Make the Most of SME Interview Time! by Michele Medved. “By using these tips to plan, conduct, and follow up on your meeting you can achieve your project goal in a timely and effective manner.”
Your time with subject matter experts (SMEs) is limited because of their own responsibilities and deadlines. It is important to maximize your time with them so that you get the answers you need, while remaining respectful of their limited time. In this article, I offer ideas I have found useful for planning and doing effective interviews with SMEs. It’s all about preparation Any meeting or discussion with an SME requires planning to make sure you ask the right questions, that your SME considers your questions, and that your SME provides you with the right answers.
Remember, you may need to ask more than one SME to get perspective on a topic. Execution Here are some key tips for getting the answers you need in online and face-to-face meetings. Planning Consider the characteristics of the target audience—who are they, what do they already know? Asking. Leo Performance Assurance Solution by Marc J. Rosenberg. “There are many compelling reasons to use performance support in the learning arena, where the demand for greater efficiency and better performance is increasing, and in almost every front-line operation, where higher productivity, fewer errors, reduced costs, and improved customer satisfaction are driving today’s successful businesses.
“What We Got Here Is … an EPSS” by Conrad Gottfredson. Twenty-Five Years Later: Performance Support Adoption by Frank Nguyen. “While the implications of this research will be explored more deeply at Performance Support Symposium 2013 (September 9 – 10 in Boston), initial analysis of the survey results suggests that most organizations are quite adept at repurposing learning content for on-the-job-support purposes.”
Brilliant ideas sometimes take a while to bloom. Here are a couple of examples: smartphones and performance support. You might not think these topics are related, but in an odd, timeline kind of way, they are. Timing is everything If you ask your friends and colleagues about their smartphone, chances are that the vast majority will proudly trumpet their preferred Android, BlackBerry, or iPhone device. But if you ask your friends and colleagues to name their very first smartphone, few if any will answer, “the IBM Simon.” In today’s app-saturated world, it would be hard to imagine purchasing a smartphone that was limited to such humble features.
“What We Got Here Is … an EPSS” by Conrad Gottfredson. “An EPSS is our best option for delivering ongoing strategic and financial value to the organizations we serve.”
In Donn Pearce’s book Cool Hand Luke, each time the captain of Road Prison 36 recaptures Luke he says to him, “What we got here is ... a failure to communicate.” And this just may well be the case now with our conversations around performance support (PS) and its range of incarnations. From Scattered Information to Transformational Performance Support: Where Are You? by Conrad Gottfredson. “The benefits are significant and can be transformational in terms of productivity gained, help desk costs reduced, processes complied with, etc.
Train, Empower, Achieve: New Thoughts in Performance Support by Carla Torgerson & Phillip Neal. “As employees become more mobile and technology continues to advance, organizations have unprecedented abilities to support employees’ performance at work.
Adding a performance support component to formal training allows training departments to bolster performance in ways that are superior to training alone.” The workforce has become more mobile, creating a significant shift in the way business is done. A 2012 Cisco study found that three of five workers say they don’t need to be in the office to be productive. We are seeing the impact of this shift not only on how people work, but also in how they learn and consume content to do their jobs.
For example, let’s say John is a sales rep for a major pharmaceutical company. In the past, John would have taken formal training (instructor-led, online, and Webinar) and the product team or his boss may have provided some coaching. Marc My Words: The Fall and Rise of Performance Support by Marc J. Rosenberg. “Performance support is all around us, from the apps on our phone to the GPS in our car; from a demo on YouTube to that little card we all carry in our wallet that tells us how to retrieve messages from our answering machine.
Performance support is a growing part of life and work. It’s time to make it a central part of our workplace learning strategy. No, better yet, it’s time to make it a central part of our business strategy.” “We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.” – Pogo Then In 1989, I was working with consultant Gloria Gery and a great team of learning technologists at AT&T to figure out our next step in electronic training. We already had a project on the table: create a CBT course on test design and development for instructional designers and SMEs.
The project was both a success and a disappointment. But enthusiasm didn’t fully translate to real traction – a disappointment. Now Fast forward to today. This turns everything around. The Impact and Role of Performance Support: Conrad Gottfredson by Bill Brandon. “Performance support is vital to anyone, whether they’re developing eLearning or classroom instruction – anyone in our profession.
If they don’t face performance support and address it, they stand the chance of failure because we can’t guarantee that people can make the leap from learning to actually doing it on the job.” “What is performance support, and why does it matter?” At mLearnCon 2012 in San Jose, Karen Hyder and Mike Sloat asked Conrad Gottfredson to explain. This short video introduces the vital role that performance support plays in transferring learning from the classroom to performance on the job. Performance Support Infrastructure: Get the Water to the End of the Row by Conrad Gottfredson & Bob Mosher. “Organizations must develop the means of delivering to their employees a commodity as vital as water is to a high desert field.
That commodity is immediate, intuitive, tailored aid that supports effective performance.” It seldom rains in the high desert valleys of southern Utah. Planting crops and keeping them green requires preparation, work, and the miracle of snow. During the winter, snow falls in the mountains around these desert valleys. In the spring it gradually melts and replenishes reservoirs. “We're Lost, But We're Making Good Time”: Performance Support to the Rescue by Conrad Gottfredson & Bob Mosher. “An organization is competent to the degree it performs effectively at every changing moment.
This can’t happen unless organizational knowledge is current, staff skills are up-to-date, and required resources are readily available to support optimal performance. How can you make good time and reach your intended destination without getting lost along the way? The answer lies in your addressing all three phases of the journey of gaining and maintaining on-the-job competency.” In 1972, the American legend Yogi Berra was driving his family to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.
What Is Performance Support?