T + D

Outside the Box...For Good

Editor The word innovation is surrounded by a great deal of buzz in today's tough economic climate, with many analysts upholding creative new ideas as a way to survive and thrive during this recession. But as Michael J. Moscynski, a VP with Juran Institute, writes random, innovative ideas, no matter how clever, will not deliver economic success unless they meet a customer need better than the current method or fulfill a previously unknown or unmet need. There is no better time to begin exploring new...

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Driving Business Results with Innovative Learning Practices

To investigate innovation, the ASTD Benchmarking Forum (BMF) used a variety of questions to target thinking and build a framework for learning about innovation. In April 2009, BMF members met in a real-time, collaborative lab environment in Wheeling, IL, as well as in a virtual meeting space. There, senior executives participated in a panel discussion, action learning events, and multiple reflective thinking exercises to build and share a portfolio of innovative tools and techniques. ASTD BMF...

Coming in August 2009

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The Manic Middle

Thanks to recent downsizing and financial trauma, middle managers find themselves with not just their own job responsibilities but many other employees' job responsibilities as well. Business functions such as training, leadership, and project management have become expected core competencies of all managers. But many middle managers asked to perform these mission-critical functions have little or no knowledge about how to do them. It is critical in these challenging times to have strong lead...

Deliver in 2009

Nobody needs to be reminded that the world is much different than it was merely 12 months ago. At Mattel Inc, the impact has been to focus on "deliver" and that means deliver in support of key goals and metrics. There are many significant new cost reduction programs at Mattel but the core strategies remain the same. An example of this is the product design function, which was singled out in 2009 as a program that brought together senior people in the design, engineering, and marketing functio...

Teams That Stay, While On the Go

Organizations that support a mobile workforce tend to enjoy greater worker productivity and are in a stronger competitive position, according to recent research by the Human Capital Institute and Success Factors. Sweden rated highest in terms of overall support for mobility. While it should be no surprise that worker productivity is high in Sweden, and GDP ratio is low in France, the data should not be interpreted simply to mean that working conditions in France are poorer. Rather, the ambiti...

The Great Skills Chase

More than 80% of employees around the world are concerned that their current skills will not sustain them for more than five years, according to a recent survey by Kelly Services. With new technology and the increased competition for jobs, people are keenly aware that their current skills must be enhanced, says George Corona, EVP and COO of Kelly Services. Additionally, the survey reinforces that learning professionals must work to maintain on-the-job training, even in the midst of budget cut...

Sustainable Expectations

A report by Krauthammer, a coaching consultancy, measured 16 different corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and found both high employee expectations and gaps in fulfillment of these expectations. Younger, less-experienced employees rated the highest on levels of dissatisfaction. Ninety-six percent of employees expect externally delivered training though only 78% of organizations deliver on it, according to survey respondents. The survey, whose respondent pool consisted of 395 Nort...

Intern Premiums Rising

In the past internships were modeled after apprenticeships whereby an upstart provides assistance in exchange for acquiring mastery of a particular skill. Now as knowledge is king, the demands are changing. Working in different environments and acquiring soft skills ranked ahead of technical skills, according to a recent survey about the skills value of internships. Interns should be aware that the benefits identified by managers in the survey are the ones they look for in their next hire. Be...

Learning Portals Represent a New Trend

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Constantly told to keep their guard up against direct discrimination and the glass ceiling, women in the workplace will need to reassess their fighting tactics. Many obstacles that women face happen much earlier in the career development process and are covert in nature, making leadership positions even more difficult to attain over time. In fact, several opportunities that women are excluded from, such as high-potential groups, talent pools, and mentorships, have secretive selection processe...

Dude, How'd I Do?

Pragmatic people want feedback on their performance in real time and know how to get it using social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook. Instead of waiting months for a formal review from their bosses, they're asking people in their online networks to help them learn how to improve right away. Twitter, a free social networking and microblogging service popular for short text-based posts, is also expanding. As the use of social media spreads to a wider pool of users, so does its pot...

The Non-Drowsy Virtual Classroom

An instructor needs to play devil's advocate to challenge people's thinking. Yet when they move from the traditional classroom to the virtual classroom, many facilitators revert to lecture and presentation mode. If you think that a straightforward lecture is a snoozer in the classroom, it's 10 times worse in the virtual classroom when the only element participants rely on to keep them engaged is the sound of your voice. To deliver online classes that are engaging, consider these five keys to ...

Roots of Innovation

When Pure Digital released its handheld video camera -- the Flip -- skeptics believed that the product, with its basic functions and no zoom lens, should instead be named Hop. Yet, the company's founders held firm, convinced that even in a gadget-obsessed world, there exists a niche for a simple video camera. Pure Digital offers a textbook case of innovation. Its leaders surveyed market trends, acquired feedback from customers, and went in reverse. Industry leaders are usually not the first t...

3-2-1 Innovate!

Innovation has everything to do with something new. In competitive business situations, success often comes to the best innovators. It may seem strange, but people can learn about innovation -- making something new -- by studying innovations and innovative methods from the past. There are two basic types of innovation. The first, type I, does happen, but rarely. Type II innovation is much more common than type I. Designing world-class services and products requires gaining a clear understandi...

Entrepreneurial Learning: Secret Ingredients for Business Success

Outstanding entrepreneurs are driven by compelling visions and learning, and the creative capacity to acquire and use information is instrumental to business success. After reviewing more than 30 autobiographies and biographies of world-class entrepreneurs and business leaders, the author found that there are similar patterns to both what they learn and how they learn it. This article presents common themes in entrepreneurial learning, a key ingredient in the recipe for business success. Entr...

Lessons From the Front Line: Harvesting Tomorrow's Leaders

Before the "crisis" mentality set in, most organizations were acutely aware of the growing shortage of leadership talent and the constraints it was placing on their ability to achieve their strategic objectives. In response to the impending shortage, the most progressive organizations developed comprehensive talent management processes. The authors asked HR executives to provide access to the line leaders in their companies who were the best at managing high-potential talent. The authors aske...

Social Networking: A Force for Development?

Social networking, the broad term that encompasses wikis, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other tools, is ideal for facilitating interactions between people who cannot easily meet in person, whether due to geographic distance or difficulty identifying needed skills, resources, or other information. With its unique abilities to connect people and provide real-time interaction, social networking offers exciting potential for learning solutions. Cost pressures and the availability of a multitude ...

The New Finish Line for Learning

Business manager accepted the proposition that positively rated training was good, and so more training was better. To balance their budgets, company leaders are being forced to make increasingly difficult decisions -- to lay off employees, to close plants and facilities, and to cut back on training. Training is competing like never before with other departments and priorities for increasingly scarce resources. To reach the new finish line, training professionals must: 1. Treat training as a ...

Flex Training

BB&T Corp, headquartered in Winston-Salem, NC, is among the US' top-performing financial holding companies, with $137 billion in assets. For nearly 10 years, the company has offered its employees online courses for an array of regulatory, certification, and policy training. In spite of the company's successes with training, until 2007, BB&T relied on a mainframe computer to deliver its online classes. Strategically, they needed a platform that would not only import content from a wide...

The Long View: Anders Gronstedt

In an interview, Anders Gronstedt, president of The Gronstedt Group Inc, talked about his career. Gronstedt said looking back at the online program they developed for all employees of Dell, it's almost laughable how they introduced them to the basics of blogging, given how deeply the company has now integrated social media and customer and employee conversations into their culture and business processes. Most training departments are the Detroit of business functions -- creating products with...

Loyalty Is Earned

Research clearly shows that the most productive, most innovative teams within companies are built on strong relationships. A manager's loyalty and that of his colleagues is strongly driven by the connections he feels with others at work. And even his happiness is in large part a function of his bonds at work. Building a loyalty-driven organization won't just happen as a natural course of events. It requires questioning some current beliefs and changing some long-standing behaviors. Building l...

Innovation Drives Business Success

The Silver Lining: An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times, by Scott D. Anthony, is reviewed.

The Practice of Adaptive Leadership

Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results

Utilizing Older Workers for Competitive Advantage: The New Human Resources Frontier

Performance Analysis: Getting It Right the First Time

Performance analysis is planning. It is how workforce learning professionals figure out what to do, in a world where you can't do everything, respond to every request, or meet every need. Analysts are charged with taking a fresh, irreverent look at the work, worker, and workplace. Strategy, cost reduction, systems, "on demand," outcomes, speed -- today, those are the words people hear. Expectations are high and grow ever higher. They link leaders not just to learning, but to what really matte...

Know Your Value in the Marketplace

Regardless of your employment status, it is usually reassuring to know what your dollar value is on the open market. As you search for a new position, internally or externally, it is critical to have an idea of your worth relative to the salary range of your position. Doing your homework before you ever go for the interview helps you focus on the content instead of worrying about compensation. Each position within an organization has a dollar value. Companies come up with their salary structu...