Death is a state of mind

Talk about doom and gloom – swine flu comes quickly on the heels of recession predictions. We’ll be keeling over in more ways than one. But is most of it in the mind? Do we give too much attention to negatives and too little to opportunities?

How does what we listen to shape our attitudes? How does language shape our personal destiny? We all use language but some of us are more adept at using it positively. Positive thinkers tend to rise to the top because their enthusiasm and belief in themselves and others brings out the best in everyone around them. Now I’m not talking about the sales technique of talking up a product when it really doesn’t match the sales pitch – I’m talking about the mentality of choosing to concentrate on the positive rather than focus on the negative; to do what you can, or control what is controllable.

I was reminded of the strength of positivity this morning when I took a session with three high achievers who have been put onto an informal GATE program at a local school. GATE stands for Gifted And Talented Education. The three nine-year olds had interests in multi-media technology, so I was asked to design a project that they could do with one hour a week’s tuition.

When we got together first I found I had three disparate children whose minds went nineteen to the dozen, who couldn’t wait to compete to show me how clever they were and who all spoke at the same time. How was I going to get that group focused on a project? Late in the hour we focused enough to decide that we would create a road safety project for the Ministry of Transport and that they would each storyboard an idea for an animation.

At the next session they came up with varying ideas (only two related to the topic) and we settled on a selection from those two storyboards. This session occurred just before the Easter holidays but they were so enthusiastic I was sure they would carry the momentum through until this Thursday. Not so …

Today they all admitted they had done next to nothing toward the project. The Ministry of Transport (alias moi) was very annoyed and told them that if they weren’t ‘up to the job we’d find someone else to do it’. The interesting thing about the following conversation was that these nine-year-olds displayed so many tactics that you would normally note in adults on a worksite:

• Avoidance of responsibility – I couldn’t find my disk, my computer doesn’t get the Internet, I was away for half the holidays, I’m so busy with my sports
• Blaming – But XX didn’t phone me up so I forgot, we had a clean out and I think mum threw out my sheet
• Avoiding tasks – I can’t see when I’d fit it in … I’ve got XX on Monday and XX on Tuesday, I’ve got Vista and it can’t read anything from an XP

Each time they came up with an excuse I told them: “I’m not interested in your excuses. All the Ministry of Transport wants is a completed video it can use.” I also named the avoidance technique they were using.

I brought out a prepared timeline and we discussed completion dates for each task using a calendar. There was a lot of talk before the target dates were set and each child recorded them. One boy in particular kept talking about the problems, and how he would have so little time out of school to complete his job. I realized he was focusing on the negative.

In Golden Bay the day had see-sawed between showers and sunshine. I threw open the curtains and told him: “Look outside … See the clouds – they’re the problems. See the sunshine – that’s the opportunity. Which one do you want to concentrate on?”

They all laughed, and one boy said: “My dad calls it ‘is the glass half full or half empty?’”

All bright kids, but already at aged nine they’d learned to look at the negative, to expect things to be hard, to accept failure.

So how does that relate to swine flu and the recession? I can’t control swine flu but I can take any precautions recommended by the medical profession charged with controlling it. Otherwise I’ll just forget about it and get on with life. And the recession? Well there are so many opportunities to be had in an adjusting market, I’ll just get out and find them.

And I’ll leave the last comment on swine flu to my daughter who posted on Facebook: We've decided it should be called Mexican Hog Fever. It's not less gross than Swine 'flu, but it sounds more festive...

On a serious note: If you do need to put some procedures in place to deal with the potential consequences of a flu pandemic, take a look here. We may be able to help. - Heather

Knee-jerk to elearning

When a (now-not-so) new technology enters the smorgasbord of training options, industry training organisations may be tempted to jump in with both feet on the accelerator. This has been especially so with the advent of elearning. Everybody’s doing it so why not us? Anyone from within the organisation who suggests a cautious approach may be seen to be dragging on the vehicle bumper for reasons of their own discomfort at the speed of change.

Elearning is not a good idea unless it fits with the organisation’s technical capability and workforce readiness. While most of my work has some component of elearning, and I do believe the method adds amazing capacity to move learners forward, I, too, would like organisations I work with to be a bit more cautious before writing their Expression of Interest documents.

Elearning developers love to create, but they also want what they create to meet the needs of the learners in the organisation. Unless the project succeeds, the risk for the developer is that the tools they create will be seen as having failed, and that in turn will damage the developer’s reputation. Often it is not the tools but the process that is flawed.

My observation is that organizations follow a pattern of:

idea > resistance > wearing down > agreement > write the EoI > start the project asap

The promoters of the project are so intent on getting on with it, (seeing that so much time has been ‘lost’ in convincing the organisation to move) they fail to do enough research to develop an effective, measurable EoI, which is the only document a developer can respond to when designing a proposal.

The EoI can be based on assumptions about the needs of the learner, as well as unrealistic budgets and time lines for development. Developers have these options:

• To warn that the project is unrealistic and can’t be done in the timeline – good-bye contract
• To build in a number of ‘provided that’ clauses to cover potential timeline blowouts
• To answer the EoI as it stands and limit the potential of what they can provide within the timeline or budget

And guess which developer will get the contract?

Before any elearning project starts the organisation should:

1. Get some reliable research done on the needs and capability of the learners they serve, and not just rely on gut-instinct. Managers see the world through the technological eyes of their own use of computers – ‘everybody knows how to use a computer’. Well they don’t! They may be more adept at using a mobile phone or the DVD remote.
2. Really understand learners’ access issues to technology. The parents may have a computer installed at home, but what happens to accessibility when the young person moves out to their first flat? Can they afford to link up to Broadband or will they install Sky Sports? If they are into social networking online, do they really want their tutor/trainer muscling in for all their friends to see? And can they afford the cost of mobile communication when for days on end they don’t reply to txts because their credit’s run out before payday?
3. Decide whether it would be wiser to contract an independent researcher to investigate these issues before engaging a developer; or make the developer responsible for developing a learner profile and recommending a best practice solution.

It is in the best interests of the organisation, the learners and the developer to design the most effective learning solution, and that solution may NOT be elearning.

The case for cloning ;)

How many times have you heard people say: “Imagine if everyone was the same! What a boring world it would be.”

I’d like to counter that by asking: “How could we possibly know that for sure?”

If we were all the same we’d all think alike, react in the same way to outside stimuli, and understand exactly what the other person was experiencing or thinking. We wouldn’t be suddenly confronted with someone angrily reacting to an ‘innocent’ comment because they would have understood what we meant.

Life would be calm; we’d all agree on how to solve problems because there would be only ONE way. The things we like to do would be the only things that there were to do because there would be no demand for anything else - the market just wouldn’t be there. Think how much waste would be saved!

There’d be no problem finding a partner because everyone would suit us. We wouldn’t need counseling because our partner would agree with us all the time, and besides, our boss wouldn’t get up our nose, and there would be no road rage.

People would work hard just like we do, so we wouldn’t feel pissed off with the shirkers. Everyone would pay their taxes and not cheat the system. Why would they need to? The tax system would have been designed to suit people like us; the health system would have plenty of funding for the ailments that affect us; the education system would teach us in the methods that suited us (because the teachers would be just like us).

Most trainers are aware that, in this world of variety, each person learns in a slightly different way. It is, however, a challenge to adapt our teaching or training style to suit each learner, because WE have a preferred method of delivery. What we tend to do is try to include a variety of delivery styles during the course, even though some activities may feel uncomfortable for us to deliver.

By providing variety we hope that each learner will be hooked in by an activity that suits their style of learning, and that they can ride out the activities that don’t appeal. A learner’s urge to ‘pass’ will usually provide enough motivation for them to stay focused.

So the trainer's case for cloning is … if everyone had the same learning style, what a dream they would be to teach! In the meantime ….

Powering up training in a recession

Cost and access issues
A New Zealand industry training organisation working with mechanical engineering, manufacturing, baking and food processing industries, Competenz, urged the New Zealand government to reduce the costs of industry training in a recent press release.

CEO John Blakey said that while trade training in New Zealand has been under-funded for decades, the recession has highlighted this problem. "We're taking the message to the Government that cost is the major barrier to employers taking on apprentices and upskilling staff - and this needs to be fixed now.”

Blakey went on to say that Competenz is working with Business New Zealand and the Industry Training Federation on long-term solutions to take to the Government.

The problems
Cost is only one part of the problem, in my view. Other brakes on training include:

1. Fragmentation of the training delivery industry leading to challenges finding the right training/courses


2. Lack of clear career pathways, despite a hefty national framework of possible units to study


3. Challenges with acceptable assessment forcing training providers to produce prescribed documentary evidence of every PC and every minuscule part of the range


4. Lack of innovative (cheap and ‘safe’) solutions to accessing online training resources


5. Companies’ headaches around rostering employees off on courses for more than a day

Solutions could come from:

1. NZQA maintaining up-to-date lists of currently available face-to-face/e-learning/distance learning courses instead of just a list of registered providers


2. NZQA and/or ITOs having easily accessible recommended career pathways for industry careers


3. A review of the prescriptive model of assessment to allow integrated projects to act as evidence


4. Better access to online training, and not just in IT or computing. The Government is moving toward broadband solutions, so companies now have to get over their distrust of employee online intent and give them Internet access (even if only in a controlled IT environment)


5. Partnerships between deliverers and developers of off-site, on-site, and online training material – no one option is best but the best will come from combining them

Subtle brakes
Then there are more subtle brakes on performance improvement:

• The company culture sees training as a ‘perk for employees’ and not as a valuable tool to advance company performance


• Training ends with the employee’s attendance/qualification and no systems exist within the organisation to spread the gain


• Skills training is seen as a one-way process, like feeding hungry fledglings, instead of as a partnership of development


• Understanding business economics is a closely guarded secret that employees must not know about

Integrated improvements
There are many ways of improving performance and giving employees skills improvement training is only one way. Performance can also be enhanced by changing the culture so that every employee understands their vital part in the process of company evolution. That culture change rests mainly on management and, to a lesser extent, the partnership between management and unions.

By educating employees on the way of the market, managers gain 100s of sets of eyes to look for market opportunities and threats. After all, employees are:

• Consumers or customers and can feedback information on market demand


• Observers of the process and can identify bottlenecks and better ways


• Potential markets for competitor products because they know what they like


• Researchers/surfers of the Net so they keep up with trends

Trainers need to rebrand themselves as facilitators of learning and enlarge their own self-beliefs. They don’t have to know it all, they can use hundreds of existing learning resources, and even rely on their trainees to find the answers. Research should be seen as a legitimate and sanctioned use of their time. Let learners learn by experiencing the power of one … or one hundred.

Many of the above options can be accomplished without large amounts of money being thrown at them. They do, however, need a shift in thinking from micro-managing training in a silo to integrating training into a company-wide activity.