The major holidays of the year – Winter Break, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving – are wonderful times to pause from the daily grind of work, get caught up on some sleep, spend time with family, cook something fun, and reflect on where things are, where things are going, and how we are going to get there.
The summer of 2017 and the first eight months of the year have been extremely busy for Advantexe as we continue to execute our strategy of providing our select clients with award-winning and innovative business simulation-centric talent development solutions that help them execute their strategies and achieve their business results.
As new members of the Inc. 5000, I took some time to reflect on the Talent Development market, our role in it, and where we see things evolving over the next two and a half years…
The Talent Development Market
The market continues to evolve and become disrupted while the roles within corporations related to talent development are becoming more blurred. Employee tenure within companies is significantly shorter (a reflection of the talent wars where they are jumping around more and more) which is prompting executives to wonder why spend money on Talent Development at all? And that’s the good news. Here are five quick points discussing how Advantexe sees the current state of Talent Development:
- Less Time for Learning – Based on the first 8 months of 2017, we can confirm the Bersin’s trend that there is significantly reduced time available to focus on training. We are targeting no more than 30 minutes per week to engage in learning activities.
- Higher Expectations – Despite the fact that executives and employees want to spend less time on learning, the expectations for immediate impact and tangible results are higher.
- Immediate Application – Because the new tenure of employees is shorter – and there is reduced emphasis on developing long-term talent – investors in talent development want immediate and more tactical application. “I need this person to be able to lead now!” instead of being patient and developing leadership skills over a few years.
- Curated Content – What started as a small, interesting idea to assess all of the available free and paid-for content has now become a science. Advantexe has entered into a strategic alliance with The St. Charles Group – experts in Content Curation – to offer clients with expanded services and solutions that have immediate impact.
- Learning Anywhere – Based on the first four point, we have a situation where there is less time to learn about more content with higher expectations for immediate application which presents another practical challenge; where to learn. The trend of anytime, anywhere learning has continued and micro-lessons and activities being pushed to mobile devices is now an entry ticket into the learning process.
The Advantexe Approach
Advantexe is committed to the long-game of talent development. In addition to being named to the Inc. 500 list, we were added to the Philly Top 100 list, and have been recognized for Talent Development excellence by winning another Stevie Award for Sales Training and another Brandon Hall Gold Award for best leadership simulation. But we are not stopping here; we are continuing to evolve and develop solutions that are aligned to the disrupting Talent Development market. Some of the highlights for the rest of the year and into 2018 include:
Fundamentals of Business Leadership 2018™
A sophisticated leadership simulation that focuses on developing the leadership skills of the new leader including coaching, personality styles, leading across generations, setting goals and objectives, and much more. The simulation has been built to be “driverless” which means all of the content (micro-learning) is built in and can be linked to other curated content on the leadership topics important to our clients.
Brew Squared – Understanding Basics of Business
“Brew Squared” is a business simulation designed to help learners understand the basics of business including how a business makes money. Learners take over as the owners of a small business that brews coffee in the mornings and beer in the evening and is struggling with their strategy, finances, marketing, and operations. Learners get to understand the system of business and how to pull the right levers to grow revenues and achieve profitability. It’s the perfect simulation for new hires, new leaders, and sales professionals who need business acumen skills to understand their customers.
Practium™
With the move toward shorter and more focused learning exercises Practium™ puts practice into action. In the Practium cloud-based talent development solution, learners are presented with a scenario. The scenario can be designed around anything from a leadership issue to a sales issue. Learners think about and respond to the scenario and are provided immediate feedback, content reinforcement, and best practices on their mobile device. Advanetxe has already built a library of more than 16 different micro-learning simulations that are driven from the Practium platform and will have close to 50 by the end of the year!
Artificial Intelligence
Advantexe is ahead of the curve by starting to integrate artificial intelligence into our simulation-centric talent development solutions. We have already prototyped “SimBots” who live in our simulations and provide learners with immediate feedback and best practices as reinforcement to their learning needs. For example, in our Strategic Business Selling™ solution we teach sales professionals how to handle objections in the sales process. In our current prototype, learners actually engage with and talk to a SimBot who puts up sales objections. At the end of the exercise, the conversation is evaluated and the learning is provided with a line-by-line analysis the conversation and the opportunity to take new skills back to the job.
In summary, it’s been a fast-moving, evolving first eight months of the year. The disruption to the Talent Development market is here and it is impacting us all. We will continue to drive change, new technologies, and advancements in the methodologies and approaches toward helping our clients develop their talent and achieving their business results. Stay tuned for updates!