Reflecting on the ASTD Meeting

I’ve just finished cleaning out my inbox after returning from the ASTD Meeting in Chicago.  Those of you who were there know that Cal and I led three sessions titled “Learning Transfer Guaranteed.”

What pleasantly surprised us is that all three “sold out” – they finally had to close the doors because we reached the fire marshal’s occupancy limit, even though the rooms held over 350 people.  So I have been thinking about why the topic proved so popular.  My thoughts are below, what are yours?  Join the conversation at: The 6D’s Group on LinkedIn

• Maybe the recession last year was a wake-up call for training and development.  An awful lot of training departments were decimated, cut back much more than other departments.  That suggests to me that we need to do even more to prove our value, and the greatest opportunity is in improving learning transfer – the amount of learning that actually gets used on the job to improve performance.

• Perhaps it is that business and workplace learning professionals are finally ready to acknowledge the “elephant in the room”—that is the widespread knowledge that an awful lot of learning goes to waste (some say as much as 80%) because it never gets transferred and applied.

• Or maybe it is because we finally have learned enough and have practical and scalable tools that can truly guarantee a significant boost in the amount of learning transfer.  Practicing The 6Ds: The 6Ds of Breakthrough Learning and using a learning transfer support system like ResultsEngine, increases the return from the same training investment.

Whatever the reason, we were delighted with the turn out; we seem to have struck a chord with training professionals.  What do you think is going on?  What do we need to do to focus even greater attention on learning transfer?

Andy Jefferson

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