In Search of Mediocrity

It’s been 30 years since Tom Peters and Robert Waterman researched the corporate world, resulting in their groundbreaking book, In Search of Excellence. An awful lot has changed since then, as the worldwide economy suffered through two recessions with boom periods in between. Stocks and fortunes have risen due to growth in some industries, and fallen with the likes of Lehman Brothers and Bernie Madoff.

Throughout all of this, generations have grown up with mobile phones and MP3 players rather than landlines and stereo systems; with PDAs and the Internet rather than pens and letters; with email, Facebook, and YouTube rather than verbal communication and media acuity. Many among them don’t realize that generations past placed a premium on quality and excellence over speed and convenience and on long-term relationships rather than instant messaging.

Don’t get me wrong…I love technology, and I am often what the industry calls an “early adopter.” But as these changes have become more common in the business world and members of those generations have started to move into positions of power, are we beginning to lose what we used to pride most?

I think it’s humorous that in the last few years, the word “artisanal” has started to pop up in retail applications, such as bakeries, restaurants, cheese shops, and handmade soaps and candles. It has become almost quaint to think of yourself as an artisan, as though it hearkens back to an earlier age of horses and buggies.

I’m 57 now, and as I was growing up in the business world, it seemed like there were lots of artisans—people who took pride in working to develop high-quality products, videos, drawings, blueprints, support materials, manuals, and training materials—there was even an art to writing an effective memorandum. Those artisans took pride in their accomplishments and in the knowledge that what they produced was truly effective in communicating and accomplishing the stated business goals. Now, I receive hundreds of emails per week, most of which are written with botched grammar, poor spelling, and incomplete words…like it’s so difficult to type “you” instead of “u.” And some of the work I see, produced by seemingly intelligent and educated people, is downright embarrassing.

I was having lunch with a friend the other day—someone who is one of those business artisans—and he was lamenting the fact that many corporate customers would rather pay a few pennies less for products made from cheap, Chinese parts, even though they know that those products will fail much sooner than if they had been made from better quality materials. In my own experience as an instructional designer/developer, I have seen training vendors eschew proven learning principles in favor of quick fixes that offer little hope of long-term behavioral change. I have tried to avoid working with these vendors, but they seem to pop up on a daily basis, as is evidenced by typing the word “training” into your browser. (I just tried it, and Google reported “about 596,000,000 results.”)

As a business writer, I have taken pride in developing cases that not only made the key points, but felt real, as though you were in the room with the characters and could sense their humanity in dealing with difficult, complicated, business situations. Now, I’m often asked to develop cases as though I’m in an old episode of “Dragnet”—just the facts.

Many companies seem to evaluate contractors’ success by the number and level of educational degrees rather than any proven track record. Other companies view us all as commodities, as though a recent graduate of architecture school will have the same insights and instincts as someone who has designed hundreds of successful buildings.

I know I may sound like a curmudgeon, wallowing in a past era that is no longer relevant. But in truth, I appreciate the changes that have occurred: I like having a smartphone, a small, powerful notebook computer, and an iPod, and I enjoy being able to post something like this on a blog that anyone in the world can read instantly. But I don’t want to be asked to do mediocre work that will not result in long-term, positive results for my clients or for me. I will hang on to the notion that at least one person in every training session will read my cases and think, “This is really well-written…I can understand and feel the dilemma that these characters are facing.”

When the time comes that I believe such quality and excellence are no longer valued, I’ll drop out of the corporate world and make pizza. Of course, it will be really good pizza.

Helping Sales Employees After Acquisitions

In this economy, companies have been acquiring other entities at an historic rate. I have had the opportunity to help work with three clients as they acquired other companies:

• In 2001, Archstone Communities acquisition of Charles E. Smith Residential Realty, leading to the creation of Archstone-Smith.
• In 2007, CertainTeed’s acquisition of Vytec.
• Monster’s recent (2010) acquisition of HotJobs from Yahoo.

In each of these cases, the acquiring company handled the transition with class and dignity, with the sales forces being successfully integrated into the new, larger entities. While confidentiality agreements prohibit me from providing specific information related to any of these acquisitions, there are a few key points that I can offer for how to make such transitions as painless as possible for sales employees:

1. Do the research. Learn as much as you can, within the legal parameters, about each company, its culture, and how it operates. This, of course, depends on what you are legally allowed to learn, which can often be very little with regard to the acquired entity until after the acquisition has been formally completed. When you are restricted from obtaining information, focus on the acquiring company and its culture, so you can pass on that information to employees of the acquired entity as soon as you are allowed to do so.
   
2. Know which questions to defer and to whom. Often, key information is not immediately available related to the internal processes of the newly combined company. The key in those situations is to have a list of contacts to whom you can refer questions about such issues. It’s always best to say, “I don’t know,” and refer the question to someone in the appropriate position, rather than bluffing a response.
   
3. Treat the incoming employees with respect. This is the most important thing you can do. Rather than treating the acquired entity’s employees like conquered partisans, you should make them feel as welcome as possible in the new environment. Ask for and listen to their suggestions, and help them to feel like part of the team, right from the start.
   
4. Recognize former competitive instincts. Salespeople are competitive by nature, and often, the acquiring company formerly competed directly against the acquired entity, with different product sets and value propositions. To ignore this competitiveness would be folly. Instead, you should embrace it and learn from it ways to better the newly combined company’s competitive edge against the remaining competitors within the market.
   
5. Make the customers the key focus. In each of the situations in which I have been involved, I was fortunate to be working with a company whose primary focus was the customer. By doing so, those companies were able to encourage their salespeople, both old and new, to make every decision through the lens of how it affects the customer. As a result, the appropriate course of action was often readily apparent, and potential conflicts were avoided.
   
6. Train both sales forces. It’s not enough to just train the incoming sales force from the acquired entity about their new situation. The existing sales force from the acquiring company must also be prepared to work with their new counterparts, so as to create the best possible environment for the customers.
   
7. Reward teamwork. For these types of situations to work, members of both sales forces have to know and acknowledge that they are part of a team whose primary purpose is to service the customers. This mindset can best be accomplished by rewarding salespeople for teaming, either through compensation, contests, or some other reward structure.

These are a few suggestions to follow when helping sales employees after acquisitions. If you or any of your clients are about to work through an acquisition or a merger, feel free to contact me for assistance in training the employees.

The Skill that Drives All Effective Communication

The following is from the script of the film, “Thirteen Days,” written by David Self about the Cuban Missile Crisis. The interchange is between Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (played by Dylan Baker) and Admiral George Whelan Anderson, Jr., the Chief of Naval Operations (played by Madison Mason).

McNamara

I believe the President made it clear that there would be no firing on ships without his expressed permission.

Anderson

With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, we were not firing on the ship. Firing on a ship means attacking the ship. We were not attacking the ship. We were firing over it.

McNamara

This was not the President's intention when he gave that order. What if the Soviets don't see the distinction? What if they make the same mistake I just did? There will be no firing anything near ANY Soviet ships without my expressed permission. Is that understood, Admiral?

Anderson

Yes, sir.

McNamara

And I will only issue such instructions when ordered to by the President.

You don't understand a thing, do you, Admiral? This isn't a blockade. This, all this, is language—a new vocabulary the likes of which the world has never seen. This is President Kennedy communicating with Secretary Khrushchev.


I use this interchange to represent my point that there is one skill that drives all effective communication, and that skill is Listening. I’m not talking about some easy-to-understand model for active listening that purports that the key is repeating back what you hear. I’m talking about truly forcing yourself to listen to what the other person is saying, showing, and feeling.

In the above example, Admiral Anderson had listened to and obeyed the President’s order to avoid firing on ships, but he had missed the message. Likewise, President Kennedy was hoping that Soviet Secretary Khrushchev would listen to his message that by not firing on the ship, Kennedy was looking for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Fortunately, Khrushchev got the message.

This drives home the point that effective listening is not about just the words—it’s about understanding everything the speaker is conveying through his or her words, body language, tone of voice, and overall demeanor. In order to do this effectively, you need to shut yourself off and focus only on the other person. This sounds easy, but it is the hardest thing for any of us to do, and it runs completely counterintuitive to everything we generally know and/or have been taught.

To test out this idea, find a young child and ask him or her to explain something in which he or she is interested. As the child is talking, you can actually hear your brain processing the information and trying to make sense of it, rather than just listening to what the child is saying.

In our desire to put things into compartments, we process information as we hear it, inadvertently throwing away those elements we believe to be nonsensical. However, by doing so, we are forming the message to fit into our way of thinking and what we expect the speaker to say. Once we start doing that, we are no longer truly listening.

So, how do you listen effectively? It involves training yourself to:

• Shut off the “processing” aspect of your brain.
• Block out all distractions, internal or external.
• Suspend disbelief—don’t evaluate.
• Use all of your senses to absorb the entire message.
• Take notes.

Taking notes is essential, because it allows you to keep your brain clear for more content. Trying to hold the message in your head can block further information from getting in. Write it down, clear your brain, and refer to your notes later.

So why is Listening the skill that drives all effective communication? Let’s examine the other basic communication skills—Building Rapport, Questioning, and Providing Information:

• Listening enables Building Rapport by providing you with information about the speaker’s experiences, views, values, and personal situation around which that rapport can be built.
• With regard to Questioning, the best questions involve asking the speaker to expand on basic information he or she has already provided to find out what’s really on his or her mind. You can only ask these types of questions if you have truly listened to the speaker’s message.
• Providing Information to another person is only effective if that information is perceived as relevant by that person. The only way to ascertain that relevance is by listening.

It’s pretty straightforward. The more effectively you can listen, the more successful your overall communication will be.

Thinking About Instructional Design

Having been in the training field for most of my adult life, and having had the opportunity to learn from some of the best, I occasionally like to reflect on what makes for effective instructional design. Here are some of those thoughts:

Thank you, Mr. Pareto.
In 1906, as the story goes, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, observed that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population, and that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. From these observations, Joseph Juran and others developed the Pareto Principle, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule.

In the case of instructional design, the rule is simple—80% of what someone needs to know to perform a job is contained in 20% of the available learning content. It is therefore incumbent on training designers/developers to sift through the 100% of information our clients present to identify the 20% the participants need to know. Included in that 20% is where they can find the other 80% if they need it. Once we identify that key content, we can design a course intended to teach it.

They may not be listening.
Trainers love to hear themselves talk, and they usually believe that the participants are absorbing every word they say. But the truth is that only about 25% of participants learn best that way, and those people might be thinking about something else at the time. The key to effective instruction—and this has been well-documented for years—is to vary the instructional approaches to address different learning styles. There are multiple models and terminology for these styles, some of which require a course just to understand. I prefer to think of them in this fashion:

• Auditory: Learning by listening/hearing.
• Visual: Learning by seeing models or other visual stimuli.
• Reading Comprehension: Learning through the written word.
• Kinesthetic: Learning by doing.

I tried to come up with an adjective for “reading comprehension,” but I couldn’t (feel free to send me suggestions). In any event, each of us has one or two primary learning styles, and effective training uses all of them. Here’s an example of how to present content in a way that addresses all four styles:

1. Show a slide or flip chart with a model (visual).
2. Describe the model and its key components (auditory).
3. Have the participants read about the model (reading comprehension).
4. Practice using the model (kinesthetic).

This approach should be used with every important sub-set of content, and it should always be followed by a debrief to help the participants internalize the learning. If you’ve done your 80/20 analysis and determined that the topic is worth covering in training, you need to teach it in a way that addresses all of the learning styles.

Build a 1970s Toyota.
I used to just say, “build a Toyota,” but the events of the past year have forced me to modify that statement. The point is that in the 1970s, the US auto makers often designed cars by taking a body from one car, an engine from another, a suspension from another, etc. and slapping it together with a new name. Toyota, having learned the lessons of Edwards Deming and other process gurus, built their cars from scratch, making sure the body, engine, suspension, etc. worked together to support the intended functions of that car.

Training is very similar. You can “design” a course by mixing and matching things that might have worked in other courses and force-fitting them to different learning objectives, or you can build it from scratch, making sure that each activity is exactly right for its intended objective. This does not mean you always have to reinvent the wheel—if you have a similar object, you can use a similar exercise. It just means that you don’t just use an activity because it is expedient or because you already know how to run it. Make sure it fits the content and learning objective.

What do you mean, I can’t do that?
This is one of my pet peeves…I’m working with a client and come up with a great idea for a learning activity, and the client says, “You can’t do that here,” because of some arcane dictum, preconception, or an individual’s dislike of a certain approach. My advice is that if you think it is the right thing to do, try to convince the client with evidence of the approach’s effectiveness and how it can be done correctly to enhance the learning. Of course if the client is insistent about not using it, you have to back off, then decide afterward if you want to work with that client again.

I don’t own it.
Understand that you are not designing/developing the course for yourself, or your blog, or your personal portfolio. Once you hand it over to the clients, it belongs to them. If they want to mess it up (as they often do), it’s their prerogative to do so. Occasionally, they actually improve it (and you have to be open to that possibility). In any event, they paid for it, and they are the ones who have to implement it, so they have the right to change it or ask you to change it. If you can’t live with that, get out of the business.

Successful Training Interventions

Someone recently asked me to comb through my nearly 30 years of experience and come up with the actions that lead to successful training interventions. I thought it was a great question, so I’d like to offer my answer here in the form of seven key points:

1. Obtain High-Level Support: In the hundred or so projects with which I’ve been involved over the years, this factor stands out above all else—the top of the house, no lower than the VP level, has to actively support the initiative. Without such a “sponsor,” no matter how good a course you develop, it will not succeed in achieving its objectives. There are two reasons for this. First, the people at the higher levels are more linked into the company goals and strategy and will be able to guide the training intervention toward supporting that strategy. The second reason for high-level support is that without it, the people who have to implement the training will not see the importance of getting behind it, therefore leaving it to die on the vine.
   
2. Work with the Right People: The people on the design/development/implementation team have to be committed to the training goal and objectives, rather than merely fostering their own opinions or careers. You might find this odd, but as a consultant, I’ve been in several situations where I realized that the only reason the clients hired a consultant was so that they could have someone to blame when the training failed. I’ve since learned how to weed out most of those clients in advance by paying attention to the “warning bells” in my head.
   
3. Make Sure the Systems Support the Training: The biggest mistake that training professionals make is rolling out a course or curriculum that is not supported by the company’s internal systems. This seems obvious, but in our zeal to introduce state-of-the-art approaches, we often neglect to update the very systems supporting those approaches. For example, if you tell a salesperson that he or she has to enter an order using a particular program but that program does not work properly on his or her laptop, you have a problem. And this doesn’t just refer to computer systems…it could also relate to filing systems, ordering processes, staff meetings, reporting structures, or even the physical plant. I had a client where the training sessions often went into the evening, but the air conditioning shut off promptly at 5:00 PM. That was a clear-cut case of the systems not supporting the training.
   
4. Train the Managers First: Does this sound familiar? The participants attend your course and are enthused about putting what they’ve learned into action, until they return to the office where their manager says something like, “That’s all well and good, but it’s not the way we do things here.” The fact is that the best way to overcome this problem is by getting key managers—those who tend to shape opinion—involved from the beginning, even if possible in the design and development of the workshop. Then, train the rest of the managers before you roll it out to their employees. Doing so will go a long way toward ensuring the success of the training effort.
   
5. Design the Training for the Participants, Not for Yourself: I was recently contracted to design and develop a sales course, and the client company assigned me to work with an in-house training professional, whom I will refer to as Dan. Throughout the design process, Dan kept saying stuff like, “You know, I saw an article online about _________. I think we should include that reading in the course because if I were a participant, I’d like to know about that.” After about 20 of these recommended additions to the course, I finally explained to Dan that he was not a participant and that the type of people who go into sales are often very different from someone who becomes a trainer—trainers like to read and analyze books and long cases whereas salespeople prefer fast-paced, competitive activities. Unfortunately, he took offense to the comment and the relationship never recovered, but the fact remains that you always have to consider your audience and build the course to their needs, learning styles, biorhythms, etc.
   
6. Make the Training Part of a Larger Effort: One of the companies with which I work is Learning Paths International, whose concept it is that training is only a part of an overall learning path that will bring an employee to proficiency. That learning path may include everything from how-to guides to job shadowing to structured meetings, and training plays its part when appropriate. Whatever approach you use to bring employees up to speed and keep them there, it should include more than attending an occasional workshop and storing the workbook on a shelf. It needs to include pre- and post-workshop activities that reinforce the training and help the participants put it into context.
   
7. Consider that the Problem May Not Require a Training Solution: As a training consultant, I find this point to be the hardest because it often means I am walking away from work. However, if training is not the right answer, it will assuredly fail. Only after you’ve fixed everything else—management, systems, work process, compensation, recognition, etc.—are you ready to implement a training solution. Otherwise, you are simply wasting time and money on an effort doomed to failure.

Episodes

An Episode is defined as an occurrence that is distinctive and separate although part of a larger event, series, or story. When applied to training, an episode is designed to provide and enhance opportunities for adult learning using existing events and technology.

Let's start by looking at the training model with which most of us are familiar. In that model, you bring people to central location for a workshop or seminar lasting one to five days, related to a specific topic or topics, using lectures, readings, role-plays, etc.

However, in today's business environment, that is not what many clients want. They want cost-effective learning options that are delivered either onsite, close by, or electronically, and use existing resources. They want this training to produce results in terms of improved skills/capabilities and their effect on the bottom line. It is the opinion of Dr. Michael Maginn and myself that the best way to meet these requirements is by using assignment-based training that is linked to strategy, leverages existing technology, and includes roles for experts as coaches and for managers as facilitators. That's why we've come up with a new approach to training which we call the Learning Story.

It begins with Assess Content by gathering performance data and pinpointing learning gaps. You can then Identify Available Opportunities by optimizing time during already scheduled events such as sales meetings, annual meetings, conferences, etc. You can also use webinars or virtual classrooms. Next, you Design Learning Experiences that are interesting and relevant, while including clear step-by-step instructions, built-in debrief questions and structured follow-up activities. Finally, you Implement Episodes using a four-step process comprising each episode:

A key to the implementation is that each individual content area (i.e., "Questioning and Listening" or "Discussing Team Roles") adheres to the same process, with its own structured activities and follow-up. By doing this, you enable the learners to internalize and solidify their use of the skills, processes, or knowledge.

Additionally, the delivery of each episode by a manager or someone else from within the organization, as opposed to a trainer from outside, helps to ensure greater management commitment and better employee acceptance of the training. Use of this Episodes process will go a long way to ensuring content retention while meeting the needs of the modern business environment.