November / December 2012

By Roy Saunderson, President, Recognition Management Institute When dealing with mistakes at work, I always think of a classic IBM story that demonstrates the attitude I hope all leaders will have whenever we make those painful errors in our jobs. Imagine being a mid-level executive at IBM and making a multimillion-dollar mistake. Apparently, the executive immediately approached then-CEO Thomas J. Watson, Jr., and tendered his resignation. Watson refused to fire him, saying he had just spent millions of dollars educating him, so why would he let him go now?

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

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 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 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 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 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 Ross Tartell, Ph.D., Learning & Development Manager – North America, GE Capital Real Estate You need new ideas. The pressure is on and the competition is tougher than ever. When the rate of external change exceeds the rate of internal change, it’s time to power up your brainstorming to generate creative ideas. Traditional brainstorming has been around for decades. But new variations have developed on the old brainstorming theme. Here are three examples I have found useful. Try one of these approaches the next time ideas need to flow: