Can technical training be energizing, interactive and stimulating?  Absolutely. 

As a management consultant focused on Organizational Change Management, I have conducted countless training sessions in order to equip those undergoing a change with the tools necessary to be productive in their newly changed environment. Often times, the change being faced is a technical one.  Whether it’s a new manufacturing system application, a new time and attendance software, a new mortgage origination website or a new claims processing tool, below are a few tips for ensuring your training is stimulating and interactive while utilizing best practices for adult learning. 

Get up and move

We all struggle with how to present information.  Whether good or bad, information can be interpreted in drastically different ways by the recipient due to the delivery by the presenter.  The different perceptions of the recipients of the same information, based on the delivery, has been coined the “Presenter’s Paradox” by consumer behavior research professor, Dr. Kim Weaver.  I had the pleasure of collecting data for Dr. Weaver’s research as a consumer behavior research assistant at Virginia Tech.  At the time, I saw the value in the data, but could have never predicted how applicable it would be in my profession.  

It was a full day of learning and sharing expertise at the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) Conference! No matter for how many years or in how many industries one has led change initiatives, we can always learn from each other. Today was a great reminder of that! I have tried to capture a few treasures from the jam packed sessions.

Speakers from Cisco, IKEA and Qantas shared lessons learned from their respective change journeys. Key takeaways included:

The first full day of the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) conference (#acmp2012) kicked off with a spectacular keynote address by Chip Heath, co-author of Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard.  Heath summarized the results of his book and the key elements of an individual’s Elephant and the Rider and how they enable (or prevent) a change. Simply put, the Elephant refers to the emotional side of an individual and the Rider is the thinker; in order to make sustainable change, both the Elephant and the Rider need to be engaged.

You are probably aware the first PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) certifications were awarded to pilot candidates in Q4 2011. The PMI-ACP recognizes knowledge of agile principles, practices, and tools and techniques across agile methodologies. As the PMI website states, “the world is quickly becoming agile. Are you?” It goes on to say “the use of agile as an approach to managing projects has been increasing dramatically over the last several years. Gartner predicts that by the end of 2012, agile development methods will be used on 80% of all software development projects.” It got me thinking about how an Agile PMO would look and feel.

A process analysts’ role, like many others, is rarely limited to its title and often bleeds into other practices, such as Change Management.  When a process consultant appears at a client, sometimes they are told directly “I want to improve process X’s throughput, process Y’s turnover rate, and process z’s cost”.  More often than not though, they are told “I want to improve all my processes”.  The consultant is then forced to ask, “Well, have you identified what your processes are?  What do you want to improve about them?”  The answers here are usually “No”, and “Everything”. 

In my experience there are a few consistent themes that emerge in data management and data governance work. Despite diversity of industry, culture and size, our clients face four common challenges in efforts to establish effective data management.

To paraphrase the DAMA Guide to the Data Management Body of Knowledge (DMBOK), data management means understanding enterprise data needs; collecting, storing, and protecting data, continually improving data quality, maintaining data security, and maximizing effective use and value of data assets.

Challenge #1: Get started

Most operational areas have a dedicated team of analysts who crunch numbers and produce a plethora of reports. They work feverishly each reporting cycle to deal with regular report production and a seemingly endless supply of ad-hoc requests from front line managers and executives. Commonly, there is a ‘new crisis’ in which a strategic imperative is not being met and a subsequent scramble to produce a new metric to spotlight the cause. In the end, the number of metrics produced grows and very little time remains to study, identify and refine those functions that are key to improving the business.

Take a Step Back and Study the Business

Consultants bring a unique characteristic to an engagement – they are not directly involved in the details of what an organization does or with the technology behind how they do it.  To learn, they conduct stakeholder interviews, read available documentation, and create process flows.

After a couple of weeks organizing my thoughts, here’s my attempt to string together, in one run-on sentence, my key takeaways from the 2011 Forrester Content & Collaboration Forum:

Organizations should be striving to create an engaged workforce – which generates collaborative content containing mission critical knowledge worthy of harvesting – by strategically implementing an information workplace that seamlessly integrates the right combination of email, calendaring, intranet content, instant messaging, web conferencing, video conferencing, team sites, document management, wikis, blogs, microblogs, and the enterprise social network… and for the love of God, it better be mobile-enabled, and all else being equal, let’s put it in the cloud.

Now you know what you’re doing in 2012.

There are many instances when a client calls upon a consulting firm to come in and improve their process. The client is in a state of complete confusion and frustration. They have spent time, money, and resources to create a new process which they believe to have a positive impact on a large part of the organization. The client states that there is substantial resistance to adopting the new process. Often those who have no choice but to adopt, due to the large effect to their everyday duties, are angry about the change and have little confidence in the team that implemented the new process. The client believes that the new process brings increased efficiency and accuracy to the business, but feels that the process still needs improvement in order for the employees to eagerly adopt.