A Glance Into The Future Of Learning: An Interview With Ben Gianacakos

Welcome. readers, to my new series of entries on interviews with people in the L&D field. I hope to provide a voice for a wide range of viewpoints in the field, and perhaps provide some background to my visitors who don't have experience in the L&D space, or are looking to get some more!

For the few interviews I've done, I have to say that this is among the most interesting. Ben has some very innovative takes on L&D from the perspective of someone who has moved through the L&D hierarchy and gained non-subject experience to complement it. Some great ideas below!

Ben Gianacakos is an experienced professional in the field of learning and development, and a proponent of the idea of lifelong learning. Currently, he’s a Learning Manager with Amazon, developing learning strategies for the Global Human Resources Department. Originally in a facilitation and training role within the United States Navy, Ben honed his skills with a formal degree in the subject, and has since completed an MBA as well.

What got you into training/learning development in the first place?

A desire to help others reach efficient behaviours, based on my early experiences in training: Often, training devolves into simply reinforcing processes. Strong learning should focus on modifying learning for the individual.

I’ve also noticed gaps in business ability in the emerging field of learning: Learning professionals fall back to basic ideas like not being able to apply ROI to learning, or bridging the gap between senior management and the learning department, and this needs to change – Learning and Development needs a seat at the C-Level table to create a better understanding of what we can offer. 

Of the current or emerging technologies in training, what grabs your attention?

Right now, I’m excited about microlearning on mobile platforms. Mobile is an underdeveloped space: Everyone uses it, there are many possibilities, but there hasn’t been much capture there. The challenge in successfully using mobile learning is that the space requires marketing and metrics tracking designed for that particular format. Because mobile learning can occur on or off the job, there hasn’t yet been accurate risk assessment in deploying mobile microlearning to hourly staff.

What aspect of learning and training is most often misunderstood in organizations?

I think that some of the greatest pitfalls in learning are the fear of failure, and a desire to placate business leaders.

As I mentioned, Learning and Development doesn’t have visibility in C-Level discussions. There are no Chief Learning Officers, and very rarely VPs or Chief HR officers. Learning doesn’t have as much value as it could because from a top-down viewpoint, learning is seen as a cost centre – It’s something that needs to be done, a function of the business. As a result, the classic approach is to minimize the cost and streamline the function. If we can change the viewpoint to show that learning is a driver for performance and is actually a profit centre, then learning will occupy a more prominent seat at the table.

On another level, it’s hard to develop and reinforce a learning strategy at a macro level. Alongside that, it’s hard to prove in financial terms the direct correlation between learning and efficiencies in the workplace, increase in employee engagement, and the retention and progression of employees within an organization.

Is there a particular skill or experience that has helped you the most in your current position?

My experience in facilitation has given me that mindset when working with a wide variety of clients – Facilitation involves planning out what are essentially extended meetings, considering the information and how it is delivered as well as what questions will be asked. This process is really helpful in consulting with stakeholders across the organization whether in individual or group consultations. Also, my engineering background lends itself to data analytics and modeling from engineering background.  Learning right now is moving towards the “Track it, log It, model it” idea, and having a background in engineering helps to determine and track metrics.  

What do you find to be the most in-demand skills for personnel in training/learning development?

Graphic design

Curriculum Design – Building good learning.

E-Learning Authoring Tools (Storyline/Captivate)

Javascript

Data analytics from metrics provided by the LMS

How to Build Better Learning

Building learning isn’t easy. It’s a painful process to define expectations, settle the scope, and assemble content, any one of which can be a major stumbling block for stakeholders. With that much involved, companies want to build learning that can be quickly executed, revised, and evaluated. Building good learning that is targeted to an audience and provides information they can immediately use, can often be at odds with one or all of those three targets. 

The compromise is to put learners into classrooms, and deliver all the information, foie gras style, stuffing the information into the learners in the name of efficiency: This is the chalk-and-talk - Put some points onto a whiteboard, and talk about them at great length. 

Ever read Harry Potter? Look up Professor Binns’ Magical History. Probably the most genius metaphor for bad learning that I’ve encountered. 

So, how can we make it better?

Today, let’s talk a little about a concept you may not be aware of called Affective Shielding. This is a bedrock concept in the field of educational psychology, and it’s quite simple: Under stress, you can’t learn. 

I tutor students on an occasional basis. Math (though not my specialty), and English. What I notice regularly is that if learners don’t understand a particular step in the process, the rest of it is noise. In one case, I was working with a student to solve word problems in mathematics, a sore point for many learners. 

The stumbling block was how to extract information from the word puzzle: The learner knew the process to solve the mathematical problem, but pulling the data was the problem. In being constantly unable to solve the problem without outside guidance, my learner became increasingly frustrated, and with the frustration came cognitive overload, and a corresponding inability to get any new information in.

How can this be prevented in your learning initiatives?

The answer is to break down your content. That doesn’t mean creating acronyms and job aids for everything and anything, rather following these three pieces:

1) Simplify: Clarify your wording, and avoid excessive detail - Figure out what’s nice to have, and remove or simplify it so that it doesn’t distract learners. Avoid formal language where you can, because you want your learners’ brainpower to be dedicated to figuring out the process, not untangling the words. Instead of looking at the whole word problem, scan sentence-by-sentence for any numbers. Filter anything that’s not important. Write down what is, and why.  

2) Model the Process: Role-Playing. Scenarios. Group discussion and charting. Modelling the process from start to finish, no matter how you do it, is incredibly important. To make it easier, follow the Golden Path: In your process, choose a scenario where everything happens according to plan, and show your learners. But what about when things go wrong? That can come later - Right now, you just want them to know how things work. In an ideal process, create a simple word problem that has all the numbers clearly listed. Walk through how you find them with the learner, and explain the steps. 

3) Immediacy: Learning is useless if it’s forgotten. Break down the learning, show how it works, and allow learners to exercise the process immediately (And make sure to remind them of the process occasionally via e-mails or postings), and you will have learning that sticks!

Until next time, feel free to find me on LinkedIn (https://ca.linkedin.com/in/thelearningguru) or on Twitter @LnDGuru and let’s talk about what I can do for your organization’s learning needs!

Embracing Broadsiding

Today’s installment is about thinking sideways! We’re going to talk a little more about how to increase your networking worth on LinkedIn through Broadsiding

I was looking for information on health services in Ontario. Rather than go through the impenetrable maze that is the government, I looked up individuals on LinkedIn who might know more, explained my situation, and sent off a few requests. While I didn’t get what I was looking for, I  changed the conversation towards learning and development with a few contacts, to see what might come of it. The end of the process netted me a few contact points that I hope to explore further.

Broadsiding is known by many other names or concepts. The idea is to approach a contact not from its most immediate point, but perhaps through other avenues. Doing some research, do you find people in an organization who share an interest, or a point of confluence?

Join LinkedIn groups (This should be a no-brainer!) and contribute, contribute, contribute. Even if it’s just a post every so often, or your own blog post, throw them out there and see what you can do! Networking may not be about approaching a problem directly, but finding the six degrees of separation between the people who can help you the most, and the people who help them!

The Three Things You Can Do Better on LinkedIn

Networking on LinkedIn is a little old-hat, isn’t it? Receive a contact request, accept it, and the person is instantly shuffled off into the ether of your digital rolodex, never to be seen again. Send a contact request, and face the same thing from the other side. It’s a sort of choice paradox redux, wherein the sheer number of your contacts decreases the value of each of them.

What’s in it for you? How can you make your social networking experience on LinkedIn easier, from start to finish? How can you make yourself more visible to your contacts? Let’s walk through three things you can consider before you click “Connect”.

Keep Things Simple

Brevity is a tricky thing - As you might see from my blogs, it’s a difficult thing for me to work on, as well. The idea of brevity in this case is a little more complex than it sounds. Let's take a look at some things you can do to keep things simple:

Do Your Research

When you want to connect with someone, or someone wants to connect with you, take the time to look up their LinkedIn page. it’s a small step that can get lost in the noise, but looking through their LinkedIn page gives you a good idea of whether or not their addition to your contact list will help you.

When sending a contact request, target it as much as possible. If you’re looking to expand into a certain field, look up companies with positive reviews on Glassdoor for a particular position. Send targeted contact requests to people within those departments or in human resources for the organization (Hiring managers or related personnel).

Research the company, even if it’s as superficial as going to their webpage, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter accounts. Is there anything new or interesting happening that you can use as a lever to open a discussion?

When you get the inevitable follow-up, be prepared with questions to ask, whether they’re general to the position and challenges, or specific to the organization’s processes: Don’t. Waste. Their. Time.

The more targeted and specific your contact request, the less likely it is to be turned down.

Use The Message Box

When receiving a contact request, nothing turns me off more than a blank message. Who are you? How did you find me? What do you want? I feel like Liam Neeson in Taken.

If I don’t know anything about you, and you’re not willing to volunteer, why are you sending me a contact request?

All this to state a very basic principle:

Use. The. Message. Box.

You’ve got 160 characters to explain who you are, what you want, and why. Start with their name. Don’t worry about yours, they already know it. What do you do? What do you want to do? What do you need from them - Contacts, an informational interview, job opportunities? Ask and ye shall receive, but don’t leave the message box blank.

All the research you’ve done should be boiled down into that little white box. If you can’t boil it down, either the request is not worth your time, or you won’t get accepted.

Embrace the box. Use the box. Be the box.



Next time, we’ll talk about my other two points in this series, Embracing Broadsides and Providing Bite.

What are some strategies that have worked for you? What are your biggest gripes and pleasures about networking through LinkedIn?







As always, I’m happy to hear comments and start a discussion on LinkedIn or through Twitter.  @LnDGuru.

Have a great day!

The Zen of The Single Task: Strategies For Single Tasking

In my last blog post, we explored the importance of single-tasking: The idea that you should spend time on individual tasks instead of having multiple tasks running in your head at the same time.

While it’s great to suggest this gently to everyone online, I’d like in today’s blog post to explore some ways you can refocus on individual priorities when your workday is spinning out into multiple tasks, competing priorities, and general stress.

Let’s go with the Three R’s of single-tasking:

Recognize

The only way you can deal with stress is to recognize it.

The only way you can deal with stress is to recognize it.

The only way you can deal with stress is to recognize it.
Am I getting through yet? Our day is composed of many small, varied stresses. Dealing with multiple e-mails, having ten browser tabs open, answering phone calls while checking e-mails, eating lunch at your desk, responding to e-mails while in meetings…

Good God, sometimes you must wonder how you can cope.

Coping isn’t the hardest part of stress. The hardest part of stress is recognizing it. In the last blog post, I recommended keeping track of your stress on a day-by-day basis, hour by hour as necessary. Find your symptoms - Do you find yourself going to the office coffee machine often? Do you distract yourself and take microbreaks? Do you get a lot of chatter in, and distract other people to make things easier?

Once you’ve recognized your symptoms, it’s time to…


Respond

Simple. Effective. Repeated. These are what your stress responses should look like. I’m going to go through three self-responses to stress. Chances are, you find yourself doing these already, but my guess is that you don’t use them regularly enough. Use them multiple times a day, and you will find yourself remarkably less stressed!

1) Belly breathing.

We’ve all heard the advice “Breathe in, breathe out”, but I’m going to ask you a basic question: Are you doing it right?

Belly breathing, or the practice of breathing from your diaphragm up, is much more effective at calming a stressful time. Train yourself to do it - When you find yourself clenching your teeth, speaking in rapid-fire sentences, feeling a flutter in your stomach, or getting fidgety, put one hand on your chest, and one hand on your belly. The hand on your belly should move, the hand on your chest shouldn’t.

Good. Now, count to five on the inhale, count to five, then count to five on the exhale.

This takes time. Time you could be using to do other things. But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? You can use those three to five minutes to make a small dent in your work, or you can take those three to five minutes to focus on your breathing, lower your blood pressure, and give your brain a moment to do what it does best.

2) Clenching

Stress can be a physical response. You feel it in your neck, your jaw, your arms, your back. Anywhere and everywhere.

So, let’s get rid of it by getting rid of the buildup. Clenches are incredibly simple.

Starting from your toes, clench every muscle group as hard as you can for the count of ten. Toes, calves, thighs, butt, abs, back, shoulders, arms, hands, neck, jaw, eyes. Everything you can think of. Clench them hard, breathe through your belly, and count to ten. It’s especially effective if you can lie down while doing it.

3) Self-Talk

Whether or not you can believe it, the thoughts running around in your head contribute in a significant way to the stress you experience. 

Programmers call it rubber-duck debugging, the process of going through their code and explaining the logic and process to a rubber duck, like you’d find in a bathtub. Saying it out loud means that they can hear and correct their thought process

When you experience the stress and anxiety of your workday, I need you to step back from your desk. Whether that means standing up and turning away from your monitor, finding an empty meeting room, or just going for a walk around the office, get away, and ask yourself a few questions:

- What am I stressed about?

- Why is it stressful?

- Am I helping? - Are you responding the way you need to, or is your response making it harder for you to get things done?

- What are some things you can do right now to help yourself?

Beyond the admittedly abstract practice, self-talk allows you to self-debug. Going through your thought processes to determine what you’re stressed about, whether your stress level is appropriate, and what you can do to fix it, will dramatically lessen the stress you feel throughout the day.

Refocus

Done de-stressing? Great!

Now your job is to figure out “what next?” Prioritize, and either tell yourself verbally or mentally what to do next, or write out a to-do list with as few items as possible - You don’t want to reload on your stress by seeing a vast list of things undone.

Take a minute and do these things throughout your day, and you will find a calm order to your life that may have been missing before!

The Zen of The Single Task

Spend ten thousand hours on one task; observe a task completed by mind and hands.

Spend one hour on ten thousand tasks; mourn work never finished 

Mindfulness meditation is the practice of regular silent contemplation on a singular topic. More challenging than it appears, it requires a gentle but constant discipline to remain focused on a single thought. 

Organizations from the Mayo Clinic to Harvard to the American Psychological Association have trumpeted the benefits of this singular practice. But for many, the hurdle of spending 15 minutes alone to contemplate is a frightening prospect - With so much to do in life, would you spend time sitting without doing anything else, on purpose?

Like every professional in learning and development, you need creativity and the ability to multitask. In the morning you'll work on one task, in the afternoon another, assuming you have no interruptions.

Does this work? In the midst of e-mails phone calls, scheduled meetings and reminders, do you have the time to produce work that matters to you? If your answer is what I think it would be, the solution is simple:

Focus on one thing at a time. 

In interviews for learning and development jobs, I like to make it clear that my work pattern is weird. That I bring weird to the job. I like walking around and thinking out loud. I like a softly-lit room with a whiteboard and a marker. I don't like sitting at a desk and expecting ideas to hit.

In other words, I create by focusing on a single task, at once. Do the same for yourself, whether that means taking a five-minute walk away from your computer, or turning off e-mail notifications and putting your desk phone on silent. Mindfully focusing on one task means you'll create better, more creative results. 

How? In one or two workdays, keep a notepad with you. Hour by hour, rank your productivity. Do you feel you're accomplishing things, on a scale of 1-10?

After three days, you'll notice patterns. Maybe your time from 11-12 is least productive. Maybe you're more productive in the afternoons; find out why. What is it about those periods, either their interruptions or motivations, that makes you work better or worse? Find your triggers, and you will find what makes you better at what you do. 

Mindfulness, simply put, is recognizing things one at a time, and acting on them. Be they weaknesses or strengths, getting perspective on life and work one thing at a time means that you will still do the same amount of work, you'll just know how to do it better.

As always, I love hearing questions and comments in the comments below, or on Twitter, @LnDGuru

Avoiding Revision Hell: Mo' Versions Mo' Problems

Thank you for allowing me a modified Notorious B.I.G. quote. I've been wanting to do that for quite some time. Also, today's the first day of a new font! Let's hope it makes my blog a little less stodgy, and a little more readable!

Let's talk about changes in documentation. The process of handling change documentation is a pretty wide and multi-headed beast. And with these kinds of hydras, it's really best to tackle one head at a time. I'll address some basics today, in the hope that it will spur inspiration on how to handle change for your own organization!

Version Control

I worked with a small e-learning shop that liked to store all the resources for all its projects in one place. Subdivided by client and project directories, it was a great way to organize. I was tasked with an update to an existing e-learning solution, changing some content to reflect changes in goverment regulations. I pulled the resources, sat down with a developer and made the changes. Go-live went smoothly and without issue.

The client called, six hours later, utterly mystified. The module didn't look the same, feel the same, have the same branding or language. How did small changes make such a difference?

After some investigation, the question was refined to: "Karim, how did you make changes to a six-year-old version of the module that no longer exists?!"

The short answer: Version Control

In its most basic form, version control is simply a way to identify changes to a project-critical document, track them, and stay updated. Think of a grocery list stuck on your fridge. Always updated, you know where it is, and it's easy reference for anyone who is taking on the task. 

If you're going to use version controls on your documents, here are some things you should know:

Use the Track Changes Function

If you haven’t already used it, the Track Changes function in Microsoft Word, as well as the Comments function, is a great way to see changes made in a document by different people, as well as insert comments for what needs to be done. Turn this on before every document you send to a client so you can more easily understand what changes have been made, and use comments to ask for clarification in areas. This will also allow you to accept/remove old changes from a document, and keep a loose track of when changes were made

 

 Keep a Change Log

Avoiding Revision Hell is all about keeping organized and staying that way. Using an Excel spreadsheet for every document, list substantive changes you’ve made (i.e. changes in branding, images, and content). This will help you see at-a-glance any issues as they arise, and will allow you to proactively address projects that may be slipping into excessive revisions before you have to play catch up! 

 

Version Naming

Changes should always be reflected in the document naming convention. If you've made global changes (Anything that affects page numbering scheme of the document, document style templates, images, or branding), you should create a new version. Old versions should be stored, and entries in the change log should have a distinct reference to the version number.

How you name your files is up to you, but you can't go wrong with a classic:

Descriptive Name - Date revised + Initials of last revisor  - Version Number.


I hope I have helped at least some of you to implement some changes to your practice that will save you a lot of time and aggravation in the future!

Has this raised any questions for you? Are there any tips or experience you'd like to share in avoiding endless revisions?  

As always, feedback and comments are welcome, and you can find me on twitter @LnDGuru. Let's start a conversation!