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Like everything in training & performance, Performance Support is a technique, not the one answer to all of our problems. After all, nobody wants their doctor checking Google on their iPad during surgery to determine where the liver is located. Performance Support works best when there is a base level of knowledge present, but there is knowledge necessary that:

• Is hard to remember
• Changes so rapidly that remembering it isn’t valuable
• Is used infrequently, so it doesn’t stay in long-term memory
• Is complex enough that frequent reminding is necessary

Conrad Gottfredson identified the Five Moments of Learning Need:

1. When people are learning how to do something for the first time (New);
2. When people are expanding the breadth and depth of what they have learned (More);
3. When they need to act upon what they have learned, which includes planning what they will do, remembering what they may have forgotten, or adapting their performance to a unique situation (Apply);
4. When problems arise, or things break or don’t work the way they were intended (Solve); and,
5. When people need to learn a new way of doing something, which requires them to change skills that are deeply ingrained in their performance practices (Change).

(Gottfredson & Mosher, 2012)

Of these, the need for Performance Support fits well into the following categories:

• Trying to Remember: This is the most typical use of Performance Support, when people need reminders to get work done. Probably the clearest example is the Help feature on most software. It’s rare that you can memorize all the features of a software system, so the Help system provides reminders.
• Things Change and Problems Arise: These categories can be similar in that they both change the landscape of performance. Things that weren’t important previously may become very important. Even though those behaviors may have been learned, they weren’t prioritized. Performance Support can put that information back at your fingertips.

Good performance support is:

• Contextualized, so I receive it when I need it and can apply it immediately.
• Targeted, so I don’t have to read a lot of text or watch a long video to get the nugget of information I need
• Behavioral; I need to take action, so I need to know what to DO. Performance Support should give me the information I need to make a decision.

In an article I wrote for Performance Solutions magazine, I mentioned the following tips for performance support:

• Just the facts. Performance support isn’t about teaching people everything there is to know; it’s about giving them just the information they need, as close to the point of need as possible. Keep it brief and to the point. Think about it like a Google search; ever get frustrated when searching in Google and getting hundreds of irrelevant hits? If you want to know who won the Best Picture Oscar in 2012, do you want a link to the history of the Oscars, or just the title you’re looking for?
• Create “experts in a bottle.” Performance support is a great way to create virtual mentoring. Reach out to the experts and great thinkers in your organization and get their tips and ideas. Incorporate these ideas into your performance support, and suddenly your best people are mentoring everybody in the organization.
• Focus on the point of need. Great performance support provides help to people when they need it most. So analyze where people typically have problems, get confused, or forget complicated instructions, and create tools to address those needs.

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

I’ve seen lot of “big ideas” come and go over the years.   While “Global Archetypes” may sound like a catchphrase, our experience tells us that, when it comes to learning, what works in the U.S. may not have the same impact across the globe.

As a learning Solution Architect, my role is similar to an architect creating a blueprint for a new building.  If the building’s foundation is wrong, the whole building could come down. Similarly, in learning we start with the foundation, a solid underlying structure on which skills and knowledge are built.  If the foundational concept is wrong, the whole curriculum could be wrong, impacting the careers of the learners and the business success of the organization.  The foundation is no place for a “flavor of the month” approach to training.  The most effective designers always consider the characteristics of the global audience as a part of the learning design process.

 
Can a Global Archetypes approach make learning more effective?

The first time I learned about Global Learning Archetypes I thought the idea was great. Almost all of my clients had challenges rolling out learning to a global audience, and the archetypes addressed the big issues: time, cost, and complexity. But anybody can say “better, cheaper, faster;” did these tools really work?

The short answer: Yes.  The slightly longer answer: the system is deep enough to apply to a lot of different situations, but flexible enough to be adaptable to a specific client’s needs.  

My client, a major global life sciences organization, was implementing a new curriculum. The content needed to be delivered to 85 different countries. The pressure was really on: new content, new approach, and worldwide rollout. The client was understandably concerned. How could the team get all of this done rapidly, economically, and at a high level of quality?

Historically, my client had differing levels of success in different countries. Learning was centrally developed in the U.S., and they found that what worked in the U.S. didn’t work across the globe.  Instructional preferences clearly differed by geography, including how the content was designed, developed, and implemented. We wanted to determine the “common core”— to reach the highest number of learners with the minimum amount of regional customization.

Based on my experience, Global Learning Archetypes help in five ways:

• A solid strategic foundation promotes design consistency
  Multiple workstreams, dozens of team members, tight schedules, overlapping timelines, and of course, unexpected changes; how do you keep everybody focused?  The Global Learning Archetypes were our “one way;” our common language, so no matter where in the world you were, or what workstream you were working on, we were all aligned.

• A pragmatic approach aligns to what we do already
  The Global Learning Archetype approach focuses on the steps we actually take when we build learning interactions. It isn’t some high-minded concept that you can’t actually implement. The 11 Dimensions of Learning really are the key decision points we need to focus on when creating learning designs. And the cultural preference models really do address the needs of different geographies. In fact, the various country managers we worked with were surprised at how closely the archetypes tracked to their own experiences customizing training for local audiences.

• A flexible structure considers that one size rarely fits all
  Sometimes a formal process will leave you scratching your head, when part of the process just doesn’t fit what you’re trying to do. Like any process, not every part of the archetype process was a perfect fit for this initiative. Fortunately, the archetypes were built to be customized. After we did our initial assessment, we adapted the archetype process to fit the needs we uncovered, a fairly painless process.

• Communication alignment hit all stakeholders
  In an initiative of this size, there are a lot of stakeholders, and they all want to understand what you are doing. To further complicate things, the Subject Matter Experts for this initiative were primarily third-party consultants who did not work for the client. You can imagine the differing perspectives, opinions, approaches, and work styles. So how do you keep all of those people on the same page? The Global Learning Archetypes allowed us to have one single way of getting things done, regardless of content, SME, target audience, or geography. Frankly, if the archetypes had accomplished nothing but that, I think my client would have been pretty happy! 

• Scalability remained, even when faced with change management
  When we started this initiative, the target audience was primarily emerging markets, a fairly small subset of the client’s global presence. As the initiative progressed, however, leadership made a decision to roll it out to all locations. This could have been a show-stopper; however, using the standardized processes of the archetypes, we were able to scale delivery up without blowing up the project.

As learning strategists, our goal is to impact performance. When you’re doing global learning, you can’t sit eyeball to eyeball with every learner. The Global Learning Archetypes allow you to use strategies and techniques that are applicable across the globe—which allows you to actually make a difference in how people do their jobs.

Want more information on Global Learning Archetypes? Click here!

Stacie Comolli is Director, Solution Architecture at Performance Development Group

It’s Halloween, so it seems like a good day to talk about fear.

One of my clients shared with me that she has been doing a lot of thinking about the influence fear has had in her professional life. She pondered the questions “What if I had spoken up in that meeting when my gut was telling me that the path the team was going down would lead to a dead end? What if I simply said no to a request I believed was not aligned to the company’s true goals and mission?” 

In these turbulent economic times, it seems like fear is part of everyone’s work life. Whether our fear comes from losing a job, a sale, a goal or simply admitting you don’t know the answer, the end result seems to be the same. Often decisions are made based on fear, resulting in wasted time and resources. How do we stop this cycle before it starts? How do we truly learn from these experiences and achieve greater understanding and usefulness in our organizations?

My client’s latest training initiative was two weeks away from being deployed. During a meeting with the CLO, it became clear that her project might be put on hold or cancelled altogether. She shared with me that she was afraid of her project getting cancelled and losing her job. My client had a dilemma: how could she overcome her fear, disagree with leadership and try to save her project? I advised her to take a deep breath, swallow hard and look at the bottom-line cost of derailing a training event; focus on the business issues, not the emotional issues.

The reconsideration/cancellation of a nearly-complete or newly deployed learning solution affects the organization both qualitatively and quantitatively. The cost to the organization is great, including the budget dollars and hours spent on resourcing the project not to mention the project team engagement, motivation and morale. The most significant cost to the organization is inability to realize and benefit from the objectives and goals of the training.  Fear and failure to change results in ongoing costs and prevents the organization from ever seeing a return on their investment.

The first step in resolving the “fear factor” at work is to acknowledge when you are having an emotional response to fear. The twist in your gut, racing heart and that tingle in your fingers is your body having a visceral reaction to fear. It isn’t a pleasant feeling and many of us react by “doing something” about it, and quickly. At times, we jump from the proverbial frying pan right into the fire. 

What we need to do is seek out the business issue not the emotional issue to be resolved. It is imperative to understand not only your own fear factor but also how fear motivates others to react. Once you have identified your fear and understand where it is coming from, you can present the facts. Having a thorough change management process in place is one way to help stakeholders realize the impact their change in direction can have on the organization as a whole. In addition, weekly budget and status updates are key to keeping your stakeholders engaged in your projects and initiatives, and understanding the impact of changes. When leaders are engaged and seeing progress, they will be more inclined to provide ongoing support to your training initiative.

Think about it: why does designing learning for a global audience need to be any harder than designing for a local audience?

Part of it, of course, is audience analysis; with such a diverse audience around the globe, we assume we must design for all different cultural preferences. Or, sometimes, we go in the exact opposite direction, designing a single version of learning for all global audience. Sometimes I call this the Pray Method; send courseware out into the world and pray somebody learns something.

Part of the problem is that we focus so much on differences that we forget to focus on commonalities. When we design global learning, we’re usually trying to get a common message out to a diverse audience. So how can we address cultural differences without muddling the message?

At PDG, we’ve developed a global design strategy called Global Learning Archetypes. The Archetypes utilize established and well-vetted cultural preference data to create a design approach that allows content to be designed for multiple audiences simultaneously. And by focusing on the similarities as well as the differences, the Archetypes simplify the process, saving time, money, and headaches.

The Archetypes integrate the cultural preferences data with a comprehensive learning model called the PDG Dimensions of Learning to synthesize a design methodology that focuses on how different cultures absorb new information.

The goal of archetypes is to simplify and streamline the process of creating learning for a global audience, allowing content to be created more quickly and for lower cost.  The characteristics of effective Global Archetypes are:

• Simple:
  The goal of the archetypes is to create less work, not more. The archetypes need to be easy to understand and have clear applicability.
• Practical:
  Global Archetypes will ultimately be utilized by learning teams who have limited budget, resources, and time. The archetypes need to be usable within the constraints learning teams typically face.
• Actionable:
  No strategy or approach is useful if it sits on a shelf, unused, Global Archetypes need to have clear process steps and toolsets, so they can be used easily, consistently, and with a minimum of preparation.

For more information on Global Learning Archetypes, you can read our white paper, Training the World: Using Archetypes to Create a Practical Global Learning Strategy or a case study of the Archetypes in action, Accelerating Time to Global: Effective Global Learning Design Using Archetypes or visit our web page on Global Learning.

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

Part 1: Teaching New Hires How to DO Their Jobs

The goal of any new hire program is to get new team members trained and up and running in their jobs as fast and as effectively as possible.

When people are learning something new, they need structured formal learning because they “don’t know what they don’t know”. However, as they move down the continuum toward becoming proficient, they may still need to be able to reference training content to answer questions as they “get stuck” but this environment has to be unstructured and informal letting the learner drive their learning experience.

I suggest ALWAYS designing and developing learning interventions with a performance and business goal in mind. Structured formal training programs are a great way of getting learners started with learning something brand new, but providing reinforcement of that learning after the fact, back on the job, is a critical component of ensuring people achieve performance goals as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

Remember that Hermann Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve tells us that from the time your learners leave the training program, let’s say at 5 pm one day, to 9 am when they come back the next morning; they will have forgotten approximately 35% of what they learned. Amazing isn’t it? I remember the moment I learned this fact and I wondered what I was doing in the learning profession. Then I learned that with reinforcement we can raise the forgetting curve and dramatically increase memory.

 

Way back in April of 2010, I wrote this post about taking learning to business, where I basically posted that business doesn’t value learning, it values performance. I recently saw a wonderful presentation by ROI guru Jack Phillips that provided data to support that assumption. The bad news? Businesses really don’t value learning. The good news? Once we understand what business does value, we can take steps to provide it.

See, businesses don’t value learning any more than the driver of a car values gasoline. The driver of a car has a goal; he wants to get somewhere. He has a resource for getting there, the car. And in order for the car to take him where he wants to go, he puts gasoline in it. Having a full tank of gas is not a goal; getting somewhere is the goal, and the gasoline is the fuel that makes the car go, and allows the driver to get where he’s going.

So, too, do businesses want to get somewhere. And skills and knowledge are the fuel that power the people of the business and allow them to take the business where it needs to go. So it’s not too surprising that businesses don’t measure learning; they measure results.

Jack Phillips did a wonderful analysis. He asked the CEOs of dozens of big organizations (Fortune 500 and similarly-sized privately-held organizations), and asked a simple question: what are the metrics that matter to you around learning? Jack wrote a detailed article about it in CLO Magazine, so I won’t replicate all his findings here.

So what’s the net-net? Well, you might not be too surprised to learn:

• Most of the things learning organizations typically measure aren’t very important to top executives. For example, 63% of organizations reported they measured employee satisfaction with training, but CEOs rated that measure as last on their priority list.
• Only 4% reported measuring ROI on training, although 74% thought they should be measuring ROI. Most interestingly, ROI was not listed as a top priority. So what was?
• The number one priority for CEOs was this statement: “Our programs are driving our top five business measures in the organization.” Only 8% said they currently measure it. A whopping 96% said they should be.

I’ve been following the so-called Mobile Learning revolution for some time now. The reality is, Mobile Learning was something that a lot of people talked about, few people did, and even fewer did well. There are a number of reasons for that, including the fact that most folks were repurposing e-learning courses to tiny smartphone screens without acknowledging that mobile was a new paradigm that required new rules.

But the reality is, not many companies even go that far. You know why? Because their mobile learning initiative ended at their IT department.  Few organization issued smartphones to their employees. There were a laundry list of issues, from cost to security to platform choices. Never before in history has American business been so concerned that a bit of technology might be left behind in a bar.

Some organizations had a “bring your own device” policy, but due to a lack of interoperability, confusion over LMs issues, and the dramatic chasm in capabilities between the newest and oldest smartphone platforms, any sort of comprehensive mobile learning strategy usually withered on the vine.

I’m writing this during the 2012 Summer Olympics, so I’ll use an Olympic metaphor. While a lot of people were focused on whether Michael Phelps would break the record for most medals won, Ryan Lochte quietly came in and ate Phelps’ lunch, then drank his Thermos of milk for good measure. (edit: Okay, Phelps proved me wrong on that one. So sue me.) Similarly, while a lot of us focused on the smartphone wars, the iPad came in made that conversation dramatically less relevant. The iPad is now making Mobile Learning a reality.

Why? The causal diagram has a lot of nodes, but it comes down to two big issues:

• Most importantly, large businesses are settling on the iPad as a platform of choice.  The old wars over smartphone platforms become increasingly irrelevant as organizations feel comfort in the relatively proven iPad platform. In many organizations, iPads are beginning to replace PCs as the business technology of choice.

• A lot of the reason this is happening is the form factor of the iPad. Large enough to do product demos, read documents, watch videos, etc, it’s become a reasonable alternative to a PC. Its slender size, friendly operating system, and long battery life make it much more convenient.

That being said, there are still pretty big challenges to doing learning on the iPad. As always, companies are concerned about data security and privacy. But as we centralize on a single platform those issues will be easier to address. But with at least some of the technology questions being settled, learning developers can focus on content challenges, not just technology challenges.

So how do we design learning that takes advantage of the iPad’s capabilities? That’s easy; we don’t design learning. We’ll talk more about that in the next blog entry!