ASTD becomes ATD: It is more than just dropping the "S"

On Tuesday afternoon May 6, ASTD President and CEO Tony Bingham, announced the rebranding of ASTD to the Association for Talent Development (ATD).   An ASTD name change was not unexpected.  Everyone recognized for a long time that this was an international organization that continues to grow outside of the US.  So we all knew the "American" part of the American Society for Training and Development was done.   We also suspected that the word "Training" was likely over as well.   Many of us in the industry had stopped referring to ourselves as trainers long ago.  Our work has become much broader in scope and impact.   Yes, we provide training when needed, but it is just one element of what we do to help people learn, grow, and perform better at their jobs.

The new word added to the name is "Talent."  This was a surprise. Judging by the mixed reactions both at the conference immediately following the announcement and via social media this week, the jury is still out on this one.

Personally, I'm comfortable fitting the definition of the work that I do under the name "Talent Development" but it is not ideal.   I usually refer to myself as a "Workplace Learning Professional."   I see my job as helping people learn what they need to either perform better at what they are currently doing, or develop their skills to be able to take on new roles or tasks so they can grow in their careers.  This will still take some getting used to. There are connotations with "Talent" that don't quite feel like a fit to me.  "Talent Management" as a function inside a business often includes recruiting, which is not something that I do.   "Talent Development" can include many activities that are not specifically learning related, but in which learning takes place.   This could be things like 360 degree feedback, coaching, mentoring, performance management activities, etc.   My team gets involved in supporting this type of activity - usually by helping people learn how to do it - but it is most often led by people who are more likely be members of SHRM rather than what was ASTD.

Still, I feel it is close enough to call what I do Talent Development.  "Development" is a good word.  I do feel my work helps people develop and grow.  But "Performance" is a good word too.  I do help people perform well to succeed in their current jobs and to help my company ultimately be successful.   That would have been a nice word to bring into this change.  And of course "Learning" is my favorite word to use in describing what I do.  I help people learn no matter what their goal is.

Contemplating Learning Content Reuse

In the last few weeks of July, our department worked on pulling together information to prepare our submission for the 2013 ASTD State of the Industry Survey.  Each year through this survey, the ASTD research team captures and compiles information on industry trends and prepares a report that gets published in November.   The report includes information in categories such as learning costs, hours, staffing ratios, content distribution and delivery methods.    All of this information is valuable, but there is one section of the report that has been occupying my mind quite a bit lately.   It is the section on the Reuse Ratio.

The Reuse Ratio is defined as the ratio of learning hours used to learning hours available, or if you prefer, learning hours consumed to learning hours provided.  Either way, this is an efficiency measure that has direct impact on learning costs.   In the 2012 State of the Industry Report, the Reuse Ratio for all respondents was reported as 53:1.  The trend has shown that the reuse ratio has fallen over the last four years while the cost per learning hours used has increased.   In preparing our data for the survey submission this year, we calculated our reuse ratio to be a little more than 8:1, which is alarmingly below the Industry benchmarks.

So what does it mean?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the context of the work that our Learning & Development team does and the state of affairs in my company.   We have gone through a tremendous amount of change over the last few years necessitating the creation of a lot of new, targeted learning.  So far in 2013, my instructional design team has already outpaced the number of new courses and learning objects created in all of 2012 – and 2012 was a very busy year!  We expect the level of change to continue for quite some time in the foreseeable future.   It will be important for us to increase our content reuse ratio as I see this as an indication that we are using our budget and human resources as efficiently as possible.

So what do we do?

There are three key actions that we are undertaking:

Retire unused learning objects in our learning management system – We have a lot of old, outdated content in our learning management system that has not sustained its relevance.   Getting rid of these items will reduce the “hours provided” part of the equation to give us a more realistic picture of our ratio based on content that is actually important to our business needs.   Granted, this doesn’t save us on cost or development time, but it will add clarity to the picture.

Increase reuse of key learning content – Rather than approach every learning need as a new instructional design project, we have a team of Curriculum Managers who are curating content.  They have created curriculum maps for key subject areas that are important to supporting successful employee and business performance.   The maps outline a general progression through the content areas to help employees take accountability for their own development.

Increase reuse of learning assets – Because the high rate of change is expected to continue in our business, we recognize that the curriculum maps won’t be able to address every learning need.   We will still have an active pipeline of learning projects that will require some form of instructional design.  To that end, we have instituted a Digital Asset Management Library so we can capture and share assets such as activities and scenarios that go into the creation of learning solutions.   This won’t directly impact our content reuse ratio, but it will help us to be more efficient and cost effective in design.  And if we reuse our best assets to create learning objects that are relevant and useful, they will get used.  This will increase the “hours used” part of the equation, which will improve our overall ratio.

Five Themes Heard Loudly and Clearly at #ASTD2013

This week was the learning industry’s premiere event:  The ASTD International Conference and Exposition (aka ICE) in Dallas.   Estimated attendance was upwards of 9000 learning geeks from over 70 countries.  I was proud to be among them.

At an event this large, it is impossible to experience it all.  It is like visiting the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There is just too much to see and do.  The best way to approach it is to focus on a theme or a track, and create your own personal conference experience.  Two colleagues from my company attended the conference this year along with me.  One of them followed the Sales Enablement track and the other followed the Measurement, Evaluation and ROI track.  My approach was different.  Our company is a member of the ASTD Forum (a benchmarking group of about 50 companies that help each other out on workplace learning issues and share best practices).   The Forum members put on a series of workshops at ICE each year.  This year we offered four sessions.  I volunteered to co-facilitate one of them and I decided to attend the other three to support my colleagues during their facilitation.   It made for a great experience but it limited the number of sessions outside of the Forum offerings that I could attend.

Despite not getting around as much as I have at previous conferences, several themes reached me through the sessions I did attend, through the twitterverse, and through casual conversations with other conference goers in the expo, at lunch, and during my favorite event: the ice cream social!

Here are five themes I heard repeatedly during my conference experience:

Passion – Sir Ken Robinson kicked of the passion craze during his keynote address on Monday morning.  In discussing his new book, Finding Your Element, he reminded us all that we are happiest and most successful in our careers when we are able to perform work that marries up our aptitudes with our passions.   This seemingly simple point, made quite an impact.  It was cited during several other sessions during the week and was often part of the conversation in between sessions.

Millennials – It was fascinating to me to see how many times the millennial generation was discussed during this conference.  But what truly surprised me was the way it was discussed: “Millenials are coming!”  “They are going to be in leadership positions!”   “We must prepare!”  It was as if a plague or a hostile army was descending on us.   In my humble opinion, we were going a little overboard on this one.  Yes, every generation has different life experiences that shape their expectations, but isn’t that just part of diversity?  Embrace it and let it enrich us.   Let’s focus more on what we can learn from them and less about how they might react to “old school training approaches” that we should be retiring anyway.

Brain Science – I haven’t heard this much talk about the brain since the educational psychology courses I attended in graduate school.   But it is a welcome line of conversation.   Brain research is about memory and recall.  It confirms all of the things we know we should be doing to enable effective learning:  get people’s attention, stimulate their thinking, appeal to their emotions, and give them time to digest and reflect on what they have learned.   The latest research is being presented in easily digestible formats.   That is good news.  It gives us something to work with when we are trying to convince our business partners why we are advocating short bursts of learning spaced out over time instead of cramming everything into a three-day event.

Mobile as Performance Support - As it was with last year’s conference, Mobile Learning was a very hot topic.  But whereas last year’s discussion centered on how to get mobile learning off the ground, this year’s theme was how to do it right: getting mobile learning into the workflow and using it for just-in-time performance support.  Shame on anyone who still thinks they might be able to take an existing e-learning course and reconfigure it for a mobile device.   That is not the way to go.

Curation – As the learning industry embraces mobile, social, and self-managed learning as opportunities, we find ourselves needing to play a new role in relation to our learners: content curator.  With the overwhelming amount of information our learners have at their disposal, and the wide variety of sources from which to get that information, we can help them by sorting it out in ways that makes it easier for them to get their hands on content that will be most useful to them.  This year the ASTD published a conference backchannel resource page.   And of course, David Kelly, who has become one of the most influential leaders on this topic, posts his own curated resources from the conference.

Maintaining Relevance in Workplace Learning

Workplace Learning Professionals: join us today for a discussion of #relevance in an #astd_forum vSession today at 12:00 PM eastern time: http://tinyurl.com/ayra9qw

Thoughts on ASTD ICE 2012 (#ASTD2012)

This week I attended ASTD’s International Conference andExpo (ICE) at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, CO.  It has been three or four years since I last attended ICE (it was in Atlanta that year).   It is such a big event; it is just too overwhelming to attend every year.  But I find it valuable to go every couple of years.   The snapshots over time give you a better sense of what is really progressing and changing in the learning industry.

Here are some random thoughts and reactions that stuck with me from this year’s conference:

The Learning & Development profession is strong and growing – there were about 10,000 attendees at this year’s conference.  The Wells Fargo Theater started filling up well before ASTD President Tony Bingham took to the stage to welcome everyone, and they were still coming in while Jim Collins was delivering his excellent and inspiring keynote presentation.

The Learning & Development profession is becoming well…more professional – I spoke to many people who had or were completing advanced degrees in Adult Education, Instructional Systems or the like.  Many academic institutions were represented at the expo enticing conference attendees to explore their programs. There was also a good showing of people who have obtained the relatively new CPLP credential.

This conference is international with a capital “I” – my guesstimate is that about 20% of the attendees were from outside the US.  Kudos to ASTD for setting up the “Global Village” networking room which was often packed during the session breaks.

Everyone’s conference experience is unique – with somewhere between 350-400 sessions to choose from, everyone has the ability to create their own conference-within-a-conference based on their own needs and interests.  I spent most of my time in sessions about mobile and social learning.

Technology rules – there was a notable difference in technology usage from my last conference experience in Atlanta.  Everyone had mobile devices, many people tablets, and ASTD provided a great app for the event that allowed you plan your day, read speaker’s bios, grab presentation materials, complete evaluations, take notes, and follow the twitter stream (#ASTD2012).

Networking rules – it was great to meet some of my twitter connections in person for the first time.  It was also create connecting with fellow members of the ASTD Forum, and to meet and make new contacts.

Since this is my blog, here are some “Mike Awards” that I’d like to bestow related to the conference:

Most practical session award – Jane Bozarth (@JaneBozarth):  Social Media for Trainers.  Jane did a great job covering many ways to easily incorporate social media tools in training.

Sleeper session award – Joe Saturnino:  Implementing Mobile Learning Applications.   I didn’t know Joe or what to expect going into this session so I was pleasantly surprised. He went through the what, why and how of mobile learning and provided great ideas on things that are easily doable.

The best session I did not attend award – Allison Rossett (@arossett) and Frank Nguyen: The Yin and Yang of Informal and Formal Learning.   I had the opportunity to read the cases and try out their evaluation tool prior to this session so I did not attend, but I know it was a good one.  Allison is always informative and entertaining.

Most amazing content sharing award – David Kelly (@LnDDave): for curating and creating this treasure trove of conference resources.

The oddest surprise award – goes to the Colorado Convention Center escalator that goes to and from the expo floor.  It laughs at you while you ride it.  No, really.

Learning vs. Recruiting: Who Would Win a Social Media War?

As someone who is focused on management development, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to capitalize on social media to promote informal learning inside my company. With many of the other learning people in my company focused on formal course development or delivery, I sometimes feel like I’m alone in this endeavor. This caused me to reflect on where the learning community in general is in the cycle of social media adoption. As a point of reference, I thought about this question in comparison to our HR counterparts, particularly those who are involved in recruiting. Here is what I’ve concluded:

"If learning people faced recruiting people in a social media war, the learning people would lose."

We would lose because we don’t have the numbers and because it is not in the forefront of our minds as we approach our work.

Although this is not scientific, here is the evidence on which I base my conclusion:

Point #1 - I recently attended the Technology Assisted Learning Conference in Chicago. It was co-located with the Social Media for Recruitment Conference. The conference organizers set up a monitor and a special twitter hashtag (#socialrecruitment) for the recruiter conference, but did not do this for the learning conference. Granted, the title of the recruiter conference was “Social Media for Recruitment”, but the title of the learning conference was “Technology Assisted Learning.” Shouldn’t it have at least been a consideration that a social media hookup would be needed or wanted by learning conference attendees?

Point #2 - I occasionally post questions on the Chief Learning Officer discussion forum. When I have posted questions about traditional topics such as learning metrics, I’ve gotten at least a few responses. But when I asked the questions, “Are you using web 2.0 tools for learning?” and “Are you using microblogging as a learning tool?” I got zero responses. I posed a similar question on an ASTD discussion forum. After five months the post finally garnered a reply. It was someone commenting how disappointing it was that I had no replies to date. He further went on to say, “The lack of response here seems to show that in general we as a population are a little behind the times.”

Point #3 - I am a member of several LinkedIn groups. On occasion when I write blog entries that I think will be of interest to members of those groups, I share the links to my blog posts. Two groups that I belong to are called, “Social Media and the Learning Function” and Social Media in Organizations” (which was formerly titled Social Media in HR). I get a lot of comments and traffic from HR group, but rarely if ever have I seen a comment on one of my posts from the Learning Function group.

Point #4 - As a final kicker, not long ago my local ASTD Chapter hosted an excellent and informative meeting on social media usage. Our guest speaker who led the discussion was… a recruiter.

I know there is a solid core of learning professionals who are active in social media who I would gladly follow into battle. But there are many others who have yet to take up the sword.

The Media Is Tuning In to You!

On Monday I attended the ASTD Southern Connecticut Chapter’s monthly meeting. The topic was, what else: Social Media. The speaker was Jennifer Scott, of HireEffect LLC. She specializes in talent acquisition and career coaching. She helps her clients use social media for recruiting and/or job searches. She had great advice for both the people in the audience who are currently in career transition, and for the small business owners who are trying to reach more customers with their training/consulting services. Currently, I’m in neither of these categories, but certainly could be some day. Nevertheless, as someone who just recently began immersing himself in social media, I found her presentation to be valuable and helpful.


She focused on three key social media tools: LinkedIn, facebook, and twitter and made good points about each. But her main point was that we would be crazy not to take advantage of the networking opportunities afforded by social media. Years ago, companies had to work hard and pay dearly to get their name out there. Now, through these tools, the media is tuning into you! Social media tools provide free targeted advertising for your business, your job search, or your personal brand.

She gave some advice on how to develop a social media presence. Here are a few of her key points and my takeaways.

• Clearly define your value proposition. Before you jump in and start appearing all over the web, know what your niche is. What do you want to emphasize? What do you have to offer?
• Be consistent. Your web presence should make sense overall. In other words, your headline on LinkedIn and your Bio on Twitter should tell the same story about you – and it should match your overall value proposition.
• Optimize your profile. Take advantage of all the real estate offered on social networking sites to describe your offering or your company. Carefully consider keywords for your profile that are job, business, and industry specific for the audience you most want to reach. Remember, this is free targeted advertising!
• Don’t just show up; Participate! - Submit news articles. Initiate and join discussions. This is social media. Contribute to the groups that you join. Forward articles or people’s profiles to others who you think might benefit from them. When you make good points in a discussion, people naturally become curious about who you are and will want to link back to your LinkedIn profile or your company’s facebook fan page.
• Convert social networking into direct connections –Where it makes sense, call a social network contact to offer your services, or to find out more about what it is they have to offer. This is really what it is all about isn’t it?

I am about three months into my explorations with social media tools. Each day as I learn more I become more encouraged by the possibilities for using them for learning inside my organization. I really feel that we are on the cusp of a new evolution in corporate learning that will see us becoming more focused on creating environments to capture informal learning rather than being content and course deliverers.