Join me for this half-day workshop to learn how to turn a training request into a performance consulting opportunity.  Date:  Friday, November 5th Time:  8:30 am - 12:00 noon Cost:  $95 Location:  Interact Studio, Charlotte, NC To register or learn more visit:  http://dickhandshawworkshop.eventbrite.com/ ** Only 10 seats available

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]Dick Handshaw Family Dollar Presentation Instructional Design:  How to Sell the Real Value March 23, 2011

I get the great pleasure of interacting daily with decision makers in a variety of roles, within a multitude of differing organizations, in a wide range of industries.  So when I start to hear similar challenges from all those diverse people, I’m naturally inclined to listen even more closely to what they’re saying.  These days, no matter how they describe it, clients are clamoring for assistance with aligning individual performance to business goals, whether the goals exist within their own department or go all the way to the top. The requests come in many forms from booking Dick Handshaw for a series of Performance Partnering workshops, to an opportunity to partner with a client to assess the validity of training requests, or simply a desire to have our consultants and designers execute analysis the right way.  The bottom line is our clients are more concerned than ever with the bottom line. Dick talks in his workshops about the responsibility that employees have to be stewards of their organization’s resources.  The great recession and the slow recovery (preceded by the rise in stature of procurement resources in the 2000s) have put an even greater level of scrutiny on how decision makers allot their organization’s funds.  What better way to show the executives how well those funds are being used than mapping results of solutions directly to the goals those same executives set for the organization? Jim and Dana Robinson published their first Performance Consulting book in 1995.  Some have given them credit for coining the term around the same time.  So, performance consulting is by no means a new approach.  In fact, just think of all that has happened in the world at large, and specifically in corporations, since the book was published.  The myriad of political, financial, ethical, and social developments of the past 10-15 years prompted Jim and Dana to publish a second edition in 2008.  As always, they were right on time.   Depending on how much you choose to believe from the media, financial and otherwise, we’re in for a prolonged period of recovery.  Those with buying power within organizations may find their decisions on how and what to spend continually put under a microscope.  As a result, showing alignment between individual performance and business goals will be the greatest justification for their expenses.  And, of course, it is and always has been simply the right thing to do.     David Carmichael, Vice President, Operations at Handshaw, Inc.

It appears to be widely accepted that performance objectives are a good thing because most instructional designers write them and most organizations use them. But since their introduction by the likes of Mager and Gagne decades ago, I find many instructional designers are unsure of the many things for which they can be used. As an advanced organizer for learners:  Gagne says that objectives help learning by giving learners an advanced organizer, or a cue for what’s coming up in the course they are about to attempt. While I do not dispute Dr. Gagne, I did conduct some research of my own in the early 90s when I had the opportunity to track whether several hundred users of an online course opted to read the first page of a course that contained objectives, or if they opted to skip the page. In my sample, only 10% of learners opted to view the page, which means that 90 % felt no need to even view the learning objectives for the course. Upon interviewing some of those learners to see if they would mind not having the option to view objectives, the 10% who opted to view them strongly stated their preference for always seeing objectives before beginning a lesson.  My attempt at getting out of doing some work failed. Score one for Dr. Gagne. As a contract among everyone on the design team to describe required outcomes:  Here is one use for objectives from which a number of parties can benefit.  This would be an example of Franklin Covey’s concept of starting with the end in mind. The primary parties to benefit here are the client or project sponsor and the lead instructional designer. The objectives serve as a concise and definitive description of the required behavior of the learners upon successful completion of the instruction. If the objectives are well-written, they also serve instructional designers to better understand the required level of learned capability, and ultimately help facilitators to understand exactly what is required of their learners.  Well written objectives are your best tool to manage expectations among all members of the project team. As a means for formulating assessment strategies:  This is my favorite outcome of good performance objectives. It is also somewhat dependent on using my favorite format for writing objectives, and that is to use Gagne’s five part format. The key is in the Action portion of the objective that describes how to perform the required task.  At Handshaw, we write one objective for each main task on our task analysis. Writing the Action portion becomes very easy because we simply use the sub-tasks from the task analysis to describe exactly what steps a learner takes to perform the task, which becomes a detailed and accurate way to describe how the task should be performed. Once you read a couple of sample learning objectives written in Gagne’s format, you will easily see how they describe exactly how the task should be measured, which tells you everything you need to know about how you will assess that learners have met your objectives. And, once you know how the task should be measured, it becomes clearly obvious how the task should be taught. This in turn defines your instructional strategy and often media selection without having to guess what might work. This is certainly one of my favorite parts in the instructional design process where the outcome of one step becomes the input to the next. Well written objectives will help you select and construct good testing instruments every time. Future blog entries will deal with how to write good objectives efficiently and how to use your objectives to get the most benefit out of the time you spent writing them.  We will also look at how referring to your objectives can help you handle scope changes.

Oct 10, 2013 Presentation "Analyzing Performance Gaps: The Gaps Map" Oct 11, 2013 "The Gaps Map Workshop"  http://www.astdchatt.org/Events?eventId=664367&EventViewMode=2&CalendarViewType=0&SelectedDate=8/20/2013

ROI Institute Certification Workshop July 21-25 in Charlotte NC - Hosted by Siemens Energy : Workshop Overview: This five-day workshop builds skills in the ROI Methodology developed by industry leader Jack Phillips. Participants experience application of the ROI Process model. This includes developing application and impact objectives, collecting various types of hard and soft data, isolating the effects of HR Programs, converting data to monetary values, tabulating appropriate program costs and calculating the ROI. Participants quickly see the advantage of the process as six types of data are collected and analyzed. This data represents both qualitative and quantitative data, developed from a variety of sources. Workshop Attendees Learn How To: • Present a briefing on the ROI Methodology • Link HR program objectives to business results • Describe at least three ways to collect data, isolate the effects of a program, and convert data to monetary values • Identify all costs of an HR program • Calculate ROI, given benefits and costs of the program • Identify intangible measures • Explain the 12 guiding principles for ROI use • Conduct and complete an ROI study for their organization • Articulate the value of using ROI Materials  Materials: Attendees will receive a variety of books, as well as a detailed participant workbook complete with exercises and exhibits. They will also receive an ROI process model and calculator. Who Should Attend? This workshop is for participants who are responsible for measuring the impact of Human Resources. Individuals such as: HR Executives, HR Specialists, HR Managers, Talent Managers, Compensation Managers, Recruiting Specialists, Organizational Development Managers, Change Management Consultants, Learning and Development Managers, and Performance Consultants. No mathematical background is required. Topics of Interest Include: • Recruiting projects • Training and learning systems • On-the-job training • Career and management development • Leadership/coaching • Compensation/benefits • Diversity and compliance • Wellness and fitness • Employee benefits • Talent management • Performance management • Employee engagement • Safety and health • Risk management Go to www.roiinstitute.net to learn more.

We have been facilitating The Leadership Challenge (Kouzes and Posner) workshops for many of our clients in India and the U.S. Participants from all over the world, participate in a 360 feedback and workshop with very profound and highly impactful results. The Leadership Challenge is about how leaders mobilize others to want to get extraordinary things done. It’s about the practice leaders use to transform values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, separateness into solidarity, and risks into rewards. It’s about a climate in which people turn challenging opportunities into remarkable successes. Participants complete a 360 assessment to measure leadership behaviors in five key practices Modeling the Way Inspiring a Shared Vision Challenging the Process Enabling Others to Act Encouraging the Heart Organizations all over the world have benefited from this proven, research-based leadership development model. A 2005 survey of 94 large companies discovered that those consistently applying the transformational leadership practices of The Leadership Challenge® over the previous 10 years achieved: Average stock price growth of 204% Net income growth of 841% Nelson Cohen Global Consulting is an authorized partner for The Leadership Challenge. Ed Cohen has been conducting Leadership Challenge assessments and workshops for more than 12 years; Priscilla Nelson has been conducting 360 assessment and workshops for more than 20 years. All leaders regardless of their experience benefit from the extensive feedback they receive. The messages are clear and easy to align to individual developmental plans. Executive coaching supports each leader’s ability to grow. For more information write to us info@nelsoncohen.com

So here’s what we know about you. You are either a leader yourself or you work with leaders and teams every day. The bottom line is, the game of business has changed locally and globally and you need to know WHAT’S CHANGING and WHAT TO DO to ensure your success. In May we published Leadership Traits Insights for Today, […] The post Leadership Traits Global Report releases on Amazon.com appeared first on Nelson Cohen Consulting.

On October 29th, Leadership Traits Insights for Today, Pathway to the Future hit #1 in Business Teams and Business Mentoring & Coaching on AMAZON.COM.   Here’s a video preview of the book…               The post Leadership Traits hits #1 on Amazon.com appeared first on Nelson Cohen Consulting.

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