If you’re a project manager, or about to begin a project with a team, we have some data that might scare you. While statistics vary across industries, the general consensus is that the number of projects that fail is too high. One study found that 17% of large-scale IT projects failed so spectacularly that they nearly brought the entire company to ruin. Of those projects that did consider themselves a success, 45% went over budget and delivered 56% less value than predicted. (Kind of makes you wonder about their definition of the word "success.") Scared yet? You should be. But what do you do? After all, you don’t want to be a manager who looks back on a failed project and asks, "How did this happen?" Swap hindsight for foresight. When you meet with your team for the first time, instead of asking, "What are our steps toward success?", turn this question around. Look your team in the eyes and ask: "What will make this project fail?" What causes project failure? Identifying from the start the potential obstacles and gaps that will send your project off-course and over-budget can save you time, energy, and valuable resources. Author Tom Kendrick distilled over 35 years of project-management experience and identified the three most common reasons for project failure: 1. An impossible deliverable. Example: End world hunger by the end of this quarter. 2. Unrealistic constraints and/or lack of resources. Example: Design a new operating system for the company in one week, with two team members and a budget of $100. 3. A lack of direction or guidance to understand the project. Poor management is the leading cause of project failure, according to Kendrick, and while the first two items on the list can be resolved by changing the parameters of the project, the last item—arguably the most important—requires a change in the way leadership is managed. How can your team guarantee success? One of the best ways to lead a team to success is to spot failure before it begins to take root. "For a given project, you can never know the precise outcome in advance, but through review of data from earlier work and project planning…you can better understand the odds and take action to improve them," explains Kendrick in his book Identifying and Managing Project Risk. If you reverse the three reasons for failure above, you can see that there are three things that projects need in order to succeed: 1. Reasonable expectations 2. Appropriate and sufficient resources 3. Clear guidance and leadership Take the time to ensure that these three factors are present before you begin by asking your team to reflect on and discuss the following questions, which address the potentials for both success and failure: Is this project feasible? Do we have the resources we need, including team members with appropriate areas of expertise, time for complete execution, and financial support to undertake the project? Does everyone on the team understand the core objectives of the project? Does everyone agree on common goals for the project? Does everyone understand his or her role, and the relationship of the various roles on the team? In another book, Rescue the Problem Project, Kendrick is quick to assure that careful self-management can prevent your project from becoming another statistic: it is in your hands. "Projects do not self-destruct," he says. "They need help. The people on and around the project provide that assistance." The post Why Will My Project Fail? appeared first on Clarity Consultants.

When forming a team for an organizational project, there are two ways to go about finding the right people for you: A. Gathering like-minded people who are likely to agree and collaborate smoothly B. Composing a group made up of different types of personalities, work processes, and strengths Which would you choose? While A is a tempting route because of the high probability of interpersonal synergy (after all, a team whose members get along makes everyone happy!), it’s actually choice B that will lead to more innovative, robust outcomes. Why? Because diversity equals success. According to The American Society for Mechanical Engineers, "Teams do better when they are composed of people with the widest possible range of personalities, even though it takes longer for such psychologically diverse teams to achieve good cooperation." Who should you pick for your team? The organizational process of any team project is shaped kind of like a funnel: it begins with a broad idea and is honed down into specific strategies for execution. So you need people on your team who can deliver success at each of these stages. Here are the four players you need: The Dreamer Strengths: The dreamer isn’t afraid to throw ideas out there, no matter how grand or unexpected. Dreamers don’t waste time with doubt—they have vision, and their willingness and enthusiasm to say YES to ideas that pop up produce innovations that many others would never have come up with. Weaknesses: Developing the nuts-and-bolts strategy for implementation isn’t always a dreamer’s strong point (but keep in mind their imagination and ability to think broadly can also come in handy later in the timeline, when they foresee possible failures that others haven’t thought of). How to recognize a dreamer: The dreamer is full of energy and starts sentences with, "Now, stay with me for a minute, but…" and "What if we tried this…" The Detail-oriented Realist Strengths: The detail-oriented realist picks up where the dreamer leaves off: by taking up ideas and scrutinizing them, holding them up to the light and asking, "Is this possible?" This person loves to create a detailed analysis of the steps that will need to be taken to achieve the big dream. Weaknesses: Because the realist is so dedicated to mapping out a firm plan, he or she may be hesitant to adapt to a new strategy in the event of unplanned circumstances. How to recognize a realist: They’re the ones scribbling down notes and drawing charts on their notepads during meetings, and they ask questions like, "What’s the timeline for this?" The Writer Strengths: Writers know how to finesse—how to take an idea and give it a voice. They are crucial on any team because they’re the ones who will be able to generate communications, draft white papers, and distill complicated projects into major bullet points. Weaknesses: Writers are more likely to be introverted, so they won’t always participate as fully in meetings—especially if they see their role as a scribe, rather than a generator of ideas. How to recognize a writer: His or her emails are always clear, concise, and grammatically sound. The Marketing Guru Strengths: Once an idea is generated, organized, and expressed, it needs to be disseminated. Marketing gurus are the ones who know how to take care of this part—their extroverted nature and keen sense of social and professional networks gives them a sharp eye for conveying messages in a way that an audience needs to hear. Weaknesses: Because the marketing guru is always thinking about how to sell an idea, he or she may have a tendency to embellish details or only highlight aspects of a plan that are more appealing to an audience. How to recognize a marketing guru: His or her Twitter account has a thousand followers, and he says things like, "How will we brand this idea?" *** It bears mentioning that not everyone fits into these cookie-cutter personality types neatly, and some people have skills in multiple areas. These are simply guides for the main skills that are useful to have while developing a project. The key message is that a diverse skill set, rather than a team comprised of like-minded thinkers, is the foundation of a successful project. The post The Four People You Need on Your Team appeared first on Clarity Consultants.

Roberta arrives at her workplace on time each morning, with an air of fresh energy. She says hello warmly to her colleagues before sitting down at her desk and beginning work. Before long, she is absorbed in her tasks, yet her energy never dissipates. After lunch, she attends a meeting, where she asks questions and writes down action items for follow-up. A coworker catches her in the hallway to ask a question, and she listens intently before replying. Roberta is an example of someone who is fully engaged in her work. When she’s in the office, she is fully present and interested in the work she is doing—without feeling distractions, burnout, or a sense of wanting to "check out." If Roberta sounds like an anomaly, that’s because she unfortunately is. Gallup research shows that a meager 13% of employees worldwide exhibit this kind of energy and interest in their work. That’s not good news, because employee engagement is a crucial ingredient in the success of any organization—and not just for its "feel-good" effect. Research has shown that companies with high employee engagement boast twice the annual net income of companies whose employees are disengaged at work. How can my organization boost employee engagement? The same Gallup research found that the 87% of employees who describe themselves as not engaged or actively disengaged are unhappy in the office, unproductive, and likely to spread negative attitudes to coworkers. This phenomenon of disengagement can’t completely be chalked up to people finding themselves in the wrong career or distractions caused by in-office internet use (although those are two possible contributors to disengagement). Actually, employee engagement is directly related to the work environment, which is cultivated by those in leadership. "A critical element in building confidence, motivating performance, and increasing employee engagement is having people at the top who inspire belief in the organization’s future," suggests a 2010 research article. Here are five things leaders can do to create an environment of employee engagement: Create relationships, not hierarchies. Engaged employees are those who report having friends at work. Strong social bonds can produce some amazing results, including better performance, higher confidence, and an ability to get along well with team members. Encourage employees to create friendly relationships with one another and work to minimize conflict and competition when you spot it. Know (and use) each employee’s strengths. Using personal strengths to achieve goals is a hallmark of employee engagement. Likewise, struggling against the current of your own abilities can cause frustration, burnout, and disengagement. According to Senior Gallup researcher Tom Rath, Practice mindful leadership. If picturing yourself meditating at work makes you break out in a sweat, relax—mindful leadership isn’t about adopting a spiritual practice. It’s actually just about paying more attention.The Institute for Mindful Leadership describes it as the ability to "be focused, see with clarity, cultivate creativity and embody compassion." It requires a full and nonjudgmental presence to your work and team members, who notice that presence and respond with engagement. Invest in employee well-being. Research shows that high employee well-being leads to high employee engagement. Healthy employees have more energy, are less stressed, and have fewer distractions. Leaders should encourage their team to take breaks, get outside, foster positive attitudes, and manage stress in a healthy way. The bonus is that engagement at work boosts well-being, creating a nice feedback loop of positive reinforcement. Engage yourself. Surveys show that only 35% of managers feel engaged at work, and there’s good evidence to show that the trickle-down effect can lead to damaged employee engagement. Boost your own engagement in simple ways by connecting with (and smiling at!) your team members, seeking out ways to challenge yourself, and remembering how your efforts are linked to company success. The post 5 Ways to Boost Employee Engagement appeared first on Clarity Consultants.

What can history teach us about being better project managers in today’s workplace? An article published in the International Journal of Project Management earlier this year took on the task of combing through fifty years of project management (PM) research to answer this very question. Because PM research is often organized in silos—with practitioners sticking to their own fields—there has been a need for a more holistic perspective on the practice of PM itself. So the authors of "Emergent trends and passing fads in project management research: A scientometric analysis of changes in the field" mapped out data to identify key trends that have emerged and faded in the last five decades. A brief history of project management research By tracking keyword burst frequency in the research, the authors developed the following timeline: What can we glean from this brief history? Overall, the movement in the last half-century has telescoped from industry-specific issues to a broader, more organizational view. What this means for today’s project managers It all boils down to this: if you want to succeed in project management today, your skills have to be sharp and diverse. With so many people undergoing rigorous training for PM certification and conducting research in the field, project managers are held to a higher standard now than ever before. What’s more, interpersonal skills and systems thinking (taking a broader view of organizational change) are now seen as the most critical tools to have. If PM research is now leaning more toward an organizational perspective, it behooves all project managers to become familiar with organizational thinking. Gone are the days when project management was limited to a temporary practice put into place to accomplish a concrete goal, like establishing a contact or calculating costs. Today’s leading managers are thinking more broadly, working with larger and more diverse teams, and trying to effect systemic change. Two key skills for project management in 2015 Be responsive to change, rather than sticking to a plan. This is also a key principle involved in the development of Agile, the collaborative software method that’s been named a top trend in project management for 2015. Responsive, rather than predictive, leaders exhibit the adaptability that is so crucial for working with large teams and big concepts. Project managers who are quick on their feet have a better chance of surviving today’s increasingly shifting, fast-moving business world. "Project management is a blend of creating and executing plans, and being flexible enough to adjust when the time comes," says Bart Gerardi, author of No Drama Project Management. Focus on interpersonal skills. The Business Analyst Times predicts that in 2015, "The intrinsic value of understanding others in order to establish meaningful relationships among team members, particularly those who are often physically distant, will be emphasized" in the field of project management. Are you as focused on listening to your team, assigning tasks based on individual strengths, and using clear communication as you are with end results? Then you’re more likely to succeed as a leader. In addition, paying attention to the field of project management itself—which is emerging as a serious area of research—can help you identify trends so you’re ahead of the curve. If the last fifty years have taught us anything, it’s that the field of PM is a dynamic area subject to exciting change. The post What Can We Learn from 50 Years of Project Management? appeared first on Clarity Consultants.

The last few years have seen a tremendous surge of interest in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Just last month, Harvard and MIT jointly published a large research study examining the trends emerging from MOOCs their universities offered in the last two years. Here is a breakdown of their key findings: Growth is steady. For the past two years, course enrollments have grown by 2,200 participants per day. Overall, there were over a million unique course participants in all courses during the timeframe of the study. Participation waxes and wanes in courses that offer repeated versions. In the second version of a course, participation typically dips about 43%, but tends to re-stabilize itself for the third version. Many of the learners are teachers who want certification. Approximately 20% of MOOC participants are teachers, and 57% of participants aim to earn a certificate from the course. (Note that aim and achievement are different: only 24% of participants who want a certificate actually earn one.) Computer Science is the most popular topic area. There are almost four times more participants in this area than in any of the others (including Engineering, History, Humanities, Government, and others). Learners are beginning to develop their own curricular pathways. User analytics reveal that there are common sequencing patterns among the Computer Science and Chinese History courses in particular. Learners who pay to "ID-Verify" their certificates are far more likely to certify. Fifty-nine percent of verified students complete a certificate, while only 5% of non-verified users do. Most of the verified students are older, more educated, and live in the United States. The findings of the study seem to indicate that while interest in free online education options is not in danger of fading, there is a growing demand for rigorous academic subjects with certification options. And the benefits of massive open online courses are plain to see: they expand educational opportunities to a limitless audience (well, at least to those who have access to an internet connection), allow students to pursue a broader range of topics, and offer an easy "opt out" process if learners realize they don’t want to pursue the course any further. One question the study does not tackle is whether MOOCs are actually effective. In fact, few researchers are willing to fully examine this question. An article in Time says that the expectations many learners have from MOOCs might far outweigh the courses’ ability to deliver. At the same time, the process is almost too casual: most MOOC participants consider the experience to be like "borrowing a book from the library and browsing it casually or returning it unread." (If you’re an instructional designer, this statement probably made your blood pressure skyrocket.) Many chalk the lack of student dedication up to the courses’ casual structure: learners don’t pay tuition, meet admissions requirements, or earn credit toward a degree. There’s also the problem of a lack of engagement: most MOOCs are designed to handle a hefty student load, offering instructor videos and readings as the main educational content and using algorithm-based scoring tools for assessments. In short, there’s no interaction between instructor and student, a relationship that can be a major motivator in learning. But others say that the MOOC format doesn’t actually stray that far from traditional university courses, where professors deliver lectures to large auditoriums and anonymous TAs score exams. One study (also done by researchers at Harvard and MIT), which looked specifically at one Introductory Physics MOOC, claims that students who participated in the online version did just as well academically as those who completed an on-campus version. What do you think: Are MOOCs an effective mode of instruction, or are they a passing fad? The post MOOCs: Effective Instruction or Pedagogical Disaster? appeared first on Clarity Consultants.

Let’s say you want to teach someone to drive a car. You, as the instructional designer of Driver’s Ed, might choose to assign a hefty textbook—perhaps the manual to the car—as well as a pamphlet about traffic laws. You may quiz your student on the contents of the reading material and find that he can answer all the questions correctly. So you give him an A, and hand him a set of keys. But when he gets into the car, he is dumbfounded. After all, he has never put keys in an ignition before. Perhaps a better model would be to have the student get in the car from the beginning, to have him practice driving in a quiet neighborhood, shifting gears and parallel parking on an empty street. The student becomes able to coordinate his muscle memory with concepts he’s learned from the text: this is how you steer, this is how long it takes to check your blind spot. Because it offers the learner hands-on experience, the second method is called experiential learning, and many say it’s the best way to deliver new concepts effectively. It’s not just driving where experiential learning can help: many on-the-job skills, such as conflict management, customer service, and medical practice have to be practiced in order to be perfected. A four-part model Educational theorist David A. Kolb developed the following four-part model of the experiential learning process: For example, in the scenario above, the student applied his brakes at a stop sign (DO). Upon reflection (and a slight case of whiplash), he realized that he pressed the brakes too hard (OBSERVE). So he thought about what he might be able to do differently next time (THINK), and at the next sign, he applied less pressure and came to a smooth stop (PLAN). The new driver’s ability to make a gentle and effective stop is now a fully engrained experience in his mind—on its way to being an automatic habit. Experiential eLearning One question you may be asking yourself is: how can experiential learning translate to the eLearning environment? One example is case-based scenarios that offer learners a chance to make decisions and see the results. Many health-care training opportunities offer such tools, allowing learners to try out different responses to virtual patients’ questions and make clinical diagnostic decisions in a safe and risk-free environment. Here are some tips for creating opportunities to enact all four of Kolb’s stages of experiential learning in your online course or training: Do Have learners watch a video and make a decision via an interactive tool. Examples might include selecting responses to offer an angry customer or deciding how to handle an on-the-job emergency (such as choosing a fire-escape route). Since experiential learning is about enabling learners to enjoy the "beginner’s mind" experience of trying something for the first time, you may not want to offer them context before they undergo the experience. Skip the explanatory text and throw them right in the driver’s seat. Observe Offer learners an open-ended reflective question about what happened. (Questions like, "What happened? What effects did you notice?" work best). These questions make excellent fodder for discussion in online forums, synchronous "chat" sessions, and independent essay responses. (These are what questions.) Think Design questions that give students the opportunity to analyze the situation. Targeted questions like "Why do you think this happened?" and "How could you have done things differently?" allow learners to begin to develop a conceptual model for what they’ve just observed. (These are how and why questions.) Experiment Do the initial activity again, so that learners have a chance to make a new choice based on what they have just observed (e.g., selecting a different response to the angry customer). Having the learner immediately implement what he or she just learned through doing, observing, and reflecting can complete the cycle of experiential learning. The post Experiential Learning Theory: Learning by Doing appeared first on Clarity Consultants.

When we talk about organizational transitions, we are often talking about the large scale—structural reorganization, mergers, new leadership, or going public. But smaller, ongoing transitions have a profound impact on the wellbeing of the overall company. One of the most important of these smaller transitions is onboarding new employees. The objective of onboarding is to introduce the culture of this particular organization to a new employee in order to create a seamless transition. Effective onboarding is an important investment because it leads to employee retention, engagement, and productivity. Employees who are not effectively onboarded are more likely to quit, creating a loss of productivity during the scramble for a replacement hire.   Onboarding Goal #1: Socialize Employees There are two standard methods for socializing new employees. Institutionalized socialization moves new employees through a series of instructor-led trainings and orientations, often with a cohort of other new hires, outside of the normal work stream. Once initiated, they are officially part of the company. One example of this is an eight-week training program customer service representatives complete before taking their own calls. An advantage of this approach is the community-building aspect—new hires have a chance to bond with one another, ask questions, and adjust to company policies from the comfort of a student’s perspective. Individualized socialization approaches allow the new employee to step right into the stream, picking up the nuances of his or her new position through interpersonal communication with colleagues, questions, and trial-and-error. Many internships follow this format, with training happening right on the job. While it depends on the company and the individual hire, some research suggests that onboarding processes are more successful when they follow an institutionalized approach, especially for post-graduate new hires and introverts who benefit from learning with a group of peers.   Onboarding Goal #2: Deliver Key Company Information The second purpose of onboarding is to introduce the employee to company policies, values, culture, and structure. Much of this is done through the institutionalized or individualized approaches described above, but there are other methods for delivering this information for both passive and active learners. For example, an online employee handbook may be voraciously read by an introverted hire, while a more socially-minded employee may get more out of an in-person Q&A with the team. Giving a realistic preview of the company, in as much detail as possible, is important during the onboarding process because it helps weed out hires who might not be the right fit. Does the company allow for employee autonomy in decision-making, or is there a hierarchy that decides? How flexible or strict are policies on dress code, remote working, and meetings? Be upfront and clear—it allows new employees to acclimate to their new environment swiftly.   Onboarding Goal #3: Increase Retention and Commitment While employee engagement is an automatic benefit of successful onboarding, there are specific goals to aim for during the process to make sure you’re creating an optimal experience for your employees. For example, setting employee goals from the start and scheduling a feedback process can establish employee engagement and motivation from the very first day. When employees have a series of goals to work for and a manager who both listens and offers feedback, they are more likely to feel committed to their work and invested in the company. Mentorship is also crucial. Partnering a new hire with a non-manager mentor, such as a "peer buddy," can help convey company values in a more informal setting and answer employee questions efficiently. Research shows that newcomers are more likely internalize the main values of their organization’s culture if they have spent time with a mentor, or attended social activities outside of work with a friendly and approachable colleague.   ** The takeaway from all of this is that the onboarding process has a much broader impact that simply easing the transition of the new employee—if done well, it can have far-reaching benefits for the health and longevity of the company. Source: Bauer, T.N., Erdogan, B. (2011). Organizational socialization: The effective onboarding of new employees. In Zedeck, S. (ed.), APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Vol 3: Maintaining, Expanding, and Contracting the Organization, pp. 51-64. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. The post Effective Employee Onboarding: What You Should Know appeared first on Clarity Consultants.

The eLearning Network is a not-for-profit organisation that supports and promotes elearning in the UK. Associate membership is free with different tiers of paid-for subscription available, all of which include a subscription to e.learning Age. Through its activities it brings together users and vendors and the eLN is a key contributor to the annual e.learning Age awards - our industry’s black-tie awards for the year. Why are we mentioning them? Because we’re members and lots of the people we know across the country are too. Until 2011 they had restricted their activities to seminars in London but this year, in response to member requests, they set out across the country, with Bristol their first destination outside the capital! They have a full list of events all year, with many free online seminars hosted in conjunction with ALT, the Association for Learning Technology. Can we call weelearning an unofficial chapter meeting here in Bristol? I’m sure the committee wouldn’t be offended if we did, but everyone is welcome to weelearning, eLN membership or not. (Did we mention it is free to join?)

There’s no shortage of events, conferences and seminars these days about learning and technology, so why should you give up your free time to come to weelearning..?   The idea for weelearning was born a few months back when Dan and I arranged to meet down the pub one Sunday afternoon. We didn’t know each other, we’d never met face to face, but we knew of each other thanks to the eLearning Network and Twitter. To some, especially my wife, this may seem a little odd, "you’re going out to meet some guy you met on the internet for a few drinks" "er, yes" "why" "um, we thought it might be fun to talk about what we do at work" Now one of the reasons this seemed peculiar to her was because she’s a solicitor and she works with lots of people her age, with similar interests and there’s a great social life at her firm. They’re always going out for drinks and more often than not they end up talking about work. If, like Dan and I, you are the only person who deals with learning technology in your office you tend to miss out on that sort of thing. So to make this modest dream a reality we have secured exclusive use of the downstairs area of The Bristol Ram on Park Street, Bristol. The evening will start around 7.30pm, we’ll have a couple of short talks to kick things off about 8.00pm for no more than half an hour, then we’ll just chat and have a few drinks. It’s completely free to attend and if enough of you turn up we’ll make it a regular event.

weelearning is really pleased to announce Packt Publishing is to sponsor our first event. Packt are a modern, UK-based publishing house who produce indispensable books for elearning people - developers, administrators and newbies. Packt have a strong commitment to open… Read more ›