Chico the Dog Goes to School

Well it’s time for puppy school.  He seems to like recess the best.  He didn’t do his homework.  I had to use the excuse that he ate his own homework.

It’s interesting to see the different ways people train dogs.  A lot of behaviorism, but there’s also a lot of treating them the way other dogs treat each other.  It’s sort of Pavlov meets the dog whisperer.  I let everyone now if he finally gets his PH.D. in rolling over.

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Measuring Behavioral Change – Level 3

Just continuing to look at the different ways people measure training.  Measuring behavioral change isn’t a bad one.  If you really know what to do look for, you should start to see changes being made after training.  Often creating  behavioral checklists and doing direct observation is a popular way of measuring at level 3. 

Here are the pitfalls.  First, when you divide things into behaviors you can loose how they work together.  You can do all the new behaviors but miss all the connections.  More than likely, participants begin to get better at these behaviors but haven’t yet reached a level of proficiency or mastery.  That takes a lot of time, practice and feedback.

Look at the example of learning to do great presentations.  You can train to a set of new behaviors in front of others during a presentation.  You can then look to see if those behaviors are starting to appear.  You should see some change.  This is a good thing.  However, to continue on to a higher level of proficiency won’t happen immediately.  In fact, the new behaviors can quickly dissappear under the pressure of doing things for real.

The solution is to look at how you can continue to build those behaviors and work on all the subtleties that may not be on the checklist.

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Training Scorecard

Uploaded on June 12, 2005
by Hysterical Bertha

If you were to create a scorecard for senior executives relating to training, what would you put on it?  Let’s make it harder and limit you to five or less items.  Remember if it’s on the scorecard it needs to be measurable.

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Webinar for Learning Leaders

We are launching some new webinars for Learning Paths.  The first one is going to be about Learning Paths for Learning Leaders.  Let me know if you want an invite.

Here’s a quick overview:

Learning Paths for Learning Leaders

A Strategic Approach to Driving Business Results

In this webinar, we are going to be discussing the role of the Strategic Learning Leader and how Learning Paths can support any successful Learning Leader.  

The role of a Strategic Learning Leader is to align the current workforce with the strategic objectives of the organization.  In other words, being able to answer the questions:

·       What are we capable of doing today?

·       How can we change to meet future objectives?

·       What are the costs and risks for making the change?

Learning Paths is a proven methodology for driving business results through dramatically improving proficiency throughout the organization.  It provides Chief Learning Officers and other learning leaders with:

·       A comprehensive approach to workforce development

·       A better way to link training to business goals and objectives

·       Real measurement data that links directly to the bottom line

·       Learning principles and change management strategies that help build a learning organization

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Training for the Uninvolved

Building Learning Paths has many of the same challenges that building any training has.  One in particular is how to you get those who were not involved in the building of training up-to-speed on what’s happening and willing to help implement the program.

A formal train-the-trainer program is often the answer.  This is a session for those who will be implementing the training.  It guides them through what they need to do plus it goes back to the beginning and sells these individuals on what’s happening and why.  Going back to your stakeholder analysis, you might find some critical people to invite to your train-the-trainer.

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Government vs. Business – Approach to a Slower Economy

 

Uploaded by Dean-Melbourne

The reason for this post is to see if we can get a little discussion going about the best approaches for a economic slowdown.  For our discussion, let’s just assume the economy is slowing.  Whether it is or isn’t, is irrelevant for this discussion.  We can also stipulate that both government and business have a range of reactions that will vary from time to time. 

My experience is that there is not only a different reaction but also a different belief system.  Businesses first reaction is usually to tighten the belt and look for ways to be more productive.  Businesses also tend to streamline and focus more on their core business.  Some businesses will see this as an opportunity to grab marketshare or expand into new markets.

This  year we’ve seen the U.S. governments reaction is to borrow money and give it to tax payers so they will spend and stimulate the economy.  I haven’t yet seen a list of programs or agencies that they can cut back or cut all together. 

I think both government and business will try a lot of accounting tricks to move money around and make things look better. 

So this is just a very broad brush on the difference.  I hope what I’ve done is set the stage for a discussion.  As they say, there are no rules in a knife fight (Butch Cassidy).  I will however, edit anything out where one person calls another an idiot. 

 Ready..set..go.

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The Accelerated Learning Skeptics

Uploaded by 2africa.nl

I’ve been blogging about accelerated learning for months now.  I’m surprised by all the resistance to speeding up the learning process.  I’ve yet to see the value of slow learning but there are a lot of people adamant about it.  Remember the story about the tortise and the hare, well I’ve put another animal in the mix.  That’s the cheetah.  Not only did the cheetah win the race, he also ate the tortise and the hare.

The first thing that has to happen in this discussion is to assume that the results are different but one method is faster than the other.  For example, if you can read a book with 100% comprehension is it better to read it in one hour or six.  The value of going faster is significant.  This means I can read 6 books in the time it takes you to read one..or I could read the same book 6 times.  I know you’ll say that you’ll pick up more of the nuance if you read slower.  I’d say that’s more a function of your reading ability that your speed.  But again, we start with the assumption that the results are the same.

Take the example of learning algebra.  Let’s set the results at being able to solve any algebra problem.  You know the ones about the trains leaving different stations.  Would you prefer to get to this level in 6 weeks or 6 months.  Same result, only the time is different.

So who might have something to lose if students learn faster?  Well some might think it’s a threat to job security for teachers.  Indeed if students learn faster, it reduces teacher time as well.  If K-12 became k-8 with identical results, that’s a big reduction in teachers.  The upside is that people who know more and learn faster want to learn more.  So teachers could expand their offerings.

Interestingly in a business setting, learning faster is at a premium.  Executives understand the costs of not having employees up-to-speed.  In fact, if the training was only an hour that would be okay.  It’s the resutls that matter.

So in the argument about slow versus fast, if the results are the same I can’t think of any situation where fast doesn’t win. 

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In the Box Thinking….”It Depends”

Uploaded by Kevin Steele

If you ever do strategy or planning sessions, here’s something you always run into.  If I ask something like, “on average, how long does it take new salespeople to get up to speed?”  Some people will think through their experience, maybe even look at some data and give it their best shot.

Others will answer, “it depends.”  They will come up with all sorts of variables that make it impossible to even take an educated guess.  In fact, they will refuse to take a wild guess. 

When this happens, I’m always reminded by the joke they told during the Clinton/Dole election.  Clinton had been asked by MTV about whether he wore boxers or briefs.  The joke was they asked Bob Dole if he wore boxes or brief…he replied…Depends.

Anyway, the depends answer is what I call in the box thinking.  In some way, people are either resistant to answering with their best guess or they are simply paralyzed by all the possible answers. 

I hear a lot in the education world about how every student is unique and different and every teacher is unique and different so you really can’t do anything that tries to reduce that variability or learn from best practices.  In many cases, this resistance is a resistance to change…so the status quo continues. 

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Is Knowledge Really Power?

Uploaded by :: SL Emerick

 Most of formal education is still focused on knowledge acquisition.  But there really has been a dramatic change in the last 50 to 100  years which makes this less important.  First, there’s been an explosion in knowledge.  You can know something about most things but it’s difficult to know a lot about everything.  Take the example of medicine.  There is now so much to know that a generalist has to turn patients over a specialist because they don’t know enough to treat you and often times diagnose you.

How about music.  I remember when most people knew all the popular tunes.  There just weren ‘t that many.  Now there are almost as many types of music as their were songs.  “Name that tune” is a lot harder than it used to be.  This goes on subject after subject, topic by topic. 

Take the champions on Jeopardy.  All you have to do to throw them off is give a lot of questions about popular culture or things out of their generation.  You could also take something like history and ask questions from out this country such as Nigerian leaders of the 20th century. 

Second in the past, this information wasn’t readily available so if you didn’t learn it, you were out of luck.  Now on almost any topic, you have instant access to information.  The emphasis switches from knowing to being able to find.  So what this suggests is a different paradigm in education.

I know in the corporate world this is a shift from knowing to doing.  As your boss, I really don’t care what you know, I care about what you can do.  If there isn’t an application of knowledge, it has very little value in this setting.

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Thriving on Chaos – The Road to Creativity

Recently I had an opportunity to lead a number of process improvement sessions.  One of the things that’s challenging is that it’s really a divergent/convergent process.  By divergent I’m mean that early on the discussion is expansive with a lot of options.  Later on as decisions are made the process is convergent leading to closure. 

As a facilitator, it’s important to allow the early chaos to happen because that’s part of the creative process.  I continuously remind everyone that this is a normal part of the process and everything will come into focus as we go along.  A lot of people are uncomfortable with this messy state of affairs and try too soon to organize things or cut off discussion.  You just have to push back and tell people to be patient.  I use parking lots to help record all those ideas that we won’t be dealing with in order to keep some focus to the discussion.

I also let people know when we are shifting gears and going into the decison making phase.  That’s the point were judgements are appropriate and necessary.  I find that when I train others on this type of faciliation that they have to see this happen at least once to fully appreciate what really happens.

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