“We have met the enemy and he is us.” ~ Pogo.

This was one of the themes that came out of our Chicago Breakfast Club last Thursday. The biggest obstacle to the success of learning is us.

The next time you’re faced with an organizational dilemma, you might want to summon the wisdom of a literary character. That may sound a bit quirky, but the idea that reading fiction affects the way we manage in the workplace is no tall tale. According to a Times of India article, fiction impacts the way people deal with life’s challenges more than any other genre.

Newspapers are in an existential crisis. One after another is drying up and those that aren’t are barely keeping their heads above water. Take The Rocky Mountain News, the oldest newspaper in Colorado. It was a powerhouse until it published its last paper on Friday. Now it’s just an artifact of the past. Similarly, the San Francisco Chronicle may close its doors if Hearst Corp. can’t find someone to buy it. It’s a sad, but potentially exciting day for journalism as we say goodbye to an era of newspapers and welcome the dawning of a new day.

We are at war with the economy, fighting a rising unemployment rate, a quickly declining stock market and whispers of a depression. As organizational managers and executives, how do we lead our troops to safety?

Google is a trailblazer, not only in technology, but also in employee engagement. We’ve all heard about the perks of being a Googler (just to name a few: free gourmet food; access to ping pong, billiards and foosball; and on-site massages). Even though we may not be tech giants ourselves, we can still mimic some of Google’s ideas on a smaller scale. Take their employee development. According to The Guardian, Google has an avant-garde approach to learning with its School of Personal Growth, one of Google University’s four departments.

A few weeks ago at the request of then president-elect Barack Obama, the most exclusive group in America met—the Presidents Club. According to The New York Times, there was no precedent for such a meeting. Historians themselves could not recall a time when a president, or a president-elect, brought his predecessors together to pick “their collective brains.”

The US Airways crash on New York’s Hudson River is a powerful tale of a potential tragedy-turned-miracle. However, I hesitate to use the word “miracle” because at its core this story is really about talent. Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III had the capability to navigate this crisis calmly. He undoubtedly had experience and skill on his side — the 57-year-old former Air Force fighter pilot had been flying planes since he was 14.

We thought we had a few more years before the exodus of baby boomers. But the newspapers of today and tomorrow are telling a different story, one where thousands of employees are being laid off or agreeing to voluntary layoffs, as is the case with Best Buy. In some instances, these employees are boomers on the edge of retirement who have years of experience, and they’re walking out the door with it.

Some of us may have been quick to the punch and instituted knowledge transfer programs in preparation for those eminent retirements, but others may have taken a wait-and-see approach.

Now because of the economy, your business may be forced to let some that personnel go. Is it too late to try and get that knowledge back? Is it taboo to work with employees who have lost their jobs in the same way you may have worked with boomers post-retirement? And if you don’t, will your business face more hardship once the economy has turned around because your institutional knowledge and experience is gone?

Last week the giant crystal ball dropped in Times Square as we officially welcomed in 2009. But as we move into the New Year there’s no crystal ball to show us what’s in store, leaving us uncertain about the future.

What comes to mind when you think of the Net Generation? Do you think of lazy, selfish, spoiled brats? Or creative, tech savvy go-getters?

The end of one year means the dawning of another. It’s a time for remembrance and acknowledgement; hope and ambition. From a development perspective, it’s the quintessential time to reflect, learn and change.

Their venue may be a board room and their dialogue may consist of strategy and company vision, but in many ways, organizational leaders “perform” onstage and engage their audiences every day.

“No individual ever built a skyscraper.” – American Economic Life

It’s July 1927 and the average unemployment in the United States is 3.3 percent, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is 168. It’s the age of Soviet Russia and Josef Stalin. And while progressive intellectuals are a minority in the U.S., there is a strong contingent of those who are looking for answers to the country’s problems — some of whom see potential solutions in the unthinkable, Soviet Russia.

A recent survey of 84 corporate and government training professionals by Expertus and Training Industry, Inc. found that more training budgets are decreasing than increasing in 2009. A total of 48 percent of those surveyed expect their budgets to decrease in 2009, which is up from 41 percent in 2008. In contrast, 17 percent of those surveyed expect their budgets to increase in 2009, down from 31 percent in 2008.

In our January issue, we have a feature on the subject of how learning leaders can assemble an accessible, cohesive blended learning suite. Here’s a sneak preview of the piece, courtesy of the article’s author, GP Worldwide Senior Vice President Eric Rodgers:

Failure is the most feared outcome, and fear of it paralyzes us. If a child feared failure, that child would never learn to talk, walk or ride a bike. Similarly, an organization that fears failure remains unchanged.

Even though failure has a stigma, it’s an opportunity to learn and grow. If we make a mistake and fail, we need to look at what happened, learn from that mistake and change. Unfortunately, the workplace is not very accommodating of failure.

One of the more interesting and ambitious books to cross my desk lately is How by Dov Seidman. The appeal of Seidman’s work is that he’s taken such a sweeping view of the business world in his explanation of how we think, behave and govern — as individuals and organizations — influences our achievements in the marketplace.

History always repeats itself, and I think that’s because we never take the time to learn from our mistakes. We should view the recent financial crisis as a teaching moment, as the lessons learned today will be foresight for the future. With this in mind, organizations should evaluate what happened, why it happened, how it happened, and the changes that will come as a result.

Elliott Masie recently did a poll about economic anxiety in the workplace, and more than 1,444 learning professionals responded. When asked about the level of economic anxiety in their workplaces, 56 percent of the respondents said they have some anxiety in the workplace, 29 percent said they have severe or high anxiety in the workplace, and 15 percent have low or no anxiety in the workplace.

Masie also asked what actions organizations have taken in response to economic anxiety, and 46 percent said no actions were taken to date. How can that be possible? How productive can employees be if they’re worrying about money, job stability or housing costs while they’re on the job?

Remember that “Seinfeld” episode where George Costanza’s father said “serenity now” to deal with anger-provoking moments? Unfortunately, his method, as we learned later in the episode, caused him to bottle up frustration, which led to “insanity later.” That’s what came to mind when I came across a recent article from WSJ.com about fostering good conflict.

You may never have thought that being in learning and development might mean you would need an understanding of interior design, but a recent article by the Business Review Western Michigan proves otherwise. The environment you provide learners with can be almost as critical as the material you provide them with. Steelcase designed its Steelcase University Learning Center (SULC) with this in mind. It’s a new-age space that is all about connections.

According to the article, “The goal [is] to connect people to people, people to information, people to tools, and people to culture.” Instead of a traditional classroom design that may silo people, this space is relatively open to foster these types of connections. The classroom itself promotes a discussion-based environment rather than a lecture-based one, as all the tables are angled toward each other.

Obviously Steelcase has a leg up because it’s their business to design spaces that meet people’s needs, but that doesn’t mean that other corporate universities shouldn’t design their learning spaces around learners’ needs. We all talk about how people learn informally, but does your workspace allow for that? Does your corporate university provide places for that to happen? If you have the right space, it makes learning easier. If you have the wrong type of space, that’s just another obstacle in our way.

I got a question from Martyn Bullard, an “early adopter” of our recently launched CLO-Network and the head of IS learning and development for the EMEA region of law firm Mayer Brown. He’s working on a dissertation for his MBA that asks whether “the concept of chief learning officer as practiced in the U.S. [is] transferable to the U.K.,” and he wanted my — ahem — “expert” advice on this subject.

Since the presidential election, media coverage has focused on the tasks President-elect Barack Obama faces, such as following through on his promise of change in the midst of such uncertain times.

I’m reminded of the criticism from his opponents: “This is not a time for on-the-job training.” They cited Sen. John McCain’s decades in the Senate and his military experience as the more appropriate background for leading the country. As I looked back on those frequent references to on-the-job training (OJT), I began to wonder about its organizational relevance today. When recruiting a leader, do you look for McCain- or Obama-like experience? How much value do you place on OJT for your organizational leaders?

Google, Campbell Soup and Johnson & Johnson are the three most socially responsible companies in the United States, according to research from the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship and Reputation Institute. Interestingly, the companies that invest more in corporate social responsibility (CSR) get a much higher level of support than other companies, as almost 66 percent of the U.S. public would recommend the top 20 socially responsible companies, and only 26 percent would recommend the bottom 20 companies. The implication is that organizations that invest in social responsibility have a better reputation than other companies, and that inevitably impacts the bottom line.

As many of you already know, we unveiled our new CLO-Network, a virtual meeting place for our readers, at the beginning of last week. The results thus far have exceeded our already lofty expectations: After just a few days, we’ve had more than 700 members join, with participants hailing from Mumbai to Minnesota, from London to New Zealand.

Additionally, CLO-Network members have started more than 20 discussions on topics ranging from LMSs to next-generation leadership development. We’re thrilled to have such an enthusiastic response to this new medium, and I wanted to share just a couple of the highlights so far.

It seems that companies are talking and schools are listening. In “Universities Tailor Courses for Companies," universities partnered with companies to create tailored educational programs. We recently covered this topic in CLO magazine’s July issue, "A Customer-Driven Approach to Molding Tomorrow's Leaders." Just as no two people are alike, no two organizations are alike, and the issues they face are unique to their cultures, their workforces and their circumstances.

This is week two in a three-week series of blogs about executive education. In “And Now, Something Completely Different,” one of the many articles published in The Wall Street Journal about this topic, there is a list of innovative, or unusual, EMBA programs.

With the World Series going on right now, my mind is on baseball when it’s not on work. However, I came across an interesting story that bridges the two in its comparison of the New York Yankees’ and Tampa Bay Rays’ differing approaches to talent.

The Wall Street Journal recently published several articles about executive education after it did a study on the best executive MBA programs. As a result, I’m going to do a three-week series on the different findings.

While crawling around the Web for news and advice about navigating through current economic conditions, I found my way to a write up on a particularly useful presentation given by high-level partners at Sequoia Capital, an international venture capital firm, on that very topic.

Essentially, what they had to say can be boiled down to a few points.

This is Part II to last week’s blog. I want to explore the findings from the Economist Intelligence Unit report a little further.

As organizations grow, they inevitably become more highly structured, a change that can smother innovation. One way to promote it is through cross-functional collaboration. Too often, we separate ourselves from one another. Even in learning, we segregate courses according to department, role or level. But what would happen if we provided a forum for people to cross these borders? How does your learning organization promote this type of collaboration? And if it doesn’t, is that stifling innovation?

In December, we’ll be putting out an issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine with a “Future of Learning” theme. As part of that edition, the editors have talked to some of the learning industry’s leading voices and compiled their comments into a feature that explores what’s next in employee development. Here are some snippets from a couple of responses:

The U.S. markets have been stormy to say the least, as financial firms drop like flies. And the ups and downs of our market have had a resulting effect on markets worldwide. Even though President Bush signed the $700 billion bailout plan into law Friday afternoon, there’s still a great deal of uncertainty about the future of the economy.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that companies still remain focused on innovation and growth, according to the latest Economist Intelligence Unit Report, “The Innovators: How Successful Companies Drive Business Transformation.”

I just started a book by business writer Art Kleiner, titled The Age of Heretics, in which he traces the history of the post-1945 revolution in management, from National Training Laboratories founder and social psychology Professor Kurt Lewin to contemporary leadership guru Tom Peters. Kleiner said the goal of the book was to provide an account of the “undertow” of the huge, stifling wave of “grey flannel suit” corporate culture, which few people questioned at the time.

This year’s Fall 2008 CLO Symposium kicked off with a keynote from Ed Cohen, senior vice president and chief learning officer at Satyam Computer Services Ltd. At Satyam, learning is about hearing and integrating voices — the voices of leaders, customers, associates and society. Cohen finds that it’s critical for those in learning to know what each these groups wants and expects from the organization, and then learning can deliver on that.

In the last blog post, my colleague Lindsay Edmonds Wickman brought up the issue of learning measurement, which also happens to be the theme of the Fall 2008 CLO Symposium taking place in Coronado, Calif., this week. She specifically pointed out that too few learning leaders are devising credible business-impact measurements that prove the function’s strategic contribution.

The CLO Symposium will already be in the past for many of the people reading this, but as I’m writing this blog, it hasn’t happened yet. That said, I think I can predict — with a fair amount of accuracy — what measurement experts at the event will say is critical for coming up with metrics that senior organizational leaders believe in and care about.

The office is all aflutter in anticipation of our Fall Symposium. Even though I’m busy preparing for interviews, I wanted to take a minute to think about this year’s theme, “Measuring Success: Learning’s Positive Impact on Business.”

In many interviews with learning leaders, this seems to be a recurring theme. People in the industry keep telling me how important it is to measure the impact of learning, but when I ask how they’re doing it, they hesitate.

As I get older, I catch myself gradually yet inexorably forgetting more things and — on rare occasions — resisting learning new things. I’m probably not alone in this, as these traits commonly appear to some degree in the aging and aged. For well-documented biological and psychological reasons, very few people grow more receptive and lucid after passing a certain point in their lives (usually ranging from their late twenties through their early forties).

Because of these factors, some organizations might be tempted to write employees off after they reach a particular age. After all, why teach someone who doesn’t want to learn something new and will likely forget it anyhow? Better to focus on the dynamic digital natives of Gen Y…

Have you ever sent an e-mail to an employee after work hours with the expectation that they’ll check it? Of course, we’ve all done it. That’s the nature of today’s corporate environment; everybody’s plugged in 24x7. So we never think twice about sending those late night e-mails, but maybe we should.

I recently interviewed Tim Sanders, author of Saving the World at Work: What Companies and Individuals Can Do to Go Beyond Making a Profit to Making a Difference for an Executive Briefing e-newsletter, and he told me about a blog he developed called “Email A to Z”, which discusses the relationship between e-mail training and work-life balance.

Maybe it’s just my idiosyncratic Internet surfing, but I’ve come across a few stories on the Web lately that take up the subject of why boys in the United States are falling behind in school. To find out more, I did some Googling on the subject. According to many observers, boys and young men nowadays are more likely to be held back a grade or drop out of school, and less likely to garner high scores on achievement tests and attend college than women. And they’re twice as prone to be diagnosed with a learning disability.

Today I went to an event where Dr. Paul Hersey spoke about leadership. I wrote about Hersey’s Situational Leadership Model for a feature in our Executive Briefings e-newsletter. But during the event, Hersey said something that caught my attention: Leadership style is a leader’s pattern of behavior as perceived by others. So it’s not how you see your behavior, but instead how others see it.

While this is not necessarily a revolutionary thought, it made me wonder how many leaders actually view their leadership behavior through “the eye of the beholder.” How much of an effort do you make to find out what your employees really think of you? Are you really a great leader, or do you just think you are?

While following the presidential campaign lately, I’ve heard or read many speculations on the subject of the candidates’ experience. It seems that neither Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama nor Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has nearly enough political experience, according to their respective oppositions (though backers of each seem perfectly satisfied with their experience levels).

Moreover, Obama, Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden are criticized for not having executive experience, having spent most of their political careers in legislative roles. And Palin has come under fire for not having any foreign policy experience whatsoever. (Her defenders have responded by pointing out that Alaska, the state she serves as governor, shares a border with Russia. As if she was attending annual summits with Vladimir Putin or something.)

I recently came across this blog (http://mashable.com/2008/07/23/corporate-social-media/), which lists more than 35 examples of corporate social media. I was surprised by the breadth of the examples. There was everything from Sears partnering with MTV to create a social network around Back to School to HP using Twitter for a scavenger hunt at a conference. The most innovative social media solutions seemed to be directed at the customer, though.

But I would argue that the same creativity should be applied to social media tools for your employees. Innovation sparks innovation. So if your learning is delivered in an inventive way, it will ultimately incite creativity in your employees.

While chatting with a friend of mine from the learning industry over coffee this week, the (touchy) subject of learning management systems came up. This person remarked on the copious complaints he hears from clients – he’s on the provider side – about their LMSs, and then he wondered aloud what the “divorce rate” for these systems was.

All the research I read tells me my generation is all about social networking. Well, I have a confession. The first time I went on Facebook was last week, and I had to use my husband’s account because I don’t even have one. Yep, I don’t even have a Facebook page. And to be honest, my first experience with Facebook was pretty frustrating. I was trying to find information for my weekly newsletter and it took about 30 minutes to do one search.

First, there was blogging; now there’s micro-blogging, where you have to communicate your message in 140 characters or less. Because of services like Twitter and Plurk, micro-blogging is all the rage, even in the corporate world. According to a TechNewsWorld article, affinity groups, professional interest communities and companies themselves are following the trend.

I’ve seen more and more articles about design thinking, and they’ve got me wondering about the intersection of design thinking and learning. Design thinking actively engages both creative right-brained thinking and analytical left-brained thinking to develop solutions to problems or issues. It seems that facilitating design thinking means opening up the discussion to a point where everyone feels comfortable in expressing their ideas.

I had that empty feeling yesterday. The one you get when you hear some real terrible news. This one was a couple of years in the making, even though we had hoped it would never come. I received an e-mail informing me that our good friend Joe Dougherty had lost his battle with brain cancer.

Many of you knew Joe as the affable president of Thomson NETg. We were all saddened when we heard the news of his cancer, and we were amazed at his courage and resilience as he battled the disease.

Several of our readers might know who Randy Pausch is. For those who don’t, he was a Carnegie Mellon professor of computer design and a pioneer in the development of simulations and virtual worlds who passed away on July 25 due to pancreatic cancer. Outside of the universities he served at, Pausch also worked on various projects at Walt Disney Imagineering and video-game maker Electronic Arts.

Most of those who are familiar with Pausch may have become acquainted with this fascinating man in the days since his death. His “Last Lecture” video has caught on like wildfire on the Web, with more than 5 million views on YouTube as of this blog posting. Pausch actually gave this speech in September of last year shortly after he found out about his illness, but it’s really gained widespread attention since this weekend.

For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, go here for his interesting commentary on technology, human relationships and life in general. It’s long (about an hour and 15 minutes) but definitely worth it.

Sometimes I get tired of the generalizations about generations. I was reading the Chicago Tribune when I came across this article about the dumbing down of Americans, especially young Americans. As I’ve mentioned before in my blogs, I’m part of the “infamous” Generation Y, and honestly I don’t like being referred to as dumb. Maybe it’s my competitive spirit that was spurred by growing up in an older brother’s straight-A shadow. Nonetheless, to take a whole age group and classify them as dumb seems a bit well, dumb, don’t you think?

I dropped by the offices of marketing agency Leo Burnett in downtown Chicago today to hand off a few copies of the July 2008 edition Chief Learning Officer magazine to Jeff Tritt, who was featured in the Profile article of that issue. While there, I happened to get wind of a couple of interesting examples of engaging employee development programs.

I recently read an article in The Wall Street Journal about growth leaders, “a special breed of mid-level managers who possess vision, leadership and entrepreneurial talents.” Through my conversations with CLOs and learning leaders, it seems people are talking more about developing their younger high potentials to ascend the corporate ladder and less about harnessing the existing talent in mid-level ranks for organic growth. Why not identify your growth leaders, keep them in those key positions and provide supporting development?

As rivalries go, MySpace versus Facebook might rank one notch above Star Wars versus Star Trek on the nerd scale. But for learning professionals looking to formulate a social networking strategy to connect with and educate younger workers, it’s one worth looking at closely.

This video really captures – with a fair amount of accuracy – the advantages and disadvantages of each social network with caricatures. Facebook seems to be less overtly commercial and more intellectual, if somewhat tedious and uptight. On the other hand, MySpace appears to be fun and freewheeling, but also a bit artificial and unnecessarily ostentatious. Most users of each network probably wouldn’t disagree with these characterizations.

But which one is more popular?

On the eve of the new and improved iPhone hitting the shelves, I went to the Apple store on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago and was surprised by the number of people lined up with camping gear in tow waiting for Friday morning to dawn and Apple’s doors to open.

The popularity of this new iPhone begs the question, what is its relevance to the business world?

Economic philosopher Joseph Schumpeter wasn’t the first person to come up with the concept of creative destruction, but he did make it popular in the business world. More than 60 years after he published Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, his explanation about how old processes and technologies are naturally annihilated by new and better ones is even more applicable than it was in his time.

“Our senses themselves are dumb. They take in experience, but they need the richness of sifting for a while through our consciousness and through our whole bodies. I call this ‘composting.’ Our bodies are garbage heaps: we collect experience, and from the decomposition of the thrown-out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee grinds and old steak bones of our minds come nitrogen, heat and very fertile soil.”

This excerpt is from a book I am reading called Writing Down the Bones. I’m reading it to break past the barrier of my own writing to explore a new and different style. But as the author Natalie Goldberg says, these concepts about writing are applicable to all aspects of life from business to running. Just replace “writing” with “learning,” and the same rings true.

When I read about the looming talent shortage, I sometimes see dramatic words like “unprecedented” and “crisis” thrown around. The terms seem to imply that organizations in developed and even developing countries are being challenged by a severe (perhaps existential) threat, the likes of which we’ve never seen.

Not so. In fact, U.S. organizations probably faced an even greater shortage of labor throughout much of the 1800s. In one part of Amy Chua’s new book, Day of Empire, the Yale law professor recounts the seemingly insatiable thirst for talent required to grow the industry and infrastructure of the recently established American republic.

I came across this article recently and it got me thinking about ageism in the workplace. So often our conversations revolve around how to engage Generation Y, but how often do we talk about keeping baby boomers engaged? How much of an effort do we make to ensure that they still feel invested in their work? To me, this is even more difficult than engaging Gen Y. Gen Y workers have the eagerness of inexperience, while baby boomers have the doldrums of experience.

I love getting messages from readers, even ones that aren’t entirely complimentary. And a recent Executive Briefings newsletter I wrote brought out a few good responses from some members of our audience.

In response to a recent reader comment about government blogging, I did some research. I found this Web site that lists 33 active federal government blogs. While I was shocked about how few Fortune 500 companies were blogging, I’m actually pleasantly surprised at the number of government blogs. Why? Because I always thought the government was a little sluggish when it came to incorporating technology, but agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security have blogs. I encourage you to check out some of them to see what they’re writing about, how often they update them, how long the entries are and whether or not people are commenting on them.

A few days ago, I got an e-mail from the folks at Root Learning about a new management training offering they’ve put together. The message included a link to a video that satirized the typical manager development experience. In this clip, our protagonist is literally roped into an assignment he knows nothing about, and is given a perplexing set of tools and a manual to accomplish who-knows-what.

I don’t really know that much what Root’s learning program is actually like and can’t offer any additional information on that score, but the video they put together to promote it is certainly intriguing. I point it out to CLO readers to give them an example of how they can “advertise” their learning programs to their “customers” in their own companies.

In response to a recent Executive Briefing titled Comedy in the Classroom, Paul Roden, a training manager in human resources at LaSalle University, e-mailed me with a great example of how he uses humor in his classroom. Often, he starts his face-to-face training detailing the four types of trainees, complete with illustrations: the prisoner, the vacationer, the expert and the explorer.

A few months ago, I wrote an article for CLO magazine’s Executive Briefings newsletter about the role of the learning function in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. In the piece, I talked to Annick Renaud-Coulon, who has promoted the idea of using the corporate university as a means to CSR ends in her native Europe and beyond. (You can find that article here.)

In the story, I asked her if there is any substantial benefit to employing the corporate university in the service of social responsibility that goes any farther than being a feel-good exercise. She said that pressure from organizations’ stakeholders (in both Europe and North America) to enhance and expand CSR programs is rising, and those organizations would have to use existing resources in new ways to improve in this area. Renaud-Coulon maintained that one of the best resources for this is the corporate university, which is a powerful lever for effecting changes in views and behaviors.

I’m now reading her book on this subject, Corporate Universities: A Lever of Corporate Responsibility, in which she offers a more formal and extensive argument for this approach.

Similar to the punk rock phenomenon that eschewed mainstream music, the philosophy of Edupunk rebels against the rise of course-management systems. These applications incorporate watered-down versions of cutting-edge technologies such as Web 2.0 applications.

At its essence though, Edupunk champions the "do it yourself" attitude and is student, teacher or community created rather than corporate sourced. The details of Edupunk are still formulating, as the term was coined on May 25th when Jim Groom, an instructional-technology specialist and adjunct professor at the University of Mary Washington, wrote about it on his blog. As a result, the definition above is pieced together from various blogs and articles on the subject.

They’re a mysterious and demographically challenged generation, one that no observer seems to be able to really pin down in a single, satisfactory explanation. One thing is for sure, though: They’re going to be a critical part of organizations’ future success.

I’m not talking about Generation X, although this description certainly applies to them as well. I’m actually referring to what’s been called “Generation Z,” a group that – according to the earliest estimates – began coming into the world around the very end of the 20th century.

Check out this wiki that lists all of the Fortune 500 companies that blog. According to the research (as of May 17th), 11.6 percent of the Fortune 500 are blogging.

Really? That’s it? To me, that percentage is woefully low, and I just don’t get it. I don’t understand what’s stopping organizations from connecting with their internal and external customers. What better way is there to engage them?

One of the most interesting trends in U.S. workforce demographics today is also one of the least discussed. It has little to do with age, ethnicity or gender, is somewhat impacted by geography and has tremendous implications for what is produced and consumed in this country (and all economically developed nations, really).

We all know that creativity breeds innovation. But if you look at the stereotypical office, ingenuity is often sacrificed in favor of standardization. If there’s no creativity in the organization, then there’s probably little to no creativity in the learning. Is your learning program stale and standardized, or have you woven cutting-edge innovation into the process?

With Web 2.0 applications, learning professionals have an opportunity to infuse creative flair into run-of-the-mill exercises.

Swiss business school IMD just released its ranking of the world’s most competitive countries, based on four dimensions: economy, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure. Which one is at the top of the list, and why?

Before coming to MediaTec Publishing, I worked as a newspaper bureau reporter. As a result, I became intimately familiar with all of the educational acronyms that determine the brightness of a student’s future. What I saw dismayed me, because now more than ever education is dependent on standardized tests. Gone are the days of spontaneity and in-the-moment learning. Now everything in a teacher’s planner is highly structured, every moment of time accounted for and targeted toward an end-of-the-year test.

One might wonder what the state of secondary education has to do with training. Well, I would argue that it has a lot to do with corporate America and learning.

In the 1940s, an intellectual movement based in Western Europe and North America started getting traction in fields such as architecture, the fine arts and philosophy. Leading thinkers in these areas, disillusioned by the bedlam and destruction brought about by the world wars, rejected existing scoietal norms and argued for a new approach to, well, everything. This school of thought came to be known as postmodernism.

In the past couple of decades, some decidedly “postmodern” traits have begun to appear in many corporate enterprises. These include decentralization and ambiguous hierarchy, diversity and complexity, and synthesis and interconnectedness. Or, as Czech President and intellectual Vaclav Havel put it, an environment where “everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.”

Does this sound like your organization? If so, how has that impacted learning strategies and initiatives?

We are always talking about the differences between the way baby boomers and Millennials learn, but what about the similarities? The following link shows that these two generations may have more in common than we think:

http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/apr2008/ca20080430_320434.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_managing

Millennials will use Web 2.0 applications on the job whether they are allowed to or not, according to a study in CIO magazine by antivirus and security software vendor Symantec. (You can find it here: http://www.cio.com/article/328964/Younger_Workers_More_Likely_to_Break_Corporate_Rules_for_Web_Apps) Half of the 600 respondents surveyed in the study have policies banning Web 2.0 tools, and 69 percent of the Millennial respondents said they will use whatever technology they want regardless of such policies.

The World Wide Web was abuzz yesterday due to the release of the fourth installment of the popular 'Grand Theft Auto' (GTA) series. Web pages were awash with ads for the video game, and discussion boards and blogs were teeming with reviews. As I write this, experts are predicting that it will easily surpass the sales records set last fall by Microsoft’s 'Halo 3' title.

So what is it about this game that’s so compelling? I clicked on some of those ads to figure that out.

I recently wrote an Executive Briefings article (at http://www.clomedia.com/executive-briefings/2008/March/2122/index.php) about the dynamics at play in emerging markets. One challenge unique to these countries is the lack of employees who are ready to take on leadership roles.

A solution to this issue is learning, something IBM has already realized. Through a new initiative called the Corporate Service Corps, 100 employees will travel to these emerging markets to cultivate leadership skills and help address socio-economic challenges. The teams will be sent to Romania, Turkey, Vietnam, the Philippines, Ghana and Tanzania. Not only will the project help develop business leaders in these countries, but the participants will return with a thorough knowledge of emerging markets and the challenges that they face.

One of the most troubling aspects of the global economy today is the meteoric rise in the cost of gas. About a year ago, pundits worried about the price of oil topping $80 a barrel. Those were the days! Now, that price is climbing toward $120 a barrel, meaning it’s gone up by more than 50 percent in just one year.

Even worse, this trend doesn’t really seem to be abating. If market observers such as MSN Money’s Jim Jubak are to be believed, we could be looking at $180 or even $200 per barrel in a couple of years due to production difficulties in key oil-producing nations. He makes a prediction to this effect here:

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal/WhyOilCouldHit180DollarsABarrel.aspx.

So why is this important for you?

In my rush to work on one recent morning, I’d forgotten all about the advent of spring until I got to work and was greeted by someone who handed me four yellow flowers. Those flowers sat on my desk for awhile and served as a reminder that we should all take a moment to smell the flowers.

As I do this, I am literally amazed by how far we’ve come. I know a lot of my blogs have concentrated on technology, but today I’m going to take a moment to look at the progress we’ve made. Just five years ago, I would come home from college to my parents’ agonizingly slow DSL computer, which seemed like torture. And now I sit at my desk with literally everything I could ever want to know a short click away.

In the corporate world, the same is true. It wasn’t that long ago that cell phones, e-mail and the Internet were the exception rather than the norm. Who’s to say we won’t do the same with blogs, virtual worlds and simulations?

I believe we can and we will one day, just as we did when we embraced the Internet, which at the time seemed like such a staggering task. But today is a day for recognizing; tomorrow will be the day for advancing.

Quick, what’s the largest employment sector in the United States? Retail? Guess again. Health care? Nuh-uh. Business services? Nope.

The resounding theme for me at the end of my first CLO Symposium was the need to view learning in a different light. The point was driven home when, in the opening presentation, Maestro Roger Nierenberg drew an analogy between orchestras and businesses — two entities I typically don’t think of in the same context. He illustrated that the dynamics that make an orchestra successful are the same that make a business successful — teamwork and good leadership.

In Edie Weiner’s keynote, we were told to strip off our blinders and view the world as it truly is — as an alien or a child would. Lastly, Michelle Blieberg, global learning officer at UBS Investment Bank, actually showed us examples of learning in a new light. She uses ballet companies and juvenile detention centers as examples of how important recruitment can be and how to change the culture of an organization.

As we prepare for our Spring 2008 Symposium next week, I’ve been reading up on the subject of change so that I’ll be able to make insightful-sounding comments about it to interlocutors during the cocktail hours. But behind any rhetoric I might spout over scotch lies a great deal of uncertainty about nature of change.

A recently released book, titled BIG Ideas to BIG Results: Remake and Recharge Your Company, Fast, states that the reason corporate initiatives fail is because they are too complex and instead promotes a simple, practical approach. The authors cite a poll stating that “less than half of employees understand their company’s strategic goals and only 43 percent believe there is ever any follow-through on planned strategy shifts,” according to a press release.  

These numbers mean that about half of corporations are getting it right and half are getting it wrong.  Which side do you fall on? If you aren’t getting it right, what can you do to change that?

There’s been no shortage of talk, including in the pages of our magazine, about how Web 2.0 tools are going transform the learning industry.

Many say that collaborative technologies, like wikis, blogs and social networks, will transform learning, thereby ushering in a new era of collaboration and knowledge sharing. Our learning models will no longer be simply top down, but horizontal, as learners share knowledge in peer groups and informal learning networks.

One of the amusing things about the rhetoric surrounding the War for Talent in today’s global economy is how much of it focuses on U.S. intergenerational demographics. Observers will compare the 80 million or so baby boomers in the United States – who are approaching retirement – to the 50 million or so Generation Xers and presume that there will be a shortfall of people in the workforce numbering in the tens of millions. If only it were that simple…

A couple of weeks ago, I attended my first CLO Breakfast Club here in the Windy City. Through the discussion, I found that most companies don’t have a formal blogging policy. The chief dilemma in developing this policy is founded on one simple but difficult-to-answer question: How much control can we give up?

A blog thrives on independence and the availability of information, but in reality, no company can give up total control or the end result could be chaos. So, how do you cultivate a culture in which people feel secure in posting honest commentary, but you still have loose control over the reins? The key is in setting guidelines that reflect the nature of your workforce and your company’s environment.

One of the great things about my job is the fact that I get so many freebies. Free books, free meals, free admission to events, you name it. But this special situation might not be so special anymore, as it seems nearly everyone can get tons of stuff gratis these days. The culprits? Bandwidth, storage and processing.

According to Wired magazine’s Editor in Chief Chris Anderson – who gave us the term “the long tail” – these three components of information technology have become “too cheap to meter.” In other words, they’re so inexpensive and abundant that everyone can post huge text, audio and video files to the Web and share them with each other at little to no cost. It also means that media outlets (such as, say, Chief Learning Officer magazine) will be increasingly compelled to give away most of its content just to be able to compete with the sheer volume of information on the Internet.

My first job out of college, I was reporting in a place that I didn’t know very well, covering topics I didn’t really understand, and the philosophy was really sink or swim. Luckily I managed to swim, but there were times when I was underwater for a long time before I caught my breath.

Because of the nature of newspaper journalism, there just wasn’t the time to sit down and explain things. I was more fortunate than others though, as I found some really great co-workers who were willing to listen to my frustrations, give me feedback and help me along my way.

Every other month for the last four years, we've surveyed a select number of our readers on the critical issues and challenges they face as learning executives. This Business Intelligence Board, as we've come to call it, gives us insight into the real challenges that learning executives face and has helped us guide how we develop the magazine.

We're just about set to release the full results of last year's surveys in the 2008 Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Industry Report. There are some recurring themes this year that echo the sentiments of prior years. Namely, leadership development continues to be a critical priority for many of the organizations we survey. Many learning executives will spend a significant amount of their time and resources to build the leadership abilities of their organization's executives and future executives.

A recent article on Slate.com, underlines the key role that leadership plays in creating, and maintaining, competitive advantage. According to Slate commentator Daniel Gross (www.slate.com/id/2186547/), the state of American management is at a crisis point, leading many foreign companies to mock what was once a strength of the American business system - its managers.

He points to the rise of foreign-born CEOs at American companies as evidence of this trend. He also points out that the management weaknesses evidenced by the subprime mess have eroded confidence in American management ability, and the lack of language skills among American executives hinder their ability to operate in a global business environment.

Food for thought as learning execs look to build their organization's leadership capabilities.

Learning is an evolving strategy. It can never stay the same, as it must change with the times, the audience, the modes and the topics. As a result, those in the learning industry must always be attentive to what’s new and cutting edge and also what’s old and tried and true. Here is a link to a blog (http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html) that lists the top 100 e-learning tools of 2008, all of which come from professionals who actively use e-learning. When I last checked, 97 people had participated in the survey, but it’s continually updated as more people respond. I encourage you to check the list out to see where you agree and where you disagree.  

One fascinating point that Jane Hart makes on her blog about her top 100 list is that traditional educators in schools and colleges are leading the way in their use of Web 2.0 tools, while those in corporate learning are using more Web 1.0 tools. I’m curious: How many corporate trainers are experimenting with these Web 2.0 tools? If you’re not, why not? Are you waiting to see how successful these tools are? I understand the need to test the waters, but at the same time, you’ve got to update e-learning to make it more engaging. I’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to e-mail me at editor@clomedia.com.

What does “Made in the U.S.A.” even mean anymore? A quick review of the items on my desk led me to find that my coffee cup was made in China, my picture frame was also made in China, and my pens are from Japan. While this quick assessment illustrates a lot about the economy, it also says something about the current workplace.  

More and more companies are moving operations overseas, placing an even larger emphasis on corporate learning. To be successful and to create a cohesive corporate identity, you need learning that will cross culture, time zones and language.  

No employees overseas? Maybe they’re spread across the country, and thus learning needs to span the culture in the south as well as that of the west coast. If you don’t have employees across state lines, take a look at your workforce and the diversity of it, and you’ll probably still find learning is essential to creating a coherent, united corporate identity and methodology. So the question in today’s world with the increase of globalization and the rise of budget constraints is how do we effectively engage our employees who are in India, South Carolina or across the hall?

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