Experiential Learning

Here's a little food for thought, an adult experiential learning model.
See Ed Batista's post for the full details.

Types of data

I was struck on Saturday by a moment of confusion. We were talking about surveys and how they measure people's perceptions; are they then not qualitative in nature?

Nope.

Surveys with numeric responses provide quantitative data (you can add them up).

When I teach measures in my work, I talk about ways to sort measures. One was is sorting by hard or soft. Hard measures look at behaviors; soft measures look at perceptions. So, while a customer feedback survey provides quantative data, it is soft in nature. A measure which looks at customer retention, well, that's a hard data. It, too, is quantitative.

When I teach, I tell people they need to have both hard and soft measures. I think measures are, by definition quantitative. So, what I'm probably saying is that quantitative measures can be either hard (measuring behavior or results: retention rates or achievement test scores, for instance) or soft (measuring how students feel about school or why a new teacher says he quits).

We can have lots of different sorts of data:

• Quantitative vs. Qualitative



• Hard vs. Soft



• Leading vs. Lagging



• Producer-focused vs. Customer-focused



• Activity vs. Results



• Outputs vs. Outcomes

The more of the different kinds we have, the more complete a picture can we paint.

Testing the blog for class

Blah blah blah

Basically, organizational coordination and control is taking a systematic approach to figuring out if you're doing what you wanted to be doing or not. It's the part of planning after you've decided what you wanted to be doing. Below are some of the major approaches to organizational control and coordination.

blah blah

Another book recommendation

I received a sample copy of 212: The Extra Degree by S. L. Parker. The cutline says, "How to achieve results beyond your wildest expectations... the way to think; the way to act."

Now, I'm not sure it's a $10 book, but it is likely worth $10. It's a bit skimpy, but it is packed with concrete suggestions on how to ratchet up the heat in terms of person production and production capability.

I plan on reading 212º and then adding new thoughts and new actions. Join me, if you dare.

Book recommendation: Get It!

A colleague of mine -- a senior consultant & trainer with the Coast Guard -- recommended a beaut of a book to me. I thought I'd pass the information on. The book is Get It, Set It, Move It, Prove It: 60 Ways To Get Real Results In Your Organization by Mark Graham Brown. Brown is a consultant and has written a number of books about management systems.

About Get It, Set It, Move It, the publisher notes

If you seek to produce measurable results in your organization, this book is for you. It provides practical and useful methods that you can use immediately and points out habits you should avoid. Get It, Set It, Move It, Prove It is about getting real results and being able to prove them.

The distinct feature of this book is the four-phased model: "Get It" focuses on your leadership's vision and values; "Set It" improves your goals and strategies and their deployment in regard to ethics and regulatory requirements and performance measurement; "Move It" strengthens your relationships with important customers and the management of employees and key work processes; and "Prove It" helps you supply the evidence that your systems are producing high-performance results.

Said a reviewer at Amazon,

I recently heard Mark Graham Brown speak at a conference and thought he was fantastic. I started reading his new book Get it, Set it, Move it, Prove it and it is a great read. For those of you who are looking into performance management, this book is insightful, humourous and to the point. From hearing Mark speak and reading his book I've come to expect a certain standard and he more than exceeds it in this book. Not only can you relate to the stories and experiences in the book, it makes you think about your organization, what kind of things to avoid and how to better manage your organization's performance.

I, too, have heard Brown; he's an excellent speaker, and this little book is a keeper. The text is available from Amazon, of course, but there's little or no discount from the retail price. And, yes, at $19.95 it's a bit pricey for a 205 page paperback, but the content is worth the money, particularly in the light of this semester's class (and our current HRD project).

Facilitation: Using colored cards

I mentioned last class that we might be able to use a facilitation technique to make management of our participation a bit less intrusive. The technique is to use colored cards. I stopped off at the store yesterday and purchased a package of neon colored 3x5 cards.

How are they used? Well, check out this listing at wikipedia which details two ways to use the cards. I have not used the cards in the manner discussed in the discussion paragraph, but it sounds good; I have used the cards for decision making.

Anyway, food for thought.

Women and leadership

Did you happen to see the latest edition of Newsweek? They have an excellent special feature about women and leadership.

I was particularly struck by the article about San Francisco. Women lead nearly every public safety agency in the city. Police. Fire. District Attorney. And almost everything else like homeland security, emergency management, etc. This hit me:

It's no accident, says Mayor Gavin Newsom, that public safety in his city is managed almost exclusively by women. Except for the district attorney, who was elected in 2003, he appointed them all. "I wasn't looking for the 'woman' candidate," Newsom says. "I was looking for a competent team."

In the post-Katrina world, Newsom reasons, the public demands nothing less than the compassionate, collaborative and practical approach he gets from his women chiefs. And as Katrina showed all too clearly, there is no more critical task in a disaster than the ability of first responders to coordinate and communicate with each other and the public. "America loves the macho guy with the cigar and the crew cut," says Newsom. "But America also likes results. I've often sat in envy of the ability of women to multitask, put ego aside, not complain, and solve the problem."

Anyway, check it out. Good stuff. And, while it's not qualitative research, I do think it would meet specs for qualitative, even if it's not published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Another possible resource as we each tackle the HRD Intervention project

I was reminded yesterday of a book I use in my work as an organizational performance consultant that you might find of use while working through the HRD Intervention project.

Hale, J. (1998). The Performance Consultant's Fieldbook: Tools and techniques for improving organizations and people. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

On Saturday, we were engaged in a discussion as to the definition of consulting. Hale (1998, p. xiv) says, "Consulting is the role each of us plays when we engage in assessment, analysis, and recommending interventions."

The book is fairly detailed and has plenty of tools to help analyze a performance issue. Also, it will keep you away from settling solely on a training intervention. As we discussed, training is not always the best or only intervention to increase performance. For those of us in the training and education field, this is a tough paradigm to break. We must, however, if we are going to be successful as performance consultants.

You can order the book from Amazon (of course).

Kirkpatrick's Four Levels of Evaluation

Here's the website I showed yesterday with the levels of evaluation information.

The first post

This is the first post of a new blog for Legacy Leaders, doctoral students of organizational leadership at Nova Southeastern University.