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

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.

Lessons from Canada Geese, Part 2

If you come from a large organisation don’t under-value the knowledge of an on-site trainer. An on-site trainer sees employees when they’re being stretched and even put under stress. These observations build up into a clear picture of the capabilities of the person. These trainers ought to be involved in any consultation about promotion and restructuring. Why? Because they’ll know who will cope with added responsibilities if roles must be amalgamated.

When you’re training a group of people, especially if you use experiential learning methods, you learn how people react under pressure, whether they’re prepared to step into a leadership role, how they think (laterally or linear), and whether they’re a group player or a prima donna. An HR manager removed from practical training may miss out on learning these attributes of employees.

The on-site trainer can also be instrumental in bringing about culture changes, provided their role is clearly supported and valued by the organisation. The best worksite health and safety policy will not reduce accidents or injuries unless it's entrenched in worksite practice. ‘Big stick’ techniques are often less effective than culture change. Threats lead to clever concealment; culture change leads to a change in belief about self and the relationship with the organisation. Culture change takes time and management commitment. It needs to be led by the trainer with a positive, reward focus.

Imagine if those small groups of Canada geese decided to leave at different times of the year and didn’t bother to practice their vee-formation flying before they left? Not many of them would be around to return the following spring. It’s their commitment to the larger group, their willingness to share leadership, and their constant calls of encouragement that keep them a cohesive group flying through the nights and the rough ocean weather until they reach the next sanctuary on their journey.

When times are tough, as they are for organisations around the globe, culture change is a vital ingredient to ensure you’re a survivor. If you’re a trainer you can make a huge impact on the survival chances of your group.

• Avoid the negativity – train only the employees who see learning as valuable for them


• Focus training on the wider picture – convince employees of their role in creating a lean, efficient and well-functioning team


• Challenge the grey-matter – use unusual training tools to keep people on their toes and thinking – you’re training the whole person


• Spread the message that solutions are right within us – we just have to have the confidence to think outside the box


• Reward employees who show initiative – even if it is only to point them out to management as potential for promotion (but let them know you have done so)


• See other trainers as resources to share new techniques and tools – share your own ideas and borrow others

Survival in today’s climate will be about the organisations that learn to work for the greater good, the ones that look for new leaders from within their ranks and support each other strive for excellence. Divisive cultures will only lead to poor performance and inevitable disaster.

- Heather Sylvawood, Educational Designer, Edutech KM Ltd

Where Does Training Fit Now?

Today I added an RSS feed from a site that some of you may have already come across HRM – the Social Network For Today’s HR professionals.

I like this blog because it focuses so much on the positive. The writer understands that when the chips are down there are two ways for a company to go:
1. Inward looking, concentrating on cost cutting, losses and fear
2.Upward looking, building on the team that remains and the values they can share

The first is a recipe for disaster; the second keeps everyone focused on possibilities and invention. I know the type of business I want to be in.

HR managers on many sites must be facing some tricky situations if they're dealing with redundancies and a shrinking workforce, a shrinking market and little time for keeping that important training going. Actually the need for training becomes even more important in a shrinking workforce, because the employees who are left are often expected to become multi-skilled.

In these times, the businesses that paid attention to upskilling and training will be benefiting from their foresight. They’ll have employees ready to step (even if reluctantly) into the shoes of employees who have left. Other businesses will struggle to quickly upskill staff and may even have difficulty finding the information that was so efficiently catalogued in the minds of the employees who have left. Inevitably employees who leave disgruntled often make sure that vital information is NOT made easily available – “’cos whatcha going do about it?”

Assuming you have staff who are able to pick up the pieces and continue production/trading/creating services at a reduced level, you cannot, even in a recession, forget the importance of training. You may need, however, to review the type of training you’re providing. Fewer employees on the job will mean fewer opportunities to take them off the floor or away from clients in order to attend courses. It may be time to look at alternative training opportunities.

We have designed resources for a number of clients who had to deliver training at a distance. In today’s financial climate the ‘distance’ may only be from your desk to theirs. Self-directed learning can be a cost-effective and easily adapted option as it allows learning to take place in small bursts, at a time to suit the learner.

The NZ Job Summit

The weekend’s Jobs Summit has come up with a number of proposals that will be considered by the Government prior to the Budget.

One of the most talked about was a proposal for a 9-day working fortnight. Stuff reports that: “The Government seems set to give the green light to a call for a nine-day fortnight which employers and union leaders believe could save 20,000 jobs, at a cost of $60 million. Workers would lose a day of work a fortnight, and receive training or education.”

Sensible move, because the businesses that move out of the recession most quickly are those whose employees understand the reality of good business practice. They’ll be the organisations whose employees are constantly looking for process improvement and product or service opportunities. They’ll be the firms who see that an investment in innovation, against the trend in tough times, is the way forward the minute the market moves into positive territory.

The trick for the country is to sell the concept to employees as more than a sacrifice to save the jobs of their "mates". Solidarity is great, but a long term commitment to improving New Zealand’s competitiveness is even more important if we’re to come out of the recession without major social disaster.

Traditional worker/employer culture has always pitted one against the other, and evidence suggests that the "culture" was born of reality. Incomes on both sides of the divide reflected the relative values given to the people who created the products or services that gave value to the business and the people who took the risk. If that culture continues, training for employees will always be seen as skills training. But there is a huge advantage if you train employees in the so-called 'soft' skills of business.

The knowledge of why things are done a certain way, and the understanding of Return on Investment, helps employees see their role as part of the whole process of business. Instead of looking at the potential one day off a fortnight as a skills training opportunity, employers would be better to ask themselves: "If I wanted someone to step into my shoes, what would I want them to know?"

Raise the bar, avoid the assumptions and the bright sparks of your organisation will help you out of the recession.
- Heather Sylvawood