Engaging Programs Q&A

There are three key reasons. First, too many management training programs fail to deliver the desired change. This is because they don’t operate at the level they need to be at. Secondly, the target management audience has changed dramatically, while the underlying thinking behind most designs hasn’t. In large part, the internet has changed everything. Attention spans are shorter, people want to get to the deliverable quicker, and interactivity is what people expect, not lecture. People want to be entertained by their educational experiences – they expect to be engaged. Yet most educators would rather hear fingernails dragged across a blackboard than hear the word “edutainment.” Third, the work situation for most managers has changed. Work times have been compressed and work responsibilities have expanded. Training programs have just got to deliver much more in the way of new knowledge in less time. The model needed reinventing. The Learning Lab is the solution.

It’s a focused and short interactive experience that produces a specific deliverable Learning Labs focus on business imperatives and are loaded with lots of on the job application. This is not your father’s classroom. They focus on building team competencies and most are compressed into 4 hour sessions. The lab is a unique small group experience where new ideas are transformed into knowledge. It’s a focused and short interactive experience that produces a specific deliverable that includes a plan and a set of behavioral actions to address a business challenge in the immediate future. A lab is where outside work gets applied in creative ways. The resulting deliverable is a solid set of “take-backs for your organization. Your managers work on “deliverables” around business problems, not theory There is no teacher. There is a subject matter expert facilitator. Content and activities are tailored to your business needs and situation. No “off the shelf” canned solutions but customized activities. Includes cool things like team problem solving business cases and group exercises that are designed to map to your specific business challenges. Is loaded with engaging activities and team problem solving with written action planning. Seeks to help you find creative new solutions to your business challenges. Is distinguished by engagement and team activities that reject traditional classroom design as passively boring.

It’s a place where individual managers develop action plans on how to be personally more effective Our workshops are classroom experiences that take your managers through an entire topic and help them rethink and redesign how they do things. They vary in length, but most of the time, are a day or less. Workshops are effective because they deploy an innovative structure. They have the following: A Pre-Session Package – Managers collect information on existing practices or behaviors. Thinking begins before the workshop. Lecture time is reduced. Begin with a Test or Assessment – We begin with a mental jolt that helps them learn where they are and what they don’t know. This provides motivation to learn. Frequent Changes in Activities – Activities change every 20 minutes. Short attention spans are engaged. Discussion is followed by completing something useful. A Compelling Case for Change – Data is shared illuminating the extent of the problem and opportunity. Team Activities – knowledge sharing is encouraged. Personal Action Plans – a clear course of action and a plan to change is recorded in the session. This includes new behaviors and improved processes.

Management tools have a similar purpose to carpenter’s tools. They allow you to do something more quickly, efficiently, and consistently, and when deployed properly, reduce the likelihood of injury. Maybe they don’t protect fingers, but they will protect egos by helping the manager perform a task successfully, especially the first few times. Teaching someone to use a tool is beneficial because it is portable wherever they go. The value is in the easy step by step approach provided. We like to equip managers with lots of tools, because we know they like having choices. Since there is often a delay between when you learn something and when you need to use it, tools are particularly helpful in delayed implementation.

These produce a personal profile that illuminates things like individual preferences, behavioral patterns, or underlying manager or leader beliefs. We have developed many unique types of instruments, but all provide a useful starting point for personal change. They are often paper and pencil, or online exercises. Instruments help reveal this information. Some look like tests – for example, they may have multiple choice questions, but they don’t provide a pass-fail type of feedback. Instead they provide insights and patterns and models for thinking. Why use them? People are often not aware of what they do well, or not well, or how they have created frameworks that may limit their success. Good instruments open horizons and expand thinking. We like and use lots of instruments because, when used properly, managers find them intellectually stimulating, engaging, and helpful. You can find examples of these on the Ksource.com website, including, the Sales Cycle Assessment, the Conflict Styles Inventory, or the California Personality Inventory.

This is a key deliverable of both Learning Labs and Workshops. It is a vital component for ensuring that new information translates into on-the-job implementation. Programs without action plans are little more than information dumps. We like to ask managers to work on their action plans throughout the sessions when the “light bulbs” are still on, and not just at the end where there may be learning fatigue.

We like tests and quizzes in our labs and workshops. OK, maybe we didn’t necessarily like them so much in school, but we like them in the real world of management learning. Why? Because these provide timely and purposeful feedback on how well they fundamentally grasp the thinking and the skills. Managers like the frequent feedback they can get from quizzes and tests – when they are non-threatening because they score these themselves. This can be rewarding because it helps them realize how much they are learning, and often, how much they did not know before being exposed to the subject. Tests, used properly, enhance the learning experience and create a sense of satisfaction with personal progress.