Online support for managers.

* ManageMentor4 Series, online, 2001, 6 min. each, Harvard Business School Publishing, $99 per person per year. Series access provided by McGraw-Hill Lifetime Learning (800-932-3293, www.mhlifetimelearning.com).

The four courses I recently took from the Harvard ManageMentor4 series, available through McGraw-Hill Lifetime Learning, demonstrate how a single instructional design applied across a series of modules can serve some educational needs well and others not so well.

The title and design of the ManageMentor4 series make clear what its purpose is: a performance support system. In simple language, that means easily accessible advice and best practices, in this case, for managers. The series provides an impressive range of courses. Around 30 modules speak to the many facets of a manager's job, from budgeting to people management.

The uncluttered interface aids use. Each module has a menu of six sections: Core Concepts, Steps (a recommended procedure), Tips, Tools (primarily planning and assessment forms), Test Yourself, and To Learn More. Because the series emphasizes unsupervised study and on-demand learning, these aren't lockstep, you-can't-advance-until-you-take-this-quiz modules. You can jump anywhere you want whenever you want.

The series design incorporates convenient user features. You can print most of the text if you prefer to read it on a page. The forms in Tools are cross referenced in relevant places by icons. Clicking the icon opens a window displaying the form. Another click downloads it as an HTML file that opens easily in Word. (At least it did for me!)

The test summary furnishes links to the relevant content for each question. The worth of the tests varies, depending on the module.

The reference section of a Harvard product is usually strong. That track record is sustained in the ManageMentor4 series. To Learn More features an array of print products, including online articles. I didn't notice any website references. The product mix is heavily skewed to Harvard publications with the exception of the book category. At the School they call this intelligent cross marketing.

The 10-item quizzes in Test Yourself are three-item multiple-choice questions. After each answer, you receive reinforcing feedback for right answers and polite correcting feedback for wrong ones.

What about the learning to be gained from the modules? The series makes no explicit disclaimers, but one conclusion about the learning outcomes couldn't be clearer: you don't learn a skill by reading about it. If that were true, I would be one of the world's great tennis players.

The McGraw-Hill Lifetime Learning platform is easy to negotiate. Login is straightforward, and the platform offers the usual tools for course registration and tracking. I was amazed that in multiple sessions, I had no major technical problems. Response is fast, and the platform appears to be very stable. It's nearly axiomatic that users of online platforms will have to overcome at least a few technical hurdles. I was pleased that I could concentrate on the content, not the delivery pipeline.

Coaching

Harvard hasn't made its reputation of late on HR-related topics. Yet, the series content is consistently strong, even if outsiders write most of it. In the end, quality is all that matters.

I found the Coaching module to be successful because it is focused and clearly written. It deals only with formal coaching, giving only a fleeting mention to informal coaching. The fuzziness of the relationship between formal and informal coaching is not helpful. The argument could be made that day-to-day, informal coaching is more important to the average manager.

Nevertheless, the topic benefits from limits. You can actually learn something in a short time. The formal coaching process recommended has but three steps. And because it's formal, it gains structure from forms; they make the process concrete.

The testing is welcome here as a self-check. Coaching has some concepts and rules that need to be remembered and understood; it isn't all about skills. The questions provide little challenge, yet they give the user a way to see if she has missed something important. This type of module and the medium itself heighten the risk of missing significant content. You are encouraged to skip around, but the flexibility incurs a weakness: the student may not look at all the pieces that make up the whole. The medium seems to induce users to try to do everything fast. Sometimes learning needs to be slow.

Managing Upward

Years ago the Harvard Business Review published an article called "ManagingYour Boss" that set records for reprint sales. For all I know, it is setting records to this day. Harvard has a good lock on this subject, and it shows in this brief module.

Managers can make two career-unfriendly mistakes about their bosses: not realizing they have to manage them in the first place or believing that politics is the way to do it. The ManageMentor4 module will knife through both. It sets out the building blocks of a healthy and mutually beneficial relationship with a superior and does so with admirable efficiency.

I found communicating and negotiating with your boss to be the most illuminating parts of Managing Upward. These can be tough to do, particularly when they're clouded with anxiety and uncertainty, as they frequently are. The module doesn't present them with a heavy dose of theory. They are, thankfully, rendered pragmatically, but you sense that the underlying principles are sound.

The test is welcome in this module as a self-check on comprehension. You can retain knowledge of key processes by consulting the forms provided, but the key concepts don't have such concrete reference points.

Capitalizing on Change

This resource could be one of the most heavily trafficked modules in the entire series. It rightly says that every manager can plan on having to deal with significant change on a regular basis and provides a handy list of events that tend to create avalanches of change, from mergers or acquisitions to downsizing.

The module gives good advice and has its heart in the right place. The title points to the dominant theme: view change as an opportunity. Managers need to cultivate the ability to read the statements behind employee questions about a change and the emotions underneath the statements. Ignoring feelings undermines effective change management.

Following up on this point, the module recommends that managers work with employees by starting with feelings and then moving on to thoughts and finally to action. The emotions are acknowledged, but they aren't allowed to bog down people's need to move ahead.

The Capitalizing on Change module recommends a simple three-step process that accentuates the positive: point out the destination or goal, be honest, and be sure to distinguish between external and internal forces. Usually, you can do something about the latter and little about the former.

The emphasis on honesty is well placed, but the module should place it in context. Sometimes managers feel they'll be at risk if they're honest; after all, change is dangerous to managers too. Others feel that filtering the truth actually protects the troops. These obstacles to candor should be explored in the module--and so should several other problems. In this module, it feels as if the design specifications, not the underlying content, dictated depth of treatment.

I found the test to be easy, too easy. Instead of recall questions, the quiz should test application of concepts.

Writing for Business

I understand why online content providers feel compelled to offer courses and modules on business writing. We don't teach writing well in this country, and when the products of the U.S. educational system enter the workforce, their poor writing becomes glaringly obvious. Book publishers pump out biz writing books by the score. Why shouldn't online publishers?

The market demand is too much to resist. (Isn't that the story of our times?) But in terms of skill building, forget it. Writing is wholly a skill, a dynamic interaction among the writer, the reader, and content. To learn to write better, you need to write, and you need to receive feedback from a reader. The implication that you can become a better writer simply by reading a book or taking an online course is simply false.

The online medium, at least as it operates today, can't match the book for writing instruction. The book can deliver more detail and nuance in a more palatable form than online. Yet, a book has a very limited role in helping a writer improve his skill. Online could be better than a book if it utilized the capacity for dynamic feedback, but I don't know of any online provider that provides it for writing. The harsh economics of online instruction rule it out.

The Harvard module delivers good advice about reader-based writing. It also gives several very useful tips concerning the writing process.

Examples: write in small categories that break down the large topic of the document into more manageable pieces, and start the document where you feel most comfortable, which is often not the opening paragraph.

On the other hand, the eight organizational schemes the module endorses can easily confuse students. The document design advice could lead to terrible results. The writing steps in the Steps section are too terse to be helpful. Some of the email suggestions have merit; others are just silly. The same word applies to the multiple-choice questions in TestYourself. An objective test proves nothing about good writing. Here the series learning design doesn't work.

Recommendation

Harvard's ManageMentor4 series dispenses compact lessons on a broad range of management topics. As references for working managers, particularly new ones, the ManageMentor4 modules don't teach skills. They don't even give you a deep understanding of a topic. They give you some important ideas and suggest processes to think about. The content is generally good, but coverage can be thin. The series' learning design effectively presents the information, but it works better for some topics (e.g., managing up) than it does for others (e.g., writing).

Bill Ellet ([e-mail]) is editor of Training Media Review.

ManageMentor4 product ratings

Product/Ratings      Coaching  Managing Upward  Capitalizing on Change

Holds user interest     **            **                  **
Production quality     ***           ***                 ***
Ease of navigation     ****         ****                 ****
Interactivity           *             *                   *
Value of content       ***         ***1/2                **1/2
Instructional value    ***           ***                 **1/2
Value for the money   ***1/2       ***1/2                ***1/2
Overall rating         ***           ***                 **1/2

Product/Ratings      Writing for Business

Holds user interest           **
Production quality           ***
Ease of navigation           ****
Interactivity                 *
Value of content              **
Instructional value          *1/2
Value for the money         ***1/2
Overall rating                **

(****)Outstanding

(*** 1/2)Very good

(***)Good

(** 1/2)Above average

(**)Average

(* 1/2)Below Average

(*)Poor

(NA)Not applicable

(NR)Not rated (usually not enough information)