As you research different options for your employee development programs, you’ll most likely find many “single dimensional” training offerings – one class, one or several online courses, one coach or mentor - all claiming that your immediate organizational and leadership challenges will be solved. Interestingly, however, the Research Institute of America found that after just 33 minutes after a single learning event, users retained only 58% of the material covered; three weeks later, the percentage dropped to an underwhelming 15% retention rate.

What we’ve discovered, in our years of successful work with leading organizations and research with  leadership development experts, is that although event-based learning assures high completion rates and enables the benefits of social interaction, the short term knowledge doesn’t translate into the necessary behavior change that will significantly impact your company’s business.

All of today’s organizational performance solutions – whether targeting new managers with basic leadership skills or driving strategic enterprise initiatives – must simultaneously affirm three fundamental questions:

1. Will the learning solution provide proven long-term learning opportunities for practice, application and reinforcement so that the learning sticks?
2. Is the learning content engaging and relevant to maintain the learner’s interest and involvement? 
3. Is the learning solution scalable and capable of being delivered to reach a globally distributed workforce?

The key to effectively developing leaders, managers and employees is not one course or one event at a time, but rather through combining dynamic and engaging content, interactive learning experiences and systems/processes to effectively deliver an integrated program that sustains an ongoing development environment to drive lasting behavior change. Studies, and the success of hundreds of our customers, have proven that true behavior change happens over time, through a process of alignment to business and individual goals, formal and informal learning, practice, collaboration and community, reinforcement and ongoing manager and senior executive support.

As we’ve discovered and repeatedly measured, the focus of any successful learning program shifts from what happens “now,” to the application and post-training reinforcement at the managerial level so they stay engaged and play a much larger and more personal role in the development of their teams. This shift holds them accountable for sustained learning and measurable results, but also empowers them to hold their employees accountable– creating a united effort toward lasting behavior change at the organizational level, not just at the individual level. This is the formula for real business impact!

Whether working from a foreign branch or telecommuting from home, organizations with multiple locations and geographies are finding that technology plays an insurmountable role in the evolution of their chosen learning solution. Highly effective online courses and technology-based reinforcement modules, combined with in-person workshops and classroom application sessions, is the ideal comprehensive solution for delivering broad-scale, rapid impact.