ATD's Action Guide to Talent Development

Get Started Now. Take Action.

Staying ahead of change in the world, your organization, and your profession requires action. You learned a lot to launch your organization’s talent development effort. As you position it for the future, what you need to know grows exponentially.

As futurist Ray Kurzweil once said, “If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.” How do you prepare for exponential growth?

In ATD’s Action Guide to Talent Development: A Practical Approach to Building Organizational Success, industry expert and bestselling author Elaine Biech lays out the steps you can take. The companion volume to ATD’s Foundations of Talent Development: Launching, Leveraging, and Leading Your Organization’s TD Effort, this book follows an eight-step framework for defining your organization’s learning foundation through preparing for the future. You are your organization’s trusted adviser, and Biech offers practical questions, organizational assessments, and tips for each step you must guide your organization through. She also presents the newest thinking from university educators and researchers that organizational experts have relied on for years as well as from industry practitioners and luminaries in leadership and development.

Open this book to any page. Jump in where you think it will be most beneficial to you or your organization. Whether you work inside a company or as an external consultant, whether you work for a large organization or a small one, whether you are launching your first talent development effort or fine-tuning a function that’s been in action for decades, you will find valuable concepts, designs, and ideas. Get started now. Take action.

Table of Contents:

I. Identify and Clarify the Organization’s Learning Foundation
1. Your Organization’s Learning Culture
2. Leaders Champion Learning
3. Employees Value Lifelong Learning
4. Everyone has a Learning Mindset
5. Clarifying Your Organization’s Readiness

II. Develop a Talent Development Strategy
6. Build a Business Case for Learning
7. Enhance Your Organizational and Industry Savvy
8. Expand Talent Development’s Role
9. Partner With Business to Become Trusted Advisers

III. Create an Operating Plan:
10. Align TD to the Organization’s Needs
11. Manage the TD Function Like a Business
12. Balance Services and Budget
13. Leverage Technology for Learning

IV. Reinforce an Organizational Talent Development Mindset
14. Evolving Your Organization’s Learning Culture
15. How Your Organization Learns to Perform
16. Managers Develop Their Employees
17. Employees are Accountable for Their Development
18. Talent Development Professionals Are Consultants

V. Design and Deliver Learning
19. Stay on the Cutting Edge of Contemporary Design and Delivery
20. Select the Most Effective Formal Learning
21. Support Learning from Others
22. Encourage Learning On-the-Job
23. Explore Other Services Provided by TD Professionals

VI. Fortify the Learning
24. Empower Employees to Learn
25. Enable Social Learning
26. Coach Managers
27. Foster Persistent Self-Learning
28. Develop Your TD Staff

VII. Define and Measure the Impact
29. Demonstrate Organizational Impact of TD
30. Identify Evaluation Methods
31. Start a Meaningful Evaluation Process
32. Plan for the Future of Evaluation

VIII. Prepare for the Future
33. The Workplace of the Future
34. The Workforce of the Future
35. Talent Development Future Trends
36. Guiding Your Organization’s Future

Appendix A. Worksheets and Checklists
Appendix B Contributor Bios

References
Author Bio
Index