Enterprise Learning Initiatives.

My teenager loves superheroes. Her favorite is Captain America. (In fact, she is convinced she is related to him because we share the same last name.) Recently she asked me, “If you could have any superpower, what would it be?” We spent the next 30 minutes debating the merits of various superpowers.

The next day, I went into work with superpowers on my mind. I found myself wondering, “What is the most valuable instructional design (ID) superpower?” I considered the many ID skills needed – creativity, investigative, problem solving, technical, and people skills, to name just a few. Then it hit me. The most valuable ID superpower is one of the most underrated skills – empathy.

Renowned author and psychologist Daniel Goleman lists empathy as a key element to emotional intelligence.  In a nutshell, empathy is the ability to walk in another person’s shoes and understand their point of view. It requires emotional intelligence because it involves detecting subtle cues and sensing unspoken feelings and emotions.

Empathy is an instructional design superpower because it enables us to paint a multi-dimensional picture of our learners. We are often limited to just a few learner demographics – job title, location, language, prerequisite courses, and average years of service. But learners are human beings who can’t be reduced to a few facts. We need empathy to fill in the blanks, know our learners, and meet their needs.

This insight doesn’t happen overnight. Terence Brake, author and L&D expert, describes this as a “process of discovery rather than an instant blinding flash of insight. It demands time, attentiveness, and perspective to fully comprehend and act.”

To better understand our learners, we must immerse ourselves in their worlds:

• What do they do, see, hear, and experience?
• What are their day-to-day interactions?
• What are their influences, distractions, pain points, limitations, and areas for improvement?
• What are their goals, values, and expectations?
• What are their skills and competencies?

Ask questions and then really pay attention to the answers. Listen to the words being said but also the emotion behind the words to understand how they are feeling about the change. Are they anxious? Excited? Apathetic? Proud?

Empathy provides instruction designers with x-ray vision into the lives of our learners and helps us understand what motivates and inspires them. Using this information, we can design solutions to fit their wants and needs.  Empathy is my favorite superpower. What’s yours?

I recently wrote about using stretch goals to accomplish things originally thought impossible. Action learning is another way to encourage incredible performance.

Getting humans to the moon in ten years was a stretch goal set by President Kennedy in the 1960s even though, at the time, it was not yet technically feasible. However, NASA achieved their stretch goal through action learning. The teams at NASA built on each success and each failure, learning at a blistering rate and improving their performance to the point they met their goal.

Most of us don’t work at NASA — how do we apply action learning to our training programs? We make it real. When employees deal with actual business issues, there are real-life consequences for failure. They are more focused and productive, and they learn more easily from each success and failure. So the challenge for trainers is to bring some of that urgency to the classroom. The more relevant and realistic the training, the more participants learn.

Here are four ways to use action learning to super-charge your programs:

1. Create an experience that is highly engaging and mimics the tasks of “real work.” Pick a highly realistic training scenario – a situation that adds value to the organization. Make sure the setting, tools, inputs and outputs are as close as possible to the real work situation.
2. Debrief the experience. Review the process, behavior, performance, and results. This step is critical to action learning. Participants examine their actions and the results so that they understand how best to improve outcomes in the future.
3. Generalize from results. What does this mean for the organization? What will the effects be on customers, team performance, Key Performance Indicators, the work of other departments and external entities? Talk with learners about what happens downstream from their tasks.
4. Transfer lessons to the future. Build in ways for employees to apply their action learning on the job.

Action learning reminds me of a saying by Reg Revans: “There can be no learning without action, and no action without learning.” It is truly remarkable what we can accomplish given the right tools, support, and means to reach our goals. Thought and learning are of little value unless converted into action. Another big thinker, Ken Blanchard, said, “Learning is defined as a change in behavior. You haven’t learned a thing until you take action and use it.”

Do you know everything you need to know to be your best as a learning professional? Well, I don’t. And I hope I never believe that I do know everything. Excellence means growth, and even the best of us benefits from new research and the perspectives of other smart people.

That’s why I love lists like the one TalentLMS just published: Books Every Aspiring CLO Should Read.

Full disclosure: one of our CEO’s books is on this list. But alongside that excellent piece of work, there are 47 well-considered books for learning professionals. Here are a few I can personally recommend:

• Visual Design Solutions: Principles and Creative Inspiration for Learning Professionals by Connie Malamed. We own this book and use it for our more junior folks as part of our development program to get up to speed and client-ready.
• Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal. We love Jane McGonigal around here. She made us take a look at the world of games to see some very important benefits.
• The Adult Learner: The Definitive Classic in Adult Education and Human Resource Development by Malcolm S. Knowles, Elwood F. Holton III, and Richard A. Swanson. As the subtitle humbly suggests, this is one of the books many consider a “learning and development bible.” I often refer to this for reminders or good rules of thumb.

The list is broken down into categories (corporate training, instructional design, gamification, talent management, etc.) to help you find exactly the inspiration and advice you’re looking for. Happy reading!

Everyone is familiar with goals and setting goals, but what about stretch goals? Stretch goals push and inspire people to accomplish things they might not have thought possible.

Research shows students actually perform better than others when they are expected to do so. This concept is played out in a scene* from the movie Facing the Giant. A football coach challenges one of his players to the “Death Crawl” drill (crawling on all fours while carrying another player on his back). The drill is set up for the player to crawl 10 to 20 yards. The coach tells the player that he wants to challenge him to go 50 yards. The player balks at this idea, and the coach responds, “I think you can go 50 yards with someone on your back, but no matter how far you make it – I want you to give me your absolute best!” Before the player starts the drill, the coach blindfolds him and says, “I don’t want you to stop when you think you’ve done enough; I want you to go until you absolutely can’t go any further.” The player starts the drill with the coach pushing, encouraging, and continually telling the player to keep going just a little bit further. Finally, the player collapses, totally exhausted. Out of breath, he mutters “That’s got to be at least 50 yards.” When the coach removes the blindfold, the player discovers he has made it all the way to the other end zone! He didn’t think he could make it 50 yards let alone the entire length of the football field!

It is truly astonishing what we can accomplish given the right circumstances. Here are five principles to keep in mind when setting stretch goals:

1. Stretch goals are called “stretch” because they are very difficult to meet. If the standard is easy to achieve, it’s not a stretch goal.
2. Stretch goals are not goals people are required or expected to meet. No one should be punished or criticized for not meeting a stretch goal.
3. Performance against stretch targets can affect other parts of the organization. If employees become more efficient or increase output, they’ll change something about the business process. Know the upstream and downstream impacts of changing employee behavior.
4. If people are not given the knowledge, tools, and means to meet stretch goals, the effects can be disastrous. If the goal cannot be met because of lack of support, it has the opposite effect on motivation, productivity, and teamwork.
5. Risk-taking should be encouraged and rewarded, even if it fails. Remember, there’s no penalty for failing to meet a stretch goal. But go one step further and reinforce the impulse to try. For example, one company builds failure expectations into performance reviews – they expect one significant slip-up per year.

Stretch goals are a powerful tool when executed properly. They enable people and organizations to reach new heights. Remember what Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.”

*Click link to see a clip of the movie scene: Death Crawl and Death Crawl 1

When it comes to training, there are things we need to do, things we should do, and things we would like to do. We all understand that. However, we often find ourselves reacting and doing what seems best at the moment. We don’t necessarily focus on the top priorities.

How many times have you found yourself facilitating a training session and realized you were running out of time with too much content left to cover? At this point, you either skip content or speed up to make it to the finish line!

The problem doesn’t start in the classroom. It happens because we want to achieve more in our training programs than we have time for.

One way to address this is to use the Eisenhower matrix to manage tasks. The matrix helps you focus energy and time on the most critical elements of your program. All other tasks fall in line behind the most important; they are rescheduled, deleted or delegated to someone else for completion.

What is the Eisenhower matrix?

The Eisenhower matrix was developed by former president Eisenhower to help prioritize his work. It forces you to assign an urgency and importance to each task, which puts the task into one of four quadrants.  The result is a list of targeted tasks in each quadrant and a strategy for each list.

How do we apply the matrix to training?

Think about the goals of your training program and each task you need to complete. Then place each task in one of the four quadrants. Use these descriptions to help you decide.

Using this matrix will help you achieve more by focusing on less. As a bonus, your learners will thank you for not overwhelming them with content.

“Our training program was a success!” Was it though? How do you know?

Most of my clients ask participants how much they liked the program. If the participants say they liked it, many learning professionals claim training success.

Sure, we want participants to enjoy the learning experience, but that’s not our goal. Saying you liked the course is pretty imprecise – maybe you liked the jokes the facilitator told, and the lunch served by catering. And those evaluations can’t measure achievement of learning objectives, which are about behavior. Changing performance is a better indicator of success.

More often than not, learning professionals perceive that it’s too difficult to measure performance change. It really isn’t, though. Here is a range of metrics used by the business leaders I’ve worked with.

• Satisfaction: This is the “did you like it?” measurement. It gives us information on the participants’ impression of the program. Typically we use end-of-session surveys about the quality of materials, program delivery, and the overall experience. In many cases, this is where evaluation ends. However, to truly define success, you have to go further.
• Learning: This gauges the extent to which participants believe the program achieved its objectives, and how well reaching those objectives met their development needs. Often we ask participants to report what they learned, but sometimes we can use knowledge checks or an end-of-session test.
• Application: This measures how well participants apply what they learned to their jobs. In most cases, I recommend asking participants, at the end of the program, what they will apply on the job. Then, follow up 60 to 90 days later and assess what they actually applied. I also recommend that supervisors rate participants’ application.
• Performance: This is an assessment of changes in job performance. The evaluation typically targets key business indicators like quality of work, customer satisfaction, speed-to-market, sales, etc. Ideally, we would measure the extent to which a participant’s new skills impact business results. Again, I recommend an end-of-course survey asking participants to predict how their new skills will change their performance. Then follow up 60 to 90 days later and measure how performance actually changed and how those changes affected business metrics. Again, supervisor ratings are important as well.
• Recommendation: This is somewhat related to satisfaction. This evaluation asks participants whether they would recommend the program to someone else. It’s a good measurement of perceived value of the program.

Collect this information consistently across all of your programs. This allows you to compare the performance of individual programs or courses. It’s also helpful to measure the same program over time. These broad views of your curricula help you pinpoint problems and focus improvement efforts.

Gathering evaluation data doesn’t have to be difficult. The metrics are straightforward and easy for business leaders to understand. Focusing on these five measures will help you build and maintain strong learning programs that deliver business value. And it will help you demonstrate training success to your stakeholders.

On Sunday nights, do you watch Game of Thrones? Do you play Candy Crush before bed? Did you collect Beanie Babies?

Trends touch us in all sorts of ways, in both our personal and professional lives. As a learning professional, you know all about the trends in learning and development. “Gamify it!” they say. “Make it mobile!” Sure, that sounds fun, but are those trends the best way to reach your learners?

Well, we’ve thought about it a lot, so you don’t have to. Watch our series analyzing six popular learning methods. These short videos explain each trend and they might help you decide whether they’re right for your learners and your organization.

The videos cover these trends in learning and development:

• Upside-down learning
• Gaming
• Moving away from PowerPoint
• Mobile learning
• Nano learning
• MOOCs

Enjoy!

When I was a waitress in college, before the end of every shift, I had to “roll silverware.” LOTS of silverware. Stack knife and fork on top of a napkin, fold in bottom, then left and top corners, and last wrap right corner around and tuck in to hold. Repeat, repeat, and repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. And on … and on. Does this sound like something to smile about? No.

So, imagine my wonderment when someone would walk by and say, “What’s wrong? Smile, Randi!” I would oblige, they would leave, and I would return to a rational expression. (What kind of fool smiles at silverware? Why am I expected to show affection for these utensils?) Their insistence was nonsensical. After all, I smiled quite adeptly at actual people – customers and coworkers, deliverymen, garbage collectors, and even random passersby. I didn’t have a smiling problem, did I? Why should I start smiling while I rolled the utensils?

Flash forward to 2018 and my delight seeing news stories of Russian workers being taught to smile before the World Cup began.

The very idea of smile training cracks us Westerners up (pun intended). But Russians aren’t accustomed to “smiling for no reason.” In their culture, it is seen as a sign of stupidity. (Vindication! Take that, silverware lovers!) In fact a Russian woman once said she’d been questioned by police for her “suspicious smiling.”

An anticipated 1.5 million foreign soccer fans gave Russians a legitimate smiling challenge and an opportunity to rethink their unsmiling ways (even if would be only a “smile-cation”). They wanted to appear welcoming and leave a positive impression. They had a great big why to back up smile training before the masses descended.

Back in my waitress days, you couldn’t have convinced me to learn to smile while I rolled silverware. But an entire city of Russians understood why they had to learn to smile.

How can we apply this to our training programs? How do we make sure our learners understand why they must change their behavior? Yes, we can simply tell them the reasons, but how do we make the why integral to the training?

Be brave. Don’t be afraid to let new employees interact with real clients and customers before they’re 100% ready. Restaurants are great at this. Before a grand opening, family and friends are often invited in for a complimentary meal. There’s nothing like a real-world situation to help people up that last bit of the learning curve. Real customers help restaurant employees understand why they need to be ready. Make this work for you — invite select clients or customers to help you improve your service to them.

Go live. Or live-ish. If you’re doing systems training, set up a simulation or training environment that feels real. Faced with a system that behaves like the real thing will help learners realize they are about to impact the business – that’ a big why. Even more compelling: have them finish learning using the live system. Plan for it, supervise learners, and train in controlled, small steps.

Leverage experience. Your experienced team members make effective coaches. They know the business and can share real examples. There’s nothing like a first-person story of success or failure to convince an employee they need to be ready to perform. A coach can also lead role plays, acting as the client or customer, and present challenges to trainees. New employees can begin by shadowing their coaches, who can then monitor and guide them through their first on-the-job tasks.

Maybe, back during my waitress days, a compelling why would have motivated me to smile my way through menial tasks … maybe. I have learned the value of a smile, though. And when it comes to achieving speed to performance, making the why of training as compelling and real as possible is good for business. If you succeed? You’ll leave ‘em smiling … no additional training required.

Want more on Russian smile training? Watch this.

“Let’s go around the room.”

“Tell the group your name and title, what you hope to get out of this class, and a fun fact.”

Fun Fact: I’m already not having fun.

• I’m unimpressed that the facilitator is using this tired technique.
• I’m bored, because I either know everyone in the room or don’t think I will need to know them after today.
• I’m distracted and not listening well, because I must come up with answers that are both interesting and haven’t been “taken” by anyone who speaks before I do.
• I’m wishing I’d had another cup of coffee, because when it’s my turn, I should pretend I’m happy to be doing this.

So why do facilitators do it?

• It gets people talking.
• It gives the facilitator information about the group – information that might be helpful as he tries to engage them during the session.
• It confirms that participants’ objectives match the agenda. If they don’t, the facilitator might be able to shift content to satisfy those expectations.
• It sparks relationships between participants.

These are great goals. This technique didn’t come out of nowhere; smart people have been using it for decades because it’s a simple way to kick-start engagement and get important information. But is there a way to avoid the participants’ collective sigh when you say those words?

Let’s find a better way.

Use social networking ahead of the session. The method depends on what you have to work with. If your organization has a communication portal, you could create a group and have everyone check in with their details before the session. If not, you could invite everyone to connect to the others on LinkedIn. Depending on the nature of the group and the context, you could create a group on Yammer or another social media platform – share information about yourself and ask participants to post the information you want before the session.

Do it in a chat. Is your session online? Or will your participants bring a device to the session? Have them connect to your online meeting and use the chat function. They will log in with their names. Then, ask questions and have everyone chat their answers. What do they hope to learn today? What is a problem they’d like to solve? What unexpected talent or experience do they have? If you’re in person, you could still use the chat function, and maybe make a game out of it. For example, “Guess which person in the room is Monica, who says she has a brown belt in karate!”  Or, if they already know each other, have them chat “two truths and a lie;” the first one to chat back which one is the lie wins a small prize.

Use your old friend, the flipchart. Low-tech – or just old school? Have each person create a flipchart page, including all the information you want to collect. Or have them create personal and work timelines, showing major events in their lives. Display the pages around the room. Then go around and walk through flipchart aloud, asking participants questions to explore their answers. Bonus: participants might choose to get creative as they design their flipcharts.

Do a roll call. Put the burden on you, the facilitator. Do your homework on each participant ahead of time. Then, as you start the session, call out each person’s name and introduce them; they can fact-check you and offer more information to fill out your introduction.

Use “speed-dating.” Have participants rotate to one-on-one conversations with everyone else in the group, introducing themselves. Or pair them up and give them a mission to find something in common. Afterward, ask the group what they learned about each other that was interesting, helpful or surprising.

Pick a prop. Arrive with a collection of small objects – toys or trinkets. Ask each participant to choose an object and take turns telling one story about themselves that somehow involves their object.

I know what I’m suggesting is harder on you, the facilitator. These alternatives take more thought, more planning and – in some cases – more time. But you want them to like you, right? And you want them to like the work you’re doing together. You want them smiling and relaxed and engaged with each other, start to finish. Kicking off your session in an unexpected way might just pay off – by making your participants more engaged with each other and with you, their facilitator.

752461. “Take a minute to memorize this number.” This was the instruction given to me by a high school acquaintance conducting a study on memory. He then gave me a short questionnaire. After it was over, he asked me to recall and tell him the number.

752461. To this day, I remember it. How did that happen? For learning and development professionals, this is important. We work to reinforce retention and recall for our learners, and to overcome anything that gets in the way. For example, the longer a person goes without using what they’ve learned, the less likely they will be able to perform effectively. So we create opportunities for practice.

One of the most effective ways to begin that reinforcement is the use of advanced organizers. An advanced organizer provides a high-level visual outline of the main topics and events in a course. It can be as simple as an agenda, as complex as a diagram, or as unexpected as a comic strip.

So, why and how do advanced organizers increase retention and performance?

• During a learning event, an advanced organizer gives participants a visual preview of topics and activities. This prepares the brain to absorb and organize information, which helps recall and performance later. Also, we know that visual cues are much better for recall than verbal cues alone. Finally, the organizer gives learners a sense of control; they feel better prepared for what is to come, so they are relaxed and attentive when learning.
• After the learning event, learners can use the organizer when they need to perform. For example, if I give you a flow chart showing the best process for making the ultimate peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then teach you to do it, you’ll not only remember the steps more clearly, you can use the flowchart at home in your kitchen if you forget what to do.

That high school researcher was testing the hypothesis that the questionnaire he gave his subjects after they learned the number would inhibit our recall. But he made one critical mistake. By telling me I would be asked to recall the number, he was essentially giving me an advanced organizer – a preview of events. He prepared my brain for what was coming next, so it focused on that number instead of the questionnaire. 752461. All these years later, I still remember the number, I remember the experience, and I use its lessons in my own work as an instructional designer.