JULY
2016 |
Volume
15, Number 3 |
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CONTACT
HSA |
To contact us, click HERE.
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PUBLICATIONS |
For more information on our best-selling, award-winning books,
click HERE.
Need help with HPT terminology? Click HERE
for The HSA Lexicon.
Click HERE
to read our published articles.
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ASK
HAROLD |
Click HERE
to read the latest Ask Harold question and Harold's response
or ask a question of your own!
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UPCOMING
EVENTS |
July 28-29, 2016
ATD Telling Ain't Training Event, Los Angeles, CA
November 3-4, 2016
ATD Telling Ain't Training Event, Chicago, IL
For details about these events, click HERE
To learn more about engaging Harold Stolovitch to speak at
your organization, click HERE
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CPT
DESIGNATION |
Harold Stolovitch and Erica Keeps are Certified Performance
Technologists (CPT). The CPT designation is awarded by the
International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) to
experienced practitioners in the field of organizational performance
improvement, whose work meets both the performance-based Standards
of Performance Technology and application requirements. For
more information, visit www.ispi.org.
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Our
Professional Family
We
individually joined the International Society for Performance Improvement
(ISPI, formerly known as NSPI) in 1975 and both served on the Executive
Board a few years later at the same time. We met each other through
our professional organization. Interestingly enough, several other
couples have met at ISPI as well!
Over the years, we have grown through our professional organization
and have contributed to our society as board members, committee
chairs, presenters, mentors and more. We were both active in our
local chapters, served in leadership roles and became life members.
Through ISPI we met incredible colleagues who became friends. We
attended numerous ISPI conferences where we had an opportunity to
maintain our ISPI friendships and professional relationships while
building our skills and sharing our work with others.
The ISPI Conference in Philadelphia this April was no exception.
We had a wonderful time seeing old friends and meeting new ones.
We were inspired by the leadership. We were thrilled with the up
and coming graduate students. They will become leaders and contribute
to the society while growing and developing their skills and careers.
They are the future of ISPI.
We look forward to seeing "our professional family" again
in Montreal for the ISPI Conference April 30-May 2, 2017. We hope
to see you all there.
Join the family! If you are not already a member of ISPI, what
are you waiting for? Learn more about membership
benefits.
Peace,
Erica and Harold
Harold's Reading and Viewing Guide
By
Harold D. Stolovitch
Here are three very different readings that
have caught my attention over time. You can access them by
simply clicking on the image beside each. Enjoy the reads
- very well worth your time.
This is a brief, intriguing book written by New Yorker
business columnist James Surowiecki. It explores a deceptively
simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite
few, no matter how brilliant/better at solving problems, fostering
innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the
future.
The book is easy to read and travels across a wide range
of fields from popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral
economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and
politics, to name only a few as it demonstrates how the combination
of individual, free choice, when aggregated can make better
and more accurate decisions and predictions than subject-matter
experts. Surowieki not only provides evidence for his book's
assertions, but also offers ways we can use his principles
in our own day-to-day work. A fun and thought-provoking volume
that both informs and entertains. Available on Amazon.
A report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development,
University of North Carolina, found that evaluation was a
top priority among learning and development (L&D) professionals.
Despite this, however, the authors also found that calculating
return on investment (ROI) on learning and development programs
is still rarely done; a McKinsey Quarterly report, for example,
found that only eight percent of organizations actually evaluate
the value of L&D initiatives. And too often, those who
do track ROI rarely go beyond asking for feedback from participants
immediately after the event. Common explanations given for
this lack of evaluative effort are: senior management doesn't
really care; don't know how to do it; you can't really calculate
ROI or even create a clear connection between L&D initiatives
and bottom line results. Frequently, the real reasons revolve
around rushing from one project to the next, with no time
and resources dedicated to verify if what was done had the
desired, or even any, impact. All of this leads to little
effort invested for measuring results and ROI of L&D activities.
Smiley sheets prevail even though, long ago, researchers established
a virtual zero correlation between the data generated by these
and meaningful outcomes.
This brief report, easy to read and implement,
offers a good start toward changing this mentality and practice.
While the reader will require more technical guidance to operationalize
and implement effective evaluation practices, including calculating
ROI, it should get the L&D professionals' juices started
at working to obtain better and more accurate readings on
the results of their activities and accomplishments.
What
a provocative, yet very well documented book this is! It presents
a powerful attack on the latest pseudo-scientific claims about
the differences between the sexes - with the scientific evidence
to back it up. Sex discrimination is supposedly a distant
memory. Yet popular books, magazines and even scientific articles
increasingly defend inequalities by citing immutable biological
differences between the male and female brain. Why are there
so few women in science and engineering, so few men in the
laundry room? Well, they say, it's our brains. Drawing on
the latest research in developmental psychology, neuroscience,
and social psychology, Delusions of Gender rebuts these
claims, showing how old myths, dressed up in new scientific
finery, help perpetuate the status quo.
Cordelia Fine reveals the mind's remarkable plasticity, shows
the substantial influence of culture on identity, and, ultimately,
exposes just how much of what we consider "hardwired"
is actually malleable. This startling, original and witty
book shows the surprising extent to which boys and girls,
men and women are made - and not born. Available on Amazon.
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Now Available! Training Ain't Performance Webinar: Adding
Value as a Performance Improvement Professional
Due
to popular demand, Harold now delivers his two-day workshop
in a five-session webinar. Ideally, the webinar series is
delivered once a week for 2.5 hours per session over a period
of five weeks. This 12.5 hour course (with approximately four
hours of homework) is now an affordable option for organizations
with a decentralized employee group who can benefit from performance
consulting skill development, but cannot meet on site for
our in-house workshop. Participants will acquire the skills
and tools to immediately begin functioning as Performance
Improvement Professionals. The sessions are highly interactive
and entirely focused on workplace application. An added benefit
is that participants get to experience a truly interactive
virtual course. They can replicate the process with their
own content.
The NEW webinar series
is based on our books, Training
Ain't Performance and Beyond
Training Ain't Performance Fieldbook, as well
as our many years of experience conducting performance improvement
projects and training/coaching/mentoring performance consultants
worldwide and across many industries.
HSA can also provide support and mentoring following the
sessions.
For a course description
and intended audience, click here.
For a detailed agenda, costs and scheduling, contact Erica
Keeps at ekeeps@hsa-lps.com
or 310-497-8466.
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Personal Musings: One and One is NOT Two
By Erica J. Keeps
The back, back story:
Years ago when Harold and I first started dating and discussing
marriage, we wondered what it would be like to work with our
spouse long term? Would we choose to be generalists or each
specialize in specific aspects of our work? Would it be best
to have an outside office and separate our professional work
from family life? Were we better suited to work from home
and share the same space day and night. (BTW, I love being
in a noisy environment and have several balls in the air at
the same time. Harold needs silence and is very linear.) Would
my clients accept him? Would his clients accept me? We actually
visited with a number of married colleagues in our field to
see how they made it work. We learned a lot about what to
do
and what not to do!
The back story:
We decided we could make it work! We got married, merged our
consulting practices and chose to work from home. Fortunately
Harold had a university office to run away to when he needed
absolute quiet. Later, once he left the university, he used
the local library when he needed to focus on writing. Ultimately,
we bought a second home
8.5 miles from our primary one!
Harold refers to it as his "private writing retreat."
Initially, we offered our clients a two-for-one sale. Two
consultants for the price of one. They were thrilled with
the financials, and we were happy to be able to travel and
work together. Soon our clients felt comfortable interacting
with either one of us, which was, of course, our plan.
When we wrote together, Harold would come up with the article
or book concept. He would then interview me to create the
structure and key points. He would write a detailed outline,
which I would then edit. Harold and I would draft assigned
chapters and would then edit each other's work until we no
longer could identify who wrote what. Once I wrote an entire
audio product knowledge script for a high tech company modeled
after one he had done. I read it to him and he seriously asked
when he had written it!
The story: We learned
I was better at managing the business while Harold was best
at the content and creativity. I took over marketing, sales,
legal, accounting, human resources and project management.
This left Harold free to do research and development, write
proposals, do instructional design and performance consulting.
We were a team. We had synergy. We had complementary skills
and some overlapping ones. Decisions we made together were
always more thoughtful and sound than those made alone. However,
we each had final say in our own areas of responsibility.
We built a business from a two-person professional practice
to an international consulting firm with 80 associates. We
did bigger projects with larger organizations. Our model was
working! Then 9/11 brought us to the realization that if we
didn't scale back, we could lose our practice and retirement
savings. Client companies were halting travel; consulting
projects, workshops and conferences were being cancelled.
We wisely chose to follow our accountant's advice and go back
to a two-person professional practice. Full circle!
The moral to the story:
One and one is NOT two; it's a whole lot more! What we did
together, neither of us could have done alone. What we accomplished
was more than we ever expected.
Two important concepts we have incorporated into our lives
are quality time together and shared independence. The first
of these simply means: Make activities you do together, whether
they are for work or play, meaningful and enjoyable to both
of you. The second focuses on demonstrating respect for each
other's individual differences when doing things apart. Share
the independent experience with one another, emphasizing the
learnings that emerged.
We have ended the prefaces to every book we have co-authored
with the following message:
"One of the greatest joys of writing a book in which
you share what you have learned with readers is that of sharing
the experience with a co-author you admire. We are not just
co-authors; we are also professional colleagues and life partners.
To each other, then, thanks for continuing the journey together."
There is a long-standing adage that "two heads are better
than one." We would like to modify it, asserting that
"two heads are substantially better than two." Our
over thirty years of collaboration attest to this.
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Guest
Author Series
From
time to time, we encounter interesting people in our work
whom we feel have something important to share with others.
Our Guest Author Series includes writings and outright articles
by these professional colleagues. The latest contribution
in our series is by Will Thalheimer, PhD. He is a consultant
and research translator, providing organizations with learning
audits, research benchmarking, workshops, and strategic guidance.
Will shares his wisdom through keynotes, research reports,
job aids, workshops, and blog posts. Compiler of the Decisive
Dozen, one of the authors of the Serious eLearning Manifesto
(eLearningManifesto.org),
founder of The Debunker Club (Debunker.Club),
and author of the highly-acclaimed book Performance-Focused
Smile Sheets (SmileSheets.com),
Will blogs at WillAtWorkLearning.com,
tweets as @WillWorkLearn, and consults through Work-Learning
Research, Inc. (Work-Learning.com).
Will regularly publishes extensive research-to-practice reports
and gives them away for free. His clients have included a
wide variety of organizations, including the Navy Seals, MIT,
ADP, Microsoft, Walgreens, DIA, Pfizer, and Liberty Mutual.
The Smile-Sheet Blind Spot
By Will Thalheimer
Smile sheets, happy sheets, response forms, reaction forms.
Call them what you will, they may be the most dangerous tool
in the instructional design toolbox! Here are some of their
problems (taken from the book Performance-Focused
Smile Sheets):
- They are not correlated with learning results.
- They don't tell us whether our learning interventions
are good or bad.
- They misinform us about what improvements should be made.
- They don't enable meaningful feedback loops.
- They don't support smile-sheet decision making.
- They don't help stakeholders understand smile-sheet results.
- They provide misleading information.
- They hurt our organizations by not enabling cycles of
continuous improvement.
- They create a culture of dishonest deliberation.
Of course, there are many reasons we might use smile sheets
(taken from the book and modified from the legendary Rob Brinkerhoff):
- Red-flagging training programs that are not sufficiently
effective.
- Gathering ideas for ongoing updates and revision of a
learning program.
- Judging strengths and weaknesses of a pilot program to
enable revision.
- Providing instructors with feedback to aid their development.
- Helping learners reflect on and reinforce what they learned.
- Helping learners determine what (if anything) they plan
to do with their learning.
- Capturing learner satisfaction data to understand - and
make decisions that relate to - the reputation of the training
and/or the instructors.
- Upholding the spirit of common courtesy by giving learners
a chance for feedback.
- Enabling learner frustrations to be vented - to limit
damage from negative back-channel communications.
In the book, I focus on the first four imperatives - those
that provide us with feedback so we can improve what we're
doing as instructional designers and trainers.
When I first saw the research showing that smile sheet results
are not correlated with learning results - actually they are
correlated with an r = 0.09 (virtually no correlation) - I
thought, well, maybe we should just stop using smile sheets.
But then I got real. Read
more...
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Readers
and Participants Speak Out
"Harold, I greatly appreciate your perspective on our
work. I respect and admire the dedication that you and your
partner have had to training and development methods - especially
because you've dedicated your life to it. Not many people
can say that they've dedicated their life to something that
I believe is both noble and useful.
Thank you for being an influence for the good of our team
- both now and for the future. However the next few weeks
play out, I'm confident that you have provided skills for
each and every team member for their current job or potentially
for another opportunity."
- Darlene Hampson, Senior Learning Advisor,
Cenovus Energy Inc.
Do you have feedback
on our books, workshops or our newsletter?
We would love to hear from you. Please share your comments
with us at ekeeps@hsa-lps.com.
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Ask Harold
Do
you have a burning learning and performance question? Visit
ASK
HAROLD and ask your question for Harold Stolovitch
to answer. Here is a recent submission that might intrigue
you:
Do you have any information
on the effectiveness of short and spaced learning segments
compared to longer, more concentrated learning sessions? I
have seen a number of articles touting these.
To read the response, visit ASK
HAROLD. To ask your own question, click on
the crystal ball above, fill out the form and click submit.
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Double Dipping: River Cruise and Mediterranean Cruise
By Erica J. Keeps
Isn't it staggering how expensive airfares
have become? And, if you travel business class, you may
have to choose between a trip or a new car! While not
everyone can get away for longer periods of time, fortunately
those who can, may elect to "double dip." |
Harold and I did exactly that this year.
We planned a river cruise to the south of France with
colleagues and friends and then piggybacked with a family
Mediterranean cruise with family. One round-trip air
ticket, one battle with jet lag and two completely unique
experiences!
River cruising is an adult activity.
It is serene gliding along a river where you see land
on both sides. Every day your small ship (with around
120 passengers) tucks into a port, you hop off and are
met with a local guide to explore a city, town or village.
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Erica and Harold enjoying an
anniversary toast in Provence
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River cruise companions, Jane
and Darryl Sink shopping one of the many open air
markets in the south of France
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No days at sea and no sea sickness!
Lots of walking, exploring and taking in the culture
of the area. No need to choose what to see as the excursions
are decided for you. You can just enjoy and appreciate
the scenery and the highlights of every place you visit.
Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? In spite of high water
levels causing itinerary changes, train strikes and
Euro soccer, we had a great time. Ocean or sea cruising
is a different phenomenon. These vessels carry 1,000s
of passengers, many of whom are children (even during
non-school closing times). There is so much to do on
the ship (for both kids and adults) that often passengers
opt out of port excursions altogether.
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Days at sea are welcomed! You are fed,
entertained, exercised, spa-treated and can shop or
gamble day or night. It is so much of a whirlwind that
one cruise line places the day of the week in the elevator
floor to keep passengers aware. You carry a ship activities
schedule in your pocket or on your cell phone. You communicate
with your family passenger members by intranet services
on board and occasionally meet up for a meal or evening
"nap." Sounds exciting, doesn't it? We had
a fabulous time introducing our family to a taste of
Europe!
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Our ocean cruise family companions enjoying a day in
Rome
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Which do we personally prefer? Both!
Each one has its pros and cons. We were blessed with
two incredible vacations this summer.
Interested
in learning more about cruising? Contact Erica Keeps
at ekeeps@hsa-lps.com
or 310-497-8466.
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