Posted by Dave Basarab on Thu, May 10, 2012 @ 09:34 AM
COMPLIMENTARY WEBINAR
Thursday, May 17th, 2012 2:00-3:00pm EST
Please join me for the fourth of the webinar series Making the Most of Corporate Training Dollars.
In my work I emphasize that learning is continuous and shouldn't stop when a training session ends. My approach is a total emersion learning experience that emphasizes training transfer, which drives adoption, which drives impact (company value). I encourage organizations to think beyond training sessions to ensure the information "sticks" and will be used effectively in the workplace.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
In this complimentary webinar, I will explain how to integrate training into your teams' work behavior and implement activities and techniques that will increase your company's training transfer rate to 60-70% or more. Additionally, I will explain how to use innovative techniques throughout the entire process - from pre-course, training, and post-course - to successfully drive training transfer.
In this session, you will learn:
- What is "training transfer" and why is it important?
- More than 20 specific actions to do before, during and after training to improve the "stickiness" of your training.
- How to partner with management for training's roll-out, so more skills are transferred to the workplace.
- The importance of planning for training transfer in the earliest set-up phases of your training - and how this increases training's ROI.
- How to cultivate a "training transfer mindset and culture" in your company.
Posted by Dave Basarab on Tue, May 08, 2012 @ 08:40 AM
Not every participant will adopt his or her goals. The question is what is an acceptable percentage of those who adopt? That is what the adoption rate attempts to do. It is the percentage of participants that we want to perform the work (Adoptive Behaviors) and is the prediction of successful transfer from training to the workplace. The Steering Committee needs to answer this question for each Intention Goal: What percentage of participants with this Intention Goal will successfully perform the Adoptive Behavior?
Committees, at times, struggle with the dilemma of this question: Is this the percentage based on what we hope it will be, or is it the realistic value? The percentage is a combination of both, based on the Adoptive Behavior and the work environment. Demands of the job, pressures to perform, participant’s current job not providing an opportunity to practice the skill, and lack of management support are just some of the factors that impede adoption. The Committee needs to recognize this and set expectations accordingly.
When Committee members are unsure, I recommend that a good starting point is somewhere near 60 percent.
Here is an example from a course titled Business Acumen Training.
Until next time - Dave
Posted by Dave Basarab on Mon, Apr 30, 2012 @ 07:27 AM
So far we have predicted training's value by predicting the intention goals and each goal's associated distribution rate. We also have predicted the beliefs the course should create. The next step is to predict the adoptive behaviors. Here we ask our steering committee to document, by intention goal, of the expect the goal to be performed on the job.
The Committee members must tackle the challenge of predicting the Adoptive Behaviors that they want participants to perform on-the-job. An Adoptive Behavior is the unit of work (what the participant does on-the-job, based on the intended goals, beliefs, and course design).
The Adoptive Behaviors flow from the course design and are the manifestation of Intention Goals and Beliefs.
In predicting Adoptive Behaviors, Committee members answer this question: If these are our best people at running a business, what work (behaviors) would the training with these goals and beliefs produce? I use the following tool when facilitating this with Committees.
The idea here is to paint the picture to what success students will be doing the skills learned in the class. Here is an example of a completed set of adoptive behaviors predicted for course titled Business Acumen Training.
Until next week - Dave
Posted by Dave Basarab on Thu, Apr 26, 2012 @ 12:05 PM
Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 2:00-3:00pm EST
Please join me for the third of the webinar series Making the Most of Corporate Training Dollars.
Learning is an economic elixir. It makes people and organizations more adaptable, responsive and nimble. It serves as the bedrock for innovation, as it's impossible to innovate without learning something new. It's the foundation for extraordinary customer service, employee attraction, retention, and development and is the fuel for profitable growth. It can shape culture. And when it's done right, it's one of those rarest opportunities - where employers' and employees' needs are in perfect harmony. In the vast majority of cases, learning offers significant benefits for both employers and employees.
Learning investments require a long-term focus and an ability to balance the tradeoffs between profits today for greater returns in the future. In short, having the right learning strategy will increase an organization's ability to create value.
Join me in this complimentary webinar as I share my proven process to build a robust, best-in-class Enterprise Learning Plan.
What you will learn
- Review your competency assessment data available for the target audiences and identify the trends.
- Interview a cross-section of key executive and subject matter experts to outline the ideal requirements for "Master Performers" in your target audiences.
- Identify the gaps that exist between your current skill levels and your needed performance levels.
- Review your company's current Strategic Plan and HR Strategy.
- Revise your Enterprise Learning Plan, outlining the training needed to get your target population to current ideal states and how to prepare them for future roles.
I will provide a framework for the identification, design, development, deployment, and evaluation of the curriculum. These learning plans examine the curriculum in the broadest strategic context then guides curriculum designers in drilling down to the most discrete curricular components
WEBINARS ON DEMAND
Did you miss my first two webinars in the series? No problem. Visit the pages below and watch the sessions.
Introducing Learning Bursts: A Different Way to Deliver Training
Predictive Evaluation: Ensuring Training Delivers Organizational and Business Results
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Posted by Dave Basarab on Mon, Apr 23, 2012 @ 07:34 AM
Beliefs—what do you want the participants to believe in when they complete the course?
When participants believe that new skills and knowledge mastered in training will help them and/or their organization, the likelihood of adoption is increased. When participants change their beliefs about themselves and their personal performance, they apply the new skills and even take on new challenges. Beliefs manifest themselves in words and actions. Therefore training should instill the set of beliefs that support participants in trying, practicing, and finally transferring these skills.
You do not teach beliefs in training, but the design should develop the belief structure during the learning experience. The instructional design needs to make sure that everything that is said and done in the course is consistent with the training’s belief statements. A few techniques include guest speakers sharing their success stories using the new skills, the language that instructors use when teaching, posters (signage) in the classroom, etc.
Belief statements are one of the first elements in the impact matrix and are expressions of the desired set of feelings and attitudes participants need to successfully transfer skills to their jobs.
Note: a well-written belief statement should complete this sentence: I believe that…
With the steering committee in place and having a good understanding of the course, you start by predicting beliefs. I use silent brainstorming and an affinity process for developing the belief statements with the committee.
Here are the belief statements from the Business Acumen Training course.
Until next week - Dave
Posted by Dave Basarab on Tue, Apr 17, 2012 @ 06:58 PM
ASTD Learning and Development Blog - April 16, 2012 - "Learning Bursts and Business Acumen Training: A Case Study". Ran my article on how Powers Resourse Center successfully used the Learning Burst training methodology with one of their clients. Click here to read the article.
Many thanks to Dr. Phil Young and Tara Powers for their inventive approach to using Learning Bursts.
If you would like to learning more about the Learning Burst training method, you can watch my webinar on demand Introducing Learning Bursts: A Different Way to Deliver Training.
Posted by Dave Basarab on Thu, Apr 12, 2012 @ 08:42 AM
Predictive Evaluation: Ensuring Training Delivers Business and Organizational Results
Thursday, April 19th, 2012 2:00-3:00pm EST
Please join me for the second of my webinar series Making the Most of Corporate Training Dollars
- Do you struggle to define training's success?
- Are you fighting to justify the training's value within your organization?
- Does your organization view training as an expense versus an investment with predicted return?
- Do you need a method of predicting (forecasting) the training's value to help decide whether to train?
- Are your current evaluation efforts always "after the fact"?
- Do you want to measure success using leading indicators that drive continuous improvement?
Then consider Predictive Evaluation
What you will learn
In this complimentary webinar, I will spotlight Predictive Evaluation, the first and only training and evaluation approach to add the element of prediction. Using my innovative new Predictive Evaluation (PE) Model, trainers and business leaders can now successfully predict training's results, value, intention, adoption and impact, allowing them to make smarter, more strategic training and evaluation investments.
Webinar attendees will learn how Predictive Evaluation enables you to effectively and accurately forecast training's value to your company, measure against these predictions, establish indicators to track your progress (and make mid-course corrections if needed) and report the results in a language that business executives respond to and understand. This approach can be used for any sort of training program, in any setting, whether planned, newly implemented, or long-established. Predictive Evaluation is collaborative, as supervisors and employees work together to establish standards for success each step of the way. The process helps guarantee that training results will be relevant to the business and gives all participants a sense of ownership in the process.
I hope you can join me,
WEBINARS ON DEMAND
Did you miss my first webinar Introducing Learning Bursts: A Different Way to Deliver Training? No problem. Visit my Webinars on Demand page and watch the session. You also will be able to download the slides and receive a free sample Learning Burst.
Posted by Dave Basarab on Wed, Apr 11, 2012 @ 08:21 PM
PE Intention Goals are the planned actions that we want participants to author during training as their personal transfer plan. If training is working as designed, we want participants writing actions that drive desired adoptive behaviors back into their everyday work patterns. Developing Intention Goals is relatively easy if the course has a set of well-written, performance-based learning objectives. They refer to training outcomes that specify the information and/or skills to be mastered and what participants do to demonstrate mastery. Performance-based learning objectives manifest themselves in training in the forms of content modules and skill-practice exercises. Therefore, the path to developing Intention Goals is performance-based learning objectives, which lead to course content/learning, which leads to Intention Goals. To create Intention Goals, you review the performance-based learning objectives and the course content/learning and answer two questions:
In what work situations do we want participants to apply the learned content?
In those situations, what observable actions (work) will they do?
For example, if a performance-based learning objective for a Foundational Management course is “Conduct highly interactive weekly staff meetings using open-ended and probing questioning techniques” and the instructional design calls for a twenty-minute lecture on open-ended and probing questions, with three fifteen-minute practice sessions running a meeting using the questioning techniques, the Intention Goal could be “During my weekly staff meeting, I will ask three open-ended and probing questions. I will involve all of the team and not just the supervisors.”
A tool that you can use with the Steering Committee to develop these goal statements is the Intention Goal Worksheet above. In Column A, pre-populate the worksheet with the performance-based learning objectives that you feel warrant an Intention Goal. A good rule of thumb to determine which objectives to include on the worksheet is: include the terminal course objectives versus enabling objectives. Terminal objectives describe the participant’s expected level of performance by the end of the course/training and describe results, not processes. Terminal objectives assist in focusing efforts and developing enabling objectives. Enabling Objectives define the skills, knowledge, or behaviors that participants must reach in order to complete terminal objectives successfully.
Note: I use the term “performance-based learning objectives” with Steering Committee members because committee members are not instructional designers and grasp the meaning of that phrase better than using “terminal objectives.”
In Column B, list the learning activities in the course design that teach the terminal objectives. These are the lessons, exercises, games, activities, etc. that participants experience to master the terminal objective. These are also pre-populated from the training design.
In Column C, the committee completes the predicted Intentions Goals for each row. You want to aim for no more than 6-8 predicted goals.
Until next time - Dave
Posted by Dave Basarab on Tue, Apr 10, 2012 @ 07:37 AM
In order to predict training value, you need to forecast how the Intention Goals will be distributed among participants. In other words, if twenty participants attend training, what percentage will author goal 1, goal 2, goal 3, etc.?
To predict goal distribution:
Ask the Steering Committee to answer the question: What percentage of participants will choose goal 1? As the Committee wrestles with the answer, you may provide the following guidance:
Look at the instructional design and the time allotted for each goal. Is there a goal with more instruction time than others? For example, if in a course 45 percent of the total time is spent teaching knowledge and skills associated with goal 2, maybe the goal distribution for goal 2 should be close to 45 percent.
Is there a goal for which the content or skill to implement it is more complex than for other goals? Participants usually write goals that are most easy for them to implement. Therefore, the goal that is least complex to implement may warrant a higher goal distribution percentage.
Does a goal lend itself more naturally to the target audience? For example, if the target audience is sales professionals, they may author goals on sales calling techniques versus budget analysis.
Once the Committee agrees on the goal distribution for goal 1, record it next to the Intention Goal and repeat the process for the remaining goals.
Facilitate a discussion on all the percentages (goal distributions); then use the Committee’s agreed-upon decision-making process to finalize the distributions.
Here is a completed example for a course titled “Business Acumen Training”.
For further reference, check out my blogs with steps 1 and 2.
Predicting Training’s Value Blog Series - Introducing the Series
Predicting Training’s Value Blog Series - Step 1: Understand the Course
Until next week - Dave
Posted by Dave Basarab on Wed, Apr 04, 2012 @ 02:22 PM
Today I was honored to provide a guest post on Allison Rossett's blog. The topic: What is a Learning Burst?
Check it out and please share with your colleagues.