Chief Learning Officer - August 2008 - (Page 28)

zational structure, the climate, the culture and morale and make a variety of sweeping recommendations,” Tanner said. “That led to the creation of my position: an ofﬁce to deal with enterprise-wide training, education and professional development activities to assist our employees in their performance and upward mobility.” Tanner, the ﬁrst person to occupy this ofﬁce, attributes his ascension to the CLO role in part to “luck.” He entered the U.S. Army in the early 1980s as a private ﬁrst class, rose to the rank of sergeant and entered ofﬁcer candidate school at Fort Ben- “I’d really like to follow a model where leadership development doesn’t start near the apex of your career, but rather begins when you enter the organization. And we’re doing just that in the department.” – Dr. George Tanner, CLO, Department of Homeland Security ning, Ga. He spent the most of his ﬁnal decade in the service in educational assignments, teaching at the Joint Military Intelligence College. “While in the military, in some ways I was the poster child for education,” he said. “I took full advantage of everything the Army had to offer. I was fortunate to be able to ﬁnish a bachelor’s degree, two master’s degrees and a Ph.D., all while remaining competitive for promotion.” One notable accomplishment during this time in Tanner’s career was writing a dissertation, titled “The Problem of ‘World Order’ When the World Is Your Village Versus Your Globe,” while pursuing his Ph.D. in political studies at the University of Hawaii. This work topped academic content provider Proquest’s best-seller list twice and remains one of the most popular items offered on the company’s Web site. In 2004, Tanner retired from the Army and joined the DHS intelligence shop. He served as the ﬁrst chief training ofﬁcer for DHS’ Ofﬁce of Information Analysis and moved up to become the ﬁrst chief education and professional development ofﬁcer at the DHS Directorate for Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection before being promoted to CLO for the entire department in mid-2006. Since taking on this role, Tanner has been tasked with aligning to Executive Order 13434: National Security Professional Development, a White House initiative signed by the President in May 2007. An accompanying strategy that came from a group led by U.S. Ofﬁce of Personnel Management Director Linda Springer was rolled out in the summer of that year. “The implementation plan put together was literally a consensus document among the interagency members on the identiﬁcation of positions that deal with national security from a planning, policy or execution standpoint,” Tanner said. “It also created a training, education and professional development program for those individuals serving in positions that require knowledge, skills and abilities pertaining to national security.” Tanner’s responsibility involves delivering learning to 208,000 employees, which includes between 165,000 and 180,000 full-time DHS staff, as well as Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) personnel and U.S. Coast Guard reservists. To manage this mission, he established the Department of Homeland Security University system, which was enabled by an enterprise-wide LMS. “That system sets out to link and leverage our existing assets in the department, whether those are training centers, education facilities or professional development programs or courses,” he explained. “The university system is broken down into four pillars: a leadership institute, a preparedness center, a Homeland Security Academy and interagency and academic outreach programs.” Like DHS itself, the university system is a work in progress. Although it’s operational to some extent, the LMS is expected to be fully deployed by 2010. Then Tanner and his team will be able to track, monitor and report on all the learning taking place. This functionality is key not only for the learning function, but also for the larger organization, he said. “We have to report to Congress, the Government Accountability Ofﬁce, individual senators and representatives, the Ofﬁce of Management and Budget, the Ofﬁce of Personnel Management and many others. So being able to slice and dice our training statistics to answer questions for the record is very important for us.” Two immediate priorities for the Department of Homeland Security University system are ramp- 28 Chief Learning Ofﬁcer • August 2008 • www.clomedia.com http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - August 2008

Chief Learning Officer - August 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Connections Business Impact Trends Best Practices Effectiveness High-Octane Leadership Development Leadership and Personality CLO Profile Discussion Groups: Harvesting Value from Real-World Experiences Kimpton 2.0: Discussion on the Web Learning Olympics: Development Through Competition Bypassing the Obstacles to Change Listen Up: A How-To-Guide for Podcasting University of Toyota: A Success Story in Podcast Implementation What Stinks About Webinars? Webinars for Learning Professionals Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - August 2008

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