Best practices for experiential learning programs are evolving. How can you initiate, or improve upon, this proven method? This session will address:

• What is experiential learning?
• When to employ it … and when not to:

            o   Participants are proficient in their own area but need better context, execution experience
            o   Cost of employee error is high (participants can’t ‘experiment’ on the job)
            o   Colleagues need to get to know each other (global, siloed, departmentalized)
            o   When to employ it -- Experiential learning generally takes time and is not optimal for simply teaching                   a single technical subject (how to do lease accounting, how to prevent computer hacking)
 

• Five key items to ensure its success

            o   Know your participants (demographics, experiences, CTQs)
            o   Ensure the experience engages on multiple levels (technical, leadership, sharing corporate culture,                        social)
            o   Use in-house subject-matter experts liberally, and wisely
            o   Create multiple opportunities for feedback among teams and between teams and facilitators
            o   Do rigorous, disciplined post-event analysis (engaging participants, their managers, SMEs, corporate                    leadership, and other relevant parties)

Mike Guarnieri brings 23 years of experience as a global finance learning leader at General Electric Co. to his role with TRI Corporation. His career at GE spanned such areas as financial services, risk management, and Lean Six Sigma. He taught finance to both finance and non-finance participants, and he was also responsible for global management of finance training for GE’s 10,000+ finance professionals, including members of GE’s prestigious Financial Management Program (FMP).

Before joining the learning organization at GE, Mike was an underwriter of middle market financing at GE Capital, leader of its audit division, and was a member of several due diligence teams that worked on global acquisitions totaling about $1 billion. He spent several years in GE’s quality organization, focused on process improvement and operations management, ultimately becoming quality leader for a division of GE Capital.
 
Prior to joining GE, Mike was at Arthur Andersen LLC. He also has experience as an assistant controller in a medium-sized firm that manufactured and assembled electronic components and sensing devices.