LX Briefing

Mustn’t Miss

Flat Arm; Leadership Conversations;Take Charge of Your Talent;Lead With a Story

Welcome Letter-May 2013

With great pleasure we announce a new manager for the Senior Leaders and Executives Community of Practice. Laleh Patel has worked with the ASTD research team and the ASTD Forum for several years and brings her extensive knowledge of the field, her broad connections, and her customer-oriented approach to her new role.

ASTD’s online communities of practice continue to grow and add new features, and Laleh will be seeking input from senior leaders for future offerings. If you would like to contribute content, offer advice, or just say hello, please contact Laleh at lpatel@astd.org. And look for her at next week’s ASTD Conference and Expo in Dallas.

Inside Story: Multi-Faceted Mentoring Strategies at Booz Allen Hamilton

Talent is a top priority for Booz Allen Hamilton. Whether experiencing double-digit growth or facing challenging market conditions, the company places a strong emphasis on staff development.

Hot Topic: Skills Mismatch

Regularly cited as a top CEO priority, execution of strategy is considered the key to achieving superior business results. Yet, the majority of organizations fail to effectively implement strategic initiatives. Research reveals that companies achieve a fraction of the financial results envisioned during the strategy’s development. “How much of this can be attributed to an organization’s lack of business acumen or business skills?” asks Rommin Adl, executive vice president at BTS, a strategy implementation company, and co-author of the recent BTS research report exploring the relationship between business acumen and strategy execution.

Mustn’t Miss: Books

Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future, The Q-Loop: The Art and Science of Lasting Corporate Change, Fear, Make Better Decisions and Thrive in the 21^st Century, What Keeps Leaders Up at Night

Welcome letter, April LXB

Spring is a time of renewal so we chose some inspirational articles and books to help you get started. Tech executive-turned-coach Mark Kutner writes about his transformation from a command-and-control leader to one who empowered people to reach new heights. A researcher at the Center for Creative Leadership shares some surprising results of a study about leaders’ vs. managers’ traits. It helps explain Bernie Madoff. And our recommended books cover how to define your personal brand, overcome your management shortcomings, achieve lasting change in your organization, and train your limbic brain. And that’s just in April.

Feature: Lessons Learned About Leadership

A command-and-control leader changes his stripes.

As a young manager rising quickly to positions of greater responsibility in a Fortune 100 technology company, my formula for success was to be “in charge”. What I assumed was managerial DNA drove me to be more knowledgeable than anyone else and to have all the answers. I lived in “tell” mode, directing people and events. My need to be involved in everything sometimes was more hindrance than help. Meetings I ran or attended ran late, and I consistently kept people waiting to see me.

Feature: Character Strengths of Leaders

What do Martha Stewart, Mark Hurd, Bernie Madoff, and John Edwards have in common? One easy answer is each of them lacks integrity. According to a study of the character strengths of leaders conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), integrity is the most important character trait for C-suite leaders.

Welcome LXB March 2013

Would it surprise you to know that half of new employees experienced buyer’s remorse after taking a job offer last year? This statistic is part of Development Dimensions International’s (DDI) latest global research on hiring trends.

Must not miss: Books

To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by Daniel Pink, Riverhead Hardcover (December 31, 2012), 272 pages

The Leader’s Code: Mission, Character, Service, and Getting the Job Done by Donovan Campbell, Random House (April 9, 2013), 256 pages

Leaders Are Made Not Born: 40 Simple Skills to Make You the Leader You Want to Be by Michael J. Farlow, LinkUp Publishing (August 24, 2012), 228 pages

Talent Leadership: A Proven Method for Identifying and Developing High Potential Employees by John Mattone with Luiz Xavier, AMACOM (October 16, 2012), 282 pages

Hot Topic: Hiring Trends in the U.S. and Abroad

Would it surprise you to know half of new employees experienced buyer’s remorse after taking a job offer last year? This statistic is part of Development Dimensions International’s (DDI) latest global research on hiring trends. And those who are dissatisfied are not alone. Many organizations also question whether they have made wise hiring decisions, as one in eight new employees were failures in the last 12 months.

He Said, She Said, They Said

Badgeville CEO, Kris Duggan, describes how personal development for employees contributes to his company’s growth and success and helps retain valuable talent. Badgeville designs game-based programs for business and its engineers are constantly pursued by recruiter

ASTD Research: Leadership Development for Millennials

Do Millenials need specialized leadership development and is it happening?

One million Millennials enter the workforce each year. Nearly 40 percent of the U.S. workforce will be comprised of Millennials by 2020, according to U.S. Census data. Increasingly, members of this generation are moving into leadership roles. But are Millennials truly ready to lead? And if they aren’t, what are organizations doing to prepare them?

Driving Greater Impact Through Learning Strategy

The 2013 ASTD Forum Spring Lab will take place in St. Charles, Il, March13-15, and Bangalore, India, March 14-15. Participants will work collectively in a confidential environment to understand learning strategy. In a highly interactive, hands-on environment, attendees will participate in thought leader discussions, hear from other senior learning leaders about their practices, participate in experiential labs, and have access to a variety of resources. Attendees will be able to take these experiences back to their organizations and make an impact on the bottom line.

Must not Miss: A Curated List of “Best” Leadership Books

As Harry Truman said, "All leaders are readers but not all readers are leaders." Maybe that’s because they weren’t reading the best books.

Picking good leadership books is subjective at best, but here are some titles that have landed on several “best” lists. These dozen books are best-regarded rather than best-selling. They might be perfect for loading onto an aspiring leader’s e-reader.

Feature: Games and Impact

Video games engage, teach, and motivate and are becoming essential shortcuts to learning. Gaming expert and researcher James Paul Gee shares 12 properties of games that help promote deep learning.

View From the Learning Executive: Peter Block

Peter Block is an author, consultant, and speaker in the areas of organization development, community building, and civic engagement. His book, Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used (1999, is often cited as the most influential book of the past 40 years for organizational development practitioners. ASTD has recognized Block for his distinguished contributions to the field and he is a member of Training Magazine’s Hall of Fame.

Welcome Letter

In an age of an overabundance of unseasonsed viewpoints, it is reassuring to revisit the classics. Peter Block, the subject of this month’s View from the Learning Executive, is one of those. His arguments for the importance of purpose for organizations ring truer than ever and his incisive – some would say crusty – opinions still refresh. Our favorite quote: “No one measures the cost of the investment, distraction, and harm done by our reliance on the send button.”

Vicarious Learning for Business

Raise your hand if your spouse, partner, or friend ever suggested that you do something to help yourself, like lose weight, start exercising, stop smoking, or start eating and drinking less. Okay, everyone reading this piece put your hands down. So, what exactly is our universal reaction to such well-intentioned verbal advice about persistent p...

Welcome: LXB January 2013 Welcome letter

An innovation from the world of higher ed – the MOOC or massive open online course – is rewriting the model for distributed learning and could help corporations address skills gaps in the workforce without spending a fortune. Learn more in our Hot Topics column.

View From the Learning Executive: Robert E. Knowling, Jr.

Bob Knowling has over 30 years of experience in the telecommunications and technology sectors, leading companies through periods of high growth and organizational turnaround. He is currently CEO at Vercuity Solutions, Inc. His connection to the learning field began when he was CEO of the New York City Leadership Academy, a training venue for school principals. He is the author of You Can Get There from Here: My Journey from Struggle to Success.

Hot Topic: MOOCs, Are They Right for Corporate L & D?

The Hot Topic question this month is whether MOOCs (massive open online courses), which are being exploited by universities such as Princeton, Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to serve thousands of learners worldwide at low cost via the Web, will work in corporate learning situations. MOOCs, a recent innovation in distance education and e-learning, are assembled from existing open software and delivered free to millions of students via partnerships. Two prominent MOOC players are Coursera and edX, each financed by different groups of prestigious U.S. universities.

Inside Story: A New Orientation Program for New Employees

Shape Corp, a global company headquartered in Grand Haven, MI, designs, engineers, manufactures, and tests metal and plastic products that absorb impact energy and protect vehicles, their occupants, and pedestrians.

Many of Shape’s employees work with cutting torches, welders, grinders, saws, mechanical power presses, and other machinery. Orienting new employees to the company’s safety measures is an important role for human resources in partnership with manufacturing.

Game-Based Learning: Worth the Hype?

Hilton Hotels Corp. training executive David Kervella thinks so. But classroom instruction can't effectively teach hotel employees how to interact properly with guests, he says. So Kervella, senior manager, brand education at Hilton, proposed that the giant hotel firm create a 3-D interactive computer game that would develop employee customer s...

Feature: How Nimble a Leader Are You?

Nimble leaders must be able to be strategic one moment and tactical the next; to be visionary and inspiring one moment but practical and down-to-earth the next.

Hot Topic: Data scientist - the hot new career

If big data guilt - all that useful but unused information collected by your talent management system or your LMS - is keeping you awake at night, consider hiring a data scientist to mine that gold.

Inside Story: China Post Group

China Post, with almost one million employees spread across China, turned to an online training college to bring employees' skills and knowledge up-to-speed following a major reorientation toward better service.

Welcome

Books You Must Not Miss

Transforming the Learning Organization

There is no doubt that social media has everyone's attention, including the learning profession. Sessions at the recent ASTD International Conference & Exposition that touched on the topic were filled to capacity. And while everyone from the National Weather Service to Dr Pepper seems to be leveraging Facebook and Twitter to deliver critica...

Welcome

Hot Topic: Flex-work

Flex-work and other alternative workplace strategies have become important tools for attracting and retaining employees but despite the financial benefits of alternative strategies, some organizations still resist such a dramatic change.

View from the Learning Executive: Interview with Jack Zenger

No topic is hotter globally than how to develop leaders.This interview with Jack Zenger, a master of what makes an outstanding leader, lays out the leadership traits that are consistently best and reveals his "cross-training" methods for developing leaders.

Center for Creative Leadership Project

Learning agility, adaptability, self-awareness, and versatility top the list of traits that managers and leaders need today and tomorrow. A Center for Creative Leadership project puts them within reach of high school and college students.

Books You Must Not Miss

The HR Business Partner: An Oxymoron No More

Over the last few months, i4cp interviewed over 70 of the most prominent CHROs in many of the world's most recognizable companies. One theme continuously came up in these discussions: the role of HR business partners.

According to the human capital executives interviewed, the HR business partner is at the forefront of the function's evolution, redefining the role and scope of the traditional HR professional.

Passport to the World

A proposed new degree program in which students study in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and Milan could reframe undergraduate business education, says Warren Bennis.

Learning Executive Briefing for October

View From the Learning Executive: William J. Rothwell

Bill Rothwell has been a training and development professional for more than 30 years and is one of the field’s most prolific writers with more than 70 books to his credit. In this interview, he takes on business schools, the shortsightedness of college deans, and companies that say people are their greatest important asset but don't act accordingly.

Improving Safety at Ball Metal Packaging

While the plant's quality and production metrics were improving, safety was not. Senior leadership made a long-term commitment to develop a comprehensive system, based on Lean principles, to attack and reverse troublesome safety trends.

He Said, She Said

This month's quote comes from Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men and the Rise of Women.

Your September Learning Executive Briefing

Books worthy of interest

No business topic has more staying power than leadership. This month we review three new books about this perennial favorite: How to Be An Exceptional Leader, Talk Inc., and Change-Friendly Leadership. And for good measure, a new book on the basics of project evaluation, something every leader should know.

Step Away From the Smartphone

Research by Leslie Perlow, author of Sleeping With Your Smartphone: How to Break the 24/7 Habit and Change the Way You Work, shows how it is possible to disconnect and at the same time become more productive. More than 900 teams at the Boston Consulting Group have used her Predictable Time Off method to break the "always on" habit. You can too.

Sweet Success

The recipe for learning at Just Born contains equal parts of executive commitment and reinforcement of a unique company culture. With 525 associates in Bethlehem and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Just Born markets candy in more than 45 countries. The Just Born line of candies includes the irresistible PEEPS, a marshmallow treat that has become an...

Into the Pool

According to the National Association of Software and Services Company, 3 million students will graduate in 2010, and the IT or BPO industry will be looking for 2.3 million workers.. Overall, this seems like an ideal balance. However, almost 40 percent of this available pool is not suited for careers in BPO, and another 20 to 25 percent drop ou...

Welcome

Developing leaders has been a hot topic for as long as we’ve been covering the learning field. There’s a passion to really get it right prompted in part by the success of leaders such as Apple CEO Steve Jobs and the spectacular flame-outs of others such as Bob Diamond, the Barclay’s CEO who resigned in the wake of an interest-rate rigging scandal. Patrick Sweeney and Mindy Storrie weigh in on this perennial favorite.

He Said, She Said, They Said

James Gleick and Daniel M. Wegner speak up about the ever-growing collective cybermind.

Book Reviews

We review two new books, New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking and Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google? The first suggests how to boost your brain power, and the second provides some novel ways to prove it.

Hot Topic

Recruiting, developing, and retaining women leaders poses challenges despite progress. Studies show persistent gaps between the numbers of men and women in leadership roles. What can be done to close the gap?