Learning Moments

Today, there is a cacophony of opinions, propositions in the area of e-learning, m-learning, blended-learning, knowledge management (KS), performance support (PS) etc.

One of the pioneer thinkers in this area has been Seymour Papert - an MIT mathematician, computer scientist and educator. He is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, as well as an inventor of the Logo programming language. He has worked on learning theories, and is known for focusing on the impact of new technologies on learning in general and in schools as learning organizations in particular.                                                                                                                            Source: Wikipedia

He once famously said: "You can't teach people everything they need to know. The best you can do is position them where they can find what they need to know when they need to know it."

I was invited to a soft-launch of a new mobile (iOS/Android) technology-based PS system just last week. This mobile learning startup won the Most Innovative Startup Award at Ideas.Inc. 2013. Hearing the very young (fresh out of grad school) Founder and CEO speak, in his jeans, jacket over t-shirt, was reminiscent of hearing a certain Zuckerberg, less than a decade ago.

The “app” probably finds itself in the sweet spot of performance support (PS) in the 3^rd & 5^th “moments of need”. The "Five Moments of Need" model (Mosher & Gottfredson, 2011) is a  model that captures both formal and informal learning tracks and needs. Bob Mosher & Conrad Gottfredson have also made significant contributions to the thinking on workplace learning.

The Five Moments are:-

# 1.  Learning for the first time (New)
# 2.  Workplace Learning (More)
# 3.  Applying what you've learned (Apply)
# 4.  When things go wrong (Solve)
# 5.  When things change (Change)

In Jane Harts 2012 Social Learning Continuum (this will be the subject of another post), the first 2 needs are best categorised as Formal and the other 3, Informal. And with an expected 2 billion smart handheld devices by 2030, the stage is ripe for an explosion of informal learning via assisted mobile technologies.

 

Are you ready for the future of learning?

Happy Year of the Horse!

吉中精神气势显，马不停蹄喜迎春

Best Wishes for a Healthy & Prosperous New Year!

 

 

Strengths-based

I am facilitating a 2-day workplan workshop this week for a corporate group when the matter of Strengths-based practice came up for discussion.

In 1998, Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D. (1924-2003) the Father of Strengths Psychology, along with Tom Rath and a team from Gallup, created the StrengthsFinder assessment. Gallup later introduced the first version of it's online version StrengthsFinder, in their 2001 management book Now, Discover Your Strengths. The book spent more than five years on the bestseller lists that started a discussion globally and challenged many to uncover and discover their top five talents.

In 2004, the assessment was renamed "Clifton StrengthsFinder" to honor its chief designer.

StrengthsFinder knows all too well that many of our our natural talents go untapped. And many hours, personal and organisation, much resources have been devoted to trying to fix our shortcomings than to developing our strengths.

More than a decade on, many organisations are still on the shoring up weaknesses approach, much to the detriment of organisational time, resources and energy. Worse, it does not add value to employee engagement, performance nor retention.

Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day? Can your organisation become Strengths-based?

 

Merry Christmas & Hellooooo 2014!

 

Wishing One & All

A Blessed Christmas & A Happy 2014 ahead!



 

会认人, 会用人, 会做人 Talent Management Simply Put

He is known for his uncompromising attention to quality and service. He has a sharp intellect, notoriously well-read and has no patience for idle chatter.  He constantly refers to key management books like Good to Great, The Toyota Way (which is mandatory reading for all new hires within 6 months of joining his organisation), to illustrate how his organisation continues to top MOH’s customer service satisfaction surveys year after year.

He made sure I attended his organisations 2-day induction program for new employees before I conducted classes in performance management for his management staff so that I was familiar with the organisational culture and ethos. Such is his attention to detail. 

A pharmacist by training, Liak Teng Lit is Group CEO of Alexandra Health (formerly CEO of Alexandra Hospital), one of the 6 health clusters in Singapore. It is anchored by the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital and tasked to look after the health of more than 700,000 residents in the North of Singapore.

He was speaking at a HR conference this week, where the majority of the audience were SME bosses, and he shared a talent management snippet from a person he said he admired greatly – billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist Li Ka-Shing.

In Mandarin, it simply says        会认人, 会用人, 会做人

会认人 – means being able to identify talent (and attract them to your organisation)
会用人 – means being to leverage and deploy that talent (to your organisation’s advantage)
会做人 – means to know how to treat people well & fairly (which will engage and retain talent)

This resonated well and deeply with many within the audience and his sharing that day was rated the best amongst all the assembled speakers.

For all the many management philosophies, principles, theories and even fads from the more well-documented and vocal West, the simplicity and elegance of these words, is just inspiring.

What are you doing today to Retain, Identify, Deploy and Engage your talent?
 

Model Class 2013

   Yesterday, I rushed off to attend my daughter's graduation after finishing a 3-day corporate training in Performance Management (PM) for Singapore's leading early childhood education and services provider.

   For my daughter, it has been a long and tiring school year, but she capped it off with very good results, distinction award in her CCA and a credible silver in NAPFA.

   More importantly, her graduating cohort of students and teachers, nominated her class "Model Class for 2013" - high honour considering it is an award garnered from both peer and teacher votes across the whole standard.

   Today in PM, many organisations are moving away from the traditional (supervisor only) review to a more balanced, unbiased and fair performance review by seeking inputs from other segments of the department and/or organisation.

   These peers (department colleagues or project team members), subordinates, other department managers, even partners - whom the staff being reviewed would have interactions with the past year, can also provide more insights into his/her performance, but more importantly, it can highlight other critical areas especially in key organisational values like integrity, teamwork, collaboration and innovation.

   These sorts of peer review, when done correctly, can enhance the performance review experience to ensure greater accuracy and fairness and in so doing, lead to better engaged and satisfied staff, who then have a greater chance of staying longer and performing for the organisation. In today's talent crunch, this makes good business sense.

   Is your organisation still in "traditional" mode? 

   Perhaps it's time to look at improving and enhancing your performance management system for better staff performance outcomes and also business results.

 

Shared Values (define a team)

Last month, I just finished one phase of a HR-consulting project with a client managing a growing beauty and F&B empire - in the last year alone, Singapore headcount increased by at least 30% and they are still recruiting and expanding.

It was no wonder then that the MD wanted to re-visit their company vision, mission, values - to ensure that they are clear(er) and perhaps more importantly, properly cascaded down through the entire organisation to each and every employee, not just the management ranks.
 
This reminds me of #13 of John C Maxwell's "The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork", published back in 2001, following his highly successful "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership".

John is known as America's expert on leadership and he wrote this follow-up in the hope of making teambuilding "simple to grasp, retain and (be) put into practice."

In it he writes about how "values can help a team to become more connected and more effective" and that "shared values are like" glue to hold people together so they can reach their fullest potential as a team, a foundation for teams to make (special) things happen, a ruler to help set the standard for team performance, a (moral) compass to help teams make (right) decisions, a magnet to attract like-minded people to the team and finally to allow the team to form a unique identity of their very own.

Are you ready to empower your team to business success?!