"For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them." Aristotle Emphasize Practice over ContentMy son has a high school biology textbook that's more than three inches (7.5 cm) thick. It's "advanced placement," so the there's more content presented during the semester than the run-of-the-mill biology course. I recently attended a conference presentation. The speaker's 100+ slides were displayed for an average of 15 seconds each. I estimated 50 words per slide, plus graphs, diagrams, and lots and lots of arrows. One of my clients recently complained, "We don't have time for the activities because the CFO needs to present last quarter's financials." She had a dozen or so slides of screen shots from the budgeting software system, in teeny, tiny print, with values in the millions taken to the penny. In a recent ISPI PerformanceXpress blog post, John Messer marvels at our continued emphasis on content over performance in training. That somehow, by including more content, more information, more description, and more stuff, that more learning will occur. He says, "We act as if the business of training is finished when we have purveyed some content." All this, when the evidence shows overwhelmingly that this is a fool's errand. Only meaningful, relevant, and guided practice improves learning. Engaging in the content, relating it to prior knowledge, and providing real-world application result in learning that improves performance. We've known this for many years. Learners should work harder than the instructor. That's right. Think about that for a moment. If we are engaging learners in real, meaningful, relevant, real-world, and "I'm going to remember this forever" training, they will work hard. Really hard. What would you rather do: Fly with an airline pilot who trained IN the Boeing 787 Dreamliner; or, fly with a pilot who attended a presentation ABOUT flying in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner? I thought so. Well designed simulations provide exceptional practice opportunities. It gives learners a chance to learn, do, and reflect in a real-world way that has prima facie relevance to their work. Simulations provide learners a way to learn from the experience and from the simulation. It gives them a way to self-assess their mastery of declarative and procedural knowledge for performance. It's personal. It's relevant. It works! Of course, we can say these things about other practice strategies. Scrimmages, role plays, drills, mock-ups, and experimentation are also examples. It's through these learner-centered, performance driven approaches to learning that we get tremendous results from training. Yet, content-heavy presentations (a.k.a. Lectures) are used far more often than can be reasonably justified. Some say presentation is the best way to assure the content is "covered." Yet, whatever the presenter is "covering," your learners most assuredly are not also "covering" it. But do simulations, activities, and exercises actually teach? Of course they do, but with some important caveats. Their design must include learner feedback and real-world relevance. Simulations, coupled with a skilled facilitation or instruction, can unlock the learning process for learners. Effective facilitator-led debriefing, peer feedback, confirming and corrective feedback, rubrics, and other techniques are vital in providing learners essential guidance in learning how they're learning, and seeing its relevance. No, more content does not result in more learning. Instead, more practice, engagement, application, feedback, and relevance does. So, turn off the PowerPoint slides and turn on the simulator for real-world practice. It works.
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"What people think of as the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the question." - Jonas Salk Realizing the Question to Ask is the Payoff"Boy, these young people really know their stuff nowadays!" This is a quote I recently overheard at a youth leadership development program. The program is designed for college-aged students who aspire to make a real difference in their communities, for their employers, and for the State of Iowa. Learn more here. So what was so impressive? Their questions. Interestingly, none of them even pretended to know any answers. They asked questions. Lots of them. And, truth be told, we adults really like getting good questions. They challenge us to come up with good and reasonable answers, and they reflect positively on the questioner. Ask good questions! In my seminar with these same students, we delved deeply into business. We conducted a three year simulation in which teams of these students took on several executive roles. They struggled with cash flow, product development strategies, inventory management, forecasting, financial results, and the like. Working in teams, they came up with plans and tactics to maximize their results. They diagnosed problems in their businesses and then derived ways to improve the outcomes. Lots of questions came up. Lots. The students immediately put their insights to work in the real world. They listed questions they encountered in the simulation that are relevant to their mentors, their employers, and their sponsors. They practiced asking and researching them as well. All of this is based upon their understanding of business in general and their simulation experience in particular. Leaders need not have all the answers. They do need to know the questions. A great question is one that is relevant and compelling. It begs to be answered. It has immediate application to the issues at hand. Our students listed these questions that they viewed as "good":
Yes. Good questions. We all could do well with an improvement in our questioning. A good question comes from an insight, an understanding, or even a gut feeling that says, "this is worth asking." Try it. You'll be amazed at what you learn. "Eighty percent of success is showing up." Woody Allen Learners Really Like Learning this Way, and That's the PointOverheard in the break area . . . “You guys going to that financial presentation?” “I don’t know. I hate finance. It’s so boring.” “Yeah. I think I’d rather work.” “Yeah.” Recently, one of my clients was confronted with this attitude about his finance PowerPoint presentation. He presents a ½ day module on company performance for the new supervisor’s course. He’s done it for years. This time, about half of the planned group actually showed up. He was quite frustrated. But, after further reflection and collecting some data, we determined that it wasn’t WHAT he was teaching that caused the no-shows, but HOW he was teaching it. He started to feel a little better. We confuse this cause and effect all the time. “I’m not good at math.” Or “I am not an artist.” Or “Actuaries scare me.” We may be right. These statements could be correct; however, consider for a moment that perhaps we aren’t good at something because of how we were taught. Teaching does not equal learning. Teaching effectiveness results in learner engagement, motivation, and persistence. Here’s another thing to think about: Evidence suggests that college students follow their best professors to their undergraduate major. If they have a good professor, they’ll tend to stay in that field and discover their passion. So, my client discovered that if he used a different method of instruction, namely Celemi Apples & Oranges , his students would be pleasantly surprised. Guess what? Yep. They were. He got high marks and positive reaction from his students. He had fun teaching. And, he had many in-depth discussions that made the time pass quickly. And here’s the best part. After conducting Celemi Apples & Oranges the word got out. Students told one another that his finance presentation was fun, interesting, and worthwhile. Students signed up, and later, they showed up. Absenteeism went down, and learning went up. Several years ago, Dr. John DeJoy of Union Graduate College did his doctoral research on learner preference in topics related to business finance. His findings suggest that there is a connection between learner enjoyment of the learning methods and their actual learning performance. Yeah, they like it because it works. Anecdotally, I can count on these methods as winners. I know intuitively and through direct experience that my presentations, seminars, and workshops that include simulations, discussions, engagement, and relevance are better received. I can count on things going well every time. My learners are sometimes effusive in their praise of their learning experience, and the evidence we collect seems to support these opinions. Besides, it isn’t in my long-term personal interest to deliver services customers don’t like. Yeah, it works. We all need better understanding of business and business finance. Our stakeholders are depending on all of us to put resources where they’ll do the most good. Only after we ‘show up’ and learn will we stand a chance to harvesting that business value. Yeah. "The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made." Groucho Marx Some say profit is an opinion. They're right, and that's okay.The other day in one of my seminars I asked the participants to describe the goal of business. After some back and forth, I quoted Eli Goldratt, in "The Goal." He said "The goal of any business is to make as much money as possible for as long as possible." My students seem to agree. What is the indicator of "making money?" Profit. Let's discuss profit for a second. Yes, profits are what it's all about. It's the bottom line. It's money we made. Let's make some money! Well, not so fast. What is profit? Well, that depends on a lot of things, like GAAP rules, Statutory Accounting, IFRS, and so on. It depends on managerial and non-GAAP measures. It depends on tax law and your local jurisdictions. Also, a company may take a "one-time charge" or include "other comprehensive income." Finally, we may need to consider if we're looking at Gross Profit, Operating Profit, or Net Profit. When we consider these things, a novice might say "Wait a minute, mister! You're just cooking the books to get the numbers you like!" There are lots of examples of company fraud in financial reporting. That's not what I'm describing here. What I am saying is that there are lots of legal and legitimate ways to make the income statement look a lot better than it otherwise would. When financial and executive leaders build financial statements, they're following a lot of rules. They also have a great deal of discretion, as long as they disclose how and why they're accounting for things the way they are. "Wait a minute, mister! You mean to tell me that the black and white world of finance and accounting is not so black and white after all?" Well, yes. There is a lot more art than science in our financial statements. A lot more discretion by the CFO to express costs, revenues, gains, losses, assets, and liabilities in ways that make the company look the way the CFO wants the company to look. But before we indict an entire profession, keep in mind that these leaders are working from limited data. It's impossible to know exactly what everyone in the company is doing every day so they can allocate costs exactly where they belong. Suffice to say that the financial statements reflect reality, but they are not reality. A biased reflection nonetheless. What's all this mean to us? What are we to do? Well, that's where our business acumen comes in. You see, by learning the assumptions, biases, and rules for financial reporting, accounting, and decision making, we can better understand what that numbers mean and what we can do to improve them. That is, improve them through business improvements -- meaningful, sustainable, and valuable business performance improvement. That's the only way. Learn how the numbers are derived and your ability to interpret them will improve. "Wait a minute, mister! If profit is an opinion, I better ask more questions around the office!" Yes. Yes you should! “We cannot simply absorb other people’s knowledge, we must create our own." Klas Mellander Learners' Nods May Not Mean What You ThinkWe all want to see our learners nodding in agreement to the things we say. I certainly do. We also want them to smile, show agreement in their body language, and well, show us that we're right. We may be fooling ourselves. Their nods may really mean, "Okay, I see you want us to move on, so yeah, I'll nod in agreement." Funny thing, both kinds of nods look the same. Klas Mellander, the chief designer at Celemi wants to invent a special hat that learners would wear in his seminars. It would have a light on the front that goes red when learners nod and yet they do not understand, and goes green when they nod and truly understand. He even made a short video about this idea that's available here. Have a look at the graphic I've used for this post. What do you see? Would it help if I said, "It's a cow?" Keep looking. Once you see it, you'll likely vocalize your learning with an "Oh" or "Okay!" We make meaning from the dots and shapes. It's a natural thing. We do it all the time. When we finally do "see the cow" we have difficulty un-seeing it. Cool, huh? Yes, we are always looking for evidence that our learners have learned, and more importantly, can perform. It's well established in the literature that just because someone has learned something does not mean they can do something. Yet, learning is an essential step in the process. The light has to come on! The "ah-ha" needs to happen. The lesson needs to go from working memory to the more sustainable long-term memory. We need this in order for the learning to have a chance to be applied back on the job. And when real learning happens, your learners will try to apply their learning back on the job. It's natural. It's important. Your best people will persist with application until the work environment (boss, reward system, etc.) either goes along with them or snuffs them out. Either way, with real learning, learners will feel obligated to 'have a go" at applying it. We should engage learners in the content so you have lots of opportunities to observe it. The only way to observe, really, is to stop talking so much. Have your learners work through the content in a meaningful way. They'll connect the dots and create meaning. Have them show you. Once they show you, assess their learning and correct or confirm it. Provide simulation, application, feedback. Provide worked out examples of what you really mean, and what you don't. If we do more of this, we'll see only "green" nods in our seminars, and that is certainly a wonderful thing. "As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The person who grasps principles can successfully select methods. The person who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble." Focus Leadership Development on PerformanceLeadership performance, in a business context, ought to result business performance. I may be stating the obvious, but too often our leadership development programs miss the mark. They are discussions of leadership traits. They are exercises in feedback on characteristics. They are assessments of personal competencies. They are explorations of "know thyself." They provide feedback on style, characteristics, and behaviors. That's not enough. Sorry to say, but that is not enough. Yes, leadership development requires competency development, trait identification, and feedback from your peers and others. Yes, that's important. It's not enough though. What's missing? What else do we need? Performance. Oh. Yeah. That's what's missing. Recently, I partnered with an Talent Development team to build a Fortune 500 leadership development program. At first, we identified these prospective leaders' competency needs. We had a list of thirteen competencies. Thirteen!! Despite the cognitive research that suggests we can only hold about 4 things in short term memory, we wanted leaders to develop thirteen 'key' competencies. To what end? What competencies does the business need? Well, we didn't know. We realized we needed to find out. Fast. So, we re-calibrated the program to business performance. With a bit of legwork, we found the company priorities included: growth, innovative products, operational execution, and talent. The firm was making promises to Wall Street and others around these few themes. Once we had business results clearly defined, we found that we could narrow to just 4 or 5 competencies, rather than thirteen. Whew! These four or five things could logically and compellingly be tied to business performance. We also could engage executives and other business stakeholders in leader development in a much more precise way. That's the one-two punch that makes leadership development efforts return so much value to their companies. With a blended perspective on competency AND performance, we can really make a big difference. Leadership is happening in a business after all, and this fact should influence leadership development. "Individual commitment to a group effort, that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." Vince Lombardi It's Difficult to Learn Business by Reading Financial StatementsThere are three universal score sheets in business -- The Balance Sheet, the Income Statement, and the Statement of Cash Flows. All companies have them. They are used to determine how well the company is performing. That's a good thing. Too often, professionals who mean well begin teaching business and finance by showing people these statements. They'll direct people to the annual reports online, or to a company's 10-K in order to teach them about the business. From there, they'll explain each line item in depth, with figures in the millions taken to the penny. Sigh. That's not a good thing. Using this approach is not much different than teaching soccer starting with lessons in reading a scoreboard. Imagine: A dad coach brings his U8 team to their first practice, and brings the kids together around the scoreboard to train them how to play soccer. Right. That makes no sense. So, when we try to teach business by starting with those financial statements, we're doing the same thing. We should engage people in playing a position on the pitch (to continue with the soccer analogy). We need simulations, case studies, engaging discussions, and scenarios to show how businesses work. Our learners should work harder than the instructor. Companies are a complex mix of people, circumstances, operations, and so forth. In order to see how it all works, and how to play the game, we need to play the game. Then, and only then, do the scoreboards make sense. We can more easily fill in the white space between the scores we earned and what we did to get them. Let's focus on engaging in business learning to build business acumen. Let's save the scoreboard watching for some other time. When it's time to learn the business, the best thing is to learn by doing. "What we learn to do, we learn by doing." Aristotle Business Simulations and Merrill's First PrinciplesThere's been a bit of a quality renaissance in learning, instructional design, and performance improvement lately. This rebirth seems to be focusing on research-based and evidence-based practices. I couldn't be happier. I mean, for too long our field has been dominated by bogus claims and scurrilous operators. We need stuff that actually works. Business simulations work really, really well. I mean, they are extraordinary. They touch people in so many levels. Well designed simulations reach people at a personal level, at a job level, at a company level, and at a society level. They gain so many insights and skills. They build procedural knowledge (how to go about making a decision in business) and declarative knowledge (how it all fits together and how our company can compete). You can tell I'm really passionate about this. At least, I hope you can! A few years ago, M. David Merrill began researching and compiling the essentials in current instructional design theory, practice, and results. He has named these findings "First Principles" since his work is preliminary. Nonetheless, the article and the findings are very helpful. They also show us why business simulations work really, really well. The First Principles are: a) Learning is promoted when learners are engaged in solving real-world problems. (b) learning is promoted when existing knowledge is activated as a foundation for new knowledge. (c) Learning is promoted when new knowledge is demonstrated to the learner. (d) Learning is promoted when new knowledge is applied by the learner. (e) Learning is promoted when new knowledge is integrated into the learner’s world. Our business simulations, and their professional facilitation, capitalize on these principles. We work to provide 'worked out ' examples for learners to activate their existing knowledge. We demonstrate the new knowledge in the learning experience, and the learners must apply their new knowledge in many and varied ways. Finally, we make the simulations relevant and realistic, thereby requiring the new knowledge to be integrated into the learner's world. Yes, business simulations work really, really well. Now we have some insight into why. "An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." Neils Bohr We're Not Academics, But . . .After many years in this profession, I've seen "experts" make claims, counter claims, marketing pitches and cite research. As a practitioner, it's difficult to know what is really true and effective, and what is not. I've fallen victim to it over the years, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. What's a practitioner like me (or you) to do? When I see claims like "generational difference matter" or "adapt to personal/learning styles" or "70-20-10", I cringe. When I see references that cite other references that cite back to the original untested claim passed off as research I roll my eyes. When I see well-meaning practitioners claim that online learning is somehow "better" and that we can influence performance by putting learning on a tablet, I pause. As a designer shows me 'drag and drop' is the level of engagement that promotes learning transfer and performance, I shudder. Gamification is where its at! Flip the Classroom! Know your style! Sigh. Some of this stuff can make us think we're on sold footing, and that we're making good progress, yet the research may provide us evidence to the contrary. What are we to do? While it's fun to poke holes in other people's claims, it's not all that helpful. We really need to focus on what works, and what doesn't. And, what works may not be all that trendy or widely done. What works? Guided practice. Performance-based learning. Expertise requires lots of deliberate practice. Integrate learning, coaching, and feedback into performance on the job. Front-end analysis on procedural and declarative knowledge essential for performance. Well-designed instructional methods matter, regardless of the media we choose. Prior knowledge may cause us to get stuck, and we need to work to get unstuck. Sure, I'm not an academic, but I've been accused of playing one from time to time. I believe it's in our interest to focus on what works in our field, and cut out the stuff that undermines that goal. Open a book. Read a real study on performance. Sift through the bias. Learn some statistical methods. Improve your results. "A balanced diet may be the best medicine. I was eating too much good eats. But people consider that part of your job, you know? Eat. And I do!" Alton Brown Applying Principles of HPT: Eat This, Not ThatFrequently, client engagements make it difficult to apply principles of human performance technology (HPT). Or, perhaps more accurately, it's difficult to apply ALL of the principles in every project. Some may find that discouraging, others may think that's disappointing, and others may well just give up. As a Certified Performance Technologist (CPT), I am committed to living the values and standards that the credential represents. I also am client-centered, and I work to add value wherever I can. What's the approach I take? "Eat this, not that." A good friend and colleague Matt Donovan suggested this thought to me the other day. I agree. "Eat This, Not That" is a series of diet and lifestyle self-help books by David Zinczenko. The main premise is, "Go ahead and eat that, but just make a good choice when doing so." If you want to eat at Applebee's, then get this menu item. If you want cookies, then eat this kind. You get the idea. So, as we approach performance projects, my clients and I work to apply better practice in this way. If you want leadership training, then let's engage senior management as faculty and to define results. If you want finance for the non-financial seminars then we'll partner with your CFO to get the content right. If you want to improve work group performance, then we'll do performance analysis, intervention selection and design, intervention implementation, and intervention evaluation. You get the idea. With this idea in mind, I partner with my clients to apply business acumen and other learning tools to achieve superior results. That's what we do. You get the idea. |
"The views expressed here do not necessarily represent the unanimous views of all parts of my mind."
- Malcolm McMahon AuthorDan Topf, CPT is Sr. Vice President at MDI, Inc. Business Learning by Dan: Primers for TrainersPDF versions of short articles on how to integrate business acumen into all training and development:
The Income Statement Cash Flow Price and Volume The Circulation of Capital The Cost of Capital Market Differentiation Industry-specific: Financial Services -- Life Insurance/Annuities Retailing Archives
January 2021
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