A colleague on a board I serve on commented that he's not sure how to keep millennials in their job for 18 months, much less get them involved in an association. It's a concern I've heard echoed by numerous association executives and board members, but I think it is one that is largely misplaced. Certainly, employers need to worry about retaining their employees - millennials … [Read more...]
The 4 Ps of Marketing Your Learning Business
Here’s a question: how would you say most people define marketing? Our suspicion - based on a lot of experience - is that when most people think of marketing, they think of advertising, or other forms of promotion. But there's much more to marketing than promotion - and even promotion has more to it than many appreciate. In this episode, we cover the 4 Ps of marketing - … [Read more...]
How to Price Online Learning
Knowing how to price online learning effectively is more important in the current competitive landscape for adult lifelong learning than ever before. This article covers the four major elements that must be addressed as part of pricing online learning or - for that matter - just about anything else. The article draws on a framework laid out years ago in just two sentences by … [Read more...]
Are your offerings an expense or an investment?
It's an essential question to ask both about how you perceive your own participation in professional development activities as well as about how your prospective customers perceive participation in your organization's offerings. When we view something as an expense, our expectations are relatively low. An expense is simply a transaction in which we give something - usually … [Read more...]
6 Paths for Leading Your Learning Business to Blue Ocean
Are you looking for ways to separate your business from the pack and stop competing on price? Would you welcome innovations that help you raise the value you deliver while also lowering your cost structure? In this article we’ll explore some "Blue Ocean" strategy tools that can help you achieve these very goals. Specifically, we’ll discuss the Blue Ocean strategy six … [Read more...]
An Informal Learning Business Curriculum
We've been publishing the Leading Learning podcast for many years now. While the majority of episodes have featured interviews with thought leaders, practitioners, and influencers in the world of lifelong learning, nearly a third have been discussion between hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele about a range of topics related to the learning business. Over time, these have … [Read more...]
Transactions vs. Relationships
"One and done. That's the approach most of our education directors take." This was the view shared with me by the vice president of a national nonprofit organization recently. Even more recently, a trade association called me in to talk with its network of education managers about moving away from a "transactional" (my contact's words) approach to selling training to more … [Read more...]
Leveraging Microlearning for Professional Development and Continuing Education
Even though it started bubbling up years ago, microlearning still represents one of the biggest current trends and opportunities in the market for adult professional development and continuing education. For adult lifelong learners, microlearning represents a way to acquire specific new skills and knowledge in a concise, targeted way. For businesses, it is potentially a way … [Read more...]
Learning How to Learn with Dr. Barbara Oakley
[This episode is from the Leading Learning archives. Most of it was originally published as Episode 104.] When it comes to engaging learners and designing truly effective learning experiences, it may not be as complex—or costly—as you may think. Dr. Barbara Oakley, professor, speaker, and author of Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden … [Read more...]
Top 10 Leading Links for 2018
Every month we round up a set of high-value links to send out to our newsletter subscribers. We use the five domains from the Tagoras Learning Business Maturity Model - leadership, strategy, capacity, portfolio, and marketing - to organize them and then we provide a quick summary of what readers will find at each link. Here are the links that got the most clicks during 2018. We … [Read more...]
Top 10 Podcast Episodes for 2018
It was a great year for the Leading Learning podcast. We had the privilege of talking with some very interesting people and learned an enormous amount in the process. We hope you did, too. Here are the Leading Learning podcast episodes published in 2018 that got the most downloads. We encourage you to share this page using the social media icons to the left and at the bottom … [Read more...]