Blog Post: "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."

Let's take into consideration the age in which we live -- I've heard it called the Information Age. While I'm struggling to recall the originator of the quote, I've heard someone state that information will replace oil as the next invaluable resource.  Which would be kind of cool, providing I can start charging $4 per thought.

The problem becomes managing the information that we need.  Information comes from various sources, not all of them reliable.  Additionally, the need for information shifts -- I just read an article in T&D that shared the challenges of training customer support staff for the Zune MP3 player, released in 2006.  Changes and improvements can be pushed out to the MP3 player at any time using automatic updates, which renders much of the Zune new hire training obsolete within the matter of weeks, if not days.  While not everyone has an environment like Zune's, it's fair to say that information needs are constantly changing.

The person brought on board to help manage the needs associated with changing information is sometimes called the "Chief Learning Officer."  A relatively new position in the history of business, the name isn't constant, nor is the position.  There's no Chief Learning Officer in my company, for example. After a brief perusal of some org charts that I got for the larger collection of affiliated companies, neither is there a CLO for my parent company.  We all report up to the amorphous HR division.

Perhaps this is one of the challenges for the training and development profession.  We don't have our own identity beyond HR.  But it's up to us to create that identity.  If we've got a CLO, great, then we've got someone who has a seat at the table who can represent our department in a way that aligns with corporate strategy. 

But what if there is no CLO?  What if the head of Training, or Organizational Development, or whatever, exists at the Manager or Director level?  What if you're the voice?

This is what's inspiring about Tamar Elkeles, who comes to ASTD-Orange County on June 25.  She's been there, nurturing a training department from one person to 30, establishing a Learning division for Qualcomm that utilizes in-house trainers as well as outside consultants to leverage their expertise off the highly-skilled associates in her corporation.

"The traditional training/HR role in any organization can be extremely strategic?if you make it that way," stresses Elkeles. "At Qualcomm, our department is heavily linked to management as well as employees. Still, our top role to fill is that of employee advocate. And in that advocacy role, we must drive organizational climate, or culture. If a department or division wants to have a certain message go out, or a certain set of skills, they come to us and discuss ways to create that message or skill set within the employee base."

This didn't happen overnight. Tamar's work at Qualcomm began in 1992, when the company was about 7 years old.  Her initiatives to develop the Learning role within the organization (counting on my fingers now) have spanned 16 years to create the robust environment that she describes above.

This will be the message that she shares with those attending the June 25 ASTD-Orange County Learning Event.  We invite you to join us -- you don't need to be of the C-suite set to benefit; practitioners at all levels of the learning and development field will be able to take away practical information that will impact how they represent the learning function in their organization.

(Title quote attributed to Derek Bok)

Some of Tamar's bio, including her quote, came from an interview with her published in  www.allbusiness.com.