Brian Vanderjack is an award-winning business instructor who has spoken at organizations such as Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, and Microsoft. He earned his MBA in Finance from DePaul University. You can learn more about him on LinkedIn and at LeadPresenter.com.

Q. Brian, here’s a question straight out of a Business 101 textbook: If high employee turnover limits an organization from getting things done, what can trainers do to help combat employee turnover, especially if they’re responsible for on-boarding initiatives?

Two key components in accomplishing tasks in an organization are process and personal skills.

The first way to assist in effective continuity as employees migrate out of key business functions is to have well-documented processes in place, and then invest in ensuring that the process documentation is updated regularly so it accurately reflects the work that is getting done.

The second issue is that personal skills come into play when actually getting day-to-day tasks completed. The trick here is to understand what the core personal competencies are in those who are currently successful in their role.

To explain, the personal skills that support success can be identified. For example, is the reason the current employee successful due to an ability to work with numbers, ability to negotiate, etc.? Techniques to get a handle on this are personality assessments, 360-degree surveys, interviewing the person or persons currently doing the job, and interviewing the key stakeholders to the process. The bottom line is once a common thread of success is identified, to either look for people with similar personal skills, or people who can be educated and/or trained to possess those skills.

In summary, once the road map is in place (the process) and the skills identified that have proven to support the process (personal skills), the adverse impacts of employee transition should be lessened.

Q. What are some practical solutions for corporate trainers trying to combat turnover?

I teach for the largest MBA program in the nation. As a part of helping my students to be successful within their organizations, I teach them personal skills that enable a higher rate of success in business. For example, in addition to the required teachings, I teach them team management skills, time management skills, and key communication skills. I break these skills down into processes and then provide hands-on experiences to encourage effective learning. Students have shared back with me that they have used these skills to improve their day-to-day operations at their day jobs.

For example, one student whose job was to get food stamps to people, used the time management skills to increase the number of people he was able to process in a week (this meant more people who were able to have dinner last night). And another student was able to use the team management skills, as taught in class, to successfully deal with three vendors (one from off-shore) who were not cooperating with a major software implementation. This particular event was at a large diversified company that you have heard of.

To explain, in both of these events these companies had processes in place; however, through improving core personal skills, overall effectiveness was increased for the good of their organizations.

Q. In some ways, you function like a coach for your students. What are your thoughts on online mentoring, especially the usage of social networking and “online learning communities” to facilitate mass coaching?

A key to knowledge transfer is personalizing the delivery. That is, either provide the knowledge when it is needed, or explain why the knowledge will be essential. I see the future of online learning moving to an on-demand nature, with access to expert educators who explain how newly-provided information maps to daily needs. It’s best when a hands-on experience can be coupled with training and education.

Unfortunately this is very difficult to do with a virtual audience. Therefore, the task of knowledge transfer is made even more difficult, but can be offset, to great extent, by taking meaningful steps to personalize learning events.

Q. With virtual audiences and online learning communities filling the 21st century, how might the role of corporate trainers evolve?

We are in the midst of an exciting transformational event. The barriers that formerly restricted information exchange and job sharing across great geographical distances are currently being eliminated. This is due to the ease at which people can communicate both documents and ideas via the internet.

To help organizations adapt to this new world, it is essential that we understand that there are cultural differences between different geographical locations. Once accepting and understanding that different cultures react to situations differently, the key is to educate employees how to add value to their endeavors through this new access to geographical diversity.

Q. That’s a great point: corporate trainers will need to have a global mindset and help facilitate cross-cultural exchange. Brian, thanks for sharing with our readers—your students are very lucky to have you. Before we end, could you recommend some literature for our training and development audience?

I highly recommend The Adult Learner by Malcolm Knowles, Elwood F. Holton III, and Richard A. Swanson. It outlines a method of teaching that is geared to the adult learner—referred to as “andragogy.” Basically an adult needs to feel that information is important in order to engage them to a point where effective absorbtion and adoption of class material takes place.

[Editor's note: Josh Little and I will be speaking at DevLearn 2010, and you should try and make it. Learn more about the event in this post.]

Brent Schlenker works for The eLearning Guild as the Emerging Technologies Analyst and is also the Program Director for DevLearn, the largest eLearning conference in North America.

He has been in the eLearning industry for over 15 years with experience in all aspects of project management, eLearning strategies, business analysis, programming, authoring, digital media creation, etc. His Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development blog has become a must-read for learning professionals, and gained him recognition as a thought leader in the eLearning industry. Brent’s unique and engaging presentations have been filling conference rooms for years offering insight, practical tips, and a colorful look at the past, present, and future of learning in the corporation. You can contact him on Linkedin.

Q. Hi Brent, thanks for making the time to speak with our readership while ramping up for DevLearn 2010. With all the training-related books out there, what book has had the greatest impact on you?

Recommended by DevLearn 2010 Program Director, Brent Schlenker

Almost exactly 10 years ago I was done with Instructional Design and eLearning. Actually, that’s not true. What I was done with was the joke known as corporate training. I was so frustrated with every aspect of corporate training—from many of my peers, to golden handcuffed managers, to stifling bureaucracy. I can expand on that in a blog post some other time.

But to keep this moving along it was an industry conference in, I think, 2000 where the keynote speaker was Tom Peters. It couldn’t have been more perfect timing for me personally. I was hooked on his message of radical change and this quote on the back of his book RE-IMAGINE, “It is the foremost task—and responsibility—of our generation to re-imagine our enterprises and institutions, public and private.”

He is an exceptionally high-energy speaker which helped drive the message home, but in general his books gave me all the ammunition I needed to believe I could change the world…or at least change my own little corporate hell into something awesome!

He had a bunch of books at the time and around 2003 or 2004 his greatest ideas were put into a beautifully designed hardback titled RE-IMAGINE. It’s the only business book I know of to this day with every page being full color glossy. His books are filled with awesome quotes that I continue to borrow from time to time in my own presentations. The most over-used but still awesome quote is this one: “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” (General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army)

Q. I’ll have to check that out. When you read that book, what hit home?

Even before 2000 I knew that all corporate training processes had to undergo a massive fundamental change. It was so glaringly obvious to me that training was a vacation from the daily grind of an employee’s job and they were not learning anything…or very little at best. Tom Peters and RE-IMAGINE supported everything I had come to know on my own that was sh*t about corporate life which for me was training. And the book gave me the confidence to speak out because now, in my then naive mind, its not just me being the disgruntled worker. Now I’ve got the full backing of a globally known and trusted business excellence guru. What could go wrong?

About this same time the alpha geeks had already started the blogging craze, and other new web 2.0 technologies were surfacing, like wikis and podcasting. I was an ex-broadcast media guy and so the head-on collision of broadcasting/publishing and learning was natural and a comfortable fit for me. For my corporate peers and managers? Not so much. Quotes like, “white-collar employment as we’ve known it is dead,” did not go over well with those sitting idly by in their cubicles waiting for retirement. I became quite the pot-stirring rebel and was loving every minute of it.

Q. How did you begin applying the motivation you got from the book?

In all honesty, it took me a couple more years to stop the jabbering and asking for permission, and just do something, anything! In 2005 I started my blog Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development.

My blog wasn’t a “real-life training initiative” for the company but it was without question my own personal training initiative in how I believed the future of learning would be transformed by new media. It was my personal stake in the ground, my line in the sand, and my middle finger to the status quo and all those who told me no. So, no I never was able to move the needle, as they say, within my little corporate organization, but what I did do was so much more powerful.

Instead of creating a nifty new little corporate training project that no doubt my manager would take credit for, I joined a global movement. I was expressing my thoughts via the blog and discovering like-minded thinkers all over the world: Japan, UK, Australia, Canada, and all across the US. We all began learning together (and still are) about how these new technologies are changing everything exactly the way Tom predicted with his quote, “the web changes everything (everything = everything). Embrace it. Totally. Or else.”

Another of Tom’s quotes made more sense than ever now: “InfoTech changes everything: ‘On the Bus’ or ‘Off the Bus’?” I worked my day gig with everyone “off the bus,” and was secretly hanging out with thousands of those global eLearning professionals that were “On the Bus.” The ones that “get it”—meaning, on the bus—energize you and drive you harder and further in your thinking and so I found myself spending more and more time in that space. I was also working with some IT guys on the side ramping up server space launching wikis and testing every open source system I could convince them to install and let me play with.

RE-IMAGINE literally helped me re-imagine my career even if that meant the scary thought of leaving the comfort of the job.

[Editor's note: DevLearn 2010's program director is featured in today's interview. Check it out here.]

What do Marcia Conner, Byron Reeves, Thornton May, John Seely Brown, Josh Little, and Nemo Chu have in common? They’ve all been invited to speak at DevLearn 2010, the leading eLearning conference & expo (November 3-5, 2010 in San Francisco, CA). Put on by The eLearning Guild, DevLearn 2010 is an event for innovative corporate training and eLearning professionals who want to know what’s next in the world of eLearning. Check out their official event website for complete details.

One Workshop and One Session from Bloomfire

On Tuesday, November 2nd (the day before DevLearn 2010’s official kick-off), Josh Little and Nemo Chu (that’s me!) of Bloomfire will be doing a one-day pre-conference certificate workshop titled Building a High Impact Learning Community starting at 8:30a. Here are a couple of the things you’ll walk away with from this hands-on workshop:

• The Business Case for a Workplace Learning Community
• The Secrets of Successfully Launching a Learning Community

Learn more about this workshop by clicking here.

On Friday morning, November 5th, I’ll be running solo with a session called Internal Marketing 101: Using “Rocket Science” to get Butts in Seats. Marketing is what I do every day, and I’ll be presenting a toolbox of critical principles that non-marketers can use to promote workshops, encourage adoption of new learning technologies, and succeed.

Learn more about this session by clicking here.

A Personal Invitation from DevLearn 2010’s Program Director

After my interview with Brent Schlenker, he wanted to personally invite our readers to showcase their eLearning efforts at DemoFest. Every year, dozens of conference participants show off their latest and greatest eLearning initiatives for recognition, prizes, and bragging rights.

Discounts

We’ve been told that there’s a special early registration discount of $100 if you sign up by Friday, September 17th. Check it out at the online registration page.

Also, if you sign up for the conference and a pre-conference workshop (such as Building a High Impact Learning Community), the price of the workshop drops by $100. There’s no deadline for this discount.

And if that isn’t enough, those who are employed by non-profits, the government, or academic institutions are eligible for 25% off, 25% off, and 50% off respectively.

So here’s what we recommend to get the most bang for your buck: become an associate professor at your neighborhood community college, then register and pay for both a workshop and the conference by September 17th to get 50% off shave $200 off the total price. Easy-peasy.

Limited spots. Thursday, Sept 2nd at 1:30-2:30p EST. Click here to RSVP.

It’s exactly what you’d expect—a step-by-step tutorial for getting your online learning community off the ground. The Bloomfire team will demo our push-button learning community platform and provide you with everything you need to succeed.

Here’s what you’ll walk away with:

• You’ll learn how to configure Bloomfire exactly for your needs, whether you’re a corporate trainer or Internet marketer.
• You’ll have step-by-step directions for quick-starting your online learning community.

Join us this Thursday, and we’d appreciate it if you can help us get the word out. Forward this to a friend, share it on Facebook, or tweet this using the button above.

Forget the hard sell—Bloomfire webinars are purely about education. RSVP at Bloomfire.com/webinars.

What is Bloomfire?

And if you don’t already know this, Bloomfire is online software for creating your very own learning communities where employees, customers, or fans teach each other. Trusted by organizations both large and small, including Kellogg’s and Overstock.com. Learn more at Bloomfire.com.

Tim Tobin is the Senior Director of Global Leadership Development at Marriott International. In this role, Tim is responsible for designing, implementing and evaluating Marriott’s global leadership development programs for Vice Presidents and above. He is also involved in succession planning for General Managers.

Prior to joining Marriott, Tim built an award winning corporate university from the ground up. In this role, he oversaw all learning and leadership programs, integrated all learning and performance management activities, and was actively involved in all strategic and operational aspects of the corporate university. He also worked at Booz Allen where he provided learning, leadership development, and human capital effectiveness consulting services to a number of organizations.

Tim holds a doctorate in Human and Organizational Learning from The George Washington University. He can be reached via LinkedIn and you can find out more about his experiences there.

Q. Tim, can share with us what it’s like to manage a global leadership development program? For many of us, the best we can do is imagine what it’s like to handle learning initiatives of that magnitude, with so many different parties involved.

There’s an inherent challenge to balancing the needs of multiple stakeholders based on their understanding of what the business challenges are, their understanding of customer/employee needs, and their unique needs for information to meet their objectives. To say that these needs are competing may be overstating the challenge, but only slightly. As a result, the true challenge exists working across the various stakeholder groups in order to deliver a seamless, coordinated and effective outcome.

At more senior levels, for example, you’ve got to be able to think strategically and show value—and you’ve got to be able to do it succinctly. Think about where the business is going and clearly show how learning can help get it there. The two key aspects that you must focus on here:

• Demonstrate value
• Integrating with other functions and/or activities

At the instructional design and programmer level, the challenge that must be resolved is the extent to which a solution is operationally simple or complex. Think about the needs and capabilities of learners, as well as how a particular initiative contributes to a larger organizational goal.

Managers are the integrators and translators. They have got to be able to effectively balance and convey strategic and operation needs. They must translate problems to generate a variety of possible solutions. They should be key contributors to building an effective business case to inspire action on the front end and tie results on the back end of a learning initiative or program.

Managers must also consider sustainability. I’ve seen too many good initiatives fade away and perhaps too many ineffective initiatives carry on. A manager that knows how to distinguish between these and generate results is indispensable.

Q. Hang on—let me package what you just said into a book and ship it out the door (laughs). With so many parties involved, from instructional designers to the C-suite, how might technology help you collaborate better, faster, and cheaper?

When used effectively, technology bridges the gap between stakeholder’s understanding of the strategic needs of the business and how operational imperatives will meet those needs. It can:

• Increase the span of participants and possibly reduce the time it takes to make decisions which ultimately improves the quality of decisions.
• Facilitate idea-sharing
• Provide a natural archive of progress and decisions, thereby allowing various stakeholders to jump in and out of the process as needed.

At Marriott, as a global organization, technology is a critical tool to involve stakeholders from around the world. We use technology to generate ideas, track best practices, grow our intellectual capital, manage projects, and deliver programs, to name a few.

However, it’s important to point out that there’s a time to use technology and there’s a time for live communication.

Given the multi-generational workforce and different comfort levels with various technologies, it is critical to select the right communication medium and technology tool depending on audience and message. At Marriott, we are very relationship-driven and we rely heavily on live communication throughout projects to build and maintain relationships. It’s important not to over-rely on technology as a vehicle to enhance collaboration because if used improperly, it could have the opposite effect.

Q. Since technology is so critical at Marriott, does technology play a role in performance improvement? What about collaborative, peer-to-peer learning?

Ok. These are two very different questions.

First, technology can be a facilitator of performance improvement but there has got to be sound performance improvement principals in place first. This goes back to a concept that was reinforced in my statistics class. If you don’t know how and why to run a particular test, layering on technology will only confuse matters and not necessarily help you get the right results.

For performance improvement—the extent to which there are well-defined competencies, a representative evaluation process, and a link to developmental activities—there is a greater likelihood of performance improvement. Technology can be used as an enabler in all aspects of performance improvement, but only to the extent you’re asking the right questions and working toward the right results. At my last organization, we were able to impact performance improvement using very basic technology. I should point out that the right technology would have made the process more efficient and effective.

Second, certain tasks may lend themselves more to collaborative learning platforms and other technologies. My experience suggests that it’s not an “either, or” proposition, but typically involves some combination of multiple approaches. I think people under-estimate the complexity of learning, and more importantly, transfer of learning. These platforms extend the scale of audience, but that does not automatically translate to better learning. At Marriott, we support learner-centric approaches that combine multiple platforms including instructor-led, eLearning, informal, and resources such as job aides to name a few.

Q. Being a user of various platforms and processes, can you look into the crystal ball for us and paint the picture of 21st century training and development? What kind of innovation should we expect to see in corporate training?

What would I like to see or what do I expect to see? Let me quickly consider both.

First, I would love to see more learning solutions driven by business issues. Inherently, this also means greater emphasis on measuring results. The most effective learning organizations will continue to excel at this.  I may be considered a heretic for saying so, but I’d love to see us move away from certain measures like dollars spent per employee or training budget as a percentage of revenue and more toward behavior change and ROI. Many organizations could spend less and accomplish more, so spend metrics do not always correlate to increased learning.

Ok, what innovations would I expect to see? There will always be a need for instructor-led training and eLearning is here to stay. Where the real white space is is around how we combine various approaches to learning to solve specific organizational issues. I would expect to see more about informal learning and our ability to learn from routine activities. Along these lines, look for more job shadowing and communities of practice.

Regarding technology, we’ll utilize mobile devices more for learning. We’ll always rely on outside expertise provided by vendors, but look for organizations to rely more on internal resources because it provides the expertise, the context, is cost-effective and results in unanticipated outcomes such as relationship-building. A real out of the box innovation that we’re looking at is how to collaborate and share resources across organizations in different industries.

Q. Since you’re familiar with communities of practice, what do you think of  ”online learning communities?”

I’ve recently borrowed a term from the marketing field to describe the type of learning that takes place using forums such as online learning communities. Viral learning captures both the speed and scope by which learning has the potential to take place here. Online learning communities are very much enablers of learning. They can be catalysts for some great information sharing and idea generation. They’re great because they often involve someone asking a question and that is the absolute basis for learning. In fact, online learning communities combine technology with the communities of practice idea I mentioned above, so I see some real potential for knowledge and information sharing here. As consumers of information, we still need to apply the appropriate filters to what we take in and how we can best incorporate ideas to address our business challenges.

Q. Great thoughts Tim—thanks for making the time to share your wisdom with our readers. Last question: what literature would you recommend for our readers?

I would recommend readers ensure they have a strong foundation of knowledge in the learning space (Goldstein’s Training in Organizations), keep some key resource books on their shelf (ASTD’s Training & Development Handbook) and stay up to date within their industry.

I just finished Anil Gupta, et al. The Quest for Global Dominance and I’m currently reading The New Human Capital Strategy by Bradley W. Hall. For magazines, I keep my eyes out for innovative learning and leadership pieces in T+D Magazine and CLO magazine. I also keep up with Bill Marriott’s blog. Lastly, I have been able to customize information I receive from SmartBrief by topic and industry.

Dan Hanssel is a Buffalo native and UB graduate. He has spent his marketing career in the telecommunications and IT industries. At GTE Airfone, Dan’s team grew sales from $37 Million to $226 Million in under 5 years. As VP Marketing and Sales at Utilicom Networks, he helped a start-up to raise a $100 Million equity investment from Blackstone Group. Most recently, as Marketing Director at Time Warner Cable, he led the $370 Million Buffalo Division to become the company’s leading operation. You can connect with Dan via LinkedIn.

Q. Dan, drawing from your highly successful sales & marketing career, what book would you recommend for corporate trainers trying their hand at marketing, especially for internal marketing at a corporation?

Recommended by Time Warner Cable's Marketing Director, Dan Hanssel

One of my all time favorite marketing books is Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing by Harry Beckwith.

Like Tom Peters and many other noted business authors, Beckwith teaches via anecdote. Through a series of over 100 short stories, Beckwith coherently leads us through critical mistakes made by service marketers, and the key factors that comprise great service marketing.

I highly recommend this book. At 250 pages it’s a quick read and worth every minute it takes to read it…it will pay big dividends in your marketing.

Q. Hmm…training organizations often provide services—classes, workshops, and coaching immediately come to mind. How might “service marketing” help training organizations “get butts in seats?”

One of my most valuable lessons from this book is simply: “Let your clients set your standards.” He points out that every profession defines excellence in their field using standards defined by practitioners of their profession; for instance, a good building is defined by the excellence of the architect’s design, not by the building’s inhabitants that actually live or work in the building. Similarly, a good ad is defined by excellent creative and copy-writing, not by whether consumers find the ad informative and entertaining.

Beckwith points out that this is the wrong way to judge things. Standards for your products, services and advertising should be derived from customer preferences, not “experts.”

Q. So we should judge our efforts from our customers’ point of view, not from our peers’ point of view. What are some methods that marketers use to get in their customers’ shoes?

In many ways, this is the philosophy behind social media, which didn’t exist (in its current form) when this book was written. Gathering interactive feedback and engaging in on-going dialogue with customers is not a concept invented by blogs, Facebook, Twitter or MySpace. However, these and similar 21st-century tools have finally placed the power in the hands of consumers to make their voices heard.

I used this lesson regularly when testing creative for ads. We would have focus groups view TV spots, print ads, billboards and direct mail pieces. The campaigns, images and copy that the focus group members thought were informative, entertaining and compelling are the ones we used. We also did lots of small batch testing of direct mail, both creative and offers, and measured call volumes and sales, before dropping large volumes of mail.

Q. Have you found success with this book in your own marketing efforts?

In his book, Beckwith has a section (page 118) called “Repositioning Your Competitors.” In it he describes a situation where an architect competing to build a new municipal building in Portland, Oregon not only defines his position in the competition, but by making his competitors’ designs look uninspiring, he redefined his competition, in a negative light.

Our “Do You DVR” campaign at Time Warner was inspired by Beckwith’s story. We positioned Time Warner as a “Local” provider by casting local celebrities that are famous in Buffalo, but not anywhere else. There was one exception: The Goo Goo Dolls (a famous rock band). Our ads were whimsical and light-hearted with a distinctly Buffalo flavor. Our competitors’ (DirecTV, Dish, Verizon) ads were all produced for a national audience and lacked any local flavor.

We ran this campaign in March to June 2007, and it was not only wildly successful, it became a launching point from which we created the most successful division in all of Time Warner Cable…we weren’t the largest division by any means, but we were #1 in making our revenue, unit volume, margin and cash flow targets for all of 2009.

Oh, and we won five international Mark Awards for Marketing Excellence. But the financial results were the real reward that validated our concept.

Q. Congratulations! I’ll have to look those ads up on YouTube. Although I know you can’t read the author’s mind, what advice might Beckwith give to training and development professionals about to launch an internal marketing campaign?

As far as HR and other non-marketing types, the key take away for them is:

1. Pay attention to your target audience
2. Actively solicit their feedback and establish an on-going dialogue with them
3. Be sure that all your communications to that audience are informed by that dialogue.

How to Turn Customers into Raving Fans with Bloomfire

Limited spots. Thursday, August 26th at 1:30-2:30p EST. Click here to RSVP.

Looking to spark word-of-mouth, upsell, boost customer loyalty, generate leads, and go viral? Here’s the secret: smart marketers know that they need to nurture customer communities. If you’re curious about how Intel, Apple, and Hyundai turns customers into raving fans, we can give you the scoop and explain how you can do it too with a platform like Bloomfire—for a fraction of the cost.

If you want a sneak-preview, click here for a recording of the last time we offered this webinar: How to Turn Customers into Raving Fans with Bloomfire

Bloomfire A-to-Z: How to Create an Online Learning Community

Limited spots. Thursday, September 2nd at 1:30-2:30p EST. Click here to RSVP.

We’ll take you step-by-step through Bloomfire and explain how our platform can help you create a successful online learning community. Tap into the power of collaborative learning now and supercharge your employee training.

Here’s what you’ll walk away with in this guided tour:

• You’ll learn how to configure Bloomfire exactly for your needs
• You’ll have step-by-step directions for starting your very own community
• You’ll learn how power users leverage our platform

Forget the hard sell—Bloomfire webinars are purely about education. We’d appreciate it if you can help us get the word out. Forward this to a friend, share it on Facebook, or tweet this using the button above. For the complete line-up of upcoming webinars, check out Bloomfire.com/webinars.

And for those of you who are new here, Bloomfire is online software for creating your very own learning communities where employees, customers, or fans teach each other. Trusted by organizations both large and small, including Kellogg’s and Overstock.com, you can learn more at Bloomfire.com.

Julika Barrett works for Dell Corporation in the newly formed service division as part of an account team that supports health-care clients in its information technology (IT) needs. As a learning and development specialist, she supports the IT associates with skills development, career management, and process improvement. She has held roles designing training, implementing training programs, instructing, coordinating projects, and providing consultation in documentation and training.

Q. Julika, from your experience, what are some common challenges for training organizations trying to maximize employee performance and align with mission-critical tasks?

The biggest hurdle I have found in working with several companies is the will to do what is necessary to:

1. On-board new hires so that they can perform with a level of competency within a prescribed period of time.
2. Capture knowledge through template-driven online documents and job instructions per task per job role.

I do believe we in training know what to do but cannot get leadership support or gain the resources to develop, implement and sustain the processes we see need to be done. It is a matter of time, resources, and, sometimes investment in the right tools. There is an expectation to make things happen but the initiatives take a back seat to more pressing, higher priority organizational needs. Unless, we, as training professionals, can demonstrate (quantify, describe) the loss to the organization in not on-boarding new employees to move smoothly into their roles and to capture and share knowledge easily with others, employee performance suffers.

Q. Sounds like some training professionals are facing the same challenge that salespeople face—getting buy-in for new initiatives. For those who are managing already-running initiatives, what can they do to take their initiative to the next level?

I have seen the potential of programs from observing several organizations’ efforts to improve employee performance and satisfaction. What I have seen that really works are:

• Clear job instructions and defined process flows for major tasks per role.
• Access to information that assists the employee “just in time,” for example: contact lists, templates and sample pieces of work, subject matter experts willing to share information, online knowledge/data-bases that are easy to navigate, etc.
• Development plans for career growth that include work assignments, shadowing key performers, focused skills training, succession plans.

Q. What are your thoughts on “online learning communities,” especially when proposed as a solution?

The potential is very high to capitalize on social networking. Online learning communities formalize the informal information pipeline that goes on in an organization but I have only seen aspects of these communities in action.

For example, I have seen in companies that employees share ideas and solutions to problems by blogging, Skyping, and texting. Online training, through synchronous web meetings, provided opportunities for networking, problem-solving, and collaboration that transfer back to the workplace.

I still would like to see a plan with a vision of what an organization can become using social networking. These communication tools take time to use and for people to gain confidence in connecting. In a reactive environment, social networking becomes more of a distraction than a positive strategy.

Q. Change is definitely a process. What should corporate trainers expect in the 21st century?

Eventually, we go back to basics—what do we need to do and what do we need to know in order to make it happen. We, as learning professionals, need to develop 360-degree vision, to understand what has passed in an organization, what an organization strives to be, and what we need to do now to get there. We can have the best tools and technology possible, but their use still depend upon solid instructional design principles, learning theory, and performance management. The trick is to be so fluent in our knowledge and performance that we can provide structured design quickly to keep pace with the speed in which organizations operate.

Q. I agree—agility and speed reign supreme in the 21st century. For those looking to keep up, what kind of literature would you recommend?

I read the literature, both online and paper-based material, that comes out of major training organizations: ASTD, ISPI, and The eLearning Guild. However, I also follow business-focused readings: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, and The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge.

These authors and their thought-provoking ideas give insight into the modern mind and the world we live in. It helps me communicate to others in terms of where we are as a society. I am always making the connection between business thought and learning and performance. I would like to see our training profession be an integral part of what makes businesses successful—not tangentially but strategically.

Are you a corporate trainer looking to sell your organization on mobile learning (mlearning)? Well look no further, here are 3 success stories of iPad-driven training that offers performance support, collaborative learning, and simulations—areas that we’ve built our software for.

iPad for Performance Support

You’re a health worker in Australia’s sweltering heat, traveling through the barren countryside conducting consultations. Since they’re “health clinic shy,” your Indigenous Australian clients are reluctant to visit you at your clinic, so you make the trek out to visit them at their homes. You grab your iPad 3G and head out the door.

What are the benefits for using the iPad for corporate training in this scenario?

• Instead of lugging paper medical records around with you, simply access them via your iPad on-the-go.
• If you relied on paper records, you’d be in a pickle if you forgot a critical file. With the iPad, health workers can pull data from their database during the consultation, in the same way that we Google the world wide web for additional information.
• You can do data entry during the consultation, updating your client’s records instantly. In the error-prone past, you relied on pen and paper, then transcribed the information when you returned to the office. Double documenting led to mistakes.

The big takeaway for corporate trainers:

Great example of just-in-time performance support, facilitated by a mobile device.

[Full story: How the iPad is improving health service delivery in the NT]

iPad for Collaborative Learning

Congratulations! You’ve just been accepted into Stanford’s (or UC Irvine’s) School of Medicine. As you get buried with gifts from families and friends, you notice that your university sent you a present too. Nestled deep inside the gift-wrap is a brand new iPad, pre-loaded with everything necessary for the first year of course work.

What are the benefits for using the iPad for corporate training in this scenario?

• It’s more than just a textbook or a binder filled with notes—you can also access journal articles and image databases. Check out vook and WIRED magazine’s iPad app to understand the potential of multimedia reading.
• Instant access to podcasts and similar audio/video libraries. Imagine watching a webcam lecture from an on-call neurosurgeon. Review it whenever necessary, and consult supplemental materials (step-by-step videos, process documents, etc) for crystal-clear understanding.
• As students scribble notes on the margins of their digital textbooks, they can also share notes with classmates. Welcome to the power of social reading, which business author Seth Godin so elegantly describes in this series of suggestions for the Kindle (see point #3).

The big takeaway for corporate trainers:

Great example of on-demand collaborative learning.

[Full story: Stanford School of Medicine equipping students with Apple's iPad & Incoming UCI medical students to receive iPads loaded with first-year curriculum]

iPad for Simulations

“We’re getting hammered—bring in the big guns now!”

Amidst the static, you hear the plea burst out of your field radio. Instant perspiration.

You’re a soldier at HQ, responsible for supporting your comrades who are being shot at out in the field. You try to think straight, but inside, your heart’s beating at 9 million miles per hour. Your men are demanding artillery support, and you’re tasked with creating a solution to save their lives. So you turn to your iPad and start tapping away.

The United Kingdom is now preparing troops for fire missions (missions where artillery is being fired at the enemy from several miles away) through an innovative iPad application, which simulates combat situations and helps soldiers practice when lives aren’t at stake.

What are the benefits for using the iPad for corporate training in this scenario?

• Trainers are discovering that soldiers are learning procedures and jargon quicker via iPad than via classroom instruction.
• The iPad application shortens training time.
• Soldiers find it so fun, they’re bringing it home to keep practicing. And they’re beginning to compete amongst themselves for high scores.

The big takeaway for corporate trainers:

Great example of simulations.

[Full story: UK soldiers use iPad app to train for Afghan operations]

There’s still one last chance to RSVP! Originally scheduled for last Thursday, the How to Build High-Impact Learning Communities webinar has now been rescheduled for today, August 17th at 1:30p EST. The featured speaker, Josh Little, had to reschedule in order to welcome a new baby girl into the world. Congratulations Josh!

Another popular webinar, Collaborative Learning 101: The “Next Level” for T&D, is coming up this Thursday, August 19th at 1:30p EST. Spots are limited, so RSVP by clicking here: Bloomfire.com/webinars

Learn why collaborative learning is such a huge buzzword in the training and development space, and get a quick primer on why it’s relevant for you and the future of corporate training. Some topics we’ll cover in Collaborative Learning 101:

• How traditional 20th-century corporate training models aren’t enough to prepare our organizations for the 21st-century, and why collaborative learning is a silver bullet.
• Case studies of how innovative organizations are successfully tapping into collaborative learning using new technologies.
• What you can do to take training and development at your organization to the next level—without the headaches that can come with change.

Forget the hard sell—Bloomfire webinars are purely about education. RSVP at Bloomfire.com/webinars.