The Road to ASTD

I am looking forward to participating in ASTD 2007 in Atlanta. Ever an educational experience, will the conference this year lean towards innovation and excitement or will it be more of an accounting of what has passed and a realization of what is possible and prudent in our industry. As I prepare for the upcoming conference, I believe our industry has reached a level of maturity that necessitates reviewing the past seven years to assess what we can achieve and what we must avoid in the next seven.

First, looking back, the good things coming from our growing industry are obvious. For example, the value of e-learning as a mechanism for more training to reach out to more people more often is evident. This year’s State of the Industry report from ASTD stated:

“E-learning was the solution for several organizations that wanted to make the same learning accessible to all their employees, regardless of their location around the globe or across the country.”

Additionally, the report shows a healthy rise in e-learning usage, accounting for at least 60% of all self-paced, technology-based learning (see 2006 ASTD State of the Industry Report). And a recent Josh Bersin survey shows a rising investment in employees, partially fueled by the vitality of the technology-driven training industry.

Yet, even the best of memories always lack the true context of times gone by. In our past, e-learning was mainly pushed as a cost saver. As a result, many companies made major purchasing decisions for large off-the-shelf libraries and launched large content conversion projects. While cost savings were always the easiest sell, cost savings will never be enough to sustain our industry. Value of services will.

Having been around for 26 years, Allen has gained a rich perspective that has taught us our industry was never about technology. First and foremost, it was about how to utilize technology to address the training needs of a generation and a changing employee landscape. I wonder if our industry’s insecurity that training will be the first to be cut when times are bad is the reason for our timidity when it comes to proving what we can do to grow our company through better employee development.

The year 2007 must be a year of accounting and growth. By now, companies and vendors should know what works and what does not.. Providing employees with the tools they need to be successful is a growth driver not a cost saver.

The vitality of our endeavors is tied to our ability to help our organizations grow. We can and should be providing solutions that raise proficiencies. We can help avoid costly mistakes while fueling the marketing of our companies’ competitive advantages internally and to customers externally.

Failures are not lacking in our industry and the bad is as clear to see as the good. From a vendor perspective, we’ve seen the disappearance of many good vendor brands along with the consolidation of many others. Additionally, the off-the-shelf market is declining with only a few large companies remaining and a handful of small, niche companies competing for the same customers. Allen’s own market of custom training providers remains fragmented, and very few companies such as ours exist that continue to grow in size and profitability year over year.

Too often, vendors have promised and not delivered. Untold dollars are spent on technology that is not used. Companies invest in content with short shelf life, with no strategy for updating and maintaining their costly investments

Allen has always tried to forge its own path in a turbulent industry. We also like to use our experience over the past quarter century to learn more. Looking back at the past seven years, here are a few of the lessons we have learned:

1) Training will always be about matching the needs of an organization to the unique nature of its employees. Squares do not fit in round holes. Custom training companies must provide their customers with options and capabilities to find a true fit. Good training is as much an art as a science. Creativity can be matched with process to create long lasting value.

2) Vendor-customer relationships have changed. Vendors that don’t change and become more strategic and forward thinking in their outlook do and will disappear. We need to look beyond out current or next deal, and provide both one time customers and long-term partners with the tools to maintain, develop and progress on their own without our help in the future.

3) Technology does not lead but is lead by a good, solid approach to instructional design, the constraints of a company’s IT infrastructure, and learner populations. Never assume that e-learning is always the best approach. Time must be spent upfront to analyze the right learning blend.

4) Lastly and most importantly, we must always aspire to make a real difference in our customers’ business. We can never shy away from believing what can be achieved through good training and a true appreciation for the goodness that a learner gets from our content.

We’ll soon be off to ASTD. On return, I’ll continue this topic by sharing the good, the bad and the sometimes ugly from conference