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Thoughts from a Practitioner in the Field

-Marguerite Foxon

I came to FSU from Australia, largely a self-taught ID practitioner, with a real desire to learn the theory behind my practice, and to improve my skills especially in research (where my skills were next to none). I commenced in August 1991, spent seven months doing doctoral research in Motorola in 1993, and after finally untangling my data I was ‘hooded’ in December 1995. I loved being a student – it was pure luxury to determine my own schedule, have the time to explore tangents that interested me, and to “waste” hours in the library leafing through journals and staring down microfiche readers at articles and papers - these were the days before Internet searching.

For the past decade I worked for Motorola out of my home office. I’ve had a variety of roles but all of them have revolved around executive development and evaluation. I now have global responsibility for the core management and leadership development curriculum for all levels except VP. I also spend about 25% of my time on evaluation which is my great passion. My title is principal performance technologist, but my job can range from mundane revisions of a slightly out of date classroom course, to reviewing dozens of boring e-learning finance packages as I try to find a compelling and well designed course for global deployment to middle managers; from undertaking a complex global needs assessment, to designing an evaluation that will provide quantifiable data on the impact of an HR intervention. Never a dull moment!

Sounds fun, huh - all that travel, working from home, undertaking a wide variety of projects! In reality, working in HPT in corporate America means struggling with limited resources, tight budgets, and a fraction of the support and professional staff needed to do the critical work. Like everyone else I am constantly figuring out how to work smarter not harder while doing the work of two people. In the good old days when our internal clients came with their request for top quality training, cheaply done, and ready ‘yesterday’ we used to say: ”You want it faster, cheaper, better? Pick two!!” Today we have to deliver all three – creative instructional design is the order of the day.

For all that, performance technology is a great field to be in, and heading out there with an FSU degree gives you a head start on much of the competition. I’ll offer two pieces of advice to those interested in the corporate environment. First, make sure you have some basic business knowledge before you kick off your corporate career (take an elective in the business school or enroll in elearning on the web). You don’t need a business degree, but you do need to know the basic financial lingo, and how a business works. Secondly, learn about change management (check out a good Organizational Development textbook from the library). At least in larger companies you’ll be working alongside OD professionals who consider themselves performance technologists (even if they don’t all use that term) whose primary focus is driving change initiatives. You need to know their ‘language’ and the framework they operate within.

Where ever your career takes you, join a couple of professional associations, read their journals, and get involved. It’s a great way to meet expert practitioners, expand your network, continue to learn, keep abreast of trends, and a good way to pick up on job openings. I have been fortunate to be a director with the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction (www.ibstpi.org) for the past 7 years and this professional experience has enriched my professional and personal life enormously. I also belong to the Academy of Human Resource Development (www.ahrd.org) where my $200 membership fee provides four refereed journals per year. AHRD also hold a small (around 200 attendees), intimate, very friendly, and cheap annual conference with a strong focus on research that exposes me to HR and OD thinking, as well as in my own field.

One of the best things about working from my home in Tallahassee is that I can stay involved with the program. I enjoy sharing corporate experiences with students in the Performance Systems class and the Project Management class three times a semester. Each time Dr Reiser teaches his Trends and Issues class, someone asks to interview me for a class project and I appreciate that opportunity to stop and reflect on where I see the field going. Even though I graduated nearly 10 years ago, I’m still a real cheer leader for our program.

Marguerite Foxon PhD
Principal Performance Technologist
Motorola