Have you ever seen the wonder of a murmuration? It’s the phenomenon where great flocks of birds (often starlings) fly and swoop at great speeds, changing direction, moving in formation, performing a beautiful dance in the sky. In the 1930s, ornithologist Edmund Selous speculated that the birds had some kind of ESP that guided their [...]
Did you ever have one of those days when you really wanted to hide away? I hit my limit one day last week. Technology is changing too fast to keep up, and the innovations are equally awe-inspiring and worrying. And social media is becoming more agitating than enlightening. And the news is disheartening, all the [...]
Wanna see something interesting? I’m currently teaching a graduate course in instructional design, and this week’s learning community discussion asks the students to try their hand at writing objectives for one of several practice cases. (They’ll be writing objectives for their projects in the coming weeks, after the results of their needs analyses are in, [...]
There’s an often-used saying that applies to learning and development interventions: garbage in, garbage out. If your inputs are bad, the outputs will be, too. If you don’t want garbage, it’s not as helpful to catch the stinky stuff coming out as it is to make sure there’s no trashy stuff going in. L&D professionals [...]
What if employee flourishing was one of our measures of success in organizations? What if we – individually and collectively – saw that part of our work together is to ensure that each and every person thrives in their work? If we aim to ensure that people flourish, we would go beyond attending to what [...]
As the year winds down, it's time to count our blessings. In the learning and development field, we can be grateful for… 1. Our individual strengths and our unique skill stack – and the projects that allow us to contribute those strengths for a good cause. 2. The collaborations that allow us to accomplish more [...]
How did it get to be November already? Yet here it is – that time of year when one calendar year winds down in a frenzy of holidays and a new year beacons. Despite the busyness, it’s an important time for reflection and planning. I’d like to invite you to take a step back so [...]
September has always seemed to me a time of beginnings. That feeling is no doubt a remnant of many years' experiences with starting school, and it’s also the feeling that accompanies transition from summer to fall (my favorite season!). It's a time for new backpacks, new sweaters, and new books (not-beach-reads), and a time for [...]
Over the last five months, I’ve been “blogging a book” on the leader’s role in developing people. Early on, I lamented that there wasn’t enough written on the subject, and called dibs on authoring a good book on the subject. In the meantime, I’ve run across Make Talent Your Business by Wendy Axelrod and Jeannie [...]
From CEO to front-line supervisor, making sure that people are honing their skills – and thereby ensuring the workforce has the capability to deliver on corporate goals and initiatives – is a primary accountability. And being effective in that role isn’t learned by osmosis any more than understanding a balance sheet or marketing tactics. We [...]