Bill Bruck

Bill Bruck: Program Outlines

Creating the Learning Organization
In a global knowledge economy, companies must constantly increase the rate at which they improve their products and services to keep pace with the tempo of markets worldwide. If they hope to prosper in a rapidly changing environment, a company must learn quickly and make smart decisions consistently.

To achieve these goals, organizations must leverage not only their corporate data and information assets but also, and especially, the collective knowledge of employees around the world. Organizations must sharpen their ability to enhance, shape and focus corporate intelligence.

Your audience will learn:

• How collaborative conversation drives the creation of collective intelligence.
• How collaboration technologies are supporting distributed organizations in work team coordination, project management and communicating across the value chain.
• How e-Learning, communities of practice and performance support are converging by using new technologies.
• How leading Global 1000 corporations use online technologies for product rollouts, corporate visioning and knowledge management.

Leading Edge or Bleeding Edge?
Bricks and mortar may sink your company. The Internet has leveled the playing field between startups and established companies. Stealth companies with killer apps and new business models are stealing market share from industry leaders in every field. New competitors are out there, and they're hungry. They lack your established client base, but they aren't burdened by the inertia that comes with it. Your business must be an e-business to stay in business. However, the dot-com bust proved that sound business models are vital. Every company needs to have an e-business strategy that integrates new technologies, but the trick is knowing which technologies and when to move. New technologies may not only change how you do business but also what business you're really in!

Your audience will learn:

• Why you must begin strategic technology planning now, and what may happen if you wait.
• How to use the Scan-Focus-Act model for shifting to e-business thinking.
• How to capitalize on emerging technologies with new business models.
• How to use "value chain thinking" to create a clicks-and-mortar strategy.

LEARNING AND KNOWLEDGE SHARING

Beyond the Hype; The "Virtual" Association
Every professional has had the experience. We have a great time at the annual meeting. We talk with colleagues from around the country that we saw last year. We promise to stay in touch. Then we go home, to not communicate again for another twelve months.

As association managers, we know we can expand our service offerings. We hear about all these new technologies – and they leave us a little bewildered. Web 2.0, wikis, FaceBook, blogs, social networking. What’s it all about, and what might it mean for improving the “between meetings” experience of our members?

In this entertaining and educational presentation, Dr. Bruck shares information about new approaches to online communities, social networks, and collaborative learning. You’ll see what has worked for leading associations – and what has failed.

You will learn:

• What these new technologies are – in simple terms you could explain to a friend.
• Why some of the most popular technologies won’t work for you (hint – you’re not running a college dating service).
• How leading associations are leveraging collaboration technologies to put on a new generation of education programs for their members.
• How the new generation of social software is enabling collaboration across the office – and across the country.
• The roles of purpose, people, process and technology in moving online.

Blended Learning Instructional Design
"The medium is the message," said Marshall McCluhan. Nowhere is this truer than in designing high impact blended learning programs. Blended learning is all about weaving together a variety of media: face-to-face and online, same-time and any-time, electronic and paper-based.

Blended learning isn't just about combining instructor-led and Web-based training or tacking a chat room or Web meeting onto an existing training program.

Instructional designers must deeply understand the capabilities of various media and their implications for thinking differently about the learning enterprise. They must build a new skill set — onto their existing knowledge of instructional design — that can manifest itself in seamless learning experiences that transfer knowledge to on-the-job capabilities and performance improvement.

Your audience will learn:

• How to think out of the WBT/ILT box in designing blended solutions and move from "training events" to "learning programs."
• What the available media and supporting technologies for blended learning are.
• How to map media to learning objectives.
• How to analyze constraints and integrate them into program design.
• How to using online instructional design standards in creating effective blended learning.
• How to use an end-to-end methodology for effective program management.
• What the five critical roles in blended learning programs are and how they affect program design.

Blended Learning: What Does It Take?
Industry analysts say the question is no longer whether to do blended learning, but how it will be done. And the promise is clear: Blended learning programs can combine the best aspects of instructor-led and Web-based training with online coaching, performance support and guided on-the-job practice, providing learners with a rich experience that affects the bottom line in critical areas of the business.

The reality is often different. Initiative owners sometimes find themselves with a consultant's one-off solution that doesn't scale, features from content or LMS vendors that don't translate to learning programs, and expenses that would fund small aircraft carriers.

Your audience will learn:

• How to use the learning investment model to determine where to invest limited training resources, and which programs to use blended learning with.
• How to overcome problems associated with traditional Web-based-training-only models.
• How to measure the effectiveness of blended learning while transforming training initiatives into strategic initiatives.
• What the seven critical success factors for high impact blended learning programs are.
• How to transform one-time training events into two-week to two-month learning programs to lock in skills on the job — without increasing seat time.
• What questions to ask external consultants (or internal training staff members) to determine their readiness to design and deliver blended learning programs.

Creating Communities of Practice
Is your organization facing a "baby boomer brain drain"? Are you looking for ways to support cross functional groups to innovate and share knowledge?

If your organization is facing problems like these, you probably realize that e-learning and traditional classroom training events are only part of the solution.

Communities of practice - often called CoPs - are being used by forward thinking organizations to support informal learning, create innovative solutions, and transfer the tacit knowledge of experts to a new generation of workers. Some have obtained tens of millions of dollars in additional revenue as a result.

In this presentation, Dr. Bill Bruck shares lessons that he and his colleagues have learned from working with some of America's top corporations and creating CoPs for groups who are distributed across the globe.

Learning and human resource professionals who wish to learn how new approaches to informal learning can enhance transfer of knowledge in their organizations.

Your audience will learn:

• The benefits CoPs can create for the organization
• Two critical success factors that CoPs must have
• How to structure activities for a distributed CoP
• Functions that your CoP platform should support

Increasing Speed to Proficiency
Last year, graduates of our new hire program generated an average of $40M/year in revenue - the equivalent of employees with nine years of experience. One of our customers just informed us that this was the result of the employee assimilation program we created for them. As you can imagine, he was really happy to be able to report this to his CEO.

The secret? A blended learning program that used an online collaboration platform to reinforce face-to-face training with coaching and mentoring for the first months on the job. The result was that rather than forgetting 50% of what was learned 30-days after training, employees learned and applied more and more each month.

In this presentation, Dr. Bill Bruck shares best practices that he and his colleagues have discovered over the last five years of supporting Fortune 500 organizations to transform one-time training events into learning programs, where the measure of success is proficiency on the job, not butts in seats.

Your audience will learn:

• How to match the type of skill with the type of learning intervention.
• How to use "the magic ratio" to plan mastery learning programs.
• When to use coaches and mentors - and how to get management to release their time.
• How to leverage collaboration technologies to scale and manage your blended learning programs.

Training won't solve the problem. Research shows that 50-80% of what is learned in the classroom or via e-learning is forgotten within 30 days. Besides, the complex skills in the heads of retiring professionals aren't effectively taught in training in the first place.

In this entertaining and educational presentation, Dr. Bruck shares information about new approaches to learning and knowledge sharing are being used successfully to communicate this tacit knowledge to a new generation of leaders.

Your audience will learn:

• How a new Speed to Proficiency model of learning is being used by leading organizations to quickly up-skill professionals and managers
• How new technologies enable organizations to capture the knowledge of departing employees in searchable, rich media "knowledge nuggets".
• How to effectively integrate learning with coaching and performance support.
• How the new generation of social software is enabling collaboration across the office – and across the country.

Putting the People Back Into e-Learning
Although the technology of e-Learning gets most of the media attention, it can no more create a successful learning experience than a brand new school building can guarantee a great class.

For knowledge workers to acquire critical-thinking skills, such as analysis, integration and problem solving, and learn to apply them to real-life business situations, the instructional design and technological tools must mirror best practices of face-to-face education: presentation of concepts followed by Q&A; interaction with peers; structured exercises, cases and simulations with expert feedback, and mentored on-the-job practice.

To achieve business goals, leading organizations are moving toward blended learning solutions that put the people back into e-Learning.

Your audience will learn:

• Why dialogue, community and practice are crucial to on-the-job skill transfer.
• How to apply the fundamental principles of instructional design to achieve high impact e-Learning.
• How people, process and technology form a three-legged stool for deploying blended learning.
• How to choose technologies that enhance dialogue and community.
• What the best practices in creating blended learning programs from leading corporations are.