Last week our CEO, Ara Ohanian, delivered a keynote speech at Europe’s leading 2012 Learning and Technologies Conference revealing key characteristics of a new generation workforce “The Millennials”. He said that to remain competitive organizations need to transform training for this new demographic.

Ara believes that today’s employees are learning with tools and techniques designed by Baby Boomers and the X generation. Digitally savvy Millennials have different needs and expectations from both life and work – they are generators, not recipients, of knowledge. The paradigm in business has shifted from hierarchy to wirearchy.

The Millennials share certain characteristics. They are impatient, easily bored and accustomed to instant knowledge access. They connect up and down the corporate ladder – equally comfortable seeking knowledge from a CEO as from an assistant manager. They want to be heard and believe their opinion counts. They expect instant gratification and instant answers- the Millennials are on-line 24/7 and expect the rest of the world to be too. Born into a borderless society Millennials are global, seeking knowledge from the world over. Millennials want to be in charge.

Ara believes there are four key steps organizations can take to train this new generation workforce to deliver productivity: place search at the centre of learning – in response to Millennials’ “I want it now”; grasp the opportunity of give and take – it’s no longer enough to learn, we all have the capability to teach; be connected and integrated in L&D – ensure the workforce has knowledge at its fingertips; make speed of knowledge the L&D driver – Millennials want instant knowledge to help them to achieve at work.

Millennials are leading us towards a richer, more complex approach to learning concluded Ara, and it’s up to those of us who provide learning systems to make sure this approach is catered for.

Thanks,
CERTPOINT Team

Learning and development will change in 2012. This will be more than an incremental change. It will be a qualitative shift to a new approach.

That new approach can be summed up in one word: performance.

For too long, Learning and Development has focused on its own efficiency. How many courses could the department deliver, to how many people, over what period? And far too often the department physically separated itself from the rest of the organization – in the basement, or even in a separate building.

This will change in 2012, but strangely the shift will only bring us back to the most natural way of learning: from each other, at work.

Originally, learning was absolutely coupled to performance. Indeed, it was a natural part of work. This was before there were any complex workplace training programmes. In the pre-industrial world, learning at work largely consisted of watching others while at work, asking questions and receiving guidance. This meant that learning took place entirely in the correct context – in the workplace.

The richness of this learning experience was largely lost in the industrial era when workplace learning moved to training delivered largely through courses in the classroom, removed from the context of the workplace.

In 2012, the availability of the right technologies – in particular hand-held devices – will change all this.

This is more than simply saying that mobile learning will continue to grow in 2012. It will, but more than that will be a shift from “Learning and Development” to “Performance and Knowledge”. In other words, the emphasis of the L&D department will be increasingly on performance, and delivering the knowledge to support that performance, whether the person remembers it or not.

And what will people access through their portable devices? Some of it will still be courses. Some of it, however, will be information resources curated by the L&D department and made available through effective systems that are designed to provide the knowledge to support performance.

And online, people will also access something else: each other. Sometimes this can be through a phone call, but more often today it is via chat, through forums or through expert help. In other words, technology in 2012 will enable us to return learning at work to what it always was – a memorable experience made richer by taking place in the context of work.

Thanks,
Ara Ohanian
CEO, CERTPOINT Systems

This morning, CERTPOINT CEO Ara Ohanian issued an internal memo to all CERTPOINT staff, expressing both his sense of loss and his feeling of gratitude following the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs. The text of that memo follows:

Some events cause us to remember forever where we were when they occur. I was on a Virgin flight from Las Vegas to New York when the news about the untimely death of Mr. Jobs flashed on the bright screen of my MacBook. Strange – I’ve never met the man but a lump formed in my throat and a tear wet my cheek. How could the demise of someone I didn’t even know cause me such deep emotion?

Perhaps it is because if it weren’t for Steve Jobs, I would have not fallen in love with technology. I would have not founded a technology learning business. I would never have known you – my colleagues who have become my dear friends. I would not have met your children. I would not have been able to work with some of the world’s greatest brands and companies. I would not have made so many good friends from clients I served throughout the years. I would have not known the names of their children, their spouses or their favorite sports teams.

I am pretty sure that if not for Mr. Jobs influence, I would not have started a technology firm dedicated to innovating knowledge transfer in the 21st century. Until Mr. Jobs, I was singularly terrified of the green DOS-based screens that could only bring joy to people I thought I had nothing in common with. But Mr. Jobs changed the world – changed my world. Like Leonardo Da Vinci, the genius of this man combined an uncanny balance of art, design and aesthetics with the mastery of a brilliant engineer. So I must thank you Mr. Jobs for gifting us the magical harmony of beauty and technology. You changed my life for the better and inspired me to change the life of others for the better.

Ironically, on a day when our politicians boast of their plans to create jobs, the world has lost the greatest Jobs of all. Today I mourn your passing. Thank you for making this world a better place.

Thanks,
CERTPOINT Team

I am often asked, “What do you think of the current metamorphosis of learning management providers into talent management providers? Is it good for the industry? Is it good for the client?”

There really isn’t a single good answer to these questions. It is more a matter of opinion rather than fact.

And my opinion is clear.

In my view, the current consolidation in the market is predominately driven by financial considerations, not by client benefit. Although seemingly complimentary, packaging, globalizing, and delivering a businesses’ critical knowledge is very different from recruiting, promoting and compensating employees.

For a knowledge and learning specialist such as CERTPOINT, the core competence rests in constantly innovating the process by which businesses can accelerate, globalize and diversify the dissemination of business critical knowledge. That knowledge is the special sauce that drives a business’s unique value proposition.

The knowledge specialist makes it possible to extend that information widely across the extended enterprise. This knowledge is crucial not only for direct employees, but also for partner employees such as distribution and support personnel. These people actively generate revenue and loyalty by being smarter on the products and services they represent.

The Talent Management purist’s core competence rests in innovating the process by which businesses automates the process of recruiting, evaluating, growing, retaining and promoting employees.

For the next couple of years, clients will drive more benefit from dealing with two types of suppliers, one focused on the globalization of knowledge and the other on the management of talent. Why? Because each of these solutions has still much to prove in terms of its measurable impact on driving value and top line results across an enterprise.

The premature combination of such companies, as in the consolidation we see today, is not designed to benefit the client; it is designed to financially benefit impatient shareholders who impatiently seek liquidity and seek a return on their investment.

There will be a time, in my view, when both Talent Management businesses and Learning Management businesses will have reached a point of maturity and proven value impact when such combinations might benefit clients. Nevertheless, for the foreseeable future clients will see more benefit from not seeking TM and LM from a single provider. It is this CEO’s view that for the time being, the best formula can be achieved with an intelligent (rather than marketing) partnership between a TM and an LM company, each focused on their core competences. Such a partnership should be client-centric, thoughtfully integrated, and designed to put the interest of the customer at the center of it raison d’être.

Ara Ohanian
CEO, CERTPOINT Systems

Clayton M. Christensen’s book The Innovator’s Solution (published by Harvard Business School) reveals some astonishing insights into the fragility of success. Being bigger, it seems, it not always better.

Examining the companies that appeared on Fortune’s “50 Largest” list between 1955 and 1995, Christensen points out that 95% saw their growth rates stall to the level of general GNP or lower. Of these “stalled” companies, only 4 percent successfully rose to a level even one point higher than GNP subsequently.

It seems that companies become victims of their own success. Too often – almost inevitably – they reach a certain size beyond which they are unable to innovate and grow.

What does this have to do with learning? Everything.

Organizations that grow to a certain size often become hidebound – whether in the public or private sector. Employees’ work is corralled by the procedures and processes which middle management needs to function in large organizations. Employees are separated from the vision and strategy of the company, executives and senior managers from the daily reality of operations.

In these circumstances, traditional ‘push’ learning seldom keeps up with the pace of change faced in the modern world – meaning that training departments are often out-of-touch with the needs of learners. Worse, learning fails to play a vital role missing in most large, modern organizations: that of a conduit of information flow, keeping senior management and executives in touch with what is happening elsewhere.

The learning and development field has done itself no favors in the past by trying to make learning a transactional process driven by a centralized LMS. This is exactly what large organizations do not need. Instead, they need co-operative, organic learning, something that people throughout the organization contribute to – certainly, centrally-produced courses have a role, but so, too, do employee experiences, informal conversations and immediate customer feedback.

Learning can evolve from the centralized teaching of the past to a truly organic system of the future, and now at last the technology exists to support this. In the future learning can be part of the lifeblood of organizations that allows them to constantly be aware of their resources, processes and values in a changing world.

This new learning will be critical to a company’s ability to evolve and remain relevant.

Ara Ohanian
CEO, CERTPOINT Systems

The bad news? Realizing I would be grounded for at least six days in Europe, so missing my son’s debut as the lead in Beauty and the Beast. The not so bad news? Although I am 4,000 miles from New York, I am stuck in beautiful Paris!

This trip was different. It was to be a short business trip – a few days of meeting clients before heading back to CERTPOINT’s New York headquarters. For the first time, I left my laptop at home. Instead, I decided to give my brand new iPad a road test.

And as my only device for running a global firm on, that iPad has had plenty of testing over the past few days.

The verdict?

The iPad passed with flying colors.  Although I wish it had this feature and that feature, the bottom line is this: the iPad is a game changer. I believe it will change the concept of personal computing for ever – making the standard laptop a dinosaur.

For the past six days I have been running our global firm right from my iPad. I can access remote files, surf the Internet, author stunning presentations, email, work on spreadsheets and when in need of a break watch a movie.

And most fun of all, since it is not yet available in Europe, I feel like a rock star in the Parisian cafes which I have turned into my office since Wednesday. Trendy young men and women constantly stop and ask me to take a peek at it. I feel great!

Ara Ohanian
CEO, CERTPOINT Systems

sometimes you hear some news that just makes you smile.

So if you think you need a lift, I recommend a visit to e-Learning for Kids.

I recently learnt about the great work that this charity is doing under the leadership of its founder and chairman, Nick van Dam, and it certainly made me grin – it made me stop and think, too. It exists to make quality electronic courseware available for free to children throughout the world. For many of these kids, learning represents their best route to a better life – and e-Learning for Kids aims to provide it.

The Dutch/US Non-profit Foundation has high standards and ambitions. Its curriculum is based on the International Baccalaureate, and has already reached 1.6 million children. But the charity’s supply is outstripped by rising demand. By 2015, they aim to be in touch with 20 million kids. The volunteers there are a smart bunch – founder Nick van Dam is also the Global Director Learning for eLearning Solutions and Technologies at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu – but they can’t reach this target alone.

That’s why CERTPOINT Systems is proud this week to have become a sponsor of e-Learning for Kids, providing some help, a little advice and yes, some good hard cash.

At a time when many organisations are thinking only of themselves, eLearning for Kids is thinking of others. When knowledge and skills are increasingly the only way to break out of poverty, they are providing them. When the global poor are among the hardest hit by the recession, e-Learning for Kids is giving them hope. For more information and access to the courses visit: www.e-learningforkids.org

It’s enough to put a smile on your face.

Ara Ohanian
CEO, CERTPOINT Systems

In the future, historians and economists may refer to our current times as the great economic and financial meltdown of the early twenty-first century. At CERTPOINT Systems, we see things differently. We view these trying times as an opportunity for innovation, a spring board for new beginnings. History has proved that it is in times of hardship that mankind has made some of its greatest leaps.

2009 forced everyone to re-examine what they were doing – especially in business. Organizations were forced to shed bad habits. Complacency went out of the window as every part of the business came under scrutiny.

With 2009 behind us, how does 2010 look?

Some organizations have weathered the storm better than others. At CERTPOINT we are fortunate enough to have ended 2009 with continued growth, continued investment in R&D and some major new customers. 2010 is looking good. And in the general economy world-wide we’re seeing a similar optimism this year.

Technology continues to become more affordable and more enabling – and will continue to impact the ways we work and learn. Let’s celebrate 2010 by continually innovating our uses of enabling technologies in our quest to enhance human performance!

My personal commitment to all CERTPOINTers, business partners and customers: We will make this year a year of focus on innovation and business impact.

Ara Ohanian
CEO, CERTPOINT Systems