Saba has acquired THINQ. Time was when an acquisition at this level -- two major players in the LMS market -- would have tongues wagging for months. But this has happened with hardly anyone appearing to care. Sure, THINQ's customers are not going to be happy about being told to migrate to Saba's technology over time. But neither the training press nor the usual industry commentators seem to think the acquisition is worthy of much attention.
Is this a sign of market maturity at last? Or is it because there has been so much blood shed in the industry recently that we are just numbed to the reality: this market is just not big enough for more than a few players. If the e-learning-only vendors have any hope of making a stand against the giant ERP vendors, they have to get bigger through merging. But we were talking David and Goliath before Oracle acquired PeopleSoft. Now it's more like David and Godzilla. Even before getting PeopleSoft, Oracle's revenues could absorb those of all the independent vendors put together three times over.
A couple of years ago I was fond of annoying LMS vendors by saying that it would be game over for the pure-play guys once the ERP firms turned their attention to e-learning. Looks like the sun might be setting sooner than anyone expected.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Work Skills are the Tip of the Iceberg
I have many hidden talents that rarely get sold to my clients. I am a photographer, a cook, a writer, and a web coder. I can fell a tree, survive in the wilderness, speak German, and some Dutch and Swedish, and a little American. I am a persuasive salesman, and an effective diplomat. I can put together business plans and brand plans, raise venture capital, re-build a computer, interpret complex data, and play a mean air guitar. I have other talents that I’d rather not go into here. So what? If they are of no direct relevance to the job I am doing, they get put on ice, and effectively cease to exist. Or do they?
In any company, each employee has a rich set of talents that never makes it to the surface in the work environment. Frequently, we “inherit” a team that we had no hand in hiring in the first place, and about whom we know little. We might, at annual review time, look at the employee file to get a better insight. But that file may only tell us about the person’s education, skills, certifications, and work experience. It tells us nothing about the employee’s alter ego, the “real” person who appears after leaving the office. It tells us nothing about their fuzzy competencies.
These days the recruitment process, which is supposed to be getting more and more rigorous, tends to ignore anything but the most salient facts about applicants. When I applied for my first job decades ago, there was a whole page of questions about my outside interests, hobbies, and sports. Today, those questions are considered either invasive of privacy or quite irrelevant to the evaluation of job suitability. In the US, most resumes should be only one page long – two at the outside – if they are to be accepted at all. Companies used to recruit the person, now they hire a finite skill set. The incidental skills and talents rarely get noticed or catalogued, so the total capacity of our workforce stays hidden.
I am not talking about Joan in Accounts, who speaks some Russian, so gets seconded to the sales team for the annual Moscow Trade Show. I am more concerned with the fundamental motivational, creative, and intellectual drivers that allow people to become linguists, musicians, programmers, amateur dramatists, community mentors, orchid-breeders, or moonlighting e-commerce entrepreneurs. It’s their learning skills that we may be under-exploiting, though their learned skills may clearly have some benefit.
We are populating our companies with tips of icebergs, without knowing what resources lie below the surface. That may have been acceptable in the 1980s and '90s, but in the knowledge-economy Naughties it’s a mistake. This is a decade of increasingly perishable overt competencies. The most valuable skills that an employee can have today are the ability and curiosity to peer over the horizon and the ability to learn, and unlearn, rapidly and efficiently.
As globalization is thrust upon us, and as networked communication becomes the norm, the ability of an organisation to rapidly evolve in new and creative ways becomes vital. The routine hierarchical “division of labour” approach to getting things done seems less relevant than the “organic flux” approach in which project teams coalesce then dissolve as needed. A key to the success of this is people who are capable of changing their focus, role, and operational skill-set as they move from one project to the next, or as they work on multiple projects simultaneously.
In the US, the digital generation is rising rapidly through the ranks, because they see ways to operate that those with an industrial-economy mindset cannot conceive. Those people older than their late twenties are struggling to change their own concepts of how organizations work.
For trainers, this raises a few complications, and many opportunities. First, an annual skill-gap analysis is of little value, but a tactical project skill-gap analysis might be handy. Second, the idea of scheduling the training of groups of people seems less sensible than creating individualized ad-hoc learning opportunities. Third, there may be a whole slew of new “learning” skills to be defined and taught. Fourth, there’s an evolving project management – and project participation – field, with its own skill-sets, to be defined and taught (the PMI's pretentiously named Project Management Body of Knowledge is considered by many to be hopelessly old-fashioned). Finally there is the growing need to train people in the skills of managing an organization that is in permanent flux.
As organizational barriers and processes start to flex and the crystalline nature of an employee’s contract with the company becomes more plastic, perhaps the idea of work-life balance changes to one of work-life integration. Instead of superficially segregating one’s skills into work skills and private skills, perhaps companies will start to look a little deeper at what fuzzy competencies people have. Identifying “root skills” that can be cultivated in multiple directions may spawn a better recruitment/promotion model than merely looking at the certificates stapled to a resume.
Original in TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 18 March 2005
In any company, each employee has a rich set of talents that never makes it to the surface in the work environment. Frequently, we “inherit” a team that we had no hand in hiring in the first place, and about whom we know little. We might, at annual review time, look at the employee file to get a better insight. But that file may only tell us about the person’s education, skills, certifications, and work experience. It tells us nothing about the employee’s alter ego, the “real” person who appears after leaving the office. It tells us nothing about their fuzzy competencies.
These days the recruitment process, which is supposed to be getting more and more rigorous, tends to ignore anything but the most salient facts about applicants. When I applied for my first job decades ago, there was a whole page of questions about my outside interests, hobbies, and sports. Today, those questions are considered either invasive of privacy or quite irrelevant to the evaluation of job suitability. In the US, most resumes should be only one page long – two at the outside – if they are to be accepted at all. Companies used to recruit the person, now they hire a finite skill set. The incidental skills and talents rarely get noticed or catalogued, so the total capacity of our workforce stays hidden.
I am not talking about Joan in Accounts, who speaks some Russian, so gets seconded to the sales team for the annual Moscow Trade Show. I am more concerned with the fundamental motivational, creative, and intellectual drivers that allow people to become linguists, musicians, programmers, amateur dramatists, community mentors, orchid-breeders, or moonlighting e-commerce entrepreneurs. It’s their learning skills that we may be under-exploiting, though their learned skills may clearly have some benefit.
We are populating our companies with tips of icebergs, without knowing what resources lie below the surface. That may have been acceptable in the 1980s and '90s, but in the knowledge-economy Naughties it’s a mistake. This is a decade of increasingly perishable overt competencies. The most valuable skills that an employee can have today are the ability and curiosity to peer over the horizon and the ability to learn, and unlearn, rapidly and efficiently.
As globalization is thrust upon us, and as networked communication becomes the norm, the ability of an organisation to rapidly evolve in new and creative ways becomes vital. The routine hierarchical “division of labour” approach to getting things done seems less relevant than the “organic flux” approach in which project teams coalesce then dissolve as needed. A key to the success of this is people who are capable of changing their focus, role, and operational skill-set as they move from one project to the next, or as they work on multiple projects simultaneously.
In the US, the digital generation is rising rapidly through the ranks, because they see ways to operate that those with an industrial-economy mindset cannot conceive. Those people older than their late twenties are struggling to change their own concepts of how organizations work.
For trainers, this raises a few complications, and many opportunities. First, an annual skill-gap analysis is of little value, but a tactical project skill-gap analysis might be handy. Second, the idea of scheduling the training of groups of people seems less sensible than creating individualized ad-hoc learning opportunities. Third, there may be a whole slew of new “learning” skills to be defined and taught. Fourth, there’s an evolving project management – and project participation – field, with its own skill-sets, to be defined and taught (the PMI's pretentiously named Project Management Body of Knowledge is considered by many to be hopelessly old-fashioned). Finally there is the growing need to train people in the skills of managing an organization that is in permanent flux.
As organizational barriers and processes start to flex and the crystalline nature of an employee’s contract with the company becomes more plastic, perhaps the idea of work-life balance changes to one of work-life integration. Instead of superficially segregating one’s skills into work skills and private skills, perhaps companies will start to look a little deeper at what fuzzy competencies people have. Identifying “root skills” that can be cultivated in multiple directions may spawn a better recruitment/promotion model than merely looking at the certificates stapled to a resume.
Original in TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 18 March 2005
Friday, March 18, 2005
New Paradigms for Learning
In recent posts I have talked about the power of informal learning, and wondered why learning professionals conspicuously ignore the potential for performance improvement that it offers. Now that the kind of human interactions that make informal learning so effective are being facilitated by the Internet, the relevance and impact of formal training may diminish even further. Do we as learning professionals stand by and watch our empires get sidelined, or do we try to take a leading role in defining and refining emerging learning paradigms?
Naturally, there will always be a need for formal training and diligent learning management, especially where compliance or certification are concerned. But according to various recent studies, corporate employees, particularly knowledge workers, learn three times more from informal experiences than they do in formal courses. Those informal learning experiences include interacting with co-workers, modelling peer behaviour, trial and error, self-directed learning, social support structures, networking, ad-hoc mentoring, and so on. If so little that is valued by employees comes from structured activities, either we are not teaching what people need to know or the way we teach is inadequate. Or the world can get by just fine without us.
Anthropologists and particle physicists agree that there are things in this world that we cannot observe without changing them in the process. Can those whose frame of reference is formality understand how informal learning takes place in their own organisations, and engage that process without breaking it? Can training departments, with all of their post-industrial-revolution baggage, rise to the challenge and affect the kind of post-knowledge-revolution changes that are both necessary and inevitable?
The challenge is to facilitate, not dictate, and to nurture and focus those aspects of an informal learning environment that can leverage what people do naturally. We need to start teaching employees how to learn. We need to create the culture that encourages innovation, experimentation, socialising, and networking. We need to make time for talking, and for dissecting failure without punishing it. And we need to start a movement, top-down, to dissolve organisational silos and the myopic tunnel-vision they produce, and to provide the facilities that make it easier for employees to engage with each other. And, for those who fear that the growing competencies of individual employees might not get recorded as they do in a formal training environment, perhaps we need to foster a renaissance in testing or measurement.
What about control, and planning, budgeting and evaluation? What about ROI? What about structure in our own jobs as trainers? - That’s the reaction that holds us back.
As the Internet barrelled its way into our corporate lives a decade ago, I hoped it would have a liberating effect on how we go about our work of performance improvement. For the most part, it has not.
Instead of cultivating and liberating corporate knowledge, we use the Internet to reinforce our ivory towers; instead of opening people’s eyes, we put them to sleep; instead of personalising learning, we deliver generic packaged courses. Instead of teaching people to catch fish, we force-feed them on Spam till their expectation of anything better fades away.
But that’s OK, because the canned-learning supply chain is easy to manage and control, which is more important than any ultimate impact on business performance. After all, we are judged on measurable results, so we shoot for measurable goals. And that learning supply chain, with which we are now all so comfortable, is just loaded with measurability – especially now that we have an LMS to automate the work for us.
Perhaps we are afraid to embark on any initiatives where the ROI cannot be readily measured or guesstimated. Or perhaps we live in a business world where projects that stray too far from conventional thinking will not be funded. Exploring and experimentation are frowned upon in the world of corporate learning, because it is not only financially risky, it threatens to rock the boat if successful. Rock the boat? Christopher Columbus found the cash to take three small boats over the edge of the world, and you can bet that his PowerPoint presentation to the Queen of Spain had really fuzzy ROI calculations in it.
Three and a half centuries later, change is so ubiquitous it has become a cliché. Yet corporate trainers don’t want to go there. To us, “innovation” is about boldly trying to get more Socratic methods into some of our classes, or converting our clickable links into animated 3D icons.
The recording industry discovered the power of informal networked collaboration when music consumers did things a radically new and – to them – eminently sensible and efficient way, using peer-to-peer file sharing. But it was not simply music files that got shared – the web facilitated a boom in knowledge sharing, with discussion forums, gossip boards, fan blogs, newsgroups, and specialised communities of interest that are doing more to promote the musicians than the marketing budgets of the record companies could ever have accomplished.
Record companies are left looking silly and marginalised, having to resort to legal actions in the courts to maintain their business model. Let’s not allow the recording industry to be a model of what is to become of training, which has typically been positioned as the “middleman” between SMEs and learners. We need to maintain some influence over the evolution of learning, because what crystallises from the informal bottom-up flux, while it will be “right” for the personal objectives of individual employees, may not be “right” for the business objectives of the corporation.
Original in TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 11 March 2005
Naturally, there will always be a need for formal training and diligent learning management, especially where compliance or certification are concerned. But according to various recent studies, corporate employees, particularly knowledge workers, learn three times more from informal experiences than they do in formal courses. Those informal learning experiences include interacting with co-workers, modelling peer behaviour, trial and error, self-directed learning, social support structures, networking, ad-hoc mentoring, and so on. If so little that is valued by employees comes from structured activities, either we are not teaching what people need to know or the way we teach is inadequate. Or the world can get by just fine without us.
Anthropologists and particle physicists agree that there are things in this world that we cannot observe without changing them in the process. Can those whose frame of reference is formality understand how informal learning takes place in their own organisations, and engage that process without breaking it? Can training departments, with all of their post-industrial-revolution baggage, rise to the challenge and affect the kind of post-knowledge-revolution changes that are both necessary and inevitable?
The challenge is to facilitate, not dictate, and to nurture and focus those aspects of an informal learning environment that can leverage what people do naturally. We need to start teaching employees how to learn. We need to create the culture that encourages innovation, experimentation, socialising, and networking. We need to make time for talking, and for dissecting failure without punishing it. And we need to start a movement, top-down, to dissolve organisational silos and the myopic tunnel-vision they produce, and to provide the facilities that make it easier for employees to engage with each other. And, for those who fear that the growing competencies of individual employees might not get recorded as they do in a formal training environment, perhaps we need to foster a renaissance in testing or measurement.
What about control, and planning, budgeting and evaluation? What about ROI? What about structure in our own jobs as trainers? - That’s the reaction that holds us back.
As the Internet barrelled its way into our corporate lives a decade ago, I hoped it would have a liberating effect on how we go about our work of performance improvement. For the most part, it has not.
Instead of cultivating and liberating corporate knowledge, we use the Internet to reinforce our ivory towers; instead of opening people’s eyes, we put them to sleep; instead of personalising learning, we deliver generic packaged courses. Instead of teaching people to catch fish, we force-feed them on Spam till their expectation of anything better fades away.
But that’s OK, because the canned-learning supply chain is easy to manage and control, which is more important than any ultimate impact on business performance. After all, we are judged on measurable results, so we shoot for measurable goals. And that learning supply chain, with which we are now all so comfortable, is just loaded with measurability – especially now that we have an LMS to automate the work for us.
Perhaps we are afraid to embark on any initiatives where the ROI cannot be readily measured or guesstimated. Or perhaps we live in a business world where projects that stray too far from conventional thinking will not be funded. Exploring and experimentation are frowned upon in the world of corporate learning, because it is not only financially risky, it threatens to rock the boat if successful. Rock the boat? Christopher Columbus found the cash to take three small boats over the edge of the world, and you can bet that his PowerPoint presentation to the Queen of Spain had really fuzzy ROI calculations in it.
Three and a half centuries later, change is so ubiquitous it has become a cliché. Yet corporate trainers don’t want to go there. To us, “innovation” is about boldly trying to get more Socratic methods into some of our classes, or converting our clickable links into animated 3D icons.
The recording industry discovered the power of informal networked collaboration when music consumers did things a radically new and – to them – eminently sensible and efficient way, using peer-to-peer file sharing. But it was not simply music files that got shared – the web facilitated a boom in knowledge sharing, with discussion forums, gossip boards, fan blogs, newsgroups, and specialised communities of interest that are doing more to promote the musicians than the marketing budgets of the record companies could ever have accomplished.
Record companies are left looking silly and marginalised, having to resort to legal actions in the courts to maintain their business model. Let’s not allow the recording industry to be a model of what is to become of training, which has typically been positioned as the “middleman” between SMEs and learners. We need to maintain some influence over the evolution of learning, because what crystallises from the informal bottom-up flux, while it will be “right” for the personal objectives of individual employees, may not be “right” for the business objectives of the corporation.
Original in TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 11 March 2005
Jeek market gets Adidas cybersneakers
What's a Jeek? They inhabit the space at the intersection of the Jock and Geek markets. (OK, I just made that up). Once a thinly-populated niche, it has been growing rapidly as sporty types acquire camera-phones and iPods, and nerdy types start seeking a little more fresh air and fitness.
It's a trans-age-group niche that buys a lot of stuff just because it's cool. And "cool" is often enhanced by premium prices.
Today, into this discerning market, Adidas launches the Adidas 1. It's a running shoe that adjusts itself to it's wearer's pace, terrain, and fatigue level.
The shoe contains a battery-powered motor-and-pully system that changes the cushioning of the sole between the time the shoe leaves the ground and the time it next impacts the running terrain. A sensor in the heel measures compression, and computes from that whether the shoe is too soft or too firm. The computer brain sends the necessary instructions to the micro-mechanics, and the next time the runner's foot hits the ground the shoe will be more appropritely tuned.
All of this technology weighs in at under 40 grams. The rechargable batteries last for 100 hours of running. To save powewr, after ten minutes of walking the system shuts itself down. Of course, you can hit the "off" switch at any time.
Price tag? $250 per pair. Outrageous compared with regular running shoe prices, but not for hard-core runners, status seekers, or those consumed with techno-lust. The Adidas 1 could well be the iPod of America's $16+ billion dollar sneaker market.
It's a trans-age-group niche that buys a lot of stuff just because it's cool. And "cool" is often enhanced by premium prices.
Today, into this discerning market, Adidas launches the Adidas 1. It's a running shoe that adjusts itself to it's wearer's pace, terrain, and fatigue level.
The shoe contains a battery-powered motor-and-pully system that changes the cushioning of the sole between the time the shoe leaves the ground and the time it next impacts the running terrain. A sensor in the heel measures compression, and computes from that whether the shoe is too soft or too firm. The computer brain sends the necessary instructions to the micro-mechanics, and the next time the runner's foot hits the ground the shoe will be more appropritely tuned.
All of this technology weighs in at under 40 grams. The rechargable batteries last for 100 hours of running. To save powewr, after ten minutes of walking the system shuts itself down. Of course, you can hit the "off" switch at any time.
Price tag? $250 per pair. Outrageous compared with regular running shoe prices, but not for hard-core runners, status seekers, or those consumed with techno-lust. The Adidas 1 could well be the iPod of America's $16+ billion dollar sneaker market.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Garbage in, landfill out
Judging by the e-mails I received, my recent post about smile sheets clearly struck a chord -- and a few raw nerves. Most reactions seemed to agree with my basic contention that end-of-class happy-sheets are abused almost universally. They are often interpreted to mean what they could never have measured, and are at best useful for scoring the food and the venue – and as a resource for promotional quotes. They have little to do with the quality of learning.
At the same time, nobody can contest that we need to formalise a feedback and review process in some way. I’d like to look at this in a little more detail, wearing my market researcher’s hat.
To be useful, any survey has to have clear objectives that are measurable, actionable, and meaningful. It has to be structured so as to maximise respondent engagement, minimise ambiguity and confusion, and allow for un-heroic interpretation of results. So the environment in which you conduct the survey has to be conducive to the kind of thinking you are asking respondents to do; and the questions, their wording, sequencing, and scoring mechanisms must be designed to minimise bias. Leading questions should always be avoided.
Here are some thoughts:
Objectives: What do you really want to measure, and why? Work backwards from the decisions you need to make, to the information you need to support those decisions, to the questions you need to ask to get that information. If you need to make decisions about future caterers or menus, then do a meaningful study that will help you make the right decisions – don’t just ask a generic question like: “Rate the food from one to five.”
If you want to evaluate how well the course met learner expectations, in order to fine-tune either course content or marketing positioning, do an appropriate study that gets inside the issue enough to be useful. Don’t just ask learners: “How well did the course meet your expectations” and expect an aggregate score on a Likert scale to tell you anything actionable. Above all, avoid gratuitous nice-to-know but not actionable questions.
Structure: In any research, you have to respect respondents’ time. A blank questionnaire may contain more accurate responses than one filled out in haste! So make sure learners have the time to do the job you are asking of them. And make sure your questions are structured and sequenced to minimise confusion.
Don’t jump from a ten-point numeric scale to a five-stage semantic differential if you can help it. Ask questions that learners will understand and will see the purpose of. Always test any questionnaire on a sub-sample of people who have not been involved in its design, because your own insight into what you are looking for can blind you to weaknesses in your wording and structure.
Interpretation: The area where most nonsense creeps into a study is in the interpretation of the data. If you have structured the study well, interpretation should be easy and obvious. If not, huge conceptual leaps are invoked to get to the conclusion you are looking for, and those leaps are loaded with bias and wishful thinking. To go back to the earlier example, you have asked learners to rate the trainer’s presentation skills and everyone gives a low score. What are they talking about? Vocal projection? PowerPoint design? Body language or eye contact? Content or structure? Pace? Audience involvement or lack of it? Attitude? Since you have no idea what it means, you will interpret it according to your own beliefs, prejudices, or defence mechanisms.
Another example: you have asked learners to rate how well the course met their expectations, and you get a good score. Does this mean it is a great course? Or does it mean they had low expectations? It is possible that their expectations were quite different from what the course objectives assumed they were.
Environment: If you start with the objectives of your study, you will probably find that one single questionnaire administered at the end of a course is quite inadequate. The environment at course close is simply not conducive to the kind of reflection or honesty that you may need. Relevance and effectiveness maybe better tested a few weeks later, when learners have had to apply what they learned on the job. An all-learners survey may similarly not be necessary – you can get really good information by pulling a sample of learners from multiple sessions of the same course into a focus group for an hour or two a month or so after their learning experience. If nothing else, such a session might reveal to you some issues that you never thought of asking about.
Some aspects of learning effectiveness may be best tested in real-time at the moment of learning, during a session where learners are trying to grasp what is being taught. As trainers, we should have the sensitivity and curiosity to be continually taking the pulse of our trainees and adjusting accordingly. Within the constraints of our schedule, good trainers do try to be wired into learner feelings and to react where possible and appropriate. But many courses are not designed for flexibility and are often conducted under such time pressure that “nurturing” is out of the question.
Perhaps we need to add another level to Kirkpatrick - level 0, measured at the point of interaction. But what tools would we use?
Original in TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 4 Feb 2005
At the same time, nobody can contest that we need to formalise a feedback and review process in some way. I’d like to look at this in a little more detail, wearing my market researcher’s hat.
To be useful, any survey has to have clear objectives that are measurable, actionable, and meaningful. It has to be structured so as to maximise respondent engagement, minimise ambiguity and confusion, and allow for un-heroic interpretation of results. So the environment in which you conduct the survey has to be conducive to the kind of thinking you are asking respondents to do; and the questions, their wording, sequencing, and scoring mechanisms must be designed to minimise bias. Leading questions should always be avoided.
Here are some thoughts:
Objectives: What do you really want to measure, and why? Work backwards from the decisions you need to make, to the information you need to support those decisions, to the questions you need to ask to get that information. If you need to make decisions about future caterers or menus, then do a meaningful study that will help you make the right decisions – don’t just ask a generic question like: “Rate the food from one to five.”
If you want to evaluate how well the course met learner expectations, in order to fine-tune either course content or marketing positioning, do an appropriate study that gets inside the issue enough to be useful. Don’t just ask learners: “How well did the course meet your expectations” and expect an aggregate score on a Likert scale to tell you anything actionable. Above all, avoid gratuitous nice-to-know but not actionable questions.
Structure: In any research, you have to respect respondents’ time. A blank questionnaire may contain more accurate responses than one filled out in haste! So make sure learners have the time to do the job you are asking of them. And make sure your questions are structured and sequenced to minimise confusion.
Don’t jump from a ten-point numeric scale to a five-stage semantic differential if you can help it. Ask questions that learners will understand and will see the purpose of. Always test any questionnaire on a sub-sample of people who have not been involved in its design, because your own insight into what you are looking for can blind you to weaknesses in your wording and structure.
Interpretation: The area where most nonsense creeps into a study is in the interpretation of the data. If you have structured the study well, interpretation should be easy and obvious. If not, huge conceptual leaps are invoked to get to the conclusion you are looking for, and those leaps are loaded with bias and wishful thinking. To go back to the earlier example, you have asked learners to rate the trainer’s presentation skills and everyone gives a low score. What are they talking about? Vocal projection? PowerPoint design? Body language or eye contact? Content or structure? Pace? Audience involvement or lack of it? Attitude? Since you have no idea what it means, you will interpret it according to your own beliefs, prejudices, or defence mechanisms.
Another example: you have asked learners to rate how well the course met their expectations, and you get a good score. Does this mean it is a great course? Or does it mean they had low expectations? It is possible that their expectations were quite different from what the course objectives assumed they were.
Environment: If you start with the objectives of your study, you will probably find that one single questionnaire administered at the end of a course is quite inadequate. The environment at course close is simply not conducive to the kind of reflection or honesty that you may need. Relevance and effectiveness maybe better tested a few weeks later, when learners have had to apply what they learned on the job. An all-learners survey may similarly not be necessary – you can get really good information by pulling a sample of learners from multiple sessions of the same course into a focus group for an hour or two a month or so after their learning experience. If nothing else, such a session might reveal to you some issues that you never thought of asking about.
Some aspects of learning effectiveness may be best tested in real-time at the moment of learning, during a session where learners are trying to grasp what is being taught. As trainers, we should have the sensitivity and curiosity to be continually taking the pulse of our trainees and adjusting accordingly. Within the constraints of our schedule, good trainers do try to be wired into learner feelings and to react where possible and appropriate. But many courses are not designed for flexibility and are often conducted under such time pressure that “nurturing” is out of the question.
Perhaps we need to add another level to Kirkpatrick - level 0, measured at the point of interaction. But what tools would we use?
Original in TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 4 Feb 2005
Monday, January 31, 2005
The self-delusion of smile-sheets
There is an unhealthy tradition in training that every course must end with participants filling in a questionnaire in which they express their feelings about their learning experience. We ask people scurrying for the door to take time to check boxes on multiple Likert scales and to scribble a few comments. Then we gather up the questionnaires and flip through them hoping desperately for a few feel-good moments of positive feedback, and finding good rationalizations for any negative scores.
Then, if the training organisation is vaguely professional, the questionnaire results get incorporated into a database where they are manipulated to produce trends and averages. Attention gets paid to those aspects that learners are clearly less happy with, and trainers with consistently good average scores acquire a sort of heroic status. Oh dear.
I can’t think of too many other fields of activity where we try to measure customer satisfaction immediately after the event each and every time. Does the waiter refuse to let you leave the restaurant till you have filled in the form? Do you get accosted by questionnaire-wielding cinema managers during the closing titles of a movie? Does your dentist insist that you check a few boxes before you are allowed to escape the chair?
I used to work with a training company that evaluated the competence of its trainers based on their smile-sheet score averaged across all questions and all participants in a particular session. Trainers would come in beaming with the news that they'd just run a 4.7, as if the number actually meant something (though of course it did -- their daily rate was pegged to their perceived ability to make learners happy, not to the impact that they had on the effectiveness of those learners once back on the job).
My background is in market research, so I know a thing or two about questionnaires and survey design. Smile-sheet questionnaires are often really badly designed, with ambiguous questions or counter-intuitive formats. The process is far from ideal, with tired respondents working in haste. And the environment is inherently invalid, with respondent-trainer relationships interfering with objective perceptions or honest responses. The data that comes in is badly flawed, and those flaws are magnified with every manipulation and interpretation. Garbage in, landfill out. Evaluating training quality by smile-sheets and then taking action based on that evaluation is naive and delusional.
Technical validity issues aside, we all know that smile-sheet scores are not a meaningful measure of training effectiveness. Nor do they provide any real insight into what, if anything, a participant has learned, or the impact that it might have on that person’s real-world work performance. They are at best a blurred snapshot of customer satisfaction at the time, nothing more. But we continue to use and revere them.
As trainers, we should have the sensitivity and curiosity to be continually taking the pulse of our trainees and adjusting accordingly. So why do we perpetuate the smile-sheet ritual? Is it because “management” wants some easy means of monitoring trainer performance? Or is it because learners have come to expect some kind of formal feedback process beyond the ability to speak up in class?
Whatever the motivation, we are simply not measuring the things that we are reporting on. There are a series of large conceptual leaps between what is actually measured (vague momentary happiness) and what we interpret as being measured (training effectiveness). The endless discussions that go on about whether a 5-point scale is better than a 7-point scale, whether checking boxes is better than circling numbers, whether semantic differentials (marvelous - - - awful) are better than numeric intervals (5 - - - 1), are all irrelevant if the core concept is inherently invalid.
If we really care about the quality of the learning service we are providing, we should put a little more effort into measuring and monitoring that quality. Quality is all about the extent to which we achieved the learning objectives, and that cannot be measured at the point of training. It has to be measured after the event, where the training is applied on the job.
We should at least care enough to acknowledge that the smile-sheet is only a token gesture at quality control, and devise and implement systems or processes that are more incisive and significant. We pay lip service to Kirkpatrick’s four levels and wistfully wish it were easy to measure beyond level one. But that is rarely part of our brief, so we let it slide. How much easier would it be to do all of those ROI projections if we had at least some valid data to work with beyond the fact that we scored a smile-sheet 4.7 average in the courses we ran last year?
Original in TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of Jan 21 2005
Then, if the training organisation is vaguely professional, the questionnaire results get incorporated into a database where they are manipulated to produce trends and averages. Attention gets paid to those aspects that learners are clearly less happy with, and trainers with consistently good average scores acquire a sort of heroic status. Oh dear.
I can’t think of too many other fields of activity where we try to measure customer satisfaction immediately after the event each and every time. Does the waiter refuse to let you leave the restaurant till you have filled in the form? Do you get accosted by questionnaire-wielding cinema managers during the closing titles of a movie? Does your dentist insist that you check a few boxes before you are allowed to escape the chair?
I used to work with a training company that evaluated the competence of its trainers based on their smile-sheet score averaged across all questions and all participants in a particular session. Trainers would come in beaming with the news that they'd just run a 4.7, as if the number actually meant something (though of course it did -- their daily rate was pegged to their perceived ability to make learners happy, not to the impact that they had on the effectiveness of those learners once back on the job).
My background is in market research, so I know a thing or two about questionnaires and survey design. Smile-sheet questionnaires are often really badly designed, with ambiguous questions or counter-intuitive formats. The process is far from ideal, with tired respondents working in haste. And the environment is inherently invalid, with respondent-trainer relationships interfering with objective perceptions or honest responses. The data that comes in is badly flawed, and those flaws are magnified with every manipulation and interpretation. Garbage in, landfill out. Evaluating training quality by smile-sheets and then taking action based on that evaluation is naive and delusional.
Technical validity issues aside, we all know that smile-sheet scores are not a meaningful measure of training effectiveness. Nor do they provide any real insight into what, if anything, a participant has learned, or the impact that it might have on that person’s real-world work performance. They are at best a blurred snapshot of customer satisfaction at the time, nothing more. But we continue to use and revere them.
As trainers, we should have the sensitivity and curiosity to be continually taking the pulse of our trainees and adjusting accordingly. So why do we perpetuate the smile-sheet ritual? Is it because “management” wants some easy means of monitoring trainer performance? Or is it because learners have come to expect some kind of formal feedback process beyond the ability to speak up in class?
Whatever the motivation, we are simply not measuring the things that we are reporting on. There are a series of large conceptual leaps between what is actually measured (vague momentary happiness) and what we interpret as being measured (training effectiveness). The endless discussions that go on about whether a 5-point scale is better than a 7-point scale, whether checking boxes is better than circling numbers, whether semantic differentials (marvelous - - - awful) are better than numeric intervals (5 - - - 1), are all irrelevant if the core concept is inherently invalid.
If we really care about the quality of the learning service we are providing, we should put a little more effort into measuring and monitoring that quality. Quality is all about the extent to which we achieved the learning objectives, and that cannot be measured at the point of training. It has to be measured after the event, where the training is applied on the job.
We should at least care enough to acknowledge that the smile-sheet is only a token gesture at quality control, and devise and implement systems or processes that are more incisive and significant. We pay lip service to Kirkpatrick’s four levels and wistfully wish it were easy to measure beyond level one. But that is rarely part of our brief, so we let it slide. How much easier would it be to do all of those ROI projections if we had at least some valid data to work with beyond the fact that we scored a smile-sheet 4.7 average in the courses we ran last year?
Original in TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of Jan 21 2005
Sunday, January 30, 2005
PowerPoint in perspective
PowerPoint is audience-abusive, presenter-addictive, and information-transfer sclerotic. But with a little determination, it is possible to stop it from calling the shots and take back control of your communication.
There is no end to the supercilious put-downs of the tool that roll of the tongues of those who know better. “Death by PowerPoint” is no longer funny, but we all use it to show how much smarter we as audience members are than those making an effort to communicate their message from the front of the room. Yet the same people who sit in meeting rooms and sigh inwardly as another bullet point whizzes in from stage right, will themselves inflict similar discomfort when called upon to present.
Not all trainers are detractors. There are many PowerPoint apologists who will tell you that it is a perfectly good tool, and that the fault lies with the way people use it. Not true. It is a tool that is often quite inappropriate for the task, yet our norms and expectations dictate that we use it anyway.
PowerPoint leads you to communicate in a slide-show or lecture mode. It imposes a sage on stage relationship between the audience and the presenter, and it makes the content as manifested way too central in the process. Content is of course important, but PowerPoint forces an abstracted sequentialism on content that often makes it incoherent. The presentation typically becomes the communication, instead of merely supporting it. Dressing it up with animated transitions and pointless clip-art will not stop the haemorrhaging of audience attention. The worst offence of PowerPoint is that it often serves as the velvet curtain behind which the Wizard of Oz presenter hides his/her own lack of substance.
If you have to use PowerPoint, what can you do to make the best of it? Assuming that basic legibility issues and presentation skills are already in hand, here are ten tips in, er, bullet point format:
1. Understand your strategic objective and structure your communication so that it gets you there. If you are trying to teach, use appropriate communication processes and don’t let “your presentation” become a substitute for a proper learning experience.
2. Only use PowerPoint slides for those parts where it makes the communication clearer or more efficient. If you can’t communicate your message verbally without a PowerPoint prop, perhaps you have nothing worthwhile to say. Don’t feel compelled to have a slide for everything you are going to say, and use blank slides liberally as spacers that bring focus back to you or to your audience.
3. Don’t use PowerPoint as a pacemaker. If your presentation design interferes with the right pace of communication, rethink it.
4. Design to express ideas, not merely to summarize. A bullet list is often the last refuge of the poorly prepared.
5. The time and attention of your audience is a scarce commodity – respect it. Self-indulgence seems to be encouraged by PowerPoint, and results in tedium and time pressure.
6. Choose the visual media that bring most clarity to any item. Numbers are often more effective than text or graphics, still images can sometimes do more than busy animations. For a real-time electronic whiteboard, plug in a cheap graphics tablet and write on your PowerPoint slides.
7. Don’t be afraid to crowd a slide where appropriate. An individual item often needs the context of other items to be meaningful, and a linear revelation may not be the most effective way to go.
8. Keep it simple and elegant. Your slides should support what and how you are communicating, not dominate it.
9. Stay flexible. For important events such as conferences, I usually have two versions of my presentation (one high-res full-color, one lower-res 16 color) because you never know what limitations the projector may have. If I am presenting as part of a panel, I prepare the full presentation and a stripped-down version in case someone steals all my time. And I make sure I can talk comfortably without any aids at all if necessary.
10. Respect your audience’s need for a record of the presentation, but don’t take that need literally. Even the most text-heavy PowerPoint slideshow is usually an incoherent representation of what you actually had to say. Instead, take the time to write a paper, including any relevant illustrations from your presentation.
In skilled hands PowerPoint can be quite effective even when it forces a sub-optimal mode on the communication. But “presenting” is rarely what we should be doing. Training, selling, persuading, inspiring, or informing all require different communication modes, processes, and media. Why do presenters and audiences have an unquestioning expectation that they will meet their objectives with a slideshow? Sometimes technology becomes an end in itself, and PowerPoint has achieved that status. The medium has become more important than the message.
You are often better off simply turning off the projector and talking with your audience. If you need to illustrate your talk, try using a less linear tool, such as HTML or Flash. But there is not a lot you cannot do, very effectively, with a whiteboard or a flipchart.
Originally in TrainingZONE's Parkin Space column of Jan 14 2005.
There is no end to the supercilious put-downs of the tool that roll of the tongues of those who know better. “Death by PowerPoint” is no longer funny, but we all use it to show how much smarter we as audience members are than those making an effort to communicate their message from the front of the room. Yet the same people who sit in meeting rooms and sigh inwardly as another bullet point whizzes in from stage right, will themselves inflict similar discomfort when called upon to present.
Not all trainers are detractors. There are many PowerPoint apologists who will tell you that it is a perfectly good tool, and that the fault lies with the way people use it. Not true. It is a tool that is often quite inappropriate for the task, yet our norms and expectations dictate that we use it anyway.
PowerPoint leads you to communicate in a slide-show or lecture mode. It imposes a sage on stage relationship between the audience and the presenter, and it makes the content as manifested way too central in the process. Content is of course important, but PowerPoint forces an abstracted sequentialism on content that often makes it incoherent. The presentation typically becomes the communication, instead of merely supporting it. Dressing it up with animated transitions and pointless clip-art will not stop the haemorrhaging of audience attention. The worst offence of PowerPoint is that it often serves as the velvet curtain behind which the Wizard of Oz presenter hides his/her own lack of substance.
If you have to use PowerPoint, what can you do to make the best of it? Assuming that basic legibility issues and presentation skills are already in hand, here are ten tips in, er, bullet point format:
1. Understand your strategic objective and structure your communication so that it gets you there. If you are trying to teach, use appropriate communication processes and don’t let “your presentation” become a substitute for a proper learning experience.
2. Only use PowerPoint slides for those parts where it makes the communication clearer or more efficient. If you can’t communicate your message verbally without a PowerPoint prop, perhaps you have nothing worthwhile to say. Don’t feel compelled to have a slide for everything you are going to say, and use blank slides liberally as spacers that bring focus back to you or to your audience.
3. Don’t use PowerPoint as a pacemaker. If your presentation design interferes with the right pace of communication, rethink it.
4. Design to express ideas, not merely to summarize. A bullet list is often the last refuge of the poorly prepared.
5. The time and attention of your audience is a scarce commodity – respect it. Self-indulgence seems to be encouraged by PowerPoint, and results in tedium and time pressure.
6. Choose the visual media that bring most clarity to any item. Numbers are often more effective than text or graphics, still images can sometimes do more than busy animations. For a real-time electronic whiteboard, plug in a cheap graphics tablet and write on your PowerPoint slides.
7. Don’t be afraid to crowd a slide where appropriate. An individual item often needs the context of other items to be meaningful, and a linear revelation may not be the most effective way to go.
8. Keep it simple and elegant. Your slides should support what and how you are communicating, not dominate it.
9. Stay flexible. For important events such as conferences, I usually have two versions of my presentation (one high-res full-color, one lower-res 16 color) because you never know what limitations the projector may have. If I am presenting as part of a panel, I prepare the full presentation and a stripped-down version in case someone steals all my time. And I make sure I can talk comfortably without any aids at all if necessary.
10. Respect your audience’s need for a record of the presentation, but don’t take that need literally. Even the most text-heavy PowerPoint slideshow is usually an incoherent representation of what you actually had to say. Instead, take the time to write a paper, including any relevant illustrations from your presentation.
In skilled hands PowerPoint can be quite effective even when it forces a sub-optimal mode on the communication. But “presenting” is rarely what we should be doing. Training, selling, persuading, inspiring, or informing all require different communication modes, processes, and media. Why do presenters and audiences have an unquestioning expectation that they will meet their objectives with a slideshow? Sometimes technology becomes an end in itself, and PowerPoint has achieved that status. The medium has become more important than the message.
You are often better off simply turning off the projector and talking with your audience. If you need to illustrate your talk, try using a less linear tool, such as HTML or Flash. But there is not a lot you cannot do, very effectively, with a whiteboard or a flipchart.
Originally in TrainingZONE's Parkin Space column of Jan 14 2005.
Monday, January 17, 2005
An eventful year for training technologies?
In 2004 technology appeared to be coming out of the post-bubble-burst doldrums and into our lives as never before. The technology infrastructure that was laid down, and the tool chest that the training industry can now play with, is impressive.
VoIP companies like Skype and Vonage started a quiet revolution in the telecom industry, making free (or absurdly cheap) phone calls easily available to anyone with a web connection, and prompting pundits to forecast that 40% of all business calls will be web-based within three years. Microsoft came under pressure from all directions. Oracle acquired PeopleSoft for $10.3 billion, a move that surely made LMS vendors nervous.
Google bought Keyhole Corp, a digital mapping business, amid rumours that Google was developing its own browser to compete with Internet Explorer. IE lost double digit market share to the open-source Firefox browser (actually Netscape reincarnated) within weeks of its launch, a classic example of how fragile the status quo can be these days, and of how vulnerable even the most dominant are to innovative competitors. And open-source Linux went from strength to strength, landing a major endorsement when IBM ditched Microsoft and adopted Linux as its operating system of choice. That was before IBM sold its personal computer business to a company in China.
After Google’s massive IPO, Yahoo, Amazon.com and Microsoft all got the search engine bug, and lots of start-ups joined the search for better search systems. And the proliferation of spam and viruses made internet security a very good business to be in. Symantec acquired Veritas for $13.5 billion.
Apple, HP and Dell all rolled out desirable little devices that make the old data-focused grey-box notion of a personal computer redundant. The cell phone became a multimedia mobile computer that serves up music, movies, and images as well as the occasional phone call or text message. The iPod phenomenon made Apple the fastest growing stock of the year. In the US, broadband users outstripped dial-up users for the first time, making web-based multimedia more viable than ever. And wide-area WiFi hot-zones sprang up like mushrooms, with the city of Philadelphia announcing a plan to provide free broadband wireless access to everyone within the city limits.
There was less dramatic progress in social computing. True, new services kept popping up to provide “connections” for those seeking collaboration or just company. Friendster became phenomenally popular overnight, acting as a peer-to-peer social network for (mainly) adolescent gossip sharing. More mature versions have yet to take hold, though Spoke and the repositioned Lycos have promise. Free photo sharing services like Hello and Flickr have blossomed. And blogs and RSS finally made it to centre court, after years of being cult phenomena, suggesting that the emphasis in the application of computing has moved from the personal to the intimate. Perhaps training needs to start following the same path.
So what does it all mean for learning? Very little, if you choose to ignore it. Rather a lot, if you are looking to exploit it. Strangely enough, academic institutions are often more advanced in their incorporation of web technologies than business organisations. Perhaps it is because their primary market is the digital generation. It is hard to ignore the way your students prefer to do things, particularly if they make sense.
Universities are using social networks, WiFi, podcasting, online forums, and virtual collaboration almost as a matter of course these days. They are still semester-bound, which is odd given the inefficiencies of date-based curricula, but for the most part there is a buzz of innovation and experimentation on campuses around the world. Sadly, a similar innovative buzz is hard to find in the training centres of major corporations.
The oft-heard put-down of “solution looking for a problem” is very easy to use at the end of 2004. There are a lot of inexpensive, easily obtainable tools looking for someone to apply them. Technologies are no longer lagging our ability to use them. The reverse is true: our imagination and willingness to reinvent our processes and ourselves as trainers is the major limiting factor in our evolution to more competent professionals.
Ah, but is there a need to innovate, to continuously improve our effectiveness or efficiency, to provide a better service to our learners, and our employers? As an industry, the answer has to be a resounding “yes” but as individuals we tend to be happy waiting for someone else to make the first move. As Microsoft discovered at so many levels in 2004, playing a waiting game is not necessarily the smartest survival strategy.
VoIP companies like Skype and Vonage started a quiet revolution in the telecom industry, making free (or absurdly cheap) phone calls easily available to anyone with a web connection, and prompting pundits to forecast that 40% of all business calls will be web-based within three years. Microsoft came under pressure from all directions. Oracle acquired PeopleSoft for $10.3 billion, a move that surely made LMS vendors nervous.
Google bought Keyhole Corp, a digital mapping business, amid rumours that Google was developing its own browser to compete with Internet Explorer. IE lost double digit market share to the open-source Firefox browser (actually Netscape reincarnated) within weeks of its launch, a classic example of how fragile the status quo can be these days, and of how vulnerable even the most dominant are to innovative competitors. And open-source Linux went from strength to strength, landing a major endorsement when IBM ditched Microsoft and adopted Linux as its operating system of choice. That was before IBM sold its personal computer business to a company in China.
After Google’s massive IPO, Yahoo, Amazon.com and Microsoft all got the search engine bug, and lots of start-ups joined the search for better search systems. And the proliferation of spam and viruses made internet security a very good business to be in. Symantec acquired Veritas for $13.5 billion.
Apple, HP and Dell all rolled out desirable little devices that make the old data-focused grey-box notion of a personal computer redundant. The cell phone became a multimedia mobile computer that serves up music, movies, and images as well as the occasional phone call or text message. The iPod phenomenon made Apple the fastest growing stock of the year. In the US, broadband users outstripped dial-up users for the first time, making web-based multimedia more viable than ever. And wide-area WiFi hot-zones sprang up like mushrooms, with the city of Philadelphia announcing a plan to provide free broadband wireless access to everyone within the city limits.
There was less dramatic progress in social computing. True, new services kept popping up to provide “connections” for those seeking collaboration or just company. Friendster became phenomenally popular overnight, acting as a peer-to-peer social network for (mainly) adolescent gossip sharing. More mature versions have yet to take hold, though Spoke and the repositioned Lycos have promise. Free photo sharing services like Hello and Flickr have blossomed. And blogs and RSS finally made it to centre court, after years of being cult phenomena, suggesting that the emphasis in the application of computing has moved from the personal to the intimate. Perhaps training needs to start following the same path.
So what does it all mean for learning? Very little, if you choose to ignore it. Rather a lot, if you are looking to exploit it. Strangely enough, academic institutions are often more advanced in their incorporation of web technologies than business organisations. Perhaps it is because their primary market is the digital generation. It is hard to ignore the way your students prefer to do things, particularly if they make sense.
Universities are using social networks, WiFi, podcasting, online forums, and virtual collaboration almost as a matter of course these days. They are still semester-bound, which is odd given the inefficiencies of date-based curricula, but for the most part there is a buzz of innovation and experimentation on campuses around the world. Sadly, a similar innovative buzz is hard to find in the training centres of major corporations.
The oft-heard put-down of “solution looking for a problem” is very easy to use at the end of 2004. There are a lot of inexpensive, easily obtainable tools looking for someone to apply them. Technologies are no longer lagging our ability to use them. The reverse is true: our imagination and willingness to reinvent our processes and ourselves as trainers is the major limiting factor in our evolution to more competent professionals.
Ah, but is there a need to innovate, to continuously improve our effectiveness or efficiency, to provide a better service to our learners, and our employers? As an industry, the answer has to be a resounding “yes” but as individuals we tend to be happy waiting for someone else to make the first move. As Microsoft discovered at so many levels in 2004, playing a waiting game is not necessarily the smartest survival strategy.
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
New Year's Training Resolutions 2005
TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 12/29/04:
Last December I made a list of “professional resolutions” that would make me altogether a better person in 2004. Having conveniently misplaced that list, I am not able to tell how I did, though I am sure it was not an admirable performance. Now it’s time to put together a new list. So what do I need to achieve in 2005 to do a better job as both a trainer and a consultant?
My New Year training resolutions:
1. Start learning Mandarin.
2. Do not get comfortable with one way of doing things, keep looking for better ways to achieve the goals, but do not be easily distracted by bright shiny learning objects.
3. Do not give up easily where decision-makers don’t want to be bothered with the complications of innovation. Try harder to justify the intelligent application of emerging technologies in learning designs where it is blindingly obvious (to me) that these will enhance learning. Develop better ways of explaining to non-technical traditionalists the use and impact of such tools as social networks, RSS, and peer-to-peer collaboration.
4. Work on a training evaluation system that actually measures my performance against the specified learning goals, and quantifies the impact that I am having on business objectives.
5. Stop acceding to demands for a training solution to what is really a management problem. I am sure that a large proportion of the training that takes place fits this mode, and it is not easy to turn away this kind of business, but I for one am not doing it any more. If I can’t successfully provide the consulting solution, I am not going to fake a training solution. Not only is it frustratingly inadequate to “train” people then send them back into an environment in which the training will have no effect, it abuses their time and energy, wastes the clients’ budget, and lowers the reputation of training generally.
6. Try to write an objective guide to SCORM and AICC in plain English that even I can understand. Focus on the practical implications for the design of learning experiences and clarify the rather specific niche that such standards and models have in the wider context of learning, and of learning administration.
7. Learn more from learners how best to help them learn. Spend more time with people to understand their evolving preferences and behaviours where learning is concerned. Try to gain better insights into their informal learning processes, and exploit those insights in more formal learning experiences.
8. Always put the needs of individual trainees ahead of my own needs, and the needs of my clients’ business ahead of all else.
9. Spend more time in the classroom and on the conference podium. Reverse my recent trend toward being very virtual, and get back to doing a lot more face-to-face communication. (For years I was a strong advocate of the virtues of virtual-ness, but, while the efficiencies are undeniable, there is a point beyond which your batteries stop recharging).
10. Campaign for free wireless broadband in every classroom, airport, conference venue, and hotel room. It is rapidly becoming as expected a part of the environment as air conditioning or electricity.
11. Design and build a prototype learning system that is delivered exclusively via low-spec mobile phone (I am particularly interested in basic literacy training).
12. Collaboratively engage with more people in the learning profession, with the goal of writing more useful how-to papers. Finish writing my book.
13. Do some pro bono work for a deserving cause.
14. Behave better: Stop using the fuzzy term “e-learning”. Stop rolling my eyes every time someone else uses it without clarifying specifically what they mean. Stop pronouncing it “HellMS” when in the company of LMS vendors.
15. Finally kick the PowerPoint habit.
It looks like 2005 will be another one of those NASA centrifuge-ride years. But I trust it will bring health, wealth, and happiness to all.
Last December I made a list of “professional resolutions” that would make me altogether a better person in 2004. Having conveniently misplaced that list, I am not able to tell how I did, though I am sure it was not an admirable performance. Now it’s time to put together a new list. So what do I need to achieve in 2005 to do a better job as both a trainer and a consultant?
My New Year training resolutions:
1. Start learning Mandarin.
2. Do not get comfortable with one way of doing things, keep looking for better ways to achieve the goals, but do not be easily distracted by bright shiny learning objects.
3. Do not give up easily where decision-makers don’t want to be bothered with the complications of innovation. Try harder to justify the intelligent application of emerging technologies in learning designs where it is blindingly obvious (to me) that these will enhance learning. Develop better ways of explaining to non-technical traditionalists the use and impact of such tools as social networks, RSS, and peer-to-peer collaboration.
4. Work on a training evaluation system that actually measures my performance against the specified learning goals, and quantifies the impact that I am having on business objectives.
5. Stop acceding to demands for a training solution to what is really a management problem. I am sure that a large proportion of the training that takes place fits this mode, and it is not easy to turn away this kind of business, but I for one am not doing it any more. If I can’t successfully provide the consulting solution, I am not going to fake a training solution. Not only is it frustratingly inadequate to “train” people then send them back into an environment in which the training will have no effect, it abuses their time and energy, wastes the clients’ budget, and lowers the reputation of training generally.
6. Try to write an objective guide to SCORM and AICC in plain English that even I can understand. Focus on the practical implications for the design of learning experiences and clarify the rather specific niche that such standards and models have in the wider context of learning, and of learning administration.
7. Learn more from learners how best to help them learn. Spend more time with people to understand their evolving preferences and behaviours where learning is concerned. Try to gain better insights into their informal learning processes, and exploit those insights in more formal learning experiences.
8. Always put the needs of individual trainees ahead of my own needs, and the needs of my clients’ business ahead of all else.
9. Spend more time in the classroom and on the conference podium. Reverse my recent trend toward being very virtual, and get back to doing a lot more face-to-face communication. (For years I was a strong advocate of the virtues of virtual-ness, but, while the efficiencies are undeniable, there is a point beyond which your batteries stop recharging).
10. Campaign for free wireless broadband in every classroom, airport, conference venue, and hotel room. It is rapidly becoming as expected a part of the environment as air conditioning or electricity.
11. Design and build a prototype learning system that is delivered exclusively via low-spec mobile phone (I am particularly interested in basic literacy training).
12. Collaboratively engage with more people in the learning profession, with the goal of writing more useful how-to papers. Finish writing my book.
13. Do some pro bono work for a deserving cause.
14. Behave better: Stop using the fuzzy term “e-learning”. Stop rolling my eyes every time someone else uses it without clarifying specifically what they mean. Stop pronouncing it “HellMS” when in the company of LMS vendors.
15. Finally kick the PowerPoint habit.
It looks like 2005 will be another one of those NASA centrifuge-ride years. But I trust it will bring health, wealth, and happiness to all.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
LMS Adventures continued..
My LMS adventures piece a few weeks ago produced a torrent of email, most of it agreeing that today’s LMS has way too much say in our training decisions.
The only vaguely defensive reactions were from LMS vendors, who typically said “Yes, but what else can we do?” Short of reinventing your systems completely, you can probably do nothing. Corporate learning used to be controlled and channelled, but is increasingly informal and personal. If training is like an irrigation system, channelling knowledge to achieve preconceived ends, then raw knowledge is like rain – it will bypass an LMS that does not accommodate and focus it, and it will find its own way, carving a new learning landscape as it does.
There is a philosophical argument to the effect that learning cannot and should not be managed at all, but let’s not go there. I believe that formal and informal learning reinforce each other and that the absence of one impoverishes the other. Formal learning, almost by definition, requires “management” – it has to have some kind of strategic context, involve some kind of premeditated processes, and be organized or guided along in some way. So there is clearly a role for an LMS.
For those who thought I was being unduly unfair on the industry that gave us the e-learning supply chain, complete with its various intermediary gatekeepers and control systems, I apologise. I never intended to imply that a system for managing learning is unnecessary, merely that such systems today are inadequate. They are inadequate not because they provide too little control, but because they provide too much of the wrong kind of control, channelling the thinking of trainers away from creative innovation and toward dumb compliance with outmoded learning models. And they are way too precious about their uniqueness within the ERP family.
An LMS should manage access, record-keeping, and reporting on those things that require such administrative control. It should also enable the flawless provision of services to the customers of the learning department. An LMS should not dictate, or constrain, pedagogical architecture or learning strategy. Sadly, most do. How did this happen?
Because a simple adaptation of most ERP systems could accommodate the access and reporting aspects of learning management, LMS vendors needed to differentiate themselves from the big enterprise providers like SAP and PeopleSoft (now Oracle). So they focused on becoming ‘platforms’ for the launching of packaged content, which was outside of the brief of ERP providers. And that became their unique selling proposition and primary function.
Only the most cynical observer would suggest that the collusion between the LMS vendors and ADL in the creation – and aggressive promotion – of SCORM was deliberately geared to creating the kind of barriers to entry that result from getting an industry to adopt a proprietary standard instead of exploiting more open web systems. But that was the net effect. In standardising course interoperability around a content-centric object model, they effectively shut out the wider world of process-centric or distributed web interoperability. In so doing they denied to their customers access to some of the real learning potential of the Internet. Learning experiences facilitated by peer-2-peer systems, social networks, just-in-time mentoring, blogging or RSS? Just because your LMS cannot “manage” these does not mean they should not be experimented with and exploited.
SCORM advocates will of course deny that their reference model paints learning developers into a corner, or stunts their growth. But I challenge anyone to persuade a corporate e-learning decision-maker to try a product, solution, process, or experience that is not SCORM-conformant. If it is not LMS plug-and-playable, it is not taken seriously. And all too often you will be asked to dumb down your learning model till it fits the capabilities of the LMS, no matter how much you lose in learning effectiveness. Just say no.
The best bet for trainers is to accept that their LMS is only one tool, and a limited one at that. Use your LMS, by all means, for tasks for which it is appropriate. Exploit learning objects, in so far as they are relevant. But where your strategy and learning objectives call for an approach that takes you outside the scope of your LMS, do not pull back. Step boldly into that “unmanageable” territory. Be willing to use multiple learning processes and multiple management tools to achieve your learning objectives, even if it means compromising at first on administrative efficiency.
Letting your LMS be the primary determinant of the limits and scope of your learning endeavors is like refusing to eat anything that cannot be nuked in a microwave oven.
Bon appetit!
TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 22/10/04
The only vaguely defensive reactions were from LMS vendors, who typically said “Yes, but what else can we do?” Short of reinventing your systems completely, you can probably do nothing. Corporate learning used to be controlled and channelled, but is increasingly informal and personal. If training is like an irrigation system, channelling knowledge to achieve preconceived ends, then raw knowledge is like rain – it will bypass an LMS that does not accommodate and focus it, and it will find its own way, carving a new learning landscape as it does.
There is a philosophical argument to the effect that learning cannot and should not be managed at all, but let’s not go there. I believe that formal and informal learning reinforce each other and that the absence of one impoverishes the other. Formal learning, almost by definition, requires “management” – it has to have some kind of strategic context, involve some kind of premeditated processes, and be organized or guided along in some way. So there is clearly a role for an LMS.
For those who thought I was being unduly unfair on the industry that gave us the e-learning supply chain, complete with its various intermediary gatekeepers and control systems, I apologise. I never intended to imply that a system for managing learning is unnecessary, merely that such systems today are inadequate. They are inadequate not because they provide too little control, but because they provide too much of the wrong kind of control, channelling the thinking of trainers away from creative innovation and toward dumb compliance with outmoded learning models. And they are way too precious about their uniqueness within the ERP family.
An LMS should manage access, record-keeping, and reporting on those things that require such administrative control. It should also enable the flawless provision of services to the customers of the learning department. An LMS should not dictate, or constrain, pedagogical architecture or learning strategy. Sadly, most do. How did this happen?
Because a simple adaptation of most ERP systems could accommodate the access and reporting aspects of learning management, LMS vendors needed to differentiate themselves from the big enterprise providers like SAP and PeopleSoft (now Oracle). So they focused on becoming ‘platforms’ for the launching of packaged content, which was outside of the brief of ERP providers. And that became their unique selling proposition and primary function.
Only the most cynical observer would suggest that the collusion between the LMS vendors and ADL in the creation – and aggressive promotion – of SCORM was deliberately geared to creating the kind of barriers to entry that result from getting an industry to adopt a proprietary standard instead of exploiting more open web systems. But that was the net effect. In standardising course interoperability around a content-centric object model, they effectively shut out the wider world of process-centric or distributed web interoperability. In so doing they denied to their customers access to some of the real learning potential of the Internet. Learning experiences facilitated by peer-2-peer systems, social networks, just-in-time mentoring, blogging or RSS? Just because your LMS cannot “manage” these does not mean they should not be experimented with and exploited.
SCORM advocates will of course deny that their reference model paints learning developers into a corner, or stunts their growth. But I challenge anyone to persuade a corporate e-learning decision-maker to try a product, solution, process, or experience that is not SCORM-conformant. If it is not LMS plug-and-playable, it is not taken seriously. And all too often you will be asked to dumb down your learning model till it fits the capabilities of the LMS, no matter how much you lose in learning effectiveness. Just say no.
The best bet for trainers is to accept that their LMS is only one tool, and a limited one at that. Use your LMS, by all means, for tasks for which it is appropriate. Exploit learning objects, in so far as they are relevant. But where your strategy and learning objectives call for an approach that takes you outside the scope of your LMS, do not pull back. Step boldly into that “unmanageable” territory. Be willing to use multiple learning processes and multiple management tools to achieve your learning objectives, even if it means compromising at first on administrative efficiency.
Letting your LMS be the primary determinant of the limits and scope of your learning endeavors is like refusing to eat anything that cannot be nuked in a microwave oven.
Bon appetit!
TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 22/10/04
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Why be a trainer?
Why any of us get into this profession has always intrigued me. It’s certainly not for the money, or the glory. Trainers are appallingly underpaid for the contribution they make, the hours they put in, and the diligence with which they work. And it is not the most obvious route to take if you want to build an empire or change the world. When was the last time you saw a trainer on the cover of Fortune magazine? Yet a career in training has an enduring appeal to some of the best and brightest, an appeal which, bizarrely, seems to have increased with the emergence of e-learning.
I have recruited dozens of people into training roles, and trained and mentored them as their careers evolved. For the most part, they were perfectly innocent people who would have had dramatically different careers had I not pulled them out of a line job into a life of learning. For the most part, years later, they don’t hold it against me. Over the years, I have encountered more training managers, training officers, trainers, VPs of learning and development, and other more exotically titled training people than I care to count. Wherever they are in the world, whatever culture they inhabit, and whatever industry or organisation they call home, they have much in common.
They all started out wanting to make a difference at a very human level. They cared about individual people and their ability to perform in their chosen roles. And they cared about the performance of their organisation, not as some capitalistic engine, but as a family. For all their initial common ground, though, they end up in very different places.
Many trainers walk a long, hard, bitter path that begins in idealism, winds down through pragmatism, and terminates in cynicism. I am not a trainer by choice or by design. I fell into the role out of a combination of an annoyingly enquiring mind, intolerance for underperformance in my colleagues, and natural teaching aptitude. While there were idealistic underpinnings to most of my earlier activities, they were never my driving force. My buzz came from tuning the performance of an organisation, not from seeing light-bulbs go off over heads in a classroom. So I guess I started out cynical, and am gradually making my way up that hill toward the idealism summit, passing an awful lot of traffic coming the other way.
True, many trainers stay optimistic throughout their careers, but just as many become negative, if not about their role then certainly about the organizations they serve. Some trainers have retreated from reality, existing inside a kind of professorial fog and being sustained by the inherent quality of their work rather than its contribution to organisational goals. In similar vein are those for whom busyness is the business, a frantic life packed with impossible deadlines and superhuman schedules preventing them from having the time to see how futile their lives have become. They gave up trying to “make a difference” to their organizations, but at least they can still make a difference to individual learners.
Others continue to strive to get “management” to subscribe to an organizational vision in which learning is central and leading, not peripheral and reactive. They never stop trying to get strategy defined ahead of operational planning, and resist having training used as a poor substitute for good management. These quiet revolutionaries patiently work at transforming organizations through helping people to transcend themselves. They demonstrate daily the value of learning, and inspire innovative thinking beyond the departmental walls. And they love their work.
In my experience some of the most effective trainers (in terms of impact on learners and impact on organisations) are those with “real-world” experience outside of their training expertise. Seasoned practitioners, subject matter experts, or those who have recently completed their own training, are often very astute, learner-aware, and acutely attuned to the context of their teaching.
Are there inherent personal characteristics that determine whether a trainer will thrive or merely survive? What do you look for when recruiting? I usually look for people who are passionate about their field, have high energy levels, are more interested in learning than in teaching, ask a lot of questions and listen to the answers, and have unusually thick skin. A formal background in learning theory or in instructional design has always been secondary – you can teach people those principles, but if they don’t have “the right stuff” to begin with they will soon be on the slippery slope to cynicism.
TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 12/3/04
I have recruited dozens of people into training roles, and trained and mentored them as their careers evolved. For the most part, they were perfectly innocent people who would have had dramatically different careers had I not pulled them out of a line job into a life of learning. For the most part, years later, they don’t hold it against me. Over the years, I have encountered more training managers, training officers, trainers, VPs of learning and development, and other more exotically titled training people than I care to count. Wherever they are in the world, whatever culture they inhabit, and whatever industry or organisation they call home, they have much in common.
They all started out wanting to make a difference at a very human level. They cared about individual people and their ability to perform in their chosen roles. And they cared about the performance of their organisation, not as some capitalistic engine, but as a family. For all their initial common ground, though, they end up in very different places.
Many trainers walk a long, hard, bitter path that begins in idealism, winds down through pragmatism, and terminates in cynicism. I am not a trainer by choice or by design. I fell into the role out of a combination of an annoyingly enquiring mind, intolerance for underperformance in my colleagues, and natural teaching aptitude. While there were idealistic underpinnings to most of my earlier activities, they were never my driving force. My buzz came from tuning the performance of an organisation, not from seeing light-bulbs go off over heads in a classroom. So I guess I started out cynical, and am gradually making my way up that hill toward the idealism summit, passing an awful lot of traffic coming the other way.
True, many trainers stay optimistic throughout their careers, but just as many become negative, if not about their role then certainly about the organizations they serve. Some trainers have retreated from reality, existing inside a kind of professorial fog and being sustained by the inherent quality of their work rather than its contribution to organisational goals. In similar vein are those for whom busyness is the business, a frantic life packed with impossible deadlines and superhuman schedules preventing them from having the time to see how futile their lives have become. They gave up trying to “make a difference” to their organizations, but at least they can still make a difference to individual learners.
Others continue to strive to get “management” to subscribe to an organizational vision in which learning is central and leading, not peripheral and reactive. They never stop trying to get strategy defined ahead of operational planning, and resist having training used as a poor substitute for good management. These quiet revolutionaries patiently work at transforming organizations through helping people to transcend themselves. They demonstrate daily the value of learning, and inspire innovative thinking beyond the departmental walls. And they love their work.
In my experience some of the most effective trainers (in terms of impact on learners and impact on organisations) are those with “real-world” experience outside of their training expertise. Seasoned practitioners, subject matter experts, or those who have recently completed their own training, are often very astute, learner-aware, and acutely attuned to the context of their teaching.
Are there inherent personal characteristics that determine whether a trainer will thrive or merely survive? What do you look for when recruiting? I usually look for people who are passionate about their field, have high energy levels, are more interested in learning than in teaching, ask a lot of questions and listen to the answers, and have unusually thick skin. A formal background in learning theory or in instructional design has always been secondary – you can teach people those principles, but if they don’t have “the right stuff” to begin with they will soon be on the slippery slope to cynicism.
TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 12/3/04
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Podcasting for non-geek trainers
Podcasting, despite its geeky name, is simple and practical, and has a wide range of potential uses in education and training. Abbreviated from “broadcasting to an iPod”, podcasting is, at its most basic, the distribution of audio content via the internet to mobile audio players. The name is a red herring, because you don’t have to be a Mac user – you can podcast any audio format and play it back on any compatible player, even if it is not mobile. Rarely does my audio go mobile – I prefer to simply listen at my desk. Podcasting lets you listen to content of your choice at a time and place that is convenient. In that regard, it is not much different from the old idea of listening to books-on-tape on your Walkman.
But that is where the resemblance ends. Podcasting uses the same technology that syndicates the content of blogs and news sites, so subscribing to a site and having its content updates automatically fed to your computer is a matter of a few mouse clicks. The technology used to push the text content of a blog to your computer is RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication). In podcasting, audio files are simply pushed out as attachments to RSS 2.0 feeds, just as documents are sent as attachments to e-mails.
First, you install an RSS feedreader (such as RSSreader or Amphetadesk, both free) on your computer, and nominate the sites whose content you want fed to you. There are tens of thousands of sites that publish their text content in RSS form. A feedreader is a simple tool that automatically finds and downloads content updates from the sites you have chosen to monitor. It will pull down the latest text entries, and can download enclosures embedded in those entries in the form of audio files. This saves you from having to go to each site, dig around to see what is new, and manually download each individual file. (To add my blog to your feed reader, simply drag the orange "XML" chiclet in the column to the right into your feedreader). I scan several dozen favorite sites a couple of times a day in a matter of minutes, a task that would take me hours without a feedreader.
You can be fed audio files by any up-to-date RSS 2.0 feedreader, but it won’t do the work of loading them into your iPod or Rio player. That’s where podcasting aggregators such as iPodder (also free) come in. iPodder will pull down audio files as they are posted to any sites that you have nominated. Further, it will automatically load the files to your mobile audio player, if you have one connected to your computer. Set your system to do a once-a-day scan at midnight, and you simply have to pick up your already-loaded audio player on the way out to your morning jog.
Podcasting allows anyone to record and broadcast anything, to an audience around the world. It’s like DIY global radio with TiVo built in, for a targetable audience. As a trainer, you can distribute content that is current and relevant. Some obvious applications are product or policy updates for your global salesforce, reinforcement for today’s classroom session, or daily micro-reminders from your online computer security course. Less obvious is the potential for capturing and sharing discussions among SMEs on hot issues, or sharing one learning group’s discussion with other groups.
All you need is a website or a blog, and recording software that converts your audio to MP3 format. Audacity (from Sourceforge.net) is good audio software, and it’s completely free. Install it, plug in a microphone, and record. When you are happy with the audio, export it as an MP3 at the push of a button, then upload it to your site as an enclosure to a blog posting. If your blog service does not support enclosures (Blogger, for example), you can still podcast by registering your blog with Feedburner.com’s SmartCast, a service that does all the conversions for you, for free. It is really that simple, though it may take a little practice to get file sizes down to reasonable sizes and audio quality just right.
Of course the downside of the ease of podcasting is that everyone who likes the sound of their own voice will be adding to the already crowded blogosphere. But the gems will stand out, and corporate podcasting should be subject to more stringent quality control.
Creative use of podcasting will accelerate the uptake of the training, marketing, and technical blogging that is becoming more common within corporations. Audio is often easier to create, easier to digest, and more appropriate than text. With a little vision and a willingness to experiment, I suspect that podcasting will rapidly find a valuable place in the already crowded chest of tools available to marketers and trainers.
TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 19/11/04
But that is where the resemblance ends. Podcasting uses the same technology that syndicates the content of blogs and news sites, so subscribing to a site and having its content updates automatically fed to your computer is a matter of a few mouse clicks. The technology used to push the text content of a blog to your computer is RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication). In podcasting, audio files are simply pushed out as attachments to RSS 2.0 feeds, just as documents are sent as attachments to e-mails.
First, you install an RSS feedreader (such as RSSreader or Amphetadesk, both free) on your computer, and nominate the sites whose content you want fed to you. There are tens of thousands of sites that publish their text content in RSS form. A feedreader is a simple tool that automatically finds and downloads content updates from the sites you have chosen to monitor. It will pull down the latest text entries, and can download enclosures embedded in those entries in the form of audio files. This saves you from having to go to each site, dig around to see what is new, and manually download each individual file. (To add my blog to your feed reader, simply drag the orange "XML" chiclet in the column to the right into your feedreader). I scan several dozen favorite sites a couple of times a day in a matter of minutes, a task that would take me hours without a feedreader.
You can be fed audio files by any up-to-date RSS 2.0 feedreader, but it won’t do the work of loading them into your iPod or Rio player. That’s where podcasting aggregators such as iPodder (also free) come in. iPodder will pull down audio files as they are posted to any sites that you have nominated. Further, it will automatically load the files to your mobile audio player, if you have one connected to your computer. Set your system to do a once-a-day scan at midnight, and you simply have to pick up your already-loaded audio player on the way out to your morning jog.
Podcasting allows anyone to record and broadcast anything, to an audience around the world. It’s like DIY global radio with TiVo built in, for a targetable audience. As a trainer, you can distribute content that is current and relevant. Some obvious applications are product or policy updates for your global salesforce, reinforcement for today’s classroom session, or daily micro-reminders from your online computer security course. Less obvious is the potential for capturing and sharing discussions among SMEs on hot issues, or sharing one learning group’s discussion with other groups.
All you need is a website or a blog, and recording software that converts your audio to MP3 format. Audacity (from Sourceforge.net) is good audio software, and it’s completely free. Install it, plug in a microphone, and record. When you are happy with the audio, export it as an MP3 at the push of a button, then upload it to your site as an enclosure to a blog posting. If your blog service does not support enclosures (Blogger, for example), you can still podcast by registering your blog with Feedburner.com’s SmartCast, a service that does all the conversions for you, for free. It is really that simple, though it may take a little practice to get file sizes down to reasonable sizes and audio quality just right.
Of course the downside of the ease of podcasting is that everyone who likes the sound of their own voice will be adding to the already crowded blogosphere. But the gems will stand out, and corporate podcasting should be subject to more stringent quality control.
Creative use of podcasting will accelerate the uptake of the training, marketing, and technical blogging that is becoming more common within corporations. Audio is often easier to create, easier to digest, and more appropriate than text. With a little vision and a willingness to experiment, I suspect that podcasting will rapidly find a valuable place in the already crowded chest of tools available to marketers and trainers.
TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 19/11/04
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Phishing: where training, marketing, and security meet
The phishing phenomenon is at epidemic levels, particularly among financial institutions. I like to think that I am acutely aware of dangers such as these (after all, I authored two e-learning courses on security and privacy), but even so I get agitated when I see an e-mail from my bank.
I get half a dozen such e-mails a day urging me to click a link and update my account details. The problem is that though I know they are scam e-mails, but I have to open them just in case they are not. One look at the e-mail's source code tells me immediately I am dealing with yet another attempt to rip me off, so I naturally do not click the link provided. But by then it is too late: the scammer's server has registered that my e-mail client has requested the image for the html e-mail, and my address is confirmed as a "hot" target for future projects related to that particular bank.
According to this CNET article 7 out of 10 people who go online have received phishing e-mails, and 15 percent of those have successfully been duped into providing personal information.
That is a lot of people in anyone's customer base. The absolute cost of reparations to victimized customers is one thing. The impact on a brand that is repeatedly abused by phishers is another. Credibility is eroded, and consumer confidence in dealing with the company behind the brand dissipates. Technology may help sometime down the line. In the meantime, the best a company can do is to educate its customers.
Who is best placed to provide that education? Marketing, Training, IT, Customer Relations? Surely this is one issue to which all parties should commit their best minds. Marketing people are good at building awareness and stimulating customers to act, but they are not the best at providing a learning experience. Trainers can provide a great learning experience, but need to work with the subject matter expertise of IT people. And customer relations people can do a reasonable job of reactively hand-holding nervous customers, but need marketing to handle the pro-active side of the process.
I have talked with customer relations people at my bank. I have talked with people in the fraud department. I have received mailings from (I assume) the marketing or legal people, on the subject of phishing. None of them do anywhere near a decent job of informing me of what it is I have to look out for, what consequences I have to fear, or what course of action is open to me if I do fall victim.
Get the trainers involved. Educating your customers is something that trainers are doing more and more of in other areas. Shouldn't they get posted to the front lines on this one?
I get half a dozen such e-mails a day urging me to click a link and update my account details. The problem is that though I know they are scam e-mails, but I have to open them just in case they are not. One look at the e-mail's source code tells me immediately I am dealing with yet another attempt to rip me off, so I naturally do not click the link provided. But by then it is too late: the scammer's server has registered that my e-mail client has requested the image for the html e-mail, and my address is confirmed as a "hot" target for future projects related to that particular bank.
According to this CNET article 7 out of 10 people who go online have received phishing e-mails, and 15 percent of those have successfully been duped into providing personal information.
That is a lot of people in anyone's customer base. The absolute cost of reparations to victimized customers is one thing. The impact on a brand that is repeatedly abused by phishers is another. Credibility is eroded, and consumer confidence in dealing with the company behind the brand dissipates. Technology may help sometime down the line. In the meantime, the best a company can do is to educate its customers.
Who is best placed to provide that education? Marketing, Training, IT, Customer Relations? Surely this is one issue to which all parties should commit their best minds. Marketing people are good at building awareness and stimulating customers to act, but they are not the best at providing a learning experience. Trainers can provide a great learning experience, but need to work with the subject matter expertise of IT people. And customer relations people can do a reasonable job of reactively hand-holding nervous customers, but need marketing to handle the pro-active side of the process.
I have talked with customer relations people at my bank. I have talked with people in the fraud department. I have received mailings from (I assume) the marketing or legal people, on the subject of phishing. None of them do anywhere near a decent job of informing me of what it is I have to look out for, what consequences I have to fear, or what course of action is open to me if I do fall victim.
Get the trainers involved. Educating your customers is something that trainers are doing more and more of in other areas. Shouldn't they get posted to the front lines on this one?
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Intellectual property and the internet
A trainer’s life is spent neck-deep in intellectual property. Everything we read, every process we teach, every concept we quote, every idea we apply, every training experience we design, every paper we write oozes with intellectual property. The laws which control what we can do with it have always been simple in concept but complex in the details.
Unless you create the work for your employer on company time, or you are a work-for-hire contractor, you automatically acquire copyright over anything that you write, draw or photograph. You don’t need to register your work (or even assert copyright overtly) to have the legal right to decide how others can use it. In fact the law acts as a lockbox by default: unless you specifically grant someone a defined right to use your material, they may not copy it or make derivatives of it, for any purpose. Beyond that, it gets murky and lawyers have to get involved.
So how do you grant limited rights to your work without abdicating all your rights and without having to engage a lawyer to sign an agreement with each and every person who would like to exploit it? Or, if you want to use someone else’s material, how do you do so legally without having to negotiate a contract?
It’s easy, if the work is published under a Creative Commons (CC) license, using a choice of easily-understood licenses available online for free. Founded by a Stanford law professor, and fueled by the blogging explosion, Creative Commons has been around in the US since 2001. CC licenses are popular among those who write online, create music, or publish their art or photography online, and it has taken hold in the offline world too.
Till recently, the carefully-crafted legalese behind the licenses invoked American law and American legal language. Now, as of November 1, there is a UK version of Creative Commons. Over the coming year, local legal versions will roll out in more than 60 countries.
Everything I write online (with the exception of things I do for other people) is published under a Creative Commons license that gives anyone the right to re-publish the work and/or derivatives of it on condition that I am acknowledged. No need to contact me, no need to ask permission, no need to talk to my lawyer. I could have chosen a CC license with more liberal or more restrictive conditions, simply by clicking the appropriate buttons when I selected it online at the Creative Commons site creativecommons.org.
Anyone finding my independent writing on the internet sees a CC icon and, by clicking on it, can know immediately what use-restrictions exist. Here’s the really clever part: because licensed work links back to Creative Commons, their search engine can find material whose legal status matches your needs. Looking for a game to use as an ice-breaker or a photo of an Olympic champion? Creative Commons might deliver what you need in a way that cuts through the legal red tape.
There is already a lot of Creative Commons licensed content available online, and that pool expands daily as individuals and organizations endorse the concept. One of the latest on board is the BBC, who are building the “Creative Archive” in which substantial amounts of BBC archive material will be made available for downloading and use. That’s going to be a treasure trove of audio, video, and photographic material for educators and trainers.
It’s the philosophy behind Creative Commons that appeals to me most. No, not the notion of making lawyers less necessary (though I am all for that), but the idea of making more and more readily re-usable learning material available online. Not in the restrictive SCORM sense, but in the sense of people’s thoughts, experiences, favourite tools and techniques, published in whatever informal way they see fit. The more generous we are with our own ideas, the more we will ultimately benefit from those of others. To me, this is the still-untapped power of the internet.
Unless you create the work for your employer on company time, or you are a work-for-hire contractor, you automatically acquire copyright over anything that you write, draw or photograph. You don’t need to register your work (or even assert copyright overtly) to have the legal right to decide how others can use it. In fact the law acts as a lockbox by default: unless you specifically grant someone a defined right to use your material, they may not copy it or make derivatives of it, for any purpose. Beyond that, it gets murky and lawyers have to get involved.
So how do you grant limited rights to your work without abdicating all your rights and without having to engage a lawyer to sign an agreement with each and every person who would like to exploit it? Or, if you want to use someone else’s material, how do you do so legally without having to negotiate a contract?
It’s easy, if the work is published under a Creative Commons (CC) license, using a choice of easily-understood licenses available online for free. Founded by a Stanford law professor, and fueled by the blogging explosion, Creative Commons has been around in the US since 2001. CC licenses are popular among those who write online, create music, or publish their art or photography online, and it has taken hold in the offline world too.
Till recently, the carefully-crafted legalese behind the licenses invoked American law and American legal language. Now, as of November 1, there is a UK version of Creative Commons. Over the coming year, local legal versions will roll out in more than 60 countries.
Everything I write online (with the exception of things I do for other people) is published under a Creative Commons license that gives anyone the right to re-publish the work and/or derivatives of it on condition that I am acknowledged. No need to contact me, no need to ask permission, no need to talk to my lawyer. I could have chosen a CC license with more liberal or more restrictive conditions, simply by clicking the appropriate buttons when I selected it online at the Creative Commons site creativecommons.org.
Anyone finding my independent writing on the internet sees a CC icon and, by clicking on it, can know immediately what use-restrictions exist. Here’s the really clever part: because licensed work links back to Creative Commons, their search engine can find material whose legal status matches your needs. Looking for a game to use as an ice-breaker or a photo of an Olympic champion? Creative Commons might deliver what you need in a way that cuts through the legal red tape.
There is already a lot of Creative Commons licensed content available online, and that pool expands daily as individuals and organizations endorse the concept. One of the latest on board is the BBC, who are building the “Creative Archive” in which substantial amounts of BBC archive material will be made available for downloading and use. That’s going to be a treasure trove of audio, video, and photographic material for educators and trainers.
It’s the philosophy behind Creative Commons that appeals to me most. No, not the notion of making lawyers less necessary (though I am all for that), but the idea of making more and more readily re-usable learning material available online. Not in the restrictive SCORM sense, but in the sense of people’s thoughts, experiences, favourite tools and techniques, published in whatever informal way they see fit. The more generous we are with our own ideas, the more we will ultimately benefit from those of others. To me, this is the still-untapped power of the internet.
E-Learning Adventures Beyond the LMS
To corporate decision-makers, the treasure map of e-learning has an island in the centre, seductively illuminated by those clever marketing folks of the learning software industry, with a big X over the Learning Management System (LMS) right in the middle. Outside of that island is blank space populated only by “here be dragons” warnings.
Given the marketing muscle behind the major LMS developers and their complete dominance of the e-learning space, it’s hardly surprising that many people see an LMS as “the solution” to their future learning needs. But an LMS, as available today, is not a universal solution for a corporation’s e-learning problems. In fact, an LMS is often the albatross around the neck of progress in technology-enhanced learning.
When your concept of learning is LMS-centric, you look for opportunities to implement “a solution” that conforms to that concept, and ignore or marginalize all else. An LMS is, of course, a relevant tool for certain applications. If you want to track learner activities, you need some kind of system. And if you want to make use of much of the available e-course content, you have no choice but to use an LMS – not because the learning requires it, but because the established architecture of the “learning supply chain” requires it.
If the only format in which music is available is on CDs, you have to have a CD player. And because everybody gets a CD player, more music is made available in that format. The industry crystallizes around its dominant technology. But the internet can challenge that. Today, I no longer collect CDs, I collect music. Music does not have to be in store-bought CD format. You can go to live performances or communicate directly with the musicians online; you can download only those tracks that interest you; you can compile and burn your own CDs, or put a thousand songs on an iPod; you can post clips on your blog to share your passion with friends.
IP issues aside, thanks to the internet, you can access and appreciate music in ways that for you, the listener, are so much better than the ways the music industry wants you to access it.
So it should be for learning.
The e-learning industry evolved in a more or less linear fashion from the classroom concept, with some influence from CBT. No imagination went into our application of web technologies, and there was little in the way of challenges to established learning paradigms. That’s perfectly normal in the adoption of new technologies – it takes a while before true innovation can take hold.
Initially, we failed to appreciate that the internet is a vehicle for connecting people with each other, and instead pursued a “learning supply chain” concept that had more in common with the 1970’s music industry than it did with 21st century e-business. We pursued systems that imposed bureaucratic control instead of learner empowerment. In a world hurtling toward distributed internetworking, e-learning was still based on a library-like central-repository concept. The first LMS from Asymetrix (now SumTotal via Click2Learn) was even called Librarian.
Our move from classroom learning to e-learning was less like a move from pony-express to e-mail, than it was from pony-express to bicycle courier.
Learning software vendors still doggedly pursue their vision of reusable learning objects that integrate via a central standards-conformant LMS. Meanwhile, trainers who really want to encourage experience-sharing and dynamic learner-created content are scrambling to understand blogging, RSS, and peer-to-peer networks.
Many LMS vendors don’t “get” learning. Can it really be that they don’t “get” the internet either? Are they so afraid of being non-intermediated that they will fight real progress every step of the way or are they about to help us evolve?
TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 29/10/04
Given the marketing muscle behind the major LMS developers and their complete dominance of the e-learning space, it’s hardly surprising that many people see an LMS as “the solution” to their future learning needs. But an LMS, as available today, is not a universal solution for a corporation’s e-learning problems. In fact, an LMS is often the albatross around the neck of progress in technology-enhanced learning.
When your concept of learning is LMS-centric, you look for opportunities to implement “a solution” that conforms to that concept, and ignore or marginalize all else. An LMS is, of course, a relevant tool for certain applications. If you want to track learner activities, you need some kind of system. And if you want to make use of much of the available e-course content, you have no choice but to use an LMS – not because the learning requires it, but because the established architecture of the “learning supply chain” requires it.
If the only format in which music is available is on CDs, you have to have a CD player. And because everybody gets a CD player, more music is made available in that format. The industry crystallizes around its dominant technology. But the internet can challenge that. Today, I no longer collect CDs, I collect music. Music does not have to be in store-bought CD format. You can go to live performances or communicate directly with the musicians online; you can download only those tracks that interest you; you can compile and burn your own CDs, or put a thousand songs on an iPod; you can post clips on your blog to share your passion with friends.
IP issues aside, thanks to the internet, you can access and appreciate music in ways that for you, the listener, are so much better than the ways the music industry wants you to access it.
So it should be for learning.
The e-learning industry evolved in a more or less linear fashion from the classroom concept, with some influence from CBT. No imagination went into our application of web technologies, and there was little in the way of challenges to established learning paradigms. That’s perfectly normal in the adoption of new technologies – it takes a while before true innovation can take hold.
Initially, we failed to appreciate that the internet is a vehicle for connecting people with each other, and instead pursued a “learning supply chain” concept that had more in common with the 1970’s music industry than it did with 21st century e-business. We pursued systems that imposed bureaucratic control instead of learner empowerment. In a world hurtling toward distributed internetworking, e-learning was still based on a library-like central-repository concept. The first LMS from Asymetrix (now SumTotal via Click2Learn) was even called Librarian.
Our move from classroom learning to e-learning was less like a move from pony-express to e-mail, than it was from pony-express to bicycle courier.
Learning software vendors still doggedly pursue their vision of reusable learning objects that integrate via a central standards-conformant LMS. Meanwhile, trainers who really want to encourage experience-sharing and dynamic learner-created content are scrambling to understand blogging, RSS, and peer-to-peer networks.
Many LMS vendors don’t “get” learning. Can it really be that they don’t “get” the internet either? Are they so afraid of being non-intermediated that they will fight real progress every step of the way or are they about to help us evolve?
TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 29/10/04
When Blending Doesn't Mix
I had thought the term “blended learning” would die rapidly, not because the concept is not important, but because the expression itself is a misnomer, and the learning experiences so labelled are often a disgrace to the training profession.
The theory is sound: by getting learners to grasp the basics pre-class, we get more time to have richer human interactions in the classroom. But the reality is often less inspiring. Any learning design that uses both online and classroom activities to achieve its objectives is referred to as blended. There is rarely an attempt to “blend” content, contexts, or learning processes. Many of the designs of blended courses that I have seen are, frankly, disjointed and chaotic - a jigsaw puzzle hastily put together in the dark.
Every training and development department that I talk to is pursuing “blending” as a core component of their learning strategy. They talk about saving costs, reducing learner time in the classroom, and cutting trainer workloads. Most have stopped trying to pretend that what they are doing is more effective; the efficiency argument is more credible.
In business we use technology to improve performance, yet so often in learning, we apply technology to give the illusion of progress while silently accepting that the performance result is a step backward. If we are going to use technology, shouldn’t we make the effort to have it actually enhance the learning experience, rather than merely support the cheapening of it?
Real blended learning offers an opportunity to move training away from its isolated course environment and to merge it with the learner’s real-world work, to allow continuous transfer and reinforcement. And, where feasible, blending should blur the lines between an instructor’s role and the role of the learner’s manager.
None of this is difficult to achieve technologically, but means thinking outside of the normal content-centric mindset of traditional instructional design. It also needs learners, instructors, and managers to embrace a less simplistic view of what their own involvement in learning can be. The result may actually demand more time, not less, from learners, instructors, or managers. But the reduction in time-to-competence and time-to-business-impact are likely to outweigh any increase in personal involvement required by the blend. And because the learning is so intimately merged with each learner’s workflow, the output – the impact on the business – can be easier to observe and measure. This is particularly true if managers have been “blended” into the process of developing learners’ abilities to meaningfully apply the learning in practice.
A blended solution can incorporate self-paced work, online instructor support, supervisor involvement, peer group involvement, classroom sessions building on job-specific pre-work assignments, ongoing application assignments moderated online by mentors and managers, community threads and chat tools, and dynamic libraries of relevant materials. While clearly overkill for basic training, such an approach is ideal for things like core management methodologies and soft skills such as sales and customer service.
If you get the right learning design, expectations, and management systems, you can achieve greater efficiency. And you can do it by increasing the outputs, not simply by cutting the inputs. Ultimately, that variation on blending has to be good for corporate competitiveness.
TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 8/10/04
The theory is sound: by getting learners to grasp the basics pre-class, we get more time to have richer human interactions in the classroom. But the reality is often less inspiring. Any learning design that uses both online and classroom activities to achieve its objectives is referred to as blended. There is rarely an attempt to “blend” content, contexts, or learning processes. Many of the designs of blended courses that I have seen are, frankly, disjointed and chaotic - a jigsaw puzzle hastily put together in the dark.
Every training and development department that I talk to is pursuing “blending” as a core component of their learning strategy. They talk about saving costs, reducing learner time in the classroom, and cutting trainer workloads. Most have stopped trying to pretend that what they are doing is more effective; the efficiency argument is more credible.
In business we use technology to improve performance, yet so often in learning, we apply technology to give the illusion of progress while silently accepting that the performance result is a step backward. If we are going to use technology, shouldn’t we make the effort to have it actually enhance the learning experience, rather than merely support the cheapening of it?
Real blended learning offers an opportunity to move training away from its isolated course environment and to merge it with the learner’s real-world work, to allow continuous transfer and reinforcement. And, where feasible, blending should blur the lines between an instructor’s role and the role of the learner’s manager.
None of this is difficult to achieve technologically, but means thinking outside of the normal content-centric mindset of traditional instructional design. It also needs learners, instructors, and managers to embrace a less simplistic view of what their own involvement in learning can be. The result may actually demand more time, not less, from learners, instructors, or managers. But the reduction in time-to-competence and time-to-business-impact are likely to outweigh any increase in personal involvement required by the blend. And because the learning is so intimately merged with each learner’s workflow, the output – the impact on the business – can be easier to observe and measure. This is particularly true if managers have been “blended” into the process of developing learners’ abilities to meaningfully apply the learning in practice.
A blended solution can incorporate self-paced work, online instructor support, supervisor involvement, peer group involvement, classroom sessions building on job-specific pre-work assignments, ongoing application assignments moderated online by mentors and managers, community threads and chat tools, and dynamic libraries of relevant materials. While clearly overkill for basic training, such an approach is ideal for things like core management methodologies and soft skills such as sales and customer service.
If you get the right learning design, expectations, and management systems, you can achieve greater efficiency. And you can do it by increasing the outputs, not simply by cutting the inputs. Ultimately, that variation on blending has to be good for corporate competitiveness.
TrainingZONE Parkin Space column of 8/10/04
Friday, November 12, 2004
Automotive advertising awards time
The International Automotive Advertising Awards (IAAA), modestly self-described as "advertising's most turbulent, creative, and challenging arena" is still accepting nominations for the 2004 awards. There are 118 categories, which pretty much guarantees that everyone's a winner.
Sadly, my favorite TV ad for the Corvette got pulled because too many people thought it encouraged kids to joy-ride.
My personal "best of" nomination goes to Audi for their brilliant use of dynamic Flash in a viral campaign for the A3 Sportback. They sent individuals a personalized e-mail pointing them to a movie online which featured a Minority Report-like engineer using a futuristic computer system to discover that the DNA of the Audi is a perfect match to the DNA of person viewing the video. How cool was it to see Godfrey Parkin scrolling across the screen? And of course you could submit the name and e-mail address of all your friends so that they too would get their very own personalized movie. Forsprung durch Technik, all the way.
Problem is, there's no category for trans-media strokes of genius like this. There's "Print" and "Television" and "Newspaper" of course, a unique category for every type of vehicle you can imagine. And in the more interactive area there's a section labeled "Interactive Media":
Maybe microsite would cover it, or web promotion. But it's hardly adequate.
Why is it that advertising awards are usually classified by the medium in which they play out and the product category into which the advertised brand falls? What happened to customer focus, or even business performance? I have yet to see an award category like "market share gained" or "enquiries produced" or "attitudes changed" or "conversation generated" or "return on investment". Maybe it's because these award events are for the ad industry by the ad industry, and accountability for business results is rarely part of the brief.
Sadly, my favorite TV ad for the Corvette got pulled because too many people thought it encouraged kids to joy-ride.
My personal "best of" nomination goes to Audi for their brilliant use of dynamic Flash in a viral campaign for the A3 Sportback. They sent individuals a personalized e-mail pointing them to a movie online which featured a Minority Report-like engineer using a futuristic computer system to discover that the DNA of the Audi is a perfect match to the DNA of person viewing the video. How cool was it to see Godfrey Parkin scrolling across the screen? And of course you could submit the name and e-mail address of all your friends so that they too would get their very own personalized movie. Forsprung durch Technik, all the way.
Problem is, there's no category for trans-media strokes of genius like this. There's "Print" and "Television" and "Newspaper" of course, a unique category for every type of vehicle you can imagine. And in the more interactive area there's a section labeled "Interactive Media":
86. Corporate Web Site
87. Brand Web Site
88. Microsite
89. Retail/Sales Web Site
90. Web Promotion / Event
91. Simple Banners (link only)
92. Rich Media Banners
93. Interactive Kiosks
Maybe microsite would cover it, or web promotion. But it's hardly adequate.
Why is it that advertising awards are usually classified by the medium in which they play out and the product category into which the advertised brand falls? What happened to customer focus, or even business performance? I have yet to see an award category like "market share gained" or "enquiries produced" or "attitudes changed" or "conversation generated" or "return on investment". Maybe it's because these award events are for the ad industry by the ad industry, and accountability for business results is rarely part of the brief.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
8 billion pages on the web...
If you are a search engine index, size matters. MSN and Google have each been positioning themselves as having the largest coverage of the web, but today's numbers announced in the Washington Post seem pretty conclusive. At least for today.
MSN has a mere 5 billion web pages in its index. Google, more than 8 billion. Yahoo? Well, their position is probably that size is less important than relevance.
MSN has a mere 5 billion web pages in its index. Google, more than 8 billion. Yahoo? Well, their position is probably that size is less important than relevance.
E-learning recovery predicted
Information Week is previewing a report due to be released by IDC next week which forecasts an upturn in the fortunes of "the e-learning industry". Without seeing the actual study it's hard to judge the conclusions, but quoted remarks from the analyst concerned make me suspect it's going to be another one of those annoyingly superficial studies that have characterized e-learning since day one.
According to the article the global market for corporate e-learning will grow 27 percent a year over the next four years. That means that the e-learning market will grow world-wide from an estimated $6.5 billion last year to over $21 billion by 2008.
According to IDC the main drivers of e-learning growth will be compliance training, particularly in areas such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA. You have to wonder where they get comments like that from. Surely the real growth in the worldwide market will take place outside of the US in those countries just now hitting the internet penetration levels the US was at a few years ago? And I don't see Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA being applicable outside American borders (unless IDC is privy to some secret invasion plans).
I have come to take forecasts such as this (as well as the market size estimates) with a pinch of salt. No two companies in the forecasting business have ever agreed on a definition of what e-learning is, let alone a definition of what "the industry" includes. Not long ago, forecasts for e-learning's growth included predicted growth in the sales of routers and internetworking hardware. It was John Chambers at Cisco who produced the nonsensical statement, much touted by e-learning systems vendors, that e-learning was going to be such a killer app it would make e-mail look like a rounding error. I guess it sold him a few more routers, though.
According to the article the global market for corporate e-learning will grow 27 percent a year over the next four years. That means that the e-learning market will grow world-wide from an estimated $6.5 billion last year to over $21 billion by 2008.
According to IDC the main drivers of e-learning growth will be compliance training, particularly in areas such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA. You have to wonder where they get comments like that from. Surely the real growth in the worldwide market will take place outside of the US in those countries just now hitting the internet penetration levels the US was at a few years ago? And I don't see Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA being applicable outside American borders (unless IDC is privy to some secret invasion plans).
I have come to take forecasts such as this (as well as the market size estimates) with a pinch of salt. No two companies in the forecasting business have ever agreed on a definition of what e-learning is, let alone a definition of what "the industry" includes. Not long ago, forecasts for e-learning's growth included predicted growth in the sales of routers and internetworking hardware. It was John Chambers at Cisco who produced the nonsensical statement, much touted by e-learning systems vendors, that e-learning was going to be such a killer app it would make e-mail look like a rounding error. I guess it sold him a few more routers, though.
Monday, November 08, 2004
The official new definition of marketing
The American Marketing Association has redefined "marketing", replacing an old definition that was all about the four P's with something that seems to parody the worst aspects of consultant-speak. Can this be a joke? Sadly, no it's not. Some consultants seem to love it's customer-relationship-centric implications. Real marketers must be cringing.
The old definition
I hate it. It’s all fluff and motherhood. It uses vague trendy-speak language that NO self-respecting marketer would use in describing their own products, services, or concepts. Imagine briefing an agency to put together a campaign to communicate this new-fangled marketing concept. Imagine trying to get agency creatives to understand what marketing is using the definition provided.
“Er, well it’s an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”
“Yes, but what IS it? What does it look like? What does it DO?”
“Um. You’re the creative folks. You figure it out. We just do the marketing.”
1) It’s a lot less useful than the previous definition in that the vague description could apply to many functions in an organization. The definition does not talk about what marketing IS or DOES in any meaningful way, nor does it describe its goals in a way that would make sense to someone who had never heard of marketing before.
2) Marketing is not just an “organizational” function and set of processes. Marketing’s philosophy and disciplines (neither gets a mention) apply to many fields outside of the formal organization.
3) The new definition implies, by omission, that the job of marketing has no conceptual, perceptive, or persuasive role. Marketing does NOT start with “creating” but with seeking to understand your market and competitors, and conceptualizing products, services, or experiences that will meet the needs of those markets.
4) Is the role of marketing really to “manage customer relationships”? Perhaps, at a very abstract high level. But for this to be the case in reality, you’d have to have Customer Service, Production, Sales, and every other department that has any impact on customers reporting in to Marketing. For most real-world marketing professionals, that’s a dream that is never going to come true.
My thanks to Jennifer Rice's blog for pointing out this change that the American Marketing Association seems to have sneaked out rather than launching. Oh dear.
The old definition
Marketing is the process of planning and executing conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of goods, ideas and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals.is replaced by this new definition
Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.
I hate it. It’s all fluff and motherhood. It uses vague trendy-speak language that NO self-respecting marketer would use in describing their own products, services, or concepts. Imagine briefing an agency to put together a campaign to communicate this new-fangled marketing concept. Imagine trying to get agency creatives to understand what marketing is using the definition provided.
“Er, well it’s an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”
“Yes, but what IS it? What does it look like? What does it DO?”
“Um. You’re the creative folks. You figure it out. We just do the marketing.”
1) It’s a lot less useful than the previous definition in that the vague description could apply to many functions in an organization. The definition does not talk about what marketing IS or DOES in any meaningful way, nor does it describe its goals in a way that would make sense to someone who had never heard of marketing before.
2) Marketing is not just an “organizational” function and set of processes. Marketing’s philosophy and disciplines (neither gets a mention) apply to many fields outside of the formal organization.
3) The new definition implies, by omission, that the job of marketing has no conceptual, perceptive, or persuasive role. Marketing does NOT start with “creating” but with seeking to understand your market and competitors, and conceptualizing products, services, or experiences that will meet the needs of those markets.
4) Is the role of marketing really to “manage customer relationships”? Perhaps, at a very abstract high level. But for this to be the case in reality, you’d have to have Customer Service, Production, Sales, and every other department that has any impact on customers reporting in to Marketing. For most real-world marketing professionals, that’s a dream that is never going to come true.
My thanks to Jennifer Rice's blog for pointing out this change that the American Marketing Association seems to have sneaked out rather than launching. Oh dear.
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