Here is the September e-news. The month of August was a relatively quiet one – at least one that I did not have to travel.

I had the honour of being appointed by the Honourable Minister of Human Resources, Government of Malaysia, as a Director of the Human Resources Development Corporation. The role of the corporation is to promote the development of human capital.

And, we moved homes after staying in one for close to 30 years – from an urban setting to a rural setting and that was a big change for us. Just trying to come to terms with the change.

Here is this month’s e-news:

I always believed that the role of training was to enable learning and change. However, I could not agree more with recent comments from leading researchers that the role of the modern learning organisation has changed; Successful modern learning organisations perform the role of an enabler and a broker of learning rather than just being the source.

Quality content has always been a huge problem. An effective learning broker knows where to find the best content, understands learner needs and the cultures in which the learner operates and develop an infrastructure to get the content across to the learners on a just in time format. Whether we should buy the content or build the content was one that I was grappling with a customer last week. With technology and change dictating the pace in today’s context, we have to respond fast when our customer needs the content. Are we able to respond fast? Are we able to make content accessible to the learner when the learner needs it? Google taught us that any search should never be more than a key word away. Can we ensure quality and credibility of the source of information? Can we minimise the confusion of ownership? With most learning becoming more informal rather than formal, the need for becoming a content broker is more important now. We can ensure this takes place by creating knowledge communities, creation of frequently asked questions, deployment of internet search tools and encouraging social learning – there are a plethora of web 2.0 tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn etc.

Disciplined thinking and disciplined action are the key attributes of great organisations said Jim Collins but is it not really difficult at the workplace. Organisations have quality systems, project management, customer relationship systems and mentoring programmes. Just pause and think how many organisations have had the implementation easy. When we read the success stories, it looks easy but the implementation is the real tough one. Everyone expects a great organisation but none wishes to plant the seeds.

I also looked around the headlines among the newspapers in the world.  Everyone wants prosperity and success more and more. Content never seems to be the word in anyone’s mind. I just remembered President John F Kennedy’s words: If the government cannot save the many that are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. I was reading an extremely provocative article in the Economist while flying between Singapore and Dubai. The article talked about President FDR initiating many programmes in order to save capitalism. When is enough enough. When will politicians ever decide that they have had enough time and decide it is time to call it a day? Maybe never.