I've learned over the years that any major change is more likely to stick when you have accountability partners.Those really important friends who touch base and ask "So.....how's that THING going?"  With the tone that says "You're doing what you SAID you were gonna do.....right?"I've been very blessed to have a number of these accountability partners over the years.The friends who care enough to check.The friends who call out my excuses when I fail to practice the behavior I said I was going to change.The friends who remind me that I am making the change because the old way doesn't work.For me OR for them.I value my friends. Deeply.Their (occasionally constant) reminders that something just doesn't work eventually gets me to practice the hard emotional work of change.And since many of them are educators, they will tend to dig a little deeper.Mostly asking what caused me to regress.  Forcing me to reflect.Then asking me to try again.For which I am eternally grateful.------------------One of the members of the Up2Us community expanded this idea to our community.  This individual and another member of the community have been my accountability partners over the past year as I've tried to make some of my own changes (personal and not naming names - they know who they are and I am eternally grateful for their check ins and lengthy talks).Each Monday - he goes into our Slack channel and asks "So what are you going to do this week?"And the wider community responds with the activities they want to be held accountable for.On Friday - he returns.  "How did it go?"    And everybody shares their successes and failures and what they thought went right and wrong.I am finding that this exercise helps to expand the trust and connection we have built in the live events.  And for those who weren't able to make that year's event - it helps to maintain engagement in the community. Also to let them know that there is a corner of the world they can go to with cheerleaders as they walk through their own journey.Two simple questions.So what are you going to do?How did it go? So powerful.

Gamification in the workplace - enterprise gamification - uses game elements to drive employee performance. Employee performance KPIs are measured in real time - like a Fitbit for work - showing where employees are doing better, having them compete with their goals and past achievements. It is made to drive intrinsic motivation, the sense of mastery and control that comes when we know we are doing our job well. Yet, most people think of workforce gamification as a thin game veneer applied to work, a "video game at work" that attempts to create motivation through points and badges, bells and whistles. And then, almost immediately, they disbelieve gamification. They are right - making work cute or "fun" or "game-like" doesn’t work, but using gamification like a fitness tracker for work works well, changing more than performance and affecting the culture of thinking and talking about employee performance. Here are five key elements of what workforce gamification really is:  1. Real-Time Performance Management Performance management is a good idea: set goals and measure their achievement. The problem is that most performance management practices involve setting of annual goals, which soon become stale. In addition, communication with employees about performance is marred by the practice of ranking employee performance - which people (naturally, of course) find threatening, confrontational and discouraging. So in practice, many companies are eliminating or re-assessing their performance management practices. How is gamification different? Gamification focuses on the here and now. Imagine a basketball coach who skids along the court, following his team as they invest all their body strength and skills to fight off opponents’ scores, and keep up their offensive within the team. The coach throws out his feedback in real-time so his players can fix their mistakes on the spot. If his point guard is taking too many shots in the first quarter, his coach will have him back on the right track by the end of the second. Gamification brings this dynamic to your employees’ performance. Feedback is given on-the-spot, by showing performance KPIs and personalized benchmarks and goals within the gamification application, so employees can rectify flaws in real-time, instead of thru retroactive feedback that is weeks or months late. 2. Objective and Fair New management practices are gravitating away from subjective evaluation of employees, and more in the direction of objective and proactive development of employees. What this brings is a positive process that reflects both to employees and their managers how employees are progressing and which goals are being met, and transparently so. Research about performance management shows that managers are often unaware of the fact that their evaluations are subjective; measuring KPIs in real time can correct this. In this case, there are spillover effects into corporate culture - when evaluation is objective and fair, people feel differently about work and about whether their efforts and performance will be fairly recognized. Gamification also reflects insights and results to employees (and managers) that effectively enable them to make changes in their work performance. In many cases, in case performance in a certain area is lacking, employees are directed to micro-learning so that they can correct their course and improve their expertise. 3. Performance Measurement is Transparent Many successful tech companies (Google, Intel, Linkedin and others) use OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to communicate goals and objectives to employees. Results are tracked - and people can see the OKRs of their peers. This is a new degree of transparency. OKRs are used by knowledge workers (product managers, developers, communications managers, etc.), and remain transparent to all their peers, so that every employee in the organization can see what every other employee is working on and setting as a priority. Gamification is OKR for the workforce: rank and file employees, who don’t have goals like ‘launch new product’, ‘have a successful beta launch’ but are required to perform within certain benchmarks expected of them. It lets the relevant employee to see how they are doing in comparison to their fellow colleagues, and in what fields they are performing better or worse than those colleagues. This instills a sense of fairness, and a clarity on what employees are supposed to focus on at work. It also lets companies set individualized goals, so that what is expected of employees is fair and achievable. 4. Drive the Right Things: Behavior Competition is often viewed as a positive motivation method. Well, for many people it isn’t and can even be perceived as a source of unfairness. Sales managers tend to believe in this fallacy and want to manage performance with leaderboards. Projecting different employee’s successes to one another on mediums like a leaderboard and showing actual sales isn’t a good idea. It’s true that sales are the objective, yet this isn’t what should be motivated, but rather the activities that drive sales. To generate better sales, gamification would want to drive behaviors and measure them: more calls, qualifying leads, meeting potential and existing clients, etc. 5. Gamification Isn’t a Game What is the "game" part of gamification? It is the use of game mechanics - like calling out to employees to bet on themselves, showing them completion bars and more - to drive behavior and engagement. Gamification creates a way for employees to monitor their progress at the workplace and act from a place of intrinsic motivation. In this, it isn’t a game, but it can be a game changer for work performance and culture.

We’re proud to announce that we have been named "Top Selling Tool of 2016" by Smart Selling Tools, a leading analyst and consulting firm in sales and marketing technology. Smart Selling Tools founder Nancy Nardin, formerly with Gartner and IDC, is a nationally recognized thought leader on sales and marketing productivity tools. You can access the Top Selling Tool report here. Nardin told us the following "We’re excited about including GamEffective as a top player in the Sales Performance and Gamification category. GamEffective focuses on motivations that drive performance in real-time. We like that it avoids the pitfalls of typical gamification solutions that reward the top tenth percent and discourage the rest. Their approach of setting personalized goals and tracking them in real time is what will drive middle performers to do better. We also like the strong integration with elearning, to drive better compliance, training and new product knowledge". To learn more about GamEffective for Sales, request a demo or, get our CRM Gamification White Paper , or check out these posts: Don’t Target Top or Bottom Performers: Move the Middle It’s not about the cash Five sales gamification leaderboard mistakes and how to fix them

April is Financial Literacy Month. Financial literacy is one of the literacies our students need to succeed. Financial and economic literacy are about understanding the importance of making appropriate economic choices on a personal level, as well as understanding the connection that personal, business, and governmental decisions have on individuals, society, and the economy. How can you ensure students master the financial literacy skill-set?The PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Charitable Foundation offers a online comprehensive financial literacy program designed for students in grades 3-12. The content of the program is aligned with the Council for Economic Educators standards.Students engage with financial literacy concepts through innovative self-paced modules featuring custom videos, animations, and interactive activities. The curriculum is called Earn Your Future Digital Lab. The modules are broken up into three levels-- Beginner, Intermediate, and Advance. Each set of modules include items of interest to students at their level. (The beginner level for grades 3-5 will not be launched until fall of 2016.)Here is a screenshot of the modules for the Intermediate Level.Intermediate level financial literacy modulesI logged in as a student and picked intermediate module three, "Can I Afford a Phone?" The module can be completed all in one sitting, or students can go back to a section later to finish it.I completed the module using a laptop computer, but then went back and tested it with an iPad. Everything seemed to function perfectly on the tablet. Of course, since the site is Web-based, it should work fine with Chromebook and the Surface, too.The module started off with a video of a clever texting session between a teenager and their parent. During the texting session, the parent gives the responsibility to their teenager to do the research for the best phone and also to figure out the costs of affording a new phone.The module continues with sound advice on how the student might proceed and offers a commonsense plan on how the teenager might approach the problem. This is followed up with a quiz about spending and budgets to gauge what the student already knows. After answering each question, the student is provided with additional information if they answer incorrectly but also with clarifying information if they answer correctly.The next component of the module is very engaging. Students pick an avatar to "become" the teenager who wants the cell phone. This is followed up with a checklist of tasks to research the phone purchase (with a pop-up for each item) and time is left for reflection by the student and a short two-question quiz.The module then moves into teaching the budgeting process so students can apply the process to the teenager's research. The students can utilize the included calculator tool to determine if the teenager can successfully create a budget that allows him to purchase the new smartphone. There is a computation piece included with some simple math problems and a review of income vs. fixed expenses vs. variable expenses. There is a fun final activity that allows the students to build a balanced budget for the teenager. The interesting part is, as the student eliminates unnecessary expenses, there are pop-ups with unexpected expenses or income, like a library fine or income from babysitting. This component truly simulates what this is like in real-life and teaches the students the difference between wanting something and being able to afford it.There is a wrap-up of the module with a nice overview of the processes taught and including some extension tips for dealing with budgeting throughout their lives for purchasing a home, saving for retirement, etc.The final component of the module is the post-test, which includes several types of summative assessments. The post test should only take about ten minutes, and, at the completion, the student earns a badge to show the module is completed. The Advanced modules, intended for high school students, also include real-life videos starring teenagers. This makes the modules even more engaging for the students.After the student has completed the modules, the site also provides additional resources to build-upon the skills practiced in the program including planning for college, home buying, risk management and insurance, planning and money management, and more.SET-UP PROCESSTo give students access to the site, the teacher or home school parent creates a teacher account on the site.Once logged-in, the teacher creates a default password for all of the student accounts. When a default password is set, students will be asked to create a personal password on their first login.Student names can be entered manually or uploaded via a CSV file.The teacher then creates a class and picks students to add to the class.Teachers then provides students with the the URL to the PwC Charitable Foundation Earn Your Future Digital Lab site, their username and the default password. Students can log-in to the site and work on the modules.One suggestion, to make sure students stay on task and complete the modules they pick to complete is to have the student print out their "badges" page which will show the completed modules.SUMMARY The PwC Charitable Foundation Earn Your Future program is brand new and additional features are planned for the near future. These include handbooks and module planning tools for the teacher and the ability to provide feedback to students via embedded assessment tools.If you want to engage your students in learning more about personal finances, whether in April or throughout the year, the PwC Charitable Foundation curriculum, Earn Your Future, is a wonderful way to engage students and help them practice and learn useful, life-long skills!This is a sponsored post on behalf of We Are Teachers and the PwC Charitable Foundation. I received compensation for this post, however all opinions stated are my own.  Visit Kathy's Web pages: Kathy Schrock's Home Page Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything

Greetings! Here are a few additions to my Edtech Archive, a compilation of over 8000 free educational resources. 20150415 art, animation, games, gifs: Adult Swim - a pretty [...] The post Additions to the Edtech Archive 46 appeared first on Many Pebbles, One Pond: The EdTech Archive.

Greetings! Here are a few additions to the Edtech Archive, a listing of over 8000 free educational resources with an eye to making the lives [...] The post Additions to the Edtech Archive 47 appeared first on Many Pebbles, One Pond: The EdTech Archive.

  It’s good to be Tesla.  With pre-orders for the yet to be release Model 3 over 325,000, each with a $1,000 reservation fee, Tesla just "crowd-sourced" over $325 million.  Pretty Impressive.  If all of these orders transfer into sales, then Tesla will make somewhere around $14 Billion in revenue.  More Impressive.  However, while the analysts might be oohing and ahhing over Tesla’s production facility and these orders, actually producing them might be a little more daunting.  In what may be the understatement of the year, CEO Elon Musk tweeted, "Definitely going to need to rethink production planning…"   Rethink might be appropriate for a genius like Musk, but his team is probably freaking out.  I used to do capacity and production planning for Ford’s largest North American assembly plant, so I have an idea of what they need to do, and if they aren’t worried, they should be.  Forbes put some of this into perspective the other day with a "Be Careful What You Wish For" article, and at a high level, it doesn’t look pretty, but when you dive into the details, it’s downright ugly.  Here’s why:   Tesla has a current stated capacity of 100,000 units per year, which, we’ll assume is a straight time capacity (no overtime factored in).  For planning purposes, the number of production days in an automotive assembly plant is around 240 [365 days/yr - 104 days (weekends) - 8 days (holidays) - 4 days (typical Christmas/New Year break) - 9 days (summer shutdown) = 240].  This is the baseline number of days.  Tesla could choose to operate on certain weekends, not take shutdown periods, etc. but those would all be incremental to baseline capacity.  The baseline is what is used to set up operations, supply chain requirements, etc.  There must be a baseline.   Not knowing the shift pattern, let’s assume they run 2 shifts at 8 hours per shift, or 16 production hours per day.  16 hours per day at 240 days per year yields 3,840 hours per year available for production.  That means, Tesla currently can produce and report around 26 units per hour (UPH) in the final assembly area.  With 5% over speed (pretty standard in the industry), that means they are running at 27.3 UPH in final (faster in Paint, Body & Stamping - assuming the same shift pattern), or producing a vehicle every 2.19 minutes (131.67 seconds).  Everything is designed to support this volume - supply chain, equipment, work stations, staffing, maintenance schedules, etc.   Now, here’s where things get interesting.  If we say that Tesla needs to produce 300,000 units per year, the numbers change just a little bit…   Required UPH in Final is now 78.1, or 82 UPH with over speed.  That equates to producing a vehicle every 0.73 minutes, or every 43.89 seconds.  It’s one thing to produce a vehicle every 2 minutes or so, but it is a completely different game to produce one every 44 seconds. [Note: should they go to a full overtime model (2 shifts at 10 hours each), the UPH requirements drop from 78.1/82 to 62.5/65.6, or a vehicle every 55 seconds.  Either way, a significant change.]   Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is faster.  And not just a little bit, but a lot.  The supply chain issues alone can bring a plant to it’s knees.  Delivery trucks are in and out faster, sequencing becomes critical, work station balances must be precise or people will stumble over each other, robots and other machines move faster, and there are more of them, quality, both internal and supplier, must be tight; everything must be designed to support this.   What before were minor issues quickly become major issues.  For example, a 5-minute breakdown today would result in about 2.3 jobs "lost" in production (around $80,500 in revenue).  In the future, 5 minutes means 6.8 jobs "lost" (around $238,000 in revenue). [note: breakdowns are why you have over speed, but clearly, the numbers add up much quicker]   It just happens faster.  Everything accelerates - including the stress on the workforce and the company to deliver.  The culture is different.  It is hard to understand just how much more difficult this environment will be to work in and produce the quality Tesla’s customers will expect.   I’ve worked in a plant that operated at 45 UPH, and the same one at 80 UPH, and let me tell you, life was much easier at 45 UPH…   Now, some of the pressure can be alleviated by modifying the production environment, for example, by adding a second final line (back departments may still struggle), which can spread the production risk.  Of course, that means more equipment, more synchronization, and more people.  There are also alternatives at a high level - Tesla could build another factory.  They could delay delivery to customers.  They could run a lot of over time, change shift patterns to operate 7 days a week, sacrificing preventive maintenance plans, and employee satisfaction (really only a short-term solution, and given the level of automation and number of robots, probably not a wise decision to reduce PM).  Or some other creative solution.   Regardless, this will be a challenge as large as Everest.   Now, Tesla has a lot of smart people to figure this out (I hope), and I do believe they will.  But if anyone thinks it will be easy or fast, they are sadly mistaken.   Musk stated in 2014, "People don’t quite understand how hard it is to manufacture something.  It is really hard."  Well, if he thinks it’s hard now… just wait..

In their book Conquering the Seven Summits of Sales, business experts and elite mountain climbers Susan Ershler and John Waechter examine the parallels between climbing the Seven Summits, the seven tallest mountains on each of the seven continents, and journeying to the peak of sales performance. The authors explore the key aspects of successful sales campaigns, and provide insights and practical approaches that will help sales professionals reach their goals and resolve obstacles in highly competitive marketplaces. The methods, skills, and perspectives needed to accomplish revenue objectives are illustrated using anecdotes based on the authors’ experiences conquering formidable mountains, including Mount Everest. According to the authors: Staying ahead of the competition requires perseverance, self-motivation, positivity, and a reliable network of support. With the right perspectives and resources, sales leaders can always be prepared to conquer the next sales summit. By projecting ambitious visions of success and establishing objectives that will help achieve those visions, sales leaders come one step closer to reaching their personal sales summits. Objectives should be both ambitious and practical. When creating objectives, sales leaders should eliminate non-essential tasks from their workflows, focus on duties that contribute to the fruition of their visions, set priorities, and aim for personal and professional balance. Careful planning ensures that objectives will be completed successfully. To plan mindful goals, leaders must review past performances, educate themselves about their businesses and services, and research potential targets and marketplaces. Pushy sales tactics are not the key to sales success. Sales leaders must strive to be guides, like the individuals who lead groups on mountain climbing expeditions. Guides endeavor to provide customers with knowledge and the right services, an approach that will make everyone involved in the campaign successful. No climbers should attempt to climb the Seven Summits alone. Similarly, sales leaders should not try to close deals by themselves. Instead, they should appoint people with the right skills and perspectives to ensure the success of the sales operation. When it is time to create new sales strategies, The Competitive Sales Route (TCSR), a comprehensive step-by-step process, can help sales teams carry out efficient and organized campaigns. To learn more, please visit http://www.bizsum.com

Leadership development dollars are a precious resource in any organization. And leadership development programs that fail to create a clear ROI are unlikely to make it into next year’s budget. So it makes sense that you wouldn’t make snap decisions about how you handle leadership development. But maybe you should. Your leadership development efforts should be: Strategic Needs based Appropriate to your organization Professionally supported In other words, SNAP! Here’s our four-step guide to making great SNAP decisions on leadership development training.   Strategic Leadership development isn’t merely a "feel good" activity, and it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Effective leadership development is aligned with your organization’s goals and overall strategy. It answers the question "How are we going to make sure our managers can carry out our strategy?" So the first step in choosing leadership development programs is to consider your business strategy. Are you focused on innovations, cost control or acquisitions? Whatever your strategy, your leadership development efforts should support that strategy. Which brings us to the second essential element.   Needs based Leadership development fills the gap between your employees’ current leadership capabilities and the capabilities needed to execute a business strategy. Once you have a firm grip on the business strategy, it’s time to consult with key business leaders to understand what those gaps may be. For example, in a company that’s trying to control costs, process improvement may be a critical need. That in turn may mean that employees need help working together in cross-functional teams, re-engineering existing processes to make them more or efficient, or adjusting to new ways of working. One simple, but effective way to determine what your organization’s leadership development needs are is to have a series of conversations with key business leaders. You can find out from there where their managers and teams are falling short. At the same time, but linking these capability gaps to business strategy and that business unit’s needs, you help build support for leadership training. After you’ve had those conversations, you may want to deconstruct those needs even more and consider what individual elements, or combination of elements, are critical. This might include assessments, for example, to help individuals better understand their own strengths and weaknesses around key functions, such as decision making. And it could also include simulations, to help people practice new ways of working together and new ideas before they apply them in day-to-day business activities. These leadership development offerings, though, will only be effective if they’re tailored to be appropriate for your organization.     Appropriate to your organization Every organization is different. Some have employees scattered across many locations. Others are filled with managers and decision makers who travel frequently. Ensuring your training activities are appropriate to your company is critical. When thinking about what’s appropriate, you might consider: Your industry. If your company is in financial services or pharmaceuticals, for example, will the leadership development program be appropriate? Has it been used for your industry before? Logistics. Will you need to get everyone in the same place to administer the program? Or can you do some or all of the program virtually? Expertise. Do you have the in-house knowledge (and time!) to run these programs yourself, or will you hire a consultant? These ‘appropriateness’ factors will help you zero in on what kinds of leadership development programs and resources will be most effective for your organization. You now probably have a pretty good idea of what you need in a leadership development program. But there is one more critical element that can make the difference between failure and success: Support.   Professionally supported Whatever leadership development program you put in place, don’t go it alone. It’s likely that you’ll choose from assessments, simulations and other program elements to construct your program. What kind of support will you have for implementing those tools effectively? When looking at providers, you should ask about: Data. Is there data available that will allow you to compare your employees to industry norms? Training. Effectively implementing a leadership development tool isn’t as simple as putting a standardized test in front of an employee. Can your provider deliver the training you need to get the most value out of the leadership development tool? As you consider the leadership development options available to you, making a "SNAP decision" ensures you that you’ll get a positive ROI from your investment. Want to learn more about how to make your development program a success? Download our white paper on best practicesfor using simulations in leadership development The post Why you should make snap decisions on leadership development appeared first on Discovery Learning Inc..

I cringe when I hear leaders talk about teaching trust. Trust is a deeply personal decision. As a learning facilitator, I can provide facts, figures, data, articles, blogs and infographics, but it all comes down to the personal choice each individual makes based on how much risk they will tolerate to build trust. Trust has two components: 1) I choose whether to trust another and 2) that individual chooses whether to trust me.   Four combos are possible :   As shared earlier in our "Power Of You" workshop testimonials, "I learned I cannot change others, I can only change myself." The first step is to start building trust in Self. If you do not trust, the other person will know it even if you think you are amazing at faking it. In the March LearningFlash, I shared our High Performing Team pyramid. To build your trust in others requires: Alignment / Clarity of Roles (see next topic)Accountability: do what you said you would do and/or apologize when you make mistakes, and hold others accountableLeverage your team and personal strengthsHave a clear sense of team and self purpose: Vision, Mission and Values   The other person can choose to do whatever they want, but when an authentic person taking the risk to connect reaches out, it is a lot more difficult to pull away.