The Mindtools L&D Podcast

The design of workplace learning typically requires input from a wide range of stakeholders, including HR, Legal and IT. But this week on The Good Practice Podcast, we hear from two people who decided to go it alone.

Bushcraft instructor Paul Kirtley and YouTuber Craig Taylor share their experiences of designing online learning content, with Ross G and Owen.

We discuss:

• The use of 'content splintering' to repurpose material on different platforms
• The use of links to drive traffic from one platform to another
• The importance of developing a relationship with your audience.

Show notes

You can find out more about Craig at: about.me/craigtaylor

For more from Paul, see:

• His website: frontierbushcraft.com
• His online courses: onlinebushcraftcourses.com/online-elementary
• His podcast: paulkirtley.co.uk/Topics/pkpodcast/
• His YouTube channel: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZd0Jw9pFXqWC0M1g73AGS49i7KtCK_v4
• His Instagram: instagram.com/paulkirtley
• His Wikipedia page: wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kirtley
• One of his online courses: identificationmasterclass.com

For more from Emerald Works, see: https://emeraldworks.com/

Owen recommended The Last Dance on Netflix.

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If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Garner @RossGarnerEW
• Owen Ferguson @OwenFerguson
• Paul Kirtley @PKirt
• Craig Taylor @CraigTaylor74

You can follow Emerald Works on Twitter @Emerald_Works and LinkedIn.

In Shape Up, Ryan Singer shares the methodology that he and his colleagues at Basecamp use to 'ship work that matters'. The book presents itself as a guide for software developers, but what lessons does it hold for L&D?

On this week's episode of The Good Practice Podcast, Ross D is joined by Owen, Nicola and Ross G for the third in our series of bimonthly 'book club' episodes. We discuss:

• our general impressions of the book
• the differences between Basecamp's approach and other product development methodologies
• key takeaways for L&D

Show notes

All of Basecamp's books, including Shape Up, can be downloaded for free on their website: https://basecamp.com/shapeup

The macOS app Owen mentioned was 'Alfred': https://www.alfredapp.com/

You can find out more about Chefs in Schools by visiting https://www.chefsinschools.org.uk/

You can listen to This American Life's Pulitzer-winning episode, 'The Out Crowd', on their website: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/688/the-out-crowd

If you work in UX/UI and you're interested in joining a team that doesn't report to Ross Garner, check out these job listings: https://emeraldgroup.current-vacancies.com/Jobs/Advert/1931140

https://emeraldgroup.current-vacancies.com/Jobs/Advert/1931141

For more from Emerald Works, see: emeraldworks.com

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Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Dickie @RossDickieEW
• Owen Ferguson @owenferguson
• Ross Garner @RossGarnerEW
• Nicola Boyle @Nicola_BoyleEW

Self-management is increasingly seen as the most diplomatic way to run an organisation. But how does this work when critical, time-sensitive decisions have to be made? What structures do these organisations need to have in place to succeed? And how do they overcome the challenges they are presented with?

This week, Nicola Boyle and Owen Ferguson are joined by organisational self-management coach Lisa Gill.

We discuss:

• The critical success factors of running a self-managing organisation
• The challenges of running a self-managing organisation
• The benefits of shifting to self-management

Show notes

• To find out more about Lisa, visit her website: https://www.reimaginaire.com/
• Listen and subscribe to Lisa's Leadermorphosis podcast at: http://leadermorphosis.co/
• The Leadermorphosis episode with Miki Kashtan can be found here: http://leadermorphosis.co/ep-37-miki-kashtan-on-the-three-shifts-needed-for-self-managing-organisations-to-thrive
• To find out more about the Liberating Structures app, click here: https://www.liberatingstructures.app/en/
• For information on Helen Sanderson's Dare to Lead interactive course, click here: http://helensanderson.net/dare-to-lead/
• Helen Sanderson's podcast A Cup of Teal can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/show/43iANzrV228opoHuom16HA

Subscribe to the Podcast

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Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Nicola Boyle @Nicola_BoyleEW
• Owen Ferguson @owenferguson
• Lisa Gill @disruptandlearn

You can follow Emerald Works on Twitter @Emerald_Works and LinkedIn.

Evidence has shown that part-time workers can outperform full-time workers. So why is it that they often feel stigmatized or second-tier within their organization? And what can leaders and managers do to challenge this?

This week on The Good Practice Podcast, Nicola Boyle and Lucy Bishop are joined by Nikki Slowey and Lisa Gallagher from Flexibility Works.

We discuss:

• How to challenge the stigma of part-time work
• How to effectively manage part-time staff
• How to go part-time and job-share in senior roles

Show notes

To find out more about Flexibility Works, visit their website - https://www.flexibilityworks.org/

The Acas code of practice on flexible working requests can be found here: https://www.acas.org.uk/acas-code-of-practice-on-flexible-working-requests

To make your own kitchen quarantine beans-based cake, follow this recipe here: http://annajones.co.uk/recipe/amazing-lemon-cannellini-cake

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Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter and LinkedIn:

Nicola Boyle @Nicola_BoyleEW Lucy Bishop - http://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-bishop-0821764b/ Lisa Gallagher - @_LisaMaclean Nikki Slowey - @nikkislowey73

You can follow Emerald Works on Twitter @Emerald_Works and LinkedIn.

What ideas are L&D most excited about in 2020? Artificial intelligence? Learning experience platforms? Curation?

This week on the Good Practice Podcast, Ross D and James are joined by Don Taylor to pore over the latest Global Sentiment Survey, and discover what's 'hot' (and what's not) in learning and development.

We discuss:

• the top-line takeaways from GSS 2020
• the key regional differences in the data
• the trends that have emerged over seven years of the survey

Show notes

To download a copy of the Global Sentiment Survey 2020, head over to Don's website: https://donaldhtaylor.co.uk/research_base/the-global-sentiment-survey-2020/

If you're interested in revisiting our last GSS episode, you can find it at: https://podcast.goodpractice.com/137-what-will-be-hot-in-workplace-ld-in-2019

For more from Emerald Works, see: emeraldworks.com

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Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Dickie - @RossDickieEW
• James McLuckie - @JamesMcLuckie
• Donald Taylor - @DonaldHTaylor

You can follow Emerald Works on Twitter @Emerald_Works and LinkedIn.

This week on The Good Practice Podcast, e-learning specialist, author and consultant Clive Shepherd joins Ross G and Owen to discuss the promise of e-learning.

Where has it succeeded? Where has it gone wrong? And with authoring tools now giving anyone the ability to create great e-learning, might the problem be... well... us?

We discuss:

• the evolution of e-learning
• the business barriers to effective e-learning
• the opportunities created by personality, humour and storytelling.

Show notes

The text-based game that Owen has been playing is Lifeline, available online at: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/lifeline/id982354972

The Cards Against Humanity Family Edition is online at: https://www.cardsagainsthumanityfamilyedition.com/

You can find out more about Clive at skillsjourney.com. He blogs at cliveonlearning.com.

For more from Emerald Works, see: emeraldworks.com

Subscribe to the Podcast

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Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Garner @RossGarnerEW
• Owen Ferguson @OwenFerguson
• Clive Shepherd @CliveShepherd

You can follow Emerald Works on Twitter @Emerald_Works and LinkedIn.

Carol Dweck's Mindset (2006) and Angela Duckworth's Grit (2016) are two of the most influential social science texts of this century, but difficulty implementing their ideas and a failure to replicate their findings has left them open to criticism.

In this special crossover edition of The Good Practice and Emotion at Work podcasts, hosts Nicola Boyle and Phil Willcox are joined by Owen Ferguson, Ross Garner and Gemma Towersey to discuss.

We explore:

• the extent to which we feel we demonstrate grit and growth mindset
• the problems posed by the popularity of these ideas
• the impact of grit and mindset on L&D.

Show notes

Mindset - Updated Edition: Changing the Way You Think to Fulfil Your Potential, by Carol Dweck, is available here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mindset-Updated-Changing-Fulfil-Potential/dp/B07NQLQDWN

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, by Angela Duckworth, is available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grit-Passion-Perseverance-Angela-Duckworth-ebook/dp/B019CGY2ZG

A useful review of mindset literature is: Burgoyne, A. P., Hambrick, D. Z., & Macnamara, B. N. (2020). How Firm Are the Foundations of Mind-Set Theory? The Claims Appear Stronger Than the Evidence. Psychological Science, 0956797619897588. Online at: https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/2020-burgoyne.pdf

A study looking at mindset in the workplace is: Campbell, A. (2019). Effects of Growth and Fixed Mindset on Leaders' Behavior during Interpersonal Interactions (Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University). Online at: https://search.proquest.com/openview/f227f221ad725ab6802a70bb2d192d83/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

Professor Dweck has responded to criticism of her work here: http://theconversation.com/growth-mindset-interventions-yield-impressive-results-97423

Two papers critiquing the 'grit' concept are:

Credé, M. (2018). What shall we do about grit? A critical review of what we know and what we don't know. Educational Researcher, 47(9), 606-611. Online at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1051&context=psychology_pubs

Lee, C. S. (2018). Authentic leadership and organizational effectiveness: The roles of hope, grit, and growth mindset. International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, 118(19), 383-401. Online at: https://acadpubl.eu/jsi/2018-118-19/articles/19a/27.pdf

The paper that Ross and Owen discussed was: Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., Murray, J. S., Crosnoe, R., Muller, C., ... & Paunesku, D. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature, 573(7774), 364-369. Online at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1466-y?fbclid=IwAR3eSTiOiVc3v8LARTfGwxTzlSDz4AiAFpLK-jK4VcJr57wI0eO8zyvwkEc

The blog by David D'Souza that Phil mentioned was: https://daviddsouza.com/2020/02/03/the-surprising-truth-about-obvious-truths/

In What I Learned This Week, the gang discussed:

Security issues associated with Zoom. Find out more at https://tidbits.com/2020/04/03/every-zoom-security-and-privacy-flaw-so-far-and-what-you-can-do-to-protect-yourself/ and https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/03/thousands-zoom-video-calls-left-exposed-open-web/

Ross' reflections regarding Dr Catherine Calderwood's resignation, covered online at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52181221

The book Ross recommended was Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed, available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/So-Youve-Been-Publicly-Shamed-ebook/dp/B00L9B7IRC

The paper Phil discussed, on the mindsets intervention, was: Foliano, F., Rolfe, H., Buzzeo, J., Runge, J., & Wilkinson, D. (2019). Changing mindsets: effectiveness trial. National Institute of Economic and Social Research. Online at: https://www.niesr.ac.uk/sites/default/files/publications/Changing%20Mindsets_0.pdf

The book that Gemma recommended was The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker, available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sense-Style-Thinking-Persons-Writing/dp/1846145503

If you'd like to Give Blood during the current crisis, you can! See: https://www.blood.co.uk/

For more from Emerald Works, see: https://emeraldworks.com/

For more from Phil, see: https://www.emotionatwork.co.uk/

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You can find Phil's podcast at: https://www.emotionatwork.co.uk/podcast/ and on iTunes.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Nicola Boyle @Nicola_BoyleEW
• Phil Willcox @PhilWillcox
• Ross Garner @RossGarnerEW
• Owen Ferguson @OwenFerguson
• Gemma Towersey @GemmaTowersey

You can follow Emerald Works on Twitter @Emerald_Works and LinkedIn.

Emotion at Work is @EmotionAt_Work.

In Social by Design, an upcoming book from Mark Britz and James Tyer, the authors argue that we should purposefully build social connections within organisations.

In this week's episode of The Good Practice Podcast, they join Ross G and Owen to discuss:

• the serendipitous nature of many workplace social connections
• the opportunities created by digital tools
• the impact of coronavirus on social connectedness.

Show notes

The book James referenced was The Connected Company by Dave Gray, available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Connected-Company-Dave-Gray/dp/1491919477

'Chatroulette' is an online service that pairs you with another person for a video call. We recommend reading this Wikipedia article before Googling it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatroulette

The Social Network Analysis report from SWOOP, that James mentioned, is online here: https://www.swoopanalytics.com/benchmarking/microsoft-teams-benchmarking/

The video Owen referenced, on the iPad trackpad, is online at: https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/18/21185188/ipad-trackpad-how-to-support-mouse-cursor

The Recode Decode podcast mentioned by James, featuring Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya, is on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chamath-palihapitiya-investing-landscape-is-done-taxes/id1011668648?i=1000469424578

Bill Gates' pandemic prediction has been covered in many places. You can see it here: https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready?language=dz

The book, Social by Design, is due for publication this Spring. You can find details at Sense & Respond Press: https://www.senseandrespondpress.com/social-by-design

For more from James, see: https://jamestyer.com/

Mark blogs at: http://markbritz.com/

For more from Emerald Works, see: https://emeraldworks.com/

Subscribe to the Podcast

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Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Garner @RossGarnerEW
• Owen Ferguson @owenferguson
• Mark Britz @Britz
• James Tyer @JimBobTyer

You can follow Emerald Works on Twitter @Emerald_Works and LinkedIn.

To what extent are our decisions at work based on data and testing, versus hunches and gut feelings? In Experimentation Works, Stefan Thomke argues that the scientific method should drive business decisions and has the potential to improve performance.

On this week's episode of The Good Practice Podcast, Ross D is joined by Owen, Ross G and Nicola for the second in our series of bimonthly 'bookclub' episodes. We discuss:

• our general impressions of the book
• the opportunities created by experimentation at work
• the challenges associated with workplace experiments.

Show notes

The paper Ross G and Owen discussed on the minimum user count for online experiments is (on review) a little vague on what counts as an 'active user', but can be found here: Kohavi, R., Deng, A., Frasca, B., Walker, T., Xu, Y., & Pohlmann, N. (2013, August). Online controlled experiments at large scale. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining (pp. 1168-1176).

Experimentation Works is available from Amazon and, hopefully at some point in the future, your local bookseller: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Experimentation-Works-Surprising-Business-Experiments/dp/163369710X

Ross G's 'deep cut' was to episode 30 of our show: https://podcast.goodpractice.com/compliance-training-ticking-a-box-or-having-an-impact

The book Ross referenced was The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Professor-Madman-Simon-Winchester/dp/0060175966

The film version of this book, The Professor and the Madman starring Mel Gibson, is streaming now on Amazon Video.

Ross G also recommended the FIIT app for yoga: https://fiit.tv/

Shakespeare's quarantined writing efforts have been covered thoroughly in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/mar/22/shakespeare-in-lockdown-did-he-write-king-lear-in-plague-quarantine

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Dickie @RossDickieEW
• Owen Ferguson @owenferguson
• Ross Garner @RossGarnerEW
• Nicola Boyle @Nicola_BoyleEW

In the past few weeks, the rapid spread of Covid-19 has made 'self-isolation' an everyday term. 'Working from home' has stopped being a perk, and become a necessity (for those of us fortunate enough to be able to do so).

But how do you adjust to working in isolation and communicating via remote meetings? On this week's episode of The Good Practice Podcast, Ross D is joined by Owen, Ross G and Emerald Workser Craig Dutton to share their advice for coping with coronavirus. We discuss:

• our strategies for productive home working
• making the most of technology
• overcoming organisational hurdles to built trust and rapport quickly online.

Show notes

Craig's guidance on getting the best from remote meetings is online at: https://goodpractice-podcast.s3.amazonaws.com/craig-dutton-remote-meetings.pdf

Owen's coronavirus simulations are from the Washington Post, online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/?itid=sf_

Ross G's fascinating insight into the world's weird flight paths is online at: https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/world/article/2165980/flight-paths/index.html

And Ross D's tedious insight into air quality on planes is at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51736185

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Dickie @RossDickieEW
• Owen Ferguson @owenferguson
• Ross Garner @RossGarnerEW

Craig can be found on LinkedIn. Just search for: Craig Dutton, Emerald Works.