Most of you may find the famous admonition to physicians familiar: “Physician, Heal Thyself.” Not to be confused with the hyppocratic oath: “Do No Harm.” Both are useful for trainers and others working in human performance.
I was recently viewing Marcus Buckingham’s profound “Trombone Player Wanted” and was moved by how effectively he makes the point (over and over) that people do best what pleases them most. The corrolate is that people won’t do what they don’t like no matter how much you train them.
Well, they will somewhat.
Reluctantly.
Grudgingly.
Possibly at some personal cost to their sense of balance, harmony, self-worth.
When I speak with out-of-work trainers and instructional designers I oftentimes find them struggling with this balance. How to find a job that doesn’t have too much obnoxosity involved. Some people won’t apply for a job that involves classroom delivery. Some don’t want a job that doesn’t mostly consist of classroom delivery. Some just came from a job that started out mostly classroom delivery and ended up mostly administration. For anyone considering a job change or stuck in the middle of one, my new admonition is going to be “know what you want to do - with whom - how - and the color of the wall coverings.” The with-whom is important. People who think independant consulting will work but then find the lonliness is getting you down - don’t be surprised! Or the ambiguity of how to do everything - the bookkeeping, marketing, recordkeeping, keeping up on technology, training yourself. Yes, training yourself. Well, who else is going to do it? Trainer - train thyself!
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I recently saw Stephen Krempl, VP of Worldwide Learning for Starbucks, give a presentation on 3-projector presentations. He used 3 projectors, of course, and made some important points about how to boost audience attention, understanding, and recall.
First, when you fill more of the audience’s visual sensorium with your visuals you reduce noise. This is like tuning in your radio and getting rid of the hiss and distortion. We don’t think much about how much the other visual content in the room is diluting the focus of the presentation. The audience is only focused on what I’ve just put on the screen, yes?
No - everything going on in their peripheral vision is competing for their attention, and virtually anything that moves, or even other other audience members who aren’t moving, are adding visual signal to the mix.
Second, it’s well worthwhile to increase the challenge placed on the audience by visuals that require they compare and contrast things. This could be statistical information - past, present, future projections. Design comparisons of one product to another invite comparison - which do you like better? Also, showing several calendarized plans, showing flow charts of different processes, showing visuals with pieces missing - all heighten audience awareness and involvement.
Krempl showed photo spreads of cities across all 3 screens, and would then drop back to using only one screen, having information build from the left screen toward the right, and from the right back toward the left. He calls this approach - in total - instructional geography - using the audience’s visual sensorium to boost attention, understanding, and recall.
I’m going to give it a try.
I know what you’re thinking:
1) How much does this all cost?
2) What sort of room works for this wide-screen formatting?
I think these are interesting issues, but not as important as the paradigm shift issue - if people weren’t using Powerpoint one-projector graphics well, how are they going to learn to use “Instructional Geography?” This is going to be a relatively easy move forward for people who were using single-screen visual aids effectively, and that’s the audience for this technology.
For more info: http://www.trizenter.com
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