The top learning miss-steps that start-ups make. Part 2

Living and working as a Learning Pro out in Northern California I see and hear about a lot of training that is not serving an organization in the way it should.

So I've put together a list of the most common miss steps and mistakes I've seen and some thoughts on how these can be course corrected. 

The first posting on this was about how Founders think that their systems are more obvious and intuitive than they may be.

Here is the second. 

More to come

2. There is a lot they need to know.

Start-ups put years of development time into producing software with a wide array of features and functionality. Product managers have put long hours into conversations with existing and potential customers to define what the software needs to do. It is quite likely that the software has been enhanced multiple times based on the wishes, or needs, of specific customers. It is quite understandable then that you want your users to know about all these great features and options that have been painstakingly built into the product to give it the depth and fullness that you are so rightly proud of. However as this list gets longer and longer the time taken to introduce these to a new user in a way that is useful to them when they come to use the product, starts creeping up and up.  

How long is reasonable for an online training class? 15 minutes?  4 hours? 

How many modules of self paced learning is it reasonable to expect a new user to sit through to be able to use your product? 5? 10? 50?

I've seen classes grow and grow. What started out as a 90 minute web class grew to 2 hours, then 3. And then into a pair of 2 hour sessions. 

I'd ask you to think back to the last time you learned something for work. How long was your company prepared to invest in your learning time?

As Learning Professionals we love creating courses. The more the merrier. The longer the better. But if we are going to be honest advisers and partners in our businesses, we do need to ask if all this content needs to be in the training.

I take the 80:20 rule as my guide. 

I've seen that time and again 80% or more of the use of any piece of software uses 20% or less of the functionality. To be truly effective training you need to identify that 20% and get your learners a chance to learn it and do it. 

What about the rest?

• Would a single page job aid work instead? 
• Is your user manual set out in such a way that the information is easy to find? 
• Do you have a social platform that your users might go to like a LinkedIn or Facebook group? Or a YouTube channel?  
• Have you tried Googling the question? 
• If you are building eLearning, can these be optional modules?

It's way too easy to overwhelm your learners. When that happens, they miss the 20% that they need to be able to use the product. If you are lucky that means they call support for help. If not they just give up, or tell their bosses, colleagues and peers that your software just doesn't do what they need it to do.

So decide what really needs to be in that precious time you get with a new learner, and find other ways to get the rest to them.

The top learning miss-steps that start-ups make. Part 1

Living and working as a Learning Pro out in Northern California I see and hear about a lot of training that is not serving an organization in the way it should.

So I've put together a list of the most common miss steps and mistakes I've seen and some thoughts on how these can be course corrected. Here is the first. More to come.

1. It's obvious. It's Intuitive

By there very nature start-ups are founded by smart people who see a need that is not being fulfilled. In Silicon Valley that usually means they have an idea that translates into a software solution to a problem that people have. Founders live and breath that idea and that solution. They see it through iteration after iteration, continuously improving and refining it. The lucky ones convince backers and develop that solution into a product and then iterate again and again. Then customers connect with the solution and those first few connections are always very high touch interactions. All the people connected with the solution are passionate about it and the invest heavily in making sure that the customers get the most out of it. Maybe you create some training for it. Leveraging existing content from the sales cycle into a training presentation and reworking the sales demo into a hands-on user experience for training. Then, if all goes according to plan, there are more customers and more people connecting with the product.

Then you get that piece of feedback.
People aren't using the software fully.
Or.
People are calling support to help through something that you thought was covered in training.

When you take a look at the what it is they are doing you just don't see why they just don't get it.
It's Obvious. It's Intuitive.

You are right of course. It is always obvious. But sadly not as obvious to someone who has not lived and breathed this idea and it's execution for the last few months and years.

As a learning Professional I always start with the fresh novice mind.  I am able to start with the luxury of looking at the product fresh and clean, without the impact of years of experience with the product, but with years of experience of people learning software.

Take a fresh look, or better yet ask someone else to take that look for you.

Part 2 follows soon

Happy Learning
Alan

Each One Teach One -- Musings from a different kind of university.

I'm lucky enough to be travelling right now to South Africa.

I've just spent 4 nights with my wife and my brother & sister-in-law in the cape wine lands  where we indulged our shared passion for wines.

We hit Cape Town on Friday and one of our first trips was to Robben Island. Former home of since then President Mandela and a host of other political prisoners.

Robben Island is now a museum. Tours of the island are conducted by professional tour guides but then they hand over to former political prisoners who take you through the maximum security prison where they and all the other black, male, political prisoners where held. (The non political prisoners were held in a separate 'convicts' prison elsewhere on the Island, the White men in Pretoria and women at a women's prison on the mainland.)

It was, as you can imagine, a deeply moving experience. Especially to an old Anti- Aparthied campaigner who (mis)spent a chunk of his college days on marches and protests.

It was also a deeply uplifting one.

One of the things that was talked about was that the prisoners established a learning culture that would be the envy of many of today's 'learning organizations'. So much so that the Island was called 'The University".  They took the principle of Each one Teach one, that had (I later learned) come from the slavery days in the US, and used it to ensure that all the prisoners had a responsibility to share their learning with their comrades.

While some, like Mandela, where educated men, many of the prisoners came to the Island with little or no education. Our guide shared with us that one such prisoner started his 17 year sentence on the Island illiterate. 17 years later he left with a degree.

Simple literacy lessons were taught drawing letters in the sand in buckets. The thirst for learning shown by people in some of the worst prison conditions in the world is truly inspiring.

If they can dedicate themselves to learning, then there is simply no excuse for those of us who work in this field not to dedicate ourselves to helping others learn.

Happy Learning

Thoughts from a Leaders Conference

I've just spent a couple of days in the company of a great bunch of people.

Some background

When I started my career as a Workplace Learning practitioner, I realized fairly quickly that I loved this field. It gives me the opportunity to help others develop new skills. I still get a kick out of the "Aha" moments I get to witness when I'm doing any form of live training. Pretty quickly I also realized that being able to share that feeling and discuss it with others was also very fulfilling so I joined my local learning group. Back then and there it was an organization called SEAL. The Society for Effective Affective Learning. When I moved to the US I joined the International Alliance for Learning and was active there for a while. Those two groups were focused on Accelerated Learning which I still see a set of fundamentally good learner focused principles.

Since 2008 however my energy has been more aligned with ASTD. I see that ASTD is the professional body of my chosen profession. Back in Chicago I really enjoyed spending my time with people who shared some of my passions for learning and started to get more and more involved with my local Chapter. I even ended up on the board where the like-mindedness took another step forward because then I started spending time with others who not only shared my passion for learning but choose to give back to the furtherance of our profession by volunteering their time and energy to their local chapter.

Being on a Chapter board is a lot of work but its very rewarding work. I get to help other learn about helping others learn. How cool is that?

If you are thinking that this sounds pretty cool then I suspect that you might also want to be a part of your local chapter board, giving back to your profession, and spending time with others who do the same. Imagine spending your time with 6-12 others who share that.

Now imagine spending your time with 350 people like that.

That's what the ASTD Chapter Leaders Conference is like. We get together with a single aim. How do we make our chapters better at serving the needs of Learning Professionals in our areas. We share great ideas and learn from each other. We return to our chapters energized and ready to push ahead with new initiatives and new ideas. I'm bringing two specific things back to Golden Gate Chapter with me.

Firstly from the folks up at Sacramento Chapter I'm bringing back "The Programs Machine"  A planning tool that will hopefully allow us to better plan the programs that the chapter hosts, not only the central chapter meetings but also the Geographical and Special Interest groups we have.

Secondly from Houston Chapter the idea of a Leaders Advisory Board. How we can get local learning leaders to guide and advise the board on the work that the chapter needs to do to meet their needs as leaders of large teams of Learning Professionals.

I'm excited about all of these things.

Naturally I was busy tweeting. I've collected my tweets and retweets here.

I'll keep you posted.

Happy Learning

Alan  

Learning about Leading and Tango.

Day two of the conference in Berlin and this morning I had a number of workshops to choose from and none of them jumped of the page at me to tell me I must attend.

So I chose to allow myself a small amount of spontaneity and went along to the workshop that I would have least expected to find myself in.

So headed upstairs to a session called.

Leadership goes Tango: Impro(ve) your leadership-skills with Tango Argentino

Read the session description here

I found my dance ability at an improv class many years ago when Matt Elwell taught me to 'Get All Up In It' or what we call the GAUII approach.

However I have found that dance where I'm expected to remember steps or even a pattern is not for me.

So attending a session on Tango was a stretch.

It was a well put together 75 minutes and I'm offering to share with you dear reader my lessons from it.

It can be just as hard following a leader as it can be leading a follower.

It's easier to follow blindly (literally). But you must trust your leader to do this.

There are many ways that a leader can work with a follower who resists being led. Sometimes it's best to stop and restart. Sometimes it's best to use the Aikido approach and let the resistance lead fr a moment then overtake that to take leadership again. And sometimes there will be something else to try.

The final exercise we did had a leader, with a blindfolded follower by their side and a resisting (sometimes) follower in front of them.
What I learned from that was how hard it is to lead a blind follower when you change the way you have done it before AND have something else to concentrate on as well.

I'll muse on the lessons from that and how they apply to learning and get back to you all.

In the mean time I feel like a steak!.

Happy Learning

Learning and Playing. AIN Conference Day 1

Today was the first full day of the Applied Improvisation Network conference in Berlin.

Some great conversations and some great learning.

I was tweeting my notes and thoughts and so were loads of others.

Learning by Engaging Meaningful Change

Regular (ha!) readers will know that I'm a part of the Applied Improvisation Network.

This week I'm in Berlin joining over 225 of my fellow applied  improvisers for our Annual Conference.

The conference starts in about an hour with some Learning Journeys.I'm discovering a 'playful city'. I'll let you know how that goes.

For the last two days I've been with other leaders of the network at a summit where we tried to move forward on some of the things for the network. One of these was about how we define ourselves and our field.

One of the decisions we made was to use three words next too our logo to help with that definition. The words are a base and each of us gets to tweak it to make it relevant to us and our work.

The term is Engaging Meaningful Change. I'm supposed to add an adverb at the front but as I've never been much for grammar rules I cheated.

I believe that not only does learning essentially change people but also that for learning to really happen it has to be engaging, and meaningful.

So my version of the tag line is.

Learning, by Engaging Meaningful Change.

Happy Learning

Alan