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ISPI Bookstore:
Holiday Discount for All Shoppers
Order today and save! The holiday season is just around the corner. Make sure everyone on your list receives the latest books in the field of performance improvement. For a limited time, professionals in the field (non-members) receive the 15% ISPI member discount on every purchase! When checking out, enter code: ISPIX. Click here to browse our online bookstore. This discount is good on all Wiley books purchased through the ISPI bookstore, so you can also shop for the latest Betty Crocker cookbook or Frommer’s travel guide or Holiday Decorating for Dummies.
A Wave of Change in Soft-Skills e-Learning
Over my career, I have watched e-learning grow and adapt with the changing technical landscape. Looking back at work that I did in the mid 1990s, it is amazing to think how much things have improved. I have been both a developer and a corporate buyer of e-learning, which has given me the opportunity to view some of the work that best-in-class e-learning companies have been creating over the years.
Earlier this year, I did an extensive scan of the e-learning market to find soft-skills courses and resources to purchase and provide to the customers of our performance management system. As I did this, I began to notice a new wave of changes that reflect not only our changing technical landscape, but also the changing expectations of e-learning users. These changes are not just superficial—they go to the heart of how e-learning is being designed and delivered. Below, I have summarized what I saw to be the top five ways in which things are changing.
Look and Feel Are Everything
A good interface is no longer just nice to have; it is a requirement. A dull interface will turn off customers, even if the content is from highly respected experts and educational institutions. Web surfing is a normal part of life for most people, and e-learning users are more sophisticated in their knowledge of good interface design. Many of the e-learning providers are realizing this and working hard to give their dated courses a new look and feel.
Video–Video–Video
The use of video on the web has truly exploded in the past year, thanks to widespread availability of high-bandwidth connections. As a result, e-learning providers are quickly moving to embrace this medium as a delivery option that was considered unreasonable in the recent past. This is a terrific development for soft-skills e-learning. If you are trying to learn how to effectively confront a difficult coworker, it helps greatly to be able to watch a video of someone doing it well.
Usefulness Trumps Instructional Soundness
I write this hesitantly, hoping that my degree in adult instruction will not be rescinded. However, this theme was very apparent as I reviewed various e-learning programs. The end users of e-learning rarely ask if the course has clearly written behavioral objectives; they want to know if the material is useful. Particularly on soft-skills topics, a number of providers are creating short video overviews that provide quick, practical steps and advice. There are no objectives, no quizzes, no exercises—just some straightforward, useful ideas. If you give busy managers the choice, they would rather review some quick tips they could apply right away instead of a lengthy course. This brings me to my next point…
If Course Length Is Measured in Hours, It Is Too Long
Some of the first e-learning courses I worked on 10 years ago were designed to take about 12-16 hours to complete, and we thought that made good sense. Today, many companies are re-working their soft-skills e-learning to last no longer than one hour. Some are even in the 10-minute time range, and they are done very effectively. This shift takes e-learning to a new level, to where it can be truly merged with work. If someone knows he or she will be going into a tense meeting later that day, that person can easily take 20 minutes to get some immediate advice and ideas on conflict resolution from a short e-learning module. In the past, we encouraged users to treat e-learning like traditional classroom training and block off hours on their calendars to go through a course. With e-learning that is “bite-sized,” that is no longer necessary.
More Is Not Better
As e-learning has matured over the years, some providers have been able to amass thousands and thousands of courses in their library. It is natural to see an appeal in having so many options if you are a corporate training manager. However, end users do not want to have to choose from 10 different courses on how to manage meetings effectively—they just want the one course that is the best. It takes more time up front to pick the best courses from the high-volume providers, but a short list of offerings helps everyone be more focused.
It is encouraging to see these changes, because I think they are moving e-learning in the right direction—providing solutions that are practical, useful, and engaging. I am looking forward to watching how e-learning will continue to change in the coming years to continue to support performance improvement and keep up with new technologies.
Shonn Colbrunn is the director of learning solutions for ThinkWise, Inc., a provider of on-demand organizational effectiveness and performance management solutions. Prior to joining ThinkWise, he worked at Visteon Corporation as an organization and leadership development specialist, and at MSX International and Andersen Consulting as an instructional design consultant. Shonn earned a BA in psychology from Hope College, and an MA in adult instruction and performance technology from the University of Michigan–Dearborn. He may be reached at scolbrunn@thinkwiseinc.com.
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TrendSpotters:
What We Have Learned
Welcome to the final TrendSpotters of 2007. As we close out the year, we reflect upon our wonderful guests of the past 12 months who so graciously offered their models and tools in this space. Thank you all for carrying forward ISPI’s tradition of sharing work with colleagues by contributing to the TrendSpotters Open Toolkit.
We feel privileged to talk with ISPIers who enthusiastically explain their work and suggest ways that others can get started using their models and tools. We have road-tested a few ourselves and can report positive results. As we consider what we have learned from our ’07 TrendSpotters, we feel a column coming on…
Others introduced tools and models particularly suited for use at one of the three organizational levels—work, worker, workplace—and provided guidance for adaptation to the other levels. There is an increasing awareness of the value of integration among the levels in easing the way through a major organizational change.
In the same vein, leadership is increasingly interested in an evidence-based approach to proposed solutions and expects performance improvement practitioners to gather and present data in support of organizational goals. Although we did not hear that organizations are now actively asking for a full analysis before green-lighting a performance improvement project (maybe next year), we understand that the appreciation for the value of analysis is growing as performance improvement specialists continue to educate their clients.
Here at TrendSpotters Central, we have been known to rant about how challenged many of us are when it comes to implementing solutions. Historically, we pointed to failure to gain buy-in from all affected parties, lack of management support, and so forth. We now see that while these actions are important, the emphasis, as in much of the work we do, should be on the front end: in preparation at all three organizational levels, in tying plans together horizontally, and in weaving the solution into the fabric of the organization so that it sticks.
We were struck, several times, by the apparent simplicity of a number of the featured models. As we talked with their creators and learned more, we were reminded that appearances can be deceptive, and that people are drawn to mnemonics, grids, lists, and other accessible formats that they can easily remember and use. There is, after all, a reason that Tom Gilbert’s Behavior Engineering Model has been referred to, used, updated, expanded, and otherwise adapted by so many of us over so many years.
| R | Focus on Results |
| S | Take a System view |
| V | Add Value |
| P | Establish Partnerships |
This proved to be a useful recap for our guests as it provided a direct tie to the core of HPT and enabled them to add insights and helpful examples for using their model or tool. Whenever we were unfamiliar with a model or tool, tying the principles to it helped us clarify the benefits for ourselves.
Meanwhile, enjoy the holidays and we’ll see you in the New Year!
Using Balanced Scorecard to Support a Business Process Architecture
Any organization that is serious about doing process work and that advances beyond CMM level 2 will necessarily spend quite a bit of time thinking about how to align process measures with strategic goals and organizational performance measures. In a similar way, any organization working to implement a process governance system will need to consider how to organize performance evaluations for process managers or sponsors. There are, of course, many different ways to approach either of these problems, and any of several approaches would serve. Many organizations, however, already have Balanced Scorecard initiatives and, for those organizations, combining process performance alignment with their balanced scorecard program would seem an obvious solution.
Some who have tired combining process performance alignment with the Kaplan and Norton approach to Strategy Mapping have been disappointed. In our opinion, Strategy Mapping doesn't fit comfortably with a process-centric approach to measurement. Strategy Mapping proposes a hierarchy that includes processes, but processes are not central to the approach and the approach lacks a clear way of aligning specific processes to specific strategic goals. In our experience, the distinction that Kaplan and Norton make between Customer measures and Internal or Process measures is a major source of confusion.
Further, our experience suggests that using the basic Balanced Scorecard concepts to build an independent process performance measurement system is easier. Consider the basic Balanced Scorecard. It suggests that companies should consider additional measures beyond financial measures. Most companies that have Balanced Scorecard initiatives have created a Strategy level Scorecard with Financial, Customer, Process and Learning and Growth Goals/Measures. In a similar way, most companies have created a hierarchy of scorecards, including Division or Department scorecards and scorecards for specific functional units and managers. Logically, one should be able to track the goals and measures from the Organization’s Scorecard to the Functional Unit's Scorecard and on down to the specific activity. At each level, the same scorecard that describes the goals and measures for the unit can also serve to describe how the manager responsible for that unit is to be evaluated. Most organizations that have adopted the Balanced Scorecard approach have put this overall alignment structure in place (See Figure 1).
Figure 1. The Beginnings of an Aligned Balanced Scorecard System.
Few companies abandon their functional structure when they decide to put a greater emphasis on process. As organizations become more serious about process, they usually begin to shift to a matrix organization structure. They still have the functional silos and the functional managers. They add managers, however, who are responsible for business processes that cut across functional boundaries. In Figure 2, we show such an organization. The Sales Supervisor in Figure 2 is responsible for a sales activity that is part of the Widget Value Chain. Thus, the Sales Supervisor wears two hats. He or she is responsible to the VP of Sales for meeting sales goals and is also responsible to the SVP of the Widget Value Chain for meeting Widget Value Chain goals.
Figure 2. An Organization with Both Functional and Process Managers.
Any company that is serious about process work will realize that they need a performance measurement and governance system that evaluates the Sales Supervisor in two ways. In effect, a company can create two, independent Scorecard hierarchies. One subdivides Corporate Goals and Measures and assigns them to functional units and functional managers. The other subdivides Corporate Goals and Measures and assigns them to Value Chains and Processes and the managers responsible (See Figure 3). In many cases, as you might expect, some goals and measures in the cells of the Corporate card are more heavily represented in the functional hierarchy, while the measures in other cells tend to align primarily through the process hierarchy.
Obviously, this means that the managers at the bottom of the hierarchy end up with two (or more) sets of Customer and Process goals and measures, but it reflects the reality of what the organization is trying to achieve. It also establishes a clear way of evaluating the performance of the process managers, independent of the functional managers. Similarly, it makes for a more complex Corporate Scorecard, or at least for some awfully serious discussions at the corporate level about who is really responsible for what and how different senior managers will be evaluated. But, again, any organization must face these issues if it is really trying to become more process centric and hopes to align and manage value chains and processes that cross functional boundaries.
Figure 3. A Balanced Scorecard System that is Aligned for Both Process
and Functional Goals and Measures.
We have seen large organizations struggle with measuring process performance and evaluating the performance of process managers. On the other hand, organizations that already have Balanced Scorecard systems are well prepared to solve these problems by simply extending their Balanced Scorecard systems to support a matrix model that subdivides corporate goals into two or more streams and evaluates each independently. We recommend that organizations that already have a Balanced Scorecard system use it when they develop a Business Process Architecture. With a little luck and some flexibility on the part of the Balanced Scorecard folks, it can simplify and speed the transition from a functional to a more process-centric organization.
Note: Reprint from Business Process Trends Advisor, Volume 5, Number 17, October 16, 2007. BPTrends is a free website: www.bptrends.com. This article comes from one of the free bi-monthly advisors sent to BPTrends’ members.
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Candidates Announced for ISPI’s
2008-2010 Board Election
The Nominations Committee has announced the slate of candidates for the upcoming 2008-2010 Board of Directors election. This year the membership will elect a President-elect (3-year term, President-elect, President, and Immediate Past President), one internationally-based Director (2-year term), and two Directors (2-year term). They will join the President, two continuing Board members, and the non-voting Immediate Past President and Executive Director who make up the nine-member Board.
The slate was developed by the Nominations Committee, which received nominations from the membership and determined the willingness of those nominated to run. All the candidates meet the qualifications and criteria of the positions. For further information on the qualifications and criteria, click here. By early-January, the Candidate Statement from each nominee will be posted on the ISPI website.
As a reminder, ISPI holds its annual Board election electronically, and active members vote for candidates to the Board online. Since your link to the “voting booth” is sent via email in late-January, it is important for ISPI to have your most current email address. To review your record, visit www.ispi.org and click on Login. Or, you may call us at 301-587-8570.
The candidates for the 2008-2010 Board of Directors, listed in random order, are:
For President-elect:
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For Director (internationally-based):
For Director:
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Now that the slate of candidates is complete, ISPI would like to thank the members of this year’s Nominations Committee for their hard work. The committee consisted of Eileen Banchoff (Chair), Carol Haig, Roger Kaufman, Marilyn Spatz, Monique Mueller, Sharon Gander, and Sylvia Lee.
In addition, ISPI would like to commend all the nominees for their willingness to serve the Society. The committee received more well-qualified nominees than the final ballot required and choosing candidates was difficult, just ask any of the committee members!
You Too Can Be a Barrel Presenter
Cracker and Bagel Barrels are a long-standing tradition at the annual ISPI conference. For 2008 we have adapted the event name to reflect the personality of our host city, New York! The “Apple Barrel” will feature presenters running simultaneous table discussions—just like past Barrel sessions. The Apple Barrel is designed to be a fun, fast-paced event to introduce attendees to several topics in quick vignettes. Each table host delivers three 20-minute presentations to an average of 5 to 15 participants. As customary between presentations, attendees enjoy bagels, fruit, and coffee and a 10-minute break before selecting their next topic.
Have you thought about being a Barrel presenter? If so, the following suggestions are based on recommendations collected from previous Cracker and Bagel Barrel presenters and participants, and were designed to provide some useful ideas on how to prepare for a presenter session.
Decide on the Presentation Strategy for Your Session
Consider your topic and presentation strategy. Remember, you will have 20 minutes per session with 5 to 15 people of varying personalities and capabilities interacting in a highly informal setting. Consideration should also be given to your personal style and the environmental constraints.
Develop a Handout
A one-page handout probably works best, but if you expect participants to use the handout during the session, keep the handouts simple and to the point.
Prepare for the Opening
What will you say and do when the starting bell goes off? Choose an opening with which you are most comfortable.
Open the Session
Set the stage for a successful session by introducing yourself and your topic.
Process Overview
Briefly describe how you will conduct the session: What is your role? What are the participants’ roles? How should they act to make the session most effective or enjoyable?
Manage the Session
Barrel sessions can be challenging to run because of the short timeline and the social atmosphere. But remember that your participants are at your table voluntarily and, therefore, have more than a casual interest in your topic, so they will probably be cooperative and follow your lead.
Close the Session
Don’t forget to keep track of the time so that you allow for a brief closing statement just before the closing bell rings.
Note: Some of the material used in this article came from “Power Barreling,” which was originally drafted by Jay Alden and updated by Deborah Stone and Michelle Halprin in February 2002.
Business Alignment for Results: Five Guiding Tenets for Success
When it comes to aligning business strategy to people strategy, there is no shortage of advice. Books, articles, seminars, workshops, and courseware thoroughly cover this domain, offering a variety of strategies intended to drive business results. Unfortunately, these strategies are often based on a bewildering array of models and prescriptive guidance around their implementation.
At the risk of adding one more voice to the crowd, I have another perspective: the “People Strategy.” This approach focuses on shaping and developing an organization’s human capital to align with business strategy at a deep and structural level.
The People Strategy, like other strategies, is intended to drive business success. Whereas most organizations measure success in terms of annual achievements, the People Strategy defines success as the seamless execution that results from a workforce in tune with its business strategy. A business with a successful people strategy achieves its goals holistically over a multiyear horizon.
Coordinated, successful execution is critical, yet increasingly challenging, as organizations become progressively more global, with widely dispersed teams and individuals. People strategy is becoming the critical component that enables an organization to reach its full potential.
The People Strategy: Tenets
The People Strategy extends to an actionable and specific organizational model. At Microsoft, we have developed, evolved, and implemented this model, specifically focusing on our engineering and IT workforce and incorporating five guiding tenets.
Tenet #1: Employee Experience is Priority 1
The most difficult component of the “system” is people. While processes and tools are definable and discrete, people are an experiential, dynamic component. Therefore, understanding and nurturing the people component must be your top priority. Your organization must seek to provide a holistic experience optimized for the broad array of employees—not just for senior managers. This will ensure that employees are integrated into the business strategy.
Integrating people into the system is difficult to do well. It is tempting and pragmatic to engineer your organization’s processes and solutions based solely upon the scorecard(s) or metrics to which you are trying to manage, and then to assume that employees will fit into the resultant system. But the employee experience should not be optimized only on these dimensions. To optimize holistically, you need the best data and information that your organizational culture can provide—including information about the skills, aptitudes, and knowledge that currently exist in your workforce, as well as what capabilities are lacking and need to be developed.
Gathering and acting upon this sort of information involves participation from your workforce. Integrating employee participation into business strategy is the ultimate level of empowerment, one that is being demanded by our employees globally.
Tenet #2: Hold the Leadership Accountable
Holding leadership accountable is one of the most common tenets for any business strategy, yet we struggle with it the most because it works only if your governance models are set up for success. Often, they are not.
Here’s why: Common doctrine says that having the C-suite or most senior individuals in the company sponsoring your work breeds success. This is not the case in all organizations. Holding the leadership accountable is not so much about individuals as much as it is an indicator of the function that owns and drives the People Strategy. In fact, this function may reside—not in your company’s C-suite—but rather in the roles that support the C-suite.
This group is so important that I usually identify them as “your board of directors.” This group is senior enough to be able to decipher and develop execution plans around the goals that your company’s C-suite sets for the organization, and to understand the actual competencies and capabilities of the workforce. In my experience, these are typically at the general manager or director level—the leadership group just above line management. The role of this group is not only to provide direction and guidance, but also to help derive and sign off the deliverables within the People Strategy. (I know that some traditional HR practitioners are now cringing; but I intentionally used the words “derive” and “sign off” to mean that this group is engaged in deriving and signing off deliverables.)
Tenet #3: Balance the System
Understanding the components of your organization can help you maintain the balance necessary for success. It is a simple equation: People + Processes + Tools = The System.
But, understanding precisely how to characterize each, and knowing how to balance them, is tricky. I remember a high-school algebra teacher who explained the value of what we were learning by telling us that the world is a set of math problems and that therefore we needed math skills to succeed in life. True enough, but what he did not say was that the math problems we encounter in life are ones for which we never completely understand the variables and for which there is no single “right” solution.
So, we do our best to find the balance. This is difficult to do, but if you maintain a systems perspective when identifying gaps between your people strategy and your business strategy, you will succeed. To recap:
| The System | = |
People (how you hire, manage, reward, and grow them) |
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+ |
Processes (what you direct your people to do) |
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+ |
Tools (the things that enable people to successfully perform to your processes) |
Tenet #4: Choose and Follow a Model
At Microsoft, we have a particular culture and methodologies that are built around our situation and mission to deliver software, services, and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. We look to performance technology to help our engineering workforce achieve its full potential. We utilize the performance matrix theory of Thomas Gilbert and the methodological extensions that Carl Binder’s Six Boxes™ build upon it. But, what works for Microsoft may not be appropriate for your organization. Therefore, I do not promote our particular models or methodologies. However, it is important to identify and adopt some kind of a model that is appropriate for your organization.
Tenet #5: Simplicity
“Boiling the ocean” is a cliché that serves as a useful reminder that it is possible to try to do too much. Do not over-engineer your system, and do take a long-term view of how much your organization can change. Understand what your workforce is capable of absorbing and when. Think of the People Strategy as a dialog about your business—one that progresses over time. Think through the cadence that is appropriate for your situation, and think ahead to a multiyear release plan.
Bringing It All Together
These five tenets form integral components of a model that aligns people to strategy. An organization with a “board of directors” that correlates the company’s business strategies to the behaviors it needs from its workforce, plus a systems view that promotes the employee experience as top priority, working within a consistent set of methodologies, and that is as simple as it can be, is an organization with an enlightened workforce and leadership. This enlightenment ensures efficiency and effectiveness and, most of all, grows organizational capability and competency. In other words, it aligns your company’s resources to achieve results and to reach its full potential.
As General Manager of Engineering Excellence at Microsoft, Cedric T. Coco drives engineering standards and practices used to create Microsoft products and provide customers with consistent, high-quality software and services. In this role, he is responsible for strategy and direction around people development, best practices, tools, and processes for the engineering and IT workforce at Microsoft. Coco holds a BS in engineering and an MBA and has served on the boards of several e-learning ventures, as well as on the editorial advisory boards for Brandon Hall Research, CLO Magazine, and Training Magazine.
San Diego: Sun, Fun, and ISPI
ISPI, along with Geary Rummler, Carl Binder, Donald Tosti, and Margo Murray, will be coming to Westin Horton Plaza San Diego, February 12-15, 2008, for our Professional Workshop Series. Be the next one in your organization to experience this unique, two-day, peer-to-peer professional development opportunity led by experts in the field of performance improvement.Before “lean”, Six Sigma, knowledge management, or one-minute cures, our presenters were breaking new ground in the principles and practices of performance technology. Participants will work with proven tools and techniques and learn new approaches to enhance value for both the organization and the client.
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Geary Rummler’s Introduction to Serious Performance Consulting will take you beyond job-level performance improvement for individual workers to an exploration of the process and organizational levels of performance improvement where HPT practitioners can make a lasting contribution to their organizations. |
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Margo Murray’s Managing Mentoring Processes for Measured Results will provide guidelines and practice in the front-end strategies, needs/readiness assessment, and back end evaluation, and continuous improvement, to create sustainable mentoring processes. |
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No matter what your role in any organization, Carl Binder’s Six Boxes™ Performance Improvement and Introduction to FluencyBuilding™—a combination of practical, results-driven methodologies—will give you new perspectives, insights, research-based tools, and quick start methods for immediate application. |
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Donald Tosti’s Organizational Performance: Focus on Results will draw on the years of research and development within HPT to introduce a common framework which facilitates the understanding of the relationships between HPT and virtually all other forms of organizational consulting. |
These workshops are limited in size to ensure participants receive individual attention from presenters and quality time to interact with other attendees. Upon completion of the program, you will receive a Certificate of Completion. In addition, you can earn up to 12 CPT points toward re-certification. For more information, visit www.ispi.org/ProSeries.
CPT News from Around the World
Mr. Roland Isnor, CPT, was presented the prestigious Swaringen Award for outstanding mentorship in Human Performance Technology (HPT) at the Coast Guard’s 7th Annual HPT workshop in Williamsburg, VA, September 12.
The Swaringen Award was established in honor of Charles E. Swaringen, the advisor to the commanding officer, Aviation Technical Training Center in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, before cancer took his life in 1987. He is remembered as one of the Coast Guard’s first true performance technologists. He conducted experiments with innovative training applications, and looked for performance deficiencies attributable to factors other than lack of skills and knowledge. He also developed training and interventions that resulted in graduates who were confident and capable of performing their jobs to the fullest potential. Perhaps what he did best, though, was to develop people; he was an extraordinary mentor.
Mr. Isnor was praised in his award submittal package as having, “…an unmatched passion and hunger for applying the discipline of HPT to Coast Guard missions.” One of his mentees wrote, “At first I thought he was just another zealot that used big words. I came to understand that his true goal is to inspire, educate, and grow passion for learning in others. I’ve never had a conversation with Roland that didn’t cause me to consider another point of view. Not once.”
His devotion to mentoring and developing HPT practitioners were specifically lauded.
“…Roland gives where it hurts the most; he gives his time. I have seen him take 30 minutes to talk about HPT with folks even when he knew he would be working until midnight to meet a deadline. Simply put, people always seem to come first with him.”
Each of the personal attestations in his award package ended with great praise for the impact that he had on people.
“…I am happy to say that the biggest influence on me as a Human Performance Analyst has been Mr. Roland Isnor.”
“He is my personal inspiration of what it means to be an HPT professional, a mentor, teacher and guide.”
“I know very few people who donate so much of their time, energy, and are as a passionate to the Human Performance Technology industry as Mr. Isnor. I am witness to the professional influence and respect he commands from seniors, peers and subordinates alike in the field of HPT.”
Congratulations, Mr. Isnor!
Your Story
If you have a story to tell that you think others would value, send it to judy@ispi.org.
Bright Lights, Big City, ISPI: Join Us in NYC for
The Performance Improvement Conference
The International Society for Performance Improvement is proud to bring you The Performance Improvement Conference, April 5-8, 2008, in New York City. The conference theme, Enhancing Knowledge, Know-How, & Results, reflects how we put our knowledge to work, and increase our ability to accomplish valued results.
Why should YOU attend The Performance Improvement Conference?
The Performance Improvement Conference begins with a premier line-up of half-, one-, and two-day workshops (April 4 & 5), along with two three-day HPT Institutes (April 3-5). The conference expands on Sunday, April 6, into three days of nearly 150 educational sessions and forums. As an attendee, you will enjoy many opportunities to learn from current and future leaders in the field of performance improvement from around the world.
You may download the conference brochure and see for yourself all the opportunities available to enhance your knowledge, know-how, and results by attending The Performance Improvement Conference!
Reserve
Your Sleeping Room Now
ISPI’s Special Hotel Rate at the New
York Marriott Marquis Times Square is one of the hottest in the city. Reserve your room today
while space is available: $242 Single/Double and $271 Triple. The hotel is
within walking distance of the Broadway theater district, Fifth Avenue/Madison
Avenue shopping, Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller Center and the NBC Studios,
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and Central Park. Also nearby, you will find Carnegie
Hall, Lincoln Center, the United Nations, and the Empire State Building.
Attention
2007 Conference Attendee
If you
attended ISPI’s Annual Conference in San Francisco earlier this year, you could come to
NYC for as low as $125. Call ISPI for details: 301.587.8570.
For more information, visit www.ispi.org/AC2008, or register today.
High Performance Marketing:
How HPT Consultants Stay In Touch
This article is written primarily for external performance consultants. However, internal performance consultants can also benefit from the suggestions presented. Most performance consultants are great at what they do. Yet, if they have one skill deficiency, it is in marketing their performance consulting services. And that’s fine. We are not all experts at everything. Here are simple, yet effective ideas to help you develop what I call a “Stay in Touch Marketing Program.”
Card Programs
Newsletters
Telephone
Letters
Personal Visit
These are all simple marketing techniques that really work. They are relatively inexpensive yet highly effective. Plus, they show people you care about them and are interested in them. Remember people do not care how much you know until they know how much you care. So, stay in touch and your marketing will not be that tough.
P.S. I have coached consultants in a variety of fields and helped them build successful practices just by using these techniques. They will and do work.
Richard Gerson, CPT, PhD, is president of Gerson Goodson Inc., a performance consulting firm located in Clearwater, Florida. He is the author of 22 books, with six books on marketing, sales, and customer service, along with several other books on performance management and performance consulting. He may be reached at richard.gerson@richgerson.com.
Project Proven Tools and Techniques for ISD:
Tips for Recruiting and Working with a Powerful ISD Project Steering Team
The final topic in this 12-part series is Tips for Recruiting and Working with a Powerful ISD Project Steering Team.
Establishing a formal project steering team (PST) ensures that key stakeholders “buy in” to the project plan politically, that it makes business sense, and that the outputs and planned tasks will be supported during the project.
The Project Steering Team
The PST is typically responsible for “owning” the project and:
The Project Steering Team Chairperson
In general, the PST chairperson is the logical owner of the project, the person with responsibility and accountability for making improvement happen.
Early in the project, this person provides key input for the development of the project plan. The PST chairperson also helps recruit other individuals that he or she thinks may be necessary to involve in the project.
Why would any potential PST member want to participate? And first, why would the ISD project manager want such oversight and control over his or her efforts?
The PST WIIFM
The ISD project manager’s WIIFM—the “what’s in it for me”—includes:
The PST’s WIFFM potentially includes:
Recruiting the PST
In selecting candidates for the project steering team, the general rule is to determine who might come forward sometime during the project or its later implementation and question or take exception to what is happening.
Better to have invited them in on day one to have their say and attempt to influence the PST. If a project hits close to their home, candidates who are true stakeholders might be so intrigued by the approach and structure of the planned effort that they might be willing to participate—if they see a return for their investment.
How many members are on a PST? The fewer members, the faster things may move. The more members, the less likelihood any one individual can negatively influence the project. It is a balancing act.
Summary
Establishing a formal project steering team ensures that key stakeholders buy into the project plan and will support your efforts as dictated by the needs of the business.
Series Close
This concludes our 12-part series on ISD. I hope you have benefited and have adopted and/or adapted the ideas presented here for your situation!
Note: An expanded version of this article and the prior articles of this series may be found in the documents area of the IS ProComm. Click here to visit the website.
Guy W. Wallace, CPT, has been an external ISD and HPT consultant since 1982, is the president of EPPIC Inc., has been a member of ISPI since 1979, is a past president of ISPI, is the author of lean-ISD, and is a recipient of an ISPI 2002 Award of Excellence. He may be reached via guy.wallace@eppic.biz, and related resources may be obtained at his website, www.eppic.biz, including his three most recent books available as free PDFs: lean-ISD, T&D Systems View, and new in 2007, Management Areas of Performance.
Calling All Creative Instructional Systems Designers!
The Center for Effective Leadership (CFEL) is a newly developed company whose mission is to cultivate superior leadership among existing and rising leaders in health care and health-care related fields. To accomplish its mission, CFEL provides its clients with instructional training, opportunities for on-the-job or simulated action learning, leadership coaching, and personal life coaching.
Under this Request for Proposals (RFP), CFEL is inviting all independent and organizational instructional systems designers to help advance the goals of the organization by providing consulting services in the design, operational development, and evaluation of the instructional training component of its Program. More specifically, CFEL is requesting that consultants perform the following: 1) Test and (as necessary) finish developing CFEL’s assumptions about the qualities, practices and outcomes associated with superior leadership in the health care and health care related fields; 2) Design the curriculum, operational infrastructure, and evaluation plan for CFEL’s instructional training; and 3) Assist with the recruitment, selection and training of an instructional training director who will most successfully and effectively implement and operate the instructional training curriculum.
This RFP requires that all aspects of the consulting project be completed between February 4 and August 15, 2008. Contracts will be accepted up through January 4, 2008, and a contract will be awarded by January 25, 2008. Additional details for this opportunity may be viewed on ISPI’s website in the job bank tab at www.ispi.org. For the full details of this RFP or for any additional information, contact A. Dawn Williams, Business Development Consultant for CFEL at 704.831.8107 or adwilliams_04@yahoo.com.
Listed below are the most recent Job Postings that have been added to ISPI’s newly designed Job Bank, click here to view all jobs.
Center for Effective Leadership
Instructional Systems Design Consultant
Job Location: United States
Job Type: Contract, Part-Time
American Express
Training Manager - Virtual
Job Location: United States, Maryland
Job Type: Permanent, Full-Time
Administaff
Instructional Designer
Job Location: United States, Texas
Job Type: Permanent, Full-Time
US Navy
Instructional Systems Specialist
Job Location: United States, Tennessee
Job Type: Permanent, Full-Time
New York Blood Center
Manager, Collections-Cord Blood
Job Location: United States, New York
Job Type: Permanent, Full-Time
Performance Marketplace
Performance Marketplace is a convenient way to exchange information of interest to the performance improvement community. Take a few moments each month to scan the listings for important new events, publications, services, and employment opportunities. To post information for our readers, contact ISPI Director of Marketing, Keith Pew at keithp@ispi.org or 301.587.8570.
Books Conferences,
Seminars, and Workshops Online Anytime: The Course Developer Workshop Online 24/7, Darryl L. Sink & Associates, Inc. Register online at www.dsink.com, or call Jane at 800.650.7465. Learning/Training Tools |
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