Training - What is it?

The K. J. Ross & Associates Summer School has been a good opportunity to reflect on what makes a good trainer. I developed a peer review form ages ago to record a trainer's performance, yet there are so many qualities essential to training and presentation, I'm starting to find it hard to place adequate measurements in place to determine if a trainer is ready for the big wide world. In other words, "Who am I to say!".

1. Firstly, by being a trainer, you end up, or have to have, such an in depth knowledge of the subject you are teaching to gain the trust and be perceived as being an authentic purveyor of the information. If the class don't believe you then they won't believe what you teach them and you will fail.
2. Secondly, you have to be able to relax. If you look under pressure, then chances are you are stressed, and the class will read this, as a lack of confidence.
3. You. Must. Engage. With. The. Audience. You are on-stage. You are a performer. It doesn't matter if you have the knowledge and expertise if your delivery style is as dry as a Tanquery Gin Martini without a smidge of Noilly Prat.

3 covers so much.

• Gauge the pace of delivery to meet the brain capacities of the audience. Is this startingly new material for them? Don't say that it is, but slow down. Does it appear like they know it? Speed up, but confirm they are keeping pace.
• Vary your voice. Your voice is a very useful tool for getting information over, but use it too often and its like a waterfall to peoples ears; they hear it but it's a constant stream and doesn't have any detail or clear distinction.
• That means vary pace and volume, including talking quietly and loudly, insert pauses and don't be afraid of dead air, so don't add "umm, err".
• Be careful about moving around too much. They are focused on your voice and face. It is helpful to gauge if they are awake when their eyes don't follow you around room, but make sure you are walking to check the attendees alertness, and to move to a closer position to help engage with them subtly.
• Powerpoint. Its incredibly useful yet deadly. Use it to display paraphrased ideas, rather than lengthy details or descriptions. Use it to prompt you, and project key messages, rather than for it to contain more than you are saying. And whatever you do, never ever ever ever read each slide word for word. You will lose the crowd within 5-10 minutes..
• Use of props. This can be both useful and a distraction. I haven't worked out if there is a magic rule for when the former becomes the latter. Certainly, they are a visual cue when doing a call-back to a previous discussion point, and they might inject humour into the introduction of a topic, but I'm sure there are limits.

There are other aspects too. Some people have a natural ability for quick thinking, and I also think it can be developed in some individuals over time. This allows you to adapt to particular situations, perhaps with difficult students or when the exercise doesn't go according to plan. Saying that, all adaptability does is to provide you a back-up plan, when others might have prepared more fully and hence not needed to adapt.

Training has become one of my main areas of focus over the past 4 or 5 years, and yet it still challenges me; there is always a better way to get your message across. Many more people now consider online training a critical path to rolling out training in the future. Having sat CBT courses when I first joined Ericsson 14 or 15 years ago, I know they are far from replacing a classroom and a skilled trainer. Yet if the skilled trainer provides guidance how CBT might provide a bit of variation in the delivery and present the most appropriate information in an online manner, then we might have some success.

One of aspects I see attendees value in attending IRL courses is the ability to have a skilled trainer relate and explain content to an individual, and enthuse that individual with the same passion in the topic as the trainer. CBT has no passion, so what content is best suited for that delivery? Content that might have heated debate with CBT thereby removing the opportunity for contentious discussion, or where content is bland?

I'm going to continue looking at some open source and commercial LMS and see how well they integrate with our CRM, and while there seems to be something fundamental missing when discussing online delivery, I'm hoping a great epiphany will strike me and make me push ahead with CBT.

'es mad about e health.

I got emailed an article in Computerworld this week, which seem

This article seems to be based on the rants of one individual who is blogging on this topic. The fact that one of the main objectives of this person's blog is to "provide commentary on what seems to have become the lamentable state of e-Health in Australia" and "to foster improvement" is hilarious. Obviously there will be a negative perspective of a topic irrespective of any merits of benefits there might be.

The blogger seems to be aiming target at NeHTA, as he has failed to recognise the challenges of being handed a poisoned chalice. Having been involved a little at NeHTA, it was easy to see that while every effort is being made to define pragmatic Australian standards for e-health information systems, numerous other parties will directly influence the likelihood of success. One instance that springs to mind was NeHTA had developed a simple directory service to identify nodes on the network. It was put forward as an Australian standard, but one vendor who had a hugely complex and excessively featured commercial non-standard product, vetoed the standard, forcing the market place to use it.

When the interests of individual stakeholders trumps the benefits to the health industry, which by it's very nature is expected to be humanitarian and altruistic, you have to question the probability of success.

By no means to I think NeHTA is exceeding expectations; I think as a quasi-government organisation there is a lack of commercial awareness, a work pace that would make chess players fall asleep, and an immaturity of project management, but I don't think this is any different from most organisations, and they recognise the importance of being pragmatic with the suggested implementations. If a vendor already has a product out, or has some of the features, they won't be penalised by the standards, more the level of conformance will be established.

Dr More also seems unaware that as well as defining technical implementations, operational standards are also being defined to ensure the technical implementations are not compromised by poor work practices. Certainly, some areas in NeHTA (although I can't speak for all) recognise that no matter how well the system is designed, if the configuration, operational practices, support processes and policies are weak, the technical systems will be vulnerable.

But hey, I haven't read any suggestions on his blog as to what should happen.

What does Apple do next?

Some interesting conjecture around what it is that Apple will deliver next. The latest idea, or at least it is the idea that hasn't been delivered yet, is an Apple Tablet.

Big iPhone or keyboard-less slow MacBook? Who knows. It is hard to think that Apple would get it wrong though. As a Tablet user (Toshiba M750) I like the concept of the tablet, but there are limitations.

• I like having a large screen
• I get frustrated at having to flip the screen around
• I don't like having to reach over the keyboard, hold the screen still with one hand whilst writing on it with the other.

Yet there are so many benefits and opportunities with a Tablet. I don't know if it comes down purely to limitations of the underlying OS or the understanding of what the problem is, that is meant to be solved by a tablet. For me, I can take notes during consulting, and have an electronic white board when I am training/mentoring. It offers a more accurate control experience, as we are more used to holding a pen and 'pointing' at things than having a slight separation of controlling a mouse to guide an arrow around a screen. I certainly noticed a difference between mouse and stylus navigation and the ease in which I could focus on the task in hand with the latter approach.

So then I find an article which mentions an Apple patent for use of eye-tracking software to allow users to navigate and control a computing device.

Perhaps this will change the way we work. One can hope.

Acceptance Test Driven Development

Interesting presentation on tools and process for Acceptance testing in an Agile environment.

Acceptance Test Driven Development

View more documents from Naresh Jain.