This one is created by Marcus Buckingham, the Gallup genius who helped create and market First, Break All the Rules, and Now, Discover Your Strengths. These books respectively say – each one of us is an individual and different, and managers should realize that and treat us differently; and people who do best focus on their strengths. The Strong Life Test for Women is a take-off on the latter.

First I took the online assessment, then I went to the bookstore and read the related book in about 2.5 hours (after reading academic papers, most business books are an easy read.)

Is is useful?

Well, it depends. If you’re looking for work, or a new life path, no one test is going to provide you the answer. What it may give you, is some insights into yourself, not because the test reveals your true self, but because you reveal your true self  when you react/interact with the test.

So I took this test. It told me the following:

• Strongest Role: Advisor. I like to ask the question – What’s the best thing to do?
• Supporting Role: Creator. I like to ask the question – What do I understand?

To be honest, I didn’t like that Creator was a supporting role. I’m an artist damn it! Ok, know that we’ve got that straight, we can move on, eh? I read my complete role descriptions and noted my reactions to the descriptions — yes, I like figuring out the answers and the best way to do things — I like being the expert (Advisor). Yes, I like starting with my own insights and finding the pattern underneath life’s craziness (Creator). Yes, I like tests that reconfirm how I think about myself, and make me remember what’s important to me.

The interesting difference

What’s different about this test, is not so much the test itself, but the accompanying literature that asks one important question:

• What are your strongest moments? In your working life, family, marriage, etc.?
• At what points do you feel you are at your best?
• What is is about those particular moments?
• How can you deliberately create those moments?
• Investigate those moments – what is it about them that you like?
• Celebrate and acknowledge those moments?

It is this difference – focusing on strong moments in your life, and the specifics of those moments — that makes this interesting. The most important exercise you can do is find the words to describe those moments.

The test is just a starting point.

Just an FYI – a list of roles as outlined in the book:

1. Advisor
2. Caretaker
3. Creator
4. Equalizer
5. Influencer
6. Motivator
7. Pioneer
8. Teacher
9. Weaver

This is a good read. I loved learning about the inner workings of Wall Street from one person’s perspective — and it just that — a biased perspective. He does not hide this fact but that’s in part what makes the book so entertaining. I learned more about how high finance works from reading this book than I have from any financial textbook. McDonald describes from his perspective why Lehman failed, what was done to try save it, and fully lays the blame at the feet of two people: Dick Fuld, CEO and Joe Gregory, COO.

One begins to understand the complexity of the financial instruments involved, the delusional activities of large group of people, and the sheer calamity brought upon this country and the world as a result of these activities. The collapse of Lehman was at the crux of the financial meltdown. Reading this book you realize how much of our financial system runs on faith and trust, and how important it is to have checks and regulations in place that keep that trust and faith in place. Dismantling the Glass-Stegall act was at the root of the most recent chaos — and that blame lies with the Congress at that time. And there is the easy access to credit thanks to the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates low after the 2001 bubble. (Sorry, can’t mention the name of the demi-god Alan Greenspan.)

The book is well-named: A Colossal Failure of Common Sense. However it’s just not the top two Lehman that suffered from this failure, it’s most of the heavy hitters in the system that did. And they should be ashamed of the havoc they wrought.

But we all had a piece of it, however small. I hope our awareness these failures leads to change. We’ll see.

Good book, albeit biased — worth the read.

Full disclosure: Lehman Brothers was a client I worked with and I knew some of the people at the firm.

My mother’s kitchen

As an adult, I’d go back to visit my mother’s house, and one of our biggest arguments was over her kitchen — more specifically, the organization of her kitchen. I could never find anything — which is not unusual for a visitor, but more importantly I couldn’t learn how to find anything and had to ask her for help every single time. Drove me bananas.

The cooking oil would be under the sink. The spices would be with the pots. There was nothing useful in the pantry. The flour, sugar, eggs (she had 2 fridges) and baking trays would be in a different room. What kind of logic was this??? I would reorganize her kitchen. She would get furious. Arguments would ensue. After a few times, I gave up.

Only just recently, I realized her logic — the mental model of her kitchen.

You see, I organize according to category — like things with like things. Dry food items here, spices there, pots under there, vegetables here. She organized according to function.

What function would require cooking oil under the sink? Well, she had a huge burner ring outside for deep frying large batches of stuff. The burner was outside on the patio, the kitchen window served as a pass-through, the kitchen sink was under the window. It was easier to have the cooking oil there rather than walk across the kitchen to get it (she also had bad knees.)

Her spices were close to the stove, where she cooked, with the pots because she could reach them there. When my brother remodeled the kitchen, he made the upper cabinets too high. She’s 4′10″.

The sugar, flour, eggs, baking items — well, she didn’t use them that often. And when she did, she baked huge batches of stuff, which meant she needed more room than what was in her kitchen, so she had another room set up for that.

The organization of her kitchen increased her efficiency. That was her mental model.

It was not one I shared.

Learning mental models

When I first moved down to the United States of America, I had a job as a writer. I was to help people learn about information technology at a University. At that time, the SysAdmin folks dictated how we thought about things. I was new, I followed along. The documentation we wrote was organized according to categories: accounts, email software, SSH, FTP, and other stuff. It was mostly useless. Why?

People did not think in those SysAdmin categories. We let the inmates run the asylum. I realized how useless it was after I left that position, then tried to access my email and change my password. I looked in the book that I had written to remember how to do this. I couldn’t find the information under email. I searched and searched and finally called the Help Desk in frustration. The information was under the Accounts section — but who would have ever thought of that?

We never bothered to learn the mental models of our learners. Not even at the most basic level. How did they organize their thinking about “that stuff they do online”?

But wait…we can’t figure out what everyone is thinking!

True, you cannot figure out the mental models of every single individual. No one is asking that. But we can figure out patterns. First question — is about functionality or categories? Do they really need to know how a domain is organized in order to do their work? Yes, it might help them in the long run, but realistically, that’s not the goal of most people. They just want to get their work done. Help them do that. Where are your learners currently at and where do they or you want them to go?

Shared understandings

Sometimes we have to create common or shared understandings. And individual mental models may get in the way. So what do we do — assuming we are talking about adults?

• Treat people as adults
  • They have survived in the world so far using the mental models they have been using, don’t demean their understanding of the world. Work to understand it. Break it down.
• Set a common, agreed upon goal — a destination.
  • Unless you can agree upon why things need to change (the marketplace has changed, more than one person needs to use this kitchen, there’s been a merger) you will not get people on your side.
• Propose a new mental model
  • How will this effect people in their work?
  • What specific behaviors will have to change? Why?
• Talk about people’s fears and uncertainties
  • Create a safe environment to discuss fear and uncertainty
  • Allow people to vent
• Experiment and play with new behaviors
  • Make the learning playful but serious (experiential learning)
  • Engage people in finding resolutions to the change
  • Disrupt existing behaviors – have learners reflect on why they did what they did
• Make a plan to make it happen (action plan)
• Follow-up (metrics)

I realize these are large bullet points and the struggle is still “how”. It’s hard work to figure out where your learners are currently at and how to change. The specific context matters. Doing the research and analysis matters. Figuring out how to measure the impact of changing mental models matters — what’s the business outcome and how do you measure it?

If I were to ever spend a significant amount of time in my mother’s kitchen, I would start with a conversation that would go something like this: “if we’re going to work together in this space, mom, it would help to make some changes on where you keep things.” I would not, ever again, stomp in there and simply start changing things. She would rightly be furious and resistant.

Imagine the emotional impact on the learners.

Then take it one step at a time.

If you’re all alone in this it helps to brainstorm with friends and colleagues. FYI – I’m always willing to play.

Here’s a story ..it happened to me…

Several years ago I was traveling to an client event in another country. I had been in my new position a couple of months at most. My boss was meeting me there, and  was to brief me on the details. I arrived a couple days early to visit with family — a good thing because on Day 1, the client called asking me to come. Boss was still in New York. So in I went.

Upon arrival I was told that a critical video that we created was stuck at the border.  I was to get it released ASAP. I smiled and said “yes, I’ll take care of it.” I had no idea what they were talking about. Couldn’t find my boss. Panic began to eat at the edges of my brain. I called everyone I knew to get the cell number of the one guy who could release the tape. He was eating dinner.  He apologized, and said he would take care of it as soon as the border customs office opened. Whew!

And then the real whammy happened on Day 1 @ 2 am (ok, technically Day 2). My boss called. She missed her connecting flight. She managed to get a flight to a city that was actually further away. Clearly geography was not her strong suite. But crazier still, they threatened to deport her because of something she said when she crossed the border: “work”. Never, ever, say you’re coming in to work in another country unless you have a work visa. I gave her this advice. Repeated it. To sum up, she would not arrive until much later on Day 2 — if she arrived at all. Me alone with the client (that’s plural client not singular) for another day. Didn’t really sleep.

Got up, put a smile on my face, and explained the crazy situation. Then volunteered to do whatever work they needed — and sure enough, they put to work. The tape arrived. Boss arrived. The rest of the event went swimmingly. We all survived.

When I got back, I was treated as a hero — if they could have given me the consultant equivalent of the purple heart they would have.

END OF STORY.

I can’t help think I could have been better prepared.

Is it possible to train for the unexpected?

YES, YES, YES!!!! Except I wouldn’t call it training…

• Step 1: Tell people the unexpected will happen.
• Teach them the power of negative thinking (book I read once). Have a team brainstorm about all the things that could go wrong and how you could prepare for them. What are the backup plans? This lesson I learned in radio — some technology will fail, some tape will break (yup, good ol’ analog days), some interviewee will *not* show up. Be prepared. Have a plan. Rehearse your plan.
• Who will answer the “red” phone at 3 am? The hardest thing is feeling that you are alone in a situation. The one thing that made a difference to me was connecting with one person who was still at the office at 7pm. Hearing a friendly voice tell me that she would do “everything she could to help me” made all the difference. Thank you team mate!
• Focus on the work that needs doing. I did my best to stay focused on the work that needed doing (get video, get boss, help client) It helped keep most of the anxiety at bay.
• Stay positive & stay focused on the needs of your client. It would have been very easy to fall into victim mode (“I’m not good enough”, “I can’t deal with this”, “I’m an impostor”, “it’s his/her/their fault”, “it’s not my job!”). Look it’s not about you, it’s about the client. So get over it. Put your “game-face” on, and as trite as it sounds, go out there with a positive attitude. What can you do to help?

Ambiguity, complexity, and the distributed expertise of teams creates “black swan” events. How can we deal with the unexpected, emergent behavior of systems? I think there’s a  game to be created here (or maybe several already exist?)

This isn’t training — it’s strategy.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

So along comes Mark J. Penn with Microtrends: the small forces behind tomorrow’s big changes (2007), his new book outlining 72 microtrends — some of which could make your instruction more specific and more relevant to learners.

Working Retired

• There are over 5 million people 65+ in the workforce (in USA  as of 2005), double the number in 1980
• 3 out of 4 boomers have no intention of seeking a traditional retirement

from inquisitr.com

The workforce is aging. In Europe, the aging of the workforce is even more extreme. (The median age in Europe will be 52.7 in 2050 — it’s currently 37.7!) Some people keep working because — guess what — they don’t have the funds to retire, maybe thanks to the recent economic collapse. Some people want to keep  themselves active. People in general are living longer, and living better.

So what does that mean for learning? Older workers tend to be more resistant to eLearning, so will they require more face-to-face training? Perhaps it will just mean learning that’s adjusted to their needs, such as impaired vision or hearing. Or maybe the more experienced workforce will require less education overall, and instead will be a boon of teachers, mentors and subject matter experts. Or will younger workers get frustrated because there’s no room to grow? Or maybe the older workers will simply be part-time, or in less high-powered jobs and a different kind of educational challenge.

For every 2 million eligible to retire each year, what if 1 million decide to keep working? A microtrend becomes a major trend.

Extreme Commuters

• In 2000, 3.4 million people traveled at least 90 min to get to work

warrenwilliams.co.nz

The current average commute is 25 min (2005). But this sub-group of people travels 3x that amount! What do these people do on the road? There’s a great opportunity for audio-based learning — otherwise known as podcasts. Workers download at work and plug-in on the road. Maybe there can even be a dedicated XM channel — business learning for commuters. A series of 20 minute, well-produced, magazine format segments on leading business ideas. Or maybe just topics relevant to your organization or business.

Extreme commuters live in the exurbs for the most part — and this is can either be a lifestyle choice or economic choice. Either way — they have time on their hands and are a captive audience.

Numbers Junkies

Americans are fascinated with numbers and science. We don’t necessarily like doing math and science, but we do like watching it on TV.  Numb3rs, CSI, Freakonomics — Americans go wild for math explanations, because they make us feel smart. These shows and books have million of viewers and readers.

numberjunkies.ca

“Science and technology are all around us, and we want it demystified” (307). We want the “aha” from the numbers — from the analysis and interpretation that helps make sense of the world, that gives us ideas on how the world works.

Apply it to learning. Incorporate unexpected analytics into your learning. Put in researched, relevant tidbits on how people learn, how your organization learns. How they compare others in the industry, perhaps.

Would they be interested to know that the non-profit sector has grown 2.5%, outstripping both business (1.8%) and government (1.6%), between 1970 and 2001? That in 2001, 6 million worked in non-profit, in 2001 that figure was 12.5 million?

Incorporating math and science into instruction gets people’s attention.

…I can’t resist one more…

Yes, yes — just one more! Is short attention span a MYTH?

• The average length of a top-ten best-selling book has increased from 385 page in 1995 to 485 pages in  2005 (think of all those book clubs!)
• 1/2 million people run marathons, triathlons and other long-attention sports
• 50 million Americans do cross-word puzzles
• The 30-min infomerical is a 90 billion/year industry (oh yeah, Ron Popeil rules!)

Just think about that. Are our attention spans really getting shorter?

If you’re interested in my annotated list of Microtrends, please send me an email (ranihgill -at- gmail) or leave a comment.

• In extremely complex situations checklists can solve many problems
• The working world is deep expertise in based in teams
• The volume of knowledge exceeds what one expert can provide
• Don’t turn complex situations into cookbooks, focus in on crucial items
• Create pause points where you can check in
• Allow people to create scripts to follow and share, not recipes
• Have people think about ways things go wrong, and are they prepared for them
• In fields where we think expertise and experience are enough, running up against limits of what we can do (example of lawyers) large volumes of knowledge and we’re making basic mistakes
• We are fundamentally fallible and make mistakes
• In situations of complexity, understand where power should lie – it’s not command and control
• In situations of complexity (i.e., Hurricane Katrina) give power to the peripheries and focus on communication from peripheries to HQ and out again to quickly spread good protocols and ideas (example of Walmart in Katrina)
• Example of VCs and how they make their decisions – different styles of decision making – gut decisions vs. analytical VCs (used checklists). Checklists VCs have higher success rate.
• Goes against our idea of what expertise is suppose to be.

Can’t wait to get it so I can review it in fuller detail.

There are many older pieces still to add, and many new ones running around in my head. But hey, check it out and I welcome your feedback.

Personas - courtesy galiciaCAD.com

Having been on the job market for several months now, I’ve noticed that Captivate and Articulate are required for almost every e-learning or instructional design position that I see posted. Having used Captivate, and having seen Articulate being used – I now understand why so many consider e-learning boring. These two software tools are designed to rapidly convert PowerPoint presentations into e-Learning. They also make it easy to tack a quiz onto the end of the learning. The metaphor behind the software design is “book”, is “page-turner”. The result is boring e-Learning.

Now hold on, am I just blaming the tools — especially since I haven’t really used Articulate? Am I limited by my own vision of what these tools are capable of? Possibly. Am I asking too much of e-Learning designers? Maybe. It is hard to create engaging e-Learning. Just look at my own portfolio — can’t say the learning is *that* engaging.

Research, Think, Write, Design

So here I come to my tag-line: research, write, think, design. Will this make learning more engaging? Perhaps, perhaps not. But it might make it more relevant.

• Research the business outcome. Why are you creating this learning course/widget/thing? What business outcomes are you trying to effect? What behaviors are you trying to change? What do you want people to do?!? Not just “We want people to learn this new financial software” — but “We want people to increase their efficiency and accuracy in expense reporting (or budget planning or budget management)”. This leads the question: “Well, heck, what are they doing now? Who are THEY?”
• Research the learners. Are they novices? experts? do they have different roles/needs? can you create personas from these needs? Is it possible to actually collect data on them? How technically savvy are they? How do they get their information? How do they interact with their LMS? Do they interact with the LMS? Examples of defining personas and how to use personas can be found on the Cooper Journal website. One can think of personas as meaningful customer segmentation made real by colorful descriptions — see the description of how Best Buy uses personas in designing their stores and interacting with their customers in my review of The Deciding Factor.
• Think about the research – well, can we just call this analysis? Sure, analyze you data. Concept. Examine the correlations. What can we learn from these data patterns, without making correlation errors. Clearly this is one of the areas that I need to address, in addition to designing better research.
• Write about it – does it seem redundant to write about your research and analysis? I think not. The process of writing and having to explain your research analysis is key to communication and deepening the understanding. The writing process forces the assumptions to the surface. It exposes the flaws in your argument. Writing is also key to the design process.
• Design – for me this is where you begin to explore methodologies, tools, techniques. This is where you think about learning outcomes, the learning experience. I also strongly believe that the basis of good learning design is good writing — understanding the subject matter, finding good examples, writing good scripts. The quality of the discourse matters. The writing underlying the learning design is often where it all falls apart — maybe the writer can’t imagine the learner persona. Maybe they do not fully understand the subject matter or business outcome. Good research and analysis don’t always lead to good design, but directs the design, channels the creative energies.

Yes, then we have development, where we use whatever toolset (choosing of which is part of the design process) or perhaps organizational constraints dictate what tools to use. Then the implementation, then the evaluation. Well, the evaluation should actually be a part of the research phase — if we know the business outcome, how will we know when we got there? Define success at the beginning and figure out how to effectively measure it.

For example, “We want people to increase their efficiency and accuracy in expense reporting (or budget planning or budget management)” — well there may be measurements in time required to do X, or accuracy in X (how many times to redo), or how many people to do X, what is the cost of doing X — then see if these metrics change after/during the learning. Of course, this assumes these metrics were collected in the first place for you to measure change against.

A role that incorporates this level of thinking, research, design would be ideal. Writing this down helps.

My question – Are Training & Development departments  thinking this way? Are organizations thinking this way? Is it that people just “don’t have time!” to do this level of research? You know, I don’t think so. I think much of the information is there, easy to get, is we ask the right questions. User-experience designers are already doing this. Product Management is already doing this. Let’s do it internally and not just for clients/customers. This is low-hanging fruit – but a big mental adjustment.

Predication and plans for 2010

In response to the ASTD big question this month – I offer the following

Predictions:

• Design thinking will be the buzz word for 2010. To be honest, I’m still figuring out what it means for learning. I think this all started with Tom Kelly’s IDEO: Art of Innovation book back in 2005 (see my review of this book) and continues with Tim Brown’s Change by Design. On IDEO’s blog, design thinking is described by 3 ideas: Inspiration, Iteration and Change
• Analytics will rule. I think the learning profession, especially online learning folks, will have to collect more specific data on how people are using the learning, finding patterns in the data to describe different “types” of learners. Again, still figuring this one out. (See post on analytics book review.)

Challenges:

• Finding new metaphors for learning. The metaphors of the book, and of the the classroom/course still dominate learning. What are the new metaphors? How do we move beyond these old metaphors? I think the big tool sets out there (Captivate, Articulate) push us towards these metaphors. Will there be new tools that move us in a different direction?
• Aging workforce. We’ve heard much about Gen Y. However, I think we are also dealing with an aging workforce. I need to research more stats.

Plans:

• Get work, get paid. Let there be work! Looking forward to being more fully employed in 2010, whether that be employment or more contracts: 2009 was not the best year to graduate :-}
• Design more games. Been focussed so much on the employment thing, forgot to do the thing I really wanted to explore.
• Learn more about:
  • Design thinking
  • Analytics
    
  • Metaphors for learning
  • Workforce statistics
  • Tools that break the mold(s)

Hmmm… I see many blog posts coming out of this. Happy 2010 everyone – may it be filled with blue skies and new possibilities!

I’ve recently decided to deepen my understanding of analytics, in part to think about my website and how to better promote it, and secondarily to better understand this new way of thinking about business decisions. So I thought I’d start with this book and a broad introduction to this field.

The Deciding Factor is just that — a broad introduction written for executives by two guys from the Fair Issac corporation (the group that invented the credit score.) The essential gist of this book is that we can use analysis of the tons of data collected about customers/consumers to better understand how to not just make, but to automate decisions. If you’ve ever read the book The Numerati by Stephen Baker, it is the more detailed dive into the new world of data mining and decision making that is governing many business and political decisions.

Quoting Lowell Bryan, managing partner at McKinsey & Gary Hamel author of The Future of Management, the authors bring to our attention that “increasingly the work of managers won’t be done by managers. Instead it will be pushed out to the periphery. It will be embedded in systems.”

The greatest benefit will be seen in retail operations (credit cards, banks, retail stores) — where there is a lot of data on consumer behavior, and where the primary business decisions are being made on the front-lines by retail employees or call-center folks. One of the most interesting examples the authors give is about Best Buy and how they used analytics to better understand the types of customers coming into the store, created personas for each of these behavior types: Barry, the affluent techy enthusiast; “Jill”, the busy suburban mom; “Ray” the price-conscious family man; “”Buzz”, the young gadget fiend. Best Buy then rearranged the layout of the some of its stores to better serve these types. In addition, they trained their front-line employees to ask life-style questions to uncover the needs of each of these types (“how are you going to use this product?”, “Is it for you or someone else?”.)

The three essential components of using analytics is:

1. Developing a Rules-Based System – automating high-volume operations decisions to make the decisions more consistent and increase control (such creating and understanding personas, and creating a set of questions to ask the types.)
2. Using Predictive Analytics Models – creating decision models and frameworks to mathematically evaluate the trade-offs among conflicting objectives then execute decisions; using adaptive control (the process of making the best possible decision to control a complex system based on current knowledge and learn more about how the system behaves.)
3. Connecting Decisions Across Multiple Dimensions - also known in part as cross-selling.

The use of both descriptive analytics – the process of finding relationships/patterns among data (i.e. figuring out the personas as described in the Best Buy example); and of predticive analytics – using what you do know to make informed decisions aobut what you don’t know to predict what might happen in the future – it expresses the future in terms of odds and probabilities.

The descriptions of how to make business decisions using analytics sounds similar to the way one imagines business decisions are currently made. However, there is a difference of degree and of control. In expert-driven decision making, one uses the experts and their experience. In data-informed decision-making, the experts interpret the information into a report and it informs the decisions. In data-guided, a predictive model replaces the unproven assumptions with objective information, and the model provides advisory decisions (methinks this is what happened in the investment banks). Finally in data-driven decision making, the running of analytic models and execution of decision are completely automated. The control is in the rules created to describe the system, whether that be a bank, a electronic store, or credit card business. The problems come in when the system is described incompletely and something unexpected happens.

The gist of this book is that decisions based on analytics are the way of the future. Decisions on how much credit-card increase to give people, whether to approve them for a loan, or what kind of other products can be sold to them are all automated. The rules are set by the business and math people, who interpret the data and create rules based on this interpretation. This feels very much like game-design.

To effectively use analytics you need organizations that have tons of data, and that collect the right kind of data. From this you can derive patterns and understand how to better make decisions, make suggestions based on these analytics. But you have to have good data, and thoughtful people making the rules, otherwise you may end up creating a system that controls you, rather than informs you. It’s a new way of thinking of understanding the world.

This book is a basic introduction to this world — at this point, I feel I need more in-depth thoughtful exploration of how it works best in the web world. Onto the next read.