Chief Learning Officer - October 2007 - (Page 51)

SPECIAL 5th ANNIVERSARY SECTION The learning organization’s move from a reactive cost center to a strategic contributor to business goals didn’t happen immediately. Rather, it took time — and a lot of patience. that with conservative and humble estimates that are shared transparently.” In regard to the broader issue of talent, learning’s continued involvement isn’t too much of a shock, especially because so many enterprises now recognize the importance of intellectual assets in a knowledge-driven economy. Particularly interesting is how many learning organizations have integrated with other talent functions. “I had the luxury of really focusing on learning, leadership and competency development,” Vance said. “Succession planning, talent acquisition, workforce planning and organizational effectiveness were housed under a colleague. There were some awkward circumstances. For example, we’d be talking about leadership development, but succession planning (which obviously involves leaders) was housed elsewhere, so we didn’t talk about it. “When I left, I made the recommendation — and my staff agreed — that it was time to integrate other elements of talent management under one person. Given the foundation we had on the learning side, we thought it was time to pull all of these together [in Caterpillar University]. So, my successor really has talent management, as defined at Caterpillar. Now, he doesn’t have everything in HR, which also includes compensation and benefits, but you have all the talent management in one place now, which is where I think the profession needs to go.” Anderson agreed. “The whole nature of what we do in the learning space is changing because of workforce demographics,” he explained. “The big issues are dealing with the future workplace and how you shape your workforce development strategy to support that environment. When you start to look at national workforce demographics, we know that the national workforce is getting smaller. If you look at what’s going on across industries, whether it’s the public or private sectors, major organizations are getting smaller. So, how do you optimize the time you have for training and integrate all your strategies relative to the workforce? “I believe that’s the direction we’re all moving in: ensuring very close linkage and integration between workforce development strategy and the acquisition and retention of employees, so that they’re part of an integrated whole instead of disconnected functions that are in different places. The idea of talent management is very real, and I think it’s the future.” — Brian Summerfield, bsummerfield@clomedia.com 51 October 2007 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - October 2007

Editor's Letter Table of Contents Letters to the Editor Taking the Lead Trends Best Practices Effectiveness Guest Editorial Elements of Social Media Arrive on the Learning Scene Trend Micro: Making Learning More Modular CLO Profile Learning’s Role in Talent Management INTTRA: Using Global Learning to Better Enable Talent Management Operationalizing Communities of Practice U.S. Army: Sharing Lessons from the Field Looking Back, Moving Forward Leveraging Business Data to Develop Strategic Learning Solutions Chrysler LLC: Metrics, Score Cards and Automobiles Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources Connecting the Dots: Recognizing Talent Development Differences at Nonprofits Nonprofits in Health Care: Learning at ENH Case Study Business Intelligence Case Study In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - October 2007

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