ItsDevelopmental - content + technology + people

Creating a sense of urgency in the workplace

Interesting interview on Harvard Business Review on urgency. John Kotter, a professor at Harvard Business School, argues that organisations going through change need employees to have a sense of urgency about what they are doing in order for change to happen  quickly.

This is a real issue for print journalists shifting to multi-media content creation and delivery.

Complacency seems to be the prevailing way of being despite the fact print revenues are dropping away. How to get your team to push forward, learn new things, try new tools. Sounds so simple, but so difficult to do.

Are experiential activities learning activities?

Interesting post on the merits of experiential activities as learning events.

My expreience is that such events can be good for overcoming things you might not want to do and to find out more about your collleagues*, but that once back in the workplace there seems to be little application.

* I once did a blindfold session with a team of colleagues (all managers) to piece together a jigsaw. I found the whole thing irritating but others were very methodical and keen to solve the problem whilst one was very encouraging - keeping the team going. it was a useful exercise but one we did not capitalise on back in the office.

Will Luddite journalists ever embrace online tools?

Held my online resources to save you time session today. It was an hour long and full of useful tools to help you at work.

I only had four delegates - this despite pushing it on the comapny intranet. DElegates seemed to really enjoy the session. I certainly learnt a lot and was amazed by how much knowledge there is in our business.

But, this was a tiny turnout for a session that was all about tools to help a journalist do their job better. This was about using tools that would save time and keep you abreast of what was going on in the world, about finding out how others use software to help them do new things.

Such a small turnout represents the scale of the challenge my organisation has engaging journalists in digital skills and processes. It really is mystifying that journalists are so unwilling to make the time (a lunch hour) to find out new ways of working that will help them.

The answer is a far more radical approach to training and development. I hope we can come up with something that can really pull the Luddites out of their zone - for the company's benefit and their own.

Death by Powerpoint

Liked this piece on overuse of Powerpoint by trainers on Personnel Today. I particularly liked the quiz, which I have lifted (thanks, Personnel Today).

Q&A: Are you state-of-the art or state of the ark?

1. The night before a training session, do you:

a) Stay up late photocopying hand-out sheets?

b) Relax in the knowledge that all your information is uploaded onto your interactive whiteboard?

2. You've been asked to organise a pan-European training event at short notice. Do you:

a) Start furiously ringing around hotels and airlines?

b) Send out an e-mail invite to all delegates to join a web conferencing training event next week?

3. You want to show delegates the best way to deal with customers. Do you:

a) Call delegates out in front of the group and embarrass them?

b) Run a short home-made video that perfectly demonstrates your point?

4. You want to make your PowerPoint presentation stand-out. Do you:

a) Paste in some clip art images?

b) Search an online photo archive and pay a small fee for some high-quality pictures?

• Mostly As: Your old-school approach is creating a lot of work and affecting the quality of your training. It's time to join the modern world.
• Mostly Bs: You are an avant-garde trainer who is making technology work for you - keep up the good work.

Online resources to save journalists time

Am looking forward to the session I am running next week for journalists at Reed Business Information. It is entitled Online resources to save you time and it is a show and tell session in which my kind - and knowledgeable - colleagues will be demonstrating the following:

Google Reader by our head of community development Andrew Rogers.

Firefox plus Pearl Crescent Page Saver and Web Developer by David Shepherd – head of content and technology, XpertHR

SurveyMonkey, DropLoad, eSnips, SnagIt, by Karl Schneider, editorial development director at RBI.

And I am looking at creating some demos using Camstudio.

This is a stellar line-up of demonstrators who know an awful lot. Surely the way forward for organisations is to tap the knowledge, skills and experience they hold.

World Values Survey

Interesting site that provides data on social and cultural change. It has some research on happiness trends. Have yet to take a look at the findings but thanks to Trainingzone's piece 'Can we learn ourselves to happiness' by Gemma Middleton for pointing me to the values survey site.

Martin Couzins looking and sounding serious . . .

Martin Couzins of Travel Weekly from Adam Tinworth on Vimeo.

. . . whilst talking about how the Flip Mino could be useful for video on Travel Weekly.

Facilitation workshops at Bath University

I've just been alerted to the fact the facilitation workshops run by the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice at Bath University are now available. 

Looks like I am going to be on a steep learning curve - I have just looked up the Wikipedia definition of participatory action research.  

I do like the idea of the concept of using the learning group to work together to come up with new ways of doing things and for this process to feed back into research of and for the group.

Here is a useful guide to co-operative inquiry (linked to action research).  

Training budgets healthy despite economic gloom

Well, that's what this report says.

And this one from People 1st/ABTA.

And the 2008 CIPD Learning and development survey [PDF] shows, and I quote . . .

A quarter of respondents expect funding to increase in the next year, while 20% anticipate a decrease in funding. Half expect their funding to remain the same.

But, that is not what training managers predict.

How to evaluate training

Useful list published on trainingzone courtesy of the Chartered Management Institute.