Peter’s Blog

A crucial step in the learning cycle is monitoring and evaluation - taking a deliberate step back to reflect on what has been learnt and implications on future action. As others have said, if we keep doing what we’ve been doing, why be surprised when we end up with the same mistakes. Reflective evaluation is critical to move from a repeating cycle to an upward spiral.

One year ago we formed an independent company. So what have we learnt in those twelve months? It’s certainly been an adventure in learning new things, meeting new people and organisations, rising to new challenges. As well as new, it’s also provided opportunities to consolidate what I knew and adapt that knowledge for a different setting. Enjoying the freedom of not being in an organisational institution with apparently endless meetings and long-winded systems of decision-making.

The first year has not been without its downside. Coming to terms with the up and down swing of not knowing where the next opportunity will come from. Of the tentative nature of business plans, however well thought through. Taking deliberate steps to avoid the ‘loneliness of the sole entrepreneur’.

I am looking forward to working with one client organisation in facilitating Action Learning. So many organisations and indeed individuals are so busy that they don’t have - should be, make - time to reflect on what’s going on. If we all stopped for a moment and thought - on our own, as a team, as an organisation - then so often the answer we seek is already within us. For some strange reason we devalue time and space for reflection, it’s not seen as real work.

If I can help people make time for such reflection, then I’m sure great adventures lie ahead!

For a long time I have been interested in Appreciative Inquiry. It seems to make so much better sense to concentrate and focus on what is going right. Not ignore what is going wrong or could go better but rather celebrate strengths and successes. The corollary is the news in the media - so much focus on bad news that you wonder is there any good news?

A new client through an associate relationship has approached me to discuss and probably facilitate action learning in their organisation. To me it links with Appreciative Inquiry in the sense of making space and time for reflection. The idea behind Action Learning is that people learn best by taking a real example from the workplace, articulating the issue with a trusted small group, in confidence, and then working together to consider potential solutions. Next time, to have the opportunity and in fact the discipline to report back on the results and so monitor and evaluate the process. It is very much learner-centred learning - for which there is plenty of empirical evidence of its effectiveness.

Action Learning also links with Nancy Kline’s model of ‘Time to Think’ where a group meeting is structured to give participants a voice and chance to be heard and to reflect in the group setting. So often we - all of us - are so busy doing that we don’t make (have?) time to reflect. If we did, how often would we take a different route or other decision?

I’m taking the opportunity to train as an Action Learning Facilitator in a month or so. I think it will add to my skills portfolio as well as form part of my Continuing Professional Development which is something else that can so easily be disregarded in the busi-ness of working life.

What actions do you need to learn from and reflect on?

There are some simple ideas that are well worth revisiting, especially when written in an accessible way. I have found that with Chris Kaday’s book ‘Grow your own Carrot’.

Chris was the speaker at a recruitment event for the Federation of Small Businesses - which I’ve now joined. With Bob Griffiths, Chris has shown how problems can become opportunities and how a sense of stuckness can be overcome. The model is well known in business circles and applies equally well to personal situations.

GROW: start with Goals. What do you want to achieve, what’s the objective? It won’t work if it depends on other people - you cannot live out your goals through others because you are unlikely to have sufficient authority or power to control what others do, at least in the medium to long-term. How will you know when you have achieved that goal? What is the success criteria?

Reality: identify and describe the current situation. Where are you at now? How near is that Goal?

Identify the Obstacles, the problems that stop you achieving that goal. What is in the way?

Consider the Options, what you can do to get round or through those Obstacles? This is where others can really help you to see new possibilities, ways to get through the ’stuckness’.

So then, what is the Way Forward? What are the explicit steps and actions you need to take to reach that Goal? Create then monitor the action plan until the successful outcome is achieved.

Using the GROW process with 3D HR, we have identified the Goal of a sustainable income and a mixed, balanced work portfolio. The Reality is that work is coming in but insufficient demand for training workshops. An Obstacle is lack of marketing and the Options include proactive marketing and producing training materials on CDs. The Way Forward is to identify who can produce CDs in the most attractive format, at what cost and to send out to potential clients. Another Option is to work out what else can be done as part of the business using our skills and experience. It’s all very exciting!

Ref: Grow your Own Carrot by Bob Griffiths and Chris Kaday, ISBN 978-0-9555074 -0 -3

3D HR Bookstore

I have spent the last few weeks, between other jobs, putting together an interactive learning presentation on e-mail management. In previous roles I noticed how much strain people were under just trying (and mostly failing) to keep up with their e-mails. It was especially noticeable with international organisations were e-mail was the usual communication method. Somehow what should be a fantastic tool became a stressful monster!

I tried to find external resources to help with e-mail management training, only to be told “lot’s of people ask for that, but we haven’t got anything available”. So I developed a short internal presentation with help from one of the charity’s commercial sponsors and it seemed to help. At least people knew how to manage e-mail more effectively even if they didn’t make the time to do so!

Then at a learning resources exhibition in London earlier this year I came across the Adobe Captivate program. You can ‘capture’ screen shots and merge with PowerPoint slides and other material to create a stand-alone learning presentation which uses Flash Player. Part of the joy of being independent or freelance is that I can make time to enjoy learning new skills. Now I have a web-based learning presentation that people can subscribe to - I think a subscription makes something more valued compared to a freebie and it’s certainly cost me time to produce.

Hopefully people will begin to realise the gain rather than experience the pain of e-mail! Check it out.

Would you say you’re a pessimist or an optimist? And does it matter in the workplace?

I have just read both Authentic Happiness and the earlier Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman (see 3D HR Bookstore). Having spend years practicing ‘normal’ psychology of helping people move from say -6 to -2, Seligman posed the question why not be concerned with helping people move from say +2 to +6? Why not focus on strengths rather than weaknesses? So he created the field of Positive Psychology.

From many years of research, Seligman and his colleagues based at the University of Pennsylvania discovered that there are tangible benefits to being optimistic. These include better sales results, more success in recruitment and increased promotion prospects. A psychometric test was developed to measure a person’s natural level of optimism or pessimism. In summary, an optimist tends to attribute good events or experiences to themselves and bad events or experience to external factors. Conversely, a pessimist tends to attribute bad events or experiences to themselves and good to external factors (including luck, being in the right place, this time round etc). The more a person sees the bad experience as personal (”she doesn’t like me”), pervasive (”it doesn’t matter what I do”) and permanent (”this always happens to me”), the more pessimistic they are. And pessimism is a key contributing factor to unhappiness.

So can you do anything about it if you are a natural pessimist? Well, yes. Seligman introduces a simple and powerful ABCDE tool. An Adversity - a bad experience - leads to a Belief (I think that…) which gives rise to Consequences (so I feel like…). A downward spiral is created. But then you set up an internal dialogue to Dispute that Belief and Consequences. Which leaves you more Energised and a vicious spiral becomes a virtuous one. I’ve written a longer, one page summary in the How to… section on my website.

Thoroughly recommended reading!

The New Year is traditionally a time to take stock, to look forward, to make resolutions. Experience shows how useful or useless this tradition is. What I have found helpful is a three-stage process of

• Process the past
• Plan the future
• Action the present

If I live orientated towards the future, always making plans and setting goals, this diminishes past experience. It lessens the opportunity for learning and growth. It risks a cyclical pattern of repeating the same mistakes, however they may be camouflaged.

Conversely, for ever looking backwards - the golden era of “if only” - stifles advance and risk-taking which could prove highly rewarding. So learn from the past but don’t try to live there. And anticipate the future but don’t live there either - its time will come.

Hence action or manage in the present - for that’s all there is for certain. Therein lies authentic happiness - according to my latest reading from Martin Seligman (see the Bookstore or his website) . Moving deliberately away from its roots in pathology, Seligman promotes Positive Psychology with its focus on strengths rather than weaknesses. Doing for humans what Appreciative Inquiry attempts for organisations.

May 2008 be great and truly happy for you and yours!

One of the people I enjoyed meeting and talking with when this venture started was Mark Forster. Mark wrote the book ‘Do It Tomorrow’ and delivered a time management workshop on the same subject to WaterAid staff. I have just read his earlier book ‘How to make your Dreams come True’ (in 3D HR Bookstore page 2).

This distinguishes the Push Mode of time management, closed lists and current initiatives to the Pull Mode of doing what you want, when you want to. Push is the language of ought, plans and schedules. Pull introduces the vocabulary of wish, dreams and letting your unconscious mind know when it’s right to do something.

The book is written as a dialogue between the Present Self and the Future Self and is strong on Appreciative Inquiry - recommending a daily “What’s Better?” list. It also links closely with NLP concepts that we each hold the resources to meet our own challenges within us and to regard obstacles and problems as learning points.

For my part, Mark’s book is a challenge to articulate my goals and dreams for 3D HR and to continue the improved work-leisure balance this enterprise has facilitated. {I am currently drafting a resource article on the balancing act of work and non-work and argue strongly against the phrase work-life balance as though work and life are opposites.}

It has also prompted me to install work monitoring software on my computer which enforces micro-pauses when the unconscious mind can grab a few moments for inspiration! Check out Workrave or Workpace.

Today is the last day of my City & Guilds course on Delivering Learning. It’s also 5 months since 3D HR started in business. So where are we at?

The last assignment of the course is a Reflective Journal and a Summative Action Plan - in other words, so what? and what next? It was interesting to construct a mind-map (I thoroughly recommend the open-source software Free Mind) and draw out the connections across the five modules and think through how they connect with the business. Certainly the principles underpinning successful learning are appropriate - how to facilitate and manage the learning process and the learning environment, how to build on motivation, how to encourage attention through participation and appreciation of learners’ experience.

A 30 minute micro-teach session on e-mail management was a challenge. Successful through a variety of learning methods, application to learners’ context and keeping to time. Less so with too much material and not giving enough time for learners to summarise their learning and create their own action plan. Very useful to have tutor and peer feedback and a systematic self-evaluation.

And 5 months on? The business is up and running with a very interesting contract on international reward which includes role profiles and competency frameworks, recruitment policy and guidelines and employee engagement initiatives. The website has been developed and is much better and clearer now with more content. I have had an article published in People Management magazine on how to take back control of e-mail. And the third accounts package has been a good investment as I can now see where money is coming from and going to!

So it feels like the end of the beginning, with a host of business set-up workshops attended; a useful course completed; work being done and money being earned; and an e-presence established. Chapter 2…

Two weeks of intensive French study at the Alliance Française in London has not made me fluent. I booked for the course when I expected to be leading a management development programme in francophone Africa in November. Alas the funding for the project is uncertain for 2008 and so the programme is on hold. I think it was still a good use of time but not the exceptional answer to my hesitant ability. What it has made me consider are the variety of learning styles.

Another course I am taking is the City & Guilds ‘Delivering Learning’. At least, that was its title when I signed up in September. With government restructuring to ensure all tutors are properly qualified, the course is now aimed at people who want to end up teaching in further or higher education. So it’s not such a good fit for me. Where it is useful is to help me think how do people learn in a professional or organisational setting?

We all know that we learn better in some situations than others. For some, the visual dominates with books, PowerPoints and flipcharts. Others learn more through auditory stimuli of listening through conversations, lectures and soundtracks. And then we learn through feel and touch and doing - the kinaesthetic. So another three letter acronym - VAK. Last week the lecturer added an R for reading and (w)riting! Like most concepts, the world is in reality more complex and we learn through a variety of stimuli, although with our own preferences.

For me, the French course was too much auditory and listening to fast conversations. But more importantly, how does that relate to my own training practice? Do I rely too much on PowerPoint and handouts? How can I incorporate more of the kinaesthetic for learners who find touch and ‘doing’ helpful? Lego and Wikki-Stix come to mind. How they are incorporated in discussion of appraisals which I’m facilitating in a network meeting in November will be interesting!

Meanwhile, some French revision is called for - BBC videos this time! A bientôt!

Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP is in vogue within management and HR circles. I’m cautious with a word such as programming - am I going to be programmed or rewired, or worse, am I expected to do that to others? Is it manipulative, cult-ish or even dangerous? Conversely, is it just common sense dressed up in the Emperor’s New Clothes - a figment of over-active imagination?

Last week I spent three days on what turned out to be a very intense and mostly enjoyable course on NLP basics. Not always enjoyable, being deliberately thrust out of a comfort zone. To try to visualize the future and the past, to draw lessons for now, to imagine what success or attainment will feel like. I discovered that I was similar to the two trainers and 30% of the other participants in finding visualization difficult rather than easy. However, there were two exercises in particular that I found powerful and potentially useful in coaching or training situations.

The first was the deliberate adoption of different perspectives to a situation, for example of conflict with a colleague. To imagine and feel what it was like to be in their shoes in that situation and how it might seem and feel to a third party outsider. Then to imagine what additional resources the observer could give to alleviate the situation.

Secondly, the Logical Levels of Mission > Identity > Beliefs/values > Capability > Behaviour > Environment. So often we tackle a situation from bottom upwards by influencing the environment - which can of course work - rather than look at, say beliefs/values, and watch how that influences capability and behaviour.

Certainly much of NLP is common sense, although as Robbie the trainer was often saying, not necessarily common practice. Listening, empathetic understanding from another’s perspective and a genuine belief that the person has the answers and most of the resources within themselves are all in there.

If NLP is about how we as human beings are programmed, then that’s fine by me. And useful as part of a wider toolkit.