Tuesday, March 18, 2008

My Latest Gig

As I mentioned in my original post, after several months of looking for a job, I landed a great opportunity. I am back at the company where I was working before - I had been in the training department in the Home Equity division of a financial services company and now I have moved to the corporate learning and development department. I am working for my former manager, which is a great thing since she is fun to work for and thinks I'm smart! This group has been reincarnated a bit over the last couple of years to accommodate a corporate-wide LMS and to leverage the talent and knowledge out in the various divisional training departments. In my mind it is the best of both worlds – the training departments are spread among the divisions because they know their businesses best, but the corporate learning and development department, in addition to maintaining the LMS, is helping to develop corporate standards, leverage our buying power with various vendors, encourage learning among the entire training community and anything else we can to raise the level of learning here. I am fortunate to get to work with a great group of people.


Mainly I will be helping with the management and leadership development courses, the LMS, corporate orientation changes, and anything else they throw at me. Another big area is working on the corporate learning standards – these have already been started and I will be helping to further evolve those. We also have the unique opportunity to consult with the training teams to help with best practices, project management, etc. I will be lending my expertise to the divisional teams on various projects including analyzing their approach to solutions, facilitating RFPs for projects, helping with vendor selection, and any other needs they may have on projects. My consulting background will definitely come into play there. So I know I won’t be bored and will have the chance to be involved in a lot of important initiatives.

Another perk - right now outside my cube I have a 23rd floor view of downtown Cleveland, which includes various downtown buildings, the Cuyahoga River, Lake Erie (which is currently frozen over), and a huge poster of Lebron James on the side of building (for the basketball fans out there!).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maria,

One of my favorite quotes is, "In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is."

I'm always glad to find people like you working to figure out ways to help learning happen. I've had a lot of corporate experience, which strongly suggests Learning 2.0 ain't just gonna happen (not that the little number there helps) -- or not in a timeframe that makes sense to organizations, which is where most people work.

If I had the answers, I'd be giving keynotes somewhere. I do think, however, that real-life efforts to solve real-life problems are crucial. Your previous comments about wikis made me think of an example -- a project team sharing what they know and what they do via a wiki.

As I write that, the key to me seems to be the verb: sharing what they know, rather than using a wiki. The wiki is of course the tool, but most of the time, on the job, we're paying attention to the work, and not the tool.

All of which is to say, welcome to blogging.

Maria Hlas said...

Oh, I'm a bad blogger! Such great comments and I have been to busy to even look at them. And I totally agree with you - the tools are merely a means to facilitate the learning. If try to get people to use them because they are cool it just won't happen.