Turtle talk with crush at Disney

My very first ASTD pre-conference session was a session at Disney Institute. I immediately felt as though the little kid in my was reignited and I looked forward to that magical experience like a little girl waiting for a candy bar.

The experience at Disney Institute did not fail to disappoint. After the first half of the day was over, we were required to immense ourselves in a live show called Turtle talk with Crush. Now I knew all about that character Crush from Finding Nemo, but what surprised me was the thought and intelligence that had gone into this show.

Turtle Talk with Crush at Epcot theme park is a live show where kids of all ages can have a conversation with the totally tubular turtle from Disney·Pixar's Finding Nemo.

Located inside The Seas with Nemo & Friends Pavilion in Future World, the innovative Turtle Talk with Crush takes place inside a theater featuring a large "window to the ocean world." After taking your seat, watch Crush swim to the window from his ocean home and begin taking questions and chatting with audience members. He'll also educate you on the importance of protecting the world's oceans.

How Turtle Talk with Crush Works

Turtle Talk with Crush uses state-of-the-art, 3D, voice-activated computer animation. Through this advanced technology, Crush can communicate directly—in real time—and hold unique, improvised conversations with audience members. Each and every show is different.

So how did our show pan out?

Well we had no special kid in the house with a birthday that day. It would have been interesting if there were. We heard that there are special code signs Disney staff would do to indicate to the voice behind Crush that there was a birthday kid in the house that day.

There was a part when Crush swung his cherry red bikini and asked us what we thought of it. Crush even winked at the audience and showed off his cherry red bikini. As it turns out, after the show, Epcot staff were seen asking a particular lady in the audience whether she caught the joke about Cherry. Turns out her name is cherry and she was wearing red that day. J

Adeline Mak

Is Powerpoint Upstaging You? Tips for Improving your presentation delivery.

Speaker: Barbara Roche

Date: Sunday, 22 May 2011-08-31

Having been in the public service for almost 7 years, powerpoint and good presentation skills seem critical as part of our delivery when we present at meetings. However, after sitting through so many presentations in my career, I often step out of meeting rooms wondering about the impact of powerpoint and how it oftens cripples us in our delivery rather than aiding us. There have been many a time I’ve seen presenters reading off the projector screen not knowing they bore their audience. Sometimes, there are too many words on each slide when the use of a picture (painting a thousand words) can seem to be more appropriate.

I was very engaged throughout Barbara’s session. She started off with some typical powerpoint slides and got the audience to name the common errors that even seasons presenters make. I was proud to say I could name almost every one of the errors. The audience were also awed that I pointed out that two rows of font had different types of spacing between them as seen in this table by table example. There was a mix of 1.5 lines spacing and the spacing between paragraphs were also not standardised. I guess I can only attributed it to being trained to see all the ‘tao-gehs’ (¶¶¶¶) in Microsoft word such that my naked eye can spot these errors.

Common errors in powerpoint presentations: 1)      Different fonts used. Decide whether you are using serif or non serif fonts and keep to the same standard throughout the presentation. 2)      Do not use too many contrasting colours in one slide. 3)      Keep is short and simple

Common errors in powerpoint presentations: 1)      Different fonts used. Decide whether you are using serif or non serif fonts and keep to the same standard throughout the presentation. 2)      Do not use too many contrasting colours in one slide. 3)      Keep it short and simple

Knowing your content inside and out is only the first step to a great training workshop. Preparation is second, and the third is effective use of audiovisual elements to enhance the learning. If you are guilty of cramming your slides with too much text, or you have a tendency toward "slide overload," this was the right workshop for many of us held guilty. J This was a workshop I found insightful as it made me aware of the pitfalls of a typical powerpoint presentation. For those who are interested, you can view Barbara’s slides here: http://www.astdconference.org/ice11/Custom/Handout/Speaker19709_Session6016_1.pdf

Recently, I also attended a South Asian Diaspora Conference where a speaker, Mr Siddarth Jain from Playware Studios, talked about www.prezi.com. It is heartening to note that the young ones are embarking on technology faster and better than the older generation. Mr Jain talked about how Playware studios have played an integral part in the Futureschools@Singapore project in Canberra Primary School. This software makes use of whiteboards and slides where multiple slides can also be combined onto one slide in a smart way to captivate your audience. I haven’t had a chance to try it as it is not so-easy compatible but I’ve been fiddling around with it on my Mac at home and hope to test a presentation of mine on Prezi in the near future. Stay tuned!  J

Adeline Mak

Nurturing Profitable Mentoring Relationships

Neil Steimann is the founder of People Dynamics, a business consultancy based in South Africa. During the weekends, he is a volunteer in one of the local projects to rehabilitate lions for release into the wild. Through the interaction between these seemingly unrelated worlds and work, Neil distils lessons on what makes for a profitable mentoring relationship.

In observing two prides of lions, Neil discovered that pride 'A' appeared to specialise in hunting, particularly buffaloes. However, the pride was unable to raise a single cub. This contrasted with pride 'B', which displayed average skills in hunting, but was always successful in raising cubs. Imagine these two prides as teams within an organisation, team 'A' and team 'B'. Just as pride 'A' focuses all its energies into hunting instead of raising cubs, team 'A' will also invest its energies into excelling in its work rather than developing future leaders. In contrast, just as the lioness in pride 'B' invests energies into hunting as well as preparing its cubs for the wild, team 'B' will also invest in both work as well as team development.

Neil suggests that most organisations make the mistake of treating mentoring as HR's responsibility or initiative. Organisations engage in a constant battle to sustain mentoring. "Formal" mentoring in which staff are assigned mentors often struggle because staff perceives that there is no "heart" in the arrangement. "Informal" mentoring is perceived to be natural and authentic, but is time-consuming and does not ensure that all staff receive the benefits of mentoring. Neil suggests that the key to successful and profitable mentoring relationships is a sense of ownership by managers involved in the relationships.

Neil also distilled some lessons on mentoring:
1. Intentionality of exposure will facilitate mentees' willingness to learn.

2. Ensure both mentor and mentee have a clear understanding of what the relationship is about.

3. The importance of crucial conversations in mentoring relationships.

4. Mentoring relationships can be enhanced by some structured maintenance sessions during which mentors and mentees take the time to review the relationship.

Sueann

Blended Learning: Part Two

As with any initiative, we can expect challenges in the implementation of blended learning.  Here are some people-related ones:

Managers

1. Not releasing staff for training

2. Do not participate in staff's learning process

3. Placing obstacles to transfer of learning, largely due to pressure to deliver

4. Not modeling appropriate behavior

5. Block staff's development out of desire to protect own position within the organization

6. Protect the status quo

7. Do not possess skills to develop others

8. Not incentivised to develop others

Learners

1. Do not see the need to be developed

2. Do not see the value of taking time out from work for training & development

3. No consequence for non-participation in training; no incentive for participation in training

4. Cultural differences

5. Programmes cannot satisfy all learners

Organisation / Culture

1. "We've always done it this way!"

2. Operate in silos

3. We want a learning culture, but we don't want to pay for it

4. Sense of entitlement amongst staff

5. Proactive vs. reactionary staff development

6. Check box mentality towards staff T&D

ASTD suggests 4 Cs to implementation success:

1. Communicate constantly to all stakeholder groups involved;

2. Support and nurture the development of a learning community, which is highly likely to mushroom in blended learning environments;

3. Sustain efforts to introduce and integrate blended learning into the organisational culture; and

4. Exercise control over the blended learning curriculum, from planning to implementation.

Here is the output from the class discussion about the blended learning life cycle:

Stage 1: Content Maintenance

Challenge: -

1. Lack of in-house technical expertise to develop / maintain content

2. Version control

3. Too much content

4. Keeping up with technology change

Advice: -

1. Build up an internal team to address issues

2. Invest in dummy-proof technology

3. Put in processes to ensure development and IT teams work closely together

Stage 2: Ongoing Ownership

Challenge: -

1. Some content lie in the "gray areas" with no obvious content owner. Need for cross-agency collaboration.

Advice: -

1. Engage content owners early and maintain constant communication. Do not depend on a single contact and establish relationships throughout the organization.

Stage 3: Ongoing Budget

Challenge: -

1. Annual projections are done very early on. Therefore, they are not entirely accurate, which pose some challenges when we try to deviate from them later on.

Advice: -

1. End the project!

Stage 4: Management of External Resources

Challenge: -

1, Teams work in silos, therefore the programs do not turn out the way they were designed / intended to be.

Advice: -

1. Bring IT in early

2. Unambiguous service level agreements

3. Backup external resources

Stage 5: ROI

Challenge: -

1. Difficult to collect ROI in public service.

Advice: -

1. Substitute with indicative-type questions (e.g. L3 evaluation) or focus on return on expectations instead.

2. Adapt to the business world

Sueann

Raising the Bar: The Modern Approach to Leadership Development

Ms Joan Busch, Director of Leadership Development in United Health Group shared her organisation's leadership development programme, with a special focus on the organisation's Emerging Leaders Programme for new managers and high potential staff.

Being such a vast area of development, United Health Group took the approach of "chunking" key content and messages into easy to pull information to facilitate the development of leadership competencies.  The organisation estimated that only 10% of leadership development can be acquired through formal education, 20% through exposure to "others", and the final 70% acquired through experience.  The organisation sought to weave the 70% and 20% into a semi-formal training programme - the Emerging Leaders Programme (ELP).

The Emerging Leaders Programme (ELP) is a 100% virtual programme.  However, because intact cohorts of new managers and high potential staff are enrolled in the programme, a strong learning and support community is developed at every level.  As additional support to staff, alumni of more senior-level development programmes serve as coach to ELP participants.  Other developmental aids include a comprehensive manager's handbook, as well as a community building programme.  For the community building effort to be effective, Joan suggested that organisations allow participants to take ownership of the programme, rather than having it controlled by HR.  Participants who view the community building effort as a central initiative are less likely to be fully committed to the programme.

To integrate learning, Joan shared that technology has an integral role in leadership development.  At the same time, she reminded the audience that leadership development must not focus only on senior management.  Front line and middle managers also need a lot of development, if not more.  This is because this group form the bulk of organisational leaders and touch the majority of the organisational work force.  Unfortunately, this same group also has the weakest leadership skill sets.

Ms Kim Lamoureux, Vice President of Research at Bersin & Associates was also on hand to share the outcome of Bersin & Associates' research findings on the Maturity Model of leadership development.  In essence, Bersin & Associates categorised 4 levels of organisational maturity in terms of leadership development.

Level 1 - Inconsistent Leadership Training (est. 25% of sample)
Content for training is available, but there are no additional development processes to benefit employees.

Level 2 - Structured Leadership Training (est. 38% of sample)
Training curriculum is well-defined and focused on developing core competencies within individuals.

Level 3 - Focused Leadership Development (est. 28% of sample)
Future-oriented and focus on developing culture and organisations.

Level 4 - Strategic Leadership Development (est. 10% of sample)
Programmes are championed by executive management and integrated with talent management.

Sueann