During the past few weeks leading up to our move, I have been thinking a lot about Maestro’s first five years, the growth with which we have been blessed and you, the remarkable people who have made—and continue to make—it all possible. “When the time comes,” I asked myself again and again, “how will I ever tell them what they mean to me?” I was afraid that no words I knew would do you justice or be equal to the task.

But today as I stood in the midst of the more than thirty souls that now make Maestro what it is, I knew I had found the answer and, hopefully, the words. I stand five foot five, but I am privileged to walk among giants. Each and every day you arrive here to make larger-than-life contributions, wonderfully huge accomplishments that surprise, delight, solve and serve.

You don’t physically tower above your peers, duck to fit through standard doorways or have gargantuan hands. Just the opposite. As a Maestro giant, you are likely of ordinary size but carry extraordinary spirit and talent. Your frames don’t require extra space, but your contributions are enormous and overflow any room. You wear shoes of normal size, but they would be virtual canyons to fill if you weren’t here.

You don’t speak with thundering voices or rattle the furniture when you walk. But be still and witness the power in small, quiet voices. And be awed, as I am every single day, by the might of the slight and slender to shake things up. Get things done. Make things happen.

To work at Maestro is to rub shoulders with giants. To be where I am and do what I do is to be humbled, awed and made to believe that, yes, dreams do come true. So from my heart to yours, gentle giants of every size, I send peace, love and gratitude. You are the collective soul of this grand adventure we all share.

Article originally appeared in April 24, 2012 issue of the Kalamazoo Gazette
Written by Yvonne Zipp: yzipp@mlive.com

KALAMAZOO, MI – Food Dance is getting new upstairs neighbors: Maestro eLearning, a Kalamazoo-based high-tech firm, is moving into a 5,200-square-foot space above the restaurant at 401 E. Michigan Ave. in early May.

“We’re so excited,” said Jen Randall, 39, president and co-founder of Maestro. “Who can beat being on top of Food Dance? I think we’re going to have to increase our food budget.”

Maestro, which designs high-tech training and support materials — a majority of which are for the iPad, is making the move downtown because, frankly, it needed more room. It has been located at Kalamazoo Valley Community College’s M-TEC facilities in Texas Township.

“The main inspiration is that we’ve outgrown our incubator space over here at the MTEC,” said Randall. “But the secondary reason was to find a space that was going to be an extension of our brand. We’ve got an eclectic group of 30 employees, and our brand and our culture is really important to us. We were looking for more of an open, collaborative space.”

The company, co-founded by Randall and Josh Little, 36, in 2007, grew 111 percent last year, with 40 percent of that strictly mobile-based technology, Randall said.

“We create a lot of training or sales support materials,” explained Randall, whose staff includes graphic designers, instructional designers, strategists, programmers and iOS developers. “We work with marketing teams, as well as training teams, as they try to increase sales or roll out products.”

With more than 75 clients to serve, including Stryker Corp., Facebook, Dannon Yogurt, Amway and Johnson & Johnson, Maestro has added 11 new employees since November and plans to add nine more by September – more than doubling in size from 18 to 38. Randall estimated that Maestro built 30-plus apps last year alone, most of which are proprietary.

In 2010, Maestro was named one of 50 Companies to Watch by the Edward Lowe Foundation and was a winner of a Main Street USA Best Small Business Award. Before founding the online training company in 2007, Little was a national training officer for Stryker, while Randall was a sales manager and regional tranier at Johnson & Johnson. Both have education degrees.

The new office looks almost like a ballroom, with a wide-open floor plan, hardwood floors and a wall of windows overlooking the old depot. There’s enough space to fit everyone, including the company pool table.

“We’re looking forward to being part of downtown Kalamazoo, part of that hustle and bustle,” said Randall.

Read the full article here on UX Magazine’s website

The Low-Five
1. Doing the same things over and over again gets you nowhere.
Resist the urge to maintain the status quo. For example, if you’re switching to mobile (Good for you!), fight the desire to simply upload your ILT presentation onto the iPad, thus crushing any excitement your employees might have had about using the new technology for training. Try using these amazing devices the way they are meant to be used. Make things tactile and interactive, experiment with the gyroscope and accelerometer and other engaging features. Make learning fun.

*2. Strategy and instructional design are not secondary to content. *
If you feel that simply pushing mountains of information to your employees with little to no structure, engagement or incentive is a good idea, and if you think they are actually going to use it, you’d better think again. Sometimes I give big books with lots of pages of info to my one year-old boy. You know what he does with them? He eats them. Uninviting truckloads of information without well-planned strategy and structure always have a way of being avoided.

*3. Bad relationships only get worse over time. If it’s not working out, its okay to cut ties with your LMS. *
I believe one gentleman who stopped at our booth mentioned that there are somewhere around 250 different registered Learning Management Systems in North America. Wow. If yours isn’t working, take some time to find one that will make your job easier. There are plenty to choose from.

4. Great ideas need fertilizer, not temporary champions.
A recurring problem in many organizations is that many T&D roles are temporary roles. Sometimes, these positions are even viewed as stepping stones to other roles. And while there may be no way to shift that culture completely, if you’re the one with the great idea, don’t let it die when you change roles. Help it grow. Take the passion for the idea into your conversations with upper management. Make sure you have some trusted comrades in T&D who will help fuel your idea and give it growth.

5. You didn’t become a trainer without a little bit of training yourself.
I’m probably more guilty of this than most, but it can be difficult for other departments to work well with training when the training department heads appear unteachable and reluctant to try new things. Remember, people are coming to you for help. For many that’s a big step in swallowing pride and acknowledging a problem. The last thing they want to encounter is another problem at T&D’s front door. Think about the times a co-worker helped you with a project or worked with you to find a solution. Felt good, right? Here’s your chance to be that resource for your co-workers.

So there you have it, five things to avoid in your training and development strategy. Overall, be open to new ideas and new technologies. Things are changing rapidly in our world of learning. Those who will be most successful are those who are enthusiastic about – not resistant to – change.

Amidst all the keynotes, breakout sessions, booth discussions, etc. We took away five things that every learner-focused trainer should know and do. These are big; and while some of them may seem like no-brainers, the fact is that they are simply not all being practiced in many organizations. So today I’m listing five important eLearning principles shared at LSCon. Then come back tomorrow when I’ll post about five training blunders NOT to make in your company’s training. I lovingly refer to them as the high-five and the low-five.

The High-Five
1. Base your content design approach almost completely, if not 100% on your learner.
It’s no secret that people absorb information differently. Make sure that your content is structured in a way that is best for your audience. My wife inhaled The Hunger Games books in about eight days. Not me. I will see the movies. We enjoy learning differently and that’s okay. Make sure you understand your audience well enough to know their learning styles and that you adapt your content design to fit what will work best for them.

2. For a memorable learning experience, engage the senses.
Roller coasters are pretty unforgettable because they engage your senses. You see the big drop, feel the lack of gravity, touch the air (or the safety bar, depending on your preference), hear the screams, and your nose… well it is nearly suffocated by 70 MPH winds coming right at your face. The same goes for learning. The more senses you engage within the learner, the better they will comprehend and retain the material.

3. New platforms require new strategy. For example, mobile
Mobile is exciting and new. Its ability to envelop a user for hours at a time without an ounce of boredom is a borderline miracle. So does it make sense for companies to assume that this heaven-sent platform should be treated like textbooks, ILT or even laptops? No, it doesn’t. Take time to think about the stories, experiences and lessons learned in training and how they will be delivered to the learner. Is there a way to make them even more engaging on a mobile device? Oftentimes the answer is yes.

4. If your training is focused on the learner, shouldn’t the learner have a say in the training?
Some trainers seem to think they know exactly what the learners need to know and how they need to learn it. I know my little boy needs to be smart and healthy, but shouldn’t it be his choice whether he plays the trumpet or the piano, soccer or football, apples or oranges? Talk to your learners about how they want to be trained. They will feel they are being heard and, in turn, have respect for the content you create for them.

5. If your learner is talking, it’s best to listen.
I know of a company that deals with highly confidential communication technology. The training department deals solely with safety and compliance. All technical training is done in teams of five or six. In those teams, three or four experienced engineers will teach, instruct and mentor one or two junior scientists. They will verbally coach them on how to perform different tasks, record findings, and develop new data. These teams will stay together for four, six, sometimes eight years. Guess how low the turn-over rate is in the company? Low. Guess how many employees feel they are making a difference in the growth of the organization? All of them. Social learning, in any form, should not be ignored, it should be fostered.

Stay tuned for the Low-Five, coming tomorrow.

People have been learning from each other since the beginning of time. It’s human nature. However, technology is reshaping the process and changing the meaning of the term “social learning,” and Generation Y is changing the way it is used in the workplace. Born after 1979, Gen Yers are the youngest group of professionals to join the workforce, and they’re driving social learning—whipping it into a full-fledged phenom.

This group will soon make up 50% of our nation’s workers. They leverage a wide range of technology and social networking tools to share information and collaborate with peers and colleagues nonstop. They share knowledge as they find it in ways that are organic and ongoing.

The result? A workplace culture that’s a far cry from same-o, same-o. In some companies, it may still feel more comfortable to disseminate information along formal channels and through a top-down hierarchical approach or in structured settings. But as we learned from Facebook’s Stuart Crabb at ASTD TechKnowledge, workplaces that are thriving with social learning—and indeed the new economy—are those that encourage the ongoing info sharing and collaboration that Gen Yers crave and embrace the technology that supports it.

Social learning requires that everyone in a company have the ability to both teach and learn anytime they want or need to. This allows every employee to support company growth, knowledge sharing, training, employee development and satisfaction. Social workplaces provide every person in the company with tools that allow them to learn in a way that is fun, fast and accessible anytime and anyplace.

With busy schedules and a wide array of roles and priorities within organizations, this may sound like a tall order. However, technology and Generation Y are here to help. Consider these ideas to help your company move faster and work smarter.

• Apply social learning. What if your sales team could use a custom-built app on their mobile devices to demonstrate the value of your products during meetings with prospects? Pretty smart (and pretty slick).
• Make it mobile. By making your company’s information-sharing options available both online and via mobile devices, you empower your people to teach and learn anywhere and at any time.
• BYOD: Bring your own device. Gen Yers are especially fond of this concept. By allowing your employees to use their own mobile devices—and yes, that includes all of the personal communication that comes along with it—you are enabling them to blur the line between their professional and professional lives. What’s more, you’re demonstrating your trust in their ability to do so acceptably. Research shows that this makes them more engaged and happier long-term.
• Join the conversation. Leverage both technology and face-to-face communication to get people excited about talking to each other. Foster a culture that is accepting of new ideas from everyone – regardless of their seniority or role within the company.

Join our social learning space at BrainBin. Collaborate with us and with others to learn in a safe, highly accessible community of learners.

The way we learn is changing. However, the way our brain and our body engage with that content hasn’t. The mobile hype cycle is shaking the very foundation of how learning takes place. But wait, we’ve seen this story before, remember? Fire, stone tablets, the printing press, the telephone…

While we attended ASTD TechKnowledge this year, it seemed like everyone asked us how to take existing learning programs and make them mobile. Today’s employees are equipped with smartphones and tablets. These devices must now be populated with content and information that will allow their users to be more successful. Companies are seeking ways to release these individuals from lengthy learning sessions that can only be accessed in person or through an Internet connection.

The solution? Apps. (Web or native) But not just any boring, cookie-cutter apps. Today’s companies need strategically forged applications that directly address their business objectives and drive value. The Maestro booth buzzed with people eager to see more than 20 apps we created for our customers within the last year. They were excited to see the possibilities, which truly are limitless.

*Adventures in Mobile Learning and Communication *
Maestro has completed a number of native apps that provide field sales representatives with both performance support and bite-sized learning tools. Regardless of context, these tools achieve immediate improvement in performance by meeting the reps’ needs in the moment and providing a resource for fast information and rote memory exploration. If the user has more than a moment, the app becomes a tool for learning comprehension and skill development.

These apps are unique and extremely successful because they are centralized resources for both learning and sales support. No longer are the users forced to sift through printed materials, electronic files, databases, emails or websites for critical information.

For those of you who may be wondering, the business outcomes include:

• Improved pipeline management
• Improved efficiency in managing customer data
• Decreased costs of traditional media
• Overall improvement in customer response

This is just one of the many mobile case studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of mobile deployment. There are many more, including integration with LMS, CMS, CRM legacy systems, the use of role-play scenarios, and much, much more. But we’ll save that for future blog posts.

So how about you and your company? Have you taken your training or sales support materials mobile?

That’s right, Vegas.

While many people might spend their time in Sin City eating, gambling, taking in the sights or trying to catch a glimpse of Celine Dion, we were having a blast talking about innovations and technology that are changing the way today’s organizations are learning, training, and equipping their employees. Call us geeks, but this is our idea of a great (as in way better than good) time.

So what did we get out of our time at TechKnowledge 2012? A lot. But here are the top three things that created a stir at this year’s event:

1. Going mobile.
   Mobile is definitely the buzz—how to use it in a way that puts content in the hands of learners. We’re in the midst of a shift from more traditional or even modern online learning to innovative web/mobile apps that can be accessed through mobile devices and PCs. Companies are looking to repurposing content to create a different learning experience. They want to add that “tactile feel” component, and integrate with other technical systems to measure the impact.

1. HTML5.
   With the rise in popularity of iPads, iPhones and Apple products as a whole, people are concerned about how to use them with the latest tools and technology, which often require Flash. We are finding ways to leverage this language in different ways. Although HTML5 poses plenty of potential limitations, it isn’t stopping us from pioneering a path to great learning.

1. Social learning.
   The use of interactive online communities for learning and knowledge sharing is growing – fast. Social media isn’t just for the personal use of Gen Y’ers anymore. It’s being applied to the workplace in exceptional ways. We see informal learning through social channels continuing to keep the water cooler alive and active.

Throughout the week, we’ll be posting our thoughts on these three ASTD TK2012 mini-stories that are causing a buzz throughout the learning community and how Maestro is providing solutions or thinking through approaches. We’re excited about the changes ahead and look forward to your thoughts, too. So keep coming back and checking your RSS feed and get ready to share your comments!

Q. How are you involved in the training world?

At present I run my own part-time business as a Coach, Trainer, and HR Generalist. In essence, I have a passion for Organizational Development and Self-Actualization.

Much of my work is customized to the personal and business needs of my clients. My target audience is typically small to medium sized businesses, entrepreneurs and professionals in need of support: to reach their personal goals; improve the quality of their relationships or lives; or implement the changes they need to improve business results.

The foundation of my business is built on a personalized trusted relationships with each client where any issue can be explored in safety and without consequence. I find this an important and necessary component to creating a framework where dreaming the future become more possible.

I lend my expertise to discerning perspectives, exploring options, strategizing suitable solutions and provide the development and implementation expertise necessary to get the work off the ground and up and running.

I thought I would give writing a go and so I am writing two books at the moment. One is on Performance Management and the other is on Power Principle for Everyday Leadership. These are not the titles per say but give you an idea of the subject matter.

Q. What has your career path been like?

I started working when I was 14 as a lifeguard and swimming instructor for the YMCA. Those experiences got me hooked on facilitation, being of service and helping others people master improvement.

By the time I was 22, I had a list of the “areas of knowledge and abilities” I wanted to master in my own life. This lead to an eclectic career driven by the need to live a purposeful life and to become as self-actualized as I could.

When I finished high school, I worked in Hospitality Food Service and the Retail Sector to learn about customer service and business basics. Then came Recreation Leadership where I learned to develop programs and workshops for community centers and the public.

I transitioned to Ambulance & Emergency Care / Paramedic Medicine to learn about medicine and managing crisis. This lead to eventually working with the terminally ill, youth at risk, and the differently-abled, and provided me with a well-rounded perspective on social and poverty issues.

From there I found my way to Employment Counseling and eventually Human Resources and Coaching. This work centers on individual leadership and business service improvements.

As a lifelong learner, formal education has been a rather constant companion on my journey. I love practical education and so I am always taking something to improve my knowledge and knowhow.

This has lead to several certificates and diplomas in a variety of subjects. I’m quite proud of the fact that I have taken over 250 classes and workshops aimed at making me a little smarter then I was the day before. I use all this accumulated knowledge and knowhow to help my clients improve their lives and businesses.

Some years ago I picked up the nickname “General Mister Fix-it”. I’m very proud of that.

A constant throughout the years has been training and professional development. This launched the consulting side of my career back in my early twenties and I have carried it through to present day.

Over the years my career has balanced traditional employment against consulting work in business development, training and facilitation, employment relations, leadership development, and human resources. This kept me well rounded.

More recently, Corporate Coaching for leadership development has spiked my interest. Many great leaders are struggling with how to evolve their workforce in environments that are heavy and complicated bureaucracies. My job then as I see it, is to help leaders become better leaders.

Q. How do your roles of Coach, Trainer, and HR specialist differ from each other? How are they the same?

Everything I do centers around people and the results they produce or want to produce for themselves and others. This remains true for me as a trainer, HR Specialist and as a Coach.

Trainer
As a trainer, the work focuses on expanding someone’s abilities by facilitating their ability to learn, retain and use new or existing knowledge.

I’m not a strong believer in managing change. Change naturally happens as a result of movement, either through deliberate effort or as a result of a decay cycle. I think it is more effective and important to manage learning, transformation and growth toward desired outcomes.

The end result might still look like change but you get a richer, more authentic buy-in when you realize that change is about helping people adapt and grow. This works best when the desired change has meaning, individual and personalized meaning, for the learner. This holds true when a worker sees them self as an essential stakeholder in the success and livelihood of the organization they work for.

In HR, the work is very multi-faceted. At the heart of it all, HR attempts to create a purposeful infrastructure for the responsive, efficient and effective use of the human workforce in an organizations. This is not an easy task.

HR Specialist
As an HR professional, building an HR framework that is sound legally, financially and makes good business sense is essential to the business. Within that framework you find a balance of organizational and individual goals and needs. Sometimes that balance is not very healthy.

This happens when the needs of the organization as a machine and a system clash with the needs of people for humanity in the relationships, processes and outcomes. For the organization that means having clear plans, expectation and systems for supporting people to get the most important work of the organization done.

For people, that means providing them with the resources and incentives necessary to support good organizational citizenship and partnership while ensuring that these same people are well suited to their job tasks and can maintain a healthy and productive work-life balance.

When we become better people, we become better parents, friends and workers. In the workplace, this can only happen if the organization actually take a real interest in the development and welfare of the worker as strategic partners in the business. The same is true in reverse.

The worker needs to take a real interest in the development and welfare of the organization as strategic partners in the business. In a perfect world, there is no compromise from either side, just great partnership. As organizations and workers, we haven’t mastered how to do that yet. I help with this function through leadership development and self-mastery.

Coach
As a coach, I help uncover what matters most to people. You would be surprise to learn how often there is no real help for the leaders in an organization.

As workers, we generally assume that managers in an organization should have superior knowledge, knowhow or access to resources to help the do their jobs. This is all too often not true at all.

I had a client tell me once, a CEO of a large organization in Calgary, that the biggest lie in their organization was they believe that management knows what it is doing. Think about that for a minute.

Who helps leaders become great leaders? Who helps workers become great workers?
Most of us stumble around trying to get it right on our own. Many of us fail over and over again.

Coaching makes use of a trusted relationship to explore issues and empowers individuals, workers and leaders alike, to develop more learnable intelligence: when you combine experiential and reflective intelligence to start living a life by design.

This approach inherently draws on a person’s natural motivation and self-determination to forge ahead with persistence and resilience to produce meaningful results in any or all areas of the individual’s life. As a coach, I help people evolve.

Q. What kind of resources (books, blogs, magazines) do you read for inspiration?

My reading tastes are quite eclectic. I like books. There is something about holding a book in hand, flipping the crisp pages, smelling and feeling the texture of the paper that appeals to my tactile senses.

I’m one of those people who likes to browse the university bookstores. I’m drawn to textbooks on organizational development, leadership, communication, business and psychology.

Some of my favorite authors include Peter Drucker, Liz Wiseman, Jason Fried, and Malcolm Gladwell. I also like Jim Clemmer, Tim Ferris, Hugh McLeod, Seth Godin, Tom Peters, and more recently Jay Elliot. Like I said, eclectic.

I subscribe to my HR and coaching association newsletters, the Harvard Business Review, as well as a few blogs like the HR Daily Advisor, Evil HR Lady and Ramey’s Canadian HR Blog, just to name a few.

Inspiration for me can come in many forms. Reading material, an intriguing movie or TV show, listening to someone tell a good story, or bearing witness to a real human moment between people.

Q. What would you tell an instructor who may feel shy or uncomfortable leading a class?

I would tell an uneasy instructor to do the following before class:

• See if you can sit in on the class taught by an experienced instructor. Make note of any teaching tricks you see and discuss them with him/her after the class
• Make sure you are very comfortable with the material. This will reduce the stress of thinking that you could be nailed for not knowing what you’re doing/teaching
• Make sure you practice, and practice and practice some more. You’ll be more confident if you know the flow of the class
• Make sure you wear your favorite outfit. One less thing to worry about if you feel confident with the way you look
• Make sure you get a good night’s sleep before the class. No one works at peak effectiveness when they’re tired
• Make sure you don’t drink too much the night before. You need clear heads when you’re thinking on your feet
• Before standing up to start the class, practice square breathing for a few minutes…breath in, hold for 3 seconds, breath out, hold for 3 seconds. This will calm you down and get you ready to start

During class:
• Make eye contact with everyone in the class. Make a conscious effort to look at each person as you talk
• Smile. A smile can keep you in the game
• Ask if there are any questions and pause. Take the time to look around the room. Use this quiet time to take a deep breath to calm yourself
• Have fun. Win the group over with your charm
• NEVER let them know it’s your first (or second, or third) class. Let them assume you’re a seasoned professional
• Keep in mind that everyone is a newbie at some point and every class will get better.