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Geoffrey Peart, MEd, CPTD, has been in a variety of roles spanning across the training, education, and communication fields. He holds a BA in psychology and economics and an MEd in learning design and technology. He is an avid explorer of cutting-edge digital and media technology and actively pushes the boundaries of what is possible with learning and communication.

Geoffrey Peart

April 2021 - TD Magazine

Employees reported dissatisfaction with L&D, so the team revamped the LMS to improve learning experiences.

Operation Overhaul

Clark Aldrich, in his insightful blog several months ago, said "As I work with organizations in developing e-learning, I am increasingly aware of dead elephants in the room, large reference points that we have to avoid because we can't wrap our minds around them." He then went on to give several examples, where we talk about one thing (the traditional approaches and methods), and do not bring up the related Dead Elephants of e-learning (the new, innovative tools and techniques). Clark ended his post by asking readers "What are some other dead elephants?"In the 10 comments that followed, Godfrey Parkin touched upon what I think is not only a dead elephant, but the huge rotting carcass of a Wooly Mammoth. He said "One very large elephant that nobody wants to talk about is the increasing marginalization (and ultimate demise) of centralized training, and its implications for training departments as we have known them."That was the point of the Snake Oil post. Back then, when it was first published, it was a wake up call for those of us who worked in corporate training departments. Back then, a lot of people paid attention and responded.As I understood the post, the purpose was to start a dialogue, to try and build a business case and discover a migration path from what Sam called "Snake Oil" - training that had been proven NOT to work - to new approaches that DO work (e.g. affective and cognitive learning, mentoring, collaboration, database-driven embedded and portable WIFI 'performance' systems, etc.). In Sam's words, it was an opportunity for us to be " rated on whether you save or make money (or both) for the company."Two years later, after the alarm was sounded, it seems as if many of us have not only gone back to sleep, we're disappearing.People left inside corporate training organizations are still selling Snake Oil. To quote a friend of mine, "This is professional suicide." The new (now old in PC years) learning and knowledge transfer methods that the Snake Oil post listed are still not being discussed or widely adopted.The reason I thought the Snake Oil post was so important - I remember forwarding it to almost everyone on my email contact list - was that it was a chance to bring the Dead Elephants to life and have them enter the room. By doing so, I thought we could move away from the old Snake Oil approach, and begin to employ and incorporate the more readily measurable methods and tools into our work. The net result would have been several years of providing corporate education that would have had a more visible impact upon performance and profitability.Because we did not take the Snake Oil post either to heart or to work, that window of opportunity is lost. And the consequences are apparent.I recently read some research about our industry by Ambient Insights that shows that we - corporate trainers - are gradually going away. We are moving from inside the corporation, where we might have had a tremendously valuable impact, especially in the Knowledge Economy, to the outside. In 2004, there were about 75,000 corporate training professionals in this country. The trends towards off-shoring, outsourcing, downsizing and capsizing indicate that by 2008 there will be about 45,000 of us left.Most of us will be working for companies outside the corporation. As an outside vendor, our influence and impact upon corporate decision making, with regard to education and training, will be minimized. And if the trend continues, and we cannot break away from using Snake Oil, more than 75-80% of us by 2011 will be looking in from the outside, as we develop and deliver corporate training programs .The upshot of all this is that 6 years from now, by 2012, only 20,000 of us (or less) will be working inside companies as part of a training department. As Godfrey Parkin said, we will be even more marginalized, our ideas for innovation and new approaches even more discounted, and our primary role will be as project managers of outsourced contracts. The majority of us will work for outside companies as low paid and/or contract workers. And becasue there will still be money in Snake Oil, that's probably what they will sell.I had high hopes, when the original post was first published, that we could change direction. I knew that we were NOT on the right path every time I bent over backwards, using some clever new system, to try and prove an ROI for a training program. I was looking forward to a new and exciting dialogue about the different role we could play. I was envisioning a more rapid adoption of the innovative methods of learning that were surfacing as part of the Digital Revolution.I had even hoped we could broaden our scope to learn what was going on outside the workplace, look at what was being done in the government, the military, Grades K to 12, and post-secondary schools. My goal back then was to reverse the trends, move away from just being 'the training department', jettison the canned Snake Oil approach, and move onto a better track that could help us become more valuable and valued by our companies.And so, two years later, the infamous Snake Oil blog is posted once again. I still believe, despite the trends, that it's not too late, that those of us inside the company can still change what we are proposing and doing, get away from what measurably does no good (Snake Oil), to what works better if not best. I look forward to 'walking the talk', using the newer and more collaborative technology of the wiki, to discuss the possibilities posited by the Snake Oil blog. As Andrew Williams wrote in his response, perhaps the original post can still be viewed as "an inflection point" in the history of this industry.

E-Learning: Back to the Future

James Bennet discusses why and how an organization would implement adaptive learning.

What Exactly Does Adaptive Learning Look Like? Part 2

James Bennet discusses not only what adaptive learning is and looks like, but also the why and how behind implementing it in your organization.

What Exactly Does Adaptive Learning Look Like? Part 1

What Does It Take to Deploy a Point of View Selling Approach? – Part 2 of 3

Ultimate Performance Management:Training to Transform Performance Reviews into Performance Partnerships: If you need a comprehensive, practical roadmap to improved performance management, you've found it! With all the downloadable, value-added materials 

Ultimate Performance Management:Training to Transform Performance Reviews into Performance Partnerships

Entering his 23rd year with the Franklin Covey Company, Scott Miller serves as the chief marketing officer and executive vice president of thought leadership. He is the host of FranklinCovey sponsored On Leadership with Scott Miller — a weekly leadership webcast, podcast and newsletter that features interviews with renowned business titans, authors and thought leaders and is distributed to more than five million business leaders — as well the weekly radio program Great Life, Great Career with Scott Miller on iHeart Media’s KNRS 105.7. This radio program and podcast provides insight and strategies drawn from FranklinCovey’s leadership principles and from Miller’s career and personal life experience to assist listeners in becoming more effective as business leaders and to improve their personal performance.Miller leads the strategy, development, and publication of FranklinCovey’s bestselling books and thought leadership, which provide the framework for the company’s world-renowned content and solutions. He is the author of FranklinCovey’s upcoming, Management Mess to Leadership Success releasing in June, 2019 (Mango Media). He is also co-authoring Everyone Deserves A Great Manager, The 6 Critical Practices for Leading A Team, scheduled to be released in October 2019 (Simon & Schuster).In his previous roles as executive vice president of business development and chief marketing officer, Scott led the global transformation of FranklinCovey’s brand and prior to that as general manager of client facilitation services, Miller worked with thousands of clients and client facilitators in numerous markets in over 30 countries. He has presented to hundreds of audiences across every industry and loves to share his own, unique leadership journey, in today’s culture and world that greatly values unfiltered leadership.Miller joined the Covey Leadership Center in 1996 as a Client Partner with the Education Division, which focused on serving K-12 schools and higher education. He also served as the General Manager of FranklinCovey’s Central Region for six years in Chicago.Miller began his professional career in 1992 with the Disney Development Company (the real estate development division of the Walt Disney Company) as a founding member of the development team that designed the new town of Celebration, Florida.

Scott Jeffrey Miller

Martin Luther King Jr. was many things, but few would see him as a great model for business leaders.King exemplifies two types of organizational leadership vital to today’s business environment, according to Christopher Neck, associate professor of management at Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business, and his colleague Jeffrey Godwin of Saint Vincent College. They argue that King was a transformational and servant leader, and enterprises today would benefit greatly from adopting his techniques.When Neck and Godwin started using King as an example of leadership in class, their categorizations differed—Neck saw him as a servant leader, and Godwin saw him as a transformational leader.Transformational leaders articulate a vision, while servant leaders believe in empowering and developing people on an individual level. Both types of leaders aim to empower employees and improve performance, but the transformational leader focuses more on the organization as a whole, while the servant leader focuses more on individuals. Both paths lead to the same goal, and in the end, the two types have more commonalities than differences, Neck says. “If you care about employees first, they will work harder, and their performance will improve. At the end of the day, it’s all about the organization.”In his research on King, Neck found examples of both types of leadership. King had a vision and set a model for followers to emulate. His expectations were high, and he challenged people about their assumptions. But he was also patient, advocating nonviolence and cooperation. He promoted equality and fairness and helped individuals believe in themselves, realizing that personal motivation was the key to social change.In research published in the Journal of Leadership and Management, Neck and Godwin examined a particular phase of King’s career: the “Chicago Campaign” of 1966. To end housing discrimination in the area, King moved into an apartment in the city’s west-side slums and began working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO).In August 1966, King led about 700 people in a protest march through all-white neighborhoods in Chicago. Angry residents gathered, but King was not deterred. Working with the SCLC and the CCCO, he planned another march, this time in the white, middle-class suburb of Cicero. Worried town leaders met with King and other civil rights leaders to discuss the march. The civil rights groups agreed to cancel the march, and in exchange, the city promised to guarantee accessible housing to African Americans.City leaders, for the most part, failed to follow through on the pact. King, though bitterly disappointed and angry, was not a short-term thinker.“It was one cog in his strategy to bring attention to his vision,” Neck says. “Even if the organizational outcome failed, he didn’t fail from a servant leader perspective. He helped people believe in themselves. He brought people together and brought attention to achieving equal education and facilities.”Though the business world has changed tremendously since King’s day, his leadership style is more relevant than ever.In the past, workers often stayed with a company for 20 or 30 years, and authoritarian leadership was the norm. In today’s fast-paced business environment, “it would be hard for an autocratic, top-down leader to survive,” Neck says. The pension carrot is gone. Frequent job change is the norm, and employers have a tough time finding and retaining skilled workers. Routine tasks are automated, and high-performance expectations are the norm. Employees accept the pressure, but only if they feel their work is valued and has meaning.A transformational leader provides a vision that inspires workers to come together and rise to challenges. A servant leader empowers them to use their best skills and make independent decisions that ultimately benefit the entire company.

Martin Luther King Jr.: A Leader to Inspire Businesses

December 2016 - The Public Manager

 Public-private partnerships abound at all levels of government—federal, state, and local. They touch virtually every aspect of our society, from the environment to space travel, transportation to housing, security to health and human services, & many more

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