What if you could spot the DNA of a great leader? With the right data, you can - so why are so many businesses struggling with analytics?

"Success is not forever and failure isn’t fatal" is one of my favorite quotes from my friend Don Shula, former head coach of the Miami Dolphins football team and my coauthor on the book Everyone’s a Coach. This philosophy drove a great deal of Coach Shula’s behavior during his long career as the winningest head coach in NFL history. Don had a twenty-four-hour rule. He allowed himself, his coaches, and his players a maximum of twenty-four hours after a game to wallow in that game’s outcome—to fully experience either the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. But once the twenty-four-hour deadline passed, they had to put it all behind them and focus their energies on preparing for the next game. A colleague recently shared with me how she used this technique at work to turn a big mistake into a learning moment. One of our sales teams used an Excel spreadsheet saved on a shared drive to track revenue and bookings. The database provided an easy method to run reports by type of product sold, sales by person, and other key categories. Everyone on the team was able to access the document easily any time they needed information—that is, until the day one team member accidentally deleted the entire file! When the employee shared this news with her boss, she thought she might actually be fired. The manager had a better idea. She calmed the employee down by asking her to start brainstorming how they might recreate the data. Together they came up with a few options: ask the IT department if the file had been backed up so they could just request a copy; check to see if anyone had copied the file onto their desktop, or recreate the file from scratch. This activity helped the employee start thinking in a positive manner instead of beating herself up. The manager did one more thing: she gave the employee permission to go ahead and lament her mistake as much as she wanted to—but only for twenty-four hours. After the required time, they would meet again to discuss next steps and to talk about what they both had learned. What a difference a day makes. At first, the manager and employee were discouraged to find out the IT department didn’t have a backup—but then they discovered the manager had saved a copy of the file to her desktop a week earlier. So the employee needed only to update a week’s worth of data and the database was back in business. Of course, the employee learned to be extremely careful when closing a shared file. But the biggest learnings proved to be the foundation for an ongoing trusted working relationship: The employee learned: she could be honest with her manager; her manager trusted her to solve problems; she and her manager worked well as a team; and twenty-four hours is plenty of time to feel bad about a mistake. The manager learned: the importance of keeping her cool in the face of disaster; and how to empower her employee to turn a problem into a victory. As a result, their respect for each other grew and they went on for years, sharing successes and treating every challenge as a learning moment. Give the twenty-four-hour rule a try. Celebrate successes but don’t get a big head—and don’t get too down on yourself when you don’t succeed. Keep things in perspective and remember: success is not forever and failure isn’t fatal.

If you play Trivial Pursuit often you might be familiar with factoids such as that Rubik’s cube was created by Hungarian sculptor Erno Rubik, and that the sandwich was invented by John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. But do you know who helped create your favorite Cloud-based LMS platform, or the names of the people working behind the scenes to bring you the most satisfying SaaS experience? In this series of posts, we’ll have a look at the talented people behind TalentLMS. Let’s start with Elena. Please introduce yourself to our readers. What’s your name and general background? I’m Elena and I’m a Customer Success Manager here at TalentLMS. Coming from a very different background (Chemistry) and working in an R&D environment, it wasn’t long until I decided to make a career switch. After completing a Masters degree in Marketing & Creativity, I worked in Digital Marketing for a few years and gained great perspective on identifying online customers and finding ways to bring greater value to them. That’s why, when the need for a customer success manager arose in TalentLMS, I jumped at the opportunity to bring everything together and really get to know our customers, how they interact with the product, what their needs are and how our marketing strategy needs to change to help them fully meet them. So, you are a Customer Success Manager. What does your role entail? Unlike most traditional businesses where the customer relationship ends with the purchase, in a subscription business a purchase is where the relationship begins. And that’s where I come in. Building strong customer relationships and ensuring that customers are getting the most value out of their TalentLMS training platform are the primary goals of my role as a Customer Success manager. Or, in simpler words, keeping customers happy. How do you qualify and quantify Customer Success? Customer success does have its share of metrics — however strange that may sound given that "happiness" cannot be fully quantified. We use a number of metrics to quantify Customer Success such as User & Revenue Churn (lost customers & revenue — typically due to account cancellations & downgrades), Lifetime Value (a prediction of what the expected revenue is per customer), Last log-in date (how frequently customers use TalentLMS). Ultimately, of course, all these metrics translate into revenue. What is Epignosis’ approach for achieving Customer Success? We have recently introduced a Customer Success manager to our Basic unlimited, Plus and Premium accounts, which basically means that I’m responsible for new customers’ onboarding on the platform and for optimizing their TalentLMS use. In general, just being available to our customers and ensuring that every product touchpoint is a positive experience makes a huge difference. What TalentLMS features do you think play an important role in attracting new customers? I think it’s the simplicity of the product combined with its versatility and power. A user can be using it to train tens of thousands of their employees, while another can be selling courses to their partners and a third might be teaching their university students. Each scenario requires a completely different set of features, all of which are present in TalentLMS. Another strong point, which isn’t a software feature per se, but is nevertheless important, is the attention that we give to all of our customers, regardless of their size. Most of our clients know our team on a first-name basis and have built strong relationships over time. Likewise, what TalentLMS qualities do you think play an important role in customer retention? Just being there and listening to our clients and developing the product based on their feedback and needs. Even though most typical SaaS products have a ‘one-size-fits-all’ mentality, at TalentLMS we try to go beyond that. How is "customer success" related work different from customer support? Is it just a kind of higher level support, or is there more to it? Well, the main difference is that a Customer Success role is more of a proactive outreach, while Customer Support works in a more reactive way on incoming customer requests. Customer Success leverages usage data to identify patterns, and predict and avoid customer challenges before they turn up as support tickets. The two specialties also use very different metrics. Customer Support focuses on efficiency (average response time) and number-of-tickets whereas, with Customer Success we’re looking at the success oriented metrics I mentioned earlier. How important is customer feedback for your job function? Extremely important. Customer feedback is one of the main drivers of our product development. We do have a rule of thumb that a feature has to be requested by at least 3 different customers in order for it to be implemented and, of course, it should not affect the experience of the rest of our users, but in the end, each feature request is always examined on a case-by-case basis. Do you have a general philosophy when it comes to customer satisfaction, any abstract rules that you feel are important? I abide by two mottos that may sound a little cliche. That "patience is a virtue" and that "the customer is always right". Apart from that, being a customer of other SaaS businesses is one of the most important learning experiences, as you put yourself in the customers’ shoes and can really relate to their perspective. Conversely, do you have some practical, pragmatic observations from working to ensure customer satisfaction from the trenches? I believe that the more a customer gets accustomed to using the product to its optimum capability, the more tolerant and understanding they will become when things don’t go as planned. In a SaaS business, there are many things that may go wrong, i.e. a seemingly small change made in an update may affect a feature that a customer is using (or abusing) in a very customized way. Clients that have a deeper knowledge of the product tend to be more understanding when such bugs occur. The post The talent behind TalentLMS: An interview with our Customer Success Manager appeared first on TalentLMS Blog.

The real world has never been enough. Sure, it’s enough for tigers, eagles, elephants, panda bears and their animal friends, but it has never been enough for Homo Sapiens (that’s us). We always tried to improve upon it or, at least, alter it to be more to our tastes. From the invention of fire to the invention of air conditioning, we’re constantly expanding upon what nature gave us. As the famous sociologist Marshall McLuan once wrote, "all technologies are extensions of our physical and nervous systems to increase power and speed". Little did he know that we’d be reaching a point that we’re finally altering (or "augmenting") not just the physical world around us, but reality itself. And that, at the forefront of this revolution, would be not some groundbreaking scientific project, but a mobile game. Enter Pokemon Go. Sure, augmented reality is nothing new. We have been going at it for years, in expensive labs, prototypes, and early-adopter products. What Pokemon Go achieved, though, is making augmented reality not only popular and tangible for millions of people, but also fun. And that’s a big deal. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Pokemon Go is the latest mobile gaming craze, and it’s using augmented reality technology to make the popular "pocket monsters" come to life. It’s something that you really need to see to appreciate (just try not to get too hooked), but essentially it’s all about using input from your smartphone’s sensors (camera, GPS, accelerometer, etc.) to draw Pokemon figures with the correct perspective, size, etc. and blend them with what your camera shows, to make them appear as if they were standing right in front of you. Pokemon Go also makes use of certain locations (places of historical interest, city landmarks, local businesses, etc.) as gathering places, luring players there to have them catch imaginary monsters. As you’d expect, it’s a huge success — which will have a huge impact in tons of other fields, besides gaming. And, again, we’re not saying it’s the first example of augmented reality (A.R.) or A.R. gaming. But it’s the first hugely popular such example, and that’s more important (when one considers impact) than "mere" innovation. Is Augmented Reality Learning the future of eLearning? In our TalentLMS 2015 trends blogpost, we wrote that "Augmented reality learning is also maturing, with a number of relevant technologies, from Oculus Rift and Google Glass to Apple’s Watch, entering the market". And while those indeed have seen some traction in the months that have passed since, in the end, it took a simple gaming app to bring augmented reality to the forefront of the tech market. It makes sense too. The Rift, Google Glass, and the Apple Watch are more or less specialist devices with limited appeal. At best, there is a few million sold of each. But billions have a smartphone capable of running an application like Pokemon Go. I don’t think this will change in the near future. I think we’ll realize most of the potential of augmented reality not through special gadgets and headsets that make you look like a nerd, but from common tools everybody has, like the humble smartphone - which, technologically speaking, is not that humble at all. Pokemon Go showed how you can make an Augmented Reality application that runs on devices accessible to all, thus gain huge penetration, and also make it fun, and thus command incredible engagement figures. Now it’s up to eLearning technology providers to wake up and smell the Augmented Reality coffee and start following in the same footsteps. The possibilities for online training are endless, especially when combining augmented reality with gamification techniques. Augmented reality learning in the form of field trips, for example, where learners are shown relevant information, 3D models (of animals, plants, minerals, engine parts, and such) can be a great way to live up an otherwise boring museum visit, while at the same time it can challenge students to collect information to increase their score or ranking. With 4G networks getting more prevalent (and 5G on the way) one could even have a full augmented reality teleconference setup on the go, where an instructor could present specific virtual items to the learners based on their location, and even have them collaborate to hunt and collect them in some kind of "treasure hunt", e.g. across a city. In fact, the very gaming model of Pokemon Go would be great for training children on important historical figures, by having them go to the places where they lived or performed certain deeds and see them re-enacting specific historical scenes — demonstrators throwing chests of tea into the sea at the Boston harbour, for example; Martin Luther King giving his famous "I have a dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., that sort of thing. Of course, Augmented Reality learning is not just about general education either. In a corporate setting, for example, a Pokemon Go-like experience could be used to show relevant items (e.g. device parts) while employees walk around the factory premises following the assembly line. In fact, you don’t even need much of a physical space to benefit from A.R. Even conventional manuals, technical, medical or any other kind can benefit from it, by mixing the traditional textual content with overlaid 3D models relevant to the subject. A good (if limited) example of this is the ZooBurst service, that lets people create pop-up designs and attach them to websites or printed books. Conclusion - not just Pokemon Go Of course, we’ve only scratched the tip of the iceberg concerning the uses of Augmented Reality in education and corporate online training. Combined with the increasingly advancing mobile APIs and the plethora of sensors and output devices offered on modern smartphones (from motion sensors to haptic feedback), augmented reality will help us unleash the full potential of mobile training in the coming decade. And all of this kickstarted with a humble game such as Pokemon Go? Sure, why not. After all, didn’t the PC-in-every-home revolution get its start with young kids and their Atari 2600 consoles? Never underestimate the power of fun. The post Pokemon Go: Does this mean augmented reality learning is a thing? appeared first on TalentLMS Blog.

As you cultivate the PS / PM relationship, here is a great tool you can use to jump-start collaboration with each other and key stakeholders: Step 1: Go to a brewpub (or a coffee shop depending on your culture) Step 2: Draw this table and give everyone a copy Step 3: Break into two teams of people and ask them to take 15 minutes to make up a story about the following: You’ve gone into work and the project is halfway finished. Tell the story of what could be happening on the project using the bullets in the box below and based on the descriptors of either Quadrant 1 or 4 (one team will brainstorm and answer the questions for either Q1 or Q4.  Here’s an example of part of what the story for Q4 might be:If you are describing Q4, you might guess that people are not showing up for meetings or hitting their due dates.The budget and timeline are running low due to rework. Leadership is not involved and people are not talking to each other. The PM feels oppressed and the PS feels that the PM is the problem.Descriptors:​​​  After the teams share their stories, reassign the teams to the other two quadrants and do the same exercise.  Step 4: After sharing these stories, ask each team to split in two, and assign one team to each quadrant. This time, ask them to describe what events would have to take place for the project about to start to end up the quadrant they have been assigned. Share that list.Step 5: Create bylaws based on what you’ve learned together for the project about to start. Discuss how to avoid the bad events and decisions and leverage the good. Using this quick process ( done in less than three hours with strong facilitation), you can start every project well, leveraging an intentional and clear collaboration between the roles of Project Sponsor and Project Manager. Using the RMA process for project management, including a Project Charter, simple Project Schedule / Status Report /Dashboard and tons of communication, you may just be the first person in your company to actually finish a project well.Russell Martin & Associates has recently released a Project Management Program which allows you to customize the help you need with your project. You design the program (together with an RMA expert) that makes the most sense to your organization choosing from our popular online / live learning experiences, coaching, mentoring, Charter and Plan review, role defining, project read-outs, tools, and templates.  If your'e interested in working together to create a customized program for your team or organization, let us know and someone will connect with you shortly. 

Let’s face it, transparency and high potential programs don’t often go hand-in-hand. Here are a few reasons that might be the case.

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If the PS and PM are aligned, the project will go very well.  To sustain these connections requires some very specific discussions.  Having the guts to ask these questions requires trust and authenticity.  It also requires an agreement on the basic philosophy of the project.  Here are the philosophies (put these on a poster and hang everywhere) that drive project collaboration and success:Focus on the End Result / PurposeManage don’t control; collaborate don’t tellMinimize tools and chartsIt won’t go the way you’ve planned.  There will be surprises.Here are some additional tips and tricks that awesome companies use to drive project success:Use visual techniques to ensure understandingIf there’s a problem with a person, go talk to that person. Don’t send emails to everyone hoping it lands on them.Drive others' responsibility (I’ll take that) and clarify accountability (you own this now)Invite the PS do the status meeting / read-outs at least once a monthCreate alumni groups to support better project management that works better for your organization at your company.Do quick surveys when a project ends and capture lesson learned.Build a Project Advisory Panel with key stakeholders to continue to improve the throughput of projects and impact on the business. Create a Project Management Office (PMO) that connects organizational projects together that depend on each other and reduces redundant project work (does not audit!).Create Coaching Triads for PMs to improve leading projects

So you have a bunch of eLearning programs already in circulation. The marketing team keeps updating you with positive course registration numbers. So far, learners are happy, trainers seem satisfied and line managers are content with the performances of newly trained staff. All signs show that your LMS is truly producing successful learners and desirable knowledge. But before this bubble bursts due to lack of improvement through iteration, you need to administer certain evaluations. So, what are these evaluation about and how do they help maintain your eLearning winning streak? eLearning organizations face the daunting task of keep operations running smoothly and trouble-free every day. Without receiving periodic feedback from the LMS users and stakeholders, it is impossible to achieve daily stability. The process of receiving feedback and measuring the effectiveness of learning programs, learners and course facilitators is known as evaluation. In this article, we’ll share with you three types of evaluation you need to conduct through your LMS as surveys. Let’s explore each and examine some sample evaluation questions you can use in your own surveys. Learner Evaluation Questions This form of evaluation is extremely critical. The answers to the survey questions change with the competency level of the learners. Watch out for answers that rarely change or are pretty much the same for all survey participants. The following questions come highly recommended for learners. 1. Which were the most and the least useful items in this course? 2. Did you achieve the learning objectives of this course? If yes, what did you achieve and if no, what obstacles prevented you from achieving them? 3. What did you learn about your personal learning strategies when completing this course? Did you change as a learner during this course? 4. Do you feel this course has practical value in your life? If yes, where will you apply this knowledge? 5. How well did you participate in this course? Are you satisfied with your level and quality of participation? 6. Were you active and responsive in group participation? Did you contribute significantly to your group? 7. How would you evaluate your overall performance in this class? The goal here is to improve the course content and the course interactivity for the learner. Another goal is to make sure that learning is aligned with the learning needs and the expectations of the learner. Course and Facilitator Evaluation This type of survey is conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the facilitator or the mentor appointed to the course. The aim here to inform the practice of the current course facilitator. The results of this survey are supposed to change the way the course is moderated and the collaboration in the learning environment. 1. Did the course and the instructor meet your needs as a learner? 2. Do you agree with the method of instruction and course delivery? 3. Was the instructor responsive and sensitive to your needs, as well as the group’s? 4. What are your feelings towards online learning? 5. What were the strengths of this course and its participants? 6. What improvements would you recommend for this course? 7. What piece of advice will you give to future learners of this course? Again, the audience of this survey are the learners. This is yet another route to bring the eLearning program closer to the learner preferences. Program Evaluation This survey can be completed by anyone. But care must be taken to account the different roles that participate in the survey. The recommendations given by a program evaluator will be different from those of a learner or a course mentor. All three results should be treated separately. If possible, they can be triangulated to achieve a stronger change management plan for the upcoming eLearning programs. 1. Was the course site easy to access? If not, what would you recommend? 2. Was the course easy to navigate? If not, what would you recommend? 3. Do you have any concerns regarding the software used for various course activities? 4. Were you able to access the technical support? How would you rate the quality of the support you received? 5. Comment on the size of the online course. Was it too long or too short? 6. If you think the course should be expanded, what additional concepts should have been covered? 7. If the course needs to be trimmed down, what areas could be omitted? 8. What additional courses would you like to be offered? 9. What improvements would you recommend for this course? Developing online surveys is fairly simple, especially if you have a capable LMS. The trick is to ask the right questions in your survey, to get honest and unbiased feedback. Use these evaluation questions in your course surveys to obtain the preferences and suggestions of your learners. Improve your courses to create experiences that are deeper and meaningful to the learner.   The post Evaluation Questions for your LMS: Learner, Course and Program appeared first on TalentLMS Blog.

How do organizations achieve excellence? What major factors and key roles need to be considered when creating learning and development programs (L&D) that lead to excellence? In this article, we’ll share with you the primary factors and stakeholders that enable an organization to achieve excellence. By definition, excellence implies an above-standard quality of performance or work. Excellence is also recognized as a talent or a quality that exceeds all expectations. In a nutshell, excellence is all about doing your best; it’s about continuously raising standards; it’s about exceeding customer expectations. In order to achieve excellence, organizations need to adopt self-assessment tools. These tools should measure the degree of knowledge creation, development, dissemination and management that occurs in the organization. Research has indicated that knowledge is the single core factor that leads organizations to excellence. This includes, but is not limited to, lessons learned, experience sharing, peer mentoring and many other strategies that create organization-specific knowledge. Knowledge is the single core factor that leads organizations to excellence.Click To Tweet The next step after establishing organization-specific knowledge is benchmarking against best-practicing organizations. When you feel you are copying the best and the number one organizations, you may be carving your pathway towards excellence. Excellence is established through improvement. It is determined by measuring goal acquisition. Excellence requires taking a hard look at the knowledge assets of the company. According to the EFQM Model of Excellence, if organizations want to achieve different results, they need to change the way knowledge is being utilized within the organizational culture. To make this simple, consider a few questions to check whether an organization is moving towards excellence: · Is the organizational knowledge static or dynamic? · Who is responsible for creating the knowledge; the management or the general employees? · Who is responsible for sharing the knowledge; the trainers or all employees? · Which factors aid in decision making for the organization; consensus or key managers? · How current are the benchmarking practices? When was the last time a self - assessment tool was used? · How comfortable is the organization in adopting new ideas? · What about creativity? · How often do employees come up with new processes, procedures, and protocols? These questions will help you define the degree of inclination your organization has towards excellence. They can also help define the gaps in your learning and performance. A golden rule to remember is that knowledge is the driving force behind excellence. Knowledge is the driving force behind excellence.Click To Tweet In the current eBusiness environment, eLearning is the best method to enhance knowledge and awareness with employees. Apart from using interactive eLearning programs, social media can also be used to distribute chunks of updates to employees. The goal is to keep everyone updated at all times so that timely decisions and actions can be made to prevent disasters and failures. Another area worth researching within an organization is the lessons learned from failures. Employees should explain to their peers what went wrong, how it was solved, how the problem can be avoided and alternative solutions. This kind of analysis creates invaluable knowledge that is unique to an organization. It reveals the learning gaps and helps recommend eLearning courses that can minimize them. The EFQM Model uses nine dimensions to evaluate organizational excellence. Notice that each of these nine dimensions can be improved upon with the aid of eLearning training programs. Let’s determine how this is possible: 1. Leadership: Organizations have increasingly realized the value of leadership courses for all employees. Leadership values are directly linked with ethical practices. Business can improve operations only if employees receive regular leadership reminders through eLearning programs. 2. People: This dimension is related to the human knowledge capital. It deals with the degree to which employees receive professional development, are given creative freedom and are recognized for innovating ideas. In short, eLearning programs can be used to instill a positive organization culture. 3. Policy and Strategy: Online learning platforms offer the opportunity to create transparent policies and strategies that can be discussed and enhanced by employees. 4. Partnership and Resources: Organizing and utilizing resources as well as forming strategic partnerships are major decisions. These need to be well-informed decisions, therefore leadership teams must be well-versed in best practices, a task easily undertaken through eLearning programs. 5. Processes: eLearning programs for on-the-job-training and job-aids can explain processes much better than an oral demonstration by a fellow employee. In fact, simulations can be used to enable practice and error-correcting in a safe environment. 6. People Results: This is the evaluation stage of knowledge application by employees. It also helps measure the degree of satisfaction and morale improvement experienced by employees, after applying knowledge management and eLearning training programs in the organization. 7. Customer Results: This measures the level of customer satisfaction and trust in the organization as a result of improved knowledge management practices. 8. Society Results: The publicity, press and social media sentiments about the organization. 9. Key Performance Results: The overall performance is articulated with organizational strategic goals. If performances are not up to par, eLearning training can be prescribed and administered. Achieving excellence in a business requires constant eLearning development and distribution. Knowledge is a precursor of innovation. Use the questions in this article to measure whether your company is moving towards organizational excellence. Then prescribe eLearning programs to fill the learning gaps. The post Pathway to Excellence through eLearning Programs appeared first on TalentLMS Blog.