Ann Parker describes what you can look forward to in the Summer 2017 issue of CTDO magazine.

During the past seven years, the transportation and shipping industry was either in the middle of market commoditization or at the very end. But in late 2011, Maersk Line placed a big emphasis on a price leader differentiation strategy. We wanted to position ourselves as the Mercedes-Benz or the Singapore Airlines of shipping. At the core of the differentiation strategy was the need for our salespeople to start selling value and...

According to Gallup research, employees who use their strengths on the job are six times more likely to be engaged on the job. As a result, employees who understand and use their strengths achieve greater levels of productivity, longer organizational tenure, and a higher impact to an organization's bottom line. As a C-suite executive, do you know your strengths and how you can use them to lead and influence your team?

President Donald Trump has tasked his administration with creating 25 million new jobs, but a lack of jobs may not be what's holding back American business. Many experts believe a skills gap is the real problem.

The improved economy has translated to an increase in job openings. According to LinkedIn, 56 percent of talent acquisition leaders say their hiring volume will increase in 2017. These gains have created a candidate-driven market, making it harder for recruiters to compete for talent. Many companies are hoping that emerging tech can enhance the hiring process.

Rob Lauber is chief learning officer at McDonald's, where he oversees a staff of 250 people across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Under his purview are the L&D Center of Excellence and seven Hamburger Universities around the world, as well as education and accreditation programs. In all, L&D's audience is about 1.9 million McDonald's employees.

Today, seven in 10 American adults are social media users, with Facebook being the most widely used platform, followed by Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter. With so many employees already using social technologies in their personal lives to connect with one another and share and gather information, it's only natural that many forward-looking companies have leveraged social media for learning.

Women are becoming increasingly invisible in the thriving technology and computing field, a top industry around the globe and one of the fastest-growing professional occupations among U.S workers, with an estimated 1.8 million jobs in computing by 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. UST Global, an Orange County, California-based provider of end-to-end digital solutions and IT services for Global 1000 companies, hopes to change that.

It's true that the world of talent development has grown and matured a lot in the past decade. There is much more C-level support, dedicated software, apps, you name it. However, one key ingredient is still sometimes lacking: the communications plan. Step one is to gain support and resources for your talent development initiatives. Step two is to begin demonstrating productive use and some form of return on investment. That begins with a great communications plan to drive quality engagement.

A survey of more than 23,000 employees in 45 countries and territories found that work effort is nearly twice as high in positive work experiences (95 percent compared with 55 percent), suggesting a stronger employee experience can contribute to…

An organization's talent development function exists, among other reasons, to develop employees so that they're able to contribute to achieving organizational goals. But if employees likely won't remain with one company throughout their entire careers, and given the evolving work dynamics in place, it's to employees' advantage to take professional development into their own hands, to achieve their personal goals. Right?

When people discuss how the human mind works, they often use computer terminology. This way of looking at the human mind perceives human thinking as information processing, much like how computers process information.

Most organizations see the value of innovation, whether it be internal innovation that revamps processes and systems, or external innovation that creates a new product or service. At some point in the innovation processmaybe ideation, planning, or even implementationcompanies encounter obstacles that stop innovation in its tracks, and ultimately the idea is abandoned.

Their leadership development program (LDP), established in 2008, is a yearlong experience that helps future leaders around the world (the company maintains offices in more than 40 countries and employs more than 10,000 employees) develop the leadership and business skills needed to succeed. Because business needs and leadership gaps change from year to year, a program that was current one year may seem out of date the next.

FM Global, one of the largest international property insurance companies, has become a top organization in its field with more than 5,000 employees worldwide.FM Global is unique among insurers because it relies on engineering data to help its clients prevent loss. Once a year, FM Global offers its engineers a three-day, instructor-led course on identifying wind exposure.

MWH Global (now part of Stantec) is an engineering, consulting, and construction firm with a focus on water and natural resources projects. High turnover meant that they needed to replace employees (which is costly and often difficult given shortages of workers with the technical skills MWH needs), and that innovation, company culture, and institutional knowledge could be negatively affected.

A consistent learner experience drives a consistent customer experience, and thats what the cable TV business is all about, says Martha Soehren, Comcast Universitys top executive, who oversees the training and development of Comcast Cables 91,000 employees. Although tireless efforts within Comcast University to improve training related to customer service had already yielded many positive results, Comcast needed to reinforce its customer-first philosophy among its thousands of employees with leadership responsibilities.

Because companies recognize the business impact learning has on organizations, the talent development leadership role is experiencing unprecedented expansion in scope and responsibilities. To show current and aspiring talent development leaders the changes and growth occurring in the roleand what those shifts might mean for themthe Association for Talent Development (ATD) and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) collaborated on new research based on the experiences of learning leaders worldwide.

Google the term disruption and you will find many results. Lets start with a few definitions so were all speaking the same language Futurist Eric Haseltine says any one of four conditions can usher in a disruptive innovation: In the early 1600s, a spectacle maker, Hans Lippershey, invented the telescope (at least in the Western world).

To bring some clarity to this topic, the Association for Talent Development (ATD) surveyed 596 talent development professionals, finding that 38 percent currently use microlearning and another 41 percent plan to start within the next year. The majority (92 percent) of those whose organizations currently use microlearning indicated that they believed their use of microlearning would increase in the future.