From the category archives:

Strategy

7 Skills and Tactics for Learning Leaders, Part I

One of the areas we are focusing on more as we progress into the new year is helping our clients with sourcing talent for their learning initiatives. We’ll be offering a variety of resources in the coming months, but as I am currently in the midst of preparing to speak to a group of professional society educational leaders, I thought it would good to outline what I see as some essential skills and tactics for leading in the world of the learning economy and Learning 2.0.

Here they are:

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What if you were the Dyson of your market?

No, I don’t mean your education should suck.

Rather, I have in mind that obvious and yet amazing claim for a vacuum cleaner manufacturer to make:

Our vacuums have strong suction and they don’t lose it.

How could you claim the same for the educational experiences you offer?

It might be something along the lines of: our seminars deliver high quality, actionable knowledge that learners retain and use.

Same for conference sessions.

And Webinars, etc.

Of course, it’s easy enough to see what a Dyson vacuum cleaner does. And what’s more, the company backs up its claim with a substantial guarantee.

How might you do something similar?

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Well, I haven’t really participated in …

January 30, 2012

Here’s something I hear far too often from association board members: “Well, I haven’t really participated in any of the ______ myself.” You can fill in the blank with “online courses,” “Webinars,” or even, in far too many cases, “conferences,” “seminars,” or “continuing education” in general. Unfortunately, the same is often true of executives and [...]

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8 Tips for Revving Your Accelerant Curve

January 4, 2012

One of the “tools” I use often when helping clients with their education businesses is the Accelerant Curve developed by Alan Weiss. As simple as it is, I have found that a 20 to 30 minute conversation around it is often one of the more eye-opening things an organization has done in years.

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5 Challenges for Upping Your Education Game in 2012

December 7, 2011

As we round the corner to the end of the year, many organizations are thinking about what they can do to reinvigorate their continuing education and professional development offerings in 2012. Here are five approaches to consider:

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Are you market-focused or product-focused?

November 21, 2011

When making decisions about the strategic direction of your organization, do you focus primarily on how you can improve your core products and services and take them into new markets or market segments? Or, do you focus more on identifying market needs and determining how you can best serve those needs? In my work, it’s [...]

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What’s Your Canal Proposition?

November 17, 2011

I’ve known for as long as I can remember that the Panama Canal ranks among the great feats of human engineering. Upon visiting the Canal for the first time recently, I discovered that it is also a shining example of a rock solid value proposition. As I watched a skyscraper-sized freighter full of Japanese automobiles [...]

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The Learning Economy – Continuing Education in a Post-Cubicle World

October 6, 2011

The Atlantic has been running a series over the past several weeks on the surge of independent, freelance workers in our current economy. I think this is a trend that has important implications for any organization in the business of lifelong learning. Here’s what writer Sara Horowitz says about the freelance trend in the first [...]

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What Can You Learn from Scalpers? Dynamic Pricing and Association Learning

September 28, 2011

The following post, written by Celisa, was the main article in the August issue of our monthly Association Learning/Technology Digest. Each digest also includes a wealth of links to news and resources. We put a new issue out today. It’s free, and if you aren’t already subscribed, you can get the latest issue sent to [...]

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Webinar Strategy – The Inform/Perform Distinction

August 31, 2011

One of the issues with which we routinely see organizations struggle is how to compete with free Webinars in their market place, or related, how to justify charging for some Webinars while offering others for free. One of the strategies we often suggest is to make use of the distinction between inform and perform training [...]

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