Posts From: Doug Harward

It’s a common belief that training managers are not thought of as strategic players on corporate leadership teams.

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Credentials to be Santa? Gray hair and beard; poor vision (must own gold wire frame spectacles); overweight (greater than 200 pounds); jolly personality…and oh yes, must have completed certification training.

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The learning technology market has been, and continues to be, one of the most fascinating segments of the training industry, now approaching a $5 Billion market worldwide. Training professionals have become increasingly dependent on technologies for the purpose of managing training operations (LMS/LCMS) and developing and delivering e-learning.

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It’s a presidential election year in the U.S. and yet again politicians are positioning outsourcing as a bad economic policy for America. Every day there are ads on television of one candidate attacking the other for their position on outsourcing. The media loves the controversy and feeds the frenzy by representing outsourcing as an economic peril. But is the problem really outsourcing? Or is it really offshoring? And is outsourcing really such a bad thing? Most people would say yes, but it could be argued that our economy and many of the jobs in our society depends on outsourcing for sustainability. Yes, I know that’s a controversial statement to many. But the only reason it’s controversial is because we don’t understand what outsourcing really is.

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Leadership training seems to touch virtually every business professional. It’s the second largest spend for training organizations (behind IT) and represents more than $2 billion of global annual spend. It’s obviously a large market as it touches an estimated 30 to 40 percent of a company’s workforce. And with more than 70 to 80 percent of a company’s workforce now knowledge-based workers, leadership skills are more in demand for team leaders and project managers.

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In my many years of working in the training profession, virtually every training organization I've ever worked with uses an external supplier to assist with some part of their training activities. Whether it is contracting for external instructors, having a company provide print services for student materials, renting classroom space in hotels or conference centers, or hiring companies to create online courses, we all depend on partners to help us deliver successful training programs.

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Creating training that's in alignment with business needs is more than a short-term goal, it's an ongoing mission of the organization. And it all starts with a clear understanding of what it takes to create alignment between learning and business. It takes, in a word, greatness. But what does that mean?

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One of the most frequently asked questions of training analysts is ‘how big is the training market?’ The truth of the matter is no one really knows for sure, although we are able to make good rational estimates based on sound research and economic analysis. Why is the data hard to get to? Because corporations (buyers of services) are weary of reporting actual expenditures for training. And in some cases, many large companies don’t accurately know how much they spend on training as expenses get buried in non-training related line items.

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With the introduction of new authoring and delivery technologies, integrated fully with social networking platforms, the learners experience is changing. Now when we want to learn something new, the first thing we do is “Google it.” Using a search engine is so engrained as our first source of information and knowledge that is has achieved the ultimate status of being recognized as a verb instead of a destination.

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An info-graphic titled "The State of Digital Education" was recently published which portrays a story of the rapid transformation of digital technologies in k-12 and post secondary education. The graphic addresses the size of the education marketplace, disruptive technologies impacting the education process, trends bringing education into the modern world, and new technologies which will work together to result in more effective learning solutions.

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