CategoryLearning

5 Lessons from Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning”

By Sean P. Murray
May 17, 2018
7 Min read
5

In 1945, within months of his liberation from a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, Viktor Frankl sat down to write a book. He was forty years old. Before the war he worked as a successful psychologist in Vienna. He wrote the manuscript in nine successive days. Although the book tells the story of the unfathomable horrors and suffering he endured as a prisoner at Auschwitz, Dachau and other camps, the primary purpose of the text is to explore the source of his will to survive. The book...

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Deep, Long-Lasting, Meaningful Work

By Sean P. Murray
September 6, 2017
5 Min read
D

How do some athletes and artists stay dedicated to their craft over many years, even decades? And throughout that time, how do they continue to improve, and turn in game-changing performances and create break-through works of art? In their book, Peak Performance, Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness explore how some individuals are able to find another gear, and develop the focus and dedication to achieve mastery. What is their secret? Well, it’s not really a secret because almost everyone who...

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3 Tips for Improving Decision Making

By Sean P. Murray
May 3, 2016
4 Min read
3

You walk into the conference room for your fourth meeting of the day. It’s a cross-functional committee and you’ve been tasked with making a big decision. You’re pretty sure the committee made a decision during last week’s meeting, and you’re hopeful today’s topic is focused on execution. After all, a solution was discussed thoroughly and you felt that consensus was finally achieved. As you scan the agenda you get a sinking feeling in your gut. You realize the decision is still on the table and...

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John Wooden on Success

By Sean P. Murray
January 25, 2012
2 Min read
J

As a young high school English teacher in South Bend, Indiana in the 1930s, John Wooden, the legendary former coach of the UCLA men’s basketball team, was not satisfied with the prevailing definition of success.   The conventional wisdom was (and still is) that success is the accumulation of possessions and power.   This definition was unsatisfactory to John, so he came up with his own definition of success: Peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing that you made the...

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5 Steps to Business Impact

By Sean P. Murray
May 13, 2011
2 Min read
5

  I will be speaking at the 2011 ASTD International Conference in Orlando (May 22nd – 25th) on how to achieve business results from training. The following is a description of the presentation and learning outcomes for the event. Those of us who have been in and around the learning  industry a long time know that the quality of instructional design, materials, delivery, and facilitation of training has steadily increased through the years and continues to improve.  In addition, technology...

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How Technology is Impacting Leadership

By Sean P. Murray
January 26, 2011
4 Min read
H

The wonders of technology are all around us.  Smart phones, ipads, kindles, email, apps, GPS, blogs and twitter to name just a few examples.  But step back for a moment and consider the impact of this technology on leadership. There is a famous essay in the the Atlantic titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid“.  The author, Nicholas Carr, reflects on how his daily Internet use, searching for information and skipping from topic to topic, seemed to change how his brain thinks.  Gone were the days when...

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Move Over LMS, Here Comes the Learning Portal

By Sean P. Murray
January 14, 2011
3 Min read
M

The Learning Management System (LMS) was originally designed for “managing” learning across the enterprise. That is, the true customer or end-user for the LMS is the training department, often charged with keeping track of who has taken what course. To use the analogy of a university, the LMS is the administration office. You remember, the face-less bureaucracy that tracked courses and credits earned.  The administration office is not what inspires college students to achieve higher levels of...

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Alignment of Learning to Business Goals

By Sean P. Murray
August 4, 2010
2 Min read
A

Has the recession forced organizations to more closely align learning objectives to business goals? A new study by CLO Magazine surveying over 1,500 senior learning and development executives found: “90 percent of CLOs believe their learning will be more aligned with organizational business objectives this year. That’s music to some executives’ ears.” Jim Gillece, AlliedBarton’s senior vice president and chief people officer, talks in the article about the importance of well-defined leadership...

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Feedback is a Gift

By Sean P. Murray
February 3, 2010
3 Min read
F

“Get a feedback loop and listen to it. … When people give you feedback, cherish it and use it.” – Randy Pausch (1960 – 2008) was a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and a best-selling author, who achieved worldwide fame for his speech The Last Lecture, after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and having only a few months to live. Most people, by now, know the story of Randy Pausch and his Last Lecture.    The book was a best-seller and the video of the lecture...

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New e-book: Getting More from Your Investment in Training

By Sean P. Murray
November 10, 2009
3 Min read
N

The current global economy is forcing people and organizations to find ways to do business more efficiently and more effectively. Companies are revisiting strategy, markets, R&D, size of workforce, and their entire cost structure. There is an intense focus on business results with an added emphasis on trimming anything that doesn’t directly contribute to the success of the organization.  These same forces are affecting training and development departments at corporations across the globe...

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