Training Delivery | Fall 2015 by Training Industry Magazine

Q U A R T E R LY I FA L L 2 0 1 5

TRAINING DELIVERY

GETTING SERIOUS WITH SERIOUS GAMES | page 16 | Using Video Games to Achieve Learning Goals

SUPPORTING SOCIAL LEARNING | page 32 | Leveraging Technology to Connect Employees

DESIGNING EFFECTIVE SIMULATIONS | page 44 | Accelerating Expertise and Knowledge Transfer

BUSINESS

PERSPECTIVES

MANAGING

WORLD-CLASS

TRAINING

atlanta, ga

noVember 16-18, 2015

Boston, ma

SePTember 28-30, 2015

denVer, co

December 2-4, 2015

san francisco, ca ocTober 26-28, 2015

l ea d t h e c h a n g e become a certified Professional in Training managemenT. learn more

PERSPECTIVES - K E N TAY LO R

DELIVERY: IS THIS WHERE TECHNOLOGY

CHANGES THE GAME? There is no question that training delivery leaves a lasting impression on the learner, and can often dictate whether or not the program accomplishes the goal of improving employee performance. With us all striving to fit that huge transformation initiative into that tiny budget envelope, is it time for technology experts to not only provide us with the tools that can take the program beyond the impact of classroom training, but also help us learn how to use them?

DELIVERY TECHNOLOGY CAN PLAY A BIG PART IN THE SUCCESS OR FAILURE OF A LEARNING INITIATIVE.

According to a June 2015 Training Industry research survey of over 190 companies, more than 38 percent of training and development is delivered using virtual instructor-led training (VILT) or hybrid instructor-led training (HILT). This makes it more common than classroom instructorled training. While the cost savings of introducing these technologies into the delivery of a program are obvious and very significant, we need to analyze whether the use of these platforms for delivering programs actually improves the impact of the learning initiative. In order to assess training impact, programs must be designed to incorporate the platform features that improve the transfer of knowledge and the development of skills. Trainers must be provided with the training necessary to ensure they fluently deploy the features of the platform

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as part of the program, and not uncomfortably try to incorporate a tool that feels forced or comes across as a challenge to the trainer. Both design and delivery experts need to focus on the effective use of features such as breakouts, shared documents, hand raising, sharing control, video, polling, quizzes, or even the participation of a remote executive or SME to reinforce the learning objectives. We should be morphing the program design to adjust for the mode of delivery, but most importantly to meet the needs of the audience. We can leverage the recording capabilities of the platforms to generate on-demand resources for future reference or to use in the ongoing development of the trainers. This edition of Training Industry Magazine takes a look at training delivery from a variety of perspectives. As you read through this collection of practices and approaches, keep in mind that the transformation in learning and development is already upon us, and that the delivery technology can play a big part in the success or failure of a learning initiative. Ken Taylor is the president and editor in chief of Training Industry, Inc. Email Ken. 3

CO N T E N TS

TA B L E O F VOLUME 8

ISSUE 4

FALL 2015

F E AT U R E S

16 SERIOUS GAMES

16 21 25 29 32 36 41 44

32 SUPPORTING SOCIAL LEARNING

41 EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

PLANNING, DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING SERIOUS GAMES By Andrew Hughes & Karlea McCoy Video games can change behaviors and lead to a much higher retention of learning.

LET’S GET SERIOUS ABOUT LIVE, INSTRUCTOR-LED TRAINING By Dale Ludwig Training programs must be relevant and useful to appeal to today’s learners.

JUST WHAT EMPLOYEES ORDERED: PERSONALIZED ADAPTIVE LEARNING By Steve Swink Harnessing analytics and big data can lead to improved learner engagement.

TRAINING WITH PICTURES, NOT BULLET POINTS By Sara Ulmer Best-in-class organizations understand that leaders are the key to organizational success.

ANTI-SOCIAL LEARNING? By Cammy Bean Keeping people connected with each other increases the speed to proficiency.

USING MICROLEARNING AND INFORMATION DESIGN TO ELEVATE SOFT SKILLS TRAINING By Stephen J. Meyer Bite-sized learning can grab the learners’ attention and keep them coming back for more.

HOW IMPROVISATION CAN DRIVE EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT By Doug Hutton Improv skills provide the framework today’s leaders need to adapt to any situation.

ACCELERATING EXPERTISE WITH SIMULATIONS By Cindy McCabe & Ann Garvey Simulations can accelerate the learning curve and enhance knowledge transfer.

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THOUGHT LEADERS

03 09 11 13

PERSPECTIVES By Ken Taylor

Training delivery can dictate the success or failure of a learning program.

GUEST EDITOR By John Hovell

Conversation may be the most overlooked technology in today’s world.

PERFORMANCE & PRODUCTIVITY By Charles Jennings

Learners need a map to access knowledge quickly and efficiently.

BEHAVIOR ∆ CHANGE By Anne Dranitsaris, Ph.D. & Heather Dranitsaris-Hilliard

Selecting a delivery mode requires knowing how people gather content.

15 50 53 54

TOOLS IN LEARNING By Karl Kapp, Ed.D.

A blended approach to learning can meet the needs of all learners.

FROM WHERE I SIT By Doug Harward

Buyers of training have become much more educated and savvy.

LEADERSHIP 2.0 By Ken Blanchard & Scott Blanchard

The ability to communicate effectively sets great leaders apart.

MEASURING IMPACT By Paul Leone, Ph.D.

Building use cases can help measure the ROI of social media.

INFO EXCHANGE 48 I GLOBAL OUTLOOK Understanding the trends driving the China training market can help buyers find the right provider.

56 I CLOSING DEALS The acquisition of Lynda.com furthers LinkedIn’s mission of creating economic opportunity.

57 I COMPANY NEWS Keep up with the latest in the training industry by reading news from the last quarter.

58 I WHAT’S ONLINE Find additional articles, research studies and information available only at TrainingIndustry.com.

59 I TRAINING TALK Keep up with the training buzz and review insights from learning leaders around the world.

A B O U T OUR TEAM

STAFF CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

EDITOR

Doug Harward dharward@trainingindustry.com

Shina Neo sneo@trainingindustry.com

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DESIGNER

Ken Taylor ktaylor@trainingindustry.com

Heather Schwendner hschwendner@trainingindustry.com

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EDITORIAL BOARD Dr. Shawn Andrews Senior Manager, Global Compliance and Training Allergan

Kaliym Islam Vice President Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.

Derek Cunard, LPC Chief People Officer Pinnacle Automotive Hospitality Services

Barbara Jordan Chief Learning Officer Jackson Hewitt Tax Service

Vince Eugenio, Ph.D., HCS, CCMC Senior Leader, Talent Development Boys and Girls Clubs of America

Karen Kocher Chief Learning Officer Cigna

Carol Gajus, Ph.D. Director, Stores and Military Executive Development Programs Macyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Corporate

Meredith Lubitz Vice President, Talent Management Dow Jones

Nancy Gustafson Workforce Learning and Development Manager American Red Cross Lorna Hagen Vice President, People Operations OnDeck

Laura Moraros Vice President, Sales Learning & Development Yahoo! Scott Nutter General Manager, Research, AQP & Development Delta Air Lines

Jeanette Harrison Vice President, Enterprise Learning & Development Pitney Bowes

Steve Sitek Head of Learning, Education & Communications, Ethics & Compliance Novartis

John Hovell Senior Manager, Learning Operations and Technology BAE Systems

Kee Meng Yeo Director, Enterprise Talent Development Amway

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THE PENDULUMS SWING A comedian recently joked, “Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do study history are doomed to helplessly standby watching others repeat it.” Given the low satisfaction and low engagement statistics in business today, it seems to be increasingly common for each one of us to feel helpless. Yet, as learning professionals, we’re skilled at behavior change and systemic improvement. Today is the beginning of an opportunity for us to swing the pendulum from disengagement to discretionary joy.

CONVERSATION MAY BE THE MOST OVERLOOKED TECHNOLOGY IN TODAY’S CONNECTED WORLD. In this issue of Training Industry Magazine, you’ll find articles discussing various training delivery methods such as simulations, e-learning, instructor-led, serious games and how to incorporate humor into delivery. These resources are not only intended to help you serve the needs of your customers, but to also start a conversation. Conversation tends to be an overlooked technology, even in today’s digital world. In fact, conversation may be the most overlooked technology in today’s connected and co-created world. For example, consider a recent customer of a large company that builds and repairs ships. The customer had a large ship that was broken. The request was to fix an estimated 1,000 problems in six weeks. For comparison, it can take years to fix 400 problems. Against all odds, an agreement

was reached and the contractor needed a level of productivity never seen before. Within the agreement and external regulations, the contractor empowered its employees to “go anywhere on the ship” and “fix or document any problems.” Social technology was used as an enabler of the culture and process change. As a result, over 1,200 problems were solved at an unprecedented rate of four weeks. The customer and the employees were overjoyed. The improvement was attributed to the conversations happening in real-time at a collective-organization level in addition to a traditional, small group level. In addition to collaborative culture and process improvements, we are experiencing other significant shifts. Data and analytics are becoming omnipresent. The amount of automation is slowly increasing; 3D printing will potentially thrust automation to a new level. The skills that are required of today’s knowledge workers are markedly different from just a few years ago. The application of these shifts could potentially cause us to rethink what it means to deliver training. We’re heading toward a more rapid oscillation between individual learning and collective learning, as well as synchronous and asynchronous learning. Whether or not MOOCs become widely accepted, other approaches to learning may prove valuable and impactful. New approaches might include expertise location, communities of practice, organizational network analysis, talent markets, knowledge markets or even the

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- JOHN HOVELL, PMP, CKM

GUEST EDITOR

conversational leadership concept of “working out loud.” Ideally, these new approaches will help eradicate today’s common challenges of finding time, writing progress reports, keeping people in the loop and scheduling meetings. Larry Prusak taught us that “the most common constraints have moved from land, labor and capital; now the most common constraints are time, attention and priority.” Managing those constraints, and applying learning within those constraints, may be considerably different than our current approaches. While most of our organizational pendulums continue to swing from decentralized to centralized, and from strategic to tactical, it is becoming more possible to connect and have conversations at hyper speed. The pendulums may swing back and forth over the long term, but these new plateaus of co-creation and productivity will only continue to increase. Consider embracing that change, and sharing your conversations so that the world becomes a better place, even faster than expected.

THIS ISSUE’S GUEST EDITOR John Hovell is the head of organizational development at BAE Systems. As a leader in the convergence of knowledge management and business strategy, John is a practitioner, speaker and author in organizational development, knowledge management strategy and methods. Email John.

1 0 -1

igh,

May

Rale

e t o n y e K r u O t e Me

o Ex p n a l & o e enc functi r e f Con on into xpert, y r t i ST. dus istract tions e R n I HO ing ing d unica n i N I a n r m r E 16 T urn lea m com T ST 0 2 the w to t ns fro t, C U R d n o s io e Att learn h ref lect olumni and n with r and c o u acti prene e entr BE DISTRACTION SAVVY With so many new devices around, todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s learners process tons of digital content and are conditioned to shift their attention constantly. Their tools give them more access to information than ever before, but also create distractions that are quickly becoming the leading cause of underperformance. Curt identifies the roots of the problem - the way the brain is wired - and helps learning leaders turn distraction into functional action.

Learn more at TICE2016.com. Interested in sponsorship opportunities? Email TICE@trainingindustry.com.

ACCESS TRUMPS KNOWLEDGE: CHANGES for TRAINING DELIVERY The well-worn phrase “knowledge is power” can be traced back to the seventh century Islamic leader Imam Ali, cousin and sonin-law of the prophet Muhammad. The full text of Imam Ali’s utterance, as recorded in the 10th century Nahj al-Balagha, is “knowledge is power and it can command obedience.” Although this was true in a world of information and knowledge paucity, it is not wholly true today.

THE NEW TRAINER CULTIVATES A CULTURE OF INQUIRY. Today’s world is not one of information paucity, but of information and knowledge abundance. The concept of a profession whose primary role is to keep and disseminate knowledge using traditional teaching methods is rapidly disappearing. While our schools and universities – and, to some extent, our training and development departments – will continue to provide education and training, one important aspect of their function is changing. Their primary focus is changing from packaging and disseminating information to helping people improve their ability to find the “right stuff” when they need it, and make sense of it when they have located it. The fundamental role for teachers, trainers and learning professionals is evolving from one with a focus on transferring information to one of supporting and enabling continuous learning; from teaching content to helping develop transferrable skills; from providing learners with detailed information to providing

strategies and cues to find the right information when it’s needed. Work may still require that we memorize and store core concepts in our heads, but we don’t need to memorize all the additional detailed information that’s necessary to complete every task; we simply need a map of where to locate it quickly when it’s needed.

OUR OUTBOARD BRAINS Detailed data is increasingly stored in our ‘”outboard brain” – in physical data stores across the Internet, in data inside our organizations’ firewalls, in our personal files and applications, and in our colleagues and contacts. The challenge for training professionals is to find ways to adapt their approaches to this new world of information abundance and knowledge accessibility. Designing and delivering content-rich and experiencepoor training courses is no longer either appropriate or useful.

CONTINUOUS LEARNING CULTURES We are fortunate that technology, the force which has made information and knowledge so easily accessible, can also help learning professionals embed more useful approaches in their work. Ubiquitous connectivity and the ability to retrieve information in seconds has removed the need for dense content-rich training courses. The best training is flipping from being content-rich and experience-poor to being experience-rich and content-light. The new training delivery is part facilitation and part curation. The role of the trainer is

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- CH AR L E S J E NNING S

PERFORMANCE AND PRODUCTIVITY

becoming one of a guide who signposts and helps people understand general principles, techniques and behaviors. The new trainer is also a curator, helping people make sense of information and knowledge, and adding value to it while doing so. The new trainer cultivates a culture of inquiry.

THE ROLE OF SENSE-MAKER The new training and development department has an important role to play in sense-making, or supporting people to build personal knowledge mastery (PKM). PKM is a way we can ensure people will work more effectively. My Internet Time Alliance colleague Harold Jarche has spent several years working on the PKM framework using the seek-senseshare approach: • Seeking: finding things out and keeping up-to-date.

• Sensing: personalizing information and putting into practice what we have learned.

• Sharing: exchanging resources, ideas and experiences with our networks.

When training delivery is interpreted as meaning delivery of an agile, capable and continuously learning workforce, and the training and development department has played its part, then we should be proud of the way in which we have embraced the changes. Charles Jennings is a director of the Internet Time Alliance. He is the former chief learning officer for Thomson Reuters. Email Charles. 11

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BEHAVIOR ∆ CHANGE

HARDWIRED TO LEARN

- ANNE DRANITSARIS, PH.D. AND HEATHER DRANITSARIS-HILLIARD

Learning is never a one-size-fits-all enterprise. When developing content and method of delivery, we need to consider how each individual learns and what engages or disengages them in the learning process. As a result, taking into account how people gather information is critical to achieve desired outcomes. According to Carl Jung’s theory of Psychological Type, the brain has two distinct ways of taking in information: the Intuitive Function located in the right, rational brain, or the Sensing Function located in the left, emotional brain. While we have both of the perceiving functions, we are hard-wired to use one over the other. The environment the functions are used in further modifies what they look like in a learning situation.

HOW PEOPLE GATHER INFORMATION IS CRITICAL TO ACHIEVE DESIRED OUTCOMES. People who gather information with the Sensing Function trust information that can be validated by the five senses and distrust hunches that they perceive as unreliable. They look for meaning in data, details and facts. People with the Intuitive Function tend to trust information that can be associated with other information. For them, the meaning is in the bigger picture, underlying theory or principles. When we have to conform to an approach to learning that is inconsistent with the way we take in information, it triggers

an emotional reaction, which inhibits learning. Understanding how the learner’s brain takes in information allows us to develop an approach to delivering content that meets their needs. The following are some tips on how to accommodate the information gathering functions of both groups.

WHAT WORKS FOR THE SENSING FUNCTION Hands-on materials. Sensory-rich experiences that engage as many of the senses as possible works best for the Sensing Function. Going carefully and thoroughly through new material. People who prefer the Sensing Function want to know the conclusions they reach and their work products are sound and based on facts. Knowing exactly what is expected of them. This gives them confidence when learning something. They want a clear, detailed assignment. Immediate use of the skills they learn. The clear, practical usefulness of new skills and facts convinces Sensing-preferenced people that the new material is worth learning. Using their memory for details. They prefer to learn by using their knack for careful observation of concrete details, memorizing and keeping a large amount of data in memory.

WHAT WORKS FOR THE INTUITIVE FUNCTION Starting with the big picture. This helps give a sense of where they

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a re going and answers the question, “Why learn this?” Associative learning. Intuitive Function people like to make associations with the learning content. They let insight tell them what is meaningful and worth focusing on. Not getting bogged down in details. This part of the brain is holistic and can only tolerate so much detail without tuning out. Being forced to learn by rote is challenging. Tackling new skills. This is more energizing to Intuitive Function people than practicing and honing existing ones. It is the possibilities, not the practicality, of new skills and ideas that motivate them. Discussion & dialogue. These people prefer playing with ideas, concepts and theories with others. By engaging in dialogue, Intuitive Function people are able to explore possibilities by taking something concrete and figuring out what it might become. By learning the preferred information gathering function of their participants, trainers and educators can adapt their style of presenting information so that all trainees have the opportunity to succeed. This eliminates a host of frustrations in training situations, including poor retention, lack of participation and disinterest in the content. Anne Dranitsaris, Ph.D., & Heather DranitsarisHilliard are leading experts in personality and behavioral change. They are the creators of the Striving Styles® Personality System and authors of “Who Are You Meant to Be?” Email Anne and Heather. 13

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TOOLS IN LEARNING

- KAR L M. KAPP, Ed.D.

USING A

BLENDED approach

WHEN CRAFTING A TRAINING DELIVERY STRATEGY

Technological advances in the past few decades have revolutionized how, when and where training, instruction and education can be delivered. As a learner, we are no longer tethered to a classroom or a particular instructor. We can learn wherever a cell phone has two or more bars. As an instructor, we are not limited to sharing our knowledge in the classroom; we can share across geographic boundaries by uploading videos, text and other valuable content. This ability to deliver training via technology as well as via a classroom has led to the inevitable question: Which training delivery method is the best? The answer is “Yes.” All these delivery methods are the best, depending on the situation. So, I guess the “real” right answer is a blend of methods. Blending different instructional delivery methods is the intelligent approach to training delivery.

CRAFTING A STRATEGY Organizations should craft a delivery strategy that includes delivering instruction with multiple methods such as classroom, on-the-job instruction, e-learning and mobile learning. Think of it this way, most organizations would not, and should not deliver all training to employees via mobile learning. Yet, these same organizations currently deliver all training to employees via instructor-led or on-the-job training. No single training

delivery method is ideal for all types of training. Instead, what is needed is a mix of instructor-led, on-the-job training, mobile and e-learning matched to the content and audience.

NO SINGLE TRAINING DELIVERY METHOD IS IDEAL FOR ALL TYPES OF TRAINING. A truly enterprise-wide approach to corporate education combines the best aspects of online education and mobile education with the best aspects of instructor-led training. The combination might be teaching basic fundamentals online and then teaching advanced skills in the classroom. Or, it might be providing on-the-job training for new employees and then giving veterans a mobile device to refresh their knowledge when needed. A blended approach means that everyone in the organization can have an orientation training program with a class size of one, or that information required to keep skills up-to-date doesn’t require time away from work. A blended approach with a strong e-learning component allows all new employees to receive the same information because it was presented consistently by an expert over the web. This then means

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the face-to-face class can focus on higherlevel skills since the basics are known and tested by the online software. Blended learning is an effective delivery because there will always be questions that will not be answered by online training or by asking “Siri.” This is when a competent, qualified person can be made available to answer specific questions on the job, or a training class can be set up to answer questions and provide company-specific ideas and suggestions not available through the online means.

MIXING IT UP For these reasons and many others, a blended approach to training delivery is the preferred method for sophisticated organizations. The careful mixing of onthe-job training, instructor-led training with a supervisor or internal expert, and online and mobile learning support provides the best possible combination to ensure employee knowledge, skills and productivity. Karl M. Kapp, Ed.D., is a professor of instructional technology at Bloomsburg University and the author of six books and the Lynda.com course, “Gamification of Learning.” Email Karl.

BY ANDREW HUGHES AND KARLEA MCCOY

Serious games and gamification are all the buzz in our industry. But do we understand what they do for our training needs? The use of serious games can change behaviors and ultimately relieve pain points within an organization. WHAT IS A SERIOUS GAME? The term â&#x20AC;&#x153;serious gameâ&#x20AC;? refers to a structured and established game designed for educational or training purposes. These games are created with challenges that allow for direct or indirect learning to take place in a fun environment, usually online or through some type of computer platform. The use of serious games is exponentially increasing in the corporate training space as young, Internet-savvy people enter the workforce in industries such as defense, education, scientific exploration, health care, emergency management, city planning, engineering, religion and politics.

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CAN WE LEARN FROM SERIOUS GAMES? Today, we are faced with a new type of learner – the millennial – who is accustomed to instant feedback, instant gratification and fast-paced critical thinking games. You may wonder if learning takes place in video games. But if you asked a youth who plays the Call of Duty games what the best equipment load is for large terrain maps, he or she could easily answer this question and explain the advantages, tactics and theory behind the game as well as how to conquer opponents with the game’s tools. This player is undoubtedly learning. He or she must demonstrate critical thinking in order to overcome challenges and advance through the game.

ALLOW LEARNERS TO FAIL AND DISCOVER INFORMATION ON THEIR OWN.

IF IT’S LIKE REAL LIFE, IT’S A SIMULATION One metric we often forget is FUN. The primary purpose of designing a serious game instead of an e-learning experience is to make training fun and engaging.

However, most corporate training departments are not trying to teach their audience which weapons work best in fictitious combat situations. Our challenge in professional training is to find a way to harness this proven absorption of knowledge from video games and use it to achieve corporate learning goals.

A serious game does not have to mimic real life at all. In fact, if you choose to mimic real life, then you’re not making a serious game; you’re making a simulation. Simply giving users points for doing something within a 3D environment is forcing learners to simulate their work. Serious games, on the other hand, utilize game mechanics to foster a fun environment for learners.

WHY SERIOUS GAMES?

WHAT CONTENT IS BEST?

Let’s be honest; training is often boring in your employees’ eyes, and they may secretly not want to do it. Your employees won’t tell you if your training is subpar, because you’re the boss, and they don’t want to rock the boat. However, they will talk with each other about how bad the training was or how boring it may have been.

Often, clients ask our team, “What content is best for our serious game?” The quick answer is, “There is no direct and correct answer.” You must weigh the game mechanics being used as well as the interests of your learners when deciding what content to include in your serious game.

Your goal is to create a learning experience that is fun and simultaneously provides your learners, directly or indirectly, with the ability to overcome challenges in their line of work. Creating a serious game can help them change their behavior to align with your corporation’s business goals.

It is important to ensure that learners can begin easily and then face increasingly difficult challenges as the game progresses. As a child, you started playing T-ball, not fast-pitch baseball. You were allowed to practice at your own level. Then, you slowly progressed to harder challenges. The “best content” is content shaped into this format. Allow learners to begin the game with less challenging content and then gain momentum at a pace comfortable to their learning style.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE The first and most important step is to assess your audience. The needs and preferences of an audience are often vastly different from those of the project champion and/ or training department. Failing to recognize these differences when creating a serious game can lead to detrimental oversights. Therefore, it is critical to research your target audience to determine what they like and dislike. If you build a first-person shooter game and then discover that the

audience dislikes that genre, you’ve built something in which they have no interest in participating, which sets you up for failure from the start. You must know your audience on a deep level in order to understand what drives their interest and curiosity. Always build or theme a game around the majority interest to capture learners’ attention and draw them in.

PRESENTING INFORMATION – DON’T DO IT! Modern video games almost never give players all the information up front. Doing so would overwhelm them. Instead, they introduce elements and concepts in a tiered manner. Games give players opportunities to practice and focus on the most important aspects of the game before moving on to

a new skill or strategy. Then, after players have had time to build and refine their skill sets, the game provides them with unique challenges to assess their abilities. Using this video game method allows learners to freely explore and extrapolate the content they need to overcome the game’s challenges. Allow learners to fail and discover information on their own. A user experience built around fun and discovery is far more powerful than one that bombards learners with a daunting amount of information. Be sure you allow learners to pull the data they need and learn by discovery rather than by forcing a presentation upon them.

SCOREBOARD FAILS Do you remember going to the pinball or video game arcade when you were a child? I did, quite often, and I have some great memories of arcades. However, there was one aspect I disliked: I knew my measly two dollars would never get me on the top 10 scoreboards. If I’d had a bookbag full of coins, I probably still would not haave reached the top 10 of any of game. Aiming

for an impossible goal left me feeling down about myself. A scoreboard is usually designed to show the top 10 achieving people. But in corporate training, we’re not attempting to change the behavior of the top achievers. Instead, we must encourage and congratulate the even lowest achievers for progressing and advancing.

HOW SHOULD WE KEEP SCORE? Scoreboards can still be very effective to build competition within the organization. Rather than showing the top 10 players, design the scoreboard to show each learner the five people ahead of and the five people behind him or her. This strategy will keep the “middle of the road” learners engaged and encouraged by giving them attainable goals and instant feedback on where they stand within a particular skill level.

A RETURN ON YOUR INVESTMENT Developing serious games takes much longer to plan, develop and test than an

KEY TAKEAWAYS The use of serious games is increasing in the corporate training space as young, Internet-savvy people enter the workforce. Serious games can change behaviors and lead to a much higher retention of learning, but building a serious game takes a large amount of time and money. Follow these best practices when developing your next serious game:

e-learning or even a gamified experience. Companies must understand the complexity in developing large-scale systems that provide feedback to the learners in a unique, nonlinear progression. Creating serious games with parallel branching and scenario-based paths requires significantly more time for design and development than a straightforward eLearning module with four multiplechoice options. Therefore, a greater investment of time and money is required to build a serious game rather than a linear presentation. But trust me: The investment is worth it. Correctly built serious games lead to a much higher retention of learning and alleviate pain points within an organization. Follow these best practices to ensure your serious game is a success. Andrew Hughes is the founder of Designing Digitally, Inc. and has extensive experience in the development of enterprise learning solutions. Karlea McCoy is the lead instructional designer at Designing Digitally, Inc. Email Andrew and Karlea.

Research your target audience to determine what they like and dislike. Utilize game mechanics to create a fun and engaging environment for learners. Allow learners to begin the game with less challenging content and then gain momentum at a pace comfortable to their learning style. Introduce elements and concepts in a tiered manner. Encourage and congratulate all players for progressing and advancing. Design the scoreboard to show each learner the five people ahead of and the five people behind him or her to increase engagement.

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Running Training like a Business

Proven Approach, Transformative Results. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no secret that corporate executives today want to radically change the way training is managed. According to industry experts, learning transformation therefore is no longer optional. At NIIT, our principles of running training like a business are at the core of helping organizations transform training to dramatically improve effectiveness and efficiency. Learn how running training like a business can work for you: www.niit.com/rtlab.

CURRICULUM AND CONTENT

LEARNING DELIVERY

LEARNING ADMINISTRATION

STRATEGIC SOURCING

LEARNING TECHNOLOGY

let’s get

SERIOUS about

LIVE TRAINING instructor-led

BY DALE LUDWIG

WITH SO MANY MODES OF TRAINING DELIVERY AVAILABLE TO LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT (L&D) PROFESSIONALS – ONLINE, BLENDED, SYNCHRONOUS, ASYNCHRONOUS, MOBILE – IT’S COMMON TO ASK WHETHER A TRADITIONAL FACE-TOFACE WORKSHOP IS NECESSARY TO MEET THE NEEDS OF THE BUSINESS. IN MANY CASES, IT’S NOT. WHEN IT IS, THOUGH, WE HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO MAKE THIS MODE OF DELIVERY WORTH THE INVESTMENT IN TIME AND RESOURCES. To that end, training professionals spend a lot of time thinking about the needs of adult learners. What some of them do not fully take into account, though, is that the adults with whom they work are not merely “adults.” They are Busy People at Work. These learners have unique perspectives and specific needs. Unlike adults in nonbusiness learning environments, they view training as a job responsibility, important for their work and their advancement, and are very busy. Time spent in training is time away from their regular responsibilities. Understanding and empathy for this type of learner must be the driving forces behind training design and delivery. When they are, trainers earn the trust and good will of their learners. Without trust and good will, learners check out of the process. Here are five key concepts to keep in mind when designing and delivering training for Busy People at Work.

MAKE IT A CONVERSATION

To determine what the live, instructorled training environment needs to be, let’s turn to Stephen Brookfield. In “Understanding and Facilitating Adult Learning,” Brookfield says face-to-face

learning is a “transactional dialogue,” an exchange of information between trainer and learner, not simply the delivery of information. As Brookfield describes it, this dialogue is one in which “comments and contributions of the participants build organically on each other’s views and in which alternative viewpoints, differing interpretations, and criticism are elements essential to the encounter.” In other words, what happens between trainer and learner in the classroom shares many characteristics with regular, everyday conversation. It is spontaneous, sometimes non-linear and includes everyone’s perspective on what is being learned. Trainers need to prepare for a dialogue in which fundamental questions, pertinent examples and crucial clarifications can be aired and addressed. This conversation is a primary benefit of face-to-face learning.

PLAN TO SUCCEED ON TWO LEVELS

Every training conversation (as well as every business meeting, presentation or discussion) works on two levels: There is a business goal and a process goal. In training, the business goal is about reaching learning objectives. For Busy People at Work, this goal is met when the

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WITHOUT TRUST AND GOOD WILL, LEARNERS C H E C K O U T OF THE PROCESS. learning is clearly relevant to their jobs. If its relevance is not immediately clear, trainers have the responsibility to supply adequate background and context.

with their perceptions of learning content. Sometimes it has to do with the fact that they are taking time away from their regular responsibilities to be with you. Sometimes it’s a combination of several things, both The process goal is met when the learning practical and emotional. conversation is perceived as efficient and meaningful. If Busy People at Work feel time Agenda: is being wasted, they grow increasingly The agenda should make the learning that impatient, just as they do during a poorly- is about to take place clear and easy to run business meeting or presentation. It is follow. No matter how complex learning the trainer’s responsibility to make every content might be, the agenda should be learner feel the workshop time is well spent. simple and make sense to learners.

Benefits: Focus on both the business goal and the process goal when you describe what At the beginning of a training session, learners will gain by the time they leave it’s important to frame the conversation the class. from the learner’s perspective. The frame It doesn’t matter in what order these should give learners a sense of purpose, elements are delivered. It doesn’t matter a sense of direction and a reason to how many slides, if any, are used to deliver participate in the training. A strong frame them. What matters is that the frame has four elements: should be delivered clearly and concisely at the beginning of the workshop. Then, Learning Goal: as training moves forward, each portion The learning goal focuses on what learners of the class is brought into the frame. will be able to do (or do better or more (See “Sample Frame.”) easily) because of what they’re learning. This goal should be relevant to their jobs. BE ENGAGED AND RESPONSIVE Learners’ Current Situation: The current situation acknowledges what An engaged trainer is in the moment learners are feeling and thinking when the and fully capable of responding to what’s workshop begins. Sometimes it has to do happening with learners. When trainers FRAME THE CONVERSATION

strive for perfection, practice to the point of memorization or follow the facilitator’s guide too strictly, they cannot engage in a dialogue. When trainers are genuinely engaged, they have, as Brookfield says in “The Skillful Teacher,” “a consistent awareness of how students are experiencing their learning and perceiving teachers’ actions.” With that awareness, trainers are able to guide the conversation – in the moment, as it plays out – to keep it relevant and efficient. Reaching this level of engagement isn’t easy: It takes effort to get out of your head and connect with individuals. Doing so is especially important during the first few minutes of the training session. Don’t skirt your responsibility to bring learners into the conversation. Your goal is not to be funny or merely enthusiastic. It is to establish a genuine connection with each person in the room. It takes awareness and trust. Trainers need to be aware of what’s happening in the room and trust in the conversation taking place. Do things seem to be heading off into the weeds? Maybe that’s where the conversation needs to go to address learner concerns. So it’s important to know when to loosen the reigns enough to let the conversation go where it needs to go and when it’s time to pull it back on track.

SAMPLE FRAME LEARNING GOAL: “This morning, we’ll be talking about the healthcare options available to you. At the end of this session, you will have the information you need to choose the option right for you and your family.”

AGENDA: “Here’s our agenda for today: First, we’ll spend an hour going over all of the benefits available to you. Second, we’ll focus on the most important item on the list: the insurance options you have for you and your family.”

LEARNERS’ CURRENT SITUATION: “As new employees, I know you all have a lot on your minds and a lot of other things to worry about, so I’m going to do my best to keep things focused and answer all your questions.”

LEARNER BENEFITS: “When we’re through here today, I want you to feel that you’ve made the best decision about your coverage, that our time together was well spent and that you know you can always come to me with questions about anything we cover today.”

BUSY PEOPLE AT WORK Always remember the people participating in training are more than “adult learners.” They are Busy People at Work – preoccupied with their other work responsibilities and afraid training might be a waste of time. Too often, well-intentioned instructional design and delivery techniques exacerbate these concerns. For live, instructor-led training to be worth the investment, learners must feel that what is learned is highly relevant to their jobs and that the learning process itself is efficient. When learners feel this way, trainers earn their trust and good will.

DON’T LET ACTIVITIES DESTROY GOOD WILL

Too often, trainers confuse an activity or an ice breaker with engagement. You will not engage Busy People at Work simply because you’ve asked them to participate in an activity. And you will never engage them by claiming the activity will be “fun.” Activities need to live within the frame of the workshop and pass the “Busy People at Work test.” Once you’ve decided a particular exercise or activity has value, see if it passes this test by looking at the activity from the learners’ perspective. How much effort, risk and time are they willing to expend for the perceived payoff? Effort is about more than the difficulty of what you’re asking learners to do. It has to do with whether the learner sees value in participating. Simply because you think

it’s a good idea to break into triads doesn’t mean learners will feel the need to do it. The question you must ask is: Will learners view this exercise as necessary? If not, eliminate or rethink it. And if the exercise is used, make sure learners understand why it will be worthwhile. Risk is about the fear of failure or embarrassment. Activities destroy trust when they set participants up for failure or cause them to feel uncomfortable in front of the group. If the risk for the activity is high, but its results are beneficial, acknowledge the risk and ease learners into the activity. Time is the big one. Will learners view an activity as a good use of their time? Will it seem necessary to them? If the answer to these questions is yes, the activity is probably a good idea. If the answer is no, eliminate the activity and find another way to reach your goal.

Remember, learners need to be engaged in the process before the exercise takes place, and the activities themselves should feel appropriate and fit within the frame you established at the beginning of the workshop. Face-to-face training serves an important business function, one that cannot be achieved through other delivery options. For this type of training to succeed, trainers must accept the fact that their learners are Busy People at Work who weigh relevance, usefulness and efficiency at every turn. It is our responsibility to step up our game to meet their needs and the needs of the business. Dale Ludwig is president and founder of Turpin Communication, a presentation and facilitation skills training company. He is co-author of “The Orderly Conversation: Business Presentations Redefined.” Email Dale.

FOR LIVE TRAINING TO SUCCEED, TRAINERS MUST UNDERSTAND THAT THEIR LEARNERS ARE BUSY PEOPLE AT WORK. T R A I N I N G I N DUSTR Y MA GAZ INE - FALL201 5 I WWW.TRAININ GI NDU S T RY . C OM/ MAGAZ I NE

MYTH

Yes, we have skills gaps, but so does everyone else. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll just have to deal with it.

Smart leaders are solving the skills gap, filling positions and growing their business.

This skills gap is an enormous risk to growing your business and filling your positions. 63% of CEOs are concerned about the availability of key skills. 50% of CEOs plan to increase headcount the next 12 months. 12 over MONTHS

Skillsoft has a solution.

SKILLS GAP

Learn more about bridging the skills gap at www.skillsoft.com/expansion or call 1-855-462-1420

TRUTH

Just What Employees Ordered:

Personalized Adaptive Learning By Steve Swink

Photo Credit: Frank Leon

s mobile devices and social media make inroads within the training industry, can learning and development (L&D) professionals leverage and manage these resources to develop truly personalized and adaptive learning? Can big data be granulated to allow instant branching and create truly prescriptive modules? As millennials become the largest cohort in the workplace and technologies accelerate expectations and shrink attention spans, will traditional delivery methods give way to more collaborative, synergistic experiences? The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that this year, millennials will become the workforce majority, and by 2030, this technology-savvy and connected group will comprise three-quarters of the U.S. workforce. In fewer than five years, many predict there will be three times more Internet-connected devices than humans on earth. Add it all up, and we can conclude that the shelf life of most training content is decaying faster than ever before. While these statistics may seem foreboding, they also offer exciting new opportunities to deliver better, cheaper and faster learning.

LEVERAGING BIG DATA TO GRANULATE LEARNING EXPERIENCES If you’ve ever shopped online with a retailer like Amazon, you’ve seen big data used to personalize your shopping experience. Retailers’ computer engines chew through

B IG DATA, BETTER O U TCO ME S During its pilot program with IBM Research, Skillsoft evaluated user interaction from direct email response behavior, learning patterns and user surveys. They found patterns indicating improved engagement with learning content, including the following data:

29%

USER ENGAGEMENT WITH CONTENT IMPROVED

OF USERS CLICKED ON AT LEAST ONE RECOMMENDATION IN THEIR FIRST EMAIL OPENED.

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128% COMPARED TO THE BASELINE.

84% OF USERS STATED THAT ONE OR MORE RECOMMENDATIONS WERE RELEVANT TO THEM.

SCHOOL THEIN

CLOUD massive amounts of data to offer you suggestions and guidance, with messages like “people who bought this also bought” or “you may also like.” Learning organizations are taking a cue from retailers’ playbooks by churning through the mounds of data that learning management systems and other databases offer and creating algorithms to personalize learning experiences. In November 2014, Skillsoft partnered with IBM Research to complete a pilot program with approximately 60,000 learning assets used by over 19 million learners. The program involved around 32,000 users and provided recommendations based on factors such as user-content interactions, content relationships and timing of consumption patterns. (See sidebar on page 25.) “We now have documented proof that harnessing analytics and big data leads to improved learner engagement,” said John Ambrose, senior vice president of strategy and corporate development at Skillsoft. “This level of adaptive, personalized learning will be paramount in the Learning Age. As the skilled worker shortage impacts organizations around the world, it’s crucial that learners are engaged and given the right tools and content so they can quickly build their skills and fill the gap.”

LEARNER’S CHOICE: SOCIAL OR SOLO? In a world where personalization is becoming the norm, should learning experiences also allow participants to choose whether they want to learn as part of a community or on their own? “The New Social Learning” defines social learning as “participating with other people to make sense of new ideas, learning with them and from them online or side by side.” Augmented by a new slew of social tools, professionals can organically gather information and gain new context from people across the globe as easily as they can from those with whom they work. In a 2010 blog article, Gretchen Wagner, an academic life coach, theorized that perhaps there is no such thing as “solo 26

In 1999, programmer-turnededucator Sugata Mitra wanted to see what would happen if children living in an Indian slum were given access to an Internet-connected computer. He placed a computer in a hole in the wall and mounted it three feet off the ground so children could easily access it. Without any formal instruction, in a matter of months, the children were browsing the Internet and teaching others to do the same. The School in the Cloud adds two key elements beyond the hole in the wall: an open, sheltered room and remote mentors whom Mitra refers to as “grannies in the cloud.” The grannies (who can be males or females) look “over the shoulders” of the children via webcams and act as surrogate grandparents, asking the students what they are doing and offering accolades and encouragement. However, students remain in control – thus the Self-Organized Learning Environment, or SOLE. learning,” because we are intricately connected to others, as demonstrated by social networks. She elaborates, explaining that “mirror neurons” cause us to instinctively mimic and, by association, learn from others. There has been compelling research demonstrating that “emotional contagion,” the notion that humans smile, gasp or yawn when they see others do the same, extends beyond the sense of sight. Subjects whose eyes and optical nerves were functional but whose brains had damage to the area involved in visual processing were still able to respond in kind because other parts of their brains took over. When the much can of crowds. hardwired

goal of training is innovation, be learned from the wisdom And perhaps because we are to interact with others, the

question should not be whether to give learners a choice between social and solo, but how to allow learners to organize and devise their own learning experiences. TED award winner Sugata Mitra has refined this concept using his “School in the Cloud” experiments. Mitra gained notoriety for his hole in the wall experiments, which led to the TED prize that in turn helped to fund his School in the Cloud projects. During the projects’ evolution, Mitra coined the term SelfOrganized Learning Environment (SOLE) to describe a place where children can work in groups, access the Internet and other software, follow up on a class project, or go where their interests lead them. While Mitra’s projects focus on school children and transforming the traditional educational model, corporate learning leaders are starting to explore similar strategies. In the U.S., Henry County, Georgia schools personalize learning for the future workforce using five tenets:

1. Learner profiles are developed by students, families and school staff to create individualized learning paths. 2. Competency-based learning.

Courses have clearly identified goals, and students move through the coursework as they demonstrate the mastery of each target. The learning is constant, but the time and place are flexible.

3. Project-based learning and authentic assessments. Students learn via real-world projects and problem solving, presenting evidence of their learning to authentic audiences such as businesses, community members or parents. 4. 21st century skills. Learning

experiences are designed around the four “C’s”: communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking.

5. Technology-enabled learning

blends online and face-to-face instruction, which ensures facility in both modes and enables

CAPTURE AND UTILIZE LEARNERS’ “SHOPPING HABITS” AND ASSOCIATED PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES.

students to better access learning and demonstrate understanding. But does having less structure open up creative channels or open the door for a chaotic hodgepodge of colliding and random information?

COLLABORATIVE CURATION Virtually every definition of social learning includes a collaborative component. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are one example of a platform where participants can learn from one another. Companies have discovered the power of MOOCs to design and deliver collaborative online learning.

must add value to the work or strategy and sharing includes the collaborative step of commenting on “other people’s stuff.”

“Scoop.it has all the functions we need to make the ‘Seek, Sense, Share’ model work,” Burrough said.

Burrough said curation helped Unum address three key areas: improving digital skills, helping people take control of their development, and building stronger internal and external networks. Unum used the curation tool Scoop.it to share content in an appealing and user-friendly way.

Steve Swink is a training specialist for GP Strategies, a global performance improvement company driven to solve your business challenges, perform at the highest level and make a greater impact on the world around you. Email Steve.

K E Y T A KE AWAYS

Another example of dynamic collaboration is taking place at Cigna. Karen Kocher, Cigna’s chief learning officer, has long been an advocate of pervasive learning. She believes “active listening, positive collaboration and continuous learning will improve employee engagement.” To that end, Cigna recently implemented a “Connect for Growth” performance initiative that leverages SAP’s SuccessFactors Jam module. The tagline for the Connect for Growth venture is “energizing people and helping them grow through new and deeper connections for better customer, company and employee outcomes.”

What are some strategies and tactics that organizations wishing to implement a personalized learning approach should take?

In the U.K., Sam Burrough, a learning consultant with insurer Unum, decided to take a creative approach to curation in 2012. After researching theories of leading experts like Harold Jarche, Beth Kanter, Robin Good and Harold Rheingold, Burrough settled on the “Seek-Sense-Share” model of personal knowledge management.

OFFER AND MANAGE A PLATFORM FOR COLLABORATION.

In her blog “Content Curation Primer,” Kanter summarizes Rheingold’s model: • Seek – Defining topics and organizing sources • Sense – Developing the “product” by writing with links and presentation • Share – Crediting sources and answering questions Kanter goes on to say that seeking should capture only high-quality content, sensing

LEVERAGE BIG DATA FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. Offer learners a choice. Then, capture and utilize their “shopping habits” and associated performance outcomes.

ESTABLISH A CULTURE THAT ALLOWS LEARNERS TO ORGANIZE THEIR OWN LEARNING. Mitra’s SOLEs and initiatives like those in Henry County Schools are examples of how the workers of tomorrow are learning and setting expectations as they enter the workforce.

Whether it is through a MOOC or another collaborative tool like HipChat, Jam, Tribe or Yammer, allow and encourage employees to reach out to one another to solve problems across silos.

ACTIVELY CURATE AND MANAGE KNOWLEDGE. Using the Seek-Sense-Share model as a foundation, proactively build a dynamic resource to spark synergistic and collaborative learning among employees.

Demographics, technology and consumer expectations are producing a seismic effect on both the higher education and corporate learning environments. The academic and business worlds can mutually learn from one another as the 21st-century workforce matures. Companies that personalize learning approaches for their workers will ride this wave of change and reap the rewards of a re-energized workforce.

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Custom-tailored learning services to drive business results. Xerox makes it simple. Your company objectives, your goals, your plans—these are all specific to your business. The tools and resources you use to keep your employees sharp and performing their best should be no different. From learning strategy and consulting to the measurement of learning outcomes, Xerox Learning Services tailors each solution to drive business results. 844.839.7988 xerox.com/learning ©2015 Xerox Corporation. All rights reserved. Xerox®, Xerox and Design® and Ready For Real Business® are trademarks of Xerox Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

TRAINING with

PICTURES not BULLET POINTS By Sara Ulmer

PICTURE IT: YOU ARE SITTING IN A TRAINING SESSION ABOUT A NEW PROCEDURAL CHANGE, WHICH IS TAKING EFFECT IN A COUPLE WEEKS. THE FACILITATOR SPEAKS DIRECTLY TO THE SLIDES, WHICH ARE FULL OF TEXT THAT SHE READS TO THE AUDIENCE. YOU WONDER WHY THE FACILITATOR IS READING THE SLIDES TO THE AUDIENCE – THEY CAN READ THEM ON THEIR OWN. THEN YOU REALIZE YOU’VE READ AHEAD AND COMPLETELY MISSED THE KEY POINTS BEING DISCUSSED. SOUND FAMILIAR? THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE. T R A I N I N G I N DUSTR Y MA GAZ INE - FALL201 5 I WWW.TRAININ GI NDU S T RY . C OM/ MAGAZ I NE

KEYS TO A SUCCESSFUL PECHAKUCHA PRESENTATION // PLAN

Develop an outline before looking for pictures and formulating your talking points. Think about how the story will work with the images to solidify your message and give the audience a rich experience.

// THEME

If the audience could remember just one thing from the presentation, what would you want it to be? Once you answer this question, develop your talking points and images around that theme.

// LESS

IS MORE

Don’t cram too much into your presentation; carefully remove anything that isn’t vital to the content. Be sure your talking points allow you to speak at an even pace while addressing everything in 6 minutes, 40 seconds.

// POWERFUL

RELEVANT IMAGES Your images should reinforce your points, not explain them for you. Limit the number of pictures to four per slide or fewer.

// PRACTICE

MAKES PERFECT

The best way to build confidence and give a successful presentation is to practice. Having many rehearsals under your belt will empower you to be comfortable and have fun during your presentation!

It’s called PechaKucha (“pah-CHAK-cha”), a Japanese word meaning “chatter.” Writer John Gendall calls PechaKucha “PowerPoint’s hip, younger cousin,” while communication consultant Eddie Selover calls it “the antidote to bad PowerPoint.” A PechaKucha presentation consists of exactly 20 slides, each lasting 20 seconds before automatically transitioning to the next. The total time of the presentation is six minutes, 40 seconds. The message is told through pictures; the slides have little or no words on them, so the audience isn’t reading bullet points instead of listening to the presentation. This format is engaging because our minds wander so easily. There are multiple situations when a PechaKucha presentation can be used in place of a traditional presentation, including training, roundtable discussions, pro/con discussions, and implementation or promotion of a new program. Using this technique in a pro/con or decision-making meeting, for instance, allows time for each side to present its perspective, thus allowing those in attendance to make an informed decision. The PechaKucha concept was formulated by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham Architects in 2003. Klein and Dytham believe that if you give a microphone to an architect, he or she will talk for a very long time. To mitigate this problem for an event they were hosting in 2003, Klein and Dytham chose to limit the number of slides and the time allotted to their presenters. The event was scheduled for the 20th of the month, so Dytham said, “Why not use 20?” PechaKucha is gaining popularity across the globe; you might even say it’s “gone viral.” PechaKucha nights, held in more than 700 major cities around the world, provide opportunities for audiences to share ideas and projects in the PechaKucha format. CREATING A PECHAKUCHA PRESENTATION When developing a PechaKucha presentation, follow these four steps: 1// Determine your topic. While some topics, such as a system training course, would not enable

a successful PechaKucha presentation, almost any other topic works in this format. 2// Create an outline. Brainstorm all the points that should be covered under your topic. Then focus on what the learner needs to know and remember. Be sure to limit the amount of content in order to stay within the constraints of the PechaKucha format. If you have a lot of content to present, consider layering multiple PechaKucha presentations, with 20 slides in each. 3// Create your speaking points. You can present your speaking points in two formats: live and recorded. Live presentations are successful if you can overcome the challenges of timing and automatic slide transitions. If you present live, it is important to be concise and focus on what the learners need to know. If you decide to pre-record your speaking points, there is a variety of software tools available to do so. 4// Select images. Most research recommends that there be fewer than four images per slide. Make sure your images are relevant to your topic but do not fully explain it; your speaking points will do the explaining. By choosing images strategically, you will keep your audience engaged by helping them connect the images to the speaking points. BENEFITS AND IMPACT According to communication consultant Mary Civiello, “pictures are six times more effective in making an impact than words alone.” If a PechaKucha audience remains engaged and focused on what the facilitator is saying, they will have a rich classroom experience that is different from a traditional approach. When facilitators recognize their attendance, gauge their understanding and deliver content in an engaging way, the audience’s overall experience is better. This style of presenting impacts the facilitator in four ways: 1// Preparation Facilitators’ preparation must be more indepth than for a traditional presentation due to the necessity of preparing concise

CHOOSING IMAGES STRATEGICALLY KEEPS YOUR AUDIENCE ENGAGED. speaking points and practicing timing; PechaKucha’s time restraints do not allow facilitators to “wing it.” 2// Speaking Points Facilitators must know their speaking points well when presenting, since the slides contain pictures instead of text. 3// Confidence Facilitators must be confident in their presentation skills to avoid simply reading their notes, as their audience will be completely focused on them. 4// Multiple Presentations Facilitators may need to create multiple presentations to cover a topic, since each PechaKucha presentation has a narrow focus. These multiple presentations can be done in the classroom with a layered effect or using a blended approach. Facilitators may assign pre-work, or the second presentation may be virtual or self-paced.

are created in the same way as for faceto-face presentations. If the audience will watch your presentation on their own, you can record your speaking points and insert them into your presentation to be played automatically. Consider what benefits a PechaKucha presentation could offer your organization and your audience, the topics you could cover, and the creativity the presentation allows. Challenge yourself to look for an area where you can integrate this approach into your training strategy. Follow these guidelines, and you can provide your audience with a richer classroom experience. Sara Ulmer is a workplace learning professional in a large financial services company. Email Sara.

Recognizing the trend toward more virtual training, it’s important to note that PechaKucha can be used in a virtual training environment with some adaptations. For live virtual presentations, speaking points

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TIPS FOR FINDING I M AG E S Always check the copyright or licenses associated with any image. Search for images that have a royalty-free license or no copyright restrictions. Your corporate collection may be a source of approved images. Often, companies create images internally or pay and receive permission to use images. PowerPoint contains images you can use as long as you’re not selling the media itself, endorsing or associating it with your product, or granting licenses to others.

ANTI-SOCIAL

LEARNING? Cammy Bean

When you’re motivated to learn something new in your life, what does that process look like for you? Do you go online and take a self-paced e-learning course and consider yourself a master? Do you attend a two-day classroom workshop and emerge feeling “done” with the learning process? Do you read a book or an article, and then clap your hands and say, “I got this?” Maybe. But not likely. Photo Credit: Emilien Etienne

WHEN WE HEAR FROM OUR PEERS, WE ARE LEARNING SOCIALLY.

Chances are, you reach out and ask a friend about their experience. You may view videos on YouTube, poke your head over the wall of your cubicle, or stop in with a colleague after lunch to talk through your ideas and ask a few questions. You might browse the comments on an online forum or even ask a question in a user group. And, of course, you try it out. You practice. You might fail a few times. Then you circle back around, do some more exploration, ask a few more questions, and keep cycling through. For example, my husband has become my in-resident car mechanic, pretty much willing to tackle any car problem. He’s not a trained mechanic, but he’s got access to a lot of resources that can help him solve the problems he’s trying to solve. A few weeks ago he decided to fix the air conditioner in our 17-year-old car. This involved recharging Freon and a lot of troubleshooting and switches and fancy car stuff. What did he do? He went to the Internet. He searched, he found videos, and he read forums. He had a few failures, too. When he finally got it working, he went back to the forums and shared his experience. And then we sat in the car for awhile and enjoyed the cool air. Ah, the sweet breeze of success. What did he not do? He did not take a class at a local vocational tech school. He did not get certified in air conditioning repair. He did not find a self-paced e-learning course. He went out and found T R A I N I N G I N DUSTR Y MA GAZ INE - FALL201 5 I WWW.TRAININ GI NDU S T RY . C OM/ MAGAZ I NE

what he needed in a way that worked for him. He learned from his peers and he shared his experience with others. He tried things out and he was willing to make mistakes. It took him a few days, but he solved the problem just in time for the hot days of summer to strike the dark interior of our car. He learned, naturally. As we consider what learning looks like in our own hands, let’s consider the types of learning experiences we design for the people in our organizations. Are we designing programs that are inherently anti-social, isolating people from others and assuming no deeper conversation needs to happen? Or are we finding ways to connect people throughout the learning process and encourage conversation and collaboration? Many organizations have jumped on the social learning bandwagon, putting social media tools in place like Jive or Yammer. You might have created a closed Facebook group that’s only for graduates of your program to share their experiences and ask questions after the course is over. Perhaps you’ve even tied forum pages to your online courses and are encouraging conversation. These are all great strategies to promote collaboration and build connections across your business. However, we’ve also seen some of the news about the ghost towns that have been created with internal social networking sites. In a recent Harvard 33

Business Review article, “Why No One Uses the Corporate Social Network,” the statistics don’t show great uptake on social sites. Why? Because leaders aren’t involved in leading the way. So if your sites are there, but not being used all that much, what else can we be doing to make learning experiences more social? Can we find better ways to get people engaged on these sites, or look to different means of building social connections?

TIPS FOR BEING LESS

ANT I-SOCI AL // CONSIDER how you learn things on your own in the real world. // ASK employees how they tackle a personal learning challenge.

// FIND out what resources and tools people use when left to their own devices.

// ASK where they could have used more support or structure throughout that informal learning process.

Let’s think about ways we can use the technologies we have to connect people in the real world and engage them socially with other human beings. MAKE IT PERSONAL When creating self-paced e-learning programs, consider ways to include the voice of more than just an all-knowing narrator. Find ways to interject the voice of your people into the program. When we hear from our peers, we are learning socially. You can do this simply through guerillastyle videos shot on smartphones. Let people hear from their peers about how they tackle certain challenges, learn directly from subject matter experts who share their insights and think through a problem out loud. This type of usergenerated content can be great on your company’s social network as stand-alone, easily discoverable bits, but consider including them in the design of more formal learning programs. Jane Bozarth, author of the book, “Show Your Work: The Payoffs and How-To’s of Working Out Loud,” reminds us that this tactic isn’t something new, invented in the digital age, but rather goes back thousands of years. “A wanderer who drew a map at journey’s end might be described as someone who ‘showed their work,’” she writes. Similarly, a hunter-gatherer sitting around the campfire sharing details of the hunt was also showing his or her work. This is workbased storytelling at its finest, really. Let’s hear directly from your employees, experts and senior leaders. Let them tell their stories to make the work come alive. BUILD IN ACTION PLANS TO CREATE ACCOUNTABILITY AND ENCOURAGE CONNECTION Learning programs shouldn’t end at the classroom door as people hand in their

evaluations or upon clicking the exit button in the top right corner of a screen. For the most part, we want people to take their new knowledge and skills out into the real world in order to do something. One way to build in some accountability and ensure action after the event is to have the participant create a work product within the program itself. This could be an action plan that they fill out as they go along, or a reflective journal. For example, in a communications course for a global bank, participants downloaded a Word document from an e-learning course and answered questions and completed activities in the workbook. A week after the program, they had a meeting with their manager to talk this through and identify specific action items and ways the manager could support the employee as he or she built her communication skills. INVOLVE MANAGERS Action plans and workbooks that are embedded into the learning program itself help build a really important social bridge – from the learner back to his or her manager. With the rise of online learning programs, managers have been able to take a backset in employee development. But it’s our managers who really have the shoulder-toshoulder experience with us and who help us build our skills on a daily basis. Again, this is not new stuff. I was watching an old episode of the sci-fi cult movie show Mystery Science Theater 3000 a few months ago. At the beginning of the episode, they aired a short Chevrolet sales training video from 1940 called “Hired.” In “Hired,” we meet Mr. Warren, a used car salesman who’s worried because his team is just not performing. So he sits on the porch and talks with his father, a retired salesman, who shares his wisdom and advice. First, the dad says, “Hire good men and then see they are well trained on their own product and on competitive products. Second, get them the equipment and help they need; third, help them plan their work; fourth, stay in close touch with each man; fifth, encourage every man every day.” Finally, he tells viewers that those they hired need the help of their managers. This was a 1940 training video. And yet, we’re still seeing sales training programs filled with the same materials. We’ve known that we need to get managers involved

KEEPING PEOPLE INVOLVED AND CONNECTED WITH EACH OTHER SUPPORTS ORGANIC LEARNING.

for decades, if not longer. This is what apprenticeship models are all about. The challenge has always been building in some structure to that process, holding managers accountable for having those conversations and giving managers the tools they need to provide that type of training and support. For example, a fast food company encountered a challenge: every year they train more than 1,000 people on mostly procedural content. Instead of creating 20 hours of e-learning, a training program was designed where technology doesn’t replace people, but enhances the process and supports them. Much of the training still happens on the store floor, where people are shoulder to shoulder with experienced mentors and managers. No one wants to replace that human part of the experience — it’s through these social interactions that people can ask questions, get immediate feedback and take their understanding to the next level. The trick is to find ways to use the technology to enhance the training they’re doing on the restaurant floor, give managers the structure they need and provide support for them through rubrics and observation checklists. Taking a flipped classroom model, short e-learning nuggets explain why something matters and provide upclose demonstrations. The managers and coaches on the store floor then get to keep their focus, not on lectures, but on mentored practice and coaching. Checklists and observation T R A I N I N G I N DUSTR Y MA GAZ INE - FALL201 5 I WWW.TRAININ GI NDU S T RY . C OM/ MAGAZ I NE

forms launched from the LMS provide rubrics and tracking for managers to identify where team members need more support. At its core, this is social learning. Keeping people involved and connected with each other supports organic learning, getting people to proficiency faster and more efficiently. SUMMARY How are you finding ways to build connections between peers in your programs? Are you putting the manager back into the process? How do you hold them accountable and provide the structure and support they might need? There are countless ways we can build social connection into our corporate learning programs. Think about where your teams struggle. Where are those connections getting missed? How can you ensure that the people’s voices are heard, that managers are embedded in the process and that people have actionable plans they can take back to the jobs. We’re at a place in 2015 where technology tools have evolved and the learning models have matured that we can support a more organic learning style that really fits into the way people learn. Cammy Bean is the vice president of learning design for Kineo. She is also the author of, “The Accidental Instructional Designer: Learning Design for the Digital Age.” Email Cammy. 35

USING + INFORMATION DESIGN TO

ELEVATE SOFTSKILLS TRAINING STEPHEN J. MEYER

2014, E-LEARNING BECAME THE MOST WIDELY USED METHOD FOR WORKPLACE TRAINING. FOR E-LEARNING PROPONENTS, THAT’S THE GOOD NEWS. THE BAD NEWS? WORKPLACE E-LEARNING HAS CONTINUALLY EXPERIENCED POOR ENGAGEMENT, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO SOFT SKILLS LIKE LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT.

So, with more and more organizations turning to e-learning to deliver training, how can we address this issue of learner engagement?

The answer is information design, a set of principles used by multimedia designers to create effective, engaging visuals.

Microlearning – quick, highly focused e-learning modules delivered in less than 10 minutes – is gaining momentum as the solution for many learning professionals. The thinking goes like this: Learners are much more likely to engage in a training experience if the time commitment is short, and the learning objective is clearly articulated.

WHAT IS INFORMATION DESIGN?

But “shorter” doesn’t automatically equal “better.” When we view content online, our attention span is miniscule, and our patience is absurdly low. For all its potential upsides, microlearning can still trigger learner abandonment if content isn’t presented in a compelling and engaging way. So how do e-learning designers grab and sustain their learners’ attention, and keep them coming back for more? 36

In its simplest form, information design is the practice of presenting information so people understand it. The term was first coined in the 1970s by graphic designers, but it has since become an interdisciplinary field concerned with representing information in a way that’s intuitive and digestible. And that should be the goal of any e-learning module – to provide content that learners can easily absorb. While some overlap exists, information design is distinct from the principles of instructional design that typically guide the creation of e-learning. Instructional design is primarily focused on content. For example, establishing

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clear learning objectives and using sound instructional techniques to achieve those objectives. Information design, on the other hand, is focused more on presentation, or how the information is delivered and how it’s experienced by the learner.

INFORMATION DESIGN PRINCIPLES Workplace e-learning has historically experienced poor user engagement. Information design can help boost engagement in soft skills e-learning. To be beneficial, it should follow three information design principles – function, flow and form.

FUNCTION Make understanding easy by designing modules that are short + digestible.

FLOW

Information design and instructional design are not competing philosophies but partners that can work in unison. Using the pedagogic principles of instructional design as a starting point, information design can guide the creation of e-learning modules that capture learners’ attention and get them invested in the training experience.

APPLYING INFORMATION DESIGN TO E-LEARNING Traditionally, information design principles are applied to visual representations of data, such as diagrams, charts, maps and infographics. Applied to e-learning, the practice includes the crafting of both graphics and the information they support. First and foremost, information design requires radical clarity; e-learning creators must be disciplined about identifying what’s essential. By stripping away the unnecessary and the ambiguous, designers can deliver insights in a way that is intuitive and crystal clear, thereby resonating with learners.

Eliminate any extraneous information that could muddle the core concept or interfere with learner understanding.

Information design is also about successfully delivering information by using the appropriate tools and techniques. A problem with many e-learning modules is that they don’t play by the rules of their chosen medium – namely, online video. And if you look at how online video is typically consumed, it’s very different than what most e-learning offers.

FORM

For example, the most popular videos on YouTube (receiving a billion views per month) have an average length of four minutes. They’re micro. Compare them to a typical 60-minute module on leadership skills, and you can perhaps see why soft-skills e-learning has a learner engagement problem.

Play by the rules of online video by creating fast-paced bursts of content that can be consumed on any device at any time.

To be successful, e-learning designers need to conform to the conventions of online video, which looks a lot like microlearning.

USING INFORMATION DESIGN TO ENGAGE LEARNERS So how can information design lead to more engaging micro content? Let’s take a deeper dive into its principles. According to information design pioneer Ladislav Sutnar, 38

the discipline is a combination of three elements: function, flow and form. Function is defined as making information easy to comprehend. Flow refers to the logical organization of content, without any extraneous or distracting information. And form is the use of dynamic visual tools that support comprehension. Let’s apply these three principles to soft skills e-learning.

FUNCTION Decades of research into cognitive load have demonstrated that our brains have a limited capacity for absorbing new information. Taken together with research into attention spans, which has shown that attention begins to fade after about 10 minutes, these studies clarify why 30- or 60-minute modules are ineffective. If the goal is to maximize understanding and decrease cognitive load, a solution is to shorten modules to 10 minutes or less. This can be done in several ways, from breaking down big topics into logical, digestible “chunks” to creating bite-size modules focused on a single, narrow concept. This approach can be seen in the “micro-lectures” of Khan Academy and the “chunked” learning of Lynda.com.

FLOW When designing an e-learning module, it’s tempting to include everything you know about a subject, including information that’s interesting but not exactly necessary. The same goes for visual content. With all the digital tools available, there’s an endless array of “eye candy” and special effects that we can use to jazz up our modules and wow our learners. But studies have shown that including this kind of extraneous information can be a distraction from the real goal: learning. Therefore, a module’s design should flow directly from the learning goals: What concept (or concepts) do you want your learners to understand? What’s the one thing they absolutely have to remember at the end of the module? Any content – whether visual or informational – that doesn’t support your learning goal is unnecessary and potentially harmful.

FORM E-learning should conform to the rules and conventions of online video. Too

SOFT SKILLS E-LEARNING NECESSITATES A MINIMALIST APPROACH THAT’S INTENTIONALLY INCOMPLETE. often, designers build e-learning based on instructional principles that work for textbooks or lectures: They are linear, logical, complete and presented over the course of hours. But this design doesn’t reflect how people consume online video, nor does it play to the form’s strengths. Instead, we should create learning experiences that reflect how people interact with online video – in short bursts of content that can be watched as comfortably on a smartphone as on a desktop. Because e-learning is video, and because modern learners are easily distracted when watching video online, soft skills e-learning should never be “complete.” In fact, it necessitates a minimalist approach that’s intentionally incomplete. For example, instead of creating a 60or 90-minute module on “leadership,” an information designer might create a number of five-minute modules on isolated

leadership topics, such as “how to have difficult conversations with employees” and “how to help teams hit their goals.” Each e-learning module develops a single learning concept in a way that will grab learners’ attention, sustain it and encourage them to come back for more.

THE FUTURE OF E-LEARNING Good information designers understand narrative pace, the idiosyncratic rules of online video and, perhaps most critically, how to separate the important from the unimportant. If we build modules based on the information design principles of function, flow, and form, learners will be much more likely to invest in the training process. Why? Because microlearning modules that utilize information design reflect how people learn and view online content. They acknowledge learners’ habits, busy schedules and attention spans. And they

deliver a powerful, clearly articulated insight in an engaging way. In the future, information design should be a desired proficiency for e-learning designers. It requires the multimedia skills of writers, designers, directors or some combination of all three. Information designers’ imperative isn’t to provide exhaustive learning programs. Their goal is to engage the learner with finely honed, compelling content because e-learning modules are useless if no one watches them. By deploying microlearning that incorporates the principles of information design, soft skills e-learning may be able to solve the issue of learner engagement that has long been its Achilles’ heel. Stephen J. Meyer is president and CEO of the Rapid Learning Institute, which provides e-learning content to companies, nonprofits, educational institutions and government agencies. Email Stephen.

CREATE MICROLEARNING EXPERIENCES. The goal should be to create a module that is easily understood and absorbed. To align with research on cognitive load and attention spans, keep modules under 10 minutes in length, and consider focusing each module on one narrow topic.

DESIGN WITH THE LEARNER IN MIND.

TIPS FOR APPLYING INFORMATION DESIGN TO E-LEARNING

A disengaged learner is an unsuccessful one. When designing a module, take into account learners’ prior knowledge and interests as well as their cognitive limits. How can you shape the content so that it grabs and holds their attention?

PROVIDE JUST-IN-TIME ACCESS. Just like other online content, modules should be accessible and easily viewed on any electronic device at any time of day. To be consumable on a mobile phone, the videos should be short and fast paced. And because they’re accessible, learners can watch them in the office, during their commute or in the moment they need them.

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HOW IMPROVISATION CAN DRIVE EMPLOYEE

ENGAGEMENT by Doug Hutton

Amid all the buzzwords, rallying cries and trends that we encounter daily in the learning and training space – including the war for talent, the challenge of millennials, and gamification galore – one stands alone as the center of gravity: employee engagement. And if you haven’t heard, the alarm bells have a consistent ring: Engagement scores are flat or down in most surveys and tracking. Aon’s 2015 Trends in Employee Engagement shows a 28 percent reduction in the employee work experience, led by a 6 percent decline in employers’ perceived people focus. Additionally, the Employee Engagement Trends Report from Quantum Workplace indicates that global employee engagement is just as low today as it was during the 2008 recession, and not predicted to hit pre-recession highs for another 6 years. What’s more, 87 percent of business executives in Deloitte’s 2015 Global Human Capital Trends survey cite employee engagement as a top challenge, yet 34 percent of companies have an outdated

or no engagement strategy at all. For a concept theoretically at the center of the HR strategy at many organizations, the data suggests more lip service than we care to admit. Employees are wondering what’s really in it for them. True engagement results from personal development that opens career paths and explicitly ties employees’ day-to-day work to those development objectives. Unfortunately, an out-of-thebox learning and training program does not meaningfully engage employees with differentiated experiences that teach essential skills.

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IMPROV SKILLS PROVIDE THE FRAMEWORK TODAY’S LEADERS NEED TO ADAPT TO ANY SITUATION.

For instance, consider the Aon study again. Employees rate “growth opportunities” as the top engagement driver. For HR leaders – particularly those in learning and development, and training roles – that’s a clarion call to provide employees with growth opportunities. And yet, the study’s other metrics plainly show that isn’t happening. We need a different mindset on how to disrupt the status quo, one with a dual focus on how we develop our people, as well as on what we train them. We need to create meaningful learning experiences with methods that drive learner engagement, that keep each employee present and active, and drive reinforcement in the very situations where we want our curricula applied. We must also focus on the specific skills that will enable employee growth, that build the next generation of leaders, and that respond to a constantly more complex business environment. Think for a minute about your employees. How often is your training designed with them as audience members? Do you actively tailor each learning program or training course to resonate best with the audience? How often do you teach in the manner that your employees receive and learn, with methods and content grounded in their daily realities?

TRANSFORMING LEARNING DELIVERY Few, if any, dispute the assertion that employees learn differently today than even 10 years ago. But most organizations have not significantly changed how they structure and deliver learning programs to re-engage the learner and drive retention. Here are three major changes to make learning stick: 1// FOCUS ON THE EXPERIENCE Many organizations talk about shifting from the classroom to virtual, but it’s important to focus on experiential learning opportunities. Ditch PowerPoint and binders too. If you want to drive employee engagement, aim for learning modules that actually engage people. Focus on exercises that build skills in the moment. Move people outside their comfort zones and get them interacting with others with whom they might not ordinarily interact. Embed improv games that create constant energy and motion in the room. You’ll amaze your teams with how fast each session flies by.

2// CREATE A STORY Think less about lectures and presenting and do something that gets everyone in on the act. Build the programmatic elements of your learning into a story that engages the audience (learners) and moves the learning along a narrative arc. In improv, the best sketches create a central character – the hero – that follows that narrative arc, often leading a great transformation. The audience becomes invested in the hero, rooting for a positive resolution. Give your learners that same desire to transform by structuring your learning as a story. 3// MAKE CONTENT ENGAGING What you say is important, but how you say it is too, especially in the age of YouTube and the proliferation of video. A short-form funny video is a great tool to reinforce learning and make it come to life. Plus, it lives on after any specific training event via mobile platforms, intranets, social media and more. Great videos have shareable qualities and the best ones break through the clutter with humor. But why is that? Humor engages people when it speaks and spoofs the truth of everyone’s experiences. We laugh and nod our heads when we know it’s true.

TEACHING LEADERS WHAT WORKS FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW We can change the “how” all we want, but if our employees still feel that the skills they learn aren’t relevant to their day-to-day jobs (or better yet, the jobs they want), engagement will continue to trend downward. Most organizations recognize the need for new skills in a complex, informationoverloaded, global economy, but haven’t given employees the tools to thrive in that environment. Improv skills provide the framework today’s leaders need to adapt to any situation, and do so while fostering the collaboration and teamwork imperative for success. Here are a few samples: 1// YES, AND... This core improv principle – acknowledging every idea (if only for a moment) and building on it – is what improvisers must do to make any scene successful. It’s the only way actors working without a script can move things forward and advance a scene. Leaders too often shut down debate or dialog in a hierarchical, command and control manner. More and more businesses today are matrix organizations that thrive when they embrace collaboration and function in ensembles (a fancy word for teams). “Yes, And” is

a central ingredient for creativity and innovation, brainstorming, and teamwork. Leaders using “Yes, And” know that the best idea might not come from them – and likely won’t. By embracing “Yes, And,” leaders and teams unlock the full potential of a team and surface more great ideas. 2// AGILITY AND RESILIENCY An improviser’s scene partner says a line you weren’t anticipating – now what? Using great agility and listening, the scene continues, with the audience none the wiser. Everyday leader scenarios aren’t any different. It’s the customer that introduces a new stakeholder late in the process. It’s the new acquisition that requires an immediate shift in corporate strategy. Leaders without agility won’t be leaders for long. 3// COMMUNICATION AND STORYTELLING How audiences consume information has changed dramatically, but command-and-control leadership styles haven’t caught up. We need to teach leaders how to communicate, create emotional connections and build empathy with employees. Humans are wired to tell stories, yet we ditch them in boardrooms and meetings in fear of seeming too human. But that’s what today’s employees crave and what the best leaders will bring.

SUMMARY Human resources, learning and development, and training professionals must empower their audiences to learn, grow into future roles, and to be engaged with their work and teams. The widespread failure to boost employee engagement certainly isn’t for lack of effort. But we must question long-held assumptions about what works in the classroom, and how learning gets reinforced when our colleagues get back to their desk. Every data point leans toward more experiential learning that builds the skills of flexibility, adaptability, resiliency and collaboration that are vital for winning today. Let’s hope it’s a path well-traveled by more organizations going forward.

Doug Hutton is director of solutions development at Second City Works, the creative business solutions arm of the world-renowned comedy theatre, The Second City, and creator of innovative business training video service, RealBiz Shorts. Email Doug.

CASE STUDY: USING IMPROV TO REINFORCE COMPANY VALUES Coyote, a leading transportation and logistics company, sought an innovative approach to reinforcing their company values while building the skills leaders would need in a high-growth, fast-paced environment. In collaboration with Second City Works, Coyote mapped their values – Tribal, True, Tenacious, and Smart – to similar improv principles: building ensemble through “Yes, And,” becoming “others-focused,” mastering storytelling, and building agility to handle difficult conversations. “Our brand and values are so important to who we are at Coyote, and witnessing them in action during each workshop was incredibly gratifying,” said Jodi Navta, vice president of marketing and communications. “Our leaders’ ability to take the improv skills and behaviors and immediately apply them to day-to-day team engagement was a testament to both the content and methodology of each workshop,” Navta added. Much of the focus for Coyote managers and leaders was in exploring empathy in new ways, designing stories that made audiences into heroes, and inspiring their teams by personalizing the Coyote brand.

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In the Tribal workshop, Coyote leaders shed their expectations of a binderbased learning experience, and dove right into a series of improv games. Designed to reframe team and employee communication, facilitators drew on improv methods to develop skills in active listening, acknowledging others’ ideas, and being fully present in every conversation. The training was tied to onthe-job context for each leader. For example, one participant’s insight from the session shows the level of nuance that the training conveyed: “The way you sit and act at work and respond to questions is a huge reflection on how people perceive you. Your body language, choice of responses, and your tone are huge indicators on whether someone will approach you again in the future.” Great leaders keep the lines of communication open, using “Yes, And” to encourage creativity, and find the next great idea from any source. As one participant put it, “Be open to and honor every idea, no matter how crazy!" With that approach now embedded in Coyote's values, leaders have the tools to maximize each team's potential.

ACCELERATING EXPERTISE with

SIMULATIONS By Cindy McCabe and Ann Garvey

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM IS THAT IT TAKES ABOUT 10,000 HOURS TO BECOME AN EXPERT. IF YOU DO THE MATH, THAT’S FIVE YEARS, WORKING FULL TIME. Baby boomers, many of whom are experts in their domains, are turning 65 at a rate of 10,000 per day; millions will leave the workforce over the next five to 10 years. They will be replaced by Generation X and millennials – populations with tremendous potential, but lack the years of experience of those they’re succeeding. How do you quickly and effectively transition knowledge to these next 44

generations to realize their potential sooner? One answer is with simulations.

HOW DO SIMULATIONS CREATE EXPERTS? Regardless of type – complex, immersive, serious game – simulations can be used to improve consulting skills via role-play conversations, model best practices for making complex business

decisions, and enhance capabilities such as customer service for retail sales, hospitality, and call center agents. In brief, simulations: Provide an opportunity for learners to practice skill-building with relevant feedback and coaching. Allow learners to think critically and see the consequences of their decisions in an environment of “safe failure.”

Present opportunities to make connections and elicit “a-ha!” moments during simulation engagement and through debrief, often within a collaborative, peer-based learning environment.

Simulations, done well, accelerate the learning curve. They collapse timelines, so decisions and consequences happen quickly and can be rehearsed over and over. They can help learners make connections in a short period of time rather than the years it takes to gain experience in the real world. Creating a simulation can be labor intensive, requiring a talented development team and commitment from your subject matter experts (SMEs). However, when you need to enhance expertise, the return on investment often validates the effort. Fortunately, by using good design techniques and today’s development tools, and, if necessary, partnering with simulation experts, most companies can readily take advantage of simulations to build expertise in their learners.

HOW TO DESIGN SIMULATIONS THAT BUILD EXPERTISE FORM YOUR TEAM Simulations are a particular flavor of learning initiative requiring resources with specific expertise. Learning professionals (often instructional designers) work closely with SMEs to frame the challenges, objectives and desired outcomes; elicit stories and scenarios that reflect real-world performance (good and bad); and, ultimately, create a working design for the simulation. There’s a learning curve for designing simulations that is not

insurmountable for a skilled instructional designer. However, a designer who has at least one simulation similar to your desired format (online, live or a blend) in her portfolio is preferable. To enhance the storyline within the simulation, a writer is often a worthy addition to the team. Writers understand narrative — story arcs, plot and character development. Some instructional designers may have these skills, but not necessarily. Simulations with a live component need a facilitator to answer questions and lead debriefs. SMEs are natural choices because they can speak to the topic, but they may not have facilitation skills. If not, develop a robust facilitator’s guide and offer facilitation skill-building to ensure SMEs use listening and probing techniques to help learners make connections.

WORK EFFECTIVELY WITH SMEs Creating simulations that build expertise requires synthesizing an expert’s years of experience and repackaging it in a way that allows non-experts to acquire those skills and knowledge. To work effectively with SMEs, be intentional about the information you need and the datagathering process. Often, expert knowledge is tacit: what SMEs know in their heads may not be written down. Ask SMEs for stories to address your questions. Let SMEs explain what they did in a given situation and probe for the why. Look for the common threads in those stories, which you can use to create the plot, characters, conflict and consequences in your simulation. Identify specific challenges and pain points. Do not look for the black-and-white situations; look for the ones that are shades of gray that required the expert to rely on years of experience. These typically come wrapped in a story or example, which helps to provide valuable context and insights. Compare and contrast how the SME would handle the situation with that of a less experienced person.

SIMULATIONS CAN HELP LEARNERS MAKE CONNECTIONS IN A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME.

Managing SME expectations and keeping the process simple is essential to your success. Ensure SMEs understand the time commitment. They may be surprised by the work effort, which includes brainstorming and reviewing the plot, characters, and

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SIMULATION CASE STUDY SIMULATION AUDIENCE

Tax managers at a large professional services organization who manage large, complex engagements. KEY BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Managers’ adoption of project management best practices was mixed. Their behavior did not indicate a change in practice. SIMULATION FOCUS

Fictional engagement, where managers had to make complex decisions affecting budget, schedule, quality, and both team and client satisfaction. SIMULATION DEPLOYMENT

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Blended solution: Teams play on the computer, but in a classroom environment. Branched programming can generate 24 different outcomes based on a team’s decisions. Multiple decisions accumulate and drive decision paths and carry throughout the simulation. Simulation played in three rounds, with facilitator-led debriefs between rounds to discuss decision making and takeaways.

SIMULATION IMPACT

Originally deployed only at local offices on a selected basis, the simulation has been so well received that it was made part of the national curriculum for all new tax managers.

multiple decision paths and outcomes (often 10, 20 or more). Gain their support by explaining that their years of experience did not happen overnight, so extracting that knowledge will take time. Explain the iterative nature of the process and encourage a collaborative attitude. For example, a straw man design gives SMEs a starting point to react to prior to a formal design. To avoid dismissal of a design that doesn’t hit the mark outright, ask SMEs to look for elements that can be a foundation.

INCORPORATE STORYTELLING AND REALISTIC DECISION MAKING Telling a good story and creating a believable experience are essential to keep learners’ attention and transfer knowledge and skills. A simulation isn’t reality; how far it strays from reality depends on the situation. If accuracy is core to the skills you’re teaching and the consequences of failure are extreme (e.g., an airplane pilot’s simulation), you need a high-fidelity simulation. For business decision making, a simulation that has a story with plausible choices is usually sufficient. Here are five tips: 1. Make learners play the central character in the simulation to increase their buy-in. Use other characters to provide different perspectives learners need to consider. Introduce characters appropriately during the story, and develop backstories for characters that drive their behaviors. 2. Use good, better and best options, and ensure they’re all plausible options, so the learner really has to think. We all naturally want to win, so if the best answer is obvious or somewhat obvious, players will sacrifice their learning in order to choose the winning response. 3. Set up decision options with foreseeable consequences. Consider the final outcomes, and “think backward” to write

the narrative that drives those results. Consider, “What would I know when I make this decision, and what would I not know?” 4. Make it clear to learners that the simulation provides a space where it’s safe to practice new ideas or techniques and learn from their mistakes. 5. Consider the tension between short-term and long-term thinking and how that mimics the real world. Offer options that might look good and increase scores early on, but limit options to be successful in the long run. A cautionary note: Simulations can be quite sophisticated with high production values, including videos, music, even paid actors. Always remember, the goal is to create a powerful learning tool. You may have to manage expectations if the desire for high entertainment value starts to overshadow the learning.

QUANTIFY THE OUTCOMES Simulations need to produce fair and predictable results. Determine a scoring mechanism that maps how learners are measured in the real world. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are a natural starting point, but explore how learners are evaluated on these KPIs and how management supports achieving them. A simulation alone is not the single magic bullet to impact KPIs; a holistic approach is needed. Develop a point system in a spreadsheet to guide the simulation programming. Give each decision a point value, based on its impact on specific KPIs. For good, better and best options, quantify the difference in score for “best” versus “good.” Run scenarios to ensure the right scores emerge for each decision path. Visually depict scores, using stoplight indicators (green, yellow, red) for

ENGAGEMENT AND LEARNING SHOULD EXTEND BEYOND THE SIMULATION ITSELF. 46

example, so learners can quickly assess how they’re doing.

HARNESS THE POWER OF REFLECTION Simulation activities typically lead to a deliverable, presentation or score, yet engagement and learning should extend beyond the simulation itself. When the simulation includes a live component, incorporate time for peer discussion and debriefs. If the simulation is online, be sure to provide mechanisms for reflective learning and reinforcement of key concepts, such as posing openended questions and comparing learners’ answers to experts’. In the blended tax simulation (see sidebar), a few teams were surprised by their interim scores because they thought they had made the right choices. However, the post-round debriefs gave them a chance to reflect on their decisions, correct their course, and apply new thinking as they progressed. To help reinforce key concepts:

Identify good opportunities for debriefs during the simulation, not just at the conclusion. Consider the callto-action or completed task at the end of each round as a natural point to help learners make key connections.

Debriefs (and the corresponding facilitator guide) should be as well thought-out, efficient, insightful and structured as the simulation itself. Include a synopsis of what happened, a summary of expected results, questions facilitators should ask and the concepts they should reinforce through discussion.

your seat time to allow for conversation. This can be where the real learning happens.

CONCLUSION With the changing demographics of the workforce, organizations are under tremendous pressure to ensure the expertise cultivated by baby boomers stays within the organization and passes to their successors. Well-crafted simulations hit a sweet spot: They build expertise, and they fulfill what Generation X and millennials want in training, which is relevance, coaching and feedback. Simply put, they engage. You will know your simulation is a success when you see that engagement firsthand. You will see spirited debates during debriefs, or have learners stay after the event to discuss the merits of different approaches. Those firing synapses mean connections are being made, and experts are being created in a fraction of 10,000 hours. Cindy McCabe is a senior account and program manager and instructional designer at SweetRush, with strong expertise in gamesbased learning solutions. Ann Garvey is a results-oriented, strategic learning consultant specializing in curriculum development and instructional design. Email Cindy and Ann.

A common mistake is cutting debriefs for lack of time. Plan

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WORKING WITH SMEs: BEST PRACTICES Plan and pace out meetings with SMEs. Full-day sessions are exhausting; plan for two- to three-hour sessions over several days to allow SMEs to process. Use repetition and recaps. As you begin each session, show SMEs where they are in the process and what’s been decided on the story so far. Help SMEs visualize the effort and understand how the story elements are interconnected. The following tools can save time and effort: Low-fidelity prototyping in familiar tools, such as PowerPoint. Wall-sized flowcharts for decision mapping, sticky notes, or, for the tech savvy, online collaborative flowcharting tools. Hyperlinks in the storyboard to make decision paths easy to follow. Show SMEs the fruits of their labor. Come up with a narrative that shows data, story and KPIs, even if it’s rough.

G LO B A L

OUTLOOK

BY JEREL BONNER

TECHNOLOGY AND TRENDS

CHINA

DRIVING THE CHINA TRAINING MARKET

CHINA

As the global markets tremble from the unraveling of the China stock market, one must ponder how this will impact China’s efforts to continue to develop its workforce. The landscape of the China professional training market is a solid “Red Ocean” and is as difficult to understand as the Chinese language itself. The training market is big, complex and as dynamic as the local cuisine. It has everything a developed economy has, with of course a good dose of Chinese characteristics.

MARKET SIZE The size of the training market in China is big, and muddy, depending on if it includes the English language training market. There are few Chinese suppliers that are able to scale to over a billion USD, but there are certainly a number of suppliers large enough to handle a Chinese-based deal. These are also national institutions that have learning centers across the entire nation. But the further west one goes, the harder it is to find the quality and breadth needed to execute on major projects. Most of the talent is concentrated in the Tier 1 markets of Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, all of which have substantial variety and choice available to a learning leader. Some training vendors are seeing a slow down in their business, while others are experiencing growth. This depends on the size of the operation, and the vertical market they are

servicing. If the Chinese economy continues to be bumpy, cuts in spending budgets will definitely happen sooner than later, as experienced in the fourth quarter of 2008.

TRAINING OFFERINGS There are a plethora of training options available to the corporate workforce. All the top international MBA programs have established learning centers in one of the three top Tier 1 cities. Smaller institutions have already begun the migration to the Tier 2 cities in the nearby providences. These programs compete with some of China’s best MBA schools such as Fudan, Qinghua, and Jiaotong University. Many of the Chinese institutions have joint venture partnerships to cross-pollinate their course programs for the highly eager to learn postgraduate in the workforce. Vocational schools are also abound, and gaining more support from the central government to graduate more students. These students may not make it to college, but they are the backbone of office operations and manufacturing facilities. All this training is administered in Chinese. There are many privately owned operations available in the market when considering training on the following topics: computer training, project management, international financial certification, software development,

coaching certification, logistics, Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing, agile methodologies, and leadership development. In another example of the market’s diversity, Toastmasters is extremely popular, and has single handedly made a big cut into the “presentation skill and informal leadership” training game. Shanghai is approaching 90 clubs alone. Toastmaster is strong in all the big cities and is expected to have three districts within the next two years. As found in many regions of the world, the head of learning has many viable options to consider when putting together a learning and development plan. The market is extremely competitive and well serviced, so performing diligent research on potential vendors is essential.

TECHNOLOGY Technology is a big driver in China, and e-learning is gaining traction. One key factor that must be considered is the ability to adapt and deliver training programs to a mobile device. The Chinese use their mobile phones for a variety of purposes, so incorporating mobile learning into an e-learning solution is the key to succeed in the Chinese markets. One firm that is doing well in this market is MicroBenefits, a U.S. firm that delivers all types of training content to the phones of blue collared workers anywhere in China.

COACHING Coaching certification is one area that is growing in the Chinese training market. Many international coaching certification programs already have a presence in Shanghai, and training managers are signing up for these programs to coach their management teams. The Shanghai market is clearly fragmented with hundreds of boutique consulting firms that deliver coaching, training or change management programs, and everything in between. Expatriates and Chinese nationals own these firms. Some have purchased the rights to train such programs as Leadership Management International’s leadership training, de Bono “Six Hats,” Covey’s Seven Habits, and many other corporate favorites. Consulting firms may also partner with assessment firms to provide a fuller service level. This is good news if you are in the market for this type of training, with so many viable options available.

INCORPORATING MOBILE LEARNING INTO AN E-LEARNING SOLUTION IS THE KEY TO SUCCEED IN THE CHINESE MARKETS. TRAINING AGENTS AND FREELANCE TRAINERS Training agents are individuals who have great relationships with HR managers and HR training managers. These individuals are registered consulting firms, and mainly serve the purpose to take orders and search for freelance trainers that are on the market to deliver the content. In China, these trainers are referred to as briefcase trainers. They walk into the client’s office, set up their laptop, hand out the materials, deliver the course and leave. While they may provide solid training on the topic, they do not focus on following up after the event or ensuring the learners have actually learned or applied the content.

LANGUAGE CONSIDERATIONS Most of the training programs in China will be delivered in Chinese. The best suppliers come to market with their content already translated. Even the foreign Chambers of Commerce such as AmCham of Shanghai, European Union Chamber of Commerce and AusCham, bring in Chinese language training providers for the membership attendees.

SUMMARY The training market in China is just as complicated today as it was 25 years ago, just in a different way. Regulations change as frequently as employees hop jobs for higher incomes. Organizations are stuck with a double-edge sword, fork out training fees in hopes of developing their staff and praying that the managers treat them well enough so they don’t leave too soon. Performing solid research and having a partner with experience in the Chinese training market can ensure a smooth market entry.

Jerel Bonner is the founder and principal consultant at Sharpening Axes, where he provides organizational development solutions that align business strategies to employee engagement for international and local Chinese companies. Email Jerel.

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FROM WHERE I SIT

- DOUG HA RWA R D

HELPING BUYERS OF TRAINING SERVICES BECOME MORE SAVVY One of the more critical roles of training managers is selecting a training supplier – one that is significant to their professional success, as well as the success of the training organization and ultimately the success of the business. Unfortunately, selecting the right supplier is not easy. Training suppliers are not all created equal, nor do they all have the capabilities they claim to have. I wish I had a nickel for every time I spoke with a leader of a training organization

who was unhappy with the supplier they selected and was in the process of making a change. The challenge in selecting a good supplier is in getting the right information about a supplier’s capabilities. We estimate there are more than 15,000 training suppliers in the world and each one wants to be unique. So how do we choose? And, how do we get the information we need to determine who we even want to get information from? We obviously cannot talk to all 15,000.

IDENTIFYING THE RIGHT SUPPLIER

TRAINING SUPPLIERS ARE NOT ALL CREATED EQUAL, NOR DO THEY ALL HAVE THE CAPABILITIES THEY CLAIM TO HAVE.

In the old days (pre Internet), we got our information by looking at magazines, attending conferences, word of mouth from friends and colleagues, and information derived from meeting with a sales agent who called on us every couple of months. Nowadays, with the Internet and all of the communication channels available

to us, we have a plethora of information. Our challenge is how to make sense of it all. Training Industry, Inc. recently conducted two research studies to understand how buyers of training services determine who they should engage for services or who they should solicit for a proposal. One study looked at the information buyers use when sourcing any type of services. The second study took a deeper dive and looked at the information used when sourcing hybrid, or virtual training solutions. (See Figure 1 and 2.) Here are the three most important sources of information used by buyers when sourcing a training supplier, according to our research:

Recommendations and referrals from peers. The study defined “peers” as other professionals in the industry, whether in similar roles or respected analysts who study and evaluate the market. Getting advice from those you trust is a sound

approach to making an important business decision, but with so much information available to buyers, it’s interesting that they consider recommendations and referrals as the most important and credible source.

Looking at it from the perspective of a training supplier tells us a lot about how to market. Many training suppliers market (or sell) themselves through direct sales channels. This approach involves their sales or business development employees making sales calls to leaders of training organizations to build closer relationships with buyers. Based on what the buyers have shared with us, this does not have much impact on their decision making when sourcing a supplier. In addition, logic tell us it is incredibly expensive and lacks scale, as sales professionals are limited to the number of buyers they can call in a given day.

Existing working relationship with a provider. This is not so surprising based on the premise that it is safe to use an existing supplier when you know what to expect.

Web search. In today’s content-rich world, we can search the Internet to find out which suppliers have the capabilities we need, how they are marketing themselves, and what industry recognition they have received.

SUMMARY From where I sit, the studies tell me that it’s more about demonstration of capability as opposed to verbal expression of

The data gained from the research is obviously from a buyer’s perspective.

FIGURE 1. INFORMATION SOURCES FOR

Doug Harward is CEO of Training Industry, Inc. and a former learning leader in the high-tech industry. Email Doug.

CONSIDERED WHEN SELECTING A VIRTUAL/ HYBRID TRAINING SOLUTION

53%

Recommendations/ Referrals by Peers

70% Recommendations/ Referrals by Peers

33% 31%

Accolades in Industry Media

31%

Industry Conferences

30%

24% 26%

Thought Leadership Research Pieces

15% 10%

6% 4%

27% 25%

Exposure to Platforms in Third-Party Events

22%

Advertisements in Industry Publications

14% 16%

Webinar Sponsorship for Relevant Topics

Accolades in Industry Media Thought Leadership Research Pieces

31% 38%

Industry Conferences

34%

Bundled with Existing Platform Suite

29% 31%

Search for Local Providers

40%

Sales Staff

27% 40%

44%

Web Search

58% 60%

Existing Working Relationship

Web Search

45%

Existing Working Relationship

18% 15%

Sales Staff

Not Planning to Partner with External Providers for Any Training Solutions

In today’s content-heavy world, buyers of training have become much more educated and savvy about getting information on suppliers. Buyers use information from their peers who have experience with suppliers, they pull from their own experiences, and they look to the Internet to see who has demonstrated thought leadership in their field.

FIGURE2. INFORMATION SOURCES

EXTERNAL PROVIDER PARTNERS

Advertisements in Industry Publications

capability. The best way for training suppliers to be recognized in the market is by demonstrating their expertise. Ultimately, they have to be good at what they do so they can get referrals from past clients, and they should leverage those relationships to add further value.

Other

OVER 1k (N=113) UNDER 1k (N=91)

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14% 4% N=193 51

Training Industry webinars cover a wide variety of corporate training topics, so you can take a break from your to-do list without losing productivity.

To view the schedule of upcoming webinars and register, visit TrainingIndustry.com/Webinars.

LEADERSHIP 2.0

ARE BAD COMMUNICATION HABITS HOLDING YOU BACK? - KE N B LANCH ARD AND S COT T BLANCHAR D

Enhancing the frequency and quality of conversations that take place inside your organization between managers and their people is one of the best ways to improve the overall quality of your leadership. And with the speed of work, the generational and cultural diversity of the global workforce, and the variety of day-to-day challenges leaders face, the ability to communicate effectively with direct reports may be the defining skill that sets great leaders apart.

A BIG PART OF BEING A GREAT CONVERSATIONALIST IS BEING AN EXCEPTIONAL LISTENER. The need for better communication skills is unmistakable. Research continues to show that serious gaps exist between what people expect from their leaders and what they actually experience. One way to evaluate a conversation is by measuring it against two criteria: clarity and positive regard. In an effective conversation, both manager and employee are clear about next steps. In addition, both parties leave the conversation with a positive regard for each other, even if the topic of conversation was challenging or emotionally loaded. A conversation that is not useful will suffer from either a lack of clarity, a lack of regard between the involved parties, or both. Ending a conversation with either

factor missing or incomplete generally means that the matter will have to be addressed again in the future.

track, however; just let them know they’ll need to take up the separate issue with you at a different time.

BAD CONVERSATIONAL HABITS

Poor listening or an inability to find common ground. When leaders don’t listen well or are unable to reach a shared understanding, they tend to focus on only their side of the conversation. A telltale symptom of this bad habit is when managers repeat themselves.

Managers never intend to have unproductive conversations, of course, but bad conversational habits can often get in the way of effective communication. Intentionality lapses. Sometimes leaders can get careless. For example, you bump into a direct report who has a question, and before you realize it the dialogue touches on topics that are potentially sensitive, emotional or confrontational. Instead of quietly framing the issue and planning a time and place to continue the talk, leaders sometimes plunge ahead in an inappropriate setting with negative consequences. As a leader, if you know an upcoming meeting has the potential to become difficult or emotionally charged, schedule it early in the day and in a quiet place where you can have a thoughtful conversation. Staying focused on the topic at hand. As a rule, leaders should focus on one subject at a time. When a conversation is about feedback or necessary behavior change, it’s only normal for a direct report to want to divert the conversation by bringing up another issue. Managers need to know how to skillfully address one topic, and if another topic comes up that threatens to derail the first, to stop and say, “That’s a separate conversation.” You needn’t be dismissive when the other person gets off

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The key to a successful conversation involves listening intently and carefully, not only to what is being said but also to what is not being said. A big part of being a great conversationalist is being an exceptional listener.

TAKE A SECOND LOOK Leadership is an influence process. Progressive managers build strong relationships with their people through the quality and frequency of their conversations. Are your conversations with your direct reports as useful as they could be? Or are bad habits keeping you from being the communicator you want to be? Take a second look at your intentionality, focus and listening skills. With a little work in these three areas, you’ll make great strides toward becoming an excellent communicator and leader. Scott Blanchard is a principal and executive vice president of The Ken Blanchard Companies. Ken Blanchard is the best-selling co-author of “The New One Minute Manage” and 60 other leadership books. Email Scott and Ken. 53

MEASURING THE ROI OF SOCIAL MEDIA WITHIN YOUR

ORGANIZATION A few months ago, around 1:00 a.m., I walked into my bedroom, flipped the light switch and stopped in my tracks. I couldn’t see anything; there was total darkness. My ceiling light had died. The next morning, after some examination, I realized I would need help fixing it, and I decided to look to social media for help. I sat down at my computer, typed in a search for “how to fix a ceiling fan and light fixture” and started clicking around. Within minutes, I determined the part I needed and then found a blog and discussion forum about that part. I typed in an additional question for this community, pressed “send” and launched the question into cyberspace.

MOST LEARNING SCENARIOS AREN’T BLACK AND WHITE.

When I returned from the store with my new part, I found four forum posts addressing my question. One connected me to a how-to video demonstrating the process step by step. I climbed my stool to start working and pressed “play.” One hour later, I was finished.

MAKING YOUR BUSINESS CASE While I always appreciated the potential value of social media’s knowledge sharing

- PAU L L E ONE , Ph.D.

MEASURING IMPACT

solutions as on-the-job training tools, it wasn’t until I started playing out specific scenarios (like the one described above) that I began to fully grasp the potential return on investment of using them in the workplace. What if I’d had to find, register, wait and pay for an instructor-led course on installing electrical fixtures? What if when I finally sat down to take it, I had to hear hours of lecture until we got to the module about relay switches? What if my facilitator were an expert in older models, but knew little of the newer, more sophisticated replacements? What would be the cost and time wasted if I had used just this one source of learning and received outdated information? When we consider a scenario like this one, it’s easy to see a clear benefit for choosing social media and instant collaboration tools over traditional training alternatives. In these situations, it makes sense to connect with experts as quickly as possible. Admittedly, most learning scenarios aren’t as black and white as changing a light fixture, but think about how different all

your learning outcomes can be and how many scenarios can play out every day within an organization.

any statistical software (e.g., SPSS, SAS, Excel, etc.), and you’ll immediately find out if there’s a significant correlation.

If you can clearly document even a few efficiency gains and time savings for key roles, you can start making inferences about gains across the organization. It is through building and highlighting these simple but powerful “use cases” within your business that you take your first step toward building a robust and reliable ROI case for social media.

If there is, you will be able to forecast an individual’s performance based on his or her connectivity, and vice versa. To show this correlation graphically, plot each point of each employee’s data set.

MEASURING ROI The first step in creating a good ROI case for using internal and external social sites is to clearly define the overall relationship between being “connected” and productivity across the organization. That is, as you compare larger numbers of employees (or groups of employees) across the organization, how well does connectivity predict productivity? Do employees who consume and contribute more knowledge within these collaboration spaces actually have significantly higher average levels of performance? You can approach this question in two ways: 1. Select images. Develop a statistical correlation or regression analysis. Start with a sample of about 200 to 250 employees with varying levels of connectivity. Make sure you clearly define “connectivity” (e.g., use of social media tools like blogs, discussion boards, learning communities, etc.) and “performance” (e.g., sales targets met or exceeded, customer satisfaction scores, performance appraisals, etc.) up front. If all your social media resources are in one place, such as an internal learning site, you may simply define connectivity as each employee’s number of visits to that site. Another approach is to track contributions and questions to communities and forums. Match each individual’s connectivity level (X) with his or her performance level (Y). Then, plug those numbers into a correlation or regression analysis using

2 . Develop a control group analysis. For instance, you might separate a sample of existing employees into two groups: one that is highly connected and one that is not very connected. Again, compare the two groups on some measure of performance (e.g., customer satisfaction scores, number of sales targets achieved, overall performance appraisal, etc.). If there is a significant performance difference between the two groups, you’ve already made a decent case. To take your analysis a step further, define the business implications of those performance differences. How much more revenue is generated by the high performers than by the low performers? What would it mean for your business if you started encouraging more employees to connect with social media, turning them from low performers to high performers? What would it mean if you shifted 10 percent of your employees? What about 20 percent? In this way, you can start to define the incremental value of increasing the number of employees using your social media tools.

CLEARLY DEFINE THE OVERALL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BEING CONNECTED AND PRODUCTIVITY ACROSS THE ORGANIZATION. you simply be presenting increasing usage numbers in a dull spreadsheet; now, you can translate those numbers into bottom-line impact. You can then deliver each of your quarterly reports on usage or connectedness in the language of projected performance gains, cost savings and bottom-line dollars.

Paul Leone, Ph.D., is an organizational psychologist and consultant with 14 years of experience measuring the impact and ROI of training initiatives for Fortune 100 companies. He is the author of the book “Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact.” Email Paul.

SUMMARY Whichever method you choose (correlation or control), once you have established this clear relationship between connectivity and performance, you can estimate with a significant level of certainty what incremental increases in connectivity will mean in terms of bottom-line business impact. Additionally, once this backdrop of research is in place and you’ve convinced your senior leaders and stakeholders of this relationship, tracking and trending employee connectedness over time becomes very powerful. No longer will

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CLOSING D E A L S

ACQUISITION OF LYNDA.COM

FURTHERS LINKEDIN’S MISSION OF CREATING

ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY - TARYN OESCH

This spring, LinkedIn announced its $1.5 billion acquisition of Lynda.com, an online learning company co-founded in 1995 by Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin. The deal, which is the largest acquisition in LinkedIn’s history, is expected to close this year. Lynda.com’s video library of more than 6,300 courses and 267,000 video tutorials provides training in business, software, technology and creative skills to its subscribers. The company is known for its high production quality. According to one Lynda.com instructor, presenters must pass a screen test before they are brought on board, and a team of producers and editors works on each video.

A NATURAL FIT While some may have been surprised by this acquisition – and its size – both Lynda Weinman and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner have commented on the compatible visions of the two companies. In a LinkedIn post, Weiner described LinkedIn’s “fundamental value proposition” as “connecting people to opportunity.” Weinman also noted in a LinkedIn post, “Jeff Weiner…and I both believe that the skills gap is one of the leading social issues of our time.” Both companies help fill this skills gap in different, but complementary, ways. LinkedIn connects jobseekers with opportunities, and Lynda.com helps them obtain the skills they need for those opportunities. With the acquisition of Lynda. com, LinkedIn will also be able to help 56

people not only find new jobs but become better at the jobs they already have. Jeff Weiner’s ultimate goal for LinkedIn is to create what he calls an economic graph. The economic graph will digitally portray economic connections and identify trends in real time. In other words, it will show jobs, the skills they require, the companies offering them, the people qualified for them and the combined knowledge of those companies and people. LinkedIn’s current capabilities include posting jobs and information about companies and individuals. This year, the company also expanded its ability to share knowledge by enabling any user – not just “influencers” – to create and post content through LinkedIn Pulse. By acquiring Lynda.com, LinkedIn has moved closer to creating a full economic graph by expanding its content offerings. With Lynda.com, the site will connect its users to more content and a different type of content: video.

industry. As Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn’s vice president of product management, wrote, “Imagine being a job seeker and being able to instantly know what skills are needed for the available jobs in a desired city…and then being prompted to take the relevant and accredited course to help you acquire this skill.”

BOTH LINKEDIN AND LYNDA.COM HELP FILL THE SKILLS GAP IN DIFFERENT, BUT COMPLEMENTARY, WAYS. Now, LinkedIn’s 350 million members will be able to access these courses – and they will be able to do so on the same platform where they find new jobs. Meanwhile, we can speculate that employers may be able to see on their profiles what Lynda. com courses applicants have completed, helping them see what skills the applicants have.

LinkedIn is known as a professional network and source of talent acquisition. As LinkedIn’s largest acquisition, the acquisition of Lynda.com demonstrates the importance LinkedIn places on learning, especially as a component of talent acquisition.

Incorporating Lynda.com’s e-learning products brings learning to the forefront of talent acquisition, especially online. As interest in e-learning grows, the importance of integrating online learning content with other online professional resources will also become clearer. With its acquisition of Lynda.com, LinkedIn is taking a big step in this direction, filling the skills gap with members who now have increased access to training that will help them accomplish their professional goals.

Integrating e-learning with job seeking has important implications for the

Taryn Oesch is an editor at Training Industry, Inc. Email Taryn

BRINGING LEARNING TO TALENT ACQUISITION

CO M PA N Y N

ACQ UIS I T I ON S A N D PA RTN E R SHIPS WCC Smart Search & Match, a leading provider of high performance search and match software, announced its strategic partnership with technology and consulting corporation IBM. The partnership involves the integration of WCC’s software platform ELISE with the IBM Social Program Management Employment solution.

Atomic Learning, education’s trusted training leader, announced its acquisition of Versifit Technologies, a leading provider of data warehousing and analytic reporting platforms in education. The company’s solutions will allow teachers to efficiently track student progress and selectively target professional learning, ultimately improving K-12 and higher education instruction.

Simplilearn, a leading global tech-ed company announced a $10 million deal to acquire Market Motive, a pioneering Silicon Valley-based digital marketing training company. The merged company is turning its attention to an expanded presence in the U.S. where it can offer a turnkey solution to working professionals and college graduates who are trying to advance their careers.

Blackboard announced a partnership with Skillsoft, a global learning content provider, to enable direct delivery of highquality content to professional learners via Blackboard’s industry-leading teaching and learning platform. The partnership will allow Blackboard to offer learners and instructors access to Skillsoft’s vast library of rich professional training and certification content.

Bloomfire and GP Strategies Corporation announced a global partnership agreement to bring Bloomfire’s innovative, cloudbased knowledge management system to organizations across the world. The joint solution will further GP Strategies’ efforts to provide the expertise and skills employees need to help their organizations perform at their peak.

Safari, the leading global platform for technology and business learning, announced the purchase of the assets of Popforms, a creator of courses and tools supporting technical leaders looking to advance in their careers. With this transaction, Safari acquires all of Popforms’ original content including its website, courses, videos, newsletters and interactive exercises.

INDUST RY NE WS SURVEY REVEALS CHALLENGES TO DIFFERENTIATING AGAINST COMPETITION Corporate Visions announced the results of a survey focused on sales pitch effectiveness. Most notably, the data uncovered that although nearly 41.5 percent of companies believe leading off a sales pitch with an “unconsidered need” would differentiate them from the competition, only 13.8 percent of companies actually take this approach. Further supporting this data, only 17.6 percent of respondents feel their pitches are truly different from the competition.

THE EFFECTS TOXIC EMPLOYEES HAVE ON ORGANIZATIONS A clear disconnect is occurring at organizations across the U.S. when it comes to employee satisfaction, according

to a new study released by Fierce, Inc. The survey found that four out of five employees believe a toxic employee is extremely debilitating to team morale, while the same number agreed that their organizations are somewhat or extremely tolerant of these individuals.

MHI GLOBAL EXPANDS IMPACT BY MERGING 5 KEY BRANDS AchieveGlobal, Miller Heiman, Huthwaite, Impact Learning Systems and Channel Enablers have joined forces under the MHI Global banner to provide organizations worldwide with an expanded, holistic approach for developing, managing and sustaining long-term customer relationships. By uniting its brands, the global organization seeks to further empower clients through its extensive suite of services.

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THE CHALLENGE OF ADVANCING WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP ROLES Interaction Associates conducted a study of more than 400 people across the business spectrum, which indicates that advancing women in leadership roles is a low priority. Only one-third of those surveyed agreed that recruiting, developing and advancing women leaders is a key business priority in their organization.

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A RTICLES HOW TO COMBAT DISENGAGEMENT BY GAMIFYING YOUR BUSINESS I By Nolan Hout Remember these do’s and don’ts when incorporating gamification into your training portfolio. LCMS VS LMS: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE? I By Sarah Danzl Utilizing an LCMS in conjunction with the LMS that is already in place can provide greater value. SOCIAL MEDIA TURNS CORPORATE ONBOARDING UPSIDE DOWN I By Karl Mehta Just-in-time learning standardizes onboarding for consistency across the entire enterprise. SIMULATION: MORE THAN JUST AN APPLICATION TOOL I By Amy Happ Simulation is a valuable learning tool that enables collaboration and creates a fun experience.

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RESEARCH

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BYOD: THE PROS

SOURCING TRAINING

STOP PRESENTING BORING

AND CONS FOR

SOLUTIONS: BEST PRACTICES

CONTENT: NEW SCIENCE

YOUR E-LEARNING

FOR THE BEST PARTNERSHIP

OF PRESENTATIONS

By Seamus Hand

By The Training Associates and Training Industry, Inc.

AMPLIFY YOUR COACHING: A

BEST PRACTICES IN DESIGN

BRIDGING TOOL

AND DELIVERY OF SALES

FOR HR AND TALENT

TRAINING PROGRAMS

MANAGEMENT?

By Richardson and Training Industry, Inc.

WEBINAR MESSAGE WITH THESE TIPS: PART 1

By Marina Theodotou

TRAINING T

INSIGHTS

INDUSTRY

Which of the following learning and development trends are most affected by trainee generational differences?

THE VALUE OF TRAINING DELIVERY

MHIG Cust Experience @MHIGCustExp Much of what gets lost in #training is because employees aren’t provided context for what is being taught: http://bit.ly/1JXCjMz Jeffrey Gitomer @gitomer MREALITY: You can’t just read and understand – you have to grasp, own and implement – otherwise it’s forgotten. #learning inviter @inviterbiz Maximize your company revenue by increasing #EmployeeEngagement http://buff.ly/1IHipFx Employee Developer @employedevelopr Without the “attempt to do it” how else to demonstrate #learning #transfer? Ask them if they #know it? They say “yes” - then what? Odissy @Odissy10 The goal of ‘learning transfer’ is to migrate new knowledge and skills to the job, resulting in improved performance #learning #transfer

68% 4%

13% 13%

Gamification Social learning E-learning Mobile learning Personalized learning experiences

N = 96

What are the biggest challenges to implementing a big data initiative within your training department?

89% 5%

3% 3% N = 120

Lack of alignment across the organization Lack of analytic skills within training department Lack of availability of HR data Resistance to implications of learning and development analytics

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