Mission accomplished

Reda SadkiThinking aloud

We won. The former school teacher and humanitarian trainer who argued vociferously that nothing would ever supplant face-to-face training is now running a MOOC. The training manager who refused to consider e-learning is now running a distance learning, scenario-based simulation. People he trains are now working remotely – and a simulation, dirt-cheap and run by e-mail, is closer to modelling the real world than is the artificially and unrealistically “safe space” of the high-cost, low-volume training room. Work went through digital transformation before “training” did. The old-school learning and development manager is getting certified to run webinars. Through practice, she has surprised herself by how much she feels when running a session. A digital course run ahead of a face-to-face workshop mobilized ten times as many (people), for ten times less (money). Course participants produced tangible artefacts, directly applicable to work, through collaboration and peer review. And they did not need to …

Jack Welch photo in GE's Annual Report (2000)

Relishing change

Reda SadkiQuotes

Jack Welch in General Electric’s Annual Report, nearly two decades ago: We’ve long believed that when the rate of change inside an institution becomes slower than the rate of change outside, the end is in sight. The only question is when. Learning to love change is an unnatural act in any century-old institution, but today we have a Company that does just that: sees change always as a source of excitement, always as opportunity, rather than as threat or crisis. We’re no better prophets than anyone else, and we have difficulty predicting the exact course of change. But we don’t have to predict it. What we have to do is simply jump all over it! Source: Welch, J., 2000. General Electric Annual Report 2000 (Annual Report). General Electric, Fairfield, Connecticut, USA.