Welcome to the August, 2010 issue of Element K News, the e-Learning newsletter from Element K®, intended for our customers and other friends! Element K News provides a monthly update of our latest e-Learning product releases. But it goes beyond that, variously including partner spotlights, dates of upcoming Element K webinars and conferences, highlights from Element K Blog, and more. This month includes some new industry data, tips to help you improve your learning initiatives, and many exciting product updates, so please read on!

• Elearning Magazine's Annual Survey
• Supporting Your Middle Management Engine
• Which of the 10 Lenses Do You Use?
• Formal Learning and Training's Enduring Relevance
• Tips on Getting Management Support for Training
• What's New at Element K Blog

• Lead Star
  

• Conference: September 27-29, 2010
  Fall 2010 CLO Symposium
• Conference: November 17-19, 2010
  2010 CSTD Conference and Trade Show

• e-Learning Courses
• ILT Courseware
• Blended Blueprints Workshop Editions
  
• Fifty Lessons Videos
• GetAbstract Book Summaries
• Did You Know?

Elearning! Magazine's Annual Survey

Elearning! and Government Elearning! magazines have reported on their now annual survey of corporate and government organizations. The title of the magazines' articles nicely summarizes the results: "E-learning Goes Everywhere." For instance, the lead statistic they cite is that 93% of the 740 total respondents indicated that they have an active e-Learning initiative, and that 100% of the remainder indicated having a plan to implement such an initiative in the near future. In addition, 69% of training hours "are being conducted outside of the traditional classroom-based, face-to-face format", with the use of e-Learning, blended, or virtual methods having grown by 10% over the past year.

Regarding training methods, e-Learning or online learning has grown particularly in the government sector, from 27% last year to 38% this year. And in terms of budgets, "Enterprises indicated that they spend up to 74% of their total training hours in e-Learning, online meetings or blended methods. Among government agencies this figure reaches up to 49% in the same categories."

One of the hottest growing areas appears to be mobile learning, where "35% of all corporate respondents plan to purchase such tools or services in 2010, while only 18% currently use it. That's an incredible increase of 194% year-to-year." And in government, the numbers are even higher: 24% of respondents indicated they already use mobile learning, and 37% plan to do so. Other technology-enabled approaches are more widely used already, but are still growing:

• Web conferencing: enterprise use is 85%, up 13 points; government use is 72%, up 13 points
• Off-the-shelf content: enterprise use is 61%, up 17 points; government use is 52%, up 12 points
• Wikis, blogs, or forums: enterprise use is 55%, up 15 points; government use is 57%, up 16 points
• Social networking: enterprise use is 48%, up 19 points; government use is 43%, up 9 points

Regarding training content priorities, the biggest increase from the survey was for customer service training, which for enterprises jumped from a 5th ranking to 2nd, and for government organizations leaped from 5th all the way to 1st. Noting that sales and marketing training (for enterprises) also climbed from 9th place to 7th, the magazine notes "development of front line personnel and managers are top priorities for 2010/2011. For corporations, employees that touch customers or impact revenue are top training priorities."

Of course, compliance training remained highly ranked for both sectors: in the top spot for enterprises, and slipping only to 2nd for government organizations. Professional/industry training saw an increase: going from 8th to 5th for enterprises and from 4th to 3rd for government. For government, the use of e-Learning in both of these areas is high: "A whopping 62% of all such training programs [professional/industry training] are delivered via e-Learning, blended, or virtual instruction. And 57% of all compliance training in the government sector is delivered via the same means."

The magazine's report closes with the following sage advice: "We expect, even after the economy rebounds, organizations will continue to leverage enterprise-wide learning solutions to drive performance, build management talent, and create bridges to customers and suppliers. If your organizations has not fully embraced the wide range of collaboration and learning technologies, start."

Not sure how to "start"? Or need to take your learning and development programs and initiatives to another level? Contact your Element K Account Executive or Learning Consultant to discuss your e-Learning and blended learning needs.

Supporting Your Middle Management Engine

The June issue of ASTD's T+D magazine had a good "soapbox" column, "Are You Stoking Your Organization's Middle Management Engine?" from Lisa Haneberg, author of The High-Impact Middle Manager. After lamenting the many challenges that middle managers often face, she encourages learning professionals to "help middle managers excel and fall back in love with their important jobs." She notes that:

To be most effective, our development offerings should help middle managers seize opportunities for impact and overcome difficult challenges. And while traditional management training programs are helpful, I have found that many training departments don't offer the development experiences that middle managers most need.

We need to teach them how to manage complexity, remove barriers, negotiate requests, build partnerships, build organizational agility, adjust resource allocations, build accountability, create an ownership environment, facilitate team discussions, implement changes, link strategies to work plans, be self-aware, coach and be coached, manage time, and build their influencing skills. How many of these topics do you offer your middle managers?

It is also important that we offer development experiences that honor the time constraints that most middle managers face. Week-long and day-long training sessions might not be practical. If we focus on delivering training using methods that work best for busy middle managers, we will enjoy greater training participation and application.

Her list of development needs for middle managers reads like the course listing from Element K's Business Skills e-Learning and blended learning offerings! And her last point is critical: for many middle managers, the need for convenient development opportunities is just as important as the topics covered being relevant.

Contact your Element K Account Executive or Learning Consultant to learn more about the Business Skills e-Learning and blended learning offerings from Element K.

Which of the 10 Lenses Do You Use?

The Learning and Development industry is full of useful models, processes, and perspectives. Industry expert and author Clark Aldrich recently wrote an interesting blog post in which he describes what he calls "The 10 Lenses to Overcome Blind Spots and See Opportunities in Organizational Learning." These 10 "lenses" as he calls them are:

• Ages of end users (e.g., millennials, gen X, baby boomers)
• The flow of skills (e.g., experts, practitioners, instructors, students)
• Types of learning (e.g., learning to know, learning to do, learning to be)
• Moments of learning (e.g., learning before use, learning while using the first time, learning to use new features, learning when things go wrong, learning new versions)
• Time in an employee's lifecycle (e.g., new employee, new job, new manager, high potential, senior executive)
• By function (e.g., training, help desk, documentation, marketing)
• By audience role (e.g., employees, channel, customers)
• By organizational priority (e.g., short term critical, medium term strategic, legal necessity, legacy)
• By message to user (e.g., low cost/don't worry, high cost/critical)
• By approach, including new and traditional (e.g., social media, mobile, simulations and games, classroom, self-paced e-Learning, virtual classroom)

Not all of the above "lenses" will be equally important considerations in all organizations, or for all learning needs and programs within an organization. Some of them are even controversial in some respects (e.g., just what are the relevant differences between generations when it comes to learning needs?) But having a good understanding of your learning and development function and the solutions you provide, in each of the 10 areas that Aldrich has identified, will help you baseline what you are doing today and focus on areas of improvement and innovation in the future. Read his article and the items he links to for more insights in these various areas.

Formal Learning and Training's Enduring Relevance

The L&D industry is familiar and comfortable with formal learning and training, whether classroom-delivered or e-Learning delivered. But for the past several years, many in the industry have been buzzing about a collection of concepts and technologies that have been evolving to what is today most often called "social learning," especially of the "technology-enabled" variety. In 2006, Jay Cross wrote his seminal work Informal Learning and during that year many organizations (from Intel to the CIA) launched internal wikis and other "Web 2.0" tools to provide better performance support, knowledge sharing, and informal learning support. The phrase "Learning 2.0" became popular with some, and today the concept of technology-enabled "social learning" is all the rage. And rightly so: informal and social learning have always been abundant in organizations, yet have received little focused attention by L&D leaders and budgets, until recently with the availability of technologies that allow greater support and enablement possibilities.

But as with any popular trend in an industry, sometimes the emphasis and rhetoric in one direction -- particularly a new direction -- can lead people to throw the baby out with the bathwater as they say. In order to promote the importance of informal and social learning, some industry experts routinely criticize and denigrate formal learning and training. Some of the criticisms are valid, e.g., the use of training as a solution in situations where it will be costly and do little real good, instead of focusing on new, innovative approaches to solving the business problem. But some remarks about the future of formal learning and training surely go too far, so it was refreshing to read industry expert and author Karl Kapp's recent blog posting "Formal Learning All the Way...Baby."

Kapp begins by making a bold statement: "There has been a lot of talk about formal vs. informal learning in the educational blogosphere and when it comes right down to it, formal learning is the most effective." He then gives several examples to support this position, such as high-risk training needs where lives are literally on the line: nuclear plant operators, many in the medical field, and pilots. For these kinds of learning needs, high-fidelity simulations are a critical training approach because of their combination of realism and safety. In Kapps' words:

When lives are on the line, the learning process is studied, calculated and formalized to a degree of realism as close to 100% as possible. In these life and death training situations, the actions of the individuals involved in the training are timed and measured against objective standards. If you don't administer oxygen within the prescribed time frame in the simulation, you know about it as you watch a recorded version of your actions as an instructor provides feedback. The fidelity between the environment in which the performance is required and the environment in which it is trained and practiced is extremely high.

Few would disagree that there will always be a place for formal learning in general, and in these kinds of cases in particular. But then Kapp moves beyond these cases and into the area of "knowledge workers," and writes:

"We like to think knowledge workers spend all day "problem-solving" but in reality they spend all day finding out what procedure should be followed in what situation. Sales people have procedures for overcoming objections, managers have procedures for dealing with a crisis or an upset customer, insurance agents have procedures for handling claims, instructional designers have procedures for creating role-plays or teaching concepts vs. facts."

Not everything is procedural of course, as processes and principles that require more judgment have more give than strict procedures are also an increasingly important aspect of modern work life. Kapp isn't here arguing that one can't also learn from informal or social learning as an addition to formal training (or in some cases in place of formal training), just that formal training should not be tossed overboard or as significantly criticized as some in the industry have been of late. But neither is he holding traditional classrooms up as models of effective formal learning either, as he continues:

Formal feedback loops, reflective learning opportunities, established standards, prescribed activities are all critical to the success of the learner in the nuclear power plants, hospitals and while flying planes. The training is all formalized. Learning and expected behaviors are not left to chance, actions are parsed, best practices studied, conclusions drawn from data and the experience of experts. This is because the difference between a radioactive disaster and successfully creating electricity is formal learning events and authentic practice.

So, if you want a highly trained individual capable of performing his or her job to the highest standard, you need formal learning conducted in an authentic learning environment.

Anything less is not as effective and the performance will not be guaranteed. Without formal training if someone does something right, it is most likely by chance. Do we really expect a person to effectively sell product in a retail environment without authentic formal instruction? Do we expect a customer service employee to provide excellent customer service and use the computer system to look up critical information when the training is delivered in a classroom environment which is an environment nothing like the actual environment in which they are asked to perform. We are kidding ourselves if we think we can avoid formal learning events and we are kidding ourselves if our learning events are not as authentic as we can possibly make them. The higher the fidelity, the better the performance in the actual situation.

Do we expect college students in an economics class to understand entrepreneurship without ever having run a business? Do we expect managers or leaders to effectively operate in a crisis situation when they've only read about the five steps needed to operate in a crisis? Or discussed it in a chat room?

If you want effective, mistake free results, only formal learning events conducted in an environment as authentic as possible provide the desired level of performance and outcomes. Everything else is a compromise. Realistic, formal learning events make a difference.

A powerful case for formal training indeed. Again, to the extent that the Learning and Development industry has not focused on better enabling informal and social learning, as a supplement to formal training, then yes more emphasis needs to be placed on those approaches. As is often said, there definitely is a need for "training professionals" to broaden their scope and become "learning professionals." But this means widening your circle of concerns, not abandoning one (formal learning) when you spend more time on others (informal and social learning).

At Element K we create learning products that take all of these points into account:

• Our software training e-Learning courses include ample simulated but realistic interactive activities.
• Our soft-skills courses include robust, media-rich, branching-logic business simulations where the learner is presented with a scenario, role-plays to makes key decisions, and has the opportunity to learn from mistakes and try alternate approaches to solving the business problem.
• Our vLabs go beyond simulation and provide realistic exercises for the learner to perform on real software and equipment, but in a safe environment rather than on their own production hardware.
• Our blended learning solutions provide a combination of classroom, e-Learning, and performance support content (such as quick reference cards) to optimize learning in "the real world."
• And yes, to complement all of our formal learning offerings, our KnowledgeHub learning management system provides several key Web 2.0 technologies -- blogs, discussion forums, and wikis -- for use as social learning tools.

Contact your Element K Account Executive or Learning Consultant to discuss your learning program needs and to learn more about our broad range of learning solutions.

Tips on Getting Management Support for Training

A frustration with classroom learning that any trainer or learning leader has faced is what happens when the worker returns to the job? As Jane Bozarth said in a recent Nuts and Bolts column ("Getting Management Support for Training") at Learning Solutions Magazine: "A thousand things stand between a learner and performance; among the biggest of these is the learner's manager."

Gaining management commitment is critical, though as Bozarth notes, it is often "easier said than done." But it can be done, and Bozarth provides nine tips on how:

• Involve management in course design.
• Beware of fads and easy answers.
• No mandatory classes.
• Involve managers in completion and evaluation processes.
• Provide orientation sessions for managers on new training initiatives.
• Work inside the organization to establish managers as the ones primarily responsible for development of their own staff.
• Make an explicit link between your training and your marketing materials and the organization's mission, vision, goals, and values.
• Be credible.
• Don't make promises you can't keep!

For her insights on each of these tips, read Bozarth's full article.

What's New at Element K Blog

At Element K Blog, we provide commentary and insights on the Learning and Development industry. This includes reports on industry conferences, pointers to the best industry resource sites, and the regular feature "Learning and Development Roundup," where we point you to key resources and opinions from the past four to six weeks.

Here is what you'll find at Element K Blog recently:

• Do You Leverage Your Passionate Learners? - A compelling story about someone who is passionate about learning, leads to the question of how can you best leverage passionate learners in your organization?
• A Common Craft Follow-up - What have the good folks at Common Craft been explaining to the world in the past year?
• Learning and Development Roundup (Vol. 15) - Includes links to items from Jane Hart, Jane Bozarth, Tom Kuhlmann, Judy Brown, Ellen Wagner, Brent Schlenker, Michael Hanley, and many more.
• What Keywords Are Searched For the Most? - Ever wonder what words and phrases are searched for the most often on an LMS with millions of learners?

We hope you'll check out Element K Blog, come back regularly, and add us to your RSS reader. Also, if you use Twitter, you can follow us there at our account @Element_K.
 

Lead Star

Element K and Lead Star have partnered to create dynamic e-Learning content. Inspired from the book Leading from the Front, by Lead Star co-founders Angie Morgan and Courtney Lynch, Element K has developed the course Leading From the Front: Being a Leader in All You Do. This course is designed for individual contributors, managers, or anyone who wants to improve their leadership skills.

Element K recently sat down with the Lead Star co-founders to discuss a broad range of leadership topics:

What are the key differences between being a leader and being a manager?

A simple way to remember the key differences between being a leader and being a manager is to look at it like this: you manage things, you lead people. Management is about staying on top of budgets, projects, resources, data, and deliverables. Leadership is all about people. A leader is someone who can influence outcomes and inspire others effectively. Both skills sets are important to build. In our professional culture, management skills are more common than leadership skills.

What are key leadership traits?

The best leaders focus on meeting and exceeding performance standards, being accountable by owning problems and their mistakes. They also are focused on serving others and can act decisively when needed. In addition to demonstrating these fundamentals well, the most trusted leaders are those that have the courage to be authentic and know how to keep their emotions in check so that their behavior is inspiring, not alienating.

Does every manager need to be a leader?

The most successful managers are also leaders. Have you ever had the experience of working for a bad boss? The reason why you had that tough experience is because you worked with someone who had authority, they were a manager, but they had limited leadership ability. The best bosses, and the most influential colleagues we've had, are memorable because they demonstrated leadership on a regular basis. The consistent, simple gestures of leadership make such a difference to those we know at work and in life.

Can anyone become a leader?

Leaders are made, they are not born. Leadership is a choice. If you choose to become a stronger leader then you can. Our society often ties the term "leadership" to power, prestige, notoriety, or a fancy job title. These notions of leadership are false. Management titles are bestowed upon you. Leadership development is a path you must choose to pursue. You don't need a power position to achieve success as a leader. Some of the best leaders we've known were the credible individual contributors on teams -- those who understood that high performance, service to others, accountability, and decisiveness are qualities that earn you the respect of others. By studying leadership practices, you can improve your ability to influence outcomes and inspire others -- the two capabilities leaders excel at.

About Lead Star
Lead Star was founded in 2004 by Angie Morgan and Courtney Lynch, best-selling authors of the business book Leading from the Front (McGraw-Hill), who made a commitment to provide practical, relevant, and inspiring ways to grow and develop leaders. Lead Star teaches leadership based on Angie's and Courtney's experiences as Marine Corps officers, private sector professionals, and entrepreneurs.

Visit Lead Star at www.leadstar.us for more information.

Contact your Element K Account Executive or Learning Consultant for more information about Element K's leadership offerings.

Conference: Fall 2010 CLO Symposium

September 27-29, 2010, Dana Point, California

The theme for the symposium is "Unleashing Learning: From Strategy to Execution." From the conference website: "Gone are the days when strategy was solely the responsibility of academics and business thinkers sequestered away in an ivory tower. Today's organizations need a flexible, dynamic strategy carried out by a nimble workforce that is actively engaged in developing and executing on shared goals and objectives. Learning is no longer something to be delivered to employees in response to a strategic shift; it's now a natural outgrowth of engaged employees collaborating to carry out a shared vision. In this world, organizational strategy and learning strategy are integrally linked together to meet challenges and capitalize on opportunities. Join us at the Fall 2010 Chief Learning Officer Magazine Symposium as we examine the links between learning and strategy and explore how learning and workforce development are critical to top-notch execution."

For more information about this conference, see the CLO Media website.

Conference: 2010 CSTD Conference and Trade Show

November 17-19, 2010, Toronto, Canada

From the conference website: "The CSTD Annual Conference is the largest gathering of training and development professionals in Canada. Gathering Instructional Designers, Training Managers, e-Learning Developers, Facilitators, Performance Consultants, and other workplace learning professionals, this unique event provides unparalleled professional development and networking opportunities. Join your training and development peers for three information-packed days that are sure to provide you with tools, techniques, and strategies that you can apply to your work immediately. You'll make valuable connections and enjoy memorable moments even as you prepare yourself for the professional challenges ahead."

For more information about this conference, see the CSTD's website for the event.

E-Learning Courses
Element K's award-winning e-Learning content includes robust multimedia content, software simulations, business simulations, quizzes, assessments, and more. And our massive libraries continue to grow each month! The latest e-Learning course additions in the following general areas include:

Business Skills

• [No new courses added in July. See the Localized section below.]

Office Productivity

• Microsoft® Office Access® 2010: Level 1 (First Look)

Design and Media

• Adobe® Illustrator® CS5: Level 2
• Adobe® InDesign® CS5: Level 1
• Adobe® Photoshop® CS5: Level 2
• Adobe® Photoshop® CS5: New Features

IT Professional

• MS SQL Server 2008 Programming
• Project Management (2008)

Compliance

• Anti-Sexual Harassment Training for Supervisors

• Medical Red Flags - Clinical (MediaPro)
• Responsible Social Networking (MediaPro)
• Safe Remote and Mobile Computing (MediaPro)

Localized Courses

• Einrichtung von Veränderungen für Manager (Deutsch)

• Gestión del cambio para administradores (Español)
• Implementación de cambios para administradores (Español)

• Gestion du changement (Français)
• La gestion du changement pour les gestionnaires (Français)
• La mise en Tuvre du changement pour les gestionnaires (Français)

• Basic First Aid (Indian English)
• Contingency Plan (Indian English)
• Emergency Response (Indian English)
• Fire Safety (Indian English)
• Mastering Cold Calls (Indian English)
• Negotiating for the Sales Professional (Second Edition) (Indian English)
• Office Ergonomics (Indian English)
• Qualifying Sales Prospects (Indian English)

• Change Management for Managers (Japanese)
• Implementing Change for Managers (Japanese)

• Gerenciamento da mudança para gerentes (Português do Brasil)
• Implementação da mudança para gerentes (Português do Brasil)

• Assessing Change for Managers (Simplified Chinese)
• Change Management for Managers (Simplified Chinese)
• Getting The Results Without The Authority (Simplified Chinese)
• Implementing Change for Managers (Simplified Chinese)
• Internet Explorer 7.0: Introduction (Simplified Chinese)
• Managing Project Teams (Second Edition) (Simplified Chinese)

Contact your Element K Account Executive or Learning Consultant to learn more about our various libraries of e-Learning courses.
 

ILT Courseware

Build an effective classroom solution to address your organization's training needs using ILT courseware from Element K. We develop and publish the most widely used and respected instructor-led training content available. Year after year, industry experts endorse our Element K-authored print courseware content. We use all of our experience in publishing and hands-on classroom instruction to create accessible, engaging, and learner-centered ILT courseware. Element K offers more than 1,300 unique courseware titles covering a broad range of topics. The latest Element K-authored ILT courseware includes:

• Adobe Illustrator CS5: Level 2 Instructor Edition
• Adobe Illustrator CS5: Level 2 Student Edition
• Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) Instructor Edition
• Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) Student Edition
• CompTIA Linux+ Powered by LPI Instructor Edition
• CompTIA Linux+ Powered by LPI Student Edition
• Harnessing Innovation Instructor Edition
• Harnessing Innovation Student Edition
• Hiring Top Performers Instructor Edition
• Hiring Top Performers Student Edition
• Performance Under Pressure Instructor Edition
• Performance Under Pressure Student Edition
• Winning with People at Work Instructor Edition
• Winning with People at Work Student Edition

Contact your Element K Account Executive or Learning Consultant to learn more about Element K-authored ILT courseware offerings.
 

Blended Blueprints Workshop Editions
Bridge the gap from online to classroom instruction with Element K's Blended Blueprint: Workshop Editions. These four-page documents are assembled as companion resources for online courses in the Business Skills library. And they serve as the ideal guide for lunch-and-learn sessions or similar hour-long classroom training intended to cap an online learning experience. Assemble your online students into a classroom to review key course guidelines and learning points, explore unique collaborative classroom activities, and access other relevant Element K resources. In July we added the following:

• Building Dynamic Business Teams
• Developing and Implementing a Strategic Plan
• Financial Performance Essentials
• First Steps Towards Strategic Planning
• Investigating the Problem
• Making Group Decisions
• Making Team Decisions
• Making Wise Investment Decisions
• Measuring Team Performance
• Preparing to Interview Job Candidates

Contact your Element K Account Executive or Learning Consultant to learn more about the Blended Blueprint: Workshop Edition products.

Fifty Lessons Videos

Through our partnership with Fifty Lessons, Element K is able to provide over 1,000 videos of powerful stories from hundreds of the world's most respected and successful business leaders. The latest Fifty Lessons additions to the complete library include:

• Adopting Innovative Learning Tools
• After Action Review
• Align Corporate Learning with Strategy Setting
• Align Learning with Changing Business Goals
• Asking Your Finance Team to Demonstrate Leadership
• Balancing Crisis Management and Long Term Activities
• Balancing Depth of Experience with Diversity of Experience
• Business Analytics: Keeping Your Company Well Informed
• Business Professional First, CLO Second
• CEO Buy-in Reinforces Corporate Learning
• CFOs Need to Understand How the Business Ticks
• CLOs Are the Catalyst for Solving Problems
• Connecting a Diverse Finance Team
• Crafting a Successful Change Initiative
• Creating a Virtual Classroom
• Delivering Financial Data Promptly
• Digging Through the Data for High Quality Management Information
• Effective Leaders Are Self-Aware
• Enable Continuous Learning
• Experiential Learning that Aligns with Strategy
• Finance's Role in Managing Risk
• Find Effective Ways to Deliver Information
• Global Trends in Learning
• How Learning Has Evolved
• How Social Networking Sites Incentivize Learning
• How War Affects Analysis of Performance
• Improving on "Best In Class"
• Innovation Starts with Core Competencies
• Keeping Your Balance
• Key Finance Initiatives for the Immediate Future
• Leadership Education
• Learning Must be Connected to Outcomes
• Learning's Foundation and Future
• Look at Customer Needs to Set Strategy
• Moving to Dynamic Problem Solving
• Not All Learning Comes from Success
• Overhauling Financial Practices
• Reducing Costs in Difficult Times
• Successful CLOs Understand the C-Suite Agenda
• Teamwork in Learning
• The Benefits of Coaching
• The CIO's Role
• The Evolving Role of the CFO
• The Future of Professional Development
• The Importance of Understanding Culture
• The Power of Learning to Align the Workforce
• The Pyramid of Value
• The Role Finance Plays in Business Planning
• The Social Learning Exchange
• Transform Learning into Performance
• Tying Learning to Business Objectives
• Understand Your Organization's Culture
• User Buy-In is Key to Successful Innovation
• What the Future of Learning Looks Like

Contact your Element K Account Executive or Learning Consultant to learn more about the Fifty Lessons products.
 

getAbstract Book Summaries

One of our most innovative partners, getAbstract, provides book summaries of the latest and most important books in business. Most of us don't have time to read every interesting book that comes along, but with getAbstract, you don't have to. Access book summaries in a variety of formats, including PDFs or as audio content for your iPhone, iPod, BlackBerry, or other MP3 player. The latest getAbstract additions include:

• A Manager's Guide to Coaching: Simple and Effective Ways to Get the Best From Your Employees by Anne Loehr and Brian Emerson
• Earth, Inc.: Using Nature's Rules to Build Sustainable Profits by Gregory Unruh
• Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones by Joseph Jaffe
• Future Files: The 5 Trends That Will Shape the Next 50 Years by Richard Watson
• How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes by Peter D. Schiff and Andrew J. Schiff
• Innovate the Pixar Way: Business Lessons from the World's Most Creative Corporate Playground by Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson
• Keynes: Return of the Master by Robert Skidelsky
• Knowledge Management Basics by Christee Gabour Atwood
• Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
• Managing the Telecommuting Employee: Set Goals, Monitor Progress, and Maximize Profit and Productivity by Michael Amigoni and Sandra Gurvis
• Marketing 3.0: From Products to Customers to the Human Spirit by Philip Kotler, Hermawan Kartajaya and Iwan Setiawan
• Nice Teams Finish Last: The Secret to Unleashing Your Team's Maximum Potential by Brian Cole Miller
• On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System by Henry M. Paulson
• Predictable Results in Unpredictable Times: How to Win in Any Environment by Stephen R. Covey, Bob Whitman and Breck England
• Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business by Erik Qualman
• The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
• The End of Wall Street by Roger Lowenstein
• The Great Reflation: How Investors Can Profit From the New World of Money by Anthony Boeckh
• The India Way: How India's Top Business Leaders Are Revolutionizing Management by Peter Cappelli, Harbir Singh, Jitendra Singh and Michael Useem
• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks
• The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development into Business Results by Calhoun Wick, Roy Pollock, Andrew Jefferson and Richard Flanagan
• The Truth About What Customers Want: "...and why they buy..." by Michael Solomon
• Web Content Rx: A Quick and Handy Guide for Writers, Webmasters, eBayers, and Business People by Wayne English

Contact your Element K Account Executive or Learning Consultant to learn more about the getAbstract products.
 

Did You Know?

For more information on Element K:
http://www.elementk.com or call 1-800-434-3466.
Element K, 500 Canal View Blvd., Rochester, NY 14623

Copyright 2010 Element K Corporation. All rights reserved. Element K and the Element K logo are trademarks of Element K Corporation. Products or other names may be trademarks of their respective proprietors who may not be affiliated with Element K. Element K is part of NIIT, a global talent development corporation operating in 44 countries.