Ladan Nikravan
About The Author

David Vance

David Vance is the former president of Caterpillar University, which he founded in 2001. Until his retirement in January 2007, he was responsible for ensuring that the right education, training and leadership were provided to achieve corporate goals and efficiently meet the learning needs of Caterpillar and dealer employees. Before this position, Vance was chief economist and manager of the business intelligence group at Caterpillar Inc., with responsibility for economic outlooks, sales forecasts, market research, competitive analysis and business information systems. He now consults with organizations on learning and performance issues, with a focus on launching corporate universities and designing effective strategies for managing the learning function, including alignment, governance and measurement. His firm is Manage Learning LLC. Vance was named 2006 CLO of the Year by Chief Learning Officer magazine. He also was named 2004 Corporate University Leader of the Year by the International Quality and Productivity Council in its annual Corporate University Best In Class Awards. In October 2010, Vance published The Business of Learning: How to Manage Corporate Training to Improve Your Bottom Line. He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

Any HR Planning Is Better Than Nothing

on March 13, 2013 · Comments · in The Business Of Learning

We talked last time about carefully planning the learning, including the need to establish specific, measurable goals. Some of these goals like expected application rate and impact, number of participants and completion dates need to be established through discussion with the sponsor. Others like level 1 and 2 goals, internal development cycle times and internal [...]

Carefully Planning and Managing Learning Is Key to Proving Value

on March 5, 2013 · Comments · in The Business Of Learning

I continue to be surprised by how many organizations do not carefully plan and manage their key learning initiatives. By this, I mean taking the time upfront to set specific, measurable goals and then use a disciplined process to manage the deployment. Let’s look at the planning first. Every learning initiative should have a set [...]

Identifying Business Goals Is a Challenge, But Worth It

on February 26, 2013 · Comments · in The Business Of Learning

We just completed our first two-day Talent Development Reporting Principles (TDRp) workshop in Denver. Not surprisingly, we spent the most time on some key elements of running talent like a business, including identifying business goals and getting agreement on the expected, isolated impact of talent initiatives on those goals. Both of these are, of course, [...]

What Are We Doing With Measurement?

on February 11, 2013 · Comments · in The Business Of Learning

It is now 2013, and the new year is always a good time to take stock. I am an optimist by nature, and I really do believe we are making progress and the profession is improving. But sometimes you just have to wonder how we have made it this far and how much further along [...]

Happy New Year and Let’s Get Going!

on January 4, 2013 · Comments · in The Business Of Learning

Happy New Year to all readers! I hope you have found past blogs helpful and will continue to read and share your thoughts and experiences. This is a good time for a little reflection about the state of the industry. Most of us, I think, would agree that the industry is not where it should [...]