The Foundation of Learning

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The Foundation of Learning

Too often in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, work and family and friends, we have our head down and we are trying to get through the day without being killed. Everything is such a rush. For most of 2020, a year which we hope to get through, we have been stuck. Too much to worry about, we don’t know what is going on, we are getting bombarded by conflicting messages on all the media, social media fan the fire further with well-meaning (for the most part) people sharing their opinions. We no longer feel as if we are in control of our lives, if ever we were.

The school age people are in flux as well. Virtual learning has become commonplace without having education re-imagined and redesigned. Most teaching is in front of a computer screen talking as if the teacher were in the classroom with the students. The students are sitting in front of their computer screen, which many students had never had before, over inconsistent networks bored to tears. We are social animals we need to interact with people in real time live.

Some learning platforms were ahead of their time. The Khan Academy, founded in 2008 has 100 million registered users. Sal Khan, the founder, states that virtual learning cannot replace classroom learning. In the “virtual class the students are missing out on the social and emotional benefits from in person classes.”

But the Khan Academy provides significant guidance on their learning platform in how to learn.

  • Students practice at their own pace, first filling in gaps in their understanding and then accelerating their learning.
  • Teachers can identify gaps in their students’ understanding, tailor instruction, and meet the needs of every student.

I believe that is the very foundation of learning.

Teachers and students able to identify “gaps” in the students understanding of a specific subject and then tailoring the instruction to meet the needs of each individual student.

At Learning Without Scars the foundation of our employee development platform is what we call “Job Function Skills Assessments.” We call these our Comprehensive Skills Assessments.

We offer a range of assessments for the Parts business, the Service Business and the Selling and Marketing aspects of the Parts and Service businesses.

You select your Department by scrolling down on that landing page. Then, all that is required is that you select your current job function and you will land on a brief write-up telling you what the assessment is about.

Each assessment, other than our technician assessments, consists of 90 multiple choice questions. These questions have been selected from the internet based subject specific classes that we offer. The student is given a time limit of an hour to complete the assessment. The time restriction is another indicator of the knowledge and level of skills that the student has on their specific job function. Upon completion of the assessment the “student” is given a score.

From that score, and the thousands of skills assessments already completed by our clients, we are able to identify the “Gaps” in the “students’” knowledge and create a specific “Learning Path” for each “student.” (more on that in the days to come)

Our Learning Platform follows the same logic as is employed by the Khan Academy. We determine the gaps in the individual employee’s skills and then create a customized learning path for each of them.

This is how we have established “Our Foundation of Learning.”

We have 32 of these job function assessments and the results we have seen to date are extremely exciting.

Next blog we will talk about the specific ways that a business can use our Skill Assessments. The choice you make on “Individual Employee Skills Development” is of critical importance to your business, your customers and most importantly to your employees.

The time is now.

Why Do We Need to Change?

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Why Do We Need to Change?

Robert Quinn says “One key to successful leadership is continuous personal change. Personal change is a reflection of our inner growth and empowerment.”

It’s important to evolve and to adjust as we grow deeper in the knowledge of ourselves and those around us too.

But why are people afraid to change? Why is change so difficult when we all know it’s inevitable?

James Belasco and Ralph Stayer, authors of the book “The Flight of the Buffalo,” couldn’t have said it any better “Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving that up.”

This week let’s think about the changes we’re afraid of making in our own lives. Are we overestimating the value of the very things we hold near and dear to us? Are we underestimating what the future may hold? Something to think about. Let’s be more aware of the need for change.

Today we finished an upgrade to our Learning Without Scars website.

We would like to invite everyone to come take a look at our new layout here.

Brian Shanahan, of Shanahan Strategy, with whom we have been working on our websites for ten plus years, has done a terrific job for us.

This change allows our clients to utilize e-commerce to purchase any of our Learning Without Scars products. It also shows a different focus on learning by utilizing our Skill Assessment Tools. From the scores achieved on the Job Function Skills Assessment we now offer a “Learning Path” recommendation of classes to take in order to improve their Skills Level. Those classes have been reorganized and the layout of their presentation has also been re-imagined here.

With the change to the website we have focused on getting in place many of the things that our clients have requested of us so far:

  1. Simplicity
  2. Ease of Navigation
  3. The ability to complete transactions online
  4. Excitement on the site

You will ultimately be the judge. But we are pleased. You will be hearing a lot more about this each day. We hope you take some time and look at the new site and give us any feedback you wish. We would welcome your help in keeping us as the most comprehensive and current employee development platform in the Industry.

The time is now.

All offerings are available at learningwithoutscars.org. Contact ron@learningwithoutscars.org if you would like to plan for a custom program.

The Innovative University

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The Innovative University

This blog title is the same as a book by Clayton M. Christensen and Henry J. Eyring published earlier this year. Clayton Christensen has been lauded many times as one of the best thinkers on the planet by Forbes and others. He came to my attention a long number of years ago with a book titled: How Will You Measure Your Life.” You should read it; it will provoke serious thinking.  Dr Christensen left us in January R.I.P.

The Innovative University was published in 2011 but it is very appropriate today.

But let me start with the theme of customer service. Schools are no different than any other business which is supplying a product or a service to a customer. In the Industry in which I spent my career, the Construction Equipment Industry I wrote often in my monthly columns about customer service. I would like to highlight some key points on customer service from a book titled “The Discipline of Market Leaders” written by Michael Treacey and Fred Wiersema. They focused on three areas: –

  1. Operational Excellence

Offering attractive pricing as well as convenience and reliability

  1. Product Excellence

The result of product of service performance excellence

  1. Customer Intimacy

The use of “micro” marketing to work with smaller segments of the market.

Educators need to pay more attention to these three items.

In the customer service world, there is a long-standing perspective that says “if you are going to be mediocre – stay mediocre – don’t confuse your customer.” Well let’s apply that to education. How consistently does the customer get a “consistent” offering of learning? So there is the first question to be answered? Who is the customer? In the Innovative University they say it is “Alumni and State Legislators. I say it is the Students and their Parents. The second question is – What IS a learning offering? What are the schools teaching? It used to be that schooling was put in place to provide professional personal development to students to prepare them for a career. That the career would be contributing to society and provide productivity and profitability for the employer. Is that what we are dealing with today?

The total student debt in the US in 2019 reached an all-time high of $1.41 Trillion.

One of the interesting aspects of education in this “disruptive world” is that although we have seen many new “entrants” to the learning platform we have seen very few “exits.” The book used as the title of this blog had a goal “to inspire today’s higher education community to do what it did in the late 1800’s when Harvard and its ‘peers created a new model of higher education.”

So, let’s take a deeper dive into education. To start with education is typically the largest discretionary item on the budget of the states. In most states it is on the chopping block or at least subjected to large tuition and other related costs for the student to pay. Are we getting our money’s worth? Are we getting work ready people with degrees? I won’t answer that question as I think it is quite obvious as to the answer.

Over the years we have seen some dramatic changes in education. In 1929 – 1930 there were 248,000 public schools.  In 2015 – 2016 that number dropped to 98,000. Elementary schools have changed their approach with Middle Schools and Junior High Schools but the total number of secondary schools has remained relatively constant at 23,900.

After secondary school society has been pushing everyone to get a college degree. Vocational and Technical Schools are also in the teaching business. This type of learning typically leds to job-specific certifications – “job ready” graduates. This sector of the education world is growing at an ever-increasing rate as technology becomes more embedded in more and more jobs. An Education World article “What Happened to Vocational Education (and why we need it back) states that about 70% of High Schools students attend College. However, of those who attend college 40% of the students don’t complete their schooling. And on top of that 37% of the currently employed college graduates are employed doing work that only a high school degree is required.

Clearly these facts are telling us something.

One final note is to be made. Benchmark Assessments, form Common Core standards, to SAT’s and ACT’s everyone seems to be focused on college readiness. More recently you are seeing Colleges drop the need of SAT’s and ACT’s. The SAT, Scholastic Aptitude Test) was introduced by the College Board in 1926. The SAT was originally designed NOT to be aligned with a high school curriculum. In 2016 that was changed. Now it is tied to Common Core.

The scores have changed over the years. Combined Math and Reading/Verbal scores have changed. In 1972 it was 1,039 – In 1982 the score was 997 – In 1992 it was 1,001 – In 2002 it was 1,020 in 2012 it was 1,014. Reasonably consistent. The changes made make comparisons between the old scores and the new scores very difficult.

It is now clearly recognized that there is a need for a radical review and redesign of the learning process. The Internet and On-Line learning have shown that quite effectively. This pandemic, however, has caused some hesitation. Many schools simply went to “Zoom” or some other technology tool and taught the same material in the same manner with the same teachers as if they were in the classroom. That is not a workable answer. Parents across the country in surveys are expressing their opinions on this and those opinions are not favorable.

For “Learning Without Scars” we use skills assessments extensively. They are specific assessments to a specific job function. We have “Skill Levels” for each job function based on thousands of assessments being completed. We categorize employees as having four levels of skills; basic, intermediate, advanced, and expert. We provide specific classes within “Learning Paths” to allow the employees to improve their skill level. We are providing the employees the opportunity to improve their skills and as a result improve the opportunities that they have for their careers.

The US has a high preponderance of the schools for higher education in the world. In 1990 Henry Rosovsky, former Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences wrote that “Fully two thirds to three quarters of the best Universities are located in the United States.”  That is still true. In 2010 the academic ranking of World Universities listed seventeen US Universities in the top twenty globally and thirty-six of the top fifty Universities in the world.

Those results show that we do know how to do it. However, we have work to do. It is time we had a comprehensive review and redesign of some of the foundation building blocks.

The Time is Now.

Internet Learning

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Internet Learning

Over the past ninety days the planet has been suffering under a serious virus. Nearly everyone has been affected. Some of the results to the economy and societies are starting to come in with analysis on the longer-term impacts.

  • The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the US will see $7.9 Trillion in lost economic growth through the rest of the decade.
  • The World Bank predicts global domestic growth will shrink by 5.2% in 2020.
  • The World Bank expects 70 – 100 million people will be pushed to extreme poverty.

There are many statistics and forecasts being made now about the longer-term impact of this virus and shutting down the world’s economy.

And then we come to education.

There will be a wide variety of forecasts and statistics made here as there are some serious competing self-interests at play. Research conducted by McKinsey & Company shows that the shift to remote learning could set the average student back seven months academically. I suspect there are many reasons for that conclusion and many ways to overcome that difference.

Students and teachers alike struggled with the switch to remote learning after schools were shut down. By their midlife, people who graduate during a recession are also less likely to be married, more likely to be childless and face a higher chance of death than those who did not.

However, what this indicates is that we have to develop better tools for this new wave virtual teaching and schooling – from pre-school to high school. The Khan Academy programs, processes and courses are a good model to consider. They have provided free world-class education to 90 million learners since 2008.

Similarly, EdX, a non-profit created by Harvard and MIT, offers MOOC’s (massive open online courses) and interactive classes in law, history, science, engineering, business, social sciences, computer science, public health, and artificial intelligence. During this economic shutdown “Every faculty member is going to be delivering education online. Every student is going to be receiving education on line. And the resistance to online education is going to go away as a practical matter.” James N Bradley, chief information officer at Texas’s Trinity University. Goldie Blumenstyk, from “The Chronicle of Higher Education” suggests this is more than a Black Swan moment it is “more of a catalyst for online education and other ed-tech tools than decades of punditry and self-serving corporate exhortations.” Going further she says “It seems safe to say that this will be not only enormously disruptive but also paradigm changing. The “Black Swan”, that unforeseen event that changes everything is upon us.

Unfortunately, this will not all be good news. A lot of professors will simply video-conference lectures supplemented by emailed assessments. In truth it will be some time before we can draw any conclusions on what forms of learning the education elite will adopt. Will this rapid disruption produce better results? Only time will tell.

In the Industries, I serve dealers who have not been strong advocates of employee development. They have typically believed that they hired the skills and that was all that was needed. That ship has sailed. With the rapid advances in all aspects of engineering and manufacturing, of materials and ceramics, and computerization and telematics it has become very evident that the skills required to stay current have expanded and changed rapidly. That means adult education is something that equipment dealers are going to have to embrace going forward. The Associated Equipment Distributors Foundation published a goal for the Industry of 80 hours of training for each employee each year. Very few dealers meet that goal. I believe it should be 160 hours.

In an earlier blog, I wrote about how to assign your time each day at work. I started from a position put forward by Dirk Beveridge, he was presented to a sales meeting at a client of mine and he got my attention in simplifying my life in how I manage time. Time was, is now and will be forever, the enemy. The older I get the more this becomes true.

I look at time in blocks – to be precise five blocks.

  • Review Results
  • Working with people to improve performance
  • Communications
  • Process reviews
  • Personal growth.

The personal growth item is the one that I have to fight with every day. There is always something that I view to be more important that self-improvement. It is not that I don’t need improvement, I really do, it is that that other thing always seems more important. It is like exercise. How many of us actually invest our daily time on our health and self-improvement? We all know the answer. So, what are you going to do about it? This “shutdown” has allowed a lot more introspection than normal times. I hope this is a subject that you are thinking about. Your employees need the same push to improve themselves. That is where Learning Without Scars fits in to the employee’s life. It is at the time of their choosing, it can take as little as two and a half hours, and you can measure the improvement in their skills. And on top of that it is $125.00/course or assessment. If you don’t invest in your own personal development and you don’t encourage your employees to improve theirs, how long do you think it will take before your customers notice.

The Time is Now. If not now when?

Why Socrates…

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Why Socrates

Our Logo – Socrates

By now most of you know that our logo is an OWL named after the Greek philosopher Socrates. He was the teacher of Plato and Aristotle. We chose Socrates as that is the method of teaching that I use the most. The Socratic Method. This method is most commonly described as “a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas underlying presuppositions.”

In other words, I teach by asking questions and helping my students develop the answers by critical thinking and debate. I help my students understand how to teach themselves.

Socrates aimed to establish an ethical system based on human reason by pointing out that our choices were motivated by the desire for happiness, and that wisdom comes from introspection.

I always ask at the beginning of every teaching experience that I have three questions: –

  • What is the definition of ignorance?
  • What is the definition of stupidity?
  • What is the definition of insanity?

Socrates is famous, among others things, for a wide range of quotations and I would like to share with you some of my favorites:

  1. True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.
  2. I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.
  3. The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
  4. Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue – to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.
  5. In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.
  6. Nothing is to be preferred before justice.
  7. Happiness is unrepentant pleasure.
  8. Enjoy yourself – it’s later than you think.
  9. Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
  10. The unexamined life is not worth living.

 

He once said “Whom do I call educated? First those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day to day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be…those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes….those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober-minded men.” This is a description of an individual that all of us should strive to be seen as ourselves.

Today we look upon Socrates as a positive influence on the development of the human race. His life ended when the political climate in Greece turned against him. He was sentenced to death and was executed by Hemlock poison in 399 B.C. He was 71 years old.

The answers to my three questions at the outset of this blog are as follows: –

  • Ignorance is not knowing what to do.
  • Stupidity is knowing what to do and not doing it.
  • Insanity is repeating the same things expecting different results.

The issue of the CED magazine, of the Associated Equipment Distributors, that contained my last monthly column after twenty-five years, had a nice article written by my editor of more than twenty years, Kim Phelan. The headline, of the article,  included a statement of mine “Teaching Turns My Crank.”

May you learn something important for each of you every day.

The Time is Now.

P.S.: We are pleased to report that our Logo, Socrates, and our Company Name, Learning Without Scars, have both received U.S. Trademark protection effective May 2020.

The Power of Information

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The Power of Information

When I was in University, we had a computer room on the top floor of the main building. Somewhere through the first year some students, for one reason or another, took over the computer room and threw all the data cards out the window to cascade down on the streets and be lost forever. That was all of the data for student records and other University data. Imagine that? How would you make out if all of your data was lost like that?

The problem, in my mind, is that there are very few in the parts and service business that would be able to tell you that their data is secured. Imagine that? Some of us have had to recreate systems that had checkpoint recovery. This is a system where all of the data on the system files are backed up at a check point. Perhaps every five minutes. When the system went down you had to try and recover the last transactions and re-enter them to the system.

How would you make out today if that happened to you? Let’s take a different turn and talk about the records for our customers. The name and address, the machine ownership, the calls, the likes and dislikes, and call history for instance. How are those records kept and secured? I will hazard a guess that your sales force knows about THEIR customers, but the Company not so much. Not a very good position to find yourself in at any time let alone today.

Marketing data is every bit as important as financial data or parts and service transactions yet we don’t do much about it at all. Instead we have executives and managers that do it all according to their experience and abilities. We have very powerful algorithms established to manage parts inventories and standard time and flat rating. Yet we do things for marketing, managing the equipment sales force and market coverage in a rather casual, this is the way it is done manner.

Someone once told me that the market leader does not want change. They have things under control. It is the businesses that are trying to grow that have to change the paradigm. They have the rattle the status quo. That couldn’t be truer nor more important to change than today.

We need to have better data to make good decisions is a common statement. I don’t agree with that at all. We need to have good data, that I agree with, however, we need to have good information to make good decisions not data.

What about our employees? What do you know about them? What kind of data do you keep on them? Of course, there is payroll history, and then there are letters in the file recording poor behavior, perhaps you have performance reviews. But what do you know about them? Your employees are the people that bind your customers to your business. Do you have enough of them to do the job you are asking them to do? You probably understand that personnel expense is the highest expense that you have and you try to keep it as low as possible. Even if it means that you over tax your employees.

What I am asking is very simple. What do you do with the information that you have to have to run your business?

  • Is it secure?
  • Can it be recreated?
  • Do people control the planning and operation of your business based on their knowledge and experience? Or do they rely on data and statistics and information?
  • Do you know as much about your customers as your sales team?

Please take this seriously as it is a serious situation. Please think about this. Your current and future success depends on it.

The Time is Now.

Millennials and the Work Place

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Millennials and the Work Place

The other day I was having a conversation with a friend and colleague about communicating with the audience for our Learning Without Scars business. An associate of ours has stated “Ron, everyone knows you. But they don’t know you.” He wants me to make a series of film clips with short stories about my career. How I started teaching, how I got into this industry, my early involvement with Computers and Dealer Business Systems, etc. That is not normally something that I like to do.

So, I asked my friend if this was something that would be a good idea and his answer surprised me. He said “for people over the age of forty-five probably, but it doesn’t do anything for millennials.”

He told me a story about a millennial that they employed who asked him what his future held. That stopped him cold, as it would most of you. We don’t typically think about or have structured programs for career path. We all kind of just wing it. Millennials are smarter than that and much less patient than my generation was at the same age. I applaud them for that. They want to know if they are going to be given opportunities. A chance to learn and develop. No, I don’t mean the corner office without any skills. That is the exception not the rule.

I wanted to continue with the theme of the past three or four blogs on the changes in learning and the path going forward.

We just put up our Job Function Assessments in Spanish and today the French language will be up as well. That means that we will have thirty-two job function assessments available, excluding the technicians. We also have ninety-four classes. Let’s talk about how we put this together.

Once an assessment has been taken for the employee’s specific job, they get a score. That score will put them into a Skills Category; Basic, Core, Advanced or Expert. In the next phase of our website development, hopefully it will be completed this summer, we will be providing navigation help in the form of short surveys. Most websites I have seen contain a lot of very beneficial and useful information. However, most of us have to find our own way to get to what we are looking for from the site. We want to do it differently.

First, when you arrive on the site there will be a short film clip welcoming you and asking you what it is that you are interested in viewing on this visit.

  • Is it an assessment?
  • Is it a class?
  • Have you already taken an assessment and you want to advance?

Your answer will bring another film clip to further assist you.

Second will be another question. Which department are you interested in seeing?

  • Parts
  • Service
  • Selling and Marketing

With the answer to that question we can take you to the next step.

If you selected an assessment the web site will deliver the assessments available for that department. You pick your job function and you will receive a description of the assessment and given the option of enrolling.

If you selected a class there will be another film clip and we will have another question. What learning category is of interest? Customer Service, Finance, Operations, Selling or Leadership. The website will then deliver the classes for that department for that learning category. Your choice will take you to a description of the class and give you the option of enrolling.

If you have taken an assessment, we already know the department, now we will ask you which job function assessment you took. With your answers we can place you in a skills and knowledge category level for that job function; basic core, advanced or expert. The website will then deliver the classes available for that skill and knowledge category that will allow the employee to improved their skills. They can pick from the classes recommended, get the description and if they so choose, they can enroll.

All enrollments are e-commerce ready and they will have their class or assessment put into a shopping cart. They can either continue shopping or pay by credit card and go forward.

I am explaining all of this because the millennials will be given an “active learning” opportunity.

  • They will know what their particular skills and knowledge level is for their job.
  • They will know what classes they need to take to improve their scores.

In other words, they will be control of their own destiny.

That is what my friend told me that they wanted. I think everyone wants to have some control over their lives and their job opportunities and are rarely given that.

What do you think? Please let me know with a comment. Thanks.

The Time is Now.

The Evolution in Learning which is fast becoming a Revolution

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The Evolution in Learning which is fast becoming a Revolution

From my grandmother who taught in a one room schoolhouse, to today we have seen a lot of change in education.

I want to go back a little further than that today. Socrates, our logo, and one of the fathers of teaching, distrusted learning from books. Students reading words would gain only shadows of the original authors’ insight and worse would not understand the difference. Of course, there were not many books back then.

In his book “The End of College, Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere” Kevin Carey puts forward some interesting statistics.

  • Less than 40% of students enrolling for the first time at a four-year college actually graduate in four years. Fewer than 66% within six years.
  • There are almost thirty-three million college dropouts in America over the age of twenty-five. Many with large student loans.
  • Fourteen percent of college graduates scored at the basic level of literacy. That makes them good enough to read grade school books.

Richard Arum in his book “Academically Adrift, Limited Learning on College Campuses” said, “American higher education is characterized by limited to no learning for a large proportion of students.”

The purpose of post high school learning according to educators was practical training, research, and a liberal arts education. In 1869 Harvard University hired thirty-five-year-old Charles William Eliot to lead the school. One of the many things he did was replace the mandatory curriculum with an elective system. This exploded the courses offered, increased the faculty dramatically and caused expansion of facilities to accommodate the increased student body. The rest is history.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, (NCES) part of the Department of Education, there were 4,726 degree-granting institutions at the peak in 2012. That consisted of 3,206 four-year institutions and 1,700 two-year institutions. The enrollment in these institutions peaked at just over 21,500,000 students in 2010.

The final straw was when the Federal Guaranteed Student Loans and tuitions exploded upward. The average debt is estimated to be $37,172 per student in 2016. The total outstanding student loans in the United States reached an all time high of $1.41 trillion in 2019. Amazing isn’t it?

Today as noted in previous blogs surveys indicate that nearly 75% of three hundred professionals prefer internet-based learning instead of classroom learning.

There is one other critical factor to consider. Teaching and Learning has made a radical and very dramatic shift. We have shifted from “passive” learning to “active” learning.

With passive learning the teacher is responsible for improving the skills of the student. With active learning it is the student that has the responsibility for their own learning.

Creative thinking, collaboration and interpersonal skills show great improvement with active learning methodologies. Businesses need to pay attention. One of the main challenges in the coming decades is going to be in the area of personnel. Attracting, Recruiting, Hiring, Developing, Appraising, and Retaining talent will be a huge challenge. I believe to the core of my being that with the right people in your business you will prevail in whatever it is that you want to do. Without them you will fail.

Companies must set up a proactive learning environment to motivate their workforce.

At Learning Without Scars, we start with JOB FUNCTION SKILLS ASSESSMENTS to determine the knowledge and skill categories of individuals. From the skill category of an individual we can customize their learning experience. We can direct them to the applicable subject specific classes available for their personal progression through the skill categories; Basic, Core, Advanced and Expert.

If individuals want to take a subject specific class(es) we can tailor that as well that into five specific areas; Customer Service, Selling, Operations, Finance and Leadership. The individual can select from an array of classes choices in each of those disciplines.

This is all aimed at allowing the individual employee to design their own learning path with JOB FUNCTION SKILL ASSESSMENTS in place to monitor their progress. This is our contribution to “active” learning where the individual employee takes control of their own destiny at work. They can grow their skills and in so doing increase the likelihood of earning more money and taking on more challenging and rewarding work assignments.

As R.C. Sproul, the founder of Ligonier Ministries, said “Our problem as people is not a lack of intelligence or a lack of passion. Our problem is that we are lazy.” And if we want to go further with him, he says “If you’re not accountable in your life that means ultimately that your life doesn’t much count.”

You have a choice to make. To be on a path of constant exploration and learning or to do nothing. The choice is YOURS to make.

The Time is Now.

Random Thoughts

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Random Thoughts from the Past Week.

Tthis month, June 2020, is my 40th anniversary in the Consulting Business. I am amazed at that and thankful that I made a living doing it. For the record I still want to make a difference in the lives of dealers and employees in the parts and service world. And… I am still confident enough to think that I can. So as an observer of the world I live in let me share some observations with you.

  • Surveys are showing that professionals would prefer Online training to Classroom training by 75% to 25%. We are counting on that at Learning Without Scars.
  • The thinking is that 50% of the Universities and Colleges in the United States will go bankrupt in the next eighteen months. Is that a good thing?
  • Hewlett Packard is giving online meditation and mindfulness services to employees: nine Thousand employees spent five hundred thousand minutes on the application.
  • Esther Yang, Global Benefits Manager for BlackLine said, “As we transition to a virtual or fully virtual or dispersed environment, we needed to make sure we still continue to create a culture where we are connected.” How do you do that?
  • How does an individual who is WFH – imagine an acronym for “Working From Home” (sometimes we can be crazy, can’t we?) separate their lives between work and home?
  • Lindsay Crittendon, head of the Headspace for Work program said “Businesses are increasingly seeing the importance of addressing the impact that chronic stress has on people – or on their bottom lines from lost productivity, healthcare spend and attrition. What about the cell phone that is attached to us 24/7 and emails and texts and even phone calls happen 24/7?
  • Most people that have worked with me, been in a classroom with me, or clients of mine have heard my three questions of my coworkers and also of client employees.

 

My coworkers were asked very regularly:

  • What do I do that you like that I do and you want me to continue to do?
  • What do I do that you don’t like that I do and want me to stop doing it?
  • What do I do that doesn’t really matter to you?

I often ask my client’s employees for input. They know a lot more than people give them credit for so I ask for their help with what I do. What are Five Things You Identify in the following categories?

  • To Improve Operations
  • That are a Pain To Do
  • That Would Make Your Job Easier

The Time is Now.

Learning and Knowledge Retention

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Learning and Knowledge Retention.

Since my early days in teaching athletics first in a Country Club setting and then at University, I have always been intrigued by how people learn. In the earliest form of learning, as a parent or a preschool teacher, the tried and true methodology: – Show – Tell – Show – Try. We start by showing you what we are going to teach you. Then we will tell you what we just showed you. Telling a story is usually the best method here. Then we will show you again. Finally, you will try it yourself. Depending on risk and degree of difficulty we might even get into a “with assistance” – “to assistance” – “solo” type of structure.

It works. It has always worked. But today we have a lot more knowledge and examples of learning methods to draw upon. And they really help, if we design the learning experience properly.

Some points to start with and consider: – Chanty Hyder, an intern at Survey Anyplace provides us six high level results of their surveys.

  1. The storage capacity of the human brain is virtually unlimited.
  2. The mind needs to be exercised like any other muscle in the body.
  3. Our attention spans are getting shorter. We are bombarded with more things online.
  4. You are never too old to learn
  5. After one hour, people retain less than 50% of the information presented
  6. To learn. The brain builds on existing knowledge

I started teaching in a classroom at a very prestigious University. I was teaching students in the Physical Education Majors how to coach and teach water sports. We used seventy-five-minute lectures, followed by seventy-five minute “in the water” case examples of the lecture content. Two and a Half hours, three days a week. Tough duty. I had a class size of between 16 and 32 students, with one sometimes two teaching assistants.

At Learning Without Scars we started with a three-day classroom format, eight hours each day. That evolved to a two-day, fifteen-hour format. Within that structure we had four blocks of specific operations learning.

Then webinars arrived when everyone tried to reduce the cost of learning for equipment dealers. The webinars were first seventy-five minutes which we then shortened to one hour. I really didn’t like the webinar approach as a teacher as I could not see the students. As a teacher I rely on visual signals, facial or body language, to determine actual learning and comprehension.

Then we used a 3D camera and we broke the learning sessions down to ten to fifteen-minute increments, sometimes these increments were as short as five minutes BUT never more than fifteen minutes. At those breaks I would turn off the audio-visual presentation and appear in camera and talk to the group of students.

Today, we have Skype, and Zoom, and Microsoft with Teams and Google providing software that allows us to see each other and share screens and emulate a classroom type of experience. This has helped in the learning process.

That still requires a schedule that the students and the teachers have to fit in to their daily lives. That is where internet-based learning takes over. Learning is available when you want it and where you want it. You can fit the learning into your life and your schedule.

So back to Ms. Hyder and her points in the paper “7 Facts You Didn’t Know About Your Memory and Knowledge Retention” I referenced above. This is how we have designed and continue to refine our classes.

Each class follows a similar format. We have a Pretest to ascertain the understanding each student has about the course content before they start the class. Then we will assign reading materials, then they enter a slide show with embedded audio tracks. This segment will end or sometimes will have a film clip inserted into the segment. Then there is a short quiz. Then another segment sometimes with a quiz or perhaps a short survey or a short essay. Each segment is approximately ten to fifteen minutes in length and a class consists of eight to ten segments. Finally, there is an assessment of the learning of each student at the end of the class. We require a score of 80% in order to pass out of each class and go on to another. The student can repeat the class as many times as they want, however, they can only take the final assessment three times before we block them if they haven’t achieved the 80% score.

This is in keeping with the current “learning and retention” theory in use today. At Learning Without Scars we are constantly researching and adapting. As new techniques and methods are identified that provide better results, we adjust our programs.

I believe, more than ever, that in today’s work environment the dealership must be more involved in training. This training has to be in the most effective and efficient method possible. That way they will be able to attract more talented and motivated employees. One of my Core Beliefs is that Passionate People Perform. Your employees will make or break your business. With talented people you will prevail and provide long lasting high levels of customer service and loyal customers. Without them you won’t. It is as simple as that.

The Time is Now.