Ed Betof, Executive Director - Leaders as Teachers Institute

For the final half-day of the conference, Dr. James Bailey, Professor of Leadership and Chair of the Management Department, School of Business at George Washington University, drew upon his decades of leadership research as well as his editorship of several scholarly journals to make connections between developing leadership potential and today’s theme of “Uncertainty and Leadership.” He shared the research on resistance to growth and change and implications for development as a method of reducing uncertainty along the leadership development path. The final speaker was Dr. Ed Betof, Senior Fellow and Academic Director for the University of Pennsylvania’s Executive Program in Workplace Learning Leadership. Drawing upon his experience as VP, Talent Management and the Chief Learning Officer, Ed shared the work done there and its evolution into his work now with the new “Leaders As Teachers Institute” at the Corporate University Xchange. His interactive session helped attendees think how leaders of history have dealt with uncertainty (including Roosevelt and Churchill in time of war, Dr. Martin Luther King in times of social change, Golda Meir in times of geopolitical crisis) and what lessons we can learn from their actions. His approach to leadership stipulates that leaders have a responsibility to teach….values, business acumen…and to serve as role models and that every leader can serve in some capacity. For more information about the LAT Institute and the robust support you can find there for bringing “leaders as teachers” to your organization, visit the Leaders as Teachers Institute.

With rich content, great speakers, opportunities to build networks and actionable ideas to take back, attendees judged the conference a success. Congratulations to the CUX team for a job well done.

After a wonderful awards dinner last night, Day 2 (“Organizational Strategy Under Uncertainty”) began with Vice Dean, University of Pennsylvania, GSE Doug Lynch leading an energetic discussion of measurement and research as a way of mitigating uncertainty.

Dr. Joseph Ryan, Adjunct Professor, the Wharton School, University of  Pennsylvania, shared with us the value of strategic thinking and the  use of “business horizons” to anticipate the road ahead.   Very helpful was his coverage of consulting skills that enable CLOs to  serve as a “trusted advisor” to senior executives.

After GLA-led discussions about application to our respective organizations, Dr. Mike Barger of JetBlue University (and a recent  graduate of the Penn doctoral program in workplace learning leadership), shared his doctoral dissertation research, which addresses the use of a Learning Balanced Scorecard as a strategy to succeed in times of uncertainty. Read more »

After an informal reception last night in the Library at the Inn at Penn, the Global Leadership Congress opened today to a sold out group of 120 learning leaders from around the world.   After Chairman Alan Todd welcomed the group, Dr. Alexandra Michel (Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California) began the discussion of the research she and Dr. Stanton Wortham (Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania) used as the foundation of their book, “Bullish on Uncertainty.”  She (and later in the day Dr. Wortham) made a compelling case for going against the natural inclination to decrease uncertainty in order to deal with changing landscapes and environments and to actually amplify uncertainty.   Based on a multi-year study of two investment banks, they offered evidence to support the more effective development of new hires who needed to quickly figure out how to use the organizational resources available to survive and, after a six-month period of inculturation, begin to thrive…even in the exceptionally challenging world of investment banking on a global stage.   They cited significantly lesser turnover rates, greater client retention as well as increased financial performance at the investment bank which chose to create an environment where new hires had to break the framework within which they had learned to operate and embrace the more “chaotic” environment and embrace the team and its collective wisdom.  In addition to the two banks studies, they shared successful examples of this approach at IDEO, US Army officers in Iraq and Google.  Following each of the presentations, attendees had an opportunity to work in small breakout sessions with Global Learning Advisors (GLAs) who fostered dialogue about taking these concepts and applying them at the organizations where they serve.

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Think your learning organization is the best?   2009 BEST award-winning companies include Wipro Limited, sanofi-aventis, Sun Microsystems, BB&T, Gables Residential, Deloitte Touche Tohmastu, CIGNA, Trust Company of the West, LaQunita, Infosys Technologies, Whirlpool, Luxottica Retail and InterContinental Hotels.

Applications for 2010 are due March 31 for the American Society of Training and Development’s BEST Awards (Building talent, Enterprise-wide, Supported by the organization’s leaders, fostering a Thorough learning culture) which recognize organizations that demonstrate enterprise-wide success as a result of employee learning and development. Since 2003, ASTD has honored the learning functions of companies from around the world for that demonstrate excellence these areas:

• learning has an enterprise-wide role (executive team involvement, business solutions focus, strategic alignment)
• learning has value in the organization’s culture (learning opportunities for employees, C-level involvement, learning for growth of the organization, innovation)
• learning links to individual and organizational performance (alignment, efficiency, measurement)
• investment is made in learning and performance initiatives

For more detail, visit http://www.astd.org/ASTD/aboutus/AwardsandBestPractices/bestAwards/
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With one week to go until the GLC, we are busily tending to last minute details, finalizing the program, printing (maybe in 2011 the whole program will be delivered on iPads?), packaging up the awards (unveiling March 1st evening at the Black Tie Gala), and getting ready to network and learn.  Needless to say, excitement and urgency fill the air.

You are hereby invited to attend The Social Learning Roundtable on Wednesday, March 3^rd, from 1-4pm, immediately following the Global Leadership Congress.  Our Social Learning Executive Council has been participating in research for the past 6 months and we will be presenting results, diving deeper into success stories, and discussing strategies and tools for enabling social & informal learning.

Social Learning is a complex topic, but one that has transformative potential.  Imagine a Facebook for Corporate Learning.  Imagine a private, secure professional network with easy access to experts, knowledge communities, best practice repositories, a Private-YouTube-for-You.  Imagine cohort communities, like a team of new leaders, working together collaboratively on action-learning projects across the globe, as part of a leadership development program.   Read more »

Congratulations to the elite learning functions in companies around the world honored by Training magazine on their 10^th annual Training Top 125 List. Outstanding learning teams were honored at an awards gala during the Training 2010 Conference & Expo in San Diego earlier this month. Hats off to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ third #1 spot in a row! Two companies, General Mills and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, were added to the Training Top 10 Hall of Fame, joining such legendary training organizations as Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, IBM, KLA-Tencor, PfizerRitz-Carlton Hotel Company and . These “Hall of Fame” companies all held Top 10 spots on Top 50, Top 100 or Top 125 lists in four consecutive years. In addition, several companies were cited for “Best Practices” and “Outstanding Training Initiatives.” For the full list of the Top 125 List winners: http://www.trainingmag.com

Next week is the eagerly awaited 11^th annual Corporate University XChange Learning Excellence and Innovation Awards. Finalists will learn how they fared during a gala dinner at the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, held during the annual CUX Global Leadership Conference. These awards, the longest running program in the talent management space, recognize outstanding work in corporate learning and talent development in these categories: Alignment, Alliances, Corporate/College Partnerships, Launching, Leadership Development, Learning Technology, Measurement and Marketing. Finalists include: Accenture, AGCO, AlliedBarton, Amil, Amway, Boeing, CA, CSC, EMC, Famers’, gemalto, Hewitt, Intel, jiffylube, Kelly Services, MasterCard, MillerCoors, Plastipak, Corporate University of Providence, Quintiles, Raytheon, Texas Health Resources, Tiffany & Co and Turkcell AKademi.. Congratulations to all of the finalists. To learn more, visit the CUX site: http://www.corpu.com/

Just a reminder….the 2010 Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Awards deadline is fast approaching (March 5^th). Now in its 16^th year, these awards will recognize achievement in twelve categories including “Best Custom Content,” “Best Integration of Learning and Talent Management,” “Best Use of Mobile Learning,” “Best Use of Virtual Worlds for Learning,” and “Best Use of Web 2.0 Tools for Learning.” For more detail, visit http://www.brandon-hall.com/

By now you are all convinced that, with regard to today’s business environment, uncertainty is the new norm, so we know that organizations need to change and adapt to survive and thrive.  If you are a learning leader in a dynamic organization, I’m pretty sure you are looking for answers to tough questions like:

• How should we change the way we develop leaders, to better prepare them for success in uncertain times?
• How can I best align my learning strategy and budget to drive improved business results when circumstances change?
• How can I build a culture in my organization that thrives on and doesn’t fear uncertainty?

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As I mentioned in my last post, we are honored to have one of the leading learning thinkers in the world as this years Academic Director.  Stanton Wortham is one amazing individual.  His stellar academic career has taken him from Swathmore to Bates to Chicago to Penn, where he has accumulated a 19-page CV filled with peer-reviewed articles in refereed journals.  In short, Stanton is recognized as a rock-star all over the world by learning researchers and theorists, his peers who are shaping the future of how mankind learns.

What’s more interesting about Stanton, particularly for Corporate Learning Leaders, is that he has a passion for studying business organizations in the context of learning.  Not only does he teach in Penn’s Doctoral program for Corporate Learning Leaders (“The CLO Program”), he has also spoken regularly at Elliot Masie’s Learning conference earning high marks from participants.  And if that’s not enough, Cambridge University Press just published his book, “Bullish On Uncertainty”, which he co-wrote with Alexandra Michel, where they provide ethnographic evidence showing that you can build a corporate culture that actually thrives on uncertainty.  A culture that can learn, adapt, and improve by preparing people for the un-preparable. Read more »

For those of you who haven’t been to the Global Leadership Congress (“The GLC”), I thought I’d give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we put the event together and why this event is different from most others. We want to make sure that we make the best use of everyone’s time, allow for breakthrough thinking to occur, and stay focused on the annual theme, which for 2010 is “Uncertainty”.

To keep the program on-target for global learning executives, we start by hand-picking 10 CLO’s to serve as Global Learning Advisors to the event.  These folks are known for the innovations and contributions they’ve made to the learning industry. Suffice it to say that it is hard to get one of these positions and we are honored to have them provide input, thoughts, and advice on what they’d want from an Ivy League executive education experience. Read more »