Transforming the CLO Role

As one of the early investors in the L&D market, Bobby Yazdani has seen a lot of change in the industry. From the early days of certification training to the blooming of the LMS market in the late 1990s into the social and collaborative enterprise, learning and development has shifted from a back-office function into a pivotal role at the vanguard of technology, innovation and globalization.

For the 10-year anniversary of the magazine, Chief Learning Officer caught up with the Saba chief executive to hear about the evolution of the industry and the critical role he believes chief learning officers will play in the transformation of the enterprise.

Tell me about your entrance into the industry. What was the opportunity you saw as an entrepreneur?
I felt that information systems were going to put companies at parity [and what] really would distinguish and differentiate companies and brands [is] essentially the skills and abilities of the people in those brands. That became very obvious to me a long time ago.

I could tell when I would walk into these companies [that] they were different from the others. It had a lot to do with my own self having gravitated to companies that have put a serious effort into developing and skilling their people. They were more distinguished in many regards. That was one key driver that I felt was a sustainable long-term competitive advantage.

It wasn’t really the information that would distinguish these businesses from each other in the competitive landscape, but their brand would get distinguished and highlighted depending on the skills and competence of the brand, which is essentially the people within those brands and the value chain of those businesses.

The other area that was very obvious to me was the Internet was going to transform this whole function in the enterprise in terms of its scale. It globalizes the process. It also personalizes the process. I could see that it was going to forever change the way learning gets delivered and put it in the hands of the learners. The Internet was more about learning than training, and they’re two very different things.

The other area that was a big deal was globalization. Back then, it was the early stages of globalization, but the pace of the Internet and globalization really are equal. The Internet enabled globalization at a much, much different speed.