Leadership Chronicles
      
        practice with us, not your customers 
February 2013

Greetings!

 



"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."
      Andy Warhol

Yes, the ASCI world has changed! On December 6, 2012, the ASCI family grew with the acquisition of e-roleplay Inc., the leading knowledge retention and sustainment organization in the world. It's now onward and upward, integrating the teams and services, and learning everything we can about the e-roleplay team and clients. 


If you are interested in ensuring your training dollars have the required ROI while sustaining the learning your team has received, let's talk. 

 

All the best,

Randy Sabourin & Cam Anderson 
by Randy Sabourin

Practice makes perfect.

 

We have all heard the adage before: it takes time, practice, repetition, exploration, mistakes and successes to master a new skill. Perfect, though, is a rather lofty goal..

 

"When I was in school the teachers told me practice makes perfect; then they told me nobody's perfect so I stopped practicing."

       Comedian - Steve Wright

 

 

So let's say practice makes better or perhaps practice makes permanent.

 

Let's explore how we generally acquire new business skills. Consider training a large group of sales people on objection handling and cross-selling and their managers on coaching to the new process. Usually the Corporate Learning and Development (L&D) team designs or purchases the training material, which is then incorporated into a workshop and perhaps an e-learning module. The participants are assembled; flights, hotels, venues are booked, and workshops are attended. The feedback from the workshops is outstanding, the e-learning scores are magnificent, and everyone is happy. Mission accomplished. If they were lucky, the Managers received an extra day of training regarding their responsibility to sustain the new sales process through coaching. While this process varies depending on the size of the organization and the commitment to the learning, this approach has been the norm for decades.

 

The real test of the training is whether the participants change their behavior in the field. If the way to measure 'lift' (a change in behavior and results) was part of the design process a key question is whether the Manager will have the skills to recognize any lack of change and then have time to coach to it. Usually, a few months go by and a small percentage of people are using the new content while Managers go back to focusing on their jobs with little time to coach. The status quo wins out and the L&D team goes back to the drawing board to design an even better training and coaching program for next year. Fingers point in both directions and the L&D budget is in jeopardy again next year with little or no evidence of return on training dollars invested.

 

The solution?  Read the rest of the article..

Practice Makes Perfect- Part 2:
How to Increase the Return on Training Dollars Invested through Knowledge Retention and Learning Sustainment
by Cameron O. Anderson

Since corporate training began, Learning and Development professionals have strived to determine the ROI on training programs. While the REACTION l evel (Kirkpatrick, Evaluating Training Programs, 3rd Edition, 2006) or "smile sheets" administered during or post program are often very positive, the final three levels (ACTUAL LEARNING, BEHAVIOR CHANGE AND BUSINESS RESULTS) are traditionally more difficult to measure. As you saw in Part 1 of this article, the reinforcement and coaching of what is taught in a training program is frequently left to overworked managers so the sustainment and ROI of the training is often also low. While good internal coaching definitely has a positive impact on changing behaviors and business results, the consistency of the follow up coaching is what is being examined around the training world.

So if coaching is the key to sustainment and internal coaching is often hit or miss, what is the solution? TELEPHONE ROLEPLAY!!!

 

Read the rest of the article 


We know your time is valuable so thank you for taking a minute to look at our view of business and the world around us. You can find more information at our site or
 send us your thoughts and suggestions.

Sincerely,

 Cam & Randy

In This Issue
Practice Makes...
The ROI on Practice
Sympathy or Empathy
Best of Tweets
A PowerPoint Alternative?
Sympathy or Empathy    
Click to Watch
This is a great video that was passed along to us by Pier Ragone at Aimia. It's a good reminder. Thanx Pier.
Quick Links

Best Of Our Tweets:
ASCI Tweets
    


e-roleplay overview - new look and feel - thoughts?
Apparently Hope is back to being a strategy (?) Making Hope a Business Strategy -  http://ow.ly/hII2o 

Great article. Very relevant - Are You Really Disruptive? (Or Just Talking About It) -
  
The 5 Questions Every Company Should Ask Itself | Co.Design: business innovation design -   http://ow.ly/hr9ct

Guru Speak: An insight into your mind - Economic Times -

Why companies should start investing in women - World Economic
 Forum 

It's time to start taking employee problems seriously - How companies can make work less painful

Google's Quest to Build a Better Boss
  
This a great (quick) interview that reinforces how we need to look at knowledge and collaboration.
  
4 components of a humble sales presentation - Expressing humility makes you more believable when you speak with... Why frontline managers are so important to sales success - coaching?
  
Why the best bosses don't have big bellies - Want to Be CEO?
 
A new way to Present
Prezi Presentations
We've come across a new way to present presentations. We just started using Prezi in place of PowerPoint. Click here to take a look at our e-roleplay overview in this new format and let us know what you think.

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