That’s an interesting definition, no?  Let’s look at it:

• constantly varied
• high intensity
• functional
• preparedness
• work capacity
• over time and varied domains

Those who participate in CrossFit will tell you the workout changes daily – causing a need for adaptability.  Rarely can you get away with not giving all you have.  The wide variety of moves and the often-used collaborative/team approaches means you are often working with someone to develop functional skills.  But don’t get me wrong, it’s highly competitive.  Everyone wants to do his or her personal best, as well as better than everyone else.

That being said, you can find a great deal of support – CrossFit also has an online community model.  Every last workout is published.  They give it away.  You can log all your activity for free.  You can see your progress or benchmark yourself.  You can be as involved or uninvolved as you like.  Some people prefer an independent study – no gym at all.  Others feel the need for support and finally there are those seeking the camaraderie of sweating profusely together.

That sounds a lot like a model for a running a strong business as well.  CrossFit is low-tech fitness.  It requires very little equipment.  It doesn’t focus on a lot of shiny new toys.  The gym is called a box and what a person puts in that box is what he or she can expect to get out of it.  When you show up, you agree to be engaged and present.  It’s not really optional.  It almost abhors “pretty fitness.”  Most participants go to “do the work.”  It’s not a hangout, it’s a workout.  There is no juicebar.  This is a focus on effectiveness and efficiency: the absolute in productivity. You can’t be effective if you haven’t learned the techniques.  You can’t expect to be able to do more with less effort – to get lean, long and strong – unless you’ve shown up continually.  Efficiency only comes with understanding what to do and continuously improving on your ability to deliver.  What’s more, we know it works.

On this blog, we’ve talked a lot recently about innovation, about simplicity as a means to remove obstacles to progress.  We’ve discussed education versus training – understanding why as well as how; developing mastery.

When you seek to reshape your organization, all of these things matter.  So, we’d suggest you go back through that bulleted list.  Determine how you are cross-training your organization to deliver high performance in a dynamic environment, developing deep functional knowledge that increases productivity.

We at Covalent also find the CrossFit model gives us an interesting prototype on which to build.  We continually cross-train our consultants to work toward widely varied goals; to build a broad and deep understanding of techniques that work to deliver results across wildly different situations.  We also ask people to continually act as a community, in giving assistance, offering advice, sharing what we know and how we can help as well as sometimes just offering up a deep throated rallying cry.  We work together and independently to succeed.  We need to deliver both.

We are working hard to keep our skills fresh for our clients, for our communities and for ourselves.  What are you doing to give your organization the same chance?

- Ryan

Training shows someone what needs to be done and when.  It addresses how to complete a specific activity.   Education helps someone understand why something is done – in addition to what, when and how.  When you educate, you allow the user to personalize.  You explain the objective and detail the potential paths.  Then, you enable and support the user in creating an experience conducive to his or her own approach to learning.  Education is about application of knowledge + experience.

Educating someone is truly a look into how humans operate. There are many different topics to address and consider when building an educational program that will benefit an employee’s career and, in turn, a team. I am going to take a look at:

• The brain
• Learning styles
• Change management

THE BRAIN

Below are a couple of images that give an excellent visual context to the brain. The illustration on the left shows the anatomy of the brain and what it controls. The image on the right shows the left and right brain function. While I risk stating the very obvious, though we all have the same brain anatomy, how we each use it varies greatly.

The brain is the most complex organ on the planet. As I’m sitting here, I’m  hoping that the correct synapses fire so that I can write a thought provoking blog post; I realize that the method I am using to write this post is unique to me and my brain. No one has “trained” me on how to write a post, but I have learned through excellent educators and my willingness to progress in my career. One of my teammates may sit and complete an outline, collect manual notes, write a rough draft, revise it and send it for approval. I on the other hand, type and type, then go back and review, edit, create my draft and send it in for review. Different methods, yet both with the same result – a blog post.

If we take that example and look at it on a larger scale with regards to software training – or education depending on how effective the delivery team is – we should ask why we have such a singular approach to the way it is delivered? Typical software training is a boot camp; in a classroom for days and all the information is given to you in an exercise-oriented style. This serves the middle well, but not the ends – people who have a technical proficiency finish the mini-exercises very quickly and commence reading email, texting or something else to engage their minds and hands.  Those who struggle are noted – and their discomfort can be palpable.  Sometimes they give up and try to catch up; a no-win proposition.  Though mass training might serve a purpose, it does not serve the goal of actually engaging the brain, on the brain’s terms. This type of training engages the temporal lobe, but only asks use of the frontal lobe occasionally. Those that need to engage with their own words and actions are at a disadvantage.

For that reason “one size fits all” training is not only broken, it’s potentially dangerous for organizations looking to adopt new technology.  More comprehensive methods, such as video, office hours, desk-side support, cheat sheets and visuals are all important in shaping a better education experience and more proficient user.

LEARNING STYLES

Our brains work different, but how then do we develop an educational model that enables the individual instead of the mass? We must take into account learning styles. There are three distinct styles and these styles must be heavily considered when you are trying to educate someone.

My teammate Stanton wrote a post on different delivery methods called Why is teaching technology still in the dark ages.  It addresses core delivery methods, but don’t overlook role-based quick reference guides, setting up a weekly lunch and share, power user enablement, gamification and post educational surveys in order to keep improving.

How do you know where you fit in? Here is a simple test to help: Learning Style Test

CHANGE MANAGEMENT

I think that change management is over dramatized. Change can be well thought out and managed if you consider that all you are doing is creating a clear path for your employees. Build the path, communicate the path, create a way to receive and process feedback and apply that feedback into the path. The more transparent, the better and easier in the long run.  With marketing technologies, change is a marathon, not a sprint.  Focus on building role based curriculums. Rather than letting your employee stumble through all the materials; create a clear, easy to follow curriculum. Your team will move through the education process at a more efficient pace and allow for quicker success.

As a marketing consultant, I am not interested in just creating a great solution for a client, but also providing a way to share my knowledge to help them to be self-sufficient, so delivering educational content will continue to be an area of great interest to me. If you have a “training vs. education” story to share, I would love to hear it. Email me – lkaufman@covalentmarketing.com

To a new generation email feels old and even “outdated.”  However, for many years now, email is the medium by which companies communicate from a digital perspective (more broadcasting that communicating, but I’m being aspirational).  Customers are all too familiar with it.  They can’t seem to put down their mobile devices or tablets long enough to lose their attraction to it, checking and sending email with friends and coworkers.  Clearly, despite some peoples’ desire to have email pass on to the great “old media bucket in the sky,” it remains.  I hear companies still talking about collecting email addresses so that they can communicate with customers to market a promotion, handle customer service issues and track product shipments, etc…so why aren’t companies talking about collecting a Twitter handle?

Despite our experience and recommendations, I don’t see companies collecting customer Twitter handles as a profile attribute.  From a data perspective, I view a Twitter handle no differently than an email address.  I am pretty surprised that I am not seeing more and more companies storing this vital new information.  Is it because companies have just figured out how to collect and communicate using email?  Is it because companies don’t want to invest in the time and capital to modify their existing customer systems to track this information?  Or is it that companies don’t think it is important to collect this data at this time?  In some cases I feel that the answers to these questions are yes, yes and yes.

It’s always amazing to hear companies indicate how challenged they are with social business, when they are still trying to use decade old marketing and data management tactics to gain ground with customers.  Seriously folks, it is past time to start bashing some silos.  It is time to start collecting more and different information.  It’s time to start not just collecting data but actually using it.

Do twitter handles lose freshness?  Yes.  Do they become dormant?  Absolutely, some of them do – and often quite quickly.   Do they need care and feeding to stay fresh?  Yes.  Do you need to do some work to collect them?  Of course.  However, there are analytic and profile benefits in doing so

Here are five:

Actionability - a quick tweet is far easier to read to than an email – especially while shopping or simply being out and about.

Directness – when you tweet, you share something directly with an individual; and optionally with your community.  It’s not about selling, it’s about sharing.

“Sociability” – the presence of a twitter handle and recent activity provides some validation of social participation, which may drive a different interaction style in customer communications (certainly worth testing).

Topic Analysis – finding out what someone is talking about allows a number of  spinoffs including supporting a Thank You Department; detecting customer service SNAFUs, gaining user testimonials and category/competitor research.

Research – social media can get you answers faster and more effectively than complex and potentially drawn out marketing research.  It’s an inexpensive way to ask people to provide feedback on your new website layout, a store offer, you name it…If you build your community well, people will respond.

While adding Twitter handles may not be an easy task to accomplish, companies should be identifying, tracking and storing them. This very important piece of data can help companies interact with some of their customers every minute of the day – most especially when they are a part of the conversation.  Furthermore, companies have limited its scope to just promoting a brand or handling customer services issues but why not use Twitter in different and innovative ways.  Why aren’t we using a twitter handle (instead of email) to provide direct messages to customers about the shipping status of a product?  Why aren’t companies using Twitter for other types of notifications that have been historically reserved for email.  Email is a dying digital breed, start collecting and associating a twitter handle for your customers…but be ready to start using it because your customers will demand it!

I spend about 40 minutes of my day walking to and from work.  It takes me 20 minutes each way between the office and my home.  I choose to embrace any method of innovation to improve those 20 minutes. Living in Chicago, there is no guarantee that my 20 min walk will be a pleasant one. I am often being challenged by the elements.

I recently purchased a new umbrella to keep dry when it rains.  Yes, I already own multiple umbrellas, but often times with one gust of wind, the umbrella retracts into the convex position like this:

By the time I get to my destination I am just as wet as if I didn’t bring an umbrella at all.

I’ve seen many girls commuting to work carrying a bubble umbrella like this:

I had to have one.  I imagined the benefits I would have by owning one:

• I had never seen a girl fighting the winds that may be challenging her to take her umbrella.
• I would never have to raise the umbrella to look up to see if a light is red or green, I can simply just continue looking straight ahead and not compromise my dryness in an effort to not get hit by oncoming traffic.
• My purse, laptop bag, or anything that I am carrying always ends up getting wet from the rain when I carry a traditional umbrella. My purse will now safely stay dry under the bubble!

What an innovative umbrella!!! I was so excited for all my walks in the rain with it. But I had to ask the question.  Why do I only see women walking with it? Do men not care as much about staying dry? Do men not care about being able to look out straight ahead and see where they were going and not always have their eyes peeled to the ground?

On my inaugural walk with it one morning this week, I happened to walk past a group of four men all gathered outside of a building engaged in conversation.  One yelled out, “Cool Umbrella!” I thanked him for noticing, but I wondered…would he ever use one?

A few minutes later this past me:

I couldn’t help but chuckle as I saw him battling with his broken umbrella.

And while this is not me, this is how dry and happy I look while using my innovative umbrella.

My gut tells me, in the battle of the sexes on embracing innovation…this one goes to the ladies.

But feel free to let me know your thoughts below.

One of our core tenets at Covalent Marketing is to begin knowledge transfer to our clients as soon as possible.  We can’t stress enough that user education is a process, not a one-time class.  We’ve seen one too many organizations make the egregious mistake to wait until the end of the project to begin exposing users to the environment, the forms, the concepts – the application overall.  We promise you that’s a straight shot to user adoption issues.  But just starting early isn’t enough; technique and method count.

Computer based programs and lecturing can work…for some people.  However, what about those who need more frequent refreshers?  Those who are new to the organization?  How can you continue to promote learning for better user adoption and ultimately a smoother running operation?

Here are 3 great training tools/techniques you probably don’t use, but may want to consider:

1. Videos
   We’re all aware they are an option, but rarely take the time to make them.  They are a great reusable asset.  I’d also add that size matters.  Try not to make any one video too long – 8 minutes or less is a good rule of thumb.
   Recommended tool: Camtasia
2. Classroom interaction
   Going back to my DonorsChoose article last Feb, most people are better at ‘learning by doing’.  Have a series of practical and organizationally relevant use cases that string together to demonstrate the principles you’re teaching.  This will reinforce terms, allow people to learn at their own pace and expose where people need more help.
3. Evaluations
   How often do you give a pre-test?  Never?  Well then how do you know what areas to focus on teaching?  How do you start a journey with no beginning?  You can make the test as difficult (or easy) as you’d like – it all depends on what you’re trying to achieve from it.
   Recommended tool: Survey Monkey

It’s time to embrace all the new and updated tools, methods and techniques available, including all their bells and whistles.   Most of them are inexpensive and rather intuitive to use.  And if you provide enough simple and direct entry points for your users, they will learn the content quickly and with far less resistance.

Are there any new teaching tools you use, if so I’d love to hear about it!

Recently, I examined a Gartner “Hype Cycle” for new technology being introduced to the market. When I thought about it and applied the cycle to something, it was as accurate as I expected.

There are five phases to this cycle:

Mentally, I wanted some validation so I chose the first technology that popped into my head, social media

I know it’s hard to believe, but Social Media can be traced back to the mid-to-late nineties. I believe that the Technology Trigger was the creation of Friendster in 2002. In my opinion, Friendster was the original social network, allowing people to connect with each other and be sorted into virtual communities. Friendster’s success opened the flood gates to a slew of copycats, including MySpace and LinkedIn in 2003 and Facebook in 2004. This was the Peak of Inflated Expectations.

Social Media’s Trough of Disillusionment came relatively quickly. In 2006, in order to promote their back to school campaign, Wal-Mart created a social media site targeting teenagers called “The Hub”, The Hub lasted 10 weeks. Some sites may not have closed shop, but changed direction. First-mover Friendster, who started as a social networking, decided to rebrand itself as a social gaming site due to the exponential rise of Facebook.

I believe the supposed Slope of Enlightenment (at least for companies if not their consumers) for social media started when companies realized that social networking sites were prime real estate for advertising their products/services. This is where we see social networks bring in the most substantial chunk of their revenue stream.

Currently social networking is measured by “The Facebook Standard”; however I find it difficult to imagine the emergence of a site that will compete on the level of Facebook near term. Instead, we see the Plateau of Productivity where companies create niche categories, LinkedIn focusing on professional networking, Twitter keeping to their 140 character posts structure, Tumblr acting as a microblogging platform, Foursquare operating in the realm of geolocation…

You can apply this Hype Cycle to many of the technologies we are fortunate to have today i.e. smartphones, tablets, online shopping, etc.

However, what happens next? Growth is not eternal. It’s not guaranteed.

Where is the phase when a technology, that may have previously been a market leader, is turned obsolete by a newly introduced technology? Gartner’s graph ends with the line going up and, as any physicist will tell you, what goes up must come down. I believe there should be at least a sixth phase to the cycle – a transitional phase – showing the decline of the currently accepted technology. In this phase, the current technology is deemed obsolete, and sets the stage for a new product to enter the “Technology Trigger” phase of the Hype Cycle.

The time frame for the sixth phase can vary depending on the technology; for instance, it could be years – and at the pace we are going – maybe decades before social media is no longer popular. But when you look at the market for something like mobile devices, the technological shelf life is relatively short.

In order for this transition to occur, there needs to be a catalyst; the child with a box of matches if you will. My belief is that this catalyst must be a game-changer, something that has never been seen before. We are seeing this with the announcement of Google’s Project Glass (which in my opinion is a rip off of Pranav Mistry’s sixth sense technology). This type of mobile augmented reality is not something that has been commercially provided to the masses, and would change the way that people interact on a daily basis. (Similar to what I said earlier about Friendster and social media right?) After the sixth phase of the Hype Cycle it makes logical sense that the process would continue by moving into the Technology Trigger phase, followed by the Peak of Inflated Expectations, and so on and so forth.

Now I’m no psychic, I don’t believe in telepathy, but I do believe in hard facts and history. And they tell us that change is imminent.

So to paraphrase the late Steve Jobs: Here’s to the crazy ones, may they continue to create the gizmos and gadgets that make all of our lives easier.

And I have no doubt they will.

The arts have  a special place in my heart. I can’t imagine if I hadn’t had the opportunity to go to art class while growing up.  At the same time, I know that funding has been disappearing for art programs in public schools across the country.  While my school did not have a ton of funding for arts programs, I always had a place to go to continue to learn about art and to help keep my creative spirit going.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick wrote something that reminded me of the days of walking into my ceramics class, and I knew that her class was the project I needed to help support.

“ ‘Mrs. Fitz, did you fire my piece?’ I hear that question every day as my students enter ceramics class. It shows how much my students love working with clay. Your help will provide the glazes my students need so they can complete their pieces. Please help replace the glazes we have used so my students can continue their work, so they can continue learning through ceramics. Working with clay is a great opportunity. Please help provide the glazes we need!”

I can’t tell you how many times I walked into my classroom asking if my piece was fired, and feeling the eager anticipation of seeing what your finished piece looked like. (I still feel that when I get a piece ready to be fired today.) I am hoping that Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s students are able to continue learning through ceramics, continue their creativity, and continue to appreciate the arts.

But it’s also wrong.

These song titles were most clearly explained in their original form: text. When they were turned into graphs, they became brain teasers similar to the ones we did in elementary school. Heck, they now require an answer key!

You wouldn’t believe it to look at the graphs that exist in countless presentations, books, etc. but a graph is not a way to misrepresent data, add color to a presentation, or take up space. It is not a redundant presentation of information that was already explained in extreme detail earlier in the information. It really shouldn’t be seen as a complex form of torture invented by nerdy bosses who want to get back at you for the holiday party fiasco, either. Graphs exist to make data easy to understand. Period.

Don’t believe me?

For my next trick, I will turn a ridiculously complex set of information into 3 simple graphs. The social dynamics involved in the love life of a single, extroverted 22-year-old girl, living and working in a large city:

Now let’s compare. This is a discussion that would last 5 good paragraphs in text, or an hour and two cocktails in conversation. After both methods, we would probably need to loop back at some point to refine a point of information.

Explained through graphs, I’m betting it took a maximum of three minutes. Even better, the data is there as a fully thought-out presentation, with no need for the audience to go on a word journey with us. This is what charts and graphs were made to do, and keeping that in mind makes it a lot easier (and sometimes fun) to create ones that are actually useful.

A quick checklist to keep your future graphs on-track:

• Have you already said this somewhere?
• Could your graph be simpler (without losing relevant data)?
• Did it take more time to make the graph than to write the text accompanying it?
• Will you have to spend more time explaining the graph than you spent making it?
• Are there more colors in your graphs combined than there are data sets?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, you’re graphing it wrong. Keep trying and don’t despair! Getting it right when it really matters is something people will notice, and honestly appreciate.

We share our feelings, our frustrations, our playlists, our reviews, our “pins” and our opinions.  From architecture to recipes to DARPA’s new cheetah robot.   Our kids’ artwork, when we’re having our car serviced.  This whole concept of “big data” is centered on very tiny nuggets, pinpoints in fact that tie together data in neat little bundles and amass it until it becomes insight.  And in the end, it’s the ability to connect the miniscule that will have the most value.  There’s precious little remaining under wraps – especially when Target can predict pregnancy based on a few line items on a receipt.

So, why do we do it? Because it makes us real.  Warts and all.  I can publicly decry USAir and express an overwhelming fear of clowns.  One coffee snob can recognize another in about ten minutes in the morning on Twitter.  The music buffs generate continual playlists.  Bots scan that data and invariably send you Walmart giftcard tweets.  However, the bots are not the big risk.  It’s that *someone* can truly imitate you, knowing where you go, and what you do while you’re there.  While the youngest social media users are likely to take privacy risks that scare even the bravest Gen X’ers, we at least acknowledge the reality of broadcasting our every move across the interwebs.  Marketers preying on the public’s deepest fears (whether of dirty dishes or having a disease the newest drug can treat) by being able to better target information and offers is seemingly small in comparison.

Folks, you syndicate your content to the many people and places you put it.  Once you put it out there, you are offered about as much protection from getting burned as a south american bikini bottom.  I am not saying you have to read 9 pages of the iTunes ToS (or any other ToS, Privacy Policy or Ts&Cs).  However, if you are not willing to read it, you can safely bet your data is being absorbed into the Borg.  There are wormholes and sinkholes and blackholes that will suck your data out faster than you put it there.  And that makes you responsible for doing something about it.

• Change your passwords, every month.
• Check your credit regularly.
• Google yourself every other week.
• Use a social media dashboard to track your presence.
• Understand the rules about the content you consume and reuse and share – credit the owners liberally.
• Check your content and sites frequently.  You never know what anomalies you’ll uncover (such as our little weird hiccup over the weekend).

And by all means, accept the risks that an open digital society poses.

Late last year, my Allstate client, Erik Didriksen (@erik_d) and I set out to figure out how an organization can get Marketing Resource Management (MRM) right.  We wanted to ask questions from people who had been there.  We wanted to review the secondary research.  We wanted to paint a better picture of success.  We also wrote about what we found contributed to successful MRM launches.

To do so, we talked to 8 companies who had already implemented some flavor of MRM, spent time with Forrester and Gartner reports, used our own experience in half a dozen or more installs and dealt with our own demons as we lived through the process together.

In the paper, we offer 7 imperatives to get right.  The ones marked with stars are the ones I think are mission critical.

• The Business Imperative ***
• The People Imperative
• The Adoption Imperative ***
• The Support Imperative ***
• The Time Imperative
• The In House Imperative
• The Initiation Imperative