Stay tuned for details as they become available. 

This topic came up in a conversation with a colleague recently. It is one that has baffled me for years. So many professions in today’s world require training, degrees and certifications. A few examples include medical, nuclear, legal, financial and of course, public education. Corporate learning and development professionals have a few certifications, such as ATD’s CPLP (Certified Professional in Learning and Performance)and ISPI’s CPT (Certified Performance Technologist), but they are not yet widely accepted or in demand. All teachers in public education on the other hand, must have education degrees and they must be certified to teach by the government for the state in which they practice. Many people enter the learning and performance improvement profession because they were good at a specific job and were then asked to become a trainer for that job. Many of us enter the corporate world from the public education sector. This was happening when I entered the field in 1979 and it’s still happening today. My friend and mentor, Jim Robinson, recently told me that if I intended to teach people instructional design and performance consulting, I would have "plenty of business for about the next one thousand years." Looking on the bright side, it is a tremendous opportunity to have so many new practitioners entering our field every year. The question is: How do we maintain quality standards and bring these people up to speed with an ever changing profession? As in other professions, one of the best ways to gain credentials and be prepared to excel in the learning and performance improvement profession is to seek a Master’s degree or even a Doctoral degree. For those who need to do this while holding down a real job, there are many programs online, that make it possible to learn and work at the same time. My own company has provided this opportunity for its employees for many years. It may not be easy to go to school and earn a degree at the same time, but at Handshaw, Inc., we pay tuition and provide as much support as we can. I consider this to be one of the best investments I can make in my business. There are other alternatives to higher education. ATD, ISPI, Training Magazine, E-Learning Guild and other organizations are great sources of ongoing professional development. There are many fine conferences each year that provide opportunities for professional development in our field. I recently had lunch with a colleague who shook his head over the number of people as he put it, "who go to work day in and day out, and yet do nothing for their ongoing professional development." He and I agreed that it is difficult to take responsibility for your ongoing development. Even as the economy improves, more and more corporations have limited travel money or stipends to attend conferences or take local classes. It is unfortunate that corporations sometimes take a shortsighted view by not investing in their learning and performance improvement practitioners. Ultimately, it is the individual performer who loses out if they choose not to improve their own skills. Joining a local ATD or ISPI chapter is relatively inexpensive and can yield big rewards in learning and skill development for you. I meet hundreds of these people who are eager to learn new skills as I travel to speak at different local chapters. I salute all of you who take it upon yourself to be responsible for your own professional development. Dick Handshaw’s new book, Training that Delivers Results: Instructional Design that Aligns with Business Goals is available now. Get your copy today!

I have never been a fan of February, but one of my favorite conferences of the year always brightens up my month. This year we are in Atlanta, GA from February 6 - 8. My friend, co-author and mentor, Dana Robinson, will deliver the first keynote address at 9:15 on Monday morning. Her message will be a challenge to all of us "to deliver training solutions that turn learning into doing …and doing into desired business outcomes." Dana and James Robinson co-authored a third edition of their groundbreaking Performance Consulting book with Patti and Jack Phillips and me. It was a pleasure and a privilege for me to be included on that team. This year, I will join co-authors Patti and Jack Phillips from the Third Edition of Performance Consulting: A Strategic Process to Improve, Measure and Sustain Organizational Results, in delivering a preconference workshop on Saturday and Sunday, February 5 - 6. The workshop is called Performance Consulting and Measuring ROI. The workshop is based on our new book which will be released in May. "It combines the skills of performance consulting with measuring results, including ROI, into one comprehensive program". On Monday at 8:00 AM, I will deliver a breakout session called Instructional Design and Performance Consulting in One Model—It’s About Time. This session is based on my book Training That Delivers Results: Instructional Design That Aligns with Business Goals that was released in May of 2014. Many instructional design models don’t include performance consulting or enough emphasis on measurement to deliver results that are consistent or aligned to business goals. This session offers a better way to design solutions that connect learning and performance to strategic business goals. At 10:45AM on Monday, Patti Phillips will deliver a session called ROI Basics which will give you "the fundamental concepts of measuring the return on investment learning and development." At 2:00 PM on Monday, Jack Phillips will deliver a session called Designing eLearning for ROI. Jack will use "case studies which show how learning through technology programs can deliver business value in terms that executives, sponsors and funders appreciate and understand". And finally, at 3:15 to 4:15 PM, Dana and Jim Robinson will present a featured session called Performance Consulting: Make Performance Your Business! Jim and Dana are both back and in person. So don’t miss this rare opportunity to see these two thought leaders preview some of the new ideas and practices from our book. They promise "you will leave the session with techniques to ask the ‘right’ questions so your managers will engage with you at the performance level". As you can see, all five of us who wrote the new Performance Consulting book, will be presenting on Monday at Training 2015. Please come by and see us. We all look forward to speaking with you. Dick Handshaw’s new book, Training that Delivers Results: Instructional Design that Aligns with Business Goals is available now. Get your copy today!

When I started traveling to ATD and ISPI chapters a few years ago, the Nashville ATD chapter was one of the first to invite me. The chapter was so welcoming and the turnout was so good, I have wanted to return ever since. This time I will be leading a workshop in addition to an evening meeting where I will be speaking about both of my favorite topics. I will conduct a new workshop that I designed especially for the Nashville ATD chapter leaders called "Three Core Concepts of Instructional Design." This is kind of a mash up of other workshops with a spin from my book, Training That Delivers Results. The trick will be to see if I can cover all three of these core concepts between 9:00 and 3:30. With this group, I’ll have a good time finding out.For the evening meeting, I will be doing my most popular short session called "Training Request? Ask Questions First." Everyone’s favorite part of this session is when I ask for two volunteers from the audience to demonstrate how to reframe a training request in order to get permission to collect analysis data, so the performance consultant can design a complete solution based on root causes. The challenge here is to remain solution-neutral while asking powerful questions.Let me say thank you to ATD Nashville in advance for having me. I am looking forward to seeing you all again.Dick Handshaw’s new book, Training that Delivers Results: Instructional Design that Aligns with Business Goals is available now. Get your copy today!

Last week Chris Adams and I attended the 10th Annual United States Coast Guard Human Performance Technology Workshop in Williamsburg, VA. You can read about the event at www.USCGHPT.org.  The three day event drew 435 participants and the keynote speaker for the event was Dr. Sivasailam Thiagarajan, better known as "Thiagi." This was not really an official ISPI event, but it felt like one. I attended several sessions and found the "Coasties," as they are affectionately called, are ISPI people to the core. The sessions I chose to attend were all case studies. I have never seen HPT practiced so well and as consistently as I did with these Coast Guard members and their contractors. If you want to see real HPT in action, you might want to attend this conference next year. Chris and I attended this conference with our new partner Vector, CSP, based in Baltimore, MD and Elizabeth City, NC. We are currently working on a project with Vector to make 500 maintenance procedures available to personnel on the Coast Guard’s 87 foot cutter. The procedure will be stored in our Handshaw’s Lumenix Content Management System and made available on a hand-held device throughout the boat. Rosalind Lambeth from Vector presented a case study on the project Friday morning and Chris Adams and I followed with our presentation on the application of Content Management Systems for performance support and learning.

Instructional designers object to developing learning solutions without being given the time and resources to conduct adequate analyses and evaluations. Instructional design books seldom dedicate enough content to address this common problem. However, in Training That Delivers Results (2014), Dick Handshaw not only guides practitioners to manage analysis and evaluation constraints, he helps them improve training design while adding value for clients. The structure of the book is a logical orientation to the Handshaw instructional design model: an integration of human performance technology (HPT) principles with the ADDIE (analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation) model. Training That Delivers Results:Instructional Design That Aligns With Business Goals (2014; ISBN: 978-0-8144-3403-1) is published by AMACOM (paperback).www.handshaw.com/DH/ISPIReview.pdf

Lou Solomon of Interact Authentically is one of those customers who have had a profound impact on Handshaw and on me personally. Several years ago, she asked me to help her with the design of her Authentic Speaking workshops. It turned out to be one of those experiences where you go with the intention of helping someone else, and get more out of it than you put into it.  I gave Lou a few pointers for her workshop in a document that she still has and claims to use to this day. I pointed out that her ability to help people develop their own authentic style of communicating, rather than trying to make them sound like someone else, is her differentiation and her great gift. Then, she went to work on me and my authentic style. I recently embarked on a new direction in my career. I am spending a lot more time speaking at national conferences and at various ISPI and ASTD chapters. It seems only natural that as I embark on the new path I should partner with Lou Solomon. I will be presenting a series of workshops called "The Results-Based Learning Series" at Lou’s studio over the next few months. I recently took a class at Interact on how to write a blog from Patrick McLean, in which he said I had "30 years worth of stories and it was time I let them out." Since it was Lou who got me started on my speaking and presentation skills, it is fitting that she is here for me again, giving me a venue for the new series on learning. I hope you will stop by the Open House at Interact Studio at 9:00 AM on October 15th. I’ll be there to answer any questions you might have about learning or performance improvement. In other words, get all the free consulting you want over a free cup of coffee and a bagel. I’ll also answer any questions you might have about the new Results-Based Learning Series. For more information on the series check out the Upcoming Events links on the left-hand side of my blog.  You can also learn more about Interact Studio at www.interactauthentically.com.  See you in October!

I know Chinese fortune cookies were invented in America and not really written by Chinese philosophers, but the truth is the truth, no matter where you find it. Here is what mine said, "People are not persuaded by what we say but rather by what they understand." I hear the following phrase at my office and I hear it from my clients. "I just can’t persuade them to look at other options. I feel like an order-taker, not a learning consultant." So why don’t our clients always listen to our advice as learning consultants or performance consultants? Perhaps the problem is human nature and the solution lies in the advice from the fortune cookie.  So, the question is, "how do we make people understand our recommendation and why it is good for them?" One thing that usually works for me is one of the principles of reframing training requests that I learned from Jim and Dana Robinson. That one is, "Use the client’s own data." To be able to use this principle we need to do some analysis. I know whenever I use the word "Analysis," most learning professionals tell me they don’t have time. In that case you are doomed to be developing a lot of training for the wrong thing or for something that doesn’t require training in the first place. If you will click on the Resources tab, you’ll find a document called "Principles of Reframing."  It lists guidelines for conducting a reframing interview. Please feel free to use it. If you would like to get some practice using those principles, you can sign up for my half-day skill building session at Interact Studio on November 5th.  The link for registration is below.  I hope to see you there. www.dickhandshawworkshop.eventbrite.com

Twenty-five years is a long time to do anything—especially for me. On October 15th, 1985, I was sitting in my living room after resigning from my job, wondering what I was going to do next. The phone rang. It was Mary Evanish, a former client from Bojangles’. She said, "Hey, I hear you’re free-lancing. Can you write some video scripts for me?" And that was the point when I learned how fine the line is between being unemployed and being self-employed. Most of my friends and family thought I would fail, like most small businesses do. One friend at least gave me a little more credit. She said, "You’re addicted to adrenalin. You’ll be on to something else in another year." One person believed in me and fortunately for me, I married her. This is a time when you look back and ask, "What did I accomplish?" I still remember my reasons for starting this business. I wanted a place to work where I didn’t have someone else between me and my customers, and I wanted a place where all the employees were treated with respect for their abilities and their opinions. I also remember promising one of my professors when I left graduate school that I would do my best to take the profession in new directions. We, as a company, have been pioneers in our field. We practiced Instructional Systems Design long before it was recognized or popular. We made many advances in technology from many first applications with other development tools to bring one of the first Learning Content Management Systems to the marketplace in 2001. We introduced our staff and our clients to the world of Performance Improvement through the workshops of Jim and Dana Robinson as early as 1996. And where do we go from here? Our work is far from finished. I look forward to doing what I do with the people I do it with every day. I’ll be around for a long time.

uN0