by Brian Clark | DOTS LMS, e-learning, LMS
There is a lot of discussion about employee face time vs. productive time in both our client community and on some well read blogs and social media. The topic is one that has some importance. We have all lived in a ‘do more with less’ paradigm for many years despite the state of the economy in which we work. The hours that one works is not always a good indicator of the work that is completed. The time and execution ratio often shows a skew that discounts the theory that work hours equate to output or execution. In the knowledge economy that insists much work is self generated the hours worked is a rotten indicator of contribution to an organisation. There are all sorts of variables that contribute to a person’s contribution to an organisation. I would include time spent in planning, innovating, exercising, communicating, learning,creating, and dreaming as time well spent in any organisation that I lead. These measures of time are not dependent upon the time a person spends in the office. In an ideal world people would engage in these activities outside of the work environment. By doing so they magnify the impact they make when they are working. I would recommend you have a look at or re-visit Ricardo Semler. When Ricardo’s work first gained prominence it was pretty scary stuff to a lot of business leaders stuck in command and control. An LMS can provide a powerful platform to support engagement and contribution that is not dependent upon more hours worked. The LMS should be a tool to support people to spend more time exploring, thinking and innovating.
by Brian Clark | DOTS LMS, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Marketing
I came across an interesting blog on the Mindjet site by Troy Larson. There are individuals in some very successful companies that hold the title of Chief Collaboration Officer. In my experience, the contribution that collaboration makes to a competitive business includes:
- A culture focused on activity and execution
- Knowledge and learning is informal and effective
- There is greater resilience against both internal and external forces acting on the business
- Reduced risk of knowledge drain when people leave the organisation
Many of my clients see the use of an online learning platform like DOTS LMS to be an integral tool in supporting a collaborative environment. I have recently been introduced to an online collaboration platform called Podio that is a feature rich, multi- faceted solution that includes knowledge capture, sharing, project and task management, recruitment, customer relationship management among many other features. The client using Podio has a diverse workforce operating in corporate and home offices. The employees are able to access the online Podio environment via a link in the DOTS LMSuser interface.
The technology is only the easy part of collaboration actually. The more difficult aspects of collaboration relate to organisational and individual change processes. The best collaboration tools will not overcome a reluctance or unwillingness to engage in collaboration. The people side of collaboration is where most efforts fail.
There are many reasons for such failure. In his blog, Troy Larson covered the idea of having a person or team accountable for collaboration as opposed to leaving collaboration to individual whim or interest. In your organisation, is there a person accountable for collaboration? If not, what role would be most likely best aligned to plan and execute a collaboration strategy?
by Brian Clark | DOTS LMS, LMS, on-boarding, recruitment
Do you use your LMS during the recruitment process? Our potential candidates able to access your LMS on the web and engage in learning about your organisation or positions available in your organisation? Once you have appointed a new candidate, do you use the LMS to begin the on-boarding process with acculturation, company information and position information? All of these are options that will help increase your productivity and return on investment in your LMS. If you are using DOTS you have a number of tools you can utilise to support your recruitment and on- boarding. You can establish any number of external websites from the website module in your admin settings. On these websites you can add access to surveys, courses, libraries or landing pages off a web marketing/recruitment campaign. The DOTS LMS is acting to engage new candidates and ensure they are motivated and interested in your organisation when they arrive for work. The persons accessing these web pages are completely outside your internal LMS environment. If you would like some more information about these tools and processes please contact us.
by Brian Clark | Business Process, DOTS LMS, learning management systems, LMS
There is always risk with the implementation of an enterprise learning management system. The risk starts early in the planning process with such factors as:
- lack of or inaccurate resource planning
- failure to engage key stakeholders, influencers and decision makers
- business requirements are not specified, incomplete and/or inaccurate
There are two primary facets to an LMS implementation project; technology implementation project plan and the change strategy/management plan. If either or both are deficient in any way the risk of an unsuccessful LMS implementation increases dramatically. It has been my experience that it is more common that organisations fail to plan and execute an effective change strategy than it is to fail in a software implementation, although both are common. In the past month our company has been approached by two companies seeking assistance wtih implementing other vendors’ learning management systems. In one case the vendor has attempted an LMS implementation project with a lack of expertise ‘on the ground’ in Australia. This implementation was attempted from an overseas office with a prescriptive generic project plan that did not address the client’s business requirements. In the second example the vendor completed the implementation and failed to assist in the change strategy implementation. The client team was poorly trained and the user experience suffered horribly. In this case it is going to be an uphill battle to win back the hearts and minds of the end users as well as senior stakeholders.
Learning management systems have evolved to have an enormous breadth of capabilities. Not all clients need all these capabilities but every organisation has unique business requirements, cultures, and operating environments. As a key enterprise software solution it is vitally important that both the vendor and the client are realistic in their implementation project planning to meet clear business requirements. Without this commitment the client is under enormous risk of a failed implementatiion. If you would like further informatoin about learning management system implementation strategy, project planning and business analysis, please send us an email or use the form on this website.
by Brian Clark | Business Process, DOTS LMS
What is the most common issue with LMS implementations? I can only speak for my experience of over 90 client LMS installations. Every software implementation has its share of issues, it is par for the course. However there are a few key issues that tend to compromise a smooth implementation project and contribute to project creep and delayed project milestones.
The first is a lack of clear business requirements. I prefer the business requirements to be written as outcomes as opposed to a wish list of system functionality. The business requirements need to be aligned with the organisation’s strategy and cascaded down to the end user. This takes many different forms but the best results are achieved when the organisation creates the business requirements without influence or conformity to an LMS vendor’s features and functionality.
The second biggie is the a lack of adequate resource planning. There are some clients who want to go down the LMS implementation path on their own. That is fine until we realise that there is one ‘learning and development person’ assigned to the implementation. I need fresh air when I hear, “oh and by the way, our implementation project manager is new to our organisation and part of our graduate intake.” There is a need for adequate resourcing pre-implementation, during the project and of course during the life-cycle of the system.
The third danger is when two forces collide. The learning and development or human resources team collide with the information technology team. This is a good question, “did you guys cross check with IT about hosing the LMS internally or externally?” In some projects I have worked on, the L & D team have opted for a fully hosted LMS option to keep the IT team out of the decision process. In some cases the LMS has been installed on external servers and ready for roll-out before the IT is aware of anything. Not a good plan. I encourage my clients to include the IT team in the whole process. They are the best advocates when it comes time for the LMS roll-out.
Well those are the current top three. If you are experiencing any of these or have a premonition of any one or all situations arising in your project we are here to help.
