Several excellent new tools in the
TZ's Trainer
Development Toolkit are free for the downloading, courtesy of this
top-notch UK site. Check out these downloads from 'Toolkit for Trainers'
(2nd edition), Pavilion Publishing, 1999.
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The Role of the
Trainer -- an exploration of the trainer's role in running
and managing different forms of events. |
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Meeting Training
Needs -- a categorization of various ways in which training
and learning needs can be met - beyond standard training courses. |
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Assessing Risk
Taking -- ideas for assessing the level of risk which
training groups are willing to take. |
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What's Wrong
with Pay for Performance?
Training's online cover article looks
at why pay for performance so often backfires. Although the slant
is more directly applicable to HR professionals than to Training's
core readership, this article makes an interesting case for measuring
the right things and ensuring adequate performance management training
for supervisors.
The folks at Lakeland Publishing only publish
a few of their articles online. That's too bad because an article
in the December print edition of Training , "Maslow for a New Millenium"
might have induced a few online readers to subscribe to the print edition.
If Training is delivered to your office in hardcopy, try to find
the time to read this article.
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NewsBriefs from APQC
The
American Productivity and Quality Council
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From APQC's
Knowledge Management Center
Steve Denning of World Bank has written a
superb white paper on one of today's hottest (and most difficult to pin
down) topics. If your organization or client is getting on the KM bandwagon,
What is
Knowledge Management? is a "must read." It can be downloaded
(in .pdf format) from APQC's site.
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Customer
Value Measurement
Customer satisfaction
measurement examines how a company's customers perceive its product/service
quality. Customer value measurement moves
the focus from customers' perception to their real-world behavior --
tracking a company's performance vis-a-vis its competitors on the factors
that drive customers' purchase decisions.
APQC has joined forces
with Dr. Bradley T. Gale, the author of the seminal text, Managing
Customer Value, to conduct a major benchmarking study of "how leading
companies meet the challenges of providing value to customers while rising
above marketplace competition." The proposal printed here contains
more serious food for thought than you'll find in the results of
many studies of similar topics.
If your organization
is concerned about customer retention, be sure to read the content-rich
proposal for this study, which will be completed in February of 1999. Customer
Value is a core area of concentration here at Major Media Learning Resources,
so we're eagerly awaiting the study results.
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Tacit Knowledge
in Organizations
This month's lead article
from ASTD's flagship publication gives a trendy new label to the issue
of identifying and transferring the skills and thought processes that makes
top performers so effective, and the question of whether it is even possible
to do so.
Despite the new name
(Tacit Knowledge), it's an old quandary and, as this article tacitly implies,
one that has yet to be resolved. There's little meat in this article for
T&D or OD pro's, while newcomers to either field are unlikely to find
much they can translate into action. Unless "Tacit Knowledge" is
your organization's latest buzz-word, or your professor wants a paper on
the subject, this is probably an article you can safely skip.
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What Makes
a Great Tech Trainer?
What are the most important
skills for tech trainers to
have now, and what will become more--or less--valuable in training
as technologies continue
to advance? Do the ASTD training competencies really relate
to the real world of technical training? As the debate goes on, A
Trainer's Guide to Skill Building provides technical trainers and their
managers with some answers to these critical questions.
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How Will
The Face of Training Change in the Next 2 Years?
Although this round-up
of views from eight members of Technical Training's Review Board
is ostensibly targeted to technical training professionals, the thoughtful
opinions expressed are highly relevant to anyone in the larger T&D
community. The wide-ranging perspectives of this group of experts
provide a fuller (and more balanced) discussion of the changes we all face
than we have seen in other articles on this subject.
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Where Technology
and Training Meet
Another excellent article
that's not just for technical trainers, this provocative piece examines
how trainers will be affected by the rapid convergence of training and
technology, "from Web-based instruction and distance learning to virtual
reality and online peer communities." Though it may not convince
you to "lay down your flip charts," as author Richard Koonce suggests,
the points he presents are highly relevant to most training and instructional
design professionals.
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Baldrige
Award Winners Announced Two large
manufacturers of aircraft and industrial gas turbines and a small manufacturer
of identification and information labels were announced as the 1998 Baldrige
winners on November 17. If you missed it, here's
the link to the press release.
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Is OD Meant
to Be Relevant?
In this thought provoking
(and provocative) essay, Dave Nicoll, Ph.D. (the editor of OD Practitioner)
wonders if the traditional field of Organizational Development, with its
emphasis on the role of human values and feelings in the workplace, is
directly relevant to managers in today's "rational," value-neutral workplace.
His viewpoint turns the question on its ear, as he makes a case for the
proposition that perhaps OD isn't meant to directly increase profits
and productivity.
Will this article
be relevant to you? Unless you have a strong background in OD theory and
practice, the answer is "probably not." But if you're an experienced
OD consultant, we think it's a must read that's likely to make you question
some of your own unconcious assumptions whether or not you agree with the
author's conclusions. In fact, that's probably his intent.
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Toward a
Knowledge Ecology for Organizational White-Waters
Yogesh Malhotra, Ph.D.'s key note presentation,
at Knowledge Ecology Fair 98: Beyond Knowledge Management, focuses on the
limitations of off-the-shelf knowledge management technology for dealing
with a "dynamically changing" discontinuous business environment.
Arguing that hardware and software solutions
"may be adequate for stable and predictable organizational environments,"
the author looks beyond most IT solutions to consider Knowledge Management
as a "live process" that may need to be more precognitive than predictive.
Note: Although this paper is clearly
not for the KM neophyte, the Knowledge Network home page provides an array
of information of if you need to get up to speed on the subject quickly.
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Send
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