Over the past few months, I’ve spent significant time thinking about L&D and its relationship to the rest of the organization. I’ve been hearing more and more about how L&D is not keeping up with the needs of the business, how employees are turning to outside sources to spend their developmental hours, and how business leadership has completely lost confidence in L&D. There are examples of organizations doing L&D well, and we hunt them out and highlight them, but I don’t think anyone is going to argue with me that L&D, as a function, is in crisis mode. As I speak with these more mature organizations, common threads begin to emerge. These organizations exist to drive business value, versus existing to provide training. The common theme is how L&D aligns (or doesn’t) with the rest of the organization. Here are my three most prominent observations. 1.       L&D is more aligned when it speaks the same language as the business. While the rest of the business tends to focus on terms and KPIs like customer engagement, conversion rates, and time to market, L&D often tosses terms like learning objectives, instructional modalities, and course completions. L&D may very well be utilizing its expertise to provide knowledge and skills to drive the business. But sometimes the vocabulary gets in the way. I recently spoke to a director of L&D who told her team, "Go ahead and geek out with the learning stuff when you’re talking to us, but when you face the business, make sure you’re speaking their language." Sage advice. 2.       L&D is more aligned when it understands and communicates with all of their stakeholders. L&D typically has three major stakeholder groups, and it should communicate and build relationships with each: ·         Business Leaders. Business or executive leaders can be compared to buyers. They set priorities and provide funding; they understand the strategy and shift it when necessary; they play a large part in shaping the culture; and their support of learning and development initiatives may be the difference between success and failure. When L&D understands and aligns with business leaders, they tend to focus their efforts and resources in the right way, and are better able to make the case for additional resources when necessary. ·         Line Managers. Line managers can be compared to influencers. They influence employee priorities; they are responsible for executing business strategies; they own the learning culture; and they frequently own some sort of budget. When L&D understands the pain points of line managers, it is able to efficiently address them in the solutions that are provided. When this happens, they likely gain the respect and confidence of line managers, which can help confirm that the right developmental activities are taking place. ·         Employees. Employees are the consumer of learning products provided by L&D. They give up their time and attention to learn. Employees are interested in doing their jobs better and more efficiently; in avoiding being overwhelmed and overworked; and in developing their own careers. When L&D understands these motivations, they can design initiatives that better fit into the work, increasing the probability that learning is happening continuously. 3.       L&D is more aligned when it focuses. Because business moves so rapidly and strategies pivot regularly, L&D should provide the organization with knowledge and skills for any new direction. It isn’t an easy job. But, it’s an important one. An L&D department should put as much thought into what they aren’t going to do as they do into what they are going to do. When L&D is able to draw a clear distinction between the things that they and the business would like to do, versus the things that will likely actually move the business forward, they are often better able to allocate their resources to provide what the business needs. It’s better to do less and do it really well, versus doing too much and failing. And that’s it. My top three for alignment. If you’d like more info on any of these three topics, you’re in luck. There happens to be a webinar on this topic on December 10 at 1:30 EST.  You can register here. We also just completed a series of articles, performance support tools, and infographics that speak to this subject. Just search for Aligning L&D in the Bersin Library.   

Josh Bersin has led the market with a message for HR practitioners at all levels:  Be Bold! Take the reins, mobilize the troops, and capture the HR and Talent field in your organizations.  The mantra for the HR community includes - perhaps for the first time—words such as "innovate," and "become data-driven," to "boldly go where no HR team has gone before." Hyperbole aside for a minute, the charter remains; but stepping up to the proverbial plate requires fearlessness and gumption; willingness to take a risk, and the courage to lead. Today’s HR leaders recognize this. Boldness is not just for the HR department however: companies that supply software for managing HR also face the need for such decisive action.  One example is SilkRoad, a SaaS-software company that launched a core HR product a few years ago that failed to meet the standards the company sets for itself.  Here is where the bold part come into play: management decommissioned the product and went back to the drawing board; rather than trying to be all things to all people, the new product which emerged, SilkRoad HRMS, is far more focused, leaving areas to third parties where third parties may do them best, such as payroll and benefits management. Product providers can be bold in their market strategies as well. Consider innovative ways to look at HR, such as "how much core HR is enough?"  What does a core HR software solution need to look like for, for example, a mid-sized company that has no international employees?  When talent profiles sprouted in the last decade, many of us analysts hypothesized that that employee profile could "take over" the system-of-record employee profile in the core HR system.  For many of the vendors that today provide  both core HR and talent  management systems  (such as talent acquisition, learning, career, performance, and succession management), that integration has happened:  there is one employee profile that contains both employment information and talent information.  But the innovation comes in with those suite providers who are talent-only - often linking to a third party HRIS system.  What employee information is indeed sufficient?  Some talent solution vendors see an opportunity to support their users—again, mostly less complex business environments—with one employee profile stemming from an integrated talent suite. Think about it: One single point of truth for information about a given employee without the complexities that sometimes accompany an HRIS.  The boldness of replacing a traditional HR system with a talent management system and an employee profile—no matter how complete—may not be sufficient in organizations that rely on the HRIS to determine ACA eligibility, as only one example.  But you must admit it is intriguing at a time when companies are looking for less complex ways of managing their businesses. I’m not forgetting HR however; consider emboldening your team. Look where you can reskill or upskill your department with the skills they will need for the rest of the decade.  Improve business acumen across the HR team. Upskill analytic skills. Enhance proficiency with today’s technology. Collaborate tenaciously with other divisions in the organization.  Build internal project management and change management proficiency within your team. Re-envision HR; re-envision the solutions you use every day, or if you are a solution provider, that you create. Consider revision -a word that does not mean "do over"—but "to look at with new eyes." Let’s be bold enough to re-envision and  revise.   This publication contains general information only, and none of the member firms of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, its member firms, or their related entities (collective, the "Deloitte Network") is, by means of this publication, rendering professional advice or services. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified professional adviser. No entity in the Deloitte Network shall be responsible for any loss whatsoever sustained by any person who relies on this publication.   About Deloitte Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee ("DTTL"), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as "Deloitte Global") does not provide services to clients. Please see www.deloitte.com/about for a detailed description of DTTL and its member firms. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.   Copyright © 2015 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved. Member of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited

Hello! I am the newest member of the Bersin by Deloitte analyst team and it is a pleasure to make your virtual acquaintance! My research focus is leadership and succession management and I look forward to lively conversations around these important and interesting topics with you. A little bit about my background: prior to joining Bersin, I pursued a dual career as leadership researcher and consultant and I worked closely with organizations in both the USA and Europe (I am Austrian!) to drive methodical and practical business research. I consider leadership as both a social process as well as an organizational phenomenon and I am excited about our future research endeavors that will help us understand how best to leverage human leadership capital for individual and collective business outcomes. The way we think about leadership has changed dramatically in the past few years. Hierarchical structures, centralized decision-making and a "subordinate" workforce are expiring principles, as markets and business challenges rapidly change and organizations are required to engage a new type of workforce: future employees. Future employees - who, by the way, may already be working at your organization! -  will have grown up in a fully digitalized, connected and diverse world  in which new forms of work habits  and values  have emerged. Their requirements for being engaged, motivated and inspired may differ from what most organizations have seen before. The question for companies has become: How to build leaders who are able to connect with this kind of workforce so that strategies are executed and business goals can be met? Participants needed for new leadership research study! Reading a lot of secondary literature, my current research suggests that one effective response can be to develop a highly responsive, adaptive and flexible type of leadership, on the organizational and the individual leader level. In the coming weeks, I am conducting research interview to this effect and I am currently looking to talk to HR and business leaders who want to participate in our research! If you are interested in a 30-minute phone call with me, or know a senior HR or business leader who is, please send me an email: aderler@deloitte.com. I look forward to hearing from you! 

All over the world companies are trying to find new ways to change their performance management practices to improve employee engagement, performance, and development. Many are eliminating performance ratings, forcing managers to check-in with employees regularly, and rethinking their compensation strategies.  Some are doing pulse surveys, revamping their engagement models, and opening up their internal communications systems. As I study this market and talk with managers all over the world, one thing keeps coming out:  we need to build a business around feedback. Feedback is a big topic, and it's more complicated than you think: We all want it and we all want to give it ... but it's difficult to give and even more difficult to receive. And in the corporate world, people who give a lot of feedback are often labelled trouble-makers. Today building a feedback-rich culture is a tremendously important task, and it impacts teams, organizations, customers, and the whole company. Well a new world of feedback tools and approaches has arrived, and I believe it could be one of the most exciting things happening in management and HR. I just finished more than two years studying this space and wrote a long article I encourage you to read. Let me know what you think, I'd like YOUR FEEDBACK on all these ideas and new tools in the marketplace!

For almost 15 years I have been focused on using research as a tool to help businesses solve strategic HR, learning, and leadership challenges. As most of you know, this focus has helped us pioneer a special breed of "actionable research" designed to help HR and learning professionals understand the marketplace, learn about trends and leading-practices, and diagnose their strategies to better understand next steps. We are very proud of our innovations - they include the use of validated maturity models (with detailed data and benchmarking behind them) in more than 20 different areas, comprehensive data on spending and resource allocation, and of course much detail on HR technology, solution providers, and content vendors and how they typically fit into the market. Throughout this journey our goal has always been simple:  to help companies address their most pressing talent challenges, and hopefully make their own workplaces more engaging and rewarding. And in the process of doing all this hard work, we realized that we could also help the HR community enhance its own professional skills and expertise - and of course help make businesses better at serving customers. This week, after more than two years of effort, we are introducing the next step in our journey - a new set of content and technology offerings we call BersinOne. While I rarely write blogs promoting our own offerings, in this case I just want to explain what we've done so you can learn more and see where we're going. Moving from Understanding to Action. Over the years we always asked our analysts to focus our research on "actionable information" - models, tools, frameworks, and examples that can help people solve problems. And most of you have told me this is very valuable and very helpful.  But it hasn't been enough. Despite our best efforts to write as much as we can, people continuously come to us and say things like "thank you for explaining that maturity model or that practice, but how can I implement it in my organization?" After thinking about this issue for many years, we believe we have come up with a new approach - and that is the focus of BersinOne.  Simply explained, what we realized is that major HR, learning, and talent management solutions tend to revolve around six basic steps, and when we want to build a world class solution, we always go down this path: Learn:  The first step in a problem is to learn about the space. If you have retention problem, or a hard time attracting candidates, or a gap in leadership capabilities - the first thing you should do is "learn about the space."  This means learning the vocabulary, understanding some of the basics, and starting to identify what "world class" looks like.  Our Lexicon, frameworks, case studies, and research reports are heavily focused on giving you the "101 course" in almost every area of talent, learning, and leadership.  And now we also include CHRO and VP level content, designed to help leaders quickly learn what they need, while you dive into detail as a practitioner or project leader. Prioritize:  The second step in developing an HR or talent solution is to prioritize. Where do we start?  What parts of our existing process or program should we throw away and what parts should we keep?  Should we double investment in this area or just tweak what we have?  These issues of how much to spend and what areas to prioritize can be tricky, because many companies aspire to copy a company like GE or Google, only to find that they simply "can't get there from here" and it might take years to reach that level. So here we provide diagnostic tools, Factbooks (books of spending level by maturity and industry), and maturity models to help you figure out precisely what the "next step" means to you and your organization. Design:  The third step is the fun part - designing a solution.  Here is where we sit down with a whiteboard (or website) and start to design how we want to redesign our onboarding program, architect our new leadership development, or maybe change our pre-hire assessment or interview guide.  Our goal here is to give you lots of guidance, tools (very precise checklists and action plans), and examples (case studies and artifacts from other companies) so you don't have to "reinvent the wheel."  And of course we try to show you what we've learned about design areas that are potential pitfalls or errors others have experienced, to help prevent you from making mistakes.  And by the way, design practices tend to change every year or two, so you have to stay current. Right now mobile apps, behavioral economics, and gamification, for example, are becoming very important. Select:  The fourth step, and sometimes the biggest of all, is to select a solution provider, product, or platform to help. My experience shows that there are very few HR and learning solutions that don't involve vendor technology, content, or platforms.  So we believe one of your most critical steps is finding the right partners, selecting the right tools, and sifting through the thousands of content and assessment providers to find the one best for you. This is why we focus on being effective HR analysts - we want to give you as much insight as we can about who does what, where they focus, and what their relative strengths are. Implement:  The fifth part of a solution is implementation. This, of course, is where the rubber meets the road - and topics like education, change readiness, change management, communication, and stakeholder buy-in can be especially critical. We are just introducing a major new area of research on change, and I think we've learned a lot to share with you - because no matter how beautiful and elegant a solution may be, if people don't use it there is no value at all. Measure: And finally, perhaps more important now than ever, is the need to measure what you've done. As an engineer with a background in analytics, I think measurement is very often a missing piece - and in HR, just like any other part of business, there are many things we can now measure. We study all areas of measurement and analytics and we offer tools, working groups (people you can learn from), diagnostics, and lots of templates to help you measure what you're rolling out. Measurement is far more than computing the ROI - it's putting in place an ongoing process to monitor and help continuously improve the program you've created. From a technology perspective, BersinOne is a major upgrade and face-lift to the BersinInsights platform we launched back in 2012. The new platform integrates all our research, tools, community, and diagnostics into an clean and new experience that will soon include role-based access to help you immediately find exactly what you need. Our goal with BersinOne is to be "the single place you go" to learn, address problems, and meet others in our community.   Part of the new content and platform strategy is to redesign our content around what we now call Bersin Blueprints - specific content designed to address current pressing talent challenges. The Bersin Blueprints, and there are four being launched today, compliment the Bersin Playbooks and extend them to give you step by step guidance using the six phases discussed above. And we have made it easier then ever to find what you need.  While all our subject areas and practices remain, all our content and tools are now also organized by nine solution areas - so you can quickly focus on a problem rather than look for content by topic or date. Becoming World Class at Talent:  More Important than Ever The world of HR, leadership, learning, and recruitment is more important than ever.  We will continue to develop innovative research and tools to help you stay ahead, solve problems, and develop your team. I look forward to sharing more with you, and of course welcome your feedback and comments.

  A leadership vision: followership in 2030 Imagine a group of elementary school children and fast-forward fifteen years to the time they enter the work force. What will they be like? What will they be interested in? What will inspire them and which principles will guide their choices? Which organizations will they want to work for, and what kind of employees will they turn out to be? Every attempt to describe the best leaders in 2030 should begin with asking about their followers. Knowing about the nature of their work, their values and expectations can help define key leadership skills. The primary factor for the fundamental differences between previous and future generations of workers is the near unlimited access to information. Enabled by technology, individuals and teams in 2030 are expected to be better informed and educated than ever before as they continue to explore ways of acquiring, managing and utilizing data. Future employees will have grown up in a fully digitalized, connected and diverse world in which new forms of work habits and values will emerge. Eventually, these changes will likely transform the role of employees within the leader-follower relationship.   Fewer limitations in regards to when and how people work, the freedom to share information and learn in more democratic ways have already begun to change work principles towards collaboration flexibility, and decentralization. As the corporate ladder is often a thing of the past, employees can create their own networks and career paths instead of relying on hierarchies and position thinking. These developments are changing the nature of followership dramatically. Better access to information provides employees with deeper knowledge and enables a higher degree of intellectual autonomy and emancipation. In 2030, workers will likely expect to be part of - not subject to - leadership processes. They should not just be followers but collaborators, associates and allies who require a new type of leadership than the generations before them. The best leaders in 2030... ...should understand that the workforce continues to transform into an emancipated and informed entity that openly disregards traditional structures, thinks independently, acts autonomously and knows what to expect from extraordinary leaders. More on what constitutes an extraordinary leader in this context next time! Feedback and comments are welcome! Please email me at mailto:aderler@deloitte.com     As used in this document, "Deloitte" means Deloitte Consulting LLP, a subsidiary of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting. This publication contains general information only and Deloitte is not, by means of this publication, rendering accounting, business, financial, investment, legal, tax, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such professional advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified professional advisor. Deloitte shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person who relies on this publication. Copyright © 2015 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.  

Here is an interesting proposition. You are a software provider, but you know you will never have the time to create every feature your customers might need, especially in the timeframe they want it. But you have other choices:  typically, a company might partner with other providers, such that their customers can get the solutions they need - but you may not have too much influence over that partner’s roadmap or product direction.  Or perhaps you as a software provider might just acquire that other company rather than partnering with it: a venture that may prove pricey, and may or may not deliver long-term value.   But what if there were something in the middle - more skin in the game than partnering—but not as much skin as if you acquired the whole company? This is the road that software provider Cornerstone OnDemand (CSOD) is taking: the "something in the middle."  Through its Innovation Fund, the company provides venture capital, workspace and mentorship to the young companies, particularly those seeking to build businesses in the LA area, where Cornerstone is located. That said, one of the early growth stage companies involved in the program is in Silicon Alley—New York City.  Named One Month, it has an interesting value proposition:  that its clients can learn a new technical skill in one month. Its video-based courses help students complete a project (such as building an app), possibly while learning a new software tool, such as Ruby, Python or Swift.  Company executives state that 25,000 people have taken its courses with a high retention rate.[1] Course enrollment start at $49 a month.[2] Named one of Social Media Week’s "10 Start-ups to Watch"[3] last February, it has had three rounds of investors, including Cornerstone in the third round.[4] In theory, this functionality could be available to CSOD’s customers as a means of promoting rapid learning models.  The company has made no promises for any long-term support of the solution for its customer base. Silicon Valley isn’t totally ignored here either. Rallyteam relocated to San Francisco from the Santa Monica area to participate in the Orange Fab accelerator program.  Backed by Norwest Venture Partners,[5] among others,[6] and now by CSOD, the company provides SaaS solutions which encourage what it calls "smart matching" of employees to projects for agile and effective teamwork.[7] Workpop and Strive are both in Santa Monica and both companies have created programs for hiring management.  Workpop was recently named one of the "Coolest New Businesses in LA" by Business Insider.[8] It provides tools and data to give an employer a better understanding of a candidate’s fit within a company, with the goal of both reducing time to hire and decreasing attrition. A key feature of Workpop is its tracking of people across companies rather than solely within a specific company. Workpop has completed its second round of funding.[9] Strive, also in its second round of funding,[10] goes after that illusive technical software developer.  Founded by the same team that created CodeWars (a community in which developers compete on code challenges), Strive’s goal is to automate the technical hiring process for its client companies. Its platform is intended to source and test qualified developers, exercising their coding skills for more effective matching with positions. Investing in young startups is nothing new in the software industry: companies such as Salesforce.com have been doing it for years.  However, in the integrated talent management suite world it is a bit rarer: Cornerstone may well be a bellwether as to the effectiveness of such an initiative by an HCM software company.     This publication contains general information only, and none of the member firms of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, its member firms, or their related entities (collective, the "Deloitte Network") is, by means of this publication, rendering professional advice or services. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified professional adviser. No entity in the Deloitte Network shall be responsible for any loss whatsoever sustained by any person who relies on this publication.   About Deloitte Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee ("DTTL"), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as "Deloitte Global") does not provide services to clients. Please see www.deloitte.com/about for a detailed description of DTTL and its member firms. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.   Copyright © 2015 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved. Member of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited   [1] https://onemonth.com/ [2] As reported by One Month executive at an introductory event sponsored by CSOD. [3] http://socialmediaweek.org/newyork/events/startups-to-watch-why-entrepreneurs-will-build-the-future/ [4] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/one-month-rails [5] http://www.nvp.com/team/matt-slotnick/ [6] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/rallyteam/investors [7] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/rallyteam [8] Business Insider, February 18, 2015. [9] With $7.9 Million In Funding, Workpop Launches As A Job Marketplace For Hourly Workers by Ryan Lawler. September 16, 2014 http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/16/workpop/ [10] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/codewars/investors

It's HR Technology season, and once again vendors are introducing amazing and disruptive new technologies in all areas of HR.  I developed our "Ten Big Disruptions" report again this year, which I encourage you to read. At a high level, let me summarize what's going on - and as always we encourage you to reach out if you'd like to discuss more. The HR Technology market tends to go in cycles, as companies install new solutions and go through a 5-7 year cycle of implementation, rollout, and then replacement.  In several areas of HR we are nearing the end of a cycle, so let me summarize some of these evolutionary changes - then you can read the report for more detail. First, there is a massive replacement of licensed, traditional HRMS systems taking place. More than 40% of all companies are replacing or plan to replace their core HRMS systems. Cedar-Crestone believe 60% of all companies are working on a new enterprise HR systems strategy and 46% are increasing budgets. Interestingly, Stacey Harris (one of our alma maters) also found out that companies with new, recently upgraded HRMS platforms are spending 22% less per employee on HR, so they are seeing financial benefits (even though the cost of implementing new HR technology is high). These new HRMS systems are cloud based, and they are coming from vendors (Oracle, SAP, Workday, ADP, Ceridian, Ultimate Software, and others) that have mostly built-out talent management suites.  Almost 26% of the companies in the Cedar-Crestone survey are doing "rip and replace" - totally throwing away their old systems. I just hosted a panel with Delta Airlines (SAP implementation), Macy's (Oracle implementation), and United Technologies (Workday implementation) and we discussed the highly complex, multi-year process these companies are going through to replace their core technology. In every case the company selected a vendor that had particular capabilities that met their needs, and in each case there are many incumbent systems, payroll providers, and outsourcers involved. Erica Volini, Deloitte's service line leader in HR Transformation and Technology, explained clearly that there are no "best products" in this space - it's all a matter of where you're coming from, where you're going, and the vendor who's roadmap best matches yours. Second, the talent management market is being redefined. I've been in this market for 15+ years and the standalone market for learning, recruitment, and other talent applications is being redefined. The LMS markets is being disrupted by new video-based learning solutions, many of which will be complimentary to installed systems. There are a host of new, disruptive recruitment vendors who are clearly going to change the applicant tracking market. In fact I believe that market is ripe for disruption, since most ATS systems are quite old (as are the vendors).  And the market for new performance management systems is emerging. I know, the ERP vendors do all this stuff. Well even so, companies of all sizes will often either A) not use the ERP vendor's products, or B) can't afford the ERP solution - so these new vendors have a huge marketplace ahead. As always, once the gorillas emerge they will likely be acquired by the big HRMS/Payroll providers, but that's years ahead. Third, the market for feedback, culture, and engagement apps is here. I wrote extensively on this in the article "Feedback is the Killer App." The traditional annual engagement survey is going the way of the dinosaur (slowly however) and a new breed of pulse tools, feedback apps, and anonymous social networking tools has arrived. If you aren't exploring this space you are missing a huge opportunity to make your company better. I wont list the vendors here, but every one of them is growing and I see this as a whole new segment. Fourth, we have a maturing market for employee well-being, wellness, and productivity systems. We have published a lot of research which shows that employees are overwhelmed, and right now I'm working on next year's Deloitte Human Capital Trends (click here to participate) and you'll see even more on this coming up. To deal with this companies are now introducing some very exciting and well developed systems that let your employees join health-related challenges, track their fitness, collaborate with their health care providers or others, and just help balance their work-life. Personally I think this will be a huge market going forward, and even device manufacturers and exercise equipment providers are developing these systems. Fifth, the era of People Analytics is here. I just published another article on the Ten Things We Have Learned in People Analytics.  In short, this space is now maturing. While most companies are early in their implementations and solutions, there are now a good set of organizations that have implemented strong people analytics strategies, and almost every vendor now has some form of predictive analytics embedded into their product. Rather than seeing dashboards, you're likely to see "recommendations"- so some of this technology is invisible behind the scenes.  Tools to predict flight risk, assess high potential job candidates, even find toxic employee behavior - are all in the market today.  While many are not highly proven yet, they all work to a degree, providing great value to any company. Apps as the Platform of the Future The final note I'll make here is that "appification has arrived."  As you'll read in the report, mobile apps are the future - and they are different and more powerful than typical browser-based web systems.  Not all the killer apps have been created yet, but most of the new, exciting HR applications coming are apps first, then web systems later. This does not mean they aren't powerful and complex behind the scenes, but they expose themselves as pinch and swipe on your phone - making it easier than ever to embed location and peer to peer collaboration into the system.  We'll write more on this soon. If you haven't been evaluating HR technology lately, you should now. The investment and venture capital pouring into new companies is astounding, and many of these new tools are transformational in their value. It's an exciting year to be an HR professional: the worlds of technology, mobile computing, analytics, and behavioral economics are all coming together for you!  We look forward to helping you understand and implement some of these exciting new solutions.          

Over the past few months, I’ve spent significant time thinking about L&D and its relationship to the rest of the organization. I’ve been hearing more and more about how L&D is not keeping up with the needs of the business, how employees are turning to outside sources to spend their developmental hours, and how business leadership has completely lost confidence in L&D. There are examples of organizations doing L&D well, and we hunt them out and highlight them, but I don’t think anyone is going to argue with me that L&D, as a function, is in crisis mode. As I speak with these more mature organizations, common threads begin to emerge. These organizations exist to drive business value, versus existing to provide training. The common theme is how L&D aligns (or doesn’t) with the rest of the organization. Here are my three most prominent observations. 1.       L&D is more aligned when it speaks the same language as the business. While the rest of the business tends to focus on terms and KPIs like customer engagement, conversion rates, and time to market, L&D often tosses terms like learning objectives, instructional modalities, and course completions. L&D may very well be utilizing its expertise to provide knowledge and skills to drive the business. But sometimes the vocabulary gets in the way. I recently spoke to a director of L&D who told her team, "Go ahead and geek out with the learning stuff when you’re talking to us, but when you face the business, make sure you’re speaking their language." Sage advice. 2.       L&D is more aligned when it understands and communicates with all of their stakeholders. L&D typically has three major stakeholder groups, and it should communicate and build relationships with each: ·         Business Leaders. Business or executive leaders can be compared to buyers. They set priorities and provide funding; they understand the strategy and shift it when necessary; they play a large part in shaping the culture; and their support of learning and development initiatives may be the difference between success and failure. When L&D understands and aligns with business leaders, they tend to focus their efforts and resources in the right way, and are better able to make the case for additional resources when necessary. ·         Line Managers. Line managers can be compared to influencers. They influence employee priorities; they are responsible for executing business strategies; they own the learning culture; and they frequently own some sort of budget. When L&D understands the pain points of line managers, it is able to efficiently address them in the solutions that are provided. When this happens, they likely gain the respect and confidence of line managers, which can help confirm that the right developmental activities are taking place. ·         Employees. Employees are the consumer of learning products provided by L&D. They give up their time and attention to learn. Employees are interested in doing their jobs better and more efficiently; in avoiding being overwhelmed and overworked; and in developing their own careers. When L&D understands these motivations, they can design initiatives that better fit into the work, increasing the probability that learning is happening continuously. 3.       L&D is more aligned when it focuses. Because business moves so rapidly and strategies pivot regularly, L&D should provide the organization with knowledge and skills for any new direction. It isn’t an easy job. But, it’s an important one. An L&D department should put as much thought into what they aren’t going to do as they do into what they are going to do. When L&D is able to draw a clear distinction between the things that they and the business would like to do, versus the things that will likely actually move the business forward, they are often better able to allocate their resources to provide what the business needs. It’s better to do less and do it really well, versus doing too much and failing. And that’s it. My top three for alignment. If you’d like more info on any of these three topics, you’re in luck. There happens to be a webinar on this topic on December 10 at 1:30 EST.  You can register here. We also just completed a series of articles, performance support tools, and infographics that speak to this subject. Just search for Aligning L&D in the Bersin Library.   

Watch this video on YouTube from May 2008 because the messages are still spot on.  Although the video focuses on the educational system (Kindergarten through 12th grade), several of the messages are relevant to corporations and professional enterprises. There are a few concepts and ideas presented in this video that really grabbed my attention - such as: Learners are effective content developers and ommunicators Learning is about relationships, communites, connectivity, and access Learners are living in a "nearly now" space where they no longer have to wait ages to get the content and discussion they need today - and where they have more opportunities to reflect, research, and test new ideas without the same pressures experienced in traditional learning systems It’s about providing the best quality trainers and experts to learners no matter where they live and work We have a classroom system when we could have a community system The vending machine approach to training will not prepare people for the workplace Learning is not about memorizing facts - it is about being able to find, validate, synthesize, leverage, communicate, collaborate, and problem solve with the facts, ideas, and concepts What are your thoughts? Tagged: learning community, social learning

The Irish word seisiún means a casual gathering where people play (mostly traditional) music.  Sessions are often instrumental, but there are singing sessions and mixed sessions. As The Field Guide to the Irish Music Session says, it’s a way to celebrate a common interest together in a relaxed, informal setting.  You don’t fret about what’s the right thing to do-you pick it up along the way. Sessions are at least as much for the musicians as for anyone who happens to drop in to listen. Which is as good a way as any to think about this edition of the Working/Learning blog carnival: Karyn Romeis starts with "a bit of a rambling romp" (her words): Learning?  Work? Her own passion for learning is such that she doesn’t think it should be separate from her job, and even prompted her to form her own consultancy. Manish Mohan has taken up a new instrument and shows what he knows in Twitter, Twitter Everywhere… The anthem of Ireland is Amhrán na bhFiann (The Soldier’s Song)—martial, but less thoughful than  Richard Nantel’s post, Dinner Conversation Turns to War.  In part he’s examining a dilemma: preparing people thoroughly to build skills they may never have to use. Clark Quinn’s post fits right into the spirit of a session: Do What You Love, Love What You Do.  One thing he examines is the question of what makes learning fun, and therefore someone you want to do.  He’s not talking about rubber chickens or noisemakers. Jane Bozarth builds on a 24-year tradition: a group of people who are determined to "stamp out bad training."  In asking Wherefore Passion?, she’s looking at what makes people passionate about their profession. Shanta Rohse is aware that you don’t read sheet music during a session.  Digital Literacy: Reading Signs along the Way is her exploration of what skills learners need if they want to join in successfully.  Workplaces should take note: if you don’t encourage engagement, people may go elsewhere to engage. Cammy Bean has a great title for her contribution: Learning to Work, Working to Learn.  She’s got a rare break between urgent projects and is using the time to see what she can see.  There’s tinkering, inspiration, revisiting, documenting-she’s busier than when she’s busy. Joan Vinall-Cox’s A Little Learning Is… looks at the path she’s followed thanks to "little learnings" over time.  Colleagues, like the other musicians in a session, help us learn more and see how much more we can learn. Ken Carroll considers early-career epiphanies leading to An Enduring Insight.  Not "what are the structures of the English language," for example, but how can we help people learn a language? Tradition is an important part of a session, as is the renewal of the tradition in today’s world.  Dave Lee joins the carnival with My Grandfather’s Advice, where he looks at how his own career has developed in no small part because of that advice. Sessions aren’t supposed to be complicated, but they benefit from skill (which can include the mastery of complexity — like  Davy Spillane on the uilleann pipes).  My own post, Analyzing Tasks with Paradigming, gives examples of techniques I’ve used to make complexity…well, if not less complex, then easier to grasp. CC-licensed photo of a seisiún at O’Neill’s in Manhattan by JimmyOKelly.

As I was saying, I needed to replace my PDA.  Last Saturday, just ahead of 6 or 8 inches of "a light dusting of snow," my wife and I each got the Verizon HTC Droid Eris.  (She meanwhile received a BlackBerry for work; we now have more smart phones in the house than we do smart people.) The good news is we were able to make a call on the way home from the store, so the phone part was easy to master.  That was the prelude to four or five hours during which we both tinkered with our phones. It was a good reminder that people who say "learning is fun" are usually talking about past learning, rather than future. At a particularly high level of stress, I wrote down some comments we were making: I know I came across it at one point… How do you…? How did I…? Where was…? …which helps explain my original delay in getting the phone in the first place.  Cost was one factor: Verizon’s data plan adds $30 to your monthly phone bill.  On a two-year contract, that’s $720 dollars (in addition to your voice plan, even though ours is relatively cheap). In retrospect, I think the more important factor for me was transition cost (which a couple of friends might phrase as "resistance to change").  I see three potential sources of trouble from a shift like the one I’ve made: You’ve got to learn some new things. You’ve got to learn how to do some things differently. You’ve got to leave some things behind. Of those, I think "differently" is the most troubling.  That’s the real change: to accomplish X, I used to do Y.  I knew how to do Y.  I was good at Y, so much so I didn’t have to think about it, because it had been incorporated into a larger set of behavior, the way I instinctively know when to use "the" and when not to (my sister’s in the hospital, my brother’s in college). A certain amount of stress (or perhaps challenge) can help foster learning-we’ve got a goal, we’re looking for a way to accomplish it.  Too much, though, and we see the new practice or new technology as not just a change but a hindrance-a word whose roots suggest harm, injury, or impairment. I’ve also noticed several instances of "intuitive cognitive strategies" (a term van Merriënboer and Kirschner use for "incorrect notions that newbies come up with").  For example, there are seven home screens-a phrase that confused me, since I thought of the middle one as the home screen.    The other sixe were…I don’t know, helper screen.  Subscreens.  Peripheral screens. (Why this matters: you only have so much space on the smartphone screen.  By flicking your finger across it, you can switch between the various home screens and have more real estate for applications.) Part of that confusion might have come from the concept of scenes, which are alternative sets of home screens.  (You swap in a new scene and your home screens are different-like one for work and one for play, maybe.) Got that?  Me, either, which is why I thought that you had to add a new icon to the "main" home screen (the middle one of the seven) and then drag it wherever you wanted it, like the offspring of the iPhone and a number puzzle. Going back to transition cost, the highest risk for me was that I’d have to re-enter my contacts and my calendar items if the Eris couldn’t sync with Microsoft Outlook.  I didn’t want to have to switch to Google’s contacts and calendar (see above, "learn some new things" and "leave some things behind"). Cooperative learning came into play.  I don’t recall what I was doing at the time (probably trying to create a clear path for app-dragging), but my wife made a very specific search and found a description of how to get the Eris to sync directly with Outlook on my desktop. It was a little bumpy, but I got it done-and that payoff boosted my sense of competence on the new tool.  Now I’m having fun playing with applications, and I’m more prone to see difficulties as puzzles rather than setbacks.  I just hope that the next time I’m trying to breeze someone else through "change management," I remember how frustrated I felt when my own change was getting managed. Here’s a video from  Lisa Gade’s look at the Eris (at Mobile Tech Review). You can see a demonstration of those seven home screens at about the 3:00 mark in the video: Biggest mystery about the phone so far?  It turns out that your purchase doesn’t include the 238 page user guide (PDF).  (To be fair, it’s 238 5 x 5 pages, but still…)  Perhaps Verizon has a goal to encourage discovery learning. Peculiar mystery: if you visit Android Market (the Google source for Android applications) with a computer rather than a smartphone, there’s no search function. [Here are] some of the more popular applications and games available in Android Market. For a comprehensive, up-to-date list of the thousands of titles that are available, you will need to view Android Market on a handset. No search?  From Google? Onetime English major mystery:  Eris was the goddess of strife.  At the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, she lobbed a golden apple inscribed "to the fairest."  Squabbling among goddesses led to the Trojan War, an event somewhat more frustrating than switching to a smart(er) phone.

Grad student Kathleen Bogart has Moebius syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes facial paralysis: no smiling, no blinking, no lateral eye movement.  A New York Times article, Seeking Emotional Clues Without Facial Cues, looked at her experience and that of others with Moebius. When she tried working with refugees from Hurricane Katrina, Bogart often couldn’t connect with them.  They didn’t see sympathy or understanding in her face-because she can’t express those things facially.  People in conversations mirror and react to one another, and we’re usually very skilled at detecting and interpreting very small physical signals: a forced smile, a distracted glance. This is a complicated area.  It’s not necessarily the case that people with similar paralysis can’t recognize emotion, but the inability to mimic is a barrier.  Some people cope through other channels: eye contact, for example, or voice.  The challenge has turned into a research field for Bogart. I had no special interest in studying facial paralysis, even though I had it; there were many other things I could have done. But in college I looked to see what psychologists had to say about it, and there was nothing. Very, very little on facial paralysis at all. And I was just — well, I was angry.  Angry.  I thought, I might as well do it because certainly no one else is. One result was a study of how people with Moebius recognize facial expressions (link is a PDF) of her study, demonstrating that the ability to mimic the expressions of others is not essential to recognizing their emotional state.  As the Times article suggests, if the strategies that people with Moebius use to understand emotion are "teachable,…they could help others with social awkwardness, whether because of anxiety, developmental problems like autism, or common causes of partial paralysis, like Bell’s palsy." The Times website has aslide show in which Bogart talks about having a face that can’t express emotion.    

Microsoft Word for DOS appeared in late 1983.  I’d started using a word processor only a few months before-WordStar, which at one time did bestride the computer world like a Colossus.  Relatively speaking, WordStar was geek heaven; its article on Wikipedia states, apparently with a straight face, that "WordStar is still considered by many to be one of the best examples of a ‘writing program.’" That notion evidently comes from admiration of the small file sizes that WordStar produced because it didn’t fool around with things like WYSIWYG display on the screen or with formatting commands sent to the printer.  WordStar focused on text, dammit, and you were lucky it bothered doing that. I got pretty good with WordStar, but when I came across a working demo of Microsoft Word for DOS, I was more than ready to switch.  Nowadays, the differences between the two seem minor (WordStar screen shot, Word screen shot), but the move away from technoid control codes and the inclusion of a few formatting touches (on-screen bolding and underlining) was a clear advance. I use several obscure features in Word, like the seq field code, but I’m also painfully aware of drawbacks like its capricious approach to numbering paragraphs.  In general, software companies feel compelled to add features to their products.  I think that’s because they-and some of their customers-confuse "feature" with "benefit."  There’s some relationship, of course, but over time it tends to be more hypothetical (if not downright fanciful). Why?  As Naomi Dunford points out on the IttyBiz blog, "With very few exceptions (medicine and cutting-edge technology come to mind) you are wasting space and money by telling people about your features." This morning, one of the people I follow on Twitter shared this comment on feature-itis: Track Changes is, as Senator Bob Dole said of another bright idea, is one of those things that seems great until you take a look at it.  I don’t know what aspect of Track Changes was making Chris shouty, but for me it’s always been quantity: the more changes (and changers), the more you feel like you’re being trampled to death by weasels. One problem is that people try to cram several kinds of editing (for facts, for sequence, for syntax, for style) into a single Pickett’s Charge of revision.  A more dire problem is the confusion of "change" with "improvement."  Shakespeare had something similar in mind in Henry IV, Part One. GLENDOWER: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. HOTSPUR: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? The number of changes tracked doesn’t equal the number of improvements made, any more than the number of features added equals the amount of benefit delivered (are you listening, Quicken?). Which points toward an inherent contradiction for training or learning in organizations.  You can almost certainly reap benefits when you help people move from "can’t do X at all" to "can do Basic Things A, B, and C" — assuming, of course, that those people see A, B, and C as benefiting them. Working further through the alphabet of features (D, E, and F…L, M, and N…) means you’re getting farther out on the long tail.  Each addition becomes more specific, which means more contextual, which means has decreasingly less appeal to most people (even though potentially more appeal to a small number of people). I rarely see much mileage for me in talking to others about customizing Word toolbars, let alone creating multiple templates for different kinds of outlines.  As for Google Docs, one less-than-obvious reason for their popularity is that the relative lack of features makes for easier collaboration among groups of people who might have widely varying levels of skill in more traditional word processors.  If you can’t add internal cross-references or sequence codes, you’re not going to frustrate or confuse people who don’t know what to do with them. WordStar box and disks image from Wikipedia.

The New York Times reports on research suggesting that if you really want to learn, you should take a test.  Pam Belluck’s article cites work by Jeffrey D. Karpicke and Janell R. Blunt recently published in ScienceExpress (linked article is on Scribd). The researchers looked at "elaborative studying" (in this case, working from a text to create your own concept map) and "retrieval practice"-writing a freeform essay after reading the material.  In the latter case, you’re writing without the material; hence, you’re retrieving information from memory. Here’s the researchers’ abstract: Educators rely heavily on learning activities that encourage elaborative studying, while activities that require students to practice retrieving and reconstructing knowledge are used less frequently. Here, we show that practicing retrieval produces greater gains in meaningful learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. The advantage of retrieval practice generalized across texts identical to those commonly found in science education. The advantage of retrieval practice was observed with test questions that assessed comprehension and required students to make inferences. The advantage of retrieval practice occurred even when the criterial test involved creating concept maps. Our findings support the theory that retrieval practice enhances learning by retrieval-specific mechanisms rather than by elaborative study processes. Retrieval practice is an effective tool to promote conceptual learning about science. This is is sort of thing that’ll end up on the evening news: "Researcher Says Take Tests, Don’t Study."  The reality is more nuanced, of course. As Karpiche and Blunt say, "It is beyond question that activities that promote effective encoding, known as elaborative study tasks, are important for learning."  What they were questioning, in part, is the notion that retrieval of information is "neutral and uninfluential" in the learning process. Because each act of retrieval changes memory, the act of reconstructing knowledge must be considered essential to the process of learning. I’m sorry that most reports about this study use the word "test," one of those terms (like "training") that’s a kind of conceptual rent-a-truck; people load them up with all sorts of meaning. I know I tend to.  And despite knowing better, when I hear "test," I have a hard time not picturing the multiple-guess, factoid-shackled artifact that so often is labeled as a knowledge nugget. In the world of learning at work, we don’t always consider that "test" can refer to something other than a mid-semester quiz.   This, despite the fact that the workplace is full of other, more robust examples of testing. Like load tests on a server.  Stress tests for a product.  Market testing for a new product (or for a media campaign).  Engineering testing aimed at continuous improvement in a process. Even if you’re aiming at (allegedly) objective assessment, you can shoot for more than recall of discrete bits of information.  So in Karpicke and Blunt’s research, the final testing  involved both verbatim questions (for "conceptual knowledge stated directly in the text") and inference questions that required the learner to relate different points in the original content. It’s interesting that participants in the student couldn’t predict whether their retrieval practice would help them learn: Students predicted that repeated studying would produce the best long-term retention and that practicing retrieval would produce the worst retention, even though the opposite was true. One version of the study, as part of the "final test," had students create a concept map.  Once again, students who engaged in retrieval practice produced better concept maps (by which I assume "more accurate ones") than did the students whose study included creating concept maps in the first place. CC-licensed images:ASVAB scores by Krista Kennedy.Test-box photo by Dave Blaisdale.  

I’ve been thinking about the less-than-obvious struggle we (meaning "I") have with behavior and accomplishment.  Behavior is what you do; accomplishment is what gets done.  In the workplace, people go on a lot about accomplishment. They want results: closed sales, increased share, service delivered at lower cost, and so on.  But people also tend to praise and reinforce behavior, even when its connection to accomplishment is tenuous. Let’s get something to eat Think about what you see as critical to quality for your workday lunchtime experience.  For me, at least in part, that involves: Acceptable food (Bombay Bistro is great; I don’t demand two Michelin stars) A space that’s clean (I don’t want to clean a table) Room to eat without bumping other people A wait time that’s less than 10% of total time I think many managers of cafeterias, coffee shops, and similar faster-food places would sign up for those as performance standards for their business.  That’s one reason they often have the touch-screen cash registers: the cashier can punch in items, and the machine does the pricing.  The idea is to produce a worthwhile accomplishment: fast, accurate billing. In her new book, Design for How People Learn, Julie Dirksen talks about fast-food drink dispensers.  Sometimes, she says, you get a really skillful food worker: She can start a drink pouring a the soda machine, turn to ring a customer, and know exactly how long she has before she needs to turn around and keep the cup from overfilling.  That’s the sign of an expert who really knows their job, and has internalized that knowledge over time. That kind of skill is expensive to acquire, which explains the drink dispensers with size buttons. A worker can press "large" and move on to another part of the order.  The dispenser isn’t (usually) going to overfill the cup, and so it helps him produce a high-quality result-a fast, accurate meal-with less deliberate investment in skill development. We presume accomplishment; we notice behavior We tend to disparage that button-pushing, though. We like interacting with high-skill behavior.  It’s enjoyable and maybe reassuring to have our order handled by someone who’s clearly expert in her work.   Even if we get our order just as quickly from the press-the-size worker, we almost feel as if he’s cheating.  It’s the on-the-job equivalent of "he had to look it up." If you disagree, how do you feel about cashiers who have trouble making change on their own?  Admit it-it drives you nuts, because people ought to be able to make change.  And how hard can it be? I tend to agree.  Making change seems like a straightforward application of match.  But I worked for years in a job where I had to make change, often. And I’ve had to teach people to make change accurately, for the sake of the customer and the sake of the business. If someone isn’t fluent at making change, it takes time to develop that fluency. You know the project-management nostrum: things can be fast, good, and cheap.  Pick the two you want. In the context of a fast(er) food business, it makes sense to have a cash register that does the change-computing task.  Otherwise, you have to hire people with more skill, or else devote time and energy to helping them acquire that skill.  (At the end of this post, I’ve written up one method for counting change.) Change and accomplishment You’d think that any fast-food place would want employees who can count change.  And maybe that’s true-the place wants them, but can’t always find them.  So it needs to hone in more on what the real accomplishment is: is it accurate change that’s handed to the customer quickly?  Do you need to crank in the behavior involved ( "employee calculates" versus "employee uses a tool" )? Figuring out what results matter, so you can work on delivering them, is ultimately what work is about.  It’s easy to latch onto behavior, because it’s usually observable and seems obvious.  As Robert Mager says, people really oughta wanna do this.  I think accomplishment is a better guide, though it does require you to question assumptions and perhaps discard predispositions. Change-it isn’t easy.  Take it from a guy who once said to a customer, "I’m sorry, I don’t have change for a ten, but I do have change for a twelve."   Bonus Feature: the Count Up Twice method for making change This example uses a small cash purchase, such as a fast-food meal, for which the customer is paying in cash, with one or more bills totaling more than the price of the meal. State the amount of the sale.  ("That comes to $7.32.") Accept the customer’s payment. Check the payment and state the amount.   ("Out of twenty dollars.") Set the payment down without putting it into the individual register spaces. Make change by counting up to yourself from the amount of the sale as you remove money from the register. That’s $7.32… 33… 34… 35… 7.40… 45… 50… 7.75… 8… 9… 10… $20.00. Count the change again for the customer, starting with the amount of the sale. Give the customer each coin and bill as you work toward the amount tendered.  Say the amounts out loud. That’s $7.32… 33… 34… 35… 7.40… 45… 50... 7.75… 8 … 9… 10… $20.00. Thank the customer. As the customer leaves, put the payment into the proper cash register spaces. Note that I haven’t spelled out the rule of thumb that you should move to the next coin or bill size when the total so far allows you to. And I haven’t addressed complications like what to do if the customer offers bills and coins as payment ($10.50 for that $7.32 meal).  Nor have I address cash-register use, underpayment, or attempts by tricksters to trip up the cashier in mid-count.   CC-licensed images: Cash register keys by zizzybaloobah. Generic text by Yongho Kim.

In my Building Job Aids workshop (presented last Tuesday at DevLearn 2015), participants analyze multiple case studies, applying techniques and using job aids to, well, build job aids. Among the skills they practice are the ability to choose the right type of job aid for a task, and the ability to use that type effectively. There’s a lot of thinking and writing: I make an effort to avoid explaining much before an exercise. Instead, there’s a minimal introduction, with a lot of what would have been explained turned into a print resource to be consulted as needed. One potential downside is that especially an hour or so after lunch, thinking and writing are conducive to dozing off. At the same time, my assumption was that participants would want and need additional practice on relevant examples. How could I give someone the chance to assess different job aids and rate their effectiveness? Did she think the samples would produce the desired result? How did they align with ideas in our workshop? The challenge wasn’t so much finding the examples as structuring the evaluation. The tradeoffs I saw (or believe now that I saw): Time constraints Relevance My desire for multiple elements in a rating system My desire for a simple, overall total Then the format presented itself in three words: I liked this title so much, I was determined to use it. But I’ve learned not to be literal about this kind of borrowing. What  makes Jeopardy!-style games in training a dumb idea (even a counterproductive one) so often is not (necessarily) Jeopardy! itself. It’s the mismatch between the content and a format best suited to recalling isolated facts. Some characteristics of dog shows that I thought suited my goals: I had widely different types of job aids, like the different dog breeds. I had limited time, which at least for me was like the dog-judging segment where the trainer fast-walks the dog in a set pattern before the judge. Plus judging. That’s where I had the most trouble.  How to get multiple points, an overall total per judge, and a logistically sane process? I started with a three item scale, rating each job aid on its fit (is this a good job aid for this kind of task?), its function (is it likely to produce the desired result?), and its format (how does it stack up against the job aid guidelines in the workshop). I could score each of those from 1 to 3, with an extra point thrown in for personal preference. No matter how I squinted, though, it looked like way too much math. Then I remembered the Apgar score - a quick assessment of a baby at birth. Five qualities like heart rate or respiration are each assigned a score of 0, 1, or 2. The total describes the baby’s physical condition on a scale of 0 - 10. So I came up with a five-point scale for Best In Show: Aptness: how well the job aid fit the task and the setting Payoff: how likely it’ll achieve the desired result Guidelines: how it fit with guidelines in general and for its particular type of job aid Appearance: overall effectiveness of the design Response: the judge’s own reaction to the job aid. As you can see, each item had a line for its score, with a box on top for the total. In the interest of time, I limited myself to six competitors. This was the score sheet: (Click to enlarge in a new window) Off to the show I was pretty sure I’d have a decent internet connection. I made a slide with links to my six examples. I explained the scoring, distributed the ballots, and showed each competitor for 30 - 60 seconds, with some contextual commentary as needed. If I’d had a large group, my plan was for each person to fold the completed ballot between the six boxes, so as to tear it into six individual sheets. I’d have had one person total the ballots for competitor A, one for B, and so on. My workshop group was small enough that I could divide a sheet of flipchart paper in six as Voting Headquarters. It was little trouble for me write down scores by candidate and then total them. How it went Best in Show was a success, both as a change of pace and as an exercise in judging job aids. It also broadened exposure: half the competitors were new; the other half had been seen only briefly, as examples, earlier in the day. An unexpected plus: everyone could see all the individual totals. One job aid received solid 10s except from one person who rated it a 7. Another participant said to her, "I want to know why you rated it a 7." The question was not a challenge but rather genuine interest in how another person applied the principles of the workshop. Aftermath Thomas the corgi, showing his best (with the kind permission of Jane Bozarth) I’m really pleased this went as well as it did. I’m thinking of ways to make it work better (one participant was confused by my instructions and rated on a scale of 1 to 3 rather than zero to 2). And if I have more time, I’ll have a follow-on exercise: Raise the Runt. The idea would be to see which job aid scored the lowest, and then talk about why and about how to improve it.  

I spent last week at DevLearn 2015, the eLearning Guild’s conference focusing on learning technology. Among my goals for attending: conducting a workshop on building job aids, finding ideas for supporting learning and improving performance, learning more about topics I don’t know much about, connecting with peers, and spending time with people energized about things that energize me. On one level, any half-decent professional conference is a kind of pep rally. It’s easy to levitate on the excitement. It’s great to hear engaging speakers and hash over their ideas afterward, especially with them. And at least for me, the company of smart people who are accomplishing impressive things helps me feel as though I can accomplish them, too. You can read virtual reams of ideas of how to prepare for a conference. DevLearn makes that pretty easy. The link above will lead you to descriptions of the pre-conference workshops, the co-located Adobe Summit, some 125 concurrent sessions… heck, just browse along the menu bar of the main page. How to turn the pep-rally buzz into personal motivation, though, especially when the event’s over and you’re schlepping through the airport on your way home? Revisiting the past One thing I did on the plane was to dig out the program guide - the day-by-day schedule. My first task was to note down the session number, title, and presenter for each event I attended. A session description from the DevLearn app For one thing, that’d make it much easier to retrieve further information on the handy DevLearn app. And recording these things in Evernote meant I could tag, search, and include links. As I worked through the schedule, I recognized my backup sessions as well. A conference is a nonstop series of choices.  I try always to have a Plan B session in case the Plan A one I choose doesn’t turn out to be what I was looking for. Even so, a wealth of options and the realities of distance mean that you can’t take in everything you’d like. I knew that with DevLearn’s mobile app, I’d have a source for materials shared by the presenters. I now had two lists: one for the sessions I’d attended, and a second one for those I didn’t see but wanted to know more about. Mapping the future This note-taking and note-revising triggered other thoughts: people I wanted to ask certain questions of, notions I didn’t want to lose, and topics I want to explore further. A third list emerged. Finally, I had a lot of notes from my workshop on job aids: things that went well, things I’d like to change, even an idea for a virtual follow-up, a way for the participants to keep in touch on the subject of job aids. One idea I may try to make that happen came from Tracy Parish’s session on using WordPress to deliver blended learning. Reflecting in the present This may have been among the best two hours I’ve spent on a plane, with the possible exception of the one time I got upgraded. I ended up with four separate notes (in Evernote, of course), along with the first draft of my last blog post. The topic wasn’t earth-shaking, but few of mine are. Writing the post was a renewal of good practice for me: being more conscious about what I do, what I’d like to do, and the gap between those things. I got far more out of my time in Las Vegas than I expected. I’ve thought a lot about how to sustain those benefits. Making these notes was a good start, and so has been the process of writing a couple of blog posts. I’m re-examining what I do, what I enjoy doing, and what I want to be doing in my career and my life over the next few years. In the short term, I have the session material to download, and some two dozen people (not counting presenters) whom I want to keep in better contact with. Dress for success I do have a day job to return to, with a fast-approaching deadline. I know from experience, though, that the material-reviewing and emails to contacts won’t happen without intention on my part. The best professional contacts, I think, are free exchanges, and almost always they include something of the personal. At DevLearn, keynoter Adam Savage talked about his fondness for costumes and how it led to jumping off a building, into a dumpster, dressed like Neo from The Matrix. That’s a bit more colorful than my choice for a workplace Halloween celebration. My immediate team - or those who were pumped up for the holiday - had the idea of being Game of Thrones characters. That didn’t really appeal to me, but the good interaction I have with them did, and so I managed to play along while letting my personality come through: And now, DevLearn’s over. Winter, as they say, is coming (except in the casino, where they don’t allow weather). Still, that means spring is coming as well, and summer after it. As the next few months roll along, I want to be rolling down a conscious path. DevLearn’s helped me map out a route.

Jay Cross died last Friday. Most people who’ll see this post know of Jay already through his books, his many-fold online posts, Twitter, his Facebook stream or some other channel he’d try out. I never met Jay in person, but about ten years ago, I signed up for an online "unworkshop" he was offering, so I could learn more about things like blogs, feeds, and what people were calling Web 2.0 tools. The unworkshop was a bit messy and bumpy. At times I found it frustrating, and at times I think Jay himself was puzzled by the reactions of some of the participants. He and I had a few side discussions about that, and I was impressed by his receptivity and willingness to at consider points of view different from his own. Prior to the unworkshop, I’d known a little about blogs but didn’t see how they’d relate to me. Jay had each participant start what I now think of as a sandbox blog - just a little place to mess around - to try things out for ourselves, to learn by doing. Most were as you’d expect tentative, because most participants hadn’t had blogged before and weren’t sure what they write (or how they’d manage what they’d written). Even so, this activity got me thinking and free-associating about my preconceived notions. As a result, next month Dave’s Whiteboard hits its tenth anniversary. That may have happened eventually, but it happened when it did because I’d met Jay Cross. (I first wrote "virtually met," but that marks a bigger divide than I want to have. I absolutely believe face-to-face meeting is ideal, but I’m pretty sure that the way Jay connected across time zones and distance wasn’t too far removed from the way he’d connect across a table.) Here’s just an example of the kind of thinking Jay was doing as recently as last week. The image links to his Internet Time Blog.  

On several projects lately, I don’t know what I’m doing. Or at least what I’m doing next. A way to cope is to ask someone who seems to know more. I’m lucky in having smart colleagues at work who will not only share what they know, but will work with me to reshape that knowledge so I have a better understanding. I’m lucky professionally as well, because I have people I can and do consult with on issues apart from my everyday job. CC-licensed image from PublicDomainPictures Sometimes, though, I’m not quite ready to do that asking. Usually that’s because of the particular type of don’t-know I’m experiencing.  Either I don’t know what (as in what to ask, or what’s the difficulty, or what’s the domain), or I don’t know how (to take the next step, to choose the right option, to switch points of view). To that end, in a nod to the Working Out Loud concept, I’ve been making what I think of as Talk To Myself notes. (The TTM nickname just came to me, and I like it enough that it’ll become a tag in Evernote.) The idea is that for a specific project or domain, I write down what it is I can’t figure out or what I want to know. This is hardly an earthshaking idea, but it’s a concrete one. The effort to form a question, even if I’m not good at forming one for the topic at hand, gets me to run through what I do know, and I think primes me to think more expansively. Here are some examples: Sibelius First I’ve written about this music-composition software here and here. I got it so I could scan choral sheet music and produce audio files — especially for the tenor, since that’s what I sing. I think I’m at the "relatively good apprentice" level with Sibelius. I can handle basic tasks pretty well, and I’ve developed some good-enough workarounds. CC-licensed image by FNeumann One side effect is that I’m more aware of things I don’t know how to do but want to. So onto the TTM note go thoughts like these: How can I add a blank page on the end of a score so I can add text there — like block lyrics, or background notes, or even a pronunciation guide for Gaelic? Can I export the melody for just a portion of the piece (say, bars 12 - 24 for the tenors)? Is there an easy way to change the instrument for a given line? So far I only know how to add a new staff for a new instrument, then copy the notes from an existing instrument, then delete the staff they were copied from. That seems… kludgy. Forums in WordPress As a follow-up to my Building Job Aids workshop last month, I wanted to learn how to create a private online community for interested workshop grads — a place where they might share how they apply what they learned, and maybe even do some show-and-tell in a safe space. At DevLearn I heard Tracy Parish talk about how she did something similar, and I got some ideas from her. This is one of those don’t-quite-know-what situations for me. Through trial and error, I’ve installed plugins to enable forums (threaded discussions) but I still feel I lack understanding. Talk To Myself in this case means repeating questions till they make sense, at least to me. Do I have to have open registration? If I do, can I keep out the obvious spambots? What should be recording the registration (if anything)? Do I need some kind of sign-up form, and if so, where does the signing-up go? At a broader level, what’s the flow from inviting someone to that person’s reading and posting in a forum? At work, a practice database So many core corporate systems have no way for people to safely learn and practice how to use those systems. A rich, low-risk environment like Amtrak’s training trains will support and encourage learning in a thousand different ways. We have such an environment for a key system at work-but it hasn’t been used much, and the documentation I can find is sketchy. So I’m making Talk To Myself notes here, too. This is a tougher area because it involves a lot of database security and management. Borrowing from advice I received from a graphic artist, I’m framing these questions in terms of what I want to accomplish rather than how I think I should go about getting that accomplishment. For example, I don’t know the steps or the stakeholders or the timeframes needed to copy data from another environment into this practice one. I don’t know how (or if) it’s possible to search for certain types of data in the practice database. I’m pretty sure I need a conversation with one of my IT contacts — but that conversation with her will go much better because I’ve spent time Talking To Myself… and taking notes.  

When is a poem not a poemAnd verse runs into prose?When is a home not a homeAnd strife contemptuous grows?The Differential CalculusDefines the least derivativeOf increments too small for usIn subtle terms definitive,But the myriad seeds of change that fallBy each gradation's measureDifferentiate the large from tall,The enjoyment from the pleasure;If this sonnet is not proved true,I've never judged, nor yet have you.Kim Cofino is a twenty-first century literacy specialist at the International School Bangkok in Thailand. In her post What Is Literacy, she speaks of attempts to understand the "shift in literacy, especially considering that many people still believe that literacy is solely being able to read and write in printed form."She cites the Becta reports and the McArthur Report as concrete research-based examples "that would help people outside the educational technology field better understand this shift." She also asks for our thoughts on the concept of literacy.I put a comment against her post:We go round in circles with this today - but one could say, 'twas ever thus.When I was taught (English) literacy in the 60s, we had a teacher who honestly believed that if a word was not to be found in the dictionary, it didn't exist. Many English teachers (of the old school) believed this.I was not very well educated in those days (that's why I was at school) but even I could figure that the words in the dictionary weren't always like that - we were taught this in the English class! Shakespeare, for instance, used a strange diction and some strange words. My question was, 'whatever happened to those?'Today we have all sorts of problems with examination authorities who eschew mobile text language, especially in English examinations. And I wonder.Recently I re-read The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson and was again delighted to find reference to a book that I'd read, 40 years ago, by Simeon Potter, Our Language (first published in 1950).In both books the message was clear: language, and the ways that it is communicated, are living things. They react sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly, like swarms of bees, always on the move.Literacy clearly has an association with symbolism. I think it is a far cry to say that literacy is only to do with the power of speech or the skills associated with that. Yet, without speech, the symbolism of 'literature', whether it is Shakespeare's script, or a text message using the symbols of that medium, would have no relevance.Sign language, no less a language than any other, also has its base in symbolism - involving signs and actions. But it is really more like the spoken language, for it is not designed to represent the written words and often simply does not follow those.Literacy is bound to the spoken language AND the written symbolisms that represent the language. A person who is incapable of writing, because of some physical disability, is no less literate than someone who is not disabled but who does not know how to write. But you would agree that there may be a difference. For instance, the able person who does not know how to write may not be able to read either. Not necessarily the person with the disability who cannot write.So literacy can have many facets. We need to define these more explicitly. I gather that the visions we may have of these definitions change as much as language does.It eventually comes down to opinion, either that of the individual or of the authorities. And to have any acceptable measure of literacy, by whatever means it is metered, requires standards.Unfortunately, this is where it becomes set in a way that doesn't really fit the nature of language. So standards must be continually revised to meet the needs of society and its understanding of literacy.Which brings us back to the question. My gut feeling is that we are chasing a moving spot of light. As quickly as we have defined where it is and mapped its shape, it has moved on.The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all your Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a Line,Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.from Edward Fitzgerald's 'Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'.

Manish Mohan has only recently written a post about trust. He made me think about this, and the decisions that I may have to make when I read a blog post.I thank Manish for making me ponder deeply about this matter. He prompted me to leave a comment on his post that carried a weighty and profound question: Do You Trust Corporate Blogs? It went something like this:Trust is a strange human emotion. It is deep-rooted in our instinctive mechanisms for survival. When the reason for a decision based on trust is analysed, it is often found to be highly complex. The nature of the complexity is often found to be meshed with a whole raft of subliminal things: hunches, preferences, likes and dislikes, gut feelings, undefined reasons.It is rarely cut and dry - rarely logical.So when you ask, "Do you trust corporate blogs?" I think about trust, and what it is based on.You could say, "do you trust blogs?" Many people don't trust blogs - never mind the corporate bit.And so we move on to ask questions like, "what is it about a particular blog that you trust?" You could also say, "why trust blogs at all?"A more in-depth analysis of trust (associated with blogs or any other Internet sites) will yield other questions. Questions like, "how can you tell that a site is trustworthy? (Never mind the 'blog' or the 'corporate' bit).For me, all sites have to be tested by my baloney detector, whether corporate or not. As naive as it may seem, I apply exactly the same detection kit to all blogs that I read (and all posts for that matter).Trust is a movable feast. The occurrences on sites permit me to decide whether to trust them or not. There are some sites that I used to trust, and now trust no longer. I don't visit these sites anymore - at least, if I happen to come across them, I don’t comment on them. It's a bit like the people I meet in everyday life.I recently received a request from a company (which I won't name here) to post articles on my blog. Effectively I was being asked to host articles.The email included a couple of links to company sites. I looked at the sites. They were corporate and commercial. The advertising that would come with the articles I might agree to host contravened my comment guidelines. I immediately treated the request (which incidentally was written like a personal email) as spam. End of story.Did I trust the request? Yes. Did I trust the attendant sites? No.So, do I trust corporate sites? The answer is, it depends.I am no more likely to 'trust' a corporate site than any other site that I come across. Every site I read is judged (by me) on its own merits.( 5 ) << - related posts - >> ( 3 ) ( 2 ) ( 1 )