Dan Pink, on learning and motivation from his book, Drive:

"Human beings have an innate drive to be autonomous, self-determined and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives."

"The opposite of autonomy is control. And since they sit at different poles of the behavioral compass, they point us to different destinations. Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement."

"It means resisting the attempt to control people - and instead doing everything we can to reawaken their deep sense of autonomy. A sense of autonomy has a powerful effect on individual performance and attitude. According to a cluster of recent behavioural studies, autonomous motivation promotes greater conceptual understand, better grades, enhanced persistence at school and in sporting activities, higher productivity, less burnout and greater levels of psychological well-being."

[Jane Hart] Organizations - and L&D departments in particular - need to relinquish control and support learner/employee autonomy. Social Learning requires a culture of trust in employees that differs from the "teacher/student" model of planning and controlling their every move.

Mark Oehlert, from the Defense Acquisition University makes the point:

“The US Airforce will give a pilot a $30m aircraft full of deadly tools – so why not trust them with Facebook at work?”

4 Common LMS Implementation Challenges:
(I've learned a few lessons - the hard way - from implementing multiple LMS solutions...)

Issue #1: Failing to visualize, plan and document for leadership the expected ROI, Operations Impact Success Metrics with all constituent groups.

• Recommendation: Collaborate with business units to define requirements and desired outcomes, first. Map the implementation process as well as a plan that includes agreed metrics and milestones for measuring success (Day One, Month One, Year One, etc) for each business unit. Communicate this plan to the LMS vendor as well.
  

Issue #2: Most internal team members have other duties to perform, and organizations usually underestimate the amount of resources and time required for a successful IT launch, including people dedicated to: Project Management, LMS Management, IT Support, Communication, Visual Design and User Support before, during and after enrollment.

• Recommendation: Make sure the project has an executive champion, a person that has communicated a vision for learning within each unit. Identify additional resources beyond the internal team that can handle the planned - as well as any unplanned - duties and activities that may arise during implementation.

Issue #3: The LMS will require changes in behavior, tasks, and job requirements.

• Recommendation: Budget time to work closely with all traditional instructors, instructional designers and support team members so they are comfortable with all aspects of the system and how they can best use it. Make sure the plan anticipates and includes organizational responses to push-back and a plan for change management, including updated job descriptions for everyone who will rely on the system for information or work.

Issue #4: There is often a desire to deliver the system everywhere to every employee, at once. The resulting support load becomes exponential and is often unmanageable with limited resources.

• Recommendation: Use a department-by-department implementation starting where the system will most most welcome and successful. Let successful users spread the word and invite them to act as mentors. Share successes through internal communications and allow space to address any concerns or misunderstanding.

Authenticity

The solution to your next, big challenge might not be found within your organization, but within your community.

That's where we learn how a mother creates a healthy menu on limited funds, or a farmer makes more efficient use of solar cells, or a teenager designs a better shoe...

Our challenge? Finding those people. Defining the actions that make them different. Sharing the learning. Measuring the impact.

Leadership Lessons: Tips to remember when things go wrong

some thoughts on lessons I have learned, prompted by an article from Bnet.com

1. Relax, you can't control other people’s actions. Your job is to define a vision and expectations and provide the resources to help people achieve goals. Great leaders understand the rule of equifinality (multiple paths - including small failures - can lead to the desired outcome).
2. Empathize without blaming everyone involved: show empathy for those who got things wrong, those who suffered as a result, and for yourself; that’s a leadership quality.
3. Learn from the experience; share the lessons you learn from your failures. Solicit team input on what could have done to prevent it. Record the lessons: adjust policies, processes and procedures to reflect the learning.
4. Inspire confidence in your team by allowing these opportunities for them to succeed or fail on their own, and then help get them back on course. Re-energizing the team is your next step.

More tips on social learning through collaboration

...from a white paper released today. Although written at an enterprise level, the tips can be extrapolated for learning and talent development.

Here are some highlights and factoids I took away (and will begin to digest) and some you may find useful:

• Roughly 53% of the 79 million adult women in the United States who use the Internet participate in social media

• According to Forrester Research, social media ad spending will grow from $716 million this year to more than $3.1 billion in 2014

• Organizations should view social media activity as a powerful enabler that provides opportunities for developing new relationships and gaining competitive advantage

• Get all stakeholders (SMEs, customers, not just trainers) involved in blogging or participating on the corporate social networks, according to their specific passions

• Partner with highly active customers to create and contribute to better learning and services (Microsoft has similar forums where the most active participants who help the most people become “MVPs” and earn trips to Redmond for recognition and rewards)

• Use ad hoc conferences to connect directly and immediately on an issue of mutual interest (best practices, etc.) or share any "positive deviance" that might help the group.

• Tie Webinars to real-time research, seeking answers from participants that address meaningful challenges, “Eight Successful Strategies for Retaining Business Travel Clients"

• Get customers involved in the online discussion through a special event (one that is educational, motivational, and entertaining)

A Rising Demand for Emerging Leaders

The IBM Global Human Capital study surveyed over 400 companies in 40 countries across North America, Asia and Europe. The findings? A lack of focus on leadership development means companies are increasingly unable to plan for the skills needed to remain competitive.

As the baby boom leadership retires, many companies will discover a generation’s worth of experience and talent has walked out the door, and remaining emerging leaders ill-equipped to fill the void.

In the study, the transfer of experience and information from one generation to the next is still relatively isolated by department and geography. Within traditional organizations, there is also a reluctance to advertise individuals as expert talent or allow them to act as internal experts. This occurs despite the fact that organizations first recruit a person based upon their unique talents, abilities and experiences.

However, once inside the organization, many traditional leaders tend to ignore or downplay a person’s experiences – the very reasons they were hired!

Collaboration between leaders, departments and employees is critical for future organizational success. Despite the prevalence of technology that can easily enable this type of sharing, functional silos, misaligned performance measures and work constraints inhibit the practice.

Without effective collaboration, an organization’s ability to identify rising stars, track and reward service champions and chances for improving operational effectiveness are severely limited.

Our solution? Structure leadership development programs to clearly define the challenges emerging leaders are meant to solve (in partnership with customers and employees), let them work on these challenges soon after being hired, and measure that employee’s ability to perform and make decisions, all while providing significant incentives that reward the right behavior.

Characters, Challenges and Cliff-hangers: What Toy Story 3 can teach us about learning

Did you see the movie? I double-dog dare you to tell everyone you did not get a lump in your throat as Andy prepared to leave home, or when the toys faced an uncertain future near the end. Those moments are examples of great storytelling.

Creative writing is a major part of great storytelling, like peas and carrots, hands and gloves. Think about the last training material you created.

Do you enjoy reading it? Did it tell a good story? Does it move you, or change the way you feel about a particular topic? Would you want to sit through it again – just for fun?

People respond to challenges with a combination of emotion, physical responses, and intellectual capacity. Yet most courses often only appeal to our cognitive, rational side. That’s a big mistake many corporations make. (shhh… “emotional” sounds so…“unprofessional"!)

Wrong! If you truly want to create more meaningful learning, you need to appeal to your audience’s fundamental humanity: their emotions.

By creating characters, challenges and cliff-hangers that spark a true emotional response, you keep them focused on opportunities coming from within the learning, and not the sports updates on their Blackberry.

Advertisers, movie producers, and great sales people learned years ago that the best way to engage the brain is through the heart. Ditto learning and employee development.

6 Ways to Improve the Learning Experience, Today

1. Get Married!

You've spent a lot of time courting each other, get married already! The faster new-hires connect knowledge to performance, the faster they learn how to do things the “right” way. Give them a real assignment and let them spend their orientation (honeymoon) phase asking intelligent questions that will really help them. Place them in charge of a new project (with oversight) and let them apply that talent you so coveted on their resume. A daily process of offering content along with application helps employees understand why, when and how their performance is meaningful to you, the organization and customers.

2. Turn Off The Firehose

A highly linear delivery of topics, with a progressive order of learning objectives, is not always the most effective method for creating a compelling learning experience. A more situation-based, organic (but still logical) delivery of content, tools, and challenges can make the experience much more engaging.

3. Challenge Their Creativity

These new hires want to shine. Eager and engaged, they are waiting to tackle a meaningful challenge. Warning students in advance of every potential problem or tough section eliminates a more powerful learning experience. If done correctly, challenging learning moments can make learning more engaging and much more memorable.

4. Let Customers Teach

Use social media to introduce user-generated scenarios. Offer challenges (solving puzzles is inherently pleasurable for the brain) and let students determine the best resources available to solve them.

5. Fill The Gaps (not time)

Your learners must face challenges that are continually just beyond their skill and knowledge level, but which they believe they have the tools (their own ability, combined with the resources and tools) needed to keep acquiring new levels of skill and knowledge. Good, dynamic assessments (like coaching) can offer “just-in-time” support for any person, at any skill level.

6. Learning Happens Everywhere

You can find learning spaces at any number of customer touch points. You control some private spaces, like your office, the training center, the phone system, the lobby or your website. You are not in control of public spaces, such as parking lots, grocery stores, bars, Facebook, customer blogs, Twitter, and other social venues that don’t ask for your permission. Learning can occur in a parking lot or a website, yet he objective is the same: connect the learner to the learning to the performance that creates a better experience. You job is to learn how to use public spaces to help your employees learn.

Flyer, Driver, Walker: what kind of leadership journey are you on?

It's summer, and I found myself thinking about life and leadership in terms of travel, along with some remarks I have heard over the years.

Flyers: Leading by Proxy

“We have seagull leadership – they fly into town, shit on our heads, then fly away.”

VP of market operations

Many people own stock. I do too. Every now and then, shareholders get a notice of an election or vote to be held, along with an invitation to send in a vote, by proxy. In this situation, my proxy stands in as my representative voice, my surrogate, the fake Russ.

Leadership by proxy isn't as helpful. It's fake leadership. It doesn't build the long-term health of the organization or its community, and besides, nobody likes pearls of wisdom dropped on their heads.

These flyers demonstrate very little commitment to community, the customer or employee experience. They fly into a meeting, then fly out, confident they have grasped the situation and set things straight, while a helicopter staff pops in every morning to deliver information and receive updates. Send them back to their home by the beach.

Riders: Leading by Observation

“Our CEO's understanding of the community? About as deep as the tread on his Lexus' tires.”

Manager, field sales

A majority of us experience life as a sequence of trips: we drive to the store, we drive to the office, we drive to our kid's school. Usually, we're only slightly aware of the communities we pass through to get to our destination. But how much can we really learn about customers when we zoom past their houses at 75 mph?

This type of leadership is mixed, at best. Yes, they see some community challenges firsthand, but they are still passengers: they come close to the community experience but they never fully engage in it. It's the average leadership experience. However, I think truly great leaders choose to walk instead…

Walkers: Leading by Experience

"Often I walked without any staff or supporters. As a result, I was able to see firsthand Florida's natural beauty, as well as its people and their challenges."

Lawton Chiles

In 1970, Lawton Chiles decided to run for a seat in the United States Senate. At the time, he was largely unknown outside his district, so he embarked on a 1,003-mile, 91-day walk across Florida, from Pensacola to Key West. He even worked at local businesses as he traveled. It made him a local legend and earned him the nickname "Walkin' Lawton".

I think of a “walker” as the kind of leader who remains close to their community, customers and employees. For them, developing, sustaining and improving the service experience is a daily discipline. Walkers do more than walk a mile in the customer’s shoes, they stand beside their customers and help deliver the experience, as any partner would.

Fly, drive or walk?

Flying around seems energetic and seductive, yet it disconnects leaders from their community.

Ray Bradbury once described the great majority of us as seeing life in a "blur", a general wash of images and color as we speed by. Yet driving through a community like a tourist just seems too passive. Not really the definition of leadership, is it?

I admire walkers like Lawton Chiles, leaders who take the time to lead through daily contact, a step-by-step journey that shapes them and the people they are trying to lead.

Every Customer Interaction is A Learning Moment

It’s easy to forget that education is part of every sale. From planning a dream vacation to selecting a cardiologist, every consumer learns about your products or services before, during and after the sale.

Some companies sell items that require education on the spot, such as a one-day only discount, or certain ingredient or a unique process that makes the service experience unique. These are all learning moments, and the best companies never forget that fact.

The most successful organizations weave learning moments into every product or service. Disney takes an ordinary roller coaster and, with excellent design, signage, staging and sensory cues, elevates the ride into an exceptional experience. You learn to expect that level of entertainment from the Disney brand. Apple turns ordinary components (a hard drive, a LCD screen, a microprocessor, etc.) and elevates the final product from a mere commodity into a lifestyle statement. You learn to expect well-designed products that work intuitively. Experiencing their brand of service is a learning moment for every visitor or customer.

Success depends upon the customer’s ability to understand and recognize elements that differentiate companies and make their services better than the competition's. Every point of contact is simultaneously an opportunity to educate the consumer, while the consumer educates your organization.

We measure service “performance” for all of our clients. This relatively simple audit tells us how well a client has defined the service experience, observes customer interactions, and learns from customer interaction and employee experiences.

We also "eat our own dogfood" by reviewing our services. Our website has been tested extensively and...our users have challenges with the home page. It's too busy, too many touchpoints, too confusing and not enough differentiation. Although our intention was to create a highly interactive landing page, the final result is to muddy.

Perhaps when you read this, the website will be cleaned up. Hopefully you will see a home page that is warm, engaging, yet easy to understand - that is our service goal. Our customer interactions are a continuous learning moment for us too.

10 Questions to Ask Your Learners

Creating a great learning experience begins with a systems approach to course design - looking for ways to structure the total learning experience (before, during and after an interaction).

Ask your audience these basic questions to quickly spot some opportunities:

1. How did you hear about this training? What were your expectations?

2. In general, how do you feel about this course?

3. Were you able to demonstrate your skills before this class?

4. What else do you need to learn about ___?

5. Are there opportunities to learn (resources) outside our training curriculum that you would like to include?

6. How could we create more informal and social learning?

7. Would it improve your experience if we invited customers to assess your performance?

8. Can you see yourself having to address any of the scenarios or customer-driven situations we offered?

9. How could we create even more meaningful challenges for future students?

10. Do you think our leaders support the learning through their behavior?