To contact us, click HERE.

For more information on our best-selling, award-winning books, click HERE.

Need help with HPT terminology? Click HERE for The HSA Lexicon.

Click HERE to read our published articles.

Click HERE to read the latest Ask Harold question and Harold's response or ask a question of your own!

February 20-21, 2014
ASTD Telling Ain't Training Event, San Diego, CA

March 26-27, 2014
ASTD Telling Ain't Training Event, Nashville, TN

June 11-12, 2014
ASTD Telling Ain't Training Event, Charlotte, NC

July 28-29, 2014
ASTD Training Ain't Performance Event, San Francisco, CA

September 9-10, 2014
ASTD Telling Ain't Training Event, Seattle, WA

September 16-17, 2014
ASTD Training Ain't Performance Event, Atlanta, GA

October 13-14, 2014
ASTD Training Ain't Performance Event, Chicago, IL

October 23-24, 2014
ASTD Telling Ain't Training Event, Denver, CO

November 4-5, 2014
ASTD Telling Ain't Training Event, Washington, DC

For details about these events, click HERE

To learn more about engaging Harold Stolovitch to speak at your organization, click HERE

Harold Stolovitch and Erica Keeps are Certified Performance Technologists (CPT). The CPT designation is awarded by the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) to experienced practitioners in the field of organizational performance improvement, whose work meets both the performance-based Standards of Performance Technology and application requirements. For more information, visit www.ispi.org.

Selecting Trainers Within Your Organization

Changes in technology, on-boarding of new hires, preparing workers to deal with significant organizational changes, introduction of new processes, products, procedures or markets...all of these will require new behaviors and accomplishments for your workforce. To ensure that employees perform in desired ways, organizations generally turn to training as the major means for successfully achieving this transformation. Organizations, faced with the challenges listed above and lacking sufficient numbers of learning and development or workplace learning and performance specialists, have little choice but to select in-house personnel to become the trainers who will make it all happen. In most companies, the majority of "trainers" are employees who have demonstrated strong capability in performing their specialty work, appear to communicate well and who are available to take on the educational role offered them. Sometimes they are "volunteered" into the role.

If there is a valid need to build new competencies within the workforce and training is an appropriate way to do this, then it becomes imperative that those selected to conduct the skill-knowledge building sessions be up to the task. Poor training is an immense waste of time and resources and results in little to no transfer to the job. It is essential to select the right people from your organization to become trainers. Training is as much a trade or profession as whatever the people's current work specialty is. Important rule (and if you don't believe us, reflect on all of the teachers and trainers you had): It is not everyone who is cut out for the job.

What follows is a solid starter list of criteria for selecting appropriate internal employees to assume the mantle of trainer. Click HERE to continue reading.

An Oldie but Goodie by Harold Stolovitch

Several years ago, I wrote an article about what I had labeled as "The Pamela Syndrome." It was triggered by watching a four-year old deeply engaged in a play activity. It started me on a course of reflection about our practices as learning and performance professionals. I enjoyed writing the piece and later expanded it into a short chapter for a book. I was pleased when the editor of this newsletter asked me to contribute something I had previously published that could be characterized as an "Oldie but Goodie." This qualifies as a somewhat Oldie. Goodie? You will have to decide.

Front-End Analysis, Implementation, Planning, and Evaluation: Breaking Out of the Pamela Syndrome

Last Saturday, I watched, intrigued, as four year-old Pamela painstakingly put together a hundred-piece puzzle. The concentration, the frustration, the energy. The attempts to match color, shape, and pattern. Finally, the transcendent joy of success as Pamela triumphantly fit in the last piece. After a long and arduous struggle, she finally succeeded in achieving her goal, despite all obstacles and adversity. As Pamela sat gazing at her completed puzzle, I leaned over and softly asked what she was going to do with it. She stared at me for a few moments, blinked, and then, with a patient sigh - due, no doubt, to my obvious ignorance - informed me in a patronizing manner, "It'll go back in the box and onto my puzzle shelf." Marrying action to word, she pulled apart the puzzle she had been working on for so long and with so much effort, stuffed chunks of it into the box, placed it on her special puzzle shelf, drew another one down, and began afresh...

There is something inherently fascinating about putting things together. In the field of learning and performance, this attraction manifests itself very obviously in the time, effort, and resources we expend to create and build interventions. There is the rush and thrill we experience when we receive the green light to develop the training, create the performance-support tools, produce the job aid, or set up the new knowledge management system. The
work is intense. Drawing together all the disparate elements is a challenging, frustrating, yet in the end, exhilarating experience. We analyze, design, redesign, develop, try out, revise, and finally produce our learning or performance products. We have succeeded! We have completed the puzzle. Then, like Pamela, too often we place our latest masterpiece on the shelf, where, after a short time, it gets forgotten in the excitement of the next new
challenge.

Interested in reading the rest of this article? Click HERE to read "Front-End Analysis, Implementation, Planning, and Evaluation: Breaking Out of the Pamela Syndrome."

Looking for Resources to Train Your Trainers?

HSA offers a variety of training delivery workshops designed specifically to provide skill and knowledge development of internal trainers. Visit our website at www.hsa-lps.com to learn more about these one, two and three day workshops.

Harold Stolovitch personally delivers our on-site workshops in organizations all over the world. HSA has no "shelf" programs. After discussing the characteristics and requirements of the employee-participants with clients, Harold customizes the agenda, participant manual and delivery to meet the organization's needs.

To schedule a workshop or learn more about HSA's workshops in training delivery, instructional design or performance consulting, contact Erica Keeps at ekeeps@hsa-lps.com or by telephone at 310.286.2722.

Recent Press

Guy Wallace, CPT of EPPIC Inc. recently featured Harold Stolovitch as his first Friday Favorite Guru on his blog. Click HERE to read the write-up and view the videos.

Telling Ain't Training Participants Say Yay!

"Last year, I attended a presentation you did in Atlanta about your book Telling Ain't Training. I just want to thank you for your insightful work. It has been a process to get from where I was at that point to where I am now, but your book and presentation have been pivotal in my career. I am now able to create plans for lessons quickly and effectively . This was drawn to my attention as I watched a colleague present a lesson today and then presented mine immediately after. Following your formulas made my lesson much more cohesive than his (I know that is a biased opinion). Thank you so much for the difference you have made in my work."

- J.L. Pope, Instructional Designer for a major worldwide religion

"I recently attended the Telling Ain't Training Conference. I work for the Katy Independent School District as the Technology Training Supervisor. I am always looking for new and creative ways to make my training fun and memorable. I find that many times technology falls into the "training" mode. The participants do not take anything with them when they leave other that what was shown in class. True, they may be able to "do" what was taught in the session, however, I am never satisfied unless I know that the learning continues into their "real word" (life back in the cubicle or in the classroom). I am not tooting my own horn here by any means but I was trying to figure out why all of my course evaluations tend to be higher than the other trainers....Well, I have figured out why.

Several reasons:

1. I connect with my participants. I find out who each of them is as they enter the room or by a group introduction.

2. By connecting with the learner first, it helps me figure out the direction I need to take the class so that I can give them examples from their world.

3. I try to tap into each learner's way of seeing the world. This can be a bit difficult since it is technology, however I can do it most of the time.

4. I have created activities in all of my sessions that participants apply and use before they leave the class, no matter how short or long the session is. In fact, I have made most sessions a little longer to include activities. (I did not do this as much before I went to the conference.)

I am sure I do other things as well, however, these four points came to mind as I was reading your book again. In fact, I believe in Telling Ain't Training so much that I have ordered five copies and am going to do a book study with the five trainers we have in our district.

I am at the TCEA (Texas Computer Education Association) conference this week and I had time today to sit and focus on your book again. (I called this my Ken Retreat). I am so excited to get the opportunity to share the information from your book with my trainers. I feel they will benefit and be brought up to the next level.

Thanks for your expertise and if you are ever in Katy, Texas look me up!"

- Kenyon Boswell, Technology Training Supervisor,
Katy Independent School District

Interested in an upcoming Telling Ain't Training Event?
Click HERE to learn more.

At HSA Learning & Performance Solutions LLC, we've seen a lot over the years.  We know the business of learning.  We know the role human performance plays in business success.  We know how to uncover and address needs, then create appropriate solutions.  We pride ourselves on helping organizations achieve high levels of performance - and success.  HSA is a leader in workplace learning and performance improvement.  Our proven learning and performance solutions have helped maximize employee performance at hundreds of organizations throughout the world.  Our principals, Harold D. Stolovitch and Erica J. Keeps, share a common passion - developing people. Together they have devoted a combined total of over 80 years to make workplace learning and performance both enjoyable and effective. Their dedication to improving workplace learning and performance is reflected in the workshops they run internationally on training delivery, instructional design and performance consulting. Together, they are co-editors of the first two editions of the Handbook of Human Performance Technology and co-authors of the best-selling, award-winning series of books Telling Ain't Training - Updated, Expanded and Enhanced, Training Ain't Performance, Beyond Telling Ain't Training Fieldbook and Beyond Training Ain't Performance Fieldbook published by ASTD Press. They are also co-authors of the Wiley/Pfeiffer Learning & Performance Toolkit Series.  To learn more, click HERE.