First Things Fast: A Handbook for Performance Analysis (Essential Knowledge Resource (Hardcover)) - Hardcover

Rossett, Allison

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0787988480 ISBN 13: 9780787988487

Verlag: Pfeiffer, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

An Essential Knowledge Resource

THE WORLD OF LEARNING AND PERFORMANCE has changed significantly since the first edition of First Things Fast was published more than a decade ago. This thoroughly revised and updated second edition of the best-selling classic recognizes a world chock-full of technology, economic strains, and opportunities. How do learning and performance professionals plan in this shifting context? How do they take advantage of new human and Internet-based resources? How do they bring their recommendations forward and add more value, no matter where they work? These questions are addressed throughout this new edition.

This important resource is a practical guide that is filled with job aids, design templates, and examples offering step-by-step guidance to the basics of performance analysis.

This new edition includes:

• New questions and templates that reflect the shift of learning and support from the classroom to the workplace, and the blends that provide learning and support in both environments
• Fresh approaches for using wikis, blogs, and online surveys to gather information
• Innovative ideas for tapping into the power of social networking and the possibilities presented for analysts
• Information on the critical link between analysis and evaluation and new guidelines for both activities
• A wealth of new illustrative case examples
• Insightful commentaries from successful leaders in the field who explain how they use analysis to advance individual and organizational strategy

"Allison Rossett combines thought leadership for the profession with practical guidance. This book, the second edition of a classic in the field, is filled with proven practices and ready-to-use tools making this a resource you'll use frequently."
DANA GAINES ROBINSON, COAUTHOR, PERFORMANCE CONSULTING AND STRATEGIC BUSINESS PARTNER

"What I appreciate about this book is that it is a straightforward, practical guide to planning, and it embraces new technology and the convergence of learning and work."
NANCY J. LEWIS, VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER, ITT CORPORATION

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Allison Rossett is a professor of educational technology at San Diego State University and a consultant in workforce learning and performance and technology-based systems. She is the author of the best-selling Handbook of Job Aids (Pfeiffer) and Beyond the Podium (Pfeiffer), both of which are winners of the International Society for Performance Improvement's Instructional Communications award.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

An Essential Knowledge Resource

THE WORLD OF LEARNING AND PERFORMANCE has changed significantly since the first edition of First Things Fast was published more than a decade ago. This thoroughly revised and updated second edition of the best-selling classic recognizes a world chock-full of technology, economic strains, and opportunities. How do learning and performance professionals plan in this shifting context? How do they take advantage of new human and Internet-based resources? How do they bring their recommendations forward and add more value, no matter where they work? These questions are addressed throughout this new edition.

This important resource is a practical guide that is filled with job aids, design templates, and examples offering step-by-step guidance to the basics of performance analysis.

This new edition includes:

• New questions and templates that reflect the shift of learning and support from the classroom to the workplace, and the blends that provide learning and support in both environments
• Fresh approaches for using wikis, blogs, and online surveys to gather information
• Innovative ideas for tapping into the power of social networking and the possibilities presented for analysts
• Information on the critical link between analysis and evaluation and new guidelines for both activities
• A wealth of new illustrative case examples
• Insightful commentaries from successful leaders in the field who explain how they use analysis to advance individual and organizational strategy

"Allison Rossett combines thought leadership for the profession with practical guidance. This book, the second edition of a classic in the field, is filled with proven practices and ready-to-use tools making this a resource you'll use frequently."
DANA GAINES ROBINSON, COAUTHOR, PERFORMANCE CONSULTING AND STRATEGIC BUSINESS PARTNER

"What I appreciate about this book is that it is a straightforward, practical guide to planning, and it embraces new technology and the convergence of learning and work."
NANCY J. LEWIS, VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER, ITT CORPORATION

Aus dem Klappentext

An Essential Knowledge Resource

THE WORLD OF LEARNING AND PERFORMANCE has changed significantly since the first edition of First Things Fast was published more than a decade ago. This thoroughly revised and updated second edition of the best-selling classic recognizes a world chock-full of technology, economic strains, and opportunities. How do learning and performance professionals plan in this shifting context? How do they take advantage of new human and Internet-based resources? How do they bring their recommendations forward and add more value, no matter where they work? These questions are addressed throughout this new edition.

This important resource is a practical guide that is filled with job aids, design templates, and examples offering step-by-step guidance to the basics of performance analysis.

This new edition includes:

• New questions and templates that reflect the shift of learning and support from the classroom to the workplace, and the blends that provide learning and support in both environments
• Fresh approaches for using wikis, blogs, and online surveys to gather information
• Innovative ideas for tapping into the power of social networking and the possibilities presented for analysts
• Information on the critical link between analysis and evaluation and new guidelines for both activities
• A wealth of new illustrative case examples
• Insightful commentaries from successful leaders in the field who explain how they use analysis to advance individual and organizational strategy

"Allison Rossett combines thought leadership for the profession with practical guidance. This book, the second edition of a classic in the field, is filled with proven practices and ready-to-use tools making this a resource you'll use frequently."
DANA GAINES ROBINSON, COAUTHOR, PERFORMANCE CONSULTING AND STRATEGIC BUSINESS PARTNER

"What I appreciate about this book is that it is a straightforward, practical guide to planning, and it embraces new technology and the convergence of learning and work."
NANCY J. LEWIS, VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER, ITT CORPORATION

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First Things Fast

A Handbook for Performance AnalysisBy Allison Rossett

John Wiley & Sons

Copyright © 2009 Allison Rossett
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7879-8848-7

Chapter One

Introduction

Nancy Lewis, then IBM vice president for sales and on demand learning and now the executive in charge of learning for ITT, contributed to the LearningTown blog on April 11, 2008:

Business leaders know that the rate of information change is accelerating, growing faster than our ability to consume it. The result being that we will all have skill gaps, all the time, and that skill gaps will be a constant state of life in the future. We also know that our roles are becoming as complex as the knowledge we work with. There will never be enough time to learn everything we need to learn. There is such a consistent and rapid churn of the skills and knowledge required to maintain job performance that learning can no longer be provided as a set of events. This is the new challenge for learning: enabling people to capitalize on new technologies, discoveries and business insights, to be first to the marketplace with new solutions that exceed our clients' needs and expectations. At the heart, therefore, the essence of any company's ability to adapt and grow is its ability to learn. And that involves new ways of thinking about an approach to learning.

What Lewis is touting is not computers, although technology, of course, plays a starring role in the delivery of learning and support. Lewis's focus is learning in juxtaposition with the work and workplace: "We looked at where learning actually takes place most of the time. It's in the workplace, not in the classroom. We learn naturally on the job. We learn by doing, by solving problems. There will always be a need for formal training, but it will likely be much more in direct support of the capabilities that cannot be learned in the workplace."

Placing learning and references closer to the work is brilliant, except when it is the wrong learning or references. Executives favor such an approach, especially in harsh economic times. Employees reject programs that are extraneous, bloated, or obsolete. That's true in the classroom and online. The big difference is the instructor, present for face-to-face experiences. Instructors typically fix instruction when it is not right. An instructor adds an example to make it more relevant. Another reminds the employee of all that he already knows. Yet another instructor provides an opportunity to tackle a problem that is within the student's abilities, to ensure a success experience. And another links the example to the concept, when the students' faces are blank. Finally, a savvy instructor would recognize when a class, as now written, ignores a critical new product or geopolitical reality. She makes fixes to ensure that the class is timely.

When we diminish instructor centrality in favor of on-demand and workplace-based resources and experiences, more responsibility falls on us. We must be certain about the resonance of our programs. What do our people need? What is top priority? What is already known? For what do they clamor? What will add value? What must they know by heart? What can they seek as they need it? It is performance analysis that answers these questions.

In April 2008, Delta and Northwest Airlines announced their intentions to merge. A Delta learning leader, in a personal email that very morning, shared feelings about the merger. She expressed enthusiasm for it, and closed by remarking that she now needs to get her arms around what Northwest learning is all about and what their people require. She has to figure out how to make this merger work at 550 mph. How does she gain insight into their people, challenges, and programs? What should she do first? What next? And how does she engage colleagues in the process, so that her ideas are not just Delta ideas or habits? It is performance analysis that answers her questions.

A former student provided another example. After a dozen years in training and development in financial services, he reports that he is now, finally, getting more control over the "juicy" projects. "I want to use technology to meet the needs of the far-flung IT community. When their executive asked me to look for ways to improve awareness about system security, I immediately thought about Second Life." Why was Second Life (http://secondlife.com/) such a natural here? I asked. He had reasons that began to bring me around, such as the interest the approach would generate in a skeptical audience and the immersive and vivid nature of the experience. But how would he direct their experiences on his corporate island? How would he rivet their attention, since other even "juicier" opportunities lurked on nearby islands? Given all that could be done, how would he decide what they see, tackle, and do? It is performance analysis that answers his questions.

You could be at IBM or Delta, or even contemplating the design of your corporate island in Second Life. Perhaps your organization is rolling out a new product. Or maybe you are tasked with getting more value from the current learning management system or with squeezing cost out of the current enterprise. Or consider the executive who wants assurance that what his people are studying in class will transfer to the manufacturing floor. Then there is the sales leader who notes that great things are going on across the world and laments that the rest of the salesforce rarely profits from these breakthroughs. Your job is to embrace these requirements as opportunities and to customize programs to ensure performance and results. How do you make that happen? No surprise. The answer is performance analysis.

Where once human resources and training professionals enjoyed a niche defined by familiar activities, such as offering classes or facilitating meetings, now there are urgent expectations about results, speed to competence, benefits and efficiencies from technologies, and eagerness to distribute smarts everywhere, accessible where and when needed.

These expectations define us by customers and causes, not by history, habit, or job title. They lead to tailored services. They lead to data and perceptions gathered from associates, managers, experts, leaders, and benchmarking groups. They lead to solutions enlightened by causes and drivers. They lead to uncovering data in unexpected places, including blogs and wikis. They lead to cobbling together solution systems from across the organization, including assets and experiences that compel attention over time and geography.

The basis for all of this is performance analysis. An effective performance analysis delivers the information and support you need to chart a fresh, tailored approach.

Is This Book for You?

This book is for you if you've found yourself thinking or saying,

I don't know where to start.

I don't know what to do.

I must get it right or I fear they won't use it.

What is performance analysis?

Why should I spend time on performance analysis, when my clients want ACTION?

What would competence look like, really look like?

A certain amount of analysis is critical, I guess. OK, what's the minimum?

They've reorganized, and now I'm in this unit called "client relationships," and we're supposed to be doing performance consulting. What should we do? How might analysis help here?

How do I avoid analysis-paralysis?

How do I get a better fix on what to do...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pfeiffer
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0787988480
• ISBN 13: 9780787988487
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Wiley-VCH GmbH; product_safety@wiley.com; ; Boschstrasse 12; Weinheim; 69469; Deutschland