It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost a full two weeks since I have returned from the scenic vistas of Laguna Niguel and the intellectual stimulation of the Fall CLO Symposium. As lovely as the scenery was, I will try to keep my focus on the intellectual pursuits. But allow me this one intrusion:

Laguna Nigel Resort

Now that I have that out of my system, the theme of the conference was “Game-Changing Learning: Development for the New Normal.” And while there were definitely some sessions focused on the old normal—how do I leverage my LMS and measure how many butts in seats I pushed through last year—there were also some refreshing perspectives that really align with our commitment to integrated learning.

The conference kicked off with Steven M.R. Covey and his keynote based on The Speed of Trust. The Media 1 management staff has all been through this program, and it has taught us quite a bit about how we work with each other. Reviewing this material reminded me how trust is critical when we talk about justifying our efforts not only to our clients, but also as we carry the vision up to their senior leadership at their companies. In retrospect, this also speaks to another major theme of the conference: measurement. It occurs to me that there is sometimes a difference between justification and measurement, and I wonder what it says about our trust levels when we use measurement of volume as justification for effectiveness. I would propose that trust, when properly established, allows us to let go of soft numbers linked to volume of effort and places focus on the hard numbers that reflect moving our businesses forward.

Covey’s keynote was soon followed by a panel of thought leaders including my friends from the Internet Time Alliance—Jay Cross (@jaycross), Clark Quinn (@Quinnovator), and Jane Hart (@C4LTP). In this somewhat controversial segment, several issues were explored, including whether or not the ADDIE model (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate) was really still relevant in a day and age where user-generated content  and informal content has become more prominent. That prompted my thought, and subsequent tweet:

Does every problem we need to face need to be analyzed? Does every analysis have a solution that needs to be designed, and does every design need to be developed?

I would argue that the role of corporate training and learning professionals is transforming and evolving away from being ADDIE-driven content factories and is now aligning closer to being curators. This also lead to a discussion on whether or not the Kirkpatrick model was still valid for measuring training—see a pattern yet? It’s not that the Kirkpatrick model is inherently bad, just many of our interpretations fall short of being valuable. If we only make it through the first two levels—that is, whether or not people are happy and whether or not they remember—that may be enough to justify our efforts, but did it really help us evaluate whether or not we are having an impact on the business?

Another highlight was Bob Mosher (@bmosh) from LearningGuide Solutions on becoming an agile learning organization. The premise of Bob’s talk was his experience in guiding his clients toward learning that is more strategic and aligns with the strategy of the business. Bob believes informal learning and social learning opportunities offer performance support that is both effective and practical. Bob also echoed my sentiment that we need to look at the role of the corporate training department differently; that it’s not as much about creating content as is about creating usable context and integration.

By far, my favorite session was with Dan Pontefract (@dpontefract) from Telus talking about “The Rise of Collaboration in Learning, Leadership and 2.0 Technologies.” Dan is an open and frank speaker who pulls no punches in his evaluation of traditional learning functions in companies. Dan, perhaps more than any other learning professional I’ve talked to lately, has a clear vision for shifting learning from a series of disconnected events to an INTEGRATED, connected, continuous and collaborative process. He also has the technical infrastructure to prove it—built in SharePoint™ to boot! I left Dan’s session charged up that someone else gets our vision and came up with solutions that in many ways echo the types of solutions we are building for our clients. Check out Dan’s blog Trainingwreck; you’ll be glad you did.

All in all, of course we hear what we want to hear, and I heard people starting to talk about the sorts of things that my team and I are passionate about—and I am excited. I feel that I am energized and eager to help my clients carve out their own little piece of the transformation that we are in the middle of. Sure I heard a lot of the old normal too—like how we do we stop our employees from saying stuff we don’t agree with and new ways to spin all the old numbers. But there is enough evidence of the “new normal” taking hold to make me believe that we really can change the game.