Insights Thought Leadership and Public Events
Chain of Evidence: Proving that your learning solutions contribute to business results.
Chain of Evidence: Prove that your learning solutions contribute to business results. This article originally appeared in the September 2016 issue of CTDO magazine.
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Strategic Partnering: Business Requirement for Instructional Designers
Last week Handshaw sponsored a forum with the Instructional Systems Technology (IST) master’s program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte for HR and learning leaders in the local business community.
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Developing the Client-Trusted Advisor Relationship
by Peter Engels
Strong professional relationships of any kind – internal, external, sales-based, or consultative – all have one important trait in common: shared trust. Trust allows us to more effectively exchange information, identify and work through barriers to partnership, and collaboratively seek solutions to larger and more complex problems. Sometimes, you are lucky enough for this professional trust to happen organically and the status of a "trusted partner" comes easily. Many times, though, this is not the case.
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Developing Consulting Skills Virtually – Is It Possible?
“We want to develop the performance consulting skills of our learning consultants. We have no travel budget for this year. How can you help us?”
That is the situation my partner, Dick Handshaw, and I encountered about six months ago. Over the past 3 decades I have developed consulting skills in thousands of people…always in an on-site, face to face manner. With this client we would be working with approximately 20 people, in as many locations, throughout the US. The technology platform supported by the client organization would provide screen access and audio; we would not, however, be able to view each other.
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How Are Your Reframing Skills?
How many times do you receive a request from a manager similar to the following: "We are experiencing an increase in preventable accidents and incidents. Safety is a primary goal for our manufacturing facilities. What kind of safety training can we offer operators and supervisors?" Or maybe, "I have two teams who are in continual conflict. I would like some type of team building experience for them. What do you suggest?"
It is possible that the already-determined solution will be insufficient to achieve results – and may even be unnecessary. The goal in these scenarios is to engage the client in a reframing discussion.
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Back to My Future...and Loving It!
For many of you, you may likely know that for almost 30 years my husband, Jim Robinson, and I owned and managed the consulting firm Partners in Change based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Our focus was to enhance capabilities of talent professionals in the areas of performance consulting and strategic partnering. In 2011 we closed our firm and moved to what we envisioned as our next phase in life. Then, Jack and Patti Phillips, together with Dick Handshaw, suggested that we collaborate on a third edition of Performance Consulting.
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Conducting a Task Analysis without SMEs
by Beth Hughes
Task analysis is a critical component to a successful instructional design process. The data for a task analysis generally comes from or is approved by a subject matter expert (SME). In the perfect world, you'd have a fully-committed SME for every project. Beth Hughes provides some tips in this video on how to build a successful task analysis without this key resource.
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Why Do I Call It "Stealth Consulting?"
I first heard the term "Performance Consulting" in the mid-1990s. I am not sure who first created the term but Dana and Jim Robinson certainly contributed greatly to its proliferation. It is descriptive terminology to be sure, but I have discovered that you have to be careful how you use it.
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To Include or Not to Include?
by Beth Hughes
On the sliding scale of too much versus not enough content, many training developers and subject matter experts err on the side of too much. Omitting unnecessary training objectives benefits our clients and their learners: our clients do not have to pay for extraneous training to be developed and save lost productivity costs for the extra time their employees spend in training. So how do you know what to include and what to leave out?
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