November / December 2012

By Dr. Stephen A. Laser When faced with a potentially problematic hire, organizations must face a difficult decision. They can either reject the candidate outright based on the findings from the initial hiring process or they can bring the person onboard and coach him or her in the hope that the person’s behavior will change for the better.

As part of Brandon Hall’s Analyst Insight program, it received a recent member question concerning leadership development. The member wanted to know the benefits or disadvantages of creating a GE-style leadership program that takes recent MBA graduates and rotates them through the organization for a year or more with a focus on learning an organization’s culture and succession planning. The idea sounds great—but what works for GE may very well be a disaster for a smaller, less global organization.

By Greg Bell, Founder, Water The Bamboo Center For Leadership Have you watered your bamboo today? When I ask that question, I often get some rather puzzled looks. What does cultivating a crop of giant timber bamboo have to do with training, human resources, or even leadership for that matter?

By Jeff Kortes, President, Human Asset Management LLC In the last several weeks, managers I work with have told me people in their organizations are still fearful despite the fact that they have seen an improvement in business in the last year. So what is driving this fear?

By Nate Kelly, Senior Strategist, Cerner Corporation In 1970, Malcolm Knowles identified six characteristics of adult learners that became—and remain—the backbone of many Training departments’ learning strategy. In today’s learning environment, which resembles more of an information battlefield than a classroom, those characteristics might be the most important weapons trainers can wield as they compete for the time and attention of would-be learners.

By Tony O’Driscoll, Executive Director, Duke Corporate Education As we set our sights on the Training 2013 conference in Orlando, we wondered what guidance Walt Disney himself might have for us. What insights could Walt provide to help guide our unending quest to help organizations and the individuals working within them become the very best? Time and time again we kept coming back to a single quote of his: “It’s fun to do the impossible.”

By Bob Pike CSP, CPAE USA Today recently celebrated its 30th birthday. That edition of the newspaper contained both a backward view for 30 years and a forward view. I read with a great deal of interest the forward view—especially when it started talking about education. In a nutshell, the predictions are:

By Lexi Rifaat, Global Marketing Coordinator, Aperian Global The history of what is now Nigeria goes back thousands of years, with evidence indicating that people have lived in this area of Africa since at least 9,000 B.C. Since gaining its independence from Great Britain in 1960, Nigeria has been ruled by a series of military coups interrupted by brief periods of democratic rule. Now a young democracy with a very recent constitution, Nigerians are still dealing with many years of political and social confusion.

By Jason W. Womack, MEd, MA Here are my suggestions about how to make change last: Look at what you are doing now. Make a decision to change one thing. An excellent way to improve your current situation is to initially accept things the way they are. When you know where you are, you then can make thoughtful adjustments.

By Sirin Köprücü, Senior Associate,and Neal Goodman, Ph.D., President, Global Dynamics, Inc.