Richard Nantel

When it comes to music, the world appears to be divided into two types of people:

• People who hear the lyrics to a song

• People who don’t hear the lyrics and instead hear only the melody, harmony, and arrangement

I’m definitely the latter type. After a first listen, I can usually pick up my guitar and play the song. But, I can listen to a song a dozen times without having a clue what it’s about. This leads to smirks around the dinner table when I say something like “did you ever notice there’s religious symbolism in Coldplay’s Viva la Vida?”

My daughters, on the other hand, have all the lyrics memorized after hearing a song a couple of times. I’m envious of their young nimble brains.

Being a strong believer in brain plasticity, the ability of our brains to adapt to new demands, I’ve decided to memorize the lyrics to one song per week. To prepare for this task, I Googled “How to memorize the lyrics to a song” to see if I could find any tips to make this easier. A WikiHow article appeared as the first hit.

The article began by proposing the following:

“1. Pick the song you want to memorize. Obviously, it cannot be an instrumental song, because it has to have lyrics. It helps if it is a song you like and listen to all the time.”

I had planned to memorize the lyrics to some Beethoven string quartets. I’m glad I read this WikiHow article first. Sheesh.

Instructions like this are like the messages legal departments place on products so that their companies don’t get sued: “Unwrap gum before chewing” or “do not place your hands on the grill of the BBQ when cooking.”

Procedural instructions such as those in this WikiHow article probably make the learner lose faith in the value of the content. I hadn’t made it to step two and already felt this page was likely a waste of time.

Have you come across cringe-inducing obvious procedures in your training materials? I’d love to read them.

I just finished reading Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, which explores the psychological influences that can lead us to make bad decisions. One section of this book proposes that only four types of people exist in any group:

• Initiators who always have ideas, propose new projects, and are optimistic about the outcomes
• Blockers who are likely to question and block new initiatives
• Supporters who side with either the initiator or the blocker
• Observers who don’t take sides but prefer to just comment on the matter at hand

You would think you’d like to fill up your team with plenty of initiators and few blockers to help drive innovation. But, that would be risky. Initiators tend to be highly optimistic about any new idea. Without a sobering second thought by a blocker, energy can be wasted on bad ideas.

The risks are significantly higher in the airline industry. Research indicates that a large percentage of plane crashes have been caused by pilots who, as confident and optimistic initiators, attempted dangerous maneuvers. The other members of the cabin crew, too respectful of the captain’s authority and swayed by the captain’s optimism, remained silent. As the author describes it:

“A strong initiator can quell a blocker.”

To address this risk, airline cabin crews are being provided with Crew Resource Management training to learn to become potential blockers when faced with bad or overly optimistic decisions by those in authority. This training program was designed by NASA and is intended to catch bad decisions before they result in loss of life.

“When pilots spot a departure from safety procedures, they are trained to challenge the captain.”

Teams in any workplace should learn these skills. Those in charge need to learn to tolerate dissent. Blockers need to be given the freedom to voice concerns without reprisal and need to be encouraged to provide feedback.

Dealing with e-mail can be like shoveling in a snow storm. Reply to 10 e-mails, press the Send and Retrieve icon, and 15 more arrive. Answer those, and 20 more roll in. If you have an empty inbox, you’re likely unemployed.

To handle this flood of messages, many people keep their e-mail application open at all times; replying to messages as they come in. They become addicted to their e-mail. The result is that their workday never includes uninterrupted blocks of time to focus on tasks that require reflection and concentration.

This type of workday is unproductive and demoralizing. In addition, research indicates it’s bad for brain health. A better solution is to schedule replying to e-mail for specific times of the day, be disciplined about replying to urgent messages first, and leave blocks available to do actual focused work.

Because of the volume of messages we need to deal with, a fundamental skill all knowledge workers need is the ability to manage e-mail. New tools are beginning to appear to help workers acquire these skills. TechDirt writes about one such tool, HitMeLater. Just forward any e-mail to a special address, and the service sends it back to you as a reminder on the date and time you determine.

What a great idea. Gone are the dozens of items I have flagged for follow-up. I’m sold.

This week, Brandon Hall Research analysts Janet Clarey, Tom Werner, Gary Woodill, and I launched a new group blog: Workplace Learning Today. The purpose of this blog is to provide readers with a daily summary of news, events, commentary, and research on all aspects of workplace learning.

I’m pleased to be collaborating with such a smart group on this project. Each analyst has his or her individual areas of interest, which I think will quickly come through in our postings:

• Janet Clarey has an extensive background working in training departments. She’s been in the training trenches and knows the challenges learning professionals face. She’s wonderfully entertaining and our most popular blogger. Her posts are read by hundreds daily.
• Tom Werner has been diving very deeply into Second Life and other virtual worlds for the last few months. Consequently, I pretty much expect to have his avatar show up at our Innovations in Learning Conference while the real Tom stays home and drinks wine. Expect quite a few posts about virtual worlds from Tom until he finds his next big thing.
• Gary Woodill is our resident futurist. Gary is only rarely present, preferring to spend most of his time walking his three poodles in the year 2020. Gary looks at a PowerPoint slide and can’t help thinking it would be better as a hologram. (Unfortunately, he refuses to disclose what the stock market will be at next year. Selfish!)
• As for me, my interests fall more in the areas of science, technology, talent management, and the nature of work. I’ll do my best to spice up posts on topics that might appear to be dull at first glance.

I hope you enjoy this new resource.

Eighteen years ago, I bought the original SimCity game and subsequently went for two days without food or sleep. I obsessively worked away at creating the perfect city filled with happy citizens. The day my virtual city obtained a stadium remains one of the highlights of my technological life.

Games that encourage learners to think like engineers, doctors, lawyers, urban planners, and other professionals are called epistemic games. These applications are now being used in schools to encourage creative problem solving.

Below is a great example from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The lucky students were even able to present their urban plans to the mayor of Madison.

Let’s be honest. It’s been pretty tough for departments to justify purchasing video game consoles for training purposes. Sure, Wii Sports may improve your golf swing or bowling accuracy, but, apart from reducing workplace stress and increasing worker morale, video game consoles haven’t yet made a significant impact on workplace learning.

Thanks to Johnny Lee, you can now purchase that coveted Wii console and write it off as a business expense guilt free. Mr. Lee has hacked a $40 Wii controller to create a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen, and a head-mounted 3-D viewer.

Technically, you don’t need the entire $250 Wii console to create Johnny Lee’s digital whiteboard. His hack only requires a $40 Wii controller, which can be purchased separately from the console, and $10 in electronic parts from Radio Shack. I promise not to tell your purchasing department. Perhaps you can even find a training use for the red-hot Wii Fit.

P.S. Unlike during the pre-holiday shopping rush, you no longer need to camp out all night at your local electronics store to get your hands on a Wii console. Wiis are now commonly available and can be acquired during your lunch break.

Last month, The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University announced its annual Berkman Awards for outstanding contributions to the Internet’s impact on society. One of the winners this year was Rice University’s Richard Baraniuk.

Professor Baraniuk won the award for launching Connexions, a public learning content management system (LCMS) that allows teachers to share digital resources and learning content, modify them as required, and provide them online under a Creative Commons license. This free, open-source platform is a building block toward a system of open educational resources.

The content in Connexions is presented in two formats:

• Modules, which are like small “knowledge chunks,” or learning objects
• Collections, groups of modules structured into books or course notes or for other uses

The site reports that it presently contains “5,690 reusable modules woven into 339 collections” and covers a very wide range of topics of interest to anyone. Readers of this blog may benefit from the following courses on the topic of learning and technology:

• Best Practices in Online Teaching – Pulling It All Together – Teaching Blended Learning Courses (m15048)
• Best Practices in Online Teaching – During Teaching – Promote Active Learning (m14977)
• Learning Design and Open Source Teaching (m14733)
• Building a Learning Community: Democratic Values (m12921)

Many more courses on online learning are available here.

Mr. Baraniuk spoke at TEDS back in 2006 about how digital learning content such as that found in Connexions will replace academic textbooks. His talk was titled “Goodbye, textbooks; hello, open-source learning.” A video of this presentation is available here.

Apple Computer is getting a lot of press these days, but the focus isn’t always on its computers, iPhone, or ubiquitous iPods. Rather, various sources have written about how Apple is run very much like a traditional top-down company. People are told what to do and then sent off to do it. If they do a bad job, they may get yelled at by the boss.

Who would have guessed?

Since reading about Apple’s old-time management style, I can’t help watching the “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” TV commercials more closely to see if the cool Mac guy has bloodshot eyes from crying in his cubicle.

According to Leander Kahney, author of a recent essay in Wired magazine titled “How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong“:

“Whereas the rest of the tech industry may motivate employees with carrots, Jobs is known as an inveterate stick man. Even the most favored employee could find themselves on the receiving end of a tirade. Insiders have a term for it: the “hero-shithead roller coaster.” Says Edward Eigerman, a former Apple engineer, “More than anywhere else I’ve worked before or since, there’s a lot of concern about being fired.”

Apple’s management style seems the polar opposite from what we hear takes place at most modern tech firms, including the world’s most powerful brand, Google. Leander Kahney writes:

“Google’s engineers have unprecedented autonomy; they choose which projects they work on and whom they work with. And they are encouraged to allot 20 percent of their work week to pursuing their own software ideas. The result? Products like Gmail and Google News, which began as personal endeavors.”

Google’s management style sounds idyllic, but I bet the reality of the situation isn’t so rosy. I’m certain there are some team members no one wants to work with and a bunch of projects that need to get done that no one wants to do. I suspect there are even days when the catered meals need salt and the massage therapist’s hands are cold.

From a talent management perspective, I think the Google style may work for Google but is at the experimental stage elsewhere. It’s not yet certain such a high level of freedom leads to greater happiness among employees or a more creative and productive team. Economists would surely say that, given such freedom, team members will inevitably choose individual self interests over what’s best for their colleagues or the company.

The opposite approach, though, of beating employees with a stick, will only be endured by the employee until a better job comes along. Making matters worse, when that employee does leave, he or she will be bitter and will do all he can to hurt the company.

This coming week will mark the 30th anniversary of the birth of e-mail spam. According to technology writer Brad Templeton, the first spam message was sent on May 3, 1978, by a Gary Thuerk to 320 e-mail Arpanet addresses and read as follows:

DIGITAL WILL BE GIVING A PRODUCT PRESENTATION OF THE NEWEST MEMBERS OF THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY; THE DECSYSTEM-2020, 2020T, 2060, AND 2060T. THE DEC SYSTEM-20 FAMILY OF COMPUTERS HAS EVOLVED FROM THE TENEX OPERATING SYSTEM AND THE DECSYSTEM-10 <PDP-10> COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE. BOTH THE DECSYSTEM-2060T AND 2020T OFFER FULL ARPANET SUPPORT UNDER THE TOPS-20 OPERATING SYSTEM.

THE DECSYSTEM-2060 IS AN UPWARD EXTENSION OF THE CURRENT DECSYSTEM 2040 AND 2050 FAMILY. THE DECSYSTEM-2020 IS A NEW LOW END MEMBER OF THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY AND FULLY SOFTWARE COMPATIBLE WITH ALL OF THE OTHER DECSYSTEM-20 MODELS.

WE INVITE YOU TO COME SEE THE 2020 AND HEAR ABOUT THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY AT THE TWO PRODUCT PRESENTATIONS WE WILL BE GIVING IN CALIFORNIA THIS MONTH. THE LOCATIONS WILL BE:

TUESDAY, MAY 9, 1978 – 2 PM
HYATT HOUSE (NEAR THE L.A. AIRPORT)
LOS ANGELES, CA

THURSDAY, MAY 11, 1978 – 2 PM
DUNFEY’S ROYAL COACH
SAN MATEO, CA
(4 MILES SOUTH OF S.F. AIRPORT AT BAYSHORE, RT 101 AND RT 92)

A 2020 WILL BE THERE FOR YOU TO VIEW. ALSO TERMINALS ON-LINE TO OTHER DECSYSTEM-20 SYSTEMS THROUGH THE ARPANET. IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT THE NEAREST DEC OFFICE. FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE EXCITING DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY.

Apparently, old DEC computer keyboards didn’t have a way to turn off caps lock.

Many recipients responded and were not pleased with the commercial nature of the DEC e-mail. One respondent wrote:

ON 2 MAY 78 DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION (DEC) SENT OUT AN ARPANET MESSAGE ADVERTISING THEIR NEW COMPUTER SYSTEMS. THIS WAS A FLAGRANT VIOLATION OF THE USE OF ARPANET AS THE NETWORK IS TO BE USED FOR OFFICIAL U.S. GOVERNMENT BUSINESS ONLY. APPROPRIATE ACTION IS BEING TAKEN TO PRECLUDE ITS OCCURRENCE AGAIN.

You can read other responses to this first spam message here.

Today, commercial spam accounts for an estimated 80-90 percent of all e-mail traffic.

More about the history of spam is available here.

The new Facebook Chat application was installed into my profile when I logged in this morning. I can now chat with any of my Facebook friends who happen to be online and logged in.

That brings the total to three ways I can chat with people through the Web services and software I use on a daily basis:

• Facebook
• Gmail
• Skype

The new Facebook Chat application is bare-bones. Click a little icon to see who’s online, initiate a chat session, type a message, and send. There are no bells and whistles such as file transfers. You can’t add a third person or others to a chat session.

Of everyone at Brandon Hall Research, I was probably the most resistant to using chat in day-to-day work activities. My past experience with IM was that it wasn’t more efficient than e-mail since so many chat sessions turn into long social conversations or brainstorming sessions.

This is going to make me sound square, but I’m slowly coming around to adding a bit of chat in my life. I love being able to see if someone is online, ask a question, get an immediate answer, and move on. Since I want to provide others with this ability, I try to keep logged into Skype and Gmail during the day.

Often, though, the phone starts to ring, the Skype and Gmail chat boxes both pop up, a flood of e-mail comes in, and I just start clicking wildly to set various profiles to “offline.”

I guess you can say I love chat when it gives me what I want but not when I’m providing a service to others. Yes, that’s totally selfish.

I suspect it’s only a question of time before other software I use daily will include proprietary chat features. So, my days will soon be filled with changing the status of my various chat apps to Online, Busy, Away, Offline, Invisible, etc. Perhaps someone will come up with a killer app that changes the status of all of these chat applications with one click of a mouse.