"...a thought leader in the Learning and Performance Improvement profession with a track record to prove it..."
-Jim and Dana Robinson
Dick Handshaw, President at Handshaw, Inc., is a consultant, speaker, and champion for real innovation and quality in instructional design. He is a pioneer in the field, with more than 30 years of experience as a learning and performance improvement professional and entrepreneur. Dick has served as a consultant for many organizations to help them establish a results-oriented learning strategy, methodology, and practice.
The presentation sessions are designed for medium to large audiences and are delivered in a 90 minute format. However, most of the sessions can be delivered in 60 minutes with appropriate modifications based on time and audience requirements.
Instructional Design: Demonstrating Value through Results
A decade ago, many were questioning the real value of instructional design (ID). Some practitioners were convinced the ID process had become obsolete. Today, however, it seems that more learning professionals are interested in the ID process. But there can be barriers to getting full support for your ID practice from internal clients and management. In a world where organizations want faster results than ever before, many people don’t fully understand the value of analysis before design, measurable learning objectives, and in instructional design and measurement in general.
So how do you sell the value of ID? Through positive results! For your organization to truly embrace your ID process and to make ID practices sustainable, you must gain the support of your subject matter experts, your clients, your learners and especially management. Participants in this session will discuss strategies for gaining this support and providing real value through ID. These strategies will help participants develop high-value learning for an organization, provide a positive return on investment for project sponsors, avoid costly rework, and strengthen teamwork.
Performance Objectives:
Identify the true cost of learning in an organization.
List three strategies for creating real value and reducing costs with quality ID practices.
Examine three case studies in which ID has provided real value.
Apply three strategies for communicating real value through positive examples.
Doing more with less in the training world is no longer a fad, it’s a trend. Corporations have tried to reduce training costs by sending training overseas, putting content online (often in the form of converted PowerPoint presentations), and making use of webinars and eLearning. The industry has also come up with faster, more streamlined ways to design and develop training.
How has this cost saving affected the bottom line for companies? How has it impacted the quality of training? Are we spending less and spending smarter, or just spending less? Dick Handshaw has a thirty year view of the training world, especially with technologies that are supposed to save time and money. In this session Dick will review strategies that didn’t work and he’ll share tactics to help participants actually do more with less.
Performance Objectives:
Identify the true cost of learning in an organization.
Compare development costs to total learning costs.
Identify development shortcuts that really don’t work and why.
Determine when and how analysis can be a good investment.
Demonstrate how being proactive can cost less than being reactive
Back to Top ________________________________________
SMEs - It’s a Marriage for Better or Worse
As a learning and performance leader, Dick Handshaw gets more questions on dealing with subject matter experts than on any other topic.
Why are SMEs so difficult to get along with?
Why don’t they take the advice of learning professionals on learning related matters?
How can we get them to give us the feedback we need, on time?
How can I keep them from changing their minds and adding to the project scope when it’s too late?
Dick will address these questions and more during this session on Subject Matter Experts. His answers come from several sources including project management process, the skills of performance consultants, and his own experience. Dick has worked with a variety of companies and will share the best practices he has learned from his research and work with SMEs.
Performance Objectives:
Be prepared to implement a process for better management of SME expectations.
Elicit better collaboration in developing learning solutions.
Achieve group consensus for the best possible learning solution.
Back to Top ________________________________________
Leading the Learning Organization
Many people who provide leadership and management training for their organizations also manage their own learning organization. It is difficult to be objective and possibly even more difficult to lead your own team than it is to help others learn to lead and manage.
Dick Handshaw has worked with a variety of large and small organizations and he has managed his own successful learning organization for twenty-seven years. He will share his management beliefs and practices throughout this session.
Dick will break the process down into seven major categories to guide the conversation with a series of interactive exercises. The following take-away items will be based on Dick’s seven topics of leading a learning organization.
Structure of the Organization – Define whether your organization is centralizing or de-centralizing and the impact it will have on learning team leadership.
Mission – Craft a mission statement for your learning team.
Relationship with Clients - Create a strategy for developing and managing relationships with clients.
Talent Acquisition – Design a talent acquisition plan that will support the mission and needed relationship with clients.
Process Management – Determine how you will adopt or modify your process for developing and delivering learning.
Talent Management – Develop a plan for managing and motivating your talent.
Culture Development – “Every organization has a culture whether it’s intentional or not.” Determine the gap in your current culture and the desired future state of your learning culture.
Back to Top ________________________________________
Learner Validation: Why Guess When You Can Measure?
Many people shy away from measuring learning after the fact because it is often time-consuming and difficult. Why not measure the results of your learning while you develop it using a low-cost method of validation with actual learners?
In this session Dick Handshaw will share his process for prototype creation and testing. Participants will learn the keys to gathering usable data for making revisions or design decisions. Dick will share his first-hand experience with participants to help them learn how to measure results that lead to solid improvements to the final product, with no “guesswork” involved.
Performance Objectives:
Select a prototype for a Learner Tryout.
Select sample learners for a Learner Tryout.
Observe and collect data during a Learner Tryout.
Observe and collect data during a Field Test.
Make appropriate revisions based on the data collected.
Get “buy-in” from learners and sponsors.
Back to Top ________________________________________
Getting REAL Value from Your Analysis
Many instructional designers understand that analysis is important, but too often they skip it or do a less-than-effective analysis because they don’t have the time. Good analysis should save time so consistently that if it is done well, it would be the last thing designers would skip when in a hurry. One of Dick Handshaw’s colleagues says, “If you don’t do analysis, you’d better be prepared to do design over and over and over…”
This session will model efficient processes for:
Task analysis
Audience Analysis
Learning Culture analysis
Three separate case studies will be used to illustrate the value provided by each of these processes in actual project applications. Small teams will practice task analysis development for a sample learning task. Once participants have mastered the skills for doing an efficient task analysis, they will never approach a learning project without this valuable step again.
Performance Objectives:
Identify three effective process of analysis that will provide value and shorten over-all development time.
Describe how these processes work in real project work and case studies.
Apply a process for developing task analysis that is reliable and easy to use with the proper amount of practice.
As someone who created his first eLearning program in 1980, Dick Handshaw knows that nothing did more for the advancement of instructional design than the widespread adoption of eLearning. There is a reason for that. It is very expensive to just start creating an eLearning program without at least some planning ahead of time. Dick’s operation of his eLearning business for 28 years has taught him that the appropriate application of instructional design saves time and money, and improves the quality of the outcome. The first half of this workshop will give participants some hands-on practice at developing a task analysis and writing performance objectives. In the second half, participants will use their work from the morning to develop measurement and instructional strategies for eLearning solutions. During the last hour, attendees will have a special opportunity to participate in a virtual session with Handshaw’s senior designers, who create eLearning every day. They will share examples of successful eLearning strategies along with technical tips and advice on tools.
Performance Objectives:
Develop an efficient and useful task analysis to describe the learner outcomes.
Write useful performance objectives to describe the level of measurement required to predict learner performance on the job.
Select a measurement and instructional strategy that will work in an eLearning course.
Select some tools and techniques that will support the development of measurement and instructional strategies that will require learner input and provide meaningful practice and feedback.
Performance Partnering – Proactive and Reactive Performance Consulting
In many companies and organizations it is no longer acceptable for learning and organizational development professionals to conduct business as order takers. Internal consultants are expected to practice performance consulting with their clients in order to achieve measurable returns on the investments made in organizational initiatives. Performance Partnering is focused on enhancing the skills of internal consultants to support the goal of establishing strong proactive partnerships with their clients. The Performance Partnership presentation exposes participants to Handshaw’s two-part process.
The first part of the process is the introduction of proactive performance partnering. Participants learn and practice the skills required to develop the consultative partner relationship with key clients and leaders in the organization. This can be a difficult challenge for some organizations. Participants will be shown positive and unacceptable examples and will be able to visualize the process as they watch one team of participants perform a live role play during the session.
The second part of the process focuses on re-framing. Participants will learn how to handle inappropriate client requests in a way that yields better results for the consultant and the client. One team of participants will develop skills using a re-framing exercise that allows them to play the role of the consultant and client during practice.
Performance Objectives:
Engage clients in discussions about business goals and barriers to performance even when there is no immediate project or opportunity on the table.
Engage the client in an open discussion about business needs and the performance required to support them.
Observe eight skills that will facilitate the proactive interview.
Observe and improve eight skills that will facilitate the re-framing discussion.
Identify opportunities to conduct further analysis of the performance needs in order to identify learning needs.
This presentation is focused on Gaps Map skill building. Identifying Gaps Logic is a skill Jim and Dana Robinson taught during their distinguished careers. Their books on performance consulting are still widely read and considered the blueprint for applying Gaps Logic in a business setting. During the session participants will view positive video examples of how to conduct an interview and begin completing a Gaps Map. The key takeaway from this session is asking the correct “Should, Is, Cause” questions in order to obtain performance relationship data and complete the Gaps Map.
Performance Objectives:
Apply the “Needs Hierarchy” to categorize performance needs in your organization.
Use known information about a performance gap to begin a Gaps Map in preparation for a client interview.
Ask “Should, Is, Cause” questions in a client interview to work toward completion of a Gaps Map.
Identify both learning and non-learning causes that will lead to the development of an integrated performance solution.
The complaint most often heard from learning professionals is that they feel like order takers when they want to be viewed as strategic consultants and business partners. Many learning professionals cringe when a client suggests, “We need to do some good old-fashioned, back to basics training.”
The process of re-framing a training request is an easy and effective way to become strategic and less reactive. In this presentation, participants will learn how to handle inappropriate training requests in a way that yields better results for the participant and the client. One pair of volunteer participants will demonstrate how to develop skills using a re-framing exercise that allows them to play the role of both the consultant and the client as they practice turning a training request into a performance consulting opportunity.
Performance Objectives:
Engage the client in an open discussion about business needs and the performance required to support them.
List and observe eight principles that will facilitate the re-framing discussion.
Identify opportunities to conduct further analysis of the performance needs in order to identify learning needs.
