Silver Learning in Practice Award at CLO Symposium

Recently, Allen journeyed to sunny San Diego to be a part of the CLO Symposium in Coronado. At the awards ceremony, CLO distinguished Allen with a silver provider award for the e-learning course developed for Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc. You can read about the press release from CLO or visit our website to read ours.

We met a lot of great learning leaders at the symposium and enjoyed being able to share our project and to hear about the other projects through the "Winners Circle" the next morning. In December, all of the winners will be featured in the CLO magazine.

We'd just like to take this moment to thank Toyota. Their dedication to their training is an amazing story we felt honored to share.

Keep it Simple

I'm at the Fall CLO Symposium in Coronado today, where Allen just received a Learning in Practice Award for Excellence in E-Learning for a recent OJD initiative we helped Toyota with. Truly, it's been an honor to receive the recognition and be counted amongst the best in the business. More so, we at Allen feel honored to work with so many great clients and top notch companies, like Toyota.

Tomorrow morning, Paul Zackrison, our COO/CFO, and I will be at the symposium's "Winners Circle" to talk about the Toyota project. Truth be told, neither Paul nor I were directly involved with the project. But we've been well briefed by our CLO, Michael Noble, and the Project Manager, Anna Sargsyan. During those briefings, I particularly took note of the story where the Toyota team showed some real commitment to quality design. Of course, at Allen, that's what we've built our reputation on. We love working with clients that are just as committed, as Toyota was and is.

In that vein, I thought you all might enjoy a little clip that pokes fun of when "design" goes overboard. I think I like it because I'm on the marketing side of things, and well, when it comes down to it, this video is poking fun of me and my cohorts (hopefully, I'm not as bad!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwqPYeTSYng

Fortunately, we don't deal with this often. But maybe you do? Maybe you have all sorts of stakeholders that want to blow past the simple and obvious designs that work. If so, what do you do?

Allen Finalist for 2008 CLO Learning in Practice Award

We recently got word that Chief Learning Officer magazine has picked Allen as a finalist for its 2008 Learning in Practice Provider Award. Needless to say, we're very excited for the recognition.

The "Gold" winners will be announced in a couple of weeks at the CLO Symposium in San Deigo. Paul Zackrison, our COO/CFO and Anna Sargasyan, the Project Manager on the award-winning Toyota project, will be attending the event to accept the award and talk about the project. If you're heading to the symposium, let us know and we'll arrange a time for you to meet with Paul and Anna.

More details on the event here.

Do Industry Awards Really Matter?

Psst! I’ve got a secret to share. Okay, well, maybe it’s not so much a secret, since you probably already know it. So, maybe it’s more of one-of-those-things-we-just-don’t-mention. Like the Emperor’s new clothes. Either way, here it goes…

Industry awards aren't proof that a vendor is right for you.

Whew! There, I said it. Man, that feels good, doesn’t it? To just get it out in the open like that. I mean, we all know that looking at a long list of awards a vendor has won only tells us that at some point the vendor created something of note. But it certainly doesn’t foretell how well the vendor will take care of you, the client.

"But, Brent," you’re saying, "Allen has a long list of awards won right there on your site. If awards don’t matter, why mention them?"

Good question. And the answer is: I didn’t say awards don’t matter, just that a list of awards won isn’t indicative of whether a vendor can help you be successful in the future. Rather, here’s what awards are good for:

1. Credibility
Awards signal that impartial third parties recognize a vendor as credible. It’s rare that a “fly by night” organization is going to be winning awards. So, vendors who win awards are credible. But establishing credibility is very much just a first step towards ensuring a successful partnership.

2. Kudos
This is the best thing an award can do – give a pat on the back to the winner. But does that recognition, however well deserved, do anything for you as a client? Probably not.

3. Benchmarking
Wondering which vendors out there are strong in a particular are, like design or results? Check out the appropriate awards. Remember, though, even a vendor that’s rated high for, say, ISD may not have the acumen to translate those strengths in a way that successfully meets your learning and business objectives.

4. Pissing Contest
Forgive me if that’s a bit crass. But I can’t think of a better way to describe this marketing effort. Let’s face it: Vendors haul out the logos of awards won, and mention them every chance they can in sales collateral and advertisements in some attempt to prove to their prospects and competitors that they’re top dog. Huzzah for the triumph of vendors over the competition. But what does all that get for you, the client?

That said, if it sounds like I’m down on awards, I’m not. I think awards are very telling. But they don’t tell everything. They’re a piece in the puzzle that you have to put together about a vendor. And, of course, this is nothing new to you. Or to any vendor out there, no matter how much we don’t want to admit it. Sometimes though, you just have to stand up and point at the “Emperor” and state the obvious: “You’re naked.”

Awards are great—and we’re proud of ours, especially the six we won this year. For you, they help you begin the process of vetting potential partners. For us, they help us benchmark our performance and strengths; they recognize our teams for their hard work, smarts and creativity. Heck, they even look pretty on a shelf. But the fact is, awards are only one piece of the puzzle you have to put together to find the right learning partner.

Award-Winning Projects

I recently returned from Santa Clara where I accepted on behalf of the Allen team an award for our work with AHRQ on courseware for their healthcare database. This is the eighth time we have won a Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Award for Custom Courseware. The obvious question winning brings to mind is, “What we can do better to make all our courses award winners?”

Then again, maybe the obvious is dead wrong! Completing over 100 projects each year and with an average employee tenure of ten years, most of Allen’s team has touched an award winner sometime during their stay here. While awards and industry recognition give the market a window to our dedication to instructional design, high quality is a benchmark first and foremost applied internally at our organization. In fact, internal benchmarking and measurement are crucial for anyone involved in training at any level. So what are some awards we as training organizations could use to measure ourselves? Here are some recommendations:

The On Time, On Budget Award
Training projects have many moving parts. Design, content creation, reviews and large companies can create bureaucratic processes. Very often, the art of good design must overcome the uncertainty of training development by injecting project management and processes that make sure the project is brought home on time and on budget. Give yourself an award star if you are able to overcome the nature of the beast and consistently make your projects come in on time and on budget.

The Optimal Design Award
How often are we asked to do things we know from experience are wrong or will be ineffective? As a vendor or as an internal training group, you serve groups who may not be as sensitive to the impact quality design has on training. You get an award star if you are able to inject the appropriate amount of instructional design while maximizing its impact on any given project based on its budget, timeline, and learning or training challenge. After all, your creativity and professionalism is measured as much as by what you produce as by your ability to find the optimal solution for any given training situation.

The Trust Award
While I often will laud the process of good training development, we must recognize that what we do for a living has many intangibles. Much like our favorite teacher in high school, a certain level of trust must develop between teacher and student to raise the quality of learning and transfer. In the training development process, trust is a crucial component that must be nurtured—it doesn’t rely on a hierarchy of the classroom but is build on relationships. Have you been there for your customers? Were recommendations from each side to the other addressed and discussed? Did the trust you have given and taken lead to a better quality project and experience? Give yourself an award star if the project you have undertaken has helped your customer build a trusting relationship with your group.

The Designer Growth Award
Lastly is the most overlooked award in our business, The Designer Growth Award. How often do we find ourselves doing the same old thing over and over again? Have we boxed in or templated our design and creativity? I firmly believe that not all projects are created equally from the perspective of the demands they make on creative people. You get an award star if your project was able to challenge and move you forward as a better designer or project manager.

Since 2000 alone, we have been fortunate to win 27 awards for our work with our clients. While each award stands on its own, taken together they make a bold statement to the industry about our philosophy:

> Never abandon good design
> Always remember that “optimal” can be synonymous with “great”
> Trust is the fuel that good projects run on
> Never stop perfecting the art and science of good instructional design