Distractions are caused by YOU, when you answer the phone, respond to an email or pick up your iPhone or Blackberry when it buzzes.  By others when they talk at you, share musings, ask questions that they know the answer to, and generally get in your face.  Your best work needs quiet and time to focus.  The video recommends blocks of an hour before returning to the melee.

'A 2 percent economic growth rate for 15 years would increase the demand for executives by about a third. Meanwhile, supply is moving in the opposite direction: the number of US 35- to 44-year-olds will decline by 15 percent from 2000 to 2015. Companies must therefore make talent management a top priority, create and perpetually refine their employee value proposition, and source and, above all, develop talent systematically while removing underperformers.'

McKinsey's in 1998!

It is always interesting because it brings me down to earth.  I always imagine huge shifts in how TM is perceived and how it is managed in companies, but the actual moves are much more modest.  However, let's not get too depressed as the moves are all in the right direction.

Over 51% of programmes surveyed (721 companies mostly US-based) now see talent as an all employee issue.  This is the first time this has ever gone over 50%. And 18% of respondents now claim to have a fully integrated TM operation (up 4% on last year). And -at last- the number of companies wehre TM goals, tactics and metrics are regularly reviewed by top execs to ensure alignment with organisational goals breaks 50% (52% actually).  I still find it surprising that this figure isn't close to 100%. 19% say that the TM strategy is not aligned at all.  That is pretty staggering.

The biggest challenge is still 'developing talent' which overshadows the next two challenges:  recruiting talent and retaining talent. The recession has apparently shifted the focus from building talent to buying talent. So there is still scope for the imaginative, aligned learning leader to storm the barricades!

Anyway read it yourself.

I wrote my third article on the topic of social networking and there is so much buzzing around that theme that it is worth mentionning here.

Jeanne Meister has published a short case study on Intel's use of social networking here focussing on its social media training programme that over 20,000 staff have now completed. And  a whole bunch of social networking policy papers are  available on line in a Social Media Governance database.

The Intel Guidelines Document is light touch and well thought out.  You can look at it here.  Many organisations are attempting to develop their use of Social networking both for internal communications and knowledge transfer and external to build external links with customers.  Intel itself has over 50 (what look like genuine) Twitter accounts ranging from job tweets to Intel ChipChitChat.  Aimed at staff and customers alike. The main one: @Intel is aimed at customers and is designed to create a sense of a fun, committed and communicating company. 

On an entirely different plain, ASOS the online clothes retailer, invites is followers to upload pictures of customers wearing ASOS clothes out on a Saturday night.  And draws attention to sale and special items.

is over for another year.  I think I skipped a year so this is my first since 08.  And I really enjoyed it for a number of reasons:

Great and enthusiastic people willing to talk and share

Some very good sessions, some unexpected

Catching up with friends and colleagues

General professional way it was organised:  felt firmly under control

But what did I learn?

• Firstly that the learning and development community is vibrant and will to accept change.
• Secondly that the recession has generated a lot of innovation
• Thirdly Social networking is really taking hold
• Fourthly that virtual worlds still need a lot of work to justify the effort and that effort might not best be put into Second Life
• Words like rapid, in time and small scale are really indicative of a whole range of initiatives
• Money is still a big issue but much social learning has been sold on the back of economy drives but that does not invalidate the result on the contrary...
• "Civil society cannot be reduced to a digital free for all" Puttnam
• We need some stats related to the UK market not just the US.
• Deep specialists are required all over organisations and their expertised networked and made accesible
• LMS = eLearning platform  2001 - 2003; Enterprise learning platform 2004 - 2007; Learning Portal 2008 -2010 (Josh Bersin)
• Learning culture has a direct impact on organisational performance (Josh B)
• At IBM you can look up the person you want to emulate and see what they are reading! (Josh B again)
• "You hired them, why don't you trust them' Mark Oehlert

It was also the conference where Twitter came of age.  There were some wonderful snippets flowiing past. I hope we can capture them for posterity.

Many of us confuse our realised strengths and learned behaviours to the point of convinving ourselves that what we are good at, is what we like;  and they are not necessariky the same thing at all.  This is exactly the point that Ken Robinson is making in his book The Element.  It is more important to get 'in your element' ie follow your passion, than pursue something because everyone tells you, you are good at it.  The book is subtitled:  how finding your passion changes everything. 

The real question is how you can help someone find that passion; or even more difficult, suggest to someone that what they do, may not be what they should be doing.  And there is a hard balance to achieve as an indivudual, between listening to what people tell you, and listening to what your head (and heart) are saying.  We all put a huge premium on acclaim, and ignore those contradictory, internal voices.  Being smart is learning fast and well, but being smarter is not being controlled by what we learn, and ignoring what really gives us energy.

The US is still a massive world economic power that dwarfs the current second biggest ecomony: ($14 trillion GDP as opposed to just over $5 trillion).  But twenty years' hence, China soars to $26.5 trillion and the US lags at nearly $23 trillion. But what is equally astonishing  is the third largest economy is India at $7.5 trilion (ie larger than China now) and Brazil is fifth at $4.25 trillion.  This is a new economic order.  The graph makes this clear.

And, incidently, the data comes from the IMF and another organisation in the news: Goldman Sachs.   Amongst all the hooha about Goldman Sachs one little fact never gets any acknolwedgement : 

"A hallmark of the Goldman Sachs culture is its commitment to the development of its people."

Goldman Sachs has always been amongst the great investors in staff learning and it seems to be paying off!

The list contains some fairly obvious areas:

Services for elderly and persons with disabilities shoot up by 73%, but management technical and scientific consulting services rocket by no less than 82%.  If the first indicates the changing make-up of an aging population, the second shows how work is evolving.  Increasing numbers of 'experts' will not be on the books of one employer but selling their expertise much more widely.  That will generate a slew of new types of organisations that are tight/loose. In other words will expand and contract and change the levels of expertise depending on how and with whom they are working. And their only product will be the collective knowledge of their employees and their networks.

I am grateful to the Huffington Post for pointing me in the direction of this Government release.

And here is the link to download the book.

If you want an explanation from Seth about why and how; then that is on his blog here.