Training 2001

Atlanta, March 4-7, 2001
This is the photo report. Here is the low bandwidth, text-only version.

Training 2001 attracted a mixed bag of trainers, eLearning tire-kickers, and folks looking for video projectors. Every eLearning vendor seemed to have a massive new booth, more floor space than last year, and more sales people than prospects.

Confusion reigns in the eLearning marketplace. Consultant Lance Dublin observes that fifty different firms claim to be “the global eLearning leader.” Everyone claims to have great content, a learning management system or a close relationship with Docent and/or Saba, and “community.”

Collecting viewpoints for the white paper I am writing for Forbes, I spoke with Thinq, Harvard Business School Publishing, Digital Think, IBM, American Bankers Association, NETg, LearnFrame, Isopia, KnowledgeNet, Knowledge Planet, Corporate University Xchange, Centra, Intellinex, Click2Learn, Deloitte, Generation 21, McGraw-Hill, Saba, and others. Everyone I talked with agreed with my contention that most vendors are still selling training rather than ebusiness effectivenss.

I asked twenty-five CEOs or marketing directors to give me a pitch that would capture the attention of the Fortune 500 CEO who just stepped into the elevator with them. Among the off-the-top replies:

• training customers makes them loyal, is better service, fuel continuing sales
• enables mission critical apps (such as M&A, new product introductions, regulatory compliance, ERP, supply chain, bringing on a new channel)
• do what you do now faster and cheaper but also do things you couldn’t do before – instant rollouts, minimize busywork, improve response time, form global teams
• eLearning now is where e-commerce was three years ago
• cut employee attrition 25%
• you’ve invested heavily in technology & processes; in people to make these and other systems pay dividends
• preserve your intellectual capital and lower your total cost of ownership for doing so
• have your people run your business better
• retool your knowledge workers

Keynote on the future of training and learning

John Chambers (recorded video clips). “eLearning is in the same position as e-commerce three years ago.” Later, he said metrics don’t really matter because this is a survival issue.

Tom Kelly, Cisco. eLearning is required, not optional, at Cisco. No travel, few expenses dictated that. Now Cisco is turning to changing how people learn. They’re investigating games, simulations, modeling. These things will no more replace training that television replaced movies.

John Coné, Dell. The battle is over. “We” are not in control. The learners are. Our job (sort of a hierarchy of objectives to win the right to do) is:

• Talent delivery
• Capture & replicate success models
• Tactical business issues
• Strategic initiatives (e.g. globalization)

The cycle of creating, delivering, and scaling success models is ever faster.

Laura Sanders, svp IBM MindSpan. What image of training pops into your head? Schoolmarm. Training was something done to you. Learning is a competitive advantage – time to performance is the metric. It’s necessary for mission-critical situations such as:

• Merger & acquisition
• New channels
• New product introductions
• Regulatory compliance
• ERP (which changes business)
• Supply chain

This is real – IBM completed 650 apps in 54 countries last year.

Changing role of the chief learning officer

Entrepreneur

Relationship manager                  eLearning guru

Business manager

Cone sees need for “learning orienteering,” helping people find the path through the material, helping them make smart choices. (Maybe I should just go ahead and do this for someone. I’ve been advocating a useful learning-to-learn course for more than a year now.)

Content should be time-stamped. Automatically chuck anything older than 18 months.

In 2005, Cone foresees a virtual coach, perhaps even dream learning.

 
99 seconds of Marc Rosenberg

This is a large sign.

Chuck Fred autographing his new boo, Breakaway, using speed and expertise to deliver value to customers fast.

I'm reading it now and I love it. This could find a place on the Time page on my site as well as the eLearning pages.

Jack Zenger at Provant

Jack Zenger introduced a new offering from Provant, “Manager’s Mindset.”

As one would expect from Jack, it’s an upbeat, humanistic approach to winning the “talent wars.”

The hypothesis is that most managers typecast people as smart or stupid, assuming they’re born that way and will never change. Stupidity becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It lets managers weasel out of responsibility. You try to steal the smart guys from the competition.

The opposite view is that people grow. EQ is more important than IQ anyway. The manager’s job is to mobilize effort, not to put everyone in their appropriate pigeonhole. This changes recruitment and assignment.

KnowledgeNet

These guys are slick. Their courseware is graphics and live workshop (sound only) played over Placeware. They replaced the typical 40-hour classroom experience with courses spread over 3 to 6 weeks. They claim 94% of their learners pass certification exams on the first attempt, compared to 74% in the classroom industrywide.

Jack Zenger

Is NETg getting into driver's ed?

Dr. Donald Kirkpatrick, leading the audience in a recitation of the "four levels." (I am not making this up.)

Dave Barry

Dave gave a humorous keynote at the end of the first full day of conference. He offered a way to put Iraq in disarray and topple Saddam Hussein: We fly bombers over Iraq, open the bomb-bay doors, and drop lawyers on them. If that doesn’t work, we put parachutes on the lawyers and go at it again.

SCORM

SCORM is making good progress; version 1.1 was recently announced and co-labs (which measure compliance) are up and running in six locations. They will focus on the format of content repositories, certification measures, etc., with the aim of being the “Seal of Good Housekeeping” for eLearning.

I am now more confident that this is the way to go.

For something completely different, one vendor was claiming to have an "open" LMS that could pull in anyone's content and BINGO! it's all SCORM-compliant. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Howard Gardner

Howard flashed up photos of geniuses: Einstein, Picasso, Virginia Woolf, Stravinsky, T.S. Elliot, Churchill, Gandhi. Who’s the smartest? Obviously, it’s a bad question.

The common wisdom is that something called IQ is genetic, heritable, and testable. It’s as if they could insert a cortical dipstick and come up with intelligence. The history of intelligence is one of scholars trying to remake it in their own image.

Howard arrived at a new view through examining prodigies and looking to other disciplines. He finds 8 ½ intelligences:

• Linguistic
• Logical/math
• Musical
• Spatial
• Kinesthetic
• EQ/understanding
• Intrapersonal (self-understanding; vital when making decisions)
• Natural (which Howard feels influences consumer choice heavily)
• Existential (asking good questions)

We all have all of these, but in varying proportion. No two profiles are alike.

Context defines intelligence – it depends upon what you’re trying to accomplish.

Roles for former trainers in an individual-centric educational experience.

1. Assess where they’re coming from
2. Match the method to the learner (“broker”)
3. Match the role to the learned (“broker”)

Pareto’s Law (the 80/20 rule)

One interpretation: you can do a lot with a little.

There’s almost an 80/20 type of intelligence.

Character is more important than intelligence.

Lance Dublin

Who among us is not facing as least on of these?

• New way of doing business
• New competitors
• New way of thinking
• New technologies
• New companies
• New organizations due to M&A

In the past we’ve bought technology (IT). We’re invested in process improvement (reengineering). The only thing left is the most important: People.

Problems are:

• Mental models getting in the way
• Lineage/legacy of training
• Market confusion
• Lazy language/confusing the what, how & why

Strategy = organizing principles for increasing one’s odds of success

Deepak Chopra

Job dissatisfaction is a bigger factor in premature death than cholesterol and smoking combined. The most popular time to die is Monday at 9:00.

Corporate success is the result of loyal employees, loyal customers, and loyal investors. With loyal employees, the other two naturally follow. How to measure? Turnover rate is the metric.

In corporations, 80% of people say they’re very stressed, they’ve overwhelmed, they’re out of balance.

The Newtonian worldview saw the universe as objects. The number one disease in the country is addiction – to drugs, to sex, to work, whatever. But it’s not really a world of objects.

Physics tells us the physical world is not physical. It atoms. Look close and you find it’s information and energy, nothing more. There’s no there there.

Every year 98% of the atoms in our bodies are replaced. Every two years, we have an entirely new set of atoms. How to memories get transferred? Where are they? It’s soul food.

Synchronicity, i.e. unlikely coincidence, results from nurturing meaningful relationships. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The Temptations

SmartForce sponsored an evening with The Temptations. The group is a little like the ever-changing human body described by Deepak Chopra. One Temptation drops out; a newcomer takes his place. They’re still the Temptations but little of the original group remains.

Here's Jon Levy, pointing at the Westin Peachtree Hotel.

Notes to future Atlanta travelers:

1. MARTA runs from the airport to downtown or Buckhead faster than the shuttles. And it costs only $1.75.
2. March can be cold here. Wind-chill temp of 8^o last night. Brrrr.