Why you should come to IMPACT 2010: The Business of Talent

On April 6-8, 2010, in St. Petersburg Florida, we will be hosting our third-annual Research Conference on Enterprise Learning and Talent Management: IMPACT 2010.   The lineup for this year’s conference is the best ever – so I want to give you my thoughts on why you should bring your team to Florida for the best event in our industry.

1.  This conference is all about the people.

First, let me start with this:  IMPACT is all about the people.  We have invited some of the best thinkers, leaders, vendors, and practitioners in corporate learning and talent management.  If you look at the speaker list, you will see top leaders and program managers in corporate training, talent management, leadership development, systems, and talent acquisition from companies like Boeing, Westinghouse, IBM, Accenture, EMC, ARAMARK, Avon, Booz Allen, Hitachi Data Systems, Credit Suisse, Intermountain Healthcare, GlaxoSmithKline, Seagate, Brinker, Agilent, Blue Cross of Michigan, Coldwell Banker, Cisco, Symmetricom, 7-Eleven, Pfizer, Amway, and more.

The entire venue is designed to be informal and intimate so you will get to meet many people in the sessions, on the veranda, on the patio, or around the pool.  We have designed this program to be one of the most energizing ways to connect with people in our industry and learn from many of the leading practitioners in the world.

I think one of the best ways to leverage this conference is to bring your leadership team.  You can each attend different sessions, have some good time together, and you can schedule time to meet with our analysts during the conference.  The hotel, The Renaissance Vinoy, is one of the most beautiful places to be in April (and I know many of you have had quite enough snow).   (Like last year, the New York Yankees will be staying at the hotel while we’re there!)

2.  The keynotes this year will be among the most enlightening you have heard in years.

This year we have three keynotes which are worth the entire price of admission.

Ted Hoff, the Vice-President of Learning at IBM, will talk about how IBM has fared the recession and learned to globalize its workforce, create one of the most dynamic learning cultures in the industry, and build one of the most highly engaged workforces in the world.  His presentation is entitled “Enabling the Globally Integrated Workforce.”  What IBM has done to build its global talent pool is truly amazing and we can all learn from IBM’s experience.

Don Vanthournout, the Chief Learning Officer of Accenture, will describe how Accenture Capability Development manages, trains, and supports its global workforce through its deep specialization strategy and the company’s bold new worldwide talent and HR strategy.  His program is entitled “How to Build a Capability Development Champion” – a key topic for organizations of all types.   Don’s experience with Accenture and his deep and enduring focus on building deep skills and specialization is a lesson for all organizations – I have met with Don many times and I know you will find his presentation inspiring and very educational.

Finally, I have been preparing a keynote on “Key Talent Strategies for the Recovering Economy,” which will be based on our latest research on learning and talent strategies for the coming decade.  I will be introducing some very important new concepts and showing you how to rethink your talent and learning strategies for the workforce and business changes we will see in 2010 and beyond.

3.  You can actually experience being a Chief Learning Officer for a Day.

The role of training executive and manager is more difficult than ever.  Over the last few years L&D budgets were slashed, yet organizations are focusing very heavily on new skills development, onboarding, and informal learning this year.  How do you lead and manage the training team?

This year we have brought together a special session, led by Dave Vance, the ex-CLO of Caterpillar and Bersin & Associates COO Bob Danna, which lets you and your team experience the role, decision-making, and strategy process of a top chief learning officer.  Attendees at this session will have the opportunity to take advantage of Bersin & Associates High Impact Learning Organization benchmarking tools and a specially built simulation which lets your teams sit down and make critical training decisions in real time.  Through this simulated experience you will learn how to budget, make resource allocation decisions, decide program strategies, and learn to measure your training programs.

4.  You will see and learn Talent Management Strategies from the World’s Leaders.

Many of our sessions focus on demonstrating winning talent management strategies for you, delivered by HR and Talent executives from some of the world’s most successful organizations.   Larry Israelite, VP and Manager of HRD for Liberty Mutual and Marc Effron, former VP of Talent Management for Avon, will be presenting the high-impact solutions they developed for their organizations (and signing copies of their recent book Talent Management:  Winning Strategies in Six Leading Organizations).  Jayne Pierce, VP Talent and Organizational Development from ADM and Tessa Tubbs Ekukanju, Director of Pepsico University, will highlight their best-practice performance management solutions.   These sessions are designed to give you detailed examples of WhatWorks in real-world talent management solutions.

5.  We will actually De-Mystify Social and Informal Learning and Show you How to Leverage Social Networking.

Informal learning and social learning are transforming the training industry.  At IMPACT 2010 we will be launching our brand new High Impact Learning Culture® industry research, the culmination of 2 years of research by David Mallon.  Liviu Dedes, the VP of Organizational Development from ARAMARK will be discussing the company’s innovative social learning strategy.  Kee Meng Yeo, the Director of Talent Management at Amway, Matt Tabor, the Director of the Action Learning Forum from Cisco, Pam Aigner from Westinghouse, Peter Premenko from Brinker, Valerie Keesee from Blue Cross of Michigan, Nicole Roy-Tobin from Deloitte and Kim Armstrong from Boeing will talk about their experiential, social, and action learning programs.  If you are in the recruiting area, Jim Wahl from 7-Eleven will tell us all about how to leverage social networking in one of the most dynamic companies in the world.

For those of you who are research members (you can join now!), we have a special 2 hour “informal learning strategy” workshop on Tuesday, designed to help you develop your end-to-end informal learning strategy.

6.  You will Learn Best-Practices from World Leaders in Leadership Development

Senior Leadership Development executives from GE, Cisco, Boeing, and Liberty Mutual will present their best practices to show you how some of the world’s leading companies train, develop, and grow their leaders.  Leadership development is the #1 topic on the minds of CEOs and HR executives today – and this year we have an even greater focus on leadership development at IMPACT. Also, Kim Lamoureux will introduce our brand new High Impact Leadership Development model, which will help you rapidly benchmark your program against best-practices.

There are also some very exciting new announcements at IMPACT: Harvard Publishing will be introducing a major new product offering at the conference – one which I know you will want to learn about.  our friends at Mindleaders will be previewing an important new offering, and other solution providers will be introducing new offerings as well.

Consider this your strategy session and professional development for the year.

We started this conference as a way to bring together all the fantastic people we meet through our research.  It has evolved into what I call an “informal gathering” of leading practitioners who take their jobs as learning, HR, talent management, and leadership development seriously.  The conference is fun, inspiring, and thought-provoking.

We use this as an opportunity to launch new research (you will see the debut of our High Impact HR Organization® research as well as several other new reports), and we use it as an opportunity to bring together the Bersin & Associates team as well.   I promise you will come away with new perspectives on your organization’s talent strategies, programs, and systems.

Please come join us – I personally look forward to meeting you in Florida on April 6!