Chief Learning Officer - August 2008 - (Page 56)

nization’s ability to share and reuse content. Corporations are so content-rich today that it is more important to reuse and share content than it is to improve the ability to build new content. Many leading organizations are delivering tremendously innovative new programs that include blogs, experts online, interactive courseware and live events. Most high-impact training programs will look like this in the future. So What Drives Impact? In this and other research, we try to determine the true drivers of business impact. Through our methodology, we sort through more than 60 possible dimensions of corporate training and identify those that drive highest levels of impact. This study identiﬁes 18 predictors of high-impact learning. (See Figure 1.) If you want to maximize the business value of your L&D strategies in today’s market, these are the areas on which to focus. As this data shows, talent management plays a major role in the high-impact learning organization. Content development and learning on-demand also are critical. But perhaps the most interesting and noteworthy ﬁnding in this year’s research is the importance of learning culture. Importance of a Learning Culture We deﬁne an organization’s learning culture as the whole set of processes, behaviors and investments that support the individual’s and organization’s ability to learn. Organizations that strongly value learning have excellent development planning processes; they commit high levels of funding to L&D over many years, they fund programs for coaching and other forms of informal training and they empower employees and organizations to make mistakes and put in place formal processes to learn from these mistakes — without necessarily punishing errors. Such openness to learning drives organizational ﬂexibility and adaptability and creates what we call an enduring organization. Can the L&D organization create such a culture? Yes, to a degree. A strong L&D organization, with the right leadership, can educate executives throughout the organization about the value of learning and can implement the pragmatic and efﬁcient programs to make learning easy, relevant and available. Corporate Learning Is More Important Than Ever Among the more than 800 companies that participated in this research, we found 72 that were exemplary and met our criteria for high-impact learning organizations. These organizations, approximately 9 percent of the sample, are examples we all can learn from. They include industry leaders such as Citibank, GE and Tiffany. Through excellence in areas such as business alignment, organizational strategy, content development and learning delivery strategy, they prove that a well-run L&D organization can be one of the most valuable contributors to any business. CLO Josh Bersin is the principal and founder of Bersin & Associates, with more than 25 years of experience in corporate solutions, training and e-learning. He can be reached at editor@clomedia.com. WEBINARS continued from page 49 reason to reach out to attendees afterward. Send a URL that houses example, related white papers, links and resources. Chan remarked upon the “Sorry we missed you” message. At ﬁrst, she liked it because she had indeed missed that webinar. She was peeved when the same message followed a session she had attended. It bugged her, she said, because it felt like spam. She also complained about repeated requests for information. When she signed up for the webinar, the organization asked her to ﬁll out a form. That was reasonable. When she attempted to visit that archive or examine other, related resources, the company sought the same information from her. That is not reasonable. Webinar Upgrade? Walt Disney Co.’s ABC News is close to scrapping the webinar format for the daily “World News Webcast,” its online version of the evening news. When reporting on this in the Wall Street Journal on June 11, Rebecca Dana identiﬁed the “World News” problem as incongruence with old media models. Web users prefer to click around at will rather than be escorted through a Charles Gibson-led tour of the news. Admittedly, the webinar is a Web 1.0 strategy. People with messages package them for distribution to others. They control those messages, and those who want them elect to get them, either synchronously or asynchronously. My two most recent public webinars attracted more than 400 people. In our business, free webinars retain their allure. Webinars often are appreciated for their limitations. They are not instruction with structured presentation, expectations for effort and performance, and practice and feedback. They are not personalized coaching. They start and they end. One hour. Most of the time, no money is exchanged. Nobody knows what else might be occupying you throughout. There is no homework. But webinars could be more Web 2.0 in nature. And in some cases, they should be. Imagine if the sessions were just the beginning of conversations and debates. Imagine if they were jumping-off points for projects, with feedback delivered by peers and experts. Imagine if participants volunteered to offer subsequent sessions based on that initial offering. Imagine if they were part of a blended system with blogs, e-coaching and even face-to-face events. Just imagine. The webinar addicts’ experiences with ineffective webinars have not turned them off. In fact, both report that their calendars for the next month are chock-full of these online events. While some things turned them off, clearly the balance favors the webinar. Chan and Cunningham hope fervently that the people planning their upcoming webinars will read and act upon the ideas in this article. CLO Allison Rossett is professor emerita of educational technology at San Diego State University and a member of Chief Learning Officer magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board. She can be reached at editor@clomedia.com. 56 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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