A point made by Enzo Silva on our webcast today was that millenial talent is not afraid to make mistakes and that they live and thrive in a “perpetual beta environment.”   Also that the new approach to learning is based on user-generated content that is collaborative and personalized.  These are exciting elements that would undoubtedly lead to innovation.  How are those innovative break-thru’s captured when they may be published in multiple social networking sites? 

HCI members, please share your questions and thoughts on today’s webcast Leveraging Learning Innovations for Millenial Talent Managment, in our new e-learning track Innovation & Creativity…

Hope you’ll get started in a lively dialog on these questions and related issues:

What are some of examples of meeting challenges with mobile learning (“learning to go”) for people learning on the job out in the field? 

 (Our presenter Enzo Silva asks) What do YOU think the future of learning has in store for the next generation?

HCI members’ thoughts:

The future of learning would be self driven rather than driven by the organisation. people would find out what they need to grow and then go in for self learning mechanisms to grow up the ladder

HCI member asks: How are service organizations that require face-to-face customer interaction and behavior change using gaming to implement learning that drives behavior and creates a personal customer experience?

HCI member asks: When we talk of learning how do we teach people what is to be learnt in laboratories and in places where one needs to do certain research to get the answer.

HCI member asks: What is true? If all info is obtained through the social media, isn’t it possible for something that isn’t true to be understood as true?

HCI member asks: How are companies that are heavy manufacturing and engineering applying this type of learning when not all of your workforce has access to computers?

HCI member asks: Is Sun Designing Learning in multi-modes to reach a variety of learning styles (i.e a game and written case study, podcast, etc)?

HCI member asks: Yes, being connected (i.e., social networking) is essential; however, this does not create human connectivity, it creates connectivity via the technology.  How do you connect the people to the actual person, not just to the text message?

HCI member asks: Since learners are all ages, how do content developers for various forms of distance learning accommodate options and preferences for multiple generations?

Also, to express more thoughts on any of these ideas, hope you’ll visit the blogs of each of today’s presenters  Jeanne Meister  and Enzo Silva.  

As a view from 30,000 feet provides big picture insight, organizations are recognizing that shifting to an enterprise view of executive coaching provides line of sight from individual coaching agendas and the larger talent management plan.  

A press release on research done by DBM and HCI of leading organizations’ executive coaching practices suggests there is more to be gained from common business themes that run across coaching assignments.  Certainly this also helps to adjust the focus from the traditional “remedial” aura coaching once had to a pro-active high impact enterprise-relevant focus. The positive impact on leadership team effectiveness no doubt benefits as well.  I hope you’ll tune in to the related webcast where this new research was recently presented and add your thoughts below…

When I was a kid, my big sister had an autograph book in which a friend wrote: “Pam, Pam sitting on a fence trying to make a dollor oout of 99 cents.”  Well, companies, too, are trying to get more for their money these days, in terms of a smart spend in talent management.  The science of talent management, drawing from sound research, can position your company to be amongst the best in class for total compensation ROI.

What do you see in your organization as the challenges to effective total compensation?  

Is it parity across business units?  Time required to design and keep plans fresh?  System to award bonuses?  Look forward to your postings and related thoughts below…

One of the most exciting organizational capabilities and talent competencies is innovation.  While undoubtedly innovation inspires more innovation, what stimulates innovation at its root?   Moving past the “chicken-egg” reflection, who could argue that learning inspires new thought and hence innovation?  Learning is undergoing a revolution, drawing on new technology with a global reach.  I hope you’ll weigh in on how learning inspires innovation and share your thoughts on learning technologies and tools that further break-through ideas and related practices.  

The above cartoon implies that break-thru thinking is needed to inspire innovation :-)  What are the learning practices in your organization that inspire innovation?

Please also join our post webcast discussion…

Title: Leverage Learning Innovations for Millennial Talent Management
When: Wed, Aug 20 2008 / 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM ET
 
Presented By: Jeanne C. Meister , Founder New Learning Playbook  blog, New Learning Playbook
Allan Schweyer , Exec. Director & SVP, Research , Talent Economy blog, Human Capital Institute (HCI) 
Register:  Click Here »
 
 
Over 80 million people born between the years 1982 and 1994, referred to as the “Millennial Generation,” are entering the workforce with expectations about learning that are vastly different from traditional approaches. They have grown up on Facebook and have social networking in their DNA.
This webcast will cover innovative approaches to re-invent corporate learning capabilities. Leverage peer-to-peer learning, collaboration, and “wearable learning” to integrate learning with productivity and how work is done by the Millennial generation.

Don’t miss these webcast take aways:

1. Identify the needs for learning and career development for four generations in the workplace–with a focus on recent research about Millennials
   2. Define benefits and barriers to investing in Web 2.0 technologies for corporate learning and talent development
   3. Integrate corporate social networking into your new talent on-boarding
   4. Create online communities of practice for various job families

I’m excited about the July 24 webcast

Title: Cascading Competencies to Create Focus & Results
When: Thu, Jul 24 2008 / 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM ET
 
Presented By: Edie Goldberg Ph.D , President , E.L. Goldberg & Associates
Mary Beth Cozza , VP, OD and Internal Communications , PMI Mortgage Insurance Company

I was impressed by the examples the presenters have that demystify critical competency development at increasing levels of responsibility. For example, how does an individual contributor demonstrate collaboration; what additional collaboration behaviors are essential for  a manager/director in contrast to how an executive demonstrates collaboration?  When the increasing levels of competencies are demystified and clearly communicated, then the development path to excellence can be transparent and visible to all.  

Career paths to success based on competency models can help talent see far ahead to actualize their potential and keep your organization’s pipeline alive.  

HCI’ers hope you’ll weigh in with your thoughts and related questions on our post-webcast discussion below…

An HCI member asks:  How does one motivate an organization to engage on a comprehensive competency model development project as described in this case study? What is the business case?

I’m excited about the July 23 webcast I’m moderating

Managing the Enterprise Impact of Coaching

because of the topics that will be discussed by presenter Peyton Daniel and experienced corporate practitioners:

1. Linking coaching to leadership development strategy
2. Creating an evaluation strategy
3. Maximizing enterprise impact

HCI’ers, how do you establish and maintain a line of sight between your coaching strategy and talent management/business plan?

What has been your experience of the enterprise impact when a leaderhip team has the benefit of coaching?

Coaching for the Leader, for the Team and for the Enterprise is a triple play- everyone wins:-)

Please add your comments below…

In today’s webcast, Mike Gotta from the Burton Group stimulated great ideas on the power of employee/talent networks.

What are your thoughts about how employee networks can develop collaboration as a critical competency?

Please post your comments below and on Mike’s blog too at http://mikeg.typepad.com

Also, please share the internation re-cast times below with your networks so you can discuss these ideas with them as well

Title: Connectivity Powers Talent: Leveraging Employee Social Networks
When: Fri, Jul 18 2008 / 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM ET
 
Presented By: Mike Gotta , Principal Analyst , Burton Group 
 
 
Recast Dates
 
Mon, Jul 21 2008 / 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM ET   
Mon, Jul 21 2008 / 8:00 PM - 9:00 PM ET   
Tue, Jul 22 2008 / 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM ET   
Tue, Jul 22 2008 / 4:00 AM - 5:00 AM ET 

Here are some related areas HCI members would like to explore… please add your posts below…

1. Question: Are there ways to expedite the team development process for flung teams so that people ‘trust’ each other and become productive even when they can’t see each other? videoconf not withstanding.
2. Question: In establishing enterprise social networks, should the information exchange be limited to business content or expanded to additional social content?
3. Question: What will be a good way to introduce and tied these to corporate culture? Is there a clear impact in productivity? any research?
    

Multiple stakeholders want to see the impact of training and learning on business processes and results.  The success story in today’s webcast,

is enlightening because of the guideline applied by Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta:  ”It’s not how good the training is, it’s how good we use the training.”    They used success case evaulation to apply their leadership training and ”learn their way forward” with “evalu-actions” planned from the very start… 

I hope you’ll join the post-webcast discussion to hear more and exchange comments below… 

Here are some related questions from HCI members: 

How do you efficiently and effectively manage follow-up logistics, such as coaching learners post-training; communicating with the learners’ managers; seeking success stories; etc. How many staff are dedicated to making this follow-up process work well? How much time is dedicated to this process?
 

What direct ways do you connect the learning with increased revenues and cost savings?

A children’s rope-skipping rhyme, “Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor,
rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief”

came to mind as I reflected on four recent HCI webcasts and interviews on how EI competencies benefit multiple occupations:

Law enforcement      Retail      Sales    Leadership

Given that EI “enables a person to demonstrate intelligent use of their emotions in managing themselves and working with others to be effective at work” it stands to reason that all of these professions would draw on EI competencies.

What critical competencies did people in these professions learn to be successful? 

If you’re a movie buff or fan of fictional stories based on fact, you may recall the story of “The Great Imposter”   where Ferdinand Waldo Demara  taught himself a number of professions and performed quite well in all of them.  Demara obviously figured out how to continuously learn new competencies.  In today’s knowledge economy, people have more career shifts and changes within their working lifetime than was the case 2-3 decades ago, and tend to change jobs every two years. This statistic referenced in the Boston Globe suggests that “change is good for stoking your passion”.
People who are passionate about self-development and self-directed learning are pre-disposed to make the best use of coaching and company investments in their competency development.   Richard Boyatzis  authored an enlightening article on the EI consortium about “Unleashing the Power of Self-Directed Learning”   He says that most behavioral change is intentional, and that the starting point is the discovery of who you want to be.  

Boyatzis suggests three steps that are critical to a self-directed learning process: 
(1) Experiment and practice to learn more from your experiences
(2) Find settings that feel safe within which to experiment and practice
(3) Develop and use your relationships as part of your change and learning process
Boyatzis reminds us that most of what we become is within our power to create, and offers a thought from the 1835 John Anster translation of Goethe’s Faustus: A Dramatic Mystery. In the Prologue to the Theater :

“What you can do, or dream you can, begin it, Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”
Here are four related questions for your thoughts and comment that I invite you to explore:
1. Where does the passion needed to successfully change jobs come from?
2. How does one learn critical competencies to move into a new job?
3. What does EI have to do with success in any number of occupations?
4. How does EI faciliatate self-directed and other learning?

In learning organizations often a valuable question or insight relies on another question being asked.  Here are three related questions– Is your talent on fire with innovation?  What factors precipitate talent being fired up to learn?   Where (and with whom) does talent development begin?

Immediately post-hire, new talent wants to learn who the “go to” people are for answers, and how to get things done in keeping with the company culture.   Last week I was on a breakfast panel in NYC at a meeting of the Five O’Clock Club to discuss best in class onboarding with 250 people also interested in how to accelerate time-to-productivity and the related learning curve.   HCI’s webcasts on Onboarding have had over 4000 sign ups from a broad spectrum of HCI members in HR, senior leadership, OD, and hiring managers, indicating there is clearly shared responsibility for developing new talent during the onboarding process. At some point post-hire (3-6 months), after the essential ‘know how’s’ to perform on the job are under one’s belt, motivation to learn may become taken for granted.  Who continues to fan the flames of talent development?  Is talent development a shared responsibility and by whom?

Let’s begin with the learner. Looking at blog directories under the heading of “talent development” I found countless blogs devoted to self-development.  To be frank, my first impulse was to skim right past most of them, because as an OD practitioner and baby boomer, my corporate experience began with answering the question, “what competencies does the organization want to develop?”  I’m not ready to throw that baby (boomer idea) out with the bath water, but upon reflection I think it is more important than ever for organizations to attract, recruit, retain and develop talent who are passionate about self-development and to find out what they want to learn.

Sun Hydraulics is known to hire talent who are passionate about learning through collaboration, and their practice with new talent is to NOT provide job descriptions on day one because a preconceived job description might be too constraining to people’s learning.  Rather, new talent is given a time period post-hire to learn about the company and align their individual motivation to learn with company goals.  What a refreshing an avant guard concept!

Peter Senge says that a learning organization comes from people who are excited and passionate about learning and enjoy learning together in pursuit of a shared purpose. This is the fertile ground for team learning and accomplishing the shared mission.

If people are passionate about self-development, it will be much easier

1) for managers (who are increasingly becoming developers of talent) to engage in conversations about learning and find out what motivates their talent,

2) to connect their interests to learning opportunities and strategic business priorities, because

3) it is these individuals who are likely contributors to innovation as they are committed to learning and continual improvement at their very core.

I invite your posts about learning practices in your organization to develop talent, and in particular learning related to innovation…