Make a 3 paragraph post that addresses the following.

The first paragraph should explain the concept in detail about strategic planning and should include at least two quotes.

The second paragraph discusses current a current example or examples in significant depth.

The third paragraph explores future application of your selected concept for both you as an individual business professional as well as any other element of the business environment.

Keller Williams Invests in Training to Become the Real Estate Company of Choice The vision of Keller Williams, the largest real estate franchise in North America, is to be the real estate company of choice for agents, franchisees, and customers. Keller Williams strives to train its agents better than any other company in the world so they can delight customers, build their business, and have financial success. Just as location is a key factor in attracting buyers to purchase a home or commercial property, training is a key reason for Keller Williamss ability to reach its business goals, which each year are based on increasing the number of agents, sales, and profitability. Keller Williamss CEO believes that training is critical for the company to attract new agents because it helps them quickly become productive, resulting in sales and commissions. For current agents the challenge is to provide training to ncrease their productivity. To reinforce the importance Keller Williams places on training, all top executives teach at various field locations. Keller Williamss com-mitment to training and its role in the success of the business was recognized by its top ranking received in back-to-back years in training magazines Top 125. The company earned the distinction of being ranked #1 in 2015 and 2017.Keller Williams has several different training programs that support agents and the business. Training involves both online and classroom instruction where learn-ing occurs through interacting with instructors and coaching and opportunities for agents to collaborate, which helps them learn from each other by sharing knowl-edge and practices. For example, KW Connect makes training accessible anytime and anywhere. It includes user-generated content from more than 150,000 associ-ates including videos, audio files, and links; a question and answer forum where agents can ask questions, receive answers, and rate the helpfulness of responses; a searchable calendar to register for instructor-led training classes; and a feature that allows associates to follow others, including executives, and receive notification when new content is posted. Managers can create customized training programs for new agents or other employee groups. One training video available on KW Con-nect has the top sales agents in the company compete against each other. Each top selling agent creates and uploads a short video explaining their approach to a real estate challenge. Other associates are invited to watch and rate the videos. The agent with the highest evaluation moves on to compete against another agent in a new real estate challenge. KW Connect has made it possible for associates to watch more than 624 hours of training on an average day. Business Objective: A Life By Design (BOLD) is a seven-week training program during which agents are taught mindset exercises, language techniques, and how to participate in lead generation activities. The course focuses on personal well-being as well as busi-ness skills. During some classes in the program agents engage in real play, calling customers with instructors providing guidance and support. This allows the agents to generate business while learning. BOLD graduates have increased sales vol-umes by 80 percent, closed sales by 86 percent, and commissions by 118 percent compared to agents who havent taken the program. Mega Agent Expansion (MAE) helps top-performing agents understand how and when to expand into new mar-kets. MAE includes instructor-led classes, webinars, expert interviews, productivity resources, and coaching. The program helps participants understand all aspects of expanding their business, including how to centralize lead generation and adminis-tration and develop a workable business plan. They have access to a social media network for learning and sharing as well as monthly opportunities to ask questions of Keller Williamss top expansion agents. Growth Initiative (GI) is a distant learning and consulting program that trains managers how to effectively recruit and retain agents. The program includes weekly one-hour seminars, requires managers to make two recruiting appointments each day, five days a week, and helps managers share best practices through an online community and a dedicated Facebook page. In addition to its training programs, Keller Williams invested in building a training and education center at its corporate headquarters in Austin, Texas. The center man-ages all aspects of learning and develops new courses, learning tools, and videos. Williams doesnt just invest time and money into training; it also takes steps to assure its effectiveness. To keep training standards high and improve learning, every trainer and instructor must take several Train the Trainer courses before they can teach any courses. It analyzes what top agents are doing and how they are doing it and then incorporates this into training programs so all associ-ates can benefit. In all of its training, dedicated time is provided for associates to develop action plans that specify how they plan to use what they learned in their work. Every agent is encouraged to join one of the coaching programs Keller Williams offers to help them put into practice what they learned to improve their productivity. Each week they have the opportunity to participate in a coaching call led by a top executive. Different types of evaluation data are collected and shared with agents and managers. Because all training is voluntary, one mea-sure of its value is participation. This includes tracking how much time employees spend in training (an average of 82 hours per person of formal, planned training) and the number of employees and franchisees trained each year in instructor-led (100,000) and online (26,000) courses. The return on investment (ROI) of many courses is calculated. For example, BOLD costs $799 per student but the aver-age agent who participates in the course earns an additional $55,000 for the year. Keller Williams also tracks metrics such as the average days a property is on the market. The average days on the market for Keller Williams is lower than for its competitors, providing evidence that training is helping agents close deals quicker and provide better service.The company anticipates it will continue to grow at a rapid pace but recognizes that real estate is a local business based on agents and their relationships. Keller Williams views training as a key to creating value for the business, its associates, and their clients. Since 2013 the number of homes bought or sold with a Keller Williams agent has doubled. This has meant financial success for both agents and the company. For example, agent commissions have increased 150 percent.

INTRODUCTION As the chapters opening vignette shows, training at Keller Williams supports the business strategy. Recognizing that learning is part of all employees responsibilities, both managers and peers, along with training professionals, are actively involved in helping other employ-ees gain new skills and perspectives. This helps to reinforce the value of learning and its importance for the business. Keller Williams recognizes that learning through training and development is critical for winning in the marketplace.Why is the emphasis on strategic training important? Companies are in business to make money, and every business function is under pressure to show how it contributes to business success or else it faces spending cuts and even outsourcing. To contribute to a companys success, training activities should help the company achieve its business strategy. A business strategy is a plan that integrates the companys goals, policies, and actions.1 The strategy influences how the company uses physical capital (e.g., plants, technology, and equipment), financial capital (e.g., assets and cash reserves), and human capital (employees). The business strategy helps direct the companys activities (production, finance, marketing, and human resources) to reach specific goals. The goals are what the company hopes to achieve in the medium- and long-term future. Most companies goals include financial goals, such as to maximize shareholder wealth. But companies have other goals related to employee satisfaction, industry position, and community service.There are both direct and indirect links between training and business strategy and goals. Training that helps employees develop the skills needed to perform their jobs directly affects the business. Giving employees opportunities to learn and develop creates a positive work environment, which supports the business strategy by attracting talented employees, as well as motivating and retaining current employees.Consider how Aerospace Corporation uses training in ways that support the business and consider its urgency and available resources.2 Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit firm that supports the U.S. governments defense and intelligence program, has over 3,500 employees, most of whom are scientists or in technical fields needed to work on space and ground support systems. Aerospaces corporate vision is to provide engineering solutions to the nations most complex challenges. This vision is supported by its values: dedication to mission success, technical excellence, commitment to our people, integrity, and objec-tivity. To support its vision and values Aerospace provides 40 hours of learning each year for every employee. The emphasis on continuous learning is supported by how training is delivered. Because its workforce operates in 40 different locations and it needs to carefully account for how government-provided dollars are spent, Aerospace uses a 50-50 mix of face-to-face classroom instruction, a learning management system, and collaboration tools such as Sharepoint. This helps keep travel and lodging costs to attend training programs low, yet gives employees access to training wherever they are located.Business strategy has a major impact on the type and amount of training that occurs and whether resources (money, trainers time, and program development) should be devoted to training. Also, strategy influences the type, level, and mix of skills needed in the company. Strategy has a particularly strong influence on determining the following:1. The amount of training devoted to current or future job skills.2. The extent to which training is customized for the particular needs of an employee or is developed based on the needs of a team, unit, or division.3. Whether training is restricted to specific groups of employees (such as persons identi-fied as having managerial talent) or open to all employees.4. Whether training is planned and systematically administered, provided only when prob-lems occur, or developed spontaneously as a reaction to what competitors are doing.5. The importance placed on training compared to other human resource management (HRM) practices, such as selection and compensation.3This chapter begins with a discussion of how training is evolving. Traditionally, train-ing has been seen as an event or program designed to develop specific, explicit knowledge and skills. But managers and trainers and human resource professionals have begun to recognize the potential contribution to business goals of knowledge that is based on experi-ence, which is impossible to teach in a training program, and they have broadened the role of training to include learning and designing ways of creating and sharing knowledge. The chapter goes on to discuss the process of strategic training and development, including identifying business strategy, choosing strategic training and development initiatives that support the strategy, providing training and development activities that support the strate-gic initiatives, and identifying and collecting metrics to demonstrate the value of training. The chapter next describes organizational factors that influence how training relates to the business strategy. These include the roles of employees and managers, top manage-ment support for training, integration of business units, staffing and human resource plan-ning strategy, degree of unionization, and manager, trainer, and employee involvement in training. The chapter addresses specific strategic types and their implications for training. Then the chapter emphasizes that for strategic learning, training, and development to be adopted, accepted, and used by managers and employees, it is important to consider it from a change model and marketing perspective. The chapter ends with a description of several different ways of organizing the training function, emphasizing that the business-embedded and corporate university models are gaining in popularity as companies are aligning training activities with business goals.