Author: Gary G. Wise - Author - Grief Coach

Unsupervised, unfiltered, and occasionally undisciplined Writer of Things that thrill readers with engaging stories created by a seasoned storyteller.

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SHORT STORIES

My Last Battle

The look on my face told a story she was not a part of, and she shook her head and looked at me as if I had lost my mind. I recovered quickly as the sensations passed. She quietly suggested we take a detour and follow a different path into the shade of the woods to get out of the growing heat. I agreed and we took a natural looking path into the woods. Turns out weird was there too.

We were following what had been an old roadbed where Confederate soldiers and supplies made their way toward high ground and onto the battlefield. Chalk it up to imagination again, but I heard horses snorting and straining against the jangle of tackle and the squeak of leather harnesses. No voices, just straining horses and hooves pulling cannon, caisson, and supplies of war.

I stopped and turned to my wife and said, “So I guess you aren’t hearing any of this either.”

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Humor SHORT STORIES

Popcorn Wars

I blatantly ignored the Science Fair pledge and applied the full power of every available technology to demonstrate my “son’s” hypothesis. You could say I bulldozed through “his” project. All of that was done on a 2-foot by 4-foot board. All that was done — only to lose the entire competition. None of it could have been done by a fifth grader. “Our” project did not just lose, it was in the way.

The story surrounding that project could only be written as either a dark mini-series or a tragic novel. I would not want to revisit that nightmare to accomplish either one. I pledged to my wife that I would never get that involved again. I kept my word for months…mainly because it was months before the project’s due date. Urgency hovered at low tide. It was either low tide of that shrinking tide just before a tsunami rolls in. Not sure, but I do not want to get ahead of myself…

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Point of Work Assessment

POINT-of-WORK: Alignment Discovery Cascade Via Pre-Design Reconnaissance

Point-of-Work Dynamics

It seems I read too many black ops books and look at missions from a tactical perspective before nailing down an actionable strategy to move forward. No Delta Force team moves to execute on a leadership request on a mission without completing a thorough and comprehensive reconnaissance effort first. We (L&D) could gain considerable insight […]

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Continuous Learning Point of Work Assessment

POINT-of-WORK: The Great Refocus On Change

Point-of-Work Dynamics

“GREAT” things are popping up lately like the Great Resignation, Great Retirement, and the Great Reshuffle as several examples. I am not swayed by the hype because these all point to one common denominator – Change…and the need to refocus on LEADING it. It is my opinion that we are seeing side-effects surface in the form […]

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Point of Work Assessment

POINT-of-WORK:   Step Away from the Stone

A recent post on LinkedIn tripped my trigger this morning, and despite the urge to rant, I will try to be gentle. No guarantees. The question posted asked for advice for someone new coming into Learning & Development (L&D). Here is what percolated into this savory reply, and I should add, this reply is not […]

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Point of Work Assessment

POINT-of-WORK:  Navigating Digital Transformation with Transformational Change

Going back to the research showing most (84%) of Digital Transformations fail, I have to ask, “Would we have been more successful if we treated the initiative a Workforce Transformation?” or replace “Workforce” with “People” if you like. The human component of Transformational Change is the wild card. Dynamic roles and myriad tasks create an avalanche of data points that confront any sense of easy Discovery. This is even more imposing when we need to be looking for patterns of failure at the role and step level. That is why “At least 90% of new enterprise apps will insert AI technology into their processes and products by 2025.” (IDC)

Technology does not fail…people do. The transformation is digital, no doubt about it, but if we neglect the transformational shifts at the human level and neglect to address performance restrainers in the workflow at Points-of-Work, we fail the people.

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Point of Work Assessment

POINT-of-WORK:  The Great Convergence of Thought and Action

Point-of-Work Dynamics

AI-driven data convergence enables another collateral convergence of informed learning and support design with multi-datapoint granularity or worker performance results at Point-of-Work. What L&D team would not want to know who needs help…when and where in the workflow they need it…visibility to investigate why they need it…and what the solution should be?

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Point of Work Assessment

POINT-of-WORK:  Throwing Good Money After Bad?

Point-of-Work Dynamics

When a worker leaves the organization, some companies complete routine exit interviews. Then what happens to those exit interviews? Are the interviews HR checkbox events to be filed away in a personnel folder? Are any actionable data points leveraged outside of HR to affect change? Does this practice represent a pattern that we do not fully address? This leads me to some potentially radical thoughts…

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Point of Work Assessment

POINT-of-WORK:  Prescriptive Performance Support

Point-of-Work Dynamics

Purpose-built Artificial Intelligence (AI) represents a bridge between high data volumes and actionable design attributes. Digging into the data will give us visibility to the things listed above and at the individual level. The result is the creation of Prescriptive Performance Support that is data-driven workflow instruction to the individual worker in the workflow and moment of need.

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Continuous Learning

POINT-of-WORK:  The Connected Worker and Analytics

I believe that if we desire performance optimization it should be at the most granular level – the individual worker. Can the Training team accomplish this? I would wager their resources are spread so thin already developing training courses their engagement is not on the table. Too granular! Too dynamic! Too immediate! Too out of scope!