Performance-based Learning

Something new under the sun part II

2007-07-24T10:09:00.000-07:00

So we launched Firefly Publisher. It's out, it's official, and we're even advertizing about it. As expected, the impact has been pretty huge. There is nothing else like it in the marketplace -- gaming, collaborative team-based development, searchable media repositories, an ability to pull source material from the repository and then repost outputs... The list just goes on and on.

We have seen a ton of early sales activity and now some of this is starting to translate to actual business. This is the fun part. I think that this model could be one of the biggest things to happen to elearning in some time. What's been missing from best-of-breed approaches is how to manage and integrate this stuff. Now, managing and integrating is the easy part, particularly since you can extend your existing media content with deep assessment capability, PowerPoint like effects, dynamic layering, themes, question pooling / randomization, and branching. It's pretty much the bomb-diggity.

Here's a real world example: we're working on a project right now with a major Financial client -- it's 15 hours of WBT across 6 user roles. Huge right? We're going to deliver this in 12 weeks -- ok let that sink in for a minute. That's more than an hour per week of development. Needless to say, we are blowing away industry standards. Industry standard is 220 development hours per hour of runtime. 220 x 12 = 2640 hours. We are doing it in 480 hours. Why? Our expertise, plus our tools: Firefly and now Firefly Publisher. Cool stuff.

So does this have anything to do with Performance-based Learning? No, not really. I guess this post is about Performance-based development. This is about how the right combination of tools and expertise can enable you to knock the cover off the ball in terms of real world performance...

Entropia, Virtual Money Exchanges, and Performance

2007-05-24T08:10:00.000-07:00

What do Entropia, virtual world parallel economies and employee performance have in common? How about motivational models for one?

There has been some debate about Entropia Universe and it's ability for players to spend real world money to buy game artificats (weapons, armor, equipment, etc...) Interstingly, the same thing happened with Diablo II a few years back. Rare or unique items were often traded on real world exchanges for real world money.

The guys at Blizzard didn't like this practice and went through all kinds of hoops to shut down the connection to the real world economy (and lots of people got burned when they bought items that were hacked into existence and Blizzard found ways to identify and shut these down.)
In a related practice, high-level characters have been sold in real term dollars for many years across multiple platforms. Even in video games like Off Road, you can spend real world money to increase the quality of your truck or whatever. By contributing more money, you can increase in-game dollars and buy that crucial upgrade to your shocks or brakes or acceleration.

It seems from my limited experience that Entropia is just tapping into this phenomenon in a deep and pervasive way. If you want to earn your progress "old school", you can. If you want to spend a couple hundred bucks, you can accelerate that process dramatically. And maybe if the in-game economics work, maybe you also have the possibility of earning some or all of that "investment" back by virtue of winning tougher battles (and the consequent drops), mining less accessible (and therefore higher value) ore, manufacturing more exclusive items, and then trading all this back into real world money.

I think it's an interesting approach. And I think it might even be a new way to think about training and learning rewards. I think by default we all view in-game rewards or learning as a means to better job performance, but what if there was also a connection to the "real world"
economy of incentives -- a day off, a dinner gift certificate, a better parking spot, half day Fridays for a month, etc... These could be random "drops" for fighting / solving / winning / answering etc... tougher challenges. But maybe there is also an in-game "economy" that maps to real world HR incentives -- 10,000 points / dollars / coins = a 1/2 day Friday or an Amex Gift Card for $50. Points would be earned by game play -- time in game, levels achieved, (insert appropriate learning objectives) met etc... There is an excellent article about this in the current issue of Talent Management "Using Noncash Rewards to Motivate, Retain, and Engage Employees" by Edward Frost. One of the interesting statistics cited by Mr. Frost is that tangible, non-monetary awards increase performance by 38.6%. So why not tie this directly into eleanring and gaming. Games have established reward models that could be easily tied back to real world non-monetary incentives.

Think of it like a Credit Card reward program except that instead of spending money to get rewards, you spend your time learning and demonstrating increased competencies / proficiencies etc... to earn rewards. Personally, while I think in-game or in-learning motivational techniques are important, it's just as important to consider real world incentives. As much as I enjoy playing games and learning, I am the kind of learner who would be way more jazzed by an extrinsic reward of some kind -- to the point where I probably use personal time to earn them which I might not do otherwise.

Anyway, that's my two cents ... which I'm saving toward an AutoReload Plasma Cannon.

Second Life -- why and what for?

2007-05-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

I’m still trying to figure out what all of the buzz is about with Second Life. I’ve created two different profiles and despite being active in related fields (elearning, community, and games) and a frequent speaker no less, I can find little motivation to do anything in this environment (other than, “I know I should do this because it seems like something I should know about” which is pretty lame as far as motivation goes).

The thing is, I’m pretty sure my experience is typical. When I’m in game-based artificial worlds, I have goals, I have motivation, I have reasons to be where I am and to care about the space I am in. In Second Life, I’m having trouble seeing any. Why am I in Second Life and what should I be doing? And why am I not spending this time productively in the real world? When I play God of War II, I feel some guilty pleasure in decapitating Cyclops and Gorgons and I enjoy the experience. When I “play?” Second Life, all I feel is guilty – like I’m just wasting my time completely as I try to invent reasons to be there.

It seems to me that there are some parallels to Second Life in the real world. This isn’t the first time, a new “world” has been discovered / invented. People have compared Second Life to the early stages of the internet and similar issues of “we don’t know what to do with it yet.” But it seems to me, the more apt comparison is to the colonization of the New World or the westward expansion of the US and Canada. In both of these cases, there was a new land and everyone was a new immigrant in that space (except of course the unfortunate native populations).

As we think about Second Life and critical mass and what it will be, I think we need to ask ourselves why people sailed across the oceans of the world to come to the Americas. Or why Americans and Canadians populated the West. What was that model? Simplistically, it was something like this “(perceived opportunity + available enabling technology + perceived reward) minus (perceived threat / risk + anticipated cost) = x. If people thought “x” – the return, was big enough or big enough relative to the same equation applied to their status quo, then maybe they moved their families across an ocean to try for a better a life. Or maybe they followed the gold or land rush West to seek their fortune.

I think the same reasoning applies to Second Life, but the opportunities and rewards seem low by comparison to their real world equivalents. The best analogy is probably a “land grab” similar to the western expansion – I can buy virtual land and develop it and resell it. And assuming enough other people decide to spend time in Second Life, that investment might appreciate. Then again, Linden Labs might decide to just “create” some more land on their servers or make land free. In other words, unlike real property, there is no “there” there. This is a new sort of risk in the “land grab” model. And yet, you still face the old risk of market glut or disinterested buyers. Just like any other real estate market, you face normal market fluctuations around supply and demand. So relative to real land and property, the risks for virtual land and property seem quite high.

Other possible rewards include Services – creating clothing in Second Life for Second Life participants. Or maybe artwork or pets or other Second Life artifacts. What’s unclear is whether there are enough participants to sustain a pure Services economy. So this too, seems insufficient as a motivator.

Beyond Services and Land Grab strategies that lead to economic incentives, what else is there in Second Life? What is there to do? What is there to accomplish? In what way can I entertain or enrich myself by participating? In my real life, I have real friends and do real things – play soccer, go hiking, watch movies, play card games with buddies over beer (or drink beer with buddies while using card games as a pretense), cook on the grill, do yard work, go camping or canoeing. So what’s my non-monetary incentive to give up any of this activity in my actual real life for time spent in a Second Life where there is no real value to anything, except perhaps relationships which can be had just as easily and more satisfyingly in person? Where’s the equivalent of the Gold Rush in Second Life to make me forsake time and experiences with my real friends and my real life for time spent in my Second Life?

What I’m missing?

Gaming: real value vs the "shiny penny"

2007-01-09T12:49:00.000-08:00

This past week I was reading through the list of sessions for Training Spring. Partly I was trying to find when my session was scheduled, and partly, I wanted to get a vibe for the show. Who would be presenting what? What was the general theme? What were some of the hot topics? Not surprisingly, the term “gaming” appeared in more than a few session descriptions.

Thus far, to be honest, I've found gaming discussions to be kind of disappointing. Most people talking about games have tended to focus on the mechanics of gaming instead of the concepts of gaming. What do I mean by that? Well, take for example, another major revolution that happened in the last century – the automobile. What was the dominant driver there? Mechanics or concept? I would argue that it's clearly “mechanics.” For starters, the idea of moving around based on someone or something else’s motive power was nothing new. From horses to camels to elephants, people have moved under the power of something else for thousands of years. The automobile was a simply a shift in the mechanics of the operation. A sizable one to be sure, but not a conceptual one. Software simulation might be another example that hits closer to home. Software simulation is also a change in mechanics. In the best software simulations, learners see demonstrations and practice and possibly assess in something that is a very close approximation of the real application. But conceptually, learners are doing the same things they used to do in a well-designed classroom environment minus the training databases, training instances, IT overhead, and logistical headaches. Same concept, different mechanics.

Using gaming for learning purposes, however, at least in a corporate setting, is something more novel, particularly, the use of electronically mediated and delivered games. Good leadership programs and the like have often used small or even large games in live training. Rarely however, have games been done electronically. This is, in fact, something new under the sun and represents a conceptual shift in the way we think about training. It is not however much of a mechanical shift.

Elearning, simulation, LMS’s etc… are all reasonably sophisticated electronic mediums through which training is delivered. And of course, in the world of entertainment, electronic games are a highly evolved market force. Today, Reuters delivers real news about both virtual and real life to citizens of SecondLife, and more people actively play Everquest on a daily basis than live in the city of New York. John Madden football clips are now used to illustrate actual game play in real football games. I could go on, but you get the idea: gaming is a huge, multi-billion dollar a year in industry. Using games, for elearning, therefore does not represent a mechanical evolution; if anything, elearning games will be less mechanically sophisticated than entertainment games. It is instead a major conceptual evolution in using existing mechanics in new and interesting ways. And this poses a real challenge for elearning professional.

Why? Well, it’s not because the elearning industry is going to be subsumed into the gaming industry. So if you hear an analyst suggest that, just slap him or her in the head. Corporate elearning is way too diverse and too specific and too fragmented to be a target for the gaming industry to care. The bigger danger is that elearning professionals seem to be ignoring gaming concepts in favor of mechanics. And given that this is primarily a conceptual shift, not a mechanical one, this is a bad thing.

People at conferences are talking about “mods” – how do I take an existing game engine and “mod” (modify) it so it can be used for elearning? Other people are talking about SecondLife and avatars and MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) and the virtual university that we should all want to build. At Training Fall, I overheard a discussion about the virtues of a 2D isometric perspective over a true first person, anthropomorphic perspective. In other words, there is a lot of talk that is focused on mechanics with, from what I have heard to date, little discussion about concepts (with the normal exceptions of Thiagi and Chris Saeger who have historically focused on the right stuff).

This raises two major and fundamental challenges:

1) Practically speaking, there is no way that a corporate training team is going to be able to design elearning games that will be as graphically rich or intricate or sophisticated as for-profit gaming companies. Not going to happen. Here are some reasons: Timelines. Bandwidth. Plug-in and installation issues. Cost to value. Size of team. Experience of team. Focus of team. Update and maintenance. Did I mention timelines? At best, we can outsource for truly high-end stuff assuming we can overcome enough of these issues. The danger here is that if we design for mechanics instead of concept, we will alienate our target audience. In an industry where most people think Captivate produces simulations, I’m a little skeptical that we can pull off the mechanics of gaming. Instead what we will likely see are learning products that clearly intended to look like a gaming title, but are, in fact, pale imitations. And then instead of "wowing" those Gen Y learners we’re trying so hard to impress, we’ll show them how terribly uncool we really are. Sort of like when I tell my kids that “I’m down with that” and they look at me like I’m sort of Yo MTV! rapper wanna-be. That was a little shout out to my shorties, yo.

2) In gaming and game theory, mechanics are an expression of concept, just as course design should be an expression of the interplay between audience needs, task analysis, and overall learning objectives, among about 40 other factors. Ask yourself: what’s more important in Monopoly, the design of the board or the concept of scarcity? Which drove the other? What’s more important, the idea of randomness and unpredictability in the dice and the Chance cards or the physical characteristics of the dice and cards? If the dice were base 10 instead of base 12, would the game fundamentally change? What if the Chance cards were purple? What’s more important, the denominations of money or the fact that it’s a finite resource used to measure relative success in the game?

Gaming is almost never about mechanics – gaming is almost always the expression of conceptual tension through mechanics (there are exceptions, particularly as it relates to ancillary or serrendipitous game experiences, but that's an entirely different subject). Typically, what defines the success of a game is not the level of graphics processor on your machine, but more interesting ideas like randomness, replay-ability, competition, cooperation, reward, punishment, advancement / progression. The larger question for the learning community is whether we are willing to put aside our desire for the “shiny penny” in favor of delivering real value. If we spend our time trying to design isometric 2d perspectives and avatars instead of focusing on game concepts like randomness and reward, we’re going to completely miss the boat.

Here are some of the questions we should be asking ourselves:

How do I create some level of randomness and replay-ability in the learning experience? Can I design an effective learning experience that doesn’t necessarily have a single start or end point?
How much control can I cede to the learner without sacrificing instructional objectives? Can I tune this in real time to control the experience?
What can I do introduce rewards and punishments that are communicated to the student during the experience to encourage and discourage certain behaviors? How can I use these elements as a way for individuals or teams to compete?
Can I introduce a real world reward structure outside of my game / learning environment as an incentive for learners to fully participate?
Are there existing game models that I can adapt or use to minimize the time learners spend figuring out the game as well as the time I spend developing it? For example, an application of conceptual knowledge through discreet challenges might lead to a Myst or Riven-like narrative where progression in enabled by solving intellectual challenges that otherwise block forward movement. In a skill-based scenario, maybe something like Diablo II might apply where you earn points for utilizing skills, but those points are randomized and dependent on the difficulty of the challenge so that bigger challenges equal bigger rewards and failure results in loss of rewards. Perhaps a game like Clue could be used as a baseline for a triage or diagnosing-type of learning event. You get the idea.

And of course, the other absolutely critical homework assignment for elearning professionals is to play games. Not just a few, but a lot. And not just electronic games either – board games, dice games, games of chance and games of skill. We should look at historic games that have changed the industry by virtue of their success or innovation. And while we are doing all this, we should deconstruct the experience:

What is the underlying concept of the game?
What metaphors are used?
What is the core objective of the game?
What are the constraints and limitations? How do they fuel the experience?
In what ways does the game handle reward? What is the competitive element?
Why is the game fun?
Who would enjoy the game – not by age or gender, but by personality type or job role?
Is the gamer creating a narrative as they progress or acting in someone else’s predefined role? In other words, am I defining a character as I go or am I “playing” a pre-existing character with skills, attributes, personality etc… Is it somewhere in the middle?

There are of course dozens of these questions that could and should be asked about any gaming experience. Until we understand what makes the game a “game”, we’re not really going to be able to make the conceptual shift of how to use games to drive corporate learning. Understanding points of convergence and divergence in gaming models is a key component in designing something new or adapting an existing model to a new instructional requirement.

One final point: don’t confuse creating a game with creating learning. There are numerous game models out there and not all of them are equally appealing to all gamers. I like first person shooters, but I’m not a raving fan. My buddy buys them all the moment they come out. I can’t stand avatar-based simulation games. On the other hand, I really like strategy-games. I personally believe that the games people enjoy are tied to innate skills and personality traits. It’s unlikely therefore that in a corporate setting with a typical heterogeneous group (particularly one large enough to warrant the development investment in gaming) you will be able to create a single game with universal appeal or equal chances of success for all participants. Unlike Blizzard Entertainment, your goal is not to make gobs of money from a specific gaming model, say, I don’t know, World of Warcraft, but rather to increase the proficiency and skill of all of your learners so you can impact the business.

So rather than investing tons of money into a single, glitzy gaming model, you may be better off taking a page out the book of another successful gaming company – Cranium. In Cranium or Balloon Lagoon (the little kid version), activities are organized around specific personality types: Creative Cat, Data Head, Word Worm, and Star Performer. Translated this would be: Artistic types, Knowledge and Fact types, Linguistic types, and Actors / Actresses. While there is an overall objective to the game, the various mechanisms to get there are varied to better appeal to different personality types and learning styles.

As a learning professional, you may want to consider these issues in determining your overall strategy. Successful use of gaming in a corporate setting ultimately will have very little to do with mechanics and glitz and avatars. Instead, it will be judged by business impact and ROI, just like any other business venture. Designing sexy gaming models that only appeal to 25% of the learner population therefore is not going to be a recipe for success. Effectively leveraging gaming concepts to create more engaging, interesting, and enjoyable learning experiences that appeal to a wide variety of learners, however, will lead to deeper business impact and a continued transformation in the way we all think about learning and performance. And that is something with which we could all "be down." Yo.

Something new under the sun

2007-01-05T11:34:00.000-08:00

So I think in my last major post, I had argued that it was unrealistic for everyone in elearning to be blogging all the time since we often had other real work to do – you know, the stuff that pays the bills. And then I went quiet for a long while. Why? Because I had to pay the bills.

Seriously, the latter half of last year was a busy time for us. We’ve been working on the release of a new web-based, collaborative authoring tool. We’ve also started some major work on Firefly to completely revamp its runtime and authoring components. In both cases, we’re moving in a much more collaborative, groupware type of model.

Our new web-based, collaborative authoring tool was released in November. It’s called Firefly Publisher and I’m reasonably sure, based on initial reaction, that it will transform the way people think about courseware development in the same way that Firefly transformed the way people thought about software simulation development.

One of the big reasons for this is that it fills a major hole in the development tools space. Today, organizations have to choose between tools for individual developers or enterprise level tools that completely transform the authoring paradigm. There is really nothing in the middle for small to large teams who want to use an authoring tool, but in a collaborative way. Today, development teams face a Hobson’s choice in authoring tools – do they ignore their team-based development needs or do they ignore their need for development speed and engaging, interactive learning. With Firefly Publisher, we’re releasing a sophisticated 4th generation collaborative authoring tool. Development groups will finally be able to work as true teams without sacrificing instructional design quality.

Obviously, we’re pretty excited. In coming weeks, I’ll post a White Paper I’ve put together to better explain why we’ve gone this route. One of the big reasons though, ties back to the idea behind this blog: performance-based learning. Whether you think of this as learning that derives from active engagement (performance) or real world performance that derives from learning – in either case, true performance-based learning initiatives focus on the learner, not on measurement and not on reports. With Firefly Publisher, we’re able to continue this focus on learners, while also dramatically simplifying and streamlining the development process, resulting in significant improvements to both group efficiency and productivity.

So that’s what we’ve been up too. Now that the White Paper is done, you can expect to hear more from me – at least until it’s time to pay some more of those pesky bills.

Learning Circuits Big Question -- follow-up

2006-10-11T08:47:00.000-07:00

The big question follow-up: So what can we do about it?

Here is the new question:

If you think it's important that everyone be blogging, how do we get there? If you agree the goals that I've just listed are important, but blogs aren't the answer. What is?

As I noted in my previous post on this subject, I don’t think it’s important that everyone be blogging. In fact, the longer I think about this, the less I like the idea. Here is what I keep coming back to – what does it mean to be a professional? And what does it means to be a typical elearning professional in a corporate setting?

It seems to me that the average elearning professional in the US is likely working for a corporation, and their primary mandate is to meet the business needs and goals of whoever is paying their salaries. Their primary goal is not career development or professional development, it’s business impact. Insofar as blogging helps us achieve the latter, I think it’s great. Insofar as it achieves the former at the expense of the latter, I think we need to question our priorities.

The mere fact of being a knowledge worker doesn’t entitle us to prioritize our time to the benefit of our own professional growth at the expense of company goals. If my primary job is administering an LMS or delivering instructor-led training or developing PSS, then how would blogging factor-in exactly? I don’t mean “what might they blog about?” – that would be self-evident. What I mean is “how would blogging help them perform their core jobs more effectively or efficiently?” How would blogging help them deliver greater business value? I’m pretty sure that these elearning professionals wouldn’t be allowed to surf Fark all day at work, and by the same logic, they shouldn’t be blogging all day at work either. While one certainly has more value than the other (and I’ll let you decide which : ), if neither contributes to some sort of bottom-line business impact, they are equally a waste of time as far as the business is concerned.

Different rules apply of course if you are a consultant or a vendor or if you are willing to contribute on your own dime and on your own time. And maybe different rules apply outside the US. I agree with most of Tony’s points about the value of blogging to the individual, I’m just not sure I agree with its value to the business, particularly when it’s phrased as “everyone.” Organizations will not benefit if every one of their learning professionals is spending 2 hours per week blogging. In some large organizations, this may mean 600 hours per week spent blogging or some 30,000 hours per year. I think it’s safe to say that with 30,000 hours, an organization could design a learning or performance initiative that might have more impact than the results associated with blogging.

As to how else to achieve and practice the professional characteristics Tony mentioned:

being self-reflective,
being collaborative,
being rigorous in supporting our positions,
open to feedback,
understanding our point of view and learning to share it,
working knowledge of new technologies

there are lots of ways. But first, it’s worth noting that blogging will not magically endow you with these characteristics. In many ways, I think a desire to blog about elearning probably means you already possess many of these traits, which is really sort of a wish-list of elearning professionalism. If you are doctor, you probably already have an interest in helping people and in exploring and learning about complex subjects and maybe a fair degree of detective-like, analytical thinking skills. You get the idea. In other words, you possess the professional traits one would expect of someone in the “doctoring” profession.

The folks who have self-selected blogging likely possess the traits that would lead them to blogging. Just as the universe happens to have favorable physical laws that lead to the formation of people who then marvel at how weird it is that the universe happens to favor the formation of people, we now have bloggers who believe that people should blog so that they will possess the traits of bloggers which is what led them to blogging in the first place. Do we blog so we can be blogger-like or are we blogger-like and therefore blog? Ok, I’m clearly having too much fun with this.

As to other ways to achieve this sort of Zen-like self-reflection in collaborative openness and communal sharing of future technologies? How about talking with colleagues within your organization over lunch? Better yet, during the design of the next learning initiative. Or maybe during an elearning conference? Or by commenting on other people’s blogs or through listservs or bulletin board style interactions?

Is there something about authoring a blog which imbues it with more importance or significance than a verbal dialog with peers? I suppose there is the permanence factor and the ability for a larger, wider debate. Of course, with this, you also lose intimacy. Do I learn more from strangers who tell me my design “sucks” or do I learn more from peers who tell me my design “could use some work”? I don’t know. What is unique about blogs is the idea of “putting yourself out there” – “these are my words and thoughts for good or for ill. This is what I believe at this moment.” And in that sense, a blog requires more rigor perhaps than a discussion, more clarity of mind and more internal self-reflection about what “what I really think” on a particular subject. But I’m not sure that this is an artifact of my writing a “blog” or just the fact that I’m writing. I suppose either way, the impact is the same. To derive the same unique benefits of blogging, there may be no choice but to publish and distill the cacophony of everyday thinking into the coherency of the written word.

Which of course leads to the question – what does a typical elearning professional need to think so deeply about anyway? For the typical elearning professional, are there enough, “boy I really need to think through this subject” situations on a daily or weekly basis to justify the time and energy of creating and maintaining a blog? I have no idea, but I’d be curious as to what others think.

The Big Question -- Should all learning professionals be blogging?

2006-10-03T08:02:00.000-07:00

Should all learning professionals be blogging?

So this month’s Learning Circuits Blog is on the subject of blogging. Which I guess makes this response some sort of meta-blog. A suppose another question we could be asking is “should learning professionals who already blog comment on whether learning professionals should be blogging?” Isn’t this a bit like asking a group of Republicans whether all taxes should be lowered? And really, can there be any answer but “yes and no”?

Yes
Why? For me, it’s a simple issue of “practicing what you preach.” Blogging, wikis, podcasting, WBT’s, simulations, instructor-led delivery (live and virtual), EPSS… it all has a place and a function in helping drive to organizational performance. But when to use each requires some understanding of the pro’s and con’s, which is best developed through usage and experiment. While you can probably argue that a theoretical understanding of the relative merits of each intervention is sufficient for most learning professionals to make accurate decisions on when to use each, I’m not sure that you really “get” this stuff until you do it. And until you “get” it, how do you design your solution? The best performance centric solutions are ones that blur the traditional delivery lines: WBT with PSS with a Wiki for on-going maintenance or Virtual Classroom with Simulation and a weekly Video Podcast on the latest product news. You get the idea. Until you understand your choices as both a consumer and a producer, you are “book” smart, and you will be harder pressed to innovate in meet your organization’s unique training and performance needs.

No
Why? For me, it’s a question of “time management.” Blogging, wikis, podcasting, simulations, virtual classrooms, LMS…. all new technologies take some time to investigate. But some of these are investigations of technology and infrastructure, while others are investigations of fundamental content development models. I can investigate LMS’s without necessarily implementing one or developing courses specific to the LMS. But blogging, wikis, podcasting… these are transformations in the way we communicate – they are content-centric, and therefore, the level of investigation to have a “gut” level understanding of these technologies is non-trivial. To get a “feel” for the impact of blogs and wikis and podcasting, I should, at a minimum, participate as a learner, but ideally as a producer as well. That works for me as a consultant / vendor in this space, but I know from working with my clients, that 90% of them don’t have as much time as they would like to work on existing projects and business initiatives, let alone take on the task of investigating new technologies that will likely consume a lot of time. So “no,” there are too many other things that will help training organizations delivery real world business impact and blogging for the sake of blogging is not the best use time for most elearning professionals.

I suppose the ideal answer is “maybe” -- maybe use a blog as a kind of internal newsletter on some business relevant subject or a change management communication vehicle for an upcoming initiative? Or maybe dedicate a few key individuals to act as learning R&D to investigate new technologies and their uses. While I’m strongly in favor of all of us learning and experimenting with new techniques and delivery models, I’m also passionately committed to the notion that we should be delivering business value first and foremost.

Just as we wouldn’t want every programmer on the team to spend hours each week learning .net if we were a J2EE house, we probably don’t want every member of the elearning community writing blogs when there are still thousands of hours of classes and WBT to deliver. On the other hand, we probably would want to use .net on the first project where it made sense. And we might want a sub-set of the team to focus on investigation and R&D on emerging technologies. It seems to me that a similar model should hold for elearning. As with all forward leaning professional development in any field, the key is striking the right balance between “big picture,” strategic, “what if” activities against the need to deliver real world business value today (if for no other reason than the selfish desire to be employed long enough to get to the cool stuff… ; )

Performance Management -- a cautionary tale

2006-09-21T10:55:00.000-07:00

In my previous post, I defined what I meant by "performance-based learning." In this one, I want to tell you a story about the danger facing a related movement – the Performance Management movement – you know the idea of managing performance through an LMS or a third-party tool that every analyst is talking about? Obviously, performance management and performance-based learning are related concepts. One is about you measure performance and one is about how you improve it. Simple, right? Maybe not. Read on.

Here’s the context and the prelude:
This past week I was at a client site to discuss their need for custom learning and content development tools – in this case, Firefly and Firefly Publisher (a software simulation tool, and it’s big brother, a collaborative content authoring tool). The client is an existing LMS customer who has recently purchased an enterprise license of our LMS (KnowledgePlanet). Since our LMS also has some pretty sophisticated performance management features, they also planned to use the LMS to manage skills and competencies, report on skill gaps and do some limited succession planning in the future. The key for them was the value in being able to link skill gaps and succession planning models directly to learning. They saw this as a key advantage to the solution. Keep that in mind.

So fast forward to this past week. I had been asked to go to the client site to discuss tools and custom eLearning. As an expert in both areas, I didn’t need to do much prep. Just loaded the usual demos, worked on a few simple conceptual PPT slides and off I went. In retrospect, I should have been slightly more curious about a company that had all the cutting edge learning and performance infrastructure anyone could ask for, and yet wanted an overview of our custom content and tool capabilities. Relative to all the planning that goes into an LMS and performance management strategy, eLearning content development is pretty straightforward: task and audience analysis + performance objectives + learning and corporate culture + infrastructure + timeline + budget = courseware design and cost. Not exactly rocket science. And as for the tools we offer, they speak pretty well for themselves and are recognized as industry-leading solutions so again, not a lot of research or demo required to determine fit.

So what the heck was I doing there? Well, as it turns out, this well-respected “everyone knows their name” company who is spending significant dollars on a massive LMS and performance management initiative had zero, yes ZERO, eLearning to distribute with either system. Zero, like nada, zilch, nihilo, zip. None. Nor did they have any in-house expertise to build any. Nor did they have any budget to hire new people to build any. They did have some limited budget for custom content development. And they also had some limited budget to train their “coordinators” to build some simple custom content.

I was there to discuss our custom content capabilities and to show them our tools, specifically to help them determine if they were “too complex” for their “not courseware developers, not instructional designers, not trainers -- some other job function” resources to use successfully in developing learning. I was also there to help them budget for eLearning for the coming year so they could outsource key projects as budget allowed. Needless to say, I was surprised and alarmed. Given the consultative nature of our sales process, I was also confused as to how we could have sold such a complex solution to a customer with so little understanding of what it was going to take to be successful. As it turns out, there wasn’t much we could have done differently on this front.

So let’s see, what’s wrong with this picture? Here is just a partial list:

Cart before the horse
Building infrastructure before you build courseware is like building a house before you have any furniture, curtains, rugs, silverware, dishes, or a TV (which may be ok if you leave money aside to do this after you buy a house, but not so OK if you don’t…). Building infrastructure before you staff instructional designers and course developers and content experts is like building a restaurant without planning for chefs, hostesses and wait staff. And trying to build a training practice staffed with people who have zero ID or training program? Ugghh. “The tools you choose are the least of your worries…” came to mind at least half a dozen times. I wanted to tell them that their plan was sort of like buying a Corvette and filling the gas tank with sand, but I didn’t.

Poor alignment between goals and methods
In any talent management or performance management engagement, the central goal should not be the identification and quantification of gaps. Nor should the goal simply be succession planning or a comprehensive catalog of skills and competencies by job role. All of this is secondary, even tertiary, to the real business goal – improved performance leading to the successful completion of business objectives.

Tracking does not improve performance, identification of skill gaps does not rectify them, having a succession plan doesn’t magically endow the successor with the requisite skills. What does? Training, learning, practice, mentoring, cognitive and task-oriented apprenticeships, systems changes, process changes... Central to any performance or talent management initiative, therefore, is the need for comprehensive training and support plan, a significant chunk of which will need to be e-something – eLearning, e-Performance Support Systems, e-documentation, e-Seminars (recorded or live)… Logistically speaking, if the org is big enough to consider comprehensive talent or performance management, they are almost certainly too big to do all the required training via live instructors.

Poor alignment between business units internally
How was it that we were able to sell an entire LMS without visibility into the content development plan? Simple really. The infrastructure purchase and the content development responsibilities were aligned with different business units. IT owned infrastructure; HR owned corporate training; each business unit owned it’s own training development. No one had the big picture. HR started the performance management initiative which clearly required technology. So IT took the lead and worked with HR to define needs and what not (this ultimately became another bit of irony since the entire thing is hosted by us and therefore requires nearly zero IT involvement from the client 00 in other words, IT never should have drove this process in the first place). Along the way, a few questions were asked of the business units but no one seriously inquired as to the existing state of content or existing budget or existing skill sets. Since there were no complaints, HR just assumed training was under control at the business unit level and that once a corporate LMS and performance management strategy was unveiled, the content would just start populating itself. Sort of a “if you build it, the content will come” strategy.

So why didn’t we know? After all, we sold them the solution. Didn’t we do our homework? Sure we did. We asked and were told there was content in every business unit. Business unit reps were in a few sales and consulting meetings and never raised any concerns. The IT guys didn’t seem to have any idea what content meant and the HR folks were mostly concerned about system admin and reports and the like. So even though we asked the right questions and we seemingly got the right answers, the reality is that we didn’t have the right people at the table.

In retrospect, the business units were woefully underrepresented. And as it turns out, they often sent different reps to each meeting. They were often asked at the last minute because HR forgot to invite them, and worse, because they were in the business units actually delivering business value, they often had deadlines and commitments that resulted in missed meetings. It also became clear as we learned more that the business units just assumed HR was going to take care of all the training. It never even crossed their minds that they would need to build hours and hours of training without any additional support or staff. After all, their main job was production and generating revenue, not developing training.

So in the end, IT and HR were both well-represented, but no one was really representing the learners or the business units. HR and IT both had executive level involvement. The business units had managers and directors. HR and IT had dedicated resources and time to spend on this initiative. The business units tried to find time in-between production. Because of this, the one group who was expected to do the most to make the roll-out successful had the least input and the least involvement. And, as a result, the one group who was supposed to benefit the most is the least likely to see real benefits from the solution.

Change management and failure to plan
What happens when the systems go live and there is little to no business-unit specific eLearning available? What will be your opinion of this system? What would your CEO’s opinion be? What’s the likelihood you will view the Talent or Performance Management System as a success if you can’t improve your talent or performance in any new or valuable ways? How likely are you to embrace it?

At the end of the day, Performance Management is not about measuring performance, it’s about improving performance. To do true performance management, you can’t just put an architecture in place to measure gaps and manage succession planning. Learning must be connected to the plan, and not just hypothetical learning you might someday build but real learning and training resources that exist today. You must plan for how you will actually change the performance of the organization. While it’s true that you can’t manage what you can’t measure, it’s equally true that you can’t improve anything just by measuring it. Knowing that the convenience store is a mile away doesn’t help me get there. For that, I need a pair of sneakers, a bike, a car, or some other conveyance to move toward my destination. In the case of corporate performance and the personal performance of individual employees, there are a number of appropriate vehicles that should be considered: eLearning, simulation, performance support, process changes, systems changes…

While all of this may seem blatantly obvious, I’m not seeing nearly enough attention devoted to this in the hype around Performance Management. HPT (Human Performance Technology) and ISPI (International Society for Performance Improvement) should be factoring significantly into these discussions, but so far, there’s a lot of talk about saving money by automating process and not much at all about improving the bottom-line through performance improvements. True visionary companies are not the ones who put in place architecture to measure and track; true visionaries are the ones who measure and track so they can make tactical improvements in the performance of individual employees to better enable the organization to achieve its business objectives.

Lessons learned
So lessons learned on my end? Don’t make even rudimentary assumptions about the state of the organization, regardless of it’s reputation in it’s vertical. Do ask more questions about the whole strategy and the overall plan. I’m not sure this would have changed much in this case as this organization was hell-bent on buying an integrated LMS and performance management solution, but maybe for a more enlightened organization, more of the right question will put the focus where it needs to be – on performers and performance and the methods and means by which to improve both.

I also think I'm going to spend more time talking about the importance of connecting the overall learning strategy to organizational goals. For years, the pendulum was toward architecture -- LMS's were king. Then it seemed to swing back to content for awhile with simulation tools and Wikis and interactivity tools leading a counter-charge in favor of content. Now I think we're back the other way where analysts seem to be focusing on infrastructure again, this time with Perfomance Management and Talent Management. As with LMS's, these buzz words don't really don't mean anything in the absence of a content strategy.

I don't know. Maybe they are making the same mistakes I did and assume that the need for content is self-evident. Clearly however, this is wrong. Now, more than ever, we need to think about a holistic strategy to address performance: including Wikis, functional or departmental blogs, podcasting, simulations, collaboration, PSS, nano-learning, etc... Layering yet another heavy infrastructure into a content-weak model seriously undermines the likely success of a solution or any chance for real business impact. On the one hand, it's sad to still have to focus on such basic issues as connecting a learning and performance strategy to organizational goals. On the other hand, maybe this need never goes away and we just need to keep hammering home the idea that the biggest value of elearning lies in actual performance improvement, which is inextricably tied to quality content.

Why Performance-based Learning?

2006-08-01T09:50:00.000-07:00

So, after 15 years in the learning space, I finally decided to jump into the fray with my own blog on all things learning. Technically, I suppose someone could nitpick and claim that since I titled the blog “Performance-based Learning” it must be about “performance-based learning” and not just learning. So what’s the difference? Why the distinction? Shouldn’t all learning be about performance?

Let’s start with the last question first. Yes. In a corporate setting, all learning should translate into performance. Just as you wouldn’t invest in new hardware for no reason, you shouldn’t invest in training for employees with an expectation of the same old performance and efficiencies. If there isn’t a demonstrable ROI, why do it?

Why the distinction? Well, for starters, too many people talk about students and learning when we should be talking about performers and performance. Even experienced people in this field sometimes talk about learning as if it’s an end rather than a means. Frankly, I’m tired of hearing about award-winning training – what about award-winning ROI?

The words “Performance-based Learning” are an attempt to cover a broad range of related concepts in an anagram-ish sort of way. It describes not only the end state: learning that results in performance improvements, but also the means, namely learning methodologies that rely on performance as a training technique. Or more succinctly: learning that results from performance and learning that results in performance, namely workplace performance.

This is where I’ve spent my life for the last 15 years – developing products, consulting, evangelizing, selling, presenting at conferences… Given the recent buzz from analysts in this area, it seemed that some clarify might be useful from someone who has been advocating this approach prior to it’s adoption as the latest eLearning fad.

So what’s the difference between “Learning” and “Performance-based Learning”? Ideally, none. Through real world examples, I hope to show the value of learning that impacts the bottom-line while also making the case for a broader view of learning that includes performance support, mentoring, human factors consulting, and process analysis. I hope that you find this blog useful. More importantly, I hope that you tell me I’m crazy now and then. None of us have all the answers on this stuff, but through dialog, maybe we’ll find that we have most of them… Happy reading.