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Dave Day

Discusses key issues concerning employee orientation in companies. Key role of the first-line supervisor as a natural extension of the training department; Role of supervisors in employee orientation; Implications on occupational training and manpower development.

A New Look at Orientation

I'm sure many of you will have come across Elgg before. For those that haven't, Elgg is an open-source engine that allows you to create your own Social Network. Founded in 2004 by Dave Tosh and Ben Werdmuller, Elgg was often pitched as a Social Network for education - perhaps the first foray into the world of 'online' Social Learning, some time before the phrase entered popular parlance.Dave Tosh has since moved to pastures new (as has Werdmuller) but I thought it would be interesting to touch base with Dave to talk about those early days before Social Learning became the phrase du jour...Ben Betts: When you were in the process of creating Elgg, did the phrase 'social learning' crop up or was it yet to emerge as a theme in education?Dave Tosh: I can't remember anyone talking about social learning back in 2004 when Elgg started. Blogging was just beginning to come on the radar, which did introduce some 'social' aspects but it was not referred to as social learning.BB: Which segments of the marketplace were quickest to adopt Elgg when you launched?DT: Education was the first group to experiment with Elgg, however, it was when things moved out of the Edu arena that groups became willing to pay for customisation which was the business model and ultimately dictated the future path.BB: In persuading your early adopters was there much focus on the command and control mechanisms within Elgg? Were people scared of how users might abuse a social system?DT: This was one of the major stumbling blocks when people tried Elgg. It was very deliberate that there were no roles and permissions. A student was on the same level as an educator as we tried to create a space where the individual (regardless of position) could control who to collaborate with and who got access to their content. This caused confusion and it was a constant battle to get people to try and forget (for the purpose of a trial) about the top-down, course centric, constraints imposed by the LMS platforms of the time in order to experiment with a platform that was bottom up, user controlled, and experience centric.There were other concerns raised when we visited the US around kids using the privacy options to plan attacks on the school and the school then being accountable due to provided them with the online platform for this.BB: In your opinion, is Social Learning a fad, a passing trend, or a sea change in the way we learn online?DT: I don't know enough about 'social learning' to comment. For me personally, learning is not a solitary pursuit. I feel the informal aspect of the learning process plays a crucial role in moving from the retention of fact to a real/deep understanding. This is something Elgg tried to address: it was not about access to course notes or course work submission but instead capturing and fostering the reflection that many students and researchers do in the cafe or pub after lectures as this was often, at least for me, when the grounding of understanding happened; in those informal discussions.BB: If you could have kept just one feature in Elgg for social networking, what would it have been?DT: This is a tough question as different components were important to different people. Some liked the group blogging component, others the fine-grain access controls - it was dependant on context. I guess if I had to choose, I would have kept, and focused more on, the aggregation side of things to make it easier for people to use their own tools but still participate in the community.BB: You open-sourced Elgg; was this a commercial or idealistic decision?DT: Elgg started out as a simple proof-of-concept - there was no business/commercial thinking involved at that time - so the decision to go open source was based on encouraging others to help build out the concept.BB: Finally, do you have any tips for how to engage and grow an online social learning community?DT: I am not sure about a social learning community. Regarding online communities in general, I would never underestimate the importance of having an engaged community; the community is everything. This is one of the biggest lessons I learnt during my Elgg days.About Dave:Dave Tosh is passionate about technology, in particular the web, and its potential for creating new learning opportunities for us all. Dave co-founded Elgg and is now to be found experimenting on a couple of ideas around information accuracy.

Where Social Learning got its start: An interview with Dave Tosh

Last week’s Government Workforce conference brought together hundreds of senior government learning and development leaders to discuss current and emerging trends and best practices across L&D landscape.Our 4th and latest conference was our most engaging and impactful. Some 50-plus government subject matter experts brought together hundreds of years of expertise, offering insight into cutting-edge practices for distributed/remote workforces, leadership development, informal learning, and managing the work function.As promised, we dispensed with the PPTs—and got right down to business in our 16 sessions. The session moderators and audience members engaged with panelists to dig deep into their stores of practical advice. A number of participants mentioned that the “behind the scenes” detail  and “war stories” shared were some of the most beneficial aspects of attendance.Some highlights:Panelists recommended favorite books. For example, A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Ralph Koster, and Dave Meier's book, The Accelerated Learning Handbook, were cited as resources for great methods and concepts for participative learning using a somatic, audio, visual, and intellectual model.We learned about Melanie Cohen of HUD’s TED- style talks. Check them out on Youtube. Click here to see one of her sessions.Powerhouse keynote sessions from Director Katherine Archuleta, Bill Treasurer, and Sardek Love really got people talking.Dozens of Tweets—almost 50—during and after the event!Many great stories about people making connections during the sessions and throughout the networking breaks.Some attendees managed to grab a person with an ATD badge to share how much they appreciated the conference. This is what they said:“I was able to stay most of the day and was very impressed with the content of the conference and the attendees, who were very engaged in every session I attended. Your lunch speaker was fantastic, too—I was lucky enough to sit at his table for lunch. I know you put in a ton of work on the conference—thanks so much for making it a very productive day for me. I certainly can’t say that for all the conferences I attend.”“I thought the conference was excellent in every facet. My colleagues commented similarly. I learned a great deal and I thank you very much.”“Great job on the conference! I heard a lot of good buzz in the hallways and in the sessions I ran. I thought it was great and the sessions rewarding.”Stay tuned for the learning to continue. In a few days, we will add video excerpts of conference highlights. In the meantime, continue the conversation with us by connecting with us on Twitter at ATDGov and join the ATD Government Community on LinkedIn to continue the conversation.

Government Workforce 2014 Highlights

Goldman Sachs executive, Greg Smith, resigned in March  after publicly criticizing the company’s profit-above-customers culture. His action added to a chorus of criticism of the investment bank from politicians, regulators, protestors, and writers. Smith urged Goldman to “weed out the morally bankrupt people no matter how much money they make for the firm.  And get the culture right again.” His view of the firm’s “toxic environment”  is in direct contrast to statements by Goldman’s top executives who maintain that the firm has a “client-driven culture”.Dave Ulrich, author of Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance And Build Lasting Value, says that Smith’s invective against Goldman may have many interpretations.  “It may be as he suggests, that the Goldman culture has become pervasively greedy and self-interested; it may be that he worked for a rogue group of employees who acted in self-interest; or it may be that he has a bone to pick with the company for some personal reason.  We don’t know his motives or breadth of experience.  But his essay on Goldman Sachs’s culture allows us to reflect on what a culture is and how it should be managed.”It is common to think about culture from the inside/out, the norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors that guide how employees think and act.  Ulrich prefers to think about culture from the outside/in.  “Culture, in our view, is the identity of the company in the mind of the key customers and other stakeholders made real to employees every day through leadership actions (we call it leadership brand) and other customer-centric management practices.“In this regard, a culture should begin by figuring out the firm’s brand because the culture translates this external identity into internal organization processes.  This externally driven identity should show in what leaders and employees know and do.  When it does, the culture becomes a powerful force for sustainable results.“If Goldman executives want to use the Smith episode as a signal to rethink culture, they should start by reflecting on what they want to be known for by their key customers and embed that identity throughout the firm,” Ulrich advises.

Accusations about Goldman Sachs Spawns Culture Debate

With an increasing need to help employees master new approaches and tools—in particular, AI—reskilling and upskilling are top of mind for learning and development professionals.But many find that their efforts aren’t yielding the impacts they’d hoped for. They teach the skills. They provide an opportunity to use them in a supervised setting. They verify that the learning has been well-received and that the learning objectives have been achieved.Yet, when employees return to the job, they fail to produce the expected output. Worse, it doesn’t take long before employees give up using these new approaches and tools altogether.What gives?Systems vs. MotivationWhile many are quick to point to a lack of motivation among employees or a resistance to learning new technology they fear may replace their jobs, most companies actually don’t have a motivation problem. They have a systems problem.That systems problem is more pervasive and potentially more costly than a perceived lack of employee motivation. If it persists, it threatens to quietly but quickly undermine companies’ technology and training investments.My research indicates that individual motivation accounts for approximately 7 percent of performance, while organizational learning systems contribute roughly 23 percent—more than three times the impact. For CEOs and senior leaders, that gap is the difference between blaming employees and redesigning the conditions that actually drive results.Unfortunately, if L&D focuses on getting people “more motivated” without changing the conditions that shape their choices, the result is frustration for everyone involved.Five Opportunities for L&D InfluenceL&D professionals have an opportunity to significantly influence how well organizations adapt their systems to improve learning outcomes. It’s not just about creating and delivering training programs. It’s about working with leaders to ensure that the organization and its managers create a culture where learning is likely to transfer to on-the-job performance.Here, I provide a practitioner-oriented framework for designing simple interventions and conversations that shift the system.1. Make the environment safer and easier to learn in.A supportive learning environment is more than a “growth mindset” slogan; it’s the day-to-day experience of whether trying something new is safe and feasible. For instance, in my upskilling work, IT employees often report that they want to experiment with new tools but avoid doing so because errors are treated as failures rather than learning data.Practical steps for L&D:Build in opportunities for practice after training has been delivered. Work with managers to ensure employees have the opportunity to apply and refine their new skills in a real-world setting. Ensure they’re able to do this in an environment where it’s okay to make mistakes.Make trying and failing the norm. Encourage leaders to share stories about times when they tried a new method, broke something, and fixed it—with a focus on what they learned. Use these as opening vignettes in workshops and town halls.Coach leaders on their language. Provide a one-page guide with phrases that invite learning (“What did we learn from this?”) and ones that shut it down (“We can’t afford mistakes”). Encourage sponsors to model the former in debriefs.2. Turn vague priorities into visible skill paths.Most organizations say things like “we need more AI skills” or “data literacy is important,” but employees can’t see how that translates into concrete expectations for their role. It’s important to help them move from abstract capabilities to clear, observable behaviors along a path.Practical steps for L&D:Create an example based on a single role (for example, data analysts or frontline managers). Map a process for applying what they’ve learned. Work with subject matter experts to create a simple three-level path: baseline, proficient, and advanced, that’s described in terms of specific activities and outputs.Publish “from–to” skill snapshots. Instead of a dense competency model, give learners a one-page “today versus six months from now” snapshot: specific tasks they’ll handle differently, decisions they’ll make, or problems they’ll be able to solve.Tag learning to the path, not the catalog. In your LMS or portal, organize resources under those path levels (“Start here if you’re at baseline”), so learners can see how each asset moves them closer to the expectations for their role.3. Redesign jobs so practice is part of the work.Employees often leave training feeling enthusiastic and eager to apply what they’ve learned. But when they return to their jobs, they discover that there’s zero allowance for experimentation. They have real work to do!Focusing too stringently on efficiency and productivity leaves employees feeling that any effort applied to using new skills is a risk. That can be especially true in IT and other project-based environments. Practical steps for L&D:Build a “practice budget” into the training effort. Explicitly ask leaders to agree to a specific number of hours/days upfront that employees will be encouraged to spend practicing their new skills. Incorporate new application tasks into existing work instead of making them an add-on. For instance, maybe one sprint each quarter, a team uses the new analytics dashboard instead of the old spreadsheet.Flag conflicting metrics. Think about a support team: if they’re measured only on volume and handle time, asking them to slow down to apply new skills will fail. Use intake conversations to identify where performance measures need temporary adjustments to make practice viable.4. Equip managers to reinforce, not just remind.Managers and supervisors can either help or hinder their employees’ ability to transfer what they’ve learned back to their jobs. When managers protect time for learning, provide timely feedback, and connect new behaviors to opportunities, transfer improves. When they don’t, even excellent training erodes.Practical moves for L&D:Give managers a “before and after” playbook. For each major program, supply managers with a short guide that outlines what to do before the training (set expectations, clarify outcomes) and after (observe one behavior, offer specific feedback, remove one barrier).Make feedback easier and more immediate. My work on feedback timing underscores that while perfectly immediate feedback is rare in real workplaces, feedback that is specific, behavior-focused, and tied closely to the next opportunity to perform can still powerfully shape behavior. Provide simple observation checklists or prompts managers can use in regular one-on-ones.Measure managers on development behaviors. Partner with HR to add a couple of indicators—such as the frequency of development conversations or the percentage of team members applying new skills—to manager scorecards, and provide that feedback to them regularly.5. Make new skills “pay off” in your system.Learners quickly pick up on whether using new skills changes anything about their work life. My research mapping training and firm performance shows that when organizations treat training as an isolated event without linking it to recognition, career opportunities, or better work, the signal to learners is clear: this is optional.Practical steps for L&D:Tie skills to visible opportunities. Work with talent management to pre-define ways new capabilities will contribute to employee opportunities they care about, such as eligibility for specific projects, internal gigs, or communities of practice. Advertise those links in your program materials.Audit your recognition system. Run a quick scan: in the last six months, how often have promotions, bonuses, or shout-outs explicitly referenced someone applying a new skill from training? If the answer is “rarely,” partner with leaders to change the narrative in town halls and reviews.Track behavior and outcome metrics, not just completions. In my professional experience in designing upskilling, effective frameworks start by defining behavioral indicators and pairing behavioral indicators (for example, frequency of using a new tool) with business metrics (like error reduction or cycle time) to demonstrate real payoff. Use those stories to reinforce that the organization takes new skills seriously.SummaryOne fundamental point is clear: performance is engineered, not trained into existence. For L&D professionals, that’s not a threat to your role: it’s an invitation to expand it and move from content creator to system designer. It’s a more strategic role that will benefit you, your learners, and your organization.

Why Your Skills Training Will Fail (Unless You Fix These 5 Things First)

Talent development professionals help others. Ben Nemtin, star of The Buried Life, called attention to that in his keynote address closing out the Association for Talent Development’s Virtual Conference: Unleash Potential. And he noted that attendees could likely relate to his bucket list pursuits that entailed not only going after the big things he wanted to do before he died but also involved helping others.The Roots of The Buried LifeAs he began his session “Impossible to Possible,” Nemtin spoke about falling into depression after seemingly being on top of the world as he graduated high school in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He had a spot on the national under-19s rugby team and a college scholarship.But that joy soon turned to anxiety, trouble sleeping, and then depression. He became a shut-in in his family’s home, not understanding why he was feeling the way he was. A summer in a new town, securing a job that brought him confidence, and talking with others about his feelings led Nemtin to start turning the corner. From there, he decided to only surround himself with people who inspired him. He found three individuals who fit that definition: Jonnie, Duncan, and Dave.Sketchnotes provided by See In ColorsWhat followed was their decision to make a film. The quartet were inspired by the Matthew Arnold poem The Buried Life, in which the poet described how we all too often leave our dreams and aspirations buried with day-to-day life getting in the way.To avoid dying without living their dreams, the young men created a bucket list—the stipulations being that they would act as if they had $10 million in the bank and that the goals had to be crazy big. They also knew they wouldn’t be able to accomplish their goals by themselves. They decided that every time they crossed off an item on their list, they would help a stranger do the same.The list that Ben and his friends crafted included such things as helping deliver a baby, having a beer with Prince Harry, and playing basketball with President Barack Obama. That last one required all the grit and persistence they could muster, including dealing with a number of rejections before it finally happened.“Doing what you love actually inspires others to do what they love,” said Nemtin. There’s a ripple effect. The same ripple effect occurs when you help others: They, in turn, have a propensity to help those around them.Your Resiliency Tool KitTo be able to help others, you need to take care of yourself, emphasized Nemtin. Here are some tips to do so, and these comprise what he calls his resiliency tool kit.Gratitude. Think of one thing each night before you go to bed and one thing in the morning when you get up that you are grateful for. They can be as minor as a meal with a loved one, a walk, or the sun being out.Exercise. You don’t have to go for 60 minutes, Nemtin pointed out. Five minutes of push-ups or a 15-minute walk will help you release negative emotions.Mindfulness. This can take the form of the Headspace or other app, a walk, meditation, or being cognizant to breathe deeply from your abdomen.Detox. This may mean staying off social media for 24 hours or avoiding the news for the same period. When you return, only use the tools that bring you joy—come back in control of how you spend your time.Connect. To ease anxiety and stress, talk with friends or a therapist, continued Nemtin.Purpose. This is what the bucket list is all about: doing the things that are most important to you and that bring you joy.Help others. You can’t feel bad when you’re helping others.Nature. If you’re unable to actually go outside for 15 minutes right now because of the pandemic, bring nature inside by getting a plant or two.Fulfilling Personal GoalsThough this belief is hopefully shifting, it’s long been the pervasive mindset that pursuing our personal dreams is selfish. Nemtin refuted that, noting that pursing our dreams is actually a service. Prioritizing your goals, he says, is beneficial to you, your friends and family, your career, and your organization. And if organizations and leaders create an environment that encourages people to go after what they want, those individuals are far more likely to stick around.Psychologist Tom Gilovich reported in his research “The Ideal Road Not Taken” that 76 percent of people identified on their death beds that their greatest regret was not fulfilling their ideal self. What leads people to stop short of that goal? Nemtin identified two reasons. One is that—unlike work goals and duties—our personal goals have no deadlines. The second is that we often lack the inspiration to move forward. To that, Nemtin suggested that we create our own inspiration through small steps and think of “dreams as projects.”Here are five steps he outlined to accomplish your personal goals:Write them down. Putting them down on paper makes them real.Share them. As Nemtim showed with his bucket list, you need others’ help. All too often, we don’t share our goals due to fear—either because we’re afraid of what others may think or because we fear falling short of accomplishing them.Persist. Sometimes we fail because we give up too quickly. Nemtin showcased his persistence in his and his friends’ efforts to play basketball with President Obama.Go for moonshots. Nemtin, smiling, noted that the level of competition for reachable goals is much higher than the competition for ambitious moonshot goals, which few people strive for.Give. Nemtin briefly recalled speaking at ATD TechKnowledge 2019, where he shared the stage with Tiago, a brain stem tumor sufferer who, through the Make a Wish Foundation, expressed his desire to go bobsledding. As a result of Nemtin and the conference attendees, Tiago realized his dream.Ripple effects happen not only from big things—for example, a smile causes a ripple, as does a compliment—Nemtin pointed out. And we don’t necessarily see those reactions happening, and that includes training and development results. But know that as talent development professionals, said Nemtin, you create a positive difference in others.Share your ATD Virtual Conference experience on social media. #ATDVirtualConference

Ripple Effect of Helping Others

As a seller coming out of sales, sales consulting, and sales training, I have a love-hate relationship with RFPs. I love them when I’ve written or influenced their content and, as a result, have exerted some control over the customer’s buying/decision criteria, and won the deal. I hate them (or rather disregard them, in most cases) when one surprisingly pops into my inbox and I quickly determine that my competitor has had a degree of influence in its content.The Buy-Side of the EquationWhen my organization, ESR, is running a client evaluation, we perform the requirements analysis and definition. We do that independently of any provider or any influence they might have among stakeholders.Why do we insist on doing the requirements definition? We know that whenever a sales trainer or consultant does a requirements analysis (their discovery process) it is most likely going to result in the highest priority customer needs matching the unique capabilities of the provider. It’s only natural. If I’m a trainer and have proven abilities in A, B, C, and D, I will gravitate toward challenges and opportunities for which A, B, C, and D are solutions for the customer. If the customer’s real issues are with E, F, G, and H, for competitive reasons, I may not acknowledge that—or in some cases, I might not even recognize that those conditions exist.(I know I’m going to get some angry comments and emails about this from sales trainers who will tell me they are open and honest with their clients about their strengths and challenges. I’m sure that’s true in YOUR case, but after nearly eight years of studying failed sales training initiatives, we know what really goes on a lot of the time.)Once the client signs off on the requirements definition, we propose a long list of providers based on a high-level match among those requirements and individual providers’ capabilities as we know them.Sell to the Customer in the Way They Want to BuyFrom the buy side, we expect anyone bidding for the business to understand how the customer wants to buy (by employing this process) and demonstrate willingness to work under those parameters.  It is also very important for our clients to understand how each potential supplier matches up against the prioritized criteria as stated in the RFP—criteria derived directly from that comprehensive and objective assessment we perform.When we publish the RFI or RFP, we assure each long-listed sales performance improvement provider the following:It’s a real opportunity.It has senior executive sponsorship.It’s budgeted.The timing of the events, including launch and roll-out, are short term.ESR has performed the requirements definition and wrote the RFP without any influence at all from any supplier.No supplier has been in the account since ESR was involved—therefore no one has the inside track.Every provider that receives an RFP has an equal opportunity to win. ESR will never solicit proposals from any company we don’t feel is qualified to win the business.In other words, we validate that this is a qualified opportunity where everyone participating has an equal chance to win. Many sales trainers have learned to trust ESR in this regard. They’d rather not go through this process, but they know it’s fair.The Short ListAfter the responses are read, analyzed, and ranked, a short list is determined. At that point, we strongly recommend that the client meet with representatives from each short-listed company to answer any and all questions. That’s also the time when the client and the short-listed firms get to know each other.ESR organizes and manages a finalist presentation day when each short-listed provider offers insight into how they will contribute to the customer achieving their sales performance goals and objectives. We also recommend that each provider to share with the client their differentiated and unique value and why they believe they are the best partner for the client. Each presentation runs about three-and-a-half hours. At that point the client evaluates each presentation among other factors and makes a selection.Bottom LineAs a result of this process, the selected provider is almost guaranteed to have a successful implementation because all the risks and rewards and strengths and challenges of both provider and client will have been identified and discussed openly by both parties before a contract is signed.This post is reprinted from Dave Stein’s blog Commentary of Sales Effectiveness.

Sales Training RFPs: What You Need to Know

It was February 2005. I was sequestered in a conference room during Plugfest 9 with Philip Dodds, chief architect of the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM™) and a few people on the ADL technical team. With us was Tom King, who helped create Authorware. At the time, King was one of the leading people at Macromedia (soon to be Adobe) working on making integration with SCORM happen in products like Flash and Captivate.This was not going to be a pleasant meeting—because I had made a very public faux pas. I had called out a body of work being done that was really, really hard to figure out.It is now 2012. It is given that tools like Captivate, Articulate, and Lectora will simply work with learning management systems. What and how technology drive interoperability is not something that anyone thinks much about anymore.This was a very different story in 2005, however. Flash didn't just naturally work with JavaScript across different browsers, which meant working with SCORM™ was definitely a challenge. A much younger, not-so-bearded self scoffed the work that Macromedia had done, completely ignorant of the important role it played in SCORM™.Basically, I was wrong, arrogant, and ignorant. I didn't know Tom, and walking into the meeting I wasn't quite sure if I'd have a job at the end of it. So as I started into what was sure to be a half-hour apology, Tom simply said, "We're all new at this." To this day, his words stick with me.Tom went on to talk about how we're in an industry called “e-learning” that didn't even exist a few years before. We were all figuring out how what we made with the advent of SCORM™ would even work. It was ALL new, and we were bound to make missteps.For years, I’d reflect on what Tom said. Sure, he was talking about me being green to how the world of emerging technologies worked. But I've come to realize that what he said at that meeting was even more profound. It's a principle—that can apply in many ways, on many levels._"We're all new at this."_Fiona Leteney (@fionaleteney) recently asked a question on Twitter that belies a common and completely valid skepticism about the Experience API ("Tin Can"). She asks, "But why would we want to record this level of detail? Help me understand context for corporate/education."The ability to track so much information about one's learning activities with the Experience API is, admittedly, fodder for a complex debate. There's a double bind, and quite simply it looks like this:I need my privacy respected. =><= I need to share details.These are two sentences that many people today, especially those of us who are living distributed lives, find equally true—even when they seem in opposition with each other.For instance, I work remotely from my team, which is distributed in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Florida. I organize and participate on a number of big projects with people in New York, Texas, and California. I have family and friends local to me in Chicago. In my own daily life, I have a need to share explicit details via digital means because that's the main way I communicate with so many people who aren't sitting next to me. And I wear lots of hats (some metaphorical, some not), so the context of the conversations I have tend to overlap from time to time.Transparency, openness, and active sharing are what build and maintain trust when we work and build relationships through the Internet. In this case, sharing on the verge of over-sharing is a virtue.On the other side of this double bind, quite simply is the notion that I don't want everybody knowing everything I'm doing. It's not that I have anything I need to hide, so much as it's no one's damn business what I do, with whom I talk, or on what projects I choose to collaborate when it's not explicitly in service to someone or something else."We're all new at this."                                         I think this is what Fiona is speaking to in her comment. And, I think this echoes the sentiment of prominent voices in our community. More important, transcending this double bind is going to be hard.For one, we're talking a whole lot lately about "learning analytics." That's because imagining what a report looks like is easier than thinking about how a report gets made. The report-out that comes from performing analytics is made possible because it is assumed that there is indeed a large set of data from which to extract information.The real question is from where does that data derive? The answer: data will come from things that generate a lot of data. In my mind, the Experience API has a role to play in this. The thing many of us, as designers, are going to need to accept is that we don’t quite know what to do with the ability to track so much data. We’re so used to describing learning with data in short, stunted sentences:Sally completed Business Conduct Guidelines.Sally scored 90% on Assessment 105a in Business Conduct Guidelines.Working with the Experience API, one could conceivably tell an actual story.Sally received an email from a xxxxx@xxxxx.com_. Sally searched the Customer Service Dashboard for response procedures. Sally clicked on “Email Response Policies.” Sally clicked on “What to do about competitors?” Sally clicked on “Do you suspect corporate espionage?” Sally entered a chat window with Dave and Juan. Sally IM’d “Have you guys dealt with_ xxxxx@xxxxx.com before?” Juan IM’d “Here’s a link.” Sally clicked the link. Sally launched Business Conduct Guidelines. Sally scored 90% on Assessment 105a in Business Conduct Guidelines. Sally responded to xxxx@xxxxx.com_._The above isn’t just some pre-defined learning experience; it could be a report on a series of interactions that are free-formed and largely self-directed. What is told in this little story would have to be designed. This is what I mean when I write: “_we need to accept that we don’t quite know what to do with the ability to track so much data.”_Largely, what it comes down to is what kind of mad-lib stories we may want to tell—only the mad-libs might be created in-the-moment. This is a completely new way of thinking about design for our profession. Maybe not new for all of us...but new for most of us?In the beginning we’re going to tell stories with the data that isn’t very good. We’re going to keep track of things that don’t always have value. And we’re likely to have privacy and security scares. This is going to happen. This is all really hard stuff.And. We. Will. Get. Better.The thing is that because we’re all new at this, we have to accept that we’re going to fall short. When we realize that, it’s the opportunity we give ourselves to figure stuff out. The future is not some downloadable app—defined for us and packaged tightly. The future is what we make, as we make it.This is how self-directed learning works. It doesn’t just work for whom we serve. It works for us, too. We’re going to make mistakes as we figure out how to design with and for data. But the opportunities for learning abound.So while we see a chance, we have to take it. And remember it is okay to make a few missteps along the way, because as Tom reminded a few years ago…"We're all new at this."

We're All New at This

Our October webinar is almost here, so we decided to sit down with our presenter Dave Stein and discuss the topic of Selecting the Right Sales Training Provider. We discussed what makes him passionate about this topic, what qualities organizations should look for in sales training providers, and why sales leaders can make the wrong choices when it comes to selecting them.  Dave has spent almost 20 years as a sales trainer, so he understands the challenges that trainers and training departments face when it comes to picking the right training option. Something he noticed in his time as a sales trainer was that when it came time to make the decision about which training company to go with, there wasn't any independent source of information about how well companies performed. With this in mind and a passion to provide sales leaders with something more than a "gut feeling" to make decisions, he started ES Research Group.On the qualities to look for in sales training providers, Dave had this to say:"It's the insistence that sufficient reinforcement programs/methods be incorporated into the total sales performance improvement initiative. Sales training companies make the biggest profit by filling seats in multi-day programs. Some are less willing to do what it takes to sustain the effort, because the margins aren't as big We like sales trainers who fight for reinforcement, executive sponsorship, sales manager participation in programs, and all the other components of a successful sales training initiative."This means that above all else, a sales training provider should be able to show how their programs will be of value to you in the long term. They can tell you all about the impressive ways that they can immerse your sales team in their learning process, but it's meaningless if it doesn't add up to positive changes in overall behavior.Unfortunately, sales leaders might not be looking at this as their requirement. More often than not, they go with an aforementioned "gut feeling" to make these tough decisions. These gut decisions can have many factors involved that will sound all too familiar to a trainer: "I've used them before." "They promise the largest ROI." Or, best of all, "Trust me, I know what I'm doing."Dave will be covering ESR's approach to evaluating and selecting sales training providers. He'll be sharing what he tells ESR's clients about their strategic approach to this process. Don't miss out on this FREE opportunity to learn what it really takes to make outsourcing training worthwhile! Register today!

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