A warm welcome to 2012 to all our customers, (and potential customers!). As this is the season for resolutions, I can share with you that ours is to widen our circle of contacts by asking our customers to recommend their colleagues and associates to register on our website. In return we will reward our new contacts with some free resources and regular information which we hope they will find useful, and our existing clients with several incentives on purchasing our products. If you are visiting this site or blog for the first time, we hope you’ll consider registering by clicking HERE. We are fortunate to have a large number of customers who have been very positive about our products and our support for their work; and we are grateful that they are responding so well to help us achieve our 2012 goals.

We also plan a number of new product launches in 2012 both in the ‘physical world’ with RSVP Design and in the ‘App world’ via our sister organisation Mobile Learning Design. If there is a tool, activity or mobile device application you’d like to see developed for a training need, then please email your suggestions to graham@rsvpdesign.co.uk and we’ll consider it as part of our product development planning process.

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We are looking for some help in having some consultants/trainers/facilitators trial some new products that we are close to launching. If anyone is interested in joining such a group, and would be willing to provide some feedback ( in exchange for getting access to some new materials, and a good deal on purchasing a commercial copy ) please email graham@rsvpdesign.co.uk

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RSVP Design was delighted to establish a new distribution relationship in 2011 with Experience Corner, based in Warsaw, Poland. Experience Corner is the first on-line store in Poland offering interactive training tools from globally known brands, and following an invitation from colleagues at Experience Corner, last month I made my first visits to and Krakow and Warsaw to introduce some of our products to their customers. It is always exciting to travel to a new city and although I had just returned from a visit to the USA, I was looking forward to seeing Krakow and watching the reactions of the Polish audience to our products. Alicja and Joanna from Experience Corner met me on the first evening I arrived, but by then I had already had the chance to wander around the main square in Krakow and begin to sample what was clearly a popular and vibrant city!

Experience Corner have translated all the facilitator manuals as well as the delegate briefs for several of our learning tools, so I although I would have an interpreter with me during the events, her main role would simply be to help me understand what was being said in Polish as the groups worked with their own language version materials. The Krakow event was held on a large converted Dutch barge on the river, and I was pleased to see that Experience Corner, like RSVP Design, believes that the learning environment is important in making events memorable for participants! It was a wonderful old vessel, and I could have happily sailed along the river on what was a beautiful sunny day! The delegates were a mixture of internal training specialists and other training consultants, and were extremely enthusiastic in their participation. I used our Images of Organisations™ metaphor cards to open the session and to get pairs and triads discussing what their training challenges were, and I was delighted to see that Polish people have no problems in working with metaphor in this way. We then had a group play Colourblind® with a number of observers and again, not only were they enthusiastic, but very disciplined in their problem solving approaches, which helped them reach a successful conclusion fairly quickly. To show how RSVP Design would sequence activities we then introduced Simbols™ (using the Team Version) to show how we might build on similar behaviours using a different activity, and finished with Challenging Assumptions™ – again it was comforting to see Polish people make exactly the same assumptions in this exercise as other Nationalities we have tried it with around the world!

The following day (well, very early in the morning!) we took the train to Warsaw where I presented to a larger group (some 45 people) in probably my most unusual training venue ever – the deep end of an old swimming pool (thankfully undergoing a conversion to an arts venue!). I was interested to see if our dinner discussion the night before about Polish stereotypical group behaviour suggested by my hosts as being  ‘a lot of heated discussion, but when agreement is reached there will be a uniform acceptance of the new direction – perhaps to the detriment of thinking about alternative strategies’. During this larger session I decided to use Webmaster® to see if these behavioural stereotypes would play out. Whether by coincidence or as a reflection of these stereotypes I did indeed witness a lot of heated discussion after the initial problem-solving portion of Webmaster® (creating the first construction). I observed lots of discussion with many overlapping conversations, and several people taking a lead as to how they though they could best achieve the team performance increase required (i.e. complete the whole construction in under 2 minutes, from an original build time of 25 minutes). None of the available exercise time was used for further practice or rehearsal purposes – it was all used for ‘discussion’. Eventually as the time limit began to expire (somehow!) the group agreed on a strategy and every one of the 30 strong group delivered on that strategy and managed to achieve the objective! There was a lot of discussion following this activity (most of which I was unable to understand!), and I get the sense that Webmaster® could become a popular activity in Poland!

Although this was a very short trip I saw enough to know that I want to go back and experience more Polish cooking, Polish beer, Polish socialising and Polish customers, and I look forward to a successful partnership between Experience Corner and RSVP Design.

Graham Cook

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It is always rewarding to see great professionals working and to learn from them.

At this year’s IAF Conference in Istanbul, I was fortunate enough to take part in a great facilitated session that drew on techniques and methods that are consistent with those we use at RSVP Design.

The first session was called ‘Consensual Circle’ and involved using images to help a group to move towards consensus – a point at which everyone in the group contributed to a decision that every member agree with – or at least was prepared to live with!

The process involved everyone working in one group. At the beginning of the session, each person was asked to draw a picture representing their individual interpretation of ‘Facilitation’. Each picture was then presented and explained.

When everyone had presented their images, each person was ask to choose the one that they liked best. They could, if they wished, choose their own but most people did not.

A simple tally was then taken and the image that received the most votes was selected.

This image was then re-presented to the group and every member was asked to score the image on a scale of 1-5, depending upon how satisfied they were with it as a representation of the theme. A simple show of fingers was used, in which the numbers meant:

5 – I am extremely satisfied: this image represents everything I want it to represent

4 – Generally very satisfied – there may be some minor changes I would make

3 – I can live with this, although it is not what I would have chosen myself

2 – Dissatisfied – I have many concerns  about this

1 – Extremely dissatisfied – I would fight hard to resist this image being chosen

When the ‘scores’ had been given, the facilitator went to the person who had given the lowest score and asked that individual to explain his/her concerns. This was done with everyone listening and with no response.

The facilitator then asked, “So you have given this image a score of 2. What would have to change in the image to move you to a 3?”

This was explored and the participant described changes that would make the image more acceptable. These changes were then offered to the group with the question,

“Would anyone have a problem if we made these changes to the image?”

If the answer was, “yes, “ the attention moved to the person with the concern and the same question was asked again, “So, is there any way you could suggest a change that you could agree to and that would also be satisfying to everyone else?”

The change was made to the image and the scoring process was repeated.

The aim of this process is to reach a solution which everyone scores at 3 or above. In our group this happened within an hour: the facilitator explained that in his experience of working in organisations the consensus was usually achieved even faster than that.

Of course, working with a graphic facilitator or live artist would be the ideal solution but as I worked on the process I recognized the simplicity and power of the process and also how it might be a perfect application of  RSVP Design’s Images of Organisation or Dialoogle cards.

Using these images as the start point removes any concerns individuals may have about their ability to draw and offers a range of possibilities to stimulate thought. It is also a perfect chance to begin to explain the thinking….eg.

“This picture isn’t exactly right, but with these changes it would be perfect….”

For more information, ask Ann!

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/shop/images-of-organisations%C2%99-p-70.html

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/shop/dialoogle-2008-pocket-set-p-55.html

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Corporate Universities are, almost exclusively, found as appendages of big corporations. In the USA the HR-driven corporate university has represented to a very high degree the choice of large organisations that need to process a large number of employees through diverse learning experiences. Over the past 20 years I’ve worked with many of these institutions, developing new learning content, introducing experiential methods and working alongside faculty to better target specific learning outcomes. I’m currently mid-way through an extended project with the CU of a major food and beverage multinational, creating experiential practice-fields for the leadership models they are introducing.

A brief down-time in this project recently led me to consider what characterises the way that CU’s approach the business of learning, the “What’s good and what’s not?” of Corporate Universities.

Top of the “what’s good?” list is the way that CU’s live and breathe their corporate culture. Learning happens in an environment which always feels like the concentrated essence of their corporate culture, an immersive learning environment that lives and breathes company ways of working. As an outsider it’s always a little daunting to first step into these unique environments, a state that I can describe in this way:

I’ve been invited here because of what I know i.e. I’m an expert, but this whole experience places an emphasis on what I don’t know i.e. I’m an alien in this place.

At this point I know I’m going to have to bring my ‘A-game’ to this job.

The result of this situation is that the learning that happens in a CU needs little translation or adaptation to be applicable in the operational part of the business. It was conceived, developed, delivered and evaluated in an environment that is totally geared towards the business of the parent company. People leave knowing what they have to do to deliver what their company wants them to deliver.

What this means for my work is that I will be given very clear design direction – I’ll be told very clearly what learning outcomes are needed, and given very strong feedback around whether my designs are a good fit with ‘how we do business’. As a designer I enjoy the challenge of very quickly assimilating the corporate culture and language, and producing seamlessly compatible designs – “going chameleon” I call it.

The flip side of this is that the walls (physical and metaphorical) around many Corporate Universities are pretty high and not easily breached by new thinking and new ideas. Let me say up-front that this is a generalisation, I work with some institutions that are extremely innovative and open to best-practice thinking. Indeed I can cite instances where particular CU’s actually lead the field in innovative learning practice: but for many their approach to corporate education demonstrates all the negative effects of “limited gene-pool learning”.

At RSVP Design we specialise in learning innovation, and that is, in most cases, why clients buy our services. We bring new ideas, new approaches, new thinking. And that makes it pretty disappointing when we can see where our approaches would breathe fresh life into some dated and tired situation, only to be told “that won’t work here” or “that’s not how we do things”. These situations, (and work with CU’s often produce them), are typified by a strange paradox:

“We’ve asked you to use your unique expertise to design something that we can’t, but we can’t accept your design because it’s different to what we do.”

I’m happy to say that my current work hasn’t encountered this paradox, it’s going well and the pilot programmes suggest we’re ready to deliver something special. The culture in the CU is strong, but open to well-informed, well-presented influence, just about the ideal situation.

Now if all Corporate Universities could hit that happy medium………

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I read a really interesting BBC article describing how there is strong evidence that universally praising children can de detrimental to their growth, and encourages a ‘fixed mindset’ rather than believing they have the capacity to grow and learn (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13128701 ) . Of course the ELLI research ( see http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/trainer-training/ ) supports this article (both for children and adults) and we are heartened by the almost universal interest in ELLI from any organisation we speak to. There is also good research from other areas that children who value the idea of ‘I am someone who can learn’, and that ‘I can learn from mistakes’, are motivated to ‘grow and learn’ and ‘resilient’ when it comes to challenging learning situations. These type of children grow into valuable employees. I know some educational colleagues who wish they had praised their own children more for effort when they were younger, and now choose to celebrate ‘failure’ as a learning opportunity, even as their children have grown up.

It has prompted me to continue to think about how organisations can generate the same motivation to learn as the people who have all the successful and well researched characteristics of effective learners. I’m convinced that this motivation has to come from an organisational culture that respects individuals as capable of learning and change, and that their leaders should behave in a way that is consistent with that. This would mean abolishing ‘lists of approved training courses’, educating managers and individuals about the science behind effective learning, paying more attention to informal learning than formal learning, re-writing the charter for L&D & OD (or even seeking to phase them out, and give their responsibilites to line managers), and using ‘learning language’ in business contexts so it is seen as being fundamentally critical to achieving any organisational mission or goal. In fact research seems to suggest that’s what organisations who ‘thrive’ actually do – now we just need some good tools to help organisations achieve this …

RSVP Design has created a new joint venture – Mobile Learning Design – and we hope to create some tools that take advantage of the personal nature of mobile devices (smartphones, tablets etc.) to provide formal and informal learning support when people need it, rather than when it is offered. Please get in touch with us if this subject is of interest!

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I am delighted to announce that Interel Inc. from San Francisco and RSVP Design Ltd. are forming a new partnership that will see their respective product portfolios merge and both organisations work together to continue to support customers around the world with the most effective activity-based learning tools and learning design support. Although RSVP Design and Interel have worked together informally for several years this is a new development in formally providing all shipping and logistical support for both sets of products. Interel in the US will support all US customers and RSVP Design in the UK will support all non-US customers – both sets of products will be available for purchase from either location.

Key product designers Boyd Watkins, Geoff Cox and Ann Alder have worked together before but this announcement signals an intention to provide a truly global and probably unparalleled level of experience in designing effective learning environments.

You can download the official press release here: RSVP Design & Interel Press Release

Please visit the RSVP Design online store to see the additional Interel experiential learning devices now added. Larger scale devices like Pyramid, Network and Mosaic provide some fantastic new tools for large group meetings and for use in outdoor environments.

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We have been struggling for several years to adequately describe what we do in terms of our ‘30 second elevator pitch’. It’s that horrible bit when an acquaintance or even a close friend/relative says ‘Graham, what do RSVP Design actually do?’ We use terms like experiential learning or activity-based learning – but these typically only work for people who are immersed in learning & development and understand this jargon. I was glad therefore to read a couple of articles recently which describes some of what we do in more plain English terms. The first was the wonderful Thiagi (see http://www.thiagi.com/index.html ). Thiagi was talking about ‘Jolts’ – short pieces of activity/games/training that can be used to ‘wake-up’ delegates and remind them that things were not what they thought, or to ensure that they are ready to accept a change in pace, direction, content or some other move in terms of the training programme. What I love about Thiagi’s philosophy is that he still maintains that you spend every second you have with your learners focused on delivering the required learning outcomes (even although he sometimes uses some very simplistic ideas that I think might not work with a typically cynical UK senior management group). This is in contrast to many US-based trainers who still use rubber chickens and a host of other childish ice-breakers that they genuinely believe will somehow make people more responsive to their forthcoming, and finally relevant, learning content!

I think a ‘jolt’ is a good example of what we provide through some of our learning tools and helps people understand what we mean by creating ‘learning tools that are effective and engaging’. I’d consider tools such as Challenging Assumptions, Images of Customer Experience and Seeing the Point as successful ‘Jolts’ . Although Thiagi maintains Jolts should be short in time duration, I’ve also seen many wonderful insights created through a  Jolt delivered by a longer experiential activity like Colourblind that can take 30 minutes to complete. I do think people often need a good amount of time to really reflect on the ‘Jolt’.

The second article discussed the ‘triune brain theory’ (also important in Whole Brain Learning Theory) and the fact that although humans have many specialist parts of our brain, a lot of training seems only to be aimed at particular parts. The triune brain theory model considers our brain as evolving from three distinct parts – the reptilian brain, which manages typical ‘fight or flight’ responses; the mammalian brain or limbic system which manages emotions and memory; and the neo-cortex or ‘upper’ brain which deals with logic, analysis, synthesis etc. A lot of training aimed at the so-called higher-order thinking processes can forget to include key areas such as emotion and memory – much of which makes learning ’stick’  and therefore be more likely to be applied, and is key in behavioural change. This article can be found in the October 2010 edition of Training Journal: ‘The Three Brain of Training’. There are a lot of tips and techniques for trainers that we would certainly agree with – and would also suggest that well designed experiential activities can provide the necessary engagement with all three brains:

1. They can provide that ’safe’ environment necessary for rehearsing new skills and behaviours, satisfying the reptilian brain

2.They can provide the emotional engagement for the mammalian brain through providing engaging and elegant game play that can provide a memorable ‘anchor’ for later recall and application

3. They can provide the necessary challenge required in adult learning that is also clearly linked to workplace issues,  to satisfy the upper level thinking processes for the neo-cortex that allows for generative learning where participants can integrate their new learning with old models.

I’m happy tell people that ‘we design games that engage each one of your three brains!’

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In a press release to promote their upcoming Content and Collaboration Summit 2010 (London, UK, September 15-16) Gartner Research forecast 10 key changes in the nature of work through to 2020:  “Work will become less routine, characterized by increased volatility, hyperconnectedness, ’swarming’ and more,” said Tom Austin, vice president and Gartner fellow. By 2015, 40 percent or more of an organization’s work will be ‘non-routine’, up from 25 percent in 2010. “People will swarm more often and work solo less. They’ll work with others with whom they have few links, and teams will include people outside the control of the organization,” he added. “In addition, simulation, visualisation and unification technologies, working across yottabytes of data per second, will demand an emphasis on new perceptual skills.”

We agree with the predictions, and see it as a continuation of change we are already seeing in organisations; and with it will come some major challenges for L&D/OD departments. Here are the ten key changes Gartner forecast, and where we think L&D professionals should be considering a response.

1. De-routinization of Work – the obvious response here is the de-routinization and individual personalisation of training. We look forward to when “Here is the list of available training courses” is accepted as an outdated and wasteful use of trainer and delegate time & resources. I suspect the public sector in the UK has some way to go on this …
2. Work Swarms – workers need more insight into how they might work effectively with others who think differently or have different problem-solving approaches etc. Tools like HBDI or Effective Life-long Learning Inventory will be useful in being able to quickly work effectively in ’swarms’ of people you don’t know well.
3. Weak Links – formal and informal networking will become an even more important skill in the future, and not just for salespeople! Consider how and where social and business networking sites can and should be used during worktime. Is time spent networking on Facebook helping to build weak links, or just chatting with friends? Will updating my blog be considered as vanity or essential to developing these weak links?
4. Working With the Collective – Perhaps ‘influencing’ will become the most desirable skill of any business leader as we move to a position where ‘the collective’ replaces any internal hierarchy? This suggests more  prefered ‘right-side’ thinking style in the HBDI model than the traditonal ‘left-side’ found in many management positions today.
5. Work Sketch-Ups – ‘Designing-in-flight’ or ‘managing in ambiguity’ requires a very different set of skills and behaviours than that typically suggested by teaching through a ‘case-study’ method. How will our Business Schools and academics respond? Will we move to more activity-based learning facilitation than ‘teaching’?
6. Spontaneous Work – This suggests creating the type of corporate culture where this is not only desired but encouraged. How do you build this culture? Contrast this with today where most ‘leaders’ set the work agenda – how do you lead/manage people who develop their own work activities and priorities?
7. Simulation and Experimentation – of course we believe that activity-based learning provides the ideal ’synthetic’ environment to experiment and simulate behaviours. That’s why we create tools to help organisations build their learning environments!
8. Pattern Sensitivity – See Ann’s forthcoming book:  Pattern Making,  Pattern Breaking
9. Hyperconnected – in a hyperconnected world there is probably no time for formal contracts and agreements. Does this suggest an increase in the importance of ‘Trust’ and a requirement to better understand how to build and maintain it? Is it hopefully the end of long-winded tender processes?
10. My Place – how do we deliver training at ‘My Place’  (the workplace may be virtual, may physically be at home, or indeed may change on a daily basis)? Will it be more ‘edutainment apps’, delivered outside of the normal working hours, paid for by discerning individuals (who want to build their learning power) out of their own pocket (or personal learning account)?

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Everyone here at RSVP Design and our clients, partners and suppliers would like to congratulate our colleague Geoff Cox on his recent Doctoral award and his new title of Dr. Cox! Outlined below is some further information on Geoff’s Thesis, and you can contact him for more information on geoff@rsvpdesign.co.uk

Back in 2003,  RSVP Design was created with a real sense of mission around utilising, and developing best practice in the design of learning environments. It was recognised at a very early stage that if this mission was to be achieved there was an urgent need to define exactly what “best practice” looked like. It was at that time that Geoff began his research, aimed at making available to designers, practitioners and buyers of learning events a set of guidelines that would help them to discern the best from the rest!

The early stages of the research were plagued with problems. Different terminology on different sides of the Atlantic, a shocking lack of published material relating to the design dimension of learning, and in particular the extent to which RSVP Design needed to demonstrate the unique value of experiential learning: each an impediment to progress. By 2004 a comprehensive examination of published material brought the conclusions:
a) There were no existing guidelines for the design of experiential learning environments
and
b) We were going to have to write our own
and
c) Any thoughts of this being a quick exercise were now out of the window!

That began six years of action research that started with some initial, tentative guidelines that Geoff put forward and asked our facilitation team to report back on. The guidelines were revised, based on their feedback, and he moved to the next piece of design using the new guidelines. This cycle was repeated on multiple occasions, with groups from business school executives to factory supervisors, each time adding to our knowledge of how the emerging guidelines needed to be revised and applied. The research journey was punctuated by some interesting insights, for instance when it was determined that the guidelines were equally applicable to learning environments that were designed to address the needs of young people, and when the guidelines were used successfully for the first time with electronic simulations as the experiential activity.

So finally, (in 2010!) Geoff has defended his Thesis and is now Dr. Cox. We will shortly be publishing an Executive Monograph of his research on the RSVP Design website and we believe that this will be a key contribution to what we believe to be current best practice in the field of learning design.

·It is an open and transparent statement of how RSVP Design creates experiential learning environments.
·It offers clients who are commissioning experiential learning events a language to define their requirements.
·It offers clients who are buying experiential learning events a way of discerning / interrogating the quality of the designs that they are being offered.

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