TED Talks - Richard St. John

I've always liked short and concise things. I believe that when someone rambles on and on about something, it's usually because he/she doesn't actually grasp the essence of the topic.

This is why I've liked so much this 3 minute talk on "What leads to success?".

http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=r_stjohn

The 8 componeents of Success:

1. Passion
2. Work
3. Focus
4. Persist
5. Ideas
6. Good
7. Push
8. Serve

Specially I had a good laugh when hearing what king of CRAP you have to put upon when persisting towards success:

CRAP - Criticism, Rejection, Assholes, Pressure.

and while you are seeing these TED episodes don't skip most of the others. Really gems of Informal Learning!

Strategic Learning - Why ?

Many hours of thought I invested in thinking and defining what's my offering to the corporate/business world.

I'll present it using the good old questions:

What? Why? To Whom? Where?

and we'll start with the : Why?

We are deep into the "Knowledge Era". All of us have read time and time again about the importance of the intangible assets in today's economy; about the importance of building processes and culture that will make easier the sharing and development of knowledge; about the constant change in the prevailing conditions, etc.

We witness an "avalanche" of new methodologies, that have 'deep down" much in common: Allowing for Performance Improvement of the organization's stake holders.

Among these methodologies, we count:

Different formats of Learning: Formal, Informal, eLearning, mLearning.

Knowledge Management

The Learning and Growth Perspective of the Balanced Scorecard.

Competencies Management

Talent Management

Performance Improvement

My specific point of view encompasses my business experience, my psychological and business education and my training background.

I look at all these disciplines/methodologies and it's almost funny to see people "attacking" separately the same needs with different "weaponry", with a great deal of belief that they have the ultimate solution. It's enough to read all the lengthy debate regarding Informal Learning sparked by Jay Cross' book or the thousands books on knowledge management, not to mention the millions of consultants implementing the BSC methodology.

Some of them have a strong bond with "Joe" or "Mary" in the corporate "trenches", others see them as an important "resource" and I've just read someone regarding the employees as "products"... Many ignore them placing the higher amount of importance in technological aspects. Almost all of them disregard the others. At the end of the day, they have to sell, don't they???...

The customers? Well they stand confused...

We are in need of a comprehensive point of view that will include all of the above.

I propose:

Strategic Learning

What's it? On the next post...

BTDT – What's this?

For some time, I've been pondering about what unique and interesting proposal, I bring to the corporate arena.

To rightfully define it, we need to know what my experience is:

CLO of a big global bank (http://www.bll.co.il/) - Bank Leumi. During my 5 years in this position, I actually received a "card blanche" to do whatever I wanted to and indeed I did!Among our main projects, I can mention:

Blended Learning (needed when we had to train all branch employees in a very short time), while the term wasn't even defined. Due to it, we won the ASTD In Search of Excellence Award in 2000.
We were the first customer in the world (1998), while eLearning was still in its infancy.
We decentralized learning and empowered the different LOB's of the bank.
We implemented Knowledge Management in the bank, realizing that the best unit to initiate it is the training one!

After leaving the bank, I crossed the street to the supplier's side (and what a change that was!):

General Manager of Interwise (Europe)
CEO of a training company ( Ergo Training)
Business Development Director of the Training Division in Ness Technologies (http://www.ness.com/).

During this time, I became a member of the academic staff of the Department of learning Technology in the Holon Institute of Technology – HIT (http://www.hit.ac.il/). This is the first academic institution that trains instructional designer in Israel. We'll have our first graduates this year and it's quite exciting!

Spirala – A very dear friend of mine (Gideon Ziler, the CEO and owner of e-Learning Knowledge Solutions – http://www.e-learning.c.il/) and I established Spirala, an institution aimed at professionalizing all those working in the training profession in Israel. We did it jointly with HIT and I must say it's proving very difficult to convince training professional (or maybe their bosses) to invest in their own professionalism. We won't give up!

The Training Community in Israel – I established it as a part of the Israeli Society for HR Management and Development (http://www.ishrm.org.il/) and I chair it. We have a regular Newsletter, member meeting in different organizations, are progressing the initiative for training certification in Israel, etc.

Developing employees/empowering the/helping them become better and more satisfied employees is my passion. This is the domain where I feel the most at home. I feel it deep in my bones, that I fully understand how to bring the corporate to the right position regarding these huge challenges.

When you add all these activities, it's quite obvious that the path I must take is one of being a well known expert in what? What's my business proposal? A very tough question! Selling training is very difficult and I'd like to make use of all my corporate leading experience, so the proposal must be one that has a meaning for all the organization.

This is where, I thought of: STRATEGIC LEARNING.

What's this? In the next post...

And before we finish, what's BTDT? Very simple: Been There, Done That. This is one my main strengths: I not only talk the talk, but I've walked the walk as well!

Yours,

Meir

The Birth of a Blog

Well, I read somewhere that every 0.5 seconds, a blog is borned, so the mere birth of a blog is not some extraordinary event. Nonetheless, as any proud parent it's a big deal for me...

What is this blog going to be about? I believe mainly for Organizational/Corporate Learning and in it, I'll concentrate in Informal learning.