Features

Published December 2008

The Future of Learning

Brian Summerfield and Lindsay Edmonds Wickman

To find out what we can expect in the corporate learning space during the next few years, the editors of Chief Learning Officer magazine talked to some of the industry’s leading voices to uncover future challenges and solutions. Here are their thoughts on some of the most important trends on the horizon.

Channeling Changes
When we asked management guru and The One Minute Manager author Ken Blanchard what he thought the future of learning held, he provided an outline of the three major changes he sees coming:

Changing Technologies
• Engaging digital natives (younger generations) in creating the kind of learning experiences they are drawn to already
• Organizations need to pay attention to how social networking, gaming and simulations facilitate real work
• Increasing isolation and alienation because more people are working from home
• Organizations need to be deliberate in strengthening relationships at work, even virtual ones
• Productivity/relationship best practices for workers who work at home or independently

Changing Demographics
• Finding different work arrangements for baby boomers other than retirement
• Organizations need to be more flexible to keep needed talent:
• Part-time arrangements
• More flexible schedules
• Project work
• Developing Gen X and Gen Y more rapidly to become leaders and managers
• Organizations need to provide career planning and intentional development and give attention to what they want or need:
• Boomers as mentors
• Work-life balance
• Larger meaning in work
• Support more “intrapreneurship” to keep people from leaving

Changing Workplace
• Increasing need to provide just-in-time solutions to problems rather than just-in-case training
• Organizations need to provide shorter training and more follow-up
• Create ecosystems that support rapid on-boarding of new employees, training with supervisor involvement, coaching and access to information through technology
• Get away from one-size-fits-all: People need their own career/development journey mapped out and supported
• Custom-built life

Improving Business Acumen
During the past few years, business acumen increasingly has been acknowledged as a core competency for effective chief learning officers because it’s the underpinning of alignment and effective measurement, said Rebecca Ray, senior vice president of global talent management and development at MasterCard and Chief Learning Officer magazine’s 2008 CLO of the Year.

“As a profession, we need to increase our business acumen and truly understand the industry of our company, its competitors, its value proposition, its products and services,” she said. “We must plan and execute against business metrics and articulate the impact in business terms. We must position ourselves as a business partner committed to driving results. We must see far down the road and be the thought leader our business partners will need.”

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