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Jim is a seasoned professional with over 36 years of experience in learning and development. He holds an MBA in Digital Transformation and an MSc in Learning Technology.

Life-long learning: key to success in a changing world

ChatGPT a new trend in learning & development?

As an L&D professional, you need to be aware of beneficial new technologies that come into the workplace. Therefore you need to have a lifelong learning mindset and an open perspective. The latest trend in Learning & Development is ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer).

Introduction to Chatbot technology

Chatbot technology is one of the most rapidly growing areas of digital transformation. It is becoming increasingly crucial for businesses to stay ahead of the curve when leveraging this technology to improve customer experience and optimise operational efficiencies.

Chatbots can automate customer service, provide instant answers to customer inquiries, and even provide real-time support and guidance. Investing in chatbot technology is essential for businesses looking to stay competitive in a rapidly changing business landscape. In addition to the customer-facing benefits of chatbot technology, it can also be used as a valuable tool for learning and development.

Training and Learning & Development

Chatbots can facilitate employee training, e.g. onboarding, provide ongoing support and guidance, and even enable life-long learning. By leveraging chatbot technology, businesses can empower employees to stay updated with the latest trends, technologies, and processes and become more productive contributors to the organisation.

One of the primary benefits of using chatbot technology for learning and development is its ability to streamline the process. Rather than manually delivering information or spending time answering employee questions, a chatbot can provide instant access to training materials and answers to questions, allowing employees to learn at their own pace. Additionally, chatbot technology can customise the learning experience for each employee, providing tailored information and resources that are most relevant to their needs. This personalisation can help increase engagement and ensure that employees are better equipped to do their jobs.

Resilient Workforce

Chatbot technology for learning and development can also help create a more resilient workforce. By providing employees with the tools and resources they need to stay up to date with industry changes, organisations can help to ensure their employees are prepared for any eventuality.

Change management

Additionally, chatbot technology is used to facilitate change management. By helping employees better understand the reasons for change and the implications of decisions, organisations can ensure that employees are on board with the organisation’s objectives and are thus better equipped to understand the change and take appropiate actions.

Conclusion

In conclusion, chatbot technolgy is a powerful tool already in use to enhance organisational learning and development. By leveraging the capabilities of chatbot technology, organisations can enable employees to stay up to date with the latest trends, technologies, and processes and become more productive contributors to the organisation. Chatbot technology can facilitate onboarding, training, support, and change management. Investing in chatbot technology is essential for businesses looking to stay competitive in a rapidly changing business landscape.

Resources:

  • Bos, N., & Verweij, S. (2018). From Chatbot to Humanbot: The Impact of Chatbot Technology on Learning & Development. Journal of Technology in Human Services, 36(2), 166–182. This article discusses the potential of using chatbot technology for learning and development. The authors explore how the technology can streamline the process, provide personalised learning experiences, and facilitate change management.
  • González-González, A., & García-Crespo, A. (2020). Artificial Intelligence and Human Resources: The Impact of Chatbot Technology on Organizational Learning and Development. Human Resource Development International, 23(2), 175–190.  This article examines the impact of chatbot technology on organisational learning and development. The authors explore how the technology can facilitate employee training and onboarding, provide real-time support and guidance, and enable life-long learning.
  • Lambert, J., Johnson, D., & Williams, K. (2020). Chatbot Technology: A Tool for Talent Management in the Digital Age. Human Resource Management Review, 30(2), 126–138.  This article discusses the use of chatbot technology as a tool for talent management. The authors explore how the technology can improve recruitment and selection, performance management, and training and development.
Disclaimer: This entire article is automated and created using artificial intelligence. I had to change a few things; I checked the references and had the blog written in British rather than American English.
Interested to read more? See my other articles listed below.
 
The Simplicity Sprint

The Simplicity Sprint

The Simplicity Sprint is so simple to use in innovation as being part of Digital Transformation. Learn from Google and use it for your own company as well. Read this short article and apply.

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Digital Transformation

Do you want to be an conducter?

Do you want to conduct Digital Transformation (DT)? When you work in the area of DT you can find in this article the two most important resources for your organization. Just check it out!

Read More »

It is time for the Holliday Season!

It is the time of the year again.

 How was 2022? I had a fantastic succefull year. Thanks to many people involved. At the end of the year, I always like to reflect on the year and ask myself what I will stop, start, or continue to do. So with  a few words online in this blog I would like to share that with you.

Stop

I will stop saying yes to assignments I do not have time for. It will hurt my other clients as I cannot focus on the details of my other assignments. I will also try to stop with too many sweet cookies, cakes, pastries and other tasty things, but bad for your health.

Continue

I will continue to care about the classes for which I am a teacher; even though it takes way more time than I expected, it is worthwhile, and it is always wonderful to see your classes graduate. I will also continue with my harsh regime of sports. Running, karate and high Impact training dictate my morning and evening routine six days a week.

What we also continue this year is the belief of sharing is caring. Therefore we made two substantial donations to charity. First the international foundation elearningforkids.org from my good friend Nick van Dam. Second is the Dutch charity Jarige Job (for children from parents who do not have the funding to present their children with a birthday gift).

Start

I will start by attending more L&D events and visiting friends. It was a crazy busy year; fortunately, I could work full-time for clients. For that, I am lucky and very grateful.

In closing

I am also grateful for my health and sponsorship from clients, family and friends in 2022. Therefore, a big thank you to all viewers who want to see how I am doing or are just curious. Enjoy the animation below and have a wonderful Holliday Season. Hope to see you back in 2023!

Great ways of implementing

Making more possible together

Today marks a particular day, hence this post on this date. Together with my fellow entrepreneur John May we successfully launched a new Learning and Development platform for our client. Of course, we celebrated today with the whole project team, including all people involved from the supplier. It was an outstanding achievement to implement and launch, as we have worked on this project for more than a year.

What else?

It was not only the implementation of this platform, but it also included a new Governance structure, a new service delivery model for the employees involved, and a load of new Learning and Development programs for the International employees of this organisation.

What was each other’s role?

John and I divided the workload of this implementation. He is way more skilled in IT than I am, so he was in the lead. I took the change and organisational side of this implementation together with the supplier portfolio.

Our cooperation was enjoyable and successful, and I would like to thank him for our collaboration.  Our skills completed each other for the benefit of our client. 

Celebrate Johm & JIm

The Simplicity Sprint

Use the collective brain to innovate

Many companies struggle with Digital Transformation (DT). A critical element of DT is innovation. You may think that doesn’t sound easy to do in my company. It is super simple, as the CEO of Google explained in an article by Nick Hobson last week in the online paper Inc. The numbers of Alfabet (including Google) went slightly down, Google’s productivity is not as per its headcount. To understand why this was the case, the CEO asked all his employees to answer a short survey with three questions:

  1. What would help you work with greater clarity and efficiency to serve our users and customers? 
  2. Where should we remove speed bumps to get better results faster?
  3. How do we eliminate waste and stay entrepreneurial and focused as we grow? 

It is essential to know that innovation does not grow in isolation; bring in all the brains to raise your company’s performance. Simple but genius! The name for this idea? The Simplicity Sprint.

Source file: see this link.

Do you want to read other articles on Digital Transformation? read e.g. the Four steps for Digital Transformation

How to enhance your customer experience

How to create a customer centric culture?

The three elements of customer experience.

I currently work for a client with customer experience (CX) delivered to external clients via a robust framework. It consists of three elements:

  • Marketing: They created the customer journey lifecycle, used personas and segmented their audiences.
  • Clients’ input: They use the voice of the customer to stay relevant and listen to feedback on the always-changing client expectations.
  • Skilled employees bu training and development: they make sure people who are talking to clients get feedback, training and development opportunities and management monitors in a good way the performance of the teams within the client contact centre.

However, this robust framework is ignored if we look at the delivery of services to internal clients, and this surprised me when I researched this for them.

We see this represented in company policies, the wording within the internal department’s intranet (lots of jargon or subject slang), and the advisors’ delivery. Why not use the framework to provide your clients with the best possible service and create the Wow factor?

How to create a customer-centric culture?

To create a customer-centric culture, you need to enhance your CX strategy (Soule, et all, 2016). How to do this?

  1. Listen to the users of your service/department and combine this voice of the customer with existing data (Sacolick, 2017) to understand the level of customer satisfaction.
  2. Invest in skills: make sure your team lives and breathes clients and that they know that one size does NOT fit all.
  3. Keep your focus and attention on your client. Wishes and demands change over time; you must stay on top of their needs. One way to do this is to use your staff to talk to clients in person (not via email or phone) and have an actual conversation. When you take time for them, they will open up and share their needs which will prepare you and your team/company for the future.
Resources:
Sacolick, I. (2017). Driving Digital. The leaders guide to business transformation through technology. American Management Association, New York.
Soule, D., L. and Puram, A., Westerman, G., & Bonnet, D., (2016). Becoming a Digital Organization: The Journey to Digital Dexterity (January 5, 2016). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2697688. 

 

 

Do you want to be an conducter?

Do you want to conduct Digital Transformation and lead by example?

I recently completed my Digital Transformation (DT) Sprint , led by Professor Michael Wade from IMD Switzerland.

Digital Transfromation Certificate

This program added knowledge and a different view to my other study, which I received under the leadership of Professor Khaled Wahba. I learned from him how to lead DT. Wahba used the book Leading Digital as general guidance throughout his lectures (Westerman, Bonnet and McAfee). As a small sidestep, both Bonnet and Wade are peers at IMD school.

Do you want to conduct Digital Transfromation and stand in front of your orchestra in order to lead by example? 

According to Wade, to start your organizational journey on DT, you need to ask yourself a few questions:

  • How should we execute our digital transformation?
  • Where do we start?
    What is the sequencing of actions?
  • And in different areas of the business, what precisely should we change, and to what extent?

At first, it may sound like these are easy questions, but finding the right answers is highly complex and demands joint leadership and teamwork. A complete overview of DT is listed in his paper: Orchestrating Digital Business Transformation, which can be downloaded here . As an alternative, you can sign up for the Digital Sprint module at IMD, which starts in June 2022, see this link.

I can highly recommend this investment for this online module in case you want to broaden your knowledge on this topic. It is a very engaging two week program in classses of about 40 people from around the world.

Do connect with me at in**@ji*****.com if you seek an independent consultant to support you and your organization in your DT journey.

Resources:

Leading Digital; Westerman, G., Bonnet, D., and McAfee, A., 2014 (Harvard Business Review Press, Boston).

Hacking Digital; Wade, M., Bonnet, D. Yokoi, T., Obwegeser, N., 2022 (McGraw Hill, NY,  USA).

Other related articles:

Four important steps for Digital Transformation

Industrial Internet of Things a big win for manufacturing companies?

Other articles