Position your consultancy for longevity and growth. "How do I position a talent development business for lasting success?” is a question Stephen L. Cohen fields regularly. In his practice, he hears it posed countless times in countless ways by independent consultants, corporate executives, and training suppliers alike. Cohen fills The Complete Guide to Building and Growing a Talent Development Firm with answers. And it is why he has organized this guidebook by key milestones for establishing a successful consultancy --one specifically focused on content, delivery, and instruction. Whether you want to start your own firm or take the next steps to grow, Cohen has been in your shoes. In his 40-year career in talent development, a deep understanding of industry best practices --and their nuances --has guided his many efforts to found, expand, merge, and even sell thriving talent development firms. Delve into timeless lessons for getting your talent development firm off the ground and start moving your business forward. You'll find sage advice on overcoming barriers to success and tips for handling potential industry disruptions. Learn to: Execute your business vision and carry it out efficiently and effectively. Win over customers and build repeat business. Pave your way to growth in new and existing markets. Build a consultancy that survives and thrives the tests of time.

Get Started Now. Take Action. Staying ahead of change in the world, your organization, and your profession requires action. You learned a lot to launch your organization’s talent development effort. As you position it for the future, what you need to know grows exponentially. As futurist Ray Kurzweil once said, “If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.” How do you prepare for exponential growth? In ATD’s Action Guide to Talent Development: A Practical Approach to Building Organizational Success, industry expert and bestselling author Elaine Biech lays out the steps you can take. The companion volume to ATD’s Foundations of Talent Development: Launching, Leveraging, and Leading Your Organization’s TD Effort, this book follows an eight-step framework for defining your organization’s learning foundation through preparing for the future. You are your organization’s trusted advisor, and Biech offers practical questions, organizational assessments, and tips for each step you must guide your organization through. She also presents the newest thinking from university educators and researchers that organizational experts have relied on for years, as well as from industry practitioners and luminaries in leadership and development. Open this book to any page. Jump in where you think it will be most beneficial to you or your organization. Whether you work inside a company or as an external consultant, whether you work for a large organization or a small one, whether you are launching your first talent development effort or fine-tuning a function that’s been in action for decades—you are sure to find valuable concepts, designs, and ideas. Get started now. Take action.

In a unique action-planning format, Dr. Stephen L. Cohen gathers his forty-five years of experience founding or leading eight talent development consulting firms to share twelve key strategies. Drawing on his extensive experience, he answers such relevant questions as: ?What are the key drivers, dynamics, and trends of the industry??What are the elements of a business plan, strategy, and structure??How do you create, market, and sell a compelling offer??How do you establish a profitable operating system??How do you best identify and serve your customers??Why do some suppliers fail, survive, or even thrive??What are the various pathways to growth??And many more . . . Whether you want to grow your existing talent development firm or are thinking of starting one, this book is an invaluable resource. With an initial self-assessment to reveal areas for growth plus workbook pages throughout to facilitate frequent review of your current progress in each winning strategy, you'll cumulate a detailed action plan to propel your firm forward.

Managers are in the best position to help people learn from experience (the uncontested major source of development). "Make Talent Your Business" shows managers how to do it by using the five practices that work for managers who are exceptional at building talent.

A WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER Do you know the best way to drive your company's growth? If not, it's time to boost your Growth IQ. Trying to find the one right move that will improve your business's performance can feel overwhelming. But, as you'll discover in Growth IQ, there are just ten simple--but easily misunderstood--paths to growth, and every successful growth strategy can be boiled down to picking the right combination and sequence of these paths for your current context. Tiffani Bova travels around the world helping companies solve their most vexing problem: how to keep growing in the face of stiff competition and a fast-changing business environment. Whether she's presenting to a Fortune 500 board of directors or brainstorming over coffee with a startup founder, Bova cuts through the clutter and confusion that surround growth. Now, she draws on her decades of experience and more than thirty fascinating, in-depth business stories to demonstrate the opportunities--and pitfalls--of each of the ten growth paths, how they work together, and how they apply to business today. You'll see how, for instance: * Red Bull broke Coca-Cola and PepsiCo's stranglehold on the soft drink market by taking the Customer Base Penetration path to establish a foothold with adventure sports junkies and expand into the mainstream. * Marvel transformed itself from a struggling comic book publisher into a global entertainment behemoth by using a Customer and Product Diversification strategy and shifting their focus from comic books to comic book characters in movies. * Starbucks suffered a brand crisis when they overwhelmed their customers with a Product Expansion strategy, and brought back CEO Howard Schultz to course-correct by returning to the Customer Experience path. Through Bova's insightful analyses of these and many other case studies, you'll see why it can be a mistake to imitate strategies that worked for your competitors, or rely on strategies that worked for you in the past. To grow your company with confidence, you first need to grow your Growth IQ.

Your Talent Development Atlas If you’ve been directing your organization’s talent development effort during the last few years, you might think you’re on a journey without a map. There are few published resources to guide you in a challenge that many experts promise will only become more urgent, and necessary, in the coming years. Elaine Biech, a legendary leader in training and development, understands the road ahead and has partnered with ATD to present a new book that will point the way—ATD’s Foundations of Talent Development: Launching, Leveraging, and Leading Your Organization's TD Effort. Biech imbues this comprehensive volume with the energy and passion she has manifested in a career spanning more than three decades. In her hands, you have a trusted adviser who provides guidance, leadership, and direction to your organization. Biech painstakingly guides you over 36 chapters—taking you from developing your talent development strategy, creating an operating plan, and reinforcing your organization’s talent development mindset, through design and delivery, measurement and evaluation, and preparing for the future. No matter where you are in your development, you will be able to pick up this book and select chapters that describe how you can help your organization. What’s more, Biech has included a new customized model to assist you. Plus, she’s invited dozens of her friends and colleagues to contribute—well-known authors, ATD subject matter experts, and icons in the field—to present a cross-section of voices and approaches in the field. In 2018, ATD celebrates its 75th anniversary by delivering ATD’s Foundations of Talent Development, its first published reference to the profession it leads and supports. Think of this book as your professional atlas. Table of Contents: I. Identify and Clarify the Organization’s Learning Foundation 1. Your Organization’s Learning Culture 2. Leaders Champion Learning 3. Employees Value Learning 4. Everyone has a Learning Mindset 5. Clarifying Your Organization’s Readiness II. Develop a Talent Development Strategy 6. Build A Business Case for Learning 7. Enhance Your Organizational and Industry Savvy 8. Expand Talent Development’s Purpose 9. Partner with Business to Become Trusted Advisors III. Create an Operating Plan: 10. Align TD to the Organization’s Needs 11. Manage the TD Function 12. Balance Services and Budget 13. Leveraging Technology for Learning IV. Reinforce an Organizational Talent Development Mindset 14. Maturing Your Organization’s Learning Culture 15. How Your Organization Learns to Perform 16. Managers Develop their Employees 17. Employees are Accountable for Their Development 18. Talent Development Professionals are Consultants V. Design and Deliver Learning 19. Formal Learning 20. Learning from Others 21. On-the-Job Learning 22. Contemporary Content 23. Services Provided by TD Professionals VI. Fortifying the Learning 24. Enable Social Learning 25. Empower Employees 26. Coach Managers 27. Foster Continual Self-Learning 28. Develop TD Staff VII. Define and Measure the Impact 29. Determine and Demonstrate Organizational Impact 30. Evaluation Methods 31. Getting Started with Evaluation 32. The Future of Evaluation VIII. Prepare for the Future 33. The Workplace of the Future 34. The Workforce of the Future 35. Talent Development Future Trends 36. Guiding Your Organization’s Future

An action plan for working as a consultant Management consulting is a $250 billion industry and growing at a rate of over four percent annually. Many predict that more than 40 percent of the U.S. workforce will soon be contingent, freelance, or consulting members of the workforce—making this book more relevant than ever. Individuals become independent consultants out of necessity or preference: necessity because they lost their job or the company offered an attractive exit package; preference because they want a career change, more control over their time, or an enriched, varied work situation. Consulting also appeals to the Millennial workforce who are searching for careers that offer a good salary as well as meaningful work. The New Consultant’s Quick Start Guide: • Serves as a companion to The New Business of Consulting • Provides you with a place to plan your transition into consulting • Helps you identify your niche, develop a business plan, charge what you’re worth, and create a marketing strategy to ensure a steady stream of clients • Prepares you for changes you will encounter beyond your professional life, including social, family, and financial aspects The New Consultant’s Quick Start Guide helps you work through the challenges of consulting such as working alone, deciding on necessary insurance coverage, finding your first clients, struggling with cash flow, and understanding market trends.