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.

In the past couple of weeks I've complained about some questionable e-learning practices. Now I realize I'm ready to declare war. Ready to declare war on ineffective e-learning. Not all elearning, mind you. Just the bad stuff.

In one recent post I spoke out against rapid e-learning being faster and cheaper, at the expense of being better. In another, I warned about turning out courses that don't have enough of a strategic foundation.

But here's the real problem: too many elearning professionals are working from a disadvantage. They're being held responsible for results, but they've either got too little time, too few resources, or too little e-learning experience to be as successful as the wish they could be.

So please, for the moment, allow me to continue to complain on behalf of all elearning professionals. And next week...I promise...we'll start talking about how to win the war against ineffective elearning.

Here's my top five complaints:

1. Missing out on better, by concentrating only on faster and cheaper (read)
   
2. Churning out tactical solutions, without the strategies for ROI (read)
   
3. Designing training without understanding the vision of your customer
4. Continuing to use the page as a measure of learning
5. Expecting learners to be successful, not through practice, but by reading
   

Now, you can check the posts on the first two declarations (click on the list above) but I owe you some explanation on the last three.

The Vision Of Your Customer

Our customers (internal and external) see the world through the prism of their own problems, for the most part. Okay...that's human nature. So why then, do we continue to design e-learning from our point of view, rather than theirs. Why do we put things in terms of what the company needs, or bury important buying information in techno-babble? We need to design and write from the other person's perspective.

The Page As A Measure Of e-Learning

Pages began with books and fliers and newspapers...all methods of communication, for the most part. PowerPoint borrows from that same linear progression of ideas. Why? Okay, for assembly of a complicated widget, sure. But for anything conceptual? Linear is too often an impediment to learning.

Reading, Not Practice

Why do we think reading about something should automatically make it clear. Why would knowledge suffice for experience? The natural way we learn from the time we're born is by doing things. Try. Fail. Try again, fail better. Bad e-learning does not incorporate learning by doing, or practice.

Okay...that's my war on ineffective e-learning. I could actually list a lot more complaints, but let's keep it simple for now, and next week we'll move on to a  solution that we call x-learning.

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.  

Every day there's less time and more to do. It's easy to take shortcuts...easy to get in a rut...easy to not think things through. And every day it takes more to be successful, too, so there's a real need to see things in a different way, and not settle for just "good enough." It reminds you that: if we always do what we've always done, we'll always get what we've always gotten.

From the top of my head, here are some examples of what may be contrary...but more correct for the our needs...thinking:

• Good smile sheets as feedback on training may be a reverse indication of how much is learned
• The best instructional designers may be the ones without degrees
• Things like learning styles and multiple intelligences aren't solidly substantiated by research
• Faster and cheaper isn't necessarily the right business target

Now, maybe some of these already make sense to you. You're savvy. Good for you. But if some of them have you wondering, let me continue in more detail.

Feedback

It's good to know how you do when you're a trainer or how the program is going when you're a training manager. And we've all known that we need more than smile sheets for some time. Here's a Training Magazine article from a couple years back that illustrates how in one company, the two trainers with the worst smile sheets have the highest training gains. http://bit.ly/4CZbJ5

Even though it can be next to impossible to get real business results, post-training, you can ask learners about how they've changed because of training. And more importantly you can ask their managers and make a comparison between the two reports. An example of this kind of surveying is in a previous post from this blog.

Instructional Designers

We have way too much e-reading and e-listening out there that's being called e-learning. So we need good IDs, no question. Cammy Bean has a great blog post from a session she facilitated at DevLearn 09, talking about IDs: http://bit.ly/8u1Nnw

For our part, here at w/, the framework that we expect our IDs to work within is what we call Natural Learning, meaning that courses should be designed around exploration, practice and feedback...allowing people to learn like they do everywhere else in their lives (okay...other than when they sit in front of PowerPoint presentations). For more on natural learning, there's another post on this blog.

Learning Styles

These theories always sound good. It would be nice to have easy answers for everything. A formula to follow...but it doesn't always work that way, does it? At DevLearn 09, I listened to Ruth Clark talking about a study that disproves learning styles. Ellen Behr also has a great blog post, with numerous supporting citations to debunk learning styles: http://bit.ly/6zNu9B

Faster and Cheaper

One of the things I want to do here is take aim at rapid e-learning tools. Yes, they can be used well...but most of time they're part of a broader approach of faster and cheaper. And I have one challenge to this: return on investment! If cheaper and faster puts your car in the ditch...is that really the target you want to shoot for? I mean...hello! When you put your other products together (and e-learning is a product) do you cut corners and then expect quality results? Heck no!

I had a conversation with a global training manager just the other day, who explained that when his company went from all instructor led training to a focus on e-learning they "went from one ditch to the other." Now they have so much rapid e-reading that people can't get to all of it. It's not focused, and it's not quality training. So, what do you think the results will be on their sales and field services? And if a year or two has passed as they drove their training program from one ditch to the other, what damage have they done to customer satisfaction or the top line results they might have had? When it comes down to it...faster and cheaper can be frighteningly expensive!

Conclusion

I started this post by saying that there's less time and more to do than ever before. That's true, and it's only going to get worse. So, business as usual isn't good enough anymore. Get out of the box! Don't take less time to sort things out, take more. Be strategic before you get tactical.

In the most current issue of the Harvard Business Review, I learned that neuroscientists have discovered that social interactions literally effect our brain chemistry. Not such a surprise, really since our interactions create emotional responses and, in the brain and body, different emotions are associated with different chemicals.

The article features Daniel Goldman, who launched the concept of emotional intelligence in leadership a decade ago, and contends:

“Leading effectively is, in other words, less about mastering situations — or even mastering social skill sets — than about developing a genuine interest in and talent for fostering positive feelings in the people whose cooperation and support you need.”

1. We need to stay attuned to the personal needs of our learners (delivering solutions that meet these needs).
2. We need to understand how elearning fits within the social system of our learners (the entire picture of their work and time needs and demands).
3. We need to be part of the mentoring and coaching that every employee benefits from (making it obvious that there is more value to our programs than just shoving new information at our learners).

Will that change the brain chemistry of our learners? Apparently. But whether you believe that or not, you can be certain it will help build better relationships with their learners. And relationships with employees, sales channels and customers that gain more trust and commitment are always incredibly valuable when it comes to building brand and achieving business objectives.

It's nice to have the scientific foundation for these ideas, but these have always been the principles embedded in our work here at w/. That's why, when we say "w/" what we mean is: "We're w/ you."