No, I don't mean just our business. I mean our clients' business, too. But I'm not stopping there, either. I'm talking about everybody's business. So, while e-learning  is our core, it's also fair to say that we're something of a business evangelist. Why do we take this position? Because the economies of the world could use a good kick in the butt. And simply put, we believe our approach to e-learning can help improve anyone's business. We also believe there's plenty of business to go around, so...

The only secrets we have to share are creativity, hard work, and common sense.

And when it comes to common sense, too many companies are so caught up in saving money that they miss the bigger picture of ROI.

w/ focuses on results. Primarily, that means adding to the top line through increased sales and brand preference. We don't leave cost savings out of the equation, but in the end, value is what's really important. And the place to save money, while still preserving value, is in efficient design and production engines, and effective project management (all of which we're really good at).

We never cut costs at the expense of increased learning and behavior changes that achieve important business objectives. In other words, we keep our eye on long-term profits, not short-term savings.

Anyone can follow our business model (though we'd like to think that no one does it quite as well as us).

• Strategy...meaning we learn a client's business well enough that we can actually contribute, as a partner, to developing new strategies for success.
• Creativity...this is one area where "good enough" is never enough. And it's important to remember that everything starts with what the learners need.
• Value...as noted above, we create systems to reduce costs. Most of the time, you can count on cheap production being a waste of money.
• Results...we don't do product training, or even just sales training. We do training that moves the needle on sales. Our learner surveys (in other blog posts) make that clear.

It's easy for our jobs to get in the way of what we do. There's so much work to be cranked out! But as always, work should be about quality, not just quantity...and ultimately it has to be about results. We can't afford to put as much time and money into e-learning as we do, if we don't get a good return on our investment.

ROI is the WHY behind strategy. So your first checkpoint on effective e-learning is: are your courses supporting a well articulated strategy? Unfortunately the usual answer is, at best, only a partial "yes".

Check your own experience: is 90% or more of your sales training just product information? Or is it focused on how to sell the right product to the right cusotmer? Too many times, that's not the case. And while sales training is an easy example, we could be talking about any course that's fat on what and lean on how, why and practice.

This post would be way too long if I were going to cover HOW to incorporate strategy. It's more about WHAT you can be doing strategically, to improve both quality and ROI. But I promise, week-after-week in the coming months we will be talking a lot about the HOW-TO of integrating strategy into your courses.

Let's return specifically to sales training as our example for implementing e-learning strategy, allow me to introduce these additional questions:

• Do you understand your customer's point of view and are you training from that direction?
• Are you reusing e-learning content to help customers sell themselves?
• Is part of your effort working to create word of mouth (WOM) in the marketplace?
• And finally, does your e-learning support brand preference that leads to repurchasing?

If it never occurred to you that these strategies should be driving your e-learning efforts, that's okay. But when you're measured on the results of your program, as more and more of us are, this might be just the improvement you've been looking for. See you next week!

Please take a look at the work on our site. If you'd like to find out more about what we might do for you, click here.  

Friday. What better day to turn your back on work and do some blogging, right? Besides, I just linked from LinkedIn to an e-learning blog post titled: Information or Knowledge...Which is it? where the author and commentors were pondering the difference between these two commodities and their meaning in e-learning.

I don't want to sound crude here, but that mentality is so 20th century...and it's so wrong. And it's wrong because business as usual isn't good enough anymore. We have to be better and smarter than that to put the American economy back on track. And for that matter, we have to continually improve what we do and how we do it...not stay stuck in what we did a decade ago.

What e-learning needs to focus on is exploration, practice, feedback...leading to competency. In other words, instructional and creative design that provides a natural way of learning by doing. And in the process e-learning changes behavior, creating new competencies that turn into company new revenues and company profits.

This selling game lets learners explore related digital home media products, then allows them to practice matching products to three different customers' needs. You can experience this game yourself at: http://bit.ly/4qeDcQ

In fact, it was years ago that we told our clients that sales training had to be more than product information. If the end result is to be more sales, then learners need to practice selling. Learners need to explore (not just read about) new products and then be able to apply what they've learned by practicing selling in a safe environment. Moreover, they must fail some of the time...because if they don't have a chance to fail and get feedback, and try again, their learning will be limited. 

If you'd like to learn more about why immersive simulations and serious games make compelling e-learning you might visit another post on this blog, Do games make compelling e-learning?: http://bit.ly/3ilXXG

This post is a real departure from my usual selection of topics, but I think it's really important to help clients manage technical contacts and conversations.

We know that we depend on our clients to survive, of course. But sometimes I think we forget how much our clients depend on us. Case in point: a phone conference I was on the other day where the topic was making two different LMS products communicate with each other. I represented w/ and our product: simpleLMS (www.simplelms.com) and there were two technical contacts from the other company who were trying to communicate what they needed from our joint client.

The details on this project are a bit deep for most clients...but what do they need to know, really? They need to know the end result of how the two products will share information, how much it costs, and how long it will take. That's it.

The mistake the technical contacts made was thinking that the client needed to understand how their database was designed and how many variables were allowed, at which different levels of the product. In other words, they were getting the client involved in the design of the solution...and that's not the client's job. All the tech guys needed to know is what information from the learners' profiles needed to be shared between products and why (login, password, course completions and prerequisites). From that, they could come back with a simple proposal to make things work, without getting the client in way over her head.

Now, you clients out there...applause for how hard you work, but don't let the techies take over the show and drag you into more work, or more information, than you need to be involved in...

• In a preliminary conversation, tell your supplier what you want to accomplish
• Make sure they ask you enough questions, so that they really understand what you need
• Make sure they clearly explain what they will need from you, in order to be successful with your project
• Ask your supplier to create a scope document that outlines all of the above parameters, and have them include at least a preliminary budget and time table
• Now, review the document with support from other people who may be able to spot problems or additional opportunities and go to a final version of the scoping document with your supplier

Recently I was asked to make a presentation on elearning best practices for the elearning SIG of the Minneapolis ASTD chapter. Approaching this from a client perspective, what emerged was a collection of tactics and tips that the w/ team uses to save time and money, while improving results.

You can see this in a podcast, just below. If you want to quickly breeze the topics first, scroll down...they're bulleted at the bottom.

• Aim at business goals. Business goals should be at the center of your target for each course. And the ring next to the bullseye is...
  
  
• Scope and process. Find out why and how we re-engineered one client's elearning practices to be 20% more effective...
  
  
• Make it modular. Modular design gives you more flexibility and saves time and money. There are a couple of ways to look at this...
  
  
• Reuse your content. Plan to get double the mileage from your elearning. For instance, building two doors into the same content...
  
  
• Repeat and retest. We've all used repetition in courses to improve learning. Learn how creatively retesting can support learning...
  
  
• Practice, practice. eLearning is uniquely powerful at providing a chance to practice (and fail) in making critical business decisions...
  
  
• Avatars add impact. These characters connect with learners at a very human level. They increase trust, credibility, retention...
  
  
• Measure what matters. Forget assessments for a moment. Survey learners to see if you're achieving important business goals...
  
  
• Be learner-centered. Make your learners more successful and the ROI is relationships of trust, commitment, and real results...
  
  
• Rethink your LMS. Most company’s LMSs are two sizes too big for their needs. Think simpler and less expensive, if you can...
  
  
• Network and share. None of us is as smart as all of us. Keep networking with others, and share what works for you...
  

Thinking about the last point, please feel free to share what works for you in the blog at www.wslash.net. Even better, we'd like to know what your challenges and objectives are. That would give us a way to demonstrate what we mean when we say w/ is elearning not as usual.