How My Husband Taught Me Performance Support vs Training: What I Learned 4/9/2012

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Tricia Ransom

Hi everyone! Ok, before I go any further, I’ll admit it. I haven’t been blogging every day. But still, I’ve done better than any time in the past year, so that has to count for something, right? And oh yeah, remember this is my first and only draft. I’ve published without even previewing…what you’re reading here is exactly how it came out of my head!

Now on to the good stuff.

#Lrncht: When is Training NOT the answer?

In #lrncht (a weekly twitter chat every Thursday) we were discussing performance support vs formal training. Click here if you want to read the transcript of the chat.

While driving around Central Illinois over the weekend, I got into a discussion about this topic with my husband who is definitely not in learning and development, at least not officially. He’s a banker by day, and a photographer by night. And when in his photography hat, he is very focused on developing beginning photographers. But I digress…

Pic Jimmy took during our conversation called "Round Barn and Horses, Urbana IL".

As I was saying, Jimmy and I were driving through the cornfields of Central Illinois and I was trying to explain to him the difference between performance support materials and a formal class. And that’s when he had an epiphany.

He said:

You mean like in our software system at the bank where there is this one field where we have to select an option from a pull-down menu. The only problem is that the pull-down menu is populated with about 10 different acronyms and no explanation or description for any of them! I don’t need a course, and I don’t want to click out of the system. Why can’t you guys just put a little question mark next to the box that opens up with a list of the acronyms and what they stand for? I even searched through for the training materials, but that was the only field that wasn’t described. For that matter, how can there be a required field and no one knows how to populate it?”

Yes, he described it perfectly. That is performance support. Training materials on hand in the moment of need to support his performance. So why doesn’t it exist?

Our Excuses

I immediately went into a litany of excuses. You know what they are, I can guarantee you’ve said at least one of these at some point in your career: The programmers/techie people hadn’t provided that information to the training team. No one had documented at any point, so the trainers couldn’t. The job aid does exist, just probably on an intranet, or in an LMS, or on a shared drive somewhere. The people who knew what the acronyms mean are no longer with the company. The IT department won’t let any documents be linked to the system (too expensive, too complicated, security issues, etc.). The training department wants to keep all the training materials in one location so as to not have multiple versions to update. Well, who would own any updates to the document – training, IT, vendor, etc.?

You know how it goes, but the end result is that these are just excuses.

Fight for the Learner

So with my litany of excuses for his bank’s training department flowing out of my mouth, Jimmy just looked at me. I know that look. And here is what he said:

How is any of that my problem? I just want to fill in the form. Why can’t anyone help me?

So I ask you the same question: Why don’t you fight the fights to help your learners? Why don’t you help them?

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Articulate Hyperlinks: What I Learned Thursday 3/29/2012

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Tricia Ransom

I’m working in Articulate today. I had a course that has 15 slides – 6 of which are videos. On slide 6, they get to choose which video they want to watch. I had placed hyperlinks to the appropriate slides, but YIKES…they didn’t work!

Turns out that hyperlinks to slides with a comma in the title won’t work.

What I learned: For me, it was links to slides with either commas, colons, or dashes.

  1. DO’NT USE SPECIAL CHARACTERS IN SLIDE TITLES IF YOU’RE GOING TO LINK TO THEM
  2. HYPERLINKS MAY OR MAY NOT WORK IN PREVIEW MODE – BEST NOT TO PUSH YOUR LUCK

Here’s a link to a great resource for Articulate and hyperlinks: http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/kb/?p=907

And a list of other gotcha’s that I just have in my head:

  1. Cannot hyperlink parts of SmartArt
  2. Don’t make a grouped object a hyperlink. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Put a box on top of it with 98% transparency fill and no outline, then make that box a hyperlink.
  3. If you make a box a hyperlink, and then put a text box on top of it….the text box will cover up your link!
  4. You cannot link an shape that has no fill. You must select a fill color, and then set it to 98 or 99% transparency.
  5. Use the selection pane and name the objects that you are making links. I like to have the linked-to slide and the linked-from object to have the same name. Trust me on this…it’ll make your life MUCH easier in the future.
  6. Hidden slides are funny. Don’t link to them. Articulate thinks they’re hidden, which they are, so therefore it won’t display them. Make sense? Just put them at the end of the course.
  7. You can’t use “previous slide”. You’ve got to pick one.
  8. I try to avoid those auto-action buttons in powerpoint. Articulate really doesn’t like them too much….and anyway, I like to design or “leverage” someone else’s design. So much prettier.
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Gotta Stop to Start: What I learned Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Tricia Ransom

Woo-hoo, I’m on a roll! 3 blog posts in 3 days!

Ok, so what did I learn yesterday? I had a to-do list, and my goal was to focus on Single Focus (working on a single task at a time) as much as possible. That was my goal. I didn’t achieve it, but that’s ok.

Instead of working through my to-do list, I worked through my PLN (personal learning network). I may not have accomplished my work tasks right then which means I’ll have to make up that time. But what I did accomplish was re-energizing and refreshing my brain.

I attended an online video chat  (eLearnChat). In a wide-ranging conversation we moved from discussing what makes a good leader to why the L&D field is so resistant to being a part of the C Suite. We also chatted about why L&D degree programs don’t teach more business courses and consulting courses.

And then we got to the power of networking on Twitter. I’ve met almost everyone on the show and in the chat room in person…but that is only because I had first met them on Twitter.

After that show was over, and I was glancing at Twitter, I became part of a flash chat mob helping one of my Twitter friends work through how to teach a person to be a good coachee/mentee. Of course, we got into communication styles, feedback, personality traits, listening/questioning skills, and a host of other things. I learned a TON!

The key point is this: many managers would think that I was wasting time and goofing off. Thankfully, my manager understands that although I wasn’t specifically focused on my deliverables, everything I learned yesterday will make me a better employee. Just the fact that I was reflecting on how to receive feedback and how to move L&D departments to the business goals means that I’m going to incorporate those concepts into my deliverables.

Seriously, I really do incorporate things I learn into my courses. For example, I’m working on developing a course designed for sales people to help them with a new product. Because of everything I learned yesterday, I’m going to focus even more on the business goals of the company rather than “nice-to-know” information.

So to sum it up – I didn’t get my deliverables done, but I did get re-energized and I learned something new. So it was a good day. Sometimes you’ve just gotta take a break and stop in order to work and move forward.

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Single Focus: What I Learned Tuesday, 3/27/2012

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Tricia Ransom

As promised yesterday, I am committing myself for the next month or two to doing a daily blog post. And sending it out pretty much first draft. My goal is to record what I’ve learned each day. I want a record of what worked and didn’t work…hopefully I’ll take that information, internalize it, and make behavioural adjustments accordingly. That’s my ideal idea. But still recording my thoughts and just writing is good for my thinking, right?

Ok, so yesterday. My number one thing I did yesterday was to prioritize my work, and finish a task before moving on to a new one. There were a lot of videos that needed to be downloaded to our shared drive so our LMS administrator could do with them as needed. At first I just piddled around and did some here, then worked on something else, came back, worked on something else, etc. But after a while, I realized that nothing was getting done.

At that moment, I committed myself to finishing the task of downloading the videos before doing anything else. And you know what? It ended up taking me a grand total of 15 minutes. I turned off email, Twitter, and my ears (ok, I put in my headphones and listed to my “dance” playlist). I was shocked at how quickly I could get through something when it is my sole focus.

So that is my lesson learned for 3/27/2012: Single Focus.

I know I have to multi-task and that I won’t always be able to finish something before starting something new. However, I learned that I am much much much more speedy when I focus on a single item rather than multiple ones.

Now that it’s Thursday, I’m going to implement Single Focus. I have prioritized my to-do list, and I will start working through it.

Tangential Thought – Priorities:

Priorities are a tricky subject, aren’t they? I mean, we are always talking about priortizing things, the priorities in our lives, “Priority #1″…the list can go on and on. But the problem most of us have with priorities is the question “What criteria do I use to prioritize?”

Although I won’t presume to tell you HOW to set your priorities, I assert that you should always have a clear understanding of WHAT your priorities are. For me, my priorities are based on understanding myself and how I like to work. I’m goal-oriented, which means that I prioritize according to what I can accomplish and cross off.

Top of my to-do list? Always the easiest and quickest thing to accomplish! For difficult and more complex tasks I break it down into easy to achieve pieces. And by easy-to-achieve I mean things that are realistically able to be completed.

Ok, so that’s it. Yesterday was about single focus and inherently priorities. Let’s see what I learn today!

 

PS: Please pardon any grammar errors or incomplete thoughts. As I said, I’m publishing these without significant revisions. What you read is exactly how my mind works. Oddly enough, I think in paragraphs. Weird, huh?

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Dedication to Blogging

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Tricia Ransom

I’m in the process of reading the book Organizations Don’t Tweet, People Do: A Manager’s Guide to the Social Web by Euan Semple.

In Chapter Four, the theme is all about sharing knowledge. I’ve never thought about it, but what would I learn if I blogged about my work day every day?

So I’m going to dedicate myself to blogging daily for the next month or so. I’ll share with myself, and anyone else who’s interested, what I learned going through my day.

In May I’m going to re-read and re-cap my thinking.

And oh yeah, did I tell you that I’m going to do these posts without revision? You’re going to go deep into how my mind works…exciting isn’t it?

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