Last week I had the honor of moderating two panels at our annual IMPACT conference in St. Petersburg, FL - one for experiential learning and another on talent mobility.  The panel that addressed the topic of “experiential learning for leadership development”” included three highly respected practitioners.  They were:

• Dr. Kim Armstrong, Senior Manager, Enterprise Lean+ Training at Boeing
• Kee Meng Yeo, Director Global Talent Development at Amway (a 2010 Learning Leader winner for leadership development)
• Matt Tabor, Leader, Action Learning Forum at Cisco

The 100+ attendees who were privileged to participate in this particular session gained valuable insights from these three speakers. 

• Kim shared best practices for building a business case for experiential learning.  As program manager for Boeing’s Systems Engineering Leadership Program (SELP), she stressed the significance of articulating the gap between Boeing’s strategic systems engineering vision and the current state of systems engineering practice within Boeing.  Successfully, she pointed to the fact that the program must be “sold” as a business solution not a training solution.
• Amway’s flagship program, the Leadership Acceleration Process (LeAP), was designed to provide the next generation of Amway executives with the capabilities to lead within a global organization.  Kee elaborated on how to select the right experiential solution for the individuals as well as the business, underscoring the need to clearly understand the audience, program learning objectives, and the organization’s ability to support specific types of learning approaches (i.e. company’s technology infrastructure, geographic dispersion of participants).
• Drawing from his experience for managing Cisco’s Executive Action Learning Forum (EALF), Matt emphasized alternatives for extending the value of action learning for the individual and the business. He focused on the idea of a learning continuum.  A few strategies that he shared included utilizing a ‘leaders as teachers’ approach for educational components; using the action learning forum as a springboard for uncovering top talent; identifying new business opportunities as opposed to only solving existing business issues; and, structuring mentoring opportunities that last far beyond the program.   

The panel also responded to a myriad of questions from the audience, such as how to engage managers of program participants; how to select projects or business problems for leaders to address; and, how to develop more cost-effective experiential solutions that could be realistically deployed for lower-level leaders.

By the end of the session, Kim, Kee and Matt had articulated a number of key success factors for experiential learning, including:

• executive and business leader engagement;
• timely, business-driven projects;
• high performing, high potential participants; and 
• an environment that supports a process-driven (as opposed to event-driven) learning format.

Cisco’s executive action learning forum is highlighted in detail in the case study titled, “Action Learning Facilitates Business Growth: A Look inside Cisco’s Progressive Executive Development Approach.” A brief description of this program can also be found in an earlier blog I wrote.

Boeing’s simulation-centered, blended learning program is described in the report, “Building Technical Capabilities: Boeing Develops Blended Systems Engineering Leadership Program.”

Within the next three to four weeks, we will publish two additional reports – a case study on Amway’s Leadership Acceleration Program, as well as a research report on experiential learning that describes the purpose and application of action learning, job rotation and simulation. 

In the next week or so, the IMPACT presentations and corresponding videos will be made available to all IMPACT attendees and Bersin & Associates research members.  If you are a member and were not able to attend our conference, I highly encourage you to take a look at these materials.  You won’t want to miss all of the amazing sessions and corresponding research, best practices, trends, and case studies.

Did you attend the IMPACT conference? If so, let us know what you thought.  Did you attend the experiential learning panel session?  What session did you enjoy the most?  Are there any key learnings you would like to share that resulted from the conference?  Feel free to comment directly to this blog or send me an email at kim.lamoureux@bersin.com.