Learning Leader

What's a Badge? Where's the Value?

This certificate was waiting for me this morning. 

It's part of my job, it seems, to be in a perpetual cycle of taking exams and (hopefully) getting sent such things, so forgive me if I sound blasé but this did not stir me to great rejoicing.It has become quite normal. 

But today this one did make me pause. I thought back to the assessment process. Unusually from an APMG qualification, this was not gained by a tick-box exam paper, but rather by means of submitting a 4,000 + word dissertation on an aspect of a programme. In my case I chose stakeholder engagement, and it was the assessment process that added value for me. And I found it really rewarding to reflect on different aspects of this theme in the Managing Successful Programmes Framework and relate that to other aspects of the programme. Reflective writing is one of the ways I learn.

As Dawson Trotman once said: 

"Thoughts disentangle themselves when they pass through your fingertips."

The whole process was more rewarding for me than the certificate, although I'm sure my colleagues in pearcemayfield will beg to differ!

One further point: this blog has been quiet these last few weeks as I've been …. writing. I'll be publishing a book later this year on how project managers can do the 'people thing', stakeholder engagement, much much better. Let me know if you are interested in this.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Project & Programme Managers: Have We Got It Right?

We had a great day yesterday with a few of our major clients at Lotus F1 headquarters.

That's me with the nearest thing you'll to me sitting in a Lotus position...

I'm not a "petrolhead", so it astonishes me how wide and passionate is the appeal of Formula One. Some people got very enthustiastic during the 'Pit Stop Challenge'!

We had canvassed our clients on what were their hot topics and the one that emerged most strongly was, "How do we measure the Effectiveness of Programme and Project Managers?" So at the end of proceedings I had to stand up and give my assessment. Here it is on SlideShare.

 

Measuring the effectiveness of Project and Program Managers: Have we got it right? from Patrick Mayfield

From my perspective we can't separate competence from learning, nor the role from the context in which it happens. So we have a lot to improve in how we measure and develop project and programme managers.

Do let me have your views.

The best job in pearcemayfield

The best job in pearcemayfield must be giving people the good news that they have passed their Practitioner exam and gained their qualification.

Yesterday was a good example. I could hear my colleague, Chris Kemp, in the next office calling client after client from our recent P3O Practitioner course. Most were surprised. All rejoiced. And that joy was infectious around the office. It's a lovely job.

But I do have a concern. The exam seems to be designed in such a way that most of our candidates genuinely have no idea of how well they had done. That can't be right. Surely part of any good assessment should be to impart some kind of affirmative feedback to a good candidate as they go along; feedback that reassures them that they are doing a good job. Surely the exam should, in this way, be part of their learning and development experience, shouldn't it?

When it comes to professional exams, am I expecting too much for the experience to enhance a sense of confidence in best management practice? Shouldn't it assure the competent that they are gaining some kind of mastery of a particular area of business?

So until that day comes, one of the best jobs in our firm will continue to be surprising people with the good news that they have passed.

The Story of the 100th Monkey

I came across this story about in one of the groups I subscribe to on LinkedIn. It is attributed to Ken Keyes Jr.:

The Japanese monkey, Macaca Fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years. In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkey liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant.

An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too.

This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.

Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes -- the exact number is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes. Let's further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes.
 

THEN IT HAPPENED!

By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!

But notice: A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea...Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes.

Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind.
Although the exact number may vary, this Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people.

But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes-in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!

There is a similar observation in the Heath Brothers' book on how change can happen, Switch: How to change things when change is hard, in human society. They record the remarkable rehabilitation of many American troops who returned from Vietnam addicted to heroin. Such was the strength of social norms back in the communities that these troops returned to, that it had a powerful change affect in helping these individuals get clean and establish new lifestyles. 

 We look for change to happen sometimes over too limited a field - a few key individuals here and there; when change gains traction more and more people come on board. We now have the term 'The Wisdom of Crowds'. There is also the Power of Crowds.

 

From rapid learning to recognition

With our Leading Change Summer School we are building on the experience with clients where we have delivered short 1-day modules that are separately accredited to demonstrable applied performance in the workplace, leading to an external qualification. I have put this into a Prezi presentation

 

and added a voice-over explanation here:

 

Let me know what you think.

Traditional Management Training: What's Wrong with this Picture?

On Friday I posted a 'Napkin' picture that I had drawn for a client. It began with an image something like this first picture, designed to show the 1-day workshops that make up our Leading Change Summer School.

Later I asked one of my colleagues, "What's wrong with this picture?"

He got it immediately. It's a lecture, not the kind of learning that we advocate and practice. (I find it interesting how many people in our business have 'Lecturer' or even 'Senior Lecturer' as their job title!)

So I drew this second one. What I have attempted to show is the delegates learning by discovery, where the trainer is more a guide on the side. [The trainer is top left in the picture.] 

Reflecting on what I had drawn, I realise I had drawn the trainer smaller and in the background. It made me wonder how much the ego of a trainer comes into this. I recognise in myself that I would rather be 'the sage on the stage' than 'the guide on the side'. There is something ego-centric in me that I want others to recognise my learning, knowledge and insight. I think this, more than anything else, has allowed the traditional model of training to persist for so long, when the alternative is so much more effective.

What's your experience?

The power of napkin notation

This picture was drawn by me in my day book. [A Moleskine A5 plain drawn with a cheap Lamy fountain pen ... for all the stationery geeks reading this.]

I composed it over a coffee Starbucks before a client meeting.

Spurred on by my graphics course last week I decided to illustrate the process of the C4CM-accredited modules in our Leading Change Summer School from a 1-day training module (top left) where delegates leave with an open exam paper, to receiving their Award (bottom centre).

It brought me back to Dan Roam's intriguing book:The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures; the idea that there is real power in the simplicity of of hand-drawn diagrams, rather than sophisticated PowerPoint pitches.

My client got it immediately.

In extremis: learning how people change in the dark places

I wrote yesterday about Viktor Frankl and the profound insights he gained whilst experiencing and surviving a Death Camp. It's interesting that his is not the only instance where learning how people behave comes out of the darkest places.

Take, for example, the work of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist who studied the emotional pathology - the journey of emotions - of people who were told that they were terminally ill. Grim stuff, but very revealing. Kubler-Ross observed that people inevitably go through the same sequence of emotions following the worst of news, but end the emotional roller-coaster with a much more positive frame - IF they are told the truth early enough.

Her model of emotions was later developed by Virginia Satir and others, such that now this model has not just passed into general management training but also into popular entertainment. (I have even seen illustrations of this in episodes of 'The Simpsons' and 'House'.)

Why? Because it seems that whenever we are given unpleasant surprises, bad news that we cannot avoid, we are emotionally wired to go through these emotional stages very predictably. If I am told I am going to lose my job, then this emotional sequence will kick in, no matter how informed or sophisticated I may be.

[The diagram is from our Change Management course, and we are running a one-day accredited version this summer.]

May I be very graphic?

Y esterday my colleague, Richard Rose, and I attended the Graphics Made Easy 'Starter' Workshop  led by Penny Pullan and Vanessa Randle. (Here is a picture of Richard at the end of the day with his summary of the workshop, surprised at how useful he found it.)

We have associated with Penny for some time now, and she did some graphics facilitation at one of our trainers' days. I'm a great fan of Penny's work, and as a one-time Buzan accredited Mind Mapping Instructor, I did not take much convincing of the power of graphics. As a trainer I have seen as well how a well-drawn flip chart illustration drawn in front of a class is far more engaging than a PowerPoint slide.

Even over a few hours I grew in confidence. Penny and Vanessa are excellent coaches.

We were all encouraged to practice simple symbols and techniques through the day and at the end allowed to practice on a topic of our choice. I chose tomorrow's 'Birds of a Feather' workshop on 'The Age of Change Management' that I wrote about on Monday. You can see me building up a wall chart we will use at this event in this series of photos. If you are in London tomorrow and can spare an hour, do come along and join in. It should be both stimulating and fun.

  [Photos courtesy of Penny - thanks!]

 

Fixing the broken training cycle - putting it into practice and getting results

"Now we are finding a new way that is already yielding significant benefits."

There is a challenge for those of in the training world: how do we bridge learnings from a formal learning experience into practice? How do we move it on from being a purely theoretical experience?

Let me explain with reference to a classroom training approach.

A delegate comes on a course, and no matter how engaging the material, how relevant it seems, as soon as the delegate returns to their routine, they seem to be swept up by other, more urgent matters. It may be several weeks in the life of a busy manager before they think to reference the class materials they have brought back with them. By then, the course is a distant memory. The classroom experience is dissociated from the real demands of their job.

Some articulate this sense of dissociation from the classroom such words: "I enjoyed the course, but a lot of it was too theoretical for my everyday work."

And so the real return on their investment in that training event is significantly reduced.

As trainers, we have wrestled with this in pearcemayfield quite a bit:

• We make sure we introduce a challenge and self-accountability to immediate application at the end of some of our courses: "What one thing will you do at work tomorrow that will take you no more than 20 minutes?" (We feel 20 minutes is about do-able as a practical commitment in most people's working day.)
• We offer consultancy, sometimes in clients' own centres of excellence, to reinforce and embed these learnings back on projects.
• We provide action learning sets and one-on-one coaching.

All these are oriented towards gaining real, measurable improvements in a manager's behaviour and performance.

Now we are finding a new way that is already yielding significant benefits. Instead of the conventional accredited model of a 3-to-5-day course with professional exams at the end - some exams have the so-called 'Practitioner' title but in truth that are still rather too theoretical - we are launching a series of one-day modules this summer where delegates leave with an open exam paper. They complete this paper over the next month against their own work, and in doing so bridge the classroom to their workaday experience. It is returned for independent assessment and, if successful, gains an award that builds up to a Change Management Certificate. We are launching this as the Leading Change Summer School at Eynsham Hall near Oxford.

The results for delegates and their organisations are astonishing. We are seeing so much more learning over a shorter period of time and positive application that is of immediate value to their organisation.

I'll write more on this exciting new approach.