As a trainer by profession, I’ve spent two decades developing programs for corporate and non-profit clients. One of the basic elements of developing a program is identifying the methodology in which you will develop and evaluate the program. Every idea has validity unless it is vetted using a criteria that is in live the program’s objective.

As a trainer, we have different methodologies that we use to develop training. The most widely used methodology is the ADDIE model. It is rather simple in its structure but used correctly will make a profound difference on the quality of a training program.

Often times the discussion of the black community delves into the American systems, white supremacy, lack of unity and ideas on what black people must learn to improve their lot. What often happens is a circular conversation where the result is individuals of differing opinions simply agree to disagree which defeats the purpose of the exercise. Another thing that occurs is the avalanche of disparate information in the form of historical facts, conspiracy theories, political ideology and religious beliefs. It all comes together that is equivalent to a data dump. There is no plan that could accommodate all of these view points; and it would not be effective or efficient to attempt to do so.

It is my belief that the black community would be well served to have a model that test the prescriptions put forth by those looking to assist in improving the plight of black people. A training methodology used for training is the perfect in this regard because training is focused on one of three things: increase knowledge of a trainee, impact what a trainee does, adjusts the acts of a trainee. And essentially this is what many are attempting to accomplish with the black community.

Returning to the ADDIE model; it is relatively easy to understand and is itself fully vetted. As the acronym suggest, there are only five steps:

1. Analyze
2. Develop
3. Design
4. Implement
5. Evaluate

Analyze
During analysis, the designer identifies the learning problem, the goals and objectives, the audience’s needs, existing knowledge, and any other relevant characteristics. Analysis also considers the learning environment, any constraints, the delivery options, and the timeline for the project.

Black people are well aware of the problems. We know all too well about the disparities in education, health, income, wealth, access to capital and as of late, voting rights. What has not taken place is a thorough analysis with the objective of creating a coherent strategy for learning and taking action. In the analysis phase you are asking:

1. What is the community need that is driving this training?
2. What are the objectives of this training?
3. How do we define success?
4. Who is the intended audience?
5. What do they need to learn?
6. What resources do they have available?

Question number five, six and seven are more difficult than they seem. The mistake that many black activists make is assuming that all black people should think alike or have the same agenda. We do not and if you attempt to place everyone into one training session you will lose everyone. You must either hone in on a particular audience or make your training broad enough so that it addresses the needs of a more diverse population.

For example, if my company is implementing a new computer system I may create a training session for every employee that highlights the needs being addresses by the system and how it will impact the company going forward. Those employees who must work with the system will have a more intense training specific to their roles.

Design
Design is a systematic process of specifying learning objectives. Detailed storyboards and prototypes are often made, and the look and feel, graphic design, user-interface and content is determined here.

This step is relatively easy with most training programs if the analysis is thorough and correctly. However, considering the complexity of the subject matter in this article, I do want to go further.

As I stated earlier, with most training you are attempting to impact knowledge, skills or action. It is in the Design phase where the trainer writes his/her objectives. There are three objective domains: Cognitive, Psychomotor and Affective.

With the Cognitive objective, the focus can be on knowledge, comprehension, analysis or evaluation. It is a means of dealing with facts and information. In second grade we read stories and answered a few questions about them as a means of testing our reading comprehension. In high school we were tasked with writing papers that compared and contrasted a particular topic.

In the case of the black community, we can relate this to the numerous black history facts that we learn over the years. You may find them interesting or even fascinating, but most of it is simply stored data.

The Psychomotor objective is a matter of learning to do something. Whether it is plumbing, programming a computer, or flying an airplane, the goal is that the trainee will exhibit a particular skill at the end of the training session.

The Affective objective deals with behavior. It can be a basic is making person aware of something to having them internalize it for themselves. The ADDIE model relies on Krathwohl’s Taxonomy of Affective Doman:

Receiving is being aware of or sensitive to the existence of certain ideas, material, or phenomena and being willing to tolerate them. Examples include: to differentiate, to accept, to listen (for), to respond to.

Responding is committed in some small measure to the ideas, materials, or phenomena involved by actively responding to them. Examples are: to comply with, to follow, to commend, to volunteer, to spend leisure time in, to acclaim.

Valuing is willing to be perceived by others as valuing certain ideas, materials, or phenomena. Examples include: to increase measured proficiency in, to relinquish, to subsidize, to support, to debate.

Organization is to relate the value to those already held and bring it into a harmonious and internally consistent philosophy. Examples are: to discuss, to theorize, to formulate, to balance, to examine.

Characterization by value or value set is to act consistently in accordance with the values he or she has internalized. Examples include: to revise, to require, to be rated high in the value, to avoid, to resist, to manage, to resolve.

This is where many organizations in the black community place their focus. It is their belief that if they can convince black people to study their heritage it will then lead them to unify and thereby creating the capacity to make improvements in the black community.

The problem is that this is where many stop. Their thinking is that is you get black people to appreciate their history it will someone impact their actions and the choices they make regarding their lives. This is simply not true. Knowledge does not necessitate a specific action. This is just part of human nature. Which is why people with lung cancer continue to smoke and countries find themselves fighting the same war decade after decade.

To resolve this, any program must effectively move to the next step.

Development

It is the phase where you begin to see the strengths and weaknesses of your program. Let’s take the often-mentioned goal black people creating their own professional sports league. Folk toss this idea around with only the vaguest idea of the likely success of such an endeavor. It’s always talked about as in a social context but with any thought to the economics of sports.

If you were to subject this idea to the ADDIE model, the results may be the following

Analyze:
1. How long would it take to create a league?
2. How many teams could the new league support?
3. In what cities would the leagues start and is there a market for it?
4. What kind of stadium deals could be arranged?
5. Could the league attract NBA caliber players?
6. What is the salary of the players?
7. What is the startup cost?
Objectives:
1. Create a league of 10 teams in the 10 largest population centers of African American
2. Institute league bylaws and salary caps
3. Draft players
4. Finalize stadium and TV deals
5. Marketing and Promotions

Design (Cognitive, Psychomotor, Affective):
1. Educate the community and sports world about the league
2. Convince people that there is value is supporting the league
3. Recruit NBA players the value
4. Attract investors

In the development phase is when you actually have to sign the stadium leases, the TV contracts and sign off on the investments funds. It is here you will note the viability of the idea. Did your market research suggest black people would watch a basketball league not dominated by Kobe Bryant, Derrick Rose or Lebron James? Did you raise enough money to attract any high profile names from the NBA to draw viewer interest? Are the stadium deals lucrative enough to pay salaries? Can you attract top college prospects away from the NBA? Is there really a market for a black-only league? This is where the rubber meets the road because the structure of the league is predicated on affirming the aforementioned questions.

And this is where many black organizations fall short. They have not moved beyond spreading ideology and theories to designing a program based on measureable objectives and sound research. Trainers often create a prototype before going live with the training. This is what I like to call the “proof of concept”.

When discussing any idea about uplifting the black community, there should always be a prototype as reference: show where the economic development worked to the benefit of black people; highlight the schools where excellent academic performance was achieved; illustrate how blacks are making gains in certain industries or entrepreneurial endeavors.

Wherever there is success then we should for scalability.

Implementation

If we return to the black professional basketball league, the implementation is rather easy. The league will draft its players and play the games as scheduled. This is all about execution.

Evaluation

From Black Nationalist to Libertarians, from the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street; none have means to evaluating their effectiveness. The problem is many of these groups are married to an ideology and often times their goals are not truly measurable. How do you measure black unity? And because many operate on the fringe and are not accountable to anyone, they are under no pressure to produce documentation of their effectiveness.

Evaluation simply asks did you meet your objectives. It will allow you to review every aspect of your process and make improvements where necessary or completely abandon the project entirely. It will allow documentation of what works and what doesn’t and those lessons will carry over to the next idea.

The Takeaway

Black people love their conspiracy theories, religious beliefs and black ideology. The problem is that we are not making the necessary gains that our history and influence would suggest. One of the reasons may be that we do not thoroughly test the numerous ideas and ideologies that are presented as solutions to the problems ailing the black community.

Taking any thought from idea to a tangible product or service requires a process and when you are attempting to implement programs that will impact the livelihood of an entire community we should require more than just theory.

We must understand that presenting knowledge or disseminating facts are only the start of the process. Without a methodology to test ideas whereby we can evaluate the validity of said ideas, we are simply regurgitating words and encouraging an environment where every ideology, theology and philosophy has equal standing.

It is time that the black community moves past this and finally proving that the alternative to what is available now has credibility. Every idea should be tested against model whereby it must prove to meet stated objectives and is scalable for critical mass. The ADDIE model is as good as any place to start as it is a proven system and has stood the test of time.

James Manning

James is the founder of Mass Appeal Media and is a writer and designer living in the Chicago area.

  

I’m not sure how so many professional players get themselves into such desperate financial situations. If they would just follow my “Live on a Third” philosophy they would be fine. TO should absolutely not play for this team. He will play for an NFL team at the right price -not his right price – but he can still play.

The problem with TO exposing himself to playing against guys that would love nothing more than to smash TO’s body ending any chance to return to the NFL. Hopefully, TO gets things together because I would hate to see the guy go out like this.

But, you have to admit that he made his bed. Guys like TO and Allen Iverson do not build good will and when they find themselves down and out there are very few people willing to step in and help.

James Manning

James is the founder of Mass Appeal Media and is a writer and designer living in the Chicago area.

  

But this morning I read an article regarding the brawl that took place at the Xavier/Cincinnati basketball game.

Holloway said. “We got disrespected a little bit before the game, guys calling us out. We’re a tougher team. We’re grown men over here. We’ve got a whole bunch of gangsters in the locker room – not thugs, but tough guys on the court. And we went out there and zipped them up at the end of the game.” source

I have a serious problem with Holloway using the term, gangsters. Are these not college kids? Are these not college kids with scholarships? I don’t know the kid’s background but words do matter and the word a person uses is an indicator of a mentality.

So often we see professional athletes get themselves in trouble because they do not leave the streets behind (see Michael Vick) and it can cause serious problems. Yes, they are men and Cincinnati did disrespect them but that’s why you play the game. Hopefully, the coach of Xavier will point this out to the young man and set him on the proper course on how to speak differently.

James Manning

James is the founder of Mass Appeal Media and is a writer and designer living in the Chicago area.

  

So it comes as no surprise that eventually our politics would fall victim as well. After all, most of our politicians are clowns. Donald Trump moderating a debate is the most despicable and insulting carnation of blurred reality I’ve seen yet.

I completely understand why Newsmax would select him. Trump is an easy coverage because he has a big mouth and even bigger ego. Having him host a presidential debate is like catnip to the media. It is a spectacle that everyone knows is wrong but will not pass up the opportunity to watch take place. The debate will take place on ION, a channel that many people have never heard of unless you are into watching endless reruns of Criminal Minds. It doesn’t help either that the debate is sponsored by a Right Wing crackpot outfit (this is my personal view of Newsmax) that has very little legitimacy as news organization.

What I don’t get is why any serious candidate for President would participate. Would you want to be questioned by someone that pretended to think about running for President and has indicated he would run if he doesn’t like the nominee? You also have to deal with the birther issue as well as his bombastic statements about China. Any outlandish statement from Trump’s mouth will leave a stain on the candidates. And let us not forget Trump’s oversized ego. He will not ask questions for the edification of the American people but for the opportunity for the candidates to praise him.

I admit, I will watch the recap just to for the hope that there is something that will go viral. But if the candidates are smart, they won’t allow this to take place. I mean, we are trying to select an individual to become the most powerful person in the world. The last thing you’d want in the process is to have Donald Trump saying, “You’re fired”.

James Manning

James is the founder of Mass Appeal Media and is a writer and designer living in the Chicago area.

  

The Home Depot makes an emotional connection with the homeowner simply by telling them they can make those changes and their staff is available to help with them with it. This is reassuring because in no way are they saying we’ll turn you into a general contractor or make you an expert at dry walling. The message is: you need to lay a hardwood floor; we’ll show you how to do it correctly.

When it comes to improving the black community, the conversation often includes aspects of unity, self-love and coming together, knowing your history and a lot of other psychological and social notions. The challenge of starting with changing a mindset to change the condition of a community is that it is abstract and it has no definitive end point. How much knowledge of black history does it take increase the level of self-love and love for the black community? There is no real answer to that question.

Let’s say you your deck is falling apart and you go to the Home Depot to get the material to repair it. They’re not going to put you through some sort of psychological analysis to see how much you love your deck. They are going to give you the material and instructions to make you feel comfortable and confident enough to tackle the task on your own. This is where you place the footings; this is how your joist should run; use this many lag bolts in the header.

But there is another level of knowledge that comes into play that will help you maintain the value of the home. And for this, you will have to have some historical aspects of your home. How old is the home? What style of home is it: Craftmans, Colonial, or Modern? How does the house fit in with the rest of the neighborhood. Taking all of this into consideration is what gives the home owner a thoughtful plan to repair the deck and also increase the value of the home.

So how does this apply to black people? When a black man walks into the Life Improvement store, he is looking for the tools and materials to improve said life. This is the focus. The challenge is finding adequate tools. Most black children do not have access to high quality education. Most black businesses do not have access to capital. Despite these challenges, we must make better of the limited resources that are available.

To achieve success, we must push black children to read and write at a certain level; perform math and science at a high level. We must push them into engineering and computer science fields. While they are acquiring these requisite skills, we can address the unique historical and cultural challenges in the black community. As is the case with creating designs that stay true to character of a home to maintain value, there are life choices that can add to the experience of an individual while at the same time adding value to the black community as a whole.

When discussing ways to improve the black community we have to start with what individuals can do to change their lot in life. Debates that involve paradigm shifts of an entire community are great for academic banter but are not practical for addressing immediate needs. For many black people, they are dealing with a deck that is falling apart. We should first address that concern and then discuss the historical reality that allowed for improperly built deck in the first place.

I have an addiction to love

There is no doubt that men love sex. We think about it often and the amount of porn in the world illustrates just how much we love it. So in some form or fashion, we are addicted to sex. But don’t translate your inability to not think about sex to not controlling where you stick your Willie Wonka.

The sex addict excuse is like capital gains tax deductions; it’s only for the rich and famous. I’m almost sure a psychologist will tell you that unless you are worth seven-figures it is virtually impossible to suffer from sex addiction.

Slippin’ Into Darkness

People slip and fall in the snow. They may slide on the ice and hurt themselves. Heck, a newly mopped floor is cause for concern. But there just isn’t a way to accidently fall into the fruit pie of another woman. At some point you were actively engaged with the other woman.

She Came on to Me

In no way should ever attempt to use this excuse. Even if you are on male super model status and with the pecks of a god, this will not work. Now, if you are in a position where you have rodies, a tour bus and no one thinks twice when walk out of the house wearing tight leather pants.

That’s right, rock stars, athletes and movies start named George Clooney can use this. But you, middle-class-working-class guy who stock portfolio is consists of you 401k holdings CANNOT use this excuse. You are not THAT DUDE. And here is an easy test to confirm this. The next time you walk into a hotel lobby, look around and ask yourself two questions: 1) are there groupies pining for you 2) are there paparazzi’s taking picture of you. If the answer to both of these questions is no, you are not allowed to use this excuse.

You Say She’s Just A Friend

Men and women can be friends. And you may at times have lunch with a female friend and you may even by them a drink occasionally at an after work function. But under no circumstances do you ever utter the words “helped her financially”, “just helped with her rent”, or “gave her money for her bills” with regards to your female friend.

You are not Herman Cain. And not even Herman Cain believes what he is saying. Men do not, have not and will not financially support a female friend they are not trying to smash.

Because I love America

This only works for Newt Gingrich and CIA agents. You screwing your secretary is not a matter of national security. It could be that you are living a double life and maybe your wife believes your job is one that takes you around the world and requires some secrecy. If that is the case, then you have only to get caught before that lie completely destroys your life. Leave that storyline for Arnold Schwarzenegger movies… and Newt Gingrich.

“They can play, get paid [in China] and return to the NBA in March,” one Chinese team official said. “Or they can not get paid, and return to the NBA in March.”

As a member of FIBA, the NBA needs a letter of clearance from Chinese teams to allow players to sign NBA deals. Chinese teams could face forfeiture of any games that NBA players participated in, if the players somehow end up back in the NBA before the Chinese season ends. Source

I was all for players playing overseas when it looked like the NBA season was in jeopardy. However, the top players should have made sure the out clause was written in such a way that it would not be detrimental for themselves and the teams they signed with.

For the players that were on the bubble with their perspective teams, this may not be an issue. After all, why pass on a guaranteed paycheck just to get cut in the NBA. I would have opted for an extended vacation in Costa Rica rather than play in China…but that’s me.

Fewer games would mean more time between games and you would not have the tired looking games that you get in January and February. Each game would mean more because you would have few teams making the playoffs. Instead of 16 teams you would have 12 teams in the playoffs with the first round being the best five.

We know why this will never happen: money. Neither the owner nor the players would want to give up the revenue. That is exactly the reason why they will not reduce the number of teams in the league which would go a long way in improving the quality of play.

Alas, all I really need to care about is the Chicago Bulls. Welcome back NBA… I’m ready.

President Obama was smart to stay out of this mess. It irks me when I hear journalist say the President should get involved. It bothers me even more when I hear people in Congress ask for the President’s input. Are these not adults? Weren’t they elected to craft legislation? These grown folks on the Hill act like they are on the Romper Room. There was no benefit for President Obama to have his hand in the mess and based on his press conference yesterday, he’s setting himself to be the adult telling the kids they’ll have to eat their peas like the agreed upon.