Leading Links 2021 – Issue 6

Knowing that many readers take time off during the summer, we’re sending out just a single edition of Leading Links to cover June and July. We’ve even taken a bit of time off ourselves, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have some current activities to highlight:

• Learning Science for Learning Businesses Podcast Series: We’ve launched a new series and you can access the first two episodes here (five more to come). Please share this page with others who may be interested. Many thanks to SelfStudy for sponsoring. 
  
• Webinar Pricing and Sponsorship Trends: If you – or the right person at your organization – have not yet participated in our brief survey on Webinar registration and sponsorship fees, please take a few minutes to do it ASAP. We’ll close down the survey this Friday. (Results will be shared with participants.)

Now, on to this month’s links. 

[Leadership] 4 Things Every (Learning) Business Leader Should Know
This is a useful collection of insights (as always) from Greg Satell at Digital Tonto. A couple of notable quotes:

“Innovation is, probably more than anything else, essentially about collaboration.”

“The primary purpose of today’s leaders is to manage ecosystems of talent, technology and information.”

These pretty well sum up how we view the role of today’s learning business leader. And, they point the way to our next item …

[Strategy] The Future of Learning (Business) is Collaboration
This is true at the business strategy level, as reflected in this The Evolllution interview about Delivering on Lifelong Learning Ecosystem Through Collaborations. Much more collaboration between employers and learning providers is needed and these need to extend well beyond academic-corporate partnerships (the focus of this piece) to include associations and other learning businesses. (Related reading here and here.)

It’s also true at the level of learning strategy. We agree that cohort-based courses and learning communities – fundamentally collaborative forms of learning – are likely to gain much more traction in coming years. Aside from their efficacy in supporting learning, they may also represent a way for learning businesses to differentiate (more on that below). Of course, leveraging them requires having the right talent in place. Which leads to our next item …

[Capacity] A Lesson for Learning Businesses to Learn Well
The key message from a recent Gartner study discussed in this article is “Failing to invest in employees now could risk a decline in discretionary effort and/or intent to stay at the very time that you need employees to drive your post-COVID-19 economic recovery.” 

Naturally, that applies to our own teams. We need to make sure we’re providing staff with high-value learning opportunities and also ensuring that any volunteer presenters and subject matter experts are well prepared to teach effectively. The flip side, of course, is that our prospective customers need to invest in their own talent (including themselves). That creates plenty of opportunity, but …

[Marketing] How (Truly) Different Are Your Offerings?
… in case you haven’t noticed, competition in the market for lifelong learning continues to grow. Organizations that were essentially the only game in town a decade ago are now surrounded by start-ups, solo edupreneurs, and a range of other learning providers. Standing out is getting tougher, but this WBT Systems article offers 13 worthwhile tips on how to do it. In addition, you may want to consider the 7 Essential Rules of Successful Internet Marketers.

[Portfolio] Does Your Learning Need a Little More Chemistry? 
Of course, an excellent way to differentiate – at least in the current talking-head filled learning market – is to offer truly compelling, effective learning experiences. Brian Washburn’s new book, What’s Your Formula?: Combine Learning Elements for Impactful Training, purports to help you do just that. We haven’t had time to read it yet, but the interactive website that goes with it is enough to put it high on our list. It’s fun to play with and also nutritious food for thought and discussion within your learning business.

That’s it for this edition. If you find Leading Links valuable, please share it with a colleague who may also find it valuable. (And, of course, they can get their own subscription here.)