Training Industry Quarterly - Spring 2009 - (Page 3)

AT THE EDITOR’S DESK | DAVID J. DEFILIPPO AS THE COACHES OF OUR COMPANIES, WE RUN OUR TEAMS THROUGH NECESSARY DRILLS AND PACES. DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC? “People love to believe in heroes and magic (and so do investors)— but it’s time to focus on getting the basics right.” – Charlie Jacklin, CEO Mellon Capital Management, March 2009 This Month’s Guest Editor David J. DeFilippo is vice president and director of Learning & Organizational Development at BNY Mellon Asset Management and is also a member of the BNY Mellon Asset Management Operating Committee. He formerly led Learning & Development for the Wealth Management group at Bank of America. Prior to that he held similar roles at Capital One Financial and Comcast. E-mail Dave at david.defilippo@bnymellon.com. Know someone who’d make an outstanding guest editor? Interested in becoming one yourself? Contact us at editor@trainingindustry.com. As we continue to weather the current economic storm and approach Spring, this quote from my colleague, Charlie, seemed very appropriate. The challenges are daunting—an unprecedented worldwide economic downturn, rising unemployment, baby boomers who are slated to exit the workforce at a historic rate (or so they thought) and by all accounts a sense that the current situation will become worse before it gets better. While conducting our 2009 operating plan for Learning & Organizational Development, my team and I spent some time identifying the priorities that would be the most useful to business partners and employees by way of professional development in 2009. In doing so, we determined that what we need to do is to focus on the fundamentals—and for us the core fundamentals are performance, coaching and leadership. Having started my career as a high school teacher and track coach, I am reminded that in the most basic terms my primary responsibility was to bring out the best in our team, both individually and collectively. At our first practice session of the season, before we stretched a muscle or ran a lap, I would hand out index cards and ask everyone on the team to write their response to this one question, “What do you want to accomplish this season?” After collecting all of the index cards, our coaching staff would meet to review the responses, assess our talent for the dozen or so events and then try to determine the best way to coach the team to maximize everyone’s potential. Our final step was to meet with our student captains and ask them what they wanted their team to stand for. Getting the team to think about and articulate their goals for the season gave the coaching staff insight into what the team would need from us in terms of coaching and leadership, and a valuable perspective on how best to push these student-athletes to new heights and pull them up when they needed help. As the coaches of our companies, we are uniquely positioned to run our teams through necessary drills and paces as they build capability for competitive advantage in our respective industries and by continuing to stem the tide against our biggest adversary, a weak economy. Additionally, we provide the ongoing performance assessment and feedback to further build our organizations’ strengths and shore up gaps that may be getting in the way of our team’s best performance. I remember 20-plus years ago when I was a coach, there was one track meet when we were tied going into the last event, the 4x400-meter relay, which entails passing the baton four times. I knew that our team did not have the speed of our competitor from a talent perspective. However, every day we had a ritual of doing 10 baton handoffs to keep this skill fresh. Coming into the last handoff exchange slightly ahead of us, the other team dropped the baton, giving us the opening to win that event and the meet. This practice should be front of mind as we consider our organization’s talent strategies and the maze of issues that have entered our field over the years. I prefer to remind myself of the elegant simplicity of our roles, thereby bringing it back to basics of performance, coaching and leadership. As Charlie said, it’s not about magic, it is about focusing on what matters—the basics—and sometimes just not dropping the baton. 3 Training Industry Quarterly, Spring 2009 / A Training Industry, Inc. ezine / www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ http://www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Quarterly - Spring 2009

Training Industry Quarterly - Spring 2009
The American Heart Association: Learn and Live
Contents
Index
Winning Organizations Through People
The Business of Learning
Learning Technologies
Best Practices for Certification Training
7 Strategies for Employee Self-Development
Learning Today: Collaborative, Social and Learner-Driven
Driving Corporate Performance through Learning Partnerships
Meet Dale Towery
Meet Milynda Weis
The American Heart Association: Learn and Live
Closing Arguments

Training Industry Quarterly - Spring 2009