There are lots of great keynotes to attend and all of them have multiple speakers, again moderated by Tony O’Driscoll.  Despite that, I want to talk about the breakout sessions. I spent most of my time with the well known favorites and I attended one that made a convert out of me. I met Karen Hyder at least ten years ago, but only recently became familiar with her work with virtual classroom or synchronous learning. Most people who know me well know I really can’t stand doing webinars. I always get the feeling I’m giving people a break from their jobs to catch up on personal email. Karen says there are times to just record a lecture and let people access it when they want.  She’s right and I need to remember that.  But if you want to do engaging training with the appropriate size group, I am now convinced it can work.  A properly trained and motivated instructor with the right technology can do a virtual classroom as well as, or maybe even better than, an instructor in person. Great job Karen. Among my favorites that I saw: Jane Bozarth, Judy Hale, and Thiagi with his Chief Learning Officer Tracy Tagliati. Now there’s a tough guy to keep up with and Tracy did a great job. And right now it’s time to go get ice cream in the expo hall. I’m gone.

Just for fun, I thought, I went to the last general session of the day Tuesday to hear Jeffrey "Skunk" Baxter.  "Skunk" is the former guitar player for Steely Dan and the Dooby Brothers and he offered his thoughts on Asymmetric Thinking. I’m still not sure what that term means, but it was my favorite experience of the conference so far. First, we heard him play the same melody different ways. Next, he offered several examples of improvisation. The same genius that made him so creative and influential as a guitarist for Steely Dan later drew him into technology. He managed to take his genius with creativity and improvisation with him. You can understand this evolution, but where he went from there will really surprise you. Now he is a trusted adviser in missile guidance systems for some of the top Generals in the military. Listening to Jeff, it all makes sense. He had an amazing story to tell, and he still plays a great guitar. It was more than fun, it was fascinating.

While the Jeff Baxter session is still my favorite, I did save the best for last today.  I attended Roger Addison’s session on Performance Architecture: The Art and Science of Improving Organizations. While I was familiar with his reputation and even some of his accomplishments, I found out today I really had no idea what he did. I’m not going to try to explain performance architecture here except to say that you should get his book of the same title. I know I will.  The biggest question I had when he finished was why haven’t we had him speak to ISPI Charlotte yet? I asked him the same question and he said he would be glad to fix that situation. Don’t miss that session if we are fortunate enough to have him. The conference is over. It’s great to have Training Magazine and the Training conferences back under the Lakewood Publications ownership. They did their usual great job. I know I’m looking forward to attending next year in Atlanta. For now, I’m going to go outside and get some lunch with Jane Bozarth in the warm San Diego sunshine before I have to fly home tomorrow.

  Dick Handshaw and Handshaw, Inc. are pleased to announce their affiliation with the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI.)  Dick is currently serving as Past President for the extremely successful ISPI Charlotte chapter, one he helped initiate in 2009.  At THE Performance Improvement Conference in April Dick will help direct the Chapter Leader’s Workshop.  At the conclusion of the conference Dick will become the new chair of the Chapter Partnership Committee for ISPI for the 2011 - 2012 year.   

I have to thank the 70 or so members of the Middle Tennessee chapter of ASTD for such a good turn out and warm welcome on Thursday, February 17th.  It seems there is plenty of interest in Instructional Design at this chapter.  My presentation was the same one I presented at Training 2011 in San Diego the prior week: Instructional Design - How to Sell the Real Value. Actually the title is intentionally misleading because my point is about creating real value with instructional design first, and letting the results do the selling for you. Thank you also to the generous people at Nissan who provided such a beautiful venue for the meeting.  I was mostly gratified by the many thoughtful questions provided by the members.  Quite frankly, I could have stayed for another hour or two to enjoy more of that conversation.  Please take advantage of the free tools and procedures listed under the Resources tab of this website.  I hope some of you will follow my blog in the future and add some of your great questions and comments here as well. Thank you again for the wonderful Southern hospitality.

I plan to enjoy the month of March because I won’t be around much during the month of April. I start the month by delivering a new workshop designed especially for a client. That will be the one day "Performance Partnership" workshop on April 5th in Denver. This is a skill building workshop designed for training people who may not become performance consultants, but need to do performance consulting to make sure they can deliver measurable results with their learning solutions. This offering includes lots of role plays with both proactive and reactive consulting models. It was adapted from the half day workshop called "Training Request? Ask Questions First," which just deals with the reactive model. Then on April 9th, I will be part of the team that leads the chapter leadership workshop for the Chapter Partnership Committee of ISPI. Of course, I won’t want to miss any of the ISPI International conference, so I’ll stay in Orlando for a few days.  Next I’ll be doing a half day workshop for Piedmont ASTD in Greensboro, NC on the 19th on Learner Validation. That same week I’ll present a lunch meeting for Research Triangle Area (RTA) ASTD on April 21st in Raleigh, NC. The topic for that group will be "SMEs: A Marriage for Better or Worse". And finally, I get to return to Charlotte to do the "Performance Partnership" workshop second time for the same client. The point of all this is that I hope I’ll get to meet some of you who have been following my blog, only in person for a change. If these presentations turn out to be half as much fun as the people at Middle Tennessee ASTD, April should be a great month. As for March, I have a couple of fly fishing trips planned.

As I travel around more and more and speak to groups of learning professionals, I keep hearing this trend that people don’t spend much time doing analysis. I also hear that learning professionals don’t want to be seen as order takers and want to be more strategic. These two trends do not go together. One of my long time colleagues and friend Damon Hearne says, "If you don’t do analysis, be prepared to do design again and again and again." And I might add, without some analysis you still may not get the design right. I’ll illustrate my point with a favorite story that goes back to when Damon and I met in 1984. I was working for First Union National Bank (now Wells Fargo) on a contract with another company before I started Handshaw, Inc. I know this is ancient history, but the principal holds true today. This was the same year I met Dr. John Gretes, chair of the Instructional Technology program at UNC Charlotte. John and I were developing Computer-Based Training courses for a branch automation project delivered via mainframe computers. We were to develop a module per week until we finished and we had enough modules to last each of us all summer. We were also told to "just start writing, there’s no time to develop task analysis." We were told this by Dr. Deane Dayton, one of my former professors from Indiana University, who certainly knew better, but was just following orders from management. At the end of the first week, we handed over two finished modules on Friday. We started two new ones on Monday. By Wednesday, we got the numerous revisions back from SMEs for last week’s modules. The revisions were so bad, we missed our Friday deadline. By the third week, we were even farther behind. On the fourth week when Damon and Deane came to the door to pick up our work, John and I informed them that we didn’t have any modules for the week, we spent the week doing task analysis. We finally caught up to our schedule and finished ahead of time. Maybe that’s why Damon and I are such ardent believers that the proper amount of analysis, done right, can save time and lead to better work. I’ll have lots more to say about this topic next week.

In making the case for analysis, I have to do a little bragging about one of my clients, North Carolina State Employee’s Credit Union. Last fall, I conducted my Instructional Design series for them, which includes a heavy emphasis on analysis. Completing a task analysis was a change for them, but they have been very diligent about using what they learned. Here’s what Lindsey Barfield has to say about their results so far. "I recently completed a task analysis with a veteran SME who worked with me on a project before we were implementing the processes we learned in Dick’s instructional design training. After completing the task analysis, she couldn’t contain her excitement. She said she could already see how helpful this process would be in developing the course and she was impressed with how much it helped me, as a developer, learn the information we are training on. We have been implementing these processes with all of our new projects and have been met with the same reaction by all of our SMEs. Everyone is excited about what a big difference it’s making in the way we train employees." I believe that makes my point. Thanks, Lindsey. If you’re wondering why a lot of people can’t find the time or skills to do analysis, I met someone recently from Middle Tennessee ASTD who might have an answer. Here’s what Bill Stetar, CPT from UT Center for Industrial Services in Nashville has to say. "I was a little surprised that most of the younger members of the audience were not familiar with or acting on some of the basic ID principles, such as doing task analysis. I think that as faculty have retired or moved on a lot of higher Ed institutions dropped their programs. I don’t think there is any post-secondary institution — public or private — in Tennessee where one can major in ID. There are some instructional technology majors, but those seem to concentrate on the medium and gizmos/delivery mode, not the design process." So what are your thoughts? I’d really like to see some discussion on this one.

Just the other day, Dick and I were having a hallway conversation about what it takes to be a good instructional designer.  He was telling me what Dr. John Gretes, chair of the Instructional Technology program at UNCC, would list as his top three "good designer" qualities.  It got me thinking about what my own list would be.  I told Dick I had a different list (he thought I was going to say something along the lines of you have to be slightly neurotic), but when it turned out to be a serious list, he invited me to guest blog about it.  Here they are: 1. A good instructional designer needs to be process-oriented.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the instructional design process works.  I have found that if something starts to go wrong during the course of a project, it can often be traced back to a step in the process that was cut short or skipped.  If you follow the process, your training will always be well-designed and effective.  Being process-oriented enables the process to support and channel your hard work and creativity, instead of being a mold that your work is required to follow. 2. Another important quality for a designer to have is a good attention to detail.  There are a million details a designer needs to keep track of on a daily basis, ranging from sub-tasks in a task analysis to using the client’s terminology appropriately.  A lot could get lost in the shuffle without a good handle on the fine points.  When is this quality most important?  I think it’s during content reviews.  An eye for consistency can make or break a QA cycle, and I think a good attention to detail breeds consistency. 3. The last requisite quality in my top three list is that a good instructional designer needs great writing skills.  It all boils down to excellent communication.  Your primary responsibility is to communicate clearly and effectively to learners, but before you can do that, you need to communicate effectively to your client, project manager, SMEs, designers, and developers through your writing.  The breadth of your writing output is vast as an instructional designer - you need to be able to write training content appropriate for your audience, but also analyses, design documents, and darn good emails.  The great thing about these qualities is that you don’t have to be born with them.  Sure, that would help, but I think they all can be learned, developed, and practiced over time. Beth Hughes is a Lead Instructional Designer at Handshaw, Inc. She takes projects through the entire process of instructional design and development, incorporating learning principles, instructional needs, and methodologies into the best learning solution for each client. Beth earned her M.Ed. in Instructional Systems Technology from UNCC.

The learning teams at Family Dollar have made a great decision and a great commitment to ISPI Charlotte to provide memberships for 18 or 20 of their employees. To welcome them into the chapter I offered a lunch and learn for them. Since they missed the introductory year of programs on Instructional Design, I did a session entitled, "Instructional Design:  How to Sell the Real Value." We had just over 20 people attend—must have been a good lunch.  There seems to be a common theme running through training departments in America. People still have confidence in Instructional Design principles, but making it work in today’s world of tight deadlines and last minute requests is a challenge.  We decided that it was a good idea to "pick your battles" and wait for the right project. By picking the right project, you can be sure to make a good example and show how the process really works at its best. I emphasized just three aspects of instructional design to begin selling the real, practical value of the process: 1. Do the proper amount of analysis, especially task analysis, to define the real behavioral outcomes at the beginning of the project. This helps build consensus among SMEs. 2. Conduct what we call a "Blueprint Meeting" as soon as you have a defined Measurement Strategy and Instructional Strategy with all SMEs, stakeholders, designers—everybody on the project team. This gets everybody on board with consensus building early in the project. 3. Conduct Formative Evaluation. Build a short prototype that exemplifies your Measurement and Instructional strategies and try it out with four to six learners to get their feedback and observe how well it works. Make revisions, complete the course, and then do a pilot with twelve to twenty learners in a more formal setting. Observe, get feedback, and make final revisions. We’ll be ready to welcome a bunch of new faces at ISPI Charlotte this year.  Thanks to Family Dollar for having me over for lunch. We’ll do it again sometime.