Measuring The Impact Of Leadership Development: Getting Back To Basics

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by Larry Clark | September 4, 2018

In the 60-plus years since Donald Kirkpatrick published his landmark dissertation on the four levels of learning evaluation, there is still great debate about our ability to measure the impact of leadership development. The debate is understandable—it’s much easier to measure things with a direct result, like reducing errors in a manufacturing plant, or improving first call resolution in a call center. Pick the right metric, assess before and after training, have a control group, minimize the impact of special variables … the process is fairly straightforward. But leadership development feels like a different animal that shouldn’t be held to […]

Back To School: Critical Capabilities For The Leaders Of Today And Tomorrow

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by Deanna Foster | August 29, 2018

I recently attended parent orientation at the college my daughter will be attending this fall. The two-day program provided practical information, insights into the student experience, and information on the academic landscape. Most sessions were designed to reassure us that our newly minted high school graduates would not only survive, but also thrive as freshmen, provided we do our part and stay out of their way. Others were designed to shift our mindsets about the goals of a college education in the 21st century, a useful adjustment for an audience whose graduations occurred in the 20th century. One session in […]

What Adult Learners Want: Takeaways From D2L’s Fusion Conference

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by Jennifer Long | August 24, 2018

My colleague Ron MacLean and I recently journeyed down to Houston, Texas to attend our partner D2L’s Fusion conference. The Enterprise track – a small, intimate group of clients – came together from several different industries and backgrounds to discuss new trends and tools in online education for today’s business leaders. And while we all are tackling learning from a number of different angles – from compliance training to leadership development – there were some common themes that arose as we all think about engaging learners, no matter what the purpose. Here are three key takeaways: Social learning is a […]

Is Your “Vision 2020” Leadership Development Strategy On The Path To Success?

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by Larry Clark | August 21, 2018

I’ve been talking to several learning leaders lately, most of whom have a “Vision 2020” strategy they set out almost five years ago to bring to life for their enterprise. But 2020 is now just months away instead of years, and there is still a lot to do to achieve what we all put in those slide decks back in 2015. Why have we not been able to move the needle as far as we’d hoped? To answer that, we need to think about leadership “strategy” in general. What exactly is it? Is it the product of that offsite a […]

Solving The Too Much Information, Too Little Time Problem In Learning

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by Jeff DeSmet | August 7, 2018

From Binge-Watching to Binge-Learning When school ended earlier this summer, I asked my 13-year-old daughter how she thought her school year had gone. (Being a learning designer, I’m big on reflection.) She thoughtfully replied, “Dad, I actually really liked school … except for the learning part.” It’s safe to say seventh grade did not meet her learning preferences. YouTube and Netflix, however, seem to be meeting her preferences just fine. I have a hefty mobile phone bill to prove it. Now if I can only introduce a little small-bite learning into the time she spends watching her favorite lifestyle vlogger, […]