Why Don't We "Just Do It"?

In a 2012 report, the weight loss industry clocked in at $20 billion dollars a year. This includes books, drugs and weight loss surgeries. At any given time, there are about 108 million dieters in the US, a third of the country. Yet, the US Department of Health and Human services reports that more than 2 out of 3 adults are at some level of obesity.

Changing is NOT Transforming!

So let’s say you are helping a child with their science homework and so you reach for Google. The assignment is simple, to talk about how a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. One website says, "The caterpillar starts to change", and then you go to another website and it says, "The transformation from caterpillar to butterfly is one of the most exquisite in the natural world". Both are reputable websites, one is a university and another is National Geographic for goodness sake. It would be fair to assume that both change and transformation are actually the same process. Well, let me ask you this, does the caterpillar become a better caterpillar or a butterfly? That is the essence of the difference.

Three Steps to Make Learning Last

I think it’s fair to say we all want our learning to last. I think we call it ’sticky’. We spend many hours reading, watching videos or in training classes, we want to see our efforts (and our expense) pay off. From a corporate perspective, CEB, a research firm, reports that sales representatives are forgetting 70 percent of the content that they receive in one week, and 90 percent in one month. That’s from the learner side of the equation. From another point of view, leaders are looking for lasting learning to go to the next step and provide bottom line impact. An ATD/ROI Institute study found that 96 percent percent of CEOs stated that their number one concern in learning is the associated impact it may bring. They want proof that their investment in learning has a corporate payoff.

Does Your Organizational Personality Matter?

What does that even mean, organizational personality, and why should we care? If you are concerned about high attrition/low retention in your organization, then this is a "must-read" blog post. See how your organizational personality affects employee engagement.

Why Does It Appear That Bad Training Works?

Does this sound like you? You are a manager. You’re looking for new and innovative ways to build your organization to perform at higher standards. You just came off an average, mediocre or even less than stellar year and the associated pressure to perform in the next fiscal year falls on your shoulders. You are motivated to find a new and compelling approach to ignite your organization to greater heights. You’re looking for the edge, something new, a structured approach to predict and achieve greater performance.

How to Ask a Purposeful Question

At an early age in your professional career, many were taught to seek 'why' people do things. Whether you are a sales person, a project manager, or an implementer, we were taught to ask 'why'. Even in your personal life, we continue to ask why someone would do something like that to us, or why did someone make that decision. Well, I'm here to tell you that is poor advice.

Webinar Recap: How ASU Sustained Its Learning Culture During Profound Disruption

The Arizona State University measures its value not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed. At the core of the university’s charter is an effort to not only advance research and discovery of public value, but to also assume fundamental responsibility for the economic, social, cultural and overall health of the communities it serves. With over 120,000 students scattered across five campuses, as well as online and in over 140 countries, it’s no wonder that ASU takes a highly strategic and laser-focused approach when introducing new technology.

Toward Gender Diversity: Men and Women are Equal, but not the Same

The gender diversity discussion continues. It also appears that everyone, men and women, want to solve the inequality problem. I sincerely believe that we do; however, before we can solve this problem, we must first must define the problem.

What Do Broken Windows and Your Learning Experience Have in Common?

If you are in the learning space and follow the trends as of late, you’ve seen that the market is shifting from a focus on learning management systems to learning experiences. This assertion is not a dismissal of learning management systems, but more so a focus on the experience that a learner may encounter. The fact remains that regardless of focus, we all have experienced learning to some degree. Starting at a very young age, we were given goals and expectations through rote exercises, and as we matured through the educational system, we became familiar with rubrics and lectures. The same can be said for corporate education. When you're first hired, you were given a set of learning tasks during your onboarding, most likely including compliance training as well as awareness of corporate policy. All of these "experiences" influence the way you perceive learning.

Did You Know That Skills are Not Behaviors?

As Learning and Development professionals, one of the big distinctions we need to make when developing training is that behaviors and skills are two different yet related constructs. It is teaching a skill that ensures that the future behavior modification will last longer than just trying to modify a behavior. Bandura’s Social Learning Theory (1977) argues that one way we learn is through mere observation but also warns that this may be pure mimicking, void of context and social sensitivity. A great example is how a child learns from observation. A little boy sees his father grab a beer from the fridge after a long day mowing the grass. The child sees this and is compelled to do the same after he does his chores. One can easily see the issues here. This is observational learning and reinforced through mimicking.

Onboarding in Healthcare: To Socialize or Not - Is That a Question?

I'm sure you remember. It was your first job. You wondered whether or not they would like you. You thought to yourself, "Will I be able to do the job?" Peer pressure seeped in when you walked into the hospital the first time. However, it's not about your skills. It was whether or not the culture would accept you. Would people embrace you and give you the understanding of the "ins and outs" of this particular hospital?

Building a Self-Directed Organization

There are two critical challenges the modern Chief Learning Officer (CLO) faces. The first is that our educational system continues to manufacture dependent learners or learners that require direction, an authority figure and continuous specific feedback. The second challenge is that most private and public sectors take much of their learning cues from formal educational institutions. Though we are in a stage of focusing on the adult learner, many of the strategies and processes we utilize emanate from traditional educational paradigms.