STUMBLING IN YOUR HOME OR SMALL BUSINESS? I became aware of an excellent free resource of online training available for those who have turned to building their own small business enterprise as an answer to the recession. If internet marketing is part of what your home business needs, read on. Otherwise, get back to reading Bob Mager….
I have gotten a great deal of help from something that has come to be known as the Renegade Community. Originally conceived for helping ordinary network marketers learn to do internet marketing, it now has recognized that it’s resources work very well for many other small businesses including professional consulting, affiliate marketing, life coaching, local area businesses (plumber, hair stylist, photographer), and other types of business.
Without going into all the details, the group is refocusing on those just getting started with online marketing for a small business. The effort is led by Eric Walker. I happen to know Eric pretty well, and I can tell you that he offers “the real deal.”
Starting tomorrow night, he is offering a series of Thursday night live webinars (9 pm EST; 6 pm PST), together with readings and other resources. If you miss the first one, you can jump in along the way. I suspect each webinar will be archived for later viewing.
Here’s the webinar topics that have been announced, and in Eric’s words:
Webinar: Branding with Blogs – It Doesn’t Have to Be Hard — Using the Renegade Professional training on how to set up a blog with SquareSpace as our foundation, I’ll go deep about how to generate up to 700 direct visitors a month in your first month of launching your blog. It takes a little hustle, but it’s all worth it when you know the specifics. We’ll make sure you new bloggers are reaching the audience they intend to. Intermediate bloggers may learn a thing or two as well.
Webinar: Smart Beginners Guide to Content Creation — This is an important one. This “Guiding” webinar will break through the common blocks most have in creating content for their target market. We’ll be sure you never DON’T know what to write about.
Webinar: Email Marketing – Putting Your Blog Content to Good Use — Often for Smart Beginners, there is overwhelm. There is a lot of set up that is involved with setting up your internet marketing funnel so people can buy from you when you’re asleep, with kids, etc.To be sure that can happen, everything has to be in its proper place. In this webinar, I’ll show you a few simple tricks that eliminate overwhelm by re-purposing the content at your blog in at least 7 different ways.
Webinar: Lead Generation – Putting the Pieces Together — Why the simple formula of (You + Branding) + Marketing = Success really is simple, and exactly what is needed to generate leads. We’ll get down to the bottom of the over-used word “Value” and discuss what it really means.
Webinar: I’ve Built My Marketing Funnel – Now What? — Once you have your marketing funnel put together, and all the pieces fit, and you’ve even generated a few leads, what happens next? That’s exactly what this webinar will cover (calibration and tweaking).
BONUS Webinar: How to Attract Synergistic Relationships Through Video Marketing — We’ll not only show you how to make precise and easy (yes, I did say easy) two to three minute videos, but we’ll also give you 9 big tips to leverage your videos to form synergistic relationships, and give the illusion that you’re omnipresent (that’s a good thing).
Do you want that kind of help?
Action You Should Take RIGHT NOW:
1) Join Renegade University - if you are not a member already. Join Renegade University - it’s free. It gives you access to some of the materials Eric will mention in the webinars. Other materials and training will require an optional upgrade to Renegade Pro.
access to a 70 minute recorded “prequel” - an overview of some basics [which is excellent],
information about winning a Personalized “Smart Beginner” Marketing Plan that will be awarded to TWO people after each Smart Beginner training webinar. These are one-on-one consultations with Eric. [Eric has an outstanding reputation as a coach and consultant in the Renegade Community and is high in demand; I can't believe he is making time to offer these time slots for two participants every week!]
directions how to see the free webinars - date - time - webinar registration link.
The first seminar is this Thursday February 25!
If you are reading this after Feb 25, you can still get on board.
I am sure the webinars will be archived. Take the two actions steps above, now!
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HOME BUSINESS? WHY HERE? The best explanation can be found by reading “About This Blog.”
It has always been one of the purposes for this blog to share information that could be helpful to colleagues in the high tech training industry who have lost their jobs or are worried about their jobs. Clearly, starting one’s own business is one avenue of response to the recession, just as looking for another job is a reasonable response. Click under “Blog Purpose” or “Home Business” under Post Categories and you will see that this topic is not new to this blog.
It seems that everyone in the 1400s believed the earth was flat. That’s why Columbus had such a hard time raising money and sailors to attempt a circumnavigation of the globe. Was it religion, general ignorance of science, an inclination to follow the crowd? What was it then… and what is it now that makes urban myth so hard to squash?
I continually get these recirculating emails that are completely untrue or, more dangerously half-true. I refer the senders to Snopes.com continuously. ”Please read the truth about this junk you want me to forward.”
To demonstrate just how hard it is to shake a myth, it might surprise you to learn that the whole story about Columbus seeking to prove that the earth was round is the real myth. That’s right! In Columbus’s day, almost everyone knew the earth was round. Still, there’s a good chance that you learned from your history teacher that the church believed the world was flat and that Columbus was defying the church. You were probably shown pictures like the one above that were meant to show how ignorant and fearful the average European was in 1450. It isn’t true. The whole “story” of the flat earth was invented by writers in the early 1800s. Yet the myth they promulgated was taught in schools through most of the twentieth century. Check it out.
Anyway, all of that is to say that trainers and training designers are not immune either. Here are three examples of myths that you might have seen/heard kicked around the training world as the Gospel.
The “Nonverbal Learning is More Powerful Than Words” Myth
When did you last hear that trainee’s understanding from a lecture is derived 7% from the words spoken, 38% from the tonality, and 55% from body language? Or that 93% of communication is non-verbal?
These percentages come from the wrong interpretation of some research done by Prof Albert Mehrabian in 1967. The statement is a myth(!) commonly referred to as Mehrabian’s myth. Google it!
The problem with this myth is that it gets more distorted every time it is repeated. It is used, to cite one example, to support the elimination of bullets in slides. Or to eliminate lecturing. That sort of advice may be good or bad but is not supported by Mehrabian’s research.
Do people possess one main learning style? Are some people verbal learners while others are visual learners? During the last few years this concept has been increasingly studied with the science coming down on the side that says- No, people learn from a flexible array of learning gateways.
The best synopsis I have read on this issue looks at some of the research, acknowledges and debunks the criticism, and then suggests that those who choose to persist in believing the learning styles myth are either unaware that it is a myth, or have a stake in the myth (they own a company with learning style testing inventories).
The “You Only Remember 10% of What You Read” Myth
You have heard it many times. You have seen graphs like the one below put up on the screen at conference workshops. Frequently in my experience at eLearning conferences. And the workshop leader points at the projected image and says with passion, “People only remember 10% of what they hear, 20% of what they see, 30% of what they hear….”
Will Thalmeier has researched the history of these bogus statistics and found that they are a “fraud.” Not sure if that is more harsh than “myth” or not. He found a lot of interesting things doing some academic investigative reporting. And in the process Will lays out the challenge for us to build our training on solid evidence of what works.
I think it is important to try our best to build our ideas about what works well in training on what we know to be true. Research is a big help. While I fully disagree that only those with a PhD in training or human performance technology should be trainers (yes I have read professors of learning theory argue to that end) I think we all need to be vigilant and ready to learn.
I’m talking about performance based equipment training objectives. I’ve actually written a ten page white paper on this.
A lot of people find PBET objectives tedious, so the last thing they want to hear is any suggestion that they create even more objectives. So why am I even writing about it?
Because it can help solve a lot of learning sequencing problems. For example-
resolving discussions about “what is a guru?”
deciding in what level a task belongs.
accounting for variations of tasks that are customer-specific.
differentiating aspects of one task that are for the service organization- not the customer.
creating a CSE (customer service engineer) certification plan for which all of the above bullets are relevant
One Task: Operator Level? Maintenance Level? Guru Level?
I remember having an objective for a basic maintenance course that read (in part): “Operate the ion implanter.”
But later on, it was suggested that getting “signed off” in training didn’t mean they were really-truly competent. Sound familiar?
The reality is that there are many dopant gases used while operating an implanter, each requiring slightly different knowledge; there is also an auto mode and a manual mode for operating the machine. This alone suggests differing levels of competence (expertise, skill, ability, experience…) and thus the advisability of separate objectives to account for these variations in conditions or standards.
And just when I have sorted that out, it is suggested that competence in the three or four more detailed objectives that I have newly extracted and written is still insufficient to account for the way a really, really, really experienced, seasoned, guru operates the machine, compared to the way that a novice does.
So I explore this. What is the “pro” doing differently, exactly? She doesn’t need to actually look up anything, it is instinctive, I’m told. Her performance is “on automatic” and flawless. And she is fast. No matter what dopant is required, she always has the machine pumping out product before anyone else. She is, in training lingo, giving a “fluent performance.”
“There is no way to account for that in one of your objectives!”
Yes there is. And this spotlights another reason to further subdivide the original objective. Here are some ideas:
Change the condition of the task so that it is performed without any references (memorized).
Change the standard of the task so that it is performed within a specified time frame based on the analysis of the most expert performer.
These two changes will lead to the task being performed fluently. Fluency is not required in most cases. It is not cost-efficient for everyone to be fluent on all the tasks. Competence is enough in most cases.
But when you want to have a way to distinguish two levels of performing roughly the same task, the solution is to have two objectives for that same task.
In summary, subdividing an objective into two or more other objectives and placing each at differing points on the learning hierarchy can solve many training headaches.
Enough. If you think this could help you, help yourself: download my white paper called, “Using Performance Objectives to Differentiate Levels of Skill Difficulty.”
The PBET Website -or Solid Performance Solutions site- has been updated. All of the old material is still available but I think you can find things faster, most of it loads faster, and new material has been added.
If you had bookmarked any pages in the past, they might not work now as I have made web page names a bit more Google-friendly. Here are a few pages of interest … (the rest you can explore for yourself!):
I always thought that at some point the name of my blog would become a liability. An anachronism. At some point the high tech equipment industry would recover to the point that it would no longer be trying to survive a recession, and my blog title would be… be obsolete! Yahoo!
Is it Time to Take “Recession-Proof” Out of My Blog Title?
In other words, is the recession over for American high tech companies?
One American company has told me they are very, very busy. They have orders. Service engineers are busy with installations and training. There is hardly any time to get engineers up to speed on PBET. I don’t think their positive story is the only one.
Apart from anecdotal reports from various semiconductor suppliers, there are statistics that say things are improving this year… but still not as good as last year. And last year had a pretty bad ending! For example, one measure reported by SEMI has been total square inches of raw silicon wafers shipped to end users for processing. What we see is an improvement during Q3-2009 from Q2-2009; yet the picture is not as good as one year ago:
Q3-2008: 2,243 sq. in. shipped
Q2-2009: 1,686 sq. in. shipped
Q3-2009: 1,972 sq. in. shipped
And then there is the book-to-bill ratio stats (BTBR) for North American headquartered semiconductor equipment producers. A little review: a BTBR above 1.0 is considered positive. We went for 29 straight months with a BTBR under 1.0 (Feb 07 to Jun 09). Nothing like that has occurred during the available data (starting 1991). Altogether the BTBR hit 1.2 or above 33 times (14%) since 1991, but the last time was way back in December of 2003. Along such lines:
Clearly, the last 6 years have been painful compared to previous years (except for the big bad 2001, of course). According to Stanley T. Myers, president and CEO of SEMI:
The SEMI book-to-bill number has been above 1.0 for four months now, reflecting small and generally steady increases as the semiconductor industry continues a slow recovery. Bookings in October 2009 have flattened, and we will continue to watch this number. SEMI maintains our forecast of a slowly improving capital spending outlook for the remainder of 2009 and into next year.
This is what the last four months has looked like in contrast to the last three years:
So is the Recession Over?
Keep in mind that the BTBR figures above are for North American headquartered equipment suppliers. As we all know, many of these companies have moved manufacturing to Asia - including the one mentioned in my opening anecdotal report. The worst of the layoffs were a year ago, but downsizing continues here and there (Sun Microsystems announced 3000 cuts in October).
This blog was created at the beginning of 2009 and is intended to be of help to high tech equipment trainers. When I use the word recession, I think of people (jobs, homes, food), not the corporate entities (BTBR, stock indexes, corporate profits).
I am not aware of much hiring in the equipment supplier training organizations. There are still many trainers out of work. For those trainers (instructional designers, e-learning experts, and related staff) still at work, the pressure to produce-more-with-less has never been more demanding.
The “official rates” (U3) that you hear in the news all the time refer only to people who: “do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work.” However the BLS also gathers information in 6 groups, with U6 being the most comprehensive: “Total unemployed [U3], plus those who are ‘Marginally attached workers’ — those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past.”
A subgroup of “marginally attached workers” are the “discouraged workers” - those who are no longer looking because of one of four reasons: (1) They believe no job is available to them in their line of work or area; (2) They had previously been unable to find work; (3) They lack the necessary schooling, training, skills, or experience; (4) Employers think they are too young or too old, or they face some other type of discrimination.
It is a bit harder to extract figures for the semiconductor equipment industry. But again, here is some additional nation-wide statistics.
So despite the uptick, the recession continues to impact those currently employed by or formerly employed by high tech equipment suppliers such as those in the semiconductor industry. The recession may be over for high tech companies, but certainly the recession is not over for high tech workers.
I plan to continue the multiple points of focus in this blog.
ideas for unemployed colleagues to start their own small or home business.
ideas for unemployed colleagues to find employment.
ideas for trainers to improve their training skills and contributions to their company.
I guess it’s a bit premature to change the name of this blog.
First of all, I consider myself a real trainer. And I have a Twitter account.
But most real trainers do not do Twitter. There are a lot of people interested in e-learning that Twitter, some of whom are real trainers but most are folks into the software or the buzz. There are a lot of people into “social learning” with active Twitter accounts. Well, of course. Unfortunately, many of those “social learning” advocates (should I say zealots in some cases) are not real trainers.
A real trainer I define as someone who uses sound theory to determine the best path to human performance improvement. Sound theory has been detailed by individuals like Tom Gilbert (Human Competence, 1978), Bob Mager & Peter Pipe (Analyzing Performance Problems, 1983 and other books in the Mager “6-Pack”), Ruth Clark (Building Expertise, 1998 - and other Clark books), Allison Rossett (Training Needs Assessment, 1987), and others. What others? Check out the bios in Performance Improvement Pathfinders by Dean and Ripley for starters.
In addition, a real trainer cares about research. I am the first to admit that I often find my actions as a trainer at odds with the research. However, I make serious attempts to bring myself into line with what the research shows, when I learn about it. When looking at change in his field, a real trainer gives greater credence to what the research proves than what is popular at conventions, especially convention exhibit halls.
A real trainer knows that there are many kinds of media, and that media is always changing rapidly. Media should not dictate learning theory. Learning and performance theory however serves as a guide to best media selection for specific performance challenges. A real trainer knows that collaboration can be powerful in the right situation, but not all situations. A real trainer knows that training is often the wrong solution to a performance challenge (gap) and is not afraid to say so.
The title of this post is deliberately provocative. It can be taken in two ways. I do not in any way suggest that real trainers should or should not tweet. The meaning of the title is simply that, apparently, not many real trainers do tweet. There are many training and performance gurus that I admire - few seem to have Twitter accounts. Those that do, do not tweet often; or gave up after one month. On the other hand, many “social learning” advocates are very active of Twitter.
This is not unusual, by the way. There are many social and professional groups that are only lightly represented on Twitter. The problem is that “social learning” advocates dominate the training world in the Twitterverse. They talk to one another readily enough, indeed, they reinforce each others’ thinking. (Note a recent comment on that social reality.) Real trainers are less likely to contradict them there than in more academic or professional environments. [Still, the impact on mainline professional associations like ASTD is fairly powerful. See a critique here.] So many on the fringes of the performance world are highly influenced - there are many HR people on Twitter, for example.
So why am I using Twitter? Marketing. I am a training consultant and have other “home based businesses” for which I have been looking into Twitter as part of a marketing tool. To meet others, and spread the word. But few of the “corporate equipment trainers” that are my customers have that need. So they are not present for the discourse, the party, the collaboration, … or whatever you might want to call the Twitterverse.
I follow many training and performance bloggers. Only some are on Twitter. I will highlight some of these useful resources in some other posts.
As for “social learning” - well, I’ll save that for another discussion!
Incredible! Only one person commented for my contest, “Guess my favorite performance and training guru.” (Thanks Mike!) Well, Gloria Gery certainly contributed a lot to my thinking over the years, no question. But the third person on my list, after Bob Mager and Ruth Clark, was Carl Binder.
Binder has written a number of articles on performance fluency. Another word might be automaticity. It’s the kind of performance where one acts without having to reflect. It’s the kind of performance involved speaking any language when we say that one speaks fluently. Over the years, I am frequently asked about what differentiates the expected performance of a senior service engineer on a given tool compared with that of a competent service engineer. It is not too different than what some people are looking at right now on the SEMI Training Task Force. The question they are asking is, What should characterize the different levels of training given by a supplier company of a given tool?
I have two responses to that. 1) Follow the PBET Process - begin with analysis and a listing of every single known task that would ever have to be done on that tool by someone - anyone. Continue that an analysis process by task analysis (and by derivation, knowledge required for the task), the writing of performance objectives, and finally the creation of a learning hierarchy. To a great extent, the hierarchy (map) of tasks to be learned will answer the question. At the bottom are tasks that anyone with access to the machine will need to perform (for example, operate it). At the top will be rarely occurring tasks that may likely be performed only by that “expert senior service engineer.”
2) The second part of the answer brings me back to Carl Binder - fluency. Ironically, the better I understand the nature of fluency and what it takes to gain fluency, the easier it is for me to see that it is typically not really required. Huh? Here’s what I mean: Often we look at these “expert senior FSEs” and describe them as people who instinctively know what to do. They don’t even have to look it up! Well, sure! The solutions to common problems, not to mention rare problems, eventually get memorized after a number of years. But to think that “training” should produce such a performer right out of the course gate, is expecting a lot.
Here are some examples where Binder and others describe the application of fluency: children learning math facts, keyboarding (I’m old enough to remember when we called it “typing”), and playing a musical instrument. What is required to attain performance objectives in those areas? Much, much much more practice than for performances that do not require memorization! In addition, forcing the performer to meet a certain “speed” of performance; hence, timed math facts tests.
Are there equipment training tasks that require fluency at the time of the completion of training? Sure. Decision-making involving safety would apply. Certain select tasks that will be performed on a regular (daily) basis. Location of common assemblies. Surprisingly, perhaps, these are not advanced tasks, but you may be able to think of some that would apply.
Well there is a third factor in training competent performers to become “advanced” performers, but it has already been alluded to. The advanced (expert, senior) performers are able to perform “more” in two ways: (a) They perform the same tasks as competent performers, but to more stringent standards and/or under broader conditions. Hence, such tasks can be differentiated by additional objectives that broaden or deepen previous objectives. (b) They perform additional tasks altogether. Both of these should be uncovered during the analysis stage, when investigating all of the tasks associated with the equipment.
Again, strange as it may sound, “fluency” as described by Binder has helped me make sense of what we truly require and do not require when throwing around phrases like “master FSE” or “seasoned expert.”
Well anyway. Mike, you are absolutely right in mentioning the whole impact of “built in job aids” (or “online diagnostics” or “Electronic Performance Support Systems”). The implementation of such in our industry over the last 15 years has had a huge impact on training.
As for myself, I am reflecting on what might have brought such a low response to this first “contest” - despite the Newsletter and Twitter. Well.
A chunk of certified PBET instructors are no longer at Asyst Technologies; the company declared bankruptcy in April. On June 10 it was Aviza Technology, also based in hard-hit California, that declared bankruptcy.
In May, Axcelis Technologies, a company at which I used to work, sidelined about 235 workers, or about 20 percent of its global workforce. The company said the decision, which came after a series of other cost-cutting moves, would save it $25 million in the coming year. “This is a difficult but necessary decision due to the continued weakness in the semiconductor industry,” said Axcelis CEO Mary Puma in a statement. That’s now over 12,000 lost jobs in the Boston area technology sector since last summer.
ASM International announced, for the second time in six months, that it would speed up restructuring. This restructuring includes an overall reduction in force together with the move of manufacturing to Singapore.
In late June, a Gartner analyst indicated that sales of stepper units in 2009 would drop by 54% to 118 units for 2009. Compare that with 604 units in 2007. I know of a few people in at least one stepper company no longer employed. I have conducted PBET Workshops for all of the stepper companies. I have many friends throughout this industry and they are frequently on my mind.
So the recession rains continue to fall on all of us. We keep hearing that the sun will be out soon. For example, in June, SEMI provided a forecast that fab spending would double in 2010. They said that “19 fab facilities closed in 2008, and about 35 facilities will close in 2009, though the number of closures should decline in 2010 as only 14 facilities are expected to close. Nine fabs are expected to launch operations in 2009. Overall the trend of new facilities commencing operations has slowed since 1995, due to the fact that most new fabs are 300mm Megafabs for memory production, meaning fewer but larger fabs are needed. Worldwide installed capacity for 2009 is expected to decline by about three percent, mainly due to fab closures, however data from the World Fab Forecast show that installed capacity for 2010 could increase by about six percent.”
Despite this forecast and others, I remain worried that the many closed fabs will provide a glut of used equipment, depressing the market for new equipment purchases. Of course those companies that have tools providing technologies for advanced processes will be ahead of the game, but the abundance of used equipment makes me less convinced about the future. Companies in the used equipment market may have a number of opportunities.
Starting Your Own Business - An Alternative
As for me, PBET Workshop enrollments are down to a trickle. I don’t expect the industry on the whole to be hiring a slew of new technical trainers in the near future! Providing PBET consulting has been rewarding and fun, but there are other work from home solutions for people with a training background.
I have been working on some of my other home business activities. I have begun to actively provide training/mentoring to others who are looking at the idea of a home business. I brought together a lot of home business resource information into a web site I call RG Consulting Partners. Whether you are a boomer, or younger, you are invited to check my resources for starting and growing your own business.
How about you? Have you had to step out of high tech training for a while? What are you doing now to deal with the recession? Are you starting your own business to recession-proof yourself? Please tell us in the comments below!
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