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Newsletter
How Do You Achieve Permanent, Measurable Improvements in Performance? Part 1 of 3
May 6, 2009 |
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| Greetings! |
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In the April 15, 2009 issue of Talent Magazine, an article entitled, Falling Investment in Employee Development to Undermine U.S. and U.K. Competitiveness, makes these points:
- A new economic study commissioned by Cognisco, a measurer of employee knowledge and confidence, reveals that a lack of investment in employees is threatening the ability of many leading industrialized countries to maintain global competitiveness in the post-recession economy.
- The study, entitled "Knowledge - The New Commodity," highlights that developed countries such as the U.S. and U.K. are likely to face the biggest challenge due to a decrease in spending on knowledge development in response to the recession.
- In comparison, according to the 301 firms surveyed in the Economist Intelligence Unit's February 2009 "Asia Business Outlook Survey," few businesses in emerging Asian markets plan to decrease training budgets. This contrasts with industrialized countries, where a large number of firms are cutting employee investment rather than increasing it.
How do you avoid the consequences of reduced revenues, increased costs, stronger competition, and viability in three months, six months, and 12 months?
Will there be consequences when you don't have knowledgeable-ready-to-go replacements for departing employees or when your current management staff falls behind the curve?
(Are they in front of the curve now?!)
What can you do about it?
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| The "Holy Grail" of Training:
Permanent, Measurable Improvements in Performance |
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One of your first actions is to avoid overthrowing your entire learning strategy! Sure, money is tight, you're making reductions in training costs, but the balance between reduced training expenses and a high performing staff is delicate - and it can easily tip toward savings versus high performance.
You certainly want to make any learning sessions deliver a payoff in performance.
There's long been a quest to transfer what is learned in the classroom to improved performance in the workplace and it has mostly been a confounding search.
It isn't easy to change behavior patterns, because those patterns have been deeply ingrained over time. To correct performance issues, to create high performing managers, new behaviors have to be introduced and consistently reinforced over the long term.
This means following up programs with enough continued learning, feedback, coaching and accountability to stimulate the growth of new connections in the brain that eventually take the place of old ones. (Literally! It's a scientific fact!)
Too often organizations have wasted billions of dollars annually investing in learning programs that fail to change behavior - you've probably done the same.
The greater challenge of the quest for this "Holy Grail" is that the solution doesn't
involve fixing just one thing. A myriad of variables within an organization influence
whether learning is reinforced until new behavior patterns are established.
But it isn't necessary or desirable to try to improve all the variables at once. The best approach is to achieve positive results quickly by taking three practical actions, which can be implemented in a very short period of time:
Step 1. Acquire integrated assessment and training technologies that support ongoing skill reinforcement.
Step 2. Involve direct managers in the learning process. Define their staff development responsibilities and hold them accountable.
Step 3. Measure performance improvement. Assess skill areas before and after instruction to establish developmental goals and accountability.
These actions will produce immediate successes, and your organization can then
build on this foundation with a gradual, tailored strategy to optimize the key areas
that influence learning transfer.
The purpose of this article is to explain how to carry out the first of three "quick start" initiatives effectively. |
| Step 1: Acquire integrated assessment and training technologies that support ongoing skill reinforcement |
The immediate goal is to dramatically improve - in the near term - the ability of your developmental programs to create lasting improvements in workplace performance. As a minimum, your organization will need to put into place assessment and training programs that:
- Focus on the behaviors needed in the workplace
- Are compatible and integrated with each other
- Support ongoing feedback, continued learning, coaching and accountability during reinforcement
Laying the foundation for this technology infrastructure is relatively simple:
FIRST - Acquire a versatile, economical multi-source feedback system.
A robust performance feedback assessment system is absolutely essential, in which learners get feedback from the people who work with them. For assessing
leadership, sales, service, team and other interpersonal skill areas, we use 20/20 Insight GOLD - it is an ideal choice for the strategy we call Train-to-Ingrain because it provides quantitative assessment of areas of performance that are otherwise hard to measure.
The assessment process is critical: it tells you where you stand with developmental needs, where your potential shortfalls in performance will be and what's working for you.
A good system like 20/20 Insight is completely customizable and can support any type of feedback survey, so it can be integrated with practically any training program. It's economical enough to be used as often as needed for reinforcement, because you can purchase relatively inexpensive permanent individual licenses, permitting frequent feedback and repeat measurements at no extra cost.
NEXT - If you don't have your own learning programs, acquire the learning resources that support an extended period of reinforcement. A prime example is leadership development, one of the most critical needs of most organizations. We use behavior-based Vital Learning Leadership Curriculum , an award-winning leadership development series that has built-in reinforcement. It provides access to online video behavior modeling, post-course exercises and a troubleshooting guide to ensure successful application on the job.
 The Leadership Curriculum is available in classroom workshops, online e-learning and blended learning solutions - and we use all three formats with clients.
THEN - Integrate the assessment with the training program.
Integration means that the performance feedback survey exactly describes the
behavioral outcomes of the training. Both the 20/20 Insight assessment system and the Vital Learning leadership courses are behavior-based, fully support the requirements of an ongoing process of reinforcement, and are already fully
integrated with each other.
For leadership development, the combination of these two user-friendly technologies makes it easy to put an off-the-shelf, world-class solution in place very quickly.
NEXT NEWSLETTER: STEP 2 of How Do You Achieve Permanent, Measurable Improvements in Performance? By involving direct managers in the learning process; define their staff development responsibilities and hold them accountable.
Managers are empowered to influence all these factors, and they lead people by doing so. When focused on developing competence, managers set an example, communicate expectations, demonstrate desired performance, give feedback, and coach performance. Most organizations expect their managers to fulfill these traditional staff development responsibilities. However, some managers still have the perception that performance improvement should be the exclusive responsibility of the training department. This is an erroneous mindset... |
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Let me summarize:
In his report in Talent Magazine, Paul Mizen (economics professor at the University of Nottingham and fellow at Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research at the University of Manchester) "argues that the world economy is increasingly knowledge-based and that an investment in knowledge will be essential for creating competitive advantages in the future. He also emphasizes that businesses investing in the continued development of their workforces and keeping pace with technology are more likely to experience increased productivity gains."
"Those countries that are cutting their investment in people are undermining their future success and their ability to recover from the sharpest economic downturn in more than 60 years," said Mizen. "Promoting a knowledge-based economy facilitates a more productive workforce and healthier working environment, leading to increased employee retention and business growth."
At ALD, we've been advocates of an integrated approach to learning for a long time and today's economic conditions make it ever-more imperative that you invest wisely and for the long term.
Take action now - delaying work on your learning strategy only makes it harder to catch up later.
Call or email ALD and let's begin the discussion about your learning strategy and the consequences of not having a strategy or abandoning it all-together! 
Sincerely,
Christine Johnson
President
ALD, Inc. |
| SPECIAL ATTENTION: For Your Spanish Leadership Development Courses |
If you're using the English Leadership Essentials Curriculum materials and would like to offer a bi-lingual class, you now have the ability to purchase the Spanish dubbed DVD and Spanish Participant Workbook without having to purchase the Spanish Facilitator Guide.
The Spanish Leadership Facilitator Guide is available for those that are interested in running an entire session in Spanish.
Facilitator Guide for the Spanish Leadership Series:
The Spanish Leadership Facilitator Guide includes the Trainer Preparation and Facilitator Notes printed in English with corresponding participant workbook pages printed in Spanish. The Pre-Test, Post-Test, Test Answers, Program Evaluation, Video Scripts, PowerPoint Presentation, Interactive Forms and Memory Jogger Cards are in Spanish. The DVD's have been dubbed with Spanish voice-overs. (Let me say that the dubbing is very well done!)
Check out Video 2 of the Essential Skills of Leadership dubbed in Spanish.
CLICK PLAY
Participant Workbook
The Spanish Participant Workbooks are entirely in Spanish which includes the Memory Jogger Card stitched into the back of the workbook.
Pricing:
Facilitator Guides $550
Participant Workbooks $39.00
DVD $50
CD $10 |
| Contact Information |
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ALD, Inc. 208-762-1322 1-888-762-9699 info@ald-inc.com
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