bwurtz's blog

Congratulations to Pierce Transit, and to our own Kelly Johnston, winners of one of the coveted National ASTD BEST Awards. "The ASTD BEST Awards recognize organizations that demonstrate enterprise-wide success as a result of employee learning and development. We are looking for organizations that get it: They use the learning function as a strategic business tool to get results."

I encourage every ASTDps member to read Tony Bingham's open letter, "Does Training Work," currently posted on the National ASTD home page. The letter comes after three major -- and negative -- articles have appeared, each questioning the effectiveness of training, in three major national newspapers, USA Today, the New York Times (I posted an earlier blog on this article), and the Washington Post. Links to the three articles are embedded in the letter.

If the news wasn't depressing enough already, Nesweek magazine recently reported the United States has experienced its first-ever recorded decline in creativity scores since the data began to be collected. Read the complete article here.

Today's New York Times features on the front page, above the fold, an article on "Factories Ready to Hire, But Employers Find Skill Shortage." It looks like our Nation's Newspaper of Record has finally discovered the skills gap, something ASTD, including this Chapter, have been talking about for quite some time now. While you can read the whole article by clicking the link above, here is a key passage:

At the risk of saying I told you so ... I told you so!  And now I have mighty IBM backing me up. Via the Innovation Network, we learn that the recently released 2010 IBM Global CEO Study, based on interviews with 1500 top global business leaders, finds that "CEOs now realize that creativity trumps other leadership characteristics. Creative leaders are comfortable with ambiguity and experimentation.

Here's an update to the following article, published in the April 2010 issue of the Chapter's newsletter. Click this link to read about Hewlett-Packard's recent announcement to see that the "Cloud" is beginning to rain on some peoples' parade. -- Dr. Bud

By R.M. Shor

Here is a message from Rita Carson:

A quick reminder that the CPLP Study Group is next meeting on Tuesday, June 1 from 5:30 – 7:00 PM at the Mercer Island Library.