Company: Lasting Contribution, Hoffman Estates, IL, USA
Company Description: Lasting Contribution is a sole proprietorship run by Tad Waddington. It’s goal is to convince businesses of the central role that Human Resources plays in business, because the success of businesses (and civilizations) depends on cultivating human capital. Tad has given speeches and consulted on three continents in the last year.
Nomination Category: Human Resources Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Human Resources Executive

Nomination Title: Tad Waddington, Thought Leader

   1. Tell the story about what this nominee achieved (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

          Context
          Peter F. Drucker argued that "developing talent is business's most important
          task - the sine qua non of competition in a knowledge economy"
          (HBR: "They're Not Employees, They're People"). This means that
          "knowledge-worker productivity requires that the knowledge worker is both seen
          and treated as an 'asset' rather than a 'cost'" (Management Challenges for the
          21st Century). Therefore, Pfeffer wrote in The Human Equation, "Training is an
          investment in the organization's staff, and in the current business milieu, it
          virtually begs for some sort of return-on investment calculations." 
           
          Past
          Defying the prevailing 'wisdom' that the value of training must be taken on
          faith, Tad Waddington obtained records on 261,000 current and past employees at
          Accenture. After factoring out the effects of market cycle, inflation, amount of
          experience, and other confounds, he isolated the effect that training had on per
          person margin. For every dollar Accenture spent training its people, it received
          $4.53 back. This work won a Corporate University Xchange award for excellence in
          measurement, a Gold from Brandon Hall as a Best Practice for Determining ROI, an
          ASTD BEST, and a Chief Learning Officer Magazine Impact award. When Nobel Prize
          winning human-capital economist Gary Becker helped Accenture launch their book
          Return on Learning: Training for High Performance at Accenture, he said, "This
          is exactly the kind of work that ... businesses most need to be doing"
          (University of Chicago's Return on Learning Conference, 10/13/2006). Accenture's
          Chief Learning Officer, Donald Vanthournout, said, "Tad's work has fundamentally
          changed the equation for how businesses think about investing in training."

          Present
          In September 2007 Waddington published a book, called Lasting
          Contribution: How to Think, Plan, and Act to Accomplish Meaningful Work. Through
          a deep exploration of talent, the book fundamentally changes the equation for
          how people think about doing business. The book provides a unified theory of
          business and, among other insights, demonstrates the ways in which efficiency
          can be harmful, non-action may be the best action, and a company may do better
          by not being the best in any one category. Lasting Contribution has already won
          a National 2007 Best Book Award, an Axiom Business Book award, and an Eric
          Hoffer Award. It is currently a finalist for several other awards. University of
          Chicago Professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, James E. Schrager, said that
          Lasting Contribution, "Should be required reading for every senior executive
          everywhere in the world."

          Future
          Having first proven the value of investing in developing talent and then
          explicating  the causes and consequences of highly-developed talent, Waddington
          has shown the central role that the Human Resource Executive can and should play
          in business. The hope is that businesses will truly see that developing talent
          is their most important task and will begin to treat their people not as costs,
          but as assets.

   2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

          http://lastingcontribution.com/default.aspx
          http://hopepubs.home.comcast.net/~hopepubs/HAbookwinners.html
          http://www.forewordmagazine.com/botya/print2k7.aspx
         http://www.kirkusreviews.com/kirkusreviews/discoveries/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003680819
          http://www.usabooknews.com/bestbooksawards2007.html
          http://www.independentpublisher.com/article.php?page=1211
          https://www.accenture.com/Landing_Pages/By_Subject/Outsourcing/returnonlearninghtm?c=bc_rolhreem_1006&n=em1-1
          http://www.accenture.com/Global/Research_and_Insights/Outlook/By_Subject/Human_Resource_Mgmt/ReturnLearningPart3.htm

   3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about this nominee:

          Tad Waddington says he achieved literacy while getting his MA from the
          University of Chicago's Divinity School where he focused on the history of
          Chinese religions. (Confucianism is strongly concerned with developing talent.)
          He achieved numeracy while getting his PhD from the University of Chicago in
          Measurement, Evaluation and Statistical Analysis. He achieved efficacy as
          Director of Performance Measurement in Accenture's Human Resources' organization
          Capability Development (Any views expressed herein are solely those of the
          author, and may not in any way be attributed to the author's employer.) As for
          achieving a legacy, well that remains to be seen.