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John Low is a strategic business leader and recognized expert in advanced learning technologies. As vice president of human capital for Fors Marsh Group (FMG), he collaborates across all divisions to extend the application of research into new learning and development services in the federal, financial, healthcare and technology sectors.With more than 20 years of experience in the field, John has directed work across a broad range of federal clients, including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Veterans Affairs (VA), the U.S. Army, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and the Defense Information Security Agency (DISA). He has led the creation of more than 500 technology-based training implementations and has consulted extensively on how best to use advanced learning technologies to achieve organizational goals.Before joining FMG, John provided creative direction for over 150 award-winning applied and serious games, training simulations, communication campaigns, and eLearning systems. In addition, John has participated on the executive advisory board for the George Mason University’s Virginia Serious Game Institute and on the board of advisors for the George Mason University Learning Technologies program. He is also the founding director of JAMTECH, a biannual event focused on STEM education.

John Low

Engage key stakeholders through making the case for a learning ecosystem that emphasizes three actions.

A Thriving Government for a Virtual Future

Distaff Expat Numbers Low

You’ve got numbers from your training. Now what? If you find that your data are unclear, or don’t seem to guide your next steps, you’re not alone. Let’s take care of that.Preparation CountsFirst, let’s review how to set yourself up for success with metrics. Here are the key steps to prepare for action:Set measurable goals for the course. For example, start from learning objectives and set goals for how much people should learn. (See” Track Success with Metrics.”)Find the features of the course that impact the goals. For example, use A/B testing to measure the effect on the course of including videos, or making videos of a certain type. ( See “Find the Levers with Metrics.”)If you you’ve done these things, you’ll be ready for your next steps. If you didn’t do these things, and you’ve got a pile of numbers to make sense of, you’ve signed up to be a data miner. Now, mining data is an honorable profession, and if you have a background in statistics and a large volume of data (say, thousands of students), you could give it a try.However, with the limited size of datasets that we typically get from training, it’ll be hard to find patterns that are significant. So, you’ll come out ahead if you have a system designed from the start around measurable goals and measurable features.Course Focus vs. Portfolio FocusDesigning a course around measurable learning objectives may already be part of your design process. We are used to thinking about training in this way. And, this is work that can happen in isolation from other courses. For example, the learning objectives for sales training for Widget X probably have no relationship to the learning objectives for engineering training for Widget Y. This compartmentalization makes it relatively simple work to set measurable goals for courses.To act on metrics, however, requires a portfolio view. To find the courses that need work, and to accumulate insights into what levers work best, is a long-term effort that spans many courses.First, to find the courses that need work, we have to know what an underperforming course looks like. While we will have some external criteria for this, such as “X number of people need to get at least 80 percent of the quiz answers correct,” the best way to address this is to look across the portfolio and find the lowest courses. In other words, establish a baseline, then find the low outlier that should be prioritized for improvement.Next, your experiments to find levers of quality (for example, through A/B testing) will be spread out across many courses. You won’t test every feature of every course, though. In fact, you might test only one or two features in each course to make the job manageable and data easier to interpret. As you accumulate a “bag of tricks” through your testing, you can apply things you've learned from one course to the design and troubleshooting of other courses.Put Best Practices to WorkCongratulations—you’ve set yourself up with some well-designed goals and levers. Now, your next steps are relatively easy.Redesign an existing course: If your data show that a course is underperforming, and it can be adjusted by one or more of your levers, consider redesigning and republishing. This assumes that course will continued to be delivered long enough to justify the investment, which you can ensure by checking your data early in the life of the course. In fact, it’s best to plan for iteration with any course: publish, collect data, adjust, and publish again.Approach future courses differently: Keep track of the best practices that you uncover through testing, and apply them in the planning stage for new courses. More importantly, once you’ve established best practices, you’re going to include them in all of your new courses. What if one of these new courses still underperforms? At that stage, you can have a discussion about the level of investment in the course. Because even with knowledge about best practices, you’ll naturally make tradeoffs between what works best and what you can afford.If the course is a priority for the business and it’s not working well, it may be time to add more high-end features, such as virtual instructors. And thanks to your work with metrics, you were able to point out that it wasn’t working, and you know what to suggest to improve it.Share Best PracticesAs your final action, share your findings with others. When you find what works best for your training, there’s a good chance it’ll be a benefit to other designers. Of course, mileage for a particular design choice may vary. Again, what you find works for engineers in your industry may not apply to another industry or to sales, for instance. So, also keep track of the demographics of your audience and include that information with your report.In the long run, you could help lay the groundwork to make training a leading profession in the data-driven workplace of the 21st century.

Act on Metrics

How can you develop far-sighted leaders throughout your enterprise? How do you find the inner voice of strategic leadership? We’ve been researching these questions, drawing on insights from neuroscience, organizational learning, social psychology, coaching, and the study of values. There are two types of leadership common today at all levels of an enterprise: transactional (making deals, solving problems, pleasing customers and your boss) and strategic (challenging existing ways of thinking, accomplishing things that others consider impossible, galvanizing people around the organization to transcend limits). Each is linked to a different pattern of mental activity and an associated brain circuit—transactional to the low ground of the mind and brain and strategic to the high ground. Both are habit-forming. Both are necessary for the leaders of today and tomorrow. By focusing your attention, you can become more effective at both. A great leader balances the low ground and high ground, moving by choice between expedience (solving problems) and strategy (making a better world). With this practice, you draw on the wise advocate within your mind. This is the inner voice of strategic leadership: seeing yourself as others might see you, with full compassion and care for your success. Calling on the wise advocate changes people; it helps them become more capable leaders, speaking with that voice in the organization around them. This helps them overcome the deceptive messages that travel through an organization’s culture and hold everyone back. With enough people embodying the inner voice of strategic leadership, an organization can take on a wise advocate role in society at large.
Learning to draw on your wise advocate will provide you with three things:
1) the ability to balance the low ground and high ground by moving between expedience (solving problems) and strategy (making a better world)
2) the emotional intelligence to see yourself as others may see you, with full compassion and care for your success
3) the confidence to help overcome deceptive messages traveling through an organization’s culture holding everyone back.
 

DEMO: Developing Your Wise Advocate

In our post “Being a Can-Do Leader: Want to Be On the Ball as a Leader? Think TPL!” we promised to explain how an easy to remember acronym, VITALS, can help you unleash an engaging “Can-Do” spirit in people that sparks their willingness to drive for high levels of performance. Please note that we said “enable you to unleash” this spirit, in your role as manager. Not create it, but unleash it. This is because the true Can-Do spirit isn’t just a matter of being persuaded that we can do something. The “spirit” part of it is a visceral feeling that energizes us to want to do something—want it a lot. And, of course, when these feelings are in force, performance is likely to soar.   Feelings of enthusiastic determination can only come from within each person. A leader cannot force this to happen with exhortations, demands, and speeches. But here’s the good news: You can, as a manager, create the conditions that will unleash this Can-Do spirit in others. Before we explain how, here’s a very important can-do leader caveat: Do not put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Most likely you’ve heard the oft quoted homily: “If you want to understand another person’s point of view, you must put yourself in the other person’s shoes.” We feel that is bad, or at least misleading, advice! It’s not enough to mentally put yourself in the other person’s position. If you do that, it’s still you that is being put in that position. If the issue is what will motivate this person in these circumstances, it is irrelevant what would motivate you in this situation. The fact is that each person has his or her own particular set of personal motivators, which cannot be identified by simply projecting our own motivational profile onto another person. So, how can we go about identifying and making good use of the motivational profiles of the people who work with us? Check their VITALS An effective way to zero in on a person’s key motivators is to do your best to become familiar with their particular Values, Interests, Talents, Aspirations, Longings, and Style. In other words, check their “VITALS.” This word can serve as a useful acronym to help you remember each of these important motivational factors. Simply put, the Can-Do spirit is most likely to be unleashed in people when their most important VITALS can be satisfied at work. You might think of this as mentally checking a little box associated with each of their VITALS. Here’s how it works: Values refers to the standards or principles that a person believes are important to uphold in life, which could include things like trustworthiness, loyalty, fairness, and beliefs. A person’s values are important to consider when giving an assignment because if you ask someone to behave in a way that is opposed to what he believes in, you may actually motivate him to work against you. In a diverse workplace, it is particularly important for a leader to appreciate the power of the cultural beliefs of the different groups represented. For example, if Lee comes from a culture where being singled out for public praise is personally embarrassing, it would be more effective to praise him in private. Interests are the particular work-related subject areas that grab and hold a person’s attention. The deeper a person’s interest in something, the stronger her motivation will be to work on projects that allow her to pursue that interest. The curiosity associated with strong interests is what motivates the kind of learning that pays dividends in the workplace. For example, if John loves to solve problems, giving John an opportunity to solve a complex customer fulfillment issue is likely to pique John’s interests in a way that unleashes his can-do spirit. Talents refer not only to strong skills that a person may have developed, but also to the underlying ability or aptitude that makes it possible for someone to develop a noteworthy skill. When a person has a strong talent in a particular area, that person often enjoys developing and displaying that talent. The key is to identify the particular talents a person has that he or she would enjoy developing and displaying. For example, if Maria is very skilled at creating innovative software designs and likes to talk about her creations, providing Maria opportunities to demonstrate this talent on the job is likely to be very motivating for her. Aspirations are the ambitions that a person has—what this person wants to be and achieve in the future. A person’s aspirations may shift over time, but the more you know about what a person thinks he wants to achieve in terms of his career goals, the better able you will be to match him with assignments that will make him feel like he is pursuing his dream. For example, if Sandip, a very competent engineer in a high-tech company, has aspirations for management roles, giving him opportunity to manage an engineering project is likely to be highly motivating for him. Longings are the nagging (when not sufficiently satisfied) psychological needs that people bring to the workplace. This includes things like a fondness for stability and predictability, a desire for personal achievement, a continuing need for close personal relationships at work, a strong desire to be held in high esteem by colleagues, or a desire to be in charge or in control. For example, if Trish has strong relationship needs, she is likely to be most engaged when given opportunities to work collaboratively in a group. If Damita, on the other hand, has a low need for affiliation but a very high need for autonomy, she is likely to be quite motivated when given opportunities to work independently. Style at work refers to a person’s characteristic ways of taking in information, making decisions, dealing with success and failure, and interacting with others. The style concept focuses on preferences rather than abilities. When we understand other people’s personal styles, we are better able to find effective ways of being influential with them. For example, if Pablo is a planner by nature and likes to be particularly well organized and structured in how he approaches work, giving him an assignment that allows him to draw on this preferred style is likely to increase his level of motivation. A thought you might be having right now is: This "Check their VITALS" strategy might sound like a good idea, but how can I possibly know all these things about the people who work with me? Identify their VITALS To get a handle on someone’s VITALS, you can observe his or her reactions to different situations and assignments and make your best guess. But a more reliable way to understand other people’s VITALS is to simply ask them to tell you about themselves. Ask them what particularly interests them: What are their near and long-term ambitions? Ask about the kinds of activities and hobbies they find most interesting when not at work. Listen carefully to their responses and use the VITALS acronym as your mental checklist. You’ll never learn everything there is to know about another person’s motivators. But if you ask people a few questions about their VITALS, you’ll know a lot more about what motivates them than you did before. And when you give them an assignment, you’ll be better able to unleash the Can-Do spirit!

To Unleash the Can-Do Spirit, Check Employees’ VITALS!

Many organizations have been testing hybrid program approaches for several months, yet we are still collecting anecdotal data of their impact. In general, hybrid meetings receive lower ratings from virtual and in-person attendees than do sessions set up primarily for one specific group. Recent research by Elliott Masie suggests in-person participants are seeking connection: they want longer, more in-depth, and full-group discussions; more experiences; and fewer, shorter breaks. In contrast, virtual participants focus on content: they prefer more small-group discussions, shorter sessions, and more frequent breaks.
ATD’s CTDO Next consortium of talent development executives set out to test these best practices with a hybrid meeting at ATD 2021. They designed a program with shorter sessions, more breaks, and time devoted entirely to conversation. Attendees received the content asynchronously for review at their convenience. Both in-person and virtual attendees enjoyed connection over meals provided on-site and via special deliveries.
Join this panel of CTDO Next members as they discuss lessons learned from their recent hybrid program experiment.
 

Proven Hybrid Program Best Practices

History shows us that innovation in products, services, work processes, and management drives competitive advantage and success. Recognizing this, the Association for Talent Development (ATD) and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) recently surveyed 393 talent development leaders across a broad range of industries and locations, seeking to understand the talent development function's role in teaching and encouraging employees to innovate at successful companies.
The research found that high-performing companies who consistently lead the competition in revenue growth, market share, profitability, and customer satisfaction are more than twice as likely to support innovation with formal strategies and processes compared with lower performers. In fact, talent development functions at top companies provide innovation training to employees organization-wide at a rate seven times that of lower-performing organizations.
Join i4cp to learn about the practices, methods, and programs top companies and their talent development teams use to drive innovation among employees and leaders at all levels.

ATD Research: Advancing Innovation

Five Factors for Developing Sustainable Selling Skills
Companies spend about $20 billion a year on various forms of sales training. Yet many sales leaders report low ROIs from sales training initiatives. Join ASTD for this webcast and learn how to maximize the effectiveness of your sales training initiative.
Norman Behar and David Jacoby discuss five essential factors that can help you achieve sustainable success from your investment in sales training programs.
Learning Takeaways for attendees:

Motivate your team for training success
Leverage the benefits of virtual sales training
Reinforce training to make new skills lasting habits


Maximizing the Effectiveness of Sales Training

Jon Bergmann provides flipped learning training consultants to small and large businesses, governments, nonprofit organizations, and schools around the globe. His mission is to teach, share, and implement best practices for creating learner-centric environments that empower trainers to maximize their teaching impact while lowering training costs. By applying flipped learning principles, he has helped clients flip their meetings with considerable success. Jon’s corporate clients include Wella AG (Procter & Gamble), the Association for Continuing Legal Education, Abbvie, Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, and iSchool. In addition, he has co-authored seven books, including Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day and Flipped Learning: Gateway to Student Engagement. His radio show on the BAM Radio network gets upwards of 32,000 downloads every month.Jon received the Presidential Award for Excellence for Math and Science Teaching in 2002 and was a finalist for the Brock International Prize for Education in 2014. He currently serves on the advisory board for TED-Education, and holds an MA in instructional technology from the University of Colorado at Denver and a BS in science education from Oregon State University.

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