the smart cut: reading Training Industry Inc ezine

Clips from reading this month's edition of Training Industry magazine:

- Ed Cohen reflects on the current crisis in the editorial as "One thing history tells us is that the parachute will open... this economic cycle will come to an end." The article is entitled "weather this storm, prepare for the next". I don't agree with his notion that this is like any other crisis our young industry faced, this one could be much deeper. But I do like his idea of "the perfect storm" building up. When the economic thing, together with the demographic thing, the new leadership for a changing environment thing and others all happen simultaneously and all simultaneously impact learning. It is in contrast with Clive Shepherd who thinks the only crisis is the economic one to worry about right now and that thinking of new generations of learners at this time is like rearranging the desk chairs on the Titanic. One more point of interest is the quote "Companies that treat their people well, even during difficult times, will be the long term winners." I agree, don't just stop learning flat, not even for one quarter. Cut it smart, not alltogether, you will cut in your own future, not your own fat.

- Doug Harward lists 7 concrete ideas for impacting the bottom line : leverage internal resources, reduce administration, reduce travel for training, consolidate vendors, reduca your vendor's cost, rationalize portfolios and convert learning courses into learning content. Let me turn this useful list into 7 questions:

• Can you involve your internal talent for what you do best?
• Are you generating lots of reports noone reads?
• Are travel costs bigger than the training costs itself?
• Do you have a lot of vendors that each have a small piece of the training cake?
• Can you renegotiate with your vendors?
• How does a particular course impact the corporate mission?
• Are you leveraging the wealth of information on your intranet besides what is locked in your LMS?

- There is a very good article on informal learning. Take the 'perfect storm' as an opportunity to push more into a blessed, supported and sustained informal approach to learning on the workplace.