MindLeaders: Fueling the Learning Revolution

New white paper: the investment benefits of training

"We can help."

The economy is slamming all of us. Here in Columbus, Ohio, we got word today that two major local employers, Limited and Longaberger, are laying people off. Everyone seems to be worried about protecting our companies and our jobs.

We've released a new front page for our web site and a new white paper with a common theme: We can help. Training can help.

Our new white paper, Training in Troubled Times, gives some facts and figures about the ways that investing in training helps a company during a recession and beyond. Companies that train their employees make it through recessions better and come out the other side stronger and more ready to capitalize on the recovery opportunities. If you're involved in making budget decisions about training, I hope you'll take a look - it might provide some good statistics for you as you justify your budget costs.

I'd love to hear any comments you have about the new web front page, too! It's the first step in a larger web site redesign by our resident web genius, so any feedback will be immediately useful for us.

What's the balance of learning?

I'm going to throw a question out that we've been talking about in the MindLeaders halls. I have no answer to it, but it's an interesting conversation to continue.

What do you think is the percentage of time that people spend on finding quick answers to questions versus in-depth study of a subject? For example, figuring out how to build a pivot table in Excel versus studying for a certification or building leadership skills?

The closest thing I've thought of that comes close to answering this is informal learning (which will mostly be those quick-hit I-just-need-the-info-and-go experiences) versus formal learning. Wikipedia's entry on informal learning includes the chart at the right. Stretching that data like silly-putty suggests that people spend 20% of their training on reference and longer-term study, and 80% on short-term answer-finding.

I'm tossing this out to see what other thoughts or information people have about this. What's your impression of the balance of pick-up learning versus longer study?

The best way to make training succeed: experiment!

Last week I built a page for MindLeaders on Facebook. I've been asked multiple times: "Why?" My answer is "We're trying things out." The longer answer is that it's one of many new avenues we're trying to connect more deeply with MindLeaders clients and the larger training community. Is this specific page going to work? Don't know yet, we have to see whether people respond to it.

In courseware development, we're testing new kinds of pages for our Classroom of One format that we use for technical and certification courses. At the same time, our development mad geniuses are working on a whole new course approach to teach people how to communicate across global cultures... more on that to come.

We're batting around new Web 2.0 and proto-3.0 technologies to look for new ways to harness learning, to make it easier to integrate what people need to learn into the work they need to do. We're kicking a lot of tires and taking a lot of test drives.

I thought of this beehive of activity today when I read what seems like my 3,000th article about how bad our economy is, and how scared people are for their jobs and careers (this article by Tom is full of great ideas, awesome information).

When we're nervous, our natural inclination is to hunker down and stick to what's safe. (Or to flee like our office is a house on fire, but we'll assume that's not a viable option.) But to protect the value of our work and ourselves, we need to do the opposite. We need to experiment, to expand, to look for the better ways of doing what we do.

In each new training program you embark on, try something new in it. Something that has the potential to make that program really sing. It might work, it might not. But track the results, and you'll learn from the experience, and either way, the next training program will be even better.

When the budget police come calling, the question won't be "What did you do in the last five years?", it'll be "What have you done for us lately?" Experimenting with new ideas, using specific goals and measurable results, will make it obvious what you're doing lately and how valuable it is.

What works today won't work as well next year. New possibilities are being born every day. Keep your game fresh. It's recession insurance for your current job and for your larger career.

Set your training goals for 2009

Did you know that MindLeaders Education Services department was recently renamed "Professional Services"? I am one of the Professional Services Analysts on the team.  Nice to meet you on the blog!

Our team often receives questions from trainers and Site Administrators on best practices for driving a successful online learning program. Here are a few questions you may wish to consider as you embark on your planning for e-Learning in 2009.

• How does e-Learning fit into your annual corporate goals?
• Can it be used to solve a high priority business problem?
• What was your primary purpose in making e-Learning available for employees?
  • Improving employee morale or retention rates?
  • Cross training employees in new skill sets?
  • Retraining employees that have been displaced?
• What factors will you consider in evaluating program success?
  • Student participation?
  • Specific course completion?
  • Student feedback?
  •  Basic skills acquisition?
  • Skill level improvement?
• Do your managers believe they will benefit from employee access to this training? Will they commit time and resources to permit training to take place?
• What tools will you utilize to measure success?
  • Scores
  • Surveys
  • Usage statistics?
• Are you providing any incentives (such as reward or recognition programs) to encourage student participation and program visibility?
• What would you do differently this year to motivate and inspire your students to take advantage of this opportunity for learning?

What is your experience? Do you have a success story or useful information to add? Tell us!  You may either post a comment to this blog, or for more information contact Professional Services at profserv@mindleaders.com.

MindLeaders is on Facebook

Calling all Web 2.0 aficionados: we have added a MindLeaders page to Facebook! It includes upcoming conferences and events, provides a feed of this blog's articles, and we've added a couple of pictures of the company in action and plan to include more.

If you're a Facebook member, we hope you'll visit our page and "fan" us. And if you have any thoughts about how you'd like to see our page used, please let us know!

How the economic crisis is a call to action for trainers and human resources

It's a sign of how bad the economy has gotten that this weekend, when I saw friends I haven't seen in a month or two, their first question wasn't "How are you doing" or "How's the family," it was "How's your work? Is your job safe?"

The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Speaker of the House just published this chart comparing job losses in the past three recessions. Numbers like these aren't going to make anyone feel any better.

As trainers, we're charged with not just worrying about ourselves, but with providing information that other people need, too. We're the ones who will be teaching new skills to workers who are being asked to do more duties with fewer resources. Eventually, this recession will be over and we should be ready for the next onslaught of onboarding/orientation training, too.

MindLeaders is doing some things to try to help in this economy. We have a new white paper coming that we'll be announcing later this week (stay tuned). And we've put together a new Career Shift package of courses to help people who are looking for a new job. The package includes courses on building resumes, interviewing and negotiating, managing time and selves, and building up skills in the latest Office products.

We're offering this new package to companies that have had to lay off workers to use in their severance packages, and to state agencies and resellers who can reach job-seekers directly.

What are some of the other biggest needs in today's economy that we trainers can meet? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

[Update 2/11/09: Janet Clarey has posted a version of the above chart with even more recessions tracked, all the way back to 1948. Our troubles today look no better.]

Got a company meeting? Jump in and train!

Here at MindLeaders, we're in the midst of our semi-annual company & sales meetings. Like most companies, it's a chance for us to take a look at where we've been, where we're going, celebrate successes, announce new initiatives, and get fired up.

Company meetings should also be a prime opportunity to teach! Beg, borrow, and steal to get yourself a little bit of time in the company meeting. It's a rare opportunity to get everyone's attention when they're not distracted by the other 5,000 things that usually buzz around them at the office.

This is, sometimes, easier said than done. Depending on your company, the company meeting can be a lofty affair reserved for the higher echelons. I think the key to success is another echo of my previous "Omit Needless Words" post: pare what you want to say down to the most essential information. Ask for five minutes to tell the single most important training tidbit of the entire year. If you can't get on the stage, ask to hand out fliers as people leave.

I'm lucky - since I'm in a training company, asking for a few minutes to tell a training story isn't a terribly hard sell. I sometimes get to speak at the company-wide meeting, sometimes at the sales meeting, but I can usually get a few words spoken about those Most Important Things. Got another great tactic for sharing information at company gatherings? Please share them in the comments.