2007 Pike's Peak Awards
By Liz Wheeler
Several years ago, The Bob Pike Group began giving Pike’s Peak Awards to trainers and companies who had truly and creatively implemented participant-centered learning. The individuals receiving awards this year were announced Wednesday, September 26 at a luncheon during the 14th Annual Training and Performance Consulting Conference in Bloomington, Minn., and were truly international.
The first recipient was Suresh Bharwani, CEO of Jetking Infotrain, India. “The whole success of Jetking is because of the Bob Pike Group,” Suresh said. Jetking trains people from ages 17-23 in technology and IT, basic electronics, hardware, assembling, operating systems, maintenance, and more. “Our students are from economically challenged backgrounds. After training them for 650 hours, we place them in big companies like IBM. A big challenge is to train them. Creative Training Techniques helps us make it fun and faster.” Jetking has about 30,000 students and this year will grow by 50 percent.
Bruce Heichelbech, senior training consultant, E.ON., Louisville, Ky., was the second recipient. “We are one of the lowest cost energy providers in the U.S. top 10 in the nation. We are in a growth mode. We have new employee training and these people get inundated with information.” So Heichelbech implemented OSHA safety theme training.
“We are in the south. NASCAR is a big deal, male and female alike,” Heichelbech said. They have trainees get in groups and designate a driver and pit crew in their group. “For $20, we found this 4x8 sheet” which is like a gameboard of a NASCAR raceway. They then bought all the current NASCAR cars and put them on the track. With two big foam dice, teams roll a number, answer that number questions, and get to move that number if they answer correctly in 20 seconds. “To have grown men and women standing around this gameboard cheering around these little hot wheels cars is hard to describe.,” Heichelbech said. “They’re blind to the fact they’re learning the whole entire time. Whichever car is in the lead wins the grand prize. The closer part is they have to take the object they won and relate it to something they won in the course of the game. They do a great job of summarizing the whole need-to-know stuff.”
“My relationship with The Bob Pike Group began in 1996 when I attended a Creative Training Techniques taught by Doug McCallum,” he said. It changed fundamentally how he does things. “People are not getting PowerPointed to death anymore. People are asking when do I get to come to training. We are making a difference and that’s what makes me get up in the morning.”
Linda Phillips, manager of Six Sigma learning at Honeywell, Tempe, Ariz., then received the award. She said, “I got into learning late in my career. I attended an ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) conference breakout session called Creative Training Techniques and I thought ‘This is what training is abou’. Then a few weeks later I went to black belt training and I thought ‘what an opportunity’. I tried to get them to understand about participant- centered training.”
“Then I met Vinny. He’s left-brained, an engineer, and global director of six sigma at Honeywell. With all of the passion that I had, I couldn’t implement the things I wanted to do without Vinny.” Phillips then presented the award to Vinny Tuccillo who then said, “What really has been the privilege for me has been to work with someone who has persevered—who knew there was a better way out there…We are setting a new standard because of the work we’re doing with the bob pike group.”
Tina Rabideau, training manager at Strategic Fundraising, St. Paul, Minn., and fourth recipient of the Pike’s Peak Award, said, “It was really a team effort. I’ve been with the company a year. I didn’t even know Bob Pike existed before attending Boot Camp. I was there maybe 15 minutes and realized this is what I was doing for the past 10 years as an educator. You make a difference one student/one trainer at a time.” In early 2007, Rabideau and the training staff had corporate-wide buy-in to lower employee turnover by utilizing training. They began implementing some creative techniques and, while recognizing retention was not only a training problem, were able to modify existing training, and improve customer service call quality which is now higher than stated corporate goals.
