A huge thank-you to the Sustainability Society for launching my book!

      Last night the Sustainability Society launched two books about sustainability - my "Seven Steps to Successful Environmental Training Programs", and Niki Harre's "Psychology for a better world: Strategies to Inspire Sustainability". Niki is a social psychologist in the University of Auckland's Department of Psychology. 
      We had 5 minutes each to overview our books - and this was a real challenge: both of us are used to 50-minute speaking slots, and though I've had coaching on the "elevator speech" and 8-minute speaking slots, I must confess to being less than stellar with my five minutes! But as I'm a member of the Society, I knew many of the people there and they were very complimentary, bless them. The one thing I forgot to say at the end was how environmental training creates new professions, thereby building what Storm Cunningham calls the "restoration economy" from inside our faltering macro-economies.  You can find out more about this in an earlier blog.
      I love Niki's focus on the importance of positive mental states for sustainable behaviour change. This is something I've always firmly believed in, and based as she is at the University, Niki has been able to back up all her thinking with impressive amounts of research.
      What a wonderful opportunity this launch was - and it was the real thing: wine (and water and juice), elegant finger-food and an informed and interested audience - the Society really knows how to put on a good do. The networking afterwards was highly informative and I'll be chasing up a few people to gather up more case studies to disseminate via my website (fully acknowledged, of course!) on how different kinds of organizations (government agencies, businesses, utilities, not-for-profits) are delivering environmental training programs.
      Several friends and colleagues came along, one of whom changed an international flight to come back a day early so he could attend. Of course friends and professional peers are the most daunting audience for any speaker, but their interest and support was heart-warming. Thank you all.
      Wow! I feel I've been blooded as a "real" author! Many thanks to the Sustainability Society!


The Sustainability Society is a Learned Society of the Institution of Professional Engineers, and membership is open to everyone - you don't have to be an engineer to join (I'm not one) and the annual fee is very reasonable, with special student rates. Several times a year the Society runs free workshops on topics of note, as well as a sensational annual conference that draws outstanding speakers and audiences from all over the world. The 5th International Conference is at the University of Auckland from 27-30 November 2012 - check it out here.


Click here to find out about Niki's book. Click here to find out more about mine.


I'll be taking a break from this blog over Christmas-New Year and will resume sometime in January. Wishing you all the very best for your end-of-year break and a very happy and fulfilling year in 2012.

Policy - an extra plank in your training platform

      Over the last five weeks, I’ve looked at 5 Ps that will make sure you develop and deliver sensational training:

• Partnership
• Personas
• Performance
• Process
• Proof.

      As I start to think about my next professional speaking engagement on the topic, I’ve gone back to the seven steps I describe in the book and pulled out one more 'P' for you: Policy.

      Before you invest a lot of time for no return, it pays to ask a few hard questions. If you don't, be sure your manager and financial officer will do so, long before you get to put the proposition to your elected representatives, who will probably ask the toughest question of all!

      

Two questions need scoping out before you do anything about environmental training:

• is training the solution to the problem? 
• why should your organization do it? Can/should/will anyone else do it instead? 

      To answer the first question; training won’t solve your problem if you can’t define the environmental Performance gap in terms of what actions people need to change or acquire: trainees must have a clear definition of what they need to do.  

      To answer the second: there are several reasons why public agencies can justify running or supporting environmental training programs. The most common is that the required training is not available elsewhere: issue- or locality-specific performance needs are often not addressed in formal qualifications or by other training providers, so over time public agency staff build up expertise not often found anywhere else. 

      Of course, the issue must fall broadly within the legal mandate of the environmental agency and there must be a demonstrable cause-and-effect link between the environmental issues observed and outcomes desired and the identifiable performance issues in the relevant sector.

      Equally obviously, large organizations and utilities can set up their own in-house training, and such initiatives can be very effective.

      Sources of data and evidence for your initial research that can justify setting up a training program (as well as monitoring its ongoing effectiveness) can include things like: 

• state of the environment monitoring indicating an emerging or intensifying problem
• monitoring of environmental permits indicating poor compliance with conditions 
• high use of enforcement compared with other methods of promoting good performance 
• reviews of the effectiveness of plans, policies, regulations and enforcement that indicate different methods need to be used to achieve desired outcomes 
• public complaints or concerns about the issue and/or its current management 
• introduction of new legislation, policies, strategies or guidelines that change the performance benchmark 
• industry requests for assistance 
• evidence from other jurisdictions about the cost-effectiveness of training. 

      The other parts of the policy framework include: 

• the creation of a new technical guideline or adaptation of someone else’s to help those in the sector of interest use effective environmental control measures 
• regulatory procedures to ensure that they obtain environmental approvals that require the control measures to be used. 

      In my experience, it is desirable for public agencies delivering environmental training to have some leverage over the relevant sector, whether via legal approvals and/or enforcement or other methods such as financial penalties or incentives and so on, to make a good case for their attending the training.

      These 6 Ps will help you build a compelling case for the need for your training program. I wish you all the best with it!


This information comes from various parts of my book ‘Seven Steps to Successful Environmental Training’. 

Proof: how will you make sure your trainees are meeting their performance standard?

      It’s always important for trainers to know their training is effective, and there is a growing focus on the different levels of evaluation, from the “smile sheets” we give out at the end of a workshop to a full financial return on investment - and beyond!

      For environmental trainers, there is often an additional impetus, which is the need for compliance monitoring to ensure that organizations are meeting their legal obligations under environmental laws. Many are required to monitor their own compliance with various operating permits, and environmental regulators often have pollution hotlines or well-publicized phone numbers for the public to report matters of interest from smoky vehicle exhausts to over-use of water. Some also have formal systems for regular inspections of activities of particular concern.

      Effective environmental training is only one part of a wider environmental training program and such programs need to be set up so that their outcomes and effectiveness can be evaluated. This needs to be done right from the very beginning of any program. Likewise, the level of compliance with your environmental performance standards or guidelines will be part of your assessment of the effectiveness of your training. 

      A number of people in the training profession have identified seven levels of evaluation of the effectiveness of training. Levels 1-4 are from Donald Kirkpatrick, Level 5 is from Jack Philips and Levels 6 and 7 are from Alastair Rylatt – the sources are listed below. The seven levels are:

• Level 1 – Reaction: Did they like it? 
• Level 2 – Learning: What did they learn from it? 
• Level 3 – Performance: What can they do as a result of it? 
• Level 4 – Results: Was the training worthwhile? 
• Level 5 – ROI: Did it produce a financial return on investment? 
• Level 6 – Sustainability: has it become ‘how we do things around here’? 
• Level 7 – Sharing the benefit: how is this helping others and the planet? 

      So there are two layers of “proof” or evaluation: effectiveness of your training; and effectiveness of the wider environmental management program to which your training contributes. 

      Regular site inspections will give you good information for both - and in many jurisdictions, the costs of these inspections can be recovered from the organization holding the relevant environmental permits. From an environmental regulator's point of view, this is good news: the funding doesn’t come out of rates!

      How does this analysis work if you are a corporate or not-for-profit interested in environmental training? How does it work if you are an environmental regulator?

This blog is the last in my series of Top Five Tips for people starting to think about setting up or expanding an environmental training program. The other four were on Partnership, Personas, Performance and Process.


What’s your hot topic for environmental training? Contact me here or make a comment below and I’d be delighted to respond with some thoughts.

The information in this blog is drawn from comes from Chapter 6 and part of Chapter 8.3 of my book ‘Seven Steps to Successful Environmental Training’. Thanks again to the New Zealand Association of Training and Development, from which I’ve learned so much about training evaluation; and as always to Ann Andrews for encouraging me to disseminate this material more widely.

The three sources of the seven levels of evaluation are (1) Kirkpatrick, Donald, 1998, Evaluating Training Programs: the Four Levels. Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc. San Francisco; (2) Philips, Dr Jack, 1997, Return on Investment in Training and Performance Improvement Programs. Butterworth Heinemann; and (3) Rylatt, Alastair, 2003, Beyond ROI – seven levels of evaluation. An article in People and Performance, the magazine of the New Zealand Association of Training and Development, June 2003. 

Process: exactly how will you deliver your environmental training?

      When most of us think of training, we automatically go back to the crowded classrooms of our early educational experience. But these days, training can be delivered in many ways, most of them much more effective than a noisy room. 
      Options for how and where you can deliver your environmental training include:

• ‘classroom’ style at a venue suitable for interactive workshops
• field visits to an operational site
• the trainees’ own workplace 
• electronically, with synchronous and/or asynchronous delivery, or training that is delivered live at agreed times, or can be accessed at times that suit the individual trainee during work or other time.

      The first two options are classical ‘off-the-job’ training, taking place out of the normal workplace. This allows trainees to get away from work and concentrate more thoroughly on the training itself, as well as to meet new people who may do things differently in their workplaces. This type of training is thought to be more effective in inculcating concepts and ideas.

      The third option can involve formal and/or informal on-the-job training. Formal on-the-job training is often associated with gaining a qualification and usually involves the trainee carrying out normal workplace tasks with the usual equipment, systems and documents, with the help of their training materials. Such on-the-job training is generally regarded as being as most effective for vocational work. In many workplaces, informal on-the-job training is often done in on-site ‘toolbox’ meetings held every day or once a week, and can be very effective at raising awareness and skill levels.

      Electronic training (‘pedagogy empowered by technology’, as Mark Nichols calls it) is technology-supported training where the medium of instruction is computer technology, which is naturally suited to distance and flexible learning. Often called e-learning, it can also be used together with face-to-face teaching as a ‘blended learning’ solution. It can be used for informal training and also as part of gaining a formal qualification. 

      E-learning or training is text-light, image heavy and interactive, so it’s great when people are poor readers, bad with numbers or learning in a new language – all very common workplace issues. It's also great when:

• large numbers of people are involved
• working people need to study in their own time
• you want to give your learners regular positive feedback 
• large distances make it hard for everyone to get together. 

      Your choice of training delivery method will depend on a range of factors including:

• the numbers of people to be trained and how widely dispersed they are
• the preferred learning style for each target group, as indicated by your persona and interview work 
• any practical constraints, e.g. any preferred time of day and the length of time trainees can be released from work to attend training 
• the availability of suitable and affordable training venues
• the availability of field sites for theoretical activities and active construction sites willing to allow visitors 
• transport requirements and costs
• your overall budget and the involvement of other parties.

      Can you see the relevance of your work on Partnership, Personas and Performance to informing your choice about how to deliver your training? What thoughts do you have about what would suit the situation facing you and your partners?

This blog is the fourth in my series of Top Five Tips for people starting to think about setting up or expanding an environmental training program. My last blog was on 'Performance' - and there is one more tip to come!

The information comes from part of section 2 of Chapter 7.2 of my book ‘Seven Steps to Successful Environmental Training’. Some of the material was drawn from Wikipedia at http://bit.ly/o6vFhn. I am indebted to many excellent trainers who have addressed these questions through the New Zealand Association of Training and Development and to Cheryl Regan and Innovaid, with whom I’ve developed interactive e-training. Thanks too as always to Ann Andrews for encouraging me to disseminate this material more widely.

Performance: exactly what do you want your trainees to do?

      The first hard question to ask yourself before you invest a lot of time in researching the benefit of an environmental (or any!) training program is: “Is training the solution to the problem?”

      It’s no use making people attend training workshops if you can’t clearly define the training objectives and outcomes, or if workplace factors make it too hard for trainees to apply what they learn.

      The first of these relates to issues in your workplace; the second to issues in those of your trainees. I'll focus just on the first - it's the sine qua non of good training.

      Training won’t solve your problem if you can’t define the environmental performance gap in terms of what actions people need to change or acquire: trainees must have a clear definition of what they need to do. 

      But, yes, training can be the solution to the problem or part of the solution when you can carry out a training needs assessment and clearly define the following factors in measurable terms:

• what’s the desired environmental performance?
• what environmental benefits would flow from that level of performance?
• what’s happening in terms of the activities of interest and their environmental consequences? Where is performance below ideal? Who is performing well, and how do they do it?
• what’s the performance gap? Can it be defined in measurable terms that training can bridge?
• what’s the cause of the gap? 
• what new practices will bridge the gap to the desired performances and outcomes?

      If you have a new performance benchmark like a new guideline that clearly specifies the standard of environmental practice required, then appropriate training will help people step up to the new mark. 

      But if you have no clearly defined performance standard that the industry can meet, such as a guideline, you need to create one or adopt or adapt someone else’s before delivering any training. Without this, training won't be able to solve your performance problem.

      When developing a new performance benchmark, remember that ultimately, the success of your training comes back to Partnership: if the wider industry you’re working with understands the importance of better environmental performance in legal, business and environmental terms, its members will do their best to support application of the new performance standards on site. 

      In sum, training will be part of the solution for your environmental problem when you win support for the training initiative and its new practices and desired outcomes from the relevant internal and external players, thereby ensuring good workplace support for your trainees.
      What performance standards or guidelines do you have or could you develop on which to base your environmental training?

This blog is the third in my series of Top Five Tips for people starting to think about setting up or expanding an environmental training program. My last blog was on "Personas" - and there are two more to come!


The information comes from part of Chapter 5.1 of my book ‘Seven Steps to Successful Environmental Training’. I am indebted to many excellent trainers who have addressed these questions in the New Zealand Association of Training and Development. Thanks too as always to Ann Andrews for encouraging me to disseminate this material more widely.

Personas: how to characterize your trainees and make your training the best they’ve ever had!

      The better you can characterize your trainees – your target audience – the better your training will be. In your thinking about the environmental issue you want to address, you will already have done a lot of good work: you will have seen exactly who does the things you don’t want done and who doesn't do the things you do want done. You’ll already have a great idea about who or what empowers or disempowers the skilful actions you want them to carry out. So what else do you need to consider?
      A useful trick to really understand your target audience is to use personas. (Having done Latin at high school I would prefer to say ‘personae’ – but the term has been anglicized, so let’s go with the current professional usage.)

      A persona is someone you invent to represent the real people who make up the target audience for your training. A good way to generate a persona is to base it on a real live human being that you know. Can you clearly bring this person to mind? Can you see them? Can you hear their voice? 

      Working with your persona, you can ask yourself questions about their workplace, attitudes and actions, their goals, desires and fears, their likes and dislikes, limitations and constraints. What are their physical, educational, personal and social characteristics? What is their experience? How willing are they to learn? What sort of learning situation would best suit them?

      Personas can also be synthesized from data collected from 1:1 or panel interviews, to help you more accurately represent your real group or groups of target audiences. Capture the information you need in a narrative about your persona: this can be anything from a couple of paragraphs to a 2-page description. Add a few fictional personal details and maybe even a name (keep it respectful, as this will set the tone for your training!) to make your personas become more realistic characters. 

      You may need to create more than one persona within each target audience, but one is best. This will help you pin down his or her training needs more tightly.

      Their strengths may be very different from yours, so if you feel awkward and unsure about trying to come up with a kinesthetic method rather than a visual/auditory method, this is a good thing: it’s a sign you’re stretching your comfort zone. Be aware that as you develop your personas and they take on their own life, you may start to feel uncomfortable as you realize how much you need to change your own preferred way of delivering training in order to meet their particular learning styles. Not all of us have had happy learning experiences in classrooms!

      Conversely, if you are cruising along with a comfortable formula, ask yourself if you are really tailoring the training delivery to meet your trainees’ likely learning preferences. Some people will learn the same way that suits you best; others won’t. Mix and vary the methods, seek feedback and stretch and grow as a trainer!

      If you do this thoroughly, you will end up with training that is truly user-centered. What a wonderful training experience it will be!

This blog is the second in my series of Top Five Tips for people starting to think about setting up or expanding an environmental training program. My last blog on 'Partnerships' was the first - and there are three more to come!

The information comes from part of Chapter 7.1 of my book ‘Seven Steps to Successful Environmental Training’. Some of the information about personas is drawn from Wikipedia at http://bit.ly/o3PEw4. I am indebted to my friend and colleague Christine Heremaia of Good Causes Ltd for this reference, and to some of my colleagues in the National Speakers Association of New Zealand who also use and recommend this excellent method of understanding your target audience. Thanks also as always to Ann Andrews for encouraging me to disseminate this material more widely.

Partnership: the genuine article means doing environmental training WITH your stakeholders - not FOR them or TO them

      Last night in a mentoring session with the wonderful Ann Andrews, she asked, "If you had someone from your target audience right in front of you, what are 5 key tips you would like to give them?"
      Having something of a thing about alliteration, I came up with 5 Ps: Partnership, Personas, Performance, Process and Proof. I'll write about these over the next five weeks - starting today with Partnership.
      I believe with all my heart - and every bit of my experience tells me it's true - that partnership is THE fundamental platform of an environmental training program (and probably every other kind of training program, as well!). 
      Q: How soon is too soon to approach your stakeholders about your training ideas? A: It's never too soon. Whether you are an in-house or external corporate trainer, a government agency or a not-for-profit, start talking to your key internal and external partners while the idea is still a sparkle in your eye. That way, they will appreciate that you are genuinely seeking their involvement as a partner in developing a training program that will work for everyone. 
      This is especially important when there is a legal compliance aspect to the training: for example, helping people do restorative stream bank planting does involve delivering training to help them gain maximum plant survival rates and the ecological and other benefits that will result. Most such programs are supportive, incentive-based programs and your trainees would not be subject to enforcement if they didn't do any planting at all, or didn't do it as well as desired. By contrast, unauthorized discharges of sediment or other contaminants are illegal in any environmental jurisdiction, so any training partners carrying out activities that pose such environmental risks are potentially exposed to enforcement action (I'll talk about this more in "Proof" in a few weeks time). Involving them as genuine partners from the earliest stages of your thinking will make it more likely that the desired Performance and training Processes are workable and endorsed by the industry - something that will be crucial for uptake of your training.
      I've seen two compliance-based programs go down different tracks in a way that clearly demonstrates this. One was initiated in full partnership with the industry and 20 years later, is still thriving, with the industry itself embracing the benefits of good environmental performance and continually striving to raise the bar. The other was a "top-down" model where the standards were imposed on the industry with little consultation, and over 15 years later, is still mired in legal disputes and cynical compliance.
      It's a no-brainer that partnership is a good idea. Why not jot down right now who your key internal and external partners might be, and how you might approach them?
      
      By the way - the glitches on my website have now been ironed out - but we've discovered that some organizations' firewalls prevent people from signing up for the free ebook - this is the first stage in accessing the free resources that go with the "Seven Steps" book. If you have any trouble, please email me, because I can sign up for you, and you can then go on to a page called "My resources" and download all the free resources that go with the "Seven Steps" book.  
      And if you have been trying to pay for a copy of that book (thank you!) the purchasing system is now fully enabled.... 
      Click here to find out more about Ann Andrews' website: it's chock-full of wonderful training and other resources.

Environmental training builds new professions... and the restoration - or green - economy

      Everyday workplace activities cause a host of problems that bedevil businesses and government bodies. Many agencies are constantly fighting a rearguard action against water, soil and air pollution and other environmental problems from construction, manufacturing, utility works and farming?
      19 years experience with a major environmental training program has shown me how training can systematically address such problems.
      When that erosion and sediment control program started my co-trainer and I thought there might be two or three years of training to deliver, then everyone would be trained and we could stop.
      What actually happened turned out to be quite different: 15 years later, the program is still going and has been endorsed by major government agencies that require their service providers to attend. Moreover this highly successful program has – like the programs we looked at when starting out – inspired a number of similar programs around the country. We’ve even had people from other countries attend our workshops to find out what we do.
      So successful is the program that we ended up creating a whole new profession: environmental managers on large construction sites. These highly skilled people move freely between development, engineering design and contracting companies, as well as environmental regulatory agencies and specialist consulting firms. I’ve seen over the years how this exchange of knowledge and perspective adds tremendous value to each of these organizations.
      Not only has the environmental training program made a difference, it has also built lasting partnerships between government, business and the community.
      And on the day I release my book on this topic, I see an article on the Environmental Leader website saying that such is the drive for more sustainable retail in the UK that retail companies are recruiting entire sustainability teams - building a workforce of sustainability professionals in the retail sector!
      I couldn't be more thrilled! What a wonderful discovery that others too have observed the same thing.
      This is part of the emergence of what Storm Cunningham calls the 'restoration economy' in which he says eight 'giant, fast-growing industries are renewing our natural and built environments' - and creating vibrant businesses as they revitalize communities. Such a wonderful alternative to the empty growth-based consumerism that has left so many of us stranded on the shores of the current recession. It also contributes to the elusive "knowledge" economy, helping to make this concept more tangible.
      Click here to find out more about my book. You can send that link to anyone at all - and I’d love it if you do! The book’s reach is global and it’s applicable to a wide range of organizations: - environmental regulators; professional associations; businesses, utilities; sustainable supply chain managers; and environmental community groups, first (indigenous) peoples with environmental objectives and other environmental and not-for-profit groups. And, as we've seen - the retail sector!
      Click here to go to the Environmental Leader article and here to find out more about Storm Cunningham's inspirational vision and practical work.

A sneak preview and an invitation to be a part of the book

I am just doing the final proofing of this ebook now, and it will be published from my website by mid-September.

This practical workbook contains leading questions and detailed worksheets to help you:

• find partners within and beyond your organization
• make a compelling case for the needs and benefits of your training program
• understand your trainees and their learning needs
• develop training content and delivery that works 
• measure the success of your training
• gain long term resourcing and support for your program.

Essential for anyone wanting to create a successful environmental training program, it has case studies of training programs in erosion and sediment control, manufacturing, riparian management, farming, utility operation and environmental restoration by first nations.

Find out the secrets of success of a highly successful program of over 20-years duration – and create your own new profession of environmental professionals to build and spread knowledge and skills in a vibrant restoration economy.

The book is supported by professional speaking and training, as well as free resources soon to be available from my free thinking page.

Be a part of the book - share your learning. If you have any suggestions for improving the book or have case studies and resources to share, do let me know via my website and I’ll upload them to an exclusive resource page for people who have bought the book. I am happy to acknowledge the source of all material.

You can choose to be notified of new editions of the book and other updates via this blog and/or through an occasional newsletter.