Learning & Development Stories Podcast

A brilliant report from McKinsey notes we need to foster intentional learning by feeding our curiosity. The report states that “inspiration is strongly correlated with an intrinsic desire to learn. Curiosity sparks inspiration. You learn more and more frequently because you are curious. Second, curiosity marks the beginning of a virtuous cycle that feeds your ability as a self-directed learner.”

IBM executive Naguib Attia was facing a difficult task. It was January 2014 and in his role as Chief Technology Officer, Naguib was involved in a project in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). There  was a lack of talent in the region to deliver on a particular project’s objectives.

To address this challenge, he considered the following question: how can I take an individual and after just six months, prepare that person for a...

What is the return on investment for a company to invest significant amounts of money send their up and coming talents to different business schools to earn an MBA degree?

Dan Pontefract, currently the founder and CEO of the Pontefract Group, was investigating this question back in 2011 in his role as Chief Learning Officer at TELUS, Canada's fastest-growing nat...

How do we get more colleagues to engage with L&D resources? This is a common concern facing L&D leaders. Swisscom, the major telecommunications provider in Switzerland, has been able to address such a question by encouraging employees to create training content. Patrick Veenhoff, Head of Learning & Development at Swisscom,...

There's a massive change in the way people are developing skills. David Leaser, Senior Executive of Strategic Growth Initiatives for IBM’s Training and Skills program, shared the story of IBM’s response to these shifts on episode 11 of the Learning and Development Stories Podcast.

Stories

David highlighted the development process of IBM’s Digital Badge Program. He explained that over the last few years it was evident that with the ...

“The recruitment of talent is more competitive than ever. Employer branding and being able to understand and connect with prospective employees requires a marketing and communications mindset as well as all of the knowledge and expertise that the talent and development side of the house brings.”

 This is among the perspectives shared by Melissa Taylor, Global Learning and Development Director for the public relations firm Porter No...

A brain-based approach in management training can lead to real behavioral change. Dr. Britt Andreatta, an internationally recognized thought leader in leadership and learning, has seen this happen first-hand and shared these experiences on episode 9 of the Learning and Development Stories Podcast.

As CEO and President of 7th Mind Inc, Britt highlighted the story of an executive who went through one her management training programs ...

How do you get employees excited about learning?

This was a question that Abhijit Bhaduri was grappling with back in 2009 when he was the Chief Learning Officer at Wipro, the information technology services company headquartered in Bengaluru, India.

This was quite a challenge, particularly given the size of Wipro (160,000 employees at the time across 54 countries). It was important for Abhijit to accomplish this goal by cutting a...

“People loved it.”

 These were the words Dana Hariton McQuade used to summarize her organization’s reaction to launching a new global leadership development framework for different leader levels (new, emerging and accelerated). She delved into the details of launching this new initiative on episode seven of the Learning and Development Stories Podcast. It necessitated bringing together three teams – L&D, organizational development ...

Are you leveraging the influencers in your organization to communicate the impact of your L&D activities? If you answered no and are intrigued about how to do this, then you will want to hear Dave Atack’s insights on episode 6 of the Learning and Development Stories podcast.

Dave, formerly the Head of Learning at D.E. Shaw and the VP of Learning Strategy and Performance at Xerox, shared how he identified a working group of influenc...

What is the best way to launch a strategic centralized learning function within an organization? Malika Viltz-Emerson, an L&D leader who has worked for the likes of Xerox and Grubhub, answered this question on episode 5 of the Learning and Development Stories Podcast.

Linking Learning to Business Strategy

In a recent role, Malika needed to develop a learning function that aligned to the organization’s strategy and technology capabi...

If you are looking for inspiration on how L&D activities can foster innovation in an organization, then you will thoroughly enjoy episode 4 of the Learning and Development Stories podcast.

Jane Hoskisson, Director of Learning & Development at the International Air Transport Association (IATA), shares how her organization is driving innovation through a program that is being rolled out to some 1,500 employees in some degree. After p...

Many organizations are grappling with how to keep employees up to speed with the digital transformation that is impacting society. Adilson Borges, Chief Learning Officer of the France-based retailer Carrefour, joined the Learning and Development Stories podcast and shared how his company is addressing this issue in its L&D activities. It is not through a one-off, expert-led learning event, but rather a peer-to-peer mentoring progra...

Think about this statistic: 80% of one-time learning events fail.

Wes Parker, an L&D leader with the software company Omnitracs, is passionate about reversing this number. One of the key ways he has been able to succeed in this goal is by implementing the full learning transfer model, as he explained on episode two of the Learning & Development Stories podcast.

Wes recounted how he and his colleagues used the full learning transfer...

Employee engagement is an issue facing most all organizations, according to a Gallup survey. What is learning and development’s role in addressing this issue?

Brandon Carson, Director of Learning at Home Depot and author of Learning in the Age of Immediacy, shared his opinion about this on episode 1 of the Learning and Development Stories podcast.

“We know that employees are more likely to be engaged when they understand their exp...