Recent Reflection #3 - A Challenge

What did I do?

A week ago today (Tuesday 18th June) I took part in a session at the Learning and Skills Group Summer Conference at Olympia in London. The idea was that three L&D professionals 'compete' in public to showcase our proposed learning design solution for a piece of compliance training on Data Protection. The session was coordinated by Julie Wedgwood and Chaired by Alan Bellinger.  The contenders were myself, Matt Brewer and Craig Taylor - stiff competition!  We had 10 minutes to present our idea and 5 minutes to be grilled by the audience.

Straws were drawn, Craig went first, me second and Matt third.  Alan was a firm timekeeper and it all ran to time.  The audience voted and the results were declared - and I got first mention! 'Cos I came third. Craig took second place and Matt was the well-deserved winner. By all accounts, the session was a great success, by putting up three real-world practitioners - not theoreticians or experts - to share our thinking and the realities of developing compliance training within the context of our own organisations and experience.

What did I learn?

I learned loads!

1. Beware Don Taylor inviting you onto a 'panel discussion' - it might not be quite what you thought it was going to be!
   
2. Competition - albeit friendly - and tight timelines don't half focus the mind, the attention and the effort, both in the preparation of and during sessions.
   
3. Bravery will get rewarded.  Matt had timed his presentation to the second and had his slides on auto-advance, leaving himself no room for waffle.
   
4. There (is/are?) more than one (way/ways?) to skin a cat (my wife and kids will hate that analogy).
   
5. Make it Visual.  Both Craig and Matt had some great ideas and tools for using and enhancing graphics as part of the learning offering - either online or for printed/presented materials.  I really liked the cartooning tools and the use of Infographics as a communication medium.
   
6. Keep it Real.  All three of us contextualised our learning propositions based on our organisations and our knowledge of our own audience, their tolerance for innovation and the technologies available to us.  Hence, whilst we all came up with different solutions, we also overlapped on several key concepts and ideas - Campaigns, Branding, Engaging, Visual and Sticky.

What am I going to do with this Learning?

I'm going to walk the talk. I had deliberately not shared my proposal with anyone at work, because I wanted to treat the challenge almost as a 'thought experiment', to try out some ideas that we haven't used before.  We are already running Data Protection training at my company, and I built my challenge proposition based on the work we have already done and what we still have to do. But now that it's been aired in public, I'm going to throw myself under the scrutiny of my stakeholders - the Data Protection Sponsor, Legal Expert, DP Subject Matter Expert and my own team of trainers, to see if they think it has legs.

It needs some work and the application of some of the ideas and inspiration I got from Craig and Matt, and the review and input from all of the above.  It may well not end up as I presented it at conference last Tuesday.  And that's a good thing.

And that's why I'm glad I took part.

Recent Reflection #2 - A Responsibility

What did I do?

We have just held our internal 2013 HR Conference.  Back in January, I volunteered to help with organising this event.  My boss immediately put me in charge (that'll teach me!) and suggested I assemble a planning and co-ordinating team of HR Business Partners from across our various companies.  Four of our HR Directors nominated one of their HRBS each.  In the early days of planning, I held virtual meetings via Webex and Conference Calls with the team, as we put together the basic requirements - dates, times, location, venue, content - and allocated tasks accordingly.

As we got nearer to the dates, we were struggling to find a suitable venue in the Manchester area and, despite the efforts of individuals in the team to investigate suitable sites, we were in danger of not being able to hit the dates already selected and pre-publicised with the HR Leadership team across the business.  Eventually, I called our hotel and conference booking service and passed the task to them.  Within 24 hours, they came back with a proposal which fitted all our requirements and I made the booking.

We were then able to concentrate on the programme and on a couple of visits to Manchester, we firmed up our proposed agenda, which, whilst approved in principle by the senior HR team, was tweaked and changed right up to and including the days of the conference itself.  This led to some frustration on the initially enthusiastic organising team's part, whilst I had to take a more pragmatic view.  I managed to handle a degree of frustration with the team to keep everyone on track to deliver what was required.  Ultimately, the team were great - all admin and preparatory tasks were completed and they ran the check-in and people management tasks faultlessly and with enthusiasm and humour.  I could not have done it without them.

Late in the run-up, I got the full-time assistance of our HR Programme Manager, who quickly pulled the remaining plan together and held us all to account on the tasks required.

As it happened, the arrangements worked and the conference went well. Some 95 HR staff from across the UK, travelled to, stayed at the hotel and attended our 2013 HR Conference in mid-June.  Speakers spoke, key messages were delivered, presentations were displayed, workshops run, discussions had and feedback captured.  We are now in the process of collating the materials for distribution and compiling the post-conference evaluation questionnaire.

What did I learn?

Sometimes a democratic approach isn't always the most effective - sometimes you have to take control and be very directive.  This may not always suit everyone, but management is not a popularity contest.  By the same token, it's important to acknowledge commitment and effort and to say 'thank you'!

There are more people and resources available to assist within our organisation than were immediately apparent.  Lots of people came up to me during the conference itself to ask why I hadn't asked for their help.  I didn't know that there was experience and resource which I could have called on.  Equally, good people and event management with your chosen venue is essential. The team at our venue were fantastic; they anticipated and reacted to our needs before and during the conference and helped make it the success it was.

Good audio visual support is essential and needs to be slick and unobtrusive.

Flexibility and adaptability before and during an event, thinking on your feet and making snap decisions is part and parcel of this kind of event.  That said, rehearsal of key points and speaker sessions would have prevented some slight hold-ups and resulting impact on timing.

What am I going to do with this learning?

I will organise a 'lessons learned' session with the Programme Manager and Planning Team, to capture their feedback and build into a resource pack/project plan template for anyone running future similar events.  This will also be informed by the feedback we get from the attendees via the online post-conference evaluation survey.

If I am organising any such event again, I will start the planning and get the fundamental arrangements - date, location, venue, speakers - made and booked as early as possible.

Also, now that I know it exists, I will not hesitate to ask for support and resource across the business as early as possible, get it booked and in place at the appropriate time and place.

I will ensure that any and all audio visual provision is of the highest standard and reliability.

Finally, I'm going to be very careful about what I volunteer for in the future!

Recent Reflection #1 - An Opportunity

This is the first of the promised "quick and dirty" blogs arising out of my previous blog Reflection? I don't have time for reflection wherein I undertook to blog more often and more quickly, on three different topics.  This blog captures my quick thoughts on a recent personal management development opportunity at work. 

What did I do?

I recently took over resonsibity for the delivery - and the team leadership - of our Management Development training and, in doing so, amalgamating the MD Training team with my small Learning Technologies team at the same time.

This is as a result of a temporary (18 months) reorganisation of our HR leadership team responsibilities, to enable each of the HR Heads to to focus our efforts on better supporting the organisation's key strategic objectives.

 

What did I Learn?

By meeting with the MD Team Leader regularly and speaking with each of the team members individually, I have learned that there is a wealth of knowledge, talent and enthusiasm in the combined team. Individually and collectively, they have expressed excitement and/or interest in exploring how we can deliver a relevant and effective learning programme in support of the strategic objectives - by working and training smarter - and in further developing their skills to be able to do so. 

 

What am I going to do with this learning?

Both teams bring with them a previously agreed set of objectives and a delivery plan, which has to be honoured while we finess the integration into one cohesive team, the upskilling - where necessary - of the individual team members therein and we identify the 'quick win' opportunities to develop and deliver learning that's relevant and accessible to the business.  I will lead the team quickly through this forming/storming period, ensuring that everyone is engaged and empowered to participate and collaborate.  I will carefully manage my own workload and calendar and ensure that I pay attention to my own health and wellbeing during this period as well as monitoring that of the team. By the end of the calendar year, we will be 'normed' and performing.

P.S: On another 'lesson learned' note, I previously updated my social media feeds about my new responsibility in such a way that it could have been interpreted that I had been promoted at someone else's expense, and this led to some awkwardness for another colleague and some guidance for me from my own line manager.  I am pleased to say we have cleared the air around this and I have clarified the temporary nature of the reorganisation. I learned to be more sensitive to the impacts of discussing internal matters externally where there may be ambiguity, and I will self-check more attentively before posting in the future - this blog being part of that process.

Reflection? I don't have time for reflection!

Or do I?  I've been a bit quiet on the social media and blogging front recently, due mainly to work and other professional activities, some of which mean significant change and others, working out of my comfort zone, but with a high profile.  As a result, I've been pretty much 'full on' and haven't found - or made - the time to sit back and reflect on impacts, lessons learned or, indeed, just to 'be' in a quiet place.

So this blog is my statement of intent to do just that - to make the space to reflect on recent activities and to look for the learning, links and opportunities arising from three separate events. I will write several quick blogs - one on each - using a model I like, and a concluding blog which will pull it all together. This is also an opportunity for me to practice something which I previously identified as an area for development - blogging faster and more often.

For consistency, I'll use the model of:

1. What did I do?

2. What did I learn?

3. What am I going to do with that learning?

So I invite you to challenge me if you do not see some quick and dirty blogs over the next couple of weeks, reflecting on a) a management opportunity at work, b) organising and running our internal HR conference in Manchester and c) speaking in the Design Challenge session at this week's Learning and Skills Group Summer Conference at Olympia in London.

Just the Job!

As my children approach the end of another academic year -Tash, Yr2 at University and Sam starting his A Level exams at 6th Form College - and as Mandy has recently started another new job with a Law Firm in London, I've been reflecting on what getting, having, doing and keeping a job really feels like nowadays.

I've been with my current employer for 7½ years now, was with my previous employer for

8½ years, and the one before that for 2½ years.  Previously, Mandy and I were in business with another couple, running our own moderately successful IT Training company.

But neither of us ever intended to be doing those things.  We met at Christmas 1982, doing panto in Stafford.  We were actors.  That's what we had trained for, had been doing for years (but see below) and intended (hoped) to be doing for the rest of our lives.

If you have read any of my social media bios, you will no doubt have noticed the number of jobs I have had.  This was not from choice, but rather from the choice I made to be an actor.  In a professional career of some 12 years, I probably worked as an actor for about 4.  The rest of the time, I was 'resting', as they say (a crappier euphemism I have yet to see - I wasn't resting, I was bloody surviving!).  These other jobs were fill-in roles, just part of the deal when not acting, to ensure the rent was paid and that I could eat. 

But that's where my previous education, personal & learned capabilities and professional experience paid off.  I could type (SCE 'O' Grade in Audio Typing), so I temped in offices; I could drive (passed my driving test when I was 17), so I drove delivery vans and lorries; I could read and deliver a script, so I did some telesales work (lasted two weeks - hated it!).  Bottom line, I managed to keep the wolf from the door because I had some life skills and had learned some stuff along the way to enable me to develop further.  I took this to be the norm and it was at a time when jobs like that were many and available.

However, when Mandy and I (still actors) became a couple and later married, this situation was no longer tenable.  We both took on more structured, permanent roles, found ourselves working with what we now call 'information and learning technologies', but back then we called 'computers', 'word-processors', 'spreadsheets' and 'computer-based training' - and the rest, as they say, is history...

But the landscape's changed now.  I've been lucky to keep my jobs until I was ready to move on (except being made redundant once, 16 years ago), but  in the last two years Mandy's been made redundant once, had to leave her next position due to a clash of understanding about organisational culture and, most recently, her last contract was unexpectedly terminated early and at very short notice.  This is not a reflection on her skills or abilities, but the knife-edge, short-termist economics stalking the business world today. Many of our friends and colleagues have found themselves in the same situation and not always been lucky enough to find other work!

I'd suggest that NO-ONE can rely on a job for life any more.  It seems to me that no long-term career planning is  possible - that we are ALL actors, moving from one job to another, having to prove ourselves time and again to yet another numpty (I had another word lined up here, but good taste prevailed) and starting afresh with new colleagues, work practices, rules, values etc.  In itself, this is no bad thing - much learning and growing to be had and done - but it's the longueurs in between, often of several months or even years, while the coffers slowly empty and the debts begin to mount that really take their toll.

So, as the children (young adults) start to look at further education and career-wards beyond that, what lessons have we learned from this that we can share with them?  What challenges have they got ahead that are the same as - or are very different from - our challenges? What does the world of work look like for Graduates and young people today?

The UK Guardian newspaper reported only last week that a UN Agency, The International Labour Office International Labour Organisation said that young people across the world continue to be almost three times more likely than adults to be unemployed. There are 979,000 unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK, after a 20,000 rise in the three months to February The Guardian 

How can we help prepare our young people to survive in this environment? 

I'd suggest that there are some essential 'life' skills required nowadays, over and above the academic. When I needed them, I relied on my communication skills, my typing skills and the fact that I could drive to keep me in work. Today, I would add to/change those skills, thus: articulacy and good verbal/conversational skills (a key differentiator in my opinion), good written and digital communication skills, driving, curiosity, flexibility, tenacity - and patience.  All these to underpin any other skills they may have or develop.

I'd love to grow that list to pass it on to our young people, maybe with some resource links to assist them.  What other essential skills would you suggest to enable them to enter the world of work with the best fighting chance?

Weekend Reflections on CIPD HRD13

I had the pleasure of being a Speaker at the CIPD HRD Conference on Wednesday.  I had also been invited to be an official Conference Blogger (two passes!).  Unfortunately, I could only attend on the first day, due to pre-booked work priorities in Southampton.  But no matter, I thought, I'll make it work.

I kinda did.  I  managed to get a blog out soon after I arrived, on a topic which had been bubbling with me for a while and which was empahsised in the twitterstream during my journey up from Brighton that morning - the use of humour in the face-to-face and the online worlds.  I was pleased to meet up with several of my twitter buddies who were also blogging the conference, particularly Mike Morrison (@rapidBI), Doug Shaw (@dougshaw1), Sukhvinder Pabial (@sukhpabial), Martin Couzins (@martincouzins) and Megan Pippin (OD_optimist). The Conference Press Room, hosted very ably by Katy Askew (@katyaskew) and Natalia Thomson (@N_Thomson) was also a great hub and bolt hole - and I knew how to operate the coffee machine!

With a limited amount of time before I had to start preparing for my own session, I had a quick scamper through the show guide and decided to drop by the "Technology for Learning" theatre in the Exhibition Hall to catch Pauline Willis (@paulinewillis) from Lauriate Ltd, speaking on and demonstrating the use of Sociomapping tools as an enabler for working successfully with remote and virtual teams. I greatly enjoyed her session and I tweeted out my key learning points throughout.

 

Then I had to run to the Speakers Lounge to meet my co-speaker, Tom Bryant from Colt Technologies, and our CIPD chair and host, to prepare for our shared session on "Simplifying L&D with Efficient Use of Technology".

It went well (despite being the 'graveyard shift' over and after lunch).  I managed to drag some responses out of the large, yet quiet, crowd and got some great feedback from attendees and fellow bloggers afterwards.  Thanks particularly to Doug and Sukh for very kind reviews.

I had arranged to meet Laura Overton (@lauraoverton) from Towards Maturity, to catch up on where my organisation has got to with following up our recent discoveries and suggested actions from completing their Benchmark Report late last year (answer: not a lot - much still to do!), and again, the Press Room was a gift to get us away from the hubble-bubble and have a good, focussed and enjoyable exchange - even if we were being spied upon by Martin Couzins... Deep In Conversation

I managed to walk the Exhibition Floor for a while before heading off to the Cumberland Arms pub in North End Road for the CIPD Tweetup, hosted again by Martin Couzins (that man gets everywhere!), which was a great, interactive and relaxing way to end what had been a full but inspiring day.

Like I said, I didn't attend Day 2, but I tried to follow the twitter backstream as much as possible within the working day.

So now, it's Friday evening and I've been following the backchannel again today - even tho' the conference finished on Thursday evening.  And that's the thing - the Conference might be over, but the debate, the discussions and the sharing is still going on.  New professional and personal contacts have been made, reflective blogs have been written, shared and commented on and links to supporting materials distributed.  The event lives on, even 'though everyone has gone home or back to work - social media and collaboration tools ensure it.

So what have I taken away from the event, from my participation as a speaker and as a blogger, and from monitoring the backchannel on Thursday and Friday?

1. I wish I had managed to attend for the whole two days - for my own development and to have been able to blog and tweet more fully. 
2. It's OK to have a script, but it's way much better to deliver a session 'off the page'. I felt comfortable with the flow - and just went with it on the day.
3. I should learn to blog more quickly, more succinctly and more often.  Doug Shaw and Sukh Pabial are really good role models here, pushing blogs out very quickly - punchy and pithy - after the sessions they attended each day.  Their - and others' - tweets and blogs were fantastic for keeping me in touch when I was working on Day 2 and following up on Friday.
4. Suit and tie = Delegate. No tie plus/minus suit = Speaker. This is a very good thing. Prick the pomposity!
5. It ain't necessarily over when it's over!
6. Reflect, reflect and did I mention, reflect?  And then go do!  That's next.

So that was CIPD HRD 13. For me, a great, but mixed, experience, cramming much into the one day I had available. Thanks to the organisers, the administrators,  the contributors, the attendees and the 'Press Pack'.  Thanks for having me.  

Having a Laugh

I'm at the CIPD HRD Conference at Olympia today (Wednesday 24th April), and having been very busy at work in the last few weeks, I have been neglecting my social and professional networks.  Come the weekends, I've found my brain so full of work-related 'stuff' that I've either not logged into Twitter and LinkedIn or have done so - and facebook - but just engaged in some personal comments and light banter. This has thrown up  some interesting perspectives for me, particularly in relation to my 'professional' profile and my 'personal' profile and interactions, and where humour sits between or across those domains. Combined with seeing some 'humorous' tweets about some of the Conference topics already today, it has raised questions for me of authenticity, appropriateness and self-censorship.

I am someone who is passionate about wit and wordplay.  The essence of a 'joke' is the element of surprise - that's what makes us laugh; and I love it when someone does precisely that - ambushes me with the unexpected - and I find myself helpless with laughter as a result.  

My long-standing 'Hero of Comedy' is the genius who was Eric Morecombe.  I find myself almost incapable of articulating the exquisite agony of watching him and Ernie Wise in the endless re-runs of their television programmes (but I'll have a go).  I am in a conflicted state of joy and sadness when I watch them, torn between total love and enjoyment of their wit and humour and the still palpable sense of loss that they are no longer with us.   I literally watch Eric and Ernie with tears in my eyes - of both laughter and sadness - and I know this is inextricably tied to the passing of my Father - on which I have previously blogged - "Age Appropriate", December 2011 - 30 years ago. I can still hear Dad roaring with laughter at M&W on Sunday evenings when I was growing up, and I spent much of my formative years developing my own sense of humour, comedy and timing by learning from people like Eric Morecombe and Tommy Cooper, and then trying to make my Father laugh. If Eric Morecombe was my Hero of Comedy, Dad was my arbiter of what worked and what didn't work.

When I was an actor, I loved doing comedy and have fond memories of performing in Alan Aykbourn plays at Dundee Rep and with John Inman in Eastbourne.  I always got work at Christmas time, in Panto, usually playing some kind of comedy foil - Broker's Man in "Cinderella", Mate to the bossy Captain in "Jack and the Beanstalk" (#1), "Simple Simon' in "Jack and the Beanstalk" (#2) and Pong the Chinese Policeman in "Alladin" (the panto where I met my future wife, Mandy, back in 1982).

It's a fine line tho', between being funny (in my view, authentic) and being a clown (artifice).  On that basis, I rarely enjoy slapstick or comedy based around stupidity (Sorry, Miranda), but I do admit to getting the occasional giggle out of "You've Been Framed" (something to do with schadenfreude I reckon).

So, back to social media, professional networking, the difference between humour and sarcasm and the effectiveness /appropriateness of both in those arenas.

What works well as a throw-away remark or light-hearted comment in a face to face environment relies on everyone being 'in on the joke' by being present and being able to pick up on all the cues - verbal and non-verbal - which make up the context.  That applies as much in the theatre as it does in the boardroom or the classroom.  It also explains why stand-up comedy works, because the audience can both see and hear the comedian, and can appreciate their physicality as well as the story or joke itself.  Similarly, good radio humour is 'good' because it is unambiguous in its intent, its delivery and its clarity - written to ensure that the lack of visual cues does not detract from its impact.

And then we come to humour in the online world.  This, I would suggest, is an altogether more difficult and treacherous beast, more likely to bite the unwary and careless.  Even more so, if attempted within the constraints of the Twitter 140-character limit.  From my observations, some people don't quite get that.  

Some of the people I follow on Twitter are professional comedians or commentators, and they post humorous tweets which are great examples of the art of the online joke - I'm thinking here of people like David Schneider (@davidschneider) and Dara O'Briain (@daraobriain) - and I enjoy a bit of banter with my Personal Learning Network (PLN) as much as the next person.

However, my own self-preservatory instincts mean that I frequently self-censor online what I would normally risk' in the room' or f2f precisely because I don't think it would translate or it would be misconstrued, misunderstood or misinterpreted.  The immediacy and ease with which one can dash off a witty response to someone else's tweet or comment has tripped up many people, and - particularly where the professional and the personal learning networks meet or indeed overlap - could mean the end of some beautiful friendships. 

Sarcasm, "the last resort of the imaginatively bankrupt" (Cassandra Clare - @cassieclare), in an attempt to be funny or to make a point, does not play well in this space either, coming across - in my opinion - as judgemental and smug, whether delivered 'dead pan' or with an implied wink (and, by the way, don't you just hate people who wink?).  Something to be avoided, I'd suggest.

By all means, tell us a funny story, but let there be either a good punchline (surprise me) or have a good learning point to make that we can benefit from (connect).  I thank you.

So there you go; bit of a rant today - and probably making myself a hostage to fortune before my own session "Simplifying L&D with Efficient Use of  Technology" - but I hope it's stimulated some thoughts and I'd love to hear what you think about the use of humour in our connected world.  What's been your experience as contributor and as recipient?  Easy to find and do? Difficult to judge and share? Am I being over-careful, over-sensitive, over-critical?  What works for you?  What doesn't work for you?  Tell all...

Go on, give us a laugh!