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Buying training or seeking transformation?
Tuesday, April 10th, 2007

The other day, Larry (not his real name) asked me about a situation he is facing.

Larry has is responsible for the purchasing, procurement, and contract negotiation function. 

He has one ”old timer” who thinks he knows everything there is to know about the business and about negotiation.   Let’s call the person ”Bill.”   Bill has this habit of of beating the living daylights out of the suppliers over price. 

Larry has promoted four clerks to contract manager roles.  He is planning to hire some new employees as well.  The new employees will be new to Larry’s industry.

Larry named several suppliers and asked who would provide the best training for his organization.

As Larry shared more information, it seemed that Larry wants the training to provide radical transformation. 

Before selecting training, should Larry ask questions like:

  • Why is change necessary?
  • What change is necessary?
  • How will the change be accomplished?
  • What parameters must be satisfied?

Once these questions are answered, a plan can be developed to address the situation.

Often, people in Larry’s situation are tempted to eliminate people like Bill.  Bill has a lot of knowledge that will be difficult to replace.  A discussion with Bill could be very valuable for the organization.  Some of the topics that might come up during this discussion include:

  • How does Bill feel about the transformation? 
  • Would Bill be willing to mentor the new people in the organization?
  • What performance metrics should be used to evaluate the results?
  • What are Bill’s long and short term goals?
  • What challenges is Bill facing from his current approach?
  • What steps could Larry take to help Bill be more successful?

Suppose that Larry goes around Bill.  Why is this a concern?  When an organization is populated by people who are going to defer to seasoned employee, this is a great situation.  Helping Bill change can help the entire organization. 

What do you think?  If you were in Larry’s shoes, where would you start?

Posted in Achieving Goals, Business Acumen, Negotiations, Training | No Comments »



Learning from Experience
Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

This 2006 report for the U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration (DOLETA) estimated that $50 to $60 billion dollars per year is spent in the United States for employee training/education of which 93% was paid by businesses or employees, rather than government entities.  Wow!  That is a lot of money!  It is about the size of SBC Communication’s annual revenue in 2004.

Are firms getting their money’s worth?  Are their employees learning?  Can what one person has learned be transferred to another person?  Why do organizations keep repeat the same mistakes?  What can be done to help people learn and to “institutionalize” knowledge?  Think about the power of being able to answer these questions in a way that indicates employees are learning, sharing knowledge, and organizations are learning from past mistakes or, better still, the mistakes of other firms.  What would that be worth to an organization?

Let’s talk about the steps that can be taken to help people learn and steps that can be taken which will help our respective share of that $50 to $60 billion expenditure become an investment, rather than a sunk cost.

Define Goals

An organization relies on its employees for the firm’s very survival.  Where would any organization be without a loyal, well-trained, engaged, customer-focused employee base?  In light of this, it seems logical to conclude that employees are the single most important asset of an organization. 

If employees are the single most important asset of an organization, how would the organization treat the employees?  What effort would be made to help them develop their skills?  As a starting point, it seems like the organization would define goals for the training so that training dollars would be spent in the way that was most appropriate for achieving the organization’s goals.

Sometimes, the training dollars might be allocated on a per employee basis.  In other cases, it might be appropriate to allocate different amounts of money to different departments for training. 

Along with allocating the training dollars though, the organization would explore other options for sharing knowledge. 

Other Options for Sharing Knowledge

In addition to formal training, how can organizations help people share knowledge and develop their skills?  The answer varies by context.  Often, new employees can benefit from shadowing a more experienced employee for a period of time.  In other situations, self-teaching or books may be viable options.  Having employees teach their peers at staff meetings can be helpful as well.  Vendor demonstrations, process checklists, networking internally and externally, and taking time to document the lessons learned on a specific project can lead to additional insight. 

What is required for these steps to work?  One thing that is required is for employees to be receptive to taking a step back so that they can think about the big picture.  Have you ever been in a situation where you are so intently focussed on a task that you can’t see anything else? It becomes a sort of tunnel vision.  Well, that is how many managers in the corporate world feel today.  Before they can be given even one more thing, they need to be given the chance to process what they have.  In many organizations though, this is not happening. 

In addition to processing information, employees need to understand that it is important for them to share knowledge with each other and that their organizations want them to learn, to understand, to develop their skills.  This needs to be built into the culture and encouraged.  Rather than focussing on the dollars spent on training, the focus would be on the skills learned, the value obtained, and the sharing that is occurring.

More Tactical View

Now that we have talked about a general vision, let’s think about some of the steps that might be used to foster the learning.  These steps would be built into the culture of the organization.  It seems to me that the culture would encourage people to think for themselves, to help each other improve, to learn from their experiences, and to share knowledge within the enterprise.  What does this mean?  How might these steps be encouraged? Let’s consider these factors now.

Encouraging thinking

People are conditioned by our society to accept the easy answers, to take what is offered, and to be conventional. On the one hand, these steps are beneficial to an orderly society. On the other hand though, these steps also lead to the absence of critical thinking, lack of analysis, and inability to develop solutions on their own.

The first step in helping people think is to help them realize that it is okay to ask questions. We may not have the answer, but we can ask the question and, perhaps, someone else can suggest a partial answer, or help us understand how the question can be improved. Recently, I mentioned Frank Kanu’s book, Stop Telling…  Start Leading!  The Art of Managing People by Asking Questions.  The book is an easy read which allows people to avoid intimidation and to focus on the concepts, rather than struggling to understand what they are being told.

I see this issue come up every day. After years of school teaching people not to ask questions, it can be a bit intimidating for people to start asking questions. My students come into class and they are so used to not thinking that it is very difficult for them to write a “think piece.” They are happy to tell me facts about the chapters that I assign. Ask them to write about what it means to them and their eyes glaze over. Ask them to apply the rule to a different fact situation, and their reaction becomes even worse. In my business law class, the most valuable thing that I can teach my students is not what the law says, but to think about the issues they are likely to face.

Helping Each Other

Along with being encouraged to think for themselves, they would be encouraged to help each other improve.  Is this anything more than team building?  Often, people are so concerned with self-preservation in an organization that they fear helping someone else because the other person might develop more skills than the teacher has.  How can this be a good thing?  Well, it seems to me that if a person helps someone else develop more skills than the person possesses, the teacher becomes dispensable and can be promoted or move to a different job.  If a person is indispensable, that person is unlikely to be promoted, to be allowed to transfer, or even to go on vacation.  And, heaven forbid, that the person becomes ill or retires! 

What tools can be created to make it easier for people to help each other?  Some of these so-called tools might be steps as simple as working lunches where people talk about issues they are facing and brainstorm possible approaches.  Other steps might be sharing books, identifying internal and external resources, creating discussion boards, and even encouraging “water cooler” discussions.

Trust is critical to this effort though.  Employees must know that offering or requesting help is seen as a strength, rather than a weakness.  As soon as they perceive that someone has been punished for seeking help or that a person who offered help is being taken advantage of, people are likely to stop participating because they will perceive that participation is contrary to their own self-interest.  How many times have you seen the person who is willing to take on extra work taken for granted down the road?  People just assume that the person will always do so and, before long, they resent if it when the person is unable or unwilling to take on an extra task. 

Learning from Experience

How can people learn from their experience? One way of doing so is to gain a lot of experience. Along with gaining the experience though, people need to be given time to assess the facts and to think about what has occurred. How does the current situation relate to other situations they have encountered in the past?

A good way of encouraging people to learn from their experience is to talk about their relevant prior experience in team meetings. By the way, it seems to me like every meeting is a team meeting. By building time to discuss the prior experience and encouraging people to discuss what has worked (and not worked) in similar projects in the past, people are encouraged to share ideas. At a minimum, people are learning to encourage participation. Often, they are able to share information about why the prior situation worked, or failed. In such cases, they may also gain substantive knowledge.

With trust, people can also discuss their prior actions, rather than having to defend them. In such a culture, how might leaders be treated? Most likely, ever leader would be allowed to be human and still be respected. That is what I saw at SBC Communications anyway. People were willing to speak up and tell leaders when mistakes were being made, as they perceived them to be. Leaders often took a step back and asked for more information. They often thanked the people who pointed to the issues, and did so sincerely. This sort of openness to questions is one of the reasons that SBC was such a great company. It is unclear to me if the same environment exists today. Some perceived that the openness to questions existed only in my teams even at that time so, who knows? My position was simply that what is said among team members stayed among team members.

Sharing Knowledge

There are many ways that knowledge can be shared. It seems likely that the best ways to share knowledge are impacted by the organization’s existing infrastructure. Training might be required in some organizations. A telephone call, posting on a discussion board, or write up in some sort of memo might be appropriate in other cases. If the goal is to encourage sharing of knowledge, there should be a structure in place that encourages this. This structure might include:

  • Requests that people share knowledge
  • Sharing of knowledge from leadership
  • Recognition for individuals who share knowledge
  • Encouragement for employees to develop their skills
  • Identification of internal resources who can help others
  • Conscious development of knowledge banks and resources
  • Inclusion of the sharing of knowledge in the job descriptions, compensation, and performance appraisals

Conclusion

In a perfect world, the knowledge that one person has gained could be transferred to another person.  This would provide continuity and allow organizations to learn from the past mistakes that their employees have made.  By learning from the past mistakes, people would be better qualified to evaluate information and to develop solutions. 

What steps do you see organizations taking so that they learn from the past and build towards the future? 

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Posted in Business Acumen, Business Trends, Negotiations, Team Building, Training | No Comments »



Managing the risks associated with training acquisitions
Saturday, March 10th, 2007

Think about the last training class that you attended.  Were you having fun and playing games?  Were you completely overwhelmed by the complexity of the topic? 

Often, people remember information like this.  While such information may be interesting, at the end of the day, is it relevant?  Why is it easier to remember information like that, than to remember the answer to the most important question one can ask about training acquisitions?  What do employees learn in such cases? 

Suppose that people attend training because they need to develop skills that can actually be used in performing their job.  Is this assumption valid?  If there is an easier way to convey the knowledge, it makes perfect sense to do that.  If there is a less expensive option than training, save the money for employees who actually need training.  To date, I have never seen an organization that has enough money to meet its needs for training.  Have you?

Training acquisitions can make a difference in employee performance, especially if they are tailored for the people who are actually attending the training.  Some firms have a goal that at least 40% of what is covered in a training class should be new information for the employees.  What does that mean for the employees and for the firm? 

In a word, it means “risk,” especially if the organization is unwilling or unable to spend the resources to assess the employees’ knowledge before the training.  Of course, there are risks in anything that one does.  What are some of the risks with a goal of 40% of the information being new to the employees?  What steps can be taken to mitigate these risks?  Why might it be a good idea to assess employees before having them attend training? 

Risks

The risks associated with training acquisitions vary with the training involved, goals, degree of expertise to be developed, and the employees’ job functions.  As a result, this article discusses six common risks that can arise from training acquisitions.   

One of the risks that can arise is employees may have differing levels of knowledge and experience.  This means that one employee may be at a level where just 10% of the content is new information while another employee may find that 75% of the content is new.  When a person is introduced to new concepts, it takes time for the person to understand, analyze, and integrate that information into existing approaches.  Just as a computer can receive more information than it can process, so too employees can be overwhelmed with new information.

A second issue that arises relates to other factors that may be occurring with employees.  In many cases, employees are overwhelmed and under stress before the training begins.  As a result, they may have difficulty listening, absorbing, thinking about, and applying the information.  The more new information, the more overwhelming and stressful the situation becomes.

There is a risk that the training will not help employees develop new habits.  It takes time and repitition to develop new habits.  When training is compressed (as is typically the case) and the material is new, reducing the amount of new content is one approach to increase the likelihood that employees will actually develop the new habits.  Instead, because of cost associated with sending employees to training, many organizations try to cover more information.  How well does that work?   

Training may be inappropriate for the employees or the organization.  This risk is seen when a person looks at the nature of organizations.  In some organizations, employees are supposed to follow instructions without thinking about the big picture.  In other organizations, employees are expected to evaluate information, develop plans, and execute the plans.  What would happen if the training did not prepare them to do so?

If the employees are unable to absorb the information, all one realizes is the Hawthorne Effect - paying attention to something leads to change.  That may sound like an insignificant risk.  While some employees will leave in frustration and other employees will be asked to leave because of performance, these may be seen as just costs of doing business, until the organization has to reduce its training budgets or needs to have its employees increase their output.

A final risk is that employees may leave the training with a false sense of security.  They may believe they understand the content and return to their offices where they find that a key piece of the puzzle is missing.  Alternatively, they may get back to work, and apply it wrong.  Sometimes that second option is worse than the first. 

Are these risks ones that you have experienced?  If so, how did you deal with them?  While there is no ”perfect answer,” let’s talk about some steps that may help.   

Risk Management

When faced with risks that the training will not work, especially cases when a high percentage of the training is new information, it can be helpful to:

  1. Use pretests, prework, web-based training, and discussions before the training to help the less familiar employees develop their skills to a point that they are ready for the training and to help employees that are more familiar with the area fill in some of the knowledge gaps, at least to a basic level.
  2. Provide training to supervisors so that they are able to coach employees on the area and are comfortable doing so. 
  3. Encourage supervisors to coach their employees on the area after the training is completed through approaches like staff meetings, lunch discussions, observing employees’ activities, asking questions, assigning mentors, assigning employees to discuss topics at subsequent meetings, and providing refresher training.
  4. “Chunking” the knowledge into smaller pieces so that people can absorb it more easily.  Sometimes, the training may be delivered in a college class format.  In such approaches, employees spend an hour or two every few days working on the training and work on their normal jobs, the rest of the time.
  5. Relating the training to information that the employees already know.  By building from the known to the unknown (from the employees’ perspective) it is easier for the employees to understand the content.
  6. Grouping employees of similar backgrounds and performing similar jobs together so that they attend the training together.  This way, employees will feel more comfortable in asking questions, taking chances by guessing at answers, and making mistakes.  Why does this matter?  Well, think about how a child learns to walk.  In many cases, employees attending training are “learning to walk” in the specific subject area.

Suppose that you take all these steps and manage the risk as discussed, what are some other steps that you can do?

Other Steps

Even if the risks are identified and managed as discussed above, they can pose challenges.  By selecting training firms who are accustomed to training similarly situated employees at similar organizations, the risks can be further reduced. 

Similar Situations

If one is in a large mechanistic organization, the approach to training is very likely to be different that if one is in a large organic organization.  Mechanistic organizations have high levels of structure and strict adherence to process.  Organic organizations tend to be more flexible and flatter.  As a result, if an organization is used to very flexible approaches, how well will training in which a person stands at the front of the class and provides the “right” answer work?  When might this be a less than optimal result?  

If one is providing training, it helps if the person has experience in the field doing the job on which the person is training others.  How much credibility does a person have if the person is providing training on a topic the person learned from textbook experience?  Potentially, the person can make this work.  What steps might your organization take to increase the likelihood of a successful outcome in this situation? 

Flexible Format

In cases like this, it is important for the format of the training to be flexible.  Allowing for the possibility that employees may be more or less advanced than what is expected increases the likelihood of a successful training outcome.  How can an organization or a training firm do this? 

If the employees are more advanced than expected, the trainer should be able to adjust the training to help them move to the next level.  If the employees are less advanced, it is helpful if the trainer can break the information down to a level that employees can understand.

Sometimes employees in a class will have different jobs.  If the instructor can tailor the examples “on the fly” so that more employees can relate to the situation, this increases the likelihood that all employees will learn.  Beyond that, they may learn a bit about each other’s jobs.  Think about some of the ways that this might be done.  For example, could employees be asked how to share their experiences?  Might they be allowed to discuss the issues, or even to identify the issues their customers raise with them?   

Meeting Before Training

In some cases, it is feasible for supervisors to meet with the trainers before the training begins.  When this is possible, it can help the trainers tailor the training to the employees’ environment.  Even more than that, might this be an opportunity to be certain that the organization’s goals and the supervisors’ goals are aligned?  Think about what happens when the people handling the negotiation are unaccustomed to the flexibility and fluidity of training.

Resource Before and During Training

If an organization is able to provide a resource who can relate to the situation faced by the employees, it increases the likelihood that appropriate information will be conveyed to employees.  Often, the training is reviewed by subject matter experts before it begins.  A second option is to have a resource sit in the training or be available via phone during the training.  Might these options work for you?  Are there other steps that you can take?  

Continuous Improvement 

With the first few deliveries of training, there are likely to be some minor tweaks needed.  If these changes are documented and used to improve the training, the training can be improved with each delivery. 

Employees’ feedback is important to keep the training improving.  Feedback during and after the training can be combined with feedback obtained after the employees return to the job in order to make sure that the training is meeting the business needs. 

Think about how the feedback might be gathered.  Is it appropriate to survey the employees?  Would it be better to have supervisors complete surveys?  Do you need to actually observe the employees performing their jobs?  You may have different approaches for gathering this information as well.  Identify approaches that are consistent with your organization’s culture.

Are there other options that may be more consistent with your organization?

Conclusion

Training acquisitions present a variety of risks to organizations.  By adopting a structured approach of identifying and managing the risks, organizationas are able to increase the success of their training acquisitions.

Training firms and trainers who have experience in similar engagements and are able to flex to the situation are more likely to help you achieve the desired business objectives.  

Learning from prior classes allows the training to improve over time.

Posted in Negotiations, Sourcing, Training | No Comments »



Using questions to build solutions
Wednesday, March 7th, 2007

Two people were talking about an issue that had arisen on a project the other day.  They had different views on the situation, as people often do.  The two people were trying to convince everyone that their respective positions were THE right answer.  Before long, the people’s voices were raised and they stopped listening to each other.  They became more insistent about their positions.  Eventually, one of the people said, “just forget it.  It isn’t worth talking about.  You have your views, and I have mine.” 

This isn’t a big issue.  It happens all the time, in business and in life.  When people are convinced that they know THE answer, they face issues like this all the time.  How can the Socratic method help us approach problems?  What can we do to help people learn to deal with conflicts like this one?

Those are all wonderful questions.  They are questions that Frank Kanu, author of Stop Telling…  Start Leading!  The Art of Managing People by Asking Questions, would probably ask if we were to talk with him about an issue like that discussed above. 

Fundamentally, Frank’s book talks about the Socratic method.  The Socratic method is a common approach that is taught in law school.  Let’s think about how you might use this approach to help resolve issues.  Let’s also consider how we might help people learn to use questions.

Situation

Imagine you are facing an issue in which two people are having a conflict like the one described above.  How would you decide whether to get involved and to try to help them resolve the conflict? 

Hypothetically speaking, suppose that the factors that would lead you to become involved are present.  In this post, let’s look at a simple approach that you may find helpful.  To make it easier to actually apply the approach, I have spelled out a few questions that might be of interest at each stage of the process.

Approach

After you decide to become involved, you have to decide what to do.  As a starting point, it often helps to encourage the people to share their perspectives.  This might be done by asking questions, combined with sharing information.  In a business context, the discussion might include questions like:

  1. I wonder if we might take a step back so that I can be sure that I am on the right page.  Please help me understand what has occurred. 
  2. I know that you are concerned with ________________.  Can you help me understand why that it important?  What does that mean for us?
  3. This project is going very well.  I know that both of you are doing a fantastic job to make that happen.  It has come to my attention that we seem to be facing some conflict with regard to how we can ___________.  Please help me understand what is occurring and your thoughts about what we can do to resolve the issues and move forward.   
  4. It seems like there was an issue on an earlier project related to __________.  Do you remember how that issue was resolved?  I wonder if there is anyone who might be able to help us find out more about that situation.
  5. What I am hearing you say is _____________________, Joe.  Am I hearing what you are saying?  Please correct me if I am misunderstanding because I want to be sure that I see the real situation from your perspective.  That is the only way that I can help you solve the real problem.
  6. Joe, as I understand it, you are interested in ____________.  What does this really mean though?  Suppose that I were in Sue’s situation and that I had done what Sue’s team has done.  How would my actions have impacted your organization?  From the organization’s perspective, why would they be a problem?  

The discussion needs to be tailored to fit the fact situation.  Basically, the idea in having people share their perspectives is to allow the people (in this case Sue and Joe) to collect their thoughts and to take a step back.  It also gives you a chance to gather information about the situation and helps the people involved understand that they will have the chance to make their positions known.  At another level, the idea is to be sure that people understand you aren’t going to ram a solution down their throats, people are going to work together to resolve the issues in a way that actually does meet the needs that have been identified.

After you understand the situation from their perspectives, it is important to understand the parameters, constraints, requirements, and specifications related to the situation.  In discussing this issue, you might use questions like:

  1. As I understand it, the project needs to be completed by ___________.  Can we work backwards up the timeline?  When does the stage in question need to be completed if this project is to meet the timeline?
  2. I am wondering how the project is tracking with the budgets associated with the project.  Are the estimate that we have so far on target with what is actually needed for the project?  If we are exceeding budget, as we talk about issues, can you help us brainstorm options that will bring us back in line with the budgets?
  3. What are the parameters that our solution needs to meet?  If we boil the issue down to brass tacks, what does it have to do and what constraints does it have to satisfy?
  4. What steps can we take to make sure that issues are resolved so that they don’t impact the project’s success?
  5. How can we deal with the issues that we are facing?

On a complex project, there can be a variety of issues that do arise unexpectedly.  If you focus on the event, there is little that you can do.  That is why I suggest focussing on the consequences.  To develop an approach for dealing with such contingencies, it can be helpful to ask questions such as: 

  1. Suppose that the worst possible thing happens on the project at this point.  What would that look like?  If that were to happen, what would our options be?
  2. It seems to me that we will be more successful if we identify the issues early in the cycle.  The sooner we know, the less waste there is and the less damage there is to our relationships.  With that in mind, I wonder if we can talk about the warning signs.  What are some signs that this or a similar issue is occurring, or is about to occur?  Who would see them?  What would they see? 
  3. How did we discover this issue was occurring?  What were the warning signs that told us that there was a problem?
  4. It is great that we were able to detect the issue when we did.  Going forward, I wonder if there are steps that we can take which would warn us that the issue is coming back or that a similar issue is arising earlier in the process.  What are your thoughts about this?
  5. Please help me understand the processes being used on our project to identify and address issues.  Can we think about what is working in this area, and what might be improved?

When an issue arises and is resolved, think about what can be learned from the situation.  How often do you see people who forget the past as they move forward towards the future, only to repeat the issues?  The questions that might be of interest to you in this context include:

  1. If we had to do this situation over again, what would we do the same?  What steps would we do differently?
  2. The critical factor for us in this situation seems to have been ________.  In what other contexts can this factor be relevant?  Does this situation teach us anything about those situations?
  3. What lessons have we learned as a result of this situation?
  4. How can we use the lessons that we have learned in this situation to prevent issues on future projects?
  5. Are there steps in our process that should be modified to incorporate the lessons that we have learned from this project?

Helping People Learn

One of the challenges that we encounter is that people are taught to give answers, rather than to ask questions.  As a result, encouraging questions requires us to help people “unlearn” behavior.  How can we do this?  Here are a few thoughts about this.  I welcome your feedback as well.

  1. Ask questions in classes and have students tell each other and teachers what the answers are.  This makes the learning student-centric and allows students to add value to their own learning.  It also engages students in the learning.
  2. Make learning a dialogue.  Both students and instructors should be learning from the exchange of ideas.
  3. Encourage students to take chances in class.  Often, the biggest obstacle to a person’s success is not found in an external source, but within the person himself or herself.
  4. Allow people to make mistakes, in class and in business.  Help them model the approach described above.
  5. See learning and education as an activity in which each person takes ownership and works together to develop the necessary skills.
  6. Treat students with respect.  Especially in training and higher education, students often have knowledge that they can share with each oher and with the instructors.  The key is to build the sort of environment in which students will choose to share their ideas.
  7. See one goal as helping students develop their critical thinking skills.  Often, the students themselves are in the position to identify ways to do things better, faster, and at a lower cost.  This is true of management and future managers.  It is equally true of hourly employees.  As a result, it seems to make sense to encourage thinking, even in technical training and coursework. 

What are your thoughts about this issue?  Is it consistent with what works when you learn? 

Posted in Business Tips, Negotiations, Tips for Students, Training | No Comments »



Law of attraction and law of observation
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007

Over the past couple of years, I have interacted with many who talk about the law of attraction.  I am not a fan of the law of attraction, especially not in its extreme cases.  Instead, I believe in the law of observation.  Okay, so it isn’t a law.  I just used the term to describe an obvious situation that occurs in consulting all the time. 

Let’s talk about the law of attraction, the law of observation, and what it means for us as business people.

Law of Attraction 

Some talk about a law of attraction.  With law of attraction, some think that one is actually attracting the thing involved.  In extreme cases, the people may actually believe that accidents occur because people are subconsciously thinking about them. 

Perhaps people can get so caught up in thinking about such issues that they cause the situation to arise, in some cases.  For example, if I am concerned about being careful that I don’t fall, maybe, my caution causes me to think about lifting my foot, rather than allowing it to come up naturally.   Still, I cannot imagine people attracting illness or injury to them.

Law of Observation

What makes more sense to me is what I call the law of observation.  It is a lot simpler.  All it says is that one is more likely to see what one is expecting to find or what is so far removed from the realm of possibilities that it grabs our attention.  This means two things.

First, if I expect to see difficulties ahead, I usually see difficulties ahead.  If I expect to see smooth sailing ahead, I usually perceive the future to be smooth sailing.  This result can occur, regardless of the facts. 

A key factor is how one chooses to view the situation.  Is the glass half full?  Or is it  half empty?  The fact is that half of the glass is half full and the other half is half empty.  Which part is the person focusing on though?

Often, people seem to miss obvious approaches and solutions.  Typically, this occurs when people have a clear focus and are concentrating so hard on what they are seeking that they lose sight of other possibilities. 

Second, the law of observation also means that, if something far removed from the realm of possibilities occurs, it is noticed.  In this situation, people do not necessarily react favorably.  They are surprised and remember what this blog has said about surprising people?  Here is an example.

Implications

It seems to me that the law of observation tells us to take a step back and reconsider the situation from time to time.  Rather than developing tunnel vision, think about other possibilities. 

At times, we may be caught up in the details of the project.  Four steps come to mind that can help us prevent and deal with the issues.  These steps are:

  1. Developing a written plan for evaluating progress, complete with checkpoints.
  2. Following the plans that are written out consistently so that one is not tempted to skip the evaluation.
  3. Having someone remind us to do the evaluation.  This person is essentially a santity check, as a friend used to say.
  4. Make a presentation to the clients about the status at that point.

What is your experience in this area?  Do you believe in law of attraction, law of observation, or some other law?  How do you use your beliefs to be a better business person?

Posted in Planning Tips, Solving Problems, Training | No Comments »



Puzzle for Building Business Acumen
Monday, February 19th, 2007

From time to time, I am asked for puzzles that will help people apply the textbook information to real world situations.  Below is an assignment that I am giving students in my online Principles of Management Class next week.  Perhaps this assignment will be helpful to other instructors as well.

Bill has just been promoted to manager of a restaurant.  He is building a case for innovation at the restaurant.  He wants the restaurant to change from a reactive mode to one in which the restaurant plans business activities and is proactive.

Applying what you have learned from this class and your own experience, write an essay for Bill to use in making his case for innovation and planning. Identify specific, actionable steps and tools that Bill can use.

After completing your essay, please provide peer editing for others in the class.  Suggest both substantive (content) and format changes for each other.  This will help you and the others improve their writing.

Point Allocation:

10 Points for your final version.

 5 Points for the feedback given to others in the class. 

Posted in Business Acumen, New Ideas, Training | No Comments »



Seven steps for better online learning
Monday, February 12th, 2007

People learn best when they learn from each other.  In a dynamic classroom, every person can be learning from every other person in the class.  Have you experienced this?

Creating a similar environment online can be challenging.  It is more difficult to build the trust when one does not meet others face to face and does not hear each other.  Each person may have different expectations and different levels of commitment. 

Let’s talk about seven steps that instructors can take to create an engaging learning environment online.  Many of the steps are the same online as offline, by the way.

Step 1.  Establish clear and reasonable expectations.  If participants know what to expect of the class, they are better positioned to make good decisions about enrolling.  Help them understand how much time they will be investing, what activities they will be participating in, and how the class is directly relevant to them.

Step 2.  Encourage participant interaction.  If the participants are encouraged to interact and to help each other succeed, this increases the likelihood that they will interact.  The entire class can be a team committed to shared learning in such situations.  This may be done through discussion forums, peer editing of papers, and the use of teams, for example.

Step 3.  Allow participants to take ownership of the class.  If participants take ownership of the class, they are more engaged than if the instructor is pushing the class.  Instructors have to let go in order for participants to take ownership though.

Step 4. Allow participants to make mistakes.  When people are learning new things, they often make mistakes.  If instructors make it safe for people to make mistakes, it builds trust and encourages learning.  As mistakes occur, it is a good idea to talk about what happened so that everyone can learn from the mistakes that others made. 

Step 5.  If the class is conducted over time, provide designated office hours when participants can contact the instructor online.  Online chatting is a wonderful tool to help participants when they are confused or concerned.  After the session, if there is the ability to provide students with access to the notes from the office hours, this helps those who may be too shy to speak up.

Step 6.  Give timely feedback.  This will help participants trust the instructor and controls participant frustration so that they are able to remain engaged.

Step 7.  Help participants learn to think through issues.  If participants are encouraged to use a problem solving approach when they are uncertain how to proceed, they are more likely to apply that approach when the training is completed. 

Are there other steps that you find effective?

Posted in Solving Problems, Team Building, Training | No Comments »



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