Portland, Ore. — 27 May 2020 — OpenSesame, the elearning innovator, announced American Management Association (AMA) has been added to its popular OpenSesame Plus subscription to expand the leadership, management, and business skills offering. 

Global 2000 companies leverage the OpenSesame Plus subscription with over 7,500 curated courses — now including AMA’s real-world scenario-based courses — to develop learners’ leadership and soft skills.

Since 1923, organizations worldwide, including the majority of the Fortune 500 companies and most government agencies, have turned to AMA as their trusted partner in professional development and draw upon its experience to enhance skills, abilities, and knowledge with noticeable results from day one.

“For nearly a century, AMA has transformed the way business professionals think and work,” said Spencer Thornton, Senior Vice President of Curation at OpenSesame. “We are excited to add their expertise and content to the OpenSesame catalog to help organizations develop their future leaders.”

“It was critical for us to find a partner that could help us gain exposure to a large and passionate user base,” said Daniel Goeller, Learning Solutions Manager of American Management Association. “OpenSesame’s position as an industry leader and experience as a trusted adviser to their customers led us to this partnership.”

About OpenSesame

OpenSesame helps develop the world’s most productive and admired workforces. With the most comprehensive catalog of elearning courses from the world’s top publishers, we are here to help you every step of the way, from finding courses, mapping them to your core competencies, syncing them with your LMS to increasing utilization and improving your L&D programs. Not only will you have the flexibility of multiple purchasing options from OpenSesame, you’ll find it simple to use and administer your elearning courses. To learn more, visit www.opensesame.com.

About American Management Association

American Management Association (“AMA”​) is a world leader in professional development, advancing the skills of individuals and organizations to drive business success. AMA’s approach to improving performance combines experiential learning—learning through doing—with opportunities for ongoing professional growth at every step of one’s career. Their online courses feature real world management and business scenarios as well as self assessments and knowledge checks for increased engagement. Furthermore, their simple and modern course design appeals to a wide range of learners seeking essential skill development.

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In this era of digital disruption, businesses need to make plans to match their mission and vision. Leadership plays a vital role in making significant impact on the strategic management process. Competent leadership is of utmost importance to guide the organization through prodigious changes. To make leaders future-ready, new skills to improve behaviors and competencies are needed to be incorporated in leadership development programs. For aspiring leaders, it is paramount to learn and adapt to new conducts to deal with unforeseen business challenges.

Only 56% of organizations take steps to ensure overall goals of leaders are closely aligned with business goals of the organizations

– Leadership Development Research, Brandon Hall Group, 2019

As L&D departments are looking for new methodologies to modernize their leadership programs, let’s dig deep into the characteristics that make up for an ensemble to take up leadership role and bring agility from strategizing to executing:

Leadership and Management

Willingness to learn and self-awareness activities enable leaders to effectively reach across teams and move strategically into the layers of business to unlock success. With hierarchical structure being dissolved rapidly, it becomes necessary for leaders to go beyond dedicated role and undertake tasks cross-functionally. This leads to more employees take up responsibilities and learn various leadership qualities in order to supersede their job functions.

Critical Thinking

Unquestionably the most critical function of a leader’s role is thinking. A leader needs to plan and foresee circumstances before anyone else to ensure that the steps taken derive results which are best suited for the business. Definitive methodology helps in breaking down the problem, implement strategy and generate alternative solutions through critical thinking. Our Ultimate CLO Toolkit for Leaders lists the resources that support them navigate through this process.

Communication

Effectively transferring information is the cornerstone for any business accomplishment. The productivity, results, morale, relationships and expectations are directly affected basis how the communication has taken place. To ensure worthwhile communication, writing also plays a very important role because a lot of messaging happen over emails, collaterals and other documents. Sharing information regarding the project within the team is also a major part of a leader’s role, where effective communication becomes crucial.

Diversity and Inclusion

Leaders that display company’s culture in their work ethics tend to influence more workforce than those who don’t. Portraying organizational values by leaders build trust in employees and shows their improved ability to recruit and retain talent with better leadership effectiveness. Good corporate leaders identify the importance of diversity and inclusion to fuel enthusiasm and encourage the teams involved to outperform their tasks. 

Project Management

Leadership development must have a direct influence in grasping the issues behind the problem. In addition to that, scenario planning is also one of the most efficient tools for project planning. As part of this process, leaders need to focus upon preparing various scenarios of what the business might look like in the coming years. Once these scenarios are outlined, teams can work backwards to achieve the objectives of the best-suited scenarios.

Sales and Customer Support

Customer needs are constantly growing and changing even rapidly, and companies are bound to meet those expectations. Effective leaders empower teams by not only improving team’s potential but also increasing their current performance in existing roles. One of the prime area of concerns of leaders in sales and customer support is to focus and enhance communication skills. For being a strong communicator, it becomes essential for the workforce to stay focused on delivering the right message. 

Team Building

Working across cross-functional teams is a very common ask for leaders. This is beneficial from a business standpoint as it brings diverse minds to pool in for solutions on a specific need. Leaders work in such scenarios that push the workforce outside of their functional roles to develop strategies and achieve productive results. At times when challenges surface, the right leadership style outweighs obstacles to focus on better ideas and outcomes.

Based on the requirements and business demands, organizations need to understand the value of leadership styles, and proliferate communication more effectively. For better understanding, download our free eBook: High-potential Leadership Programs that talks about developing the right kind of leadership skills for a rock-solid talent bench.

Infopro Learning, a leading provider in corporate training outsourcing and human capital transformation, helps organizations create an exceptional employee and customer experience through bespoke eLearning solutions. For more than 25 years, the company has designed and implemented engaging learning experiences that attract, develop and retain talent across the entire employee lifecycle. To learn more, visit www.infoprolearning.com.

About the author: Divesh Srivastava is currently working as the Marketing Manager at Infopro Learning, a leading provider in corporate training outsourcing and human capital transformation. He has over 5 years of experience in marketing strategy development and is a certified Content Marketing professional. His interest lies in conducting market researches to understand learning business needs and develop best practices to benefit organizations and amplify their return on investment.

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I can’t tell you what your new strategy is going to be.  But I do know how you’ll get there.  

Solicit Everyone’s Input – You can’t change your strategy if you don’t have any ideas about how to do it, and you can’t know which ideas are best unless you have some options to choose from.  So get everyone to think about what they’d like to see as you move forward. Not only will it get everyone thinking in the right direction, but it will also begin the process of getting your team to buy in to the idea that things are about to change.

See Which Ideas Overlap – Odds are you’ll have several different people come up with very similar ideas, and that might help you set your direction right from the beginning.

Have Some Messy Conversations – This is probably the most important step, and also (naturally) the one people tend to like the least.  Setting a new direction is not an easy thing to do, and the process is not simple and straightforward.  So prepare yourself for a few meetings that don’t result in concrete solutions, and accept the fact that big decisions generally take more than an hour of thought before the right answer presents itself.

See Which Ideas Survive – If you began this process with ten ideas, it’s likely that a few of them only have the support of one or two people.  It’s also likely that a few of them will turn out to be impractical, too expensive, or otherwise inappropriate. The ones left over are the ones that have proven themselves to be interesting and viable, and slowly you’ll start to see where you should be concentrating your time and attention.

Have Some More Messy Conversations – I think you see where this is going.

Continue Until You’ve Settled On A Strategy – Eventually, inevitably, you’ll figure out what you want to do.  That doesn’t mean everyone is going to be in perfect agreement – very few strategies have unanimous and unqualified approval – but it does mean you’ve analyzed all the possibilities, given everyone an opportunity to voice their support and concerns, and settled on something that the majority of your organization is excited to implement.  

Charting a new course is a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be a painful one.  As long as you’re willing to listen to others and open yourself up to the minor chaos of a few wide-ranging conversations, you’ll find what you’re looking for.

For more information on how to choose a new business strategy check out available courses from The Jeff Havens Company in the OpenSesame course catalog.

About the Author: Jeff Havens is a speaker, author, and business growth expert who has spoken to over 1,000 companies and associations across the Americas and Asia. The mission of his training company, The Jeff Havens Company, is to provide serious solutions in a seriously funny way through their video-based courses that tackle everything from industrial safety to corporate ethics to customer service, and all of them are as entertaining as they are educational. Jeff is a contributing writer to Fast Company, Entrepreneur, BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal; and has been featured on CNBC and Fox Business. For more information, email info@jeffhavens.com, or visit JeffHavens.com.

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Pressures such as:

• • Being asked to do more with less resources at an ever-accelerating pace.
  • Coordinate the efforts of remote workers, virtual teams, and cross-functional relationships.
  • Deal with ever-changing business conditions in real time.
  • Simultaneously manage the performance and development of workers from multiple generations.

There is no doubt that what it takes to be a good manager today is far different than it was just five, 10, 15 years ago. To quote management guru Tom Peters, “If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention.”

Unfortunately, many leaders are performing their roles based on outdated, 20th century practices; and, subsequently, feeling the pain of not being able to keep up the challenges of this digital age.  Proving once again the wisdom behind the saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing over-and-over and expecting different results.”

The time for leaders to examine their fundamental assumptions about management and figure out how to build the capabilities required to compete in 21st century is now.

Peter Drucker once said, “The very best leaders are first and foremost effective managers.” While that is as true today as it was when Drucker said it, the requirements of being “effective” have changed.

The speed, complexity and digitalization of the work environment compels managers to consider new ways to organize the work, conduct business planning, develop their talent, handle everyday change, etc.  In other words, leaders need to be open to redefine what they need to be able to do and how they should go about doing it.

Having spent years running leadership development at companies big and not-so-big, a solid strategy for tackling the development process is to approach it along three interdependent dimensions, namely…

1. 1. Education: Learn new and/or enhanced management fundamentals through formal and informal learning programs (on-line learning, workshops, webinars, etc.). Intellezy offers several great course options through OpenSesame, including the popular course series The New Fundamentals of Management to start.
   2. Experience: Learning through experience is the most powerful and sustainable approach to developing management skills (as well as careers).  Involves viewing job assignments as learning activities; integrating learning with delivering business results. Best accomplished in partnership with a leader’s manager to assist in planning, execution and measuring results.
   3. Coach/Mentors: Development requires planning, action, reflection and feedback to truly make a difference and provide sustainable results. Having a coach and/or mentor are proven to provide the best results over time as well as creating a basis for maintaining a positive approach to learning.

Collectively, these three approaches can provide leaders with a learning strategy to develop the skills required to execute against their business plan while enhancing the performance and development of their employees.  

About the author: Brian Powers is an instructor at Intellezy. His background as a global executive, OD consultant, Senior Fellow at The Conference Board, and teacher at Suffolk University, enables him to synthesize best practice with relevant and practical research to deliver programs and outcomes that map to client’s business plans.

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Prioritizing soft skills training

More than 35% of the average learning budget is tied directly or indirectly to soft skills and leadership development, with the majority being spent on content and content development. This raises some critical strategic questions on spending priorities. Now that you are spending more on content, what type of content do you need. Should it be spent on on updating internal resources, using off-the-shelf learning courses, bringing in a subject expert or creating stimulating experiences through role play and on-the-job experience?

Changing learning landscape

Werner reports that organizations that use a combination of learning methods are having a better response with learners, such as just classroom learning. Werner revealed that delivery of soft skill training in a formal, classroom environment has decreased from 65% to 47% in 2014, and expected to drop to just 40% by next year as other learning methods continue to be rated more highly by employees. While everything should not be necessarily outsourced to a third party vendor, learning programs should begin combining off-the-shelf content with traditional learning methods to respond to changing learner needs. Soft skill development is one of the top content categories where organizations are seeing better learner response and increased learner engagement and participation.

Mobile learning and employee driven learning

35% of L&D programs are currently not offering any mobile friendly courses for training. When it comes to soft skills, not having mobile access to support learners who are searching for content to fit their own work needs, this can be a missed opportunity for your organization. Offering easy to access learning content will support your learners while maximizing their soft skill development.

Conclusion

Nurturing employees soft skills is changing to be a more prominent priority as organizations rely more on these skills in today’s business environment. Traditional methods of in-house training and internally produced content is not necessarily the most effective way to deliver soft skills training anymore. Employees being able to access their own training quickly and on devices that readily available to them is producing a faster turnaround time and expediting training initiatives for employers.

To learn more about how you can develop your organization’s soft skills, watch the webinar recording here.

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You might very well understand the many benefits of upgrading your LMS; however, your executive team might not immediately see the full value of a investing in modern learning technology. In order to convince them, you’ll need to understand their priorities and the challenges they need to overcome to achieve positive business outcomes. Then, you can connect the dots for them and position your request for learning technology to address their specific concerns.

Building a Business Case for a New LMS

Your ability to deliver a compelling business case for a new LMS hinges on how well you structure your argument to resolve the key challenges and priorities of your audience. Break down the problems of each person you’ll have to convince.

What’s your CEO or CLO’s biggest headache? What did they announce as their biggest priority during your company’s annual meeting? Directly addressing each of these problems will make your business case stronger and will help you handle any objections they might bring up.

Outlining Key Concerns for All Executive Decision Makers

Below is a breakdown of some examples of the key concerns held by L&D leadership, CEOs, and IT leadership, and how you can address them in your business case for learning technology. When building your case, be sure to perform outline the key concerns for all executive decision makers that might be involved.

CLO/VP/Director of Training

CEO

IT Leadership

For more materials that will help you build a better business case for a new learning management system (e.g., a presentation template, an ROI checklist, and more), download Docebo’s free LMS Project Toolkit.

Victoria Hoffman is a Content Specialist at Docebo. She is a graduate of University of Toronto’s Semiotics and Communication Theory Program and has 5+ years of experience in digital marketing. She enjoys writing and is always looking for a good book recommendation.

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Professional exams are needed for everyone who wants to further their career and boost credentials. But how important PMP and CAPM are, really?

Having these certifications shows your high skills and knowledge,  it means that you can manage your projects, you are goal-oriented and motivated person.

So let’s take a closer look at them in this article to help you make an informed decision.

What are CAMP and PMP?

Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)

The first certification in our comparison is an entry level one. It was specifically designed for those who wish to start their career in project management and has a great value for aspiring project managers.

The CAMP process requires the candidates to provide information about their professional experience and pass an online examination.

Minimum Qualifications for CAPM:

The certification requires all candidates to provide High School Diploma (or Secondary Diploma) and at least 1,500 hours of experience on a project team.

If a candidate cannot provide the document or has no prior experience working in project management, he or she needs to attend formal training. If the trainee logs in at least 23 hours, the certification allows qualifying for the exam.

Other requirements include:

• Time allowed: 3 hours

• Question type: multiple choice

• Number of scored questions: 135

• Number of unscored questions: 15

The exam is split into a number of project management areas, including:

CAPM certification is valid for five years. After this time, upgrade is available.

Project Management Professional (PMP)

PMP is an advanced certification that only be acquired by professional who have at least 3 years of experience in project management and a completed bachelor’s degree. Thus, it is suitable for those professionals who want to advance their credentials.

PMP also allows to enter candidates with educational background related to project management (at least 35 hours), a completed secondary education, and 5 years of experience in the field.

Minimum Qualifications for PMP:

For this certification, candidates have to have more experience (at least 4500 hours of managing or leading projects), and education (at least a Bachelor’s degree). In addition to these requirements, all candidates must attend formal project management training for at least 35 hours (online or classroom).

For those candidates who don’t have a Bachelor’s degree (for example, a High School Diploma), taking the exam is allowed but the experience requirement is increased to 7,500 hours.

Other requirements:

• Time allowed: 4 hours

• Question type: multiple choice

• Number of scored questions: 175

• Number of unscored questions: 25

The PMP exam does not features as many areas as CAPM:

The candidates who pass PMP receive certification valid for three years. During this time, they are required to earn 60 professional development units (PDUs) to be able to qualify for a renewal.

The Difference Between PMP and CAPM

So, this one is obvious now. CAPM certification is designed for beginners in the project management field who wish to start their career there. Typically, they have little or no experience in leading or managing projects.

On the other hand, PMP is suitable for those who have been working in project management for years and have a lot of practical experience. Thus, the requirements for PMP candidates suggest that only active project managers with rich experience qualify.

Advantages of CAPM and PMP

Here are some important advantages of the exams.

• If you’re just beginning your way in project management business, you should definitely consider taking CAPM. It can really highlight your resume and help to stand out among others. The certification demonstrates your commitment to the field and eagerness to learn and become more professionals. The same could be said about PMP as well: it shows that you have an impressive experience and a desire for continuous improvement.

• You can use CAPM as a way to obtain a higher position in the next project because certification is always valued by employers. “I was able to accelerate my career thanks to CAPM,” says Gregg Leonard, a project manager at Awriter. “It really opened my eyes to new possibilities in managing of people, communications, and risks.”

• More value, however, is given to PMP. But don’t be discouraged: on entry levels, CAPM can provide you with a significant advantage over others!

Study Materials

For both exams, only one book is used – The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), Fifth Edition. The Project Management Institute has prepared this guide for all PMP and CAPM candidates, so it is quite comprehensive. People involved in project management highly recommend it for everyone who wishes to be involved in the field. Additionally, OpenSesame offers a variety of courses that count toward Professional Development Units for both PMP and CAPM.

In addition to the literature, exam training is available for candidates. It is also recommended to attend the training to increase the chances for success.

The Bottom Line

To pass CAPM and PMP successfully, you need to do a lot of learning and training. In the end, it’s all worth it because a certification can really accelerate your career!

Lucy Benton is a marketing specialist, business consultant who finds her passion in expressing own thoughts as a blogger, and currently writes for www.assignmenthelper.com.au . She is constantly looking for the ways to improve her skills and expertise. If you’re interested in working with Lucy, you can find her on FaceBook and Twitter.

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Align training with organization goals to establish a successful learning program. According to a Brandon Hall group study, 70% of companies that tie training to goals see an increase in profits. But, how can an organization actually do this?

The first step is to examine your core values and strategic goals and map core competencies for employees. In other words, based on core values and goals, are there any skills that all employees should have? For instance, Zappos has a strong inherent culture of providing excellent customer service; their mantra is even “Powered by Service.” To meet this goal, all employees undergo an intense customer service training program that includes shadowing experienced customer service representatives and learning best practices. Additionally, are there any skills that specific teams need?

Once you identify what skills are needed, you can start selecting content based on these core competencies that will achieve organization goals. For example, if your organization has the goal of providing excellent customer service, you might have an internal objective of responding to all support requests within 24 hours. In order to achieve this goal, relevant teams should have customer service training and communication skills. When browsing for content that can accomplish this, you might select courses like Excellence in Customer Service or Communicating on the Phone.

2. What metrics will you use to measure success?

Define the expectations for your training program for various stakeholders. What does your training audience expect? What does management expect? These metrics should be a combination of both quantitative and qualitative points. For example, quantitative metrics would include sales performance change and the effect on company turnover. Qualitative metrics would include learner response to courses and whether they feel that they apply training to their work. Creating metrics to evaluate your training program will help you determine whether your program is actually accomplishing its goals and will also help with measuring ROI.

3. What resources do you need for training?

Delve deep into answering this question to set a strong foundation for your program. Go beyond the financial considerations! Understand what IT resources you will need. Do you need to allocate workstations just for training? Do you have adequate IT support in the event that courses don’t work?

Consider what communication platforms your organization has and how you can leverage them to promote training. For instance, does your organization have Slack or another internal communication platform? If so, consider creating a channel on it for training purposes and regularly post updates and questions to gather feedback. If your organization has an intranet, would you be able to post learning updates on an already existing page or a new one? Determine who will be responsible for communications.

Identify what additional budget you may have for promoting elearning. For example, you may want to run a contest to incentivize learners by rewarding the department with the greatest participation. You may want to also motivate learners through prizes depending on your organization’s culture. By identifying what resources you have before beginning training, you can maximize these opportunities to create a successful learning program.

Creating a successful training program requires preparation. Answering these three questions can help you determine the objectives of your program, justify the program to those controlling budget and resources in your organization, as well as maximize your resources to increase learner utilization. You will be also be able to create a dialogue at your organization about what a successful learning program looks like. Naturally, the next step is developing your training program! As the leading provider of elearning courses, OpenSesame offers flexible options to maximize your budget, over 20,000 off-the-shelf courses, and compatibility with every LMS.

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