Conversations with Jill Konrath, a sales thought-leader, author of best-selling books and avid Gamer -- Part III

As an author of several best-selling books such as SNAP Selling (#1 Amazon sales books) and Selling to Big Companies (Amazon Top25 sales book since 2006) , founder of the Sales SheBang and a premier thought-leader for building high-performing sales teams, Jill Konrath brings passion and well-articulated wisdom daily to deliver results to her vast and diverse group of clients.

… Continued from Part II

RD> Do you envision that salespeople have to be trained and coached differently to meet the needs of today's crazy-busy buyer?
JK> Look at the current buyer: The amount of information they're exposed to daily through all their "devices" impacts their ability to think and pay attention. They are easily distracted. They clearly have a “net it out” mentality. And, they get quickly overwhelmed with what’s on their plate to do.

A salesperson has to change their message and how they communicate with these people. Buyers listen to voice-mails with a finger on the Delete button. If a salesperson cannot sustain their interest, they'll get deleted immediately. With email, ExactTarget stated that the average person makes a decision to delete/read/forward the message in 2.7 seconds.

These facts force a rethinking of what it means to be successful to sell. In last year, a recent survey 49% of salespersons did not meet their sales quota. What do sales leaders to react to the decline last year? They raise the quota, so now 2010 will be even worse. They don't invest in the salespeople so they can learn to work differently. Instead they just cut the training budget to save money.

RD> Do you think the lack of investment in skills training is due to spending more in technology?
JK> They cut training when they get scared. Instead of figuring out what they can do differently, sales leaders go to an activity-driven work habit. Let’s do more of these sales calls and increase the pipeline instead of targeting more their efforts. They don't spend enough on appropriate technology and training to enable the best results.

The truth of the matter is that I think the training providers themselves are part of the issue for less spend. Budgets allocation is based on real ROI measures. Most training companies provide event-based training and convince sales leaders every few years to do the customer-centric selling or solutions-based selling or some such acronym based training methods.

The sales leaders in turn forget to focus in what helps them manage sales end-to-end from lead generation to contracts to up-selling. And worse, both providers and sales leaders never link the training investment to actual sales. There is little to no learning community to extract the tribal knowledge within an organization. There is very little tracking of sales coaching that is linked to again sales effectiveness.

Having said this, I think companies are realizing this and are forming sales enablement teams where they are determining a framework on that best helps the salesperson integrate their sales conversations and manage the tribal knowledge. Bottom-line is that sales leaders have to stop treating all issues as special causes and stop reverting back to activity based life (checking the box) whenever crisis hits.

RD>Well! [Chuckles] Thank you for endorsing our differentiator. I seldom plug our company in these interviews, but that’s what our software platform does i.e. give on-demand real time linkage and ROI to sales leaders, so they can effectively manage the entire buyer cycle and skills sets of salespeople that meet the buyer’s needs. We care about performance goals and not just learning goals.

RD> What do you think about the using social media tools and its current utilization?
JK> Right now, I am seeing a great seduction of the tools. There are many tools that capture all information about the buyer and that information can be very useful. There is good stuff available and the tools are a very cool aid to prepare for the sales calls.

However, the most important thing is the relevance of the information and how we use it on sales calls. On my website, I have information about my cat. So many people call me and say, “I saw on your website that you have a cat named Cali.” How is that relevant to our conversation?

This comes down to the critical thinking skills – or lack of them. They're not thinking about how to best use all the information that's available. I think this needs to be taught, or else the tools itself becomes ineffective in delivering results. For example, if I see on your website, that you are Lean Six Sigma person, then as a person selling to you, if I can integrate that information while selling to you, you will be more likely to listen to me. The value of the information needs to be appropriately leveraged.

RD> We are actually considering building some games that teach sales and service professional how to filter and use social media information that is relevant to the buyer or customer.
JK> Great idea.

RD> Not to switch the conversation, before we end, I wanted to ask you about your SalesShebang.com website. Tell me more about it and how it got started.
JK> Sales SheBang started when media folks contacted me and would always express “Oh! It is so nice to find a woman sales expert who can talk about sales strategy – and not just the soft stuff like networking and communications.” And I would always respond, there are tons of women sales experts out there that you should talk too – and I'd give them names.

Then I decided that I should bring these experts together and share our wisdom via a website and conference. The best part was having the extraordinary talented people like Anneke Seley , Anne Miller come together and send our message to more talented women salespeople whose ideas are under-leveraged.

RD> One last question, what do you see as trends in B2B sales process?
JK> I think that buyers will be harder and harder to reach. They will have more expectations from salespeople than ever before – and will choose to work with the ones who have good solid creative and critical thinking skills. Sellers who are proficient in this area will excel. I also see the increase use of technology to learn more about customers more quickly. And, I think you'll see companies doing much more online to attract prospects into "their world," then educating them as they're trying to make good decisions for their firm.

RD> Thank you Jill. This was a fabulous learning time for me.
JK> Truly my pleasure. Let's keep in touch so we can continue conversation.

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Conversations with Jill Konrath, a sales thought-leader, author of best-selling books and avid Gamer -- Part II

As an author of several best-selling books such as SNAP Selling (#1 Amazon sales books) and Selling to Big Companies (Amazon Top25 sales book since 2006) , founder of the Sales SheBang and a premier thought-leader for building high-performing sales teams, Jill Konrath brings passion and well-articulated wisdom daily to deliver results to her vast and diverse group of clients.

… Continued from Part I

RD> Your website and our website are probably the only ones that talk about critical-thinking skills for sales professionals. What is your definition of critical-thinking skills?
JK> When I started doing sales, charisma and networking skills were considered as salesperson’s key assets. Also, they needed to have strong product knowledge because it was their responsibility to convey all that knowledge to their customers.

Nowadays all that's available online ⎯ Prospects can go to a vendor’s website or do a Google search and find everything they need. They don't need salespeople for that function. Nor do they have time to meet with a chit-chatty salesperson.

Today the salesperson who wins is the one who is a problem-solvers for his/her clients and who uses critical-thinking skills where she/he can synthesize, curate and dispense vast quantities of information to the client.

This salesperson also needs creative thinking skills by which they are seen as “idea people” who can deliver results for the buyer. Both these skills (creative-thinking and critical-thinking) help them successfully provide the insights on the value of changing from the status quo – and how to do it most easily. This kind of thinking is invaluable to today's crazy-busy buyers.

RD> Are you seeing that many sales managers seeing these two skills as an asset for a salesperson?
JK> I would say, I see it as emerging awareness among sales managers. I don't see it though in middle market and small businesses. In that size company, there's the still the perception that a salesperson needs to be a fearless hunter – who will open the doors. Of course, these businesses struggle because they tell their salespeople to “go get the meat we are starving here.”

On the other hand, larger sales organizations are devoting more time to training salesperson to manage complex situations. They are business savvy and people savvy at the same time. They can navigate these complex buying-cycles.

Recently I was reading the book on successful leaders called Multipliers. In it, the authors Liz Wiseman with Greg McKeown mentions that one factor emerged as the biggest differentiator among successful versus average leaders.

What was it? “Intellectual curiosity”. Those who were intellectually curious and actively listened were able to motivate and facilitate internal discussions with “what if” and “how will” questions that led to multiplying the effect of the results.

RD> It is interesting you said that, I read about an year ago, an interview of Orit Gadiesh, the CEO of Bain Consulting with Harvard Business Review, where she says that, curiosity is what made her successful.
JK> That’s wonderful. I think that “intellectual curiosity” is a soft-skill asset for salespeople. Because if they can provide prospective buyers with new insights, share how other companies are solving problems – they are more likely to make a sale. The salesperson that is curious will step beyond the “old” skills and learn how-to use information to guide the buyer.

The old requirements of a salesperson’s skills are on a quick decline. However, there are many sales leaders who are holding on to that definition, in fact clinging to it. But they will not be able to deal with the new realities. I don't mean to be demeaning about the Sales Gurus of yesterday who still promoting these "old school" skills. Their wisdom was very effective twenty or thirty years ago. But with the advent of the internet and having “crazy busy people” as buyers, their strategies do not work any more.

Salespeople have to become more creative. When my daughter was younger, I coached her Destination Imagination creative-thinking team. I spent a lot of time studying how to help the kids be more creative.

One thing I learned that really stuck out was this: The only difference between people who were creative versus those who weren't was how their perceived themselves. Nothing else. If they thought they were creative, they were. If they didn't think they were creative, they weren't. It was the only variable.

So when sales leaders are asked to train their salespeople to critically think and be creative, it's hard for them to do if they don't see themselves that way. It becomes this vicious cycle. They do not want to experiment. They want binary “right or wrong”. They do not know how to deal with the continuum of possibilities i.e. degree of effectiveness. They are not curious about things like:
− “How can I make it more effective?”
− “What else can we do to make the client excited?”
− “How can we make this interaction where an objection not flare up?”

This lack of curiosity and creativity leads to average or low-performing sales teams. But those who can teach their salespeople these skills will have enormous success.

… To be Continued

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Conversations with Jill Konrath, a sales thought-leader, author of best-selling books and avid Gamer -- Part I

As an author of several best-selling books such as SNAP Selling (#1 Amazon sales books) and Selling to Big Companies (Amazon Top25 sales book since 2006) , founder of the Sales SheBang and a premier thought-leader for building high-performing sales teams, Jill Konrath brings passion and well-articulated wisdom daily to deliver results to her vast and diverse group of clients.

This interview with Jill is the seventh in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing and work performance.

RD> The first question for you, are you a gamer?
JK> I am a gamer. My favourite games right now are word games. I have addictive crossword puzzle syndrome and start every morning with the New York Times crossword. I especially like the Thursday, Friday and Saturday ones which are much harder than the ones earlier in the week. As I've done more writing, word games have helped me learn and write better. I also recognize that Games and Business go hand–in-hand and I love solving problems, so yes! I am gamer.

RD> How do you learn?
JK> First and foremost, I learn by reading. When I'm interested in a topic, I do an immersion in it and read everything that is out there. As I read, I look for emerging patterns and start determining what is effective and what is not.

I want to first learn from the Masters and get a comprehensive picture. Then I start experimenting with different approaches and strategies till I ultimately figure the puzzle out. That’s where “learning by doing” comes into play. When I first got into sales at Xerox, I followed the exact same learning path I just described.

RD> I find that our age-cohort, you and I acquire information and learn very differently from the under-40 generation. Do you agree? What are the differences and similarities you see among those getting into sales profession now versus when we got into our careers?
JK> I am not sure if age plays a role. I think we have adapted to new way of acquiring information (which is not age-dependent). We have become scanners online till something attracts our attention. However, the content summary has to first wet our appetite in small chunks before we pay attention. This is very different to what probably you and I did twenty years ago.

I think people learn differently. My daughter learns via reading and can assimilate and process information and learn by reading just like you and me. My son loves physical learning and being in aviation he learns via simulators.

However both are not afraid of failing and they like failing fast. Our age group probably is more afraid of failing and will spend endless hours to get to the right answer.

For example, the younger generation will crash few planes on the flight simulator and then learn quickly to make correct landings. If I played flight simulator, I would do everything I could to get it right the first time.

Younger people will experiment more and they will say “Oh! That’s ok – I blew that light on the runway and I will do it again and I will correct it.” Whereas I will sit there thinking ‘Gosh I don’t want to blow it. I don’t want to fail.” I did the same when I played PAKRA Games.

… To Be Continued

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Conversations with Bill Forquer an entrepreneur, strategy consultant and a soap-box derby enthusiast -- Part II

As an entrepreneur, angel investor, executive leader, and soap-box derby enthusiast, Bill Forquer delivers strategic consulting using game-theoretic modeling that produces roadmaps for C-level executives on their best strategic moves that will preempt market changes and mitigate competitive responses. He is out there preaching the virtues of game theory every day.

... Continued from Part I

RD> Tell me more how these game theory models actually get used.
BF> Through a series of surveys and workshops given to the executives and thought leaders of our client, we extract the three components required in a game model . First, is the “who” ─ the players in the game. These are current and future competitors, partners, regulators, and any stakeholder that can affect the outcome. Second, is the “what” ─ what strategic options are available to each player. Third, we capture the interests of each player. What is a player trying to accomplish? The discussion around this third part is quite revealing because we codify all the players interests using a game theory construct called “preference trees”. A preference tree is a stack-rank list of all the options of all the players from most important to least important. Each participant role plays being a player in the game to construct that preference tree. The preference tree expresses the importance of each option either positively or negatively. That is, a player desires an option to occur, or fears that an option will occur. Priiva takes these inputs, goes away, runs all our mathematical models, and returns to the client with analysis and predictions.

RD> Then what happens?
BF> The analysis and predictions drive the strategic actions that need to be taken. Metaphors often emerge that help communicate that strategic plan. For example, “a rising tide” might describe an immature market where all the players benefit from a technological breakthrough by any of the players. At the end of the workshop, the client is left with contingent scenarios, has a deeper understanding of their market, and is well prepared when big headline events actually occur ─ like a competitor announcing an acquisition, a government scandal that triggers economic turmoil, or new regulatory surcharges on product shipments.

RD> Are these preference trees a proxy for risk tolerance of a competitor’s management team, and not just a proxy for preferences? If yes, do you think it creates a data collection bias because the participant in the room will probably bring in their personal risk tolerance and preferences while role-playing Player X? If no, how do you elicit those “real” risk preferences of Player X?
BF> Yes, it is a proxy for risk tolerance as well. We attempt to eliminate personal bias by confirming each preference tree with group thinking. We also re-run our models tweaking key assumptions. In terms of the risk tolerance of competitors, that comes out in the role-play as the participants need to really understand what makes Player X tick, including their risk tolerance. The team needs to learn everything they can about Player X ─ their personality, their history, where their leadership team trained, the tenure of their CEO, their ownership structure, their swagger (or lack thereof) at investor meeting events, their words, their play, and every piece of information we and the client can get on that player.

RD> How do you drive consensus?
BF> Sticking with our Player X example, a small team would be assigned to role-play Player X, use all the available information, and construct the preference tree. Then that team would appear before the entire group and defend their tree by stating the behavior profile for Player X. This leads to a great discussion, and often the original preference tree is changed. Once the preference tree is agreed to for Player X, we will inspect where Player X’s own options are in the stack-ranking of all options. If a player’s own options are at the top of its own tree, that is an indicator the player is aggressive and will act without fear or consequence from others. Conversely, when Player X’s own options are well down in the ranking it means Player X is more sensitive to the actions of others before initiating their own actions. The models can be run few times on our system – in order to take away disagreements and give a more definitive answer. Insights are the value we provide.

RD> Because your insights are only as good as the information you and the participants bring to the table, do you see games and simulations fitting into your workshops? And do you think there is value in redirecting play online where you could create additional simulations, involve more participants, avoid “GroupThink” issues, or facilitate better decisions?
BF> Today, we use our proprietary software to facilitate the discussion we are leading. But we do not install, teach, nor provide software for clients to use. Starting in 2011, we will have the option to leave the facilitation software tool with the client so they can spark additional discussion on their own. The question about a crowd-sourced simulation model and service is an interesting one. I can envision a cloud service of hand-picked or anonymous participants simulating a game model, and creating a piece of publishable research that Priiva would monetize. Right now, we do not have that in our plans, but we are not ruling it out.

RD> Thank you Bill. It has been most lovely to hear that you and Priiva have monetized game theory and strategic decision-making, something I intensely dabbled with in my past life. Wish you all the best with increasing your client base.
BF> Its rewarding to help companies learn to make better strategic decisions. Thanks for listening.

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Conversations with Bill Forquer, an entrepreneur, strategy consultant and a soap-box derby enthusiast -- Part I

As an entrepreneur, angel investor, executive leader, and soap-box derby enthusiast, Bill Forquer delivers strategic consulting using game-theoretic modeling that produces roadmaps for C-level executives on their best strategic moves that will preempt market changes and mitigate competitive responses. He is out there preaching the virtues of game theory every day.

Prior to working at Priiva, Bill pioneered the “Enterprise Content Management” market beginning his career at Battelle Laboratories. At Battelle, he developed software catering to library and legal users which eventually spun off the company “Information Dimensions” which was then acquired by Open Text Corporation. At Open Text, he worked for eleven years, having various executive roles in marketing, products and M&A. He coauthored a book “Enterprise Content Management Solutions: What You Need to Know”

This interview with Bill is the sixth in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing and work performance.

RD> The first question for you, are you a gamer?
BF> No! I am not. Wait, do crossword puzzles count?
RD> Sure.
BF> I must say, early on in my career, I was introduced to “Great Game of Business”and the Open Book Management. I found it riveting so I introduced the concept to the entire company. We had great success creating higher performing teams. I like using games and simulations to help employees do their jobs better, and to open up communication that builds trust.

RD> How do you learn?
BF> I learn by doing.

RD> Bill, with your clients, you apply game-theoretic models and help them define and analyze market strategies in a competitive play. As you know, game theory is something I worked on for almost a decade, starting from my undergraduate days. So! I am very curious to learn more about what you do and how you began this part of your career.
BF> We complement each other as I’ve had no formal education in game theory. While I was at Open Text, I had an opportunity to participate in a workshop that Priiva (my current workplace) facilitated. Priiva uses extensive game-form tools and templates. This allowed executives at Open Text to analyze very complex market and strategic data, devise a clear strategic vision, and have an action-based game plan. As I was deciding to leave Open Text and determining the next phase of my career, I realized that these exercises with Priiva really helped me develop my thinking and was something that many companies need.

RD> What do you like about social media?
BF> They are very important for any consultant like me, as they are tools for personal brand building and awareness. Facebook and LinkedIn are especially interesting tools to help bridge the ever blurring of personal and work life. I bias LinkedIn for my professional side and Facebook for my personal life. I’ve both synched to Twitter which allows me to easily update either or both at my discretion. I like that.

RD> When you ran marketing programs for Open Text, did you find that with Social CRM etc, the marketing and sales roles are merging/blurring?
BF> The social tools provide targeted and robust communications, which can be used by both marketing and sales. But I don’t think the roles really blur. First and foremost, everyone in the organization is selling and that hasn’t changed. Corporate Marketing is the steward of the brand, but that stewardship must now accommodate use of social media, by lots of people, as a communications channel; so that responsibility is harder, but hasn’t changed. At Open Text, we had some blurring as I was a champion of having field marketing report to the sales organization. That forces sales to have total responsibility and accountability for their pipeline.

To be continued ...

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Conversations with Maria Palazzi - a commercial animator, decoder of choreographic thinking, user of metaphors for communications, polymath

As, a pioneer in commercial applications of computer animation, Maria Palazzi, the director of Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) at The Ohio State University, shares her views on merging arts, humanities, design and technology to further understand creative and other thinking processes. Prior to her academic appointments, Maria was a senior animator and director for Cranston/Csuri Productions. Her work has been nominated for awards from Clio, and screened at ACM SIGGRAPH and international film festivals. She is an unrelenting champion for increasing participation of young women in computer animation.

This interview with Maria is the fifth in our series about learning, design, games, social media, crowd-sourcing and work processes.

RD> The first question for you is, are you a gamer?
MP> No I am not. Never was into Board games either.

RD> How do you learn?
MP> I learn in a multimodal way. I definitely learn by doing. I also learn by reflection and I have to internalize, process and reprocess it. I read and probably that’s the best way for me to take in information. I draw and I map to make sense of complexity of ideas (perhaps my Graphics background) – that in turn allows me to process the information that I read and heard. Then lately I finish the learning process by reflecting and by communicating and reinforcing my understanding using metaphors. This last part has become more important to me, as I intensively work with multidisciplinary creative teams.

RD> True – the act of rhetoric is to create an image that someone can relate to and makes the content more relevant to the audience. Recently I read a blog written by Jill Konrath – a leading Sales effectiveness trainer interviewing Anne Miller (an author of the book Metaphorically Selling) – who talked about metaphors in sales communications. Tell me more.
MP> Absolutely, it can be used in any form of communication and understanding of complex transactions and processes. The more images you and I bring to the discussion and use the metaphors to communicate, the better the learning reinforcement is for both you and me.

RD> Do you think younger generation especially under-40 are learning differently?
MP> Well! I read. I don’t think younger generation takes their information by long-form reading that much as I do. Their information intake comes from different sources in shorter spans. I am not judging it, but the only issue I see while teaching students is how they find information. Because my Mom was a librarian and I worked in a library, I was taught very early on how to use a library, my reflexes automatically knew what keywords would lead to faster and more relevant results to find content. When Google and other search routines came along, that transition just made the results be delivered faster to me (from printed cards to my screen). Nowadays, that library visits seldom occur and how to do a keyword search is not a skill that is intuitive to them, , Sometimes working with my students, with all their different devices, they have a tough time finding scholarly information. I find that they struggle to determine what keyword they should put in that makes their search provide efficient and relevant search results. This I think makes their start of their learning longer. Once the information is received, processing the information and complexity of ideas—irrespective of age, I think there is no difference. Then it diverges again during reflection and communication, but that’s more of a style preference. These days, irrespective of age, use metaphors and more non-linear way of communicating simply because interactive learning and media tools make it faster to communicate complex ideas. Of course you must realize I have an inherent bias in my observations because I deal with Arts and Design people.

RD> What is your definition of immersive learning?
MP> It really depends on whether it is a verb or a noun. Sometimes it is how a student or a learner immerses in the content in order to learn and sometimes we create (like in ACCAD) an immersive learning environment where the learners come in to experience. I personally think that creating immersive environments or simulation-lab environments cannot only teaches someone the complex ideas but provide new understanding of old ideas. This is about immersing students in knowledge – then learning happens.

RD> If I understand what you are saying, in the technology world, that “immersing students in knowledge” is what we call “user experience”.
MP> Exactly, after the experience, the learning happens. So! As a teacher, “immersion” becomes a verb. Teaching them how to immerse and then create artifacts where they learn while immersed and then send them to the next level to learn more. Technology enables the building of artifacts. This encourages someone to become lifelong learners.
RD> This reminds me of the movie “Inception”, where you assimilate by building the artifacts and then play out the concepts and then redo for better. Have you seen it?
MP> No! I have not.
RD> You will love it – and try to see it on the big screen.

RD> How do you envision using games/simulations to teach people to use information better and also learn to understand complexity?
MP> A good example of this, is a project called Synchronous Objects that we did at ACCAD. It is about “Choreographic Thinking” based on a dance by choreographer William Forsythe. The dance is called, “One Flat Thing reproduced”. Norah Zuniga Shaw, a professor from the Dance department and I worked on this project to understand how his (William Forsythe’s) choreographic thinking works. It was not meant to be a form of dance documentation, but instead a visual way to unlock the ideas about how Forsythe’s complex systems of organization. The materials we created—animations, graphics, interactive tools—are investigatory as we wanted to probe Bill’s choreographic thinking and they are exploratory as we wanted to discover what we could see in the dance, and how we could visualize those interpretations.
To make Synchronous Objects, we assembled an extraordinary group of graduate students who are animators, designers, dancers, and scientists – as well as an outstanding group of faculty and researchers at Ohio State who brought their expertise the project.

RD> What is your definition of “Choreographic thinking”?
MP> A choreographer’s (in this case William Forsythe) strategies for planning time-based and space-based events and group relationships, and then presenting it in a way, a choreographer presents it to their audience.
RD> This just blows my mind. This is so similar when we think of designing complex simulations of a work process or interactions where eventually there is an output to the audience i.e. the consumer or customer in my world. Tell me more.
MP> When I first looked at it, as a graphics and visual person I could not even understand the complexity and kept asking myself, what am I looking at? I am an animator, I am a visual thinking person, and I never could seem to understand what I am looking at in the dance. I realized soon that what we typically expect a linear experience with a story-line with a beginning and an end like the NutCracker. It was not linear.
He was using this concept called “Counterpoint”, when he was arranging the piece on stage. I have been exposed to the concept of “Counterpoint” from jazz music. My parents had exposed me to lot of Jazz in my childhood. So! What finally helped me, is taking that Jazz metaphor to understand and learn about this non-linear complex narrative or as you would say “immersive simulation”.
We had to then deconstruct that thinking. We had to break it down to little parts of information bits and objects. We had to re-map using many different folks from various disciplines to build relationships among those objects. Then use information visualization skills to reconstruct sets of narrative, while keeping his ideas intact. We had to also determine how different learners would come to the site. By different learners I mean learning styles that different users would be comfortable to assimilate their own metaphors. For example, some are visual learners , some learn by word analogies etc. So! The site presents multiple ways into the material, it is very non-linear. We mined the data from the dance to define each object’s parametric range and what and how they can interact and what relationships can be had.
We have 20 objects – some of those are truly abstract – i.e. you would not assume by looking at the object that it came from that dance. But what the objects do is challenge you to answer the question – “what else might this dance look like?”
RD> To me this latter part of the exercise is applying “Group Theory” and “Topology” from my past life of dabbling in Mathematics. The objects can have certain properties like reflexive, associative and transitive as examples and then as a group or a topologic construct they can behave in certain way and you get more properties out of it that you can visualize. Is the mined data from the project shared with others? Incredible! Still having goose bumps.
MP> [Laughs] To create a continual experience for the audience, we have it available for interactive play at http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu/
We share the objects – of course this is not the only interpretation but it is our interpretation. We had statisticians, anthropologists, geographers, mathematics, neuroscientists, designers, authors – lots of disciplines play with the objects and come up with organizational strategies. We shared with them, how we discovered the objects but then had intense discussions of the relationship of the objects and how they relate to the objects and led them create new prototypes.
RD> This project clearly shows how technology, art, humanities and design can be brought together to create an immersive learning environment to do innovation on a very complex process such as creativity of a dance. Of course, this validates how we can use this project thinking to deconstruct complex human interaction and work processes and recreate new innovations in thinking and work processes.

RD> You know – I can go on talking about this. But I have to let you go soon. I wanted to ask my last set of questions. You have led the path here locally in Columbus to increase women participation in technology -- what trends have you seen in 1990's versus 2000's? How do we increase women participation to join the game/graphics production? Are there gender-based differences in design thinking?
MP> We have a summer program at ACCAD, where we bring young women from 8th and 9th grade schools to participate in workshops. These selected women work with women mentors and use “problem-solving skills and collaborative learning to create digital animation”. We have been doing this now for ten years. There are no gender-based differences in output but how they approach a design is very different from what it was ten years ago. These young women understand what media is and understand what story is. They have already played with Photoshop in sixth grade. So! These young women are much more well-versed on the tools and technology and spend more time in the critical thinking or design side and come up with projects that involve complex thinking and production through a collaborative effort. Lately I have invited the same group back a few times to work on more complex projects and they have amazing retention, and I can see the changes. It then makes computer animation careers much more of a reality for them. The other interesting thing I have noticed is that these children finally see that there is a continuum of careers between an engineer and an artist. They no longer feel that they need to pick one. They want to operate in their comfort zone.

RD> Thank you Maria. It has been really interesting to chat with you. Let us continue our discussions.
MP> Let‘s do so -- because I think we have some opportunities to collaborate.

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Conversations with TA McCann - a sailor, a CEO, a person "just interested"

As a serial entrepreneur, sailor and someone just interested in stuff, TA McCann CEO of Gist. Gist provides a next generation contact manager and social media hub delivering value to users as a crowd-sourced solutions to search, to learn and to communicate and to make valuable connections. Prior to starting Gist, TA founded “Jump2Go - providing innovative solutions for the radio industry, HelpShare - a web Q&A company, and Soft Labour, a web design and development consultancy” as well as running the Exchange business for Microsoft.

This interview with TA is the fourth in our series about learning, games, social media, crowd-sourcing and work performance.

RD> The first question for you is, are you a gamer?
TAM> I was never a video gamer but enjoy occasional board games such as Scrabble.

RD> How do you learn?
TAM> Primarily, I am an experiential learner. Secondarily, I learn by auditory and verbal learning. The best way for me is doing a project. I generally find people who are learning something that I am interested in and then I put myself around them and then do a project with them.

RD> What is your experience in how people learn and how learning is being delivered especially in the context of corporate training as opposed to schools and universities? Do you see a trend of learning content being delivered to individuals like you where the delivery adapts to the person’s way of learning?
TAM> I am certainly not an expert in education. However, I see a movement towards project-centric and team-centric learning. When I went to school, it was much more individual based and by the book. Now it is much more team reports and collaboration. I am seeing learning is a much more collective task. I see among the progressive west-coasters a more self-directed learning beginning among kindergartners. Montessori teaching was always self-directed where a teacher might say,

You Suzie you are interested in hockey, you John are interested in gardening, you Rini enjoy talking about cooking – let the functional skill follow those interests and I will teach you multiplication or language or composition based on that interest.

Having been on the board of a Montessori school, I understand this principle. But before, once a child was past kindergarten, the teaching became by direction from school and university and it carried on to the post-secondary and corporate world. Now the principles of self-directed training are becoming more prevalent among adults. It translates really well in the corporate world especially with the rise of social media. Now, an employee says,

I need to learn how to do the work or I am interested in having this skill, I know there are others like me who have already learned how to do it, and I will practice with them.

For example, if someone wants to effectively learn how to use social media, no one goes to school for that or reads a book about it. Suppose someone wants to grow roses in their backyard and learn to use the social media technology. They start by creating some social media accounts, follow others who are writing about it, discuss with others, if they like enjoy writing, then they start blogging about roses. Amidst that dialog, and using the technology, the learner uses self-topic of interest and with trial and errors with other people with same interest learn how to grow roses.

RD> Do you see learning and development community in businesses moving away from classroom and compliance-based training? What was your experience at Microsoft when you were there?
TAM> Yes and No. At Microsoft, classes were free and easy to attend. I took more than my fair share of classes at Microsoft, simply because I wanted to learn and it was readily available. Personally, I do not enjoy online training because I like the human interaction. I liked the instructor-led training. Many of these courses were really well done from an instructor-led training perspective but very few were project-based. Given that this was the early part of the past decade, and a bit dated as much has changed or evolved since then, I think it is moving towards a better virtual space where again it is self-directed and team-centric learning. More and more people have taken matters in their own hands via current technology and even mobile technology. They are unwilling to wait for batch-mode training, they want to crowd-source the learning. In software training, more and more people do not use manuals, nor do they sit in classes to learn how to use the software, making demand for instructor-led training less. There are many software now and more and more will be designed in the future, where the user will drive and source learning content.
For example, someone says,

I have a need, I have a passion and I will use the software. If I like it, then I will tell other how well it works and then provide tips on certain things.

Software developers, like us at Gist, are making it easy to use and fairly intuitive interface whereby a user asks these questions:

User - How quickly was it to set up?
Developer - Quick and easy.
User - How much does it cost to set-up?
Developer - Zero for Gist.
User - How much deployment do I need?
Developer - None.

This dialog then creates a consumption-driven learning model. The answers they get are then proven immediately by setting it up and then when they find it easy, they tell others. Then they can answer the question,

How can I get it on my mobile?

Then they ask by searching, if the mobile app is there, they set it up. If they like a cool button, they write about it. Then others follow. This becomes crowd-sourced and on-demand. Software when well designed will still have some complexity behind some three doors that an average user cannot open, and that’s where customer service and trainers or power-users will open those doors and promote that learning about the complexity. I think that’s the trend that traditional training community has to provide.

RD> You are absolutely right. We have been asked many times, why we don’t have manuals for our Learning and People management SaaS console with step-by-step instructions. I always ask the user the question,

What task are you trying to do?

They name the task. Then I ask them,

Given you had an overview, how would you do the task?

They immerse themselves in the product and then within 3 seconds they figure it out. It not shortens their learning time, as our design too is very intuitive, it saves us the cost of having an entire team doing documentation and version controls. This then saves money the user by not transferring the cost in the pricing.
TAM> Yep! It is the continuous cycle from the user to the designer to the developer and back to the user in a continuous learning loop. I think this evolving user-driven learning model for software can hold true with any learning associated with any work process.

RD> This segues well into my next question. User adoption for enterprise software has historically been a big issue. When the user’s initial learning cycle and effort gets simplified and initial getting up and running gets simplified for an organization, data should show that users adopt faster, But there are still big issues with SaaS models such as Salesforce.com and others that come to mind. What factors affect user-adoption in this day and age?
TAM> SaaS design in the past was not very intuitive, when you consider Salesforce.com. There are three trends in the software design today and is foreshadowing enterprise software design in the future.
First, software needs to be easy to use and be intuitive. I do not see some of the SaaS or other enterprise software from ten years ago as being that.
Second the software needs to provide instant gratification to the user. After those first two are met, then the user wants more and then you give them more. There is very tight cycle of effort then reward and then effort and then reward. I think almost all enterprise software ten years from now will have this type of design model that not only addresses first-time users but also addresses the needs of ongoing-users. What this leads to is that there has to be a way where a manager can be able to say and teach in a simulated way how much more improvement user Rini can do. This is where the manager says,

Rini – look what a great job you have done and announce it to the world.

This brings the third piece of how what you guys are doing becomes very important in users adopting. The more and more a game’s mechanics teaches not only critical thinking and how you use the technology and work process; you have built a relationship between that learning skill and the real work. Whether you work at a call center or elsewhere, employees will have “you got a gold star” incentives in real-time. Whether it is passively broadcast or instantaneously broadcast, both are immensely valuable to increase the user adoption.

At Gist, we have a new Game “Learn That Name” that teaches how to maximize the value of using Gist.
Here, we provide no manuals or training, but I-the user scores some points playing it and learns the value with small investment of time, small amount of gratification, and then learning happens.

RD> Our software and games relate not only to immediate learning goals, but also to real-time work performance metrics. We have done pilots and studies to prove the value of how it helps change behaviors and makes the learning consistent. However, the big objection that we hear time and time again, is that the user group of our technology (or other technologies like FourSquare and Gowalla) are self-selecting early adopters and that user-adoption is all about middle adopters and this might not help. We find that the incremental change in performance for early adopters is huge, the change for middle adopters is huge, and that the change for late adopters are much less. The last group, in my opinion, should look for a new job. However, this objection comes up all the time. How would you address it?
TAM> Before I answer that question, let me tell you of another trend. People who try and fail are better learners. Let’s look at the microcosm of iPhone. Most users will download an iPhone app, try it, like it, decides to continue, dislike it then delete it. This cycle is happening with any one user multiple times a month. Of course, Apple has a great job again making it intuitive and easy to install and easy to delete. I try one application but 200th time I do it, I become very confident to increase my productivity.

Mac is very good at giving that opportunity to users whereas Windows has not, hence much faster adoption in use of Mac for those who try it and less for Windows who get into the mode of “living with it.”

People who are lifelong learners are also early adopters; they like this type of change and they do it better. For employees who are these early adopters, I am not surprised that they will have a larger increase in their productivity. The performance gap between middle adopters and early adopters, I see as widening except with right leadership and incentives and rewards for the identified early adopters are leading to the traditional middle adopters move towards early adoption.
Again, the pool of early adopters is larger because failing and learning has become such a faster cycle. Learning Games companies like yours will bring more of these users to light in front of the management teams. I agree with you, late adopters should look for another job, that it’s a lost cause.

Companies should incentivise employees to be more productive with newer technology and tell them,

you guys will figure it out yourself, you tell us how it works, you help others to use the product and we increase productivity and in the long-run, we have faster deployment cycle, we don’t need corporate training and we can have change happen faster.

My experience has been that with that kind of leadership mantra, fast-fail change/reward mind-set, easily deployable technology, intuitive design will move the middle adopters.

RD> What does social selling mean to you?
TAM> Relationship ventured networks. Everyone should consider himself or herself to be in sales. In sales and marketing, customer support, and technical support and for software – you are directly helping with recruiting and selling. In that respect, social media is every employee’s tool to social sell whether it be to end-users or to recruit employees. There are three components for that.

First there is a listening component. This way you just don’t get information about TA McCann the buyer, but more and more components of data about what TA is about. The same goes for the buyer knowing more and more about the seller. Social selling is about the buy-cycle as opposed to the sell-cycle. This means more touch-points with long-term effect in the buy cycle.

The second aspect is the “social” component. Now someone who is trying to sell to me knows I am the CEO of Gist, I started a Montessori school and I am sailor and I have backyard chickens. The seller can connect at that level. Every aspect of the information I provide is socially relevant. It is no different before whereby I met a guy at a church and eventually that guy comes to my hardware store. The last component of social-selling is the how to manage content to build that trust. I can post today,

I am going to go to Hawaii and am interested in scuba-diving.

This is a signal from me to the world – give me content, give me information and recommendations for hotels, best place to dive, best gear place. The opportunity then becomes to those listening how to address this.

For example, I can post today, "reviewing VoIP systems" on twitter. The ones who do this listening badly, will immediately call me to sell me their crap. Those who do it well will send me a tweet about VoIP buying guide. That education and sending me relevant content builds the understanding and builds the trust and that trust leads to the opportunity to sell.

RD> So! Looking back in the past two years what percent of significant and meaningful professional relationships have you built and nurtured using social media?
TAM> Well! The main relationships in last 2 years came from conferences, simply because I go to a lot of conferences, and I go because that’s the way I learn. So! That shared context has given me focused opportunities to generate contacts. However, Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin have all been incredible useful to me to nurture that first in-person contact and also bring back people that I knew from the past to have an almost daily interaction. Social media has helped me easily maintain and take those professional relationships to the next level. The percentage is increasing in an accelerated fashion for that maintaining part with orders of magnitude.

RD> Thank you TA. It has been really interesting to chat with you. Good luck with increasing the number of Gist users.
TAM> Let us continue to promote learning!

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