Reading About Change Management

Change Management does not sound like an interesting topic to me. And I would be surprised if you are excited about it too, but it is a necessary part of any organisation. So recently I started reading John Kotter's book (thanks to Susi for purchasing it), Leading Change. So far I have not been disappointed. I've known about Kotter for some time as his name is often thrown around business publications but he sounded more like a theoretical academic to me. Reading his book has kind of changed my views about him as his writing is quite pragmatic, practical and not really heavy on the technical side of things.

So what are my initial thoughts about the book?

For me it's more of who should read it instead of my initial thoughts about it. To start with I think leadership teams operating at the C level should read it, and also have a good open discussion about how they can integrate some of its lessons into their organisations.
I also think managers at the mid-level should read it too. Learning and development practitioners should definitely it read since most of what they do is about supporting change. I do think the material in the book could be used to design a good training course, instead of spending money on some ridiculously expensive course.

That's a challenge for me, perhaps.

Ambitious Learning Goal

I set myself an ambitious learning goal this year: to read and review one learning and development related book each week. So far I've done well because I have read and reviewed eight books and started reading the ninth today. But why am I doing this? Is this just a pointless exercise? So I thought initially until I started thinking about one my personal dreams. A couple of years ago I came across three websites which are:

• http://www.getabstract.com/en/
• http://www.summary.com/
• http://www.bizsum.com/

These sites write book summaries and you can buy a subscription to their library of summaries. Although I never bought any of their subscriptions, I fell in love with their business idea. It was the kind of business idea I would want to have on a small scale because I do a bit of reading myself. And being a learning and development practitoner I know that after reading a book, you forget about 70 per cent of what you read in a week's time if you don't start putting it into practice. At least reading a book summary can mean you still have access to some of the knowledge, because no book summary can totally cover the full contents in a book.

With so much passion and desire I thought of the one topic I love reading about: entrepreneurship!. I went out to charity shops and Amazon uk (the used books bit) and bought about 30 business biographies (I still have them stored somewhere) and decided to start a small site with business biography summaries. Initially it was going well, but it soon became difficult and there were a number of reasons for this. A lot of the biographies especially the autos were very subjective and amounted largely to self promotion (hey look at how great I am, I have bult this wonderful business). Rarely will any biography tell you the whole truth about what made their business successful. In fairness some do but they are really the exception. I got discouraged and shelved that idea.

But now I have picked up the idea again, so I thought why don't I start writing summaries of learning and development books. The benfits for me are immense, I'm reading and learning and it may also help other people to choose books and learn from the summaries. So far I have only been writing reviews, but hopefully the summariwes will come later. Here is a link to my blog with all reviews I have so far written: http://ladtools.wordpress.com/

Creating Knowledge Connections

Here is a post from FastCompany forwarded to me from Susi at work:

 http://www.fastcompany.com/3023424/why-successful-people-have-so-many-groups-of-friends

I am still trying to figure out what the learning point but one thing is clear making connections with people, sharing information and knowledge with them and most importantly being able to speak different languages that connect you to different knowledge groups is important. This is something that i need to work on.

Handling a new service

We are about to take on a new set of residential mental health services though a TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings). These services will provide 24 hour residential care support to people with mental health illness. The services were traditionally NHS services and they work differently from the way we do. We've been discussing how learning and development can support them so here are some steps we are thinking of taking:

• Firstly organise a meeting which involves the Learning and Development Manager, Learning and Development Advisor, Manager for the new services and Senior HR Business Partner.
• We identified what a superstar support worker will look like (who works according to our values) and what they should be able to do.
• We identified the skills and knowledge they will need to work as a super star support worker and what learning support they will need. We then decided how the learning will be delivered.
• Some of the ideas we thought of were: buddying with existing workers, the staff in the new services to visit existing services, complete an exploration trivia about the organisation, attend classroom training and complete e-learning courses.

This will be part of their induction planned over a six month period.

Just In Time Learning

In a decade where things change so fast and loads of new information is generated on a daily basis Just In Time learning in the workplace sounds reasonable. With the presence of internet and mobile technology, we will have to develop  new set of skills which enables us to learn while working. Some of the tools we can leverage for Just In Time learning are:

• Search engines such as Google where you can get information instantly.
• Content libraries that can be created to store crucial information that can be accessed easily. For example success stories (and those for when things didn't go well) and work processes can be collated for easy access and learning, meaning people can learn quick from experience.
• Wiki technologies that facilitate people to share knowledge.
• Use of question and answer sites such as Quora.
• Social networking sites which allow people of similar interests to learn from each other.
• Instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp that can be used to ask questions and get answers instantly.

There are much more tools than these but after reading an article by Bruce Tulgan posted in Training Magazine titled, Learning Just in Time, these are my thoughts. What do you think? Do you know of any other tools that can facilitate Just in Time learning?

Some considerations for becoming a valuable learning function

Make sure that whatever training or learning you deliver is critical to the organisation. To do this your training must be directed by business drivers. There are three main ones which are:

• Using learning to reduce risk
• Using learning to reduce costs or decrease wastage
• Using learning to increase revenue

Be in tune with the latest trends in learning principles and technology and how they can be applied to deliver effective learning in your organisation. Trends that you currently need to be mindful of are:

• Mobile learning which provides you with the opportunity to deliver learning in small and quick bits and also provide performance support useful during the workflow.
• Social learning which involves harnessing resources available online, sharing knowledge and collaborative problem solving.
• Learning as a lifelong process for both the organisation and individuals. This is about promoting a learning culture in the organisation.

Run the learning function like its your own business. If the learning function was your personal business how would you run it? You might need to do a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat) analysis on what you are doing to identify what is working well and areas where you may need to improve.
Promote learning as a strategic resource that supports the organisation to achieve its goals. Make sure you are clear about the ROI (Return On Investment) that learning brings to the business and raise your visibility by continually communicating about the value that learning is adding to the organisation.

Peer Support Training

On the 4th of December 2013 I partook in a Peer Support Training with two other ladies. I was involved in designing the programme which is for peer mentor volunteers who will be supporting people with mental health illness. The volunteers themselves do have lived experience of mental health illness. There were three of them but it still worked out to be a very engaging and worthwhile programme. It was also a pilot so the first signs did look good. Look forward to delivering a much bigger programme.

#edcmooc - About Me

Hello My name is Bola Owoade. I am based in London UK. I work as a Learning and Development Officer facilitating staff learning in a non-profit organisation. I have a Bsc in Geography form University of Ibadan in Nigeria and an Msc in Geographic Information Systems from University of Greenwich in England. I am also a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. I have been involved in delivering training and development to adults for about 12 years.

Learning methods

Using short video clips
Telling stories
Using props for example pictures and Physical objectives
Collect pictures you snap and use them
Let your activities reflect you

Train the trainer on 21-22/10/13

Did a train the trainer course with Caroline today and I was shocked at how good people said I was. More importantly I like Caroline's challenging situations matching exercise. I must steal it for ladtools.com.
I must start concentrating on the two things I am passionate about which are learning and development and entrepreneurship.
Laura did a short training session using a funny video illustrate a point. Also see if you can use physical exercises that link to the training such as close your eyes or move your hands that may help.

Designing a Self Service System For Training

In my current job we have been using the HRIS system called HR Pro for quite a long time. We recently upgraded to the most current version and also decided to take on the self service option. Today our team had a meeting on how to put training requests onto self service. It was an interesting brainstorming session but one that probably raised more questions than answers. What was clear to me is that while a system may give you efficiency, it will not necessarily make you effective. As far as L&D is concerned, at least from my perspective, it is the job of the practitioners to work in a way that generates effectiveness, the systems only provide you with a resource to be more effective, they won't make you more effective. Just my thoughts.

Some Tips About Instructional Design

Step 1 - Identifying learning out comes.

• Learning outcomes help better understand what the learner should know by the end of the course.
• We have to support these outcomes with appropriate  assessments and information.
• Clear learning outcomes help to trim your course, making it more concise.
• We all tend to mind dump everything. Stick to the learning outcomes.
• All screens should support the learning outcomes.
• Maximum of 5 learning outcomes.

Step 2 - Choose your assessments

• Ensure that all tests support a learning outcome, either for the module or course.
• Only assess learners on information you have covered - or intend to cover in remedial content (hidden resources) if they get it wrong.
• You have two options for assessment, scored and self-assessment.
• Consider the no-less than 100% that elearning offers.

Step 3 - What will help them pass the test

• What content /media do you already have that will help them pass the test?
• How might that content be leveraged?
• If you think that content/media should be included but it does not support a learning outcome you've identified, should you add another learning outcome?
• More is not always better. Consider using hidden resources if there's a lot of extra mateiral

IT TRAIN THE TRAINER

Today I did an IT train the trainer with two people. I feel I did it well being the first time. I used the IT TRAINING pocket book for a large part of the training. I do have a lot of useful knowledge but what do I do with it. I also did am MCA course yesterday. It was unconventional but bloody good.

Learning for 14th October 2013

I had a meeting with Mina to discuss Peer mentor training. We went through various sessions on peer mentoring and I actually came away with a few ideas. previously I have proposed to her that we have a merntal Health Training Membership site. Here are my refreshed idea around that proposal:

• Have a library of mental Health related training modules
• Develop a train the trainer pack for in-house mental health training specialists
• Develop a series of workbooks relating to mental health
• Develop training packages for different groups such as corporate organisations, charities, polics force, religious organisations, personal development

The action for me is to arrange the MHFA training. So I need to contact Ambesit for tyhe details.

Learning and Development Apps

I am going to start listing apps that i think can be used to design, develop and deliver affordable, non-tradtional and effective online learning. So the first three i am recording are:

1. Ning for scoial netwroks
2. Blogger (you guessed) for blog posts
3. Mindmeister for mindmapping
4. Gimp for image editing (not online hosted)
5. LearnDash LMS (Wordpress plugin)
6. Chris Lema's site and check out membership and e-learning plugin reviews (not an app but useful)
7. Speakerdeck
8. WP101 - training for wordpress
9. Wheeldo - social game learning
10. WP - Courseware
11. sohelpful.me
12. hogrefe - coach on the desktop

At the mental health manager's meetings

Bola's Learning Diary

Tuesday, 17 September 2013

At the Mental Health Managers Meeting

On September 16th 2013 i attended the MH Managers meeting at my company. Now for a bit of context, we recently started using a business partner model so I partner with the MH aspect of our organisation hence i attended the meeting to give the managers an update about what learning and development and also to talk about Recovery Star training. Recovery Star is a person centred tool we use in Certitude to support our service users. So what were my key lessons from this meeting.

To start with i found out that i sometimes talk too much and don't listen. Well honestly that is something i already knew but it dawned on me more at this meeting. Secondly I listened to Susie Petherick, our new Leadership Development Manager who gave a brilliant presentation and really engaged the audience. I think her listening skills and ability to use light humour was outstanding. Also was the encouragement for me to network more.

The goals for me out of the programme was:

• To visit our services more often
• To design a new Recovery Star training programme that is more blended and less classroom focused.

Qualifications and Performance

Research shows that hiring a person over qualified for a job does not mean they will perform better. At the same time it does not reduce the need for them to be trained in specialised skills. Accenture's Graduate Employment Surevy in 2013 stated that 63 per cent of respondents said they still needed training to do their jobs properly. Also rarely  do graduates come with all the skills that employers need. They still need training and do expect it from the ir employers. Lots of jobs are being unfilled because employers are expecting ready made candidates. Employers need to change their expectation for hiring graduates and focus on investing in training.

Action Points:

• Don't hire people who are over qualified for the job
• Train your new hires in the essential skills needed to do the job effectively
• Don't expect graduates to come with all the skills you need for the job

Source: CLO 2013 - Turning Potential Into Performance - Page 6

Learning and Social Media

Read an article by Marc J Rosenberg recently. It was titled Boston, Social Media, and Lessons for Learning. Here are some of the lessons I learnt from the article.

• Social media is very effective for delivering information speedily and to a large audience in a short time.
• Social media is inclusive as it facilitates the inclusion of a lot of people. The barriers to participating are little or even non-existent. Social media will be good for communities of practice and crowdsourced knowledge.
• But social media can be wrong. Since almost anybody can be involved in contributing information it is easy for people to contribute information that is not accrate.
• Also not all authors involved in contributing content to social media outlets are expert. What these means is that we have to be careful about information that comes via social media.
• Information from social media can be overwhelming. It adds more to the information overload we are already dealing with.

CIPD's HRD

I briefly went to CIPD's flagship event for the learning and development profession called HRD Conference and Exhibition. Personally I was not impressed. It all seemed a bit stale and it looked smaller. Maybe that's because I have not been to it in the past three years. Although I am a member of the CIPD I do have a lot of personal issues with them. To start with I don't think they promote  L&D adequately. It seems to sit in the background of other aspects of Human Resources. But my biggest beef with them is the cost of their qualifications. They are way too expensive. I would imagine that they should allow different routes of study. CIPD currently has only two routes. You either study with them or through one of their certified providers or you study at a college/University.

In a world with great and affordable learning technology I find that very backward. Here are some options I would like to see CIPD provide to study their qualifications.

• Distance study: They can sell their resources for those who believe they can study it independtly on their own. All they need to do is to assign a tutor to people studying this way. Kind of like studying with the Open University.
• E-Learning: Why not make use of virtual technology which can provide content for study and also use the community of practice model to get students to interact.

Recently I have taken a lot of interest in EdTech (Educational Technology) and the pace of innovation is breathtaking. We need this type of innovation to disrupt the current models of providing professional certification. To become a graduate student of CIPD do I really need to pay over £9500? I think it is absurd and ridiculous.

If you are reading this, what do you think?

I must admit though, they  have a great library and the people who work there are really nice and helpful.

Creating a Team Learning Strategy

One of our services called CDW Brent is launching a new service called Travel Support. The purpose of the service is to provide support for people with Mental Health illness to move about using public transport. The people employed in this service will be called Travel Buddies and they will be people with lived experience of Mental Health illness. To provide training for the Travel Buddies they have been set up to do our mandatory e-learning courses and booked on mandatory courses that are not currently run through e-learning.

But I am also interested in seeing whether they need any development which will support them to do their jobs up to the required standard. To tackle this I have sent an email to the service's project manager. Here is what I sent to her:

I’m trying to put together a development plan for the Travel Buddies. I have read the Job Description. I need some more information from you. Please can you send me information on the skills and knowledge the Travel Buddies need to be able to do the job up to the required standard.

I am  expecting her reply.