Tony Dye

Travel Time

For the next two weeks, I’m traveling, and mostly staying away from “normal” things, which in many ways means a lot less use of technology.  An hour or two a day on the computer is about it.  Rethinking my life purpose, values, vision, and considering an Andy Stanley idea of “what path am I on?”  I like his quote (which I think he attributes to his dad): “Direction, not intention, determines destination.”

This is partially a trip catching up with friends and family I haven't seen in a while; a little bit of business; a little "think" time in the car, and a lot of retreat, all mixed together.  I'm having to ask myself some hard questions and expecting that some of the answers won't be easy, or at least not easy to receive.

Splitting Wood

Maybe I should call this post “life on the farm.”  I’ve been a city boy all my life.  Now that I’m in Central Kentucky, I’m learning a bit about farm life, or at least life that’s very different from my past.  Last week, I spent a few days splitting logs.  Now I can understand that for a lot of people, that’s hard work, dull, even drudgery.  But for me, it was still new, so it was fun and even some good exercise!  It kind of turned into a challenge to figure the best process, too.

Vernon, the master, who taught me what I needed to know

A little of the wood is already neatly stacked

 
There is a lot more yet to be put away

Not sure when I’ll be qualified to get on the tractor

Christmas in Liberty

I love this small town!

Five Tech Training Basics

What are the most basic of things you want people to understand as you're providing technical training?  Here are my top five:

1. Attitude: if you can approach learning from the perspective of "I wonder how" instead of “I don’t know how,” everything will quickly be much easier
2. Doing the wrong thing won’t blow up Kansas. (OK, if you're doing system admin training, maybe change this, but for user training, eliminate the fear factor)
3. Good backups reduce risk – you get a “do over”
4. There are bad guys out there; you need to be on guard. YOU are the best defense. If you meet a stranger on the street who makes you an offer or asks for information, what would you do? Take the same attitude with electronic offers
5. Master a small number of tools, or even just one; dabble in others

Bonus thought: Technology can be your friend; don't let it be your master.  Technology can be like riding a tiger if you let it.  Don't!

 

Lighting a Fire

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
-William Butler Yeats

Is Training, especially technical  training, the same as education?  It is so true that when you have receptive students, eager to learn, that training/teaching is so much easier.  So how do we inspire this?

I have to think back to Jim LaBarr's old adage, that as soon as we transition someone's belief from "I don't know how..." to "I bet there's a way..." that the training gets easier, even fun.  The fire I want to help light for people is to create the attitude that things are possible.

How does training work at your organization?   Are people eagle to learn, or simply complacent to sit and be talked to (or at)?  Have you found good techniques for inspiring learning?

Stephen to Ft. Hood

My younger son, Stephen, heads to Ft. Hood Wednesday to prepare for deployment to Afghanistan next month.  When he joined the Army Reserve four years ago, deployment seemed likely “soon,” but it didn’t happen.  Recently, it seemed it would never happen, but sometimes you just get surprised.  He’s spent the last few weeks getting ready, including some more training which he feels quite confident about.

My father was career army, and I dabbled with Air Force ROTC, but never served.  Stephen is the first family member with the Dye name to carry on the military service tradition.  Needless to say, I’m very proud of him.  Certainly I’m concerned for his safety, but I have to remember what my father often says – “do you think he’s any safer in downtown Atlanta than in Afghanistan?” 

Stephen will have a total deployment of 400 days.  He’ll spend Thanksgiving in Ft. Hood, and by Christmas he’ll be in Afghanistan.  There’s a slight chance he’ll be back home before Christmas 2010.

Thank you Stephen, I’m proud to be your father.

Where is Liberty?

For anyone wanting to know, Liberty KY is pretty much right in the middle of the state of Kentucky.  It's not exactly near anything major, but it's also not all that far away.  The town has about 1800 residents and is the county seat for Casey County, which has a population of around 16,000.  Quite different from the suburbs of Atlanta I just vacated!

Liberty is located on US 127 and the next closest significant city is Danville, about 20 miles to the north.  Lexington is the nearest major city, just over an hour away.

If you draw a line from Louisville to Knoxville TN, then another from Lexington to Nashville TN, the intersection is pretty close to Liberty.  Travel time to Louisville, Nashville, and Knoxville are each 2+ hours, but still very reasonable.  Lexington, Richmond & Nicholasville (Lexington suburbs), and Danville are fairly normal travel destinations.

There are actually three towns in Kentucky with the name Liberty.  Besides this Liberty, there is also West Liberty (which is actually located quite a bit to the east) and there is New Liberty which is located west of here.

Home = Liberty

I'm not sure what it requires to call some place home, but I'll make the claim that Liberty KYis now my home.  As of this past Friday, pretty much all my physical possessions are in a storage unit in Liberty, I have a PO Box in Liberty, and I have no other address to call home, so this must be it!

I'll definitely still be spending a lot of time in the Atlanta area, and all points between, but for now, Liberty is where to find me.

Learning, 5 Minutes at a Time

Thanks to Steve Simmons for the inspiration here.  Steve was explaining part of the theory behind Where There’s a Will There’s an A.  (I've heard the concept before, but have NOT studied this material, so this is not intended as a summary)

 

There are two concepts that would seem to apply in all training, but especially technical training.

1. Attention span is a bit like a bell curve, and for most of us it tapers off pretty quickly.  (Maybe this is just another part of ADD)  However, if we switch to another subject, the curve restarts, so by dealing with a lot of short subjects, we're likely to learn more than spending an extended time on a single subject.

 

2. When we receive teaching on a particular subject, we’re more inclined to remember the first thing said and the last.  What’s in the middle becomes brain mush quickly.

 

If you put these two ideas together, it would seem the best training would be based on many short segments, covering different topics, with each segment consisting of a great intro, a little bit of detail, then a great summary.  There's some indication that even if we rotate through a small number of subjects, the short segments still work.

 

Five minutes may not be the magic length, but it sure makes sense to NOT spend all day on a single topic (as with my earlier post on Conventional Training).

 

Can we recreate training to be lots of short segments?  That offers the potential of higher retention, as well as an opportunity for the attendees to not have to be away from the job for as long.  Can we do this? I’m willing to try!

I Want LESS!

Related to my job search and consulting work, I need organization.  I need better tools.  But I don’t want MORE tools.  I want a very few tools (or just one?) that knows how to talk to all the rest, so I have just one interface.  Just thinking of some of the things I use, or might use, or have used: PIMS, Outlook, contact managers, CRM.  Then there are full databases, on-line research tools, blogs, OneNote, EverNote, spreadsheets and word docs,
Ad-hoc databases of all sorts.  Now we have Personal Relationship Managers.  Outlook (I know, but it's multiple things for me and others), JibberJobber
Then there’s LinkedIn, Facebook, Naymz, Spoke, Jigsaw, and on and on.  I don't even know how Twitter fits in, but it's part of the whole mess.

Somebody, please bring it all together – give me just one place for anything and everything!  Yes, I do want a lot.  Wasn’t I the one who also wanted a personal Knoweldgebase?  Yeah, make that all the same thing, too!