learning & development

Practitioners talk about the role of line managers in the learning and development field and the importance of L&D at a strategic level. You can also hear the conclusions of the latest CIPD survey.

Podcast 7: Learning and Development

In this podcast we discuss how learning and coaching add value and contribute to business performance, especially in the current economic climate. We also look at the latest annual CIPD Learning and Development survey.

Podcast 19: Learning and development - equipping people for change

In this podcast Dr John McGurk, CIPD Adviser on Learning, and Talent Development, Peter Butler, Director of Learning at BT, Nicky Taylor, Learning and Development at Ginsters and Alan Fletcher, Business Development Manager for KMI, discuss the latest trends in learning and development.

Podcast 42: Pushing the boundaries of learning and development

In this podcast John Baker, former Development and HR Operations Director, Legal & General, Charles Elvin, Director, Centre of Professional Learning and Development, The Open University. Clive Hutchinson, Company Leader, Cougar Automation and John McGurk, Learning and Talent Adviser, CIPD discuss what impact social media is having on the world of work and how learning and development is becoming 'social'


Podcast 54: Learning and development in a socially networked age

Is learning and development mostly about science or is it more of a strategic business discipline? Three experts with differing perspectives discuss:  Dr Itiel Dror, Principal Consultant, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Bill Parsons, VP for HR at ARM Holdings UK, and Vice President L & D at the CIPD and Martyn Sloman , L&TD academic, consultant and practitioner 

Podcast 66: Learning and development: Science or strategic business disciline

Recent research shows that just 7% of L&D professionals evaluate the impact of learning initiatives on the wider business but in these uncertain and evolving times it’s essential that L&D becomes all about alignment; with both business aims and with evolving ways of learning.

But what does alignment actually look like? In this podcast we speak to three experts to gain their insight. Laura Overton, founder of Towards Maturity, discusses what is holding alignment up and what L&D should really be measuring to assess value, while Julian Stodd, Founder and Captain at SeaSalt Learning describes the new world of learning, of social and community, and why L&D need to act as agile facilitators not controllers of learning. Andrew Jacobs, Talent Management and Organisational Development Manager at London Borough of Lewisham, agrees with the importance of embracing new ways of learning but stresses the need to challenge the use of certain methods and technology to ensure it’s what is needed for the business. Andrew also discusses his experience of stripping back his L&D offering to truly align with what people want and what they’re already using.

Do you feel that more needs to be done to align L&D with business objectives in your organisation? How are you embracing evolving learning methods? Join in the discussion on Twitter @CIPD using the hashtag #cipdpodcasts. 


Podcast 103: Aligning L&D With Business Objectives and emerging practices

Organisational Change and Development - Topic 10

Join Dr. Krister Lowe and today’s featured guest and leading organizational coach Bob Costello—a Senior Agile Coach with the Eliassen Group—for this week’s episode of The Team Coaching Zone Podcast! Bob offers over 20 years experience in the software industry and has held leadership positions in both software startups and large organizations. He has a background in software development, product management, and engineering. For the last 8 years Bob has been helping organizations, both at the team and leadership levels, to make the transition to agile. Bob excels at helping organizations achieve both their business and organizational goals of an agile change program, with leadership coaching, team coaching and change management. He has a rich background of experience with IBM Design Studio, BlueCollar Objects, Akkolade Consulting, Valtech, ACS, CGI-AMS, BEA Systems, Deloitte, Next Software and more.

In this episode Bob shares his journey over the last 20 years rising up through the ranks in the software development industry to becoming an agile leadership and team coach. Themes covered in the podcast include: working at NEXT Software with Steve Jobs; The Agile Manifesto; the changing operating context that catalyzed the agile movement; agile principles and practices; coaching agile mindsets vs. process; “being” vs. “doing” agile; using situational leadership for coaching agile leaders and teams; shared leadership in agile teams; the 4 SCRUM ceremonies; managing your role as an agile team coach; team maturity and development; agile teams as learning teams and more. Bob also shares some great stories coaching agile teams as well as recommendations on books and team coach training programs that focus on agile.

All team coaches including both generalist practitioners as well as specialists in coaching agile teams will find Bob’s insights and lessons learned well worth the listen. This is an episode that you will surely not want to miss!

053: Bob Costello: Coaching Agile Teams: From Being a Group to Becoming an Agile Team

Today we’re going to be talking about communities of practice and how they can support learning in your company . Communities of Practice are “formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor” [1] 

In the organisations we work with, we encourage those with similar skill sets - testers for example - to get together with others in similar roles, who work in different departments. This wider pool of individuals can then support one another in their day-to-day work. 

It could therefore be said agile faces a paradox; we have all battled for smaller, cross-functional teams to improve communication and learning, but are we now losing out on the wider knowledge held in other departments?

Communities of Practice is addressing this. 

To join us to discuss the subject we’ve invited Emily Webber, an independent agile and lean consultant, who has recently published her book “Building Successful Communities of Practice”. This week’s host, Matt Wynne, is also joined by our podcast regulars, Arti Mathanda and Seb Rose.

You can find out more about Communities of Practice and Emily’s book on her website - http://emilywebber.co.uk/building-successful-communities-of-practice

Let us know your own experiences and thoughts on twitter @cucumberbdd or in the comments below.

You can also find this episode on iTunes - itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/cucumber-podcast-rss/id1078896635

[1] http://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/


How Communities of Practice can support learning in your company

In this episode we hear from Andy Lancaster, Head of L&D Content, CIPD and Nicola Josephs, Senior Executive Advisor, CEB on the challenges and opportunities facing L&D professionals now, and in the future. We also chat with Derek Bruce, Head of International Development, ABN AMRO and Alexandra Bode-Tunji, Programme Lead - Skills and Capabilities, TFL about how their organisations are preparing their employees for the future.

Podcast 117: Future L&D

This podcast features Derek Huether and Dave Prior having a discussion around the idea of getting back to the basics of Agile, understanding why we do things, seeing the value they bring and creating safe spaces for learning while your organization is coping with the challenges of Agile Transformation.

Show Notes
Interview Start 00:08
Topic Introduction: Back to Basics  and the importance of asking Why 00:09
An Example: Reporting and figuring out what is needed in terms of reporting  01:41
Give them the information, not the reporting they got used to under waterfall 2:45
If time is currency, how much does the Daily Standup cost? 04:08
Risk mitigation and making a time investment 05:20
When the Daily Scrum isn’t working, is it wasteful? 05:50
Figuring out why things aren’t working 07:19
It’s not what did you do yesterday, it’s what did you finish yesterday 7:55
Going through the motions until you see the impact and understand why 8:44
Taking your hands off the wheel and learning to trust the team 10:30
Learning to trust is hard 11:05
Learning to trust and letting them learn from mistakes - with safety 12:24
Is it failure or learning? 13:22
Creating a safe space for middle management 14:01
Advice for mid level managers who want to do Agile, but aren’t working in a safe space 17:58
How the Agile Manifesto was created with Generous Listening 20:50
Supporting Agile transformation and existing deadlines with supplemental teams 22:02
Showing them how to do it instead of telling them how to do it 23:40
Learning Fast, Not Failing Fast 25:48
The Not Touchy/Feely Agile Guy 26:17
It’s all about Money, Time and Coffee 26:40
Reaching Derek on every form of social media known to man 26:50

If you'd like to reach Derek you can find him on the LeadingAgile site at http://www.leadingagile.com/guides/derek-huether/

or on Twitter at https://twitter.com/derekhuether

Back to Basics and Creating Safe Spaces for Learning with Derek Huether

This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences.

In this podcast, Shane Hastie, InfoQ Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, talks to Kent McDonald, Steve Adolph and Ryland Leyton about the state of business analysis and product management in agile product development. They were participants in a weekend workshop where the Agile Alliance and the International Institute of Business Analysis were collaborating to produce a revised version of the Agile Extension to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge.

Why listen to this podcast:

- Analysis skills are necessary for successful product development
- We don’t question and challenge the rationale and strategic alignment of projects enough, which results in lots of waste from doing the wrong projects or building the wrong features in a project
- The best return on investment that you can get is to stop wasting your money
- Value is hard to define but crucial to identify; the definition of value will be different in every context
- Agile methods provide for learning and rapid feedback, which enables us to optimize value and ensure strategic alignment in product development
- User stories are conversation placeholders, not orders to be fulfilled

Notes and links can be found on InfoQ: bit.ly/2e32o5X

- 6m 20s Analysis skills reside in many different roles and doing analysis in agile development is far less prescriptive that has been the case.

- 6m 44s You need to have a very comprehensive toolkit and have the ability to relate the tool needed to the context of the work being done.

- 9m 13s Advanced organisations are changing when they utilise analysis skills to determine which initiatives should be worked on and how they align with organisation strategy; being able to review these decisions even after an initiative has started, stopping development work when it is no longer valuable.

More on this:

Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ. bit.ly/2e32o5X

You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/2cMnjfW

InfoQ Podcast

Business Analysis & Product Management in Agile

In his best-selling book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge outlines the concept of the ‘learning organisation’. These organisations would be agile, innovative and highly competitive. They would emphasise continual learning and work from a shared vision for all employees. Senge was certainly ahead of his time and 27 years after publication, organisations are still seeking (and often struggling) to embody these ideas. 

In this episode we discuss new research from Towards Maturity into the New Learning Organisation, and we chat to learning professionals from Virgin Media, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and British Heart Foundation to find what becoming a learning organisation has meant for them and what steps they’ve taken to put learning at the heart of their business.

Podcast 126: Learning to learn - a new take on Senge's learning organisation

Bring out the Leader in you in Human Resource and Leadership Management

All of us want to be a leader, the captain or the head of any group whether it is in a company department or a group working on a project. But do you have the necessary skills to be a successful leader? Do you have the managing skills to succeed in either Human Resource management or Leadership Management? With this course, you definitely can.

Strategic Human Resource Management is the process of linking the human resource function with the strategic goals of a business in order to improve and drive performance. On simple terms, Human Resource Management involves recruiting, hiring and managing employees. While great leaders will move and inspire you to do your best work. That said, it is important that you have effective leaders in your workplace to empower and influence your people to achieve business and team goals.

This Course will teach you all the qualities the leader should possess and how you can instil them inside of you. Learn the how to become a human resource manager and all the benefits that come with it. This course will provide you with guidelines on both sides as an HR and Leadership Manager.


Details: https://goo.gl/6FZatf

YouTube Audio Library

HR and Leadership Management Level 2 I HR Training And Development

In this episode Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss the Second Agile Principle: ‘Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.’

We hear how the principle is closely related to Lean Startup and Minimal Viable Product, and how, at its core, it is about understanding and learning from one’s environment as quickly and as often as possible.

This reminds Squirrel of the OODA loop, the decision cycle developed by military strategist and US Air Force Colonel John Boyd, and he tells us a story about fighter jet dogfights in the Korean War.

Jeffrey also tells us a story, about a startup he started way way back in the first dotcom bubble in 1999, which brings to mind another military lesson that ‘no plan survives contact with the enemy.’.

Finally, we hear examples of common errors witnessed over the years, such as refusals to fully embrace the Second Agile Principle in favour of misguided efficiency and an often irrational attachment a plan.

***

SHOWNOTES:

-The 12 Agile Principles: http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

-The OODA Loop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

-Lean Startup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_startup

***

We’d love to hear any thoughts, ideas or feedback you have regarding the episode (or regarding anything else, for that matter).

You can email us, here:
agile@troubleshootingagile.com

Or send us a tweet, here:
twitter.com/TShootingAgile

Or you can find our website, here:
http://troubleshootingagile.com/

Also, here is a link to our iTunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2
If you felt like liking, Sharing and/or Subscribing, we’d really appreciate it.

Embracing Change & Maximising Validated Learning

This month, we got to catch up with one of the pros at International House Mexico, Orlando Delgado Mata. Orlando is the director of teacher training and development at IH Mexico, but his industry experience ranges everywhere from teaching young learners to assessing CELTA courses. I had a blast chatting with him about why doing your CELTA in Mexico or Costa Rica is an awesome idea, all his advice on success during the course, how to prepare for your DELTA, and more!

learning & development

Rachael Sciberras