That Word Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

This is a short post with a big impact.

After spending two weeks scoring Chief Learning Officer Learning Elite submissions it's imperative that I inform you that the word blended does not mean what you think it means.

It's not just the Learning Elite submissions either, I have run into this confusion many times when talking to training and development professionals. For some reason, T&D professionals believe that if you offer a course in the classroom, and via e-learning, and via a virtual platform (or various other delivery methodologies) you are offering “blended learning.”

WRONG

What you have is a menu. 

Here is an easy way to remember what blended is vs. what a menu of options is: Do you like your potatoes baked, mashed, or French-fried? All three are potatoes. You could eat all three “potato delivery methods” at the same meal, but you’d still be consuming the same fundamental thing.

The same holds true for training courses. Three different iterations of the same class are still one course. 

What a blended course looks like is offering different portions of one course in different formats which are utilized to best achieve maximum learning.

For instance, if you were teaching how to use graphic design software, you might have the learners first review a glossary of terms such as font, pixel, saturation, etc. You would not need to waste valuable classroom time teaching them terms and their definition. They could have a handy resource to do so prior to coming to the class, as well as to use throughout the class as a reference tool. The next portion of the blend would be to have students come together in the classroom, to use the software hands-on. The next portion of the blend might be to give each learner an assignment to complete, asynchronously (on their own time, not with others) over the next two days and to bring it back for review and critique. During those two days, you might offer “office hours” so that learners could contact you with any challenges they were experiencing during the independent assignment.

That is a blended learning experience. It utilizes four different training methodologies which, in total, create the entire course. 

1. Independent study (reviewing terminology)

2. Classroom

3. Independent activity (practice over two days)

4. 1:1 coaching 

You don't need to take valuable classroom time teaching people terminology nor do you need to keep the group together for them to complete an independent assignment. So a blended course is divided into chunks, each of which uses a different teaching or learning methodology, to best achieve the learning outcome.

Principles vs Rules vs Heuristics in Learning

Or what I learned through working at a casino

I was having an interesting conversation with a colleague the other day about how we use or should use principles, rules, and heuristics in learning and development.

It hadn’t occurred to me before this conversation that these probably should be identified and defined at the start of any learning/training process so that our learners understand the parameters for the information that is to follow.

Let me explain the difference between the three through a story….

In the early 2000s I taught various courses in human resource management, business management, training and development, and ethics, for the University of Connecticut system. In one of my training and development courses the students had an assignment to develop a short training lesson that included objectives, knowledge, skills, and behavioral outcomes. They then had to teach the lesson to the group.

To get real value from the assignment, the topic had to relate to their work.

One of the cool things about my job with the University was that, rather than teaching on the college campus, I was sent to businesses to teach the college’s courses to an intact group of employees who were working toward degrees. This particular client happened to be a casino.

As their final assignment, two of my students taught the rest of us how credit at a casino is determined and extended to gamblers who have run out of money. It is a very involved process which in the end comes down to a judgment call.

Principles: A fundamental truth that serves as the foundation for a belief, behavior, or for a chain of reasoning.

In practice: ALL casinos share credit information with one another. You cannot run out of money at one casino, borrow, run out of money again, and move on to another casino – every casino knows how much debt you are carrying and who you owe it to.

Rules: Official policies or regulations.

In practice:  Before a line of credit is determined and extended, the casino employee looks at credit scores, bank records, and the customer profile (based on their gambling history and use of credit in the past) to determine how “good” of a credit risk they are. It is incredibly difficult to get credit extended the first time because the gambler has no history of paying it back (unless, as noted above, they have used credit at a different casino).

Heuristic: A rule of thumb or an educated guess that allows you to make decisions efficiently.

In practice. Assuming the person applying for credit has a good history of using credit in the past, and their bank records and credit score don’t reflect anything alarming, they will be extended credit.

Here is the part of learning that cannot govern the final decision: the amount of credit extended is entirely up to the casino employee. Two different employees may come up with two different decisions. Neither one is “better,” and so long as both employees followed the process’ principles, rules, and heuristics both are right.

Now, your assignment: When designing or delivering workplace training, start by defining the principles, rules, and heuristics - it will help you to organize the content and help the learner to understand what processes are de facto vs. when and how they apply their own critical thought.

Leadership Skills for All

What do you define as a “leadership skill?”

Is it being a good communicator?

Or helping other people to increase their skills and capabilities by being a coach?

Is it understanding strategy and your company’s business goals?

Or is it working collaboratively across departments and divisions to achieve the best outcomes?

Here’s another question to ponder: Why do we label ANY of those things “leadership skills?”

It’s much easier to learn leadership skills as a young working professional than it is for someone who has been on the job for 10 or 15 or 20 years. At that point in someone’s career, you’re actually working harder to UNdo behaviors they’ve been practicing for a decade or more. Yet companies typically wait until someone is promoted to leadership and then start developing their “leadership skills.”

Here’s a list of things we typically label leadership skills:

Critical thinking     Decision making     Risk assessment     Continuous improvement     Strategy     Forecasting     Influencing others     Behaving Ethically     Understanding Finance     Project management Workflow planning     Ethics

NEW Question!!

What makes those “leadership skills” and not general business skills and how hard is it to teach those skills to everyone?

Here are the answers….

• They ARE general business skills, but for some reason we don’t teach them UNTIL someone is promoted to a leadership position. And THAT’s why we label them “leadership skills.”

Are companies afraid to make their employees more capable? Would they rather have someone with limited knowledge and skill - who can only perform a finite task?

There’s a famous quote by Zig Ziglar in which he asks: What’s worse? training your employees and losing them? Or not training them and keeping them?

Perhaps companies are afraid of investing in their employees for fear of the employee going elsewhere…But here’s the kicker – if you DON’T invest in them – they WILL go elsewhere. There have been numerous studies conducted by SHRM and Deloitte and others, that all come to the same conclusion: Millennials and Gen Z workers – those workers under the age of 40 right now – want the same things

-        A job that they believe is purposeful and fulfilling, and

-        Professional development

Above all else. Above promotions, above pay raises, above titles… So if you AREN’T providing skills development, they WILL leave your company to find it.

• It isn’t hard to teach leadership skills to everyone in your organization. There are small, organic things that you can do every day to instill leadership ability.

By teaching leadership skills to all of your employees, you’ll be raising the capability of the whole organization.

More capable people means more productivity; more productivity means more profitability.

So – from this point going forward – let’s all embrace the concept: Leadership skills for all – leadership from day one.

The Difference Between Education, Training, and Learning

In our 30 years of consulting to organizations both big and small – it has become very apparent that most workplace training fails for one fundamental reason…

People don’t “get” the difference between education, training, and learning.

As an expert in the field, we often speak at industry conferences and always start with this distinction.

It is amazing to hear many people in the audience exclaim “ohhhh.”

Here is the distinction:

Education is something we’ve all experienced.

It is formal. It is typically done in large groups.

It is mostly a one-way flow of information.

It’s usually an expert imparting knowledge - which often takes the form of facts, rules, or underlying theories.

At the end of education we expect people to “know stuff.”

Training is more outcome based.

At the end of training you are expected to be able to do something or to behave in a certain way.

And training is dependent on education because you often cannot do new things without understanding certain facts or rules.

For instance,  you can’t hit a golf ball with accuracy unless you understand how your body position changes the trajectory.

But above and beyond that – there are many different techniques for hitting a golf ball …which can be learned through training.

Finally, learning is achieved when you have internalized something.

It is the point where somebody says “how do you do that?” and you don’t even know.

You forget what it was like to be a beginner.  

You forget what the steps are – you just do it.

So if we want to get to learning – which we do – how is that accomplished?

Three ways:  experience, spaced learning, and reflection.

First Experience – not all learning is done in the classroom or in a formal, prescribed setting, right? Think of all the things you’ve learned in your life. A well-known example is teaching a child not to touch a hot stove. Rarely do any of us actually teach that. If we were to educate the child we’d say “don’t touch that stove, it’s hot!” or  “be careful, you’ll get hurt” or the simple NO! 

But none of those words mean anything.

Inevitably we all touch a hot stove and IMMEDIATELY learn what we’ve been “taught” but didn’t internalize.

So – if you truly want someone to learn something – they have to experience it.

Next, spaced learning or practice.

Think about when you learned to ride a bike or drive a car.

 You didn’t take a class and then miraculously know how to do it.

You practiced over and over – repetition, yes, but also - you practiced over the course of many days or weeks - - spaced practice.

We simply do not learn something once, and change our behavior or our capabilities immediately.

And third: reflection.

Reflection is something only an adult human can do.  

Have you ever punished your child by saying “go to your room and think about what you’ve done.” That is futile. They can’t do it.

But you know that internal monologue you have running in your head… as you drive or when you’re in the shower …where you’re constantly reflecting on what has happened and whether you were satisfied with the outcome or not? That’s reflection.

In order to learn - people need time to reflect.

Sadly, we rarely allow for that in the workplace.

We put people into 2 hour or 4 hour training classes and then release them back to their jobs where they get inundated with new and urgent things… and that’s the end of that.

And then we wonder why people don’t change their behavior … despite the fact that we provided them “training.”

So -  to reiterate:

Education, training and learning are different.

When people get to the point of having learned – they have internalized the content.

They know what they are doing…

why they are doing it…

when they should do it…

and how their behavior might have to change based on changing circumstances.

Here's How You Can Create Training Without Knowing a Thing About the Topic

Have you ever had to design a training program for a topic you just didn't get? Us too!

The wonderful thing about being a professional instructional designer is that you don't actually have to understand the topic, but you MUST understand the process of how people learn.

If you understand how to design learning - the topic is irrelevant.

For instance, we created Row, Row, Row Your Family Feud Boat (download, here) when we were charged with helping financial planners to overcome client objections to moving to a new platform.

At first, we referred to it as a "product" and we were quickly corrected: It's not a product, it's a platform.

When then changed our wording to "service." Wrong again. It's not a service, it's a platform. How could we design training to overcome objections to a platform if we didn't even get what that WAS?

Easy - you design a learning process and have the learners themselves fill in the content.

Check it out here. You can use this design for all sorts of topics.

3 Ways "We" Have Destroyed Young People's Ability to Think

Here are three ways education has undermined thinking in theyounger generations:

The primary education system has changed quite a bit in thelast 50 years and many of those changes have resulted in young people'sinability to think critically and instead to rely on cues and memorization.

1 - Memorization

For decades we’ve been lulled into believing that memorizingand recalling information is learning. And perhaps, in anindustrialized world, recall was all that was necessary. When theindustrial age was ruled by manufacturing and work was repetitive, perhapsremembering the steps in a process and executing them properly was "theskill." We are now in a knowledge economy (and have been for at least 20years!). We pay people to think. We pay people to make decisions,solve problems, innovate and synthesize. In direct opposition to this, oureducational system (and generally our corporate training system) focuses onteaching learners to memorize information so that, with the proper prompt, itcan be recalled; educating/training does not teach us how to useinformation in a variety of ways and circumstances or (heavens!) use it in away that wasn’t taught at all (extrapolating).  

2 - Cramming

Somewhere along the line, we have lured young learners intobelieving that “cramming” is a proper methodology for learning. Duringexam week at colleges, the libraries and dining halls stay open around theclock to accommodate the learners who are staying up around the clock studying– this only reinforces the idea that the last-push to learn is a crucial time.

Typically young people prepare for a test or exam the day beforethe exam – which means that they are simply working from short term memory,which generally is good enough if the measure of one’s learning is being ableto spot the right answer on a multiple-choice test - but not enough if weexpect them to use that knowledge "out in the real world."

Real-world application is built from learning over multipleexposures to a concept or process, not a cursory review of the keypoints. 

3 - Testing

Thanks to the introduction of Scantron Bubble Sheets in the50's and 60's - everything became a multiple-choice test. The bubble sheetswere extremely helpful to teachers and administrators as class sizes grew andrecord-keeping became more stringent.  Unfortunately, they took morethan they gave. This type of testing fueled the usage of the 2"learning" strategies discussed above AND undermined the value of theteacher's input into student's testing.

Prior to a machine grading tests, teachers had to read eachresponse, giving the answer critical thought. Very often they would addcommentary to the grade, rather than simply marking an answer wrong. They mightremind the student where the correct information was found or help them toremember how the concept they got wrong was similar to what they werethinking. Sometimes they would give partial credit if the student was onthe right track but then veered off before their final summation (this is theonly way I passed geometry, believe me).

Prior to a machine grading tests, even when a student got ananswer wrong - they were learning. They had coaching, correction andrefinement from their teacher based on how the teacher graded thetest. Once the Scantron bubble sheet became de rigueur in public schooleducation, students simply received their grade with little to no explanationor intervention.

Unfortunately, I can spot factors that led to the demise of thinking skills (and there may well be more that you are thinking of!) but I am not sure what the remedy should be to reverse the trend. Given class-size and teacher pay, it's not reasonable to take efficiencies away from public school teachers. Instituting "study skills" classes in college is smart - but it's usually an elective and addresses a small population of the students (plus, by the time students are in college, it is remedial - we should be teaching study skills at about age 11 and continue it until the end of high school - see my article on 3 Keys to Ensuring Learning for more on this topic).

I think the rise of AI and machine learning will make theseshortcomings even more apparent in coming years, as all of the "easy tospot" answers will be gobbled up by robots and the critical thinking willbe the domain of humans.

Your thoughts?

Note: This article was originally published on LinkedIn.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/3-ways-we-have-destroyed-young-peoples-ability-think-miner-ed-d-

Encourage Contrarian Thinking

Very often leaders are emboldened by people who are in agreement with their ideas.

• That sounds great! I'll get right on it.

• Brilliant idea! No way we can lose this one.

• This will really knock the competition on their arse.

The employee you REALLY want on your team is the one that says, "Hold up! I see three ways this can go sideways. Did we think this through? Did we ask for input from customers (nod to New Coke), vendors (hello State of NC), or our employees (here's looking at you, Google).

As a consultant, I believe that part of what you pay me for is my ability to "see the other side;" to bring questions and alternative perspectives to your organization. When I worked as an employee my approach was always to ask, "How can I break this?" much like testing a new software... what if I did this? or this? or this pressure is applied?

Contrarian thinkers - and similarly, devil's advocates - aren't negative for the sake of being negative; they are thinking ahead to the future and to ramifications of your, or your company's, actions.

If you are a leader and a developer of future leaders, here are three ways to encourage contrarian thinkers:

1. Always have two meetings: Don't make decisions at the first discussion of a new idea. Simply have an open discussion about the idea (new product, new process, new hire) and allow a few days for people to think about it. You might even want to charge your attendees with coming to meeting #2 with at least one "argument" against the idea. This process will prevent ideas from becoming run-away before they've been thoroughly vetted. Yes, it will take more time to make decisions, but they will be good (or at least better) decisions.

2. When addressing your followers, always ask, "What am I missing?" This is especially important to ask of people on the front-line. They are the ones who are actually doing the work and have a pulse on what customers, vendors, and fellow employees are thinking and feeling.

3. Praise those who come forward with their opposing views. When you ask the "what am I missing?" question, always thank the person who offers their negative outlook. Your job is not to argue the opposing view, but to give it consideration. You might even ask open-ended questions to gather more information, such as "do you have an example you could share?" or ask of the group, "have others seen this same phenomenon?"

By engaging in a conversation, purposefully asking for opposing views, and thanking the contrarian for offering their insight, you are encouraging others to do so in the future; which means you are building a stronger company and a community of forward-thinking employees which helps your organization to foresee and mitigate potential risk.

NOTE: This article was originally published on LinkedIn.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-risk-part-3-nanette-miner-ed-d-/

You Need a Leadership Development Program that Starts at Day 1 - and here's why

We wait too long to start leadership development. A 2016 meta-analysis of leadership development programs determined that most leadership development begins at age 46 AND leadership development almost always begins after someone is appointed to a leadership role. That makes little sense. Wouldn't you rather have an employee that learns feedback skills or problem-solving or strategy at the start of their career, rather than at the end?

There are a number of other approaches to as-we-do-it-today leadership development that are illogical - here is a sampling, with the rationale for a "better way."

• Leadership development programs are generally short-term (one week, 10 months) and generic - leaving the individual to figure out how their new knowledge and skills apply to the work that they are doing.
  • You want a development strategy that integrates work with learning and outputs.

• To be cost-effective, companies generally are selective about whom they will send through leadership development - sacrificing hundreds of capable individuals for the development of a few. Do you really want only a few people in your organization to be fully capable in their roles?
  • When leadership skills are integrated with regular activities and duties – starting on day 1 – the costs are minimal and absorbed daily, you don't need a "special event."

• As leadership development is currently administered...ROI is iffy. If your organization has 15 individuals, in 10 different disciplines, who have gone through leadership development this year - how do you associate their output with the learning?
  • When the learning process is integrated with every worker's role and responsibilities, you can easily connect output to increased knowledge and skill through various measure of productivity.

100% ROI 

Whenever I ask business owners and managers this question they are always a bit dumbfounded at the logic of it: Would you rather increase the capabilities and competencies of 15% of your employees? Or raise 100% of your employee's skills by 15%?

If every employee made better decisions, took responsibility for problem-solving, communicated better with their colleagues and other departments, understood who their stakeholders were... and more "leadership skills"... the efficiency and productivity of your company would be boundless.

But that "training" needs to begin on the first day they walk in the door. Your company should have a 3- or 5- or 10-year plan for the development of every employee. It should include skills building in the role they were hired for as well as broader, more business-acumen topics like risk, finance, and strategy.

And most importantly - it should include exposure to all areas of the business. Too many poor decisions are made because HR doesn't understand Ops, or Marketing doesn't understand Finance. When individuals understand the "big picture" of how your company operates - and they make relationships with people in other functions - companies run more smoothly, efficiently, and profitably. But they need to develop those skills at the start of their career, not the end.

Activities to Boost Creative Thinking

Creative thinking is something we usually squash down in corporate America – you get more done if you keep your head down and follow the established path.

But creative thinking is how we come up with new and better ways of doing our work. Here are 3 exercises to enable you to think in more creative ways. You can use them alone or with your team.

✔ 21 What Ifs

Writing is something I do on a daily basis, so writer’s block comes with the territory. When you find yourself blocked or at an impasse in your work, let go of “rules” or “outcomes” and brainstorm 21 What Ifs? It will get your creative juices flowing again and often you’ll find the “answer” you were looking for.

✔ 21 What Ifs?

For example: I am trying to find a descriptive and compelling title for my podcast…

• What if it were for children?

• What if it were for aliens?

• What if it was something grown / farmed?

• What if it were a color?

• What if people said it to invite someone else to marry them?

• What if it were something you could buy at a store?

• What if it had a taste?

✔ Explore Analogous Fields

On your way home from work tonight, look at the businesses along your drive / route and just pick one randomly – fast food, nursery, car repair, gym, florist – then go home and write a list of 10 ways this company is just like yours. Then do the reverse - 10 ways it is entirely different from yours. (In a thinking curriculum [with a group], we’d do this in a different way, but this is a great solo activity that gets largely the same results.) We tend to think we are so special, so specialized, that we miss out on great opportunities by NOT looking beyond the end of our nose.

Alternatives of the exercise include:

• 10 ways your skills could improve the (observed) company

• 10 ways your skills could put the (observed) company out of business

• 10 one-to-one comparisons of your skills and the (observed) business, such as: my skill in making cold calls is like a growing plant in that…

✔ Stop Being so Literal

There are many objects in our daily life which we know the function of and that saves us a lot of time and has a lot of utility. We don’t pick up a pen each day and ask “What the heck is this? What does it do?” BUT that focus on the literal can also be a hindrance to our seeing possibilities.

A pen can also be a lever, an easel, a plug for a hole, used as a utensil, and so much more.

As a way to get creative juices going, alone or with your team, randomly choose an object from your desk or surroundings and imagine other uses for it. If you’re working on a new project, stop and ask, “Why are we going down this path? Is there another, alternative, path? Are there dual paths? Once we get to the end, is there more than one way to monetize or utilize that end?”

Examples:

• Post it notes were invented as a byproduct of trying to develop a stronger industrial glue.

• Slinkys (the toy) were invented as a byproduct of developing industrial springs.

So stop being so literal and look for the possibilities.

= = = =

Originally published on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/activities-boost-creative-thinking-nanette-miner-ed-d-/?published=t

Who "Gets" Leadership Development?

Why Not Everyone?

A question we are frequently asked - and frequently wrestle with in conjunction with new clients is - who "gets" to attend thinking skills / leadership development? It's a tough question to answer because on the one hand, the logical answer is "everyone."  Why wouldn't you want everyone in the organization to work smarter, make good decisions, understand the vision and mission of your organization, etc.? On the other hand, unless you are a small company of 150 people or less, that would be a prohibitively expensive endeavor. So the tough question is - how do we make the cut? Who makes the cut? Here are some "arguments" - none is "the best."

Argument #1

As stated in the headline - why not everyone?  Simple things - not full blown curriculums - could be enmeshed in everyday work responsibilities (much like Google's now defunct 20% time). Sending a business / industry article out each week via email, or leaving copies of it on the lunch tables, can help to ensure everyone has the same industry knowledge. By leaving articles on the lunch tables, spontaneous discussions can begin about the content and merits of the article. Managers can hold short, 20 minute, meetings two days after the articles are issued asking for feedback or questions about the article. 

To help managers, the department that issues the article can include 3 or 4 discussion questions they'd like the employees to focus on. This article sharing can be rotated throughout the organization. Much like "it's your week for carpool," it could be "your week for article sharing." 

Let's say your company works in manufacturing or healthcare - while there are plenty of articles about the industry itself, there are department-specific articles as well - manufacturing operations, healthcare marketing, etc.

This is just one small and easily do-able activity that can be rolled out throughout the organization. Why not increase the knowledge and capabilities of all your employees?

Argument #2

Focus on leaders in the organization.  We've spent so many years making individuals experts (through training) in their fields that they often don't have a big picture view of their organization or their role.  Sales Managers often don't appreciate the need for profitability which is a finance-department focus.  Charge nurses often don't appreciate customer service which is an operations (and accreditation) focus. By directly impacting the thinking skills and thereby the leadership skills of leaders in an organization there will be an immediate and beneficial impact on the departments that they run and the individuals that they manage.

Argument #3

Include all new hires - starting now.  If everyone who joins your organization is indoctrinated into a thinking curriculum from day one, they will grow in to your (smartest) future leaders. Over  a planned development process of 3 years, 5 years, or 20 years, you will have an organization chock-full of individuals who not only understand how the organization is run (because they will have had linear exposure to the organization), but they will also be knowledgeable and skilled in critical business topics such as communication, teamwork, risk management, continuous improvement, fiscal management and much, much more.

Because they have been brought-up in cohorts (The Training Doctor's branded design), they will have relationships and the ability to communicate with other departments and individuals in other disciplines.

The choice for every individual company will be different. Increase everyone's skills just a little bit?  Deep dive for leaders who will return the most immediate ROI? Or plan a long-tail approach to enmesh employees in "lifetime" development to create a leadership pipeline?

Got 5 minutes for professional development? Here are 3 resources.

Would you like to be in charge of your own professional development rather than waiting for a formal training process to be offered (and without even having to sign up for one!).  Here are 3 easy, free, and GREAT ideas:

Your local library (radical, right?) 

If you haven't been to your local library since high school, it's time for a visit. Believe me, it's probably more up-to-date than the training department in your company.  My favorite part of the library are the LIBRARIANS.  They are a fount of information and know where to look for information if they don't know it themselves.  They can point you in the right direction, request resources for you, pull reading lists, and more. I use one particular librarian as my personal research department; she is awesome and she loves the work because she doesn't have many customers asking her for corporate research.

Deep dive in to podcasts 

Would you like to be "better educated"? Find a podcast on an "academic" topic (finance, economics, astronomy). You'll be surprised at how much a topic you knew nothing about informs your present-day life.Maybe you'd like to increase your business acumen. Look for podcasts that focus on engineering, logistics, marketing, human resources, etc. Give yourself a bigger perspective on the work that you do, or the industry that you are in.

One of my favorite podcasts is Freakanomics, because, it turns out, economics plays a role in everything; and it can be fun!  I especially like that this podcast has a transcript of all the shows on its website.  Earlier this year they did a series on the "Secret life of a CEO" and had hour-long interviews with Jack Welch, Satya Nadella, Mark Zuckerberg, and Indra Nooyi, among others.

Look at LinkedIn

One of the things I love about LinkedIn Learning is that you can filter for exactly what you want. You can choose an industry, and then a field, and then the type of learning (video, full blown course), what level of knowledge you are looking for (beginner, intermediate, advanced), and finally how long it takes to complete. Often, when I get that :15 minute reminder that I have a meeting coming up, I have time to fill. I love looking up 5 minute or less nuggets to expand my knowledge on all sorts of topics. How can you not spare 5 minutes to expand your thinking? 

(Note: If you are a paid member, LinkedIn Learning is free AND if you scroll down the right side of your "home" page, you'll find a new suggestion for a course, every day. It learns your preferences and will start to suggest shorter lessons in topical areas you've shown an interest in.) 

Happy Learning!

Ways to Ensure Reading Comprehension

Reading is probably the #1 thinking skill, yet it has become a lost art.  The ability to read and comprehend is so important for getting ahead in the business world, yet we never receive any formal training in it. If you can read – and comprehend – you pretty much have the key to success.

BUT reading has to be done correctly. Print materials are best. There is a significant difference in comprehension and retention between reading on screen (poor) and reading in print (best). It has to do with neuroscience and the ability to make references and associations between paragraphs, pages, etc.

Here are 5 Tactics for Reading Comprehension

(We will assume you are reading a professional piece such as in a trade journal, newspaper, or text.)

• Read the headings first, to get the main points – think of them as a road map for the readin

• Look at pictures and figures and their explanatory text – they are there to illustrate the points of the text and help you to better comprehend

• There are two benefits to highlighting 1) it means that you were able to separate out the important stuff from the filler and 2) when you need to review and summarize, you’ll be able to skim for the highlighted parts

• Use the margins to give yourself clues to the context, such as: stars for key points, question marks for things you don’t understand or want to look up elsewhere, exclamation points for things that resonate with you (think of it as giving a virtual high-five to the author)

• Write a summary. If you have comprehended what you read, you should be able to write a 3 – 5 sentence summary of the text or explain it to a friend

When you get REALLY good at comprehension, you’ll be able to evaluate and synthesize what you’ve read and integrate it with your own opinions, experiences, or research.  (Hello Adult Learning and Bloom's Taxonomy) Try these tips this week and see if you don’t feel smarter immediately.

Twelve Weeks to Becoming the Manager of the Most Kick-ass Department in Your Company

As organizational development consultants, we are often tasked with creating activities or events that "move an organization forward." Clients ask us to solve problems related to communication, teamwork, poor workmanship, lack of commitment or accountability, and many other issues which stymie output and frustrate individuals.

Every organization is different, of course, but if you are a manager who would like to elevate your profile and your department's reputation, here is an activity that anyone can use to achieve both. All you need to do is commit to one hour per week for three months and follow the process below.

Week 1

This works better if your team is co-located. There is something to be said for looking your colleagues in the eye.) Bring together your team and have each person stand, state their name, their role, and declare how their role interacts with or is enmeshed with another person in attendance and their role. Repeat until everyone has spoken.Be aware: This will be an uncomfortable struggle at first, but by week 6 people will easily rattle off their inter-dependencies and accountabilities.

Weeks 2 - 6

At subsequent weekly 1-hour meetings add one-more-individual to the interdependency declaration. In other words, in week 1 each speaker must choose one other individual and declare how their role interacts with or is enmeshed with that person’s role. In week 2 they'll need to choose two other individuals. In week 3, they'll choose three other individuals, and so on. Slowly your department will begin to recognize how they are dependent on one another. This process works because it is visual, verbal, requires people to think to make the association, and is repeated week after week.

Weeks 4 - 6

Once people have the routine of choosing co-workers and declaring how they work together, "step it up" by having them add something about the other role that is frustrating, confusing or that they always wondered about. This might sound like, "I'm Susan Jones. I schedule the demo-rooms for the sales group. Sean Rhodes is one of my internal customers; he frequently meets with prospective clients in the demo rooms. Sean, I've wondered how far in advance you schedule meetings with prospects that need a demo. Is it usually the same-week or do you have more notice?"

What Susan is really getting at is, "I am tired of Sean always yelling at me that he has a client arriving within the hour and no where to put them." But perhaps Susan doesn't realize that Sean gets little advance notice himself. Or perhaps she just made Sean aware that he needs to schedule the demo rooms with more notice than he has been giving.

Further conversation can happen after your 1-hour meeting, allowing Susan and Sean to come to a solution so that neither of them regularly feels frustrated by the other (without your meeting, and this process, the chance of this conversation happening at all is slim and perhaps the whole "issue" would lead to a major blow-up down the road).

Weeks 7 - 12

Time to step it up again. Now that you've got your team regularly focusing on the way they work with and are dependent upon one another, start bringing in "guests" from other departments (directly upstream and downstream are easiest at the start). Stretch their knowledge of and accountability for other roles and departments. The same process is used, but now each speaker must include someone (the guest) outside your immediate group.

Let's assume you invited a mechanic from the maintenance group. This might sound like, "I'm Susan Jones. I schedule the demo-rooms for the sales group. I also issue a monthly report to maintenance for each machine, which logs how many hours each machine was used during the month."

Susan may or may not know that the hours-used report allows maintenance to conduct preventative maintenance on the demo-machines which are otherwise out-of-sight, out-of-mind for them. Preventative maintenance ensures that a salesperson isn't embarrassed by a demo-machine that fails during a client presentation. If Susan doesn't know that's what her report is used for, she'll learn it during your monthly meeting (by asking "I've often wondered what that report is used for,") and will understand the value and utility of it.

If Susan does know and declares the purpose of her report, the rest of the group will come to learn that this maintenance occurs unbeknownst to them in order to ensure the sales group has the equipment they need to be successful.

In addition to your current group of workers becoming more knowledgeable about, and accountable to, their co-workers and the larger organization, this is a great process for bringing new hires into the fold. They will quickly understand the work processes and outputs of your department and how they are interrelated, which is crucial to doing their own job well and knowing who to ask for help.

In just 12 short weeks you'll have the most highly functioning department in your organization, guaranteed.

Drop us a line and tell us how it went. And don't be stingy! When other managers ask how you created such a high-functioning team - share the process, like we just did for you.

Are You A Slow Thinker? Good for you!

First, a quick tutorial on Fast and Slow thinking – or System 1 and System 2 Thinking as popularized by Nobel Prize winner Danny Kahneman - in case you are not familiar.

Fast / System 1 Thinking

System 1 thinking can be thought of as our “immediate response” to something. When the alarm goes off in the morning – we get up. We don’t stop and ponder – what is that noise? what does it mean? should I get up right now? There is an immediate understanding of the information coming in and an immediate and knowledgeable response to that information. (Caution! This sometimes leads us to applying bias to situations that do in fact require more thought, and System 1 can be manipulated through the use of priming and anchoring.)

System 1 also enables us to do several things at once so long as they are easy and undemanding. System 1 thinking is in charge of what we do most of the time.

However, you want system 2 to be in control.

Slow / System 2 Thinking

System 2 thinking is the kind of thinking that requires you to struggle a bit. In this short (4:22) video featuring Kahneman, he gives the example of being able to answer 2x2 vs. 17x24.

The latter causes you to pause and put more mental energy in to arriving at the answer. If you’d like to try a fun activity to test your slow thinking ability, click here. Or watch the famous Invisible Gorilla video which illustrates that when System 2 is concentrating on one thing (counting the number of passes) it cannot concentrate on another (seeing a gorilla walk through the frame).

With practice System 2 can turn in to System 1 thinking, as in the case of a firefighter or airline pilot. Once sufficient application of System 2 thinking has occurred over an extended period of time and in varying circumstances, it becomes “easy.”

System 1 is all about “knowing” with little effort – as an expert is able to.

System 2 Thinking in Learning

What does System 2 Thinking mean for learning in organizations? Quite a lot, actually.

In a recent blog post by Karl Kapp, in which he describes purposefully causing his students to struggle, he states, “Unfortunately most learning is designed to avoid struggle, to spoon feed learners. This is not good… The act of struggling and manipulating and engaging with content makes it more meaningful and more memorable.”

Another important job of System 2 thinking is that it is in charge of self-control. This is an important skill / quality in the workplace. It allows us to measure the information coming at us and respond appropriately (which means, sometimes, not responding at all). Controlling thoughts and behaviors is difficult and tiring. Unfortunately many people find cognitive effort unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible (so says Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow).

Because of this tendency, we need to make teaching thinking skills a priority in workplace learning and development.  This could be a challenge. Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, says that older Americans may be better equipped for serious thinking because they didn’t grow up with smartphones and can “stand to be bored or more than a second.”

And a study conducted at Florida State University determined that a single notification on your phone weakens one’s ability to focus on a task. The ability to focus is crucial not only in completing tasks but in learning new things as well. The ability to focus without distraction and to perform cognitively demanding tasks is THE job skill of the future.

It Ain't Learning if it's Microlearning

Microlearning is the short-term, focused delivery of content or involvement in an activity. Lately I’ve seen a lot of chatter about best practices for “microlearning.” By most standards microlearning should be less than six minutes and often the suggestion is that it is no more than two minutes.

The thinking is that learners have the “capacity” to sit still and watch an informational tutorial for only so long before they’ll zone out, hit pause, or be interrupted by their work. Companies that create micro learning promote it by touting its ability to quickly close a “skills gap” – a learner can learn a new topic or take advantage of a refresher, in a short snippet that they can apply immediately. About to close a sale? Watch this microlearning video on 5 steps to closing a sale. Need to perform cardiac surgery? Look at this flowchart which will lead you through the process (I’m kidding. I hope.).

Another advantage – per proponents of microlearning – is that the learner himself can control what and when to learn.

Pardon my upcoming capitalization: THIS IS NOT LEARNING. This is performance support. How and when did we get these two terms confused?

Silo’d Learning is Limiting Workplace Learning Potential

For years, possibly decades, we have helped people develop expertise around specific jobs, or how to do their current job better. We've kept them learning "up" a topical trajectory, much like a silo.

What was often neglected was the need to expand knowledge, skills, and abilities overall. What we’ve got now are millions of Americans who are very skilled in a narrow area of expertise, but not well prepared for upper management or executive positions because they lack general business intelligence.

While it might seem obvious to only include salespeople in sales-training, what would be the detriment of including the administrative group that supports the salespeople, or the customer service representatives who support the customer after the sale, or the field service representatives who actually see the customer more frequently than anyone else, or manufacturing who will learn how their product works in the “real world?” Wouldn’t each of them learn more about how to do their job well, and learn more about the business as a whole by participating in a developmental topic that is ancillary to their current work?

Estimates are that by 2030, Baby Boomers will be completely out of the workforce. This presents a call to action and an opportunity, because the generation with the most breadth and depth of work experience will be leaving the workforce. We – as L+D departments and professionals – need to quickly rectify the silos of specialists we’ve created by broadening the role-specific training of the past in order to address the workforce needs of the future.

Our challenge is to develop a new generation of company leaders capable of making well-rounded and well-informed decisions based on their experiences in a multitude of business areas. The focus on job-specific training is a thing of the past. Organizations must focus on developing well-rounded individuals who can take the organization into the future. The future success of our companies depends on the actions we take today to develop our future workforce.

Better Learning Through Interleaving

Interleaving is a largely unheard of technique – outside of neuroscience - which will catapult your learning and training outcomes. The technique has been studied since the late 1990’s but not outside of academia. Still, learning and incorporating the technique will make your training offerings more effective and your learners more productive.

What is it?

Interleaving is a way of learning and studying. Most learning is done in “blocks” – a period of time in which one subject is learned or practiced. Think of high school where each class is roughly an hour and focuses on only one topic (math, history, english, etc.). The typical training catalog is arranged this way, as well. Your organization might offer Negotiation Skills for 4 hours or Beginner Excel for two days. The offering is focused on one specific skill for an intense period of time.

Interleaving, on the other hand, mixes several inter-related skills or topics together. So, rather than learning negotiation skills as a stand-alone topic, those skills would be interleaved with other related topics such as competitive intelligence, writing proposals or understanding profit-margins. One of the keys of interleaving is that the learner is able to see how concepts are related as well as how they differ. This adds to the learner’s ability to conceptualize and think critically, rather than simply relying on rote or working memory.

How Does it Benefit?

Interleaving is hard work. When utilizing interleaving, the brain must constantly assess new information and form a “strategy” for dealing with it. For example, what do I know about my competitor’s offering (competitive intelligence), and how am I able to match or overcome that (negotiation skills)? While the technique is still being studied, it is suspected that it works well in preparing adult learners in the workplace because “work” never comes in a linear, logical or block form. You might change tasks and topics three times in an hour; those tasks may be related or not –the worker needs to be able to discriminate and make correct choices based on how the situation is presented.

Interleaving helps to train the brain to continually focus on searching for different responses, decisions, or actions. While the learning process is more gradual and difficult at first (because there are many different and varied exposures to the content), the increased effort results in longer lasting outcomes.

What’s interesting is that in the short term, it appears that blocking works better. If people study one topic consistently (as one might study for a final exam), they generally do better – in the short term - on a test than those who learned through interleaving.

Again, the only studies that have been done have taken place in academia, but here is an example of the long-term beneficial outcomes of interleaving. In a three-month study (2014) 7th-grade mathematics students learned slope and graph problems were either taught via a blocking strategy or an interleaving strategy. When a test on the topic was conducted immediately following the training, the blocking learners had higher scores. However, one day later, the interleaving students had 25% better scores than the blocking learners and one month later the interleaving students had 76% better scores! Because interleaving doesn’t allow the learner to hold anything in working memory, but instead requires him to constantly retrieve the appropriate approach or response, there is more ability to arrive at a well-reasoned answer and a better test of truly having learned.

How Can You Use Interleaving?

As mentioned earlier, although concentrating on one topic at a time to learn it (blocking) seems effective, it really isn’t because long term understanding and retention suffers. Therefore one must question whether there was actual learning or simply memorization. If your goal is to help your trainees learn, you’ll want to use an interleaving process. Warning: Most companies won’t want to do this because it is a longer and more difficult learning process and the rewards are seen later, as well.

Make Links

The design and development of your curriculum(s) doesn’t need to change at all – simply the process. First, look for links between topics and ideas and then have your learners switch between the topics and ideas during the learning process. For instance, our Teaching Thinking Curriculum does this by linking topics such as Risk, Finance, and Decision Making. While each of those is a distinct topic, there are many areas of overlap. In fact, one doesn’t really make a business decision without considering the risk and the cost or cost/benefit, correct? So why would you teach those topics independent of one another?

Use with Other Learning Strategies

Interleaving isn’t the “miracle” approach to enhanced learning. Terrific outcomes are also achieved through spaced learning, repeated retrieval, practice testing and more. Especially when it comes to critical thinking tasks, judgement requires multiple exposures to problems and situations. Be sure to integrate different types of learning processes in order to maximize the benefit of interleaving.

Integrate Concepts with Real Work

Today’s jobs require people to work on complex tasks with often esoteric outcomes. It’s hard to apply new learning to one’s work when the two occur in separate spheres and the real-world application isn’t immediate. Try to integrate topics to be learned with the work the learner is doing right now. For example, for a course in reading financial reports (cash flow, profit/loss, etc.), rather than simply teaching the concepts with generic examples of the formats, the learners were tasked with bringing the annual report from two of their clients (learners were salespeople). As each type of financial report was taught, the learners looked to real-world examples (that meant something to them) of how to read and interpret those reports.

Ask the Learners to Process

Too often we conclude a training class by reviewing what was covered in the class. Rather than telling the learners what just happened, have them process the concepts themselves. This is easiest to do through a writing activity. You might ask the learners to pause periodically, note what they have learned, link it to something they learned earlier, and align it with their work responsibilities. For instance: I will use my understanding of profit margins and financial risk to thoughtfully reply to a customer’s request for a discount or to confidently walk away from the deal. It’s not about the sale, it’s about the bottom line. The process of writing helps the learner to really think through the concepts just taught and it allows them to go back over their learning in the future to remind themselves of the links they made within the curriculum and between the curriculum and work responsibilities. Interleaving enables your training to be more effective and your learners to be more accomplished and productive.

Why Knowledge Management is NOT the Answer

4 Levels of Learning Outcomes

According to Wikipedia, Knowledge Management (KM) is the process of creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization.

At first-read this sounds like a great idea, and many organizations have spent many millions of dollars in the last 20 years to collect and catalog the knowledge their employees possess, in order to "preserve" it and share it.

There is one glaring problem with this approach - knowing what you know and knowing how you arrived at the answer are worlds apart. As the illustration shows us, knowledge is at the lowest level of learning. Indeed it is the foundation upon which all learning, skill and ability is built, but having knowledge alone is not enough.

For individuals and organizations to have success, there needs to be a transfer of thinking skills- not just information. For example, in one organization we've worked with, the transfer of thinking skills started with asking senior associates to write a short synopsis of the six "defining moments" of their career - when did they have an “ah-ha” moment and how did it change how they worked? These were then categorized in to themes such as loss, growth, conflict, strategy, competitive advantage, etc.

The same senior associates were then interviewed to get more detail about their "stories" - what they had learned and how. Questions such as, "Was there a single factor that influenced your _____," or "If you had the opportunity to give advice to your younger self, what would you advise?"

Finally, the "best" stories in each category (loss, growth, etc.) were chosen and those same senior associates were interviewed, on camera, a'la 60 Minutes, to tell their story in five minutes or less. The previous steps of writing the story out and thinking aloud through interviews helped the associates to succinctly transmit the situation, the outcome and the lessons learned.

In just under two months the organization captured the best thinking from the most experienced people in the organization. The videos were used as "teasers" to get learners interested in the topic (theme) and the other stories were made available in a case study format for learner's reference.

The collection of thinking is available to be disseminated via multiple modalities - on the company's intranet, via a monthly internal newsletter, on-demand from the learning portal, and in leadership training offerings.

An interesting outcome of the project is that other associates have come forward to voluntarily share their thinking as well. They want to share their career defining moments and learnings with the organization and other associates. The organization now has an archive of what, why, and how, rather than a collection of simply what.

Invest in Critical Thinking = HUGE ROI

Some organizations still believe training is a cost-center rather than a money maker.

But the right training, applied at the right time, can have exponential returns! According to this short report on Critical Thinking, published by Pearson in 2013, the return on investment for critical thinking tends to be extremely high. Research has shown that when training moves a $60,000 a year manager or professional from “average" to "superior," the ROI is $28,000 annually. (emphasis, ours) 4

How would your organization like to make $28,000 per year, on each of its managers? We can help. It's what we do.

Smart Pills - Is it Possible to Enhance Your Thinking?

are smart pills real?

Thinking - like any skill - requires practice to improve... right? What if there was a way to make yourself smarter with no effort? What if you could just pop a pill to increase cognition?

The smart pill idea was introduced to the mainstream by the movie Limitless in 2011 (and subsequently a TV show by the same name in 2015).In the movie the main character, Edward Morra, is able to become hyper-focused, productive and perceptive through the use of a nootropic drug called NZT-48. He is able to write a book in four days, make rationale and spot-on stock picks and more.

Believe it or not, there is some truth to this. Many ADD / ADHD medications are considered smart pills - not because they make people smart(er) but because they can help people to focus and concentrate - thereby being better able to take-in and process information. Just as a computer enhances efficiency by helping you to create and store information, a smart pill can increase mental efficiency and abilities.

The most commonly used smart pill in the US is Modafinil - which is used off-label for increased wakefulness and focus. The original purpose of the drug is to solve narcolepsy and certain types of sleep apnea. A 2008 article by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington dubbed it an entrepreneur's "drug of choice" as opposed to illicit drugs which might cause addiction (Modafinil has no side effects and is not habit forming), although he does question the wisdom of staying up 20 hours straight.

It Works

In addition to anecdotal evidence that nootropics work, a meta-analysis of 24 studies was conducted jointly by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Oxford, which showed that Modafinil does indeed increase cognition. What's interesting is that the most benefits are derived in relation to complex tasks such as planning and decision making - as opposed to simpler tasks such as pressing the right button at the right time. Given today's business environment, which requires quick and complex thinking tasks - Modifinil might be the next required "tool" in a company's toolbox.

Increased Focus Isn't Always the Best Outcome

The Harvard / Oxford study also cautioned that focused thinking is not always the desired outcome. There is evidence that divergent thinking is inhibited by the drug, so jobs and tasks that demand creativity and innovation may suffer.

Do Smart Pills Create an Ethical Dilemma?

The use of smart pills poses some questions for the workplace, such as: should stimulant use be banned or approved? We do allow caffeine and nicotine which have similar effects. How do we differentiate or draw the line for a drug such as Modafinil?

The TechCrunch article joked that venture capitalists might require business owners to take the drug, to ensure their investment / company success. Some colleges are already banning the use of these drugs (Duke University has revised its policy on drug-use to include banning "unauthorized use of prescription medicine to enhance academic performance"); but other "smart drugs" include Ritalin (which increases memory and retention) and Adderall, so aren't schools then penalizing young people who need these medications? (Note: The percentage of young adults prescribed ADD / ADHD medication nearly doubled between 2008 and 2013.)

Research suggests that cognition-enhancing drugs offer the greatest performance boost among individuals with low-to-average intelligence (Scientific American March 1, 2016). So banning the drugs could harm both those who need it and those who could most benefit from it.

We ask these questions because this is where the discussion is happening right now, but give it a few years and we'll be having these same discussions in the workplace - either because everyone will be looking for an advantage in order to get ahead, or because the youth who have relied on these medications for success in childhood will graduate to working in business and may still be taking these cognitive enhancers.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is - smart pills don't increase the size of your brain or the number of neurotransmitters, or make you able to learn something you aren't inherently able to learn in the first place. They simply help you to focus for longer periods of time, thereby increasing your abilities related to complex cognitive tasks.

When it comes to learning, one millennial cautions: While smart drugs allow for instant improvement, they overlook what can be learned from the process of improving. Here here!