Debbie Ung, Senior Vice President at GP Strategies (NYSE:GPX), discusses performance readiness and the importance of enabling frontline workers.

We all have a race or goal to accomplish. When working together and inspiring each other, we are able to get to the finish line faster and celebrate. Are you ready to gear up and take on your next challenge? Click the play button below to listen to the full podcast.

Now entering my 33rd year in the learning and development profession, I am excited about 2013 and what we can expect. Here are my predictions for the coming year: Mobile learning reaches the tipping point. I wrote my first article on mobile learning in August 2010 and addressed screen resolution, bandwidth, learning management systems, and instructional design as the major challenges. A little more than two years later and all these issues are history. Bandwidth and screen resolution are more than adequate. All the major LMS vendors have released mobile applications, and instructional designers have worked hard to chunk the content into manageable sizes. With all the barriers removed, we should see a surge in the development of corporate mobile learning applications. Content development moves aggressively from out-tasking to outsourcing. A large portion of custom content development has been out-tasked to vendors since I started in this business. In fact, I was hired to write content for GP Strategies as part of a major design and development project for a power company. Today it is not uncommon for companies to use 5, 10, or more vendors as part of their content development strategy. Managing this many vendors can lead to issues of inconsistent quality, different price points, and getting projects started in a timely manner. In the last two years I have seen a shift from this out-tasking model to an outsourcing model where a company will select a single vendor to develop all their content. With the early adopters’ proven success of these outsourcings, we should see significantly more companies moving to this model in 2013. Learning content management hits a critical stage. As we continue to produce more and more digital learning assets, the problem of tracking these assets has reached a critical stage. If we don’t know what content is in each asset, what date is what created, when it will become obsolete, and where the source code is, we are headed for major headaches. There are more times than not that I cannot find a presentation that I developed and saved on my laptop. How are we going to keep track of thousands of courses? Learning content management systems are supposed to help with this problem, but the jury is still out on the value of these systems. Leadership training continues to grow. As the economy continues to recover and companies return to a growth mode, more leaders will be required. We all know that when the economy takes a downturn, leadership training is the first to take a hit. In 2008 and 2009, we saw very little demand for leadership training. It started to recover in 2010 and 2011, but in 2012, the demand increased exponentially. The Bersin 2012 Leadership Development Factbook reported that spending on leadership training would increase 12% in 2012. I see the demand increasing in 2013 and continuing for the foreseeable future. Will this be the year of the MOOC? Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are continuing to grow. From Kahn Academy with over 3,600 courses on a wide range of topics including math, science and finance to Academic Earth that provide lessons from Yale, MIT, and Stanford, the availability of more courses will start to meet some corporate learning needs . As more free courses become available, I expect to see companies seriously considering replacing some of their Skillsoft library with these courses. What are your predictions for learning in 2013? It would be great to hear your thoughts and continue the conversation!

Debbie Ung, Senior Vice President at GP Strategies (NYSE:GPX), discusses performance readiness within organizations.

Over the last six months, a lot has been said about the terrific benefits that SharePoint 2013 has to offer. And it is true that there are many enhancements and improvements to the SharePoint Platform. Last January, Microsoft gave us a sneak peek into the new platform through the form of technical specifications. A few months later, they opened up the beta program for the platform, which added even more goodness for the SharePoint community. I have been working within the newest platform since July 2012, and it seems I learn some new tidbit about the platform that intrigues me even more each time I use it. And to have attended November’s SharePoint Conference, I learned even more about the platform. The one question I am asked is, "What is your favorite part of SharePoint 2013?" which I find hard to answer; there are simply too many great things in it. So, for this blog post, I am going to list my five favorite things about SharePoint 2013. Since I tend to focus my SharePoint adventures around the Business User, I will limit this listing to things I think will be of greatest benefit to the Business User. So without further ado, here are "Johnathan’s Top Five Features of SharePoint 2013 (Business User’s Edition)": Video Support - This is a very interesting development. In past incarnations of SharePoint, there was the ability to upload videos into libraries. But with the new Asset Library App, anyone can not only upload a video, but can also designate a thumbnail image (from within the video, from an image stored elsewhere, or from the web). We also have the ability to have various renderings of the video, meaning videos with different characteristics can be loaded, and depending on the connection speed of the device trying to access the video, the proper video can be loaded for them. App Store - This feature may be one of the more controversial enhancements within the platform for Governance Teams. But with the App Store, developers can produce solutions and post them within a SharePoint App Store for consumption by users. So, instead of designing a tracking system for example, someone can go to an App store, and purchase and download a solution someone else may have developed. The possibilities are limitless for teams being able to load various apps they might need for use. Community Sites and Portals - I am really excited about this development. Up to this point if an organization wanted a community site, they would either use the Team Site template and modify it to accomplish having a community site, or simply start with a blank site and add the components they needed. With SharePoint 2013, there is an actual Community template that can be selected, which is focused on community-driven practices such as discussions, ratings, and badges. What’s more, any site created using the Community Site template is registered within a Community Portal. A Community portal is simply a site that is used as a directory for the various available communities. This is great in my mind because now an organization can have a central place where people can locate communities that may be of interest or use to them. Device Channels - This development excites me and at the same time worries me. But overall, I think it is great. In past SharePoint platforms, there was a default view set up for use with mobile devices. I always found it interesting when people asked me, "How do we make our SharePoint site mobile enabled?" To which I would answer, "Nothing, it’s already mobile enabled." The only problem (well, actually there were several problems with this view) was there was a single default view that may or may not be friendly to a mobile device, depending on the device being used. With SharePoint 2013, we now have the ability to render a single publishing site in multiple ways using different designs that target different devices. So, you can have a design for Windows Phones, iPhones, Android devices, etc. That is great—now developers and designers can not only create mobile friendly views, but they can also leverage the different strengths of the various devices to add even more functionality to the site. Now the part that worries me is that when there is a change, each of those designs will have to be managed as well. This could get messy, but we shall see. Location Field Type - Going with the mobile theme, there is a new field type called Location, which is a geo-location field. That may not sound too exciting to you at first, but think about your current smartphone and the ability it has to know where you are. I can envision a lot of new apps being developed that can enable location-aware information, for example, when technicians need to enter data about a station they are working at. The location field could be leveraged to input the latitude and longitude of the person and know which station they are at. I am really interested to see how this new field is utilized in the future within organizations. Okay so this is my list of the top five things I see for Business Users in SharePoint 2013. But as some of us are still winding down from the holidays, here is a sixth (think of it as my little New Year’s present): Search - Search has always been a strong portion of the SharePoint platform. In SharePoint 2013, Search received almost a full facelift in terms of architecture and functionality. For this listing, though, the one feature that I like the most for Business Users is document preview. Now you are able to hover your mouse over a search result and preview the contents of the document in a hover panel to the right of the result. Wow, no more opening multiple documents until you find the correct one! That is powerful. There is one more feature that I have been reading about and am very interested in, but I simply don’t have enough information about it to say it is a favorite. It’s called the Educational Services module. Everything I am reading leads me to believe that this could be a game changer for learning. I am delving further into this module, and as soon as I have enough information, I will most likely do a series of blog posts about it. Stay tuned! I am sure that as you read about and explore this exciting new platform, you will find your favorite features as well. In which case, I ask that you add a comment below as to what the feature is you like, along with why you like it.

Agile Learning - Leveraging the adaptive, iterative nature of social, mobile and micro learning techniques to streamline the development and delivery of outcome-based learning. http://gpstrategies.rwd.com/

I won’t spend a lot of time discussing the definition of informal learning. Chances are that if you’re reading this blog, you already know its basic principles.  Until recently, anytime I wanted to learn something new or find out specific information about a particular topic, I would "Google it." Obviously, Google provides hundreds of thousands of links for any resource you are searching. However, like most people, I learn better by "seeing and doing." As a result, I have recently turned to YouTube for a variety of reasons. Product Reviews - When I want specific product reviews on an item I’m looking to purchase, I’ll go to YouTube. I have found that video reviews are far more valuable when buying certain products. Consider deciding between two different coffee makers or laptops. Video reviews are much better in these cases. Handyman Services - YouTube helps when fixing something around the house. While I would like to consider myself a regular handyman, my wife would certainly disagree. However, a few months ago, I was able to reinstall a brand new garbage disposal just by reading the directions and viewing a few YouTube videos. A year earlier, I fixed a problem with our flat screen TV two days before the NFL playoffs.  Software Tips/Tricks - It would be simply unreasonable to take a new ILT course on Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint to learn all the new features and functionality every time a new version is released. Instead, I often research YouTube on the specific feature I’m looking to work with. Educational/Political News - I have also noticed that a lot of the educational and political news I view from a variety of websites has YouTube videos embedded within the content.  Now, translate this idea into the corporate learning environment. Think of the possibilities of implementing a corporate learning video platform.  Several years ago, Sun Microsystems implemented a social learning environment called the Sun Learning eXchange (SLX), which is essentially a video community for the enterprise. The SLX is a SaaS-based video community platform for the enterprise and helps employees, partners, and customers more effectively communicate and collaborate through video and the social web. The application supports tools that enable learners to easily create and publish content and provides a "self-managed" content management strategy that allows learners to categorize, tag, rate, and provide feedback on content. In today’s mobile technology environment, creating a video with a smartphone and posting it on YouTube is almost as easy as creating an email. As a result, people within organizations already have most of the technology needed to contribute to a workplace video community. Sure, you would have to set up the infrastructure to support the portal, etc., but most of the control is already in the users’ hands.

Often I am called upon to meet with clients who are interested in using the SharePoint platform. One of the first questions that I ask is, "Why do you want to use the platform?" I receive a variety of answers, but the prevailing answer is, "So we can collaborate better." This sounds great, and in fact, if you go to Microsoft’s SharePoint site, you will see that collaboration is listed as one of the main reasons that the platform is in place. However, I have noted that several of the groups I have had the pleasure of working with seem to miss what the meaning of collaboration is.  Listen to the full podcast "Communication Needed Bfore Collaboration Can Begin" by clicking the play button below.

While helping our clients create learning solutions is reward in and of itself, GP Strategies has garnered several outside awards from prestigious industry organizations and publications for our innovative learning services and solutions. We are grateful to be recognized for our accomplishments in helping others achieve greater organizational efficiency. 2012 was a particularly great year for the company in terms of outside accolades. We believe that these awards show just how effective we are at creating value and impact for our customers.

Rick Contel, Director of Strategic Consulting at GP Strategies, discusses the transformation from traditional sales training to a performance-based learning program that transcends basic new-hire training, and follows the entire lifecycle of learning from the hiring process through continued career development.