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Learning about learning

ATD2015 Wrapup

5/22/2015

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Lessons from the Learner

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You know what hard work learning is the day after a conference ends when you go from highly jazzed to completely fizzled out.
I've just finished six days of intentional learning. From the time my feet hit the floor till I collapsed on my pillow, I was engaged in discovery about learning. I'm pooped! Most of that time I was in Orlando at the Association for Talent Development International Conference and Exposition learning with and from 10,000 people who work building learning for others. I've been at this for twenty years when I made the move from teaching to training. I've seen the name of what we do evolve over the years. Now we call it talent development. Whatever you call it, it's about designing learning to solve business problems.

I learned a ton over the last few days. Here's a recap of the highlights.

Solving Business Problems

Training is often viewed as a cost center in business because we don't generate revenue. However, if we do our job the right way, we become a valued business partner, enabling employees to do their job better and learn new skills. Foundational to that is linking the goals of what we do to the problems businesses need to solve.

When Instructional Design Met Performance CONSULTING

Jim Robinson & Dick Handshaw  Handout Link
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In 1997 when I was working at Bank Boston, my manager had me read Performance Consulting, a few years after it was published. I thought it was interesting, but didn't do much with it. It wasn't until I got involved with MASS ISPI and attended a workshop by Tina Teodorescu that I really understood what this concept was all about.  Since then, I've been doing a lot to connect the dots with the business need and teaching my students and staff to do likewise.

  • Key Takeaways
  • Focus more on the needs of the business as the foundation for learning
  • Leverage the principles of design thinking with SMEs to uncover needs
  • Connect with people. Conferences provide rich opportunities meet other learning junkies.
Performance Consulting is the process of uncovering business problems at the root of what is presented as a training need. It's about examining things systemically, to look for the causes of the problem, which may be related to coaching and feedback issues, process problems, or even a problematic environment. The key is that the business needs inform the performance needs the individuals must do. We uncover those needs through questioning. Dick Handshaw provides an excellent listing of questions on his website. Aligning our training to those uncovered needs ensures we solve the right problem that impacts business results.
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Dick Hanshaw elaborated on the role of instructional design to create the learning solution for the problem. One concept that he has that I've not seen in other models is the blueprint, where everything is laid out prior to production. There is great wisdom in this.
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Building Strategic Linkages: Map and Measure Your Learning Strategy

Ajay Pangarkar       Handout Link
In this workshop we also talked about meeting business goals but by looking at things strategically. We looked at how business maps things out:
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Then we looked at how this is measured, using a balanced scorecard approach:
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My takeaway from this session was to look for the metrics being used to measure in the business and see how we might leverage them in training, and to focus on more alignment of learning goals with business goals.

Innovating Learning Through Design Thinking Interview Techniques

Amanda Chavez and Katarzyna Siedlecki      Handout Link
Design Thinking has become pretty trendy in business. It's a way to bring about innovation by leveraging the principles of design, which basically is iterative problem solving. There's a lot of research coming out of Stanford about Design Thinking and they even have a 90 Minute Crash Course you can take to learn it. 
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Depending on the model, you'll get pictures like these to depict design thinking. The one on the top is the model used at Stanford, and the one on the bottom is the model used at Booz Allen Hamilton presented in the workshop. The principles are similar in the world of instructional design, but with design thinking the ideate process is a bit more fluid and creative. I loved the idea of doing this with the subject matter experts that I work with to toss around ideas to generate a better end product. In this workshop and a similar one I attended during the week, we used mindmapping, post-it notes, and brainstorming techniques as part of the problem definition, and solution generating process. I definitely want to experiment more with this.

If you want to know more, there's a great infographic at the Design Management Institute.

I came, I Learned, I presented.

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I was able to share some of my expertise with people in my session on Ubiquitous Learning: Leveraging the Strengths of Online Learning. Having done all of the development work I did for the college over the past five years, I've seen some things that work well, and that really don't in online learning, and was able to show some examples of things that I've used with great success. Online learning is everywhere, and we miss out on a great opportunity not to leverage it. I had several international folks come up to me after the session to inquire if I'd fly to their company to present my workshop. We shall see where that goes. For now, we continue to learn. I spent several hours this evening going through the handouts for the sessions I was unable to attend. That's one of the benefits of online learning and access: I was able to extend the learning another day, and through mediums like this blog, share ideas with others to continue to learn. I love that. Don't you?

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Unexpected Learning

5/18/2015

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Musings from ATD2015

I'm in Orlando at the Association for Talent Development International Conference and Exposition, fondly known in the industry as ATD ICE. This is my second year, and I'm still amazed by the mammoth size of this event. I forgot from last time that I should have prepared for the Boston Marathon prior to coming here. This place is HUGE and I'm convinced that I am walking several miles between the parking lot and between sessions. 

It's also an interesting thing to see the family gathering atmosphere that occurs here as people who have made connections over the years reconnect at the conference. There's lots of catching up, and I suspect that there are some job connections that come from this event as people build their PLN. One the flip side, if you come alone, things can be daunting and feel clique-ish. It's important to realize that things are not like that at all. Everyone is welcome and often invited. 

The discoveries so far have been rather unexpected.

MUSING One
GIRLFRIEND, Get Down Off Your PRIVILEGED High Horse

When I arrived in town I picked up my rental car and began to grumble about how uncomfortable it was and WHAT! It didn't have power windows and locks. It's a Kia Rio, and definitely NOT a car I'd ever buy for myself because the headrest pitches you toward the windshield and it's really hard to get comfortable.

I drove from the airport to the timeshare I'd rented for the week. RCI had a special promotion of an extra week of vacation for $249, so I cancelled my reservation at the Hyatt, right next to the convention center, and booked a week at the High Point World Resort. The pictures looked good, and the reviews were mainly five star. I'd always had wonderful resorts whenever we'd stayed at RCI places, so I had great expectation, especially after the resort we stayed at for Learning Solutions with its full service, incredible food, poolside restaurant by the enormous pools with multiple hot tubs and posh accommodations.

This place was a little different. My GPS sent me to the strip with all the cheap souvenir shops and down a tiny road to what looked like a pre-fab housing development of budget townhouses. The welcome center was two guys at a desk. One checked me in and the other handed me a stack of paperwork about the "amenities" which included a hot dog roast by the pool in the middle of the complex on Wednesday night.

I found my unit and walked into 1980 complete with the brown canvas couch, the VCR and the Formica furniture in the bedroom, complete with mirrored closet doors.

It looked clean anyway, so I settled where I met the lizard running around the walls of my living room. Oh boy. Could this get any worse? At least it wasn't a mouse. 

I posted something on the ATD Facebook page about the lizard and Michele Lawson suggested I give him a red feather and invite him for networking. So I named him Richard, after someone I'd met at dinner, and decided I could deal with him.

It's funny, how that little bit of perspective changed everything. Last night when I got back Richard was no where to be found, despite his very visible dashing presence the night before. I was kind of sad about that.

This morning I woke up and realized that this place would be luxurious if I were in India and decided that it's not so bad after all, even though the wi-fi is not working. I have a hot spot on my phone. What's the big deal? What was so annoying yesterday is not so much of a bother. I realized that I needed to get down off my high horse and be grateful for having a place that saved me a ton of money and a car that gets me to the conference safely. I have sneakers to wear to be comfortable in the marathon walk from the parking lot, and can walk off some of the calories from the fabulous meals we've been eating. So first lesson learned: In the moments of tiredness, annoyances are bigger than they really are. Get over it and put things in perspective.

MUSING TWO
UNexpected Conversations

I was invited to dinner gatherings by two people I'd never met before, and I'm so grateful to Michelle Lawson and Megan Torrance, who gathered together random groups of people to go to dinner. I ate at Margianno's Italian restaurant and Fogo de Chao Brazilian Steak Houses; both places I wouldn't have stumbled on. The food was great but the company was really fascinating.

I met Richard and Austin from Sage Media out in Denver. They do video, which was pretty interesting, but the conversation evolved to elements of film, which is something I know next to nothing about. It was really interesting piecing fragments of the conversation together with my little knowledge store in this area. I wonder how often that happens in our training classes? Definitely something to think about to make sure that I attach new concepts to something familiar.

On Sunday I had breakfast with Aaron Silvers, a long time Twitter friend of mine who is an expert in xAPI, and his friend Russell Duhon. It was interesting hearing the geek side of the process and the evolution from SCORM, something no one really understands, but we are expected to conform learning in our LMS to it. I wish my friend Jason Kramer would have been there. He'd have eaten that up. Perhaps another conference.

Musing Three
Learnings So Far

I've been focusing on instructional design at this conference. I attended a workshop on Design Thinking for Instructional Designers with Angel Green from Allen Interactions. She walked us through some exercises we could use with our SMEs, which generated an oh duh! moment for me: Leverage Design Thinking Principles with our SMEs. I'd recently taught the principles of Design Thinking to my team of IDs and never thought to have them use that with their SMEs.

After teaching my session, I went to a workshop with Dick Handshaw and Jim Robinson called When Instructional Design Meets Performance Management. I'm trained in both disciplines, but it was really nice to have a refresher from the people who were key influencers in practices we use today. I'd never thought about the importance of getting to the right SME to identify the business issue, and that often means escalating a level or two. I plan to share their slides with my team and work a little harder to dig out the business issue around the behavior problem or need we need to solve for. When training addresses and corrects a business issue, the business sees training as a valued partner. I returned to Dick's ID workshop today and was reminded yet again how important that is.

Today I attended Ken Blanchard's presentation on the new One Minute Manager. His original book is over 20 years old. Business has changed, but paying attention to employees has not. Connecting, praising and redirecting toward the goal go a long way in developing people. It's amazing to have been able to see the pioneers and leaders in our discipline in person. 

Reflection is important

I've been tweeting up a storm at this conference. It's been great meeting people, and sharing the nuggets that I've been discovering in workshops. I really appreciate having the handouts available and online so I can go back to them and add them to my notes. I'm not convinced I appreciate the long trek from one end of the building to another between workshops and from parking to the conference, but I have appreciated having quiet time to reflect like this.

I've learned a lot so far. How about you?
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    Jean Marrapodi

    Teacher by training, learner by design.

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