Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ChangeManagement, DetroitLions, football, sports, TPI
With the firing today of the Detroit Lions head coach and their distinction as of yesterday to be the first NFL team to go 0 – 16 for the season… I started thinking, how can a sports franchise best revitalize their franchise in the eyes of the fans?
First, an organization needs to admit that they have a problem. The Detroit Lions started down this path, when they requested that the NFL lift the blackout rules for NFL broadcasts in the Detroit market. But, the owners continue to do some of the same things – pretending that firing people will change the organization. The Detroit Lions, today, much like the Big 3 Auto Companies, need to revitalize their franchises from the bottom up. But for today, lets focus on the Lions and the fans who ultimately support the franchise
To propose a means to revitalize the franchise, I’m going to call upon a change management model developed by Lance Dublin, a management and performance improvement consultant.
Phase 1: Awareness: The Lions need to develop a communications plan that targets the internal organization, external stakeholders in the NFL, and fans. The Detroit Lions are no longer just considered losers, they are considered jokes. Management needs to clearly articulate that the organization needs to change. That the organization will change, and that in order to change it needs the buy-in, support, and ideas – internally and externally. While proper management, coaching, and talent (getting the right people into the right positions, according to Jim Collins’ – Good to Great) will help to realign this organization, I contend that modern management techniques of involving stakeholders will be needed to rebuild the internal and external support of this team.
Phase 2: Engagement: Once the organization crafts and communicates a message, it needs to find ways to engage internal and external stakeholders. The 2006 movie Invincible, staring Mark Wahlberg is a great example of internal and external engagement. The film takes creative license to tell the story of Dick Vermeil and Vince Papale. However, it gives a motivating example of what thinking outside of the box can do for an organization. While in real life Papale took a slightly more traditional route to playing for the Eagles, the fact that Vermeil held open tryouts and rebuilt the team is fact. It is this type of radical leadership and change that a struggling organization, such as the Detroit Lions needs. I’m not suggesting that it follow in the footsteps of the Eagles, but the history of the Eagles demonstrates how important internal and external stakeholder engagement is to the change process. The Detroit Lions need to find their own engagement process that is meaningful and credible.
Phase 3: Commitment: The Detroit Lions organization then needs to integrate and commit to the change process. For years the organization has appeared to accept the status quo of deficient performance. The team needs to take ideas from the internal and external stakeholders, as well as from the new coaching staff and team manager to affect change. It needs to demonstrate that it is committed to change, and that the old status quo will not be accepted anymore. There is a new performance standard, and that the team is focused on the continued improvement and success of the franchise.
As with most change management plans, while I have used the term phase (or substitute steps, or other word of your choice), the process really reoccurs and is non-linear.
Change Management by Lance Dublin
This week, as time has permitted I have been participating in the second Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations 2008 conference. Jay Cross, has called this format the unconference. The all on-line conference focuses on organizational learning and performance. What sets this conference apart, excluding being all on-line… is that this conference is free to attend, and all presenters receive no honorarium. All sessions are recorded, and if you are unable to attend a session, you just log into the Ning site and you watch the webcast from the live session. You can then use the Ning site and Twitter to discuss and synthesize what you have learned.
Is this the future of “conference” type professional development.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: commentary, education, learning, PersonalDevelopment, TPI
A discussion concerning To Learn Lists has been going on in a number or training and performance improvement blogs and websites for several weeks. I believe the genesis was an item in the ASTD Learning Circuits website.
I’ve always had an informal list, but since I have been reading these discussions, I have been putting things in writing. It occurred to me that my list includes two types of learning… first, learning for an immediate or near future performance need’ and second; learning for future personal or career development.
Some items my my To Learn List include:
- Expand knowledge of ActionScript 3.0 for Flash, in order to make Flash applications that work with Ajax like technology. The purpose for some learning applications and for database interfaces.
- Get my arms around SCORM. I’ve been avoiding this, since I really don’t use an integrates LMS/LCMS. It is knowledge I will need in the future either for my current job, a new job, or a consulting project.
- Mandarin. I’ve tried Rosetta Stones software, and I don’t like it. I looked at enrolling at my local university. They offer one course at noon – four days a week; not a real friendly alternative. Purpose, for personal and maybe career development.
- Case study research methodology. Currently a learning activity so I can complete my dissertation.
- Identify and learn a new elearning authoring tool that will let me use some ideas for exploratory elearning. The Rapid Elearning Blog by Tom Kuhlmann in particular has been fueling some ideas for redesigning some training I have developed, as well as some client needs. I don’t think I am using tools currently to complete some of these ideas. Also Michael Allen’s presentation at the 2008 ISPI conference has fueled some new ideas.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: books, learning, LearningStyles, TPI, visual
The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam, presents a quick, easy to read, and practical approach for learning how to communicate visually. This should be considered a must read for trainers, teachers, and facilitators. Dan emphasizes that the message is more important than the quality of your drawing abilities. However, he present easy to draw concepts to build upon, that people like me — who don’t draw well can even use.
Visual Thinking Toolkit
I’m not a regular Dilbert reader, but found this on another blog… excellent!
Google Apps has released a corporate collaboration version of YouTube. Google Apps for a minimal cost of $50 per user per year provides numerous on-line collaboration and enterprise software. The release of a corporate version of YouTube allows for the sharing of digital media within an organization, whether highly centralized or distributed. The Google Apps videos developed to advertise this service do a good job of demonstrating the practical and not so practical reasons to use YouTube as a manager for corporate video.
ACU is embracing mobile learning as part of the higher education learning eco-system. All incoming Freshman will receive either an iPhone or an iPod touch. Students choosing the 8gig iPhone will be responsible for their own accounts.
However, in terms of potential meaningful technology support for education, this is likely a better direction than that of schools link Northern Michigan University that require students to lease an Lenovo Think Pad, regardless of the technology the student already owns.
It will be interesting to see if the faculty accepts this new mobile learning platform. If faculty don’t offer podcasts, videocasts, blogs, or wikis that are easily used for mobile learning, than this will likely just be an expensive giveaway.
This is an example regarding the use if technology as a performance support – the newest is not necessarily best.
To communicate between the mine shafts and the hoist operator, an old bell system was replaced with a telephone. Then they recognized that there were over 10 languages spoken on the job site.
To accomodate different languages a light and bell system replaced the telephone.
Awareness
Action
Application
Jim’s 3 A’s are designed to help conference attendees take new information learned to post conference implementation.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: commentary, education, Fairness, Testing, TPI, Training
I haven’t posted in awhile, and hate my first post of the new year to be a rant, but i must.
Is it no wonder that students hate taking tests! I’m teaching my first community college courses this semester, as a lowly adjunct instructor. That essentially means I have no control over content or syllabus – well a little creativity, but not much.
Last night, in my Introduction to Computers course, I proctored a required course pre-test. One question specifically asks about networking, and presented two totally wrong answers, and two correct answers. When I asked the course designer about this, she said she wanted the “best answer.”
What what the heck is the “best answer?” Maybe the best answer, happens to be the answer that represents what the student needs to use at home?
Regardless of the fact that one option is indeed best, because of a number of technical reasons — it still stands that I HATE BEST ANSWER tests. Teachers do not exist to trick students. If this is what I have to look forward to, maybe this won’t be a good match.
BTW: The question basically asked, you use what type of cable to connect your computer to a cable modem or router? The two potentially correct answers provided, were a USB Cable, or Ethernet Cable. Obviously, the Ethernet provides best performance. Regardless, there are two correct answers.