ABOUT THE AUTHOR Al Switzler is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, I believe it’s paramount to maintain a positive working relationship with all of our potential vendors, whether we use them or not. The goodwill of healthy person-to-person relationships often translates into discounts, freebies, and other considerations that benefit my company in the long run. At issue is what happens when a campaign doesn’t work or if we have a disagreement with a vendor. My superior’s knee-jerk response is to insist that we never work with the company again. He appears to enjoy this tactic and even preempts me by canceling contracts. Given my beliefs and that our niche market has a limited selection of vendors, this feels premature and reactive to me. How can I help him understand that his approach is detrimental to our marketing program and is making my own job that much harder? Peacemaker Dear Peacemaker, To answer this question, I need to hark back to the creation of our name: VitalSmarts. (By the way, I love to hark.) For many years, as we consulted with managers and teams, we used a tool we called the Death-to-Vitality Continuum. The essence of the tool is this: Every individual, team, or organization fits on a continuum between death and vitality and is moving one way or the other. A leader’s primary responsibility is to help move her- or himself, her team, or his organization measurably toward vitality. The skills and tactics that move them toward vitality are the "smarts." Hence our name, VitalSmarts. As part of this strategy, we defined what vital means. In every case, and particularly in your situation, being vital means having all stakeholders willing and able to maintain a positive relationship with you. This goal becomes a balancing act. Some of the actions we take to please one stakeholder can negatively affect another. For example, if you lower the price of your service, you may find that you don’t have the revenue to pay your employees well. On the other hand, if you give employees a raise, and then raise the price of your service, fewer customers may purchase it. In either case, your organization may become less vital. Keeping all stakeholders balanced can be difficult. There are other strategies that can also cause imbalance. One of those is process improvement. In complicated processes, leaders sometimes try to streamline one part of the process to reduce steps and costs, unwittingly moving the work and the cost to another department or team. And the new frustration can stay buried for months. I repeat, keeping all stakeholders in balance is difficult and important. That’s why in the best organizations, leaders have balanced scorecards that help them frequently see what’s happening so they can analyze and adjust. Before I get to your situation, let me highlight one other factor. Not all stakeholders are equally visible or regularly measured. For example, many teams and organizations have measures that can allow a lag in the information they use to inform decisions. Often, financial measures are conducted daily, customer satisfaction measures monthly, and employee satisfaction yearly. A lot of dissatisfaction can grow in that time span. It is also interesting to note that when it comes time to identify key stakeholders, too often, one or more are overlooked until there is a crisis. Among the stakeholders that are always identified are owners, customers, financial institutions, and employees. Vendors, suppliers, regulators, and resellers however, are often missed. When any of these become unable or unwilling to maintain a positive relationship with the organization, vitality can suffer. So here is some advice on talking with your superior to ensure your organization remains balanced and vital: 1. Share how vendors are important stakeholders. Be specific about how having a positive relationship has helped you, your team, and the company. Tell detailed stories about how a specific vendor went the extra mile to help your company out of a jam because your relationship with that vendor was positive. 2. Share how a relationship that has been improved is often better than one that has never met with a difficulty. Research on customer satisfaction supports this. If a customer has a negative experience with a company and that company responds with an appropriate solution, the customer’s loyalty is higher than that of a customer who has never had a problem to begin with. I’m not suggesting that you create a problem to solve, but that you solve the ones that come. Share stories about how this has worked for you. 3. Put the right issue on the table with your boss. You have two issues. One difference you have with your boss is opposing opinions about stakeholders in general and vendors in specific. You need to dialogue about that difference of opinion. You also have a second issue: your superior’s actions with vendors and how they have put important relationships at risk and made your job harder. The second issue is harder to discuss, I imagine. But talking about the first issue, and not getting to the second will not solve your concerns. You need to find out why he does what he does. You need to really try to understand. You need to be equally determined to help him understand how his actions are affecting your job. You need to get to the point where both of you understand what actions you each need to take to allow trust to be present in your relationship. Your challenge is typical of many differences that affect how people work or live together. People have differences about what is the highest priority, about what defines quality, about what order things should be done in, and so on. There are enough differences to go around. Often these differences are unseen and unstated until there is some friction. "Ah, there’s the rub." To solve these differences, you need to make sure you create the conditions of Safety, Mutual Respect, and Mutual Purpose. Then candidly and courteously put the issue on the table. Even with our best efforts, we sometimes don’t find a mutual solution; but with our best efforts, odds are we will. I wish you well, Al Related posts: Tired of Complaints Responding to Cheap Shots and Personal Attacks

I sat down this evening to write a post I’ve had in my idea pad for some time. I was going to write about mobile and the enterprise. Tonight I feel unmotivated to write about either of those. Sometimes a topic sounds of great interest, and other times your brain isn’t in that same through process to think of great things to write about it. The Question What do you do when you’re not motivated to do something? I think that’s a very easy question to answer in my case for posting to my blog. Switch gears and choose something else that I feel more in the mood to write. That’s all good for my blog, but what about a project that you have to get done? What if there are deadlines breathing down the back of your neck and there’s no way you could put it off even one more hour? That question is a bit more tough to answer when you consider those circumstances. Now you can’t simply set your current project aside and move to something that inspires you more. You’re stuck. Take a second to think of a situation like this you’ve been in. It could be as soon as yesterday, it could be last year. Ask yourself again. What do you do when you’re not motivated to do something? Means of Motivation One of the biggest challenges of Learning & Development is to motivate people to want to spend their time with us and not something they’d rather be doing. There are all sorts of things to attempt to motivate. You know, those things to try to get a person lost in what they’re doing. Games? Yes, that’s one of them. That popular buzzword gamification, but really it’s just motivation. Or at least the attempt of motivation. Have you ever been in a situation where you can tell somebody put a lot of effort into trying to motivate you to do something? Something like a training event where they tried so hard to "gamify" it? I have. The problem with this is that they tried so hard they forgot about the content, it’s boring and there’s too much. It was intended that I’d be motivated to go further, to do good, but I just wanted to get through it as quick as possible. This is what happens 9 times out of 10 when training is "gamified." How do you motivate someone that’s just not as interested as you in the topic? The Answer(s?) I don’t have the answer to how boring content can be made into something fun. I do have the answer to how you can get somebody through it as quickly as possible so there’s less chance they will get bored though! I have dedicated a large part of the past year working within an IT L&D department thinking and wondering how this stuff could be made less boring. People don’t have time to waste on training, they don’t have time to enjoy the content you spent so much time working on. They also don’t care about it, they just want to finish and do their jobs, what matters to them and what they get paid for. I think myself and a teammate had an aha moment together today when we finally realized what needed to be done. I had been veering down this path for some time but finally became aware of the path I was steering. Simple, graphically beautiful, wordless (or very few), and just amazingly easy to follow job aids. Yes, but back the words to as few as possible, show don’t tell, and start there for every single training event needed. Okay maybe not every one, but it’s a great place to start! Beyond the job aid(s), continue to monitor the effect of it to see if that is improving people’s work. Is it? Great! No? Then you may have to check to see if something else is needed. Hopefully you’ve already ruled out a system problem or some other problem that training can’t fix. So that’s it, if somebody never has to even take training and is able to either search out the information they need from others or find a job aid that will help them, that’s motivating. So this post has probably changed subjects several times since you started reading, but that’s okay. I just wanted to write some ideas down and my mind feels so much clearer for doing it. Please share some of the things that caught your interest in the comments section and what you do about them. Don’t be shy, nobody is going to judge you or scare you. We’re all here to learn and be part of a great community of L&D professionals who each have their own way to approach problems that are as unique as we are. Tell me. What’s your answer? The post When You’re Feeling Unmotivated appeared first on Nick Leffler's Portfolio & Learning Insights. You might also enjoy: First Thoughts on Learned Helplessness Social and Learned Helplessness in Learning Ten Things That Make Me Cringe

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is coauthor of three New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, How do you recommend keeping Crucial Conversations alive in an organization once training is complete? Trainer Dear Trainer, One of the perks of my job is talking to people years, even decades, after they have participated in our training. The good news is that the skills we teach are largely self-sustaining. The concepts are well organized, so they are easily remembered; and the skills get used at work and at home, so they stay fresh. But that wasn’t exactly your question. You asked about keeping the skills alive in an organization and that requires a bit more work. I’ll use some Influencer principles, specifically the Six Sources of Influence™, to share some ideas that work. Personal Motivation—Create personal wins and share them. Make sure participants are using their new skills to solve the problems that cause them the most pain. We often ask participants to help us identify the problems they’d most like the skills to solve. For example, here are the answers we received from a group of healthcare professionals: team members who don’t take initiative or fail to do their share of the work; team members who gossip, start rumors, are rude, or otherwise undercut team spirit; and physicians who are not responsive—who either fail to come when needed or fail to answer team members’ questions and concerns. Once you know what participants want to do with the skills, make sure they experience wins in these areas within the first few weeks. Then get them to share their successes with others. This will build personal motivation to continue using the skills. Personal Ability—Use refresher drills and applications. People always benefit from deliberate practice. Here is a simple exercise many of our trainers use: Go to our Crucial Skills Newsletter archive and select four or five questions that are relevant to your participants. Have participants work in pairs to apply their skills to one of the questions. Hint: you might want to tell them which skills the author used. Have participants read the author’s response to the question and discuss how their own use of the skills compared. Social Motivation—Tie the skills to an important initiative. Make the skills a means to further an important end. • Work with managers a level or two above your participants to identify a key initiative that the skills can support. • Have these managers determine crucial moments in the initiative when the new skills should make the greatest difference. • Make sure participants know they will be held accountable for using the skills in these crucial moments to further the initiative. Social Ability—Identify champions. Make sure there are people who will help participants whenever their new skills aren’t enough. Ask specific formal and informal leaders to take on this champion role—people participants can go to whenever they run into a situation that is too tough for them. Make sure these champions have the skills, respect, and clout required to play backup whenever participants get in over their heads. When participants know there are people who will back them up, they will take on tougher challenges and get more out of the skills. Structural Motivation—Link to carrots and sticks. The organization’s reward systems should be aligned with the use of the skills. • Make sure participants know about existing rewards that support the use of the skills. • Identify existing carrots and sticks that may discourage use of the skills and try to modify or remove them. • Create some short-term incentives to reward people who test out the skills during the first few weeks. • Work to integrate the skills into long-term incentive systems—i.e., the "P"s: performance reviews, pay, promotions, perks, and punishments. Structural Ability—Create opportunities. The TV detective, Perry Mason, identified the suspect who had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit the crime. Create means, motives, and opportunities for your participants to use their skills. • Use project-review meetings, interdepartmental meetings, etc., as opportunities to identify communication breakdowns and have crucial conversations. • Create forums with customers, other regions, other functions, etc., to discuss and resolve disconnects. • Ask leaders to use staff meetings, one-on-ones, and round tables to initiate crucial conversations. As you can see, there are many ways to keep skills alive after the training is over. The key is to use a combination of these strategies so that you involve multiple sources of influence. Our research suggests that when you combine all six of these sources of influence, you are ten times more likely to succeed. David Related posts: How can I help participants brainstorm strategies for change plans that are based on soft skills? Using Skills to Manipulate Motivating Others to Take Action

I want to preface this post with the following information: Before a few days ago I had never heard the term Community of Inquiry, which is exactly why I’ve chosen to write and learn about it. Now for the why because I wouldn’t just pull this one out of a hat and decide to delve deeper. I’m joining in (if even partially) to a cMOOC called Exploring Innovations in Networked Work and Learning which I found out about from Tanya Lau. This means being buried in heaps of information that I’ve only been able to glance over a few pieces from, but I’ve accepted that as my fate for the time being. So, if you’re curious about learning more about this cMOOC then I’d head over to the class blog here and perhaps check out the Google+ Community which is where all the conversation happens. I’m sure nobody would mind if you stopped in and checked it out and maybe even joined in a discussion or two. Oh, and can’t forget the wonderful Twitter, my favorite place to interact on the Internet, that’s with the hashtag #msloc430. Why Communities of Inquiry Sorry about the detour of information there. I’ve been thinking about all this for a while so am somewhat excited to put it down in words finally. We were asked to "explore a model that is new to you" which is exactly what I did because I’ve never heard of the term Community of Inquiry before. From this point forward I’ll refer to it as CoI (or maybe I won’t, we’ll find out). Other models we could choose from were: Networked learning (familiar) Personal learning networks (very familiar) MOOCs (way way too familiar) Communities of inquiry (WTH?) I’ve caught a few random discussions on CoI here and there in the community and on Twitter but I must say I’m still completely clueless as to what it is, and I like it like that for now. So, that’s my stance in this blog post. I know nothing about it and am going to document my first impressions of what it means to me. As time goes on I’m sure I’ll learn more and have more intelligent things to say. For now you’ll have to live with this being my uninformed opinion. I’ve warned you. Defining CoI I don’t know how to define it really, and it doesn’t seem anybody does thus far which means nobody understands it very well either. That’s good for me because I’m in the same boat! Although everyone else is probably ahead of me now because I’m a slacker at heart. Here’s the information to help clarify it from the msloc430 blog: Community of Inquiry Anderson, A. , Butler, R., Kyle, N., & Wess, Y. (2014). Community of Inquiry (Video file). Retreived from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7MHPxIU27E Synopsis: Simple presentation based upon referenced research outlines Community of Inquiry model and how it works in a learning environment. (Cartoon in the middle was bit jumpy for me?) Community of Inquiry: https://coi.athabascau.ca/coi-model/ Synopsis: Website providing a reference point for description and research on the model. Swan, K., Garrison, D & Richardson J. (2009). A constructivist approach to online learning: The community of inquiry framework. In Payne, C. (Ed.) Information Technology and Constructivism in Higher Education: Progressive Learning Frameworks. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/398997/A_Constructivist_Approach_to_Online_Learning_The_Community_of_Inquiry_Framework Synopsis: Downloadable chapter presents the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework of online learning as the interaction between and amongst three presences: social, cognitive and teaching. Now it’s all clear to you right? Not me! I must say though, after watching the video I find it has my absolute favorite word in the world scattered throughout: learners. What It Is To Me Before I start in on this I want to give a second warning about my lack of knowledge on the topic so my ignorance is covered. At about 6 minutes in the video it suddenly clicked for me that I’ve probably experienced CoI before. A recommended strategy is to require people (yes people, not learners) to contribute a minimum number of posts to a discussion. My master’s program was based almost entirely off of this! Every week we had a required reading which the instructor then presented a group of questions for us to reflect on and answer. After a certain day of the week it was a discussion free for all but we were required to comment on at least two other people’s posts. In this process the instructor would even join into the discussion and ask additional questions as needed. So, there’s what CoI means to me. Well, that’s what it means to me in a traditional education setting. I even went as far as to recommend that as a solution to some of the problems of the xMOOC. Yes, it might not scale to the xMOOC size of 100k plus people, but it’s a start because it’s just so difficult and lonely being in the sea of an xMOOC with noone to talk to. That covers exactly what CoI is to me in an education setting, I think. I would like to move on to what it could mean to the business world though. Not sure if it is useful there but it deserves some thinking and discussion. CoI In Business This is the important part for me because I’m heavily involved in the business world now. I’ve parted ways with higher education and will never return, I’ve even written a bit about how it might do some more harm than good (notice I said some). Learning & Development would be the most logical place to go for those instructors that will guide people in their discussions in a CoI. I don’t know if that’s a wise choice though. It may be best for L&D to act more as a consultant to those who are trying to solve a problem using discussions between a group of people. Honestly, I can’t even think how that would all work, and it’s late. I think this is something I’d have to leave for discussion which I’m sure has already been brought up. I’ll be catching up with what people are saying how CoI could apply to business organizations. Your Call What do you say about the place of CoI in business? Does it have a place? Useful? What’s your experience and thoughts on CoI? I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on the topic, please join in the discussion below. You just saw my first learning process of Communities of Inquiry, pretty messed up isn’t it? The post Communities of Inquiry appeared first on Nick Leffler's Portfolio & Learning Insights. You might also enjoy: The Biggest Fad of L&D The Things We Can Do With Crowdsourcing Are Limitless (But Hard) Turn The Curiosity Back On

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Andrew Maxfield is director of the Influencer Institute, a private operating foundation that seeks to increase humanity’s capacity to change for good. Recently, I had the great pleasure of spending a few days with Martha Swai, one of the primary architects of an influential (and now world-renowned) radio soap opera in Tanzania. In the early 1990s, Martha and her colleagues developed a serial drama called Twende Na Wakati ("Let’s Go With the Times"), which blended first-rate entertainment with carefully crafted public health messages. The result of her efforts was that millions of listeners adopted safer sexual practices to reduce the transmission of HIV/AIDS. Further, Martha’s efforts elevated the status of women in Tanzania and promoted planned childbearing to curb cycles of poverty. Before you get caught up in the remarkable pubic health implications of these broadcasts, think about how Martha worked her magic: she changed the behavior of an entire nation by telling vivid stories. Does storytelling strike you as a soft skill? Something for the PR department or for social evenings around a campfire? Daniel Pink doesn’t think so. In his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future, Pink characterizes a mastery of story as a critical individual skill and organizational competency. And if you’ve read Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, you’ll know that influencers are master storytellers, which leads us back to Martha. Rather than broadcasting lectures or logical arguments, Martha told stories. She and her writing team invented believable characters and plot lines that resonated with their listeners. They followed the exploits of a philandering truck driver who, much to his surprise and the surprise of the listeners, contracted HIV/AIDS and eventually died. They gradually revealed how his reckless and often abusive behavior negatively affected his family members and acquaintances. One of the reasons that storytelling is so powerful is that it honors the listener’s intellect, which creates a participatory relationship wherein the listener begins to own the parts of the story filled in by his or her imagination. A good story invites the listener to personally discover the connection between actions and consequences. A good story invites the listener to scrutinize information, make guesses, and imagine outcomes. A good story triggers empathy and emotions. Next time you’d like to influence the behavior of an individual or group, remember Martha Swai and the power of a vivid story. Note: At our REACH conference this year, VitalSmarts recognized Martha with the 2013 Albert Bandura Influencer Award for her exceptional public health efforts. Click here to learn more about this prestigious award. Related posts: Influencer Institute: Introducing the Influencer Institute—And a Call to Action! Influencer Institute: Finding Meaning in the Mundane Influencer Institute: Beating Poverty One Vital Behavior at a Time

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Al Switzler is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, I’ve been told that one cannot be an effective boss by being a friend to those one supervises. I have some serious concerns about this as I feel that being a friend at work is a good way to gain employee confidence and performance. I’m concerned about where to draw the line between being a friend and being a boss, and how to set the proper environment where friendship is allowed and being a boss is respected. How can I be both an effective boss and also a friend to my employees? Friendly Boss Dear Friendly, The challenge you’ve presented is the perfect example of a Fool’s Choice. What we mean by this is that we can only see two options that seem diametrically opposed. We don’t see it as a false dichotomy, but as an unfortunate reality. We found these Fool’s Choices to be ubiquitous when doing our research for Crucial Conversations. For example, we commonly heard people say things like, "I can speak up and be mean, or I can bite my tongue and be nice." They felt they could be candid or courteous, but not both. Those who mastered crucial conversations found the "and." They learned how to be candid and courteous. And so it is with managing or leading. In this bit of advice, I’ll try to help you see that you can be friendly and be a boss. I’ll start with a story that shows one extreme of the term "boss." I recall a leader telling me that when he was promoted, his boss gave him this advice: "Congratulations. Now get out there and fire a person or two so the rest of your team will know that you have power." This is clearly a bad example. This person’s manager had a perception of leadership that focused on control, power, and even intimidation. From our research, we know that some people value quality over harmony; they value getting results over getting along. They value performance indicators like productivity and budget. Another leader I know was told by her boss, "Don’t give praise to people for doing their job. It only makes them weak." One of the reasons people find themselves in this Fool’s Choice comes from seeing bosses manage in this manner. And understandably, they don’t want to be like that. Some people move to this extreme style of management because they have seen the consequences of bosses who are too friendly—who value getting along more than getting results. Unlike their results-driven counterparts, these friendly bosses fear being the bad guy to the degree that they fail to hold people accountable or press for continuous improvement. On the other hand, their birthday celebrations are superb and they highly value performance indicators like morale and job satisfaction. I should point out that there is a long line of leadership research that shows the negative consequences of managing in either of these extreme ways. What we found from studying leaders and team members is that the best performers don’t fall into the trap of managing on one end of the continuum or the other. They value getting results and getting along. They value quality and productivity as much as they value harmony. They can clarify high expectations and rally a team to be both motivated and able to accomplish them. They can have tough, honest, candid conversations with care and courtesy. They have found the "and." They know how to be both friendly and highly productive bosses. So here is some specific advice to help you find your "and." 1. Don’t fall for the Fool’s Choice. There are more options than being a boss or being a friend. You can value accountability and morale; you can find ways to get input and get execution. Get out of this trap by moving to dialogue—with your own boss and with your team. 2. Clarify how you can work to achieve both purposes. Put two columns on a sheet of paper. In one column, brainstorm together and clarify what tactics and measures you could use to make sure that key indicators like productivity, schedule, quality, and budget are being met. How will you set clear goals? How will people be held accountable? How will you deal with setbacks or gaps? In the next column, clarify the more people-centric measures and tactics. What goals will you set? How will you measure job satisfaction and morale? How will you praise people and celebrate successes? The outcome of this exercise will not only be clarity and balance, but you will also get beyond the Fool’s Choice. 3. Determine who does what by when and follow up. Good plans with frequent follow up give your boss, your team, and yourself confidence that there will be accountability and that nothing will fall through the cracks. Also, good plans help you know the specific steps and expectations you have to help you accomplish the results that make for a "friendly" workplace. In closing, I want to share an observation that I’ve had many times over the years. Sometimes our greatest strengths can become a weakness. For example, if the manager is the most experienced and expert person in the room, she can sometimes hear points of information from her team, and then jump to a conclusion that skips three additional points. Her speed of thinking now leaves half or more of the team in the dark. The boss says, "Here’s what we’ll do…" and moves to the next issue. Her strength (speed and problem solving) has become a weakness because her team would describe her as controlling and impatient. To apply this to your case, don’t let your friendliness slide into missing deadlines, overspending budgets, or not holding people accountable. And don’t let your firm management style slide into not praising, involving, or smiling. The choice is yours. I wish you well, Al Related posts: Who’s the Boss? Confronting a Gossiping Boss Chaotic Boss

I’m going to take the next four days to post a topic a day from the MSLOC430 cMOOC I’m participating in, or maybe the correct term is reading in. I don’t feel like I’m the best participant because I haven’t joined into the co-authored document (an example of crowdsourcing I suppose) defining all these objects or other activities that I should be doing.I’ve more flowed in and out of I’ve more flowed in and out of discussions and caught the odd post here and there about each topic. I think the beauty of the cMOOC though is that you can flow in and out at will though. You get out of it what you put in and that’s different for everybody. So, the four terms I’ll be picking apart and thinking about in my way are: Crowdsourcing (that’s this one!) Idea Management and Design Communities of Practice Working Out Loud (ooh my favorite) Now to the first topic good stuff. Crowdsourcing What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think crowdsourcing? I think of a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a worthy cause of some sort. Maybe a company that wants to change the world for the better but keep control from the greed of companies who have their own agenda when funding a company. I even think of not so worthy causes such as the fad of some to attempt to crowdsource their next vacation, or honeymoon by asking relatives (and sometimes strangers) to fund it. My first introduction to crowdsourcing is hard to put my finger on, but an example I do remember is from the Gamification conference in 2012. An employee of Microsoft used crowdsourcing and gamification methods to uncover bugs in some new software. There were hidden badges within the game of uncovering bugs and making reports on them. Playing this game was completely voluntary so there had to be some way to get people to want to do it. The big question for crowdsourcing is how it’s going to benefit me. What’s in it for me? I guess that’s where the gamification elements come into it. An important element of crowdsourcing is how you attract people to want to solve your problem. Is it fun? Is there a potential payback? Do you get recognition? People aren’t going to throw money at you or start working to solve your problem unless there’s something great in it for them. One of the easiest things to do is assume that crowdsourcing is the answer to all your problems and people are going to be begging to help you solve your big problem. It’s supposed to be a cheap, easy way to solve problems, right? Wrong. I think the main benefit of crowdsourcing is that it opens you up to a huge diverse group of thinking, new ways of seeing the problem. This all comes at a huge cost though. A lot of money and time has to be invested to make sure the crowd will even be interested in helping. It’s necessary to have that "what’s in it for me?" question covered from all directions so you won’t just get forgotten. It’s Not That Easy In the MSLOC430 blog, there’s a summary of Daren Brabham’s four ingredients to crowdsourcing: An organization that has a task that needs to be performed A community (crowd) that is willing to perform the task voluntarily An online environment that allows the work to take place and the community to interact with the organization, and Mutual benefit for the organization and the community. (Brabham, 2013) The message I get out of this is that crowdsourcing is hard. A lot of work is necessary to make it work. The only step along the way that might be easy (or not!) is that an organization has a task that needs to be performed, or I might add a problem that needs to be solved. Each of the other steps is a huge challenge and one that takes a lot of thinking, preparation, and work to pull off. Nobody is awaiting your call to jump in there and help, there must be a reason. It’s Relevant To All I don’t see that crowdsourcing is relevant to only business. It seems to be a topic that is extremely relevant to education, business, non-profits, anybody really that has the resources and wants to put in the time to make it work. What kinds of examples have you seen in the world of crowdsourcing? I’m interested in hearing in what context you’ve seen crowdsourcing attempted, failed, or succeed. Please leave a comment below and share, let’s crowdsource a list of great examples of crowdsourcing Tomorrow I’ll be attempting to explore the world of Idea Management and Design. I don’t know where to start on that topic, but I get the idea that that’s a topic I will instantly connect to something I’ve seen or just makes perfect sense. The post The Things We Can Do With Crowdsourcing Are Limitless (But Hard) appeared first on Nick Leffler's Portfolio & Learning Insights. You might also enjoy: Communities of Practice Need Some Practice Communities of Inquiry Idea Management and Design - You Mean PKM?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Justin Hale is a Master Trainer and Consultant with VitalSmarts. READ MORE How do I keep things going for learners after the formal training? Here are a few things to consider: Read David Maxfield’s article. This provides an excellent explanation on how to keep the skills alive in your organization. Hold regular practice sessions. This can be a 30-45 minute meeting. Ask people to come with a situation they are dealing with, take the first 5 minutes to quickly review the skill they’ll be practicing, and then spend the rest of the time on practice and feedback from a coach. If people don’t come with scenarios, hand out 3×5 cards and ask them to write down a few relevant situations they deal with. Then go through all the cards and look for trends. Find 3-5 common examples and use those for practice. Drill and Scrimmage. As with sports, there are two types of practice: drills and scrimmage. Drills are meant to isolate one skill and focus on a lot of repetition. Scrimmage is meant to simulate a real situation. Drills—Isolate one skill (like STATE) and have people practice with 4-5 scenarios (almost to the point that they start to hate it ). Make sure they’re in pairs and have one person practice the skill and the other give quick feedback after each practice (the second person should just be offering feedback, not role playing). You can also walk around give feedback on the nuances of the skills. People will start to become more confident and competent with this skill. Scrimmage—Put people in triads (initiator, respondent, coach) and have them "scrimmage" a real situation. The initiator will begin the conversation by stating his or her path and then the respondent will respond in a way that closely simulates what a real conversation would be like. The initiator can then incorporate more skills (contrast, AMPP, CRIB, etc.) So remember, if you are going to get learners together after the formal class, try to focus more on practice than review. Make sure they have the skills down (drills) before you throw them into the real deal (scrimmage). Good luck! Justin Hale Related posts: How do I respond to participants’ concerns about participating in training? Changing Behavior After Training What are some ways I can further participants’ learning after the training?

Yesterday I started the first of my four-part series covering my thoughts and impressions on the four topics presented in week 3 of the MSLOC430 cMOOC. I started with crowdsourcing, the message I came away with there are so many problems that can be solved and tasks that can be completed, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Today is a new term for me, but it sounds familiar. Idea Management and Design, that sounds close to what I know as Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). Of course this is  my first impression without any interference from the outside, we’ll see if my impression holds true though. After reading a few lines from the MSLOC430 blog it really does sound like PKM. Harold Jarche has many models and forms of making sense of information and learning with his Seek-Sense-Share framework. Breaking down idea management from the MSLOC430 blog, it’s very familiar to me: Sourcing - who contributes ideas, and how do you collect them (seek) Filtering - how do you evaluate ideas to find the most promising or innovative. (sense) It’s just missing share in there. I’m thinking the first difference I might see in this would be that idea management isn’t just personal, it can be for the good of a company and can be group knowledge. Problems The blog post talks about Open IDEO and ideas being voted on and expertly reviewed sounds great, but does it lend itself more to group think? Everybody starts agreeing with each other and when an idea is new and radical it has a tendency to get shot down by the masses. As we’ve seen in the past, the masses can do some pretty horrendous things (and good too though to be fair!) There’s nothing worse that I can see for an organization than it becoming one big group think. I hear the statement "great minds think alike" and I can’t help but cringe. Great minds absolutely do not think alike, that’s what makes them great, uniqueness. Maybe some great minds might cross paths on occasions but they definitely do not think alike. The greatest minds do not fall into group think, they are not swayed by the masses. Great minds are not crushed by the weight of people voting that their idea isn’t good or should be thrown out. So, could Open IDEO and the concept of idea management be a problem? Yes, it could. Group knowledge I think can be a problem. While personal knowledge has the power to create great (and unique!) ideas, group knowledge has the power to create sameness. Successes While I do think there could be some problems with the model of falling to group think, there’s also some huge potential for great success and wonderful things to happen. As long as ideas aren’t thrown out completely and they’re judged by people who actually understand the details of them, there shouldn’t be a problem. It seems the OpenIDEO platform has potential to not fall prey to the bad things that can happen with group knowledge. With a system in place to account for the biases of people and the lack of understanding of people, it could succeed in doing something great. Going back to organization knowledge, the same possibilities of success holds true as with OpenIDEO projects. Tapping into new great things that people can come up with together holds a lot of power to change the world or organization. My Experience As I was writing this I recalled an experience I had over a year ago at an organization. Every year everybody would get together to plan innovations and share with the rest of the company something great they came up with. I participated and found the experience to be somewhat comical, somewhat of a madhouse. It started in a big room with everybody displaying boards and samples of what their project is all about. This is after painstakingly preparing the project and getting approval to take part from "leadership". It was a great experience and everybody in the company got to vote on the "innovation" they thought was the most worthy of being implemented. While the project I worked hard on with several others did make it as the top voted project, some others that made it very close to the top too.What is considered innovation at this thing? Well, bagel Monday was considered an innovation. Bagel Monday sounds cool and all, but it doesn’t sound like an innovation. What is considered innovation at this thing? Well, bagel Monday was considered an innovation. Bagel Monday sounds cool and all, but it doesn’t sound like an innovation. I think my point in bringing that up was that these processes where people vote, and executives, or leaders have the last say are prone to a huge amount of abuse. Our project never did make it through the last round, but we were approached by the CIO to present to him personally because he wasn’t a judge this year. It was a somewhat success for us to make it that far, but unfortunately I have to say I didn’t make it much further in rolling it out because I was in the last month of employment there. Best to go out on a high note, and that’s the way I continue to live. Your Thoughts As always, I’m interested to hear what your thoughts are. What is idea management and design to you? Do you see the relationship to PKM? Don’t worry, I won’t bite, nor will anybody else (I hope). Discussion is great and I truly do appreciate it (and in most cases you’ll get a reply within an hour The post Idea Management and Design - You Mean PKM? appeared first on Nick Leffler's Portfolio & Learning Insights. You might also enjoy: The Things We Can Do With Crowdsourcing Are Limitless (But Hard) Learning From Others Reflecting on the National eXtension Conference (#nexconf)

ABOUT THE EXPERT Steve Willis is a Master Trainer and Vice President of Professional Services at VitalSmarts. READ MORE My experience with "why" has been an interesting one. In fact, I’ve been able to identify several distinct phases that I’ve experienced. There were the younger years where "why" was fast and frequent…and as my parents would say, annoying (my mother and father are currently enjoying seeing my children do this to me). Next I entered the teenage years where "why" took a more belligerent and defiant tone. This phase has gradually given way to the current phase that I’m still growing into: "why" as a curious approach rather than an accusatory approach. As I reflected on this, I realized that our participants have a similar, albeit condensed, experience during the session. And the sooner they move into the curious phase, the sooner they start really internalizing and learning. So here’s the big question: What do you do to help participants move more quickly into the curiosity phase of "why?" Let’s compare notes. Send me your thoughts. Related posts: From the Road: Training #241- How to Keep It New and Exciting From the Road: Mind the Gap From the Road: The Importance of Propinquity