During our 6-week residency in Houston for my daily cancer radiation treatments, Paul and I decided to further explore and enjoy the city as much as we could over this extended stay. A few weeks ago we were in the central Rice Village area, and discovered a a fantastic cupcake shop called Sprinkles, which delivers the best cupcakes I have ever had. Curious to learn more, I did some background research on the company.
In the simplest conceptual terms, performance improvement professionals believe companies have a stackable structure, like building blocks. Each of the different pieces, parts, departments and divisions influence and support each other. Because of this, we see misaligned or missing building blocks as a threat to the entire operation’s effectiveness, reducing the quality of outputs, including products and services. But if you can identify the block that is compromised or causing lower quality in a system, then you can accurately address the deficit to reaching target quality. Start by examining any bad business assumptions, then follow this easy 6-step, evidence-based process to quantify current and desired results, before addressing the issues. This will enable you to make targeted changes to your system, based on quantifiable data, and achieve actual business process improvement that leads to the desired outcomes.
In 2022, the International Municipal Signal Association (IMSA) contracted Change by Design to design and develop legally defensible exams for five public safety worker disciplines, plus new standard operating procedures (SOPs) in the form of process workflows and detailed design documents (DDDs). Following the successful roll-out of the deliverables to the IMSA certification teaching community early this year, discussions were held about additional challenges they faced. As a result of the dialogue, we are pleased to share that IMSA has hired Change by Design for two additional projects for 2023.
Change by Design is happy to announce being recently selected by ISF to fulfill a new contract award. The sub-contract is converting existing coursework into more effective online learning modules for the Florida Department of Health’s (FLDOH) Children’s Medical Services Department. The end result of this project will be better informed, prepared, and competent program staff who are effectively implementing policy in each of their respective geographic regions.
Since recovering (slowly!) from chemo, I've returned to the gym to build back my strength. But recouping takes time, no matter how much I try to increase my level of exercise. Being back in Houston for daily radiation treatments has personally reminded me that memory is an underrated, limited resource that no amount of exercise can expand. Instructional designers know why reducing cognitive load, or the amount of mental processing that occurs in our working memory, is key to helping us handle more situations and improve learning effectiveness.
But why? Because all human working memory allows no more than 5 +/- 2 pieces of information, concepts, or mega-concepts to be held in our brain at one instant. For example: if you 1) have a high-powered or complex job that requires you to change your focus and effort frequently to new and different tasks, 2) you are struggling with a medical issue for your child, and 3) you're trying to quit smoking, that's a lot of cognitive load!
During the past 30 years, a lot of corporate training has garnered a bad reputation. I've heard some say the culprit is over-reliance on PowerPoint or Keynote. Others in our field bemoan expediency brought on by tighter budgets, or instructional designers whose sole qualifications are on-the-job experience. The truth is that training mode, training budget and trainer competency are really not the largest contributors to this problem.
Instead, the real issue is a widely-held misunderstanding by the misinformed majority that presenting information in a pseudo-teaching environment is training. But presenting information is not the same as training. It's just information, presented in an attractive wrapper. Instead, good training aligns with goals and delivers results. And it doesn't have to cost much to be effective. Here's how to easily build a great instructor-led corporate training on a tight budget.
