Training for Multiple Cultures, the February 2010 Infoline by Andrea Edmundson, earned a glowing review in Learning Solutions Magazine today. Jane Bozarth, three-time author and eLearning Coordinator for the North Carolina Office of State Personnel, praises the issue for its concise overviews and concrete suggestions. Jane summarizes, "Overall, the piece is very tight, focused, and clear, and is certainly worth the $12 purchase price." Read the whole review here.

 

For more information on Cultural Training, consider attending the session Going Global: Developing Cross-Cultural Competence at the ASTD 2010 International Conference and Exposition!

Tune in for the upcoming Best Practices for Achieving More Success webinar that will share a March 2010 survey of registered ASTD 2010 attendees revealing their buying habits at expositions. The webinar will be hosted by Mr. Scott Korzen, vice president training and development for Incomm Research & Incomm Sales Training. Through his research and training programs, Korzen has identified the best practices organizations use for exhibiting at trade shows.

As part of the webinar, he will also share ideas and strategies for setting goals and expectations from exhibiting. Extensive research indicates that the most successful exhibitors arrive with a pre-defined goal and mission. The success of your mission is dependent upon the team members and how they execute the game plan as well as their actions used when interacting with attendees.  Whether you’re a 10’x10’ or 30’x30’ exhibitor, the results could mean big business for you.

Korzen will also share what field representatives have identified as the most important parts of a lead written in the trade show environment. Most attendees have a pre-defined expectation of their interaction with representatives when questioned about buying plans. Korzen will share quick success tips for creating that level of trust for capturing the needed information. 60% of a professional’s skill depends on the ability to ask questions in a non-threatening manner. Apply these proven techniques and experience more results!

Also, as part of the March 2010 survey, attendees were asked to identify the best methods for following up on their requests as well as how soon they expect an exhibitor to provide the information requested. Tune in March 18 at 2:00 p.m. EDT to hear their expectations.

Register for this free exhibitor webinar today!

When last I left you, the CEO search committee for Opportunity International U.S had homed in on three finalists to lead the global microfinance organization. I think you remember our three finalists: One had built his company from a single store to more than 800 locations, 4,000 employees, and $600 million in annual revenue, and he didn't have a college degree. Another hadn't been ready to leave the private-equity world when we first contacted him, but circumstances changed his mind and now he's 110% committed to the idea. The third had tremendous marketing and management experience, with fabulous networks that might help Opportunity get to a new level.

None come from the nonprofit sector, so we wanted to craft the best possible evaluation for them. Thanks in part to your comments, we came up with a great approach for making our decision: We created three role-playing scenarios to see how our candidates would perform as CEO.

The three-part final interview went like this:

1. The candidates had to present a strategy to the "board of directors" (our search committee) for doubling Opportunity International's impact over the next five years. In one hour, they had to structure a presentation and conversation that covered things like:
• Their assessment of the organization's current state
• Their thoughts on where the organization should be in five years
• Their views of the greatest growth opportunities facing the organization
• Their recommended approach to advancing Opportunity's mission
• Their plans for how they would use the top role (and their individual strengths) to execute on their suggested strategies
2. The candidates (in the role of CEO) were then invited into a living room to meet with a group of donors and potential donors. They were given 10 to 15 minutes to introduce Opportunity to this audience and ask for the group's support.
3. And finally, the candidates (in the role of CEO) were given a five- to 10-minute private audience with a major donor who had supported Opportunity in the past but had not done so in the past few years. How would the candidates approach the donor and gain their renewed support?

All three candidates were well prepared, but one knocked our socks off. He articulated creative and exciting strategies to double Opportunity's impact over five years and to make it a Top 100 nonprofit. He used a wonderful story-based approach to engage the donors in the living room scenario. He proved he could quickly connect with a major donor in the one-on-one session. He ended up being the unanimous choice of the search committee and, ultimately, the full board of directors.

Our new CEO is Bill Morgenstern. He was candidate number one: the successful entrepreneur who brings a plethora of talent and experience to the job, but not a college degree. Now we're on to the next phase — helping to ensure Bill's success in his new role. And so I'm asking the HBR.org community's advice again: We know a great onboarding program is absolutely essential to a successful leadership transition. What's worked for you? What hasn't? What recommendations can you share?

David Simms is a partner at Bridgespan and the head of its Bridgestar initiative, which is aimed at developing leadership talent in the nonprofit sector.

When I was a young consultant, my first (and at the time, only) client was a fledgling Toyota, which had only recently entered the American market in a big way. Back in the mid-1970's, in the wake of the first oil shocks, Toyota was an inspiring company battling for long-term growth and market share in a country that still viewed Japanese products — and the people who made them — with suspicion. To this day, I carry insights with regard to leadership that I learned from Toyota in that period. Toyota could learn a lot from studying its past.

While today's Toyota's leaders may be flailing, in its heyday, the company knew what it stood for. It came from the top. Then, Eiji Toyoda ran the company in strong-willed but humble way. He had tremendous respect for his workers. Because it was relatively small, Toyota licensed a great deal of its technology from other companies. As a result, much of what has been called the Toyota Way was based on the continuous refinement of processes and products invented by others. This could be infuriating. When I rebuilt the carburetor of my 1975 Corolla, I was dismayed to find that there were five versions of the carburetor for that year, each one slightly better than the last, each with a different parts list. Such a process could have prevented today's problems with gas pedals and brakes.

Toyota's second strength was that Eiji Toyoda allowed leadership to permeate the organization. He listened to his employees and trusted them. He installed suggestion boxes and read what was in them. He gave assembly workers the authority to pull a cord and stop the entire production line if they detected anything that might affect product quality.

Granting that level of authority to assembly workers was unheard of at the time — not just because the rest of the world's car makers didn't think the people putting together their products had enough judgment but because stopping the line was expensive. A delay could back up the entire system, from parts deliveries to putting finished vehicles onto trucks, trains, and ships, and onto dealers' lots. Despite the costs, Toyoda let his workers know they could stop the line.

When I consulted to Toyota it was what I call a Common Purpose organization, in that everybody around the world seemed to know what the company stood for, which, in turn, helped them understand how to do their jobs better. For example, everyone knew that quality was more important than profits, that part of everyone's job was to fix something that went wrong, and that if they had a concern about a product or process they would be heard. They also knew that selling a second car to a customer was more important than the first. Loyalty counted for a lot.

Back then, in all likelihood, someone would have spotted and fixed a problem with an accelerator pedal or braking system immediately, not after two years and not after it affected more than 2 million cars. Someone would have pulled the cord.

What happened? Some have pointed fingers at the company's suppliers. But Toyota has always been the least vertically integrated of the automobile companies. It was a networked company of autonomous and semi-autonomous suppliers as far back as the 1950s; some have worked with Toyota since its inception. Its managers were adept at managing supplier relationships to make certain everyone understood the company's goals. Much has been written on this point. It's unlikely that Toyota's managers simply forgot what had been widely hailed as one of the company's most important attributes.

Others have suggested Toyota's problems are a result of its size. As the world's largest automobile company, it has grown too big to manage. This is also not likely the case. Toyota did not grow through mergers or acquisitions, it did so organically. This meant that there was nothing new to integrate into the Toyota system and that there were no clashes of corporate cultures. In addition, Toyota became No. 1, not because of a growth spurt, but because its main rivals fell.

Toyota's quality problems run deep, but they are not simply a failure of design, or a retreat from best-in-class manufacturing. They are a failure of leadership. The company recently lost its much-respected head of North America to Chrysler, and also went through a transition at the top in Japan. From my own recent experience with the company, many of the executives I met with felt second guessed by their bosses. Numbers, not people, are in the ascendency and workers have lost respect.

When the spirit of Common Purpose is on the wane in an organization, missteps are sure to follow.

Joel Kurtzman is the author of 25 books including: "Common Purpose: How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve the Extraordinary" (Jossey-Bass, March 2010). He is a former Editor of the Harvard Business Review and consults to organizations around the world.

Let's say you're someone over 55 who has enjoyed roaring success in your career, launched your kids, called it quits. You've made your mark and your moolah, and you want to do more than spend your sunset years hanging out on a golf course in Florida.
You want to give back. Donating to charity feels too bloodless. You hate mosquitoes, so the Peace Corps is out. What's a socially conscious "third-ager" to do?

Randy Antik faced this conundrum. A 66-year old retired CEO from Dallas, Antik had noticed that a lot of his kindred souls in the upscale neighborhood of Naples, Florida felt the same restless desire to make a difference as he did. But they didn't know how to go about it.

A longtime aficionado of ideas conferences like TED and the Aspen Ideas Festival, Antik decided to start his own gathering, and so the Imagine Solutions Conference, which took place in Naples recently, was born.

About 500 CEOs, former CEOs and community leaders — nearly all of whom sported little, or white, hair — paid $2000 a pop to hear from big thinkers such as Ken Dychtwald, Niall Ferguson, Peter Diamandis and Nick Negroponte.

But more to the point, they also connected with 11 young people who are addressing critical problems in education, health care delivery, energy and environmental depletion, and the faltering economy. One of these "socialpreneurs" was Rebecca Onie, whose organization Project Health is setting up "family help desks" in medical clinics to help needy patients. Doctors at the clinics "prescribe" food and housing for patients who are connected to a network of volunteers and resources.

Another was Jordan Kassalow, an optometrist who realized that people in developing countries were losing their livelihoods for want of simple reading glasses, and so created a franchise opportunity for poor people to sell glasses. All 11 visionaries were creative, inspired, energetic and refused to take no for an answer. And they needed help helping. The Imagine Solutions attendees had much more to offer than just money — they had years of experience as C-level executives.

"It's easy to write a check, but it doesn't give you a lot of satisfaction," said Linda Martin, who owns a cell phone company in Pennsylvania. She has offered to help Andrew Butcher, CEO of Growth Through Energy and Community Health Strategies (GTECH), expand his vision of turning blighted inner-city vacant lots into thriving vegetable gardens. Multiply that kind of connection by 500, and you get an idea of the kind of power of Antik's matchmaking idea. By the end of the event, said Antik, "I guarantee you every one of the social entrepreneurs had at least 3 or 4 offers of help" from the current or former CEOs who made up the bulk of the audience.

So if you're a third-age leader in despair about the state of the world, don't just sit there — contact the Searching for Solutions Institute and find out how you can help. See you in Florida.

Bronwyn Fryer is a contributing editor to Harvard Business Review.

ASTD is currently collecting data for our 2010 State of the Industry Report - the most sought after research in the industry of learning and performance. ASTD collects State of the Industry Report data through our WLP Scorecard - an online benchmarking tool that allows organizations to compare and benchmark against hundreds of other organizations in our database.

The deadline for participation this year is June 15, 2010.  All organizations that submit their learning and performance data by the deadline will receive a complimentary pre-release electronic copy of the report. Please consider entering your data as soon as possible so your organization can help set the standard for the industry and benchmark against other companies and help ASTD keep abreast with industry trends.

For more information on the WLP Scorecard, you may visit the WLP Scorecard or view a recorded webinar overview of the Scorecard and data submission.

The conference "EU projects in favour of the Roma community" hosted in Brussels by the European Commission has just closed its plenary session this afternoon. Organised by Directorate General Education and Culture, the conference aimed at disseminating the results of various EU programmes which fund projects related to Roma people, as ...\n

Androulla Vassiliou, Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, will join Education Ministers from 46 European countries in Budapest today and in Vienna tomorrow to formally launch the 'European Higher Education Area' on the tenth anniversary of the Bologna Process for higher education reform. The Bologna Process, ...\n

A report presented today by the European Commission shows that countries still face challenges in modernising higher education, a decade after the launch of a blueprint for reform known as the 'Bologna Process'. The report, based on data provided by the 46 countries participating in the Process, shows that the economic crisis has affected higher ...\n

The European Commission has just presented the Europe 2020 Strategy to help Europe emerge from the crisis and prepare its economy for the next decade. Education and training are to play a key role for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.\n

Adopted by Education Ministers earlier this week, the 2010 joint progress report of the Council and the Commission on the implementation of the work programme "Education and Training 2010" is now available online.\n

European e-Skills Week highlights the growing demand for skilled users and professionals of information and communication technologies (ICT) to drive a competitive and innovative Europe. This campaign seeks to inform students, young professionals and SMEs about the vast range of opportunities that ICT-related jobs present. The ...\n

Nearly 500 teachers are meeting in Seville to celebrate the fifth anniversary of eTwinning, an action that creates online communities of teachers and schools across Europe. Through eTwinning, over 85 000 teachers from across Europe work together in international school activities involving more than 50 000 schools in 32 European ...\n

A new forecast on the demand and supply of skills up to 2020 foresees a steady rise in knowledge- and skill-intensive occupations in Europe. The forecast was presented today by Cedefop, the EU's reference centre for vocational education and training, at the European Commission conference 'New Skills for New Jobs: Action Now'.\n

Immediate action is required to solve Europe's skills deficiencies and give Europeans a better chance of labour market success in the future, says an independent expert report published by the European Commission today. The report - 'New Skills for New Jobs: Action Now' - stresses the need to provide the right incentives for people to ...\n

A new publication looks at the different ways to measure creativity both of individual people and at national and regional levels. The publication is based on the outcomes of an international conference, which the European Commission hosted in May 2009 under the title "Can creativity be measured?" The publication Measuring Creativity looks ...\n

Did you know that Spain, France and Germany are the most popular destination for Erasmus students? That the average Erasmus student stays abroad for around 6 months? That the number of university teachers going abroad with the help of the programme each year has more than tripled over the last ten years and is now at over 27 000? A statistical overview ...\n

A group of independent experts will present its key recommendations on 4 February 2010 on how to further develop the skills and jobs agenda in Europe and to better build bridges between the worlds of education, training and work. The report will be presented at a conference in Brussels, jointly organised by the European Commission's Directorate-Generals ...\n

How do you approach business process improvement? By keeping the focus on the customer? Or by seeking efficiency?