Key Themes and Takeaways from Masie Learning 2009: Part I

Also check out Beth's Learning2009 posts at Explorations

Twitter: #L2009, @jonll, @bethchm

Speakers

This was my first Masie event, but I absolutely loved the up close and personal interview style that Elliott had with all of the keynotes, and impromptu supporting cast of characters. John Abele and Lem Lasher were really awesome speaking with Elliot about innovation, Charles Fadel blew my mind with the ability to be funny, eloquent but not over the top, and really personable for a guy that does brain research for Cisco, phew!

Two of the speakers really stood out for me - Malcolm Gladwell to some extent, and surprisingly, Capt. 'Sully' Sullenberger. More on them in Part II.

Break it down!

Wayne Hodgins, who is the VMG Strategic Futurist wound this theme through many of his presentations, and believe me, it is even hard for us VMG folks to break Wayne into sound bites, the guy just has too many big ideas to boil it down sometimes. But for this particular topic, it was about mass personalization, getting the right content, in the right context, in the right moment, on the right device, at the right level, etc. You get it? We are indeed all unique ("The Snowflake Effect") and our learning needs to reflect that. Two examples were howcast.com and smart.fm, both really interesting places to explore (try boosting your Spanish at smart.fm!)

Wayne believes that mass personalization is only limited by our own ability to decontruct and disaggregate what we already have. The technology is there, we're the holdup. The only way to begin to understand Wayne is the dripfeed method, check out his blog and tweets (@wwwayne).

I'll post a link to the slides when Elliott finishes get all the conf materials up on the site.

ROE, not ROI

At the CLO lunch, all six leaders agreed, ROI stinks. You don't need it. What you need is executive sponsorship to the point that ROI is a given and that success is measured by engagement. Obviously, if you are asking for a lot of money (or in this environment, any money) you need to have a strong argument but in the end, if you are supporting the business needs and mapping to strategic imperatives, you will find support in your program.

If you are leading a team through this, give them the tools and support that they need to make it happen. By enabling them to innovate and clearing the path to success, you are giving them life skills, opportunity, and loyalty to you as a leader. Also, it's just dang fun to watch your team get fired up and make it happen. A good leader should be almost entirely without ego here, bask in their glory but don't take it from them.

One final point - if you make your pitch, and the 'business' (whatever that might be, a product, division, line of business, etc) doesn't fully buy in, get engaged, and jump behind you to demonstrate their support - go find another business to help. They may never come around, or they may succumb to peer pressure when you blow the doors off with someone else. Life is too short to be spinning your wheels and pushing rocks uphill. Go make a difference somewhere!

Nigel Paine is in the house

Nigel Paine led a fantastic session named "So you want to be a Learning Leader", which I can only analogize to a combination of some sort of crazy British game show and being interviewed by Fast Company. Nigel led an interactive discussion with about 60 or 70 folks most of whom were not learning leaders. Nigel probed, questioned, and drew out a list of qualities that if you were a CEO, would want to explore in an interview with a prospective CLO. It came together nicely - with the list looking something like this (add some if I missed any, the marker was fading fast)

- vision
- problem solving
- trust "It's not about you, it is about the TEAM, lose your ego."
- strategic
- business acumen
- technical
- cultural fit
- innovator, leading innovation
- listening, information gatherer
- multi-lingual fluency (of business)
- global
- customer focused

In the end, Nigel summarized that vision, innovator, business acumen were among the top 3, and having a great cultural fit were really key. He ended with a great message that brought it home from Peter Drucker's definition of innovation - "change which creates a new dimension of performance."

Nigel was a model of my dream boss - someone who mentors, pushes, pulls, laughs, and creates an environment where the sum of the parts is exponentially greater than the 'whole'.

Add your thoughts on the conference, PLEASE! Would love to hear more about what resonated with YOU!

~ posted by Jon Lloyd on 12 Nov 09
   tagged as: #L2009, Learning 2009, masie

 

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