Chief Learning Officer - December 2008 - (Page 21)

“Anything that doesn’t support the business will be subject to intense scrutiny. What can’t be articulated as driving business will be scrapped.” – Rebecca Ray, Senior Vice President, Global Talent Management and Development, MasterCard Improving Business Acumen During the past few years, business acumen increasingly has been acknowledged as a core competency for effective chief learning ofﬁcers because it’s the underpinning of alignment and effective measurement, said Rebecca Ray, senior vice president of global talent management and development at MasterCard and Chief Learning Ofﬁcer magazine’s 2008 CLO of the Year. “As a profession, we need to increase our business acumen and truly understand the industry of our company, its competitors, its value proposition, its products and services,” she said. “We must plan and execute against business metrics and articulate the impact in business terms. We must position ourselves as a business partner committed to driving results. We must see far down the road and be the thought leader our business partners will need.” Ray predicted that the learning industry will see increased use of social networks and user-generated content due to demographic and technology changes. The challenge for CLOs is to stay ahead of these technical trends and also demonstrate their value as learning solutions. “Anything that doesn’t support the business will be subject to intense scrutiny,” she said. “What can’t be articulated as driving business will be scrapped.” Riding Out the Perfect Economic Storm Economic troubles have dominated discourse in the business world lately, and for good reason. The global economy is facing the most disconcerting developments in the past 25 years, and perhaps even since the 1930s. These problems will preoccupy learning leaders in the near future, said Ed Cohen, CLO at India-based Satyam Computer Services. “Throughout this period of economic uncertain[ty], we will be distracted and sometimes overwhelmed as we strive to successfully help our people weather the economic storm,” he explained. “We all need to keep in mind that there is another storm waiting, brewing and growing. [It] is only slightly delayed as a result of the current economic storm. This storm has been brewing for years and has the potential to derail businesses around the world with potentially greater impact than we are seeing today. “Some are calling it the ‘perfect storm,’” he added. “A perfect storm is the convergence of multiple storms that, when they collide, cause massive amounts of destruction and damage. Retirements of the babyboomer generation in developed countries; aging populations worldwide because of declining birth rates; longer average life spans; a widening skills gap; and insufﬁcient numbers of people entering the workforce are all factors which, when combined, are leading to this perfect storm.” According to Cohen, the keys to getting through this storm will be extreme awareness of costs, knowing as much about the business as possible and taking care of employees, which in the end will better position the organization for the eventual upswing. Chief Learning Ofﬁcer • December 2008 • www.clomedia.com 21 http://www.clomedia.com

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Chief Learning Officer - December 2008 Editor’s Letter Contents Connections Business Impact Best Practices Effectiveness Guest Editorial The Future of Learning CLO Profile Learning Opportunities Embedded in Social Networking ManTech Leverages Knowledge Management Approaches for Social Networking Agility Training for the Learning Organization Creating an Agile Organization With Learning 2.0 2008 Learning In Practice Awards Corporate Social Responsibility: How Can Learning Contribute? Union Fenosa Corporate University: How CSR Education Impacted the Bottom Line Training in the 21st Century: Everything Old Is New Again Zions Bancorp.: Connecting the Dots Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - December 2008

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