The Consultant Rap

I first delivered the "Consultant Rap" in person at an NSPI conference in Toronto. Several people have requested it since, so here it is:

Well I think I'm gonna tell you what it’s like to be
a performance and management consultant like me.
Well you travel in airplanes all around.
Yeah, you’re flying so much you barely touch the ground.
Then you’re running for meetings and you get there late,
but the clients they just make you sit and wait, wait, wait.
Then you finally go in so you can meet with them,
and by the time you’re done you’re running for a valium

Because they’re clients…they’re clients,
and if you don’t know what that means, I’ll be telling you now.

Because they come in and they tell you everything has changed
since you met with them the last time, and you wanna say, “That’s strange.
When we met the last time, you seemed so sure of it all.
You should have let me know. You should have given me a call.
So I wouldn’t have had to finish all this time-consuming work
and come into this meeting looking like a real jerk.”
But what you really say is, “Oh please, tell me more,”
While you’re feeling like a wimp, you’re feeling like a real whore.

And then they say…the clients say
that the new VP, he wants to change it all around.

So you go back to your Mac, but you’ve had enough, Jack.
You want to hang it up, you want to just lay back.
Then you remember that it’s time to meet with all your friends
and go out and party when the meeting ends.
Then suddenly the whole thing doesn’t seem so bad
when you think of all the rockin’ good times you’ve had
going here and there and stopping off for a beer
and having lots of people to exchange good cheer.

And then you say…you wanna say
that being a consultant isn’t such a bad way.

Training Via Video Conference

I remember years ago, meeting with my instructional design and development colleagues and discussing the future, in which our trainees could sit in their homes or offices and be full participants in face-to-face training experiences. We talked about how the trainer would be able to see all of the participants in small windows on their screen while they could see the trainer and the other participants. “Wouldn’t it be great,” we thought, “if we could do that while showing a PowerPoint or video in another window or an another screen?”

But that was years away. We could hardly get our conference calls to work correctly, even with those modern, Polycom “starfish” phones sitting in the middle of the tables.

Well folks, I’m here to report that the future is now, and it couldn’t come at a better time—with post-9/11 travel restrictions, an increased focus on “teleworkers,” and companies hungry to trim travel costs. The technology is here, and I’ve been using it to deliver training for the past six months.

No longer is it necessary to use clunky Webex or GoToMeeting presentations supported by conference calls. And I’m also not talking about Skype, with its grainy, pixilated picture (known as “packet loss” in the industry).

I’ve been working with Polycom to train its own employees, using a wide range of technological options from multi-flatscreen monitors to my laptop computer, delivering HD video and audio to participants around the world. I won’t bore you with the technical details (it’s not like I understand them), but through partnerships with Microsoft, HP, and many other companies, Polycom has been able to deliver high-quality audio and video that is ideally suited to training applications. They compete directly with Cisco/Tandberg, whose equipment, I am told, is also quite good, but does not use the open standards architecture that Polycom uses. There are other competitors on the market as well, and I’m not here to push Polycom (although I can vouch for their products), but one advantage they do have is called Lost Packet Recovery (LPR) which significantly reduces the packet loss problem I referenced earlier. LPR removes the final hurtle to using video conferencing for effective training delivery.

How it Works:

It works best if you are in a meeting room with two monitors and good speakers. You may have other participants (or trainers) in the room with you, or you could be standing in the room alone, talking to participants (and other trainers) in locations around the globe. They may be in meeting rooms together, or participating from their homes or offices. Most of the time, I set it up so that the person talking is in a larger window (yes, the technology will do that). If you have two screens, you see the participants in separate windows on one screen and yourself on the other. If you want, you can “push content,” showing your desktop or content from another source on the second screen.

In addition, the camera moves, so you can set “presets” in advance. I usually preset myself in a sitting position, myself standing from a slight distance (so I can move around and stay in the picture), myself standing with a close-up (for when I really want to make a point), and other presets (from up to 10 available) of the flipchart and/or whiteboard and of the other people in the room (if applicable). Once they are set, you just have to press the number on the remote control for the camera to go where you want it. Polycom even has a product called Eagle Eye Director that can track the camera instantly to whoever is speaking.

From there, you can conduct a training session just as though the people were in the room with you. If you want to do a breakout exercise, you can just send people to different rooms (known as bridges), have them perform the exercise, then come back to the main room. If you want to monitor their progress during these exercises, you can go to the different rooms, just as you would if they were in a breakout room down the hall.

In the past, when using Webex and audio, I always thought it was difficult to do interpersonal skills-based training (sales, management, etc.), but now, if you know what you are doing, it is as effective and seamless as having everyone in the room with you. I’m sure the technology will continue to improve, but I have used it quite a bit, and I will tell you that it is ready to use now.

The Benefits:

Where do I start when discussing the benefits of video conference training? Here are a few:

• There’s no longer a need to address the logistics (and costs) of getting everyone to the same location to conduct the training. They can meet in regional locations or even participate from their homes or remote offices.
• People get to go home every night—no more sleeping in hotels with the costs (and possibly bedbugs) associated with doing so.
• If you have disabled employees or trainers, they can participate equally, without facing the physical hurdles often associated with travel and training.
• With the touch of a button, you can record the entire training experience, so future new employees can review it.
• If executives want to welcome the participants or monitor the proceedings, they can do so with little disruption to their time and schedule.
• If there is an expert in one location, and you want everyone to learn from that expert, it is easily accomplished.

The Drawbacks:

As with every training methodology, there are a few drawbacks, including:

• There is a minor lag, so that once you’ve asked a question, you need to wait a few seconds for the participants to hear it, for them to unmute, and for everyone to hear the responses. It takes a little getting used to, but once you do, it is easy to address.
• You miss the camaraderie of talking to people off line or sharing lunch, dinner, or drinks together. However, you can easily build icebreakers or other activities into the course to compensate for the loss in actual face-to-face time.
• Exercises involving labs or hands-on experiences are hard to implement. You need contingency plans if such exercises are required.
• Time zones become an issue, especially if you are training people in diverse locations and you are trying to build in time for breaks or lunches. This can often be solved by including more frequent, shorter breaks, but you need to deal with each situation depending on where your participants and trainers are located.

Overall, training via video conference works best if you design it and plan it out in advance, and generally stick to the schedule. If you can do so, and you have access to (or the budget to purchase) high quality video conferencing technology, I highly recommended it as a medium for a wide range of training applications.

For more information, feel free to contact me at Connective@aol.com.

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.