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Neal Whitten

Discusses ways for employees to boost their own performance. Setting of goals; Empowerment; Time-management; Limiting of commitments; Knowledge of one's options when faced with a problem.

Boosting your own performance

Social recruiting is no longer something for the future—it is here today and is already playing an important role, given the explosive growth of social media trends. The rise in adoption of social media, especially by active job searchers, presents new opportunities and challenges for talent management professionals.  More than ever before, organizations need a global social recruiting presence if they expect to succeed in a world that is digitally connected.Social recruiting has become a top priority for nearly every talent management professional—and for very good reason. Just a few years ago, building online relationships with top talent was considered a competitive advantage—a recruiting differentiator—against other digitally savvy companies. Today, it is more often considered a necessary business requirement for effectively acquiring “impact players” — people that possess high-demand talents that are in low-supply in highly skilled industries such as technology, chemical engineering, and health care.**So, what are the necessary steps in developing your social recruiting strategy?**1. At the core of a successful social recruiting initiative is a clear and focused strategic plan. How will social media enable you to achieve more impactful efficiency and effectiveness when it comes to recruiting? What will drive the most impact for your talent acquisition efforts? To achieve the most measurable outcomes, you will want to start with your goals – what success looks like to you – in mind.2. It is important to ensure that appropriate and inappropriate uses of social media are clearly articulated and shared with employees of all levels. A strategic business plan considers the strategic uncertainties associated with it, and the same is true of your social media strategy. With the right policies and guidelines, and with strong training programs, organizations can gain tremendous benefit from online engagement.3. A comprehensive social recruiting strategy includes the creation of a robust content strategy. The content that you create should be determined by the goals and objectives that you’ve set for your social recruiting efforts. To develop content that is relevant and socially friendly, make sure that you know your audience, know where they hang out; also know your recruiting brand and your recruiting voice.4. Embrace mobile as part of your social recruiting strategy. Mobile technology has profoundly changed the way businesses interact with stakeholders, customers, employees, and now job seekers.  Mobile is your opportunity to leverage marketing techniques, to create interactions, and to find those you may want to take to the next level.5. Create a meaningful candidate experience. Everything about the recruiting process can add to or subtract from how candidates experience the company – the company’s products and brand, the technology, the employees, and the recruiting team. Even when candidates don’t get the job they were seeking, you want them to feel that their experience is worth a positive post on their Facebook page.6. Transform employees into recruiters. Leverage your employees’ social networks to actively connect with and engage pools of talent, and to recruit on the company’s behalf.7. Measure what matters. The trick for talent professionals is to have good techniques for filtering and processing the vast amounts of available information, and to understand and leverage it for planning, campaign optimization, resource allocation, and program outcomes.To maintain the competitive edge that can come with effective social recruiting, it is essential not only to implement a core strategy, but also to stay abreast of what future trends may bring.  The top three trends include:Workforce science.  Workforce science will put big data at the heart of recruiting allowing recruiters to move beyond using social media as a communication tool toward leveraging big-data technologies. Recruiters can then mine data and drive customized social experiences that influence job-seeker behavior in ways that benefit the business. Social graphs.  Social graphs will seismically change how we recruit. The data collected through social graphing will become of great interest to businesses that are trying to connect and engage for the purposes of building a brand and driving consumer behavior.Gamification. We can expect that gamification will continue to change the game of recruiting – especially as these tools are adopted more readily in organizations. The content of this blog is a summary of a larger body of work, written by Annemarie Neal for The Conference Board. The report is titled Brave New World: Recruiting Talent in the Digital Age, published October, 2013. The report number is TCB\_R-1534-13-RR.Read more from Annemarie Neal in her new ASTD book, Leading from the Edge.

Recruiting Top Talent in the Age of Social Media

Bruno Neal is a scholar and a learning and development authority. He has written dozens of articles on learning and development, two Infoline__™ issues on Informal Learning and Quality in Learning and Development, and one TD at Work™ on Learning and Development in Healthcare. He is a Certified Professional of Learning and Performance (CPLP), and currently works as an L&D leader for Indiana University Health. He has been appointed to the 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 Board of Examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, a judge of the 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 Association for Talent Development (ATD) BEST Award, and Chair of the award committee since 2014. Neal was awarded with the highly esteemed American Society of Training & Development BEST Award in 2009, and part of the team awarded with the same achievement in 2011. He also was awarded with the Champion of Learning Award Certification for his contribution to learning and professional development in 2011. In 2015, Neal received the Global Training & Development Leadership Award at the World Training & Development Congress in Mumbai (India) for his contributions to the international learning and development community.Neal also serves as contributor for ATD’s T+D Magazine. In addition, he has spoken at ATD International Conference & Exposition, local chapters of ATD across the United States, Cancer Treatment of America, Training Magazine conference, the Training and Education chapter of the National Association of Electric Distributors (NAED), Medical Users Software Exchange (MUSE), and ATD’s Learn from the BEST conferences.

Bruno Neal

If you’re anything like us, 2018 went by in a blur. As you juggled responsibilities, you likely didn’t get to keep up with all the new thought leadership and trends you wanted to.So as the year winds down, we thought you might like to catch up on some of the hottest topics of 2018. To make it easy for you, here are the top blogs DDI published this year:1. 10 Hot Leadership Topics for 2018This was the most-read blog we published in 2018—and it’s not hard to see why. Every single topic Stephanie Neal predicted would be prominent—from AI to a greater focus on data—mattered to leaders over the past 12 months.2. The 4 Questions All Leaders Must AskLeadership isn't about having all the answers, but about asking the right questions. In this blog, Bruce Court defined the four types of questions all leaders need to regularly ask and explained why it’s so important to adopt a “questioning mindset.”3. The 3 Most Dangerous Myths About Unconscious BiasUnconscious bias was a popular topic in 2018. One of the most thought-provoking blogs came from Mark Smedley, who made the case that to avoid unconscious bias, we need to be aware of it and learn how to effectively manage it.4. We Embrace the Concept of Diversity Until Confronted by the Reality of ItWhile an unquestionably worthwhile endeavor, attaining diversity is challenging for both organizations and individuals. Mark Busine explained one of the major reasons why: When faced with differences, we often react in ways that don’t match our intent.5. Even If You’re Not a Leader, You’re Always LeadingIt takes conscious effort to be a good leader. But not all leading happens when we’re trying. Leadership happens, Richmond Fourmy pointed out, even when we think we’re doing nothing.6. How Strategic Leaders “See” DifferentlyDiscussing the challenging transition from an operational to a strategic leadership role, Mike Hoban revealed how strategic leaders must develop “visual agility” to see both the critical details and the big picture.7. Why Disruption Is the CEO’s Best FriendCiting findings from the Global Leadership Forecast 2018, Audrey Smith and Stephanie Neal made a strong case that organizations benefit when they are led by CEOs who willingly embrace disruption and change.8. The Surprising Generation That’s Changing the Future of WorkSo much has been written about Millennials that the generation that currently holds many leadership roles, Gen X, has been overlooked. Stephanie Neal and Rich Wellins looked at what the research says about this forgotten generation.9. A Gender-Diverse and Inclusive Culture: It’s a Symphony, Not SolosIn the analogy of a symphony orchestra, Tânia Fernandes Mendes found a novel way to talk about gender diversity in the leadership ranks—and why it’s a competitive advantage.10. How a Talent Growth Mindset Creates a Company Growth TrajectoryWhat sets growth-mindset companies apart from the rest? For this blog, Evan Sinar offered an eye-opening list, including higher-quality leadership, improved financial performance, and better customer focus.

The Top 10 Leadership Blogs of 2018

An unusually astute sense of self translates into an ability to understand the world and the people around you on many levels and in many different contexts. Purpose to ‘change the world’ coupled with a powerful strength of conviction keeps leaders pushing forward even in the face of obstacles or when pressured by others to do something else, while never forgetting their responsibility to satisfy the needs of the board, shareholders, customers, or employees. Recall how N.R. Narayana Murthy, one of the co-founders of Infosys Ltd., the Indian-based business consulting, technology, engineering, and outsourcing services company, stood up against political corruption in his home country to change the way business was done in India.Many of the truly exceptional leaders I have worked with possess a rare capacity to rapidly absorb, synthesize, and organize information that helps them understand the world around them, even when that world is radically different from what they have experienced before. Almost simultaneously, they are able to use that new worldview to determine how best to lead themselves and their organizations going forward. This multi-level processing enables them to respond more quickly and effectively to market changes and opportunities. The ability to make connections and interconnections across industries, technologies, markets, and geographies is an incredibly important skill for the global leader. It is essential to the process of developing strategies and collaborative relationships that keep a company, even an entire industry, relevant over the long term.              Another essential trait is in knowing when that which has worked in the past is destined for failure going forward. The dilemma faced by many leaders is that when they find a good model, say Dell's "Build it to Order," they have a hard time letting go. For global leaders, this dilemma is amplified, given the need to operate multiple business models simultaneously around the world. Truly global leaders need the intellectual acuity to know what to keep, what to destroy, and what to recreate across their organizations, in order to remain relevant to myriad markets and constituents. More importantly, they need the emotional intelligence and the mettle to take action, especially when what must be destroyed is exactly what made them successful in the past.  Consider how LEGO dramatically undertook an aggressive diversification plan (i.e., changed its business model) expanding its business beyond the traditional interconnecting building blocks to include a new line of clothing, theme parks and video games to improve revenue and capture greater market value.While more of an operations focus and engineering mentality may have been successful in the past, today's leader needs to be more of an inventor and an experimenter, willing to try out a new idea (a hypothesis) and recognize that failure (disproving the hypothesis) can be just as valuable, if not more so, than when the hypothesis turns out to be correct. Experimentation is a critical component of the reinvention process—whether you are reinventing a product, a solution, your business model or organizational structure, and even an industry platform or standard. [Let’s Recreate Leadership Series – Final PostBlog #4: The nature of organizations has changed, and the leaders they require in the future will be fundamentally different from those they require today. It is time to recreate leadership for the requirements of the modern organization.](http://stockmonkeys.com)[](http://images.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=6ddcewZIeuHIBM&tbnid=GF-iv8QA4q-dTM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/duboc/7896404652/&ei=5JkJUru\_CImsiAf\_goDoBQ&bvm=bv.50500085,d.aGc&psig=AFQjCNFm5h4mgyFMC0GTeXZYwhLGf5W\_Fw&ust=1376447315952368)Over the years, serving as a management consultant and as the corporate lead in charge of executive development, I have assessed and developed thousands of leaders, most of whom were either preparing for or already in significant global assignments. Working closely with these individuals, I have learned that there are certain notable traits that distinguish those who hold global positions from those who are truly (deep in their being) global leaders. Interestingly, the differences have little to do with age, gender, where they were raised or schooled, and not even the kind of "on the job" training they received or the number of countries stamped in their passports. These are certainly important factors that contribute to one's ability to do global work; they provide the playground in which budding leaders can learn and grow, but they do not make a global leader. What I have found is that the true differentiating qualities are more psychographic than demographic in nature.  [Failure is a necessary ingredient to success. Leaders need to learn how to fail: How to understand it, learn from it, and importantly, how to recover from it. Learning how to fail is essential if you want to know how to be successful. As Winston Churchill said, "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."  Failure is not the opposite of success but rather an integral part of the invention, reinvention, and innovation process.  Within each failure are lessons that develop experienced judgment to apply to subsequent reinvention or innovative projects. Today's leaders need to see their corporations as if they are part of living systems, in which the success of the individual is dependent upon the success of the larger whole. In the business world, they understand that the success of the corporation is dependent upon the success of the broader ecosystems. For Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, improvement of his company's core product, Linux software, depends on cooperation among software developers around the world far beyond those on Red Hat's payroll.  This approach is in sharp contrast to the more common economics of scarcity in which something of value is protected by copyrights and is only available to those willing to pay for it. In Whitehurst's world, value is actually created by maximizing access, which increases the size of the brain trust working on a given problem. This approach, long lauded by the free software movement, can yield unprecedented results.Today's leaders also need to not only learn to live with, but also to appreciate, messiness on the outer edge of their organizations. This requires co-existing in two worlds, one that is more reminiscent of the past, where a certain level of control and oversight is important to drive today's performance expectations, and another where the leader sets the vision and then gives permission to those working on the edge to self-organize and find solutions—often to problems that have not even been considered or created. By understanding and balancing the needs of both worlds, leaders can help their organizations stay profitable today, which can help financially support innovation for the future. To do so, leaders need to be comfortable with the messiness inherent in a knowledge (versus industrial) economy.  Leadership, especially at a global level, has a tremendous capacity to change the world, for good or for bad. Unlike industrial age thinking that at times disregarded or diminished the importance of environmental and social responsibility, leaders today need to be much more aware of the impact their operations have and are adjusting processes and policies to promote sustainability. Growth going forward must depend upon business models that support sustainability: of communities, of workforces, of the environment.For many businesspeople, a word like empathy seems too soft for the fiercely competitive, results-driven world in which they live. But empathy can yield some very tangible business results on many fronts, from employee engagement to product design to identifying new market opportunities.Authenticity is even more critical in a world of social networking, where anything you do or say can be captured and shared with the rest of connected humanity in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. For Frits van Paasschen, CEO of Starwood Properties transparency is a fact of life. In his manifesto on leadership, written in early 2012 for the employees of his worldwide hotel and resort network, Frits says, "It is not enough to have a strong brand or a great product. People expect to know about the company behind the brand and the people behind the product. Thanks to Facebook, Wikileaks, and LinkedIn—there are virtually no degrees of separation anymore. All the world's a digital stage."  The author would like to thank Karen Conway for her contribution to prior materials that inspired the content of this blog.](http://images.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=qAIj51xYsMFmfM&tbnid=1OxD7ZSM5jTkuM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http://www.keral.com/index.php/narayana-murthy-to-head-infosys-again/&ei=f5QJUpD6D4yFiAeywYHIDA&psig=AFQjCNHPU3lz2G-TvW0hht3mg\_cULvPjjg&ust=1376445937659029)

Let's Recreate Leadership Series - Final Post

At the recent Totara User Conference in London, Senior Learning Strategist Lori Niles-Hofmann shared her ideas for 10 ways that organizations can transform learning results. One key point was that more learning professionals should act like journalists, so that they can glean what really matters in learning content with creative storytelling and the ability to craft a compelling narrative. If you’re unable to take a journalism course, here are some things to remember when you want to write like a journalist.The 5 Ws … and an HWho, what, when, where, why, and how. In a journalism course, the importance of covering the 5 Ws (and one H) upfront will be drilled into you in every single news reporting class. The goal is to cover as many of these points as possible in the first sentence or two of a story, such as:A fireman claims he spotted the Loch Ness monster yesterday while he was fishing near Brighton’s West Pier.In journalism, the art of placing the most important information first is known as the inverted pyramid--you want to convey the bulk of the story in the first few lines, with the rest of the story adding color. Don’t leave the crucial information until the end. If we don’t find out until halfway through the story that Nessie was spotted in Brighton, way outside its usual environment of Loch Ness in Scotland, we’re skipping over a huge part of the story!Crafting a NarrativeMany learning professionals craft their learning into too corporate and formal of a style, whereas most people will remember quirky details and stories that they can relate to. Compare these two ways of conveying the same information:If you are about to have a difficult conversation with an employee, it may help to rehearse what you say before the meeting. Having a couple of prompt words on a piece of paper will help you stay on track.Barbara is preparing to discuss Alan’s inappropriate behavior at work and has invited him into her office. As Alan knocks on the door, Barbara glances at her prompt words--‘unprofessional language, unhelpful, patronizing’--to remind her what she needs to cover.Something as simple as setting up a scenario with names and a location can help anchor the point of your learning in someone’s mind. If you can tie the fictional scenario to your own organization, even better.Know Your AudienceOne of the skills in a journalist’s toolkit is the ability to make their story resonate with a specific audience. Think about the different writing styles you will find in a tabloid newspaper versus a broadsheet versus a glossy weekly magazine. Take these examples, for instance:Hollywood hunk Alan Smith is selling his joke shop chain. With rumors of his bankruptcy circling, he won’t be laughing his way to the bank this time.Oscar-winning actor Alan Smith has announced that he is selling his chain of joke shops for a fraction of their original cost, citing "difficult economic circumstances" for the closures.Word on the street is that everyone’s fave film star Alan Smith is shutting up shop on his joke stores. A source revealed that his recent stint out of the limelight has left him a little strapped for cash, so let’s just hope he can magic some dosh out of thin air to keep his struggling fitness lifestyle brand afloat.This is the same piece of information written for three different audiences, taking into account their different interests and how readers expect to be spoken to. Just because you’re creating corporate training, that doesn’t mean that your audience will respond well to a formal tone. This is where it pays to dig deeper into your company culture and to look at the way people speak in your organization--if even the C-suite are relatively informal and friendly, it makes sense to reflect this in your training materials, as anything too corporate and jargon-filled will feel jarring.Borrow from your marketing colleagues. Marketing and journalism go hand in hand, particularly when it comes to the skills you’ll be borrowing as a learning professional. Aside from the writing itself, think about the marketing campaign you’ll create to promote your content to your audience. It’s not enough to write a course and leave it on the LMS; think about how learners will find out about it, how they’ll get there and how you’ll keep them coming back over and over again.You may consider sending out regular emails or internal newsletters to highlight new content, promote useful existing content or surface interesting conversations on your internal forums. You may carefully craft the phrasing on your LMS to guide people towards the most relevant content, or you may even create physical posters or stationery to sit in the workplace and act as a constant reminder about the available learning. If in doubt, speak to your marketing team. There are likely to be plenty of things you can do to get more people accessing and completing your learning.Curious about the other nine essential skills you need? Download our free ebook about the Learning Social Contract, which covers advice from Senior Learning Strategist Lori Niles-Hofmann and Totara Learning’s CLO Lars Hyland, about the most important skills for learning professionals to develop today.

Four Ways Learning Professionals Can Be More Like Journalists

You have a new job as Chief Learning Officer of a mid-sized company, but you’re worried about the transition into your new job. There are several lessons to think about before you start your new position.Transitioning executives are often are in a hurry to put “points on the scoreboard.” They want to show too much value too soon! By that I mean, they want to please their bosses by making a big splash before they win over the people they’ll need for sustainable performance—their peers and people who report directly to them.Transitioning executives are told by their new bosses to “get in there and shake things up."Unfortunately, the transitioning executive takes this as a mandate when in fact, what it really means is “make changes over time, but don’t drive people crazy in the meantime!”  Making too many changes, too quickly scares the hell out of people--both those who report directly to you and your peers.Here’s my advice for a transitioning executive: Make haste slowly. Don’t start taking down pillars of support before you determine which are cosmetic and which ones are load-bearing and whose removal will cause the roof to fall in!Transitioning executives often have no idea about the power of culture. The Seattle Seahawks call their fans the 12th player on their team; that acknowledgement of their fans is vital. It is the same with culture. Culture is the BIG Kahuna in any company. Edgar Schein (emeritus professor at MIT and culture guru) tells us that the culture of a business is like an iceberg: above the water, you can spot behaviors and artifacts (symbols and stuff you can see); just below the water are beliefs and values; and further out of sight are basic assumptions. It takes a while to see below the surface…in the meantime you can hit the iceberg if you’re not careful.Onboarding—Is an Onboarding Process in Place?When considering a new job, the first question I’d ask is “What is your onboarding process?” MANY companies have none. I just hosted a meeting with 20 CEOs on the topic of executive transition. Not one of them had any sort of an onboarding program. If the company you’re considering joining has a program, find out their process. If you find something missing, such as an assimilation meeting, lobby for one.I’ve written a piece for T+D Magazine (June 2014 issue) that handles most of the basics of making a smooth transition.  Additionally, there are several books out there, such as The First 90 Days, and The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan, with further information on the subject. There is also a lot of information in Google and Google Scholar: focus on the research in Google Scholar for more dependable, repeatable processes.If the company you’re joining doesn’t have an onboarding process—check out the references above and construct your own.  Don’t ignore the lack of a program; you will regret it.Rules, Above and Below the SurfaceWhen I was in the FBI in the Training Division at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia (a place that trains agents and police executives from around the world) an agent once said, “In the FBI, there are a lot of unwritten rules, AND they are strictly enforced!” He wasn’t kidding. The same is true at most companies with a strong culture.It’s up to you to find a mentor to serve as a guide—someone to take you through your onboarding journey and help you avoid tripping over the unwritten rules that you may never see on your own. Unwritten rules such as: How do people greet each other? What do they call the CEO? What’s the dress code? Who’s really in charge of what? A mentor, who should be another executive not in your division, can be invaluable. However, if you get a bad mentor (as I did once) ditch him and find a better one. Everyone needs a good guide when in a new place.One of my favorite techniques for taking the temperature of an organization is to sit down (one-on-one) with individual employees and peers as you settle in. I usually ask them to tell me about themselves, their families, what they like to do at work, the things they’re really good at and enjoy. I ask them what I should know about them and the company as I start the job. Finally, I ask them what’s one thing I could do to help them in their work. I make no promises and I thank them for talking to me.Another thing I’ve seen used very effectively is to send out a questionnaire over Survey Monkey. Here are several questions to ask:What is the company/division/unit (whichever you’re interested in knowing about) doing well and should continue to do?What should the company stop or start doing to do an even better job?What else should I know as I come into the company?Before making the transition into a new company, make sure you have all of the basics in writing: salary, benefits, vacation time, etc.  Next, think about the leadership philosophy: look for signs of high control (sign-in sheets, show-up requirements, things like that.) If you believe that people need to be monitored closely because they are lazy shirkers who can’t really be trusted (Theory X management), then OK. But if that’s not your management style, think twice before you jump in.I’m a big fan of Linkedin. I’d see if any of my connections has a history with the company and find out what they think. I’d listen carefully to those who worked there and have values similar to mine.Making the Transition SmoothlyI was just counseling a top executive transitioning into a major U.S. company. She’s smart, dedicated, and hard working, and she tends to come on strong. She asked my key piece of advice. I said—SLOW YOUR ROLL. Go in slow and “hit the ground LISTENING!” This is good advice for anyone who wants to matriculate into any organization. Go slowly at first, and then go faster later.It is difficult to do, but if you want to make your own staff comfortable right from the beginning, be vulnerable. This is tough for most of us who want to come in looking strong. Men are particularly bad at this. Professor Brene Brown (see her TED Talk on this) talks a lot about the power of telling people we don’t know it all. Telling the staff and direct reports that you really have a lot to learn and will be leaning on them, shows you’re not an insufferable know-it-all, and that goes a long way. The more you’re willing to expose your weaknesses, the more people trust you—and trust is at the heart of success for any leader.I highly recommend doing a leadership assimilation meeting in the first couple of weeks. Hire a coach or an independent third party to conduct the meeting. It’s simple and has a huge effect. I’ve conducted two in the last week. The way they work is the coach sends out a questionnaire to everyone who reports directly to you, asking questions like: What do you want to know about the new leader such as his family, hobbies, and background? What do you want to know about his vision, values, and work style? What advice would you give him as he comes in? Usually I ask six or seven main questions and get dozens of questions in response. Believe me, you will get a response, especially if you ensure that all responses will be confidential and that you will aggregate them. Then, on the day of the meeting with staff, I act like a talk show host and read the questions and reveal the gist of the answers. The new leader has seen the aggregated responses prior to the meeting, so he is not taken by surprise. Usually the meeting drifts into a conversation as people become more confident. Every time I have done these assimilation meetings, both the new leader and their teams have told others and me how valuable they are. Do NOT skip this process!Your Leadership StyleTypically after one of these assimilation meetings, it takes about 30 minutes for the word to get out about how cool the meeting was and what a neat person you seem to be. I know of nothing that equals this. Also, I recommend an informal 360 survey in about three to four months to see how the assimilation is really going.As a talent development professional you need to heed the advice you give to others! Talent management folks are often like the carpenter who fixes his own house last. In fact, when it comes to your own career, I recommend using a coach. Find a peer coach, another talent development professional, to coach you objectively about your own career and transition. Finally, keep a journal to work through the various issues you encounter, using reflection and writing to keep track of what does and does not work for the next transition in your life._Steve Gladis, founder and CEO of Leadership Partners, 703.424.3780,www.stevegladisleadershippartners.com, sgladis@stevegladis.com_

Mission: Transition

This is the first in a three-part series on Gamifiying Your Instruction. The series is written by Karl Kapp, professor of instructional technology and internationally known author of two books on gamification, both co-authored by ASTD.Imagine you have just been assigned the task of “gamifying” some of your training program. Where do you start? How do you begin to think about using game-elements and game-thinking to create instruction that is engaging? How do you get started?The first thing is to keep in mind is that gamification is not a technology-driven methodology. Instead, think of gamification as a design methodology. Don’t think of it as adding technology to solve a problem; think of it was a way to redesign your instruction to be more game-like.This means adding stories to start your instruction, begin the instruction with a challenge, and create a game-like look and feel. None of these techniques require additional technology or a change from the tools you are already using.This also means that you may need to spend some time educating others on the concept of gamification that you want to implement. In some cases, people will think gamification is the use of serious games—games for teaching. In other cases, people will think it is the addition of points, badges, and leaderboards. And some people will see it as the redesign of instruction to make it more game-like with the addition of themes, interactivity, and more feedback.It is not that one definition is right or wrong; it is that everyone in the organization needs to have agreement on what the term actually means for your organization. I tend to think of gamification as a continuum. On one end is a high-quality, fully immersive, 3D game. Meanwhile, on the other end is the addition of a point system to learning.You can also classify gamification as content gamification which is changing content to be more game-like and structural gamification, which is adding elements such as points, badges, and achievements to help motivate learners through content (see Two Types of Gamification). Both have their place, but you need to determine which is most appropriate in which case—just like all instructional strategies.Work to develop a definition that can be articulated and demonstrated to the stakeholders of the organization. The more examples, samples, and case studies you can show, the better.Once you have established the definition or definitions for the use of gamification in your organization, you can start to share the anticipated value and business outcomes expected.   Adding gamification to your instructional toolkit because it is neat, fun, or exciting are the wrong reasons. Adding gamification because it will engage learners, provide repeated exposure to content, and help them reach desired behavior changes is the outcome you are striving to achieve.Bottom line: Gamification should be about driving learning and behavior change. Keep that as your focus and you will be successful.In the next post, we will discuss best practices in gamification implementations.Editor’s Note: For more information about gamification, see Karl’s two books: The Gamification of Learning and Instruction and The Gamification Fieldbook, both available from the ASTD bookstore.

Getting Started With Gamification

I get so wrapped up in the world of e-learning, it’s sometimes easy to forget that much of the world still doesn’t know our industry exists.  Occasionally, I get a glimpse of something to remind me. Following a presentation I gave at a university in the United Kingdom, I was approached by a student who had been in the seminar.  She asked me if there was a market for training in the workplace.  I assumed she meant my particular brand of training: online, social, gamified stuff.  What I like to call “the edge things.”  But I had the question quite wrong; she was literally asking whether there is a market for training in the workplace?  She had no idea.  She was a third-year economics and business student at a top UK university, and she had no idea that our industry even existed.I decided I needed to explore this idea a little further.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to go far. Sitting near me in the office is a talented intern, Quentin Marbacher, who is in the UK from France, doing a 10-week work experience stint.  When he first arrived he was just 17, in a new country, and in a real workplace for the first time.  Daunting as it may seem, he was ready and very able to work. As his intro to the world of e-learning, we took him along to the Learning Technologies conference in London.  I asked him to reflect back his experiences at the show and to tell us more about his opinion of our world.BB:  Were you aware that training and development continues after you leave university and move into the workplace?QM:  Until this year when I arrived in my undergraduate school, I didn’t know that training and development continues even when you are working for a company.  Actually, I don’t really know what the use of training in a company is, but I guess it can be for everything, like presenting a new product to the sales force or even teaching how to use a new machine for a unit of production.BB:  When you hear the term “e-learning,” what do you think?QM:  The first time I heard the word e-learning, I thought it would be a website where you would be able to learn and be the actor of your learning, but I was really disappointed when I realized that this e-learning was exactly the “next button robot” approach. In fact, during all this e-learning, I was hearing someone giving the course and sometimes I had to press the next button to be sure I wasn’t asleep yet!BB:  From your previous experience of using e-learning at school and university, would you say your experience was positive or negative?QM:  Actually, I had two main experiences of e-learning, and I think they were both negative—but I will explain why.  The first one was an e-learning course about the use of Microsoft Office, it was quite interesting because there were a lot of exercises in order to understand the courses, but the real issue was that it wasn’t engaging at all. In fact, I am someone really attracted by design and this website wasn’t appealing at all.The second e-learning experience was much less interesting than the first one, but the website was well designed. Nevertheless, it wasn’t engaging either. I spent hours in front of my laptop, but it didn’t help me to succeed in the test. So, I think it was useless! In conclusion, both of my previous experiences of using e-learning were really negative.BB:  When you aren’t in school, how do you learn about new things?QM:  I mostly learn from the Internet. When a subject interests me, I try to found what other people say about it. But I also love to learn from the others. In fact, when there is a debate, I like to take the opposite side of my own opinion to learn new arguments from the others—and mostly in order to challenge my own opinion.I contrasted these opinions with the findings of the recent McKinsey report, “Education to Employment:  Designing a System that Works.” According to the report’s data, 58 percent of companies globally believe that the education of their new-graduate hires has not prepared them adequately for the world of work.  Also, less than 50 percent of employers rate graduates as being competent when it comes to problem solving or written communications, both key attributes for knowledge workers. I find this second stat particularly disturbing because problem solving is one area in which young people seem to excel in their daily lives. You only have to look at the music industry to know that where constraints exist, young people all over the world can innovate (legally and illegally) to get what they want.  And between text and Facebook, there cannot have been a time in history when more young people practiced written communications on a day-to-day basis. So what gives?  Could we be failing to educate young people about the true nature of the world of work?  Or perhaps our education system is so instructivist that the whole concept of exploring something yourself seems almost foreign?  I personally feel that education is overly completion-contingent; it focuses students on reaching a certain point, rather than a quest for self-improvement.  There is an assumption that at age 18 school ends and the real world begins.  But those ideas don’t tally with the need to be a lifelong learner.I’m convinced that in order to succeed in the future workplace, it will be our wits (and not our processes) that create a competitive advantage.  We can’t go on making things faster, cheaper, higher quality—the returns are diminishing and the BRIC countries of this world are pretty darn good at this stuff.  In order to facilitate an approach in which our ability to problem solve is the differentiator, we’ll need a workforce that knows that learning is work and that work is learning.  I’m not certain that young people know this. They have the skills. They just don’t know we want them.

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