Chief Learning Officer - August 2008 - (Page 4)

EDITOR’S LETTER Navigating the Dog Days Commenting on the sweltering heat in Chicago the other day, an acquaintance referred to “the dog days of summer.” It was a phrase I’d heard my whole life but never really thought about. For some reason, it suddenly piqued my curiosity. So as soon as I got back to my air-conditioned ofﬁce, I looked it up online. According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, the “dog days of summer” are considered the hottest days of the year. Their name comes from Sirius, the “dog star.” In ancient times, people in different parts of the world navigated by the stars. To get their bearings, they “connected the dots” of stars and created easy-to-remember pictures in the sky. For their primitive GPS system, our ancestors in the Northern Hemisphere drew many familiar animal shapes such as bears (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor), a bull (Taurus) and dogs (Canis Major and Canis Minor). Sirius is the brightest star in the big dog, Canis Major. In summer, Sirius rises and sets in conjunction with the sun. Observing this event, the ancients reasoned that Sirius’ heat was adding to the heat of the sun, creating a stretch of hot, sultry and often dangerous weather. So they called the period of time from 20 days before to 20 days after the conjunction “the dog days.” Their theory was wrong, of course. But the connection between sticky, hot weather and dog days stuck. Interestingly enough, the conjunction between Sirius and the sun has been changing all these years as the Earth rotates and the exact timing of the summer equinox adjusts. Now, the “dog days” occur a little earlier in the Northern Hemisphere than they did during Roman times, and as time passes, they will move out of the summer season altogether. That last bit of information made me smile. Did it mean that centuries from now, people would comment to one another about the “dog days of spring?” It didn’t seem likely. As our understanding evolves along with the universe, this evocative phrase probably will disappear from our vocabulary altogether, like so many other colorful colloquialisms have. Changing language is just one of the manifestations of learning, albeit a very noticeable one. With every new discovery, technological development and scientiﬁc advance come new words and phrases that make their way into the vernacular, until we can’t remember a time when we didn’t talk about things like “texting,” or “Googling” or GPS systems. According to Wikipedia — there’s another new one — freshly coined words and phrases, or neologisms, “are especially useful in identifying inventions, new phenom4 Chief Learning Ofﬁcer • August 2008 • www.clomedia.com ena or old ideas that have taken on a new cultural context.” The authors of the Wikipedia entry make the observation that “neologisms tend to occur more often in cultures which are rapidly changing, and also in situations where there is easy and fast propagation of information.” That pretty much describes any competitive, connected organization in the 21st century. So it’s no surprise that the language of doing business constantly is evolving. But this shifting vocabulary makes the learning curve that much steeper for everyone and your role that much more challenging. It affects both the content you need to deliver and how you deliver it. It affects both the learner and the instructor. It affects productivity and performance. And ultimately, it affects the organization’s ability to compete. So how are you navigating the shifting landscape and changing language in your enterprise? Are you searching the heavens for signs? Or are you investing in your professional development and education so you can guide your learning organization where it needs to go? Are you doggedly clinging to the way things have always been done? Or are you adapting to new challenges with learning innovations that are as exciting and energizing as the new ideas that are emerging in your business universe? At Chief Learning Ofﬁcer magazine, our goal is to help you ﬁnd direction by speaking to the latest issues in corporate learning with a clear voice and by delivering important new knowledge, whether it’s presented on the page, online or in person. Joining the conversation is a great way to increase your workforce development vocabulary. So during the “dog days” of August, I hope you’ll do just that by joining the discussions taking place in our online community, registering for the upcoming Fall 2008 CLO Symposium slated for Sept. 24-26 at the Hotel del Coronado in Coronado, Calif., or by sending me a message about what’s heating up for the learning function in your organization. I’ll read it and respond from the cool comfort of my air-conditioned ofﬁce. Norm Kamikow Editor in Chief norm@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

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.