At the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame last night, Ninth House was recognized as one of the fastest growing software & information companies in the Silicon Valley by Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50.
We ranked number 22 and want to express our thanks to the dedication of our employees and loyal customers.
Ninth House was ranked on Deloitte’s 2006 Technology Fast 500 list which lists the fastest growing companies in North America. Selected companies are from the media, telecommunications or life sciences industries and are based according to percentage revenue growth from 2001-2005.
Check out our press release and the rankings.
Looking at my in-box, I realized that I receive at least 1-2 newsletters a day. Each provides articles and perspectives on a wide variety of topics encompassing work management, work performance, leadership development, talent management, etc.
After sifting through the plethora of newsletters in my inbox, akin to a pile of newspapers on my front door stoop, here are a few that provide great insight into leadership development and related topics. In alphabetical order:
ASTD’S The Buzz provides quick synopsis of training related news that appears in national newspapers, business publications, and industry media. States it’s for members only.
Chief Learning Officer Executive Briefings is a weekly newsletter that reports on more timely news that the print publication is unable to cover. CLO also has a newsletter titled “In the News”, but Executive Briefings provides a more in-depth look at current news and trends.
HRWeek from SHRM provides highlights on a variety of topics and news relevant to HR professionals. In order to read the full articles, you have to be a SHRM member.
Online Learning News and Reviews is published every two weeks. The newsletter provides peer-based responses to questions about e-learning implementations or concerns.
Training Directors’ Forum e-net (TDF e-net) is a weekly discussion newsletter with career-related questions posed by and answered by fellow training management peers. Training Magazine produces both TDF e-net and Online Learning News and Reviews.
Workforce Management focuses on workforce management issues, such as benefits, discrimination, and diversity. Though ancillary to leadership development, these issues do impact how managers and companies react and lead an organization. This newsletter includes polls, readers’ questions, and news blurbs.
Have fun reading!
Talent Retention has been a hot topic for months... ever since the Powers-That-Be began to truly recognize (and internalize) what the U.S. Brain Drain and the retiring Baby Boomers challenges were going to bring to bare. Talent retention also provided the perfect fodder for a lively discusion at the recent Ninth House Leadership Development Summit in September. But that's only the tip of the perverbial iceberg.
Ading fuel to that fire are the generations coming up behind the Boomers--specifically Gen Y. These young (under 25 years old) professionals have their own peccadillos that are making things complicated for HR executives, hiring managers, and organizations as a whole. Getting Gen Y engaged is not the challenge... it's keeping them engaged... and loyal.
Many HR and learning executives are experiences the same challenges, and are struggling to find answers before their current leaders retire. However, it's clear that retrofitting now-antiquated learning techniques for Gen Y is not the answer. Fresh ideas are needed, and large organizations are looking at new techniques--and new staff members--to tackle the problem.
Engaging and retaining young professionals is a completely new animal. They travel and communicate as a subset of society. They are not interested in the sterotypic "Lecture-Learn-Implement" methodology of training and learning. They learn experientially, and internalize their peers' experiences as part of their own. They have formed a social collective and taken social networking to new bounds. They are the reason YouTube was purchased at such a lofty evaluation.
How are you planning on engaging and retaining your GenY's? Post in the comments!
Ninth House's newest course, Retaining Talent, received the highest rating from Training Media Review (TM Review), an independent reviewer of media based training! The four stars were bestowed for the course's interactivity, high-quality production quality, and content.
Check out the full press release issued today. For the full review, go to the TM Review website and sign up for a free 24 hour trial.
This topic generated the most interest amongst the attendees at the summit, especially with a recent report from Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) stating “83% of employees polled said it was somewhat or extremely likely they would seek new employment once the job market and economy improves.”
Initially, the topic was listed as “Retaining Talent”; however, most attendees agreed that the issue is about engagement, not just retention. Whether or not due to a negative connotation, participants highlighted that organizations are not seeking to retain people who don’t want to stay but rather engage their employees. The concept is that through engagement, this will naturally result in retention.
In addition to the trend of engaging talent, attendees noted that people are not just leaving companies, they’re also leaving industries.
The discussion then turned to ways organizations can engage employees.
We want to hear from you!
On Wednesday, September 20th, over 100 of Atlanta's technology companies attended a Women in Technology (WIT) event sponsored by Ninth House. The guest speaker was Clifton Taulbert (photo on left), a Pulitzer-prize nominated author and faculty member of Ninth House.
Clifton first opened up the meeting by having attendees rip up their business cards – a symbol of breaking down barriers to authentic leadership.
Clifton introduced the “Eight Habits of the Heart” as tools to understand, embrace and use in building community within the workplace. These leadership principles include: nurturing attitude, responsibility, dependability, friendship, brotherhood, high expectations, courage and hope.
He espoused that “leaders become these habits through multiple micro-acts of workplace selflessness.” Through time, there will be visible results emerging from these principles. This helps organizations to have effective fellowship while empowering teams to exceed.
October 3, 2006 Update: Go to the Ninth House Events Archive for a copy of the presentation slides.
On the first day of the Summit, we had a more organic discussion period. The idea was to have different topics situated at the four corners of the room; hence calling this the Four Corners Discussion. Based on attendee feedback, the main topics selected centered on manager-led training, generation Y, enterprise implementation, and engaging talent.
We will post summaries about each discussion and invite everyone to add your thoughts.
The topic for today – The Learning Process: Are your managers involved? The goal of this discussion was how organizations can involve managers into the learning process.
There were two perspectives shared:
1) If an organization truly wanted managers to be involved, then integrating involvement into the manager’s performance review and process would be key. The thought was if manager is measured on people development and held accountable to being involved in the learning and training process, then they would have a lot of success.
2) Conversely, if a company is unable to incorporate this into the performance management process, which was a concern from some attendees, then the solution would be to provide managers with the tools to better teach and mentor employees. The process doesn’t have to be prescriptive, but rather encourage managers to have discussions with their direct reports. The conversation is so much more invaluable then the training person doing anything.
Resource: VNU Learning publishes the Training Director's Forum e-Net that recently discussed how to get managers involved in the process. Though there is an archive search function, the most recent newsletter posted on the site seemed to be from March 2006.
From the September 21st issue, the key theme was to involve managers before the learning event and not after the fact.
From September 13-14, 2006, over 40 learning and performance management colleagues attended the Ninth House 2006 Leadership Development Summit to share solutions for their biggest challenges of developing leaders in their organizations.
Representatives from such top organizations as the American Express, CIA, Citigroup, CompUSA, Cox Communications, National Science Foundation, Seagate Technology, and more attended this two-day, intimate forum.
A variety of leadership development topics were presented by some of today’s most forward-thinking organizations:
Over the next few days, we will be posting summaries and insights from the summit. We look forward to continuing the discussion over the next few weeks and months and welcome all perspectives.
