Take a minute to think about what it felt the last time somebody either in your personal or professional life made it clear that they did not trust you. You know how that feels? Now think of an experience, either professional or personal, when you were able to establish mutual trust and work on an endeavor, overcome some obstacle, or meet a challenge with another person. Now, how did THAT feel? How did those two different situations translate into the results you were looking for? According to Steven M. R. Covey, research shows that only 49% of employees trust senior management, and only 28% believe CEOs are a credible source of information. That’s a pretty unfavorable view of leadership in business. Just as there’s no real relationship without trust, without trust there is no real leadership. Real leaders build and inspire trust. Anything else is what they call management. Further, Mr. Covey advances the idea that lack of trust actually adds a "tax" to all activities in business that require human interactions, meaning that lack of trust actually inhibits the speed and flow of transacting. From my own experience and from what my customers tell me, it also reduces the quality of the output. So, our lack of trust is actually impeding our efforts to create greater levels of success for ourselves and those we would lead. What are we to do? This is an important question for many of us who are faced with getting more out of our workforce and developing our future leaders. We have a lot on our plates these days, but the good news is that there are more and more great resources available to help us as we wrestle with this question. Some basic advice from Peter Jensen in his book The Winning Factor is that we shouldn’t assume that trust will occur automatically, even for a team that has been together for a long time. In his book, Jensen cites coaches who were very intentional in their development of trust. Just as important to their success is that they were also the first to extend trust. Easy peasy, right? Not! But that’s okay. Like all things worthwhile, it will take a little work. It will take a little practice. It may seem like a steep climb to change some old habits, but if we are to truly lead, develop future leaders, and achieve the success we are looking for, then we need to start somewhere. As Samuel Chand is famous for saying, "…without trust and respect, even the smallest molehill morphs into an Everest," and that’s an even steeper climb if you ask me.

The Role of Traditional Mentoring The concept of mentoring in the workplace has been around for generations and has always been defined as when "a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person." Topics and subjects may vary by industry and job category, but essentially the definition has been widely agreed upon. Many organizations have leveraged mentoring programs as a component to their Learning and Development, and Leadership initiatives. However, some high-impact learning organizations have taken it a step further and begun developing reverse mentoring programs. Reverse Mentoring Reverse mentoring is actually where someone has a skillset that you do not have regardless of your experience and success. The concept is not exactly new, as Jack Welch championed the idea when he was CEO at General Electric. The idea is fairly simple when you consider the millennial workforce. Executive- and senior-level managers are teamed up with younger (most millennial workers) in an effort to increase knowledge in technology, social media, and the latest workplace trends. For the first time, organizations are seeing young people as resources of information and even tutors (to senior people in the office) that possess new and original skillsets, especially in social media. For me personally, I get constant requests from older colleagues to help explain the value of social media and other technology that may assist them at doing their jobs better. Why It’s Important and Effective An effective reverse mentoring program is a "win-win." The mentee gains valuable insight in areas of expertise that may be unattainable otherwise (for example, how to make their tweets more meaningful). The mentor realizes direct fulfillment by working with someone higher in the organization (even in another business unit at times) and providing a learning opportunity that increases chances of exposure within the company for the mentor. Consider the below table, which is an excerpt from When Generations Collide: Who They Are. Why They Clash. How to Solve the Generational Puzzle at Work by Lynne C. Lancaster and David Stillman. Perhaps even more important than specific subject matter, reverse mentoring allows mentors an opportunity to share with mentees the fundamental differences between generational workforces in many areas and how they apply to their business. Tips to Success Avoid subordinate-manager relationships - Like a traditional mentor program, I think the best value in reverse mentoring comes from pairing individuals who are not directly linked within the organization. Meaning, the mentor is not a subordinate to the mentee. This ensures more openness and less stress, which increases the likelihood of success of the relationship. This type of relationship also avoids the chance that the mentee is threatened by a younger worker who may know more on a specific subject. Set expectations - It should be clear from the beginning on what the mentee is aiming to get out of the relationship. Identify areas where knowledge or skills are lacking, and make them a priority to the mentor. Make it more than just about technology - Technology is an easy subject for older colleagues to receive some assistance. However, there areas that may be explored during this relationship. Identify those that are equally as important. Entertainment? Popular Music? Tips for managing millennials? Utilize successful techniques from traditional mentor programs - A successful mentoring program isn’t supposed to be a mentor sitting on one end of the table talking while the mentee takes furious notes unquestioningly. There’s supposed to be a shared dialog, shared learning, and the goal of bettering both participants in the long haul. Report the success - Like any successful Learning and Development program, it will be important to report the success through company communications and other mediums as necessary. This helps increase leadership buy-in to provide more support for the initiative throughout the entire organization. Several successful companies have already formalized reverse mentoring. Have you taken your mentoring programs to the next level by implementing a Gen Y reverse mentoring program?

One frequent question I hear is "What is your favorite (or what is the best) book on Change Management"? This question surfaces in conversations, in Linked-In forums, and in desperate hopes for a magic pill that will cure all. While this is one of the more frequently asked wrong questions, I empathize with people who ask this because I know they are truly looking to help, to make a difference, or to fulfill a difficult assignment handed to them. They are typically reaching out because of the belief that change can be managed. And, to some extent, it can. However, when the expectation is that change can successfully be managed, leadership is often left out of the equation. A good friend and colleague frequently puts it this way, "Change is an act of leadership and individual choice." Once leaders have successfully won people’s hearts, the actions that help and enable people to change become important. That is where the planning and management enter. That is also why I typically recommend John Kotter’s international best seller, Leading Change. Dr. Kotter is one of the most renowned authorities on leadership and change. His work does not sacrifice leadership’s important contributions to change for the tasks and actions of managing the change, nor, does he omit the planning and management aspects from the equation. Leading Change describes eight steps for leading change. Rather than repeat them here, the following link takes you to a site belonging to an organization led by Dr. Kotter. This site describes the eight steps and provides an explanation of each: http://www.kotterinternational.com/our-principles/changesteps/changesteps. The leadership contribution is well represented in the eight steps. The management side of change is also represented. An example is in Step 6, Generating Short-term Wins, where the importance of careful planning and effort (planning, not praying) is highlighted. Beyond recommending the "best book," I would have to qualify that there are many others on nearly the same plane that also deserve serious attention. Another question to avoid asking is "How do I get our leaders to lead the change?" If you are asking either of the questions posed in this blog, you have likely been asked to or aspire to be an agent of change. The right question to ask is "How do I become a leader of change?" Change agents both lead and enable others to effectively lead change. There is no simple answer to the question, but you can work on, develop, practice, and finely hone your leadership skills. As a start, refer to my last blog, Personal Leadership at http://blog.gpstrategies.com/leadership/personal-leadership/. Ultimately, the questions being asked are likely not going to be fully answered with an assignment or a book—the truest answer is through a lifelong and life-changing journey. What better time to start than now?

Organizational Change Management (OCM) is not new. I know because I was there when it started. The first change management model was developed by McKinsey’s Julien Phillips and published in 1982 in Human Resources Management. This was known as the "McKinsey 7S Model" because all of the seven components began with the letter "s." However, no one noticed and nothing happened for about five years. The mid-80s saw the growth of Manufacturing Requirements Planning (MRP) systems that, along with Japanese manufacturing techniques, brought wrenching change to American industry. This movement collided with Michael Hammer’s powerful reengineering ideas in 1990 to create a perfect storm of change. Consultants were all over it. In 1988, the visionaries at the Consulting firm I used to work for established a Change Management practice to take advantage of the new opportunities. They did not know what it would look like or what it would do, but they knew they had to have one. When I joined the practice in 1988, it was mostly made up of people with training backgrounds, and consequently, most change management activities involved training of one stripe or another. We struggled mightily. I recall talking to a partner in the firm who wanted to know how we could help resolve a sticky organizational problem. When I told him, he said come back when we had "matured" some more. Throughout 1988 and into 1989, we were desperate to invent or acquire ideas that could be quickly and effectively applied to complex organizational issues. We developed a methodology, we went to seminars put on by other consultants, we read books, we developed internal training, and we never stopped looking for that "silver bullet" that would work for every client change initiative. Finally, we decided to stop trying to learn and start doing. With the cooperation of some non-risk averse partners in the firm, we began to try things out in client organizations. I remember reading a particularly influential (on me) book entitled Figuring Things Out by Tom Kramlinger and Ron Zemke. Among other great information on how to do organizational diagnostics, I learned how to apply the nominal group technique to running focus groups. A light bulb appeared over my head, and I said, "I’m going to do this at (client name)." Needless to say, the focus groups were a resounding success and the information gleaned was used to transition the company from traditional to cellular manufacturing. I continued to use this technique with other clients until it stopped working and then moved on to something else. The reason I mention this learning experience is because everything we know about OCM today came from similar learning experiences. Regardless of what some people believe, OCM, as practiced by consultants in the real world, did not follow in lockstep behind John Kotter and the other researchers in the field. It grew up organically through trial and error. If you are new to OCM and would like to learn more about it, be sure to see my upcoming article Why OCM? which will appear on this Blog in December.

This week Fraser Marlow and Joan Dasher from BlessingWhite, A Division of GP Strategies, led the webinar "Recent Trends in Employee Engagement". They explored how leading organizations are going beyond engagement surveys by fostering purposeful cultures in which employee engagement is part of everyday dialogue. They also shared the results from a recent BlessingWhite research study as well as concepts detailed in the book, The Engagement Equation: Leadership Strategies for an Inspired Workforce authored by Chris Rice, Fraser Marlow and Mary Ann Masarech. In case you missed it, be sure to listen to the recorded webinar on Trainingindustry.com: Get up-to-date on the latest state of workforce engagement. Learn best practices for building a culture of engagement. Identify the opportunities for L&D to equip individuals, managers, and executives to own a piece of the engagement equation. The webinar sparked a great conversation at the end. Unfortunately Fraser and Joan were not able to address all of the questions that came in, but they have compiled answers to all questions that were posted during the presentation in the following Webinar Q & A document. Do you think higher engagement levels from employees yield more positive business results? Let us know in the comments section below. The first three people to respond will receive a free copy of The Engagement Equation: Leadership Strategies for an Inspired Workforce!

Researchers have determined that a number of characteristics have been exhibited by decision makers, and those decisions can be timed right or off centered. Mike Koper outlines seven defining characteristics of decision makers in the following podcast:

People communicate differently online, so we can’t ignore the possibility that relationships forged in this space will be fundamentally different. Since trust and integrity form such an important foundation for how we work, we should strive to understand these dynamics better. Press play to listen to the full podcast. Originally published on Julian Stodd’s Learning Blog.

Fewer than 1 in 3 employees worldwide (31%) are Engaged. Nearly 1 in 5 (17%) are actually Disengaged. While organizations want to maximize the contribution of each individual toward corporate imperatives and metrics, individual employees need to find purpose and satisfaction in their work. Full employee engagement represents an alignment of maximum job satisfaction ("I like my work and do it well") with maximum job contribution ("I help achieve the goals of my organization"). Engaged employees are not just committed. They are not just passionate or proud. They have a line-of-sight on their own future and on the organization’s mission and goals. They are enthused and in gear, using their talents and discretionary effort to make a difference in their employer’s quest for sustainable business success. See the full Infographic for more information.

There are five distinct segments of employee engagement.  Are you "Engaged", "Disengaged", or somewhere in between? At the individual level, drivers of satisfaction and contribution will vary, as will longer-term aspirations and career goals. While the organization can help an individual examine and gain clarity on these, it does demand a partnership and a proactive participation from the individual. No individual can expect the organization to make them engaged. Individuals need to ACT on engagement by: Assessing their skills, strengths, career goals and current priorities. Communicating with their manager to ensure alignment and put together a plan on how to address their personal engagement drivers to reach higher levels of contribution and satisfaction. Taking action - with their manager’s support start to change those items they can and track their progress throughout the year. View the full infographic for more information.

Trust in Managers Managers are not necessarily doing the things that matter most. The actions that correlate the most with high engagement are not always the ones that receive the most favorable ratings. And in some regions, relationship trump skills, that is, employees’ knowledge of their managers as "people" behind their titles appears to impact engagement levels more than manager actions. Trust in executives The way that employees interact with and perceive senior executives is very different from their relationship with their manager. While executives do not get to interact one-on-one with every employee, their role in building a culture of engagement is pivotal. Setting the tone, fostering a purposeful culture and establishing an inspiring vision of the future are all important prerequisites to building engagement across the enterprise. Executives appear to struggle with key leadership behaviors correlated to engagement, yet our findings suggest executive behaviors can have a greater potential impact on engagement than manager actions. View the full infographic for more information.

What one thing would most improve your performance? Two items compete for first place: access to more resources and greater clarity on what the organization is expecting. These two items are clearly split based on engagement levels, with those already engaged looking for more resources. Contribution drivers vary significantly based on employee engagement levels and this should indicate how an engagement strategy should be adjusted to be relevant to a regional office or facility. View the full infographic for more information.  

Mobile learning isn’t a replacement for traditional learning, it enhances it. The way people get information has changed, this video shares how mobile devices can help support a more learner-centric approach.    

Many client-facing, revenue-generating employees in sales and service organizations struggle to communicate the value of their products and services to their customers. In many of our client companies, sales leaders and their managers often face an ongoing struggle to help their sales people increase their impact and achieve their sales quotas.  Without belaboring the point, there are many factors contributing to this challenge.  For example, products are getting more complex and buyers are becoming more sophisticated. Since the challenge of communicating value to customers is a very real one, many executives continue to invest in developing the skills of their sales team.  They have to respond (in other words, the have to take action), or they risk an eroding market share or competitive losses.   For example, many of our clients are investing in negotiation and questioning skills or looking to develop programs to connect with and educate executive level clients on industry trends and insights. Against this backdrop of increased business challenges on one hand and increased investments in skills training on the other hand, you would think sales enablement leaders within organizations are expanding their influence and taking more direct control over expenditures.  Surely, if the problem is in the "wheelhouse" of the sales enablement team and the need is so great, the influence of the sales enablement function will continue to evolve, right? Nope, that’s not happening in most of the organizations I talk to. The reality is that many sales enablement professionals are struggling to reach out to the sales leadership team and create a truly effective partnership that drives lasting business results. This is perplexing because the sales leadership team runs a specific functional area that needs the help of "skill developers" and also falls within the potential scope of "performance challenges that need to be addressed".  In the view of one VP of Sales, "I hate to say it, but I think I need too much help. The challenge I have is figuring out where to start." So, what’s up?  Why are sales leaders not engaging their enablement and training function more collaboratively?  Why aren’t training leaders able to earn the trust of the sales leadership team in order to truly take a more proactive stance? Tough Question. Tough Answers. When it comes to addressing this reality, it’s a two-sided coin.  Clearly the sales function and the learning function should, and could, become partners.  Getting there requires meeting in the middle. If you are a sales enablement leader, it’s likely you have a sales problem.  Your challenge has to do with helping sales leaders understand the help you can provide, and more importantly the value you can create with the sales teams you support. I will share more about this below. If you are a sales leader, it’s likely you have a creativity problem. Your challenge has to do with making a decision to create "white-space" around a specific team or group and boldly experiment to find out what will really truly work to communicate value differently within your sales environment.  Creating that white space requires bringing the right cross-functional team of training, marketing, technology, and content providers together with the sales team to work together. More importantly, it means allowing the cross-functional team to test, learn, and deploy in an iterative and adaptive manner that is equivalent to "failing forward" (more details on this forthcoming in another blog post). In both cases, business as usual is the equivalent of putting your head in the sand. Addressing the Sales Enablement Sales Challenge As I work with sales leaders, I often ask, "What is the business purpose of your sales enablement/training function?" Their answers provide a dose of reality.  Some current perspectives that sales leaders have about the training function include: "That’s the group that does HR training." "That’s the group that does training (and manages the course catalog)." "That’s the group that runs our kickoff events." "I’m not sure what they do.  They do their stuff, we do ours." "They help me shift the behavior in our sales team to sell to executives more consistently." (This is very infrequent: 1 out of 50.) So, where does that perspective come from?  As a sales enablement leader, you have a sales challenge.  So, what are you selling to sales VPs? Hello VP of Sales: "We need to make sure every salesperson attends information security training." "We would like to talk to you about the courses you would like us to offer next year." "We are hosting several lunch and learns on the technical aspect of product X." "We would like to conduct a needs-analysis." In sales, the way you engage your customer (the sales leadership team) often dictates the expectations you create.  In working with sales leaders, it’s important to take stock of the expectations they likely have of you and your group and confront reality.  To some in the space, this is equivalent to more design thinking, or thinking more like an architect.  I think Steve Jobs summarized the challenge the best when he said: "A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have." So, what experiences have you had?  How are you at connecting the dots for your sales leaders?  Are your answers linear (that is, are you always recommending the same solution to a problem)? To help, let’s take a step back and look at the questions that sales leaders are likely asking with regard to their sales enablement teams. What’s in it for me? Translation: What are you selling me?  A course? A needs analysis? An approach? Why should I work with you? Translation: How are you going to work with me?  Are you going to put the burden on me to figure out things, or are you going to offer me your thoughtful point of view so that we can co-problem solve? What are you bringing to the table? Why should I care? Translation: What problems do you really solve?  What are you going to take ownership of?  What are you willing to get fired over (because that’s my reality - it’s likely I won’t be in this job more than 2 years)? These would seem like fairly reasonable questions to ask, especially if you’re responsible for a multi-million dollar sales quota, and you are getting questions from executives, board members, and customers on a daily basis. An Aspirational Charter As we begin a new calendar year, perhaps it’s time to take a moment and step back.  It’s definitely a good time to take stock of what you are doing well, and what you might need to work on going into a new year.  And it’s probably a good time to think deeply about how you’ll evolve as a sales enablement leader, responsible for partnering with the sales executive team. Here are some things to think about: How will you increase productivity of workers across sales, marketing, and service organizations in order to increase your company’s return on human capital assets?  What small initiative can you start that tries to move the needle? How will you help the executive team bridge the gap between strategy and execution by helping workers align work accomplishments to the forward-leaning business strategy and changing human capital strategy?  What likely initiatives are coming down from the executive team?  How can you get in front of them? How will you decrease the friction between groups within the organization that need to work together on important business initiatives and produce new outputs that are valuable to customers?  Where do teams need to learn and how can you help them? How will you help workers increase their value contribution by learning new skills and acquiring expertise they need to drive our company’s business strategy forward?  Do you know the future-state definition of the roles you support?  What are they moving away from, and what are they moving towards? A word of caution: Make sure you can deliver on the expectation you’re setting.  Take the time to ask yourself the three questions from above.  You have to be able to explain what you’re really selling, how you work with sales leaders, and the problems you solve for them. See more great sales enablement insights during one of our upcoming Webinars.

With today’s global workforce, learning is often needed in real time through mobile technology. But how can organizations best implement mobile learning content? Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective. Listen to the full podcast:

In our discussion, we covered the four key components of successful gamification of a learning experience. If you missed the webinar, a recording is now available. But if you’re looking for the Reader’s Digest version, I want to offer a quick look at some of the key takeaways we offered. Methodology of Gaming We briefly discussed ensuring that gamification solutions are grounded in the methodology of story, strategy, score, and support. It is first important that you take the content you are looking to convey and create a story or a purpose behind the training. You then need to look at a strategy that the learners can use to gain the desired knowledge. A score can come in a variety of formats and provides both a challenge and feedback to the learner throughout the experience. Finally, you need to ensure that there is support available for learners along the way. Case Study: Planning and Scheduling Game Ken Arthur described one possible gaming solution: the Planning and Scheduling Game. This game is a great example of immersing the learner in the STORY of scenarios that replicate the dynamics of real-world maintenance work. The players need to employ real STRATEGIES to move through a backlog of work and deal with issues such as work orders, parts, interruptions, and scheduling. The players are then SCORED based on the amount of work that was done safely through the simulated weeks. When we use this in an organization, SUPPORT is provided by GP Strategies throughout the session. During the session, a number of questions came up, and while we were able to address most of them, we weren’t able to get to all of them due to time. Below are those questions and my best answers. This is an ongoing conversation, and I encourage you to keep the questions coming in via the comments section at the bottom of this page. Q:  Has this model been used in a retail application, i.e., heavy truck repair facility, in a very high-traffic location? A:  We have not to date used this model in that industry, but it is easy to see how this solution could be created for that environment. The game board can be customized, as can the scenarios and the game pieces. For example, this game was customized for the Oil and Gas industry to simulate the refinery environment. Q:  Do you know of any gamification building tools that integrate to learning management systems? A:  From an online standpoint, many games can be created that integrate with a learning management system. It’s a simple matter of having your score be presented throughout the experience instead of the results of an end-of-course assessment. It is sometimes helpful to have the score times 10,000 to increase the game-like experience. But remember, not every learning experience needs to be measured and recorded, so be cautious in that decision-making process. Q:  Have you been able to measure success while using games when not using them for L&D? A:  Games are extremely successful with many fields. This case study of the Planning and Scheduling Game, for example, has measurable results throughout the experience as the players are able to see the impacts of the new strategies they are employing. The more realistic you can make you story, the more measureable impacts you will find. Q:  What are some other types of games that you currently employ? A:  The infographic below provides a few examples of different types of games that you can use in your organization. Q:  How much does a game typically cost? A:  Games can be created for small and large budgets. The design is the important component of what makes a game successful. If you are interested in creating a game, you should focus on the design of the games and add the extra bells and whistles as budgets allow. Q:  Can you give a percentage breakdown for time spent playing game? A:  It depends on the type of game. For an immersive experience like the Planning and Scheduling Game, it is typically a minimum of a one-day experience. For online games, each experience should be around a 15-minute maximum. For classroom games it will vary. Games are often very effective in the classroom at the beginning and the end of a class to provide a recap and closure to the day (plus sprinkled in to increase engagement).  

Your learners are ready for your learning content to be mobile, but are you? With the continued growth of employees bringing their own devices to work, organizations are challenged with the expectation that all training content will be accessible. Without a mobile strategy, the end result can be app confusion and an overall frustration with the training solution. How can an organization quickly ramp up with the possibilities and limitations of mobile learning to be successful? During a recent 20-minute webinar, I explored a five-step action plan that can help you REACH your learners and support mobile deployment for sustainability and success. • Researching the different ways to develop mobile content • Evaluating your options • Adopting a plan with your tech-savvy people • Communicating the plan across the organization • Helping support your organization through deployment After the presentation, a number of questions came up, and while we were able to address many of them, we weren’t able to get to all of them due to time. Below are those questions and my best answers. I encourage you to keep the questions coming in via the comments section at the bottom of this page or join the conversation on LinkedIn and Twitter. Q: Can you clarify top pick Storyline #1 or #2 for mobile and specifically android? A: From an output perspective, Storylines 1 and 2 are equal. Storyline 2, however, is much more compatible with mobile devices (specifically adding android support) and is more user-friendly. It took many of the actions that required custom coding and made now to leverage dropdown menus to create the interaction. It’s very intuitive and easy to use. Q: Only one of the authoring tools you cited leverages a responsive web design—do you not think that’s an important consideration for creating flexible and adaptive content that’s optimized for different display sizes? A: I do think that in an ideal situation, responsive web design is always best. Captivate 8 does a great job with responsive web design, for example. The challenge is balancing a consistent experience, user assistance, and maintainability with your choice of mobile strategy. For example, most training courses have help menus that clarify where buttons are and how to interact with the environment. When doing a responsive interface, be sure to include all the possible layouts and deviations. The challenge with creating a more responsive training module is that it will require a bit more experience from a development perspective. This can be a challenge to many of our customers who want to maintain their content moving forward but do not have a robust development team. Q: What is the best tool for rapid development? A: Any of the PowerPoint-based tools (Articulate Presenter and Adobe Presenter) would be considered a rapid development tool for mobile learning. Q: If we already have a mobile app and it has caused the communication confusion that you have described, how can we rein it in and use it appropriately? A: The best thing to do is to confirm your mobile strategy and then put it into action. Have a few courses deployed that exemplify this strategy and prove how successful your strategy is. Then you can start to work with the app owners to keep apps that make sense for your organization and remove apps that don’t align with your strategy. Q: Do you see any uptake in xAPI/Tin Can in mLearning in your projects? A: We see a lot of requests but not a lot of people implementing Tin Can. Many organizations have legacy LMSs in place and are still using SCORM and AICC. As organizations upgrade their LMSs, we feel there will be an increased interest in Tin Can. Q: Was Articulate the best-rated platform for developing eLearning? A: I don’t know that there was an official rating; however, our experience has been very positive with Articulate. There are minimal challenges with integration into LMSs; the tool itself is very intuitive and it allows us to create interactive modules in short timeframes. Q: What is your opinion about the Captivate 8 product for mobile platforms? A: Captivate as a tool has many creative features and functions, including a responsive design and the ability to create apps. For high-end solutions or if you have a strong development team, this is a great tool to use. I would compare this to be the mobile-friendly version of Adobe Flash. It was a pleasure to virtually spend time with you all. Please join us on April 15 when I present another 20-minute webinar: A Modified Agile Process for Outsourcing.

Over the past five years, those of us in the learning and performance field have been posed time and time again with this question from our clients, "We are interested in gamification; can you do that?" Admittedly, though, this is rarely the right solution for the problem at hand. By the way, the answer is, "Yes, we can do that. But are you sure you want us to?" What it means and what we know. Gamification has many definitions, but the easiest is that it involves using characteristics typically associated with games and game environments and embedding those elements into non-game experiences such as learning/training. We’ve employed characteristics including badging, scores, levels, and even hidden elements into learning experiences with mixed results. Too often, the eventual outcome is slightly more engaging to those learners who are unfamiliar with games (it serves as variety) and is slightly disengaging to those who are familiar with games (it’s artificial and not as polished as a real game). In both cases, the eventual outcomes do not match the effort or expectations—a satisfied client is not the same as a delighted client. Why didn’t the gamification elements add sufficient value to the experience? Ultimately, the gamification elements may not have been employed well. In other words, the disconnect lies in one of two areas: the design or the expectations of what gamification can provide. Design In the design, the challenges are scope and appropriate fit. When talking about the scope of an effort, gamification is often "tacked on" versus "planned up front." As gamification is really located in the learning environment itself, key aspects need to be defined up front and then carried through into the design. Adding a badge element to a poorly designed learning component does little more than pretty an experience that should have been designed differently. In other words, choosing to employ gamification is about addressing a business problem or performance challenge, not about detailed learning objectives. This lack of a pervasive vision often derails the learning experience. Learners want to understand the What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) for any learning experience. When we use gamification techniques sporadically, we set apart a particular experience as being "special" without a clear and compelling reason. Learners often learn that a topic is more important than another because it looks like more effort went into the design and development. This is not always meant to imply importance. Expectations There is little guidance in the definition of gamification that leads towards an answer to the question, "What can gamification do for my organization or learning experience?" In the previous section, I mentioned the WIIFM that learners thirst for; I assert that organizations have a similar question. Put another way—if gamification is the answer, what was the question? There are certain expectations associated with games; it is these same expectations that we are all striving to infuse into the learning and performance space: motivation and user investment, which are often realized by incentivizing the experience. Games are composed of certain characteristics: Levels - Individual experiences with a start and end, often with a progression of some sort Scores - A quantified descriptive of how well you did Narrative - A binding force that drives from a start to a finish Rules - Dos and don’ts, cans and can’ts Skill - Knowledge and expertise necessary to achieve We’ve applied many of these in learning for years. Levels - A curriculum comprises modules of learning that are often sequenced in a meaningful way to allow for layering of knowledge and building from one to the next Scores - Course assessments, effectiveness in the workplace Narrative - Providing meaningful context to the learning content Rules - In web environments, these can include clickable items, non-clickable items, gating Skill - Requiring knowledge to achieve the identified goals (prerequisite knowledge) This begs the question: If we are already doing these things, haven’t we already gamified learning? To some degree, the answer is yes. Yet, clients ask for more and they are right to do so. If we are not already hitting the motivation and incentive level we desire with current techniques, then which techniques or characteristics do we need to employ more? So, wait—I’m confused. Is gamification worth doing or not? So far, I’ve painted a fairly bleak picture of gamification and its benefits (or lack thereof). But gamification is not without value. Instead, we need to consider how to employ these characteristics more. One in particular has tremendous value and has the ability to change the experience: narrative. Narrative, or storytelling, is often missed as a gamification strategy primarily because it is not universally available in all games. Storytelling (narrative) is not thought of as a technical characteristic of a game; however, it is often the binding force that elevates a mediocre game to become a great experience. We’ve used storytelling in learning for years, often through the use of scenarios and case studies. We should be refocusing our energies in this direction. Storytelling provides an opportunity for us to include context to the learner. And a story will often let the learner empathize with its main characters so that the learners begin to "see themselves" in the situations presented. Now, what I’m suggesting is called a simulation by many; we do need to keep in mind that a good story often has exaggerated elements to emphasize key points. A little exaggeration and a little whimsy are acceptable for even the most serious of topics. The reality is that our end goal in learning and training is to have the learner retain the knowledge and to apply it on the job. If they don’t retain, there is nothing to transfer. If they don’t pay attention, then there is nothing to retain. Sometimes we need to make tradeoffs to get the learners most of the way towards our (and their) eventual goal. The other place where we can really gain value from gamification is in learning systems. Gamification characteristics, like levels, scores, and badges, can be employed effectively when they are embedded in the overall learning system, not just in a course here or there. Learners can use these to track their progression and to begin to understand how disparate pieces of learning relate to one another. In other words, we encourage the learners to build and populate a map of their learning opportunities and knowledge. This map of knowledge then becomes the blueprint for not only the job they are doing today, but also for direction on how to consider evolving to the job of tomorrow. So, gamification might be okay after all? Yes. But we need to elevate the conversation. Instead of talking about gamification as a one-off component of a single learning-event, we need to talk about pervasive experiences and meaningful applications of storytelling. When we evolve the learning system with key game-type characteristics, learners will be better equipped to visualize the knowledge that permeates their job and role. Completion is not nearly as "meaningful" to a learner as saying that they’ve "achieved level 2 of the competency." And, when we employ storytelling effectively, the learners leave the learning experience with a narrative that they can remember and that will resonate with them once they are back at the job.

With businesses competing to offer the most effective solutions, with the shortest possible turnaround times while keeping an eye on costs, adopting a 24-hour work culture has become the new world order. To achieve maximum performance and to meet (and often exceed) customer expectations, it is important to have this global model working to our advantage. Working across time zones seems to be an efficient way to achieve this goal; however, challenges exist that need to be addressed. Teams often face the challenge of working with colleagues located in multiple time zones with time differences ranging from 4 to 10 hours. This calls for a flexible work culture with project teams working in a highly collaborative environment, involving members from different geographical locations and cultures. Studies have also uncovered some adverse effects of working across time zones, such as loss of work-life balance, tendency to overwork, increased stress, and sleep deprivation. So how do we overcome these hurdles in our chase of the sun? Passing the Baton When working across time zones that are farther apart, a work location that is midway between these two time zones is often identified as a relay point. I call this the connect-zone. This location, apart from acting as a development center, would also serve as a bridge to transfer information between the two time zones. This helps to create a better overlap of the time zones, establishing clear lines of communication between teams. Effective Project Management Effective project management plays an important role in collaborative projects across time zones. Project managers are key to understanding the impact of time zone differences and using this to their advantage. Project managers play a critical role in sensitizing and bridging teams separated by geographical and cultural differences. Analysis of the team’s strengths, strategic allocation of tasks, and seamless hand off between teams are critical to ensuring success with this model. I’ve worked on and managed many projects with multiple project managers, from various locations, working in concert to manage time zone differences. Collaborative Dashboards and Social Platforms When establishing a connect-zone is not possible, a team dashboard would serve as a platform for creating a collaborative environment. A typical project dashboard contains the project description, profiles of team members, a project file repository, process maps, and a discussion board where the users can post questions and get clarifications. This helps team members understand and support each other. The dashboard also helps in the development of a collaborative culture and establishes an element of trust across teams. Using corporate social platforms like Yammer, apart from serving as a professional networking platform, serves as a virtual water cooler, helping the teams to gain insight on the technical and cultural aspects of their fellow team members. Fringe Meetings - The 25th Hour Fringe meetings happen when project teams put in the extra hour just before the workday or at the end of the workday to connect with their peers from the other side of the globe. Such meetings help in efficient work transition and for discussion of key project tasks, expectations, and issues. A flexible work schedule motivates team members to participate in such meetings. Studies have shown that flexible work schedules have a positive impact on employee satisfaction, making them more receptive to their tasks and challenges. Develop Trust Trust is, perhaps, the most important factor that determines the success of a collaborative effort at a global level. Team members should be sensitized to perceive collaborative projects as a learning experience—motivating each other, generating new ideas, applying new strategies, and winning together. It is important to remember that all of us are working towards a common goal—the successful completion of the project. Do you have any more suggestions to add to this list? Please add your suggestions to the comments and I will be happy to discuss your ideas.

Chris Kaplan, Content Manager at GP Strategies Corporation, explains how Instructional Design can be considered a science used to apply the ongoing body of research regarding teaching and learning to the creation of instruction. In this video, Chris focuses on two questions: How can we use technology to inform the design of instruction? How can incorporating a science-based approach to instructional design change the way training is delivered?

The Cloud Is Inevitable The shift to SaaS human capital management (HCM) applications is an ongoing and unstoppable trend. Quite simply, the ease of deployment and the cost benefits are so attractive to business owners that it’s an inevitable paradigm shift. Couple this with rapid innovation and seamless rollouts of regular releases and it’s simple to see why this shift is happening. That’s not to say that SaaS is a panacea; in fact, it introduces some of its own problems. One of the benefits of a behind the firewall-type implementation is that since all applications lived in your own data center, their interoperability and integration was far easier by sheer virtue of being able to reach out from any layer to any layer. Your HCM system needs to feed payroll? You can roll your own integration, in your programming layer of choice, directly hitting each application’s database tier directly. This isn’t feasible in the cloud. You need to get your data out of that application somehow. Maybe your system offers some basic integration capabilities with scheduled reports sent out or simple CSV generation capabilities, but if your integration needs are more advanced, what’s the answer? APIs Are the Answer… The answer, of course, is an application programming interface (API). This is a part of the enterprise application that lets other applications (as opposed to users) talk to it. While there are many industry standard ways to deploy an API (RESTful, SOAP, and others), it’s critical that the application you select offers some way to access your data. It is also critical that the API exposes all of the objects in your underlying data model to allow for meaningful integrations. A nice-to-have would be exposing the metadata used in configuration of the application to allow seamless rollouts of configurations across multiple environments, but this is not yet a common approach. One additional, often overlooked, facet of the API is excellent documentation. With SaaS being a more "self-service" focused-type deployment, it is critical that the vendor of your HCM suite has devoted the time and energy into making it easy enough for you to use. Surprisingly, this is not always the case. Regardless, the enlightened self-interest would dictate that a vendor have robust documentation to keep support and "how-to" calls down. …But Not the Only Answer Always consider the type of integration you are attempting before perusing the available APIs in your HCM system. A good rule of thumb is to think of real-time (or near real-time) integrations as being good candidates for API-type integrations. Things like "when a person is entered in the system as a new hire, accounts should be created in system X and Y and they should be linked to the active directory account created for them" are good candidates. This is processing one (or a few) record right away. Counter to that are things like business intelligence (BI)-type integrations, where large blocks of data ("all transactions today") are fed into a data warehouse or other data analytics-type system. These are typically meant to be larger batch jobs where transformation of the data is needed, and this is notionally the opposite of how an API functions. This type of transaction might overwhelm the HCM system API setup and cause other issues. To prepare for the Great SaaS Migration, remember: It’s inevitable, so plan now. Think about what integrations you have and want with your HCM system. Research, research, research the available APIs for your HCM system of choice. Make sure you’re using the right tools for the right job.

GP Strategies polled our experts from around the world, asking each to give their take on gamification in learning. The result was an insightful snapshot of attitudes and thoughts surrounding gamification and can be found in our latest eBook. Today, we would like to introduce you to one of the experts from the eBook, Sheri Weppel. After years of losing to her husband at Scrabble and wanting to throw the letter Q across the room, Sheri realized the emotional attachments we can have to games. If we could harness that desire to succeed, compete, or win and apply it to a learning environment, what impact could we have on learner motivation? Later while teaching middle school art, Sheri entered her master’s program in Learning Sciences and Technology at Lehigh University with a focus on Gaming for Instruction. During that time, Sheri started at GP Strategies in the States as an Instructional Designer and was able to embed those concepts into solutions for her customers. This is often a challenge for customers who want to use gaming but often don’t believe they have the time or budget required to successfully launch into the gaming space. Sheri is driven to help these clients find a balance in embedding gaming elements into instruction in a practical manner. Over the years, her role has transitioned from Instructional Designer to the Director of eLearning and Training Development. Her goals include working with customers to help build impactful training solutions that focus on the needs of all populations, specifically when to incorporate gaming versus hands-on, versus traditional approaches. When she is not working, Sheri enjoys adventures with her dog Olivia, yoga, and learning new three-letter words that begin with the letter Q. To download the eBook, visit: http://bit.ly/gamificationebook.

GP Strategies polled our experts from around the world, asking each to give their take on gamification in learning. The result was an insightful snapshot of attitudes and thoughts surrounding gamification and can be found in our latest eBook. In our second Meet the Expert post, we would like to introduce you to Kiran Jehan. Kiran has 12 years of progressive strategic HR experience as a senior professional across developed and emerging markets. She’s got a strong practical experience of managing organizational efficiencies and reformed business operations from an HR perspective and has been recognized for her skills and efforts by a number of international HR forums. She joined GP Strategies as a Regional Delivery Manager in 2014. With an MBA in HRM/Marketing/Training, she does a great job blending her training and branding expertise in all her solutions. Throughout her career, her main focus has been training and coaching, talent management and assessments, compensation and benefits, administration, recruitment, morale building, event management, general HR policies and procedures, and employee relations. However, for her, training is her passion. She believes that sharing knowledge and helping others to develop and grow is the best contribution to any organization. Kiran has been in the Middle East region as an HR Consultant for the last six years and actively involved in design and delivery of learning solutions with more focus on gamification. She manages 360-degree gamification services (consultancy, platform sourcing, integration support, gamification artwork production, and post-engagement management) with the end program being an integral part of the user experience, be it on a mobile app or company intranet or learning module, etc. To download the eBook, visit: http://bit.ly/gamificationebook.

In his recent blog, Andrew Dennehy-Neil talked about what digital means for us at DWP as we change the way we work to build digital services with user needs at their heart. DWP is a large and diverse organisation (of around 96,000 people in March 2014). With a similarly diverse range of experience in using and creating digital services, there was naturally some uncertainty with the creation of our new Transformation group last year. "What do we mean by Digital Transformation?" became a frequently-asked question. Getting to grips with digital and social media at the As One DWP conference Digital Transformation in government Government Digital Service (GDS) is leading the digital transformation of government, and was established to make sure the government offers digital services so good that people want to use them instead of using traditional paper forms or calling us on the phone. This means building and maintaining the single GOV.UK website to bring government services together in one place, changing the way government buys IT services, and transforming 25 important digital services across government, including three from DWP. For a big transactional department such as DWP, it was less clear to our people what this meant for our long-established processes and technology which support the delivery of critical pensions, working age, disability and ill health benefits to over 22 million claimants and customers. This was of particular concern given the face-to-face nature of the transactions that take place in our 760 JobCentres, and the needs of our most vulnerable customers. The view from industry Digital Transformation has become a buzzword but there isn’t a single definition. As an example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a useful general definition as "the use of new digital technologies (social media, mobile, analytics or embedded devices) to enable major business improvements (such as enhancing customer experience, streamlining operations or creating new business models)." If anything, there is a consensus that every organisation’s digital transformation journey will be different. Our conversations with digital leaders from around government backed this up. So we needed a clear statement about what Digital Transformation means for DWP. We started by being clear that "digital" is just one enabler for transforming DWP’s business. What does Business Transformation mean for us? Our ambition is to lead a step change in the way that the whole of DWP operates, delivering the policy intent and the service citizens expect from government, in an efficient way, testing and learning as we go. There’s already been substantial transformation over the years at DWP. Just as the move from paper forms to phone calls enabled automation and process improvements, digital gives us the opportunity to lead another fundamental change in the way DWP operates. What about the Digital bit? At DWP we think of ‘digital’ as three equally important concepts: Digital is one of the ways DWP, as GOV.UK, provides services to citizens. We’ll be digital by default, and we recognise that some of our vulnerable customers won’t always be able to deal with us online, so we’ll help them with this - that’s Assisted Digital. Digital refers to the automated and efficient way we want DWP’s business to operate, moving away from paper-based clerical processes and enabling our people to focus on what’s important to our customers. Digital is the working culture, tools, and performance measures we use to develop our services. Students at our Digital Academy, a key new way of building digital skills and working culture across DWP. Leave us your comments below. Follow Andrew on Twitter and don’t forget to sign up for email alerts.

In my last blog I wrote about Business Transformation in DWP.  We are leading a step change in the way that the whole of DWP operates. That means delivering the policy intent and the service citizens expect from government, in an efficient way, testing and learning as we go. At DWP, like the rest of government, we build new services following the Government Digital Service (GDS) Design Principles. Various teams around DWP had also established the need for principles, for example our Strategic Design Authority. With so many principles already, why did we need more? One of our top priority transformation activities is to produce a joined-up business design which we can direct all of our change efforts towards.  To create a business design that’s right for us, we needed a way to evaluate the options facing us.  And with a number of programmes that are already delivering change, we needed a way to help us make decisions quickly, consistently, and in line with our ambitions. Our Guiding Principles address both of those needs. Our Guiding Principles We followed best practice from external organisations, and used as an input all of the principles which existed around the department.  We co-created the principles with teams from across the department, including change programmes, our Digital Academy, and our business strategy and design authority teams. We needed to keep the principles simple so we took the time to use words which would be understood by everyone in the department.  We decided not to try to create a "hierarchy of principles", linking these to the others in circulation, as we felt this would be too complicated. We felt having more than 7 or 8 key principles would be too many and after debate and testing we decided on 7. We intentionally created a tension between the top-level principles, because we want to stimulate the right level of challenge when making difficult decisions. How do we expect the Guiding Principles to be used? We want to use them to show the way, by asking only one question of any proposed course of action: "Does it fit our Guiding Principles?"  This is a surprisingly practical way to help make the decision-making process much faster. We are using the Guiding Principles to galvanise our change community, and working to establish the use of the principles as "business as usual" for the way we deliver change. They’re also now recognised as a decision-making tool by our Executive Team, where they are helping us make decisions quickly and confidently. Engaging with the Guiding Principles at the DWP Digital Academy, one of our key ways of driving a change in working culture across DWP   We’ve also used the Guiding Principles externally as a conversation starter, where we have had a great response from colleagues in other government departments, and other stakeholders. Using our Guiding Principles as a conversation starter at Civil Service Live 2014   How are you using guiding principles and how do you react to ours? Leave us your comments below. Follow Andrew on Twitter and don’t forget to sign up for email alerts.