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Below is a
brief description of just a few example projects. See also the
detailed consultant project history information on our
Team Page.
Curriculum Design and Competency Modeling
| Audience and/or Work
Process |
Business Need |
Solution(s) |
|
Managers of alliance teams
for joint ventures |
Define the work and
development path to enable new hires to "spin up" |
Conduct job analysis, design a
competency model, and define a development path. Also developed an
assessment tool and integrated all of the above into the performance
management process. |
|
Commercial insurance
underwriters |
Define a common underwriting
discipline and identify training content to allow sharing across business
segments |
Design of an overall corporate curriculum for the underwriter
population spanning five different business segments. |
|
Wholesale billing service representatives
within a large telecommunications company |
Reduce the training cycle time
and identify content that could be shared across nine regions |
Job analysis, comprehensive curriculum design,
and recommended curriculum paths for each region. |
|
Managers of convenience
retail sites for a major Canadian petroleum company |
Improve consistency of
performance and reduce need for coaching of new retailers |
Job analysis, comprehensive
modular curriculum design, and recommended development path. Included a
three year implementation plan. (The client won an ISPI Award of
excellence in 2000.) |
|
Technical and customer service
agents at a regional telecommunications company |
Redesign work processes and
training to support the implementation of a new consolidated call center |
Job analysis, comprehensive
modular curriculum design, recommendations for identified work process and
tools issues, and custom training program design. (This client was able to
reuse the design structure for three additional programs!) |
Custom
Training Program Design and Development
| Audience
and/or Work Process |
Business
Need |
Solution(s) |
|
Customer service, sales, and
collections agents |
Consistent work performance
and reduced training cycle time |
Developed
libraries of more than 200
simulated calls and more than 100 skill building "learning units" for
training and testing of call flow process, problem-solving, and accuracy
of information delivered. |
|
Technical sales
people, engineers, and technicians |
Training to
support flagship product lines addressing both sales and technical content
and enabling future ease of content maintenance |
Development of
custom group-paced training programs including simulation exercises and product
"quick reference" guide. In many cases, these programs were
developed in parallel with the development of the products. |
|
Product and market
managers, product development team leaders |
Build capability
to facilitate team decisions using business logic while engaging team
know-how in the process |
Development of
training incorporating simulated team meetings and
planning/decision-making for hypothetical products/systems based on
financial and market situations. |
|
General new
employees |
Overall orientation process and program that
orients new hires to the company, the industry, and their job |
Combination of CBT,
guided interviews and literature reviews, and self-paced print materials.
Designed to ensure shared content where appropriate to minimize
development and downstream revisions. |
|
Service engineers |
Teach labor allocation and planning to ensure
customer service and profitability |
Designed a five-day, group-paced training course on managing
commercial equipment customer service agreement accounts, including job-related
exercises on making labor allocation decisions based on capabilities, material,
and financial data. |
|
Chemists, chemical
technicians, process operators |
Documentation and instruction to support
capability performing complex and unfamiliar technical procedures |
Hands-on training
for use of test equipment, addressing details for technicians as well as
overview for managers. Hands-on training on operating chemical processes.
Hands-on training to support a technology transfer of combinatorial
chemistry methods. |
Qualification System Design and Development
| Audience
and/or Work Process |
Business
Need |
Solution(s) |
|
Branch sales, engineering,
installation, service, and project managers |
Reduce the time required to bring a new hire
up to a defined baseline level of performance |
Defined
"chunks" of performance and sequenced on a qualification path.
Identified "baseline" and other benchmarks. Created supporting
website for implementation. |
|
Mechanical, electrical, software, projects,
and systems engineers |
Inventory the
specific capabilities/qualifications for individual engineers within a
3,000 person workforce to enable staffing and business planning |
Analyzed the work
and enabling knowledge/skills to identify qualification items for each of
the roles. The data was loaded by the client into SAP R3. |
|
Market research and alliance management
professionals |
Identify
capabilities across a department for use in allocating assignments and
development planning |
Analyzed and
itemized capabilities and developed an individual assessment tool.
Designed management tool to "roll-up" individual assessments for
business planning and gap analysis. |
Simulation Design and Development
| Audience
and/or Work Process |
Business
Need |
Solution(s) |
|
Call center agents (sales,
customer service, collections) |
Emulate the call process,
customer interaction, and computer system data-entry performance |
Use of DialogCoach(tm) engine
(and its predecessor) to build over 200 scenarios based on observing and
interviewing top performing agents in major telecommunications and
financial services firms. |
|
Product team leaders |
Simulate the combination of group
decision-making, facilitation/interaction, and leadership typical of
product team meetings |
Coached group exercise in
which learners rotated between different roles and products to make plans
for situations at specific points in the product life cycle. |
|
Engineering |
Teach trade-offs between technical options
and cost |
Simulations requiring
two-person teams to design systems to fit within estimated cost. |
Knowledge
Management Systems, Technology Transfer Projects
Though we have not done
many technology transfer projects, our approach of defining the work and
enabling knowledge/skills has helped our consultants to tackle some complex
technology transfers.
| Audience
and/or Work Process |
Business
Need |
Solution(s) |
|
Combinatorial chemists |
Transfer the tools,
techniques, and methods to chemists representing purchasing company |
Combination of group-paced
training and reference material, including series of "canned
labs" to teach key techniques. |
|
Instructional designers |
Transfer an ISD methodology |
Combination of workshops,
coaching, and certification. |
|
Aerospace employees |
Communicate and explain basic concepts,
tools, and policies related to TQM |
Development of a reference
manual for internal publication. |
|
Foundation organization |
Create a file
structure and tagging approach to improve use of content and know-how
generated in various parts of the organization |
Definition of a
folder organization structure for documents and raw information based on the
content, tasks used for, and audience segments that would need to access it.
Specification of rules for document placement (e.g., personal versus
organization access versus restricted access) and meta-data (for improved
searching). |
|
Volunteer board members |
Store and re-use documents and infoware
developed by previous board members (i.e., prevent everything from being
reinvented every time the board changed) |
Develop a common terminology
and document structure addressing the work of all board roles. Implemented
by collect existing documents, setting up storage, and managing access.
Includes training and job aids. (In-process pro-bono project) |
General
Consulting
| Audience
and/or Work Process |
Business
Need |
Solution(s) |
|
Convenience retail managers |
"Commonize" three
different existing training curriculum designs from three recently-merged
petroleum companies |
Facilitated and documented a
three-day analysis and planning session to compare existing curriculum
designs, define a common global learning path, and plan the transition. |
|
Training department |
Consolidate requests and known issues to
focus team priorities and assess resource needs |
Facilitated a planning session
to review the business plan, technology changes, competitive issues,
participant feedback, and other change drivers and develop a three-year
department work plan. |
|
Pharmaceutical company marketing,
regulatory, and medical professionals |
Manage internal capability development |
Created tools for assessing
competency levels, training requirements, departmental capability levels,
and role requirements to support development and workforce planning. |
|
Project managers and group supervisors |
Create a performance-based incentive plan |
Facilitated a team of field
and home office representatives to define the parameters for the incentive
program. |
|
Industrial wholesale and telecommunications
sales agents |
Address environmental performance issues |
Facilitated a
"data-mining" process to identify, prioritize, and develop
recommendations for resolving problems with the work environment (e.g.,
processes, policies, tools, etc.) |
|
Petroleum production management |
Approach for measuring effectiveness of
support for a major business process re-engineering initiative |
Designed a multi-level
evaluation system and specified tools and processes for implementation. |
|
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Large scale
structures for content and employee development process! |
|
A unique, rapid,
object-based design and development approach for effective
solutions that can be shared and maintained over time! |
|
Performance-based
verification so that employees can do their jobs! |
|
Learning that
includes the complexity (and "noise") of the workplace. |
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Comprehensive
capture of know-how and development of
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Process
-
Tools
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Reference
Information
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Training
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Other
Resources
|
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We can use
facilitation skills and group process techniques to work through
a wide range of business decisions. |
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