Chances are, your CEO's get the numbers - things like EBITDA, ROI, net and gross revenue, income statements, balance sheets, and related 'hard' data. But perhaps they don't put the same focus on your firm's 'soft' business needs like Employee Engagement.

As instructional designers we are constantly being bombarded with new technologies and new trends. It’s difficult to distinguish which are fads, and which are worthy of our investments of time and resources. The safest, and often most expedient course of action is to continue to focus on the delivery technology we know is NOT a fad, the traditional classroom. After all we’ve been using the traditional classroom forever, how can we possibly go wrong teaching in a classroom in front of an audience? As new technologies, like the virtual classroom, eLearning, and social media, are introduced, we continue to play it safe by trying to make these technology experiences replicate the classroom.

Sheryl Sandberg, author of the new book, "Lean In", tells a story about a businesswoman’s conversation with her 5 year old daughter. She explained to her daughter that when women are promoted and succeed in business, they are liked less by their co-workers. The daughter said, "Then I wouldn’t want to be promoted, because I want to be liked."

Don’t miss this opportunity to get the inside scoop from three Training Top 125 judges who will pinpoint what they look for in Training Top 125 applications during the scoring process. Whether you are a veteran Training Top 125 winner or filling out the application for the first time, this special complimentary Webinar can be the key to increasing your score and ranking.

No organization can escape the damage and the rubble as the global economic and business landscape continues to evolve. In this environment, ROI as a metric is more important than ever. It is a powerful tool to demonstrate the accountability of learning solutions. But even powerful tools have their faults. ROI calculations can seriously misrepresent and overstate the business contribution of a learning solution. ROI is an important metric that should never be allowed to stand alone when communicating results. Enter the new view of ROI - the ROI Quality Analysis reveals the truth and communicates the real business contribution.

Virtual teams often face difficulties solving problems, making decisions, generating innovative ideas, and reconciling differences. When team members don't meet with each other face-to-face, it can be harder to build rapport, develop trust, and establish meaningful collegiality. Team members multi-task, leaders fall back to presenting endlessly, and the work goes sideways.

We know that change is a constant. There will be more of it in every organization, more often and impacting more people. We also know that new learning and e-learning programs as well as organizational initiatives are changes and they don't just implement themselves. To ensure their success we must recognize the often quoted mantra, 'the soft stuff is the hard stuff' is in fact, true. The 'soft stuff' are the people issues - creating awareness and understanding, developing involvement and engagement, and ensuring integration into the individual and organizational processes - that touch users, managers and executives and we must find ways to efficiently and effectively address them.

In Part 2, Wendy Kirkpatrick will share four practical ways to implement a "real" training evaluation strategy, even with limited resources. Beginning with the concept that "the end is the beginning," she then will provide tactics to utilize before, during and after training that will both increase and document the value delivered to the organization.

In Part 1, Jim Kirkpatrick will discuss the fact that training evaluation is not as complicated or expensive as some make it seem. He will explain how to integrate a sound evaluation plan into the instructional design process and implement it with minimal resources.

Experts state that today 80% of learning in organizations comes from informal learning. Learning leaders try to manage it; CEOs want the increase in human capital it creates. Bright prospects eager to get hired try to get it in order to have a shot. All have somewhat different objectives.

Microlearning is a new kind of training for the digital age. This playbook offers strategies for applying this methodology to your own curriculum - a positive step in gaining back lost productivity and finding affordable, effective training for a more digitally capable workforce.

For many years, costly coaching programs were reserved for senior executives and emerging leaders. However, in recent years, a new trend has surfaced as more organizations recognize the intangible and monetary benefit of coaching. Organizations now offer coaching beyond the executive suite. The difference is that these new coaching programs and services are provided by internal coaches: individuals who may not be certified in coaching, but are trained in a set of coaching skills to support a specific business need and produce monetary business impact.

Bringing a new product to market? One of the hidden success factors of a product launch is your sales force, and by extension your customers. Do they have the right skills and knowledge to make your launch successful? This white paper will show you how a curriculum of learning solutions can be used as part of a product launch to solve common business problems.

The world of training is changing. The days of all day workshops and seminars are quickly behind us. Employees need to be developed but there is little time allowed for the old traditional ways. This is where the world is changing and NOW has never been a BETTER time for TRAINERS to build their Value!

To make technical and compliance elearning engaging, it needs to focus on the learners’ point of view. Thus, it must be short, immediately useful and employ episodic events and stories to help learners absorb and recall knowledge quickly.

During this one hour webinar you will be introduced to three interdependent aspects of performance improvement: 1. The systematic process 2. The consulting process, and 3. The building brand process. All three aspects contribute to sustaining changes required for improving the performance of people, work teams, and organizations as a whole. You will gain insights and get three tools that you can use to explain performance improvement to others and guide your own development in the profession.

Although variations of the flipped ideology have been around for years, Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams are considered pioneers of the movement since their adoption of the flipped classroom in 2007.       The idea of the flipped classroom is simple: take what's typically done in the classroom (lecture, direct instruction) and provide that for students to view at home, or outside of class, in the form of a video.  

Are you considering virtual instructor-led training (vILT) but aren’t quite sure how to get started…or whether your organization is even ready? Join us for this session and you’ll learn what to expect from vILT, including its pros, cons and critical success factors.

It is not uncommon for learners' jobs to depend on their ability to master the critical information delivered to them via training. Imagine you must design and deliver a learning solution that addresses a critical business need. What would your approach be? Every day, stakeholders and designers make choices that sabotage corporate learning efforts... and result in wasted dollars that produce no result. If learners take a course, will they remember what they learned? In this white paper, you will discover four learning strategies that maximize long-term retention. Then, you'll learn about four additional strategies that maximize the learning from a single training event.

Creating a sustainable company in a world of unprecedented technological advances, globalization and shifting economic drivers is one of the greatest challenges facing decision-makers today. Fostering this environment requires that companies invest their time in a series of interrelated priorities.

More than 200M adults in the US are part of the digital workforce, yet only 1-in-10 rate themselves as very proficient with the digital tools they use every day at work.  Training has not kept pace with technology, and workers, businesses and the entire economy are paying the price. Digital products and topics are rapidly proliferating and evolving, and yet there is virtually no professional development focused on these 21st century skills. For instance, organizations are using Dropbox and Box for file storage and sharing, Twitter and Facebook to connect with customers, and Google Docs and Analytics to run their businesses. These tools serve essential functions but they can only improve productivity with the right training. This paper will help you develop an action plan to assess and remedy the digital skills gaps in your business.  

Join us and discover how coaching best practices were introduced and implemented in this organization to build a highly engaged coaching culture. This webinar will provide a real world case study of an organization formerly struggling with the Great Recession that now employs a Director of Coaching under whom all managers coach their employees regularly with successful outcomes.

"If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think." David Ogilvy David Ogilvy, the famous marketing and sales executive, said it this way, "If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think." Nelson Mandela said it like this: "If you talk to [people] in a language [they] understand, that goes to [their] heads. If you talk to [them] in [their] language, that goes to [their] heart." The ability to communicate—whether to persuade or just to understand—goes beyond using words well; it requires the ability to use words in a way that has meaning for those with whom you are speaking. The ability to talk with someone in his or her native language isn’t just about them understanding you; it’s about you understanding them—their experiences, their thinking, their beliefs, and their values. While definitions lie in words, meaning lies in the people who use them.

As the Mad-Hatter said to Alice (in Alice in Wonderland), "if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." With or without the Mad-Hatter we know the basic truth of this statement. Even without such a strategy, organizations though haven't stood still. They have spent monies, allocated resources, and invested time. However, without a clear and defined organizational learning strategy, organizations find themselves spending too much time, money and resources to get too little result. Significant investments in learning technologies are wasted. Prepared and motivated learning professionals are under-utilized. The workforce is left under-prepared and supported. And, as a result the organization is unable to fulfill it's promise to customers and shareholders, clients and supporters. This is truly an example of the 'ready-fire-aim' syndrome.