Fredrickson Communications eZine - February 2010

by Site Admin,

In this edition of the Fredrickson eZine . . .

The Learning Organization’s Brand

by J. Hruby, Director of Marketing
Fredrickson Communications

The recent news of the problems at Toyota started me thinking about the importance of brand image—not just for businesses, but for all types of organizations and even for individuals.
If you’d asked three months ago, few would have predicted that Toyota would (or even could) ever find themselves in a position where their carefully-crafted image for quality and reliability was in question. I mean, we’re talking about Toyota here! Things change very quickly in an age of instant and constant communication.

One of the most valuable assets a business has is its brand image—the image consumers have of the company and its product(s) in the marketplace. It’s hard to understate the value of a positive brand image. Beyond the “warm and fuzzy” aspect of being well-regarded, brand image can be a giant business enabler. Because of its image for quality, Toyota has been able to charge premium prices, sell more, and do so while offering less in the way of buyer incentives. These factors combined to make Toyota very profitable in an industry that isn’t exactly known for being profitable at all.

Brand image matters because it influences the perception of value. And who doesn’t want to be perceived as valuable? My musing about the importance of brand quickly turned to the brand of the learning organization and two questions immediately came to mind:

• If we looked at a learning organization as if it were a company, and the company’s employees and managers as the consumers, what brand image does the learning organization have?
• What influences the image and the perceptions that others have of the learning organization?

Read more . . .

Leveraging Learning in a Down Economy

A Learning Paths International (LPI) Workshop
March 11, 2010
8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Aloft Hotel, Minneapolis

There’s a one-day workshop opportunity that may be of interest to many in the Twin Cities training and development community. Steve Rosenbaum and Ira Kasdan of LPI will present Leveraging Learning in a Down Economy. This workshop will focus on using the Learning Paths Methodology to help participants:

• Turn employee development into a competitive advantage
• Get higher productivity and quality from current employees
• Implement process changes and operational improvements faster and more effectively
• Quickly get employees fully productive when roles expand or change
• Capture and transfer best practices before they are lost or leave
• Drive out time, waste, variability and cost from training
• Identify and close proficiency gaps in record time
• Use your onboarding process as a key recruiting and retention tool
• Dramatically cut the time it takes your salespeople to become fully productive in their roles
  
  Registration
  For more information and to register for the workshop, visit the Learning Paths International website.