Building organisational capability through learning technologies

I'm presenting on organisational capability at this year's Learning Technologies conference in a couple of weeks time.

The conference is being opened by my fellow research associate at Learning Light, informal learning guru Jay Cross who will be talking about how, in many organisations, learning and development is inadequate for keeping workers knowledgeable and competitive.

Picking up this theme, in my session, I will be talking about organisational capability, the role of learning in developing capability, and how the L&D function needs to change to support this new role.

I quite like conference organiser, Don Taylor's, description of this role as Skills Strategist:

"The skills strategist understands the direction of the organisation, what it means in terms of knowledge and competence, and sets the L&D department’s activities accordingly... From its traditionally isolated position at the edge, it needs to be thoroughly connected with the rest of the organisation. There is an opportunity here to make the language of skills and knowledge as wide-spread in the organisation as that of finance and quality control. Indeed, for success in the private and public sector, it may be that there is no alternative."

I agree that use of the language of people will be critical for this new role to develop. The good news is that L&D is in a great position to help employees and particularly managers and leaders to learn this 'new' language.