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Fred Clark

Improving Technical Skills in an Urban Transit Environment

FRED G. CLARK

Facts and Fiction About Inflation

ATD Blog

While facilitating leadership development workshops at Emerson (a Fortune 125 company with 90,000 employees in 140 countries), there is an interesting comment I frequently hear: “I did not realize how much time you would give me in this workshop to think!”Is that a compliment or a complaint? I believe most people mean it as a compliment because they are surprised. Most of them haven’t had enough time to think in prior trainings.I’ve heard this comment many times, and it never takes me by surprise. In fact, I would be disappointed if I did not hear it. Most learners aren’t given adequate time to think and reflect when they attend training sessions.Far too many training programs rely on content rather than application and do not offer learners time for intentional reflection. In my 28-year learning and development career, I’ve seen too many programs approach learning by telling learners as much as possible in the time provided. Many of us in L&D call that strategy “ten pounds of training in a five-pound sack.”Fred Harburg, former chief learning officer at Fidelity Investments, sums it up well: “If there is no time for reflection, there is almost no chance for improvement.”L&D professionals want to create value for learners. One of the most valuable activities we can build into the design and delivery of our courses is intentional reflection and implementation planning. To improve our training programs, we must stop talking and pushing content, and let learners think.This represents a paradigm shift for many L&D practitioners. Spend less time on content and more time on intentional thinking and reflection.L&D thought leaders Roy Pollock, Cal Wick, and Andy Jefferson (authors of The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning) popularized the term “learning scrap.” Learning scrap refers to content covered in a workshop that is never applied. Most L&D programs have a typical learning scrap rate of 85 percent. At best, most learners apply 15 percent of what’s taught in a workshop on the job. If you want to decrease learning scrap and increase learning transfer, build more deliberate thinking and reflection activities into your courses.In his classic book, Learning and Memory, Donald A. Norman writes, “To remember is to have managed three things successfully: the acquisition, the retention, and the retrieval of information. Failure to remember means failure at managing one of these three things.” I argue failure usually occurs at the retention level. If there is no reflection, there is no retrieval. If there is no reflection and retention, do not expect retrieval to follow.This issue is well-documented by Ruth C. Clark, Frank Nguyen, and John Sweller in another classic book, Efficiency in Learning. They refer to this concept as “information fatigue.” We need to give learners more time to process during a training program. The authors’ research shows a lack of time for reflection leads to cognitive overload. Overload implies a malfunction; learning is short-circuited. If a person attends a program to learn, and we cram it full of content without giving them time to think, it’s no wonder learning scrap occurs.Several years ago, I codeveloped a workshop with Michael Watkins (a former faculty member at Harvard Business School and founder of Genesis Advisers) to create a workshop based on his bestselling book, The First 90 Days. Our workshop designed intentional thinking activities that asked participants a series of questions at the end of each module. The reflection activities took between 20 and 30 minutes to complete and consisted of five or six questions. These were not simply recall or comprehension questions, but rather synthesis and evaluation questions (the higher levels of cognitive thinking).Some of the top executives who attended this workshop told me that if I had not built in deliberate time to think, their goal would have been to rush through the course so they could move on to the next thing on their list.Here are some ways to build time for reflection into your programs:
Build thinking time into the design and delivery of every learning program you create, no matter the delivery method (in person or virtual).Resist the temptation to add more content to your courses. Do not fall prey to the “myth of more.” More content at the expense of intentional time for reflection will not improve learner performance. It will diminish it.Remember, the goal is not to give the content. The goal is for learners to get it, which will only happen through the discipline of quiet reflection.If trainers are given the option to talk or let their learners think, many would choose to fill the silence with their own voices, but the greatest value trainers bring to a workshop is knowing when to stop speaking and give learners time to reflect.

Want Them to Learn? Give Them Time to Think

Dorie Clark has been named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50 and was recognized as the #1 communication coach in the world by the Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards. Clark, a consultant and keynote speaker, teaches executive education at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Columbia Business School, and she is the author of Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You, and Stand Out, which was named the #1 leadership book of 2015 by Inc. magazine. A former presidential campaign spokeswoman, Clark has been described by the New York Times as an “expert at self-reinvention and helping others make changes in their lives.” A frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, she consults and speaks for clients including Google, Microsoft, and the World Bank. You can download her free Entrepreneurial You self-assessment workbook.

Dorie Clark

Troubleshooting for Trainers: Q&A With Sophie Oberstein

ATD Career Week 2015 (September 21-25), sponsored by Degreed, offers a great line-up of activities. Indeed, no matter where you are in your career journey, there’s something for you!Early CareerIf you’re thinking about changing careers or getting into the field of talent development for the first time, don’t miss the webcast, “How to Get Started in Talent Development,” on Monday, September 21st at 12:00 p.m. Facilitator Marilyn Feldstein will review potential careers tied to talent development and how to match your skills with what employers seek. Mid CareerIf you’ve been wondering whether or not to pursue your CPLP certification, this webcast can help you make an informed decision. ATD Certification Institute staff Jennifer Naughton and Diane Daly will answer your questions on Tuesday, September 22nd at 3:00 p.m. during the webcast, “Is CPLP Certification Right for You?”   What’s more, all week long, we will provide FREE access to the ATD Career Navigator, a tool that enables you to evaluate your skills against the ATD competency model. Typically a member-only benefit, this tool can help you to assess your professional readiness for new opportunities, as well as identify skill gaps that you may have for your current position. Access to this valuable tool at www.td.org/atd-career-navigator.  \[You will need to login to the site, but you will not need to be a member if you use this link\]. EveryoneMost people don’t enjoy networking, or they are unsure how to do it effectively. Join Dorie Clark, one of our members’ favorite speakers, on Wednesday, September 23rd at 3:00 p.m. for the webcast, “Stand Out: Networking.”Also, nearly 70 percent of training is still delivered in instructor-led courses. Yet, there are currently more than 1,200 sources of learning content in dozens of formats, and workers are increasingly choosing options that fit into how they learn on the job. Join Eric VanDerSluis, Comcast's senior director of talent and professional development, and Todd Tauber, Degreed’s vice president of product marketing, for the webcast, “Reinventing L&D for the Next Generation of Learners,” on Thursday, September 24th at 2:00 p.m.Looking for a New Opportunity?If you’re looking for a new opportunity, be sure to sign up for our Virtual Career Fair on Tuesday, September 22nd from 12:00 to 3:00 p.m. Or check out the most recent job postings on the ATD Job Bank.Career Development HelpPerhaps your managers need help developing effective IDP’s for their employees? Check out the new TD at Work, “Managers Guide to Employee Development” for a primer on how to talk to employees about career and development plans.Finally, be sure to take a look at the TD at Work Career Management Collection for three great issues of TD at Work that address how to keep your career and personal life on track.

Access Career First Aid During ATD Career Week 2015

Whether you have just started your first job or you are several years into your career, it’s not too early to pave the way for a leadership role ahead of you.  In fact, if you don’t start thinking about how you can become successful in the future, success may elude you down the road. That’s because there are certain career path essentials that you need to consider and skills you need to acquire to achieve a top position in your industry.Four essential actions will position you now—so that you will be qualified to lead in the future:Develop the right skillsOptimize your performance reviewsCultivate executive presenceAct like a leader.Develop the Right SkillsDeveloping the right skills isn’t easy; you have to figure out what skills you need and how to get them. Here’s how.Review leaders’ skillsets and experience. The only way to ensure you know the qualifications that leaders possess is to study exceptional executives in your industry. Although you can examine top management in your company, it’s also a good idea to broaden your search to include other industry leaders outside your organizations. Consider these questions:What are these leaders good at? What experiences or job postings have lent to their abilities to do their jobs?Is turn around experience necessary to manage a major division? You might notice that your division leader worked on turning around a troubled product line before she was promoted to her current position. But look at other leaders to determine if this is an industry-wide requirement.What education and training do the upper tiers of managers have?Do leaders typically have international experience? What specific department boasts the most leaders in the industry? If it’s a technology firm, maybe the top brass were all engineers. If you’re in the consumer product industry, maybe the marketing department churns out most of the executives.No two successful leaders will have identical backgrounds, but if you can identify patterns and trends, you’ll gain an idea of the skills and experiences you will need to thrive in your industry.Build your skill arsenal. Now that you know the types of skills you need, it’s time to begin to look for opportunities to develop them. Ask for projects that will stretch you professionally. Often, the “king-maker” assignments are company “problems” that most people don’t want to tackle. Will your current position allow you to gain some of the skills you need or has your learning curve plateaued?  If you can’t learn much more where you are, identify assignments in other groups and ask your manager if you can volunteer for them—as long as you complete your other responsibilities. If cross-group project work isn’t possible and you’ve learned as much as you can where you are, you may need to make a change within your company or outside of it.What’s your special power?  Most everyone has at least one skill at their job that they completely rock. Oftentimes, though, they don’t know what that skill is. That’s because when we do self-analysis, we think too big. For example, you may not be amazing analytically or the best salesperson, so you think, “What do I have to offer?”Drill down on little tasks that you’re especially good at performing—maybe even better than anyone else in your group. Is it your ability to engage comfortably with your teammates? Is it your clear understanding of the group head’s requests? Is it your skill at ensuring presentations are free of errors? Is it your creative additions to the scope of a project? Ask yourself, ask your colleagues, and ask your manager what they think you do well. If you’re afraid of sounding too self-serving, ask how they think you handled XYZ, or ask if they could give you feedback on ABC. You’re bound to start hearing the same good things about what you bring to the table. Once you know what that special power is…exploit it! Seek opportunities to assist your manager and colleagues in ways that showcase your talents. It’s a win-win for your company and you.If your goal is CEO, you need to gain line experience. In any company, most of the top managers have gained line experience or have been responsible for a P&L. These professionals are called “line managers” because their jobs are associated with revenue generation. Examples of line positions are easily found in manufacturing, brand management, and sales, to name a few.Alternatively, staff positions are those with clients internal to the company. Examples of staff positions are accounting, legal, and human resources. The path to the top of a staff department can land you at a very senior-level position within your company, such as head of human resources. But typically, there is little mobility outside of these departments.Be sure to assess your goals to discern if you want to be “running” the organization a few years down the road. If so, it’s best to gain line experience.This article covered “Developing the Right Skills,” the first of four essential actions to position yourself to lead in the future. Join me for my webcast, Prepare Now to Lead Later, on February 20, 2015, at 12:00 p.m. EST to review the next three actions: optimize your performance reviews, cultivate executive presence, and act like a leader.

Critical Steps You Need to Follow Now—to Become a Leader in the Future

At the beginning of the past two years, I’ve written a post on important points I think you should know. In 2021 I mentioned the importance of context, emotion, and learning to learn. In 2022 I discussed some of the newer cognitive science models of cognition—including distributed, social, and embodied cognition—as well as the role of mental models. This year, I’d like to focus on a trend that we should extinguish: the belief that we are formal, logical, reasoning beings.The cognitive revolution transcended the view of behavioral psychology; we couldn’t talk about what went on in the brain. While many valuable insights were generated by that scientific paradigm, including the role of performance objectives, the move to thinking we could isolate necessary components provided further advances. Results that have stood the test of time—the recognition of sensory, working, and long-term memory as well as core cognitive processes like attention, elaboration, and retrieval—were identified.We tend to adopt existing models as frameworks for thinking about the brain, and the cognitive revolution was no exception. For example, consider the computer as a general-purpose information processing system. It made sense to adopt that model to reflect our abilities to process information and complete a variety of tasks. Thus, the dominant framework for thinking about thinking was to view our brains as formal, logical, reasoning machines.Such models, with some assumptions like mapping the world into formal representations, accomplished impressive tasks. Systems built upon that model could break down problems into components and solve them. They could even learn. Artificial intelligence (AI) advanced as a result. So-called “expert systems” were built upon interviews with the best practitioners. Sadly, these models failed in practical situations, leading to an AI winter. This was a disconcerting time, when behavior naturally observed in humans did not reflect these symbolic systems.The Postcognitive RevolutionOne of the most impressive capabilities of our thinking is the ability to organize the world into flexible frameworks. What David Rumelhart called schemas, Marvin Minsky called frames, and Roger Schank called scripts all reflect our ability to infer knowledge about the world. Thus, we had representations such as wheels that scaled up to vehicles but differently for automobiles versus bicycles. Symbolic logic struggles with this, however. Attempts were made to adapt, such as Lofti Zadeh’s Fuzzy Logic and Douglas Hofstedter’s Slipnets, but suffered in practice.An alternative framework emerged that could be characterized as “subsymbolic,” operating below the symbolic level. John Holland, Keith Holyoak, Richard Nisbett, and Paul Thagard created a genetic algorithm approach in Induction, which borrowed mutation from biology, but wasn’t aligned with neuroscience. Rumelhart, along with Jay McClelland, proposed connectionist models instead in their two-volume set Parallel Distributed Processing with a neuroscientific inspiration. These models were found to exhibit rational behavior similar to humans. They represented the same types of behaviors, including errors, that were empirically obtained from psychology research.These neural net models created not only a psychological revolution, capturing elements of cognition, but also a renewed basis for artificial intelligence, underpinning much of today’s work in machine learning.A Cognitive LegacyOne small legacy of the formal, logical, reasoning model of cognition, however, seems to linger. It appears that many of our practices in learning and development (and business in general), still seem to be based on this idea. This is a potential problem.If we’re formal logical beings, there are several things we should be able to assume. For one, if we give people new information, they’ll appropriately adjust their behavior. Moreover, the person with the greatest access to information should be the one to make a decision, and that decision will be the best one possible. We see this manifest in several ways.For one, our training frequently resembles the presentation of new information with an expectation of behavior change. Too often, we see bullet points of information extracted from (and even presented by) experts. After this, there’s an expectation that we’ll do something differently. Similarly with annual or quarterly reviews. People need feedback at the appropriate time and support for change. We don’t just change when we wish to; it takes time and practice.We also see decisions made by individuals without consultation. Folks will decree a new approach because it’s been determined by the person at the appropriate decision point. Yet the evidence suggests that we get better outcomes when we bring more people into the decision-making process, such as in Keith Sawyer’s Group Genius. When we follow practices that help us suitably explore a problem individually, and then collectively brainstorm solutions, test, and adapt, the outcomes are better.A Problematic LegacySadly, there is also evidence that this approach to work isn’t working. We see it in the outcomes of learning investments, and when we evaluate organizational success as an outcome of our approaches, we see that more informed ones work better.In the 2012 Harvard Business School working paper The Great Training Robbery, Michael Beer, Magnus Finnstrom, and Derek Schrader cite metanalyses that suggest only 10 percent of training investment has an impact. There may be multiple causes for this, but it does suggest that we’re wasting money with our approaches. The Serious eLearning Manifesto suggests that much of traditional learning is based on information presentation, so it’s safe to say that we’re not doing as well as we could.Similarly, efforts like Laura Overton’s Toward Maturity and Lauri Bassi’s Human Capital Capability Scorecard suggest that organizations do better when they’re better aligned with how people think, work, and learn. Organizational performance reliably improves with better employee approaches.Overall, the continued use of ineffective practices undermines our organizational success. We need to effectively achieve our organizational goals, which includes ensuring we can optimally execute what we know we need to do and continually innovate when we have to invent or adapt.Moving ForwardWhat should you do differently?Truly understand how your brain actually operates. Know the basics of the human information processing loop and extensions for learning and performance.Avoid the myths that continue to hinder our industry.Conduct deep needs analyses to find important performance gaps and their root causes. There are many causes of problems besides a lack of knowledge or skills. Stop thinking that if you give people knowledge, behavior will change.Leverage external resources. Decision making is best done collectively and iteratively. To do otherwise is to minimize your potential.Move from legacy practices to evidence-based practices. There are vested interests that continue to exist based on perpetuating approaches that aren’t effective. Many products that are quite lucrative—profiling instruments and development programs —aren’t effective.Start measuring impact. This doesn’t mean what people prefer (there’s no correlation with what people think of a program and its impact). Instead, assess the actual change in the organization. You can’t collect this yourself; you must partner with the business units that require change.Align programs to demonstrable gaps, and then measure until they’ve improved.Ultimately, L&D should be the folks that are responsible for not only optimal execution but also continual innovation. When you’re innovating (problem solving, designing, or researching), you don’t know the answer when you start, so inherently it is learning. It’s informal learning, and no one knows the answer (yet)! Still, it’s an opportunity for L&D to attain a more valuable role in the organization.To make this strategic move and start bringing evidence-based practices from formal to informal learning, take ownership of these practices within your teams. Make it safe to fail; share stories of what you tried; and learn together. Create and understand a learning microculture before taking it to the rest of the organization.Last, identify the organizational legacies that are holding you, and your organizations, back. Then, find alternatives, and implement them. When you’re free of your unexamined past, you can move forward to an evidence-based future that means better outcomes. That’s a trend I’d like to see and encourage you to undertake.

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