Mike,
A fave topic of mine. Your first observation under "Three Changing Trends" is intriguing. I can see it to be possible with budgets shrinking - public and private industries - and more carefully selected learning &amp; development solutions are sought. It certainly changes how vendors make available their offering. It's compelling.

For this to be successful, managers must alter how they support the learning and development of staff. A greater emphasis must be placed on development post-learning or development - period. Managers who can provide development assignments or opportunities to their leaders after a learning solution will increase the return on time. Patience, however, must also be learned. As you point out, leadership is learned from the successes and failures. I'd add that principals, approaches, and such can be taught to aid the on-the-job development associated with successes and failures.

Shawn