Neon Elephant Award 2006
22nd December 2006
Neon Elephant Award Announcement
Dr. Will Thalheimer, President of Work-Learning Research, announces the inaugural edition of the Neon Elephant Award, awarded for 2006 to Cal Wick of the Fort Hill Company for leading the development of the first commercially-viable training-follow-through e-learning software and his work as co-author of the book, The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development into Business Results.
Click here to learn more about the Neon Elephant Award…
2006 Award Winner – Cal Wick
Cal Wick embodies the values of the Neon Elephant Award. In 1999, he founded the Fort Hill Company because of his frustration with the way typical management-training programs produced virtually no impact when the learners returned to their jobs. Cal’s answer to this problem was the development of Friday5s—an e-learning platform that enables training results to be channeled to on-the-job implementation. By tracking learners’ progress toward goals and connecting the learners’ managers and learning administrators to the progress of implementation, Friday5s enables a revolution in how we think about training. No longer is training about information. No longer is it an event. With an online training-follow-through platform, implementation can become part of the training contract. Since the 1980’s the field has moved from training to performance improvement. Cal and his team’s invention provides a bridge between training and performance. It’s not one or the other. The goal is on-the-job performance. Now training can be outfitted to support that performance.
Cal and his team at the Fort Hill Company do more than create and market their products and services. By utilizing results from both research and practice and by honestly evaluating their own on-the-job results, they have been able to build a continuing cycle of improvement in their own work efforts. They’ve also compiled their own learning in The Six Disciplines book, published this past April (2006), making it easy for the rest of us to improve what we’re doing. In the book, which I’ve previously reviewed as “nothing short of revolutionary,” they’ve laid out a coherent and well-tested system for getting training results. It’s not just about training-follow-through software. It’s about an attitude and a complete methodology for getting business results. To get the 2nd edition of the book, click here: The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development into Business Results (Pfeiffer Essential Resources for Training and HR Professionals)
