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Ah, autonomy. Isn’t it grand? No defined time when you have to arrive at the office. No guilt over having to leave early for your kid’s recital. And if you’re not feeling well or the roads are bad, no problem–just work from home. But is it ever really that simple? After all, other things become more salient when you’re working from home, like that pile of laundry that needs to get done, or a plethora of mindless daytime TV viewing options. That’s one issue with autonomy–it’s entirely up to you to get your stuff done. You have to set your own deadlines and hold yourself accountable to deliverables, because no one is looking over your shoulder. Perhaps it’s a mixed blessing. According to the National Workplace Flexibility Study, 98% of managers who implement a flexible work schedule see no negative drawbacks. Rather, they see results like better communication, interaction, and productivity. So, it’s not that simple–managing a flexible schedule requires a strong balance of managerial trust and personal accountability. But what does the latter look like? How can you still manage to get stuff done with the boundaries that many of us became accustomed to before we had this kind of autonomy? As it turns out, it’s more than possible–and we’ve got a few tips.
Via The Learning Factor
You probably know that powerful people receive dozens, if not hundreds, of unsolicited requests every day. And at networking events or speaking engagements, the most influential folks in the room usually have to fight back a scrum of people hoping to get a word in or hand off a business card. To get on their radar, you have to do more than cold email and hope for the best, or push your way to the front of the line at industry mixers. The better way to connect with superstars isn’t to get in front of them and ask them for things. As Duke University professor and author Dorie Clark put it, “The world is competing for the attention of the most successful people,” she wrote for Harvard Business Review. “If you want to meet them–and break through and build a lasting connection–the best strategy is to make them come to you.” Here are a few ways to do that.
Via The Learning Factor
Here’s the dilemma: In a competitive, complex, and volatile business environment, companies need more from their employees than ever. But the same forces rocking businesses are also overwhelming employees, driving up their fear, and compromising their capacity. It’s no wonder that so many C-Suite leaders are focused on how to build higher performance cultures. The irony, we’ve found, is that building a culture focused on performance may not be the best, healthiest, or most sustainable way to fuel results. Instead, it may be more effective to focus on creating a culture of growth. A culture is simply the collection of beliefs on which people build their behavior. Learning organizations – Peter Senge’s term — classically focus on intellectually oriented issues such as knowledge and expertise. That’s plainly critical, but a true growth culture also focuses on deeper issues connected to how people feel, and how they behave as a result. In a growth culture, people build their capacity to see through blind spots; acknowledge insecurities and shortcomings rather than unconsciously acting them out; and spend less energy defending their personal value so they have more energy available to create external value. How people feel – and make other people feel — becomes as important as how much they know. Building a growth culture, we’ve found, requires a blend of individual and organizational components: An environment that feels safe, fueled first by top by leaders willing to role model vulnerability and take personal responsibility for their shortcomings and missteps.A focus on continuous learning through inquiry, curiosity and transparency, in place of judgment, certainty and self-protection.Time-limited, manageable experiments with new behaviors in order to test our unconscious assumption that changing the status quo is dangerous and likely to have negative consequences.Continuous feedback – up, down and across the organization – grounded in a shared commitment to helping each other grow and get better.
Via The Learning Factor
How long should an eLearning module be? What is the ideal length? Can people concentrate for longer than their shoe size in minutes? What is the average attention span? Attention span is the amount of concentrated time a person can spend on a task without becoming distracted. Common estimates for sustained attention to a freely chosen task range from about five minutes for a two-year-old child, to a maximum of around 20 minutes in older children and adults. (www.Wikipedia.org) Recently I had to sit through 2 hours of on-line Contractor Induction which we had developed for a client. The reason was this – we were developing a video to include in another Induction for Ship Captains for an LNG production facility, and I was part of the video crew from our company in charge of the droning video. Initially, I was like, “OMG, do I really have to go through this?” But after realising it was mandatory, I chose to do it as soon as possible. I have to be honest, I thoroughly enjoyed this experience as it was broken into smaller sections: facility, safety, ecosystem, wildlife responsibilities etc. These together with the various interactivity made it engaging. So how do you decide the ideal eLearning length? 1. Learn from a favourite TV Series Think of a TV Series you love to watch. It’s made up of Seasons, Episodes and Acts. Every Season has about 12 Episodes and every Episode has 5 or 6 Acts. Each Act lasts about 10 minutes. Why are there Acts every 10 minutes? The screenwriters understand human behaviour and that we lose attention after 10 minutes. They know the way we restore attention is by taking a rest, doing a different kind of activity, changing mental focus, or deliberately choosing to re-focus on the first topic. One large financial client we have is now developing 5-8 minutes eLearning modules and every employee goes to work and watches one module per day. 2. Know how essential this training is I like to think of ‘essential’ like a set of traffic lights. Red, is ‘mandatory’. This could be a longer module broken up into smaller segments. eg InductionAmber, is ‘important but not mandatory’. This needs to be at a length that people will see as a win/win. Long enough to get the message and training without it encroaching on all my other pressures and responsibilities. This should be 10 -15 minutes maximum.Green, is ‘good to know’. It needs to be short, sharp or if longer requires gamification or great interactivity. This is generally 2-5 minutes or could be longer if it’s engaging. One of our clients is a Pharma company. We have been developed many 2-3 minute eLearning modules for their channel to watch, explaining the different products and their benefits to the consumer. 3. How engaging can you make it? People are generally capable of a longer attention span when they are doing something that they find enjoyable or intrinsically motivating. In eLearning, we achieve this through interactive, reality-based scenarios, quizzes and gamification. These engage people and therefore their attention span. Introducing a video can also help to hold attention as it introduces emotion. The video could involve: people at work, actors, drone footage, 360-degree exploration or animation. With different personalities, different learning styles and different ages the question ‘How long should your eLearning module be?’ is always going to be a challenging one. Over the past 5 years, we have gone from eLearning modules being hours long to being minutes long. However, at the end of the day what is probably the most important goal is meeting your Learning Objectives. If you are still unsure then learn from some of the largest companies today. Most companies are aiming for 8-14 minutes and if there is a subject that requires more then they break it into segments. A bit like a TV series really �� Chris Gaborit is managing director of The Learning Factor, an eLearning company who loves technology linked to learning. Follow him here on Linkedin, on Twitter @droneservicesAU and Instagram @idronefoto
Via The Learning Factor
hen it comes to our daily schedule, most people fall into one of two camps: The over-scheduler: Their calendars look like a kindergartener’s finger painting. Meetings overlap meetings while reminders for events, breaks, tasks, and more meetings are going off like it’s New Year’s Eve. Their days are determined from the moment they wake up to their evening routine. The minimalist: Also known as “The Dreamer.” They’ve got one or two recurring events, but a whole lot of whitespace so they’re “free” (at least on paper) for long stretches of work. The problem is that both of these are terrible. For their own reasons. Being over-scheduled leaves us no time for ourselves. The more “in control” we are of our calendar, the less control we feel like we have over our lives. Not to mention we’re notoriously bad at knowing how long tasks take us to do. When your schedule is this jammed, even going 15 minutes over on your morning task will throw your whole day out of whack. And the minimalist? Well, they’re just living in la la land, aren’t they? They’ve offloaded their schedule to some other format–most likely a to-do list, scheduling app, or series of angry emails asking “Where is this?” A good daily schedule is a blueprint for a successful life. Knowing what we’re doing and when empowers us with a sense of purpose, meaning, and focus.
Via The Learning Factor
If you’re a working parent, chances are excellent that at any given time, your to-do list looks like the one above — and that it stretches on, and on, and on — an endless, and eternally growing, list of deliverables. Is it any wonder that research shows that most working parents feel stressed, tired, and rushed? Or that when you look ahead, you feel more than a little overwhelmed? As a responsible person and a hard worker, you know how to dig in and get things done. And since becoming a parent, you’ve tried various strategies to keep the ever-more-intense pace: moving paper to-do lists onto your iPhone, reorganising your Outlook “Tasks” section, spending more and more time logged into work each evening, cleaning up the endless queue of unread emails, sleeping progressively less each night. But here’s the good news: There are simple and effective techniques for taming the overwhelmedness — things any working parent can do, starting today, to feel more competent, calm, and in control and to start shrinking that task list permanently. Here are four of the most powerful.
Via The Learning Factor
Your brain is a comparison engine. In every new situation, it automatically rifles through your memory of every other situation you’ve encountered in the past. It swiftly finds one or a few that are similar to the current scenario, then uses that information to figure out what to do next. Most of the time, you do this without you ever realizing it. Sometimes this cognitive reflex works to your advantage, and sometimes it doesn’t. But since it’s always happening anyway, you might as well make it work for you more often than against you–at least as best you can. Here’s how.
Via The Learning Factor
Join our internationally endorsed leadership and management training courses and explore emerging leadership and management trends.
Today’s younger, connected, and mobile workers are managing their careers on their own terms and often outside categories that have defined the workforce for decades. Organizations will need to reassess what they have to offer talent and even what it means to “have” talent in the first place.
Via Kenneth Mikkelsen
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5 Reasons to Use MicroLearning
MicroLearning is a form of learning that delivers key concepts in as short an amount of time as possible. It is a short, sharp, just-in-time snippet. I like to think of microLearning as 'short enough to watch standing up on the job'. It's when you need a quick tip, brush up on a specific skill or have a moment to learn about new product between customers. What are the 5 advantages of microLearning? 1. Timely Learning. The greatest advantage of microLearning is time. Imagine a manager racing through their day. They have a performance management meeting with an employee but have not had the time to read up on the correct procedure to follow. Or a railway engineer arriving at a broken down train and the broken axle is something he hasn't unbolted for 12 months. Neither of them have the time to scroll through three layers on the company's Intranet, find the LMS, log on and watch the 20-minute module. What they want is to go to their phone, open an App, and BAM! There is the 3-minute microLearning video. It's all about timely learning. 2. Speed to Market. One of our clients is a global Japanese car manufacturer. They require an eLearning module for every new model released. They don't have months to plan for product training. They need learning NOW! What companies require is microLearning with rapid development that matches their timeline for product delivery. 3. Expiry Date Learning's expiry date is faster than ever. It used to be that a learning program would last a few years before it needs refreshing but with changing products, people and systems, learning is being discarded faster and needs to be produced cheaply, yet with quality. MicroLearning is a cost effective and fast way to develop training content, making it a win/win for the companies and the learners. 4. Pictures are powerful Around 70% of millennials visit YouTube monthly. It is a large part of their life so it seems obvious that we should adapt learning to what they are familiar with. When millennials need to learn something, they watch a 2 minute YouTube video. Research teaches us that if you hear something, after 3 days, you would have only retained 10% of what you learnt. If you then add a picture to that, retention increases to 65% - that's 6 times better! Using video in MicroLearning makes it stick. Our brain links what we hear to a picture and retention is greater. 5. Mobile One of our Pharma clients is investing in Asia. The people they are training in Asia have limited access to computers, but they all have smartphones. How do they train them? MicroLearning. They make it engaging, enjoyable, entertaining and most of all mobile compatible. The training is mobile, so that they can watch it standing up on the job, or sitting on the bus or train. MicroLearning is certainly leading the way in creating new and exciting learning content, whilst making the process easier for both the companies and their employees. Send me a message if you'd like to find out more on our microLearning offering and what we can offer. Chris Gaborit is managing director of The Learning Factor, an eLearning company who loves technology linked to learning. Follow him here on Linkedin, on Twitter @droneservicesAU and Instagram @idronefoto
Via The Learning Factor
Yesterday I walked into my home office and examined the space from a fresh perspective. It hasn't had a facelift in about ten years and I've hardly noticed its dingy appearance. Don't get me wrong, I love my office but it's simply out of date and no longer reflects my personality. It's time for a change. Approaching the challenge like any diligent, problem-solving coach, I did my research. What does science say about an office space that boosts energy, creativity, and productivity, all while projecting a safe, calm feeling for clients? Yes, it's possible, and you can do it all on your own. Here's what I've learned. 1. Use color, but not just any color. Color psychology studies (and there are many) reveal changes in the body and brain when people view certain colors. These changes influence productivity, creativity, health, stress levels, focus, communication, and emotions. That's some powerful influence! Color psychologist Angela Wright explains the phenomenon this way: "Color travels to us on wavelengths of photons from the sun. Those are converted into electrical impulses that pass to the part of the brain known as the hypothalamus, which governs our endocrine system and hormones, and much of our activity." First decide what's most important about how color affects you, your employees, and your visitors. In an interview with Chris Bailey, Wright offered this simple breakdown of the effects of color on the mind: "The four psychological primaries are: red, blue, yellow, and green. And they affect the body (red), the mind (blue), the emotions, the ego, and self-confidence (yellow), and the essential balance between the mind, the body, and the emotions (green)." But it's not that simple. Bailey nicely breaks down the process of choosing just the right color in this article.
Via The Learning Factor
You’ve probably experienced the frustration of being distracted at work. Perhaps you were pulled into a never-ending Slack discussion, and when it finally ended you struggled to focus on the task you were working on. Or a coworker criticized you, and now you can’t stop replaying his comments in your head. It’s totally normal to lose focus after a period of time (which is why you should be taking regular breaks). But if you find yourself easily distracted throughout the day, you might want to consider tweaking some of your morning habits. They probably won’t eliminate all distractions, but you’ll at least start your workday strong building a good foundation for the rest of the day.
Via The Learning Factor
What do you really need to get ahead at work? I get asked this all the time. The answer varies depending on the person, their goals, and my mood, but there’s one answer I’ll never give: “Work hard.” That’s not an oversight or a misstep. It’s very intentional. Whenever I hear some public speaker or Silicon Valley personality talk about how it just takes hard work to really succeed, I can’t help but roll my eyes a little. I’m sick of hearing people talk about working hard, keeping busy, putting their head down, etc. We’ve become too preoccupied with “the grind,” and it’s actually bringing us down.
Via The Learning Factor
Learning new things is an important part of career growth, and 87% of millennials say professional development opportunities factor into their job decisions, according to Gallup. Acquiring too much information, however, can be a problem, putting your career at risk of becoming stagnant, says Dom Price, work futurist-in-chief and head of R&D at the software development firm Atlassian in Sydney, Australia. “In the digital world, we’re privy to an abundance of knowledge,” he says. “We believe getting smart means knowing more, but in fact, it is not. We’re not practicing what we know. The acquisition of knowledge is dangerous when you don’t practice it.” In order to succeed, Price argues that you need to understand the importance of unlearning—identifying the things you know that you don’t have time to nurture, and then letting some of them go.
Via The Learning Factor
Regardless of your job or industry, there aren't always enough hours in the day to get everything done. As a result, you constantly feel like you're always behind. And that's just not good for your productivity or your health. So, what's the answer? Work more hours? Not necessarily. As Bob Sullivan explained on CNBC.com, "Research that attempts to quantify the relationship between hours worked and productivity found that employee output falls sharply after a 50-hour work-week, and falls off a cliff after 55 hours -- so much so that someone who puts in 70 hours produces nothing more with those extra 15 hours, according to a study published last year by John Pencavel of Stanford University." Instead of putting in those extra hours, you can become more effective at work by focusing on what really matters. And you can get started with that ASAP by following these ten simple tips.
Via The Learning Factor
Are you doing what you can to avoid ERP failure? You may be surprised.
In the July/August issue of HBR, Ram Charan argues that the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) role should be eliminated, with HR responsibilities funneled in two separate directions — administration, led by traditional HR-types, reporting to the CFO; and talent strategy, led by high-potential line managers, reporting to the corner office. While my colleague and I vehemently agree that HR’s status quo is an inhibitor to growth, it is with the same fervor that we disagree with Ram’s proposed solution. Really? Break up a strategic function in response to underperformance in the wake of severe market disruptions? Put the most strategic pieces into the hands of up-and-comers passing through the leadership-development revolving door? What would the capital markets look like today if a similar tack had been taken when the CFO role was ripe for transformation?
Via The Learning Factor
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It can be harder to stay productive when you work your own hours, so it’s up to you to set boundaries that allow you to do your best work.