This year, as our company Christmas gift, we thought we would continue our charitable history but bring it a little closer to home.  The economic challenges are great this year and each of us are aware of many families who are struggling to provide for their basic needs.  In keeping with the importance of both family and community, Iona decided to Adopt-a-Family this Christmas.

Realizing that the need is great, employees contributed personal funds to the company allowance knowing that joining together, we would make this Christmas a little brighter for a local family.  Working with Peoria Friendship House, employees divided into teams that had the responsibility to shop for one family member.  This program targets families with children in 8^th grade and younger to provide a new outfit and one of the toys on the child’s wish list.

It was a great effort as everyone pitched in – from shopping for their person, to donating additional monies to go to the family shopping, to helping wrap the gifts.  Our front hallway was lined with 11 very large, very filled bags.  They contained toys, electronics, clothing, coats, boots, hats, scarves, gloves, cleaning supplies, games and hot cocoa.  They are filled with our Iona family helping out another family that needs help.

We are all blessed in so many ways.  What a great way to share those blessings with others and a nice way to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas.

BJ Aberle, Jeremy LeBeau, Mark Tovey, Matt Forcum and Jeff Idleman wrapping gifts

An appropriate title for my first blog post, don’t you think? My primary focus at The Iona Group is in our Learn practice area. This practice area focuses on helping our clients develop and deliver effective learning programs. Our work is primarily in the area of eLearning, although we work hard to recommend the right solutions for our clients and eLearning is not always the right approach.

In any case, I have been doing a lot of reading and thinking lately about what makes good learning and what makes it successful. When you think about it, learning in a corporate setting ultimately has one purpose and one purpose only: to change behavior. To achieve positive business results we need the right behaviors to change, but that is a different topic. What I want to focus on here is how to get people to do things differently from what they are currently doing.

There are three things that affect behaviors: beliefs, attitudes and knowledge. Often, corporate learning only focuses on one of the three: knowledge. This can be problematic because knowing what do to and doing it are often two different things. For instance, think about smoking. There is overwhelming evidence to support the negative health effects of this activity and this information is widely available. And yet, according to a 2006 study by the US Department of Health and Human Services, every day 1,300 children between the ages of 12 and 17 try their first cigarette and go on to become regular smokers. So information alone is not always enough to change people’s behavior.

When I sit down to work on a project with a client I always ask three questions: Who is the audience? What is the message and what do you want people to do differently as a result of your message? What I find is that in general, people have thought a lot about the message and only a little about the audience and what they want the audience to do differently after receiving the message.

A great example of this is safety training. Safety training can be some of the most important learning companies offer their employees. But simply providing people with safe practices and procedures does not necessarily mean they will be followed. The key is to affect people’s attitudes about safety – that it is important and change their belief that following safe practices and procedures – whatever they are – will make a difference. In a recent series of safety training and messages we worked on for one of our clients, we did this by tying our messages to the idea of people returning safely home to their families every day. By connecting safety at work to its impact on loved ones at home, we aimed to produce a more lasting and effective message that would result in people taking safety to heart.

By beginning with the end in mind, and focusing on how to impact peoples’ knowledge, attitude and beliefs, training will become more relevant, more interesting and more personal, resulting in learning that will change behavior and achieve the desired results.

Welcome to my blog. My name is John Feser and I am one of the partners and owners of a creative communications company called The Iona Group. We work with Fortune 100 companies, small and medium sized business and non-profit organizations to help them creatively and effectively communicate their messages. If this sounds too much like a marketing message and more abstract, I apologize. It is always interesting when I describe Iona because what we produce is so diverse (corporate websites, HD video, eLearning, computer interactives), yet how we go about producing these various forms of communication is so incredibly similar. If you would like to learn more, check out our website at www.ionagroup.com.

I am fascinated by how we as humans communicate with each other and how our communication affects how we work and interact. I am interested in everything from our use of technology, to the written and spoken word as well as the impact it has on our relationships, our society and our culture. Obviously, communication is pervasive in every aspect of our lives; so much so that we tend to take it for granted.

My goal with this blog is to share my observations and experiences with communication and how they relate specifically to learning and human performance, especially in the workplace. I’ll explore what makes good communication work and why along with examples of ineffective communication. I welcome your comments and feedback on all my posts and sincerely hope that I learn as much from those who follow this blog as they learn from me.

I was helping one of my daughters with her homework and the inevitable question came up, “When am I ever going to use this?” While maybe a little frustrating as a parent, it’s really a fair question if you think about it. And it is one that is just as germane to adult learners as it is to my ten year-old daughter.

In corporate learning it is easy to get caught up focusing on the content of the course. Countless hours are spent making sure all the key points are thoroughly covered, that the material is presented in an engaging manner and that there is an adequate way to assess whether the learner has mastered the material. This is all well and good, and very important. But does the learner really know why they are taking the course? If the answer is, “Because my boss told me to,” or “Corporate requires it,” then don’t expect your learners to be too motivated.

If you really want to motivate people so they learn and retain the material you are trying to teach, you must first answer one important question, “What’s in it for me?” The answer to this question will be very different depending on your course content. However, it should always be personal and specific.

First, it must be personal. If you are trying to roll out sales training to your sales force and you tell everyone that the purpose of this training is to, “Improve sales so that the company can achieve a 10% growth in revenue,” people may lose interest almost immediately. But tell them that this training will make them better salespeople and that it will help them reach or exceed their monthly sales quota, and you will get their attention.

Second, be specific. Explain how the training will benefit them. For example, “This training will introduce you to various types of customer resistance and will show you some ways of handling that resistance so that you will be more comfortable and confident when you encounter objections.” There are many ways to make the learning specific. If you have information or statistics on how the training has benefited others who have taken the course, share it. If there are specific situations when your material is particularly useful, be sure to let people know that also.

Answering the question “What’s in it for me,” also provides another benefit besides increasing interest and motivation. It also provides a context for learning. If people understand the answers to When, Where, How and Why they will be using the course material, then they will be able to relate the learning to their own real-life situations. This helps greatly with comprehension and retention of the material.

So, as you are writing the outline for your next course or training piece, be sure to think about providing your learners some personal and specific reasons for how this course will benefit the learner. You’ll end up with people who are more motivated to learn and are able to better comprehend and retain the material.

I was helping one of my daughters with her homework and the inevitable question came up, “When am I ever going to use this?” While maybe a little frustrating as a parent, it’s really a fair question if you think about it. And it is one that is just as germane to adult learners as it is to my ten year-old daughter.

In corporate learning it is easy to get caught up focusing on the content of the course. Countless hours are spent making sure all the key points are thoroughly covered, that the material is presented in an engaging manner and that there is an adequate way to assess whether the learner has mastered the material. This is all well and good, and very important. But does the learner really know why they are taking the course? If the answer is, “Because my boss told me to,” or “Corporate requires it,” then don’t expect your learners to be too motivated.

If you really want to motivate people so they learn and retain the material you are trying to teach, you must first answer one important question, “What’s in it for me?” The answer to this question will be very different depending on your course content. However, it should always be personal and specific.

First, it must be personal. If you are trying to roll out sales training to your sales force and you tell everyone that the purpose of this training is to, “Improve sales so that the company can achieve a 10% growth in revenue,” people may lose interest almost immediately. But tell them that this training will make them better salespeople and that it will help them reach or exceed their monthly sales quota, and you will get their attention.

Second, be specific. Explain how the training will benefit them. For example, “This training will introduce you to various types of customer resistance and will show you some ways of handling that resistance so that you will be more comfortable and confident when you encounter objections.” There are many ways to make the learning specific. If you have information or statistics on how the training has benefited others who have taken the course, share it. If there are specific situations when your material is particularly useful, be sure to let people know that also.

Answering the question “What’s in it for me,” also provides another benefit besides increasing interest and motivation. It also provides a context for learning. If people understand the answers to When, Where, How and Why they will be using the course material, then they will be able to relate the learning to their own real-life situations. This helps greatly with comprehension and retention of the material.

So, as you are writing the outline for your next course or training piece, be sure to think about providing your learners some personal and specific reasons for how this course will benefit the learner. You’ll end up with people who are more motivated to learn and are able to better comprehend and retain the material.

An appropriate title for my first blog post, don’t you think? My primary focus at The Iona Group is in our Learn practice area. This practice area focuses on helping our clients develop and deliver effective learning programs. Our work is primarily in the area of eLearning, although we work hard to recommend the right solutions for our clients and eLearning is not always the right approach.

In any case, I have been doing a lot of reading and thinking lately about what makes good learning and what makes it successful. When you think about it, learning in a corporate setting ultimately has one purpose and one purpose only: to change behavior. To achieve positive business results we need the right behaviors to change, but that is a different topic. What I want to focus on here is how to get people to do things differently from what they are currently doing.

There are three things that affect behaviors: beliefs, attitudes and knowledge. Often, corporate learning only focuses on one of the three: knowledge. This can be problematic because knowing what do to and doing it are often two different things. For instance, think about smoking. There is overwhelming evidence to support the negative health effects of this activity and this information is widely available. And yet, according to a 2006 study by the US Department of Health and Human Services, every day 1,300 children between the ages of 12 and 17 try their first cigarette and go on to become regular smokers. So information alone is not always enough to change people’s behavior.

When I sit down to work on a project with a client I always ask three questions: Who is the audience? What is the message and what do you want people to do differently as a result of your message? What I find is that in general, people have thought a lot about the message and only a little about the audience and what they want the audience to do differently after receiving the message.

A great example of this is safety training. Safety training can be some of the most important learning companies offer their employees. But simply providing people with safe practices and procedures does not necessarily mean they will be followed. The key is to affect people’s attitudes about safety – that it is important and change their belief that following safe practices and procedures – whatever they are – will make a difference. In a recent series of safety training and messages we worked on for one of our clients, we did this by tying our messages to the idea of people returning safely home to their families every day. By connecting safety at work to its impact on loved ones at home, we aimed to produce a more lasting and effective message that would result in people taking safety to heart.

By beginning with the end in mind, and focusing on how to impact peoples’ knowledge, attitude and beliefs, training will become more relevant, more interesting and more personal, resulting in learning that will change behavior and achieve the desired results.

Welcome to my blog. My name is John Feser and I am one of the partners and owners of a creative communications company called The Iona Group. We work with Fortune 100 companies, small and medium sized business and non-profit organizations to help them creatively and effectively communicate their messages. If this sounds too much like a marketing message and more abstract, I apologize. It is always interesting when I describe Iona because what we produce is so diverse (corporate websites, HD video, eLearning, computer interactives), yet how we go about producing these various forms of communication is so incredibly similar. If you would like to learn more, check out our website at www.ionagroup.com.

I am fascinated by how we as humans communicate with each other and how our communication affects how we work and interact. I am interested in everything from our use of technology, to the written and spoken word as well as the impact it has on our relationships, our society and our culture. Obviously, communication is pervasive in every aspect of our lives; so much so that we tend to take it for granted.

My goal with this blog is to share my observations and experiences with communication and how they relate specifically to learning and human performance, especially in the workplace. I’ll explore what makes good communication work and why along with examples of ineffective communication. I welcome your comments and feedback on all my posts and sincerely hope that I learn as much from those who follow this blog as they learn from me.