WHAT ARE HR LEADERS THINKING ABOUT NOW?

Kris Dunn over at Fistful of Talent (Blogger and Twitter) writes this week about HR CLEANUP. As an HR Professional – things you have to clean up after the holidays. What really happened at those holiday Christmas parties?

Tim Sackett at Fistful of Talent (Blogger and Twitter) describes SUCCESSION AS AN ART: Tim comments on the Warren Buffet decision to have Howie, his son, become his successor. He talks about the need for not only competency of a future leader, but also trust. Article here: Why  Successions Can Be Sticky Business.

7 LEADERSHIP TRAITS

Tim also talks about an article he read on Scott Durschslag, the CEO at Expedia. He describes Durschslag’s 3 management traits:

1. Define a clear vision
2. Get the required investment
3. Put great people in charge – and then empower them.

In the comment section of the article, Steve Levy, from The Recruiting Inferno, a follower of Sackett, mentions an article written by IBM CEO Palmisano – on the four questions he asks of every IBM leader. That article “Even A giant Can Learn to Run” in the NY Times is very good.

They are four great questions! Perhaps even better than the management ideas at Expedia.

1. Why would someone spend their money with you — so what is unique about you?”
2. Why would somebody work for you?”
3. Why would society allow you to operate in their defined geography — their country?”
4. And why would somebody invest their money with you?”

DO LEADERS NEED TO BE SOCIAL?

Dawn Hrdlica-Burke over at HR Insomniac asks if “Leaders need to be social?” In her blog “Soc’s vs Greasers: HR C-Suite Snub Local HR Networks?” she concludes “Yes and he needs to do it better than anyone else.”

Jennifer McClure at Unbridled Talent (Blogger and Twitter )posted a blog in November that is a very helpful resource. She lists 10 Presentations – Using Social Media in HR and Recruiting including the SHRM “Social Media in the Workplace” findings from November. The presentations are useful data for today’s HR leaders.

2011 TECHNOLOGY STORIES plus 2012 PREDICTIONS

Matt Lafata from HRchitect (Blog / Twitter) in his weekly HR Happyhour webmingle blogcast hosted a discussion 2011 Year in Review as well as a look forward to Trends and What’s Ahead in 2012. It includes a list of important transactions and mergers for 2011, and is one of the best insight to HR Technology that I have read.

SUMMARY OF HR TECHNOLOGY STORIES for 2012:

• SumTotal buys GeoLearning, Accero and CyberShift.  The organization faces quite the challenge integrating its five learning platforms and Softscape
• Taleo buys Cytiva, and Jobpartners
• Peoplefluent buys Aquire
• SuccessFactors (SFSF) buys, is bought, and buys some more including Plateau, Jambok, Jobs2Web and then was acquired by SAP
• Technomedia (Talent management)  buys Hodes iQ (Talent Acquisition)
• Kenexa buys Batrus Hollweg (Assessment)

The webcast as well as the summary of the webcast lists important 2012 trends:

1. Human Capital Management Software will continue to consolidate – particularly in the ITM suite
2. ITM (Integrated Talent Management) is now recognized in the industry – and marketing will be even stronger on the concept
3. Mobile enablement of Integrated Talent Management with iPad apps, pilots and focus on HTML 5 will be big
4. ITM Suites – and the combining of suites will be much discussed by many organizations.
5. SaaS is now the preferred method for Integrated Talent Management deployment. It is better than using a “capital expense” method, instead opting for per person per month usage fees.
6. The linkage between Performance, Learning, Succession and Career Development is increasing in importance for ITM
7. Single solution recruiting platforms will grow in size and importance
8. Everyone is focusing on Talent Profile data including competencies

I have isolated 8 findings that HR and Learning professionals should be aware of.

• A new low 44.6% of Americans report getting their healthcare through an employer.
• Gallup reports that actively disengaged workers have lower wellbeing than those who are unemployed.
• In April, Gallup’s global employment tracking reveals that 27% of young adults in the global workforce are underemployed. In October, Gallup’s employment tracking reveals that 30% of 18- to 29-year-olds in the U.S. are underemployed.
• For the first time in Gallup history, a majority of Americans (53%) support legal gay marriage.
• Gallup finds that underemployment appears to affect the wellbeing of college graduates and postgraduates more than Americans who are less educated.
• Gallup finds that the world’s roughly 630 million would-be migrants are most likely to be young, single, educated, and relatively financially well-off.
• Americans rate their lives worse than at any time since July 2009.
• Fewer young adults in the U.S. report lacking health insurance since the new healthcare law began allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ plans up to age 26.

To me, these findings are indicative of a few urgent and growing trends:

1. Millennials continue to feel the brunt of the recession. Millennials who don’t have college degrees are underemployed in jobs that don’t allow them to even reach salaries to reach above the poverty line. College graduates settle for lesser jobs – and await the day when the economy takes off again. In the meantime, they are saddled with heavy tuition debts, which require them to delay life by living with parents and waiting for the job of the future.
2. The Millennials size and cultural impact is being felt by the country. More liberal perspectives on diversity will change voting issues across the country. And it is only the beginning.
3. Health insurance, despite the political debate in the country will be a critical issue going forward. As companies provide less and less benefits, two things could emerge. Millennials may ask themselves, “Why work for a large company. What is the value?” And secondly, their dependence upon institutions ranging from parents to the US Government will cause a debated discussion among benefits providers.
4. Immigrants are the backbone of most countries growth initiatives. America is falling behind on it’s policies of welcoming immigrants. We would do well to look at forward thinking countries such as Australia, where the employable population has grown from 10% immigrants to 25% immigrants in it’s population increase. America is running out people to do the jobs no one else wants to do.

The Gallop Poll web site is on my list of regularly followed sites. As an HR or Learning professional, I urge you to follow the trends. The full set of 2011 trends can be viewed here.

How do you think these 8 items will affect the future workplace?

Kutik is the co-chair of the HR Technologies  Conference, a technology columnist for Human Resource Executive Magazine and is the host of the Bill Kutik Radio Show as well as “Firing Line with Bill Kutik.” He was joined by Knowledge Infusion CEO Jason Averbook, (Kutik describes him as “the number one consulting firm for HR corporate strategy and landscapes”), HR technology writer Naomi Lee Bloom, and Principal Analyst and CEO of Constellation (a strategy product consultant) and Ray Wang (covering enterprise applications for HR technology, was an analyst at Forrester).

Here is a summary of the 11 predictions and discussions held by Kurtik and the panelists:

• UNIFIED PLATFORMS, SASS and CLOUD COMPUTING IS VALIDATED
  THE SAP ACQUISITION OF SUCCESS FACTOR validates Unified Platforms and HR Cloud Computing. Cloud computing is the future direction for Cloud Computing. 60% of people prefer cloud as the delivery method. We will be merging people data with enterprise data. Enterprise data should include people data. Every organization will go through some reimplementation and deployment of technology in the next 2-3 years. “Worldwide, everyone organization will revisit their technology strategy. They will revisit the strategy. And re-implement their technology stack. (Jason Averbrook, Knowledge Infusion)
• MASSIVE HR REFRESH COMING.
  Most of the transactional HR platforms are 10-12 year old. We are about to go through a massive refresh. Oracle, Peoplesoft and SAP will all be reviewed. The shift is happening quickly, because of cloud, cloud innovations. Secondly, the purchase of SuccessFactors by SAP will highlight a strategic focus on Social, Cloud and Mobile expertise. (Ray Wang, The Constellation Group).

• CONSUMERIZATION OF HR
  HR self-service is dead, replaced by true direct access to knowledge, content, analytics and the transaction. During the next year, HR will prepare itself for the consumerization of HR including Gamification and meaningful business social interactions. (Jason Averbrook, Knowledge Infusion).
• YOU DON’T WANT TO FALL BEHIND.
  If you are not restructuring and re-visioning, you will fall behind 5 years for every 1 year you wait. New software is designed so that 99% of the software is user friendly. Are you delivering value  in every screen and capability to the employee and manager – in their terms? Not in that of HR. Are you thinking about content, knowledge, HR intranets, which are a mess, analytics at the time of the transaction, the transaction. Are you ready for the consumerization of the application? Are you designing for the employee and the manager so that it is BYOD – brining your own device to work, to complete those transactions. (Jason Averbrook, Knowledge Infusion)
• GAMIFICATION MAKES HR INTERESTING
  Gamification will make the new HR interesting. It will motivate people to want to add information. It is how the new workforce is engaged today. (Jason Averbrook, Knowledge Infusion)
• HR NEEDS TO REINVENT (Again?)
  Almost every function is ill-prepared to support the process and technologies that are being demanded by the business to deal with the workforce issues of today. Going forward, HRIS will be replaced with a function that understands process management, change branding and overall outcome-based storytelling. (Jason Averbrook, Knowledge Infusion)
• MOBILE IS IMPORTANT IN HR
  Mobile will become user’s first experience with enterprise software. In two years, half of mobile phone users will have smart phones. In the future, mobile comes first. (Ray Wang, The Constellation Group)
• DISPARATE HR APPLICATIONS will cause Enterprise problems
  There are new implications of newer Cloud architectures on the long-standing challenges of integration across disparate HR applications between HR and non-HR applications (Ray Wang, The Constellation Group).
• MASTER DATA CLEAN UP
  Next year, organizations will have to do Master Data clean-up. Regardless of your systems portfolio, global data standards for the most important objects are required. Doing analytics on a foundation of lousy data is a death wish. (Naomi Wallace, Bloom and Wallace).
• RIP AND REPLACE HR SYSTEMS
  In 2012, HCM/TM/HRMS “rip and replace” will be happening at a very noicy pace. 2011 was a year in which key vendors ramped up to be vendors of choice when “rip and replace” picked up speed, and their investments (if done well) will pay off in 2012. (Naomi Wallace, Bloom and Wallace).
• NEW ROLES IN HR
  In order for HR to be ready for the SASS model, new roles and responsibilities will be needed. To begin with, the old HRIT organization should be renamed the “HR Process and Technology” Department. Ownership of projects should be centralized. There needs to be renewed alignment between HR and the business. And the skill of “program management” needs to be taught to all HR. Each HR organization should have a “data tsar,” quantative story tellers, process designers, marketing capabilities, social skills, gamification skills and the ability to brand their organization.

What other predictions do you have for HR in 2012? Check back in our ongoing dialogue about changes in HR Technology.

Forrester believes that five years from now, almost half of US workers, about 63 million people, will work virtually. Forrester believes this is a dramatic shift that will “change everything” including IT department needed to create new information workplaces strategies, needed for people collaboration to delivering content experiences to better methods for delivering next generation workforce processes. Matthew Brown is the VP and Practice leader of the Content and Collaboration practice at Forrester. Their content and collaboration community offers some interesting predictions for the future.

The website information on the upcoming conference offers some insights into what a mobile workforce using content, collaboration and social application will look like for the future. Here are some of their best practices worth considering.

BEST PRACTICES from the CONTENT AND COLLABORATION FORUM 2011

SUPPORTIVE STRUCTURES: Companies must create supportive structures for the future world of work. The workforce will be more distributed and more mobile. – Rob Koplowitz, VP and Principle at Forrester

INTERCOMPANY COLLABORATION: Drive groundswell innovation, using social tools, information management practices and capability for intercompany collaboration. – Leslie Owens, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research

USE TECHNOLGY TO ANALYZE INTERACTION: Analyze employee and customer conversations for better product innovation, improved processes and competitive differentiation. – Leslie Owens, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research

CREATE INTEGRATED CONTEXTUAL EXPERIENCES: The value of Enterprise 2.0 is creating an integrated contextual experience that enables people to spend less time shifting between technology silos and getting more time getting work done. – Shiela Jordan, Vice President of Communication and Collaboration IT at Cisco Systems and head of Cisco’s Integrated Workforce Experience (IWE)

FOCUS ON WORKSPACES: Workspaces need to be inherently social, mobile, visual and virtual. Drive adoption change management. Shiela Jordan, Vice President of Communication and Collaboration IT at Cisco Systems and head of Cisco’s Integrated Workforce Experience (IWE)

SERIOUS GAMING: Use serious gaming to facilitate interactions between companies, individuals, partners and vendors. TJ Keitt, Senior Analyst, Forrest

MICROBLOGGING DELIVERS WORKER EFECTIVENESS: Use microblogging tools like Yammer to help with worker effectiveness by driving expertise across organizational and geographic boundaries, foster innovation and increase collective decision-making. – David Stewart Vice President, Platform Yammer

MICROBLOGGING BENEFITS: Use microblogging for specific benefits to your organization, such as Tieto, a leading IT service company in Northern Europe. Their benefit of deploying microblogging included: 1). visible collaboration and communication leading to project cost savings from duplication of work and reorganization of processes; 2) improved employee productivity for engaged Yammer users due to information-sharing and better access to expertise; and 3) higher employee engagement resulting in a faster onboarding for new employees. 4). Improving vertical communication between company leadership and employees and 5). Providing public record of conversation and 6) reinforcement of success drives.

SOCIAL BUSINESS ANALYSTICS: Apply social business and analytics to a business mobile device strategy to dirve new forms of user experience and productivity benefits for the business and its employees. – Alistair Rennie, General Manager, Social Business and Collaboration Solutions, IBM Social Business.

CONSUMERIZATION STRATEGY: IT needs to focus on issues needed in the consumerization issues associated with mobile devices, including: 1) linking employee mobile devices to the business’ information and process systems; 2) supporting not one but multiple mobile devices, given employee choices; and 3) ensuring that relevant information is delivered as a rich experience to the workforce. – Alistair Rennie, General Manager, Social Business and Collaboration Solutions, IBM Social Business.

MULTILINGUAL CONTENT MANAGEMENT STRATEGY: Enterprises need to determine their multilingual content management strategy by embracing the mantra of “create once, use everywhere” strategy to address the issue of globalized and localized multilingual needs for content. This also includes an adaptive strategy for the multidevice landscape. – Stephen Powers, Principle Analyst for Forrester and Tim Walters, Ph.D, Senior analyst and advisor, Forrester.

GOING CLOUD: Consider moving your email to cloud services, as did Fairchild Semiconductor, GSK, Hyatt, Panasonic and the US Dept of Agriculture. – Christopher Voce, Principal Analyst, Forrester

CLOUD EMAIL: Everyone is moving to cloud, including email and advanced collaboration tools. – Christopher Voce, Principal Analyst, Forrester

TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENTS: Create fact based conversations with your employees by using survey methods with latest technology. Workforce technology assessments (WTAs) take requirements gathering to the next level. – Philipp Karcher, Researcher, Forrester  and Sean Sweeney, Principal Consultant, Forrester

NEXT STAGE SHAREPOINT If you are using Microsoft SharePoint, determine how you will tackle governance, information architecture, and content delivery to support an increasingly mobile and social workforce. – Alan Weintraub, Principal Analyst, Forrester

VIDEO IS HOT: Video! Conferencing, streaming, training, teleprsence – all are tools necessary in the new work environment. Have you selected the right vendors, strategies and cost models? Henry Dewing, Principal Analyst, Forrester and Philipp Karcher, Researcher, Forrester

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES: Create customer experience applications using mobile devices. Jeffrey Hammond, Principal Analyst, Forrester and Stephen Powers, Principal Analyst, Forrester

MOBILE CONTENT MANAGEMENT: Create an enterprise content management strategy for managing mobile content. Pay attention to risk mitigation. – Alan Weintraub, Principal Analyst, Forrester

MOBILE COLLABORATION: How do you combine collaboration and mobile to create “mobile collaboration?” Is your strategy social, realtime, and document collaborative enabled? – Rob Koplowitz, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester and Ted Schadler, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester

PERSONAL CLOUD TRENDS: Understand how the personal cloud market like Carbonite, Dropbox, SugarSync and others are driving enterprise needs. – Frank E. Gillett, VP, Principal Analyst

REMOTE WORKERS: 66% of information workers work somewhere other than the office. TJ Keitt, Analyst and Ted Schadler, VP, Principal Analyst

SMARTPHONE STRAEGIES: One in five information workers already uses a smartphone for work – and half of those smartphones are purchased by employees. Forrester projects 120 million smartphone and 82 million tables in the hands of consumers by 2015. Are you ready for the demand of your employees for mobile content and collaboration experiences?

Go to FORRESTER SEMINAR For more information on the Forrester event.

To lead is to serve. This seemingly contradictory concept is at the heart of Chick-fil-A’s approach to developing leaders. That approach is delivering phenomenal results. Since the company’s founding in 1967 with a single restaurant in suburban Atlanta, Chick-fil-A has grown to be the second-largest quick service chicken restaurant in the U.S., with more than 1,500 locations and annual sales of almost $4 billion. 

The book describes the story of Debbie, a struggling and a failing leader, who learns the lessons of management from her Boss. Miserable with her poor performance, the character of Ken’s Book, joins the Mentor Program offered by her company and incidentally, Jeff, the president of the company happens to be the trainer. She thoroughly undergoes the training sessions where she realise her mistakes. She is taught to be a ‘Serving Leader’ rathar than a ‘self-serving Leader’. She learns the secrets of success with the five steps :

S-E-R-V-E

1. Seeing and shaping the future
2. Engaging and developing others
3. Reinvent Continuously
4. Value results and relationships
5. Embody the values

SEEING AND SHAPING THE FUTURE: Seeing the future does not mean using a crystal ball, but to have a plan and goals as to what the future should be. Have a workable plan and develop the steps to make the plan succeed is how you see the future. The future does not just happen; it is what you do today that makes the future of tomorrow.

ENGAGING AND DEVELOPING OTHERS is a great way to make your future succeed. No man is an island and all tasks go better with assistance. Ask others their opinions and their ideas. Encourage them to get involved in the process towards the new future and help them to succeed in the process.

REINVENTIN CONTINUOUSLY means you must watch for constant opportunities for change and analysis. Just because something was always done a certain way does not mean it is the best way to do it today. Time management, delegation of duties, a shifting of job responsibilities and then new training of team member may be all you need to improve your team and see results.

VALUE PROJECT RESULTS  and building STRONG RELATIONSHIPS may be a new direction for you. Investing in the relationships of those in your team will build trust and understanding between all the team members. When you like the person you are working with, you feel freer to share ideas, discuss failure and find solutions. If your relationships are growing, so will your results. Its easy to value results, we all want to succeed. The harder part of the equation is to build and develop strong, trusting relationships with all team members.

EMBODY THE VALUES in your team members, your relationships and your results for the team. True leadership is built on trust. If you don’t trust the person leading, you will not follow them no matter how great their plan is. To build trust, you must maintain and exhibit values others can relate to and embody. Trust, values and strong relationships are traits of great leaders. Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson all had unyielding values and strong relationship with those they served.
Mark’s speech reminds us well about the idea of servant leadership.

If you plan to implement leadership development programs rooted in western style leadership principles, you will not be successful. Our own ability to lead is based upon a set of principles we have learned from the sum of our experiences growing up. The experiences that a western style leader has learned from is not the same as the experiences by many emerging market leaders.

There are at least 8 key differences that you must understand when creating a leadership development approach and program for emerging markets.

1.  Collectivism over individualism
2. Family vs Corporate mentality
3. Younger Leaders
4. Informal results vs formal results
5. Educational experiences of recent generations
6. City life vs Rural life
7. Diversity in Classes of people
8. Leader hierarchy

 COLLECTIVISM over INDIVIDUALISM: Collectivist cultures in which individuals are integrated into strong, cohesive groups; the group continues to protect the individuals, from their birth throughout their lifetime, in exchange for unquestionable loyalty

FAMILY vs. CORPORATE MENTAILITY: Most emerging companies are run by families, especially in Brazil, India, Mexico and Turkey6, and are typically paternalistic and autocratic. In other markets, such as China, where the state is the dominant organizational structure, firms are generally characterized by high bureaucracy, informal social networks and personal connections

YOUNGER LEADERS: Emerging Markets have the youngest populations in the world. 26 percent of the population in these countries7 is under the age of 14 and 35 percent is under 20. In contrast, it is expected that the total number of people in Europe between the ages of 50 and 64 will increase by 25 percent over the next two decades, while those in the 20 to 29 year bracket will decrease by 20 percent. The age of the population affects how individuals view organizational life and the issues they consider important.

INFORMAL LEARNING vs FORMAL LEARNING: The way individuals acquire knowledge also differs from one society to another. Historically, employees from the Emerging Markets tend to utilise informal learning means, such as family discussions and social interactions. Westerners, on the other hand, are conditioned to utilise formal learning sources such as books and seminars.

EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES of RECENT GENERATIONS: In the Emerging Markets, literacy rates have risen considerably since the 1970s and continue to increase as the local economies grow. During the same period, literacy rates in the United States and Europe have been stable. Just as local governments understand the importance of this change and continue to put great emphasis on education, business leaders should as well. They need to understand what this means in terms of upbringing, mindsets and support systems, and the way in which it influences employee performance. How does a change in literacy rates affect how one should lead the new workforce? Leaders need to look back one generation in the Emerging Market and understand literacy rate impact on society.

CITY LIFE vs RURAL LIFE: It is expected that by 2030, two thirds of the global population will live in cities. Population growth, coupled with rapid economic development, has led to a massive development of new cities in Emerging Markets. In contrast, urbanization is slowing down in the developed economies with people searching for more affordable housing, or simply desiring more tranquility. This translates into increasingly populating suburbs. The Emerging Markets are becoming the hub for innovation, wealth, finance, talent, technology, etc. For the emerging economies, and as leaders of the new workforce, it is important to consider the source for the growth of the cities.

DIVERSITY in CLASSES OF PEOPLE: Until recently, Europe, Japan and the United States were home to the majority of the global middle class. Today, however, as emerging economies grow, a new middle class is rising up from poverty. According to World Bank estimates, emerging countries accounted for 56 percent of the global middle class in 2000. This number is expected to increase to 93 percent by 2030. By discovering this insight into the new workforce, leaders are able to discern the amount of interactions the employees would have had with their brands and competitor brands as a user. Also, as employees are coming into the ranks of the middle class, organizational leaders should reflect on how the values, world views, risk tolerance, power relations, honor, etc. shape the employee, and understand what it means for talent attraction, recruitment, retention and development.

LEADERSHIP HIERARCHY: With Emerging Market employees’ understanding of workplace practices comes the historical dominance of family-business and the centrality of paternalistic cultures. Relating this to the new workforce, Emerging Market employees have a leader-centric mentality. The workforce is designed around the top position in the organisation, and from this comes a centralised approach to providing direction, making decisions and control. This is in contrast to Western multinationals who tend to be employee-centric—the organisation recognizes the preeminence of the employee and shares responsibility and accountability, delegates authority and includes the views of the employees.

Source of some content: Kenexa, “Leading the New Workforce – How to successfully lead.”

The competition for successful leaders in emerging markets will continue to grow. Strong leaders are needed, but using styles that embrace western business expectations with a blended approach of emerging market principles.

TH203 A VIEW FROM THE TOP

On February 3, 2011, Kevin Oakes, of i4cp hosted a panel discussion at the ASTD Tech Knowledge convention in San Jose, California. He invited a panel of Chief Learning officers to give their perspective on a series of strategic learning topics. This is a transcript of some of the converstation that took place during the discussion.

(this is a non-edited document from live notes taken by Rick Von Feldt @hrfuturist)

Tamar Elkeles @Qualcomm, Karie Willyerd @jambok, Susan Burnett @yahoo speaking at #tk11 on their view of where learning is going !

Kevin Oakes (Click to Learn, Docent, Sum Total) Runs i4cp – Institute for Corporate Productivity. Research on many topics.

Dr. Karie Willyerd, Former CLO of Sun Microsystems, winner of ASTD 2009 Best aware. Now CEO of Jambok

Susan Burnett, Chief Learning officer at Yahoo. Also from Deloitte, Gap and HP.

Tamar Elkes. CLO for Qualcomm in San Diego. Been there 19 years. Responsible for all learning and development. Centralized function for 19,000 people.

All on board of ASTD in the past.

Tamar is the CLO of the year for CLO Magazine.

Topics we may want to talk about:

Web 2.0 and Learning

Informa and Social learning

Social Network regulation

Mergers and Acquisition

Mobile Learning

Simulations and serious games

Talent management

Learning Evaluations

What was the best decision you made in technology?

Tamar: Not about purchase. But look at the need and find a solution. We have tried a lot. I wonder if we were too early of our time. Was there a need? Everyone is purchasing new products, but is there a component of is this helping the business? There may have been a few things I put out there that did not have a key business component. Don’t get caught up in the technologies.

Susan: In 1984, I was HP, doing Sales support. We were trying to get the sales force certified. I was leading that effort. But after going on calls with them, I realized they needed something for the “point of sales.” I went to IT and demo’d the Internet or Mosaic. We build the first sales portal. The portal unlocked people’s ability to get just in time info at the point of sales. We could then customize sales literature at the point of sale. It is all about look up. Chunking things. Advancing learning portals. How do you get people at the point of need?

Susan Burnett: Learning is all about looking things up – chunking and advancing learning portals.

Karie: How do we support sales? We developed SLX – the Sun Learning Exchange. We needed something that could deliver mobile content to the mobile sales force.

Panel: Interesting. We ended up building – not buying.

Kevin: The correlary to this question: What learning technology do you wish you never had to begin with?

Susan: I am in LMS hell. What is striking to my about talent systems is how little they are designed for the business process they support.

Audience: So, who will win?

Tamar: Nobody wins.

Kevin: Let me look at who you think are the leaders. Everyone is claiming to be something different. Or grander than their roots. The millions dollar question is, who will win? There is much M&A. Talea bought learn.com. All are designed to have the full suite. The convergence is h

Learning Platforms, Recruiting, Performance Management and HRIS vendors.

Will Oracle buy everything at some point?

Learning: SumTotal, Plateau, Saba

Tamar: What is your issue?

Audience: I am knowledgeable, but know nothing. I want it to eliminate administrative responsibilities, but also be a

Consumer Products Company of 5,000.

Tamar Elkes: The user interface using any LMS sucks. Forget the headache, and don’t purchase an LMS.

Karie: the user interface does not exist today. There are companies that help you. And LMS are database, and get an open source data base to make your user experience the best thing possible. When I took over Sun, we had 9 LMS systems. None were cloud based. We had many versions all over the place. We created a front end with wigets. You could keep building them. Widgets are to our programs, LMS, news feeds. You have to custom build. It is pulling data. Make it the cheapest thing you can pull from.

Susan: If you don’t want open, then look at: Plateau or Sum – and deal with them as a back end. Be cautious with what they say.

Tamar: The biggest issue is that we have talent management process. As you grow larger, and the needs are different,  you have to find elements that help you manage all of the systems.

Audience: What about cloud base LMS?

Karie: Yes, you can configure it. But then it can’t be linked to internal systems. It is hard to channel in communications.  You still need a one stop portal.

Susan: But stop and ask, “What are you doing this for?” Are you really going to track every piece of information?

Tamar: Career pathing is not good in most groups.

Audience: yOu brought up a good idea about growth. We have 200 people. We will get to 3,000 to 4,000. What do we do to deal with immense growth?

Tamar: I get growth. Figure out what you can do to scale. Build for the next five years. What will you build for the next 5-10 years. What is a solution you can create and customize? What is the flexible solution. Many LMS are static. Try to build something on your own. We build our own tracking system. I just purchased an LMS just a few years ago. We were tracking training before that. Now, my staf struggles with the LMS. They are more for us, to get rid of paper.

Karie: It is not what LMS you have. But maintaining the culture you want to keep. I interviewed Tamar in my book. She has an idea called “Fifty Two Lessons.” An LMS should be one of my last thoughts. Culture and Talent are so much more important.

Karie: An LMS should be your last thought. Instead, thinking about culture and talent.

Karie: Consider items like Google Analytics – because it can track their audentity. You can see how long your users stay on sites. What you cannot do is to have it connected to alerts.

Karie Willyerd @jambok @angler: Google Analytics is a great learning user tracking tool.

Susan: Learning and the user have converged. You need flexible, customzed and quick. No LMS does that.

Susan: You want to learn about your users.

Kevin: Let’s talk about Talent Management. I am on ASTD Talent Management committee.

New book: The Executive Guide to Integrated Talent management” by Kevin Oakes

Learning is a key component and critical role to integration.

Kevin: How is this convergence of silos? Is it happenng at all? How is learning playing a role?

Tamar: It is about attraction, development and retain. That is our job.  an…. We are thinking about all three.

Tamar Elkes: Our job in learning is to attract, develop and retain talent. How do we motivate. Engage. Reward. We must thing TM System.

Kevin: most organizations spend time on the front end – the skills and competencies. But once they are hired, the data is thrown in the trash. It is not centralized. So – who controls that? Do you see a centralized skills database.

Tamar: We have that. Some is pre populated. Some is populated by managers. I think that is the responsibility of us. If we need 10 new software engineers, we can search our database. Or we can give them development to get to that area. We want to mine the data about the employees.

Tamar Elkeles: I don’t like competencies. It sounds like evaluation. I would rather see “dimensions” like communication or strategy.

Kevin Oakes @i4cp – There is a convergence of silos in learning. Attraction. Development. Retentions

Audience: What is the size of a company, before you can really track that skill.

Tamar: The

Kevin Oakes @i4cp When do you need a talent management system? When the CEO does not know all employees.

Tamar: When we grew too big, we had so many people that it was difficult to put in so many profiles. We were late. Do it early. Or you will be too late. The key thing is when does the scale become to big of a business need? Boards of Directors are starting to push that. That pressure was not there 5 years ago Not it is.

Tamar Elkeles @qualcomm: At the 500 person mark is when you need to know the talent of your company.

Audience: Starting with learning technology, when there are old school thinking. We started, but it was slow for acceptance. How did you do it? More than LMS. Social media. Informal learning.

Karie: When I market with Jambok, I start with data. Do you know how much people are using it for their learning experience. In less than 3 years, half of our population will be millennials. In the future, they won’t work for organizations that don’t have these kinds of tools. It makes the ahh haa sound better.

Susan: I worry so much about getting people interested in technology. I don’t care about it. I care about winning in the market, getting customers, getting a better business. If there is a way I can show you how to get business results better, would you be interested in that? If I could crowd source content that could help the business win, would this interest you. I know it sounds cliché. I am rabid about it. Start with the business need.

Susan Burnett, CLO @yahoo: I am rabid about the customer. Don’t tell technology in learning. Sell business need. Start with the sales organization.

Tamar: I had a technology department in learning. They helped us move social learning. That is different than IT. Or HR IT. If you con’t have it, you need to have your own technical team.

Tamar Elkeles @qualcomm If you don’t have a Learnining IT team, you loose. Not IT. Not HRIT. But your own.

Susan: If you are a sales manager, you focus on the basics. They have needs like closing deals faster. How to create a bigger deal size.

Tamar: We used Metrics that Matter. It works for us. It gives a perspective on the value of investments. How do instructors compare. Industry comparisons. Classroom implementations. It is from Knowledge Advisors. That is the best thing out there that is a system that you can purchase. We have been a customer for 2 years. We implement for 90% of our classes. It helps me make decisions on my investments. We don’t have people scorecards. We don’t have processes around the business metrics. But there is value of human development. At Qualcomm, learning is a part of our culture. We maintain that culture. We need leaders to become better. I manage the climate process. We correlate stock price as compared to our talent.  My advice on ROI? If your leader is asking you, then already, you should find another job as they may already not trust you.

Karie: The cover issue this month on “Does Social Learning Measure up?”  We use Capital Analystics to look at the variable that are at play. Our learning is that mentors are affected the most – more than mentees. If you do studies, you will find

Dr. Karie Willyerd @jambok @angler: ROI in learning? The first question is, “Is it worth measuring?” Does it really matter?

Karie: How will it inform management decisions going forward? Will we do something differently?

Audience: We are developing a distance learning program. The development of training and content is not easy. No one has time. As experts, what is a good idea for me to move forward to finding volunteers. What makes you want to be in training?

Susan:  The answer are the people you hang out with. I told HP that being in ASTD is my development. I serve with the best people. And I bring back nuggets. You need to get anchor tenants. Kevin called me to be on the panel. If we have dinner together, we learn something. People are attracted to people who give them insight.

Karie: One of the things I am thining about as a new entrepreneur. How do you build community. And the skills it takes to facilitate real live community is different than virtual community. How do you garden and nurish? It is a really interesting thing to begin thinking about! Example – in a virtual communicate, no one is even welcomed. Or nourished.

Audience: For training orgs that are externally focused, how do you do this?

Karie: Yes I did $200m of external training delivery at Sun. We had to worry about the “grey” market. People could undercut us. We had to think about creating value in distinguishing us – better than the grey market. We wanted to be able to connect to our engineers. External people could interact with our internal engineer. We did spend money to look how much impact certification impacted productivity. Example – we found that you could be 17% more productive if you get certified. We connected the user to our community.

Kevin: Here is a new topic: Difference between Training 1.0 and Training 2.0 – how training is shifting. Trainign is not longer the sole provider of content. Employees are. How is that shifting things in inside of your organization.

Tamar: Training 2.0 is what we do. We facilitate knowledge. It is a different role. We don’t push content. We facilitate. How to bring knowledge inside of the organization and share.

Susan: At Deloitte, you have knowledge workers. How do you get their knowledge of the deal? Everyone contributes knowledge at the deal. The incentive was to keep your job. But if you published, you would get knowledge awards. We had a knowledge world.

Susan: At Yahoo, we are not an empty search box. We are now content. We are digital media. We are the largest in the world. On the ousdide, we crowdsource, curate and

Susan Burnett @yahoo As learning, our job is to crowdsource, curate and organize content. Not create it.

Susan: for content inside, we have to as good as we are externally. We need compelling content. We have to kick it up a notch. How to add chats about performance management. Content is co-created. Created every day. Internal needs to add more knowledge. But how do you keep it factual. Does the community get certified?

Susan: We must have credible good content. Everything on the internet is not true. Credible. Real time. Co-created in the organization I where it is at. Then, you must be a different type of learning kind of people.

Content. Crowdsourcing. Co-creation.

Tamar: The hard part is control. You have legal issues.

Susan: You need learning co-creation hourly – not weekly or monthly.

Karie: Why should you go to learning 2.0? The average knowledge worker is spending 20% of their time searching for information. A day a week. If you make it easy to find current updated validated information, instead of chasing documents, you have a compelling business case.

Karie: We added features page or “editors choice.” This is where we can mark what is content you can trust. And be sure people’s names are attached.

Audience: (I work at Sony). Tamar, I know that you sponsor many organizations in San Diego like art museums and music.

Tamar: We think art and music is important. The Qualcomm museum is something I created. It was f 4 month project. I went to our CEO and president. We have been in business for 25 years. We don’t want to loose it. We are 19,000 people. I hired a company that creates marketing material. And a company that does events. Using Disney theme partks to tell the story. I  believe as a CLO, I am responsible for culture. We need to be able to enagage the employee base about the history and the future. We look backwards at the last 25 years. And we also look forward about how we are going to change the future of the world and organizations. I manage our corporate library. I thought I would take a section of the library and create a museum. We have so many things. There are materials. T-shirts. To existing employees. And to future employees. Instead, the CEO gave us a 35,000 SQ feet. The reason this is important is that it is about the power of the story. Who are we an organization.

Tamar Elkeles @qualcomm Learning is in charge of the culture. We must tell the story of the past and the future.

AUDIENCE: If you are building a learning organization from scratch, what would you do?

Susan: I like building them from scratch. Start with building business relations. You can come from technology or sales. But know how to design and think about how people learn. Be an exceptional communicator. All organizations has stuff. What kills learning people is that they cannot traverse through that effectively. How do you find that? It is hard.  You don’t have to be Tamar. But you have to be open and curious. Try it fast. Iterate.

Susan Burnett @yahoo Advice on being a learning leader: Try things fast. Iterate. Ask people what they need. Be curious. Agile. Fast. Fearless. Politically saavy.

Tamar: Find people good at needs assessments. Ask the tough questions. Follow through. Most people in learning are pizza delivery people. Someone orders cheese pizza. They deliver cheese pizza. Needs assessment is important. Consulting is important. Highly flexible in needs assessment.

Karie: You have to really understand your companies culture on who they are going to accept. Inside person? Or outside? In other companies, they want perspective! No matter how good they are, if the culture rejects them, it will be a difficult road.

Susan: “No offense. Nothing you delivering is relevant to my job.”

Susan: When I arrive to Yahoo, we have 10,000 elearning programs. Millions of dollars. I look at them all, and I ask for how many have more than 20 users: The answer was only 20. And when I looked at users, then it came to $1,800 per head. The notion that you can throw stuff out, and expect it to fly, it not right. We don’t have that contract anymore. Learning to the point of need.

Tamar: The number one engagement factor is Career Growth

Karie: The number one need (from all three panelists) from learners? “Does it help me develop my career?”

Susan: My rule is that training has to be less than 10 minutes. No one watches anything less than 10 minutes.

Susan: You are downloading and learning from your apps. And there is no LMS tracking.

Kevin: We will end here. The panelists are here. Karie is doing her book signing in the bookstore. We appreciate it you taking the time.

Forty years later, the power of Facebook brought us back together. And it has been great fun to virtually chat about how our special lives ebbed and flowed over time.

Recently, Kelly announced she was planning to reinvent her life in some dramatic ways. And in doing so, she sent me a note and asked for advice. Usually, requests like this send me in a tailspin to write the perfect response. This time, I decided that in 15 minutes or less, I would write a blog post about the first ten pieces of career and change advice I could think of off the top of my head. It might not be the most relevant or correct. But it speaks to me today.

I would appreciate it if you would also add your career advice tip that comes in to your mind for the day!

Rick

10 Career Advice Ideas – as of today.

1). Write a mission statement about what you think your life is meant to be. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You just have to start with a statement. Do it in the next 24 hours. And then be prepared to keep testing it, writing it and revising it.

2). I love the question, “If you could do anything, and be paid $250,000 per year to do it, what would you do? Anything. You choose!” – Once you know what that is – then find a way to do it, and I believe, that, because you are doing the thing you would be most passionate about, you could make that much money. Or perhaps, because you are doing what you really want to do – you won’t even need that much. Or maybe you will get even more!

3). Pick out 25 proactive people in your life. (If you don’t have that many – then part of your goal is to find them). For those 25 people – send them two things:

1. Tell them exactly what your vision is of your future job, and very specifically, where you need help. Ask them to help you.

2). Think of three things you could do to help them, without obligation. And in indicating those three items, ask them what you could do to help them. In my experience, I am amazed at what the power of “asking for help” can do. People naturally want to help others. We are just not very good in doing so.

4). Live in the future. Not the past. When changing careers, unless it is your specific passion, think about what you could do in the future. Social media, technology, collaboration, millennials, globalization. Individualization. Urbanization. All of these are items of the future. That is where people need help. How will you be a part of the future?

5). Each day, write a list of the obstacles you think you are facing. My belief is that each obstacle has a secret hidden treasure – a bit like a little prize in a video game if you can find a way to capture it. And so, for each of those obstacles, what is the hidden treasure? And secondly, specifically, what three things are you going to do to jump over those obstacles? Write them down. Turn them in to a list. And go get them done.

6). If you are making a big change, take time to live simply. It is a great time to clean out your home – and possessions, in a similar way to which you are cleaning out your past. Take digital pictures of things you want to keep. Print it out. Write a story about each item. And then throw away those physical things. Written memories and pictures can be as powerful as the physcial things. And besides, one day, we will forget the stories of those physical things. They will be relics. Instead, if we have photographed, and written about those items, then they live on with detail forever.

7). I recently saw a saying on a friends website from Og Mandino. This person put it there, because he, and so many people, often talk about what they are going to do, but few ever do it. It is the time to do. It is the time to act. And so, I encourage you to read this prose from Mandino every week! In fact, even better, say them outloud. There is proof that if you say something outloud, even if you are along in the room, then you will believe it more.

I will act now. I will act now. I will act now.

Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success.

I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person. – Og Mandino

8). Take a lesson from first grade, and bulletin boards. Bulletin boards are not by accident. They are visual daily reminders of what we should be focusing on. I loved them when I was little. They are expressive. And representative. I have purchased one. I put of pictures and sayings and items I want to focus on every day of the year. Over New Years, I take everything down, recover the board with a different color of paper, and start over. It is refreshing and cleansing to do this each year.

9). Spend more time asking questions then trying to give answers.

10). Spend each day, carefully asking your soul, “What do you need today?” Be mindful of the answer. And listen to yourself.

Could the same work for planning and promoting learning?

Step 1. Plan with social Media tools.

Step 2. Organizing and inviting

Step 3. Promotion and distribution

Step 4. Optimizing the event for social media sharing

Step 5. Post-even social media communication

Read the article and media suggestions here:

http://mashable.com/2009/04/29/events-social-media/

How could this be used in the same way to plan and promote learning ideas?

But only 30 minutes online was enough to know how the addiction of the Monopoly like game could become addictive. I haven’t been back since.

Today, when Zynga sent me an email, inviting me to redeem 10 City Cash tokens (the value of about $1.50), it prompted me to again realize the impact of this social gaming company and trend.

Inside Network says that “2010 will be remembered as the year that games on social networks became a billion dollar business and transformed the way millions more people socialized with friends online.” However, they say the future is all about “virtual goods.”

To begin to see the impact of how social gaming will have on culture and people, it is good to begin by looking at Zynga, the leader in online social gaming.

Their company video is worth watching to get a taste of their culture.

Here is a summary of some of the key points made by the founder Mark Pincus and his team:

• Zynga’s mission is “connecting the world through games.”
• Social games should be playgrounds for personalities
• Until video games came along, games were inherently social. We would play them with other people…now we think (again) who we are going to play it with – not what machine we are going to play it on
• Social games give you the chance to create new memories and feelings with people that matter.
• It’s almost as if we are not building games, but we are building social experiences
• This is about the next generation of social networking. And we are just getting started.
• We want this to be a movement – not just a company
• We move much faster than most other people are used to.
• Our company is based upon meritocracy. Either you are excited about that or it just fries your brain. It is all about performance, and it’s all about what works. And that is the heart of a meritocracy.
• Build traffic or build revenue
• Zynga is more like a lifestyle than it is a job
• If you produce results, you get a lot coming back to you.
• Social gaming is a historical opportunity. There is no Google of gaming. Everything is exploding around us in terms of virtual goods and social networks.
• This is the big turning point when it becomes something that the public does.
• The size of this is only limited by the number of people that have a device that can access our gaming experiences.
• We can be the way that friends connect with their friends and family, and that is a really powerful place.
• We are going to conquer the world.
• And we are.

This is going to have an impact on the future workplace. New generations will have a new perspective in fun and social interaction.  People are interested in social experiences. Not only at home, but also at work.Social gaming is proof that we went from playing board games with each other to playing with machines, and we are not back to wanting to play with people. What does that say about the future workplaces? There is a desire by people to demonstrate and exhibit their own personality.

If Generation Y has learned to be social through gaming, then how will that culture affect the future workplace?