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Vale Jobs

11 October 2011 by Clark 2 Comments

My first job out of college was designing and programming educational computer games. I had to do the TRS-80 Model I before I got to work on an Apple ][, but I finally bought a ][e, and sold it to my company shortly thereafter as I headed off to graduate school. I was a grad student in an HCI lab (with Donald Norman, who went on to become an Apple Fellow), and so I was very aware of the Macintosh (I’d coveted a Lisa before that), and bought a Mac II to write my PhD thesis on. Since then I’ve only used Macs as my main machine (tho’ there has been the odd PC around the house). And that’s quite a few; in my office right now is an iMac DV, a Powerbook Wallstreet and also a G4, as well as an old and a new MacBook Pro, iPhone, and an iPad.

And let’s not dismiss the software. Despite some quirks, the OS has a solid foundation, and the interface experience on top of it is pretty good. I learned HyperCard (even though I’d moved on from programming), love Keynote, think Pages is *almost* there (the outlining is not quite yet industrial strength), etc. So you can imagine it was with some unexpected sadness that I learned about the passing of Steve Jobs.

Enough has been said about the fact that it wasn’t just the surface design, but his insistence on a comprehensive user experience. It has also already been covered that it was much more than that, it was the insight into the market, e.g. not just the iPod, but iTunes. Not just the iPhone, but the whole reengineering of the relationship between hardware provider and telcos. Industry-changing stuff, and absolutely true. But I want to talk about one other thing that has somewhat passed under the radar.

How many of you would have liked to work for Apple? You didn’t hear much about it, like you might with Google, but it seemed like a pretty cool place to hang out. And there are two aspects to this. One is that you didn’t hear much. In the notoriously gossipy Silicon Valley, Apple was remarkably resistant to leaks. I think this is reflective of the other component. While you can install some pretty rigorous constraints, I think you do better if you instill some loyalty. And I think that while Jobs was at times dictatorial, as has come out, I think he did it through selling a vision inside the company as well as outside.

It has been said that the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship (the only problem is ensuring the benevolent part), and I think Steve Jobs made a company doing things worth getting behind, and I suspect that it was pretty easy to go along with some of the constraints because you knew why they were there. But it has to also be a place where you can make mistakes, as Steve made them himself, starting with the Apple ///. I think that Apple has wanted the best, but rewarded folks for being that, too.

This is all inference, as I never worked there, and haven’t discussed it with the few people I’ve known who worked there. But some pretty fabulous stuff has come from there, and it can’t all be one person. So I just wanted to acknowledge that he not only built products, and a company, but a culture that allowed the company to succeed, wildly. I’m somewhat skeptical of the ability to use a university model to develop executives who can perpetuate the Apple success, but the fact that they’re trying is worthy of consideration. I think they can continue to succeed, but I hope that they have some other approaches too.

And, that, to me, is a lesson to take away from this. Steve Jobs was inspiring, but he recognized it was more than just luck, it was a habit of mind that can be developed. Not only do you have to pursue your dream, but there are skills and habits of mind that go along with it. And if you recognize that, identify those skills, model them, develop them, and reward them, you can build a successful company.

RIP.

Three core foundations for online learning

4 October 2011 by Clark 7 Comments

The wise Ellen Wagner has a neat post about what should be the ‘ten commandments’ of online learning. I agree with them, and recommend them to you. I have thought about it in a slightly different, but similar frame.

I came up with this as I was trying to suggest what the core value propositions (yeah, I said it, deal with it) of an online offering should be. And I tried to frame it the way I thought Steve Jobs might:

An absolutely killer learning experience
We don’t just develop your understanding, we develop you
We’re your partner for your success

What I mean by a killer learning experience is one that is engaging and effective, ie all the principles of Engaging Learning. It’s a pedagogy that’s challenging, meaningful, relevant, tightly coupled, and more. It’s also social, having you learn with others, not just on your own.

Developing the person means not only developing their knowledge of the topic, their degree, but also their success factors. That includes things like helping them develop a portfolio of work, developing skills in working with others, communicating, etc. In essence, layered on top of the domain knowledge are 21st century skills, which are likely to be the only lasting value you can provide learners (c.f. Father Guido Sarducci’s 5 Minute University).

And finally, it’s about not just providing the content and having the learner sink or swim, but instead actively looking at the learner’s performance, finding ways to scaffold the learning and being attentive to signals of potential trouble. It’s data-driven adaptivity to the individual learner, coupled optimally with human intervention. And competency-based, so the learner has clear indications of what they need to do.

We can do this, on a cost-effective basis, and I reckon it’s going to be the only sustainable differentiator to be a successful provider. The only question then becomes: who’s going to bring it all together? The market is waiting.

Cognitive Task Analysis

19 September 2011 by Clark 2 Comments

While I argue strongly for stepping away more frequently from formally structured learning, not least because we overuse it, there are times when it is crucial. As naysayers of informal learning like to point out, you wouldn’t want your pilot or heart surgeon to have picked up the task by reading a book. When performance is critical, you really want to understand what the important elements are, whether to train them or provide support.

A technique for doing that is Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA). This is not a shortcut, it’s deep in terms of the knowledge elicitation techniques, the analytical task, and the representation of results. Based in decades of cognitive research, integrating work on mental models, expertise, and more, it provides a mechanism to try to unearth the tacit understanding experts hold. Because experts compile away their knowledge to the point that they no longer have access to it, it is hard to get at this knowledge, and it takes a rigorous process.

While useful for system design, CTA is also valuable for designing performance support, and training. The deep elicitation process can derive what the task really is, and what should be in the learner’s head and what support can and should be available. When I talk about the performance ecosystem, particularly for complex tasks, you want just this sort of support to determine what should be distributed across formal learning and performance support.

One of the problems with CTA is that there have been a number of different approaches, and they tend to be buried in academic papers or proprietary processes. The good news is that there’s now a book about CTA, Working Minds, by Beth Crandall, Gary Klein, & Robert Hoffman, academics and practitioners. It boils down the divergence into a fairly reasonable set of steps, with techniques that can be used at each stage. The bad news is, of course, that it still is a daunting read, with considerable depth.

If you’ve got performances that absolutely have to be right, you’ll want to do the analysis ala CTA, and use it to decide what really needs to be in training, checklists, etc. This goes deeper than HPT even, tho’ I think it’s as weak when it comes to the benefits of social learning, but I reckon it’s for expert *performance*, not innovation. That’s another layer. Still, a valuable tool in the quiver of supporting performance.

Please at least understand what CTA is, and know when you need it. You may not need to be an expert in it, but you should at least be aware.

Working Smarter

12 September 2011 by Clark 2 Comments

Work smarter, not harder.

Have you heard that? I did, in my first job out of college; my boss said it, but it wasn’t clear what it meant. What does ‘work smarter’ mean? I already thought I was working smarter. Well, as I’ve learned (in conjunction with my ITA colleagues), it means a number of things that organizations can, and should, do.

So, what is known about when we work smarter? We work smarter under a number of conditions: when we have a clear goal of what we’re supposed to achieve and we recognize it’s importance; when we’re free to experiment, explore, and even fail; when we have colleagues to collaborate with; and when we have the resources we need available ‘to hand’. This provides some guidance about what an organization should be doing to optimize the likelihood of success.

We need to be doing meaningful work that we’re excited about. We need to be connected to a vision, and understand how our role contributes. There needs to be transparency above and below as well as ahead, so we can see how the parts are working together.

We also need a culture where that transparency is empowering, not threatening. It has to be safe to perform in public, to share our thoughts, and to both provide and receive help to others. Where, when mistakes are made, the lessons are learned and shared.

We need to see it as important to contribute, and be enabled to communicate to the right people, and be able to work together to get the job done. We need time to reflect as well, to take time to think about what we’re doing. We should be doing that publicly too. We need to learn out loud and together.

Finally, we need the tools available. We shouldn’t have to take time to go multiple places to get what we need, and use inconsistent interfaces to use them. We should have an environment where we’re focused on our tasks, and can get who and what we need to stay focused.

How to work smarter isn’t a mystery. The mystery is why more organizations aren’t systematically breaking down the barriers to working smarter. Are you ready to get going?

Layering learning

8 September 2011 by Clark 3 Comments

Electronic Performance Support Systems are a fabulous concept, as pioneered by Gloria Gery back in the early 90’s. The notion is that as you use a system, and have entries or decisions to make, there are tools available that can provide guidance: proactively, intelligently, and context-appropriate. Now, as I heard the complaint at the time, this would really be just good interface design, but the fact is that many times you have to retrofit assistance on top of a bad design for sad but understandable reasons.

The original were around desktop tasks, but the concept could easily be decoupled from the workplace via mobile devices. One of my favorite examples is the GPS system: the device knows where you are, and where you want to go (because you told it), and it gives you step by step guidance, even recalculating if you make a change. Everything from simple checklists to full adaptive help is possible, and I’ve led the design of such systems.

One of the ideas implicit in Gery’s vision, however, that I really don’t see, is the possibility of having the system not only assist you in performing, but also help you learn. She talked about the idea in her book on the subject, though without elaborating how that would happen, but her examples didn’t really show it and I haven’t seen it in practice in the years since. Yet the possibility is there.

I reckon it wouldn’t really take much. There is (or should be) a model guiding the decisions about what makes the right step, but that’s often hidden (in our learning as well). Making that model visible, and showing how it guides the support and recommendations that are made, could be made available as a ‘veneer’ over the system. It wouldn’t have to be visible, it could just be available at a click or as a preference for those who might want it.

Part of my vision of how to act in the world is to ‘learn out loud’. Well, I think our tools and products could be more explicit about the thinking that went into them, as well. Many years ago, in HyperCard, you could just use buttons and field, but you could open them up and get deeper into them, going from fixed links to coded responses. I have thought that a program or operating system could work similarly, having an initial appearance but capable of being explored and customized. We do this in the real world, choosing how much about something we want to learn (and I still want everyone who uses a word processor to learn about styles!) about something. Some things we pay someone else to do, other things we want to do ourselves. We learn about some parts of a program, and don’t know about others (it used to be joked that no one knows everything about Unix, I feel the same way about Microsoft Word).

We don’t do enough performance support as it is, but hopefully as we look into it, we consider the possible benefits of supporting the performance with some of the underlying thinking, and generating more comprehension with the associated benefits that brings. It’s good to reflect on learning, and seeing how thinking shapes performance both improves us and can improve our performance as well.

Levels of analysis

26 July 2011 by Clark Leave a Comment

When I was a grad student, a fellow student did an interesting study. In analogical reasoning, what helps is abstracting from the specifics to the more general (and folks are bad at generating good analogies, though okay at using them, according to my PhD and other research). Folks had made efforts at getting abstraction, and failed. What my fellow student did was to control the abstraction, and got useful outputs. It turns out some abstract too far, and of course in general most don’t go far enough.

From that beginning, I’ve been interested in useful mental models, and good analysis from appropriate levels of abstraction. That’s what I have tried to do in my books: abstract to useful levels, and guide application in pragmatic ways. And that’s what I look for in other’s work as well. My PhD advisor has served as an excellent model: Don Norman’s book Design of Everyday Things is still a must-read for anyone designing for humans, and his subsequent books have similarly provided valuable insight.

I like the thinking of a number of folks who do this well. For instance, I’m regularly learning with my Internet Time Alliance colleagues (Jay, Jane, Harold, and Charles). Jane Bozarth, Marc Rosenberg, Allison Rossett, Will Thalheimer, Marcia Conner, and Donald’s Clark & Taylor are just a few of the folks who cut through the hype with incisive thinking. There are of course others I’m forgetting to mention (my apologies). They’re looking for best principles, not best practices.

It’s a similar thinking that helps break down new technologies and finds the key affordances for learning, avoiding other intriguing but ultimately distracting features (Powerpoint presentations in Second Life, anyone?). You need to look a bit deeper than the surface.

Interestingly, to do so really requires taking time for reflection. Which is why it always frustrates me to hear those folks who say “I don’t have time for reflection”. Really? You don’t have time to do the most valuable level of thinking that will impact your effectiveness and ultimately save you time and money?

And can we please put this process into our school curriculum as well? I benefited mightily by having a 12th grade AP English teacher (that’s you, Dick Bergeron) who modeled deeper thinking and used reciprocal teaching (without having that label) to help us develop our own abilities. While I try to do so for my own kids, our society and world needs more folks thinking at useful levels.

So, please, take time and a step back from your day to day problem-solving and abstract across your activities and look for higher level principles, both emergent and external, that can improve what you’re doing.

Integration (or not)

14 June 2011 by Clark 1 Comment

I’ve recently been asked about what industries are leading in the use of (choose one: mobile, games, social). And, in my experience, while there are some industries (medicine in mobile, for example), it’s more about who’s enlightened enough yet. Which made me think a little deeper about what I do, and don’t see.

What I do see are pockets of innovation. This company, or this manager, or this individual, will innovate in a particular area. Chris Hoyt has innovated in social learning for recruitment for PepsiCo, and is now branching out into mobile. One company will do games, another mobile, another social. And that’s ok as a starting point, but there’s more on the table. You want to move from tactics to strategy.

I want to suggest it’s better if someone higher up sees that tying the elements together into a coherent system is the larger picture. You don’t just want the individual tactics, but you want to see them as steps towards the larger picture. At the end of the day, you want your systems tied together in the back end, providing a unified environment for performance for the individual. And that takes a view of where you’re going, and the appropriate investment and experimentation.

I recall (but not the link, mea culpa) a recent post or article talking about the lack of R&D investment in the learning space (let me add, the performance space overall). That is, folks aren’t deliberately setting aside monies to fund some experimentation around learning. Every learning unit should be spending 3-5% of the budget on R&D. Is that happening? If so, it’s not obvious, but I’m happy to be wrong.

I really struggle to find an organization that I think is getting on top of this in a systematic way: that has realized the vision, is aligning tactics to organizational outcomes, and is looking to integrate the technologies in the backend to capitalize on investment in content systems, social media systems, portal technologies, and learning management systems. This can also be customer-facing as well, so that you’re either meeting customer learning needs around other products or services, or delivering learning experiences as a core business, but still doing so in a coherent, comprehensive, and coordinated approach.

I am working with some folks who are just starting out, but I think the necessity to link optimal execution with continual innovation is going to require much more thorough efforts than I’m yet seeing. Am I missing someone? While I love to hear about exemplary individual efforts, I’d really like to hear from those who are pulling it all together as well.

Beyond Talent

16 May 2011 by Clark 1 Comment

A post I wrote for the ATC conference:

As I prepare to talk to the Australasian Talent Conference I’ve naturally been thinking about the intersection of that field and what I do. As I recently blogged, I think there’s an overlap between OD and the work of trying to facilitate organizational performance through technology. I think Talent Management similarly has an overlap.

While technology is used in talent management, it really is more focused on the management part, supporting the role of HR in recruitment, competencies, and more. Which is good, but now there’s more on the table. We now have the benefits of Web 2.0 to leverage. To understand how, it helps to look at the charateristics of Web 2.0. Brent Schlenker talks about the 5-ables:

findable – the ability to use search to find things
feedable – the ability to subscribe to content
linkable – the ability to point to content
taggable – allowing other to add descriptors
editable – allowing others to add content

At core, this is about leveraging the power of the network to get improved outcomes. When others can add value, they do. We have seen that in learning and development, and the drivers there are not unique to the area.

Things are moving faster, and information is increasing. Worse, that information is more volatile, as well. As if that weren’t enough, competition is increasing. The luxury to plan, prepare, and execute is increasingly a thing of the past. As a consequence, optimal execution is only the cost of entry, and continual innovation is the necessary differentiator.

As a result, the old top-down mentality is no longer a solution, one person can not do all the necessary thinking for a team. Instead, forward-thinking organizations are finding the solution in empowering their people to work together to come up with the necessary solutions. They are devolving problem-solving, research, design, innovation further down in the organization, and realizing real results from the process. Instead of having to own all the content, learning units are instead facilitating the development of answers from among the stakeholders.

Note that by doing so, organizations are also making work more meaningful and consequently more rewarding. As Dan Pink’s Drive demonstrates, individuals are more motivated by the opportunity to engage than by artificial rewards. And these results are not unique to high-tech, but being seen in organizations engaged in manufacturing, medicine, and more.

This revolution can, and should, be seen in talent management as well. Throughout the lifecycle of talent, the network can add value. Beyond recruiting, networks can be used for talent evaluation, and then within the organization for onboarding, development, performance management, and even debriefing and alumni activities.

The point is to think about how to tap into the power of people. And even when you are now hiring people, you are not just hiring what is in their heads, but what’s also in their networks. Similarly, they are choosing organizations on how well they use networks. As the Cuetrain Manifesto documented, an organization can no longer control the message. If an organization is inauthentic externally, it is a safe bet that it is similarly dysfunctional internally.

Social media is much more than just marketing, it’s a tool to take advantage of for many reasons. More meaningful work, better outcomes, and a better connection to the market are just the top level benefits. Social, it’s not just for parties any more.

On Competencies and Compliance

3 May 2011 by Clark 4 Comments

While my colleagues in the ITA and I are railing against the LMS as a complete solution for organizational performance (and the vendors rally back with their move beyond course management with social and portal capabilities, to be fair), one overriding cry is heard: “but we have to do compliance!” And, yes, they do. But that umbrella covers a multitude of sins as well as some real importance.

So, for the record, I acknowledge that I want procedures followed when lives are on the line and other cases where it’s important. Yes, I do want oil well procedures followed, ethics in financial transactions, careful scrutiny of pharmaceutical research, harassment-free workplaces, and more. I like that there are procedures for pre-flight safety, medical sanitation, etc. So don’t get me wrong.

What I am concerned about, however, are two things. For one, as I see the effectiveness of classes ranging from very practical guidance to ridiculously useless knowledge tests. Let’s be clear, telling someone about something and having them recite back the knowledge isn’t going to lead to meaningful change in behavior. An expert in emotional intelligence told me that most of the workplace bullying interventions are worthless, as the person responds appropriately to the information on a post-class test, but then goes back to the workplace and continues to misbehave. That’s a waste of time and money.

For another, the criteria are often knowledge based, not performance-based. We can make meaningful tests, either computer-administered (simulations), or real performance. What doesn’t work are knowledge tests. And LMSs don’t care what the form of assessment is, if it can be recorded.

What we should be looking for are competency assessments, based upon real performance, not knowledge test. Certainly, pilots have to perform appropriately, as do surgeons. They are measured by real performance. It’s not about courses. If they can’t perform, then there are knowledge resources, whatever might be helpful, but it’s not like they have to take a course, unless they want to.

And the standards change over time as new procedures and tools come in. BTW, how does that adaptation happen? Not by one person decreeing it so, but panels of experts coming up with new proposals, testing, and refinement. A social process, with criteria of their own about acceptable standards. And not measured by seat time, poundage, or any thing other than the ability to reliably demonstrate capability.

Now I’m going to sound far-fetched here, but in the long term, I see communities developing the criteria and competencies collaboratively, and the assessment mechanisms as well. The tools will exist for communities to pass up ideas, for experts to review and revise the criteria, and for the process to be transparent to governmental and public scrutiny. We need better and more meaningful competency development and testing. That’s what I’d like us all to comply with.

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