Category: Observations Page 16 of 88

How to Improve Training

On April 11, 2017

I had a long talk with a co-worker today about training for WebEx. There are training classes being offered and a need for people to take training based on the calls to our help desk. However, people are not signing up for the training sessions. He wanted to pick my brain to see if I had any ideas on what they could do to encourage more people to attend training.

I wish I had recorded what I told him since I was overflowing with ideas, having given this a lot of thought in my former job when I was a team of one and had to streamline my training efforts and education to a large user community.

The ideas here are about training adults to use WebEx in a government environment. But many of these ideas can be tweaked and applied to your own user community.

Find Your Allies

Somewhere in your organization people know who needs training. If you’re at a loss where to begin, start with managers or team leaders. They’ll know who could use training because they need the help or can find power users who want training. In many groups there’s a go-to person for, in this case, WebEx. They’re the unofficial support person and person everyone relies on for help.

They’re also a valuable source of information. They can tell you where they struggle and what trips people up. Is training unclear on a topic? Is that topic missed in the training? Does the training reflect reality?

Finding these power users and getting an email correspondence going, or sitting down for a 15 minute call or meeting can teach you more about what you need to be doing than weeks of struggling on your own. Everyone uses WebEx differently.

When I schedule training with a group of users, the first thing I try to find out is how do you use the tool? Because everyone uses it differently depending on their job. An Administrative Assistant scheduling for an Executive is going to use it very differently from an A/V Support professional managing a large meeting space.

Find the Pain Points

Everyone struggles with technology. The secret to better training is to find where people struggle then lessen their struggle. Talk to your super users. Talk to your new hires. A fresh set of eyes can help spot a problem you’ve overlooked because you’re so familiar with the system and its quirks.

Do you know it can take up to 24 hours for a recorded WebEx session to become available to the host? Or that certain elements such as the Multimedia Panel are not captured in the WebEx recording? What about the audio solution(s) available? Do they have the same attendee limit as your WebEx system or will you need multiple options to reach capacity? Can you accommodate international participants?

People try to help themselves before calling for help. Make sure all available documentation is up to date. Especially in large organizations, information can get siloed into different places. There may be a set of documents on an Intranet site. A SharePoint site may contain a different version of those documents. Got a Wiki? Well, those may be different as well. Be sure you’re telling everyone the same thing.

I’ve walked into situations where I had a user tell me there was a set of documentation they used I never knew existed before that moment. It’s good to get a handle on what is available to your user community. If you need to, ask them. If someone tells you “that’s not what the documentation here says”, ask them where they’re looking and get it updated or corrected.

Schedule Conflicts and Geography

Live trainings are great. There’s no better experience than being in the room with a trainer and learning in person. That may sound weird coming from someone who supports and lives in WebEx, Jabber, Lync and other collaboration technologies all day. But I still feel there’s no better way to learn something new than sitting in the room where you can look the trainer in the eye and ask questions.

That’s a perfect world. For many people, they’re never going to get into the room with the trainer. Even if the training is offered remotely through WebEx, GoToMeeting or another tool. There are still some people who will never make it to a training session.

Geography plays a big role in large organizations. Do not schedule an 8am training in Washington, DC if you expect your Seattle office to join. It’s 5am there! The problem is only compounded if you are catering to an international audience.

Even without geographical constraints, there are people in the same building who will never make a live (or online) training due to their job. Remember those Administrative Assistants? They may have a hard time blocking an hour of their time to better learn a tool they use daily, because it’s not directly part of their job. Anyone who works phone support may not be able to leave that phone. And there are still others who will simply have conflicts of all sorts during the scheduled training times.

On-Demand Content

The solution for these folks is to create content for them to consume on their schedule. Are you holding a training class? Record it with WebEx or another tool and make the recording available? Create documentation (and I am not talking about the slide deck from the training class.) Create documents that stand on their own and do not need a presenter to explain their contents.

Even more valuable than a recorded live session if you’re able to manage it, is to record a session with the trainer without a live audience that is just the content. While question can be helpful in a live session, there can also be interruptions, audio issues and other distractions which detract from the content that make it frustrating to watch.

If the user has set aside time specifically to learn this content, make that content as valuable as possible. Cut out the 15 minute introduction before the presenter gets started. If there a break for a group activity in the training? Edit that out. It’s easy to take a recording of a live session and put it online for those who could not attend to watch. But there is often a large amount of dead air while people work in groups or take bathroom breaks.

The person watching the session doesn’t need to spend an hour on a recording that only has 35 minutes of actual training. Respect their time.

Target a specific group

Targeting a specific group can be useful if you’re trying to improve your training for the organization at-large or simply want to offer better training to that community. A couple of groups I identified as good places to start for WebEx are:

Administrative Assistants
Trainers
Help Desk
A/V Support
WebEx Support Group

In your organization, there are people who use and interact with your tool differently. By identifying them, you’ll see weak spots in your information or training you never knew existed. It’s important to talk to people with all varying levels of comfort with the tool.

Since WebEx training is my example, here is how I would target these groups to better serve them.

Administrative Assistants

They’re going to see weird edge cases. Executives are going to have mobile devices and different models of hardware than many other users. If there’s an incompatibility in a product, they are going to find it.

This is also a group who lives in other people’s calendars and email all day long. They’re my experts on how WebEx works in Outlook when scheduling for another user. They do this all day. They’ll know where the shortcomings are and where the system breaks down.

Trainers

Other trainers are a valuable resource. Especially in my field since WebEx is our tool for meetings, it’s often used for trainings as well. Ask other trainers where they struggle. Find out what questions they have or where people who attend their trainings have problems.

They’re a group who is already focused on teaching skills to other people and they’ll have their own outlook on the tools they use to do the work.

Help Desk / WebEx Support / A/V Support Staffs

I’m lucky enough to work in a place with a dedicated WebEx Support group. Your Help Desk may be the catch-all for all things broken. These people are a treasure trove of information about problems in the organization. No matter what you want to train people on, your Help Desk has information you need.

Who else talks to the user community every single day? There are always people within your help desk who are anxious and willing to share what they know with you. (And many times, nobody is asking them.) It’s a resource that gets overlooked. Anything the help desk staff is able to teach you about training or supporting your users will in turn help them out.

The fewer calls they get, they more time they have to focus on other problems. If there’s a recurring issue with your application, the help desk will know about it (and will be cursing your name as they field their 100th call for the week about it.)

Talk to your support staff, open a dialog with members of the team, or work with the help desk managers. They will be able to find members of the help desk who will be able to help with providing ongoing information to make your training better and lessen their workload.

Vary Training Topics

Often times, there’s a perceived need to offer the same introductory training all the time. There are always new hires to your organization or people new to your particular application. While there is value in getting those people introduced to the tool, you lose everyone else.

Remember those power users? They’ll never attend your training because they know how to use the tool. They want to use the tool better. Even people who are not power users, but want to learn more will not repeat the same training over and over. But if give them a reason to come back, they will.

I gave a couple of examples of how you could vary the schedule for a weekly WebEx training session. There are three different “Centers” in WebEx. They each have a purpose and a feature set which makes them stronger in some scenarios than others.

The Meeting Center is for meetings. Imagine everyone around a conference room table. Everyone has the same privileges and there’s no hierarchy of control.

The Event Center is for events. This allows a set of panelists to have greater rights such as an open phone line and share their webcams with a large number of attendees who are muted and unable to share video.

The Training Center offers features for training such as the ability to virtually break a single conference phone line into multiple groups for smaller discussions.

There is more than enough content to cover each of these centers in an hour-long session. There are the first three weeks of your month. Each week, a different topic. For the fourth week, offer a deep-dive into a specific topic.

How does closed captioning work? Tell me everything I need to know about recording, converting and sharing my meeting. How could I manage large events better? Hold a session for the 10 Tips to Make Your WebEx Better! Open the time for a Q&A session where anyone can join to ask questions and either answer them on the spot or follow-up in a later session. (You just got your next session’s content!)

Create a calendar

For WebEx, it’s easy to cycles through those 3 centers on a monthly of bi-monthly basis. Then fill in the weeks in between with special sessions into a single topic. It’s just as important to tell people ahead of time what to expect and when. I may not care about Training Center because I’ll never use it, but Event Center sounds like it will solve my problems with attendees unmuting their phones and talking in a meeting with 350 people.

This is also a perfect opportunity to see what new features or changes are coming and work those into your training before they happen. People hate change. Especially if it’s a tool they’ve come to rely on and have developed muscle memory about how it works and where menus are. Even for something as simple as an interface change, that could be enough to focus on for an entire session.

The idea with offering different content is to reach the greatest number of users. So make a calendar and publicize that calendar. Make sure people know what is coming up. Take note of what popular topics are and what few people use. Then change-up your schedule or training accordingly.

Listen and Learn

Every time I host a training, I always learn something new. I see a new problem no one ever reports to our support group. I learn a new way to use the tool I had never considered (because everyone uses tools for different things). I learn where my flaws in training are and how to improve them.

If you’re looking for ways to improve your training, take the time to look and listen for feedback. Offer multiple ways to provide feedback. Host an open Q&A for the people who want to come to a room and meet in person. Provide your phone number for those who prefer the phone. Give your email for those who think best in text.

Your user community is a valuable resource and can give you everything you need to make their lives easier. Your task is to find those people and groups who will help you succeed. Once you start looking, they’ll start coming to you.

Rules for Email

By Carl

On April 10, 2017

In Observations

I spend a lot of time in email. If you’re reading this, you also spend a lot of time in email. Either you’re waiting for new support requests to come in, or work to show up from your boss or you’re corresponding with friends and loved ones. Email is everywhere and it comes in like a tidal wave. It’s worth setting some ground rules with people you email.

Set Email Hours

For instance, I don’t email people outside of work hours. If I happen to look at email after work to pull some bit of information I need and I see something needing a reply, I may draft the reply and leave it as a draft. I don’t need to send that reply now.

I do this because I don’t want to teach people I am reachable by email outside of work hours. Even if it’s just one person, word spreads. If I email one person back in the evening or the weekend, it won’t be long before people are emailing me at all times for responses and expecting one.

Blind Carbon Copy (BCC)

I will let this author share my thoughts about BCC as they’re clearer than anything I’ve ever said.

There are only two legitimate uses for bcc. First, explicitly moving someone to bcc who no longer needs to be part of the ongoing exchange. Second, to send email to a large group of people by putting all of them on bcc. I strongly recommend never using bcc any other way. If you want someone to know about an email you sent, send it and then forward it…

Some Things I Have Learned About Email

That second point is particularly important. When you send email to a group using the TO or CC line, then you’re not just emailing everyone. But you’ve given everyone on that list the addresses of everyone else on that list. Even if it’s a small list, those people may not want others to know they’re part of it. Or to give up their email address.

If you have a large list, then you’re asking for a reply-all nightmare. I’ve emailed groups of 500 people before using a series of BCC emails. If you don’t, and any of those people decide to reply-all, you’ve got an email going to 500 people every. single. time.

Please take me off this list.

Thanks

I’m not going to ever reply to an email with Thanks if it’s the end of the conversation. You don’t need another email to delete from me and it doesn’t add any value to our conversation.

I’ll email a response to any questions I am being asked, or if I need something and you reply you’ll do it. I’m not going to close the thread with a Thanks. I don’t see the point of it and it annoys me when people respond with their own Thanks.

Meeting Acceptances

By default, Outlook will send an email reply when you Accept a meeting. I always opt to not send the reply back. If I decline, I respond with a reason in addition to the declined email. However, if I’m going to attend your meeting, I’m not having the system send an email. I feel about this the same way I feel about the Thanks email. It’s unnecessary.

This is a learned behavior from running a series of large meetings and training events where I find myself buried in emails. It’s no fun to return to an inbox overflowing with over 100 meeting acceptance emails. It serves no purpose other than to generate another email.

Less Email

The goal of my last two rules is to make less email. When I reply to an email, I try to be brief and consider the recipient’s time. In the same way, I don’t generate more email for them to sort through. Though many people’s inboxes have unread counts in the thousands partly because of emails like this.

I do my part to send less email and generate less email overall. I don’t see the point in adding to the growing pile of unread messages. Especially if they say “Thanks” or “I’ve accepted your meeting request.”

All Email Is Public

I don’t mean public in that hackers are going to release it, or it’s going to fall into the wrong hands. I mean people will forward email to anyone for any reason without a second thought.

If I write a reply to a question someone asks me, I assume it’s going to be forwarded in its entirety to the third-party who asked the question.

A bonus tech worker tip: Never put any note in a ticket or email you would not want the customer to read.

Nothing about email is private. I’ve had entire ticket histories emailed to customers. I’ve had co-workers and managers send along an entire conversation just the two of us were having to a larger group. The truth is you never know just how far and wide your email may go. Treat it as if it will be read by the person you least wish would read it. That way, when they do, you won’t have anything to apologize for.

Where do I go from here?

By Carl

On January 22, 2017

In Observations

2017 is turning into the year where I take my feelings and convert them into action. Ever since the election, I’ve had a lot of feelings about our new President. A man who doesn’t want the job as much as he wants applause. A man who wants to put people in place to lead agencies with little idea of what they do and why it’s important.

I’ve focused a lot of my growing discontent on what I can do with myself and where I can go from here. Since that’s the question I keep coming back to. Where do I go from here?

Uncertainty

I work for the government as a contractor. I want it to stay open. And while I feel it’s less likely to close now that the Republicans control it, I fear their choices may lead to shutdowns in other ways. The short of it is I don’t trust Trump to look out for anyone but himself. The rest of us are collateral damage.

I know government is a huge ship. It doesn’t turn swiftly in new directions, but it can knock out small boats without even seeing them in its wake. I fear for our position in the world and what it means for our safety at home.

I have a lot on my mind and I’ve started to channel that into action. Even if that action is slow and uncoordinated, it’s a start.

Tech Solidarity

First, I attended the first DC Tech Solidarity Meetup. The “secret meeting of the resistance” was attended by people from all across the spectrum. I was worried it would be mostly programmers. We had activists, advocacy groups, cyber-security and cryptography people, government affairs consultants, marketing and communications people, public policy folks and IT folks of all stripes.

We had all come together to try to find an answer to the question on all our minds. Where do we go from here?

It was a good start for something bigger. I hope it continues to grow and lead to action.

Swamp Revolt Nonviolence Training

Second, I attended Active Bystander and Nonviolence Training hosted by Swamp Revolt. The training was a solid three hours of learning the basics of what it means to be an active bystander. In addition to many role plays, we talked about the basics of nonviolence and the Bystander Effect. It was interesting and helped me learn how I can be a better ally to those facing harassment if the opportunity presents itself.

Women’s March

Third, I attended the Women’s March in Washington DC yesterday. It was an amazing, positive event. I will miss the spontaneous cheers throughout the day. Standing in line for the metro. There was love and pussy hats being passed around from those who had a supply. We got one from a woman in line who had extras. Each hat came with a note and contact info for who knitted it. Ours came from Jessica Greenfield

@jessiasott Thanks for the hat! On the way to the march in DC!

A photo posted by Annie Holscher (@daylightfading20) on Jan 21, 2017 at 5:22am PST

It was worn proudly all day, and later that night when my Gengar hat and my wife’s pussy hat got us some weird looks at our local grocery store.

The event was a marvel in sheer scale. I have never seen any crowd so large in Washington DC. We arrived in town a little after 9am, fueled up with donuts then made our way towards the National Mall.

March Fuel.

A photo posted by Carl Holscher (@carlholscher) on Jan 21, 2017 at 6:28am PST

I say towards because there was no reaching the mall itself. We made it to 7th Street and Jefferson.

There was no getting any closer. It was a wall of people all the way down the mall from 3rd St where the stage was setup. There was also no backing up since we were surrounded by people for at least two full blocks behind us. Though we didn’t realize it at the time.

My wife and I only saw the fuller scope of the march as we started to move. The rally was scheduled to end at 1:15 then the march was to have begun. However, at 2:30 the rally was still going and word was trickling through the flow of people walking away from the stage the march was cancelled due to the overwhelming number of people who showed up.

So we made our way out with the flow of people. We ended up taking a turn down Pennsylvania Ave with a couple thousand others. We were going to have a march whether it was official or not. As we got a couple of blocks down the road, I got a notification from the Women’s March app the march was starting. So it did finally get underway. By then we were walking past bleachers full of people shouting support and cheering. I didn’t intend to be in a parade that day, but I was and the energy was incredible.

I have never attended anything like this before. I’ve never been to a rally or demonstration anywhere and to be with hundreds of thousands of women, men and those somewhere between has no comparison.

Despite being packed like sardines standing in the street, we made paths for people suffering from health problems so they could find some relief. We parted the human sea so those trying to make it to the Don’s Johns to relieve themselves.

Well-equipped for every need.

A photo posted by Carl Holscher (@carlholscher) on Jan 21, 2017 at 7:30am PST

Even riding the Metro home was a magical experience. Despite the exhaustion of those on the train, when we arrived back at Shady Grove, one of the station managers there was smiling and clapping. Spontaneous cheers rose from the crowd as we entered the station. High fives and smiles exchanged with the tired WMATA staff.

Speaking of WMATA, the entire Metro experience was fantastic for the march. They had extra trains and despite the huge number of people, the trains were running every 5 minutes from the end of the line where we started. We made it into and out of DC without and mechanical issues. The trains were packed but just as we do on normal commuting days, we squeezed a little closer to allow more riders on.

There was a feeling of community that extended to every part of yesterday’s march.

As I awoke this morning, very sore and still tired I felt a withdrawal. There were no cheers or chants going on around me. I was left to watch the speeches and performances online that I was able to see, thanks to the large screens, but unable to hear thanks to the lack of speakers.

Where do I go from here?

I’ve spent the day taking action and talking with friends about what more we can do. The march was about translating intention into action. It was about finding the courage to do something outside a keyboard and a screen.

I am a more active citizen of democracy today. I am making strides to stay active and find groups to help channel my desire for change and to fend off the upcoming attacks on rights many who aren’t straight, white and male fear are coming.

The path is still uncertain but it gets clearer by the day. I move forward. I continue to vote. I call my representatives more. Even if it’s to tell them I agree with the way they’re voting and doing their jobs. I will continue to push them to fight for the rights of people who don’t look like me. I will weaponize my empathy and use it for good.

Mindful Eating

By Carl

On January 4, 2017

In Observations

My relationship with food is changing. I’ve always had a good relationship with it. I love food. I love to try new things and I love to eat. I always have.

I still struggle with not wanting to eat everything in sight. But since I started paying attention to what and when I eat, my relationship with food has improved.

When I have a set number of containers of food I can eat everyday on the plan I’m on, it helps me think through my choices. Do I want to blow all my carbs early in the day? Is that sandwich worth it?

What about proteins? Where do I want to spread them out? How will I ever fit that many vegetables into my day? And the fruit! What about those fruits?!

I’ve been at this for about a month and I’m far more mindful about what I eat. And I’m more appreciative of that food.

After dinner and my workout, I was hungry and looked at what I had left for the day. I had half a container of healthy fat (the blue container of cheese) and three proteins (the red/pink container with yogurt). My snack for the night was one red container of greek yogurt, 12 slices of lunch meat and a few small cubes of cheese.

Beachbody Containers for food

Before I started this plan, I would have reached for ice cream or more of the enchiladas we had for dinner. I would have eaten more than I needed to feel full. I would have eaten until I was emotionally fully. Not physically full.

Feeling full and being done is something I struggle with. In my head, I need to clean my plate every time with every meal. It doesn’t matter if I’m eating at home or out at a restaurant with a 3-meal portion of food. I need to make it disappear.

It’s a behavior I am fighting and this is helping. Being mindful of what and how much I am eating helps. I have a structure for food. And tonight, as I laid in bed reading, I enjoyed every single slice of that ham and turkey and I savored each little bite of cheese.

I’m seeing the changes in my body an I’m really happy with it. I’m down 20-25 pounds. I can’t tell for sure because when you’re as fat as I am, despite ordering a scale online that supports a weight larger than yours, it still disagrees with itself. It varies 3-5 pounds even when I step on it twice in a row.

But the difference is clear to me. The number is not as important to me as the inches I’ve lost around my waist. Nor as important as my wife being able to reach her arms farther around me when we hug. Or when my shirts fit better and I look better in them.

It’s still a very, very long journey but I’ve made that first step and I’m not dead yet.

How I lost 20 pounds in 21 days

By Carl

On December 27, 2016

In Observations

Less of me.

It as the name of a Tumblr site I started years ago. Then it was abandoned just like the effort it was started to support.

I am fat. When I bought a new scale that wouldn’t error out when I stepped on it, I was around 380 pounds. I was dangerously close to 400 and that was frightening because I want to be around for many decades to come. I want to be there for my wife and to live the life we’ve worked so hard to make for ourselves.

It was time to change. I’d talked about it and made small efforts before, but it was time for a big change. That change has come in the form of BeachBody’s 21 Day Fix.

I am wary of all the competing weight loss ideologies and programs available. Many of them require massive life changes and specific eating regimens. They require math and points and other nonsense to eating right.

21 Day Fix is a simple container system. You get X number of containers for fruit, vegetables, carbs, protein and healthy fats. The containers are sized to promote better eating. The program also comes with a book and app that lists examples of each food group and quantities of those foods. This may sound like a small thing but for someone who knows little past what’s a fruit or a vegetable, it’s very useful as a starting point.

There’s also a shake mix that comes with the program that’s chock full of nutrients. It has the added benefit of being a replacement for sweets. My wife has serious sugar cravings and the shake killed her cravings altogether. It’s also been a good way to eat vegetables I wouldn’t ordinarily enjoy.

Eating is half of the story. The other half is a daily workout program. For 21 days, it’s work and sweat and suffering but with noticeable results. I just finished Day 10 and I am already noticing differences in my body.

Granted, I started around 380 pounds (I say around because the scale couldn’t quite decide if I was more 385 or 383. Maybe 386). But I started very heavy so I had almost nowhere to go but up.

In the past week I’ve noticed my belly getting smaller. My arms are stronger. This change was punctuated by my wife saying the shirt I wore to a recent family dinner looked looser and better on me than it ever had before. What more motivation do I need than the woman I love telling me I look better?

She’s completed her 21 days and has moved on to another program and saw great results too. She’s lost weight, gotten stronger and feels better about herself.

I will be honest. She was my gauge for whether this program was worth it or not. There’s so many options out there and everyone wants to sell you a slimmer you. But it’s still up to me to put in the work to make it happen. I don’t want to buy all my food from a program. I don’t want to perform algebra at every meal. I wanted something simple an effective.

Seeing her lose weight and inches was exciting and I hoped with all the weight I have to lose I would see good results quickly too. There’s nothing worse than putting in work for a long process and not seeing any changes for a long time. That killed my motivation in the past. But this has been good for me.

So where am I after 21 days? Am I all talk and no action or have I seen some changes?

Today is Day 21. I am 15 pounds lighter and 3 inches less around the waist. My wife gasped in surprised when she hugged me Christmas Day after I had worked out. She could get her arms further around me than she could before. And that’s thrilling to me that not only am I seeing the changes, but she is seeing them too. It feels good and I want to keep that feeling going. Tomorrow I embark on my next month of working out and eating right.

If you’ve been looking for something easy to do at home and make a change in your life, won’t you join me?