Future of Learning

This is probably the last update on the upcoming online conference. We are finally announcing the speakers and a bit more about what they will be discussing.

On July 23 - click the following to: Launch the Session

You won't want to miss this ... Intuit talks about their move to outsource learning development to their customers and redefining value of learning. Hearing Dave Wilkins talk about selling social learning solutions. Or Gary Wise talking about selling incremental changes to learning designs on the path to richer solutions. Amit Garg discussing where his innovation team is focusing. Or senior leaders from major training companies talk about the challenges and opportunities in the market. This is going to be really great stuff.

Future of the Business of Learning

Free Online Event

July 23

9 AM - 2 PM Pacific Time (Click on times to see Time Zone Conversion)

Brought to you by: Learn Trends, ISA and Training Magazine Network.
Moderated by Tony Karrer.

Register Here

Description:

Corporate training departments and training companies are facing challenging times. It’s clear to thrive they need to focus on business critical issues for the organization, provide solutions provide real value, differentiate their offerings, and look at ways to provide value beyond being a publisher of courses and courseware. However, that’s easier said than done.

This online event will bring together people with a variety of perspectives on what we should be doing today to set ourselves up for success going forward. We will look at questions that include:

• Is this a temporary downturn or changing landscape?
• How will demand change?
• What will internal or external customers pay for that's not traditional training?
• What's already selling today?
• What business models, products, companies should we be watching?
• What should we be doing today to be in position for the future?

Panel #1 - Industry Perspectives

9 AM - 10 AM Pacific Time

This distinguished panel will provide overview of the challenges going on in the industry, major trends that they are seeing, what is selling and what’s not, and where they believe that organizations need to go to be successful going forward. Josh, a long time analyst and source for trends in learning product and market data, trends and expert advice, will provide us with perspectives on what’s going on. Paul, a connector between training companies and other kinds of providers and the marketplace, has some very specific suggestions on where training companies need to focus. Lisa, as President of ISA and a long-time consultant to training companies, understands a lot of the challenges they face.

• Josh Bersin, CEO and President, Bersin and Associates
• Paul Terlemezian, President, iFive Alliances
• Lisa Fagan, President, Amplify Selling

Panel #2 – Internal Training Perspectives

10 AM - 11 AM Pacific Time

This panel consists of senior managers responsible for aspects of corporate learning who will discuss what they are doing today and opportunities they see in the future. Gary will talk about his Prepare-Deploy-Reinforce (PDR) model, how it represents an incremental transition, and how he sells to various audiences. Rob will talk about how he sees his offerings transition in the future. Allessandria from Intuit will discuss how they’ve outsourced parts of their development to their customers and have changed how they view “return” on learning investments.

• Gary Wise, Sr. Director Learning Architecture, Cincinnati Children's Hospital
• Rob Robertson, SVP, Learning Technology and Architecture, Citi
• Allessandria Polizzi, PhD, Group Manager, Accountant Training & Relations, Intuit

Panel #3 – Training Company Perspectives

11 AM - Noon Pacific Time

This panel consists of senior executives at training companies who are looking at how they can create more compelling offerings in the market. They will discuss aspects of how their offerings are evolving and the kinds of new offerings they are trying to sell. Ann, who facilitated a session for ISA with CEOs of Training Companies to look at the future of the business of learning, will start the session with an overview of key take-aways from that session. Jeff, Pete and Ben will all discuss their particular perspectives on what it’s going to take to be successful going forward. Because of their very different kinds of companies and offerings, we’ll likely have a lively discussion.

• Ann Herrmann-Nehdi, CEO Herrmann International
• Jeff Sugerman, President and CEO, Inscape Publishing
• Pete Weaver Senior Vice President of Leadership Solutions and Chief Learning Officer, DDI
• Ben Snyder, CEO, Systemation

Panel #4 – Software and Services Perspectives

Noon – 1 PM Pacific Time

This panel consists of senior executives at software and services companies who are trying to create compelling offerings in the market. They will discuss aspects of how their offerings are evolving and the kinds of new offerings they are trying to sell and the challenges they have selling these offerings. Amit will discuss their interesting innovation team that works closely with training company partners to showcase new offerings that the partners can sell in the marketplace such as mobile, performance support, simulations and games, integrated accountability, and social learning solutions. Dave will discuss the challenges and opportunities around social learning solutions. Holly and Monika will talk about capitalizing on development opportunities that exist in every day work environments.

• Amit Garg, Director, Upside Learning – The Training Company Back Office
• Dave Wilkins, Executive Director of Product Marketing, Learn.com
• Monika Ebert, CEO, DifferentLens
• Holly St. John Peck, CEO, Peck Training Group
  

Panel #5 – Discussion

1 PM – 2 PM Pacific Time

We will transition into a more open discussion around what we heard and what we think are some of the important answers coming from the session. We have several interesting folks joining the discussion that I’m sure will challenge us a bit. Some of these folks include:

• Jay Cross
• Harold Jarche
• Ray Jimenez

Too Much Information or a Skills Gap

Wesley Fryer discusses How are you dealing with TMI? (Too Much Information)  (found via Stephen Downes).  Wesley points us to a post by Kevin Washburn “TMI! Information Overload and Learning.” where Kevin points out:

TMI floods the brain with data, preventing comprehension and elaboration, and thus, preventing learning. Jonah Lehrer suggests the danger of too much information is “it can actually interfere with understanding.” Why? Because the brain has a do-it-yourself attitude toward learning.

Wes also asks us to consider:

 current visual list of education applications from the website “All My Favs.” I’m overwhelmed just looking at these choices!

 

This is similar to the list of Web 2.0 tools that I often use in my presentations.

All of these represent potential metacognitive tools and methods.  Life was simple 25 years ago.  We knew how to use the card catalog, journal indices, microfiche readers.  We had quarters in our pocket for the Xerox machine.  We knew how to use Interlibrary Loan.  We knew how to take notes.

It's a lot more complicated these days.

And I think that we need to recognize that it's more than the "Too Much Information" aspect of the issue.  It's really that we need to adapt to new methods and tools.  It's a big skills, knowledge, performance gap – see Work Skills Keeping Up.  And I personally believe that it's a big mistake to Not Prepare Workers for Web 2.0.  It's why I created Work Literacy about a year ago.

Wes has some specific suggestions in his post for how to deal with TMI.

I try to address this through posts such as:

• Tool Set
• LinkedIn Guide for Knowledge Workers
• Top-Down Strategy
• Better Memory
• Information Radar
• Processing Pages with Links
• Networks and Learning Communities
• Collaborate
• Twitter as Personal Work and Learning Tool
• Search

I look forward to collaborating on this very important topic.

Future of the Business of Learning

As part of preparing for the July 23 free online session on the Future of the Business of Learning, I've had a bunch of conversations with CLOs/VP Learning, CEOs of Training Companies, Marketing and Sales Consultants to Training Companies, Industry Analysts, Software and Services Vendors.

I am really looking forward to July 23 when we come together to discuss this. It's going to be interesting. There are some real nuggets that I'm finding that you will hear about. I would highly encourage you to join in and book the day. If nothing else, seeing the Intuit case study to think through and discuss outsourcing to your customers and rethinking return on training investment.

Register Here

There's a bit more detail on the particular sessions via the link above. I will announce the panelists in a day or two.

I felt compelled to capture a few thoughts as I've been having these conversations:

Tough Times - No One Jumping

Statistics are made real when you run into actual examples. For example, 10% unemployment doesn't always translate. Having friends or family lose their job hits home.

When you talk to someone who's training business is off 20-30%, it hits home. Imagine your paycheck getting cut 25%. Actually, if you are a smaller training company, it's worse than that. You likely are now scraping by with virtually zero paycheck. And possibly incurring debt.

At the same time, while we all know this is tough times from training, no one I've talked to is on the ledge ready to jump. Instead, I think that everyone recognizes that there's always going to be need for skill development. And overall, learning is more important than ever.

Mature or Declining Industry?

When I first introduced this topic, I probably should not have used an analogy between publishing and training. No one knows for sure what the total spend on training (using formal learning methods) will be in the future. Will it overall go up a lot? Down a lot? Stay relatively the same? Training is definitely in much better position than publishers who relied on advertising dollars.

I personally believe that the overall market for training using formal learning models is going to be on a long, slow downward trend. We are currently experiencing a big drop (similar to the drop in 2001). Training never quite recovered from the 2001 drop. And likely after this drop, we won't quite recover again.

My guess is that even the most optimistic person sees a relatively modest growth percentage and pessimists probably line up with me.

But what I find is that anytime I say that Training (using Formal Learning Models) might be transitioning into a relatively flat or declining industry – people hear - "Training is Dead." (see Long Live? for an example).

So, please help:

How can I effectively explain that training might be a mature or declining industry and still keep folks listening?

One thing I have tried to do is use an analogy. On a phone call the other day, I used the unfortunately analogy of the railroads. At one point railroads were in hyper growth mode, then they matured and consolidated. Then they were supplanted by cars, trucking and airlines as other forms of transportation. I don't think that any of the railroads managed to really transition themselves into other forms of transportation. It's a classic example of the innovator's dilemma (see The Innovator's Dilemma of Learning). Of course there are still railroads.

This did not go over well. Partly it was that there was a funny moment when I realized how tough things were for the auto and airlines. But also, no one wants to see themselves as the railroads.

Differentiation and Innovation Opportunities

No matter your take on the overall training spend, there's clearly lots of differentiation and innovation opportunities. A lot of what I've been hearing is about successful differentiation in the marketplace. Training companies and internal training organizations who focus on things that matter to organizations or who have offerings that are more than content seem to be having a better time of it.

There's also some incredible innovation going on as well. The Intuit example that will be presented and the implications of it for internal and external training organizations is going to be worth the entire time investment.

Tough Questions – Tougher Answers

I hope you won't come on July 23 expecting easy answers. The core question that I asked:

While training as a publisher of courses and courseware faces an increasingly challenging market, what other things can learning businesses successfully sell to internal or external customers?

is definitely a tough question. ISA did a session in March looking at a very similar question and it's clear there are no easy answers.

A big part of what makes these questions tough was beautifully captured by Tom McKee, CEO of Ken Blanchard,

You can't sell what people aren't willing to buy.

Many of our internal customers are simply not ready to buy solutions that look like something more than courses and courseware. There are exceptions and definitely opportunities for innovation. But realistically, a lot of what we will be talking about is what organizations should be doing today to be in position for the future.

This is going to be fun, hope you will join the conversation.