LearnCentrix - best practices

Must Learning Leaders Provide Tools to Equip Sales Force?

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 15:47:10 -0700

I must disagree with an article I read today on CLO magazine's site. It says that sales reps don't prepare enough before a sales call. And somehow the make the stretch that the training department should be doing more or better to fix this problem.

My goodness! It's not the trainer's fault. It's not a factor of instructional design. I've spent a good deal of my career in some form of sales, and I can tell you that sales people wouldn't take the time if you handed them all the info on a silver platter.

This is just another case of someone thinking that training is the solution to a process or personality problem.

Leading Corporate Learning Into the Future

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 12:12:40 -0700

Wednesday, December 14, 2005 – 11 a.m. Pacific/2 p.m. Eastern
Click here to register for this event

Corporate learning officers know that the workforce has changed, and so have their job demands. The workforce of tomorrow will have to be savvy at processing and synthesizing diverse information to understand current conditions and remain flexible in the face of certain change. CLOs need to offer future-focused education programs that prepare thinkers and leaders to support their companies. It’s not just about skills—who can predict what skills will be required tomorrow in a quickly changing world? It’s about leadership, team-building, change management and flexibility. This e-Seminar will address how CLOs can adapt their functions and departments to the requirements of dynamic change in order to better serve their companies.

e-Learning for Certification Programs

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 08:02:05 -0700

I have personally witnessed an ever increasing number of customers interested in using LearnCentrix as a tool for certification. Basically, companies are wanting to provide a certain amount of online training for their proprietary products and services. And the key piece of the certification program is to have students pass exams of 50-100 questions. Thus, if students can pass the test, they are certified.

That seems pretty prudent. It also seems to be a perfect fit for online training tools like LearnCentrix. Of course the tool can provide randomization of the questions, different subsets of questions selected for each student, tracking of how each student responded, scores, averages, etc. But one objection has been raised lately....cheating.

2005 CLO Industry Report

Fri, 25 Nov 2005 15:58:50 -0700

The CLO Breakfast Club presents an environment for local learning executives to discuss the issues that drive enterprise education, share best practices and analyze the strategic alignment of business goals and workforce education. During this CLO Breakfast Club presentation, CLO editors and learning industry thought leaders will reveal and discuss results of the CLO 2005 Business Intelligence Industry Report to help executive attendees benchmark their learning and development initiatives.

Thursday, December 8, 2005
6:45 am, Mountain Standard Time

https://webexevents.webex.com/webexevents/onstage/g.php?d=661814202&t=a&SourceId=clo128

Raving, Ranting & Ragging on e-Learning

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 12:26:30 -0600

Here's to eLearning! Employees can sign-on any time, learn at their own pace, review content that is particularly difficult for them a couple of times and take that final exam with a glass of wine at home! This is eLearning at its best. It is a win / win situation for both employee and employer. Everybody should be happy.

So why isn't everybody happy? Course developers that put together the content for sometimes hundreds, if not thousands, of online students have not been trained in eLearning course development. The end result is that you have the same paper manual, probably broken up a little differently for the online system, just now it's online. Perhaps in the "old" days, there was an instructor attached to this paper manual ... now it's just the manual - page after page of text with the occasional graphic. With an instructor, at least you could get a little interactivity. Now, it's dry as toast and a student's retention level is about as long as a kid in kindergarten.

ROI Presentation from Patrick Hernandez

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 09:29:03 -0600

Patrick Hernandez is the VP of Organization Learning/Talent Development at Time Warner. He presented a complex process that he guided at TW where the senior executives (especially the CFO) were specifically engaged during a two-day offsite retreat to align the company's strategic objectives to the learning function. It was fascinating to see that a large company actually took training that seriously. They invested heavily into new assessment of employee capabilities. They refocused the funding on 4 key areas of employee families that made the biggest impact on shareholder value. I will write more later when I get a copy of Patrick's presentation.

Training ROI

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 08:43:53 -0600

Last night I was the panel moderator at an event hosted by the ASTD Rocky Mountain chapter in Denver. The event was titled: Training and ROI: The Inside Story The two key questions addressed were: 1. How do you link training results to business initiatives? 2. How do you successfully measure ROI? The four panelist provided interesting case studies from their personal experience. And they certainly had a diverse background and work in very different environment. The evening proved once again that ROI is elusive. It is complex. It means something different to each person. In this posting I will highlight one of the panelists. Deborah Wiest is the Senior Director of Training at DirecTV. Her presentation was titled: "Begin with End in Mind - Linking Training to Business Results". Deborah shared a specific example where her company was struggling with call center inefficiency. So, the training team analyzed the situation and got management agreement on a key solution: increase first call resolution. With the business result clearly defined and agreed upon, the team determined several "contributing factors" to the result. Then each contributing factor was analyzed to see what particular knowledge was needed to impact that factor, and thus, affect the business result. The process was not simple and certainly not easy. Here are some of the team's actions:

Gather current state pre-intervention data such as call transfer patterns, number of transfers, etc.
Determine transfer reduction opportunities
Create/deliver performance-based skills training and support content targeted to the transfer reduction opportunities
Monitor and track performance results (post-intervention data)
Evaluate and communicate performance results
Identify cost savings and other benefits via a scorecard
Modify and refresh training based on the results and ongoing metrics
But Deborah states that more important than the actual steps to the process were the relationships. She deliberately and systematically went to all the managers and supervisors in the call center organization and made friends. She needed to understand each stakeholder's personal needs and get their buy-in to this project. So, as much as we hate to think of training people degrading themselves like salespersons, that's essentially what allowed Deborah to achieve a significant ROI for her company. Deborah granted me permission to publish a summary of her presentation. I have asked her if she would like to join our community. Perhaps she can shed more light on her ROI experiences. And maybe I can get some actual ROI cost savings from her. There were other true stories she shared with the audience that I haven't recounted. I will post more about the other panelists and their ROI presentations as I receive permission. The gold nuggets from Deborah's experience:

CLO Magazine on Training ROI

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 18:38:53 -0600

From CLO Magazine, Sept 2005, “Aligning Education with Business Strategies”

“Instead of regarding education dollars as a tiresome drain on profits—the first expense to be cut back in hard times—smart CEOs increasingly see education as a strategic asset, an asset that enhances the long-term value of the business.”

I talk to clients, colleagues, and prospects every day that live in the world of corporate training. This authoritative statement in CLO magazine doesn't match up with what I see as reality. Most of what I have witnessed is a continual eroding of senior executive support for investment in employee training.