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SHARE2012: SharePoint One-liners

April 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I just listened to the keynote, Sarah Haase from Best Buy, speak about User Adoption.

During it she gave the Worst One-liners, and I thought they were quite amusing:

  • SharePoint is great. It’s the users that need help.
  • We work with SharePoint. The kind of user adoption you’re talking about is an urban myth.
  • Just throw SharePoint out there. They’ll jump on board.
  • We have 6TB of data stored in SharePoint. Now that’s adoption!
  • Just cram everything onto the landing page…
  • SharePoint is self-evident. We don’t need any training.
  • I don’t mind if we put this stuff in SharePoint, but it can’t look like SharePoint.
  • Let’s drag all of the files from the shared drives into SharePoint. Then people can use full text search to find everything!
  • We’ll just train people on SharePoint features. That’ll solve the adoption problem.
  • SharePoint doesn’t suck. Your file share sucks!

Now I found this very humorous; however, I found myself agreeing with a few points (one being modified by me).

  • Licensed Full Version of SharePoint is Great. Since my organization uses on the Free version of SharePoint, I found relieved that a product so popular was better than expected or experienced.
  • I don’t mind if we put this stuff in SharePoint, but it can’t look like SharePoint. This is definitely true mainly because SharePoint has done a poor job of branding itself or showcasing it’s various deviations by companies.
  • SharePoint doesn’t suck. Your file share sucks! Again, I used to think SharePoint sucked; however, I’ve learned that, just like any other tool used inappropriately or not as it should, it’s actually quite good and gets the job done well. Yet, I must agree that file share and other similar methodologies also suck.
Filed Under: Learning Technologies Tagged With: ,
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SHARE2012 How Did I Get Here & Do I Belong Here!?

April 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I am an instructional designer, elearning developer, social learning strategist, and an Apple/Mac user wanna-be. Really I see myself as a jack of all trades and master of none, at least IMHO. One role I play at work is a learning technologist of sorts. I love beta testing and investigating new products to determine how my organization can use them (which is how I become no more than a Jack on most things).

Recently, I had a project and due to circumstances beyond my control, we had to push some training to SharePoint. This lead me to request Site Admin access. Having NO IDEA how to use SharePoint, I hit Twitter and a few of my external connections (since I was newer with the company, I really didn’t know who to ask, and I still don’t–”if we only knew what we knew…” [Lew Platt, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard]) helped me create a site and get it ready in about 10 minutes.

Then based on my knowledge of HTML, etc., I created a very basic site that played Captivate courses in SharePoint in a separate window when various image buttons were clicked. Then in Phase 2 of this training program, we expanded the site even further to include technical documentation, communications, etc. Now, that group as well as my group believes that I know SharePoint. Then another group in Learning and Development had a need that they believed the LMS wasn’t going to solve, and they were debating a few solutions. Since this conversation was happening near my cubicle (which isn’t a problem for me since I tune everyone out with social media and my headphones most of the time unless they come to me), I had to walk by the conversation at what point someone asked my opinion. After being brought up to speed, I simply suggested SharePoint. To my surprise, they hadn’t thought about that at all! So I showed them the solution I did for our other internal customer (Compensation), and they immediately decided that it was the solution. So immediate that my now boss’s boss was informed and brought into the conversation with me standing there. Very interesting…

Now since I represent my department on the Social Media Roundtable, in our investigations of social platforms and solutions for my company, we have stumbled on this client and that client. Having thought we found a solution, the solution went up the flag pole only to come rapidly back down. A few in IT have been supporting SharePoint to meet some of the business requirements. Early in these discussions, I met and talked with J. Holston of NewsGator via Twitter only to end the conversation by being a SharePoint naysayer and favorable to another solution, which was on another platform altogether.

And again recently, I was involved in a meeting with Microsoft and another vendor, which that vendor began to talk about their solution and their customization of SharePoint. After the important people asked a few questions, I began inquiring. By the end of the conversation, I found myself being invited by Microsoft to SHARE2012 and being nominated by the group to attend on behalf of my company. I thought, “Great! I have absolutely NO IDEA what I am going to do there!? I don’t even care for SharePoint.” I even tried to get my department to send someone else behind closed doors.

So, you may can tell that I am slightly anti-SharePoint, yet I know SharePoint’s advantage points as it relates to some solutions. Really, here’s how I felt about SharePoint.

So here am I at SHARE2012.
SharePoint Conference

Looking at the agenda, meeting the various power users, mingling with them, talking to the many vendors learning what they do, I’ve learned a ton. However, I am not sure still that I really belong here. I have no decision-making powers. I have no real SharePoint responsibilities within my team. We were on SharePoint 2007 (WSS 3.0 FREE) until the Friday prior (which I had no chance to investigate). I even didn’t come the first day because I didn’t think any of it was relative to me and my job or my responsibilities (though I am writing this in the Blogger’s Lounge, which is awesome!).

Filed Under: Learning Technologies Tagged With: ,
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ROI Training: An Essential for All Instructional Designers

April 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Not too long ago I began my ROI certification with the ROI Institute. There, I learned probably some of the best instructional design, even organizational development, skills I’ll ever need to use. The way I see it, many organizations have training as an under-utilized necessary but dubious department. Really, if you could press them and they would be honest, I bet in many companies you’ll find it as a “necessary evil,” or a black hole of money/spending, or a department in the wild with no constraints and no accountability. Even in some companies where there is some level of accountability, there is the aversion of “too much accountability” because of a variety of reasons including job security, laziness, love of the status quo, etc.

However, for the life of me, I cannot understand why any instructional designer would not want to be ROI certified. I still do not understand it. Even when I didn’t know what ROI meant in its fullness, I still wanted to be trained in it. Here’s how I see it. Any training department, learning and development department, or organizational development department that’s worth their weight, should want the level of accountability that ROI measures bring.

ROI Proves the Department’s Impact & Worth

First, and foremost, it is the most valid way to prove one’s worth to the organization. It’s a concrete method of determining one’s impact to the business and to the bottom line. For example, when I didn’t really know how to do a proper ROI study, I did a ROI impact study on the implementation of GoToMeeting at my last company. It was determined that my training initiative saved the company $1,000,000. Now, I don’t know what that would have translated into as a ROI because I didn’t do it right, but that was the net amount the company saved on a conservative basis. However, now that I know ROI, I bet the ROI of a GoToMeeting implementation and a conversion from ILTs to VILTs was in the hundreds, maybe even thousands percentage points.

ROI Establishes Sustainability

Second, what business unit is sustainable, really, without accountability and measures? A training department and its training initiatives that are linked to the business needs and strategic imperatives is poised to become a focal point of the organization. Training departments who exist for the purpose of ensuring that strategic business goals, objectives and imperatives are met become the life blood of the organization. About a year ago, I was at a conference where I heard two CEOs say that if they could have only one other Chief Officer, they would take the Officer of the Learning and Development Department whether that was the CHRO or the CLO, and this is why.

ROI & Business Impact Measures Help Focus Learning Objectives

Many trainers and instructional designers are hogs of learning. They love to learn for learning sake. Furthermore, they love to create and redesign and redeliver learning (hence the reason they make a very poor trainee). We also speak learningese, the language of trainers and other learning and development professionals. There are glossaries and textbooks with glossaries of all the learning terms that exist. We have rules and governances over learning objectives. Then some organizations have both learning and performance objectives to satisfy all parties involved (which of course, there’s always someone upset about something). Regardless though, just like a high school student, if something is not going to be on the test, we don’t pay attention if it’s not measured. However, if we know a ROI or Business Impact study is going to be done, then we step up our game and ensure that our learning objectives are on par and ensure the best outcome possible.

A Culture of ROI Improves the Quality of the Training

Even in rapid development, ROI studies can show benefit to the quality of the training. An instructional designer, a developer, and anyone who knows that their outcomes are going to be measured both by the impact to the organization in performance as well as the bottom-line will kick in a little extra to ensure that the quality meets their standards before going to the organization.

Summary

Simply put ROI training, implementation, and a culture of ROI will yield far-fetching benefits to all parties involved: the person being trained (the end user of the training), the trainer, the training manager, the training department, and the organization as a whole.

It can:

  • Prove the Department’s Impact & Worth
  • Establish Sustainability
  • Help Focus & Improve Learning Objectives
  • Improve the Quality of the Training
Filed Under: ROI
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