I was driving down Market Street in San Francisco the other day when I spotted a young woman, clad in shorts and a tank top, riding her bicycle with her dog in tow. I winced. This practice of towing a dog alongside a moving bicycle always seemed cruel to me. Regardless of whether the dog is tired, sore, thirsty, hungry, out of breath, sick, or even injured, it has to … Read More
“I had no choice,” I told my client, Beth. “I am not good at work-life balance because I wanted to be or because I somehow got lucky. I literally had no choice.”
I’d called Beth to catch up after she’d been out of the office on medical leave for several months. We’d worked closely for many years on a variety of projects and I wanted to find out how she … Read More
I read this article, Fixing Workplace Learning – Inconvenient Truths, late Friday afternoon, and have been stewing about it all weekend. First and foremost, I completely agree with the author, Bill Sawyer: The workplace learning field, for the most part, lacks professionalism to an astonishing degree. And, from what I’ve seen, the quality of Instructional Design just keeps getting worse. We are mesmerized by the new; think mobile delivery, 
I recently reviewed a subject matter expert (SME) designed course for customers of a software vendor and noticed something absolutely critical missing.
The course was for casual coders; in other words, people who know how to code, but don’t do it all day every day. Not surprisingly, the course started with a lesson on remedial coding to ensure that everyone knew the basics to actually use the software. The course … Read More
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How Gamification Makes Training More Effective
What do quests, boss battles, levels, and points all have in common? They are all game mechanics that can be used to gamify training. In this approach to Instructional Design, you structure the training around achieving an overarching quest. You can find examples of overarching quests in the game world that might include conquering the world, defeating the dark side, or saving a damsel … Read More
Sometimes it sucks to be my husband. Let me explain. Alex is from a country that was part of the former Soviet Union. Apparently, manual transmissions work differently over there. We discovered this when I needed to hop out to shift my car into reverse before we slowly slid into a parked car while he was driving. Admittedly, it didn’t help that some not-too-helpful mechanic had gorilla-glued the knob on … Read More
If you believe the hype you read on the Internet and in professional journals, most organizations have successfully embedded technology into their training offerings. Employees making their way through branching scenarios in 3-D virtual worlds, participating in MOOCs, and clicking open custom apps to quickly access information is completely commonplace, right? Maybe not so much.
Of course, early adopters exist. But, in my experience, the vast majority of my clients … Read More
One of the biggest mistakes I see new sales reps make is thinking that if they win the argument, they will win the sale. So, when a prospect pipes up with an objection, their response is to jump right in with both fists swinging in an attempt to show how their logic can’t be beat. In other words, they are right and the prospect is wrong.
How do you feel … Read More
The effectiveness of sales onboarding is critical. Not only is it the launch pad to sales success or failure, it also has a significant impact on both employee retention and engagement.
According to a study by the Aberdeen Group, employees in companies who offered effective onboarding programs showed the following results:
- 71% of employees exceeded expectations as compared to only 8% in laggard companies
- 72% of employees rated themselves as
I grew up in the era of latchkey kids. I was used to figuring out and doing things for myself. After getting home from school, I had to figure out what snack to eat as well as how to get my homework done and dinner started. In addition, I was responsible for “babysitting” my three younger siblings until my parents got home from work.
Many Millennials did not grow up … Read More