So, the day has nearly arrived: Elaine Biech's latest opus, ASTD's Ultimate Train the Trainer, is nearly ready for the printer. It has not been an easy book to work on, for a variety of reasons, but in the end it's a project that I feel proud of and that will ultimately be a real gem for the people who use it. One of the reasons it's been hard to work on is trying to make it as easy and user friendly as possible. Sometimes that requires a lot of work and thought from authors, editors, project managers, and designers (and a lot of disagreement about how best to accomplish that goal). But it's coming together. Those last bits and bobs are being fixed, the finishing touches are being added, and next Friday this book goes to press.

It's been a complicated book to put together, but it's not a complicated book to use, or at least that's the plan. What it does is provide a complete, three-day train-the-trainer workshop in five modules that generally align with the ADDIE model. It gives the trainer who needs to train trainers everything he or she could need: step-by-step instructions for activities, handouts for participants, checklists for getting prepared for the session, evaluation forms, PowerPoint slides, and more. All the stuff that the trainer will need to have on hand in the training room is provided on the CD, so he or she doesn't need to spend hours copying pages out of the book or recreating handouts from scratch.

And of course, it's from Elaine Biech! She's spent a lot of time perfecting the way she delivers training and is more than willing to share what she knows works.  

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Oh well, so much for good intentions. I had planned to blog from the ASTD 2009 International Conference & Exposition, but working in the store is quite a whirlwind experience. It was a lot of hard work as well as a blast. For those of you who attended the conference and stopped by the store, I thought you might think it was fun to see what it looks like before we transform it into the glorious Barnes-and-Noble-esque wonder that it is, so here are some pics from setup:

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So it took a little convincing, but Elaine Biech, one of ASTD Press's favorite authors and an overall champion and supporter of ASTD, has agreed to blog for ASTD and has posted her first entry! Before starting, she came up with a list of exciting topics that she wants to cover as she blogs for us to make sure that she "had enough to talk about." As though there were any doubts about Elaine's ability to contribute to the discussion. Anyway, I am really excited to see learn what she has to say and look forward to her entries.

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I'm reviewing Larry Israelite's manuscript for his forthcoming book Talent Management: Best Practices and Strategies for Success from Six Leading Companies, and "at the risk of biting the hand that feeds" him says that he feels that ASTD's definition of talent management is too complex:

ASTD's definition (as published in the "ASTD Talent Management Practices and Opportunities" research report): "A holistic approach to optimizing human capital, which enables an organization to drive short- and long-term results by building culture, engagement, capability, and capacity through integrated talent acquisition, development, and deployment processes that are aligned to business goals."

Larry's definition: "The collection of things companies do that help employees do the best they can each and every day in support of their own and the company's goals and objectives."

Now these are very different definitions. One has 38 words, the other has 29. One uses terms like "holistic approach," "optimizing human capital," and "integrated talent acquisition"; while the other talks about helping people "do the best they can." They obviously have different audiences: The ASTD definition is geared toward specialized professionals who use specialized language, while Larry's definition is geared toward anyone who works. And that last difference is part of Larry's point: talent management is not the sole domain of human resources professionals, but really belongs to everyone.

So what is talent management? Does it belong to everyone, or should it mainly concern human resources professionals? What other definitions are out there? When people talk about talent management, are they talking about the same things? It's a hot topic these days, but why does it matter? Does it matter more or less now given the difficult state of the economy? Any thoughts?

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Yesterday, we had a great meeting with Elaine Biech to start talking about a new project that we are planning for next year: a Leadership Handbook. Having worked on the ASTD Handbook for Workplace Learning Professionals, I am excited to get the chance to expand that product into new areas (we are also working with Patti Phillips on a Handbook for measuring and evaluating, but I will talk more about that in another post where I will also introduce her forthcoming blog).

Some of the ideas we tossed around in the meeting included at least three sections (development, characteristics/competencies, and tasks or roles of leadership). We came up with a huge list of potential contributors. We also thought about opening up the scope of the book to include chapters on leadership that focused on the military, politics, global politics, the ministry, as well as specific business sectors such as financial, healthcare, and so forth. As a bit of a news junky, the idea of opening up the scope like that sounds like big, juicy, exciting fun. (At least, until we get into the nitty gritty of editing, proofreading, managing the schedule, bugging the authors for answers to queries, and so forth!)

At present, no outline exists, the topic list is wide open, and only a loose timeline is in place. Those of us who attended the meeting have been tasked with coming up with five to six contributor names or topics to give Elaine as fodder for her ideas, so I thought I would cheat a little and see if any of you have any thoughts on what you'd like to see covered in a Handbook on Leadership. 

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Well, it's been a tough week here in Books world and, despite some glimmers of improvement, the going is still tough out there in the big world. One quality that can really help people weather hard times is emotional intelligence. It's a quality that can be found in some of the strangest places and in the most unexpected people, which is the point of an article that I wrote for T+D back in December 2004, which I am attaching here for your reading pleasure. And yes, it really is about Ghengis Khan! 

76041271, December 2004.pdf (40.11 kb)

 

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I just read the press release stating that Ed Betof's book Leaders as Teachers has already sold 1,000 copies in pre-release. This is really exciting to me because this was one of the books I worked on, and I am glad to see that it is already so successful, especially since Ed was just a delight to work with and the idea of leaders as teachers is so compelling. (And the book looks and feels really nice too: hardbound with a dustcover and pretty endpapers. Selecting the various components of a hardbound book is really fun to do.)

In his book, Ed talks about six benefits of using a leaders-as-teachers approach in an organization. They are

• helping to drive business results by aligning the learning function with organizational strategy
• stimulating the learning and development of leaders and associates through role modeling, creating a safe environment for feedback, and building networks
• improving the leadership skills of leaders who teach
• strengthening organizational culture and communication
• promoting positive business and organizational change
• reducing costs by leveraging top talent.

An unspoken theme of the book is the aspirational quality of using a leaders-as-teachers approach. This isn't just about making do or getting by, but about doing great things as an organization. Ed draws on concepts from such thinkers as Tim Butler and Jim Waldroop (deeply embedded life interests), Bernard Haldane (key transferable career management principles), Noel Tichy (leader-teacher principles and Leadership Teachable Points of View), John Kotter (change and change leadership), and Jim Collins (Built to Last and Good to Great) and uses them as a foundation for developing and implementing a leaders-as-teachers program that has had great success.

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I have been plagued with a lot of runaway days lately. You can't help but wonder where they are hiding out anyway? They must be with all the socks that get lost in the laundry...

Anyway, I just got done checking second proofs of Christee Gabour Atwood's upcoming book, Knowledge Management Basics, which is due to go press in the next two weeks. This is a nice little book that gets at the basics of knowledge management (which would explain why it's part of the Basics series, I guess), explaining the rationale behind the practice and describing what you need to know to collect, verify, and maintain organizational knowledge.

So what is the rationale behind knowledge management? Essentially the idea is that one the most valuable assets an organization has is the knowledge of its people, and that knowledge can walk out the door at any time. But knowledge management is more than just a way to hold onto to its assets, it's a way to disseminate knowledge consistently throughout an organization. It allows employees to find out what they need to know fast and to find information that's accurate and up to date. If done right, it also ensures that employees get the right information. I know I have worked in places where they do a process one way in one department and do it completely differently (and possibly erroneously) in another department. In other words, it has the potential to create a lot of efficiencies.

To do it right, Atwood stresses that it isn't about the technology (even though she does discuss a wide assortment of technology tools that can be used). If an organization's culture doesn't tend to use certain types of technology, then installing an expensive, high-tech system is going to be a waste of money and time. Instead, it's about coming up with ways to collect the right data and get it verified, put it in a place where it's going to be used, providing incentives to people for using and sharing information, and finally keeping it current.

I find knowledge management to be a really interesting topic because it lets people find their own answers to questions and it allows a certain amount of standardization of processes in ways that make sense. It's also a way to avoid having to reinvent the wheel every time that you start on a new project because you can find out how similar projects have been done before.

 

 

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Recently ASTD Press started up its own Facebook page, where we hope to connect more closely with the ASTD Press community (both authors and readers). Greg Williams, the author of the May issue of Infoline, "Build Your Training Portfolio," has agreed to host a discussion about the best items to include in a training portfolio on the Facebook page over the next few weeks. So click over to the ASTD Press Facebook page now and throw your two cents in!

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/note.php?note_id=77981908179&ref=mf

 

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Performance-review time often scares the willies out of both managers and employees. But it doesn't have to be that way. I am currently reading the edited manuscript for Ultimate Performance Management by Jeff and Linda Russell, and I think they may be on to something.... The book is part of a new ASTD Press series, the Ultimate series, which is a spinoff of the ASTD Trainer's WorkShop series and is designed to give you everything you could ever need to train people in a particular area. Other books that are currently planned for the series are Elaine Biech's ASTD's Ultimate Train the Trainer and Christee Gabour Atwood's Ultimate Basic Business Skills Training.

But I am getting off topic, I wanted to talk about Jeff and Linda's book, which deals with transforming the scary once- or maybe twice-annual performance review into an ongoing development tool that enables people to go from "Eh, well, I am doing OK," to "Wow! I am doing GREAT!" The book presents a series of workshop designs that transform the performance review from a single retrospective event into an ongoing, forward-looking development process. Jeff and Linda present a larger performance management framework called the Great Performance Management Cycle, which has much of its roots in ideas from Chris Argyris, Donald Schön, and others. Implementing the framework probably requires a fairly substantial change in the way that organizations manage their people, but has potentially huge benefits for employees, their managers, and the organization as a whole. This is because the ongoing coaching conversations that Jeff and Linda advocate enable employees to feel heard and be encouraged to do great things, managers are encouraged to help their employees achieve those great things, and the organization as a whole reaps the rewards of all those great things.

The book primarily provides everything that a trainer or facilitator would need to facilitate workshops for managers and employees on the new performance management model, including lots of training tools, participant handouts, training instruments, and learning activities--all of which is good, practical, here's-how-get-it-done stuff. However, for me, the heart of the book is chapter 2, which explains the theory and thinking behind the model and is a fascinating read.

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