We are so grateful to all who joined us for our 15th annual Learning Leadership Summit! We gathered at the beautiful Como Lakeside Pavilion to reconnect with friends and colleagues and to make new connections. 

A special thanks to Margi Simmons from the Brave New Workshop who led a conversation about “Learning at the Speed of Laughter”. It was an engaging experience filled with fun activities, conversations, and moving outside of our comfort zones. We left feeling the joy that laughter and connection bring to our community! 

Thank you to everyone who came together to celebrate the power of learning and community - it was a day to remember!
We were thrilled to present the 10th annual Learning Leader of the Year award at this year's Summit. The award is presented to a learning leader who has made great contributions within their team, organization, and learning community. A panel of judges, comprised of the past winners of the award, reviewed scrubbed nomination materials to keep the process fair and unbiased. We congratulate and celebrate this year's winner, Kim Wiemer from Red Wing Shoe Company.

2021 Learning Leader of the Year
Kim Wiemer

Director, Organization Effectiveness
Red Wing Shoe Company
We also want to acknowledge the rest of our nominees this year. Each of these leaders is inspiring - we know this because at least one of their team members spent time going through the nomination process with us! It is an honor for us to be able to hear stories of the meaningful work all of the nominees are doing, and it reinforces the esteem we have for our L&D community. We present the full list of this year's nominees via the video below, and we encourage you to congratulate all of these individuals if you ever get the pleasure of speaking with them.
We are thrilled to share the following featured guest blog article with you. Rich Taylor is the Senior Vice President, People Experience at Nasdaq.

So much has been written about the value of organizational culture, for instance here, here, and here. But it’s much harder to find good information about how to go about shaping culture. And this is important because sometimes the ‘legacy’ culture we have isn’t what will best serve the organization going forward.

We first need to acknowledge that an organization’s culture has grown over time to solve problems and accomplish results, and it’s been perfectly adapted to meet the needs the organization has encountered to date.

But if the future will look different—for instance changing business challenges, changing products, changing markets, changing customers, changing technology, and/or changing competition—the culture of yesterday may not be “fit for purpose” for the next horizon.

What makes culture so hard to shape is that it’s not easily made visible. Culture is implicit: deep-rooted beliefs, behaviors, and expectations that we can only glimpse in the physical environment, the tools and processes, and the vocabulary we use. So, shaping culture is less about changing visible things (look, we have a new culture poster on the conference room wall!) and more about shaping the mindset of employees—including senior leaders.
The Thought Leader Series provides a venue for forward-thinking learning leaders from around the country to inspire, challenge, encourage, and educate learning and development professionals. We invite you to join us virtually on October 19th for our next session - a registration link is included below.
Forward-Focused Learning: Inside Award-Winning Organizations is a collection of practical lessons and inspiring stories written by a plethora of award-winning thought leaders in learning strategy from brand-name companies. We are thrilled to have the authors of chapters six and seven as the facilitators of our next Thought Leader Series event. Join us as they share their insights.

  • The Talent Behind an Award Winning Team - Gale Halsey, VP HR Ford Motor Credit Company

  • Winning at the Shark Tank: How L&D Leaders Really Gain Management Support - Kevin Wilde,  Executive Leadership Fellow University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management
In early August, the Learning Technology Network had the chance to hear a real-life, in-progress User-Generated Content (UGC) and Knowledge Management success story. Tim Wirtz, Manager of Training and Knowledge Management at Digital River walked us through the Digital River story, sharing key insights and provoking great discussion. 
 
Along the way, Tim discussed his team’s approach to the type of people and processes necessary to successfully curate and publish UGC. He graciously provided attendees with a demo of the platform they are using and was so open to fielding on-the-fly questions with the group. Key insights included how to train content authors to provide quality content and how important it is to select a tool that can automate processes as much as possible.
 
In small breakout groups, we were then able to share more about what was working and not working for us, which gave us all a lot to consider as we move forward in our organizations. The session was a wonderful mix of a concrete success story and the ability to explore possibilities for each attendee. We thank Tim once again for leading such a great session!
We had a great Young Learning Leaders Forum session in mid-August, called "From Manager to Leader - making a career in L&D." Some of our favorite events with this group are when great learning leaders of today share first-hand experiences that have led them to success. In this particular case, we had not just one but two such individuals willing to spend some time with those earlier in their L&D careers.

Not only that, these two shared a common L&D origin story - starting as first-time L&D managers at HealthPartners. Tara Florek now finds herself as a Global Education & Development Leader at 3M, while Derek Harley is an EHR/HIT Learning and Development Manager with University of Minnesota Physicians. Although the two started in similar roles, they both learned from their differing management styles to grow even more as leaders. We thank them for their time and the wisdom they shared with our early-career professionals.
Mark Berthelsen from Allianz Life led a jam-packed session with our Twin Cities Articulate User Group entitled, "Shortcuts to Storyline Savvy", and really, the title says it all. Rather than share a written recap with you, we're grateful to Mark for allowing us to record and share the session itself!

This session may be useful to anyone you know who uses (battles with) Articulate Storyline regularly. Please feel free to pass it along.
The Financial Services Learning Forum is our newest community! Jen Zabala from U.S. Bank kicked off our first official event in early September, leading the group in a productive conversation and sharing regarding the grand "return to the office." We found similarities and differences in organizations' plans, and we were happy to bring some focused connection to L&D professionals in the financial services industry.

If you or someone you know may benefit from some idea exchange, networking, and case study sharing in this sector in particular, please contact this group's community manager, Molly Hendricks ([email protected]).
Our clients put in a lot of hard work collaborating with us to create learning that is relevant and impactful, and we are always thrilled when that work is recognized. We're pleased to announce that two of our partnerships in the last year have resulted in 2021 Brandon Hall awards!

We partnered with 3M's Industrial Adhesives and Tapes Division to create a course entitled, "Exploring the Six Common Assembly Types at Metal Works Inc.", which won a bronze award in the Best Advance in Custom Content category.

We partnered with Prime Therapeutics on, "Prime+ You Onboarding", which won a bronze award in the Best New Hire Onboarding Program category.

Congratulations to the teams we worked with on both of these projects. You are all doing a great service to your organizations and your learners!