“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.” –Michael Jordan 

Teambuilding, HCI’s new e-learning track in Talent Development, launches Oct 29 with a great webcast on cross-functional product teams. As talent factors inseparably into business success, the talent that makes up your product teams and the effectivness of your product teams becomes paramount.  Teams that take charge of a product as if they were running their own business is the focus of our first webcast.  Our presenter, Steven Haines, author of  “The Product Managers’ Desk Reference” will share how cross-functional product teams meet the business challenge posed by Jim Collins…combining discipline with entrepreneurship as the alchemy of good performance.

HCI members we look forward to your insights, comments and questions…

What are the challenges product teams face (from HCI members):

“Beasts” (challenges interdisciplinary product teams face)

Question: lack of corporate vision

Question: disaparate experience levels and decision rights among functions

Question: In so many cases, the project/product is just one of many priorities - for the dedicated core team members as well as the associate and extended team members. competing with the other projects for resources is very tough
stion: team members don’t follow through with actions. they dont know how to begin.

Question: Challenges commonly faced are individual agendas and bureaucracy to get things done (too many layers for approval

Question: indecision by executives. constantly changing directions

Question: Commitment of resources - dollars and material resources needed to move at timetable needs.

Question: Resource contraints and scope creep

Question: Motivation towards reaching a common goal

Question: We have a direction but internal issues dealing with accepting new direction.

Question: short term view; lack of a sense of urgency; tunnel vision or lack of a comprehensive view of how the projects fit within the context of the whole

Question: beasts are jealousy, territoriality, inadequate commuications, unresolved conflicts, a culture that works against working in teams and more

Question: Execution on timeline

Question: Poor disemination of information.

Question: We have a lot of them. Top down planning by management that does not want to invest in the business, yet looks to us for revenue growth. People opposed to change, Lack of analytical and problem solving skills. Departmental goals given higher priority than company goals.

Thinking diversity (the different ways people think) creates an environment that realizes “maximum value,” in individuals and teams.   Not surprisingly managers are a catalyst to encourage thinking diversity, often leading to break-through innovation.    If you’re a manager of a team or a member of a team with diverse perspectives, we hope you’ll weigh in on our webcast and participate in this post-webcast blog discussion with our presenter Nick Pothecary.

HCI member asks: What are 2-3 things a manager can do to boost the thinking diversity in their teams?

A point made by presenter 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.”   Presenter Jeanne Meister added 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?  

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

HCI members, please share your related thoughts and questions 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:

 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 related ideas, hope you’ll visit the blogs of each of today’s presenters  Jeanne Meister  and Enzo Silva.  

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

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?

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…