AchieveGlobal's blog

Learning When the Score is Nil-Nil

By Andrew Calvert Manchester United played Tottenham Hotspur in the League Cup final a few weeks ago. The match was 0-0 at full time and remained scoreless after an overtime period. At that point, the match referee called the managers and team together to prepare a list – a detailed sequence in which all 11 players on each team would take a penalty kick. The team with the highest score would win (and get 12 months of bragging rights). During the eight minutes or so that it took to compile the list, the Manchester United goalkeeping coach took his goalkeeper aside and showed him a iPod video of Tottenham players taking penalties. A few minutes later, Ben saved one penalty and unsettled the Spurs’ other penalty kicks. Manchester went on to win 4-1. Click here to read an article about the event. What an excellent example of just-in-time, mission-critical, workflow learning mediated through technology! But if you think about it, the video and immediate coaching (valuable as they were) were only the tip of the process. This goalkeeper works out many times a week, conditioning his reflexes, and gets coaching in every aspect of his profession – penalty-saving just a part of it. So, a lot of thought, practice, and dedication – and then at the critical moment, the iPod video... Technology is good. It helps. But without practice and dedication, would this goalkeeper have saved the game? What are the lessons here for blended workflow learning in a corporate environment? I'd welcome your thoughts...

Four Generations and Social Networking, Part 1

By Jack McDaniel I’ve been fascinated with generational studies for several years since picking up the excellent book Millennials Rising by Neil Howe and William Strauss. (You might recall their ground-breaking book on generational theory, the pithily named Generations.) At an AchieveGlobal event for trainers last year, we covered topics from training ROI to the latest trends. While everyone was engaged throughout, the energy spiked when we discussed options for engaging four generations of learners now in the workplace. That day sent the hamster into overdrive running the wheel inside my head. Anecdotal evidence implies a wide disparity among how different generation use social-networking tools. My father-in-law, who once watched the New York Giants play football at the Polo Grounds, has one favorite social-networking tool ... the telephone (and I don’t mean a 3G touch-screen texting machine). On the other hand, my teenage daughters give new meaning to the word connected. Some days I feel like a befuddled Arthur Dent in their hip new Ford Prefect world. So I suspected a connection, like peanut butter and chocolate, between each generation and its social-networking tools. In the spirit of crackpot science, I slapped together a totally invalidated, extemporaneous survey and forced my friends, family, co-workers, and all their friends to complete it. The survey contained very few questions, with a 1 – 5 scale for the first two (What tools do you use? And how often?). I asked participants to identify their most and least favorites, and tell me why. And, of course, I asked them to identify their generation. My arbitrary list of tools covers the most popular – at least in North America:

• Facebook
• MySpace
• Twitter
• Skype
• LinkedIn
• Blogs
• Discussion forums
• Email
• Text messaging
• Internet messaging

Next week I’ll reveal and analyze my survey results. In the meantime, I would love to hear from anyone with an interest in this confluence of generations working and learning together. Are their differences real, or overblown? Are younger generations wired differently, or are any “delta factors” due solely to behavioral and environmental differences? Tell me what you think.

Maybe This Really IS Your Father ’s Oldsmobile

By Todd Beck I’ve mentioned here before that I'm a pragmatist. So although I create videos for my YouTube channel and practically live in Facebook, I never (repeat never) use Instant Messaging. And I have a webcam (given to me free for participating in some survey) still in its original box in my closet. My wife says she thinks she wants it. Until she pushes hard, though, I'm procrastinating. So maybe I'm not a pragmatist, I'm just lazy. Either way, for me a technology must meet a need. If it doesn't, I consider it a waste of my effort. All of this makes me wonder if technology adoption is not a generational thing but just an age thing. In other words, regardless of generation, as we get older, maybe we start to prioritize more. We don’t have (or take) time for new technologies, not because they’re new but because the time required to learn them or use them won’t have the ROI we hope for. Kids love to pick up new toys which they often quickly abandon for something else. You can blame that on attention span, but I think it’s just that kids have the luxury of being able to spend time on what might turn out to be a dead end. What adult would take six months of golf lessons with absolutely no intent of ever playing after that? If the pace of technological change continues, then my 4-year-old son will eventually grow into an old man bombarded with new stuff. He’s a “digital native” who may end up just like his father—skeptical about how valuable each Next Big Thing actually is, and thus becoming very choosy. And if he does, I will be so proud.

How do older workers respond to technology-based training?

By Todd Beck I'm not sure what you expected to read under that headline - especially from a 44-year "old person" - but let me debunk a myth. I recently read a 2007 study (a very rigorous one) by Southeast Missouri State University that found that, contrary to what the literature is saying, when you compare older workers to millennials, measures such as perceived satisfaction, learning, and motivation of the generations are more homogeneous than different. That really should be no surprise. I'm a GenX, you're a Millenial, she's a Boomer, but all of us are human - always have been, always will be. What I found especially interesting was that the study said older workers might have more interaction with instructors and other participants face-to-face, and are more likely to have an online learning plan. So that made me wonder if technology is the difference or if older workers are somehow more willing to invest in structure and follow-up of what they learn. Maybe older workers value training more. Or maybe we’re just senile so we need the extra help. If you missed it, watch this video where Jack needs extra help as my senile old avatar debates him on AchieveGlobal Island in Second Life.

How Can You Prepare Managers to Support Training?

By Craig Perrin This is the fourth of my five-part discussion with Kim Stafford, AchieveGlobal’s Director of International Development. This week we ask, “How can you prepare managers to support training?” CRAIG: If we want managers to support training, we have to stop shaming them. Instead, we should reduce their coaching responsibilities by changing the way we train. Rather than big training events followed by inconsistent or short-lived coaching, we need shorter increments of training over longer periods. Instead of a two-day employee workshop every six months, what if we had a one-hour session with an immediate application assignment and ongoing collaboration with peers, every week for two months? What if we leveraged all the technology now available – Internet, intranet, YouTube-type video, online social networking? What if trainers helped peers to coach each other? What if we developed dedicated coaches – people who like to coach, with the time to observe, provide feedback, and recognize employees? This kind of training isn’t idle fantasy. It’s already here in many organizations, functioning very well, and taking this pressure off managers to be everything to every employee. KIM: That’s one approach, yet it’s not always realistic. For better or worse – and I think it’s better – most organizations will continue to deliver traditional classroom training. As a long-time former trainer and director of training, I’ve seen the power of classroom learning. The classroom remains the number one place where skill development takes place. Larry Bossidy, author of Execution, says “Every leader and supervisor needs to be a teacher; classroom learning should be about giving [both managers and employees] the tools that they need.” People are worth the effort it takes to develop them through formal classroom training and skilled coaching. Dofasco Steel’s tag line is: “Our product is steel. Our strength is people.” In my view, the best way to improve human performance is to prepare managers to coach and then to measure how well they coach. That’s also the best way to reduce turnover and move toward key business goals. I’ll leave you with this thought: The main way employees – whether managers or individual contributors – learn new skills is through training, and the main way they grow and develop is through coaching.

Does classroom or elearning generate better results?

By Todd Beck A couple of years ago I attended a conference where an elearning vendor presented a client case study. After taking elearning, 100% of the client’s employees passed their industry certification exam. Sounds impressive, right? So I raised my hand (couldn't resist) and asked, “What was the consequence if they didn’t pass the certification exam?” The answer: “They lost their jobs.” I didn’t push the issue, but I hope everybody was thinking about the relationship between motivation and outcome. Even if the elearning had been poorly designed with huge data gaps, those employees were highly motivated to find workarounds fast. If the classic complaint about elearning is that “nobody” completes it, then this question becomes moot. It’s like medicine: It really doesn’t matter how effective a medication is if the patient doesn’t take it. So, intuitively, putting me in a training room and forcing me to participate and demonstrate some level of competence will generate better behavior change. As a natural skeptic, I’d discount any research that claimed elearning alone achieves better Kirkpatrick Level 2 and 3 results. I’ll end with another story. The other day a company told me that they don’t want training that requires their employees to come back and do any work after class. “The training should be completely contained in the classroom.” I was shocked. Another company told me that their managers don’t have time to coach employees on using the skills because those managers are too busy running the company. My guess is that those companies would have terrible completion rates. Whether it’s elearning or any other job assignment, people finish what matters to the boss. WIIFM. What gets measured gets done. Put your favorite management slogan or motivational poster here.

Whatever Happened to Transformation?

By Craig Perrin It’s a 21st-century axiom: The sum of accessible information is inversely proportional to the human capacity to absorb it. To illustrate, according to Nielsen, by September of this year the average duration of a web page viewed had shrunk to 47 seconds. That trend applies not just to fast-thinking, fast-texting Millennials, but also to engaged Gen Xers and (maybe for different reasons) to wizened Boomers like me. One of the brightest young leaders I know says she can’t stay with a YouTube video for more than 60 seconds. I get 999 cable channels of news, sports, movies, and UFO programming – and I suffer from carpal-tunnel thumb. So, in a terabyte world, many of us now have a kilobyte attention span. Nicholas Carr explored this phenomenon recently in The Atlantic (Is Google Making Us Stupid?). He quotes from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey”:

“Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.” I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going – so far as I can tell – but it’s changing.

This “remapping” of consciousness is changing my profession, too – corporate learning. At one time, a three-day sales workshop was no big deal. Now, as economic conditions worsen, leaders won’t pull the sales force out of the field. Instead, they simultaneously minimize lost productivity, leverage installed IT, and match shorter attention spans by inserting bite-size learning in tiny crevices of the workday. I’m not saying this is bad. It’s just what’s happening, and it has implications. Clearly, the Google search or equivalent has become a dominant way to learn. A need appears, a question comes up, my memory fails: Who was Vigotsky, anyway? I pull out the iPhone, key in the word, read for 47 seconds, and – oh yeah, Vigotsky – that Russian shrink who laid the groundwork for modern online learning. Yet this instant access to information compels me to ask, Whatever happened to transformation? The historic goal of corporate learning is productive action – application of new skills to boost bottom-line metrics and transform people and culture by realizing dormant abilities. And that question raises other, honestly non-rhetorical questions, some of which I list below – and none of which will likely be answered with a Google search:

• Does information alone bring transformation?
• Is a summary as good as a rehearsal?
• Is knowing the main precursor of doing?
• Does it really take three days to learn how to sell?
• In the future, will everyone be conscious for 47 seconds?

DEBATE: Which one better addresses employee retention – classroom or elearning?

by Todd Beck This question assumes that the organization's goal is to retain an employee through training - perhaps to signal that the organization is investing in the employee's future, or that the organization itself is dynamic and can learn, so that jobs are safe with no threat of layoffs. Put yourself in that employee's shoes. Which option suggests that my personal value to the company is higher - sending me to a 3-day classroom program or emailing me a link to a library of 3,000 elearning courses and saying, "OK, have at it." Or to be more fair, a 3-day classroom program vs. a 3-hour elearning program. All else being equal, in this simple example, in your gut - which one sends the better message that the organization values that employee? Granted, it's not fair to blame the medium of elearning for all the faults in training implementation and plain old bad management of change. But it's been my experience - and I'll bet it's been yours - that organizations that use a lot of elearning do not choose elearning for its intrinsic instructional effectiveness. They choose elearning because it's cheap. So, when you want to retain your BEST employees, be honest - will you choose elearning or classroom? Choose wisely, because your BEST employees will figure out why you chose classroom or elearning, and will use that perception to guide their own decisions to stay or to leave. NOTE: You wouldn't want to be in Jack's shoes in this video where I debate him on AchieveGlobal Island in Second Life.

DEBATE: Which one better addresses employee retention - classroom or elearning?

by Jack McDaniel As a leader, if I had a retention issue, I would look at giving my employees clear line of sight to what we could offer them, to make it attractive for them to stay. I’d align learning with job roles and allow employees to see what it takes to advance. These programs are best created with elearning, so that employees can access them anywhere, anytime. If employees feel they have a career path, with a clear view of what they have to learn to get to the next level, they have something to work toward. That kind of personal vision keeps them engaged. And if they’re able to access learning at their convenience, it increases their personal satisfaction. Finally, elearning helps learn in a safety bubble. By practicing in a virtual environment, learners feel they can get a step ahead without being criticized before they’ve acquired the skills to be a viable candidate for the next position. This doesn’t mean that you just throw up a thousand courses and give everyone open access. It involves creating meaningful programs aligned with defined roles, and showing employees what’s in it for them to enroll in and take the programs. This approach not only gives employees the feeling that they have somewhere to go, it gives you qualified candidates when you need them. Watch this this video in which Todd needs a safety bubble and a cone of silence when I debate him on AchieveGlobal Island in Second Life.

DEBATE: What sort of training do younger workers--digital natives--need to master skills of leadership, sales, and customer service?

by Jack McDaniel The generation coming up in the workforce is learning to learn in a virtual world. IDC research shows “that 45% of companies have workers blogging, 43% use RSS feeds, and 35% of companies have employees using wikis.” IDC also reported that company executives and CIOs are often unaware of employee use of tools on the other side of the firewall. As corporations, we need to embrace the tools workers are using, make it safe to use them, and give workers opportunities to use them to learn. Secondary and post-secondary schools are increasing the number of on-line and virtual classroom sessions. Would any of us feel comfortable sending our kids to a school that did not teach and incorporate computer skills and virtual research techniques? The next generation expects to learn virtually. In addition, as companies are becoming much more global, with work groups that span the country, if not the entire world. Managers manage virtual teams, the service industry is becoming more and more a remote business (with offshore and virtual customer service groups), and sales are moving more toward on-line, with greater emphasis on reducing travel budgets. Corporate decision-makers may be located in three different states, or countries. If the next generation needs to learn to bridge distance and communicate virtually, so why wouldn’t training (including real-time skills practice) be virtual? The new generation is equipped to learn via elearning techniques, they are more comfortable learning via simulations, and they have virtual social skills that will need to be refined for the business world. So the best way to train them is in their native environment… online. If you're a digital native, or hope to be one in your next virtual life, watch this video in which Todd has no chance of winning this debate with me on AchieveGlobal Island in Second Life.

DEBATE: What sort of training do younger workers--digital natives--need to master skills of leadership, sales, and customer service?

by Todd Beck You can all throw gray goo or nuke me, or however else you choose to grief me, but I’ll say it anyway: I think generational differences are over-hyped. People are people, and have been for thousands of years through renaissance and revolution and countless arguments about how parents just don’t understand. We’ve always needed help improving personal interactions, and we always will need help. In fact, if the simplest information exchanges are moved to technology, then face-to-face (or phone-to-phone) will inherently become the really meaty discussions. So what training do today’s workers need? The interpersonal skills needed 50 years ago will be needed 50 years from now. People need to be able to ask questions to better understand needs, create messages that push the right buttons (pun intended), read how the other person is responding, help the other person manage emotions productively, and motivate desired behaviors. Perhaps most important, they need to learn that all these skills apply to all these media. That the way you interact with me via instant messaging has to create the same feeling I get from you when we’re face-to-face. And only classroom will allow me the chance to practice those vital face-to-face interactions. Check out this video where I grief Jack during our debate on AchieveGlobal Island in Second Life.

DEBATE: What is the best way to engage learners and motivate them to apply new behaviors in the workplace?

by Todd Beck I’d like to separate the two points—“engage learners” and “motivate them to apply new behaviors in the workplace.” The motivation part is no secret--it’s all about what’s in it for me. So when a behavior leads to more money, more recognition, less work, and fewer complaints, then a learner will absolutely apply that behavior. Motivation is not a training issue. It’s a management issue that determines the success of training. And it applies equally to classroom or elearning. I think, though, that learners infer a lot from the organization’s willingness to invest in training, and if elearning is seen as the cheap, low-priority method, then learners infer that the skills taught are low-priority. There’s something about my boss scheduling me to leave work and spend time in class that says, hey, this behavior must be important either to my boss or to somebody even higher up. And that means it’s important to me. As for “how to keep learners from being bored,” I think either classroom or elearning can do that equally well, if properly designed. If you're bored, you should check out this video where Jack and I engage each other in debate on AchieveGlobal Island in Second Life.

DEBATE: What is the best way to engage learners and motivate them to apply new behaviors in the workplace?

by Jack McDaniel Regardless of the learning modality, the best ways to engage learners are to 1) make the content relevant to their jobs, and 2) make learning highly interactive. Simple techniques, such as a case study real to the learner instead of a generic situation or a skill practice that resonates with the learner’s real-life situation, can make a world of difference. This kind of learner engagement can be accomplished easily in either classroom, virtual classroom or self-paced elearning. But it’s in the follow-up and reinforcement where the learning modality can make a difference – and using technology is clearly superior. Just look at the effectiveness of blogs, EPSS, discussion forums and communities of practice. A comment about this question: While it's true that relevant content engages the learner, organizational commitment is even more critical. This commitment reveals itself in the importance that the organization puts on learning, the rewards that come from improved performance, and endorsements and follow-up from the executive team down to the manager. Management teams must be engaged. They must help coach and reinforce the behaviors before, during, and after the learning, regardless of the modality. If learner engagement is relevant to your business, watch this video in which Todd and I continue this debate on AchieveGlobal Island in Second Life.

DEBATE: Doesn ' t it make sense for people to learn leadership, sales, and service skills by communicating with each other, face-to-face, in a classroom environment?

by Jack McDaniel It does make sense for people to learn “human skills” by communicating with each other, but not necessarily in a face-to-face classroom environment. A 2006 IDC report indicated that 70% of learning happens informally, outside a face-to-face classroom environment. This includes looking something up on Google, asking a question over the next cubicle, having water-cooler conversations, and communicating by IM, text messages, and so on. Of the remaining 30% of learning, ASTD reports that 30% of that (one hour in every three) is involves elearning, often in a collaborative format. Josh Bersin’s data indicates that over 11% of firms already use collaboration through “communities of practice” to encourage employee learning, with interest building in on-demand approaches such as blogs, wikis, and discussion forums. So yes, we are social beings and will continue to rely on learning from each other; however, there’s a lot more than face-to-face classroom training to meet our needs. Data indicates that only 11% of people who watch this video think Todd's argument is stronger than mine. Seems to me I'm totally winning this virtual-world debate on the AchieveGlobal Island in Second Life.

DEBATE: Doesn ’t it make sense for people to learn leadership, sales, and service skills by communicating with each other, face-to-face, in a classroom environment?

by Todd Beck Yes, it does make sense to match the medium with the message. I read in a Wall Street Journal survey related to business schools that about 80% of corporate recruiters—businesspeople like you—said that online programs are not as effective in developing skills as classroom programs. In fact, nearly 40% of recruiters rated online programs as "not at all effective." Josh Bersin’s 2008 research on elearning found that less than 2% of you were training customer service skills mostly online. Only 4% for interpersonal skills, and a whopping 0% were doing sales training completely online. That’s intuitive from a learning perspective—we learn interpersonal behaviors by seeing and doing. eLearning’s virtual reality apparently just isn’t real enough for most learners. Speaking of virtual reality, you can watch this video where Jack's avatar gets pwn3d by Todd's avatar as we continue this debate on AchieveGlobal Island in Second Life.

DEBATE: With shrinking training budgets, what is the best way to invest in human capital development?

by Todd Beck In tough times, the smart thing to do is to focus on return on investment, not just how to lower the investment. Because whatever the economy, you get what you pay for. You know, it’s interesting that in 2008 MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) raised its classroom tuition a full 4.1%. And almost every other university and community college out there is raising tuition for classroom instruction. But MIT offers absolutely free the elearning equivalent of classroom instruction, including lectures and study materials via the Internet. That’s validation that the return on classroom investment is seen as going up, while the return on elearning investment has continued to decline.  In a soft economy, you need to decide if you want to invest to survive or invest to thrive. Classroom is still very much a smart investment. Enjoying the debate? Check out this video where Jack and I battle in real-time but in Second Life on AchieveGlobal Island.

DEBATE: With shrinking training budgets, what is the best way to invest in human capital development?

By Jack McDaniel The best way to maximize an investment in human capital development is through leveraging technology-based learning. Not only do you get consistent quality of training – especially since elearning 2.0 has made possible exciting new instructional design tools and techniques – but you also get the performance support tools necessary to reinforce learners as they change their behavior. We all know that coaching and reinforcement are critical to assimilating skills, yet budgets usually cut the funding in this area. If we teach the learner where to go for coaching and reinforcement, and if those tools are available just-in-time, then technology gives us a win-win situation. Learners have access to the same materials that they experienced during the initial learning and learners know where to get them – anytime, anywhere – all at a reduced cost to the organization. The organization can then use part of the dollars saved in employee travel costs – and lost opportunities because they’re out of the office – and invest that in a blend of live virtual and self-paced coaching and reinforcement programs. I'll leave you with a recent quote from an executive with a Fortune 500 company:

“We would prefer to have training reach 100% of our population and be 50% effective, than to only offer training to the 20% that we could afford to cover face-to-face. And we do not feel that the newer elearning is less effective than traditional classroom, so the choice is a no-brainer.”

If you're excited about the possibilities elearning 2.0 can bring to your organization, watch me pummel Todd mercilessly and with pithy elocution in this video  as we debate the issue on AchieveGlobal Island in Second Life.

Is classroom on life support? YES!

By Jack McDaniel Technology is here to stay, it just keeps improving, and we eagerly embrace that. How many of us are comfortable without access to email or our cell phones? We’re all proud to be part of the “frenzy of fascination” that Todd mentioned. Technology is helpful. We conduct business in new ways, more efficiently. Perhaps more importantly, the upcoming generation of businesspeople are demanding that they communicate, work, and learn leveraging the techniques and technologies that they’ve grown accustomed to. They embrace collaborative environments, virtual classrooms, self-study elearning and knowledge-based systems like EPSS. The Sloan Consortium annual learning benchmarking reports that more than 90% of all post-secondary institutions in the US currently offer some variety of elearning, and that online enrollments are increasing at a rate of more than 18% per year, compared with traditional enrollments at a rate of 4%. Schools that do not currently offer on-line capabilities are considered sub-par. As humans we’re wired to be social, and social communication – including learning – is being shifted to online modes, freeing us from the constraints of formal face-to-face classrooms. Simply put, we’d no more accept a steady diet of classroom learning than we would accept giving up our email, cell phones, Facebook, or LinkedIn accounts. So yes, face-to-face classroom training is on as much life support as Pong or rotary dial telephones. NOTE: Is elearning vs. classroom a debate happening in your organization? If so, watch this video in whichTodd and I battle it out on AchieveGlobal Island in Second Life.

Is classroom on life support? NO!

By Todd Beck This is a hot topic in the 21st century, and yet has been argued for decades--maybe since back when radio started broadcasting educational content. Today's threat is the internet and virtual instructors, so people keep asking: Is classroom on life support? To find the answer, I will take on Jack McDaniel (AchieveGlobal's Media Projects Director) in a no-holds-barred, deathmatch cage fight--well, more of a structured debate with some trash talk thrown in. Jack has deep experience with writing, instructional design, and Web development. He'll claim classroom is dead. I will take the position that classroom is alive and well. After brief remarks from each side, we'll answer a series of questions. Who will win? Stay tuned. Here's my opening position: I love technology. I research technology. I’m one of those people who friends and neighbors come to for advice and help with technology. Heck, I work on my computer all day and then go home and play on my computer all night. But the other day I took one of those assessments where it measures where you are personally on the change adoption continuum. And as you listen to me speak today it will be no surprise that the assessment showed that, when it comes to change, I’m a pragmatist. A solid focus on what’s practical—what will generate the highest return on investment. And I don’t apologize for that. You and I are businesspeople. We get paid to generate business results. So when I think of behavior change, and I look at everything that impacts the likelihood that an employee will complete training, will commit to new behaviors, and will apply new behaviors on the job, I see classroom as the long-standing champion that has been and might forever be the most effective way humans learn. Elliott Masie recently wrote that “there is a frenzy of fascination and way too much hype” about technology. “And, much of this frenzy does not map back to the requirements of learning development and design.”  (Learning TRENDS by Elliott Masie - August 29, 2007) People are people, so why should it be that you and I should be physically wired to benefit from classroom learning for thousands of years, and then suddenly during this “frenzy of fascination” somehow have our basic learning preferences change? Classroom is how humans learn. Classroom is not on life support. Classroom is life support. ....Jack--it's your turn. Bring it on!

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

By Craig Perrin No doubt about it, the industrial age worked very well. Without mass production - in which humans served machines, followed directions, performed repetitive tasks - our civilization could not exist. Yet we've seen rapid change. Today, machines serve people, doing many jobs better than we can -more consistently and efficiently, error-free, 24/365. That leaves us to do what technology can't. Only we can make judgments, collaborate, coach, be diplomatic, negotiate, motivate, create. In short, at least so far, no machine has replaced the human ability to sell, service, and lead -three core disciplines for organizations in the digital age. As the pace of change accelerates, digital technologies will increasingly free us to learn and build new skills. Our central task, therefore, will be to adapt - and help others adapt - to this new reality. Here is the bedrock assumption of the AchieveGlobal Blog:

The human capacity to think will make organizations flourish in the 21st century.

Growing from that core belief, future blog entries will explore the many implications of theglobal shift from the industrial age to the digital age. We cordially invite you to join us in this great enterprise - Developing the 21st Century Workforce™.