Scott McPherson's Web Presence

Yesterday, I had the grand opportunity to be interviewed by "learning guru" Elliott Masie on the topic of pandemic influenza preparedness and the role that the chief learning officers and chief training officers of business, industry, academia and government will be asked/forced to play in preparing for, and mitigating the effects of, pandemic influenza.  Heckuva sentence, huh?

I am unfamiliar with the "training and learning universe," so I did exactly what Elliott did to come up with my name:  I Googled him.  He is an extremely well-respected and admired advocate of innovation and reinventing the entire learning and training experience.  He is also a facilitator and incubator of ideas.  His organization, the MASIE Center (www.masieweb.com) is a major supporter of the Malaria No More project, at http://www.malarianomore.org/.  His conference, currently under way in Orlando, has more than 2,100 attendees from 29 countries.

Masie also "vetted" me through the Central Intelligence Agency beforehand, which has caused me to start speaking in a friendly tone of voice to the little fire sprinkler I have in the ceiling of my office.  Anyway, with that kind of gravitas, I could not possibly resist his request for me to come down and have a personal discussion on influenza in front of twenty-one hundred of his closest friends!

We covered 1918, H5N1 and world history.  We covered my favorite line, WWID, or What Would Ike Do, regarding panflu planning.  But I asked a question of the audience.  I said, How many of you are currently involved in pandemic preparedness within your organization?

A fair number of hands shot up.  But then Elliott turned the question inside out and asked, How many of them were not involved?

A sea of arms and hands shot up.  Our look of surprise had to be evident on the two hi-def screens on either side of the stage.  We were both amazed that such a key pandemic resource as learning and training was being overlooked by upper management.  That, I feel, is symptomatic of where we are as a nation today with pandemic preparedness.  Few corporate leaders are seriously engaged in out-of-the-box thinking on this topic. For every Michael Dell, who I can personally assure you is engaged on this topic, there are ten thousand flu-clueless captains of industry.  For every Michael Leavitt, there are ten thousand flu-clueless agency heads, elected officials and political leaders nationwide.

CTOs and CLOs are a growing and influential lot.  And they were told, by Elliott and by me, that they need to become pandemic subject matter experts and agents for change within their own organizations.  Trainers and learning professionals need to quickly ramp up their knowledge of influenza, and of H5N1 in particular, I told the assembly.  Read John Barry's The Great Influenza.  Learn how to overcome supply chain failures.  Subscribe to Google alerts.  Go to flu blog sites and other important flu sites. Learn as much as they can about the disease themselves.  Don't rely upon the American mainstream media for when to prepare.  Be prepared to teach employees how to prepare -- and care for -- their families. And know when the whole thing is about to go Pop! 

So you captains of industry and government, pull up an empty chair for the learning and training officers.  They are your best hope at imparting the necessary knowledge and skills necesary to weather this coming storm.