The Brief

For an annual corporate conference different divisions were tasked with preparing presentations and workshops. The sessions were of a duration of one hour and for 40+ participants per session. My task was to prepare a workshop focusing on Safety & Risk Management for the entire Operational Division.

The Challenge

How do you design a workshop for participants, who have over 15+ years experience and as well provide a fresh take on the topic of safety?

Since the audience was a mix of senior management, heads of department and senior managers; all who have a vast experience in safety, a safety presentation would just be too boring. We were sure that we didn’t want a presentation and just treat it like a seminar, we wanted to raise the bar to do something different and unique. Also the fact that we only have one hour for the workshop put significant time constraints on what we could do.

Conceptualization: Step 1 – Brainstorming

With that abstract brief, I started brainstorming the different elements and challenges that the operational managers face on the line. What I ended up with, was the following final five elements.

1. Operational time pressures
2. Budgets
3. Safety procedures & Regulations
4. Information & Data
5. Operational Objectives

These were the elements that as an operational manager you had to constantly juggle daily. So, I started working on linking all these elements together and try to design a workshop around it.

Conceptualization: Step 2 – Converging

Looking at each of these as 5 elements and trying to join them up together into one cohesive piece wasn’t easy. It took me a week just to come up with and fine tune the concept.

I focused on Operational Objectives as the first piece and tried to brain storm what could be a simple task that I could ask the participants to complete. Since the target audience was operational staff, I was thinking around what could be something that they could build. After a couple of ideas I settled on using lego pieces to build a structure as the task.

I used http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/efficientlego as a reference to look at some basic structures. At this time I hadn’t decided on the final structure but had a rough idea in mind.

Now that I knew what the task was going to be, the next piece to link was easy: Budgets. To build the structure I would ask the participants to buy pieces from a fixed pool of money. At this point I had decided on one structure and setting a points value based on the different colors used. So for example a structure built with red blocks, would have a higher point value than the same structure built with blue blocks. The problem with this was that, you would have no reason to build the structure with a lower value. This drove the decision to come up with 3 different structures using different pieces. You can see the final structures below.

Each structure would require an increased number of pieces with increasing complexity. The more complex the piece, the more points it had.

Now focusing on Information & Data, I came up with the idea that not only they had to build the products, but they also have to sell it to a country. Each country would require a certain type of structure (demand) in a specific color (commercial information). This information would not be readily available but would need to be bought using their Budget. To add another layer of complexity the commercial information would have two pieces of paper with conflicting commercial information – both were date stamped with the only latest date having the right information. This is what we call as TRAPS, within a workshop.

Traps are built into simulations as a wrong decision pathway thats used during the de-briefing of the activity.

The element of Safety procedures & Regulations was designed in two ways. The first was coming up with the concept that the pieces were corrosive and would require safety equipment to handle the pieces. Safety equipment which would need to be purchased using their Budget. This was another trap. This trap was linked with the regulation: for every violation there would be a regulatory fine, that would deduct from the revenue. If a threshold of multiple violations are reached than they could lose up to 100% of their revenue.

This was to bring to life the fact: that if you prioritize commercial pursuit with a total disregard of safety, you risk losing everything.

Finally the time pressure was added by giving participants only 30 minutes of the one hour to complete this task. Also during the workshop, as time winded down the time left would be emphasized numerous times to put additional pressure on participants to finish.

Conceptualization: Step 3 – Preparation

With the basic concept of the simulation designed, it was to piece all the pieces together. Purchase the required number of pieces, figure out the commercial values, figure out the total number of pieces that could potentially be built.

A briefing pack was designed with the objective, production guidelines & regulations/fines. This was given to each group during the initial brief.

3000 lego pieces were bought with 6 different colors to allow enough pieces for each session of 4 teams composed of 8-12 people per team. All the required pieces were color sorted.

Print outs of commercial information was prepared in enough packs to have for all 4 sessions for a total of 16 groups.

Below you can see some of the different components.

Muhudeen one of my team mates busy preparing the paper cash:

Another key aspect of the workshop was to have a team to help facilitate the workshops.

3 stations were setup with a team member assigned to one of the stations. The stations were:

1. Production Supplies – To buy the required lego pieces
2. Marketing Research – To buy commercial information related to a country
3. Safety Equipment – To buy necessary equipment to safely handle the pieces

Each participant group were also assigned an observer to watch out for regulatory violations. They were also responsible for the final assessment and scoring at the end of the round.

Two rehearsals were organized with the team to practice, as well as try out the concept and see if it works. At the end of the final rehearsal an overall plan with roles was agreed upon. The rehearsal and trial of the concept was key in fine tuning the workshop mechanics.

The final setup of the workshop was following the: 10 – 20 – 30 principle.

- 10 minutes for setup and initial brief to participants
- 20 minutes for the debrief post activity
- 30 minutes for the actual activity

The Workshop: Conference Day

A summary of the brief given was:

You as a team, have been allocated $10k in cash. With this in hand you have to source and produce as many products you can. The materials for the product can be purchased from the materials station. Completed products have to be sold to a target country, the market research if required is available from the marketing station. Also please be aware of any safety equipment you may need during the production; safety equipment can be purchased from the safety station. At the end of the activity you will be scored, based on your successful production taking into account any fines due to any violations. A list of regulatory compliance rules can be found in your briefing pack.

The introduction brief was kept very simple. They were alerted to all the stations from which they can purchase information, materials or equipment. They were also introduced to each of their facilitators who could answer any further questions they have during the activity.

Below are a couple of shots of the sessions in progress.

One of the fears I had, was that I may have made it too complex for people or that people may not participate being in such big groups. To my relief the opposite came true! Everyone was participating and were up on their feet actively involved.

The Workshop: De-brief

Running the workshop is one part but the most important component is the final debrief. An excellent debrief allows participants to relate with what they have done to what they experience back in operations.

For the de-brief we focused on 3 points.

1. Leadership & managing your team
2. Managing your safety risks while balancing your operational needs
3. Communication & collaboration

The teams did fall into the various traps that were setup and each of those were used as discussion points.

For example, some people used the wrong commercial information resulting in producing the wrong product. We used this to emphasize the importance of being up to date with procedures and always making sure you have the latest information/procedure to work with.

Another example was while on the table they used the gloves to handle the gloves while forgetting to use it when purchasing the materials. This was used to emphasize that we need to be safety conscious, not only during our operational times but be vigilant even when we are not within our domain of work. The facilitators at the material station also were not wearing safety equipment and this was highlighted and noticed by a few participants, which was perfect! This point, was used to highlight the fact, that we deal with a large number of third party suppliers and we need to up hold them to the same safety standards that we practice within our organization.

Finally, one point we emphasised is the aspect of information silos.

We asked “Why did you all need to purchase commercial information? Why wasn’t the information paid for once and shared between all teams instead of having all the teams purchasing the commercial information individually.”

This was used to emphasize the point about working efficiently and not becoming focused only within own departmental objectives. We are all part of a bigger organization and must work smarter and more efficiently maximizing sharing of information & resources.

Conclusion: Overall feedback

The feedback received was extremely positive. People were engaged, involved and it was a fresh take on safety that they had not experienced before. A positive experience is critical when ever you are trying to bring about change.

I would also like to thank all the volunteer facilitators who helped facilitate the workshop. It would have been extremely difficult to run the workshop without their help. Thanks Paul, Earl, Francis, Janine, David, Mihaela, Simon and Adrian.

Finally I would like to thank the big boss Paolo who had the courage and gave me the support with the creative freedom to try something unconventional.

“The views expressed on this post are my own and not those of Etihad.”

You can view the entire module following the link below:

>>SMS: Treasure Hunt

http://www.mashrur.com/guruentry/story.html

The SMS treasure was completed as a proof of concept, to explore how to tackle regulatory training where there are certain core knowledge that needs to be learned before tackling more advanced topics. The challenge with these type of information is that these are basic concepts that one needs to know. The common approach, that one could take is send out an e-mail with an attached document – and say read this. The assumption is people would read it and understand it. Another approach I have seen, is convert it into a powerpoint presentation, slap on some voice-overs and call it e-learning. So this is my attempt at tackling this challenge. Following are some design considerations to explain the thought processes behind it.

Structure

One of the first things I needed to consider was, what are the basic concepts. After a brain storming session, I organized it into 3 core areas: SMS pillars, Safety Cultures and Reporting. Now the challenge was to link them all together. To be quite honest, I had at this point no idea how to tie it all together.

It was a Thursday evening and the latest issue of “One Piece” (best manga ever) came out and while reading it, the idea popped in my head “Why not design it as a treasure hunt?”

From that little trigger, over the next 5 hours I started sketching on A3 paper.

Navigation

Majority of e-learning courses have a linear design. I wanted to be able to provide a form of navigation where the user is free to explore at their pace. Give them the most basic guidance and allow them to decide how they want to explore the content. This was tackled in a couple of ways:

1. Give them the most basic instructions as a simple task – in this case find all the gems. Each of the gems were linked to one of the three core areas.
2. The progression meter (How far am I in the course?) was designed as a treasure map, where – as each gem is found the corresponding option is greyed out.
3. I also had to design scenes, in way to take care of scenarios where the player may revisit an area after having already found the gem.

Challenges & Knowledge Tests

One key challenge that I wanted to overcome, was that technical knowledge should not be memorized. What’s more important is the comprehension and application of the knowledge. This is the reason why all the challenges have an option by which a learner can refer back to the knowledge notes. An example of this is, with the China scene. During training you were given definitions of what hazards, incidents and accidents are. During the challenge is the application of this understanding of the definitions with real scenarios. It was disguised as a tic-tac-toe game to allow them to tackle the questions how they want; and if you forget the definition you can always look it up. I have lost count of the number of SME’s that tell me:

“They need to know this! Tell them the definition and then ask them what it means at the final quiz – to make sure they know it!”

Which makes me smile (or LOL in some cases), because in a google connected world no one can look up definitions anymore or refer to a technical manual. Just to stress it again, that it’s more important that people know how to apply the knowledge rather than just memorization.

Design Process

I started by focusing on one gem to build out the structure (logical & flow). Once finalized, the structure of this copied into the other two. This helped in a couple of ways.

1. Easier rapid prototyping and testing of logic to make sure it works as expected.
2. Any further feature additions could be easily added to all areas due to all of them having a similar structure. An example of this is, each scenes background changes in the browser, this was more of an enhancement post completion. The JavaScript code was easily added & tested where needed in less than one hour.
3. As far as time management, I was more easily and accurately able to estimate the time required for each scene.
4. This also enabled me to compartmentalize the work into small chunks that I could focus on – one at a time.

Another thing I wanted to share, was at one point I made a conscious decision to not include voiceovers. This was to future proof the course if it needs to be translated into any other language without requiring re-recording of voiceovers (which can turn into a costly exercise). Instead I chose to include short sound bites to fit into context with the slide the user was on.

Graphic Design

Due to time constraints and trying to work smarter I decided to source the graphics. Majority of the images were bought through istockphoto. The graphics were bought as illustrator files that I could then change to my own needs. This saved a considerable amount of time and I was lucky enough to find related images with a similar design style. The reason for choosing a cartoon style was to again break the norms of standard graphics people have come to expect in e-learning. Besides trying to be a maverick, the main reason was to give people a story they can get more engaged in.

What is a computer?

I have seen this syndrome where people try to design courses for the lowest common denominator. While I understand the need to cater to that, some people just take it to another level with click here to proceed on every single slide. So instead of this, in the beginning a few click next highlights were used to give people an orientation of the navigation. Since each of the challenges required a different style of completion (drag & drop versus clicking), I added short video demos as well as on screen help highlights if required. I didn’t force them to go through the help but provided it as an option.

The end?

Now as mentioned earlier this was designed in order to pave way for future classroom sessions. The theme and characters can be carried over into classroom sessions to tie in with the online module. Each additional future module can then be marketing and promoted as a new adventure in the series. Also each participant who has completed the module can take away the core concepts as a PDF download.

What are your thoughts on this?

The following is my tribute to the man who had one of the biggest influences on my life.

It is an animated presentation of Steve Job’s commencent speech for Stanford University graduates.

God Speed Steve Jobs.

Click to Launch Presentation

Sample Slides

I have source a lot of images through google.com, please let me know who the photographers are so that I may attribute them.

The following post is meant to highlight the 3 key stages in planning and running an event successfully.

The 3 stages I will talk about are:

1. Pre-Event
2. Event
3. Post Event

In each stage I will share with you what you need to keep in mind as well as what we did in each case.

The proposed event

A one week event was to be organized and run to help foster a greater awareness of safety amongst the employees of the company. The Safety and Quality Department, together with the operational departments, was to organize the Safety Week. The event is to include daily presentations that will provide insights into the safety challenges that operational departments face, and how they deal with them.

The main remit of the event was to bring together operational and non-operational staff together to understand the roles they play in safety.

Pre-event

Audience

Its important to know who your target audience is and what you wish to achieve. This helps in marketing the event to the right people as well as ensuring any presentations are relevant for the audience.

Ideally we would want to be able to target every single employee but this is difficult due to a few reasons:

1. Operationally it would be difficult for everyone to attend. We couldn’t possibly ask everyone to stop working for just for this event.
2. Capacity restrictions would limit the number of attendees per day.

So we made a few key decisions, we would target a total capacity of 150 attendees per day with a 2 hour session every day. The number of seats were divided equally between operational and non-operational staff (75 each).

An online registration system was setup to allow people to be able to register themselves into one of the 5 sessions over the week.

Presentation

You need to know what you will be presenting as well as make sure to have a common theme that ties all the different presentations together.

We decided on 8 presentations from operational departments focusing on key areas with each area being allocated 15 minutes. The focal theme that brought all the different presentations together was to focus on the Safety Management System and how each operational area benefits from and contributes to it.

Each operational area was given a week to prepare their presentations and all the final presentations were sent to me for the final compilation. All presentations were quality checked for spelling and data, as well as given a common visual theme (colors, fonts, images) by me.

Video statements

Video statements are a fantastic way to make sure key messages from senior management can be shared even if they are unable to attend all the events.

We recorded video statements from all the relevant divisional senior management to highlight key messages to the organization from their leaders. The video statements were also to be re-used for further training and development in the future.

Handouts

People love free stuff, but its not just about giving stuff away. Anything you plan for people take home with them should help them remind them of the event and the key messages.

As part of the event we ordered custom pens for all the participants with the slogan of the Safety Week.

As part of this I also led the development of a safety management brochure that gave all participants a high level view of how the system works.

Awareness

Its very important to advertise your event and increasing the awareness of the event. Call it marketing, promotion, raising awareness – what matters is people know about it.

We did a couple of things to raise the awareness.

1. We sent out a corporate communication to all staff from the CEO, describing the overall event
2. We followed that up with an e-mail sent to managers to inform them about the specifics of the event
3. Once people registered for the event online, they were sent e-mail reminders 24 hours before the event
4. We also changed all the wallpapers on company issued laptops and computers to make sure people know about the dates of the event. You can see an example below.

The Event

Practice

Practice – Practice – Practice.You can’t believe the number of presentations I have attended were speakers stumbled or struggled with the A/V equipment. All of which can be solved if they had practiced before hand or familiarized themselves with the equipment before their presentation.

In order to ensure all the presentations went as smooth as possible, all our presenters met twice to do a practice run of their presentations.

This helped improve on a couple of ways:

1. We moved the speaker podium so that the speaker was able to see the screen without having to turn around as well as not obstructing the view of any participants.
2. There was a one second lag between when a presenter would click on the pointer and the slide would change. The practice session allowed the presenters to be able to get familiar with that delay as well as to expect it.
3. Finally the volume for the auditorium was adjusted to an optimum level taking into account all the voice levels.

The event

Always be prepared for anything that might go wrong and have contingencies in place.

A couple of examples we faced and it helped that we had planned and prepared for these potential events.

1. One of the microphones stopped working. We had two spare microphones on hand.
2. On one of the sessions the number of participants was more than there were chairs available. What we had done was keep a number of spare seats outside the auditorium and these were brought in as and when needed.
3. We also had a spare laptop in place, in case anything went wrong with the primary laptop.
4. The presentations and all the relevant materials were available on memory disks and on the cloud in case they were needed to be moved to a different computer or location.

Master of Ceremonies

Any event you plan – you need to make sure you have at least one person who has overall control and big picture view of the event ensuring everything is going according to plan. If there are any deviations or hiccups he is the one responsible to ensure everything is put back on track.

Overall responsibility of the running of the event was mine as well as I was the master of ceremonies preparing presenters and introducing them. Having an MC helps engage with the audience while they wait for presenters to change. As an MC I also helped keep track of time and cue the presenters on the time left. Any other technical problems or logistics were taken care of by me with minimum disruption to the event. As an example people who came in late to the event were asked to wait before being seated so as not to interrupt the presenter or audience.

Post Event

Communicate Success

Always make sure to communicate how the event went with your wider audience.

Post event we sent out another corporate message sharing the success of the event (over 600+ participants).

Share the event

Just because the event is over does not mean you cannot share the experience.

As I mentioned earlier it would have been an impossible task to allow everyone to attend (logistically and operationally).

I designed an online portal with recordings of each of the presentations as well as a photo gallery to allow others who were interested in the event to be able to view it at their own convenience.

Overall the event was a great success and a great example of excellent teamwork and co-ordination between numerous departments.

If there is one thing I can share with you is that plan – plan – plan. As the old adage goes “He who fails to plan, plans to fail”.

“The views expressed on this site are my own and not those of Etihad.”

]]> http://www.mashrur.com/2011/06/how-to-run-an-event-successfully-safety-week/feed/ 3 http://www.mashrur.com/2011/04/information-design-uae-population/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=information-design-uae-population http://www.mashrur.com/2011/04/information-design-uae-population/#comments Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:08:24 +0000 Mash http://www.mashrur.com/?p=853 There is nothing new about info-graphics but it is quite in its infancy in gaining momentum in its use across business to communicate information.

This is an info-graphic I developed based on the recently released U.A.E. population statistics by the National Bureau of Statistics.

The use of visual data has a couple of benefits over textual/numerical data:

1. Visual information is a more interesting way of explaining data that people can easily understand. Think about it, whats easier to understand seeing the distribution of male vs female in a population or a visual representation of that ratio?

2. Visual information also saves a lot of time in processing information as its explains a lot with a very few words. Yes it may take more time to produce an infographic, but it more than makes up for time saved by your audience in processing that information. Thats what you want for your business at the end of the day, people to easily understand and process the information you are sharing. People also connect much better with visuals.

3. Humans by nature are programmed to be more visual. Representing your information visually hence caters to that human need. More than 60% of the population are visual learners.

(click on the infographic to see the full resolution)

27th of September, Blackberry CEO Mike Lazaridis announced the company’s new tablet — the PlayBook.

Since the announcement of the iPad, one of the most controversial features left out is Adobe Flash. While this may not have a huge impact on the majority of consumers, it is a crucial feature thats needed for any e-learning (Majority of e-learning courses are in Flash format)  to be possible using a tablet platform. Since september last year we have seen a flurry of announcements of tablets with flash support.

The biggest benefits of deploying tablets for a workforce are:

• A tablet is more cost effective than buying laptops/workstations.
• Majority of people do not need workstations for complex software packages and would allow to launch a standard hardware profile across an organization.
• You cannot beat the portability and battery life of a tablet for a mobile workforce.
• Inclusion of remote wipe and tracking would help reduce the risk of information leaks.

I can rant on and on about how tablets are going to revolutionize the work environment; I am going to focus on the use of tablets for e-learning.

1. The deployment of  standard hardware and software profiles for all people and be able to rest assured that it just works. Ever tried trouble shooting jvm and flash versions on the laptops of different people? Or if popup blockers are disabled or javascript enabled? Irrespective of how advanced we have come with IT there is still a significant amount of people who still struggle to keep up with the torrid speed at which technology moves. Tablets are focused and much less messier technical environment to maintain.

2. A tablet truly is an instant on device. Gone are the days waiting for reboots and the loading of unnecessary system modules. You turn on your tablet and browse to that document you need downloaded from the cloud, or check your e-mail or even prepare a presentation. One touch and you are on your Learning Management System.

3. A tablet would allow one to design more ergonomic Learning Resource Centers that provides a friendlier learning environment than being just another CBT room. Imagine a room that is full of lazy boys and couches that people can gather around and discuss an online course. The best learning happens when people are collaborating together in a relaxed environment. Imagine also being able to use the iPads as a library of books and references for students in a college or school (Think about all the paper we  could save in printed books).

4. The portability of a tablet is the biggest advantage when it comes to online compliance. It would allow departments in regulatory environments to send out work process bulletins that would be instantly delivered and tracked for compliance instead of using e-mails.

The tablet e-learning scenario has become even more interesting with the recent announcements from Motorola, HP, Samsung and others; iPad has carved a brand new product tier. A product tier I am excited to watch and see how it matures in the direction of learning. We have already seen the potential with interactive books, training apps, flash cards, language courses etc; it can only continue a positive trend forward and I am looking forward to adopting it in a organizational learning environment.

What uses for a tablet can you think of in the future of e-elearning?

Imagine planning a vacation to France.

What would be the purpose of visiting France? Are you going there to relax? Are you planning to visit some museums? Do you want to go on a tour of the different vineyards? Do you want to stay in a hotel or a private getaway? Whats the budget for the vacation? Will you be traveling alone or in a group?

This is in a way similar to when a manager walks into your office and asks for a training session on customer service. What’s the purpose of the training? To deal with complaints handling? To train customer service standards? Is this for new recruits or existing staff?

Without getting bogged down with educational theory, an aim is used to hence define the purpose of your training or vacation.

Vacation to Paris

AIM – To visit french vineyards and learn about the history of french wine.

Aim clearly now states our purpose in wanting to visit France.

What is the aim missing?

We have stated what we are going to do on our vacation but have not stated why? This is an important question that should be answered using the aim. Let’s add that in.

Vacation to Paris

AIM – To visit french vineyards and learn about the history of french wine, so that I can be better at pairing french wine with french cuisine.

In a similar manner when ever you come up with an aim for your training module, you need to give your learners an idea of the direction they are headed. You have to explain the purpose of what they are going to learn and why they are learning it. How they will be able to meet the purpose and what specifically they will be able to do is whats covered using objectives.

So what could be some objectives for our vacation?

Vacation to Paris

OBJECTIVES

- Identify verbally the 5 major wine growing regions in France

- Identify by taste the difference between Cabernet, Merlot and Pinot Noir

These are just some examples of what some objectives could be.

To summarise, an AIM is the overall guideline of what is to be achieved while OBJECTIVES are the specific tasks that will be learned to get to the AIM.

What do you guys think? Do you have a simpler way of explaining AIMS and OBJECTIVES?

1. Describable
2. Memorable
3. Effective without colour
4. Scalable i.e. work when just an inch in size
5. Relevant to the industry in question

The following post describes the logic and process behind the design of my logo and how I feel it meets the above points.

I wanted to design a logo with a play on my name “Mash”. I definitely wanted a typographic logo with an emphasis on my initials. I also experimented with the use of animal outlines to try to incorporate a visual look.

Here are the results of the first drafts I worked on.

Quite a few people liked the logo with the tie, but I did not feel strongly about the look of that logo. It some how did not feel right (call it listening to your instincts or gut feeling).

I went back to square one. I composed the following image to focus more on the typographic elements.

After a few revisions on paper I was quite pleased with the final draft of the logo. The new design was simple, unique and was a play on the words “peak people performance” with the twin peaks of the letter “m”.

Below are the design elements of the logo.

So how does my logo stack up against the five points?

Describable, Memorable and Relevant

It is describable and memorable as the logo is a play on my name “Mash”. The top m is “mashing” the bottom letters down. Also there is that subtle element of a building skyscraper rising from the ground.

Scalable and Effective without colour

Below you can see the logo on black and white backgrounds. As there are no gradients or color dependencies, it still looks great with no colour. You can also see the scaled down version. The fact that I avoided any shapes, the logo will easily scale to any sizes for print.

You can also see the impact on the design with rgb profile applied to the logo.

Below you can see the final logo.