This week’s Fierce resource was originally published on the Harvard Business Review, and explores how empowering the lone wolves in your organization can actually fuel your team’s success.Leaders are tasked to find ways to constantly innovate, otherwise they risk falling behind the competition into obscurity. Yet in the search for the next great idea, they still cling to workplace cultures that promote conformity and alienate the troublemakers.History has shown that the world’s most prolific visionaries are often labeled rabble-rousers, disrupters, heretics, and radicals. Even Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds of the 21st century, was labeled a troublemaker by a teacher.In order to promote original thinkers and innovators in your organization, you first need to build a culture of inclusion. It starts with empowering your employees to speak up. Learn how one junior officer in the U.S. Navy transformed the ultimate bastion of bureaucracy into a culture of innovation.Are you ready to light the match of rebellion?"Kohlmann lit the match by creating the navy’s first rapid-innovation cell—a network of original thinkers who would collaborate to question long-held assumptions and generate new ideas. To start assembling the group, he searched for black sheep: people with a history of nonconformity. One recruit had been fired from a nuclear submarine for disobeying a commander’s order. Another had flat-out refused to go to basic training."Read the article.The post Fierce Resource: How to Build a Culture of Originality appeared first on Fierce, Inc..

When you look at your life - at home and at work - what is one thing you do that makes your heart sing? Is it learning to speak a new language? Spending quality time with your partner? Volunteering? Reading more books?It is your job to make time for that thing. No one else will. You can point and say that you are too busy at work, or the kids take that time, or you are too tired. And no one is going to prioritize your time for you except you. It isn’t an easy task to make the time for what is most important.When I think about this internal challenge, I always think of what Iain Thomas said:And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, ‘This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this!’ "And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, "No. This is what’s important.'" - Iain ThomasSo I ask: What do you need to yank your hand back from? This week’s tip is to say "no" to what gets in your way. As Seth Godin said recently in his blog, "The short run always seems urgent, and a moment where compromise feels appropriate. But in the long run, it’s the good ‘no’s that we remember."So, what are you going to say no to this week? The post Fierce Tip of the Week: Say "No" More appeared first on Fierce, Inc..

We live in a time where everyone is visible more than ever before — now we can even see how far our reach extends with profile views, shares, tweets, and "likes." In a world where every failure, frustration, and triumph is publicly recognized online, an unexpected yet poignant result is that conversely, many of us feel less "seen," both in the workplace and at home. According to a 2011 Workforce Mood Tracker Survey, 69 percent of employees would work harder if they were recognized more often in the workplace. Recognition is inspiring and if we had more of it, we’d probably work harder with our families and friends as well.As more and more people compete for attention and appreciation in the workplace and beyond, there is a silent undercurrent brewing, an epidemic of people not feeling acknowledged or seen for their valuable contributions. This is where our friend and foe, technology, lurks - it can both help us and hurt us. Human desires, in this case, being "seen," provide tremendous potential for technology companies. And then apps like Peeple appear on the scene. In fact, on Peeple’s website it states their mission is: Revolutionizing the way we’re seen in the world, through our relationships.If you haven’t heard about it, Peeple was initially announced as the "Yelp for humans" in October 2015, then outrage ensued due to its controversial approach. The idea of rating people or arguably being falsely "seen" set the internet on fire. John Oliver on Last Week Tonight even launched a site to counter Peeple called ScreamIntoTheVoid.com, where users can type all of the non-productive and hateful comments about people and then the comments disappear. Oliver’s jab is well-noted. If your comment is not moving anyone forward, sometimes it may be better to keep it to yourself. In other words, how you superficially see someone may not be that important.When examining apps like this, the bigger picture question is still: What is the value of being seen versus being truly understood? Do you need more visibility today or something deeper? As Joseph Pine stated in the Experience Economy, "The experience of being understood, versus interpreted, is so compelling you can charge admission." What apps like Peeple fail to address is our underlying need to be truly understood by one another. We are seeing a whole lot…without truly "seeing."Entrepreneurs today who focus on going deeper and creating more understanding in our world will earn, attract, and retain more. More people. More dollars. More likes and more shares.We all truly crave being seen. And perhaps that can’t be quantified by number of connections, likes, or recommendations. It comes from being authentic and sharing the value you have with another - human to human.The post Spearheading Employee Recognition: Welcome to the Age of Being Seen appeared first on Fierce, Inc..

This week’s Fierce resource was originally published on Forbes and explores how men and women have similar priorities when it comes to valuing work-life balance.Work-life balance has been a hot-button topic for years and conventional wisdom tells us that women struggle the most with juggling work and personal responsibilities. But a recent national study by Bain & Company is bringing new issues to light. Researchers found that nearly equal numbers of women and men want to prioritize family and life outside of work over career progression.How successful is your organization at integrating work and life? Source: http://www.forbes.comThe post Fierce Resource: Why Work-Life Balance Isn’t Just a Women’s Issue Anymore appeared first on Fierce, Inc..

Steve Jobs once said, "You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." I have always been intrigued by his statement, because the "something" he references seems very juicy. And it is an internal thing. Everyone can have it. So what makes some people have "it"? How do some people know they have "it"? Why do some people seem to always be searching for "it"?This idea came up for me again last week when we kicked off our 2016 Fierce Lunch & Learn Series. Happiness expert and best-selling author, Neil Pasricha, talked with our team about his recently launched book, The Happiness Equation. The premise is to take common ideals about happiness and use research and tangible tips to help people be happier in their lives. One of the biggest takeaways for me was around how we create happiness in our lives. He shared that the common misconception is people think that if they do great work, then they have big success, and then they will be happy. That’s what we are all raised to think. However, he makes the case to flip it. You need to be happy first. After you choose to be happy, you then do great work, and then you have big successes.So make your own luck by focusing on your happiness. Because the research shows that we need to invest in ourselves first - we must make the choice to be happy. Pasricha gave some proven ways to do this from journaling twenty minutes a night to taking at least three twenty minute walks in a week. These are very easy ways to invest in your happiness.Neil’s message was a good nudge for me. I consider myself a pretty happy individual, and yet, I don’t have a plan for my happiness. I have plans for everything under the sun for my team members, for our marketing initiatives, for my fitness, for travel. My goal is to be more intentional about my happiness, and I will start with adding more meditation in my routine. (Yes, it is a fact, meditation does makes you happier.)This week’s tip is to make your own luck by focusing on your happiness. So, what are going to do?The post Fierce Tip of the Week: Make Your Own Luck appeared first on Fierce, Inc..

It is with great sadness that we have to announce that having designed, developed and run the only NLP based Masters degree in the world for the last 14 years, we have to say good bye to it. We have had over 400 international graduates through 4 universities, and once again the university and political system have terminated our course, this time due to restructuring and more importantly a loss of HEFC funding. Although we find this incredible as our course provides a net contribution to university coffers, we can no longer negotiate with a system which is so much larger than ourselves, and which does not support commercial enterprise.  There is a glimmer of hope in one further university taking this forward, although they cannot cope with it until 2017 at the earliest. Sadly therefore, our current cohort is the last, and we wish them every success with their dissertations. In future we are still offering post graduate level qualifications; ILM Level 7 Coaching and Mentoring, ILM Level 7 Coach Supervision as well as the Professional qualifications - Accredited Coach Training Programme from the ICF, and the Advanced Accredited Diploma in Coaching from the Association of Coaching. All of these qualifications are coaching specific rather than NLP top ups. We offer the NLP qualifications separately. We hope to see you on our courses, and we are very proud of all our Masters degree graduates, some of whom have continued onto Doctoral programmes. Well done!   The post End of an era … appeared first on The Performance Solution.

Most content are unnatural. It emanates from a higher plain with an objective source and is written in a perfect world. Hence most content is not understood by people. On the other hand, certain content that people understand may not be really recognized immediately as content. These are ordinary things we see, feel, touch, smell and use every day.Factual vs Real-Life Content  ̶  Which One Works?When unnatural content is taught, this results in unnatural learning and consequences that  are highly ineffectual. Likewise, they are costly. Most of all, they fail on the job because it is not based on reality (unnatural content) and therefore beyond the reach or comprehension of people intending to use them.But why does content tend to be unnatural instead of natural? What can be done about it?Move Away from Factual Learning into Reality LearningThe natural way people learn is through the wholistic approach. This means that as we learn, we strive to understand the whole and not just the parts. I spoke of SLOMO learning in a previous tip because we need to slow down our thought process and look at the whole picture. We lead our minds to think of facts and events and make our own interpretations of things as fused and connected items.This is automatic and unconscious. One's natural tendency is to look at things in its totality. The disconnect starts when we talk about facts separate from events or events separate from facts. And when we talk about such items, we inhibit or disallow learners to have the opportunity to reflect and form their own interpretation. The disconnect happens because designers are in a "reality distortion" mode.Have you seen the movie/documentary, Steve Jobs? Steve Jobs has the habit of being cocooned in his own world because he creates distorted realities. The best part is, he succeeds in bringing his audiences and customers to believe in another reality. Many of them follow him. They buy into a dream, a new reality that Jobs has created in their minds. The distortion becomes productive when customers purchase the product and the experience is fulfilled. However, it fails badly when customers do not experience the promised distorted reality.In learning design, we distort reality without realizing it. How do we do that? In a manner that we present content that is far from real-life. We tell the learner to learn content as if it is separate from reality and experience. The consequence of this is that, we stress on recalling the facts. So we make them memorize and let them take a series of tests.Practical Tips in Design and Development of ContentJust like Steve Jobs, we seduce our learners. In a similar fashion, we appeal to the human experience. Technology and content are just mediums.Seduction today in learning is done with massive efforts through bells and whistles of e-learning. They are not wrong solutions. Yet, when used to seduce learners to learn facts, these tools become ill-used or underutilized. Examples are over-investments in videos, gamification, social interaction, exercises, assessments, etc.Remember, these are only tools to help keep our learners learning. We need to reflect back on the idea that learners look at the whole world and do not split facts and events. They create their own interpretations. Here are four practical tips in design and content development:1. Always add context and meaning in real-life related to the fact. This will automatically lead the learner to his/her natural learning tendency which is the wholistic approach. This will prevent the disconnect between content and reality.2. Start with context, not facts. Avoid making the learners memorize volumes of information that are disconnected from reality. Doing this will provide meaning and help learners to value the facts. 3. Write in the way that learners talk about the content. You immediately connect to your audience if you avoid using technical jargons and instead develop your contents in the context of their own conversations of the topic. 4. Ask learners a question always as part of your content.The purpose is to encourage learners to quickly create their own interpretation of the fact and events. Facts and events are foreign and unknown or removed from the learners until they reflect on them.Until they create their own insights, learners are not applying or understanding the content.Start by asking, "What would happen if you are unable to use this content?""What would happen if your are unable to discover the fraudulent transactions ahead of time?""What would happen if you are able to detect and prevent the fraudulent transaction ahead of time?"In the above examples, you immediately invite the learners to understand the fact and content.ConclusionCurrently, there is a disconnect between content and reality. Learners find it hard to comprehend and apply content to real-life situations. The solution to this predicament is to apply the four tips in design and content development.References  Ray Jimenez. Stop That Dump Truck! Ask Questions to Know What is Important for Learners Ray Jimenez. Slow-Mo Learning is Faster   Ray Jimenez. Creative Musing   Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

The debate between Direct Instruction vs Discovery Learning is not new. It has been around. However, the amazing part is, it still rages on. Should we let the trainers and designers take control of the learning process or should we transfer the steering wheels to the learners? There is no easy answer.Direct Instruction vs Discovery LearningAccording to Jean Piaget, the father of discovery learning, interfering with discovery blocks complete understanding. Therefore, discovery learning should be the preferred way to learn.A. Faye Borthick and Donald R. Jones emphasized the advantage of collaboration in discovery learning and the sense of community that results from it.  They opined that, "In discovery learning, participants learn to recognize a problem, characterize what a solution would look like, search for relevant information, develop a solution strategy, and execute the chosen strategy. In collaborative discovery learning, participants, immersed in a community of practice, solve problems together."On the other hand, experts like Paul A. Kirschner, John Sweller and Richard E. Clark are strongly in favor of Direct Instruction. According to them, "learners should be provided with direct instructional guidance on the concepts and procedures required by a particular discipline and should not be left to discover those procedures by themselves."Personally, I prefer Discovery Learning but I also acknowledge that there are situations where Direct Instruction is the better approach.How Do We Provide Information and Still Make Learning a Discovery Rather than Telling the Learner?Tita Beal who is an Instructional Designer with the American Management Association posed this challenge, "How then can we guide learners toward a skill model, conceptual framework, correct procedure or other "answers" while still providing opportunities to discover, use inductive reasoning and give a sense of ownership over - and therefore more commitment to apply - the learning? In short, how and when do we provide the information and still make learning a discovery lesson rather than telling the learner?"According to Beal, this is an example of direct instruction: "stop and think before responding to identify the stage of the change process -- denial, resistance, acceptance even if grudging orfull commitment?I believe a third option is in order:I usually use the embedded model. This means that in a Story-Based eLearning lesson, I design an event so that the learners need to access a reference guide to find the answers to the problem they are solving in the event.      An example event might be: Compare that to Beal's "stop and think before responding to identify the stage of the change process - denial, resistance, acceptance even if grudging or full commitment?We keep on creating events to help learners discover the content in real life.   You can always provide a link to show learners the key ideas. My suggestion would be to rewrite the content in a way that relates to your scenario.For example: (as an Insight)Why does Gigi suspect Joe's views? What are the consequences if Gigi continues to deny, resist and not accept her tasks/role/etc. as demanded by the situation? On the other hand what would be the benefits if Gigi opens her mind to accept and commit?Observe, that your content is still integrated within the insight. But it is in a story form and related to the decisions that your learners can relate to.ConclusionWhile the debate between Direct Instruction and Discovery Learning rages on, I believe we can come up with a third option where we provide instructions to the learners while keeping the learning process as a discovery scenario. Embedding insight into the content designed in a form of a story, makes it natural for the learners to relate to.References A. Faye Borthick and Donald R. Jones. The Motivation for Collaborative Discovery Learning  Online and Its Application in an Information Systems Assurance Course. Georgia State  University.    Paul A. Kirschner , John Sweller & Richard E. Clark. Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based,Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching. Educational Psychologist.   William W. Cobern, et.al. Experimental Comparison of Inquiry and Direct Instruction in Science.   Jean Piaget, Wikipedia  Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

In my previous tip, I mentioned that learners struggle to focus because there's just too much stimuli that competes to grab their attention. The solution is to make our content or story snappy, relevant and cholesterol-free. In short, cut the crap!!!Top Reasons to Simplify ContentLearner/User Experience - As I previously mentioned, varied stimuli tug at learners' attention. Whether you're writing a story or just plain learning content, if it does not stand out, forget about getting an audience. When designing content, you have to make it grab the learners' attention upon eye contact.Business/Corporate Reasons - Simplifying your content makes you polish your message. This means saying only what is relevant to your learner and avoiding unnecessary repetition. Being less verbose conveys the message that you mean business because you don't waste your word and consequently, your learner's time. Extra Benefits - The added benefit of snappy story creation is that there are less chances of making mistakes. Reducing your content/story to what only matters to your learners means you edit less.Cutting the Crap out of Your Story-based e-Learning ContentWriting a snappy story means the removal of what is gratuitously present in it. It means cutting out what is there for no reason at all. When doing it, ask yourself these questions:Will my story stand without this part? If the answer to this question is yes, then that part of your story has to go. In the words of scriptwriter Paul Peditto, "Look to the dialogue you wrote in the first rough draft. Look at it with an unflinching eye. What can be cut? Cut it. Does the scene still make sense? If the answer is yes, it stays cut. If you've left something out that has to go back in, then in it goes. That's the true measure of what's necessary: Does the scene make sense without it?" Should I include this part? Often times it's not a question of whether you could include a thing or not. It's more a question of should it be included? Stuffing your content to convolution just to make it look meaty only adds to confusion. You don't need to prove that you have a lot of things to say, just get to the point.  What will the learners think? Considering what the learners will think of your content/story will make you design it from their perspective. Always remember that you are not there to prove that you're "deep" but to connect with the learners.In his article SCRIPT GODS MUST DIE: Writing Dialogue - The Cut Instinct, Paul Peditto gives an excellent example of how to cut the crap out of your story. I believe the same principle is applicable when designing plain content. Take a look at the dialogue excerpt and observe how he simplified it.He reduced it to this: Did you notice how the dialogue became snappy, relevant and cholesterol-free? Conclusion Simplifying your content is a conscious design choice. It means getting into the shoes of your learners and including only what you have thoroughly assessed and determined they really need. What's not  necessary is dropped and what is retained are only the stuff that matters. I'm not a martial arts artist, but the words of Bruce Lee resonates when he said "absorb what is useful, reject what is useless." References Speider Schneider. The Secrets Of Successful Website Content. March 7, 2014.   Richa Jain. When Less is More - Why Minimalism STILL Rules the Web. June 29, 2015   Paul Peditto. SCRIPT GODS MUST DIE: Writing Dialogue - The Cut Instinct. July 1, 2015.  Ray Jimenez. Minimalist Story-Based eLearning Lesson Grabs Learner.   Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

Most content are unnatural. It emanates from a higher plain with an objective source and is written in a perfect world. Hence most content is not understood by people. On the other hand, certain content that people understand may not be really recognized immediately as content. These are ordinary things we see, feel, touch, smell and use every day.Factual vs Real-Life Content  ̶  Which One Works?When unnatural content is taught, this results in unnatural learning and consequences that  are highly ineffectual. Likewise, they are costly. Most of all, they fail on the job because it is not based on reality (unnatural content) and therefore beyond the reach or comprehension of people intending to use them.But why does content tend to be unnatural instead of natural? What can be done about it?Move Away from Factual Learning into Reality LearningThe natural way people learn is through the wholistic approach. This means that as we learn, we strive to understand the whole and not just the parts. I spoke of SLOMO learning in a previous tip because we need to slow down our thought process and look at the whole picture. We lead our minds to think of facts and events and make our own interpretations of things as fused and connected items.This is automatic and unconscious. One's natural tendency is to look at things in its totality. The disconnect starts when we talk about facts separate from events or events separate from facts. And when we talk about such items, we inhibit or disallow learners to have the opportunity to reflect and form their own interpretation. The disconnect happens because designers are in a "reality distortion" mode.Have you seen the movie/documentary, Steve Jobs? Steve Jobs has the habit of being cocooned in his own world because he creates distorted realities. The best part is, he succeeds in bringing his audiences and customers to believe in another reality. Many of them follow him. They buy into a dream, a new reality that Jobs has created in their minds. The distortion becomes productive when customers purchase the product and the experience is fulfilled. However, it fails badly when customers do not experience the promised distorted reality.In learning design, we distort reality without realizing it. How do we do that? In a manner that we present content that is far from real-life. We tell the learner to learn content as if it is separate from reality and experience. The consequence of this is that, we stress on recalling the facts. So we make them memorize and let them take a series of tests.Practical Tips in Design and Development of ContentJust like Steve Jobs, we seduce our learners. In a similar fashion, we appeal to the human experience. Technology and content are just mediums.Seduction today in learning is done with massive efforts through bells and whistles of e-learning. They are not wrong solutions. Yet, when used to seduce learners to learn facts, these tools become ill-used or underutilized. Examples are over-investments in videos, gamification, social interaction, exercises, assessments, etc.Remember, these are only tools to help keep our learners learning. We need to reflect back on the idea that learners look at the whole world and do not split facts and events. They create their own interpretations. Here are four practical tips in design and content development:1. Always add context and meaning in real-life related to the fact. This will automatically lead the learner to his/her natural learning tendency which is the wholistic approach. This will prevent the disconnect between content and reality.2. Start with context, not facts. Avoid making the learners memorize volumes of information that are disconnected from reality. Doing this will provide meaning and help learners to value the facts. 3. Write in the way that learners talk about the content. You immediately connect to your audience if you avoid using technical jargons and instead develop your contents in the context of their own conversations of the topic. 4. Ask learners a question always as part of your content.The purpose is to encourage learners to quickly create their own interpretation of the fact and events. Facts and events are foreign and unknown or removed from the learners until they reflect on them.Until they create their own insights, learners are not applying or understanding the content.Start by asking, "What would happen if you are unable to use this content?""What would happen if your are unable to discover the fraudulent transactions ahead of time?""What would happen if you are able to detect and prevent the fraudulent transaction ahead of time?"In the above examples, you immediately invite the learners to understand the fact and content.ConclusionCurrently, there is a disconnect between content and reality. Learners find it hard to comprehend and apply content to real-life situations. The solution to this predicament is to apply the four tips in design and content development.References  Ray Jimenez. Stop That Dump Truck! Ask Questions to Know What is Important for Learners Ray Jimenez. Slow-Mo Learning is Faster   Ray Jimenez. Creative Musing   Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning