The professional services sector is one where firms often seem to be merging. I used to work for Touche Ross, one of those many names which is no more. Much of 2009 felt pretty quiet in terms of merger activity but then in the space of 6 weeks, three come along at once.
Here’s some of the headlines:
This means it will be a busy time for those in L&D working on the integration and a time of job insecurity for those deemed surplus to requirements, but what’s causing this? read more…
At this time of year, there’s loads of commentators talking about emerging trends in L&D in 2010. Chances are that you’ve read a few that say that social media will be the big thing, and in particular the use of on-line communities to share learning. Whilst I’m happy to be proved wrong, it sounds to me like yet another cycle of hype and disappointment waiting to happen. So I’ll be happy to watch this one from the side lines, but before I do so, let me explain my reasoning. read more…
Jay Cross has an interesting article in the December issue of the “Inside Learning Technologies” magazine about making business decisions and the use of business metrics. As I made the claim in Feb that 2009 would be the year of “bad measurement” this is a topic close to my heart. read more…
In October’s TJ, Justin Collinge writes a thought-provoking article called “Are you m*ssing a tr*ck?”. His premise is that if you leave information out of a visual, or deliberately reverse the letters in a word so that the learner has to work out what the correct message is, they are more likely to engage with it and remember it. The scientific basis for this is the “generation effect” which I remember fondly from my days of being a psychology undergraduate. I like his linking of recommendations to scientific evidence, but I think he has drawn misleading conclusions along the way.
In the November Issue of TJ, Des Woods and Henry Marsden have an article called “How professionals learn”. As the former head of learning at Ernst & Young and head of professional development at Linklaters, Des is writing from considerable experience. This is a great article if you are relatively new to professional services in your L&D career, especially if you’ve worked in a different industry previously. read more…
Trainers and L&D professionals by their nature have some pretty strong views on what makes learning effective, based on how people learn. But how much of this is personal experience? Or how much of it is based on theories invented by management consultants? How much is actually backed up by scientific evidence? Is Kolb’s theory really true? read more…
If you’re struggling to think of what you’d like to receive or buy someone for Christmas, I’d recommend Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science. Amongst other things it successfully and perceptively:
I’ve recently been leading an internal knowledge management project. Part of the technology of the portal allows social networking e.g. forums. As staff all have profiles on the portal, we communicated the expectation that people would post a photo of themselves on their profile…it makes communication feel a whole lot less impersonal that email. There are some obvious reasons why you’d want your photo there e.g. it raises your profile in the organisation, increases the chances that people will remember your name. So the percentage of people who have done this within the first 2 weeks was… read more…
An interesting day at the eLearning Network on 25 Sept where the focus was Learning Management Systems. One of the themes was the way that websites that we consume in our leisure e.g. BBC, Amazon set expectations of functionality and look & feel for other web-based systems that we use. So what’s next in the LMS world?
Francis Marshall in the Sept issues of TJ reminds us how line managers have a vital role in the success of L&D within organisations. The business drivers within a professional services firm make it challenging for line managers (partners & middle management) to spend time engaging with L&D and the increased focus on chargeable hours during the recession can’t be helping. Here’s my take on a well worn theme.
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