While companies are off debating their policy regarding access to social networking sites as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, there is a growing body of evidence that Net Generation employees, who put a huge premium on doing things quickly and with zero learning curve, will demand access to these sites. In fact, Professor Clive Holtham, of Cass Business School, notes that in California some firms are already finding they cannot attract or retain staff because their IT infrastructure fails to meet the standards of the Net Generation. Consider some of the benefits in adopting social media to attract, develop and retain top talent: Increases in Creativity and Innovation Deloitte has come up with the innovative idea of hosting an employee film festival, where employees submit creative videos articulating the company’s values and culture. The best of these are now on YouTube. Deloitte has engaged in social media in a variety of other ways, with a special focus on using social networking in new hire on boarding. You can visit the Deloitte New Hire Facebook group from London of September 2007 to get an idea of how social networking can be utilized by new hires. Increases in Employee Engagement We know from the Gallup Organization that engaged employees lead to greater productivity, customer engagement and, by extension, higher profits. Hence, companies with populations of mostly actively engaged employees tend to outperform those with populations of mainly disengaged employees. Increases in Communication with the Troops Some aspects of social networking have already found their way onto the CEO agenda. Consider the growth in the number of CEO’s of publicly traded companies who have their own blog: Jonathan Schwartz, "Jonathan’s Blog" — CEO of Sun Microsystems Bill Marriott, "On the Move" — CEO of Marriott International Mike Critelli, "Open Mike" — executive chairman of Pitney Bowes Robert Lutz, "Fast Lane" — GM vice chairman David Neeleman, "Flight Log"— chairman of JetBlue Airways Michael Hyatt, "From Where I Sit" — CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers While CEO’s that blog are still rare, what is more common is the company department that starts a blog to share their lessons, insights and practices to a global workforce. Whatever road your company takes to developing a high performing workplace, the key will be to recruit, develop and retain the best talent and that talent may in fact demand you equip them with the latest tools in order to more closely match the way they run the rest of their lives.

There have been many definitions for Web 2.0 but perhaps the easiest one is by Tim O’Reilly, who first coined the term at the O’Reilly Media conference in October of 2004. He referred to this new web as a collaborative network characterized by the participatory and cumulative experience of users. Let’s break down the three major components of Web 2.0: Collaborative: Supports extensions to itself, is not a finished product but always a "work in process." Accessible across multiple platforms: Meaning, Web 2.0 can be accessed by devices of all kinds from PCs to Mobile Phones to You Name It… User-generated: Rather than viewing content as static, the well-established boundaries between professionals and amateurs are eroding and content is open and continuously updated. Listen to Tim O’Reilly, often called the father of Web 2.0, as he describes the concept on YouTube. Now let’s step back and ask if this user participatory experience, which is at the heart of Web 2.0, can be incorporated inside corporate learning departments. As you consider this question, five issues come to mind: What happens to the instructional design process? What is the role of subject matter experts versus professional instructional designers? How do Learning Management Systems need to be adopted? How do learners continually add their experiences, stories and lessons to formal learning programs? What new processes and methods need to be created to take into account the "wisdom" of the crowds? If the cardinal rule of Web 2.0 is that users add value - then how does this fit into the current way you design, develop and deliver corporate learning programs?

Do you understand your employees’ motivations and desires to the same extent as your customers? Perhaps not, and here is the opportunity for you. The Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study had some interesting findings related to innovation, learning and development. First, improving one’s skills and capabilities ranked second to competitive base pay in a list of key drivers for employees in attraction, retention and engagement. The Tower Perrin Global Workforce Study polled 90,000 workers in 18 countries on drivers to being attracted and engaged at an organization. Specifically, the top five drivers of engagement include: Competitive base pay Career development and advancement opportunities Challenging Work Flexible Work Location Flexible Schedule So how does your organization stack up against these top five? You can see all the results at theTowers Perrin website.

"Why $0.00 Is The Future Of Business," on the front cover of the Wired Magazine March, 2008 issue is one of the most thought provoking articles I have read in a long time. The author is Chris Andersen, who also wrote The Long Tail and resides as Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine. The article explores the concept of FREE - a marketing strategy where digital products are given away and previews Chris’ forthcoming book called "Free." Chris argues that with cost of digital products rapidly dropping, it’s time to give them away for FREE. There are plenty of examples in the article including: free web web mail from Google and Yahoo, free access to online content from the New York Times, and free DVR’s from Comcast. According to Wired article: FREE was once a marketing gimmick, free has emerged as a full-fledged economy. Offering free music proved successful for Radiohead, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and a swarm of other bands on MySpace that grasped the audience-building merits of zero. The fastest-growing parts of the gaming industry are ad-supported casual games online and free-to-try massively multiplayer online games. Virtually everything Google does is free to consumers, from Gmail to Picasa to GOOG-411. The rise of "freeconomics" is being driven by the underlying technologies that power the Web. Just as Moore’s law dictates that a unit of processing power halves in price every 18 months, the price of bandwidth and storage is dropping even faster. Which is to say, the trend lines that determine the cost of doing business online all point the same way: to zero. Just last week the United Nations University was launched. At this stage, the UNU OpenCourseWare Portal offers open access to about a dozen courses developed by three of UN’s Research and Training Centres and Programmes (RTC/Ps) and the Tokyo-based UNU Media Studio. The goal of the UNU OpenCourseWare Portal is to make the course materials used by UN Research and Training Centres available on the Web, free of charge. This is not meant to replace degree-granting higher education or for-credit courses, or even customized learning programs, but to provide content that can be used by educators for curriculum development, by students to augment their current learning resources and by individuals for independent self-study. As more of these initiatives are launched and heavily promoted I can see senior executives of companies asking learning and talent management professionals the tough questions including how to integrate FREE content into some of their customized learning programs and in the process lower the cost and improve the quality of these programs? On a final note, I wanted to take Wired Magazine up on their offer for a FREE March, 2008 issue where this article is the cover story. But on the Wired web site you will see the following notice: The March 2008 Issue For Free Offer is Now Closed. So much for walking the walk…

This week I participated in an interesting panel at the 2008 National Human Capital Institute entitled, Attracting and Retaining the New Economy Workforce: Generation X and Y. After a brief discussion of how generational differences can impact behavior in the workplace (see below), the focus of the panel was on what talent management executives can do about developing new practices for attraction and development of Generation Y, also known as Millennials or the Google Generation. Some suggestions to consider in thinking about adopting new practices for a multi-generation workplace include: Learn how the marketing, operations and sales departments in your firm are using social media to attract and retain new customers. In many organizations, experimenting with new media happens outside of the human resources department. For example, in June 2006 Blue Shirt Nation was launched for Best Buy associates. This is a voluntary, open-source, corporate-sponsored social network site that operates outside of the corporate firewall and is moderated by its users. Currently there are 20,000 members of Blue Shirt Nation and it’s become a place for Blue Shirt associates to help each other solve retail store operation issues. It has become influential in affecting changes to the email policy, improving enrollments in the 401k program and setting up systems for employees to communicate between shifts. In terms of retention, the funder of Blue Shirt Nation claims that while company turnover rates hover around 60%, members of BSN have a turnover rate of just 8.5%. Work with your talent management group to develop innovative ways for Net Generation X and Y’s to connect with one another while showcasing their creative abilities. One of the panelists, Leah Reynolds of Deloitte shared a YouTube clip from the Deloitte Film Festival. This is a contest run among Deloitte new hires where they make short films that express their vision of the firm’s culture and values. The best of these videos are posted to YouTube, check out my favorite, entitled, The Green Dot. It is about a Deloitte superhero who shows what’s its like to be a client services superhero for a day. Finally, as you work with your teams to create new and innovative ways to attract, develop and motivate Net Generation X and Y’s be sure you take a business approach. Develop a business case for why your organization needs to look at newer alternative methods. Also define the target audience and, importantly, the results and metrics you are looking for in terms of increased retention and increased on-the-job performance.

Every year I wait to see which companies made FORTUNE’s list of America’s Most Admired Companies. This year, Apple is not only ranked #1 in America, but also #1 Globally and in the category of Most Innovative Company. Apple has not only created successful new products but it has disrupted three different industries - computers (with the Mac), music (with the iPod) and movies (with Pixar). Let me make a full disclosure here: I own most of Apple’s latest products with the exception of the MacBook Air (though, it’s next on my list). What I found most interesting about the Apple coverage in the latest FORTUNE article was the comment by COO Tim Cook, "Apple hires people who are never satisfied. You don’t get a foot in the door unless your eyes light up when you talk about your Mac." It really is passion that provides the secret sauce to talent management at Apple. It’s so easy to forget the passion quotient in thinking about talent management, but in the end it’s what drives customer satisfaction. This is what Steve Jobs has this to say about recruiting and managing talent: "When I hire someone really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself. They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for me or them. Recruiting is hard. It’s finding the needle in the haystack. In the end I ask myself: How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they are challenged? Why are they here? Hopefully the answer will be: They cannot do what you can do at Apple anywhere else." Below are the lists for this year’s top 10 most admired companies and the top 10 most innovative. Top Ten Most Admired Companies Apple Berkshire Hathaway GE Google Toyota Starbucks FedEx Procter & Gamble Johnson & Johnson Goldman Sachs Top Ten Most Innovative Companies Apple Nike Medco Health Solutions Procter & Gamble Herman Miller Walt Disney Fortune Brands Burlington Northern Santa Fe McDonald’s ProLogis

The demand to grow the best breed of talent is on the CEO agenda but still many CEO’s struggle to resolve the talent shortage for their businesses. There is a fundamental disconnect between how executives value the importance of talent management versus the amount of involvement and rigor they have in the talent management process. This is one of the major findings from Growing Global Executive Talent, a global online survey of 412 executives conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and Development Dimensions International (DDI). Click here to download the PDF of the full report. According to this survey, 55% of respondents said that their organization’s performance was likely or very likely to suffer in the future due to insufficient leadership talent. One of the more compelling quotes in the survey findings was from a CEO in support of investing more time in talent management. David Novak, CEO of Yum Brands, shares this in the survey; "Show me a good leader and I’ll show you a good business." A number of key findings emerged from the survey that can be highlighted and referred to as evidence of the importance of talent management, namely: 66% of the respondents from the survey are making talent management a core business strategy equal to or more important than other business priorities. Some CEO’s are increasingly playing a hands-on role in expanding and fine-tuning their talent management initiatives. For example, Mr. Majdi Abulaban, vice president of Delphi Packard Electrical Architecture, said he is now spending 50% of his time on talent management, up from 35% two years ago. 55% of respondents said their firm was fair or poor at identifying talent and communicating promotions. Strong talent management depends on clear communication where potential candidates understand where they need to improve and what they need to accomplish in order to be in line for advancement. Only 20% of respondents said they spend time on managing leadership talent or involved their human resources department as a "true strategic partner." One thought for Human Resource professionals: Be proactive in involving yourself as a business partner. Waiting to be "invited" to assume this role will clearly not work for you. One suggestion: develop an enterprise people development plan, this will give you the strategic view into your organization’s talent needs. Furthermore, given the fact, that just one in ten CEO’s said they reviewed leadership talent with their Board of Directors, this appears to be another opportunity for Human Resources professionals to begin to engage with their senior leadership in putting talent management on the agenda for the Board of Directors. And having an enterprise people plan may be the first request of the Board. So, the survey asks what is preventing companies from adopting a more "rigorous" approach to talent management? Some common strategies mentioned in depth in the survey findings include: Develop an integrated talent strategy - meaning do not patch together various programs, but rather adopt one comprehensive strategy requiring leaders to serve both as executive sponsors and champions of the talent strategy as well as active participants in the development of talent. Identify talent potential early - the demand for strategic leaders is outgrowing the supply and this results in the need to identify and invest in internal leaders on a regular basis. This requires a routine scanning of the skills, knowledge and talent of the organization, and isolating leaders who show a combination of strong performance and leadership potential. Use innovation and take "calculated risks" in executive development - push your learning vendors to use innovative design approaches including metaphorical learning experiences - a term referring to a learning method that takes participants out of their familiar surroundings and gives them the opportunity to immerse themselves in a new world as they go through a set of learning exercises. So what are your barriers to gaining traction with talent management inside your organization? Please share your experiences with our growing community. Save to deli.cio.us | Digg this | Link to Facebook Technorati Tags: talent management, talent retention, talent leader, global talent, ceo

The annual Business Week survey of the 50 Best Performers is out on newsstands. Here are a few things to think about: Is your company on the list? What are the companies on the list doing in terms of people development? First the top list of companies: 1. Coach 2. Gilead Sciences 3. Allegheny Technologies 4. Verizon 5. Questar 6. Apple 7. Colgate-Palmolive 8. BJ Services 9. Abercrombie & Fitch 10. MEMC Electronic Materials 11. CB Richard Ellis Group 12. C.H. Robinson Worldwide 13. IntercontinentalExchange 14. UnitedHealth Group 15. CME Group 16. Starbucks 17. Robert Half International 18. Avon Products 19. Cognizant Technology Solutions 20. Sunoco 21. Goldman Sachs Group 22. Exelon 23. Amazon.com 24. Rockwell Collins 25. Nucor 26. Varian Medical Systems 27. AT&T 28. Autodesk 29. T.Rowe Price Group 30. Bed Bath & Beyond 31. Pepsico 32. Expeditors International of Washington 33. Lehman Brothers 34. Google 35. Schlumberger 36. Best Buy 37. IMS Health 38. PNC Financial Services Group 39. Constellation Energy Group 40. Sherwin-Williams 41. Microsoft 42. Precision Castparts 43. Titanium Metals 44. Moody’s 45. Coca-Cola 46. Barr Pharmaceuticals 47. TJX 48. Centurytel 49. Nvidia 50. Exxon Mobil A few observations: The list is created based on financial measures. Business Week selects the top performers in each of 10 sectors based on two key metrics: return on investment and sales growth over the past three years (and for the financial service firms, their return on equity and growth in assets). But as we know that only tells a small part of the story. What about the commitment these companies are making to innovation and people development? One of the companies - Lehman Brothers is in fact doing both, all the more remarkable given the current chaos in the financial services and sub-prime marketplace. This year Lehman Brothers ranked number 33 on Business Week’s Top 50 list and while down slightly from the previous year, the company continues to make a commitment to people development. One of the interesting innovations in learning used by Lehman Brothers is Metaphoric Learning, a learning method that takes participants out of their familiar surroundings and gives them the opportunity to immerse themselves in a new world. Metaphorical Learning is not just another fad. Rather, this learning method, as pioneered by Duke Corporate Education, ties learning outcomes to key business priorities. At Lehman Brothers, metaphorical learning is used to develop relationship building skills among investment bankers who become part of a pit crew changing tires trackside at a NASCAR race while building key skills sets that focus on developing execution skills and how to be a member of a complex team. To date, over 500 Lehman executives have participated in metaphoric learning experiences and according to Lehman Brothers there has been a relationship between those who participate in these learning experiences and an increased retention rate. Is this method widespread? Currently it is focused on niche populations in financial services and medical fields but is gaining traction among a broader segment of workers even New York Police Department has used metaphoric learning to build observation skills among police detectives. Is it effective? The key to using metaphoric learning is to be sure it is linked to strategic business goals, the specific skill sets you want to build in a target audience and then measure the outcomes such as increased employee retention, revenue and productivity. If you have experience with metaphoric learning please share your experiences with us. Technorati Tags: metaphorical learning, Duke CE, Lehman Brothers, Business Week Save to deli.cio.us | Digg this | Link to Facebook

This week, I spoke and attended the CLO conference entitled "Orchestrating Change: Leading Organizations with Learning." My presentation focused on Brave New Learners: Millennials and Beyond. The presentation addressed such issues as: What impact will all of this have on the four generations currently in the workforce? Do Millennials really learn differently? Will FORTUNE 500 companies ever create their own Facebook for internal use? There is no doubt that online social networking is weaving itself into the fabric of all four generations in the work force, defined as: Veterans born between 1925-1945 Baby Boomers born between 1946-1965 Gen X born between 1965-1977 Millennials (Gen Y) born on/about 1978 or later It was the discussion about these topics that really got us into a lively and engaged session with lots of questions and frank dialogue: The four generations of the workforce should really be defined attitudinally (i.e., what they are involved in at work and how they have embraced social networking, rather than by their chronological age). I, for example, am a Baby Boomer, but think, act and engage like a Millennial. Despite the huge popularity and widespread adoption of social networking websites like LinkedIn and Facebook, the concept of social networking has had a difficult time finding traction in the business world where IT managers fret about security issues, and rightly so. Instead, the "early adopters" of social networking for learning and human resources are creating "Facebook-like" applications behind their firewalls. They are also thinking about what they expect from social networking and how it will benefit the organization. In addition, they are asking themselves "What do we want ‘increased connectivity’ to bring to our business? What does success look like for the recruiting, sales and learning departments?" A new category is emerging in the social networking landscape called "socialprise," a mash-up of social networking and enterprise computing applications. Look for more examples here from companies like Select Minds and InsideView. Finally, and perhaps most compelling, the audience for the session at CLO was overwhelmingly comprised of Baby Boomers. One Chief Learning Officer from a Fortune 100 firm came up with the most honest assessment of why FORTUNE 500 firms will continue to be slow to adopt to social networking: "I know I continue to feel guilty when I am on sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. I feel that I am not working, not producing those power point presentations or answering those emails that I have stacked up on my in-box." But then another member of the audience shot back: "That would never be an issue for Millennials. They have social networking in their DNA and know connecting to colleagues and using the latest technology to stay on top of industry trends is part of working in the 21st Century." But let’s remember as we explore how to incorporate social networking into the enterprise that it’s not about the technology. This is still relatively new to Fortune 500 firms - the larger issue is to have a clear vision for what you want to accomplish and build both online and offline solutions that allow increased connectivity for your employees, customers and business partners. Technorati Tags: social networking, CLO, Facebook, LinkedIn, Millennials, Save to deli.cio.us | Digg this | Link to Facebook

There is so much talk lately about how your learning organization or human resource organization should utilize blogging. Questions abound like: What strategy should the learning and human resource department have with regard to blogging? What guidelines should be in place for how your employees blog, i.e. what topics to stay away from and how to use blogging as a way to build stronger bonds with your customers? Often I hear comments like, "my leadership is afraid of blogging," or "we have strict rules allowing a small number of senior people to blog and our department is not included in this small number of senior executives." It seems to me there are some larger questions you should be addressing like: Does your CEO know what a blog is? Should your CEO have a blog? Has your CEO blog been reviewed in the blogosphere? Do your top three competitor CEO’s have blogs? Are these competitor CEO blogs a corporate communications tool or does the CEO really post about significant issues? Interesting questions to ponder as more companies begin experimenting with social media to develop trust, improve communications and increase vehicles for employee development. To find out about what your competitor CEO’s are doing in terms of blogging, I recommend you go to TheNewPR CEOBlogsList Wiki. To date, 58 of the Fortune 500 companies have blogs. But in most cases, the blogs are company blogs, many maintained by corporate communications departments (like Clorox, which has one that answers questions about stains), rather than CEO’s penning their own blogs. But there are notable exceptions and two CEO’s come to mind that regularly post to their blogs. One is Jonathan Schwartz CEO of Sun Microsystems who posts on a regular basis about his interactions with customers around the world. The other is Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and CEO of HDNet. As you continue to research what strategy to adopt and to create a set of guidelines with regard company blogging, I recommend consulting a survey recently conducted by content security company, Clearswift. The survey was conducted among 939 corporate decision-makers on matters related to corporate blogging, wiki’s and participation in online networks/forums and other aspects of the so-called Web 2.0. Some highlights from the survey found: 20 percent of IT and business decision-makers don’t have a policy governing appropriate use of the Internet, including social media sites 39 percent of IT and business decision-makers consider social media to be relevant to today’s corporate environment, while 36 percent do not see social media as relevant to their businesses 13 percent of organizations are not aware of social media and have no policy on it So before your begin to develop a policy for your Human Resources and/or Corporate Learning department regarding blogging, wiki’s and other social media, first find out what your company policy is regarding the usage of social media at work. For Human Resource and Corporate Learning professionals, I find the Sun blog policy to be highly informative. Finally, let’s continue a dialogue on CEO’s as Bloggers: Should more CEO’s be bloggers? Should this be part of their job in next 5 years? Should CEO bloggers participate as part of a corporate communications strategy or use blogging to begin a "real" dialogue with customers? And how can Human Resource and Corporate Learning departments "experiment" in their own departments about innovative ways to leverage social media at work while maintaining security standards? Technorati Tags: CEO, talent management, social media, Sun Microsystems, HDTV, Human Resources

I am always on the "hunt" for interesting dialogues happening on the Web and the following one about Blackberry caught my eye. It starts out with a request for using a Blackberry for purposes of training a population of Attorneys and focuses on the tools that will allow this to happen seamlessly. I am looking for the ability to send an email to all our Attorneys via 
BlackBerry (1000+) that contains a link. Upon clicking the link a multimedia 
file will either download and play or stream. This multimedia file 
can be actual video or a PowerPoint-type stack that contains audio and automatic slide change. The critical 
factor is that the population of Attorneys do not have to open up a separate application on 
the BB thus making using the BB for learning as easy and seamless as possible. So far, one leading suggestion is to try Blackberry Video Generator. Now, let’s say you are trying to build a case to your management on why you should be exploring "Wearable Learning For Senior Executives." Here are some examples to refer to: There Have Been Record Shipments for PDA’s According to Gartner, the PDA market (Personal Digital Assistants) showed record shipments of 17.7 million devices, an increase of 18.4% from the previous year. Gartner defines a PDA as a data-centric handheld computer weighing less than 1 pound that is primarily designed for use with both hands (collectively known as "BlackBerry’s," or "CrackBerry’s" for the addicted). Examples include the RIM BlackBerry 8707v, HP iPAQ 69xx, Nokia E61, Motorola Q, T-Mobile Dash and Sidekick. So there is a huge installed base of senior executives who "wear" a potential training device. Some companies are already piloting using Blackberry for Training There are a number of on-going pilots of companies already exploring using the Blackberry for training. Often the target markets are senior executives who use BlackBerry 24X7 in their job. One that comes to mind is a series of pilots being rolled out in 2008 targeting Merrill Lynch Investment Bankers. The objective is to provide corporate mandated training to Investment Bankers over Blackberry. What’s interesting is how the pilot is organized: Merrill Lynch is using their internal Learning and Human Resource staff as the first pilots to work out technical issues as well as test out the ergonomics of programs. Research points to the need for heavy investments in recruiting high paid professionals as compared to investments in training high paid professionals. Deloitte Research finds that the typical US company spends nearly 50 times more to recruit a $100,000 professional than it will invest in their annual training once they are on-board. What has been your experience in using the BlackBerry for learning? Share it here with our readers. Email this | Save to deli.cio.us | Digg this | Link to Facebook

Last week, I was interviewed at length by News & Observer, a regional newspaper operating in North Carolina for an article entitled "The New Work Study: Companies Invite Degree Programs, Employees Benefit." The essence of the article was the growing trend among corporations to bring degree granting courses on-site at the company location. Actually, I have been following this trend since 1994 when my first book on corporate universities, entitled Corporate Quality Universities was published. But now I can see that this is the moment for companies and universities to truly enter a new period in creating innovative and customized partnerships bringing accredited learning to the masses. As they say, "timing is everything." What we are experiencing now is a global talent shortage. This is finally fueling the demand for companies and universities to re-think how they do business with each other. The importance of retaining talent is highlighted in the following headlines taken from across the globe: United States • Every 10 minutes someone in the Baby Boomer Generation (born between 1946 and 1964) turns 60 years old. Europe • 38% of UK employers are struggling to fill positions due to a lack of staff with the right skills India • By 2010 India will experience a shortfall of nearly half a million qualified IT workers. Companies spend millions of dollars on tuition reimbursement and now they are demanding to become true "customers" of the higher education system by creating flexible and innovative programs for their employees. And the results as profiled in the News & Observer article are worthy to take note: 25% of Blue University "graduates" (i.e Blue University is the corporate university of Blue Cross Blue Shield and is the entity that partners with universities) have experienced lateral or upward mobility in their careers within a year of graduating from one of the on-site university programs Company turnover was 16% in 2007, but was just 9% among Blue University graduates So why has it taken so long to create these on-site and, often times, customized corporate/college programs? These programs require a new mindset among both heads of human resources and learning as well as deans of universities. Corporations must realize that the days of passively funding tuition assistance programs are ending. Instead, in its place, companies must manage a global network of universities that meet specific criteria just as they manage a network of healthcare providers. And for universities, there exists a new set of challenges—new ways of delivering curriculum, new mandates to "customize" curriculum that is aligned to strategic business priorities and importantly, new ways to communicate the business outcomes associated with investing in talent. So, as companies look to "retain" and grow talent internally, they will focus on re-writing the playbook in working with universities. Perhaps the day has finally come for Customized Corporate-College Partnerships. What do you think?

Managers frequently cite completing performance appraisals as one of their least favorite tasks and that is often an understatement. But quietly there is a movement afoot to "consumerize" business software. This means that software is being designed and tested by "user experience teams" with the goal of making software "intuitive," engaging and, importantly, free of training. This consumerization of business software, a term coined by Gartner, Inc, will have a tremendous impact on our employees. Increasingly, employees on-the-job will come to expect software to be as easy to use as creating a profile on Facebook or an account on Ebay. They will no longer tolerate training courses or training manuals that go through endless "how-to-use" scenarios. Instead, they will expect an "IPod" experience — elegant, fun and engaging. Take a moment to think about the software your department uses, can you say this? Often the norm is one where employees endure lengthy training or spend hours poring over reference manuals only to be more confused than when they first downloaded the program. One company leading this movement is SuccessFactors, a company providing performance and talent management solutions to over 3 million employees in 1,750 companies. Looking at the current solutions and those about to be released, it seems clear such sites as Facebook, Ebay and Amazon have inspired them. The latest offering of SuccessFactors, called SuccessDirectory, is a Web 2.0-based collaboration solution that enhances a company’s Employee Profile section in its Performance Management solution to include social media technologies like tagging and social networking. Let’s assume for the moment that you work on a global team and collaborate everyday with team members across the globe that you have never met in person. Wouldn’t it be great if you could create a profile here where you could share your educational background, work history, post a photo of your choosing, list your professional training, languages you currently speak, ones you want to learn over next few years, books and music you enjoy, hobbies and some information about your family? In fact, creating and sharing your profile, could really help you get to know your virtual team members better and may even lead to doing your job better. Why will this movement be so important? Well, if you have a teenager, like I do, you know how they download new software or personalize their cell phone. Do they ever read the manual? Of course not. They just dive in and use it. With 80 million Net Gener’s about to enter the workforce these Millenials will demand their professional networking be similar to how they build their personal networks. But as the head of Talent Management or Learning at your organization, here are some questions I would ask a company touting an enhanced Performance Management solution: What has been the research with Millennials in using performance management solutions with a social networking component? Do these programs impact recruitment and retention of Millennials? Can anyone across the entire organization access my profile or is it like Facebook where you can grant access? What is the process for updating these internal profiles if the new data is outside taking a new course? Let’s say I just learned a new language "on my own time" but updating this may be the last thing I remember to do. But if I know that updating my internal profile will impact my chances for promotion, then I am motivated to review my profile on monthly basis and update with every new skill, course, etc. Share your experience with integrating social networking into performance management. What has been the reaction of your employees (especially the Millennials where social networking is in their DNA)? Technorati Tags: millennials, net generation, successfactors, social media, social networking, web 2.0 Email This | Share On Facebook | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us

The May issue of Harvard Business Review is now off the shelves but the cover story, entitled, "Leadership’s Online Labs," by Bryon Reeves, Thomas Malone and Tony O-Driscoll has become a buzz among Chief Talent Officers and Chief Learning Officers. If you are like me and did not grow up playing multiplayer online games also known as MMORPG’s (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) it is important to give you some context. Multiplayer online games are a large and growing market with current estimates topping 50 million users. World of Warcraft alone has 10 million players who each pay a subscription fee of $15 a month. According to the Palo Alto Research Center, participants’ play an average of 20 hours a week, their average age is 27 years old and 85% are male. They are not exactly your typical corporate employee, but the question is this: What can we learn from how these virtual teams form to solve a problem and then disband? Questions about what the participants do when they play these games has caught the interest of corporate talent and learning officers. Essentially, they are facing the same organizational challenges as many of our leaders in today’s FORTUNE 500 firm, namely they are: • In constant recruitment mode • Experimenting with being creative about motivating and rewarding top talent • Using the latest collaborative tools so global teams can be constantly connected to each other • Incorporating more personalization into day-to-day interactions with team players So, if we believe these online games are a preview for what leaders will be facing in the next few years, what can we learn about what works? Here are some lessons and observations from Leadership’s Online Labs article: Think first about how to change the game rather than solely focusing on "building individual leadership competencies." Two suggestions: First think about offering immediate individual and non-monetary team rewards. This can range from public ratings and ranking systems recognizing stellar individual contributions (think Amazon ratings here) to devising a game-inspired set of incentives where players have visibility into what their reward will be if their team is successful. As the HBR article states, "the power of online games is that people care very much about the virtual gains and losses, even if the currency that records them can’t be exchanged for dollars." So the processes we set up for documenting individual contributions and allowing these to be rated, commented on and ranked is a very powerful incentive. Create more detailed views into the profiles of team members as I discussed last week in my article, "Performance Learning 2.0". The static employee profile used for decades by human resource officers is slowly being replaced by a "personal employee tag cloud" where you can view a snapshot of an employee’s personal and professional life—courses taken, language fluency, projects worked on and work/life goals for next few years. But a note of caution here, employees will ask how this data will be used and companies will need to develop a set of guidelines and policies if they go down this road. Some questions for you and your teams as you leverage the lessons of online games: What is your Facebook Strategy? This has come to mean do you have a strategy for embedding social media into your learning/talent development offerings? This does not have to also mean losing control or taking risks regarding security. Rather, it implies that your organization is making a commitment to experiment with using social media as a way to become relevant to the Millennial Generation. How much of your Learning & Talent Management staff is from the Millennial Generation? Are you tapping into this mindset as you partner with your customers to design and develop new programs? Are you taking the lead to "educate" your organization’s IT department on how game-inspired processes and incentives may need to be created to attract, develop and retain Millennial Generation. For example, have you created a presentation on social media for learning and shared this with your IT department? Remember IT departments need to be brought along early rather than having Human Resources "come up with a solution and then try selling it to IT." One way companies are doing this is appointing a Chief Technology Officer for their learning department. Please share your thoughts with our growing community and me. Technorati Tags: Online games, talent management, Harvard Business Review, Leadership Development, Facebook Email This | Save to del.icio.us | Digg This | Post to Facebook

Unlocking the knowledge of your "stars" for the purpose of building collective intelligence seems to be the goal of a growing number of learning and talent management professionals. Here’s one direct question from the head of learning of a FORTUNE 500 firm: "How do I identify the stars within the enterprise, motivate them to share their knowledge and then empower them with a toolkit that is seamless?" Do you recognize yourself in this quote? In fact, AMR Research estimates that in 2007 the total amount spent on knowledge management was $73 billion and this is expected to grow by 16% in 2008. Why? I believe that increasingly companies are going to great lengths to capture and utilize the vast amounts of unstructured information that is flowing through, and around them. KM (Knowledge Management) is a vast, catch-all phrase that encompasses all kinds of software from portals to search engines to content management systems. Now the decisions around how to unlock this knowledge becomes more complex because more and more questions get raised: Does this synch with your company’s Social Media strategy? Do you want your application to be "searchable?" Can users create content that is both public and private? Finally, what polices and guidelines need to change as you attempt to "unlock" this knowledge for the benefit of all? According to Forrester Research, 50% of the Global 2000 are planning to adopt some type of enterprise 2.0 solutions by 2013. This equates to a $4.6 billion market. The chart below shows how companies of various sizes are looking to adopt Web 2.0 in their respective organizations. So, if you work at a Global 2000 company (defined as having 20,000 employees) your organization is either in a buying mode or considering buying enterprise 2.0 software. Here are a few questions for you: Is your Human Resources and/or Learning department involved in this decision? Have you made a presentation to your department and to your IT department about the issues you need solved in order to unlock this knowledge? Have you created relationships with key "influencers" in the organization so your point of view is understood and heard. Let me know where you are in this process. What’s clear is that with a market the size of $4.6 billion there will be a number of alternatives to consider in building the best solution to tapping into your organization’s collective wisdom. Technorati Tags: Knowledge Management, Web 2.0, Forrester, Groundswell, AMR Research Email this | Save to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share on Facebook

We held our first meeting of the Learning Innovation Network at Sun Microsystems this week. The focus of the dialogue and discussion was around the range of innovations we are experimenting with in corporate learning. This includes an enterprise web 2.0 toolkit of blogs, wikis and online communities as well as metaphorical learning experiences, focused on designing learning with impact while meeting key business outcomes. We had a wide ranging discussion of how learning will change and evolve from a traditional function to one that is more integrated into the fabric of every employee’s life. Key themes that emerged include: The team from Sun Microsystems kicked off the event with a major theme we discussed for the rest of our day and half. The trend, dubbed, "Learning 2.0″ is moving corporate learning from structured programs to collaborative learning experiences. This means top-down push learning is being replaced by self service "pull" learning with an overall goal of taking our General Motors production model for designing and delivering learning and shifting this to a Google-like search model. Sun is determined to push its LMS system (currently the heart of its learning system) to the periphery of a new, strategic (and open source) tool that will allow flexible, web-enabled learning from anywhere, including mobile devices, and will encourage employees to contribute to course content creation. Learning is becoming more social, informal, continuous and embedded in our daily activities. While the term "social learning" has gained a cult status, the ability to collectively create and collectively understand is becoming a mandatory skill for employees at all levels. In fact, credit Suisse shared their online virtual communities of practice model which connects employees to others in the organization based on their skills and knowledge sets. It makes it easy to find expertise, to "know what Credit Suisse knows." Learning is becoming more mobile. Millennials view the Internet as something that comes to them not something they go to. With over 2 billion mobile devices in use, mobiles have now eclipsed PC’s in the marketplace. We should remember that as we consider delivery options for current and new programs. At Sun Microsystems, technical training is being delivered globally to field engineers on their iPhones, seems like this model will continue to gain traction in the coming months. Finally, after many demo’s of new tools, programs, games for learning and metaphorical learning experiences, we closed with the need for learning professionals to: Focus less on how technology is changing learning and more on how the learners, especially the 80 million Millennials, are bringing new expectations and demands to the workforce. These include being able to use the same applications they have grown up with, such as Instant Messaging, Mobile web conferencing, BlackBerries and video-sharing on-the-job. Be open to new needs and expectations of four generations in the workforce. Understand and share how to make change happen in an organization. It’s not easy but there are lessons in how to improve your odds of success with implementing innovations in corporate learning. if you are interested in learning more about the Learning Innovation Network, send me an email at jeanne@newlearningplaybook.com We are looking for more learning departments operating "on the edge." Technorati Tags: Millennials, Sun Microsystems, Google, BlackBerry, Web 2.0, Learning Innovation Network

While the heightened awareness of corporate social responsibility was originally borne out of business scandals and crisis, it is now here to stay as a business strategy. As Coca-Cola’s Chairman and CEO E. Neville Isdell said in the company 2006 Corporate Responsibility Review (opens PDF), "businesses must be a force for positive global change—one community at a time." Isdell believes that committed employees who believe in the company they work for, perform better. It’s that simple. He then goes on to say these employees who believe in the company’s mission often times have higher levels of employee morale, productivity and ultimately this translates favorably into the company’s brand. So for a company’s corporate social responsibility efforts to have real value, they must have a "line of sight" connection to the business goals. If they do not, they are really just philanthropy. As I was reading about Coca-Cola’s CSR strategy I was thinking how we as learning and talent development professionals provide opportunities for our employees to be engaged in learning & development while also being involved in corporate social responsibility projects on behalf of the company. While it may seem a stretch, I think the next alliance within FORTUNE 500 firms will be between the heads of talent development and the heads of a company’s foundation. Some companies are already headed in this direction—notable is UBS Learning & Development who has begun to build alliances with a number of key philanthropies to build leadership development "moments of learning" into the CSR projects. Why does this make so much sense? Well, the target audience of Millennial managers has most likely been involved in social responsibility projects for most of their student and working lives. It is a natural extension to combine learning & development with corporate social responsibility. In fact a recent survey conducted by the Aspen Institute Center for Business Education surveyed 1,943 students ages 26-30 years old at 15 business schools to find out about their attitudes towards business and society. Top line findings included of this Aspen Institute survey include: Business students are thinking more broadly about the primary responsibilities of a company. In addition to citing shareholder maximization and satisfying customer needs, more students are also saying "creating value for the communities in which they operate" should be a primary business responsibility. MBA students are expressing more interest in finding work that offers the potential of making a contribution to society (26% of respondents in 2007 say this is an important factor in their job selection compared with 15% in 2002). These Millennials do in fact appear to be interested in integrating CSR with broader business goals. As you consider how you can build a bridge between these two initiatives, ask yourself a few questions: What is the current alliance between CSR and Talent Development functions? Is your company’s approach to CSR based upon business priorities and achieving business objectives? This should be the same as its approach to talent management. What specific business outcomes are you working to achieve in your CSR and how are these consistent with your business outcomes needed from leadership programs? What pilot projects can be started as a way to build a partnership between your company’s Foundation and Talent Management? The champions of CSR and Talent Management really both want the same end result—to make CSR and Talent Management a major part of the core decision-making process at senior levels. Is your company beginning a dialogue to partner with CSR efforts? What has been your experience? What are lesson learned? How are you reporting these efforts? I hope you share this with our readers so we can start a conversation.

The answer is most likely no, your Intranet is not nearly as easy to use as Google. But a growing number of companies are looking to their Intranet to do just that - operate in a social way so employees can share, collaborate and find information. While I have written in past posts about the benefits of starting a company blog, there is no reason why blogging should be your first foray into the world of social media. In fact, I could build a case that maybe you should start with a project that is not threatening to your IT or legal department, not to mention your PR department. Re-vamping your company Intranet to include wiki’s, tagging rating and even image galleries may in fact be an interesting starting point on your path toward social media. One company that is actually doing this is a brand name you will know, especially if you are single - eHarmony.com. Online dating is a big and growing business. According to Jupiter Communications Inc, in 2003 consumers spent $313 million on US based dating Web sites and this number will climb to more than $600 million by the end of 2008. eHarmony is the Internet’s fastest growing relationship service and its user base is doubling every quarter, adding 10,000-15,000 new users a day, the company is growing at 30% a year with over 20 million registered users in all 50 states and 191 countries. In fact, you can impress your friends by asking them if they know how many people who meet on eHarmony actually end up getting married? Answer 236 every day. Now that I have your attention, let’s focus on the eHarmony Intranet - it was broken. It required knowledge of HTML coding to make changes and was very cumbersome to use. So the eHarmony HR Head decided to re-vamp the company Intranet as a way to build greater employee collaboration and knowledge sharing. The company behind this effort is accurately named, ThoughtFarmer and they have been called the company that builds engaging Intranets for "Intranet-haters." But the story gets more interesting because as a result of re-vamping the eHarmony Intranet, more departments at eHarmony are putting their information on the Intranet and encouraging employees to contribute new ideas through the new Intranet. All of this improved communication has actually resulted in new ideas for product improvements and cost savings at eHarmony. Now the question for readers: as more companies explore using the Intranet for greater collaboration and knowledge sharing, who owns the responsibility for researching and then re-vamping the intranet - IT, HR or Marketing & Communications? Answer-all of the above. The Intranet was once an IT initiative but now it is a business initiative with HR often taking the lead in forming a cross functional team to re-vamp both the company Intranet as well as the HR/Learning portal. Why? Because having a voice on projects which provide tangible business outcomes is the future in many evolving HR and Talent roles. Share with us - who owns your Intranet and do you see your involvement in a re-design as part of your role? Technorati Tags: ThoughtFarmer, social media, intranet, Human Resrouces, eHarmony

As learning organizations experiment with leveraging Web 2.0 tools to create online communities of practice, many Chief Learning Officers, heads of human resources and talent management should take a lesson from Chief Marketing Officers who have created online communities for marketing purposes. Many of these online communities have failed, and sadly, produce fancy web sites that few customers ever visit. Let me state, I am a strong advocate of online communities of practice for extending learning into the workplace. But, we, are learning professionals, must learn from the marketing pro’s about what works and how to create and nurture engaging online communities, and avoid them become a ghost town. In a groundbreaking survey of 100 businesses that have created online communities for marketing purposes, Deloitte found that many of these sites fail to gain traction with customers. In fact, the statistics outlined below are a reason for CLO’s and human resources professionals to pause before launching their own online communities. Of the 100 businesses surveyed by Deloitte: Thirty-five percent of the online communities have less than 100 members Less than 25% have more than 1,000 members 6% of businesses spent over $1 million to launch these online communities So why is this happening? Deloitte identified a number of common blunders that we can take note of before undertaking online communities for learning purposes: Blunder #1: Bells and Whistles trap: Companies launching online communities often get seduced by bells and whistles and blow their online-community budget on technology. Alternative: Do research to understand the needs and "pain points" of the online community instead of investing in the latest technology tools that you fall in love with. Blunder #2: Too few resources are spent on community management and facilitation. Remember this is a new endeavor for both the company and the potential community members. Deloitte found that 45% of the survey respondents identified poorly managed online communities as a significant barrier to their effectiveness. Survey respondents stated the quality of the community manager and their online facilitation skills were two features that greatly impact a community’s success. Blunder #3: A lack of hard business metrics. While business that create online communities for marketing purposes say they do this to generate customer loyalty and word of mouth marketing, their most frequent metric is simply the number of hits to the site. Some metrics proposed include: number of in-bound links, rankings in Google and impact on the share of market numbers. Some questions for you to consider: Are you putting the "right" people, processes and technologies in place to create, sustain and nurture online communities? How are you measuring the success of these online communities? Are you connecting with the "marketing folks" at your organization to learn how they are using online communities? Share your thoughts. I look forward to your comments. Technorati Tags: Online communities; Deloitte, Chief Learning Officer, Chief Marketing Officer

Last week’s post, "Is Your Online Community Delivering Value For Your Organization?" drew quite a bit of email traffic. The overwhelming response was this: Creating online communities can be a game-changing strategy for a learning & development function - if you are clear about your business objective and how to engage and reward participation. The graphic above is taken from the AFOL community, or Adult Fans of Lego. These adult fans make up 10% of Lego’s billion-dollar business. My advice: Chief Learning Officers should take a page from Chief Marketing Officers. Learn what drives success in these communities and as noted in the excellent book, Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, begin your journey to build a community by asking yourself key questions such as: What business objectives are you trying to achieve? What pain points/passions/areas of general interest do your community members need help with or want to give assistance to? How will you support and maintain the community? Communities are cheap to launch but to be effective they must be constantly supported with new content, new features and new designs. How will you measure success? Think beyond just the number of visitors and number of page views to business metrics such as increases in the engagement of employees and customers and decreases in costs. What are the incentives? Community members need to be rewarded for their participation. Now how do these lessons apply to an internal community that a learning & development department may launch? There is actually quite a bit of overlap - one can ask the same questions, the answers will differ for an internal community versus an external community, but the overall secrets to success are the same, namely: Start with a business objective Understand the passion of your potential community members Build into your budget the resources to support and maintain the community (think beyond technology resources to people and training resources) Set metrics early on to measure your success in business terms Be creative about providing rewards and incentives for participation - remember your employees contribute to a community in addition to the demands of their "day job" What other "secrets of success" do you have in running and managing online communities of practice? Share them by either posting a comment or sending me an email. Technorati Tags: Online communities; Groundswell, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Learning Officer

The number of people on Facebook has now exceeded 90 million and the fastest rowing segment of these new users are those over the age of 25. As a result, it’s becoming quite common to ask: Will you be able to access Facebook and other social networks from your work computer? Or should you and your team be banned from access on a company network? Gartner analysts Anthony Bradley and Nikos Drakos say corporations should not ban social applications such as Facebook, Twitter or social networks in the enterprise. Their arguments come after a number of financial service companies in the financial services sector have stopped their employees from using such tools at work. While the number of ways to collaborate with peers online is on the increase from using Microsoft SharePoint to joining online communities of practice, most of this increase can be traced to collaboration tools behind a company’s firewall. But with Facebook claiming they have more than 90 million plus users online, should employees be able to access their Facebook profile or other online profile from their work computer? Garnter argues YES and the way to do this according to Garnter anslysts, Anthony Bradley and Nikos Drakos is to create a "Trust Model," meaning: define how to participate in these online social networks at work define the positive and negative ways to doing this present specific guidelines around such areas as expected online behavior, corporate policies on appropriate and ethical behavior and appropriate brand usage So what are companies saying about all of this? Here are the three barriers I hear to opening up these social networks at work. My question is this: how real are these barriers? Impact on Employee Productivity: Employees may spend so much time updating profiles their productivity will decrease. Yes, there are employees who will play games online but there are also employees who will seek out networks to improve their productivity—like joining a network on LinkedIn or Facebook related to their expertise. Impact on Company Network: Let’s say hundreds of employees are running virtual reality apps on Facebook or watching YouTube videos at the same time, are they sucking bandwidth from the company’s pipes? Impact on Company Brand: Employees that communicate online on their social networks need to be aware that their profiles on public social networking sites identify them as employees of a company, so their postings can have an impact on the company’s reputation and brand in the marketplace. All this points to the importance of designing a "trust model" and set of guidelines before going forward. The bottom line I see is this: Employees, especially Millennials, are living, communicating and networking online. They will bring a set of digital expectations to their employer and over time being able to access social networks from work will become important to the competitiveness of companies. Think for a moment about what the world of work wil be like in 2020—won’t employees just assume they can access everything from their PDA/Smart phone—including, of course, learning? Does your company allow you to access social networks from your work computer? Why or why not? Technorati Tags: facebook, social networking, gartner, enterprise 2.0, new york times

I got my text message that Joe Biden will be the Democratic Vice President candidate at 3:00 am on Saturday, August 23rd. And YES I could not help but think about the now famous TV commercial about ensuring the next President of the USA is qualified enough to take "that" 3:00 am phone call in the White House. So I started to think about how explosive the growth of text messaging has been whether you are a Millennial or trying to synch up with today’s Millennials. There’s no doubt about it: Millennials have abandoned email in favor of texting and instant messaging. So here are a few questions to ask yourself and your team members: How will the growing usage of texting impact our world of learning & development (especially in light of how Millennials are addicted to texting. Will CEO’s be sending updates to their teams via texting instead of emails? Will we be texting short updates of knowledge via a text? Some quick research gives us a context for the explosive growth of text messaging: According to Gartner the number of text messages sent to and from mobile phones will more than double over the next two years to 2.3 trillion messages sent by 2010. The number of messages transmitted over short message service (SMS) systems in 2005 was estimated at $936 billion, according to Gartner. Total revenues from text messaging is forecast to grow to $72.5 billion in 2010 from $39.5 million. In fact marketers across a number of industries such as hotels, travel,and food chains are gearing up for text message marketing. Rationale: they see how consumers are always "on-the-go," and increasingly rely more heavily on their cell phones as their main communication device. China tops the average number of text messages sent by text users. Chinese sent almost 430 billion text messages last year, approximately 1000 per cell phone user. There are some interesting examples of companies who are leveraging texting into new hire programs — one case in point is Ernst & Young, a company that has been a magnet for Millennials. E&Y regularly sends out messages from senior executives and welcome notes from the CEO to new hires via text. Will texting be the next mode of delivery for short bursts of learning? Take the poll in the column to the right to see how many texts our readers are sending/receiving in a month. Share how this will impact learning & development. Technorati Tags: texting, gartner, smsing, corporate learning, millennials

Google is launching Google Video for business, a customized video platform aimed at businesses for internal use. Google is targeting Heads of training and HR and anyone that uses internal videos at the company. The product will be included in Google Apps Premier Edition for free, with 3 GB of storage per user account. This is a "Zero billion dollar market today" Director of Product Management Matthew Glotzbach said in a briefing about the product. But we will change this and Google Video For Business will be easy to use. These videos will basically have the same features and limitations as YouTube, including upload size and file type limits. Videos have access control, even if they are embedded outside of the intranet or Google Apps, and can be tagged and commented on just like YouTube. As the video below states, these videos are quick and easy to create and can be uploaded and shared in a number of ways: for training, to communicate end of quarter results, to showcase famous people who visit Google headquarters like Obama and Bloomberg and finally just for some laughs and fun during a stressful overworked the day. So, what do you think as head of training or Human Resources at your firm? How will you use this? Will this replace your in-house video production crew? Will you use video more in video sharing sites to describe a new service or for quick updates? Technorati Tags: Google, Human Resources, Video Sharing, HR

I quickly get a sense of what is resonating with my blog posts by the response in emails on the blog and calls to me personally. Well, the CEO as a Blogger talked about how forward thinking CEO’s are blogging and the role HR and Learning senior executives must have to ensure the CEO as a Blogger is a success. Details are described in the post. So when I watched NBC nightly news interview with Bill Marriott, the CEO of Marriott International, I was very interested as he described his process for blogging and then I was really amazed when he shared that his blog called Marriott on the Move has been responsible for over $4 million in incremental bookings to a Marriott property since the inception of Bill’s blog in January, 2007. There are now 60 CEO’s among the Fortune 500 who are blogging. Is your CEO one of those? IF not should he/she be? The NBC story featured 2 CEO blogs, Marriott and Coca-Cola’s, as examples of how CEO’s are establishing these blogs to communicate openly and honestly with customers and key stakeholders. But the story gets better because in the case of Bill Marriott, it turns out he either writes his blog posts in long hand, or dictates them and they are then transcribed and entered onto the blog. In Bill’s own blog he shares in detail how he partners with his communications specialist to create the blog which is posted on an Awareness platform and how he reads customer comments and stays in touch… But here is a question for our Human Resources and Learning readers: If your CEO is blogging, are you involved in this along with your Head of communications? I see the lines blurring between enterprise learning initiatives and corporate communications initiatives, and all too often the HR and Learning executives are not being proactive enough to partner with other internal stakeholders. It should not be just the Head of Corporate Communications identifying and helping to launch new initiatives like the CEO as Chief Blogger. By being involved in these type of initiatives, you can: learn first hand what your CEO is thinking learn about what your customers want more of in terms of new products and services be associated with a leading edge initiative that in the case of Marriott, has led to adding $4 million in new bookings. Share your first hand experiences here for many to learn from… Technorati Tags: CEO as Blogger, CLO, Marriott, Awareness