Brief description of your role:
I manage our Western US and Asia Pacific operations from San Francisco, oversee client and partner relationships, and am involved in our advanced product development.
1. Why did you become a learning and development professional?
I graduated Babson College with a major in entrepreneurial studies and finance. My first job out of school was a financial analyst supporting acquisitions for a Fortune 500 healthcare company. After a year in this role, Cal Wick (Author of The Learning Edge: How Smart Managers and Smart Companies Stay Ahead (McGraw-Hill)) approached me to help start Fort Hill. He wanted me to apply and leverage my entrepreneurial training to help get his vision off the ground. After 10 years, I now have a deep understanding of the space and am completely engaged in the real value learning and development (when well applied) can bring individuals and their organizations!
2. What do you enjoy most about your role?
I have had the privilege of working with companies like Coca-Cola, Honeywell, Sony, Cisco, Oracle, Microsoft, Agilent and MGM. To date, I have worked with almost ten percent of the world’s largest companies to learn their culture (i.e. what makes them tick) and most importantly, how they develop their people to meet their long and short range business objectives. I also feel incredibly fortunate to have supported some of the top learning models like Facilitative Leadership®, The Leadership Challenge®, Debono Thinking programs, The Leadership Grid®, Fierce Conversation® and Ken Blanchard’s Situational leadership®. This exposure to world-class companies and leadership models is feeding my lifelong learning itch!
3. What do you find most challenging?
It takes time! Organizations are not always prepared and ready to execute on the complete learning and development solution. Time, money, sceptics, and competing priorities often slow the process down. After 10 years experience creating change from within the world’s top organizations, we guide the change process strategically. We have them choose an area that can produce the greatest impact, implement a small percent, build credibility, and then slowly improve upon the start.
4. What do you do to be recognised as a valued business partner?
As a trusted advisor who knows what levers to pull to get the most impact from any learning and development efforts, often times these levers have more to do with the system of support rather than the content.
5. What is the best advice that you would give to someone new to this line of work?
Understand your business. The financial statements (balance sheet, cash flow, p&l, etc) and the annual report so you can really talk the business and align your learning to meet the needs of the business. Learning and Development has the power to impact every area of an organization once we’re aware of what those business needs are and align the learning to match it. The next biggest piece of advice would be to sell the value L&D brings and make those results visible!
6. What's the best advice that's been given to you that has helped you in your career?
“Problems are gold” Cal Wick, our founder and Chairman, told me this on our first day working together. Often times we hide from problems but in the problems lie the real opportunity for innovation/value creation. Try and reframe a problem to the point where you get excited to dig into it to uncover its gold. Sounds bizarre but let’s take this recession for example (I assume now it’s OK to call it what it really is – a recession!) I have been telling my clients and team that you never want to waste a perfectly good recession as it offers opportunities you would never have in a healthy marketplace. For example take the time to look around at those nagging things we are ordinarily too busy to fix. Also reach out to people who might be able to help you create a new exciting solution; people are open to ideas!
7. What's the best career help book that you've ever read?
I would have to say the One Minute Manager® is the most practical/simple book which has made it one of the best selling business books ever. Just the concept of scheduling a 1-1 meeting with your team to check in and hear what their thinking and working on makes so much common sense…it should be common practice. Also the concept of catching someone doing something good and telling them about it is a wonderful thing to practice. Leadership is about doing all the small things right.
8. What's the best event within the training community that you've ever attended?
Best event would have to be (and this will sound self serving) the Fort Hill Company Best Practice Summit held once a year outside of Wilmington, Delaware. We gather our most trusted clients to learn what’s working and where they need solutions; it fuels our innovation. Over the years we have been blessed to have almost 100 CLOs and thought leaders share the innovative work/research they are doing to advance our industry. This year’s summit will feature David Allen, Author of the bestselling book Getting Things Done® and CLOs from Companies like GE, Deloitte Consulting, Genentech and the IRS!
9. Who do you think is the most inspirational member of the training community and have you ever met them?
The most inspirational leader of the training community (and I have to be careful here because we have some really inspirational thought leaders in our company and as clients) would have to be Teresa Roche the CLO of Agilent Technologies. She is extremely visionary leader but also has the ability to show-up in the moment in a way that makes everyone around her better. To give an example of two lines we often cite of hers is that she would rather her facilitators in her organization be the “Guide by the side rather than the sage on the stage” and she also says that “Learning needs to be a part of work not apart from work” – enough said.
10. What else would you like to share with our readers?
I’m excited to speak at the Australian Institute of Professional Facilitators (AIPF) conference, learn from my peers and meet people from the land down under who are passionate about our industry. It is my first time in Australia; I invite your recommendations!
