critical success factors when coaching was introduced across LogicaCMG, a 21,000-person organization.

1. Create and maintain CEO sponsorship.
It's one thing to have an initial conversation with the CEO when coaching is considered innovative and cutting edge. It's another to repeat those conversations when budgets are being reviewed, the initial novelty has gone and the first challenges appear.

Sponsorship is like trust; it's hard to win and easily lost. In creating a coaching environment, maintaining CEO sponsorship involves measuring results and reviewing them on a regular basis. It also involves constant innovation
to ensure the initiative keeps track with the way the business is evolving.

2. Focus on the "marzipan layer."
The idea of trying to create a coaching culture from scratch in a 21,000-person organization is a daunting prospect. Don't try it. These concepts spread by osmosis, not revolution. Focus on people who are in the best position to influence the wider group. In theory, you'd guess this would be the board of the organization, but this group often don't have the time to effectively sponsor this type of initiative. As an alternative, consider the "marzipan layer" - the group of young and ambitious leaders who fill the layer below the board. These leaders are often more enthusiastic about introducing new ideas to the organization and have greater insight into the ambitions of people lower down in the company.

3. Ensure project management discipline.
LogicaCMG is steeped in over 30 years of project management discipline. This was a big advantage when building a coaching environment. The required skills include rigorous
planning and estimating, active steering groups, regular reporting and communication and celebrating success. Within the coaching team there needs to be sufficient project management skills and aptitude to avoid the inevitable risks these types of programs involve.

4. Create accredited internal coaches.
When LogicaCMG initially embarked upon its coaching initiatives we had no option but to involve external
coaches. However, our objective was to build an accredited internal team of coaches who could be used alongside external coaches. This wasn't just a cost issue - the benefit of the internal coaching component is that these
people can act as change agents within the company in a way that just isn't possible for an external individual. Hence, the final course in our coaching skills training program takes nine months to complete and leads towards
accreditation with the International Coach Federation.

[I]Source: Strategic HR Review Vol. 4, Issue 5, July/August 2005[/I]

Training Need Analysis Tips

2006-01-09T10:20:00.000+07:00

TOP TIPS: How to conduct a training needs analysis

When considering implementing a training program, it's important to identify
the correct areas in your company in need of improvement and to choose the
most effective training method for your organization.

1. Find your company's "gap in performance." This can be identified by
establishing the standard or benchmark you want to achieve, then compare
this with actual performance, bearing in mind the implications of employee
and customer satisfaction ratings.

2. Determine what training is needed to help close the skills gap. Avoid
jumping to conclusions about what the best way of meeting the need for
training might be. Establish clear learning objectives to determine what
training needs to take place to improve skills.

3. Define role requirements of job specifications. To improve attitudes,
knowledge or skills, manage performance issues to organizational guidelines,
present a favorable case for improving team motivation and reduce
absenteeism through managing work stress.

4. Select the most appropriate way of meeting learning needs. Clear learning
objectives help to decide what the best method of filling the gap is. The
three main types of objective are: knowledge-based, skills-based and
beliefs- and values-based.

5. Measure success with evaluation. When evaluating the success of training,
use the same methods of measurement throughout and be aware of what
non-training events may impact results - i.e, anything which has not been
identified before the training program commenced.

Source: Fiona Silberbach, managing director of Changing Perspective, a
leadership development and executive coaching organization.
http://www.changingperspective.co.uk

Effective Training

2005-12-29T17:22:00.000+07:00

The goal for any trainer is to present effective training. This is especially true in a newsroom where time is short and newsroom people are quickly turned off by ineffective training.

Adult learning theory makes two points over and over about effective training design. The material should be practical and the training should be active.

Education professor Malcolm Knowles says it is essential to recognize that adult learners are different from students. Adults are more self-directed and expect to take responsibility for decisions. The familiar information dump, classroom lecture format will not work with adults. According to Knowles, effective training designs for adults must take into account:

Adults need to know why they need to learn something.

Adults need to learn experientially.

Adults approach learning as problem solving.

Adults learn best when the topic is of immediate value.

As part of his "Conditions of Learning" theory, psychologist Robert Gagne developed a sequence of nine "instructional events" that he found provide effective adult learning. Gagne's outline is a good starting point for designing effective newsroom training. The nine steps are:

1. Gain attention
2. Identify objective
3. Recall prior learning
4. Present stimulus
5. Guide learning
6. Elicit performance
7. Provide feedback
8. Assess performance
9. Enhance retention/transfer
Sample program

Here is how Gagne's nine-step model might be applied in a program on anecdotal leads:
1)Gain attention: Share examples of a good and a bad anecdotal lead.

2)Identify objective: How to write good anecdotal leads.

3)Recall prior learning: Ask participants to list other types of leads, their strengths and uses, and reasons to use an anecdotal lead.

4)Present stimulus: The how-to lecturette: List the four elements of a good anecdotal lead.

5)Guide learning: Evaluate examples of weak anecdotal leads using the how-to material.

6)Elicit performance: Ask participants to evaluate and rewrite weak anecdotal leads with the how-to material. (Alternative: Present raw material for another story and ask participants to construct an anecdotal lead.)

7)Provide feedback: Share and discuss their anecdotal leads.

8)Assess performance: Identify successful examples.

9)Enhance retention/transfer: Ask participants to share potential anecdotal leads from stories they are now working on.

Timing

When planning such a program, block out times for each of the nine sections with an eye toward limiting lecture and facilitating self-directed learning. Below is how the anecdotal lead program might look in a 60-minute outline.

(10 min.)

1. Gain attention: Share examples of a good and a bad anecdotal lead.
2. Identify objective: How to write good anecdotal leads.
3. Recall prior learning: Ask participants to list other types of leads, their each strengths and uses, and reasons to use an anecdotal lead.
(15 min.)

4. Present stimulus: The how-to lecturette. List and explain the four elements of a good anecdotal lead.
5. Guide learning: Evaluate examples of weak anecdotal leads using the how-to material.
(25 min.)

6. Elicit performance: Ask participants to evaluate and rewrite weak anecdotal leads using the how-to material. (Alternative: Present raw material for another story and ask participants to construct an anecdotal lead.)
7. Provide feedback: Share and discuss their anecdotal leads.
8. Assess performance: Identify successful examples.
(10 min.)

9. Enhance retention/transfer: Ask participants to share potential anecdotal leads for stories they are now working on.
Note lecture time is short. More time is spent on applying the how-to material to solve problems. Active training plays to adults' learning preferences by providing time to practice new skills and learn by doing. This increases the likelihood new skills will be learned and applied on the job - the test for effective training.

In a program outline, a long lecture segment is a warning the program is trying to cover too much material. When a program tries to cover too much material, and does not allow time for practice, it will be ineffective.

This is by no means the only way to design a newsroom training program. But Gagne's model does provide a basic outline that can be applied to many newsroom topics. When you develop your own training designs, Gagne's model is still a good reminder of the basic ingredients for effective training.

By Michael Roberts

Conquer Telephone Tag

2005-12-29T13:47:00.000+07:00

Conquer Telephone Tag

By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

I love technology. I am not a technical person but I admire the techno-things that have helped my business, productivity and profitability. Things like laptops, the Internet, and email have cut costs and boosted productivity and profits dramatically during the last decade.

With almost all new technological breakthroughs, there is a period that is heralded as the answer to all our problems followed quickly by a learning period during which we figure out how to best capitalize on this new way of working.

Voicemail fits this paradigm. Voicemail-the culprit that heightened “telephone tag” to an art form.

Ten years ago, I had to pay the salary of a receptionist or acquire the services of an answering service to handle incoming telephone calls. Or I might use an answering machine with a limited recording limit. I opted for the live receptionist. More personal, more real, I thought.

Then along came voicemail, a way of accepting incoming phone calls at a low cost with more options than an answering machine and a way of more effectively handling phone calls than before, giving the caller the opportunity to receive answers to their inquiries without talking to a real person.

Multiple menu options surfaced (if you would like sales, press 2, if you press 2 and would like to receive a copy of our catalog, press 4, if you press 4 and would like our winter catalog, press 5, but if you would like our spring catalog, press 6…..). I actually timed a menu option thing recently and it took over a minute and a half to get to the option that I wanted to get to the information I needed.

Voicemail also creates a new opportunity for people to duck your calls. Many people rarely answer a phone when it rings waiting until you have slogged through their voicemail menu, then to play your message and decide whether or not to call you back. Of course, when they call you back, they get your voicemail system and then you have to listen to their message and decide whether or not to return their call. Hmmm. Telephone tag and you’re it!

We need a better system. Here are a few suggestions to better deal with voicemail and avoid telephone tag.

1. Use an alternative to telephone. Look, people you call are going to duck your call via voicemail so use a different mode of communication that might have a better rate of success of getting through. Fax your message or email it or even use a first class letter. Some of those “old” methods are better than the new technology.

2. Don’t spill the beans. Want someone to call you back? Don’t give them the entire speal in your voicemail. Less is more. A little intrigue. Teasers. “Debbie. Please give me a call to talk about how to maker your job easier” v “ Debbie. I found a new online course for only $259 that will show us how to get a lot more done in less time with a lot less stress. The problem is I can’t afford to buy it on my own. Would you be willing to kick in half of this and we could share the program? Let me know if you want to do this.”

3. Be specific. If you want a return call, don’t end with “Call me as soon as possible” or “Call me soon” or “Call me when you can”. Everyone has “too much to do”. You are then just one more thing to do. Those vague requests wind up in the “as soon as possible” pile of Never Never Land that rarely gets acted upon. Instead, give a specific day and time to call back. Don’t give two or more choices because that will necessitate a call back from that person to confirm which date and time is best to return the call.

For example: “Joe, this is Don. I need to speak to you about how to make the Anderson research run more smoothly. Give me a call back on Tuesday, the fifth at 9:00 a.m. I blocked that time for you. If this doesn’t work for you, please give me a call to reschedule and leave a message on my voicemail with at least two alternate dates and times for us to talk. Gutsy? Offensive? Well, 95% of the time you will not hear back from this person to change the date and time you have selected and you will accomplish what you intended to do on the date and time you have selected.

Resolution and New Year!

2005-12-29T13:43:00.000+07:00

HOW TO MAKE NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS STICK

By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

At the beginning of each year so many of us commit to changes and worthy
goals to be accomplished in the next twelve months only to be
disappointed come next December 31 when we discover we are no closer to
achieving those resolutions than we were on January 1. The noble
resolutions we made early on became unstuck. So I looked at this dilemma
and created four useful suggestions to increase the probability that
your New Year’s resolutions will stick this year.

1. Quantify it. Sometimes we are just too vague about what we want.
Therefore, a resolution such as, “I want to lose weight this year” will
probably fail. It is too vague. How much weight? Be specific. What would
your ideal weight be, less what do you weigh now, is what you are going
after. It is not enough to resolve that; “I want enough money in the
bank this year”. Quantify. What specific amount would soothe your soul?

2. Set a deadline. Resolutions that are to be achieved “as soon as
possible” wind up in the heap of “Someday I’ll”. Deadlines are
commitments. Without a deadline as a self-imposed pressure point,
getting started is easily postponed. You see, deadlines put us on the
line and define when failure occurs. Deadlines also help us to break the
resolution down into little bite-sized pieces. For example, if your goal
is to lose 25 pounds by June 30, that translates into approximately 4
pounds per month, one pound per week, or a daily reduction of caloric
intake (or an increase in daily caloric burn) of just 500 calories per
day. Now that’s manageable. 500 calories a day is easy to achieve. 25
pounds seems like a leap across the Grand Canyon. Until we quantify our
goal, set a deadline, then break it down to its daily requirements, the
resolution will forever seem unattainable.

3. Change one or two things at a time. We generally do not like change
in the first place. We seek the familiar and avoid the strange. The more
change you put yourself through, the higher the probability your
campaign will collapse. Focus in on one or two of the more important
resolutions you seek to accomplish this year. When you achieve one or
the other, start on the next one. Don’t overwhelm yourself with too much
change all at once.

4. Be realistic. There’s just something about the start of a new year
that gets us all wound up for changes in our lives, sometimes
extraordinary and unrealistic changes. We become much like the child in
the candy store whose eyes are bigger than his stomach. Be realistic.
You can only accomplish a certain amount within a period of time. Don’t
saddle yourself with unrealistic resolutions that will only spell
failure later on.

Employees in the Dark on Training

2005-12-22T13:29:00.000+07:00

Employees in the Dark on Training

It’s all well and good that you offer your employees the best training and development your company can afford. The problem is many of these workers have no idea such opportunities to better themselves exist. According to the Emerging Workforce Survey, released last fall by staffing and recruitment firm Spherion Corp., based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., there may be a serious disconnect between your training department and the workers it purports to help.

The findings are based on two separate surveys; the results of the employer survey are based on 502 telephone and online interviews with senior human resources executives at U.S. companies conducted between March 21 and April 27; data on U.S. employed adults was gathered from the Harris Interactive QuickQuery online omnibus conducted monthly by Harris Interactive on behalf of Spherion. Sample sizes of the Spherion Employment Report vary between 2,500 and 3,100 among U.S. employed adults.

A comparison of results from these two groups shows a substantial gap in understanding. While 92 percent of employers who participated in the survey reported offering funding to attend seminars and trade shows, for instance, just 28 percent of employee respondents said such funding exists. When it comes to the provision of internal training sessions, 91 percent of employers said it’s available to workers, but, by contrast, only 46 percent of employees reported that they knew of such programming. Similarly, 89 percent of employers said they offer external training sessions, though just 26 percent of employees reported that their company provides these sessions to them.

On tuition assistance, 69 percent of employers claimed they offer it, but just 31 percent of workers reported their companies making it available to them. The ignorance of workers to their companies’ training benefits extends to the online world as well, the study points out. Though 58 percent of employers said they provide online skills training; a scant 20 percent of workers reported their companies supplying them with this service. And, while 37 percent of companies said they offer online career development programs, only 14 percent of employees responded that their employers are providing them with this.

For more information, visit www.spherion.com

saving time

2005-12-15T16:05:00.000+07:00

Microsoft Software Engineers Aided By Performance Support Tools

When Redmond, Wash.,-based software manufacturer Microsoft Corp. wanted to save its software engineers time searching for information, it developed a set of performance tools, such as prescriptive guidance, templates, samples and learning objects. These tools are expected to save engineers two to three hours every week.

Measuring the ROI on Training

2005-12-15T16:03:00.000+07:00

Measuring the ROI on Training

Measuring training's impact comes down to asking the right questions to find the data that can be linked to changed behavior, Richard J. Wagner and Robert J. Weigand argue in their new book, Measuring Results of MBTI Type Training, ROI in Action. Wagner, a former corporate trainer who is currently professor of management at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and Weigand, the director of management training and development at St. Luke's Hospital and Health Network in Bethlehem, Pa., use the implementation of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality assessment tool to illustrate how training's ROI can be measured.

Most organizations and companies only are measuring the effectiveness of training at the most superficial levels, such as simply asking students to rate how happy they were with the program, or how much information they will take back to the office, Weigand says. Just how much of the training ends up making a difference in employees' work isn't usually looked into because it is thought of as impossible, or too difficult to measure.

To make determining training's ROI easier, the authors try to show trainers how the worth of training programs can be measured using the easy-to-attain data that's right in front of them. Weigand says he and Wagner only applied their methodology to the MBTI, but that it can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of any training program. "We believe if you ask the right questions, and go to the right data sources in the organization, if the data is there, you can find the data out and link it to changed behaviors," Weigand says.

For example, Weigand says the head of biomedical engineering at St. Luke's was able to successfully pitch a change of work schedule to subordinates, thanks to the understanding of their personalities that he gained through use of the Myers-Briggs tool, which assesses personality type, or how different types of people prefer to approach life. The department head had a goal of reducing overtime expenses in his department. He realized that tinkering with his employees' work schedules could significantly impact costs for the better, but he worried that workers, used to their old routine, would react unfavorably to the changes.

He was able to get his approximately 20 workers to agree to the shift in schedules at least partly because he knew how to sell the idea to each of them. While one worker may be driven to make decisions based mostly on hard facts, such as the amount of money that will be saved after making the change, another worker, based on his personality type, will likely need to be convinced by non-monetary, non-bottom-line factors, such as the maintenance of comfort to his lifestyle. As a result of getting employees to go along with the change in routine, he saved his department between $81,000 and $100,000 in reduction of overtime pay this year, Weigand says

SYSTEMATIZE AND SIMPLIFY

2005-12-14T17:57:00.000+07:00

SYSTEMATIZE AND SIMPLIFY

By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

During thirty years as a Time Management speaker and consultant, I have
learned and shared a lot of simple practices that help my audiences to
increase their daily results. A lot of time is wasted because we don’t
have a system in place for many of the repetitive tasks we do so that we
have to pay over and over again, with our time, for the same results.

So here’s one neat tip: systematize. (I don’t think this is really a
word, but hey, if no one invents new words, how will our language grow?)
Systematize is the simple procedure of creating a routine way of
responding to a myriad of tasks that will open our time for more
important things. We can systematize in all areas of our life. Here are
a few places you may wish to begin.

1. Standard text documents. I have dozens of documents in “My Documents”
section of my computer. These include a lot of the articles that people
request through our website and standard letters I send out for business
and personal contacts, standard information documents (like directions
to our office). Most of the information I need to send to respond to my
emails is there or easily modified and tailored so that I don’t have to
type out a lot of repetitive information.

2. A single calendaring system. Some people use as many as a dozen ways
of tracking their appointments and scheduled events and their “To Do”
list items. There’s a calendar for work and one for personal things.
There’s stuff lying out on the desk reminding us what needs to be done.
The dentist appointment card is on the bathroom mirror and the dry
cleaner claim slip is hanging from the visor in the car. The softball
schedule is on the refrigerator and we have several other commitments in
our heads. Boil this all down to a single system. I use Daytimer
products, but whatever product you feel comfortable with is fine. Just
make it a simple, singular, master system from which you take control of
appointments and scheduled events and your “To Do” list items.

3. Clean up the messy desk or work area. Studies have shown that the
person who works with a messy desk spends, on average, one and a half
hours per day looking for things or being distracted by things. That’s
seven and a half hours per week! (“Out of sight, out of mind.” And the
reverse of that is true too, “In sight, in mind”.) And, it’s not a solid
block of an hour and a half, but a minute here and a minute there, and
like a leaky hot water faucet, drip, drip, drip, it doesn’t seem like a
major loss, but at the end the day, we’re dumping gallons of hot water
down the drain that we are paying to heat. If you have ever visited the
office of a top manager, typically, that person is working with a clean
desk environment. Many would attribute this result to that person’s
access to other staff members. While there may be some truth in that
conclusion, in most cases, if we went back some years in that person’s
career, they probably were working with a clean desk back then which
gave them the focus they needed to become promoted to where they are
today.

4. Have adequate supplies. Some people spend a lot of their productive
time looking for a pen or a pad of paper or staples for their stapler.
Have enough pens, pencils, yellow markers, “sticky notes”, writing pads,
fax paper, printer cartridges, updated telephone directories, staples,
“Wite Out”, report forms, index cards, paper clips, rolls of adding
machine tapes, etc., etc.

5. Make your physical surroundings workable. Move the fax machine closer
(or further away!) from your desk. Have the most frequently used and
needed files within arm’s reach and the less frequently required items
further out. Have adequate space at your desk to do what you need to do.
Remove some unnecessary items, if necessary, to make room.

6. Set up a functional briefcase. I travel a lot and am out of my office
at seminars or meetings with clients requiring that I tote along a
briefcase. In addition to the stuff I need for where I am going, I have
my briefcase stocked with a lot of neat things like a calculator, a
pocket map of the United States, basic office supplies (writing pads,
pens, yellow markers, small stapler, paper clips, stamps and a few
envelopes), blank checks, a few deposit slips, a paperback book I have
been intending to read, and at least one project I can work on if I get
stuck in traffic or am waiting for the meeting to begin. It gives me
more choices.

7. Schedule maintenance. The equipment you use, your car, stuff around
the house, and oh yeah, you. You know your car needs to be serviced. Why
wait for a breakdown to get it done and spend more time on what could
have been accomplished in less time. (You still need a tune-up, but now
you have to wait for the tow truck to arrive.) Regular medical and
dental checkups save huge amounts of time in our future by fixing small
conditions before they become major costly issues.

8. Catalog contacts. Develop and maintain your contacts list so that
networking can enhance your future with the contacts you make. A
computer-based program such as ACT is excellent, but even a simple 3x5
card system will work. Keep track of a growing list of contacts, help
them at every turn and they will be there to help you.

Performance Management Not Performing

2005-12-01T16:05:00.000+07:00

Performance Management Not Performing

Organizations plagued by an inefficient workforce despite their best training efforts may find the root of the problem in an unexpected place. According to a survey released last week, it all may boil down to lackluster performance management.

Based on a survey of 265 U.S. companies across industries and a complementary survey of 1,100 workers, the study, conducted by the Washington, D.C.,-based human capital and financial management firm Watson Wyatt and the Scottsdale, Ariz.,-based nonprofit human resources professional organization WorldatWork, found that most employers have adopted best practices, such as the 98 percent that say they provide formal annual reviews, and the 91 percent that say they offer coaching and feedback, but not many are successful at implementing them. While 92 percent of programs, for instance, are designed to link pay to performance, only 79 percent of employers say managers at their respective organizations are moderately or greatly effective at it. Moreover, only 52 percent of employees indicated that their managers tie pay to performance.

The study also found a deficiency when it comes to providing formal career development and planning to workers. Eighty-two percent of performance-management programs reported on the survey are designed to include career development, but just 37 percent of employers say that managers at their organizations are at least moderately effective at providing it, and only 31 percent of employees say their companies offer career development.

Management also was deemed sub-par in linking employee goal-setting to business objectives. Such a link was reported in the performance-management program design of 91 percent of the companies surveyed; however 74 percent say their managers are moderately or greatly effective at it. Additionally, only 48 percent of employees report that a link to business objectives is provided.

Some 57 percent of employers say their managers are moderately or greatly effective at providing coaching and feedback to employees throughout the year; 48 percent of employees report this is the case.

The problem may lie with the managers left to execute the programming, the findings suggest. Only 36 percent of the organizations surveyed have a formal training program to enhance managers' ability to manage rewards. This is an essential point since Watson Wyatt and WorldatWork point out that companies that offer such a program are more effective at providing coaching and feedback, providing formal periodic performance discussions and helping poor performers improve.

Full survey results are available for purchase at www.watsonwyatt.com.

Tuition Reimbursement Pays Off for Blue Cross

2005-12-01T15:34:00.000+07:00

Best Practices:

Tuition Reimbursement Pays Off for Blue Cross

Offering workers tuition reimbursement makes a big difference for Chapel Hill, N.C.,-based health-care insurance product and service provider Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina. The company, which did a study of the correlation between employee turnover and tuition reimbursement during the years 2001 to 2003, found turnover was seven to eight points lower among employees who received this benefit.

Color Profiles - Discover Your Personality

2005-11-30T16:53:00.000+07:00

Color Profiles - Discover Your Personality
( Source Unknown )

Just as our personalities are continually evolving, the colors we prefer also vary. The colors we enjoy the most, change as a result of our age and sex.

For example, women are more aware of color and prefer red to blue while men prefer blue to red. Elderly people have a significant preference for light colors over darker ones. People with schizophrenia tend to prefer neutral colors such as white, black, brown, and gray. People with bipolar disorder and "mentally healthy" individuals tend to prefer chromatic hues such as red, yellow, green and blue.

Dr. Buddy, Psychoanalyst, who holds an endowed chair as Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Canarsie sums it up succinctly and to-the-point as follows:

"People have different likes in colors and this can actually tell us something about their personality, or, how they are feeling on a particular day. In fact changes throughout your life can/will cause you to change the preferences of your likes and dislikes of colors, which is just as well since the same old thing every day would become boring. So, as you get older and more mature, you will find that you like different colors. This is neither good or bad, it just means you are changing in some way."

All right, now think of your favorite color (don't let the above introduction sway your thinking; as though you can help it, but try) and read the descriptions below.

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Beige
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Like: Beige people have many of the same characteristics as brown, though they are probably less intense. Creamy beige's and honeyed tones take on a lot of yellow qualities, while rosy beige's take on pink characteristics. You are warm, appreciate quality, and are carefully neutral in most situations. You are usually well-adjusted and practical.

Dislike: You are less frenetic and impetuous than a disliker of brown, but have many of the same characteristics. Beige represents to you a beige existence--boring and tiresome. You hate routine.

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Black
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Like: This is rarely chosen as a favorite color because it is actually the negation of color. The person who chooses black may have a number of conflicting attitudes. You may be conventional, conservative and serious, or you may like to think of yourself as rather worldly or sophisticated, a cut above everyone else, or very dignified.

You may also want to have an air of mystery, or, as in the language of the proverbial black negligee, be very sexy. Wit, cleverness, personal security and prestige are very important to you.

Dislike: Since black is the negation of color, it may be a total negative to you. It is the eternal mystery, the bottomless pit, the black hole, the Halloween witch and her black cat. It may represent death and mourning to you. Things that go bump in the night are black. Were you frightened by the dark in your childhood? That experience could be buried in the darkest recesses of your mind and may still haunt you when you look at anything black. Black may simply be too heavy or depressing for you to handle at this point in your life.

You are uncomfortable with the super-sophisticated and feel insecure in their company. You like real people and are not dazzled by dignitaries.

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Blue
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Like: The color of tranquility and peace, blue tends to be the most preferred color universally. Although cool and confident (or wishing to be), blues can be vulnerable. You are trusting and need to be trusted. You are sensitive to the needs of others and form strong attachments, and are deeply hurt if your trust has been betrayed.

Blue people aspire to harmony, serenity, patience, perseverance and peace. You are somewhat social but prefer sticking to your own close circle of friends. You think twice before speaking or acting out. You are generally conservative, even-tempered and reliable.

Because of the highly developed sense of responsibility of the blue personality, you must be careful of perfectionist tendencies that may make you unrealistically demanding. Your gentleness, however, will win out.

Dislike: A dislike of blue may mean restlessness--a need to break away from the sameness that bores you. Perhaps you would like to change your job, or even your life, and long for more excitement. You might be tired of being "depended on," but your conscience makes you stay. You wish that you were either wealthy or brilliant (or both) because that would enable you to have all the good things in life without working so hard. Deeper blues may mean sadness and melancholy to you--blue may simply give you the blues.

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Brown
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Like: The color of Mother Earth is the hue that is associated with substance and stability. A preference for brown means you have a steady, reliable character with a keen sense of duty and responsibility. You are the down-to-earth person with a subtle sense of humor. Browns love simplicity, comfort, quality, harmony, hearth and home.

You are a loyal friend, understanding but firm. Brown people have strong views and may be intolerant of others who think, talk, or act too quickly. You strive to be good money managers (we won't say "cheap") and drive a good bargain.

You are the person who might find it difficult to be carefree and spontaneous but will often rebel internally against accepting things the way they are. You feel very uncomfortable about losing control, but will work hard to change a situation that seems unjust or unfair.

You'd make a good marriage partner and a good parent because you have a strong need for security and a sense of belonging. Family life is very important to you.

Dislike: You probably fantasize about a lot of things, perhaps traveling with a circus or racing cars. Novelty excites you and routine drives you crazy. You are witty, impetuous and generous. Living on a farm is not for you. Homespun people bore you. You do like people, but they must be bright and outgoing. A meaningful relationship with you could be risky business--it's hard to get you to sit still.

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Gray
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Like: People who prefer this most neutral of all shades are carefully neutral about life. You like to protect yourself from the hectic world, wrapping yourself with the security blanket of a noncommittal color. You prefer a secure, safe, balanced existence, and so unlike the reds in life, you never crave real excitement, just contentment. It is important for you to maintain the status quo.

You have often made compromises in your lifestyles. You are practical and calm and do not like to attract attention. You are willing to work hard (the gray flannel suit) and to be of service. You are the middle-of-the-road type, cool, conservative, composed and reliable.

Dislike: To dislike gray is to dislike neutrality. You would rather be right or wrong, but never indifferent. Routine bores you. You look for a richer, fuller life. This may lead you to get into one involvement, hobby, or interest after another in the pursuit of happiness. Gray may mean eerie ghosts, ashes, cobwebs, and the dust of a haunted house, or other scary gray things.

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Green
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Like: Nature's most plentiful color promises a balance between warmth and coolness, so green people are usually stable and balanced types. This is the good citizen, concerned parent, involved neighbor and PTA member--the joiner of clubs and organizations. You are fastidious, kind and generous.

It is important for you to win the admiration of peers so you are often a "do-gooder." You are a caring companion, loyal friend, partner or lover, with a high moral sense, and are super sensitive to doing the right thing.

You are intelligent and understand new concepts. You are less inclined, however, to risk something new than to do what is popular and conventional. The bad news about green people is that they often have big appetites for food. If you are dieting, it is difficult for you to lose your lumpies. The worst vice for a green is the tendency to gossip. Are you a little green with envy?

Dislike: Since lovers of green are usually very social, joiners and "keep up with the Joneses" types, dislikers of green will often put those qualities down. You may have an unfulfilled need to be recognized that causes you to pull away from people rather than join them. You don't like thinking, looking and doing things the way you see the majority of people thinking, looking and doing them. Picnics, cocktail parties and a quiet Saturday night at home are not your thing.

Biliousness and certain body functions are often associated with yellow-green, as are snakes, lizards, dragons and various other creepy-crawlies. Did something slithery frighten you as a child?

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Lavender
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Like: People who love this tint use it sometimes to the exclusion of all other colors. Just as with purple, this person likes to be considered different. You are quick-witted, though usually not intellectual.

The lavender person seeks refinement in life. Yours is a fantasy land where ugliness and the basic aspects of life are ignored. Outward appearances are very important. Gentility and sentimental leanings also go along with this color, as do romance, nostalgia and delicacy. Since lavender is first cousin to purple, you may aspire to creativity, but if not capable of it, you tend to encourage those who do have talent.

Dislike: Yours is a no-nonsense approach to life. You don't like others to be coy with you--you would rather they be direct. Nostalgia is not your thing; you live in the present. Just as with the anti-purple people, you don't like superficiality in manners or appearance and you usually let people know about it (or wish that you had). You may also see lavender as insipid or aging.

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Orange
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Like: Orange is a combination of red and yellow, so it takes on many of the characteristics of both colors. It is vibrant and warm, like the autumn leaves. Orange has the physical force of red, but it is less intense, less passionate. Lovers of this color work and play hard, are adventurous and enthusiastic.

You are good-natured, expansive and extroverted with a disposition as bright as your favorite color, and you like to be with people. Your ideas are unique and you have strong determination. You are more agreeable than aggressive.

Orange people can be fickle. It has been said that your latest friend is your best friend. Orange lovers make for undependable mates--they're always looking for new worlds to conquer! Success in business can come easily to this gregarious, charming person.

If your preferences tend to the peach tones, you have all of the same traits as the orange person, but you are much less assertive about it. You work hard, but your play (especially sports) activities are more as an observer than a participant. You're friendly and charming as well, but in a much more subtle way.

Dislike: Life is definitely not a dish of gumdrops for the rejecter of orange. Nothing flamboyant appeals to you. You dislike too much partying, hilarity, loud laughter, showing off and obvious intimacy. As a result, you may be difficult to get to know, if not a loner. You prefer a few genuine close friends to a large circle of acquaintances and once you make a friend, they're your friends forever.

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Pink
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Like: This is a softened red, so it tempers passion with purity. It is associated with romance, sweetness, delicacy, refinement and tenderness. Pink people are interested in the world around them, but they do not throw themselves into participating with the ardor of the red person. Violence in any form is upsetting to you.

At one time, pink was considered exclusively feminine, like the frosting on a little girl's birthday cake, but more men are comfortable with pink now because it's no less macho to exhibit sensitive, so-called "feminine traits."

If you love pink, you are talented and have subdued drive, charm and warmth, and are probably an incurable romantic. Pink people are friendly but tend to keep inner feelings hidden.

Dislike: Soft, medium tints do not evoke much emotion--many people are indifferent to pink. It is sweetness, innocence and naive-red with the passion removed. So if you dislike pink, you are looking for excitement in your life and pink simply will not do it for you.

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Purple
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Like: This hue has an aura of mystery and intrigue. The purple person is enigmatic and highly creative, with a quick perception of spiritual ideas. Purple is often preferred by artists. People who like to consider themselves different from the common herd or unconventional often prefer purple.

You are often generous and, at times, charming. Purple is also associated with wit, keen observation, super sensitivity, vanity and moodiness. Because purple is a combination of red and blue, which are opposites in many ways, you often have conflicting traits. You are constantly trying to balance those opposites--the excitement of red with the tranquility of blue.

It has been said that purple people are easy to live with but hard to know. You can be secretive, so that even when you seem to confide freely, your closest friends never completely understand you.

Dislike: If you dislike purple, you probably have no desire to be artistic or creative. You feel that purple represents snobbery, falseness, exaggeration and vanity. You pride yourself on your sincerity and genius, and sometimes misjudge others because you do not like them or approve of them. You find it difficult to increase your own self-confidence, and you must learn you cannot build it by condemning others.

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Red
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Like: Just as red sits on top of the rainbow, you like to stay on top of things. You have a zest for life. Remember that red can speed up the pulse, increase the respiration rate and raise blood pressure. It is associated with fire, heat, and blood, so it is impossible to ignore. And so are you (or would like to be).

The key words associated with red are winner, achiever, intense, impulsive, active, competitive, daring, aggressive and passionate. Red people are exciting, animated, optimistic, emotional and extroverted. Desire is the key word, they hunger for fullness of experience and living.

Now that you have all the good news, let's hear it for the bad news. Since you crave so much excitement in your life, routine can drive you bananas. Restlessness can make you fickle in your pursuit of new things to turn you on. It is hard for you to be objective and you can be opinionated. You have a tendency to listen to what others tell you and then do whatever you please. Patience is not one of your virtues.

However, you are an exciting person to be with, and always stimulating. The world would be a dull place without red people.

Dislike: Since red is primarily associated with a zest for life, excitement and passion, a dislike of this hue could mean that these feelings are a bit much for you to handle at this point in your life. Perhaps you are bothered by the aggressiveness and intensity that red signifies. Or perhaps you would really like more fulfillment but are afraid to get involved. People who are irritable, ill exhausted, or bothered by many problems often reject red and turn to the calmer colors for rest and relaxation. They are very self-protective.

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Taupe
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Like: This color also speaks of neutrality, but combines the character and dependability of gray with the warmth of beige. You like classic looks and are careful about allowing too much excitement into your life. You're practical, fair, well-balanced, and would make a good arbitrator.

Dislike: If taupe doesn't appeal to you, it may be because it is so balanced and classic. You'd rather make a more definite statement, whether with color or otherwise. You're probably not known for your subtlety.

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Teal
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Like: Since this is a marriage of the blue and green colors previously mentioned, many of the traits will be combined, but there are added dimensions. You are neat (to the point of fussiness) and well groomed. You are sensitive, but also sophisticated, self-assured and (usually) stable.

You help others and usually manage your own affairs very well. Courtesy and charm are characteristics, too. But narcissism is a key word here. Teals love to dress up to get the admiration of others, but along with admiration, you may also provoke some of the "blue-green-eyed monsters."

Dislike: Since love of teal means orderliness and neatness, dislike of teal means that, as messy as you'd like to be, a little voice inside you (was it your mother or your father?) keeps telling you to clean up your room. As much as you try to ignore it, it won't go away. You really love to relax more and not pay attention to petty details. You really prefer earthy types to fussy people.

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White
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Like: White is cleanliness and purity, and those who prefer white are neat and immaculate in their clothing and homes. You are inclined to be a cautious buyer and shrewd trader, but critical and fussy. If you got a spot on your tie or scarf in a restaurant, you would summon a glass of water immediately to clean it off. White also signifies a self-sufficient person and, occasionally, innocence. It is a recall of youth and simplicity.

Dislike: Since white represents cleanliness and purity, to dislike white does not exactly mean that you are a messy person, but it does mean that you have never been obsessed with order. You are not very fussy. Things that are a little off-center are much more interesting to you than those that are perfectly in line. A little dust on the shelves or on yourself doesn't throw you into a spasm of cleaning. You are not very uptight and are easy to be with. You may see white as sterile and connect it with nurses' uniforms, doctors, and worst of all (for many) dentists.

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Yellow
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Like: Yellow is luminous and warm because it is strongly associated with sunshine. It sparkles with optimistic activity. Yellow people are highly original, imaginative, idealistic, creative, artistic and often spiritual. You love novelty and challenge and have an inquiring mind. You are a reliable friend and confidant. Your ambitions are often realized, and you usually have a sunny disposition.

You are often egotistical, however, and do not like to be second best. You can be generous, but may be rather shy at heart and appear somewhat aloof as a result. You may be impatient with other people's ideas if they seem less well thought out than yours. You are genuinely concerned about the good of society, but generally spend more time talking about it than actually doing anything about it! Yellow people are perfectionists, but can also be joyful.

Dislike: If you dislike yellow, you usually dislike the qualities that this luminous color has. You are a realist--a practical, down-to-earth person and probably critical of others who are not. You are skeptical of new ideas and rather than try something innovative, you prefer to concentrate on things you know you can accomplish. Guaranteed results are important to you, because you like to protect yourself from disappointment.

2005-11-17T18:05:00.000+07:00

Cisco Joins Push to Increase Women in IT

San Jose, Calif.-based electronic network provider Cisco Systems is troubled by the 19 percent decline of women in the information technology field that the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) has noted over the last eight years. Last week, the company announced that it had joined forces with the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) to combat the problem.

With ITAA now reporting that women represent barely one-quarter of IT workers, Cisco and Boulder, Colo.-based NCWIT are hoping the creation of a digital library, available at www.ncwit.org will help. Designed to give students, parents and teachers information about careers in high-tech fields, the site also includes tips on enhancing performance in math, computing and technology, along with sample lesson plans for teaching computing to girls. Details about local clubs, programs and summer camps for girls in technology are also available.

The Web site the company has launched with NCWIT is new, but it ties into Cisco's ongoing Women in Technology program. Part of the company's Networking Academy, the program reaches out to young women six to 10 times a year with Girls in Technology Summits in which IT workers from companies such as fashion and publishing houses give presentations about their work. The goal, says Gene Longo, senior manager for the U.S. and Canada for the Networking Academy, is to show young women that having IT skills opens up opportunities in nearly any field they may be interested in. Summits also include presentations to the girls on how technology can be used to solve problems in their communities.

“We try to get the girls more engaged with the thought of technology helping to solve problems, whether they're health or socials issues,” Longo says. This solution-oriented approach seems to work especially well with female students, he points out. “We find women versus men tend to get more connected to technology when it actually has a benefit. We take real world problems Cisco has encountered around the globe, and then we bring those problems to the young women and see how they would solve them with technology.”

The company still has its work cut out for it. Longo notes that despite Cisco's specialized program offering, women account for fewer than 20% of the students enrolled in its Networking Academy, a program for which Cisco has donated “well over” $300 million worth of IT curriculum, supporting materials and instructor training to nonprofit high schools and colleges in every state, and 150 countries.

Efforts to raise awareness among girls of IT as a career goal are just starting to make a dent. A study of 1,112 girls aged 11 to 18, released this fall by Tokyo-based electronics manufacturer Toshiba Corp, found that a fifth said they wanted more access to technology at school, BBC News reported last week. But, this enthusiasm, unfortunately, has not yet translated to the work place. The study also found that the proportion of IT workers who are female is down to 21%.

The paltry number of women in IT affects more than just traditional computer programming. According to a recent survey by San Francisco-based International Game Developers Association, which polled over 6,500 employees to establish the demographic makeup of the industry, just 12 percent of respondents were women.

Turner Construction Course Maintains Insurance Coverage

2005-11-17T18:02:00.000+07:00

Turner Construction Course Maintains Insurance Coverage

When Pittsburgh, Pa.-based general builder and construction management firm Turner Construction Co. discovered that insurance stopped covering exposure to mold in new or renovated building projects, it decided to give its staff a course on mold awareness and moisture control. The training has helped the company maintain insurance coverage for more than $1,500 projects at a value of over $15 billion.

Send that Stress Away!

2005-11-17T17:03:00.000+07:00

HOLIDAY STRESS BUSTERS

By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore

The holidays are a time for great joy for some, and a time of stress and frustration for others. None of us should be denied the joys of the holiday season and so I have put together the following seven
suggestions to help you “bust” the holiday stress and enjoy this time more.

1. Plan ahead. We know well in advance, (like a year before), that the holidays will require a lot more of our time for special preparations in addition to our regular routines and responsibilities. However, many of us get caught short, in crisis management, running around at the “eleventh hour”, trying to get the last minute stuff done, feeling a bit (or a lot) stressed out. The solution is to plan ahead and schedule these tasks and events with greater care. It always seems to get done sooner or later. Why not sooner, at your pace, without so much of the hassle?

2. Delegate. There is a lot of difference between “I do it” and “It gets done”. Which is more important to you? I hope, “It gets done”. Sure it’s fun to “do it all”, but that may be an impractical goal that only serves to frazzle and stress you out. Share the shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc. responsibilities with others. You don’t have to “do it all” yourself. It would be nice if we could, but there is only so much time.
And people generally appreciate the opportunity to participate in the preparations. “You don’t always do for someone when you always do for someone.”

3. Get enough sleep. During the holidays, with all there is to do, the parties, the preparations, the shopping, the wrapping, and the cooking, it is easy to pay for the additional time required with our sleep time. The problem for many is that when they don’t get enough sleep, they get cranky and don’t enjoy what they are doing as much. Not only that, they may not exactly be a pleasure to be around! Each of us has a different sleep level that we require to feel rested. Especially during the busy holiday period, take the time for adequate sleep so that you have the energy to get into the full swing of things and enjoy it as it happens.

4. Don’t overindulge. Anything in moderation. The holidays are a time when it is easy to overindulge in what we eat and drink. The problem is, we pay for it later and sometimes sooner. A little advanced planning might help as well. For example, let’s say you know that you always accumulate an additional five pounds over the holidays. Make it a point to drop five pounds before the holiday season. Many find it is easier and less stressful to lose that additional weight before, rather than after, the holidays.

5. Set a financial budget and stick to it. We tend to want to be generous and when shopping, it is easy to fall prey to “impulse buying” and “go all out” with the credit cards. Then, we experience the “post
holiday blues”, when the bills arrive in January. Plan what you will spend before you go to the stores, when you are rational, and then stick to those budget amounts when you are in the stores, when you are more emotional.

6. Don’t overload this time period. KISS. “Keep it Simple…” This is not the last holiday period you will enjoy. You can’t do everything but you can do and enjoy the most important things. Sure you will do more now than at other times during the year. Have a grand time, a memorable holiday season. Just don’t try to “do it all”. Save something for next year.

7. Enjoy the journey, not just the destination. Don’t “dread” any part of it, the shopping, the wrapping, the cooking, the cleaning, etc. Find happiness in all of it. Enjoy it all. Some place all their eggs in one
basket. If all the celebration and the joy are scheduled for that one night, perhaps Christmas Eve, what happens if it’s a disappointment? The whole season is a bust. Enjoy all the stuff leading up to the “big
night” and enhance the quality and your level of enjoyment of the entire season.

HSBC Program Generates New Ideas From Employees

2005-11-06T20:50:00.000+07:00

HSBC Program Generates New Ideas From Employees

When HSBC-North America, a Prospect Heights, Ill.-based financial services company, wanted to bring employees into the brainstorming process, it got creative itself, launching its Great Ideas program last year. With rewards such as cash, stocks, and merchandise prizes for worthwhile employee suggestions, the program has resulted in at least 138 cost-saving or revenue-generating ideas.

Wachovia Trains for a Profit

2005-10-23T15:11:00.000+07:00

Wachovia Trains for a Profit

To ensure its employees understand commonly used banking products and equipment, Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia Corp. created several Web-based training programs. And these have been so successful that many of the banking company's competitors have purchased them for their own internal use. Wachovia has earned more than $300,000 from sales of one of these programs.

Promoting From Within

2005-10-23T14:58:00.000+07:00

Promoting From Within

In the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, an already beleaguered oil industry is finding itself in yet another bind, according to BusinessWeek. In its Oct. 10 issue, the magazine reports that after years of layoffs during slow times, the industry is scrambling to find engineering talent to fill vacant positions. With a coming scarcity of petroleum-engineering graduates just 1,500 are enrolled this year, down 85 percent since 1982, the article notes some oil companies are resorting to novel means of recruitment.

Schlumberger, an oil-field services provider based in New York, uses a proprietary online system called PeopleMatch, the company told BusinessWeek. The system, accessed through Schlumberger's intranet site, helps human resources managers fill positions with talent already under the company's roof. Managers can use PeopleMatch to select possible candidates within the company based on desired characteristics. Information on employees' past job performance, salary and resumes are available through the system; managers can also access employees' self-written bios, which include photos, career goals, family information, past assignments and professional affiliations.

Cultivating talent from within rather than scrambling to fill open slots from without is a sound goal for small companies as well. The Washington, D.C.-based SCORE Association, a nonprofit organization that gives advice to small businesses, provides tips for promoting from within. SCORE suggests bringing outsourced work back into the company if it could create an advancement opportunity for an existing employee. In the organization's "5 Tips on Promoting From Within," Tip No. 5 suggests, "If an employee needs outside training for a higher-level job, pay for it. That will be cheaper than recruiting a new employee."

Superior talent management strategies are also behind top-performing hospitals, Linda Wilson wrote in the July 25 issue of Modern Healthcare. The magazine reported on findings from the "2005 Hospital CEO Leadership Survey," published by Evanston, Ill.-based health-care business-intelligence provider Solucient and St. Louis-based health-care staffing firm Cejka Search. The survey, completed by more than 100 hospital CEOs, was designed to identify the hospitals' leadership team composition, organizational performance and future strategies for success.

According to the survey, boards of "top" hospitals select a CEO from inside the organization about 50 percent of the time, while boards of "typical" hospitals promote insiders just 37 percent of the time. For non-CEO senior executives, top hospitals are also more likely to promote from within than typical hospitals are (36 percent of the time versus 21 percent of the time).

"Top" hospitals were defined as institutions that made Solucient's list of top 100 hospitals for three to five years, while "typical" hospitals were defined as those that consistently ranked in the middle quintile of hospitals on the list during the past five years.

The entire report of survey results can be found at www.cejkasearch.com/ceosurvey.

THE BASICS FOR A SUCCESSFUL IN-HOUSE TRAINING PROGRAM

2005-10-23T14:28:00.000+07:00

THE BASICS FOR A SUCCESSFUL IN-HOUSE TRAINING PROGRAM

By: Dr Donald E. Wetmore

As a Professional Speaker, I have conducted hundreds of in-house training programs during the last eighteen years and I have observed several practices that make in-house training work better than not. This is not a comprehensive list, or all inclusive, for that matter. It doesrepresent what I would consider the more important “basics” for a successful in-house program.

1. Giving information v changing behavior. Presumably, one of the outcomes of the program is that people will change what they do and how they do. It’s not what happens in the training room that counts as much as what happens after it is over. The hardest thing to get anyone to do (myself included) is to change their behavior. We all value our “comfortzones”. Therefore, attention ought to be given to not only “what to do” and “how to do it”, but, more importantly, “why” they ought to do it. Without an understanding of “why” it ought to be done, it is difficult for adult learners to consider changing what they do.

2. What do I do next? End the program with the answer to that question. Give them a list of specific practices to follow, what additional information or resources they will need to secure and how to get them, or whatever it is that they need to do to now get the value from theprogram into their lives. Just like when a doctor releases a patient, give them the follow-up plan of action to put into practice what was discussed in the program.

3. Offer the program as a reward, not as a punishment. Sounds silly, but some companies use in-house programs to correct deficiencies and failures, almost as a punishment for their failings. Attendees are forced to go to get corrected. Position your programs as an enhancement of whatever they are and wherever they may be. In my Time ManagementSeminars, people are never invited because “they are broken and I’m going to fix them”. I am not going to make them productive. Everyone is productive. The question is, and the emphasis of my programs is, “how much more productive can we help you to become?”

4. Allow only a qualified instructor in the front of the room. Anyone can spend a little time researching to give a “book report” on a topic. Audiences are perceptive. They know when an instructor has “walked the talk”. They know when an instructor is only one chapter ahead of them. Giving a weak program does two things. First, it probably does not accomplish what it was intended to do. Second, and more important, while it is generally a struggle to get people to commit to training in the first place, you are only as good as your last program. If the lastprogram they attended failed to not only meet, but exceed, their expectations, if their lives were really no different after taking the last program, then there will be even more resistance to attending what you offer next.

5. Don’t hold the in-house program in-house. I know about training budgets and issues of convenience. Half of the in-house programs I conduct are on company premises. Having an in-house training room is an asset. The problem may be, however, that it might not be the proper venue for what you need to accomplish. If the training room is on premises, the participants’ temptation is to go back to work during the breaks, to get caught up on email and voicemail, and be interrupted in the session since they are in the building. Often they are coming back late and not having a focus on what the program is intended to accomplish. Holding the session off-site, at a hotel, for example, has an additional cost but alleviates the problems and makes the event somewhat more special. I ask my audiences to be with me not only physically, but also emotionally, just for the duration of the program because they will get a lot more out of it. I ask them to ignore their problems until our program is over, assuring them that their problems will still be there when they return.

Games for Time Management Training

2005-10-20T22:09:00.000+07:00

Games for Time Management Training

Activity for you which can be derived the Activity and the Derivation would take 2 Hrs and then the House can be opened for Brain Storming, You could summarise the whole thing in the end.

Activity:

Building the Tallest Tower in 45 Mins to 1 Hr ( Please be specific and choose either one of them)

Resources alloted to all Teams( Team size 4-6 Only), any number of Teams can participate and would depend on your batch size,
1.Straws-50 nos per Team
2.Disposable Plastic Cups 30 nos per Team
3. Cello Tape-Small Roll

Ask the Team to imagine a Tower and Build the Tallest one Possible using only the Resources provided, indicate the time alloted and clearly specify that the tower shuld stand on its own without any support from the Ceiling, Walls etc and watch them get into action.

At the end of the alloted time ask them,

How they managed the activity?
How they allocated the Tasks and Resouces?
How they Planned the Time Schedule ?
Who was the Time Keeper?
How the Time was managed by managing the Task?
What happened when they realised that some other Team was faster?

Derive that if they planned it Timed the whole thing and allocated even the Human Resorces would they have more than enough time to complete the activity??

Ask them to list out Activities they are supposed to do in their line of Business and allocate the time required for each activity and see how much they can achieve in a day!!

Also Explain thet there are only three Kinds of Jobs
1. Urgent
2.Important
3.Priority

Ask them where they would focus their attention and energies, Derive that if we do important things we dont have to worry since nothing will be urgent or Priority, however if something urgent should crop up which was not planned for then Brainstrom on which should be given due importance based on various situations. You could add in more content and Power point based on your requirement

Learning the do's and don'ts of training

2005-10-17T06:44:00.000+07:00

Learning the do's and don'ts of training

Debra Davenport

From bizwomen.com

Smart executives understand the value of smart employees -- and the value of keeping them ahead of the learning curve.

Ongoing employee education can contribute significantly to profitability, productivity, customer service, safety, wellness, efficiency, and reduced turnover and absenteeism.

Whether you've been providing education programs for years, or you're considering implementing a program, there are a number of important do's and don'ts to keep in mind where your employees' learning is concerned.

First, let's distinguish "employee education" from "training."

Historically, the word "training" has been used when referring to dogs and circus animals. Today, we incorporate the training of simple human workplace tasks into this definition.

"Employee education," or what I prefer to call "professional education," requires and develops critical thinking skills. It's one thing to train someone how to answer the telephone. It's quite another to help them learn and understand the importance of interpersonal communication.

When you're developing educational programs, decide from the get-go if they're training-based or education-based.

Here are some other do's and don'ts:

1. Do identify relevant learning needs and bring in experts to deliver appropriate education.

2. Don't conduct training programs simply to check off a box. Laissez-faire training programs generate similar results.

3. Do invest adequate time in the development and delivery of your education programs.

Often clients will ask us what we can teach in an hour. Well, in an hour, we can toss out a lot of information that will neither be retained or implemented. You can't get your BA in six months; neither can you expect your employees to learn anything profound in 60 minutes.

Additionally, classroom learning must be reinforced with both hands-on practice and "homework." Repetitive practice of any concept or task is necessary in order to master it.

Too often we encounter prospective clients who want the quick and dirty fix to internal issues that realistically require a year of intensive re-education, practical application, data collection, and learning reinforcement.

4. Do expect to spend some money. High quality corporate education reflects the knowledge of adult education and curriculum development that only comes with proper experience and education on the part of the instructors.

Keep in mind that your workplace comprises people with varying degrees of IQ and EQ.

In addition, some may have mild learning disabilities, learning resistance or anxiety, language barriers, or many other issues of which you are not even remotely aware.

Skilled educators can assess your team and design learning modules that will ensure success for virtually every employee.

In the long run, it's much more cost-effective to invest in quality education, rather than quickie seminar programs that take a cookie cutter approach.

5. Don't engage in training programs if you're not going to follow through.

Learning is a process -- it takes time and reinforcement to break old habits and form new ones.

Before-and-after metrics will let you know if your employees learned, what they learned, how much they understood, what information they've retained (and what they've forgotten), what they're actually applying, and if they're applying it correctly.

6. Do understand that bad training is worse than no training at all.

7. Do make learning experiential.

8. Do require accountability from all sides.

9. Do assess new hires. As you're assessing personality, communication, problem-solving and work styles, also identify new employees' learning styles. Knowing how they learn best will ensure success.

10. Do encourage off-site learning. Out-of-the-ordinary environments, with minimal distractions, can help to imprint the material being presented.

11. Do motivate your employees to learn. The best way to motivate employees is to enhance their reasons for learning and decrease their barriers.

Adult learning pioneer Malcolm Knowles identified various characteristics of adult learners (for more: http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/adults-2.htm):

- They are autonomous and self-directed.
- They bring a wealth of life experiences and knowledge to the workplace.
- They need to connect learning to this knowledge/experience base.
- They are practical, goal-centric and relevancy-oriented.
- Adult learners need to be shown respect for their experience.

Professional education is one of the most important investments you will make in your company, so always choose quality over other factors -- you and your employees will most certainly reap the benefits of this smart decision.

Six Steps for Making Your Threat Credible

2005-09-23T18:45:00.000+07:00

1. Increase your costs of not following through on your threat
Imagine that you're thinking about bidding to acquire another company that would be of great value to your firm. Your only reservation is that your bid might invite your biggest competitor to follow suit, instigating a costly bidding war. If you lost the war, your company would almost certainly take a hit in the stock market. Even if you won, the bidding war may have driven the price so high that the deal is no longer worthwhile. To summarize, you would love to bid but only if your competitor stays out of the game.

2. Visibly restrict your options
A public commitment makes it difficult for a negotiator to back down from a threat. Other tactics�such as throwing away the steering wheel in a game of Chicken�make it impossible for you not to follow through. There is no better way to make your threat credible than to ensure that you can't go back on your word.

3. Visibly incur sunk costs
Suppose you are negotiating with a consulting firm to renew its contract to provide information technology (IT) services to your company. In pursuit of a lower price, you threaten to cancel the $700,000 yearly contract and create your own in-house IT department. Unfortunately, both you and the contractor know that it would be much cheaper for you to retain her firm's services than to start up a new department.

4. Delegate authority to someone who will follow through on the threat
The time, energy, and resources that you devote to reaching agreement can suggest that you're desperate for a deal�any deal. The greater your investment in the negotiation, the less credible your threat of walking away becomes.

5. Create and leverage a reputation for making credible threats
Your threats will be more credible if you have a reputation for carrying through on them. If you are known for sometimes being rash or obstinate, even your more extreme threats are likely to be taken seriously. Your threats also may be effective if you have a reputation for staying true to your word or for being willing to sacrifice dollars for principle.

6. Leverage the shadow of the future
Even if you can't leverage your past reputation, you might be able to leverage your future. Imagine that an author is selling the rights to market her book in a particular region. If there is only one potential publisher with significant access in that region, the publisher is likely to make a low offer, knowing the author has no choice but to sign the deal. The author's threat to walk away if the publisher doesn't tender a better offer may not be credible.

complete story ..

Getting Learners Back On Time

2005-09-23T16:28:00.000+07:00

Getting Learners Back On Time

David Gibson:

Getting learners back on time after a break when the training room is in the same building as learners normally work can be a bit of a challenge. Below are 8 strategies that will help you with this challenge.

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1. Avoid 'ish' times
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Heard this before "Ok, so it's nearly 11 o'clock, we'll take a break here. Please be ready to continue at quarter past eleven." This is what I call an 'ish' time. Quarter past, half past, quarter-to are all non-specific times and learners feel that they can return somewhere around that time and usually up to 10-minutes after that time.

How about making the return time a non-ish time i.e. "It's now 10:59. Please be ready to continue at 11:14." 11:14 is 11:14 - no leeway. I've been using this technique successfully for many years now and was recently happy to read that there is some scientific research as to why it works. Apparently when we give a specific time it initiates a little anxiety (nothing strong enough to interfere with learning) making learners much more conscious of time. In fact, learners will look at their watches up to 5 times during a break if you specify a specific time (having read this research I have observed learners to see if this is true and I can categorically confirm it is).

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2. Bribe learners back
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This may sound a little strange but works every time. The idea is to offer something your learners really want at the exact time you state the workshop will continue after a break e.g. if I was facilitating a sales workshop, "It's now 10:59; we will break here for 15-minutes and continue at 11:14. You have just uncovered 2 great techniques for selling the new X02. At 11:14 I want to share with you the technique that has generated most sales and commission. The door closes at 11:14 and those people not in the room at that time will not be allowed in until we have uncovered this technique." Where will your salespeople be at 11:14 - in the room - guaranteed!

I often use a magic trick to demonstrate a specific content point and using similar wording to the above offer to give learners the props and share how the trick is done at the said time. This guarantees that every one of my learners is back on time. NB - you must live up to your promise!
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3. Time monitors
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Why not select time monitors immediately prior to a break whose responsibility it is to ensure that all their team members are back on time. (See 'Tip 63 - Fun Ways For Selecting An Activity Leader' for some suggestions on how to randomly select the time monitor.)

Twist:
You can also 'randomly' select the person who has been late themselves to be the time monitor eg if they are the tallest in their team, "The time monitor will be the tallest person in each team".

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4. Benefit focused
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Keep the content totally learner centered, relevant and benefit based. Let learners know what the next content piece will be and how it will help them in their everyday work, ie set up positive expectations and build a need to be back on time based upon what will be of benefit to them, eg during our workshop 'Making Meetings Work' we say, "I know you diaries must be full with meetings. After the break I'm going to suggest an idea that I'm certain will allow you to go through your diary and remove at least half of the current meetings freeing up all that valuable time for you to work on your other priorities and not having to stay late on an evening to do these because you've been in meetings all day."

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5. Start on time
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Always, always, always start at the specified time - even if all learners have not returned. This stops you setting the precedence 'it's OK to be late because I'll wait'. It also stops you punishing those learners that were back on time by keeping them waiting - after all, if you'll wait for them, then they may as well be a little late next time because you'll wait for them too! (Personally I continue and do not back-track for anyone coming in late.)

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6. Shorter more frequent breaks
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Rather than one 15-minute break in the morning and afternoon, why not have a 5-minute break every hour. This gives enough time for a top-up of water, coffee etc and a visit to the bathroom but not enough time to go to their desk and check eMail etc. It also helps break-up longer pieces of content and time for the brain to process previous content.

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7. Puzzle time
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You might find this a useful strategy when you are continuing after lunch. Start with a content related (and fun) puzzle projected via the OHP. Ask teams to work together to try and solve it. This should only last 3-5 minutes. What it does is allow for any latecomers to re-join the workshop without anyone noticing, helps bring learners mentally as well as physically back into the workshop and re-connects them to content.

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8. Last resort
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Have a quiet word if someone is a constant offender - aside and away from other learners. I would say something like, "John, I notice you seem to be a few minutes late getting back after each break. Is there a specific reason for this?" There may well be a valid reason and if so, you can work around this. By asking if there is a valid reason means you are not jumping in and accusing - just asking and avoiding any conflict. If not, you can simply say that it is causing a little distraction for other learners and would it be possible to be back on time.

Call to Action:
Don't just accept that some of your learners will be late back. Use some of these positive techniques to ensure your learners are back on time and rearing to continue.

Good Training Practice:

2005-09-23T16:25:00.000+07:00

Good Training Practice:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.agron.iastate.edu/nciss/kingsat2.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Principle 1: Encourages Participant - Trainer Contact
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Frequent trainer-participant contact in and out of sessions is the most important factor in participant motivation and involvement. Trainers concern helps participants get through rough times and keep on working. Knowing the trainer well enhances participant's intellectual commitment and encourages them to think about their own values and future plans.

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Principle 2: Encourages Cooperation Among Participants
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Learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort than a solo race. Good learning, like good work, is collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated. Working with others often increases involvement in learning. Sharing one's own ideas and responding to others' reactions improves thinking and deepens understanding.

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Principle 3: Encourages Active Learning
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Learning is not a spectator sport. Participants do not learn much just sitting in sessions listening to trainers, memorizing pre-packaged activities, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves.

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Principle 4: Gives Prompt Feedback
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Knowing what you know and don't know focuses learning. Participants need appropriate feedback on performance to benefit from courses. In getting started, participants need help in assessing existing knowledge and competence. In sessions, participants need frequent opportunities to perform and receive suggestions for improvement. At various points during training, and at the end, participants need chances to reflect on what they have learned, what they still need to know, and how to assess themselves.

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Principle 5: Emphasizes Time on Task
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Time plus energy equals learning. Efficient time-management skills are critical for prtticipants and professionals alike. Allocating realistic amounts of time means effective learning for participants and effective training for trainers. How an institution defines time expectations for participants, trainers, consultants, and other HR professional staff can establish the basis for high performance for all.

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Principle 6: Communicates High Expectations
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Expect more and you will get it. High expectations are important for everyone, for the poorly prepared, for those unwilling to exert themselves, and for the bright and motivated. Expecting participants to perform well becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when trainers and institutions hold high expectations of themselves and make extra efforts.

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Principle 7: Respects Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning
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There are many roads to learning. People bring different talents and styles of learning to the training room. Brilliant participants in the seminar room may be all thumbs in the activities. Participants rich in hands-on experience may not do so well with theory. Students need the opportunity to show their talents and learn in ways that work for them. Then they can be pushed to learning in ways that do not come so easily.

HR as a Coach and Mentor

2005-09-23T16:20:00.000+07:00

HR as a Coach and Mentor

Introduction

These days in corporate sector, everybody is talking about the role of HR professional as a coach and mentor. People are exited as well as confused. Exited, because it is new and it is challenging. Confused, because many are not aware of the difference between mentoring and coaching.

I got the inspiration to write this write-up from one such confused e-mail from one of my professional friend. I was describing my job profile to this friend of mine, wherein I mentioned that one of my role in present job is “Employee Coaching” to which he replied that what is coaching in layman’s language is “Mentoring” in corporate sector. It was a shock for me. In this article, I will be covering:

Differences and similarities in mentoring and coaching:

1. Role of HR as a Mentor and Coach

2. What they should do as a mentor and as a Coach

3. How to be an effective mentor and coach.

4. Basic definition of mentoring and Coaching

What Is Coaching?

To begin, coaching is a form of consulting, and is a new and rapidly growing profession, particularly, the area of personal development coaches. Coaches will identify strengths, weaknesses, goals, and needs, typically through a series of prearranged sessions over a month. In the words of Bentley, the four core elements of the coaching process are support, modeling, step-by-step development, and encouragement.

What is Mentoring?

The key to mentoring is to closely link it to the mission, goals, and priority strategies of the organisation. Only an integrated, facilitated process, which is linked, to current and future mission or business imperatives can be expected to stand the buffeting of the winds of change. Of course, mentoring must be monitored and tracked to measure its impact (Murray 1995).

You can read the complete article at:
http://ezinearticles.com/?id=64752

Conclusion

Coaching and Mentoring are not the same thing. Our results and experience support the conclusion that mentoring is a power free, two-way mutually beneficial learning situation where the mentor provides advice, shares knowledge and experiences, and teaches using a low pressure, self-discovery approach. Teaching using an adult learning versus teacher to student model and, being willing to not just question for self discovery but also freely sharing their own experiences and skills with the protégé. The mentor is both a source of information/knowledge and a Socratic questioner. If I am your coach you probably work for my concern and me is your performance, ability to adapt to change, and enrolling you support in the vision/direction for our work unit.

The ONE Thing That Keeps Us Sleeping Longer

2005-09-22T20:28:00.000+07:00

By Kacper Postawski, Sleep Science Researcher

Probably one of the biggest challenges people have is getting themselves out of the bed! This really has little to do with understanding sleep science or any of the information I teach, It has to do with your will power, and a little bit of strategy.

You've probably had many times in your life where you just couldn't get yourself out of bed. The biggest reason why we tend to stay in bed is because we "rationalize." For instance...

"I'll just sleep for 10 more minutes..." or "It's okay,... The alarm is early by 2.5 minutes anyway..." or "I'll get up when the room warms up a bit..."

Well, whatever you've rationalized not getting out of bed with, I'm sure it was very creative too, because as human beings we're really great at coming up with reasons for not doing things! The reason why rationalizing makes us stay in bed, or prevents us from achieving many other goals in our lives is because it creates negative momentum.

The law of momentum states: Once something gets into motion, it tends to stay in motion. The opposite, is also true: Once something stops, it tends to stay there!

Once you make a decision to remain in bed for "a few more minutes..." It tends to stay there, and it usually stays there for a lot longer than just a few minutes! That's why I teach people to create a momentum strategy to get out of bed as quickly as possible, and start moving - start moving around the house, go for a run, make breakfast with your partner, whatever it is you need to do to start moving and stop sleeping.

When you create positive momentum it will be too late to rationalize about sleep because you'll already be out of your bed! So here are just a couple of strategies you can use to get out of bed quickly and get more out of your day:

1) The "Distant Alarm" Method
Most people place their alarms right next to their bed within reach. This is a BIG no-no if you want to avoid staying in your bed. Why? Because most of the time you don’t even have to roll over to press the alarm. That doesn't create a lot of movement and definitely doesn't stop you from sleeping your life away.

Instead of placing your alarm clock by your bed, place it far away, like at the end of your bedroom by the corner of the wall! By doing this you'll be forced to get up out of your bed to turn it off! By the time you're out of bed it will be too late to rationalize staying longer in bed, you'll be out already.
I even once duck-taped my alarm clock to the ceiling, so every morning I had to get up and get a chair right underneath it to turn it off. Where there's a will, there's a way.

2) Rehearsing
The reason why we "rationalize" morning after morning is because we've done it so long that we do it without even thinking about it. Rationalizing becomes a learned and rehearsed behavior.

A good way to stop rationalize is to rehearse jumping out of your bed in advance. When you're ready to go to bed, simply try this exercise: lie down in your bed as if you were sleeping, close your eyes... Then pretend you've just woken up in the morning, and JUMP RIGHT OUT OF BED saying "YEAAAA!!!"

Repeat this exercise at least 5-10 times, or as much as feels good! I know it sounds stupid but it works! Your mind does what you tell it to do in a given situation. Doing this exercise will teach your mind a new behavior. In order to stop "rationalizing" you must replace the old behavior with a new behavior.

When you think about it, we're taught how to brush our teeth, we're taught how to take proper care of our bodies, and some of us are even taught proper nutrition skills, but no one is hardly ever taught how to take proper care of their inner sleep system, which is responsible for your energy and your health more than you know!

Whatever rationalizations you've come up with, allow me to suggest that you forget them and take some positive momentum in your life RIGHT NOW.

Kacper Postawski is an innovative sleep science researcher and the creator of the “Powerful Sleep - Secrets of the Inner Sleep Clock” system

Building Expert Power - Lead From the Front!

2005-09-22T19:53:00.000+07:00

There are many types of power that leaders can use.

These include problematic ones such as the power of position, the power to give rewards, the power to punish and the power to control information. While these types of power do have some strength, they put the person being lead in an unhealthy position of weakness, and can leave leaders using these power bases looking autocratic and out of touch.

More than this, society has changed hugely over the last 50 years. Citizens are individually more powerful, and employees are more able to shift jobs. Few of us enjoy having power exerted over us, and some will do what they can to undermine people who use these sorts of power.

However there are three types of positive power that truly effective leaders use: Charismatic power, expert power and referent power.

This article teaches the technique of building expert power.

Using the Tool:

Expert power is essential because as a leader, your team looks to you for direction and guidance. Team members need to believe in your ability to set a worthwhile direction, give sound guidance and co-ordinate a good result.

If your team perceives you as a true expert, they will be much more receptive when you try to exercise influence tactics such as rational persuasion and inspirational appeal.

And if your team sees you as an expert you will find it much easier to guide them in such a way as to create high motivation:

* If your team members respect your expertise, they'll know that you can show them how to work effectively;
* If your team members trust your judgment, they'll trust you to guide their good efforts and hard work in such a way that you'll make the most of their hard work; and
* If they can see your expertise, team members are more likely to believe that you have the wisdom to direct their efforts towards a goal that is genuinely worthwhile.

Taken together, if your team sees you as an expert, you will find it much easier to motivate team members to perform at their best.

So how do you build expert power?

* Gain expertise: The first step is fairly obvious (if time consuming) – gain expertise. And, if you are already using tools like the information gathering tools in "How to Lead", the chances are that you have already progressed well ahead in this direction.

But just being an expert isn’t enough, it is also necessary for your team members to recognize your expertise and see you to be a credible source of information and advice. Gary A. Yukl, in his book “Leadership in Organizations,” details some steps to build expert power. A summary of these steps follows:

* Promote an image of expertise: Since perceived expertise in many occupations is associated with a person’s education and experience, a leader should (subtly) make sure that subordinates, peers, and superiors are aware of his or her formal education, relevant work experience, and significant accomplishments.

One common tactic to make this information known is to display diplomas, licenses, awards, and other evidence of expertise in a prominent location in one’s office – after all, if you’ve worked hard to gain knowledge, it’s fair that you get credit for it. Another tactic is to make subtle references to prior education or experience (e.g., “When I was chief engineer at GE, we had a problem similar to this one”). Beware, however, this tactic can easily be overdone.

* Maintain credibility: Once established, one’s image of expertise should be carefully protected. The leader should avoid making careless comments about subjects on which he or she is poorly informed, and should avoid being associated with projects with a low likelihood of success.

* Act confidently and decisively in a crisis: In a crisis or emergency, subordinates prefer a “take charge” leader who appears to know how to direct the group in coping with the problem. In this kind of situation, subordinates tend to associate confident, firm leadership with expert knowledge. Even if the leader is not sure of the best way to deal with a crisis, to express doubts or appear confused risks the loss of influence over subordinates.

* Keep informed: Expert power is exercised through rational persuasion and demonstration of expertise. Rational persuasion depends on a firm grasp of up-to-date facts. It is therefore essential for a leader to keep well-informed of developments within the team, within the organization, and in the outside world.

* Recognize subordinate concerns: Use of rational persuasion should not be seen as a form of one-way communication from the leader to subordinates. Effective leaders listen carefully to the concerns and uncertainties of their team members, and make sure that they address these in making a persuasive appeal.

* Avoid threatening the self-esteem of subordinates: Expert power is based on a knowledge differential between leader and team members. Unfortunately, the very existence of such a differential can cause problems if the leader is not careful about the way he exercises expert power.

Team members can dislike unfavorable status comparisons where the gap is very large and obvious. They are likely to be upset by a leader who acts in a superior way, and arrogantly flaunts his greater expertise.

In the process of presenting rational arguments, some leaders lecture their team members in a condescending manner and convey the impression that the other team members are “ignorant.” Guard against this.

This is one of the articles in “How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You”. Not only does the course explain how to use the other "good" power bases, it teaches you how to use a range of honest influence tactics and powerful motivational techniques.

MAKING SMARTER PURCHASES: HOW-TO-BUY

2005-09-22T01:42:00.000+07:00

Making the right purchase for your learning program is often a roll of the dice. Any major purchase will have some risk associated with it, but research and diligence can go a long way to making a better purchase.

Saul Carliner (saul.carliner@sympatico.ca ), helped answer some questions on how to be a better learning buyer.

OLNR: How do you begin to find reputable vendors or products or services you might need?

SC: Unfortunately, there's no secret formula to becoming a knowledgeable consumer. To find a reputable vendor, you need to do good, old-fashioned information gathering by following these six steps:

(1) First and foremost, learn about the product or service that you want to purchase. Get a basic background and read the trade press to find out what's going on in the field.

(2) Get support from inside your organization. For instance, if you're purchasing information technology, work with your I/T group. They know the technology and can provide you with some private tutoring. They can also tell you what will and won't work with your organization's networks.

(3) Stay connected to the professional community because one of the best ways to whittle down the endless list of vendors is to get the inside scoop from people whom you know and trust. On a local level, go to meetings of local chapters of groups like ASTD and ISPI. To build up your network of contacts, volunteer for committees.
Leverage this network when you need a vendor. Find out who used a vendor for a similar purpose and see what their experience was. People are usually guarded with people whom they do not know, but are often more candid with their impressions with trusted friends.

(4) On a broader level, go to industry conferences and events. Don't just attend technical sessions -- participate in the social events and build your network. Keep up the contact after the event.

(5) After you find a vendor, ask them to provide references. In addition, use your network to find other people who worked with the vendor and ask their impression, too.

Conducting a reference check often ferrets out problems, but the overwhelming majority of organizations fail to do a reference check (only about 10 percent of organizations do so).

(6) Last, if you think you're over your head, don't be afraid to hire a consultant to act as a "tutor" and help you make a purchase. The consultant should be one who does not sell the types of services or products that you're purchasing or, at the least, should be prevented from bidding on this contract, to ensure that they remain
impartial with you.

ONLR: Are there major differences in making a purchase for services (design, delivery etc.) vs. a major product or system purchase?

SC: Definitely. Purchasing technology is like purchasing an appliance for your home -- ultimately, you can see and touch the possible choices to determine which one is best suited for you.

Purchasing services is like choosing an interior designer or therapist -- you cannot really touch or feel the service, so you have to determine which vendor is most likely to provide you with trustworthy advice and with training and design services that best reflect your needs and approaches.

OLNR: How do you make the business case for a major purchase? What are the key factors to consider?

SC: For starters, don't just assume that executives (a) see the needs you have identified and (b) agree with them.

So formally prepare a business case. In it, describe the problem that is driving the need for the purchase. Provide several options, including one that involves doing nothing. For each option, provide a brief description of what it is and its pros and cons. Provide a list of criteria for choosing a solution and consider the risks of
each option. Based on this, determine which option most closely meets the needs without providing undue risks.

Even if you're a small company, develop a business case and provide several options. In this way, when the company invests in the service, they know what they're investing in, how it benefits the organization, and the commitment that the executives are expected to provide to make this investment a success. This may seem like overkill in small organizations where people usually conduct business on a handshake. But in many of these organizations, training is also seen as a support service whose budget can be slashed when funding is tight. By going through the exercise of a business case, you not only increase the likelihood that funding
remains intact if economic problems arise, but subtly build the impression that the training group is indeed a professional one, and one that has strong business practices.