In the research I’ve been conducting around leadership development, I have repeatedly read about the strategy of organizations looking for cultural fit over technical competence when hiring or promoting leaders. I understand that this seems a way of guaranteeing that the leader can carry the organizational vision and promote organizational culture. However, I think if …
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Learn Just to Learn
I often say that I’m in this industry because I love learning and this is the perfect job for anyone who just loves to learn for the sake of learning. Working for different organizations has meant that I’ve had to learn about parasites, microchips, web design, and even pornography. All of it has been fascinating. …
Does Excellence Breed Excellence?
I am fascinated by leadership behavior. I’ve seen some highly effective leaders and if you have ever been in that environment it is unbelievable energizing. Actually it is almost intoxicating. I’ve also seen shockingly incompetent leaders and I’m always amazed that they made it to a leadership position when they are clearly so unsuccessful. Unfortunately, …
Reading on the Interwebs
I read a lot of articles during the week to stay on top of the industry. If you don’t have time to look at them all you can just pop in and see if any of these look valuable to you: Wow, we have a superstar this week! I love it when someone integrates models …
Diversity of Thought
Diversity is something I think about a lot. Not just because we should think about diversity and there is a social obligation to promoting diversity but because I think there is a fiscal responsibility in organizations to promote diversity. I was reading this article last week and it spoke of diversity of thought. So many …
Is Excellence Unrealistic?
A question I frequently hear from managers is “how do we hire excellent employees?” and I get frustrated when I see training/management/HR professionals dismiss the workforce as unmotivated or lacking something that makes them excellent. Most people come to the table excellent and it is the organization that provides roadblocks to that excellence. The question …
Reading on the Interwebs
If I find something useful, I like to share it with you. This is a wrap up of some of the articles I read last week: This is a great tool for anyone that wants to know more about Twitter and especially how it could fit in with learning. Discovery learning is a fabulous way …
Where Effective Meets Efficient
Dick Handshaw had a great post about content and context last week. This really got me thinking. Are we losing our trainers to developers? What happens to a training organization that replaces performance-focused trainers with an instructional design team. The training can definitely be pushed out more quickly but what is it doing to the …
