April 2011 - Posts

• Instructional Design on a Dime with Bill Thimmesch

  As ASTD gears up for the International Conference and Expo 2011, we sat down with Bill Thimmesch from the Federal Government Distance Learning Association to get a preview of what he will be sharing with us at the conference in his speaking session, “Instructional Design on a Dime.”   The Importance of Creativity Working in the government sector, I hear a lot of whining--and have done some myself--about the lack of funds for training and development. The truth is, the more important training that takes place occurs on the job anyway (not in the classroom).  I think the financials are forcing us to be a lot more creative as trainers in using existing technologies and learning resources to create more effective training programs for our employees.  It’s a great time to be creative!   Challenges with e-Learning Synchronous or not, the biggest challenge I’ve seen is getting students to participate.  We just finished a leadership webinar yesterday and I noticed there was a lot of silence on the line.  A very observant student wrote me to point out that this was much different than our very talkative classroom seminar that kicked off the training.  He suggested that I call on people specifically—as you might do in a face-to-face setting.  Those are great ideas, and I think learner engagement is going to be something we will need to continue to pay attention to.   The Benefits of Using In-House Resources Definitely, I’d say relevancy.  When you use in-house resources (mentors, senior leadership panels, organizational case studies, etc.) you have more relevant content for the learner to apply.  Most commercial (COTS) training is too generic for most companies and organizations. I think the more you tap the resources you have, the more effective you are in delivering a training program that makes sense to your learners.   Advice for Leadership Development Programs Start with your subject-matter-experts.  They’re the ones who can provide input on action learning strategies, case studies, and ways to apply the training to realistic leadership situations.  It’s time-intensive but well worth it!   Main Takeaways at ASTD 2011 The best will certainly be the sharing of resources.  In our session we’ll have dedicated time at the end for participants to inventory their existing learning assets, and then have time to share and discuss those assets with their peers. Think of it as a social learning experience where they’re given time to apply what they’ve been learning all week at the Conference.   Join Bill in his speaking session at ASTD 2011, “Instructional Design on a Dime” on Wednesday, May 25th at 1:15 p.m. in room W 203 ABC. Posted Apr 29 2011, 11:12 AM by Marissa Garff with no comments Filed under: training & development, government learning, e-learning

• The Un-Cola Public Servant

  As I filled my second cup of coffee and began reading the Sunday Palm Beach Post this morning, I stumbled upon two widely disparate items that bore a subtle, yet remarkable resemblance to one another. The first, an op-ed by Paul Krugman published in the New York Times a day earlier, noted a congressional rebuke of the government’s proposal to influence health care costs through an Independent Payment Advisory Board. He also took issue with the manner in which medical patients are now blithely referred to as health care “consumers” – as if receiving medical care “…were no different from (any other) commercial transaction” – buying a car, for example. In his opinion piece (“Patients are not Consumers”), Krugman bemoans our dehumanizing societal valuation shift in which citizens and doctors (aka providers) have been reduced to mere market factors. Thus, it’s only natural to utilize related free market language in referring to other provider and consumer matters – such as maximizing “consumer choice.” So, patients (aka consumers) would be free to choose without bureaucratic interference - even in the absence of the highly specialized knowledge needed for intelligent decision-making involving billions of taxpayer dollars. Later, as I neared the bottom of my mug and made it to the “Accent” section of the paper, I was struck by Sam Thielman’s book review of David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King – an unfinished, hard-to-read work that explores the boring professional lives of US Internal Revenue Service agents. Like I said, at first blush these two pieces seemed to have had little in common. Yet, Thielman discovers that Wallace succeeded in presenting “…IRS agents – soulless bureaucrats in the mind of the American taxpayer – as not merely souled, but complexly so.” Yes, somehow the author allows the reader to peer into the lives of several otherwise faceless bureaucrats working together in Illinois 30 years or so ago and discover their common humanity. True, it’s rare to find coverage in one’s morning newspaper that extols (or even implies) the humanity of public servants – unless we’re talking about such human foibles as corruption, shoddy ethics, failure to oversee government contractor performance in the Gulf of Mexico and the like. But honestly, my takeaway from roughly 45 years’ involvement in public management – as a rank-and-file public servant, senior executive and management consultant both in the US and abroad – is that, in the main, my colleagues and counterparts were at least as dedicated, principled and trustworthy as any other professional segment of our society. Look for this un-cola side of government workers as the country celebrates Public Service Recognition Week in early May. Warren Master President & Editor-at-Large, The Public Manager     Posted Apr 26 2011, 04:35 PM by Warren Master with no comments

• The Leadership Yardstick: What's Important and How Do You Measure It?

  It has been half a century since Kirkpatrick’s seminal tome on measuring the impact of training!  Yet the how to’s, why’s, and whether or not to’s abound. While attention to levels 1 to 4 is as robust as ever, there’s more to measurement than meets the eye.  Some espouse measuring return on investment. Others focus on return on expectations.  Trends in business measures—such as engagement or customer satisfaction scores—are the focus of others. Intangibles are a recent addition to the “what to measure” list. And, metrics associated with the knowledge, including knowledge and skill tests (and of course, 360s), are making a comeback.   The impact of leadership development has been studied and popularized in books that include The Extraordinary Leader: Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders, by John Zenger and Joseph Folkman (2009) and The ASTD Handbook for Measuring and Evaluating Training by Patricia Pulliam Phillips (2010) just to cite two.  Common sense and current research confirm that leadership development makes a measureable difference. Yet we continue to be eager to measure and to prove the bottom-line impact of our efforts. We capture 360 scores down to the tiniest percentage point. We watch for shifts in data sets (whether engagement, results, or knowledge) that most often are far too small to serve up anything of statistical significance. We create decks, reports, and other tomes that show we are making a difference. Often, we spend more than we spent on the developmental effort to prove the worth of that effort.  Peter Block, recipient of national awards for outstanding contributions in the field of training and development and author of The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters (2002), the winner of the Independent Book Publisher Book Award for Business Breakthrough Book of the Year, suggests the “how to measure it” question is an expression of doubt, a question that we turn to when we’ve lost faith and feel the need for control or oversight. Too much focus on the measures draws one away from an underlying focus on values and what’s truly most important. Is the fact that someone’s confidence, commitment and contributions have soared any less impressive that the fact that 89% of newly trained supervisors conduct regular performance reviews? Is the willingness to speak up to power any less impressive that a 0.35 ROI? While the what to measure and how to measure it debate won’t be decided with this blog, our hope is that a robust conversation follows. Let’s get it started.  Two questions follow: What’s the most significant outcome you look for in terms of leadership training? How do you truly know you’ve made a difference? What do you measure? Don’t worry if the two don’t match. Perhaps your responses will enlighten us as a community about the difference we want to make (our values) and how we go about proving our worth (the measures). If there’s congruence, that’s grand. If not, we just might get closer to the reconciliation of what we do with what we measure. Ivy Savoy, Human Resources Specialist, IRS Rosaria Hawkins, Ph.D., President, Take Charge Consultants, Inc. Posted Apr 26 2011, 09:44 AM by Marissa Garff with no comments

• Taking Private Sector Procurement Ideas To the Public Sector

  Today The Public Manager has tips on taking private sector procurement ideas to the public sector thanks to Brad Douglas, the former commissioner of the Department of Administrative Services for the State of Georgia: By Brad Douglas The State of Georgia has not been spared in the ongoing budget crisis for public entities. The 2012 state budget is projected to be cut by 20%, but the situation could have been much worse. In 2005, I was hired as assistant commissioner of purchasing for Georgia’s Department of Administrative Services (DAS), and it was my first position in the public sector. I had previously spent nearly two decades in the private sector, including eight years running the procurement operations at large companies in the staffing services and hospitality industries. I took the job because, after 18 years in the private sector, I wondered whether the business principles that I had used in the private sector could be successfully applied to government operations. Thanks in large part to our efforts to bring private sector practices into the public sector, we have completely transformed procurement and brought $1.6 billion of an estimated $5-6 billion of total spending under central management. With newly streamlined processes and as much as one-third of the State’s spend taking place under contract, Georgia is saving many millions of dollars. The State of Georgia is giving the nation a concrete example of the future of public procurement.  This is a future in which purchasing on contract is as easy as filling an electronic shopping cart and where the procurement office can focus, not on pushing paper, but on analyzing spend data and negotiating better contracts that save taxpayer dollars. In government, as in business, it is not always what you buy that makes the difference, but how you buy it. The steps that the State of Georgia has taken have enabled them to achieve far more with each and every dollar. Citizens deserve that diligence, not just in Georgia, but throughout the nation.  Read the entire story here Posted Apr 11 2011, 01:44 PM by Jessica Ourisman with no comments

• Introducing Me (The New Editor)

  Welcome. As The Public Manager’s new editor, I figured I should introduce myself.  I wish I had a cute song and a guitar melody to offer. But I don’t.  Frankly, the Public Manager isn’t about me – a fortysomething  journalist turned entrepreneur and working Mom -  though we share an interest in good government. The Public Manager is about you – public sector leaders of today and tomorrow.  The Public Manager is focused on “Leadership That Works” because we are committed to being more than your educational quarterly.  We want to enable you to develop a proud, professional community. We want to give you tools to leverage resources, multiply your leadership capacity and innovate. When you have a free minute, or need a break, we invite you to hang out with us on GovLoop.com/GovLearning.  You know as well as we do that the workplace is continuously changing. And we will continue to consider management challenges involving people, budgets and learning. But we know increasingly as technology keeps us mobile, work won’t always center on a place, it centers around a cause or goal – that thing you do to make a difference. Many years ago I learned as an undergrad at Yale that public servants are actually great leaders, and public service was one of the nation’s highest callings. Though I’m a pragmatist, I’m also a believer in the Yale School of Management mantra:  “Good management can and should promote the greater good.“ I began my career at the Brookings Institution focused on managing public health concerns, but mostly I’ve been in media. The CQ Weekly, one of my first Washington employers, reported I and this publication are “On the Move” circulating “ways federal government professionals can better do their jobs.” Sometimes we learn from state and local managers as I did when I joined the American Society for Public Administration’s annual conference in Baltimore. There seasoned executives and students shared ideas about measuring and achieving success, about overcoming hurdles present in government and the private sector and about leading rather than merely complying. Recently I have also heard invaluable insights about 21st century government and 20thcentury reorganizations from leaders gathered by the National Academy of Public Administration. So Alan Balutis and I have convened those folks to give you a forum this summer.   In addition to frequenting key meetings, The Public Manager promises to spotlight what’s happening in the field.  In honor of my old boss, David Broder, whose Press Club tribute I just attended, I want the federal system to be informed by the great ideas bubbling up from the states and its energetic voters.   As a former TV producer, I may play a little with our podcasts as well. Stay tuned on iTunes if not right here.  We will talk about how laws are implemented, partnerships leveraged, citizens engaged, and talent rewarded around the nation.  Let us know what you think. Posted Apr 05 2011, 06:18 PM by Ilyse Veron with no comments Filed under: workplace learning, ASPA, 21st century government, Alan Balutis, good government, CQ weekly, Ilyse Veron, American Society for Public Administration, govlearning, National Academy of Public Administration, change management, government learning, David Broder