Virtual Learning Works, But Not Because It’s Virtual

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by Larry Clark | October 26, 2018

In my first few months here at Harvard Business Publishing, my passport has been getting a real workout. Sitting on the plane ride home recently from two weeks in Asia and Europe, I had some time to reflect on discussions with clients and my field colleagues. One hot topic on this trip was technology-enabled learning, including the best ways to leverage virtual learning. In the US and Europe, virtual learning – and for our purposes here, I’m using that term to describe live, instructor-led training delivered over a technology platform like Cisco WebEx or Adobe Connect – has become fairly […]

Don’t Wait for AI to Be Perfect

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by Larry Clark | October 10, 2018

There’s an old joke about two campers who are being chased by a bear. The one camper shouts to the other, “We’ll never outrun this bear!” The other camper shoots back, “I don’t have to outrun the bear –  I just have to outrun you!” I was reminded of our unfortunate campers when reading a recent Wall Street Journal article about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the quest to cure cancer. The article talked about IBM’s iconic AI platform known as Watson, which first showed the power of AI with its mastery of chess and its victories on the TV game show “Jeopardy.” Watson […]

Act Today To Prepare For Tomorrow

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by Dalia Molokhia | October 5, 2018

“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago; the next best time is now.” This expression carries a lot of weight in South Africa, where I spent a few days meeting with senior leadership and learning professionals in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Its relevance struck me as I listened to them share their sense of urgency around the shortage of talent and the need to future-proof workforces to remain competitive in a VUCA world. The conversations held focused very much on the future, not the past, and the subtext was often that what worked in the past […]

Unlocking Genius That Leads To Greatness

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by Larry Clark | September 20, 2018

I had the honor of participating in the graduation ceremony for 63 top women leaders in Mary Kay’s six-month leadership development program in Mexico. Together, these women were responsible for leading over 300,000 Mary Kay consultants and consultant leaders across the country. What was most remarkable to me was the collective story of these women — a story that reminded me of a fundamental purpose of leadership that we don’t talk much about anymore. They reminded me of greatness. I’m not talking about the kind of greatness that we often associate with fame. I’m referring to a leader’s ability and […]

Measuring The Impact Of Leadership Development: Getting Back To Basics

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by Larry Clark | September 4, 2018

In the 60-plus years since Donald Kirkpatrick published his landmark dissertation on the four levels of learning evaluation, there is still great debate about our ability to measure the impact of leadership development. The debate is understandable—it’s much easier to measure things with a direct result, like reducing errors in a manufacturing plant, or improving first call resolution in a call center. Pick the right metric, assess before and after training, have a control group, minimize the impact of special variables … the process is fairly straightforward. But leadership development feels like a different animal that shouldn’t be held to […]