Category Archives: Technology

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Setting Up Your SME for Success

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If you plan to set your SME loose to build your training program from scratch, give them some upfront direction to get them off to a sure start. Perhaps you are asking them to do a knowledge dump into your software or learning app or will they be delivering audio, video, slides or articles. Before you send them the log in information and disappear, make sure you have given them enough direction so they can be successful in their efforts to build a great knowledge resource.

Here are a few essential Do’s and Don’ts to keep them out of the weeds and focused on the task at hand.

DO:

  1. Schedule a pre-launch or pre-build meeting where you familiarize them with the goals of the project. Explain why the project is necessary and what it will achieve for the business.
  2. If you have learning objectives, be very clear about what the learner should be able to DO with the knowledge (assemble a widget, lead a team meeting, sell something, etc) so they can deliver steps or information that leads to outcomes.
  3. Familiarize them with the software or whatever platform they will be using to impart their knowledge. Make them aware of all its features, shortcuts and capabilities so they can be most efficient. Make sure they have access to a tech person to answer questions.
  4. Give them an approximate length of either the full project or chunk it out in time or word count limits. A general outline can help keep them on track.
  5. Give them a deadline and check in (at least!) at the halfway mark to make sure they can meet it.

DON’T:

  1. Rely on the SME to give you exactly what you need. Ask specific questions or give them an outline.
  2. Ignore them after they’ve started. Check in with them soon after they’ve begun to make sure they are able to do what you have asked. Provide corrective direction early.
  3. Involve them in discussions about look, feel, graphic design. Perhaps you can share it after they’ve delivered their content if their input is needed, valued or if they are interested.
  4. Distract the SME with unrelated questions or peripheral requests. Keep them focused on the learning objectives and the outline, if you’ve got one.
  5. Ask them to build assessments and exercises. You can involve them in that role after the main information is complete.

Role clarity is key to success in these partnerships. As the training professional and instructional designer, you can keep the goals of the project and the steps in your line of sight and that frees your experts to deliver their content in a structured way under your guidance.

Sex, Drugs and Russian Hacks

As an FYI to my readers, I enjoy receiving comments and having discussions with you. We have a comment filter set because sometimes spam gets through. Some weeks we may get one or two pieces of spam, but some weeks we get more than 50. Usually they are easy to spot because they are advertisements for sex websites, online pharmacies and lately they are in what appears to be Russian, as well. We have to manually delete each one to avoid inadvertently deleting legitimate comments.

If your comment doesn’t appear right away, it is because we go through each comment to separate the real readers from the bots. We will eventually update our system and put in a bot filter on the front end. For now, thank you for your patience.

And please do comment below. We’ll be looking for it!

 

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The Disease of Experts

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Ronald Reagan is credited with saying the problem with a certain group of people is that so much of what they know isn’t true.

In the interest of bipartisanship, I’ll refrain from mentioning the group he targeted in his remark. But the essence of the remark is pointed: so much of what we think we know ain’t so. Experts aren’t immune to this disease. In fact due to the mantle of infallibility draped on some experts,  they may be more susceptible to error than other mere humans.

“The disease of experts” is a term coined by Malcolm Gladwell.  This morning, leadership guru Michael Hyatt called attention to Gladwell’s phenomenon in his blog as it relates to leadership, and it bears discussion here, as well.

To quote Hyatt’s blog, “Gladwell called overconfidence ‘the disease of experts.’  They think they know more than they actually do. In fact, they make mistakes precisely because they have knowledge.”

Overcoming Overconfidence

Experts are often accustomed to being the smartest person in the room, and this can lead to overconfidence. Certainly expertise in any field by definition requires extensive study. Some say it equates to 10,000 hours of study in one area, which translates to about five years in a full-time job or the years put into gaining a PhD. That kind of work lays the foundation for earned credibility and respect in your field.

Hyatt often talks about the value of humility, and this subject is one that gave him an opportunity to remind his readers, “What we really need are leaders who are humble and willing to listen.”

Beyond that prescription for leaders, I would like to add some advice for experts in any field who are called upon to transfer their knowledge to others.

  1. Question everything. Yesterday’s truth is tomorrow’s myth. See “flat earth meets Galileo.”
  2. Stay current in your field. Some say we now collect as much knowledge in two years as we had from the beginning of human history until today. People around the world are always building on each others’ knowledge. Remain tapped in to other experts in your field so you are aware of the latest developments.
  3. Remember your humble beginnings and treat learners’ questions with respect. Honor the next generation who will build upon your work. They will carry your hard work forward and create the next great leaps in science, technology, education, the arts, business and industry.

After all, it is that student with the perplexing question who leads to the next great leap in your field. Honor the learners and leave a foundation that you have helped build so they can move your field forward to the next levels of innovation.

Answer learners simply and sincerely. Tell them the truth as best you know it, so what they know is so.

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Preserving Corporate Expertise is a Risk Management Issue

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Risk Management

If you hear something twice, pay attention. In this case, I heard the same comment three times in as many weeks. That comment was about the importance of preserving corporate expertise as a risk management issue. Yes, it is.

Expertise by definition takes time to acquire, is rare and is not easily replaced, which translates into expensive. The experts in your organization are holding some valuable cards, and losing your experts and their knowledge could cost you delays, customers, sales and even the competitive advantage you hold within your industry.

To find your knowledge vulnerabilities, make an assessment of your critical assets by stratifying them according to whatever criteria points to your most acute assets. Not all information is important but if you analyze your company by people, products and divisions you are unlikely to overlook anything.  You may not know all the information you need to retain without a fairly thorough organizational analysis, so it is worthwhile to do a periodic assessment of your potential losses.

Any internal knowledge assessment is strengthened by doing an external scan to give you a strong grasp of the state of your industry and what your competitors are doing as well as a grasp of how your business and your industry fits into the larger global economy. You may have cornered the market on dial telephones but you needed to understand the impact of mobile phone technology to understand where your business was headed. That kind of information will tell you what to keep and what new kinds of expertise you need to begin to acquire to stay in your game.

Because knowledge management is (or should be) an integral part of your corporate strategic plan, it argues for making sure your training department remains close to your C-suite to align missions. Such alignment will help prevent wasting scarce training dollars on short-sighted training efforts.

Especially with the pace of change both technologically and geopolitically, you can’t afford to ignore a thorough analysis of your knowledge management needs that considers your company’s vulnerabilities now and into the future. That is why your knowledge management plan should be an integral part of your corporate risk assessment.

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Sensitivity, Ageism and Country Music: Should We Provide Tips for Working with Retiring Employees?

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recording engineer

Everyone has a definition of heaven. For some, it’s a golf course or a gourmet kitchen or an endless beach. For me, heaven is a recording studio. One of my hobbies is singing and songwriting and there is nothing like hearing your idea fully developed. About 15 years ago, I went to Nashville to record a song demo at a studio using the local studio talent. I worked with an arranger who also ran the studio session and he organized all the details – chose the studio, hired the musicians, and wrote out the arrangements.

Because I came in from out of town, he coordinated the session so that we could record all five songs to the final mix in one day. That gave us time to do an arranging session the day before and allowed time to set up appointments with song publishers to shop the tunes afterwards.

When he was hiring recording engineers – those are the guys you see behind glass at the big consoles with all the dials and knobs and sliders – he said, “I hired a young guy to stay with us through the final mix. They are the only ones with the energy for a long session like this.”

He surprised me when he said that, but it made perfect sense. It was something I had never considered. But he did this for a living, and he knew how demanding it would be so I trusted his judgment.

The Long Haul

A long session of five songs, from basic tracks through instrumental overdubs, basic vocal and background vocals, and finally to blending them all together, choosing levels at which each instrument and voice will appear and putting it through some electronic magic so it sounds good on a little speaker – takes time. Some big studio albums take months to record. When you are recording a song demo, it needs to be good but not final-product perfection. We flew through the whole thing in about 12 hours.

Nashville studio musicians are some of the best people on the planet. They are efficient and flawless. They record songs all day, every day. Think factory work for people who play guitar. Everyone comes in, does their thing for an hour or two or three, and then leaves. But the recording engineers, they are in it for the long haul. They have to listen to every note, work with every player to get a performance that is consistent with the vision, and keep their ears tuned right up until the final mix. It is exhausting. And they are on the clock. We needed a finished product by morning to get to meetings with publishers.

That’s why the arranger hired the young guy. Even I slept through the final mixes, and they woke me up to listen to the result around midnight. It felt a little like having a baby by C-section, you know, missing the actual birth. Nonetheless, the baby was born and we had a great demo.

The question is: Was the arranger practicing ageism by choosing a young engineer to ride through the whole process? Or was he just being sensitive to the fact that, as he explained, an older guy wasn’t going to last at the board in a non-stop, full-attention session for 15 hours?

Your Retiring Workers

That incident came to mind this week because a similar situation applies when working with retiring colleagues in a training situation. When I mentioned to a group of trainers recently that some retiring or retired workers might not have the stamina of younger workers, and may need considerations and adaptations, some were shocked that I would discuss it. Perhaps I was insensitive in the way I worded my comments. And trust me, in no way did I intend to insinuate that people over 60 are frail or deficient. Quite the opposite. Some of my best friends (ahem) are retired, and yes, they would be the first to admit they have more trouble walking, they go to bed earlier, and find themselves shopping for replacement parts.

One 63-year-old friend who works full time in a job that requires five, 12-hour days and submits to an annual physical requiring he stay in tip-top shape said, “I do everything I always did. I just do it less.”

Another 67-year-old yogi friend tours with rock bands and said, “I am in the best shape of my life.” I have seen him play guitar perched atop another yogi and I would have to agree.

All that aside, I am suggesting that when you work with older workers, you may need to consider things like stamina, eyesight and hearing. It’s just a biological fact. As I age, my eyesight isn’t nearly as good as it once was. I need to compensate for that.

I have worked with people in their 80s who have more to offer than they ever did, with perspective and wisdom and humor that comes with age. They are the most brilliant people, and I have learned most from them. But I paced interview sessions, allowed for hearing issues, and so forth, not to pander to them or to be condescending but rather out of consideration and sensitivity.

It isn’t ageism, as I see it. By mentioning the fact that older workers might (I emphasize MIGHT) need some considerations regarding the biological realities of aging, my intention is to invite sensitivity from people who work with older colleagues.

If my remarks- written or spoken – imply any inherent insufficiency of older workers, I apologize to anyone I’ve offended. I also hope that as we work with people who are approaching or have well surpassed the legal age of retirement, we consider different levels of physical tolerance than we expect from colleagues in their 20s.

Please comment on this issue. I invite a discussion and other perspectives.

 

 

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Company Culture Promotes Right-the-First-Time Attitude

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Last week, I attended the AGXPE regional meeting where we had info-packed sessions on the process of getting compliance documentation right. It was a pharmaceutical-focused group so we had a lot of discussion around FDA inspections. But, as any industry under regulatory supervision knows, the kinds of best practices and standard operating procedures that guide safety can be found in any manufacturing environment where employee and customer lives are on the line.

Two perspectives emerged from the sessions. First, the group discussed the many issues involved in getting data right the first time. Second, the group wrestled the issue of quality control checks on the back end. In both cases, many of the same attitudes and issues underlie the problems that result in faulty data and information capture that, in the case of pharmaceutical manufacturing, often result in lines shut down, batches thrown away, lots recalled or patients injured.

To get to the heart of the accuracy of initial data entry and quality control, you have to take a close look at what causes human error. Causes are almost as varied as the humans involved.

The AGXPE group had its share of trainers in attendance, and training people know that they are the first stop when a performance issue is uncovered. Training people also know that often the problem can’t be solved with training alone.

A complex human problem, especially this one, cannot be narrowed down to one or two specific issues with a couple of quick and neat little fixes. What really is going on is a complex web of human knowledge, skills and attitudes that come both from the personal background and experience of individual employees combined with the culture of the organization.

This is where the organization can affect the outcome. The one thing organizations can address and control is the culture. A right-the-first-time mentality can be cultivated, encouraged, rewarded and modeled from the top down. In fact, it is the only way that a company can reinforce behaviors that it values.

After employees are imbued with the company culture of responsibility and accountability at the source where information is captured or products manufactured, then training can come in and do their jobs by providing guidance and methods for achieving excellence the first time.

If solving the complex reasons behind human error were simple, the problem would not exist. But if solutions were impossible, near-perfect performance would not already be happening in plants around the world where examples of human excellence abound.

 

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Podcast 2: Capturing the Right Knowledge at the Right Time

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Welcome to Episode 2 of the Working with SMEs Podcast. Today, Nathan Eckel and I talk about 4 questions that commonly arise when we talk to corporate executives about managing the knowledge of their internal experts. (Listening time: 16:25)

Listen as Nathan and I drill down into these four questions:

1. Are we talking to the right experts?

2. What knowledge should we capture that is most important to the business going forward?

3. What knowledge needs to be captured immediately as opposed to eventually?

4. If we have limited resources or limited time, which experts should we speak with first?

Are you using your valuable, finite resources to capture the right experts?  Please comment below!

Corporate Advisory Council Conference

Twice a year dozens of professionals in the field of e-learning travel to Bloomsburg Pennsylvania to attend the Department of Instructional Technology and Institute for Interactive Technologies’ (IIT) Corporate Advisory Council (CAC) Conference.

The three-day event provides corporate professionals with an opportunity to see the latest in e-learning software, learn the latest thinking about learning and to become educated in instructional technology as well as give back to the field. The event allows professionals in the field to directly interact with students who are preparing to become instructional designers and developers. The students prepare a 20 minute presentation and are then asked questions by the Corporate Advisory Council members, in turn, the students and CAC members interact, exchange ideas and learn about the field in the energetic three-day event.

Date: April 12, 2017
Time: TBD
Event: Corporate Advisory Council Conference
Topic: 3 Clear Strategies for Finding , Capturing & Transferring Retiring Expertise
Sponsor: Department of Instructional Technology and Institute for Interactive Technologies
Venue: Bloomsburg University
Location: Bloomsburg, PA
Public: Public
Registration: Click here to register.
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Respecting Your Learner’s Need to Know and the Value of Just-in-Time Learning

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batteryacidstains

If you have ever been deeply engrossed in a subject, you know that life is constantly presenting you with opportunities to learn more about it.  Everything I do somehow relates back to something I am learning and writing about.  Yesterday, for example, my microcassette recorder wasn’t working. Yes, I still use it occasionally, and in this case I wanted to listen to a tape I made many years ago. I use the microcassette  infrequently enough that when I investigated the cause of the malfunction, I found the batteries had leaked into the battery compartment and the contacts  were corroded.

I “YouTubed” a video on how to properly clean the corrosion. The video was 3 minutes long. The solution was simple.  Dip a cotton swab in clear white vinegar and gently wipe the battery compartment clean, being careful not to get any of the leaked battery acid on your skin, and careful not  to drip any liquid into the device. Wipe the vinegar off the contacts with a paper towel. Soak another cotton swab in water and wipe the inside of the compartment to remove any traces of vinegar. Dry it with another paper towel. Done.

That probably took you about 20 seconds to read that paragraph. But it takes about 3 minutes to watch someone actually perform all those steps in real time.  Three minutes is a long time to watch this process.  After about one minute, I found myself checking the remaining time on the video and figuratively tapping my foot wondering when the heck this video would be over. But I knew if there were two remaining minutes, there must be more to it so I better watch the whole thing or I might miss something crucial.

I learned two things yesterday.

1) I learned how to clean the battery compartment of my microcassette player and

2) I learned just how impatient we have become as learners.

If I –  someone who was educated in the pre-YouTube era, someone who reads 300-page books to learn one critical point  –  if I didn’t have the patience for a 3 minute video, imagine how short the attention span of children who graduated from baby rattles to baby iPads by the time they were one year old.

The Post-9-11 Workforce

Those children born post-9-11 are entering the workforce this year en masse as they turn 17 and graduate from high school. Your employees of today learned to swipe an iPad to get the answer before they could drink juice out of a cup without a lid.

The other day I lunched with a woman who will be retiring within a few years who shared her experience of younger workers.  She works in a medical technical field in a hospital.

I will paraphrase her comment only slightly. “They ask me a question, and they only want to hear a quick answer. They don’t want to know why or how or the context. They just want to get right back to checking Facebook or looking at Instagram.”

I do not want to castigate younger employees. Quite the opposite,  in fact. I am suggesting that perhaps as we consider how all people learn today, what captures and keeps our interest, how we think and what we need to know to do our jobs,  that we respect the effect of our all-info, all-the-time culture on the way we expect to receive information.  After all, I can’t even sit through a 3 minute video without looking at my watch and wondering when the YouTuber will get to the point.

As you craft training programs to communicate with your workforce, ask yourself if you are you considering our cultural bias to learning new information. Is your approach and content relevant and compelling?

As experienced trainers know, if the learner isn’t paying attention perhaps it is time to revisit your methodology.

 

 

 

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The Expert’s Curse: You Need Patience and a Plan

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Ignorance isn’t always bliss. For experts in any field, whether they have double PhDs  or have been operating a complex machine for 20 years, the curse is the fact that experts, by definition, know more than they can ever re-tell succinctly.

Abraham Maslow is credited with developing the levels of competence that has true experts at the pinnacle of competence. Maslow said experts are unconscious competents who know more than most people will ever be able to learn about their field. Often, experts are unconsciously competent because they love their field; they think about their work even when they aren’t at work. Their knowledge becomes part of their identity usually internally and often externally.

Expertise Challenges Corporate Knowledge Management Efforts

If experts could stay in one position forever, their job never changed, their company’s mission never changed, the market never changed and technology didn’t evolve, expertise would not be a curse. But in reality, some or all of those things are bound to change over time. And that is when it is important to be able to excavate the expert’s knowledge for preservation, modification and transfer. Change presents challenges to corporate knowledge management efforts.

If your experts are so immersed in their own knowledge that they can’t completely reconstruct it, how can your company manage the wealth of corporate intelligence?

First, companies need to get their arms around the body of knowledge, skills and attitudes that make them profitable and valuable to customers. Many companies today who are facing changing conditions – such as mass baby boomer retirements, corporate downsizing, mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, competition from nimble startups – are putting plans in place to make sure they preserve critical information.

When preserving critical information, most companies start by working with their internal experts to ensure business continuity. And that is when they encounter “The Expert’s Curse”.

Patience and a Plan

Many companies are finding themselves stuck at the intersection where they have made the decision to catalogue critical corporate knowledge and the place where they decide how to collect it. They need to make decisions about how best to collect it based on what technology and skills sets they must employ to gather information in a logical framework and how best to organize it for effective transfer while overcoming the expert’s resistance to describing their knowledge.

Often the expert’s resistance is simply the result of too much work to do. But many times that resistance is accompanied by a true frustration about how to begin to deliver a stepwise description of their expertise whether it is intellectual capital, processes, procedures or physical actions. How do  you impart what is often a lifetime of study and application – the subtleties, hints, tricks and clues- that lead an expert to make decisions that those with less experience are not as equipped to make?

You can never replace an expert. But you can isolate the unique knowledge they bring to your organization and lead them to re-tell it in a way that allows it to be captured and preserved. You can help your experts overcome their brilliant blessing disguised as a curse. It just takes patience and a plan.

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Replace Products with Outcomes in the New Economy

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We touched on this idea in an earlier blog, and “this idea” is that to stay competitive in a rapidly changing industrial environment, you need to focus on the business you are really in. The example was Kodak, that once shining icon of great invention that lost its luster when it failed to identify its core mission. Read the Kodak blog here.

Why is this important in relation to your corporate expertise? Simply, you must make a clear-headed decision about whether today’s expertise is relevant tomorrow because you will have to dedicate your valuable, finite resources to capture and retain it. This important decision is cause for some crystal ball gazing, for sure, but it is important work as you decide to put energy, time and money into making training and talent development decisions in your organization.

I was reminded of this critical decision today when I stumbled on this article in strategy+business  titled “The End of Conventional Industry Sectors”.  Here’s the link.

The article discusses how basic industries, particularly in the manufacturing sector, are evolving their business models to respond to a different culture spurred in part by exponential leaps in technology. For example, car manufacturers are reimagining themselves as the providers of on-demand mobility which may – or may not – involve owning a personal mobility device (eg. a car, for those of you following along on the home game).

The call to action to remain competitive is to think of your company in terms of the outcomes that it provides to its customers which may or may not involve the current products and services you offer. Had Kodak expanded its awareness that it was providing memory capture, as opposed to film and chemicals, it might have soared in the age of digital cameras rather than ceding the field to companies that made cellular phones and photocopiers.

As you assess the knowledge that you must capture and retain, consider the gems that reside in departments focused on the customer, especially sales. What do they know about your customers’ needs that may elude the design department that is focused on the body design of the latest model year car? Download the information from your sales and marketing people, survey your boards of directors, ask your CFO what’s rising, what’s falling and do they know why?

Beyond R&D and manufacturing, think about your future customers when you determine the kinds of knowledge that you need to retain and (dare I say?) exploit to remain competitive.

I also want to thank the great team at AmpTech in Malvern PA for hosting our workshop. Thanks to Drew Ortyn, Simon Kassas, Summer Kumar and Natalie Haritonow for arranging everything. We hope to be back with more topics soon.