Identifying Key Processes

Knowing which of your processes are truly key to the success of your organization takes a bit of analysis.

Four questions can be used for identifying Key Processes:

Ask yourself:

1. Which outputs are of the greatest importance to our customers?

2. Which processes produce these outputs?

3. Which processes are most visible to our customers?

4. Of the processes identified in response to Questions 2 and 3, which seem to have the greatest potential for improvement?

Once you have identified your Key Processes, you will be well on your way to serving your customers better, and growing your business!

Using Humor to Engage Your Audience

As anyone who knows me will tell you, I like to use Humor in my Presentations. I have always found it beneficial in Engaging the participants, and I am confident it helps to improve student learning.

The creative development of Humor in the virtual classroom deals with "How" to teach, not "What" to teach. The use of humor is a teaching tool that increases the amount of "What" that is actually learned by students. Using humor can have a Very Positive Effect on any classroom (or boardroom) experience.

Some teachers and other professionals fear they will not be taken seriously if their material elicits a laugh now and then. Don’t be Afraid! Try using some humor in your presentation, and see how much it is appreciated by your audience.

Getting Your Inbox to Empty

One of the requirement of effective Time Management is the realization that you cannot (and should try to) do everything at once. What you should do, however, is have Control over all of your "In" boxes, (physical and virtual):

Getting “In” to Empty doesn’t mean actually doing all the actions and projects you have collected It just means:

1.  Identifying each item

2.  Deciding what it is

3.  What it means

4.  What you are going to do with it

Once you have done that, you have control, and in effective time management, control is what it is all about.

Toot the Horn!

Perhaps the most important, and often underutilized, tool in truly effective coaching is Giving Praise.

• Great companies and coaches take the time to Recognize good work and good people

• They also encourage their people to Ask for recognition when it is not forthcoming

• It’s good for your people to “Toot Their Own Horn”!

How do you feel when you get praise for doing something well? You want to do More of It!

The Moment of Truth

Are you ready for the Moment of Truth?

The "Moment of Truth" occurs every time a customer makes Contact with an organization. You have the opportunity at that time to make a Positive, Neutral, or Negative impression in the mind of the customer.

You might ask yourself:

• "How does this affect the reputation of the company?"

• "Do I have a clear idea whether the customer's needs were met?"

• "Do I have a recordkeeping mechanism in place to track these Moments of Truth?"

The moment of truth happens all day; every day. Are you ready?

Adult Learning Theory

Since the 1970s, Adult Learning Theory has been based on Four Assumptions:

1. As they mature, adults tend to Prefer Self-Direction.

2. Adults' experiences are a rich resource for learning. Active participation in Planned Experiences—such as discussions or problem solving exercises can create a powerful learning experience.

3. Adult learners' Needs and Interests are the starting points and serve as guideposts for training activities.

4. Adults are Competency-Based Learners, meaning that they want to learn a skill or acquire knowledge that they can apply to their immediate circumstances.

By keeping in mind these four principles, an educator can Better Connect with his or her Adult Learners.


"The Ultimate Educator" by Edmunds, C., K. Lowe, M. Murray, and A. Seymour, 1999.

Does Life Experience Promote Learning?

I read the following quote on the web recently, and I am still trying to decide if I think it is true.

“The more life change events an adult encounters, the more likely he or she is to seek out learning opportunities. Just as stress increases as life-change events accumulate, the motivation to cope with change through engagement in a learning experience increases.”

Can it be true that the more we have experienced, the more we want to learn?  What do you think?  I am going to have to think about this for a while, and I would be very interested to see any real-life examples.

30 Things We Know...

Six-Step Coaching Plan

A suggested Six-Step Plan for Coaching includes the following. Try using these steps for every coaching session and track your improvement in your results:

1. Preparation: Set an objective

2. Open: Build rapport and state the purpose of meeting

3. Perceptions/Needs: Let the employee talk first and only then give perceptions

4. Identify and Remove Obstacles: This is where you get into mutual problem solving

5. Close/Acton Step: Agree to next steps and be sure to cheerlead!

6. Follow Up: Set a follow up date

Following these steps will add structure and consistency in your coaching sessions. And that, as Martha Stewart would say, “Is a Good Thing…”!

Leverage Technology for Learning

The days of doing all training in traditional classroom settings is past. Fulfilling your company's educational requirements by leveraging the multitude of tech solutions is not the future, it is now!

One of my favorite pieces of training software is Adobe Captivate.  The company has steadily improved their technology, and the latest version is truly state-of-the-art.

 

The Captivate software enables anyone to rapidly create powerful and engaging simulations, scenario-based training, and robust quizzes without programming knowledge.  With the most recent edition, you can also publish on all sorts of mobile devices.

As their website says, with the latest Captivate 5.5, "you can easily convert Adobe Captivate generated SWF to HTML5 and repurpose your countless hours of interactive trainings for your mobile devices that do not support Flash content."

It's true! With some experimentation and a little practice, you can create learning modules that can replace expensive, instructor-led training initiatives.

Leverage Technology; It is the Wave of the Present.

Teacher Tube!

Another great technology resource to integrate into your company's educational efforts (and is Free!) is TeacherTube:

TeacherTube is an online community for sharing instructional videos. It is a site where teachers can post videos designed for students to view in order to learn a concept or skill.

Among other things, with TeacherTube, community members can:

1. Upload, tag and share videos worldwide.
2. Browse hundreds of videos uploaded by community members.
3. Integrate TeacherTube videos on websites using video embeds or APIs.
4. Make videos public or private - users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly or share them privately with those they invite.

TeacherTube - Try it out! http://www.teachertube.com/index.php

The Problem May be Your System

The father of quality management, W. Edwards Deming, believed in the Use of Statistics in the management of quality control in the corporate world. The need for a working understanding of basic statistical principles is at the heart of Deming's teaching. "Statistical theory has changed practice in almost everything [in business].”

Composing music was one of his many talents, and when thinking of the difficult-to-sing national anthem, he created a clever Metaphor for the work process:

• Don’t blame the singers (workers) for not hitting the notes
• The song (system) is the problem
• Instead, rewrite the song (fix the system)

If you are having trouble meeting your company goals, don’t necessarily point a finger at the workers; the problem may well be your system.

ASQ: American Society for Quality
http://www.asq.org/about-asq/who-we-are/bio_deming.html

The Six Sigma Strategy

As we have discussed before, Six Sigma is a powerful business strategy that utilizes data and facts, rather than intuition for making sound corporate decisions. The key methodology of Six Sigma is DMAIC:

• Define process improvement goals that are consistent with customer demands and corporate goals
• Measure key aspects of the current process and collect data
• Analyze the data to verify cause-and-effect relationships
• Improve the process based upon data analysis
• Control to ensure that any deviations from target are corrected before they result in defects

Even if your organization does not wholeheartedly adopt Six Sigma, it can still benefit from many of its precepts.

Kirkpatrick's Model for Measuring Learning

It can be argued that it is pointless to provide instruction to people if you have no idea whether they are learning anything.

Donald Kirkpatrick first published his widely recognized four levels of learning model in 1959:

1. Reaction of student - what they thought about the training and the instructor
2. Learning - the resulting increase in knowledge or capability (can be measured with a pretest and posttest)
3. Behavior - extent of behavior and capability improvement and application to their job
4. Results - the effects on the business or environment resulting from the students' performance (often quantified in ROI)

If you do not know what your learners are gaining from your instruction, you cannot know if you are succeeding in your educational efforts.

Fink's Five Principles of Good Course Design

Whether teaching young people or adult learners, most course design criteria are the same. This applies to the corporate world, as well as academia.

A "Good Course" is one which meets the following five standards:

1. Challenges students to higher level learning
2. Uses active forms of learning
3. Gives frequent and immediate feedback to students on the quality of their learning
4. Uses a structured sequence of different learning activities
5. Has a fair system for assessing and grading students

L. Dee Fink, University of Oklahoma Instructional Development Program, July 19, 1999.
http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/finks5.htm

Benchmarking

Why is Benchmarking important? Simply put, “If you do not know where you have been, how will you know how far you have come”? Another way to think about it is to ask yourself, “Well, I think we are doing well, but how do I really know”?

There are four basic ways of benchmarking. Think about which one may apply to you, your department, and/or your company:

1. Internal Benchmarking
   Compares one department’s procedures to another
2. Competitive BenchmarkingCompares organization’s procedures to those of a direct competitor
3. Functional BenchmarkingCompares how dissimilar businesses perform similar functions
4. Generic BenchmarkingSearches for the “Best of the Best”

Benchmarking will help you know how far you have come, and how you stack up against the competition.  And that, as Martha Stewart would say, "is a good thing"...

Crosby's Four Absolutes of Quality

Phillip Crosby, PhD, former president of the American Society for Quality, established Four Absolutes for Quality Performance. These "Absolutes" are just as applicable to service industries as they are to manufacturing:

1. Definition of quality is conformance to requirements, not goodness
2. System for causing quality is prevention, not appraisal
3. Performance standard is zero defects, not “that’s close enough”
4. Measurement of quality is the cost of nonconformance, not indexes

Although "Zero Defects" may be an impractical goal for most businesses, it nonetheless is an interesting a worthy ideal parameter. The broader point is, of course, to know what you are measuring and what the proper standard of measurement should be.

Welcome to BEN!

Welcome to the Debut of Business Education Network (BEN)!

This site is dedicated to professionals who wish to share their experience and expertise in the realm of business education. The site will regularly address areas such as:

1. Six Sigma
2. Time Management
3. Effective Coaching
4. Continuing Education
5. Much more!

I do hope you occassionally stop by to see what's happening!

All the best,

Bob