Thursday, May 21, 2015

Becoming a Better eLearning Designer: 4 Areas to Focus On #ATD2015

Yesterday, I had the honor of being interviewed for ATD TV as part of the International Conference & Expo that just wrapped up in Orlando this week.  Here I talk about the four pieces of eLearning pie you should eat if you want to be a well-rounded eLearning professional. These ideas all originated from conversations I've had over the years with my friend and mentor, Dr. Ellen Wagner of Sage Road Solutions.


Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Six Psychological Tricks to Increase Recall #ATD2015 @MindGym

These are my liveblogged notes from a concurrent session at ATD 2015, happening this week in Orlando, Florida. Forgive any typos or incoherencies.

Sebastian Bailey from Mind Gym "Six Psychological Tricks to Increase Recall"
1. How do you increase the quit rate of smokers? (let's take a look at habit change).

When you look at all literature on habit change you see these stages:
  • Persisting "I enjoy smoking"
  • Contemplating "Maybe I should give up."
  • Preparing "I'm definitely going to quite..."
  • Acting "I've quite. It's hard but i've quit."
  • Maintaining "I've not smoked for six months."
Positive deviance. Go look at the behaviors of people who have quit -- who are solving the problems?

At the persisting stage -- we perceive the cons of quitting smoking to be too many, while the pros of quitting are fewer. The shift to increase the pros we consider for quitting, we have to change the mindset at the persisting/contemplating stage.

At the persisting stage, the cons outweigh the pros. A key shift happens at the stage where people are contemplating. At the Maintain stage the pros outweigh the cons.

So how do you help? It's how you raise awareness. If we get engagement right, sustain will help.

How to apply this trick:
  • Think habit changes as much as learning and recognize the stages of change
  • Don't rush people from Persisting to Acting and expect much change
  • Encouraging belief in the value of change is key

2. People need to feel compelled to get involved.  

How can we harness positive stress? If we are too aroused, our performance drops; if we're not aroused at all; our performance suffers...(yeah, I know -- we laughed in the session. This is from a model developed in the early 1900s.)

When we send anxiety provoking messages, people's intentions goes up -- they think they will go get the shots that are recommended. But fear alone creates too much stress and people don't actually go to the get those shots. But when you build some fear AND give a map to the clinic, more people go and get their shots.

    How to apply this trick:
    • Schedule learning just before or after a challenging experience - what are you doing so your learners are entering the experience with some sense of anxiety...why they should care?
    • Sell the need
    • Make the call to action really explicit
    3. What are we more likely to recall?

    STORIES. Chip and Dan Heath study.  Stats vs. stories. Stories aid recall. We make emotional connections, more memorable. But do they help us change behavior?

    Save the Children did a study. Shared presentation of stats and charts, shared a personal story of a child who had a difficult life. Then they asked them, "Will you make a donation?" Which condition inspired more donations? Stats people gave on average $1.43 vs. for stories $2.38...Stories do have an impact on behavior.

    Why rhyme is sublime.

    How hard you're making me think has an effect on how much I believe what you're sharing....

    How to apply this trick:
    • Don't just tell, use stories that sell
    • Stats and number will cause slumber
    • while rhymes will inspire devotion...
    4. Where and when matters.

    If you set a goal for yourself "I'll go update my resume" -- 20%of study participants who committed to update their resume did so.

    The second group set a different goal -- from a goal to an implementation intention: "I will update my resume on Wednesday at 10:00" -- 80% of study participants followed through.

    So how do you structure an implementation intention?

    If-then statements are more effective: "I'll do as many math problems as I can on Wednesday at 9:00" is not as effective as ''If it's wednesday at 9 am, I will do as many math puzzles as possible." There's less deviation when we use if-then statements..

    Don't make me think too hard. The if-then statement creates a situational cue. So you have to think less.

    Social support creates accountability.

    How to apply this trick:
      • Use implementation intentions to drive transfer
      • Get people to write it down
      • Get people to tell others about their commitment

      5. How do you get drivers to notice bicyclists?

      It's easy to miss something you're not paying attention to.  People only see what they look out for. Situational attention.

      We need to be prompted and supported to look for the moments when we should apply learning.


      How to apply this trick:
      • Use cues and prompts in the real world to focus attention
      • Set specific missions built into the workflow
      • Develop the participants mindfulness as part of the experience
      6. What makes a psychology professor behave like a soccer hooligan?

      Why do we behave out of character? 

      Primed behavior experiment
      Ask trivial pursuit question -- 
      No prime
      Prime someone to be a professor -- ask them "If you were a professor how would you solve problems? (see a 15% increase in how well people do on the game)
      Prime them to be an assistant (see a 2% increase in how well people do over non-primed)

      Adopting the right mindset can have a huge difference in our performance.

      The way in which we get primed lets us hear something differently.


      How to apply this trick:
      • Use priming to increase the participants view of themselves as great learners
      • Develop tools to support participants in their problem solving
      • Prompt participants to adopt the right thinking frame for the problem at hand.
      Recap:
      1. Build belief in the early stages of change
      2. Create emotional arousal
      3. Use stories over facts/stats
      4. Use written, shared, implementation intentions
      5. Set specific missions built into the workflow
      6. Prime the right mindset by providing tools

      A methodology:
      • Engagement campaign
      • Some type of diagnostic (where you are now - this helps people see value)
      • Create a toolkit and scaffolding to create the right mindset.
      • Create 90 minute workouts  -- the power of social settings
      • Pledge -- this is a specific conversation about WHY transfer is hard. What are you going to do to beat all of your habits?
      • Mission
      • Distributed practice -- distribute your learning
      • Boosters
      • Toolkit

      Sugata Mitra,"The Future of Learning" #ATD2015 Keynote

      These are my liveblogged notes from the second keynote at ATD 2015, happening this week in Orlando, Florida. Forgive any typos or incoherencies.


      Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University, England and winner of the 2013 TED Prize. Known for the "hole in the wall" experiment.

      We are coming from a world -- the recent past -- where we did not have phones, computers, rapid transport. That was the world of thousands of years before the world of the last 100. How did that world operate? How did we develop people in that world? 

      We hard horses and buggies and we were driven by a driver. Then we had cars and we became the drivers. This was a big shift and enabled creative things to happen, like drunk driving.

      We needed to develop soldiers -- people who could take orders and could be replaced with each other. We needed to develop people who could sit and take direction, not ask questions (sitting at the desks), the Factory workers -- to stand at the same spot and do the same thing over and over again. We needed them to not be creative.

      How did we create these people? There was a machine that ran that world for us. The school. Its job was to produce those people.

      But the world has changed.

      "Schools enabled empires. They are now obsolete."

      All the tools we used to have -- slide rules, cameras, maps -- they went into the mobile phone.

      One day our grandchildren will ask us, "What is driving?"

      Not just things, even concepts, dematerialize.

      One day our grandchildren will ask us, "What does KNOWING mean?"

      That world is really close.

      What happens if you give access to children in the slums to a computer? The hole in the wall project. He created a do it yourself computer in a concrete box 3 feet off the ground. People hadn't really seen computers before. "What is that?" And he didn't say "that's a computer". He said, "I don't know." 8 hours later they were browsing and teaching each other how to browse. 

      There was NO teacher. The children taught themselves. People couldn't believe this. 

      "There's something inside there that thinks!"

      The results -- unsupervised children, when given access to a computer and the internet can go in 9 months to the same level as the average office secretary in the west.

      He says, "I'm glad trainers are laughing and clapping at that." 

      He used to teach people how to use computers. 

      The children had discovered a search engine -- their homework was perfect. They were quoting Harvard Business Review in their assignments.

      This is not learning, he thought. It took him a decade to understand he was wrong. This was the first attempt by the passengers to drive the car.

      Children weren't understood because their accents were so strong. He brought a computer there and installed a speech to text program. They couldn't be understood. So he said, "make it understand you." "How?" the asked. "I don't know", he said. (HIs pedagogical method ;) 

      The children figured it out. They downloaded an Oxford Dictionary with a speech component. They typed in a word, listened, and practiced until the speech program understood. The learner had developed the pedagogical method. This is not what he would have thought of.

      "Groups of children, using The Internet, can learn anything by themselves."

      The method of the grandmother. Stand behind them. Say "wow, that's fantastic. How did you do that? Where did you get that from? When I was a child, I couldn't do anything like that."

      The children respond with "Oh, you're stupid -- this is easy. Let me show you."

      It's a method very different from the parent or the teacher. The grandmother's method using admiration as the driving force to start each learning cycle.

      And it worked.

      So now he has created the granny cloud. British grandmothers with webcams who get beamed into remote places. They don't teach, they just admire.

      "The presence of a friendly mediator can improve self-organized learning."

      Self Organized Learning environment: SOLE
      Broadband + collaboration + encouragement/admiration

      It works, and results improve.

      But we have one problem: assessment. The government assessment program assumes you will NOT use any assistance of any kind. No calculators. No Internet. This came from a time when you could not carry your library on your back.

      100 years ago an office looked like rows of clerks, following instructions. This is what an exam hall looks like...Those employers are dead. Why are we preparing our children for that world?

      The office today looks more like the hole in the wall -- people around a computer. Shouldn't the examination look more like that? That's the world where our children will be working.

      "Use your head. Use your computer. Talk to each other."

      We have to unschool people.

      "Allowing the Internet into the examination hall will change the entire system."

      The questions will need to be different. The curriculum will need to be different.

      Take the hole in the wall, take the granny cloud, take the SOLE -- put it all together and you get the School in the Cloud. With his TED Prize money, he created 7 of these. Over a 3 year period, where did the children take themselves? Today they are 1.5 years into it.  The classroom looks like a business class lounge for children. Computers and places to sit together. On the wall, an Xbox.

      The teacher had to be more interesting than the Xbox. You drive the system with a question. "Why don't our teeth grow back a second time?" - 40 minutes later the kids come back with a lot of amazing information about gum health.


      "It's not about making learning happen. It's about letting it happen."

      Your next billion they are going to be explorers, hunter gatherers. They can carry the entire body of knowledge in their pockets. That's what we need to prepare for.

      The edge of chaos. Emergence. 

      A completely organized systems is too much; chaos is too much. But if you bring them together -- nature's way is to operate on the edge of chaos.

      "Learning can emerge as spontaneous order at the edge of chaos."

      Your talent will come from the edge of chaos.

      What's next in the world where what you teach today becomes obsolete tomorrow? 

      Knowing is NOT the most important thing. To be able to FIND OUT is more important than knowing.

      Skill education has changed completely. Students watch YouTube to learn how to erect a scaffold. A day later they are up two floors on their scaffold. 

      We have to prepare the workplace to drive the car.

      At the edge of chaos, you can't predict where it will go. But it always goes somewhere.


      Monday, May 18, 2015

      Opening Keynote: Andrea Jung "Leading a Global Business" #ATD2015

      These are my liveblogged notes from the opening keynote at ATD 2015, happening this week in Orlando, Florida. Andrea Jung is the Chair of the Board and former CEO of Avon -- a truly global company.

      We need to encourage the next generation of leaders to step up.

      Her story with Avon -- she joined the company 20 years ago. It was started in 1886! The owner sold perfume with his encyclopedias...no one wanted the books, but they did want to buy the perfume. He started a company that stood for female empowerment -- he hired women to sell outside of their homes. They were given the right to own and run their own businesses -- 35 years before they were given the right to vote.

      40,000 employees globally. 6 million Avon reps globally -- in Brazil there were 1.2 million reps! Not employees, but independent contractors. How does Avon motivate them and inspire them?

      Vision and Values must be a global language.

      They must be clear, simple, and globally embraceable. Avon's founding vision was pretty clear. "The company for women." -- 1998 they simplified their mission and vision. Four simple words - translatable and understood. To create a unifying language.

      In any Avon conference room, you see this tagline. They had a song that was translated into 15 languages. A source of global unity and global pride.

      Have a clear set of values that everyone lives by. Trust, respect, belief, humility, integrity. Five leadership values that every one every where was expected to live by.

      Needed to set that tone right from the top. In every new employee training session, in every employee  rally -- every single leader was expected to teach and share the vision and those five values.

      It's all about influence.

      Leadership is ALWAYS about the people. Understanding what motivates them; how to influence them; how to inspire them.

      Influence is very different than power. Power = I'm your boss, do what I say. Influence = very different. The difference between managing and leading.

      The emphasis on developing people and communicating with people.

      Technology is an equalizer.

      Key to employee motivation is COMMUNICATION. "Hypercommunication." Relentless sharing of the message. In the good times and the tough.

      Authentic leadership doesn't shy away from the tough discussions. She traveled globally to talk with people face-to-face -- rather than using technology to communicate -- when they restructured the company.

      Reinvention is the key.

      What has made you successful to-date, may not be what keeps you successful going forward. CHANGE. You may need to fix the roof when the sun is shining. Have a constant turnaround mentality, even when business is thriving. Every cycle requires reinvention -- and these cycles get faster and faster these days.

      You need to commit to personal reinvention. Never get complacent. Keep looking at your org with fresh eyes.

      Change is constant.

      Go home on a Friday evening. Come back on Monday as if it's a brand new job.  Reinvention comes with a big dose of humility.

      The boldest moves come from a commitment to constant reinvention.

      Never stop innovating.

      Innovation is a global equalizer. (She's on the board of Apple, Mercedes, GE (?) )

      Innovation isn't always about product. It's about people, processes.

      Talent Development is the number one, two and three priority. Talent Development starts at the top.  The CEO and the leaders - this is their job. The CEO is the CTO - chief talent officer.

      Technology is an enabler. But there are even more disruptive things coming.

      Women are the fastest growing emerging market.

      It's not a country, it's women.

      Women as entrepreneurs, customers.  There is now way to win at a global level without including women as part of leadership.

      US Stats: women are 51% of the population, 60% undergraduate degrees, 48% medical degrees. 59% of the college educated workforce are women. They hold 52% of the professional jobs.

      But women lag in leadership roles.

      When she became the CEO in 1999 there were only 3 female CEOs in fortune 1,000s - that rounded down to 0%. Today it's 15%. The glass ceiling has not shattered, but there are big cracks.

      Equal representation is important. It's about balanced collaboration. A board of all women is not what we're going for.

      Women who are qualified to be leaders of large corporations and governments -- when you look down to entrepreneurship...women who own small businesses are growing fast.

      The more women leaders you have, the more women you employ, the more they pay the women. They give better health care.

      Do good. It's as important as doing well.

      (Jim Collins, Good to Great) -- it's impossible to have a great life without meaning.

      Contributing to great social good is hallmark of future leaders and future success.


      Personal lessons she learned along the way:


      • It's about purpose, not power.
      • Follow your compass, not your clock -- make those big decisions about your life from your heart and not your head (she was passed over for Avon CEO -- within two weeks was offered two other CEO jobs. But she stayed because she loved Avon. Two years later, she became Avon CEO. It was about purpose, not power).
      • Persevere. Never give up. "Bloom where you're planted." You will learn as much from a job you don't like or a boss that you hate...
      • Fail forward. You are going to make mistakes. Make the same mistake twice, big problem. Make the mistake and learn from it? Some of the biggest mistakes yield the greatest successes.
      • Life is not always fair. The concept of being a victim is a non-starter. Progress is slow for women and it's not always fair. Find the solution. Don't be a victim.
      • Balance is possible, but not on the same day ;) She was a CEO -- single mom, raising two children. Each of us has a way to figure it out. You can't have it all in one day, but over time you can. There were days the job lost; there were days the kids lost. On the day of the game, I did not feel guilty about missing the meeting. On the day of the meeting, I did not feel guilty about missing the game. You can have it all, but not on the same day.
      • Pay it forward. In life, the choices you make are critical. It's what you choose and what you choose NOT to do that you will be remembered for. She's left Avon -- she's focused now on micro-finance and poverty alleviation for women. Grameen give out 1,000 loans a day -- average loan is $2,000 -- these women ARE paying it back. (Grameen America)

      Leadership -- it's always about the WHO and not the WHAT.

      Tomorrow's leadership generation has to drive sustainable solutions for the future -- it's possible, through people.






      Wednesday, May 13, 2015

      Make Blended Learning Work for Onboarding [WEBINAR]

      Another short and sharp Kineo webinar  -- the third in our blended series.  Join me and Chip Clearly on Thursday, May 14 at 2:00 eastern for 30 minutes of  examples and insights to inspire you to design better onboarding programs for your organization.

      Registration and more info available on the Kineo Events Page.