The Ascendence Group

Chris Brogan recently asked a brilliant question. Actually, he asked 5 brilliant questions:

1. How could new ideas change education?
2. How can younger generations learn from the body of work of their successors?
3. How can we marry up all the great resources of people who know something great to those of us who could stand to learn more?
4. How can I help those of us who lived in the cubicle farms, and what can I do to share that information in a way that will empower others?
5. How can we equip our youth and/or our students and/or our business professionals?

Each of these questions dances around a singular issue: Today’s learning models are inadequate.

This message is similar to one Charlie O’Donnell has been spreading: “Structures for industry specific learning, particularly when it comes from learning from the accumulated wisdom of successful and experienced professionals, is horribly inefficient.”

So, we’ve got two really smart guys highlighting the exact same issue. Could this spell business opportunity? Methinks so… …

There’s no easy way to put this, so I’m just going to go right out and say it:

Your college career center can’t help you.

It’s not that career center employees don’t want to help you. Most do. But the truth is, they can’t help you.

You see, college career centers operate within a very flawed system – a system so poorly designed that it makes the guy that built this gem look like a genius. And until the system is fixed – until key structural issues get resolved (which I explain in detail below) - your career center will continue to be unhelpful, offering mediocre services and delivering mediocre results.

…

Q: What will colleges and drug companies soon have in common?

A: Regulatory reform that puts the consumer first.

As Obama so powerfully says, “Change is coming to America.” And higher education institutions across the U.S. should be paying serious attention.

Today, Louis Soares and the Center for American Progress released a groundbreaking white paper on higher education. The idea:

Put the Student first in College.

Make no mistake: This is not a small change. This is a fundamentally new approach to the higher education market – a market plagued by 4,900 different suppliers, each with their own agenda, mission and performance record. Soares writes: …

Today, Dr. Sullivan shared some frightening statistics about the efficacy of the talent management industry on ERE. To put it simply: it appears that the talent management industry is a catastrophic failure.

• 70% dissatisfied — 70% of the external customers (applicants) and 28% of the internal customers (hiring managers) indicate they are dissatisfied with the hiring process (Source: Staffing.org).
• 50% customer regret — 50% of the processes users (both managers and new hires) later regret their “buying” decision (Source: The Recruiting Roundtable). In addition, 25% of new hires later regret taking their new job within one year (Source: Challenger, Gray)
• 46% turnover — 46% of new hires leave their jobs within the first year(Source: eBullpen, LLC) and 50% of current employees are actively seeking or are planning to seek a new job (Source: Deloitte).
• 46% failure rate — 46% of U.S. new hires must be classified as failures within their first 18 months (fired, pressured to quit, required disciplinary action, etc.) (Source: Leadership IQ). In addition, 58% of the highest-priority hires, new executives hired from the outside, fail in their new position within 18 months (Source: Michael Watkins).
• Only a 19% success rate — only one out of five of the process output can be classified as unequivocal successes (Source: Leadership IQ).

• 66% regret hiring decisions — Nearly two-thirds of hiring managers come to regret their interview-based hiring decisions (Source: DDI)

With my hedge fund background, if these statistics represented a publicly traded entity, I’d short the be-jesus out of it. As it stands today, it’s fair to say that the time has come to rethink most talent management processes.

How? What’s the new model? First a bit of background… …