Learning Architect

The Hour that Matters Most

2011-10-23T12:14:00.003-06:00

The Hour that Matters Most - the surprising power of the family meal
This is a new book written by Les & Leslie Parrott. This book describes the concept of holding the evening meal as a special family time.

We have done this for the last two years since we adopted our son. I know that the time and attention to each other we spend have helped our family.

The book has some great ideas for conversation starters that help to get the whole family talking. We have started to use many of these and find they can help get it going if you are tired or distracted.

The book has recipes and is an easy read, with lots of headings that can draw you to specifics.

What does this have to do with learning? I think the message that comes through is what are you doing when you are designing learning, be it instructor lead or E-learning, to build community. We need to create solutions that allow for social interaction, and for people to share and tell stories.

Activating Memory

2010-08-10T06:42:00.003-06:00

I was out in the country this weekend and it was a hot August day with little wind. You could smell the hay as it ripened, this smell brought back a flood of memories for me, from making hay to people to regrets about things that happened when it was hot and had that atmosphere.

It set me to thinking, how realistic is it to try and connect the learning I design to be that evocative. I write and design learning for 1500 people, how can I connect it for each of them? They all have thier own diverse memories and emotions.

I think my path is to strip everything down, have it be very simple and connected to exactly the behaviour that needs to be different or better, with context and in context. How this will work with content owners and subject matter experts who want to throw the encyclopedia they have in their heads at the learners is my challenge, any thoughts?

The basics

2010-08-04T07:03:00.000-06:00

My reaction to a great post by Janet Clarey http://janetclarey.com/2010/07/27/the-basics/

I think that we should always talk about the basics. Any great Elearning (or other learning) has at its heart the basics, a compelling story that challenges the learner in thier work context. When we talk about learning I think it's sometimesw helpful to split the topic into two parts-1 the actual learning itself and 2 the back office work needed to administer, track, monitor, pay for and report on.How deep anyone gets in part 2 depends on the level of resources available to them in their organization.

Solution Agnostic

2010-07-08T07:48:00.002-06:00

I read some blog posts today from a LMS vendor http://dwilkinsnh.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/a-defense-of-the-lms-and-a-case-for-the-future-of-social-learning/ and the commentary of the social informal lerning experts who have a fever and the only cure is more fill in the blank (social Learning, Informal, just in time, etc.)

The absoluteness ( and the twitter snarkiness they deliver it with) that many of the advocates does us all a disservice. The client knows that any solution can work, they've learned both formally and informally in the past.

What is a practitioner to do...proudly declare IT DEPENDS.

What are the resources available for development and delivery, are the regulatory requirements, what's the norm in the organization, what's the best androgogical way to learn it, what's the capacity of the learners.
Then own your space with a declaration this is the best solution for this problem, and state your reasons.

Make the solution fit the problem, be solution agnostic.

2010-06-24T07:37:00.003-06:00

A Model I use in my practice.
I use them to describe 2 things.
That what I'm doing has some grounding and is not just the rantings of a some disconnected HR nut. That's useful when my design comes back with less than what the client was expecting, my clients usually expect that what they have needs days of classroom training. And when it comes back with spacing in the event, go away and back to topics multiple times and with informal or formal before and after.

Next time I'll share a different model.

Instructional Design Ideas

2010-06-14T07:02:00.002-06:00

I was asked a while ago how do I come up with ideas. I struggled for an answer, and then forgot about it.

Then last week I saw a video from David Rock .

One of the concepts he talked about was about weak associations. I look for ideas and recall them in odd places, saw a drill in a kids soccer practice adapt it and use it in your corporate learning, did something in legal training, reuse it in sales training, play out the plot from a movie, use it in learning.

ID is fun when you let yourself calm down and stop thinking.

Old Faithful inspires instructional design.

2010-06-10T04:50:00.004-06:00

What's the best way to do instructional design?

Fail Forward, try something and then try it again. Start with doing the safe alternative, you know lecture classroom style, or whatever it is that you do. There,I have something the client will accept. Then start to flip it ,twist it do it completely counter to everything you know.Do any of those ideas seem better then the old reliable, if it does build it out and pitch it to the client.

First round up the usual suspects, then go for it with as many crazy ideas as you can.You might end up using one of them or modifying old faithful to make it meore interesting

Delivering Happiness book review

2010-06-07T19:58:00.002-06:00

I was sent an advance copy of the new book Delivering Happiness. http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com
The book is all about Zappos and their culture which they feel drives business results.
Looking at the book from a learning and development angle I take 3 things out of it.
1. We need to be sure that our learning interventions connect people to purpose, community and their world.
2. There is no substitute for hard work and repetition. The were able to achieve results by working hard and practicing. Are we giving learners that chance with the training we design.
3. You can formalize informal learning,Zappos practice of having a library and those books being part of a formal development curriculum are a great example of informal learning furthering business results.
I was disappointed in one element of the book.Tony glosses over a central element of his success, his skills as a software developer are glossed over. All the culture and warm feelings in the world won't help you without technical expertise, great processes and skills at doing something. Expertise, process and skills are the ticket to entry and it's culture that allows you to last and enjoy success.
Here is the amazon link for Canada it's a worthwhile read for learning pros.
http://www.amazon.ca/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275963352&sr=8-1

It's not a learning issue

2010-05-18T07:05:00.003-06:00

Had a meeting with a client yesterday, the presenting problem is not a learning issue. They described wanting to build awareness about what they do. It's a communication play and I refer ed them to a communication expert and a presentation workshop.

The hardest thing was the look when I said it wasn't something I could do for them. They really wanted to be helped (rescued). So I spent another half an hour talking to them, my own inclination to help (rescue) got the best of me.

I did manage to come up with an activity that the could do, create five scenarios, some of which the protagonist would have been better off by partnering with the group. then the audience can see how they could apply their new found awareness.

It was really difficult to turn them away, and I didn't do it as elegantly and fast as I should have. My reputation is too important to damage it by helping where I can't provide meaningful assistance. Saying no is vital to credibility and the client's results, it may be the most important skill we have.

Learning or Training ?

2010-05-13T06:54:00.002-06:00

What do we call it? Is it Learning , is it training?
I am continually surprised by how important some think this is.
I think it doesn't matter, let people call it whatever they want.
As long as whatever I do is designed to provide the conditions for people to DO something differently or better you can call it whatever you want. Maybe we should call it changing results instead of learning or training, that's what the organization needs.

The Why of Work wrap up

2010-05-07T06:20:00.002-06:00

The last in a series on the new book The Why of Work.

The seventh dimension is What Delights me?

"Delight is about noticing little things, breaking out of ruts, feeding creativity. Delight is about appreciation, about beauty, about playfulness and fun."

It's a simple challenge for a learning professional to build abundance. Does the learning we build break out of ruts, does it feed creativity, does it allow for appreciation, is it playful?

The book concludes by describing the implications for executives, human resources and individuals. For learning professionals Meaning and fitting learning to the dimensions of an abundant organization are how we can institutionalize great practice to make a difference. I am going to add this as another lens to help me judge my work and to set the tone with my clients that building meaning is another requirement along with the business impact and behavior changes wanted from the learning intervention.

The Why of Work is an important new book and anyone interested in doing great work needs to read it.

How do I respond to disposability and change

2010-05-06T06:48:00.003-06:00

This is a sereis on the book The Why of Work

The concept discussed in this chapter focuses on the concept of failure as a learning opportunity.

I agree and am reflecting on why some of the learning that I've designed wasn't very good. I made it too easy, there was no chance for the learner to fail or be pushed. Not only did it make it dull, it made the intervention ineffective.

"Abundant responses to change focus on learning and resilience, born of the belief that failure is a path to success."- It's a call to arms for learning architects top challenge learners, push them away from the happy easy path and let them really learn. I need to go apologize to some of my past clients for delivering something dull and easy.

Tomorrow the seventh dimension and a wrap up.

What challenges interest me?

2010-05-05T07:35:00.002-06:00

This is the fifth post in a series about the new book The Why of Work. I'm looking at the seven dimensions of an abundant organization form the perspective of a learning professional.

I'll quote directly form the opening of this chapter "When their work is too easy, people get bored. When it is too difficult, they get anxious and give up."

Replace work with workplace learning and the challenge for leraning pros to play our part in building an abundant organization is set out for us. Yes, it is be difficult to match multiple levels of ability that exist across an enterprise to get the right level of challenge for learners. don't feel up to it , or don't feel that it's realistic, then get out of learning development and move on to something else.

Again form the chapter in the book, the authors lay out four ways leaders can personalize work for each employee. These are easily applied to a learning architect. The comments in parentheses are mine.
1. Understanding what outcomes matter to the employee (Understand the outcomes that matter to the learner).
2. Creating a clear line of sight between what employees do and the outcomes they desire (Creating a clear line of sight between what learners will learn and how they will apply it on the job).
3. Helping employees discover the intrinsic value of their work (Helping learners discover the intrinsic values of the behaviour change desired by the learning).
4. Shaping work conditions and matching employees to conditions that appeal to them. (Shaping Learning conditions and allowing as much learner choice as you can)

Tomorrows post will be about How do I respond to disposability and change? (Growth, learning and resilience)

How do I build a positive work environment ?

2010-05-04T06:52:00.001-06:00

This is the fourth post in a series about the new book The Why of Work. I'm looking at the seven disciplines of an abundant organization form the perspective of a learning professional.

This one is easy, are the routines and patterns that show up in our learning consistent with the corporate culture. We can grow the existing culture by reinforcing it in everything that we build. If your culture is "nonabundant" can you wage a guerrilla effort to build change by putting into the learning you design the patterns that would support an abundant organization.

The next post will be on personalizing and contributing work, or What challenges interest me?

At the end of the series I'll also post how I'm going to apply the disciplines of an abundant organization to the learning that I build.

Whom do I travel with?

2010-05-03T07:01:00.002-06:00

I'm working through The Why Of Work from the perspective of learning, and how the application of great learning can build an abundant organization.
This principle is about building relationships. In the book Ulrich discuss Lynda Gratton's concept of "glow"- a cooperative mindset, jumping across boundaries, and igniting latent energy.

That statement is a great test, did the learning solution show how learners could jump across boundaries and build a cooperative mindset. If the learning we develop isn't doing this I beleive we are missing an oppourtunity not only to build a great organization, but to build great learning too. Learning that pushes learners across boundaries and highlihgts working with others will get closer to delivering real performance change.

The Why of Work-Purpose

2010-04-28T07:59:00.003-06:00

The series continues today where we look at the new book The Why of Work by Dave Ulrich.
Today we are going to discuss how the second discipline of abundant organizations; Where am I Going? (purpose and motivation), shows up for a learning pro.
"Great leaders recognize what motivates employees, match motivators to organization purposes, and help employees prioritize work that matters most"

For learning pros this concept fits nicely with what I want to do to build great learning.
1. Is the "thing" you are training clearly connected to a business outcome that matters. If it isn't the learning you design will not lead to abundance it will just be noise. The role of a learning pro is to ask the questions and push the client, or organization, to say what results they want to change, without this purpose will be lost.

2. Is your learning matched to the motivation of the learners? Can you clearly tell them how the learning you built will fit into their purpose of doing their job, or parts of their job, differently or better. The way I do that is by creating performance objectives for leaning, not learning objectives. And I create them with verbs and a standard "to the extent that" so they can clearly see how the learning I built is going to fit their individual purpose. An example of how I have brought this to life is I have banned the use of the word understand from our performance objectives. Understand is to vague and doesn't show how you will use it.

By doing these 2 things; lining up the learning with the organizations purpose and with the individuals purpose I believe that as a profession we can help build abundance in our organizations.

After covering 2 of the 7 disciplines of abundant organizations we are 2 for 2 of how The Why of Work can make sense for learning professionals.

Tomorrow I'll talk about Whom Do I travel with?

What am I known for?

2010-04-27T07:33:00.003-06:00

The Why of Work

Dave Ulrich has a new book out about the 7 disciplines of abundant organizations.

I think the way it's described can fit for an abundant learning organization, and over the next seven days I will cover the seven disciplines from a learning perspective.

#1 is Identity

What is your identity as a learning professional?

The strengths I want to build on are to be fast, and to make the connections so that the instructional design part of me can take over.

What do I mean by connections
--------Client describes performance issue
--------------which leads to
--------------------find out business issue it's related to
------------------------find out what the cause of the performance gap is
--------------------------------Answer the question: Will learning change the conditions of the root cause.

After that's done I can jump into a solution ( being true to being solution agnostic-the right solution with the resources available to get at the cause.

Tomorrow's post
Where Am I going? purpose and motivation.

Journeyman make better learning consultants

2010-04-14T08:48:00.007-06:00

Interesting Post this morning at the HR capitalist.

http://www.hrcapitalist.com/2010/04/hiring-sales-pros-the-journeyman-the-maverick-and-the-superstar.html

I get most of it I just think that journeymen make better coaches, and as an example Dave Tippet has Phoenix in the playoffs and Wayne Gretzky could not.

Learning consultants- expertise in a subject makes you dangerous as you miss that crucial piece that is innate to you that others need to figure things out.

The X factor means the superstar just gets it, they can't explain why something doesn't work. The journeyman who had to think it out to get success can explain the why.

Who are the superstar coaches (heads of departments) in sports, mostly they were journeymen.
Bobby Cox, Chuck Daly, Coach K, Popowich, Parcells.....

Justin Timberlake and the Art of Presenting Well

2010-03-15T08:18:00.001-06:00

Soemone needs to do this for Instructional Design
Duarte Blog » Blog Archive » Justin Timberlake and the Art of Presenting Well

Evaluating soft skills

2010-03-13T05:48:00.002-06:00

Can you evaluate soft skills?
I was recently told that there is no way to evaluate the transfer of soft skills. I believe that you can do it, it's difficult and can be tricky but the effort must be made. If we don't then it will be too easy to shut down learning because we aren't showing results.

Overstuffed Learning

2010-03-05T06:58:00.002-06:00

Just one more thing.

When I hear my subject matter experts and content owners say this I get a little scared.

That was a lot to take in.

When I hear that as a learner I wonder what I missed.

Have you been in, or built learning or training, that is overstuffed? You know what I mean by overstuffed, it's that wall of information, 1000 bullet points, the entire first year university curriculum touched on in a day and a half.

Less is more and we can get farther and take our learners to better performance, quicker, when we boil it down to just what they need to use to be successful on the job.

It happened to me this week. Just days before a pilot session the client wanted to add in a lot more data and get it too the learners by telling them. The most challenging and most important part of my job as a learning architect is selling clients on not having overstuffed learning. Sometimes I get it done, sometimes I don't. Hit the comments with how you get it done.

Trust the learners

2010-03-02T21:19:00.002-06:00

Trust the learners.

Will you as a designer, creator, architect of learners trust them?

Trust that they will figure it out, trust that they will ask questions, trust that they will bring their prior knowledge, trust that they will apply, trust that you don't have to tell it all.

When you bring it as a learning pro do you respect the learner, and give them some trust. If your learning is truly connected to a business need, to something that's real in their world they will get engaged with the material.

When I see a piece of learning which doesn't respect the learner ( a sure fire hint that it doesn't is that it's a lot of telling). I wonder why the designer didn't trust the learner. When I have built some learning that didn't trust the learner, and yes I have built some that is crap, it is because I am not able to show in a clear way how the learner can make it a part of what they do. When that happens it's hit with the wall of info and hope for the best.

Next time- overstuffed learning

Evaluation make it your friend

2010-02-17T19:46:00.002-06:00

When I start out with my clients , the first deliverable is an evaluation strategy. We identify what we will measure and how at each of Kirkpatricks levels.

The leaders in the buisness want to know if the interventions are making a difference, in my expereince they are not as concerned about ROI. THey want to know if the performance is showing up on the job.

Nothing builds credibility faster than saying what you are going to do for the business-change performance and then taking the risk to go out and prove that you contributed to the change.

Instructional Design

2010-02-16T07:47:00.002-06:00

Is it interesting?
You can make a learning event interesting by making it relevant. No matter the from, self study, e-learning or instructor led having the learning event make a difference to the learners performance is the first duty of the instructional designer.

How do you make it interesting?
Connect it to
Purpose-how does it fit into the learners world
Mastery-how does it help the learner be better at what they do
Control-does the instructional design trust the learners and give them control

Start with the problem and get the learners busy doing.
I like to use ideas from Why Not?, to stimulate instructional design

"What would Croesus do?" -if money and time were no object what type of learning event would you build, doing this you can take the solution back to the resources you have.

" Why don't you feel my pain"- in telling the story who can the external pleasure or pain involved in the change in performance be internalized by the learners, make it real.

"Where else would it work"-have you done and activity for something else that would fit, a personal favorite but I wonder if I keep using the same tired old tricks

"Would flipping it work"-will arrange the information in a different way provoke a different way of thinking.

If the learning event we design doesn't bring about learning and transfer we have failed. That's why evaluation to Kirkpatrick's level three is so critical, how else are we going to know if we are anything more than hopeful with our work.

Who needs Needs Assessment

2010-02-15T08:36:00.002-06:00

We don't need the formal needs assessment process. Clients are engaging learning pros because they already know they have a performance problem.

What we need to do better is get to cause. Why is the performance not where it should be.

In the last post I talked about the question I ask, "What do you want people to do differently or better?" What I didn't say was the follow up questions of why and how. This is where you can get into it with your client and figure out what the issue really is.

Our profession needs to be able to do a better job of getting practioniers able to ask these questions and do it quickly. It can be done quickly, and it will give the learners expereinces that are relevant and make a difference.

Getting Started

2010-02-11T05:32:00.002-06:00

What do you want people to do.

That's the question I ask my clients when I am working with them to build the learning or training that they want to do. It's hard for them to answer this question a lot of the time. That shouldn't be surprising. They likely are in the position they are because they have a lot of expertise. Experts are dangerous when building learning. They know so much stuff that it's hard for them to sort the unimportant from the important and they often know pieces so well and do it innately that they can leave out important pieces as well.

I use a mixture of learning methodologies. The program from St. Francis Xavier and the SIX DISCIPLINES OF BREAKTHROUGH LEARNING are the base for my consulting work. If you are familiar with the 6D's you'll recognize that question. It has lead to lots of silence and furrowed brows, but it is the only way to help the business get to learning that makes a difference.

Next time I'll talk about why we don't do needs assessment and how that helps us get to the true needs faster.

Solution Agnostic Learning Architect

2010-02-10T06:11:00.000-06:00

I was inspired by the comment of Mom's client, but that comes later.

I had always been interested in figuring out new things, and taking in as much information, or as my wife calls it "who knows stuff like that?".

I did a degree in kinesiology where I learned the science and art of instruction in the physical world. After school I went to work as a salesman, for three reasons, to travel, to push myself out of shyness, and because it was the only job I could find.

I then went on to fulfilling a dream of working on the family farm, to support that I worked as temp for Kelly and Adecco to give me the flexibility to farm while maintaining cash flow. Dropped into various work environments I had to figure out who to get the job done with a wide range of instruction, it was like grad school in performance solutions.

Once the farming dream became died, (although I still own and rent my farm)I started work in a warehouse and had risen to the Office/warehouse/warranty manager. It was completely unfulfilling but it filled a need. It was a job, not a career.

Now back to my Mom, she was a nurse and for most of her career she worked as public health nurse. A few days after she passed away I was on the street in my hometown when an elder in the community my mom served approached me. This elder stopped me and said, " Your Mom always helped our community and it is a better place because of her work"

It hit later that I had been missing the connection in my life to making it a better place. I thought of many different paths to getting that feeling.

I still wanted to maintain my meager lifestyle so full time at school didn't make sense. Then I thought if I could figure things out and show other people how they could do it to.

I took a job as a sales coach, enrolled in the St. Francis Xavier adult education program. http://www.stfx.ca/academic/adulted-diploma

Then I got lucky, the sales coach job had training added to it, so I gained experience with delivery and with design. From there I was on my way to be an instructional designer, or as I call it solution agnostic learning architect

Rob Bartlett