Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2008 - (Page 35)

10 QUESTIONS WITH DAVID DeFILIPPO 1 What’s most important to a learning professional — classroom/training experience or business experience? 5 6 7 8 What are the most pressing issues on your professional plate now? For me, it’s business experience first, and being really grounded in your business and understanding the drivers of the business. Two things I’ve always done: One is go out in the field and spend time with the employees closest to the customer, so I can learn what the customer interaction is like. Two, I sit down with someone in finance and understand how we make money. Then I work backwards from there, to then go into what are the talent needs. Understand the business first, then you’ll understand what the talent needs are. I think the biggest issue that I’m working on now is really preparing the organization for the future needs of the workforce, that trifecta of leadership development, technical skills and onboarding. It’s embedded in a multi-year plan. Finding the right talent is harder and harder right now. What’s the most challenging aspect of your job? 2 What’s your favorite training methodology? Blended learning with a strong emphasis on on-the-job application and manager support. I know as a learner and I’ve observed this over and over: If the learning is not relevant to the job, we’re essentially not optimizing our dollars and our time investment. And if someone’s direct manager is not involved in that experience, the likelihood of having impact is greatly reduced. The analogy I would use is it’s like a coach on the playing field. If you’re working with one of your athletes, you have to tell them what to do, show them how to do it and give them feedback on what they’ve done. That’s a continuous process that leads to results. I would simply say it this way: I love my work, so there aren’t really a lot of challenges. But in this case we are building a function, so the simple challenge is that we are building a function. There’s a lot to do. The list is long. What’s the most rewarding aspect of your job? The juice for me, if you will, the thing that gets me up every morning, is having those one-on-one conversations with people about their careers, coaching and counseling colleagues on how they get from their current role to where they eventually want to be. Basically helping people meet their potential. 3 What’s your most memorable training experience, good or bad? Do you find the time to continue your own professional development? There’s one funny story that sticks in my mind. One time I was working at UPS and we were opening up one of these mega-call centers, in a brand spanking new building. Nobody had every tested the heating system and when it came on it smelled as if the building were on fire; 800 people had to evacuate the building. So it’s almost like the moral is user-acceptance testing. You have to try it out first before you implement it. We all had a good laugh about it, but… The short answer is yes. You have to find time for your own development and it can be done in very simple ways. In the Boston and New York area, I have a monthly goal of trying to meet one or two more professional learning and development colleagues. That’s a simple way to develop. It doesn’t have to be about going to a class. I meet them through all different channels. If I read a name in an article, I’ll call them on the phone and say, “Hey would you give me 30 minutes?” I’m not shy. It’s about networking and leveraging relationships. 4 Who would you consider your most valuable role model? 9 10 Any recommendations for folks out there – books, partners, resources, etc.? This is a really easy one for me in that there are two. My father has an incredible work ethic which he engrained in me. He also challenged me to find a career that that I could be passionate about so that work wouldn’t be “work.” The second is my college track coach at Union College in New York, Dr. Russ Ebbets. He was truly a coach not just of the sport but for all of us, about getting life skills. He really prepared us as athletes to be as good as we can be, not just as students but for the workforce. He used to have us come back every year for a boot camp in the fall. That was comprised of not just training, but we’d have to read books and report on them. It was holistic education for all of us. I have a quote from him that I use quite often:“I don’t want you to suffer from having permanent potential.” I think that my general recommendation to people in the field and the people I’m hiring now is to spend time in the business getting to know your clients and getting to know what they do and what’s important to them. Then use that to really construct, devise the strategies and tactics that you use to build a learning plan. If someone wants to follow in my professional footsteps, I’d tell them to be sure to… Be passionate about what you do, and do it. I never worried about titles, but focused on the work I wanted to do. When I found that, it made the days click by really fast. Training Industry Quarterly, Summer 2008 / A Training Industry, Inc. ezine / www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ 35 http://www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2008

Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2008 At the Editor’s Desk Contents Ezine Email Winning Organizations Through People Before You Buy… Learning Technologies Games & Simulations: Playing to Learn Designing Learning Simulations: Strategies for Leveraging Failure Business Impact 101: The Value of Learning Strategic Alignment: Transforming the Business of Training Meet David DeFilippo Meet Krys Moskal Meet Vince Eugenio Dealing with Death: Learning’s Most Sensitive Lessons Closing Arguments

Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2008

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