MindLeaders: Fueling the Learning Revolution

Do You Have a Portrait of Your Ideal Employee?

In marketing there’s lots of talk about your ideal buyer. What is this person’s job title? What does their day look like? What are their skill sets? Their pain points? Their goals? Their challenges? Knowing the answers to all these questions and more allows marketers to better speak to their ideal buyers. It allows them to create content that gives them value. And it allows them to figure out not only who they are selling to, but just as importantly who they aren’t selling to.

It seems like HR could benefit from something similar. Who is your ideal employee? What skill sets do they have? What kind of behaviors do they exhibit? What attitudes do they bring to the workplace? How do they impact the day of those they work with? What impact do they have on the bottom line of the company? Having answers to questions like these allows a picture of the ideal employee. It helps to paint a picture of someone who fits into the existing company culture, and contributes in a meaningful way.

If you want to have more ideal employee on staff, know what you are looking for. It will help make your screening process more efficient and your hiring process have more hits than misses. Of course the flip side of catching ideal employees is to hang onto them. Do you know how many ideal employees you currently have on staff? Do you know if their turnover rate is higher or lower than the average? Do you know what the company is doing (or not doing) to hang onto them?

You should understand what your ideal employee’s pain points and goals are, not just a required skill set. What do they want their work environment to be like? What benefits are likely to appeal most to them? What changes can you make to increase their retention? In The Shriver Report, most employees agree that businesses aren’t keeping up with their needs. I suspect it’s because HR is focused on skill set descriptions and stopping short of creating a full picture of what their ideal employee looks like, and what they need to do to attract and retain them.

Using Twitter lists to follow great elearning people

As you might know if you read this blog, I believe that Twitter is not about what you say, it's about who you follow. Therefore, one of the most important tricks to Twitter is finding the right people to follow: people who are sharing good information about the things you're interested in.

Twitter's new Lists feature helps out with that. Anyone can create a list of Twitter accounts and label them anything they'd like. One of the first fun things to do with lists is to look at your own (or anyone else's) Twitter account to see if you're on anyone's lists.

Mindleaders is on six people's lists. You can click the "x listed" number to see exactly what lists that account is on.

That exploration can lead you to some good people to follow. But the power of Lists is when you take a step back and look at the wisdom of the crowds.

First of all, the raw number of lists an account is on can tell you a bit about how valuable that account is to other people. It's like judging accounts by their number of followers, but this number is an even better gauge.

Looking for lists in your favorite topic areas? Check out Listorious. This site is serving as a central repository for the lists that everyone has made. Type in any topic to see all of the lists it knows about that deal with that topic.

You can follow a list to follow everyone in it. Or, if you want to take yet another strategic step back, take a look at some of the best lists and see who comes up in them over and over again. That's the way to really mine for gold. Unfortunately, right now Listorious doesn't do that for us except for one generic, over-arching list of "Top 140 Most Listed People," so we have to do that part manually for the time being.

Here are some great elearning and corporate training lists. They can be followed directly, or you can take a closer look at the people being followed for potentials for your Twitter stream:

• corporate-training
• e-learning
• elearning
• lrnchat
• top-elearning blogs

(Good to see in these lists that the "e-learning"/"elearning" debate is still alive and well.)

Have you made any lists of your own yet? Please share your experiences in the comments section!

LMS Market Still Strong, Despite Recession

Bersin and Associates is predicting that the $850 million LMS market will continue to grow at a rate of 10 to 15 percent. This is good news for learning and development organizations. The strength in the LMS market indicates that corporations view employee development as a business driver that they are willing to invest in. Training is moving out of “nice to have” into “must have.” Finally.

In addition, informal learning and the advent of social learning networks have changed the game. More and more corporations are trying to embrace information sharing, collaboration, and harness the power of informal learning that is happening within their organizations. In some cases the LMS is a major player in facilitating this. But certainly not in all cases.

The downside to the good news is that LMS systems are still difficult to manage. They are generally complex and in some instances cost millions of dollars and take a few years to fully implement. This issue is going to get worse over the next few years. Talent management and learning management are converging, and corporations are already wishing for more interoperability between LMS systems, talent management systems, and HRIS systems.

If your organization doesn’t have an LMS yet, chances are they will be looking at one in the future. If they do, ensure that there are clear goals for what functionality is important to the organization. Is it customizable reporting? Is it simply to serve up e-learning? Is it to provide an internal social network? Be clear about what is needed, and then assess vendors to determine if they have the potential to meet those needs.

What do you think? Is your company assessing or implementing an LMS system this year? What features are most important for your organization?

Are Your Talent Management Practices Rooted in the Past?

The Shriver Report was released a few weeks ago. The report is extensive and examines a single question. What are the implications for men, women and families now that women make up 50 percent of all workers? And make no mistake about it. The implications are huge and we as a society, including government and business have yet to effectively deal with most of them.

Let’s start off with a few facts. I am a woman who has worked all of my adult life and some of these surprised even me.

• Women receive 57 percent of bachelor degrees and 50 percent of doctoral and professional degrees
• Women are primary breadwinners in 4 out of 10 families
• Less than 25 percent of married couples have only one spouse working to support the family

The role of women in society is shifting rapidly. Only 30 years ago women were less than a third of the workforce. Only 30 years ago approximately half of American families were traditional nuclear families with a primary breadwinner (usually the man) and a primary caregiver (usually the woman). Yet most businesses behave as though it is 30 years ago and ignore the vast changes that their workforce, both male and female, are dealing with.

Now that women are half of the workforce, the dynamics of families have changed. Both men and women are in a constant state of negotiation about who will assume childcare responsibilities, household responsibilities, and elder care responsibilities. Equal pay, flexible schedules, paid medical and family leave, comprehensive childcare policies are not “women’s issues” they are family issues that affect all workers. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to the workers who participated in the Shriver Report.

• “Men and women agree that government and business are out of touch with the realities of how most families live and work today.”
• “Over 80 percent of men and women agree that businesses that fail to adapt to the needs of modern families or risk losing good workers.”

So I ask you again. Are your talent management practices rooted in the past? Before you answer no, take a look around and examine the reality of what is happening in your workplace.

• Do you really practice equal pay for equal work?
• Do you and your managers act as though there is only one place where work happens?
• Do you and your managers believe (and behave as though) there is only one way to structure a workday?
• When is the last time you updated your family and medical leave policy?
• What kind of childcare policies do you have? When is the last time you updated them?

The answers to these questions and others like them will determine whether your company will be able to capture and capitalize on the talent that your workers bring to your organization. Those companies who can identify and truly address the shifting needs of their workers have a golden opportunity to differentiate themselves to the talent pool and steal (and hang on to) the cream of the crop.

Sales Training Drives HIgher Performance Levels

Have you trained your sales staff this year? Not product training. Not training in how to fill out their expense reports. Training in prospecting skills. Training in closing skills. If you haven’t, you are missing on an opportunity to increase your company’s performance according to a recent report released by Aberdeen Group. How much of an opportunity? Best in class companies experience:

• Over 80 percent of sales reps meeting their annual quota (compared to 65% for average companies)
• Average deal size/contract value increasing by 7% year over year (compared to average companies which had a flat deal size year to year)
• Average annual revenue increasing 11% year over year (compared to 2% decrease for average companies)

Best in class companies deploy training that focuses on what sales reps say and do to create perceived customer value to create these results. (Not just how to calculate quota or track number of sales appointments.) These companies have processes for:

• Sharing collective knowledge
• Training their internal trainers
• Reinforcing training on a regular basis
• Capturing organizational best practices
• Defining competencies (and training needs) for each sales role

Best in class companies also train often and train consistently, regardless of economic conditions. In fact, they are increasing spending on sales training over the next 12 months. This makes sense. As the economy recovers, these companies want to be positioned to capitalize on the positive changes.

One of the key takeaways of is that training and reinforcement should happen frequently. This doesn’t necessarily mean continuous onsite training. Consider what content you can license, how you can train internal trainers, and how access to training content can continue to reinforce new skills.

For more information, you can read the entire report, Sales Training: Translating Tribal Selling Knowledge into Bottom-Line Productivity.

Play is far superior to Work

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and [...]Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

I love this quote from Tom Sawyer. Not just for the insight on its face, but also for its context: the fence still got whitewashed. Work got done, and yet everyone had a grand ol' time accomplishing it. And with the growth of "serious games" and "virtual worlds," the training and organizational development world might be starting to agree with Mark Twain.

At MindLeaders, we believe deeply in Play and Fun. We believe that it's a core part of building knowledge, and of building teams and relationships. Our greatest example of this was held on Friday: our annual Halloween Party.

 

Outrageous costumes roam the halls all day long, we feast on a massive potluck lunch, and we gather up for an early end to the day to give prizes for all kinds of contests held throughout the week and eat and drink together. My friends envy me on Halloween Party day. When I show them pictures of the costumed craziness that goes on, their cracks are usually something along the lines of "Do you guys do any WORK in your office?!?"

Tom Sawyer's answer to that is no. Nobody is Working in our office on that day. Everyone's doing a lot of Playing. But much still gets accomplished, and the effects continue throughout the year. When MindLeaders employees talk about the company culture or what it's like to work here, the Halloween Party is frequently one of the first things mentioned. We've been doing it so many years that it's part of our DNA. Teams work together months in advance to come up with group costumes. Silos disappear on that day as everyone explores the halls to enjoy cool costumes or check out office decorations.

Our Halloween Party is strictly a company-building type of Play. For a great example of a teaching type of Play, check out DevLearn 2009's "Zombie Apocalypse." People are getting familiar with all types of social media, scouring it far more deeply than any Work class assignment would ever compel them to do, and it's Play. (And if you're trying to come up with a play idea, it's hard to go wrong with zombies.)

Got a team that needs to communicate better? Trying to teach some tough skills to someone? Want to knock down some tension or closed doors between teams, departments, or management and employees? Do some Playing. Not the fake kind of play that's still an obligation. If someone watching from the outside would question whether you're Working, then you have the right kind of Play.

2009 PILAR learning award winners announced

Today MindLeaders has announced the winners of the 2009 PILAR (Performance Improvement and Learning Achievement Recognition) Awards for industry-leading results and innovation in learning programs.

The winners include a state agency that used elearning and other initiatives to do more training with less budget, a marketing group and the vendors of the LA "Dodger Dogs" who both got 100% participation in their learning programs, a law firm who's using elearning to boost competencies, annual reviews, and management practices, and a second-time PILAR winner, this year for integrating elearning with book publications to train the world.

We'll be presenting the cool crystal obelisk to the award winners at a special banquet and corporate event in February. Huge congratulations to all!

The winners of the 2009 MindLeaders PILAR Awards are:

• Best Blended Program: Texas Parks & Wildlife of Austin, TX. This agency is responsible for some of the finest outdoor recreation in the world, including hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, biking, and bird watching. When their budget funds were reduced, instead of cutting out vital training, the agency found a way to offer more options than ever while saving the state money by striking a perfect balance between elearning and instructor led training focused on management business skills.
• Best Marketing Program: Questar Corporation of Salt Lake City, Utah. This natural gas-focused energy company has core operations in the Rockies and Midcontinent. Questar took advantage of a top-down philosophy within the company to leverage executive support and consistent communications throughout the organization to create award-winning learning results.
• Best Measured Results: SIGMA Marketing Group, LLC, of Rochester, New York. SIGMA Marketing Group specializes in Direct Marketing Analytic Services. They combined a strong partnership with MindLeaders, a well executed marketing plan, commitment and follow-through to build 100% completion rates as well as a measurable increase in employee satisfaction survey scores.
• Most Innovative Channel Partner: Computer Assisted Learning of Quezone City, Philippines. Computer Assisted Learning is a second-time winner of a PILAR Award! CAL has paved the way for the publication of a series of books designed for three learning levels: the Awakening Series (Pre-School), the Exploring Series (Elementary), and the Experiencing Series (Secondary Level). MindLeaders online courses were integrated as enhancements or electives that allow for more skills-focused training for the early collegiate stage, training for the unemployed, and for technical training in government agencies.
• Best First Year Program: Clougherty of Los Angeles, California. Over 1,700 people work for Clougherty Packing, LLC, serving high quality meats in several countries. Their Farmer John® brand is synonymous with the Los Angeles Dodgers, producing the "Dodger Dog" at Dodger Stadium for over 50 years. In the remarkably short time frame of 10 months, 100% of Clougherty learning program participants had participated in their training, thanks to Clougherty executive sponsorship of the program and close collaboration with the MindLeaders Professional Services team.
• Founders Award: Perkins Coie of Seattle, Washington. Perkins Coie is a large international law firm based in the Pacific Northwest with offices around the United States and in China. Their primary goal in partnering with MindLeaders was to deliver competency-based learning while streamlining their annual performance review process. They have nailed those objectives in record time in addition to secondary goals of promoting lifelong learning and improving management practices.

Study with MindLeaders, pass your certification - guaranteed!

Taking a certification exam requires preparation, commitment, and money. Serious effort and career succession plans are on the line. Want some extra confidence that, when test day arrives, you're properly prepared to pass? To get all Cajun-chef-y, at MindLeaders, we'll "gar-on-tee" that you're ready!

Our Certification Guarantee says that if you pass our study guide courses with at least an 80% score, you will pass your certification test or you'll get your money back. We're that confident that our study guides cover every objective and give you all the tools you need.

There's some back story to the Certification Guarantee. We've just now added this page to our web site and a big splashy Flash piece to the home page, but in reality, we've had this guarantee in place for years. Somehow, as time passed, a lot of people forgot that it was there.

But a month or so ago, a "Whatever happened to..." conversation brought the Certification Guarantee back to life. (Kind of appropriate for Halloween!) So we're dusting off the pledge, shining it up, and putting it in a place of honor so that everyone knows about it.

Study up and get certified. Give new skills and confidence to your IT teams or your project managers (this covers the PMP, too!). We gar-on-tee it!

Social Media's Rise Doesn't Mean Formal Learning is Dead

The landscape of employee development is shifting under our feet. While learning and development organizations are facing lots of changes, two developments are driving most of them.

·     Technology and social media are allowing information to be shared quickly and easily

·     Learning management and talent management are converging

Remember when e-learning came into the market and there was lots of talk about the death of instructor-led training? Stand up training is still here. E-learning is here. And now we have the influx of social media platforms and a lot of chatter about how it will wipe out formal learning (and e-mail and other forms of communication). And guess what? It won’t.

Formal learning is far from dead. The fact that learning management and talent management are converging is one reason why. Integrating learning into career development and performance improvement will always be formalized in organizations. And of course content lends itself to different deliveries. That which lends itself to instructor-led or e-learning formats isn’t likely to be completely replaced by the new social media and information sharing technologies. So social media's rise hardly means the death for formal learning. It does make for some interesting challlenges though.

Learning organizations are faced with helping organizations integrate these technologies in a way that makes sense. New roles will emerge and new skills will become necessary for learning organizations to move forward effectively.  But the ones who can will reap some real benefits. These new technologies let peers easily share information. They allow transparency between groups. They make it harder to blow smoke about what you are up to. They practically eliminate the ability to information-hoard. Yes, there are some who won’t like that much, but the benefit of easily accessible organizational knowledge is well-worth the price.   

Squeezing in Time for Training

Several years ago I worked for a newspaper, and one of my co-workers liked to wear a shirt that said, “I was put on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind I will never die.” All of us in the office thought it was hilarious and quite apropos. It seemed like we were always on deadline and running behind. And the thought of that making us immortal did lessen the stress.

Not much other than my job titles has changed since then. The workday pace certainly hasn’t slowed. My to-do list hasn’t miraculously gotten shorter, although there are an increasing number of books and tools to help me manage it better. I am always pulled in many directions at once. And I don’t think I am alone. This is the reality of today’s workplace. And it’s a tough competitor when you are trying to squeeze in time for training.

If you and your staff you don’t make time for training, it won’t happen. It’ll get lost in that workday frenzy, buried in the marathon list of to-dos. So here are some strategies that have worked for me over the years to squeeze in the training I needed.

• Block out time on your electronic calendar so that you will be reminded to start training and others will know you are busy.
• Put a sign on your door or cube entrance to encourage others to go away until you are finished. Humor is acceptable.
• Use some earphones to deaden the inevitable noise around you. You don’t have to pipe music into them and no one has to know that but you.
• Borrow a vacant office or small conference room for your session. If they can’t find you, you can’t be bothered. Plus you’ll look like you are doing something really important, which you are.
• Schedule time for group discussions and debriefs to ensure that information is shared at the end of projects.
• Declare a training time-out for you and your staff, say a couple of hours on a Friday afternoon each month. (No one is working on Friday afternoon anyway and the time-out is valuable for everyone.)

This list isn’t comprehensive, but simply things that have worked well for me. What strategies have worked for you? How do you squeeze in time for training?