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The PDG white paper, The Mobile Learning rEvolution, gives an overview of how the use of mobile devices is slowly changing how we learn. Here’s a selection from the white paper.

Mobile devices have become so common that they are part of our learning lexicon whether we like it or not. “Mobile Learning” is a misnomer, as learning style is not unique to a device. However, people have demonstrated clear ways they prefer to use their mobile devices and we would do well to note that and focus our learning design. Mobile devices have unique attributes, or “affordances,” which allow us to do things on mobile devices that would be difficult to do through other methods.

The Mainstreaming of Mobile

A lot of organizations are talking about creating Mobile Learning Strategies. And while innovation is to be applauded, these organizations are really making it more difficult on themselves than they need to. The advent of the iPad and the smartphone haven’t changed the way people learn; they’ve provided new ways to distribute and consume learning.

That’s not to say that people’s expectations for how they learn and how they access information haven’t changed, however. As the smartphone and tablet become parts of everyday life, our expectations have changed.

We tend to consume information:

• Close to the time of need
• In small, easily digestible chunks
• And expect to access it immediately

Mobile devices make it easier to incorporate learning directly into business process, rather than separate from it. When we start to think about Mobile Learning Strategies, it helps if we look at the way people already use their mobile devices. Rather than trying to convince them to use a new method of learning on mobile devices, we need to design learning that leverages the way our learners already prefer to use their devices.

Want to learn more? You can download the white paper here for free! You can also find out more about mobile learning with these resources:

• 12 Tips and Tactics for Creating Effective Mobile Learning
  
• The iPad Eats the Smartphone and Mobile Learning Becomes Real
  
• Mobile Learning is SO 10 Minutes Ago…
  
• New Technology Rollout

Discover how PDG partnered with Biogen Idec to create an advanced sales training solution. Mark Lockett, Director of Commercial Training on the Biogen Idec Commercial Training Team and Marcus Hswe, a Consultant at Performance Development Group (PDG), are presenting the topic The Next Generation: Creating an Advanced Training Curriculum at the Society for  Pharmaceutical and Biotech Trainers (SPBT) Annual Conference in Grapevine Texas on June 10. 

Participants will learn to:

• Promote the effectiveness and impact of an advanced training curriculum design and development model
  
  
• Identify the drivers for enabling a successful advanced  training curriculum
  
  
• Identify how a patient-centric selling model can build more effective relationships with health care providers

Biogen Idec has successfully helped Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients manage their disease for years. To capitalize on that success, the organization benchmarked its best sales reps to evaluate how optimal behaviors can be adopted by those who work directly with health care providers.

The result was the Advanced Training Curriculum to meet the following challenges for rep training:

•          Make it a WOW factor
  
  
•          Get away from “me too” and make it unique
  
  
•          Must be motivational and engaging
  
  
•          Centers on retaining top talent
  
  
•          Supplements current rewards system

This curriculum leveraged the Patient-Centric Model, a relationship-based sales approach that focuses the conversation on a health care provider’s patients and their individual cases. With this Patient-Centric approach, Biogen Idec trains the sales team on specific actions to build and maintain those relationships to drive revenue and market share. More information on the presentation The Next Generation: Creating an Advanced Training Curriculum and how to register can be found on the SPBT Annual Conference website.  

Mark Lockett

Mark Lockett currently serves as a Director of Commercial Training on the Biogen Idec US Commercial Training Team, focused on leading the development and implementation of an Advanced Training curriculum. Mark has 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical, device and biotech space, and has held leadership roles in Sales Management, Marketing and Training.

Marcus Hswe

Marcus Hswe is a Consultant with Performance Development Group of Malvern, PA. He has over 10 years of experience in enterprise learning, especially in the design, development, and management of training initiatives.

• Becoming a Business Partner
  
  
• How to Talk Learning To Business
  
  
• My SMEs Don't Have Time to Contribute Content to Training
  
  
• A is for Analysis; Analysis of What?

 

David Manning is the Founder and Managing Partner of Performance Development Group (PDG). David has over 20 years in the management consulting and learning outsourcing space, and has successfully led the growth of global organizations and start-up ventures. David formed PDG after serving as the Chief Operating Officer for a global training consultancy. He was interviewed at PDG headquarters in Malvern, Pennsylvania Spring 2014. David shared three trends in the learning field: High Performance Learning Organizations, Flexible Resource Management, and Globalization of Learning. In this article, he speaks about High Performance Learning Organizations; additional trends will appear in future issues of the PDG Fast Five newsletter and the PDG blog.

What is a top trend you have seen recently in the corporate learning and development field?
Executives are looking to get more value out of their learning organizations. More than ever before, the learning function is getting a seat at the table and aligning their priorities with solving key business issues versus solving training issues. In order to maximize this opportunity, companies need to increase the effectiveness within the learning function and are doing so by creating High Performance Learning Organizations, with the best people, the most efficient processes/tools, and governed by purpose. Near and long term goals are directly linked to and measured upon business impact. They see an opportunity for learning to drive shareholder value now more than ever before.

What has changed in the marketplace to drive these changes?
In many cases, learning organizations have not been well-aligned with the business strategy, and therefore the capability building which they were doing was not directly connected to what the business needs to execute their strategy. What has changed is that companies have identified this oversight and are now installing leadership within the learning function capable of leading the change to a High Performance Learning Organization.

Why is this trend important to those in the learning industry?
Opportunity. There will be a great opportunity for learning to drive organizational and cultural change and directly impact shareholder value. Over the next decade, the learning function will gain more visibility within the enterprise and be viewed as a strategic differentiator. High Potential employees within the learning function will be noticed and fast tracked for senior roles within the organization. Simply put, the companies with the best learning organizations will have the most success.

For more about performance improvement read the following resources:

• Leveraging Learning to Change Culture and Drive Growth
• Using Performance Improvement to Drive Business Metrics
• Tips for Great Performance Support
  
• Driving Organization Improvement Through Social Media

 

David Manning is the 
Founder and Managing Partner 
at Performance Development Group

 

 

 

 

Based on research, what do top executives value?

1. Performance - CEO’s don’t value learning they value the increased performance that learning can bring.

2. Business Results, not Learning Results - Instead of measuring learning, measure the results learning brings. Skills and knowledge are the fuel that takes the business where it needs to go.
   
   
3. Drive top business initiatives - Most businesses have a small number of top-priority initiatives each year. Demonstrating how learning helps drive those initiatives creates a clear picture of how you are driving value.
   
   
4. Manage your demand and supply chain - Business needs change over the course of the year, and business expect departments to be responsive. Planning for your learning demand and having a supply chain in place to respond to change helps guarantee to you will drive business goals.
   
   
5. Return on Investment –Measuring the return on the investment in learning programs validates why it is important to build the skills and knowledge of the organization.

PDG has a number of white papers and case studies with examples of programs that drove top business goals for our clients. They include: 

• Leveraging Learning to Change Culture and Drive Growth
  
  
• Taming the Learning Demand Curve
  
  
• Enabling Sales Strategy Through Learning Effectiveness

 

 

Amanda Cushman Holm is the 
Sales and Marketing Specialist at 
Performance Development Group

 

 

Join PDG at the ASTD International Conference and Exposition in Washington, DC on May 6, 2014 for a presentation by Rich Mesch, Senior Director Customer Engagement and Stacie Comolli, Director of Solution Architecture. Stacie and Rich will be discussing Global Learning Archetypes, PDG's unique approach to

simplifying Global Learning, and providing a case study of how the methodology was successfully applied at a multibillion dollar global organization. Here's a summary of the session:

TU206 - Training the World: Using Archetypes to Create a Practical Global Learning Strategy

Date: Tue, May 06

Location: 144BC

Description:

Virtually all large organizations are global, and facing the challenges of creating learning interactions that are beneficial and comprehensible to diverse audiences all over the world. Some organizations take the "pray" approach, by creating learning for one geography and praying other audiences will get something out of it. Other organizations burn through huge amounts of money creating custom learning for every different geography. Isn't there a better way? Can't effective global learning be created in a way that doesn't break the bank?

This session focuses on a pragmatic and reasonable approach to global learning design that utilizes archetypes, focusing as much on the commonalities between learning styles as on the differences. The Global Archetype approach adapts well-established cultural preference models and combines them with insightful learning models. The result is three primary Global Learning Archetypes and six secondary archetypes that allow training to be designed once and used around the world.

This session focuses on how:

• the Global Learning Archetypes were created
• the Archetypes can be translated into design specs that any learning team can use
• organizations are using the Archetypes to deliver globally while controlling cost
• to apply a vetted, model-based strategy for designing global learning rollout
• to integrate a well-established cultural preferences model that can be applied to learning best practices to create Global Learning Archetypes. 

Speaker biographies:

PDG recently published an intriguing new white paper called “Taming the Learning Demand Curve: 4 Smart Steps to Lower Cost and Higher Quality in Corporate Learning.” The white paper focuses on an innovative approach to managing demand in a learning organization and creating a flexible structure to meet stakeholder need. Here’s an excerpt from the white paper:

A few years ago, industry analyst Jack Phillips dealt the training and development field some tough love. His research, completed by polling top executives at large global organizations, told us something we may have suspected: business decision-makers have trouble understanding the business value of corporate training. But Phillips’ research also offered some insight into how to solve that problem. Those same executives said they would see the value when they understood how training and development drove success in the primary goals and initiatives of the business. So all we have to do is demonstrate how learning drives the business.

So how do you do that?

There are many ways, but the first step is to treat learning like a business. And like any business, that means managing your demand curve and your supply chain.

Learning Demand is Predictably Unpredictable

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

                                                            -- George Santayana

Remember the movie Groundhog Day? In the movie, Bill Murray’s character lives through the same day, over and over again. At first he makes the same mistakes each time he lives through the day, but over time he learns the adjust his behavior and changes the way the day plays out. Given the opportunity to learn, he does things differently and creates a better future.

Sometimes running a corporate learning department feels like Groundhog Day. Every year, we try to plan for the learning needs of our organization, and every year we end up feeling stretched as unexpected demands come up, projects shift onto our to-do lists that weren’t there before, or that new product launch that was scratched from last year’s agenda suddenly shows up on this year’s plan. You may find yourself asking, “Why does this happen every year?” But if something happens every year, it means that it’s following a predictable pattern. And once we can identify that pattern, we can analyze it and build a plan for it. That pattern will still have unpredictable elements, but we can build a system that accounts for unpredictability and allow us to deal with it—quickly and effectively—when it does happen.

Getting a Handle on Learning Resourcing

Step 1: Getting Off the Rollercoaster

If you’re like most organizations, your Learning Demand curve probably looks a little like a roller coaster. Periods of high demand for learning resources may be followed by periods where demand flattens out, or even dips… followed by additional periods of high demand. This curve can make resourcing difficult, and create sleepless nights for learning managers. So how do you begin to tame the learning demand curve?

Want to know more? You can download the entire white paper here for free! You can also click here for more information on how PDG approaches Flexible Learning Resourcing.

 

 

 

 Rich Mesch is Senior Director, Customer Engagement
at Performance Development Group

 

 

• Try using smaller chunks of context-independent content that can be understood out-of-order

5. Consider delivering content in stages and over time to build awareness, learn, apply, and reinforce.

6. Integrate mobile learning into actually doing the job, providing performance support for different phases of key tasks

7. Deliver a stream of constantly updated content that builds capabilities, skills, and knowledge over time

• Your goal is to use mobile devices to provide information for better job performance

8. Combat the Forgetting Curve by providing reminders and reinforcement over time

9. Game-like approaches can work very well—people love playing games on their devices

• However, games often require a bigger investment of time than your learners can provide

10. Make sure the content is relevant and immediate-- mobile is not the tool for deep thinking

11. Replace learning objectives with What’s In It For Me (WIFMs)-what will I be able to do by using this tool?

• By the way, this works for NON-mobile learning, too!

12. Make sure the technology used works on the appropriate platform or platforms for your target users

• The Mobile rEvolution White Paper
• The iPad Eats the Smartphone and Mobile Learning Becomes Real
• Mobile Learning is SO 10 Minutes Ago…
• Teaching Non-Linear Instructional Design for Mobile Learning and Performance Support
• The Myth of Mobile: An Introduction
• Compliance Learning on the iPad

I recently attended Performance Development Group’s Performance Consulting Workshop, and found it full of valuable information. I work in a marketing role at PDG, but I thought the information I learned at this workshop would be helpful to our customers and others in the field. So here’s a taste of the insight I gained from the PDG performance consultants.