A Vivid Preview of US Air Force Basic Training
You can find voluminous information about the US Air Force at
www.af.mil, but if you want to check out the really cool stuff, the place to go is
www.airforce.com.
Thanks to the March/April issue of
Communications Arts magazine, I'm now aware of the immensely engaging and informative
section of airforce.com devoted to detailing what happens during Air Force basic training. You can access this section
here.
You'll find that the navigation is organized according to the eight full weeks recruits spend in basic training:
Week 1 — Fall In
Week 2 — Basic War Skills
Week 3 — Combat Lifesaving
Week 4 — Countering the Threat
Week 5 — Ready to Fight
Week 6 — The Beast (Basic Expeditionary Airman Skills Training — field exercises and combat scenarios)
Week 7 — Airmanship
Week 8 — Graduation
Each week's material includes a video overview, a short inspirational blurb (accessed by mousing over an image on the screen representing the week's focus), video comments from a Military Training Instructor, still photos, and a summary of the schedule for the week.
The site also provides guidance on how to prepare for basic training (e.g. what to study in advance, what to pack, and what not to pack).
On every screeen a visitor is one click away from launching an online chat with an "advisor" or launching a tool for finding the nearest Air Force recruiter.
Visitors can also:
- click on "See What It's Like" to access video on such activities as combat search and rescue, serving on a bomb squad, and special ops.
- try various interactive features, such as "Train a Military Working Dog," "Refuel a Plane," "Launch a Rocket into Space," and "Fly with the Thunderbirds."
- play simulation games
The basic training section of airforce. com is the handiwork of
GSD&M Idea City.
###Labels: Branding, Documentation, Military training, Persuasion, Simulation
Working People of Holyoke IV: Holyoke Heritage State Park
Wikipedia provides the
basic information:
Holyoke Heritage State Park celebrates the history and culture of the City of Holyoke, Massachusetts. It is operated and managed by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. Park features include a visitor center with exhibits about paper manufacturing and Holyoke's industrial and cultural history. Admission to the park and visitor center is free.
The Holyoke Merry-Go-Round, the Children's Museum at Holyoke and the Volleyball Hall of Fame are located in the park.
The site in which Heritage State Park has been built was once the land used for the William Skinner Silk Mill. Heritage State Park was planned after Skinner's mill burned down [in 1980].
William Skinner's Silk Mill
Holyoke, Massachusetts (1887)
(Digital Treasures)###Labels: Documentation, Innovation, Learning resources
Alfred Sloan's Memoir VII: The Milford Proving Ground
Interestingly, Alfred Sloan has very little to say in
My Years with General Motors about production line workers. On the other hand, he gives lots of attention to GM's managers, engineers, stylists, and dealers.
(click to enlarge)
GM's Milford MI Proving Ground
(gadgetopia.com)For the engineers, one of the biggest steps forward was the creation of the General Motors Proving Ground in Milford MI. As Sloan explains in Chapter 14,
The most important step we took to standardize and improve test procedures was the establishment in 1924 of the General Motors Proving Ground, the first of its kind in the automobile industry. The thought was that we would have a large area, properly protected, and entirely closed to the public. It would be provided with roads of various types representing all the various demands on the motorcar from the standpoints of high speed, hills of various grades, smooth roads, rough roads, ability of a car to move through water — which is frequently required in severe storms — and the like. There we would be able to prove out our cars under controlled conditions both before and after production and we could also make comprehensive tests on competitive cars.
... Michigan is rather flat, and at first we had difficulty locating an area of sufficient size that would give us all the various grades we needed. However, almost every foot of the United States has been measured topographically, and the record was available in Washington. We went to Washington and from the Geological Survey maps available there we determined a location that appeared to fulfill our needs. Then the general executives and engineers of the various divisions and myself spent a day at the prospective site. We walked all over the place, ate a picnic lunch under the trees, and finally came to the conclusion that that particular area of 1125 acres — now 4010 acres — at Milford, Michigan, would meet the requirements we had in mind.
[. . .]
The land was surveyed; the straightaways were laid out so that we could check the effects of different winds on speed; a track was built and banked so that it was reasonably safe to operate cars at speeds up to 100 miles an hour or more. Engineering buildings were erected, so that indoor tests could be made in correlation with outdoor tests. Headquarters and facilities were provided for the corporation's engineers. Separate engineering headquarters and garage facilities were eventually provided for the staffs of the engineering departments of the various divisions, so that they could preserve their divisional autonomy in testing. Chevrolet, for example, could do its own testing if desired, in addition to that being done by the corporation. A clubhouse was erected that provided sleeping quarters, dining facilities, and the like for those attached to the Proving Ground operations, since the Proving Ground itself was a considerable number of miles from any town where commissary facilities were available.
In those days I used to spend a day and a night, sometimes longer, at the Proving Ground every other week. I would go over the engineering of General Motors' cars and competitive cars. I would examine what was being done in the way of testing future products. The Proving Ground thus afforded my associates and myself a wonderful opportunity to find out what was going on in the automobile industry from the engineering point of view. To the original Proving Ground we have since added a special, desert proving ground at Mesa, Arizona [replaced in 2009 by a facility in Yuma], and a station to test cars in mountain driving and a garage and shop facility to service our test cars at Manitou Springs (Pike's Peak), Colorado [closed in 1999].
[pp. 253-255,
1990 edition]
###Labels: Documentation, Management practices, Quality
"The Great Influenza" III: The National Library of Medicine
The
National Library of Medicine is one of the notable developments in US medical research capabilities that
John M. Barry highlights in
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.
Barry explains:
[John Shaw] Billings lay behind America’s first great contribution to scientific medicine: a library. This library grew out of the detailed medical history of the Civil War ordered by the army surgeon general. The army also created a medical “museum,” which was actually a library of specimens.
Both the museum and the history were remarkable. In 1998 scientists at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, a direct descendant of this museum, used specimens preserved in 1918 to determine the genetic makeup of the 1918 influenza virus. And the medical history was extraordinarily precise and useful. …
Billings did not write that history, but it did inspire him to create a medical library of comparable quality. He built what one medical historian judged “probably the greatest and most useful medical library in the world.” By 1876 it already held eighty thousand volumes; ultimately it grew into today’s National Library of Medicine. [p. 45]
###Labels: Documentation, Innovation
The Positive Deviance Initiative
Since I
first wrote about the
Positive Deviance Initiative (PDI) a year ago, the organization's website has been enriched with a range of additional resources.
The most important, dating from May of this year, is a
Basic PD Guide (pdf), consisting of twenty-seven slides detailing the steps in the positive deviance (PD) process. Those looking to try the process themselves will find summaries of:
- When to use the process
- Guiding principles
- General advice on how to proceed
- Effective facilitation techniques
- Types of questions to ask at each step of the process
- Self-evaluation questions for facilitators
- Preconditions for success
- The six basic steps in the process
The diagram below is an example from the guide showing how the PD process was carried out in a project aimed at improving maternal and newborn care in Pakistan.
(click to enlarge)
(Positive Deviance Initiative, Basic PD Guide — pdf)The guide concludes with reproduction of some sample PD tools. Those and additional tools (all pdf) are available at the PDI website, including:
General Tips for Good FacilitationTips for Asking QuestionsDiscovery and Action Dialogue (DAD) Cheat Sheet (geared particularly to looking for ways to reduce hospital-acquired infections)
Generic PD Presentation (22 slides)
Feedback Questions after Discovery and Action Dialogue (action planning, building momentum, assessing the degree of success of the dialogue in terms both of producing actionable ideas and of adhering to a healthy PD process)
There are several tools specifically geared to education projects:
Sample Group DiscussionsIdentifying Positive DeviantsHousehold Visit and Interview GuideThe above lists are only a small sampling of the material available at the PDI website. Anyone interested in delving into the details of how the PD process works, and the stories of real-world examples of how it has been carried out in practice in numerous projects used around the world, will find time spent browsing the site produces a wealth of insight.
###Labels: Documentation
Is that report actionable?
In a world in which managers are typically flooded with information, it's essential to regularly evaluate what's helpful and what isn't.
The November 2009 issue of
Chief Learning Officer has a helpful
article in which
Chris Moore, president of Zeroed-In Technologies, offers a tool for assessing data reports, such as those presenting metrics a company is using to track the results of training.
Moore suggests asking these questions for each report:
- What do you do with the report?
- What decisions does it help you make?
- What is the norm or target for the metrics on the report?
- What actions do you take if the report deviates from the norm?
- On a scale of 1 to 5, how important is this report to your work success?
- How quickly can you refresh the report with current data points?
- Is the report too granualar or not granular enough?
- Who are the other consumers of the report? What do they do with the information? How would they answer these questions?
The idea is to ensure that metrics managers are (ostensibly) monitoring provide information that can actually guide their decision-making.
###Labels: Decision-making, Documentation, Knowledge management
The "Getting Out and Staying Out" Guide
As a follow-on to yesterday's
post, I want to mention the comprehensive guide provided to offenders who are being released from the San Francisco County jail system. It's an exemplary handbook now in its second edition (2008-2009).
Getting Out and Staying Out: A Guide to San Francisco Resources for People Leaving Jails and Prisons is a project of what is now the
Reentry Council of the City & County of San Francisco.
1 The guide has ten sections:
- First Things First — helps the ex-offender get organized by identifying and prioritizing services he/she needs.
- Probation & Parole — four pages on the basics of conforming to probation and parole requirements.
- Identification & Benefits — covers such matters as how to get a copy of your birth certificate and how to apply for food stamps.
- Finances — strongly encourages getting a bank account rather than dealing with check-cashing services; explains how to use the EARN program to get matching funds for education, buying a house or starting a business; provides help on setting up a budget.
- Legal — a listing of providers of low-cost and free legal services.
- Housing — covers permanent housing, emergency shelters, rental assistance, transitional housing, residential treatment facilities, and domestic violence shelters.
- Education & Employment — lists educational opportunities and employment-related services.
- Information & Services — a potpourri of information and service providers.
- Wellness — a listing of resources for physical health, food, mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment, anger management, and case management (e.g., for problems with being violent).
- Families & Children — a listing of services for parents and others involved in raising children.
One other note relating to restorative justice: It's an international movement, as you can see by visiting a website such as that maintained by
Restorative Justice Online.
It was interesting to me to note that non-US materials on restorative justice seem to be more heavily oriented toward victim and community restoration than the San Francisco RSVP materials. I take this as an indication that offender restoration is less of a departure from standard practice in countries like the UK, Australia, and New Zealand than it is in the US, which has a strong thread of retributive justice in its culture.
Nonetheless, professional attention to the restorative justice approach has a
history in the US, with particularly deep roots in Minnesota. See, for example, the website of the
Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking, which is housed in the School of Social Work of the University of Minnesota.
Finally, I would note that
John Braithwaite of Australia is a leader in the restorative justice field, with a considerable body of work to which you can refer for additional insight into how restorative justice is best implemented — so that one maximizes the odds of achieving desired outcomes and of avoiding mistakes.
__________
1 Thanks to my need to understand why the San Francisco Sheriff's Department runs county, rather than city, jails, I am now clued into the fact that San Francisco is actually both a city and a county — an example of a
consolidated city-county.
###Labels: Conflict management, Documentation
A Pair of Pay-for-Performance Cases
There are a couple of short articles by Kevin Gray on BNET.com today that describe the contrasting experiences two organizations had with pay-for-performance compensation systems.
The
not-so-hot case of pay-for performance was tried at Hewlett Packard in the early 1990s. As Gray explains, managers at thirteen HP worksites got approval
to adopt a pay-for-performance model, hoping to boost productivity and encourage a focus on team rather than individual performance. They designed a plan that tied 10 to 20 percent of their workers' pay to their team's performance.
Unfortunately, the results were not good, even after managers made a series of adjustments, trying to tune the system so it would work as intended. The basic problem was that the existence of contingent pay meant workers' motivation was skewed and their morale was depressed. Employees:
- were resentful when circumstances beyond their control, such as slow delivery of parts, slowed them down.
- "refused to allow workers they saw as less experienced join them. Less movement between teams meant that less knowledge was shared or transferred among employees."
- found, if they missed their numbers, that they had trouble servicing mortgages and car loans whose size was based on the their income gross of bonus.
Needless to say, disgruntlement set in. The system didn't even reach its third anniversary before being discontinued.
The moral of the story, Gray concludes, is that "Success is never merely about numbers, so don't turn your reward system into a numbers game." Instead, think about such performance issues as whether your compensation system is compatible with solid inter-group collaboration and steady talent development.
Oddly enough, the
success story Gray writes about
was largely a numbers game, but one that was set up in a context where employees and colleagues were satisfied that the numbers captured fully meaningful information.
The setting was
North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System (NSLIJ), which includes fourteen hospitals with, among them, almost 5,000 beds. The workforce numbers 38,000.
In 2003, NSLIJ agreed to participate in a pay-for-performance study organized by the
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The goal was to see whether the pay-for-performance arrangement would improve the quality of patient care. Gray explains:
The rules were strict. The staff was given 30 measures to assess the treatment of thousands of patients. Heart attack victims, for example, had to receive aspirin within two hours of arrival, beta-blockers at discharge and smoking-cessation counseling. Pneumonia patients required flu screening and an assessment of the amount of oxygen reaching their blood. And surgery patients required antibiotics one hour before the first incision. The hospitals were graded on each criterion and given bonuses based on their performance.
A big part of the reason NSLIJ succeeded with the program was that they invested the considerable time and effort required to get it up and running properly. They trained their staff, they created the necessary documentation, and they ensured that results were monitored by people with authority to make any needed adjustments.
Although Gray focuses on the experience of NSLIJ, he reports that the entire cohort of 275 participating hospitals registered encouraging results. For example, the program was credited with saving the lives of 2,500 heart attack patients in its first three years.
So, now, what's the moral of this contrasting pair of pay-for-performance stories? Most obviously, defining performance appropriately is essential for a program to pay off. What's appropriate in one industry and organization is going to be different from what's appropriate in a different setting.
But it also matters whether bonuses are awarded at the individual level, the team level (the HP case), or the organizational level (the NSLIJ case), which is not something Gray addresses.
I would argue that what is significant in this regard is the degree and nature of the linkages among individual, team, and organization performance. The tighter any linkage, the more important that a pay-for-performance program be directed at the highest level involved. For example, if work is largely accomplished through effective team performance, then well-formulated team bonuses are appropriate. Conversely, where linkages are loose, e.g., where a number of individual contributors are doing the work (as in many sales situations), individual bonuses are appropriate.
###Labels: Documentation, Rewards and recognition, Systems thinking
Jeppesen's White Papers
I was reminded of an earlier
post on how to write good white papers when I browsed through the white papers on offer as part of
Jeppesen's documentation of their Vessel and Voyage Optimization Solutions (VVOS). I was interested in VVOS because it seems to be such a good illustration of how IT can enable substantial improvements in productivity.
As Jeppensen explains in their VVOS
brochure (pdf),
VVOS utilizes advanced routing algorithms to accurately and comprehensively optimize each route for on-time arrival while minimizing fuel consumption and avoiding heavy weather damage. ...
Using sophisticated hydrodynamic modeling, computations, and highest resolution ocean forecasts the VVOS guidance system recommends speed and heading changes to manage ship motions to minimize heavy weather damage. ... VVOS includes a detailed model of ships’ motion, engine and propeller characteristics. This “virtual” ship accurately estimates speed made good under forecast wind, wave and ocean current conditions for a given engine power and propeller RPM, as well as ship motion limitations defined in the “Safe Operating Envelope” [specified limits on such ship metrics as roll, angle of pitch, and acceleration].
VVOS includes a real-time monitoring, recording and warning system for excessive motions and accelerations ... Once underway the system also monitors ship motion response and engine condition, and provides alarms if safe operating limits are exceeded. ...
Once at sea, ships simply download current ocean area forecasts via satellite communication. Routes are modified as new forecasts become available or operational requirements change during a passage. ... [T]he ship's crew is provided with decision support tools which allow them to run through various scenarios, selecting the one which best meets their specific operational objectives.
Jeppesen reports that one of their clients realized these results from implementing VVOS:
- An 80% decrease in hours of delay due to heavy weather.
- A 73% decrease in the number of structural damage claims due to heavy weather; the cost of claims went down 29%.
- An 87% decrease in cargo damage claims due to heavy weather.
- Fuel savings of up to 6% over the sample period.
Unfortunately, I found that the four
white papers Jeppesen offers fall short of the
standards enumerated by
BNET that I referenced in my earlier post.
The basic problem is that two of the white papers, while informative, have not had the benefit of good editing, and the other two are repurposed articles that were written about ten years ago. Jeppesen would be well advised to rework and update their white papers so they really serve the purpose of deepening the reader's understanding of what VVOS does, how it does it, and what the benefits to ship owners and crew are.
###Labels: Documentation
Structured Radiology Reports
The subject of electronic medical records (EMR) is much in the news nowadays, and I know from one recent project I worked on just how complicated implementing a new or upgraded system is for a hospital. (I haven't had any direct experience with getting EMR up and running in a medical practice, but I have no doubt that the complexity and resource demands are daunting.)
The payoff from adopting a well-designed EMR system is also substantial, including as it does, more rapid. complete, and accurate communication among providers; better support of diagnosis and treatment planning; and reduced treatment errors. This is not to overlook caveats relating to privacy, security, and lack of standardization. It's simply to say that medicine needs to keep moving in the direction that other types of enterprises have gone, namely, taking advantage of the power of well-managed IT to increase productivity and quality.
(click to enlarge)
An example of a structured radiology report
(StructuRad)As just one concrete example, I'd cite what is happening in the field of radiology. For some years now, radiologists have been moving toward use of computer-based
structured reporting. A 2009
special report (pdf) from the Radiology Reporting Committee of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA)
1 explains:
Construed narrowly, structured reporting means the use of predefined formats and terms to create reports; in this sense, structured reports are those based on templates or checklists. In a broader sense, however, structured reporting can integrate additional information collected during the imaging procedure, such as clinical data, technical parameters, measurements, annotations, and key images.
Not only does structured reporting help communicate findings clearly, but it also makes the information in reports searchable, which can assist with research, teaching and clinical quality improvement. Structured reports also help with regulatory and billing compliance. Finally, as the RSNA report notes:
Because information in a structured report adheres to predefined format and vocabulary, it is easier to integrate that informtion with generalized knowledge-based resources. Thus, one can more easily integrate structured reporting process with clinical guidelines, collaborative staging tools, educational resources, and decision support.
To stay apprised of developments in structured radiology reporting, you can follow the RSNA
Reporting Wiki.
__________
1 The RSNA's definition of professionalism was the subject of yesterday's
post.
###Labels: Communication, Documentation, Quality
The Maturity Model for DITA
As a follow-on to yesterday's
post dealing with DITA (the Darwin Information Typing Architecture), I'd like to call attention to a
white paper (pdf) explaining how an organization can adopt DITA incrementally.
(click to enlarge)
DITA Maturity Model
(JustSystems [pdf])The above graphic shows the six levels that
Michael Priestley (IBM) and
Amber Swope (DITA Strategies), authors of the white paper, define for gradually expanding the scope of an organization's implementation of DITA.
Level 1: Topics — Migrate existing XML content to DITA — using the appropriate topic type for each chunk of information — in order to establish a single source for each topic. "You can easily generate the same information in multiple formats by specifying a different output type when you publish."
Level 2: Scalable reuse — Enable flexible reuse of information by using maps to assemble each deliverable, such as a manual or a Web page. "Because each map is specific to a deliverable, you can optimize the content to include the organization of the content and the links between the topics for each deliverable type."
Level 3: Specialization and customization — Achieve quality and consistency by defining the content types required to meet different author and audience needs and specifying how to meet those needs using structured, typed content. "In addition to creating new structural standards, organizations may choose to customize transforms to provide customized output deliverables, such as training materials or data sheets."
Level 4: Automation and integration — Adopt a full content model by explicitly defining the different types of content required to meet different author and audience needs, and specifying how to meet these needs using structured, typed content. "Organizations need a CMS [
content management system] to effectively control and automate the content development life cycle. In addition to storing content and providing versioning control, the CMS provides workflow automation support that assists authors in creating, reusing, and publishing. ... In addition, you need to define a robust metadata model to support the content model and apply it to all topics. Lastly, you must have agreed-upon content development processes in order to automate them with workflow control."
Level 5: Semantics on demand — Achieve dynamic personalization by using DITA as a cross-application, cross-silo tool. "This ... becomes a strategy that covers every source of semantic data or content: DITA becomes the common currency between semantic applications. Data can be exposed as DITA maps; structured or semi-structured content can be exposed as DITA topics at various levels of specialization; and unstructured content such as PDFs, images, or multimedia files can be wrapped using DITA maps to provide a common interface for associating and storing titles, descriptions, and metadata."
Level 6: Universal semantic ecosystem — Achieve universal knowledge management. "DITA becomes the semantic interchange standard for cross-organization, cross-standard, universal content use. ... [O]rganizations that make the move to DITA become part of a semantic ecosystem that enables information sharing and collaboration where and when it’s required, without expensive infrastructure negotiations."
You can read a Q&A with Priestley and Swope, in which they talk about the ABCs of the DITA Maturity Model,
here. Note that Priestley and Swope acknowledge that Levels 5 and 6 are pretty much aspirations at the moment. Even Level 4 implementation of DITA is infrequent, so far.
###Labels: Documentation, Knowledge management, Learning resources, Taxonomy and tagging
Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA)
If you are involved in production of documentation that can benefit from chunking and reuse of various modules, you should know about DITA — the Darwin Information Typing Architecture.
DITA was initially developed by IBM, which donated the system in 2004 to
OASIS — the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards. OASIS is now the body that maintains DITA standards.
As explained in IBM's 2001 "
Introduction to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture," DITA
is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. This architecture consists of a set of design principles for creating "information-typed" modules at a topic level and for using that content in delivery modes such as online help and product support portals on the Web.
Over the years, the variety of materials produced using DITA has expanded beyond technical documentation. Also, aesthetically aware authors have advanced beyond spare, default formatting. You can see a sample of recent DITA Web output that includes video
here. This sample is an appealing contrast to more heavily text-based documentation, such as that
here.
DITA's core design principles are:
Topic orientation — DITA is used to create discrete units of information, each of which covers a specific subject with a specific intent.
Topic aggregation — Self-contained topics are combined with other topics to produce documents suited for particular purposes and audiences.
Strong typing — Document type defintions (DTDs) and
schemas guarantee that DITA topic types follow identical information structures.
Specialization — DITA enables extending basic topic types to new types adapted for a particular use.
Common base class — A top-level topic type provides “fallback” for all specialized types. This ensures that content that contains specialized types is compatible with DITA implementations that do not include these particular types.
Once topics have been created, how some or all of them are used in a particular document is defined by a
map. The map organizes the chosen set of topics into a hierarchy (topics and subtopics) and sequence. Use of maps enables a different organization for different deliverables. It also enables reuse of topics.
OASIS's DITA
FAQ provides a good complement to the DITA knowledge base you can access
here. For a practical guide to using DITA, you can read and work through
Louise Kasemeier's 2007 manual and tutorial,
DITA for Solo Writers (pdf).
One last point: The reason this architecture is named after Charles Darwin is explained
here.
###Labels: Documentation, Knowledge management, Learning resources, Taxonomy and tagging
Sloan Course: "Communication for Managers"
The
MIT OpenCourseWare site recently added materials for a Sloan School of Management course in
Communication for Managers, taught by Neal Hartman during the Fall 2008 semester.
Though the materials are not complete — lecture notes for nine of the fourteen class meetings are missing — there are a number of items that anyone interested in this particular skill area will find helpful, even if only as a refresher.
I'd suggest starting with the
notes for the course wrap-up (pdf), which provide an overview of the principles Hartman emphasizes in the course:
- Four types of leadership:
- Visioning.
- Relating.
- Inventing.
- Sensemaking.
- How to do a situation analysis as the basis for devising a communication strategy:
- Define your purpose.
- Analyze your audience.
- Assess your credibility.
- Analyze the cultural context.
- Factors to consider in deciding on your communication strategy:
- Managerial style — distinguished in terms of writer/speaker control and the degree of audience involvement.
- Structure of the communication — direct statement of your main points or recommendation, followed by rationale vs. indirect approach that begins with subsidiary points or with arguments that set the stage for your recommendation.
- Content.
- Communication channel.
- Robert Cialdini's six principles of persuasion:
- Liking — People are inclined to say yes to requests of a person they know and like.
- Reciprocity — People repay in kind.
- Social proof — People follow the lead of others who are similar to them.
- Consistency — In response to personal and interpersonal pressure, people tend to follow through on their clear commitments.
- Authority — People defer to experts.
- Scarcity — Opportunities seem more valuable when their availability is limited.
- The Minto Pyramid (see graphic below, which you can click to enlarge) is a good device for organizing your ideas when you are recommending a change of some sort.
- Principles of effective design of visual aids:
- Consistency in formatting.
- Appropriate titles.
- Purposeful use of color and special effects.
- Clear and uncluttered layout.
- Principles of effective document design:
- Use of subheads to show structure.
- Use of lists to highlight important and conceptually parallel information.
- Use of white space to highlight material and to create transitions through indenting, columns, and lines.
- In-text highlighting of key words and phrases.
- Use of tables and graphs to make evidence more legible.
- Principles of effective cover letters for resumes.
- Importance of awareness of values and perceptions that differentiate cultures around the world.
- Developing your ability to listen actively.
Hartman provides several tools to assist you in preparing your written and oral communications, notably a
Strategy Checklist (pdf), a
Communication Planner (pdf), and a
Presentation Planner (pdf).
###Labels: Communication, Documentation, Hiring and getting hired, Leadership, Learning resources, Persuasion, Upward influence
Management Software for Conservation Projects
As a follow-on to yesterday's
post, I'd like to mention the
Miradi software that the
Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) and
Benetech have been jointly developing since 2007. ("Miradi" is a Swahili word that means "project" or "goal.")
As the developers put it at the Miradi
website,
Miradi is designed to provide project teams with the essential features that they need to design, manage, monitor, and learn from their conservation projects, in other words, to practice good adaptive management. Currently, most conservation practitioners go through the adaptive management process either using pen and paper, or by cobbling together functions from a wide range of programs including flowcharting, mapping, project planning, spreadsheet, accounting, and other software packages. Miradi takes the right functions from each of these different kinds of programs and bundles them together in one easy-to-use integrated package.
To get a project set up in the software, the user works through a step-by-step process that matches the flow of the
Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation developed by the CMP. Those steps are:
1. Conceptualize project1A. Define initial project team
1B. Define, scope, vision & targets
1C. Identify critical conservation threats
1D. Complete situation analysis
2. Plan actions & monitoring2A. Develop strategic plan
2B. Develop monitoring plan
2C. Develop operational plan
3. Implement actions & monitoring3A. Develop short-term work plan
3B. Develop & refine project budget
3C. Implement plans
4. Analyze, use, adapt4A. Prepare data for analysis
4B. Analyze results
4C. Adapt project plan
5. Capture & share learning5A. Document learning
5B. Share learning
5C. Create a learning environment
Close the loopOnce the conservation project is set up in Miradi, the project can be managed and tracked using the various data views the software provides.
The
Diagram View shows the
conceptual model underlying the project:
In a complete conceptual diagram, the overall project scope is linked to specific conservation targets that are each in turn linked to direct threats and the contributing factors that lead to these threats. The diagram also displays the strategies that the project team is taking to counter these threats, showing the key assumptions that the project team is making about how their actions will lead to their desired outcomes. The diagram also allows users to focus on the specific results chain that they predict will happen as a result of their interventions and to determine what indicators they need to measure to test these assumptions over time. [emphasis added]
Other views include the Threat Rating View, Viability Analysis (showing the status of each conservation target, e.g., "coral reefs"), Strategic Planning View, Monitoring View, Work Plan View, and Budget View.
###Labels: Collaboration, Documentation, Knowledge management, Learning organization, Productivity, Systems thinking
Fair Use
The
Center for Social Media, based in the School of Communications of American University in Washington DC, provides a wealth of information on fair use of copyrighted materials.
An early success in clarifying the concept of fair use was the
Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use, released in November 2005. The document was developed by the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, the Independent Feature Project, the International Documentary Association, the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, and the Washington chapter of Women in Film and Video, in consultation with the Center for Social Media.
As reported in an
FAQ relating to the Documentary Filmmakers' Statement, it
has provoked dramatic change in the industry ... PBS and ITVS [Independent Television Service] have used the Statement to release programs, and so have cable casters including IFC [Independent Film Channel]. All four of the national errors and omissions insurers now issue fair use coverage if a lawyer says that the use is within the terms of the Statement. [link added] (For more on the success of the Statement, see here.)
The Statement "is organized around four classes of situations that [documentary filmmakers] confront regularly in practice":
- Employing copyrighted material as the object of social, political, or cultural critique
- Quoting copyrighted works of popular culture to illustrate an argument or point
- Capturing copyrighted media content in the process of filming something else
- Using copyrighted material in a historical sequence
Each of these situations is described, and then the relevant fair use principle is explained, along with limitations on application of the principle.
Similar fair use issues arise in the creation and posting of online videos. Accordingly, the Center for Social Media released a
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video in June 2008 that builds on the work done in developing the Documentary Filmmakers' Statement. The situations covered in the Online Video Code are:
- Commenting on or critiquing of copyrighted material
- Using copyrighted material for illustration or example
- Capturing copyrighted material incidentally or accidentally
- Reproducing, reposting, or quoting in order to memorialize, preserve, or rescue an experience, an event, or a cultural phenomenon
- Copying, reposting, and recirculating a work or part of a work for purposes of launching a discussion
- Quoting in order to recombine elements to make a new work that depends for its meaning on (often unlikely) relationships between the elements
One last item I'd highlight among the resources provided by the Center for Social Media is the
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education. The situations covered in this Code are:
- Employing copyrighted material in media literacy lessons
- Employing copyrighted material in preparing curriculum materials
- Sharing media literacy curriculum materials
- Student use of copyrighted materials in their own academic and creative work
- Developing audiences for student work
An FAQ relating to the Code for Media Literacy Education is
here.
###Labels: Arts, Documentation, Innovation, Journalism, Learning resources
Patrick Coyne on Web Design
The May/June 2009 issue of
Communication Arts presents the results of the magazine's fifteenth Interactive Annual competition. Editor
Patrick Coyne introduces the thirty-five winners with an Editor's column that is basically an anthology of comments on likes and dislikes from the competition's jurors.
Coyne's thought-provoking column doesn't seem to be available online so, with the advice that you try to get your hands on a copy of the May/June issue, I'll provide something of a teaser by citing some of my favorite passages.
"A common thought that pervaded all discussion among the judges was that we really appreciated the minimalistic approach to design, user experience and navigation this year." (A comment from Amber Bezahler, managing director of an ad agency in Vancouver.)
"I was really excited to see some of the mobile stuff, like the iPhone Apps and the smaller Web sites, because they take the other extreme [from info- and media-heavy sites]. They're very small, very efficient experiences, and some are really beautiful and meticulously done." (A comment from Michelangelo Capraro, co-founder of an interactive design firm in San Francisco.)
The dramatic increase in the use of video has been the big topic over the last several years, and this year's jury was particularly critical of its overuse.
. . .
"People still don't know how to handle [video] properly because we're experiencing these crazy-long wait times. For what? As a user, the impact that you're getting in terms of what you're investing timewise isn't quite there yet." (A comment from Stacey Mulcahy, a Flash designer)
"A lot of companies are trying to engage audiences and they thought games would be a good way to do it. In the end I voted most of them out because they were trying too hard, and the amount of fun that you actually were able to have wasn't worth the effort." (A comment from Jason Ring, creative director of an ad agency in San Francisco)
"It goes back to that basic question we ask ourselves a lot, 'Why does this brand need a Web site and who would ever want to go there?' That's not to say that people don't want to interact with the brand or the brand doesn't have something to say to them, but it's really looking at where the right place is for that interaction to take place — with the idea of reaching people where they already are as opposed to driving them to a place where they're not." (A comment ftrom Jay Zasa, executive creative director at a New York ad agency)
You can see the winning interactive projects
here.
###Labels: Communication, Documentation, Usability, Web 2.0
Communicating with the Public - Back to Basics
On April 29
Pete Blackshaw published a
column at adage.com enumerating ways in which the
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is handling communications concerning the H1N1 virus with great effectiveness.
You can skip Blackshaw's opening paragraphs, which basically say that a crisis concentrates the mind, and proceed directly to the ten pointers he extracts from watching the CDC webmaster(s) in action:
- Empower those who want to help others. "Like a growing number of newspapers and blogs, CDC does a really good job empowering site visitors to subscribe to and share its content, especially the real-time information."
- Make search simple and accessible. I'm strongly in favor of every webmaster adopting the convention of putting the search box in the upper right corner of each page. Blackshaw's advice includes: "Repeatedly test [your search capability] with important queries and make sure it works on timely topics."
- Syndicate the message. E.g., use RSS, widgets, Twitter links, and embeddable mobile applications that enable people on their own websites to display CDC content.
- Communicate in multiple languages. The CDC provides information in the languages listed on this page.
- Push mobile as a service extension, and don't make it complicated. If you'd like to get an idea of the CDC's mobile offering, without actually using a mobile device, you can have a look at this page.
- Be simple and selective on Twitter, don't over-complicate. Blackshaw says "the CDC exercised impressive restraint in sharing only the most essential content." My own supposition is that the CDC is culturally disposed to using Twitter in a fashion that involves only tweets that are "important, timely and actionable."
- Prime the messaging. "... by tweeting early, the CDC is helping to frame the public's perception of [the arrival of H1N1 flu] by providing rational and fact-based messaging."
- Update the scorecard 24/7. The CDC has an H1N1 flu "scorecare" on its main H1N1 page that is updated frequently. Blackshaw points out: "It doesn't need to be sexy or flashy; it just needs to be reliable and consistent."
- Exploit sight, sound, and motion. "The CDC is clearly making an effort to provide site visitors with multiple ways and formats to consume this serious content, from video explanations to podcasts featuring health domain experts. It looks a bit clunky at times, but the functionality is all there."
- Ask for feedback For instance, the CDC has a "Tell us what you think about this page" button on its main H1N1 page, and there is a "How are we doing?" button on the Health-e-Card page.
One last observation I would offer is that the CDC has to make innumerable decisions concerning the reading level at which to pitch their text. The balancing act between accuracy and readability is presumably one aspect of their site on which they welcome feedback. They also try to address the problem of different levels of reading ability, and familiarity with technical terms, by presenting information separately for laypeople and clinicians.
###Labels: Communication, Documentation
Continously Strengthening Patient Safety Procedures
Paul Levy, the President and CEO of
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, maintains a blog he calls "
Running a Hospital." One of today's posts reproduces a
write-up by two employees describing how overdosing a patient was avoided, and further, how the root cause of the near overdose was identified and corrected.
As you can see from reading the post, Beth Israel extracted two main lessons from the near-miss:
- Even though an automated medication dispensing machine reduces the risk of mistakes in administering meds, it is still necessary for a human being at the bedside to doublecheck that the medication picked by the machine is correct.
- When a near-miss occurs, all interested parties must be notified so that unwitting repetition of the problem is forestalled. Beth Israel has a safety reporting system into which personnel are expected to enter the details of all adverse incidents. Those monitoring the incidents can then see any trends that suggest a systematic weakness that needs to be fixed.
Since hospitals, like the military, are literally dealing with issues of life-and-death, they have strong incentives to consciously and consistently implement effective operating practices. Thus, the best hospitals serve as good models for any organization looking for specific ways to strengthen its own culture of excellence.
PS. You can watch a
video to hear Levy talking at a 2007 conference in the Netherlands about how to run a hospital, how to use new media, and reasons for an executive to blog.
###Labels: Documentation, Innovation, Learning organization, Organizational culture, Quality, Web 2.0
SmartLessons
One of the short pieces at the front of the May issue of the
Harvard Business Review describes how the
International Finance Corporation (IFC), an arm of the
World Bank that undertakes private-sector investment and provides technical assistance in developing countries, is using a knowlege transfer program called "SmartLessons" for internal dissemination of best practices and lessons learned from various IFC projects.
"
To Boost Knowledge Transfer, Tell Me a Story," by
Shad Morris and
James Oldroyd, respectively business professors at the
Fisher College of Business at Ohio State and at
Sungkyunkwan University Graduate School of Business in Korea, emphasizes the importance of packaging knowledge generated during a project in a way that makes the knowledge memorable. The technique to use is narrative.
Importantly, the narratives published by the IFC in their SmartLessons write-ups are by no means entirely free-form. Rather, as you can see in examples concerning
reform of company inspections in Tajikistan and
establishing corporate governance codes in countries of the Middle East and North Africa (pdf), there is a structure to the narratives that makes it easy for the reader to understand project goals, rationales, processes, and responses to challenges. The lessons learned are explained with reference to the specific experiences that suggest that these lessons are indeed principles that can be productively emulated in comparable circumstances in subsequent projects.
For example, Lesson 1 (of six) from the Tajikistan project is "You need strong credibility if you want key players to listen to you." The commentary on this lesson reads as follows:
In Tajikistan, infrastructure or rural development projects often appear far more urgent than advisory projects. It was crucial for IFC to position itself as a credible actor, first through the high quality of the Business Environment survey conducted in 2003, and then through constant responsiveness to government's needs. The Project reacted swiftly to requests, and provided ample review of international practice. Also, it was essential for the Project to combine readiness for confrontation, and for engagement:- Confrontation — No compromise on the message. Survey results were hard on the government; intense "discussion" ensued, but in the end all key players agreed that the results were valid and had to be acted upon.
- Engagement — The Project did not just provide advice, but argued for it. It also worked with governmental partners directly on legal drafting, instead of just providing them with reports.
Note that the writing style here is plain English, a key point. I'd also mention that as one reads through the whole set of six lessons learned, they parallel quite closesly the principles for community problem-solving advocated by Xavier de Souza Briggs, as discussed in a previous
post.
###Labels: Documentation, Knowledge management, Learning organization
An Ad Agency's Business Development Scorecard
The Cambridge-based advertising agency
PJA has drawn up a
scorecard (pdf) for its business development efforts that can serve as a model for other agencies and as a discussion-starter for companies in any industry that want to systematically improve their approach to bringing in new customers.
The scorecard has five sections:
- The Plan
- Positioning
- The Pipeline
- The Pitch
- Perception/Reputation
Within each section are three or four items to be used in assessing the current quality of business development efforts. For example, the items in the Positioning section are:
We have a positioning statement
A majority of agency staffers can summarize agency positioning
Our positioning deliberately excludes market categories or capabilities that are not areas of strengthThe assessment is on a scale of 1 to 5:
1 "Not on your life"
2 "We have some work to do"
3 "I'd give us a solid 'C' "
4 "Pretty damned sure"
5 "Absolutely"
Obviously, you can adopt your own labels for the rating scale if the cutesy agency lingo doesn't appeal.
###Labels: Branding, Competencies, Documentation, Strategy
