Learning Is The New Working

Another RedThread Rewind episode: “I think we have to help organizations get out of the way and let people unleash and unlock their ca-pabilities in ways that does not require the organization to be at the center.” Sounds pretty optimistic? No surprise as whatever else he is, our guest this week, Greg Pryor, is an optimist—and we are too, given the power of the examples and the strength of the conviction he gave us in this hour of debate over the future of HR. Greg, People & Performance Evangelist at Workday, a tech firm that is shaking up the world of enterprise software and which we're grateful to have as sponsor of this whole Work-place Stories first season, shares many fascinating insights into what he sees as a totally new age for human capital management that the pandemic has tipped us all into. These cover the gamut from bleeding-edge academic research on the future of work to the life lessons kids are teaching their par-ents out of playing Fortnite, and keep Stacia and fellow interviewer Chris engaged and often delighted. It's a great conversation: use it to level up your thinking about skills. We certainly did.

Sometimes you feel you're in the eye of the hurricane: so much is happening in terms of our wider society in terms of changing expectations, changing ways of working, changing life choices. Add the potentially explosive compound called ‘Diversity' into all this, and it can start to feel a little hot in here. But, advises this week's special guest and DEIB and L&D expert practitioner Jesse Jackson, CLO for JPMorgan Chase with a special focus on the Wall St's giant's consumer community banking business: when it comes to getting DEIB right, it's not heat you want: it's light. This is a really fascinating chance to find out from a person deep in the midst of all the changes we're talking about, but also deep in a blue-chip financial services firm that always has to see things in terms of achievable ROI. We'll let you decide if you agree that's what Jesse's achieving: us, we're hunkering down in the place where it's always the most interesting… that hurricane's eye. Because that's where change happens.

“I think that in the future, what will be really necessary in terms of skills are people that talk different languages of skills… talking different languages of different skill sets will be something really, really im-portant.” Why is it significant that become more expert seems so fused with speaking restricted lan-guages? And what does it mean to have ‘intentionality' about skills? How do you start to really under-stand the skills needs of an organization you join in COVID? This week, these and many other thorny but critical issues get exposed via our debate with long-time friend and highly accomplished CLO and talent leader Nuno Gonçalves, who is now starting to do at global confectionary, food and pet care giant Mars what he did at European life sciences player UCB: implement a cross-company, future-focused skills strategy. It's an excellent conversation with a truly passionate learning ninja who's thought deeply about these problems; we think you're going to love it.

Are there three sets of people in Inclusion: the folks doing the ground-level work on DEIB, maybe the researchers way off in the academic stratosphere, and then the people actually affected by these issues on a day-to-day level in the workplace? If so, could we simplify this and remove a layer? If you think that's a good idea, then listen today to someone who is doing all she can to fuse the first two roles there—Rachel Fichter, a PhD who also works for a Wall St financial analytics firm, S&P Global… but who sees herself in a fascinating new kind of role in HR and analytics: DEIB scholar-practitioner, helping her firm Integrate Inclusion while also diving into the literature on Belonging in the Columbia University stacks. So: quite a woman. And quite a DEIB thinker. You're going to like this Workplace Story.

“What I introduce [my students] to are the kinds of skills that allow them to navigate ambiguity.” If that seems like urgently-needed capability you or your team to have you're in luck, as you're about to find out a whole lot more about why you'd need such a thing… and why you won't find it, alas, in to-day's conventional curriculum (including corporate L&D). In the first full episode of our new Red-Thread podcast—our deep dive into what we're calling capitalism's focus on ‘The Skills Obsession'—we meet passionate educator, innovator and bestselling author Lisa Kay Solomon. Designer in Resi-dence at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (‘the d.school') at Stanford University, Lisa presents in her dialog with Stacia, Dani and Chris something of a masterclass in what thinking about the future actually needs to consist of—and how that feeds into her conviction that, “learning is the currency of possibility.”

In December 2020, I was invited to host three live Learning podcasts at last year's HR Innovation and Tech Fest (#HRTechFest), a week-long event hosted in Sydney, Australia by Hannover Fairs; I'd previously attended as an in-person delegate, and loved the energy and vibrancy of the Antipodean L&D community I interacted with, so I was more than happy to help out when asked (and can't wait for it to go back to being real-world again later this year!). You may have caught my previous excellent Tech Fest conversation with Air New Zealand's Dr Sydney Savion—and this is the perfect follow-up: Director of Manager/Leader Capabilities, Worldwide Learning at Microsoft, Shelby Grieve. A progressive, results-oriented leader with nearly 25 years of experience building and managing high performing, cross-functional teams, as well as building impactful, highly scaled global programs, Shelby has proven leadership skills and is a 2018 recipient of Microsoft's prestigious Circle of Excellence award, and at Platinum Level. And former Basketball champ and coach! Our conversation ranges across a range of really interesting L&D issues, shaped by her experience at a Microsoft actively moving to the famous shift from ‘know-it-all' to a ‘learn-it-all' culture demanded by LFG's favourite CEO, Satya Nadella, as well as: what 18 months of structured modelling, coaching and caring tuition for managers is achieving; how ‘model, coach and care' capability is genuinely a performance metric now and what she and her team do when it isn't happening enough; Microsoft's new rule of three (personal impact, how much you helped others succeed, and how well you leveraged the work of others); a very different picture of virtual corporate training looks like; good tools to help you; what Microsoft is doing to get ready for the imminent hybrid workplace; and much more.

In our thematic Season 5—‘The Learning Leaders’—we’ve been meeting both new and seasoned leaders from industry, academia, and technology. The sole criterion for us profiling them is they have made significant contributions to workplace learning, EdTech, and talent leadership disciplines—and that’s absolutely true of today’s guest, 15-year veteran of leading and consulting on talent development and learning transformations in Fortune 100s, Matthew Daniel. Now Principal Consultant at Guild Education—which is an amazing institution in its own right, of course—Matthew is genuinely passionate about skills and the trouble we may be storing up for ourselves as a society around them. And indeed skills is the focus of the whole separate podcast series I am borrowing this excellent conversation from, our partner RedThread Research’s amazing ‘Workplace Stories’ podcast: kicking off in February, this is a series of analyses with experts (and indeed, Learning Leaders in their own right) who are working wit Stacia, Dani and I to unpick, in Season 1, what RTR sees as our current ‘Skills Obsession.’ This run is being sponsored by the great guys over at Workday, who plan to run an exclusive live webinar towards the end of the season, where you can meet us and join in a conversation about the future of skills and skills management. Find out more information, and access exclusive Workplace Stories from RedThread Research Season 1 ‘The Skills Obsession,’ please go to the main RedThread home page at redthreadresearch.com and click on ‘Podcast.' I hope you like this episode enough to want to get more, so please think about Following (what we do now instead of ‘subscribing,’ see) on your podcast platform of choice; see you over at Workplace Stories soon!

If you're working for a body whose main mission is to develop a Georgia where schools and communities pursue breakthrough success for all students regardless of race, geography, or family income, you’re right in thinking that support for diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) is going to be a big priority. Then the pandemic hit—and here in Season 6 of ‘Learning Is The New Working’ we’re looking into the impact of the global health crisis on the future of work and Workplace Learning. So this week we get a chance to not just do that, but also to see some real pandemic-inspired L&D innovation, too, as we hear from the great people over at non-profit Glisi, the Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement. Set up by former state Governor Roy Barnes with a mission to uplift school leaders, transform mindsets and action, create vibrant cultures of innovation and build excellent and equitable schools, Glisi is there to help: so get ready to hear how it did so, with something different—the use of bite-sized, 1200-character max text-based learning… and all this in the crazy first months of the ‘rona, as part of a drive to help teach thousands of educators and managers at the State’s Forsyth County school district get to grips with what can be a very challenging topic for L&D (and users). So listen as the organization’s Senior Program Director Letishia Seabrook Jones and her colleague the Associate Director of Organizational Effectiveness, Kasey Wood, share with us the practicalities of working with this unique L&D tech, which is from Arist, which develops text message-based learning that is strives to be as accessible, engaging, and super effective as possible. These practicalities include working with that very tight constraint of 1200 characters, as well as: a core design principle—let’s get through all of this course, even if it makes you uncomfortable; a great project motivator—How do we keep people uplifted during this year with so much this past year, with so much change, and so much unknown? what it’s like to build two new courses from scratch, remotely. over 10 days each; going from creating hours or days of content to something much smaller; how text-based content met the need for steady light touches in the flow of work to coach people when maybe they couldn't dedicate 30 minutes, but they could dedicate five or 10, maybe even 15; how useful the supplier’s guidance was on things feedback on basics of instruction, use of emojis, and where to put links so that they weren't missed; and much more.

In 2019, the Business Roundtable surprised many when it declared that companies should have a purpose beyond serving shareholders—that the corporation’s goal should also be to deliver value to customers, employees, suppliers and communities. Clearly, learning and development is critical to delivering this vision: by investing in the workforce, we give our users the skills and knowledge they need to feel valued and deliver better service to customers and communities. But how do we know if our investment is working? What does successful purpose look like? Inspired by the Roundtable announcement, longtime friends of the podcast RedThread Research and I decided to try and find out in the shape of what became Season 7 of ‘Learning Is The New Working’—our attempt to answer the question, ‘Is Purpose Working?’ It should be noted Stacia and Dani had already had the purpose question under their research microscope, which gave us a great platform for our work of discovery—and leading L&D tech firm NovoEd, also fascinated by the implications for its customers of the shift to Purpose, also decided to help out by generously stepping into sponsor the work. As you’ll know, over the course of 10 episodes, comprised of a scene setter and nine interviews with purpose stakeholders across a range of industries, we really shook the trees on this one. And this week, we pull all the threads together (a word deliberately chosen, as you’ll about to hear) for a special summary discussion, ‘The Role of Purpose in Supercharging Workplace Learning,’ that forms this special final season episode, our season-capping webinar hosted by the good people over at NovoEd. Tune in now to listen to myself, Stacia and Dani, as well as NovoEd’s Director, Product & Content Marketing Declan Fox—all under the expert MC-ing of his colleague, the company’s Chief Learning Strategist, Todd Moran—walk you through what we learned over those 10 discussions, and perhaps more critically what the takeaways have to be for both global business and the L&D function as purpose becomes more and more a focus of us all, from individual team member to board. And for me personally, I now think ‘purpose’ is the fuel that L&D professionals have been looking for and will really work for our community. My reasons for thinking so include: Purpose provides meaning in a time of crisis; Purpose isn’t just branding; Purpose ≠ ‘good deeds’ alone; Purpose is fully compatible with turning a profit; It’s starting to be a real bottom-line performance metric; Purpose and the talent pipeline: a highly potent mix; The coming centrality of L&D in purpose; and much more.

With Season 6, we’ve been looking into the implications of the global pandemic on the future of work and Workplace Learning. This week we get the helpful perspective of what many people in the business say has been a quiet force for innovation over decades: HR and L&D heavy-hitter Bill Pelster. A resume that includes building major people practices at not just one but two global consultancies, as well as being the man who bought Josh Bersin into one of them, Deloitte, and who then founded that organisation’s much-envied Deloitte University outside Dallas would in itself more than justify Bill being included in any one of our on-going thematic seasons. But the rise two prominence through COVID of the new HR tech group he set up with Josh in 2019, The Bersin Academy, is what sealed the deal for us: Bill and his team have been right at the eye of the health crisis hurricane here, so we knew when he paused for breath we’d want to hear his thoughts on our central question of, From what-if to what now? So, in this very focused episode, look to hear from Bill about the steps that take you from “the nuclear side” of the Air Force to working with big companies dealing with SAP where he decided the HR side of the problem—“These darn people!” as he jokes—was more interesting than the coding, his retirement and immediate pivot to set up his shingle with Josh and why he lives in the beautiful Pacific North West, as well as: how Bersin is doing, and even growing, in the pandemic; the 10-20m professionals who either have HR or learning or talent in their job description, and why that’s huge lever for change in any organisation; what the Academy stands for (democratizing of professional development, a home for HR best practice, networking and support for conversations with peers); how the pandemic meant HR went from being part to the team to leading the team; the inter-relationship between the Academy and Josh Bersin’s ongoing researchthe rising importance, even in the these crazy times, of physical spaces for effective learning; the inside story of how the Deloitte University was designed, including its out-of-city locale; the benefits from mixing up people from different disciplines he learnt from his daughter’s experiences at USC; some hints on what the Academy has planned for 2021; and much more.

Now we’re (still) all meeting virtually, making virtual events work is a priority, but many organisations have struggled to make them work: it’s particularly an issue when we’re all fried from endless Zoom meetings anyway. This week on Learning Is The New Working, we meet someone who says they know how to fix that, and even gives us the algorithm: an interactive design, a skilled facilitator, prepared participants, equipped to learn. Sound useful to what you’re trying to do? Then check out the guidance and advice you’re about to get from virtual training consultant, facilitator, author and speaker Cindy Huggett. Cindy is convinced that virtual events can be immersive, interactive and engaging—which could also easily be our ‘review’ of this great conversation with a genuine Learning Leader. That’s our thematic season, as you will remember, where we meet new and seasoned leaders from industry, academia, and technology who have made significant contributions to workplace learning, edtech, and talent leadership discipline. And it’s also an episode in Season Five that’s been kindly sponsored by the amazing team at Arist, the pioneer of text message courses that let you teach and train in bite-size chunks that learners love, and whose use cases ranging from leadership training to knowledge reinforcement. So now we’re all set up, get ready to find out about Cindy’s 29 years of professional experience that include leadership roles in global organizations, starting a non-profit focused on volunteering and community service, serving on the national ATD Board of Directors, teaching classroom trainers how to engage with remote audiences and designers how to use typical platform tools to create interactive classes, as well as: why she’s based in North Carolina; her core definition of key virtual training terms (and why they matter); why your assumptions about virtual training were pretty much all wrong pre-2020; how design thinking, interactivity, and tolerance came to the rescue; her views on change in terms of virtual training platform tech; the highlights of her unique annual survey, especially a big drop in content prep time; our new perspective on making the best use of everyone’s time; and much more.

In December 2020, I was invited to host three live Learning podcasts at last year’s HR Innovation and Tech Fest (#HRTechFest), a week-long event hosted in Sydney, Australia by Hannover Fairs; I’d previously attended as an in-person delegate, and loved the energy and vibrancy of the Antipodean L&D community I interacted with, so I was more than happy to help out when asked (and can’t wait for it to go back to being real-world again later this year!). My first live podcast was with this week’s LITNW guest Dr. Sydney, GM Learning/CLO at Air New Zealand and a former chief of education strategy at Dell-EMC and Learning leader at Booz Allen Hamilton. Sydney is definitely a prime candidate for us to profile her as one of our Learning Leaders, where we meet new and seasoned leaders from industry, academia, and technology who have made significant contributions to workplace learning, edtech, and talent leadership disciplines. After all, she does truly believe that “creating a true learning culture starts at the top with embracing the power of democratized learning to reshape mindsets, human capabilities, and organizational culture.” Hear hear! So in our conversation look to hear more about her personal journey, which includes being crowned CLO magazine’s Chief Learning Officer of the Year 2020 (Better Work Media Group), as well as: what it’s like when 60% of your company’s income goes away overnighther belief in personal purpose and providence; working life in a nearly COVID-free New Zealand; the importance of her 20 years in the US Air Force on everything she does; how you crunch 7 LMSs down into one (cloud) one; how she got to her mantra of ‘survive, revive and thrive’ and what it really means; and much more.

In 2013, Big Four consulting firm Ernst & Young, a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and consulting services, rebranded as ‘EY.’ What maybe few of us picked up on at the time was that part of that rebrand made an explicit Purpose statement front and center: ‘Building a better working world.’ But in this, our latest ‘Is Purpose Working?’ season in collaboration with RedThread Research sponsored by edtech leader NovoEd, that was actually a hugely important internal cultural shift and pivot for the company: “By everyone knowing our purpose statement, it creates a golden thread--so no matter where you are in the world, what culture you have, whether you're a new employee or a tenured employee, what service line you're in and what work you do you come to work to do every day, we are all connected by the fact that we are all building a better working world.” Join us, then, for a deep-dive into why this global service leader adopted Purpose and how it’s helping, as well as the critical role it sees L&D in that pivot, framed as a key role in helping people become performers, colleagues, leaders—and people. Helping us understand are two excellent speakers, Tal Goldhamer, Partner and Chief Learning Officer - Americas, EY, and his colleague Jeff Stier, EY Americas Consulting Purpose & Vision Realized Leader. As ever, our investigation is aided and sharpened up by the participation of RedThread, this time Stacia flying solo: and it’s a genuinely fascinating and at times moving and personal exploration, featuring a 6th Century CE Anglo-Saxon poem, as well as: EY’s in the unique position to bring the power of a large firm to support our people on their personal journey of discovering their individual talent that they develop for themselves, their teams, their clients, their communities, and for the world
; details of how EY individuals have found Purpose through internal, L&D-led, Purpose programs
; an intriguing new concept in our Purpose journey—the idea of nested Purpose
; why the guys believe that personal purpose and personal vision and organizational purpose are part of what gives daily meaning to the work that you do daily
; how, if you want to be an organization that claims to be purpose- and vision-led, you need to be led by leaders who themselves are purpose- and vision-led—which means developing a platform and program around personal purpose and vision
; and so much more.

First there was IDEO, an award-winning global design firm that decided to take a human-centered, design-based approach to help organisations innovate and grow; you may or may not have encountered its unique approach if you’ve ever interacted with the Stanford d.school. And then, in 2014, along came IDEO U (University), an online school promising to equip learners with the skills, mindsets, and tools to help us stay relevant and adaptive in our modern world. Just on its own, IDEO U would so be worth us looking at it as an example of successful online L&D, as it’s served over 50,000 learners in 100 countries, spawning a community connecting over 200,000 change makers bringing increased creativity, innovation, and modern leadership into their work. But we know that driving principle at IDEO is Design Thinking, which its chair Tim Brown says we should see as “a human-centered approach to innovation” that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success… so what is the connection, if any, between Design Thinking and Purpose? What role does Purpose play in what Suzanne’s been trying to do this past bumpy year of COVID as Managing Partner of that part of IDEO? Given that the organization specifically offers a Power of Purpose course (“A clear purpose guides people through change and motivates them to lead from wherever they are”), we knew we needed to know more. So this week, in one of our final (but not final final!) episodes in our ‘Is Purpose Working?’ Odyssey we meet the latter’s Founder and Dean, Suzanne Gibbs Howard to try and find out. Her work at IDEO U caps a pretty amazing (she’ll tell more of a “crooked path:” we think you’ll disagree) personal and professional journey that involved Anthropology and associated field work, as well as a dip into divinity school, usability and lengthy spells in China and Africa. We learn about that, as well as: why she ended up in that beautiful city by the Bay called San Francisco; how IDEO interprets Purpose—as a way of helping align people toward what's next for them; how our common tough 2020 brought Purpose to the surface for many people struggling to “keep pushing forward;" the role of Learning as a way to spark the engagement that’s the necessary precursor to successful, Purpose-driven engagement; why L&D needs to be a lot more than “just MOOCs and talking heads” from now on; and so much more.

Does Purpose help the bottom line? It’s a fair question, surely—maybe, ultimately, the best question we can really ask ourselves in business as the idea of a move away from purely shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism takes off. And while we do need to ask CEOs of Purpose-driven companies that question, perhaps the ideal community to seek a hard-nosed answer here is the VC (venture capitalist) world, for whom the conditio sine qua non of an investment has to be that it will pay back, at multiples. Luckily for us on Season 7 and all our now fast-interlocking conversations on our central question of ‘Is Purpose Working?’ is that today, we have the definitive answer: yes—in fact, it’s actually only the companies that have Purpose that end up with strong cultures and stronger outcomes. There’s a lot to take in to see why our guest, Deborah Quazzo, Managing Partner at GSV Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund investing in education and workforce technology entrepreneurs, is so convinced of that fact, but we hope we have intrigued you enough to listen in to see her logic and proof… but it’s also just such a pleasure to listen to the fusion of a deeply ethical mindset and razor-sharp thinking Deborah brings to her job. Just one example among many: her rhetorical question about why she does what she does: Is it more fun to go call on a company making breakfast cereal, or on a company that’s really trying to change people’s lives meaningfully? Deborah and her team have been active for many years disrupting the $6 trillion education technology sector, having helped amazing names like ClassDojo, Degreed, and RaiseMe, among many others, get out of the lab. Equally important to her, as you’re about to hear, is her work on the annual ASU GSV Summit: now in its 11th year, the Summit celebrates innovations and innovators across the global “preK to Gray” learning and talent landscape and this COVID, virtual year attracted a quite staggering 33,000 online attendees. So tune in now to hear how this predominantly Chicago-based ed tech sector investment ninja has been putting ‘Purpose’ as one of the ‘5 Ps’ a startup has to have before she even looks at them. Before we get started, two callouts are needed: one, to our on-going Season 7 partners, Dani and Stacia over at Purpose-driven HR advisory group RedThread Research, and most especially to our Season sponsors, ed tech luminaries NovoEd, who are just as keen as we are to find an answer to ‘Is Purpose Working?’ Don’t forget that in early 2021, the issues Deborah raises today will be under the microscope in our planned special live, online gated experience, where we will debate all the Learnings from Season 7. If you doubt that Purpose is good for capitalism, then make sure you can get in your two cents about it by locking-in your free place at the webinar. How can I do that, Chris? I hear you say. It’s easy: click on over to the special NovoEd microsite supporting the project, www.novoed.com/purpose. All done? Great—so let’s hear about VC money, Purpose, diversity and what a VC does, as well as: how Deborah sees a coming together of all parts of Education and workplace training; the emergence of knowledge as a ‘currency’; why what GSV does is not the same as what an impact fund tries to do; that significant 2019 Business Round Table statement… are we actually seeing enough action by companies? How Learning is starting (at last?) to be seen as an important weapon by corporate leaders to improve overall outcomes; her conviction that exponential growth in an ed tech company will come not just through great technology, but through diverse teams; what inspired her to get into the ed tech area; and much more.

Celia Berenguer. since November 2017 Chief Learning Officer at European-headquarterted Life Sciences giant Sanofi, couldn’t have been more excited getting ready to press the ‘Go’ button a new Sanofi University. Then, as we hear on this latest episode in our on-going Season 7 look at Purpose in the modern enterprise, a certain novel coronavirus decided to mess with her plans. This is a story, then, about not just how she and her L&D team had to help flip the company to remote working, but what to do about that whole corporate Learning endeavor. Celia—a graduate of Tufts who’s held senior Learning roles in organisations including Barclays, BP, and the Harvard Business School—tells me and this week’s co-interviewer, RedThread Research’s Dani Johnson, not just how she won through, but how a renewed Sanofi focus on Purpose driven by its new CEO, Paul Hudson, helped her work through many of her most difficult issues. A way we decide to understand all this is that COVID’s been a way to help L&D see that what it needs to offer is access to skills and support for talent mobility that makes sense for the individual, the company’s and their own Purpose of ‘Empowering Life:’ Purpose, perhaps, as more bottom-up than top-down, compared to other companies we’ve profiled in our exploration of ‘Is Purpose Working?’ Expect to hear a lot of honest reflection on the first steps of an amazing journey, then, as well as all the countries you need to live in to end up with that accent, the fun and challenge of working with 140 nationalities working hard on everything from general medicines to consumer healthcare to vaccine creation, as well as: how she’s seen the Pandemic throw out the talent rulebook and end standard career pathways; how Learning at Sanofi has a new focus, aligned to getting products out there to help patients; the contribution to making Purpose explicit by her new CEO; why she sees L&D as the source of all the support mechanisms and development tools that can bring that Purpose to life for people; democratising Learning and sharing Learning in a crisis; and so much more.

Near the end of today’s episode our guest tells us that, “My Purpose is to bring hope to every employee of Johnson & Johnson.” We have no doubt at all he means it—and what makes this even more interesting is that he’s working in an $85 billion enterprise that many see as being one of he very first American brands to publicly commit to Purpose. The company is, of course, Johnson & Johnson, a brand founded in 1886 that develops medical devices, pharmaceutical, and consumer packaged goods, and the individual we’re speaking to about Purpose is its Global Head of Talent Development, Clint Kofford. Today, we’re going to delve into what Clint means by his statement—as well as how Johnson & Johnson’s Purpose statement, its famous Credo, feeds into what he and all of its other 135,000 team members do every day. As you may know the Credo, written in 1932, lays out how, among other things, it is “responsible to our employees who work with us throughout the world” and that managers must always strive to “provide an inclusive work environment where each person must be considered as an individual”—but just as importantly, “When we operate according to these principles, the stockholders should realize a fair return.” Amazing stuff for 1932; still pretty cool—which is why we knew J&J had to be a big part of Season 7, where we’re working with the smart gals at RedThread Research to understand Purpose in modern American business… and why Clint is convinced the Credo’s more than just a moral compass, but a recipe for business success. And we do, I think, but really through a great dialog with him, not from a line-by-line analysis of any Purpose statement. A senior HR, talent, and leadership development professional with a strong track record of delivering high impact change initiatives, developing talent, and elevating executive capability across a variety of industries and business life-cycles, Clint discusses his career highlights, which include time at Nike and Mars, what led him to living in North Central New Jersey, as well as: his day to day role leading of Johnson & Johnson’s management and leadership development work; what the mechanism is for doing that at the company, the Human Performance Institute, and its roots in sports psychology, and how the Institute is now the new internal J&J ‘brand;' Purpose and L&D and how new personalised career paths are starting to energise the team; how, as a Learning professional, he’s doing what every Learning professional wants—harness the unique talents of everyone in the organisation to bring out the best ; how he thinks Purpose the glue that holds Talent together—but how internal paradigms may need to shift around the status of non-full time employees first; and much more.

Ask today’s guest, Dan Pontefract, about his current mission and he’ll tell you, “If we want Purpose to happen, maybe we need to take a look at our thinking”—and that, “We’re not here to see through each other, we’re here to see each other through.” Sounds like we need his input into our work trying to answer our defining question for Season 7 of ‘Is Purpose Working?’ Agreed—and we do just that in today’s episode, but then we do even more: in the first of a two-half Purpose podcast, we then have a mid-Season discussion which I’ll tell you about in a second. Now, back to Dan: based in Canada (Victoria, British Columbia) Dan is a leadership strategist, author, keynote speaker and trusted advisor. After a successful career including as ‘Chief Envisioner’ and Chief Learning Officer at TELUS, a $14bn Canadian telecommunications company where he (among other things) set up a special internal TELUS MBA, a role he took on after senior roles at major tech firms such as SAP, Business Objects and BCIT, Dan then founded The Pontefract Group, which is all about building bridges between life and work. Writing for Forbes and Harvard Business Review, he’s also an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria Gustavson School of Business, and has published four books (with a fifth on the way!). And as you’re going to hear, Purpose is very much at the heart of all his recent work and thinking; he says he helps organizations and leaders become better versions of themselves, plus offers consulting to help organisations get more “collaborative, productive, engaged and purpose-driven”. We flesh this out a little bit, and also find out how: why Purpose needs to be more than ‘values on the wall’ but a working, operating behaviour guide; his idea that there are three kinds of Purpose—personal, role and organisational; why he’s convinced there’s a direct link between EBITDA and Purpose; is it the employer’s responsibility or not to help the employee find their Purpose? why Purpose is much more a realistic business deliverable after COVID than it was in 2015; and much more.Then, as noted, we pivot after the conversation with Dan to conduct a special three-way (Dani, Stacia and I) review of some recent key developments with regard to Purpose and what’s going on out there in a fast-moving COVID world right now. Before we deep dive into all that, just a reminder that, in early 2021, the issues Dan but also all our other awesome guests will get discussed in the second half over all nine episodes of the Season will have a full Level 1 Diagnostic in a special live, online gated experience where we will debate all the Learnings and problems with Purpose we’ve uncovered. Make sure you file a question if you have one real early by locking-in your free place at the webinar. How can I do that, I hear you say? So easy it’s almost insulting to a smart person like you, I answer! Just zip on over to the special NovoEd microsite supporting the project, www.novoed.com/purpose (and thanks once again to those guys for sponsoring all this work). All set? Cool—so get ready for a quick debate between me and the smart RedThread Research ladies on what we took from talking to Dan like the many levels of Purpose beyond organisational and why they need to align and his sharp linking of Purpose and Empathy, as well as external developments such as: how talk of Purpose is everywhere right now—including for the President-Elect—but will it stand the test of Time? a year on from the famous Business Roundtable statement, what’s actually happening in the real world, Purpose-wise? a critique of the September KKS Advisors Purpose audit and its methodology; where we are with possible metrics to help… if we even need them; and much more.

Wall St might not be the most obvious place to find a company with Purpose. But when we meet someone like today’s Season 7 ‘Is Purpose Working?’ podcast guest, and they say things like, “If purpose is an articulation of the reason for existence, we end up articulating something we were already living,” then—maybe we’re in the right place after all. Meet Dr Rachel Fichter, once a professional cellist and educator who now spends her days helping colleagues accelerate progress in the world by providing intelligence essential for companies, governments and individuals to “make decisions with conviction”… in other words—live out the company Purpose statement. The company in question she’s doing all this at is the world’s leading provider of credit ratings S&P Global, where she’s the 22,000-strong company’s Global Head of Talent and Leadership. What’s really interesting is that her company is also helping its customers better orient to a Purpose perspective, by creating environmental social and governance information products that help investors better evaluate companies around important metrics like climate change to social justice, as well as help clients understand where it stands with respect to those increasingly critical KPIs. On the podcast, Rachel tells RedThread Research’s Stacia Sherman Garr and I all about her journey to such a position, and why Purpose could matter for a global financial data and analytics company like S&P. So, a definite important contribution today to us gathering the inputs to try and answer our question of, ‘Is Purpose Working?’ Like me, if you’re interested in how questions around how talent management, leadership development, executive coaching, organizational development, culture, and workplace Learning factor into the Purpose discussion, then you’re definitely going to want to hear Rachel’s thoughts. Finally, another reminder that all this ‘Is Purpose Working?’ work is set to peak in a live, online gated experience where Dani, Stacia and I will debate all the Learnings from Season 7 that have come through, with inputs including today’s great discussion with Rachel. There, you will be able to get your question about anything she or our other Season 7 guests have raised—but to get your questions in nice and early, lock-in your free place at the webinar over at the special NovoEd microsite supporting the project, www.novoed.com/purpose. You good? Great—so now, let’s hear from Rachel explain how you go from the New England Conservatory to the heart of American finance, why L&D is deliberately decentralized at S&P Global, as well as: why we need to stop saying ‘talent’ (hint: is that all we value in this person?); how S&P has adopted a consciously ‘Agile’ approach to delivery these past couple of years; reimagining the performance experience and what that looks like; the importance of the 2019 Business Round Table Purpose statement to S&P’s new focus on Purpose; why there are still Purpose challenges and trade-offs; why, if Learning is now everyone’s responsibility, so is Purpose; why everything she does is like interpreting a musical composition; and much more.

As we dig deeper into answering our question ‘Is Purpose Working?’ we find that while Purpose is a very new concept for many, having a conscious organizational Purpose has been BAU for some corporations for decades. This week we meet one, which had it written down in 1960, and which specifically states that the company’s”first and foremost priority” is to contribute to human welfare. The company in question is $30bn, Ireland and Minnesota-headquartered Medtronic, the world's largest medical technology company and creator of the world’s first battery-operated pacemaker. And we also learn how, 60 years after being defined, it’s a Purpose statement that continues to serve as an ethical framework and inspirational goal for all 90,000-plus employees around the world. Explaining all this for us is the company’s Vice President, Global Learning and Leadership, Jeff Orlando. Based in Philadelphia, Jeff explains just how new he is in post—he joined the very week the company had to move into Lockdown, in March—but also how quickly he’s become part of the Medtronic family. With the help of RedThread Research, we find out just how-with those guys actually leading the debate with Jeff this time, and me joining in with a discussion at the end (well, actually the beginning this time, to keep things fresh)! As you’re about to hear, for me, and for Dani and Stacia, what makes Medtronic’s conscious sense of Purpose even more interesting than its heritage and on-going affirmation (something we get into big time in the conversation) is that it’s marked by ritual. In 1974, the company introduced a special in-house “mission and medallion ceremony” that’s now held many times a year at facilities all over the world; an employee gets to receive the medallion as a reminder of the honor and responsibility they have in fulfilling our mission. Acting as a deliberately symbolic way of bringing new employees together behind the company’s defined common purpose, could rituals like this be something other CEOs pursuing Purpose be looking at doing too? Should your Purpose statement really act like the Constitution for you over time? It’s a fascinating question—and one bound to come up, I predict, at the special ‘Is Purpose Working?’ webinar early in 2021, our live, online gated experience where we will debate all the Learnings from Season 7 that have come through, with inputs including today’s great discussion with Jeff. Make sure you can ask your question about Purpose and ceremony by locking-in today your free place at the webinar at the special NovoEd microsite supporting the project, www.novoed.com/purpose. So: all set? Great—so let’s hear about Jeff starting with our our executive summary of the conversation and how Purpose is brought up to make hard decisions, how you can’t ‘fake it’ and why Purpose isn’t just in pockets across the company, which as well as: a shared podcast participant history (Deloitte); how he sees L&D’s contribution is creating organisational capability to win in the market; how companies with a defined Purpose seem to have so much passion about it; the idea all employees are really only ever ‘stewards’ of the Mission (the Medtronic Purpose); how L&D has an important place in creating the space and time for the ceremonies that can anchor your Purpose work; how Medtronic's HR accepts the Mission is its Mission, too—but it still needs to help the company meet immediate targets; and much more.

Purpose has become more and more a key concept for modern organizations: type ‘Purpose in American business’ into Google, and you’ll get 1,740,000,000 responses, for example. But how real is it? Is it the same as CSR, or giving corporate money to a good cause? And, crucially, what’s its connection—if any—to L&D? On this special new Season on the podcast, we’re attempting to answer these and other questions about Purpose under the rubric, ‘Is Purpose Working?’ As you may know by now, we’re doing this with the help of RedThread Research and with the welcome support of an ed tech firm equally interested in finding out an answer, too—NovoEd, a developer of a collaborative online learning platform that builds high-value capabilities that result in real impact. In this second conversation in our researches, I am delighted to be joined by RedThread principal analyst Stacia Garr. Stacia proves invaluable in us both teasing out insight from someone who just might be the foremost expert on the science of purpose and fulfillment at work: consultant, VC, social entrepreneur and Seattle-based Purpose influencer Aaron Hurst. In 2014, his book ‘The Purpose Economy’ brought widespread attention to the concept of Purpose and its importance for our lives today (for me especially). Now CEO and co-founder of Imperative, a platform that connects and supports employees as peer career coaches, Aaron describes how his new venture enables video-based peer coaching conversations across organizations that drive mindset and behavior changes that increase leadership abilities, productivity, and fulfillment. It’s work that caps his famous stint as the founder of pro bono volunteer channel The Taproot Foundation, which connects talented people with non-profits—and, we hear, connects him and one of the other people on the podcast! Finally, a reminder that all this ‘Is Purpose Working?’ work is set to peak in a live, online gated experience where Dani, Stacia and I will debate all the Learnings from Season 7 that have come through, with inputs including today’s great discussion with Aaron. Be assured you will also be able to debate with us and get your question asked—but to get your questions in nice and early, lock-in your free place at the webinar over at the special NovoEd microsite supporting the project, www.novoed.com/purpose. Now let’s go, and be sure to stick around for a quick three-way debate on what Aaron told us at the end. So now, let’s hear from someone you might style the Father of Purpose, debating such key milestones of his career and thinking as: how he ended up in Seattle after ‘something of a nomadic career;' why the non-profit world he started working in frustrated him—and what he did about it; why Taproot was just a vitamin, not real nutrition; why he wrote 'The Purpose Economy' and how he’s convinced we’re in a whole new economic era fuelled by ‘meaning;' what last year’s Business Roundtable commitment to Purpose did for a lot of CEOs; and much more.

Back in August 2019, the Business Roundtable—an association of chief executive officers of America’s leading companies—said that the Purpose of American business was no longer to maximise shareholder value but to instead promote an economy that ‘serves all Americans.’ “CEOs work to generate profits and return value to shareholders, but the best-run companies do more,” stated one Roundtable member, Tricia Griffith, President and CEO of Progressive Corporation. “They put the customer first and invest in their employees and communities. In the end, it’s the most promising way to build long-term value.” A lot’s happened since then, as we all know, but multiple events over the first few months of Lockdown seems to bear out the idea that Purpose really has become front of mind for many corporations right now. So we decided to find out more—and in this special new Season on the podcast, that’s what we’ll be doing: answering (if we can) the key question, Is Purpose Working? We’re joined on our journey by the super-smart ladies of RedThread Research, who have kicked off an in-depth, on-going probe into Purpose in parallel to our show. And even better, we’re being supported by a great ed tech firm equally interested in finding out an answer, too—NovoEd. Global enterprises rely on its collaborative online learning platform to build high-value capabilities that result in real impact, with its customers working to deliver powerful, engaging learning that activates deep skill development, from leadership to design thinking and digital transformation, as well as driving measurable business outcomes. It’s also well worth knowing that the Season culminates in a live online gated experience where I will be debate all the Learnings from the Season with RedThread, and you will be able to debate with us the implications and ask your questions and get your comments heard. Secure your free place at that today, over at www.novoed.com/purpose... then listen in to this scene setter, where I and Lead ‘Threadhead’ Stacia Sherman Garr set some goals and identify core Purpose topics, such as: why ‘Why we do what we do’ seems to be the best definition of Purpose we’ve foundwhy ‘cause’ isn’t the same as Purpose; why HR needs to get more involved when it comes to Purpose; some hints on some of the amazing writers, thinkers, venture capitalists and stakeholders coming on the Season; why are people coming together to work? the need to look at all the axes Purpose affects—leadership, people and systems; a new concept: the stake-giver; a quick progress report on RedThread’s ongoing Purpose research exercise; what Purpose in a Pandemic looks like; and much more.

Founder & Principal of boutique HR consulting firm Daimler Partners, Melissa Daimler has always said that if you do it right, work is the best learning lab you could possibly want. She’s certainly done her best to make that maxim work for her: we’re talking about a career that started with Psychology at college to setting up Adobe’s entire L&D practice to experiencing Twitter grow from 400 to 4000 staff in her four years there. With WeWork also on her curriculum vitae, you know you’re dealing with a major player—so how refreshing to find out in person Melissa is down to Earth, great fun, whip-smart but still very much looking to keep learning. She is a perfect interview for this next episode in our on-going COVID-19 mini-Season ‘From What-If To What Now?’ where we’re exploring what the massive change rippling through the worlds of Work and Learning looks like at ground level. Oh, and last but absolutely not least: our episode is sponsored by by the great guys over at genuinely innovative SMS-based learning innovators Arist (www.arist.co), who’re working 24x7 helping brands and non-profits alike create and launch amazing text message courses in minutes, not days. So sit back or get the New Balance on with us for an hour as we review her singular professional journey, talk about how COVID may or may not be permanently changing the work culture of her adopted home, San Francisco/Silicon Valley, see what systems thinking can offer the L&D practitioner, as well as: why a certain dot com bubble helped her choose her forever home… which she still loves despite having to keep checking the air quality index; what it’s like to work at a place that got a tad too excited about a big market cap; what she thinks ‘culture’ really is; how are all good L&D practitioners know everything’s interconnected already; how the Pandemic is showing the best leaders asking such good questions of themselves, their execs but most importantly, their teams; why we must work out a way to get back the office experience (and that isn’t just the amazing donuts at Twitter); where her personal sense of purpose and inspiration comes from; and much more.

Time was, the biggest L&D brand was a long-vanished enterprise called the Katherine Gibbs school. What it taught: the hugely in-demand skill of working the world’s most valuable piece of information technology, the manual typewriter—a technology that hit its peak in 1975 with the Smith Corona Super 5-Series portable electric typewriters, famed for being quiet, efficient, and fast. But 1975, as we hear in this latest episode in ‘Season Eight,' where we’re ‘Connecting The Dots’ to form a picture of what we’ve learned in 18 months of our investigation into the future of Workplace Learning, was also the year that the company behind that awesome machine and the subject of all the hard training at the Gibbs schools went bust. 1975 was also the year two kids surnamed Gates and Allen teamed up to start a company called Microsoft, that 6 years later would release its first ever stab at word processing software. So in this episode, it’s a lot of déjà vu; we replay how some once-invisible industries crumble, how once-ubiquitous careers (membership in the company typing pool) can vanish, and how skills that once seemed really worth learning (transcription and stenography) can become worthless almost overnight. Along the way, we meet some interesting historical characters, but end with a really challenging proposition: what if we’re seeing very similar patterns, where we’re teaching stuff that in a few short years no-one will need to know… and we might be calling it computer programming right now?

Here’s a question that’s fascinated me my entire professional life: How might technology change the future of Learning and Work? But actually, as I finally figured out only a couple of years back, the more important is WHY technology change the future of Learning and Work. That insight is what eventually led me to set up both The Learning Futures Group and this podcast, which has now hit over 50 episodes in just over a year. And what I’ve Learned in that journey is what I am starting to try and feed back to you guys in this special season of the podcast, which is where I am trying to ‘Connect The Dots’ and map out some provisional findings from my conversations with CLOs, edtech pioneers, Learning Scientists and thinkers out there. In this second episode in the run, I return to what sparked my personal journey—the arrival of Microsoft’s third CEO into my life—as well as relevant soundbites from just a few of the great people we’ve met so far. So, welcome (or welcome back) to ‘Season Eight:' with an overall theme of ‘Connecting The Dots,’ our aim is to move slightly away from our interview format to a more ‘radio feature’ audio style, where we are pulling together insights gained from all of our conversations and research to scope out what L&D needs to do to catch up with Our New Normal, starting with: another stimulating clip from super-inspirational MS’s Satya Nadella on why he led the charge to move from a ‘Know-it-all’ to a ‘Learn-it-all’ culture (and why that freaked me out!); what some of our podcast guests are worried about; a scary look into a workless world, which is already here for a big part of young Humanity (hint: William Gibson—The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed); and much more.

Way back in 2019, we started this fifth season of the podcast, ‘Learning Leaders,’ with a commitment to let you hear from Learning Leaders from industry, academia, and technology who have made significant contributions to workplace learning, EdTech, and talent leadership disciplines. The program was originally initiated in collaboration with The Learning Leaders Conference, and some episodes were recorded onsite at the 2019 conference in Washington DC Watch this space for more details; this is one, though we haven’t featured a chat done this way for some time. We have a great return episode, though: Fernando Sanchez-Arias, a former member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Talent Development (ATD) but who is now powering away at a Washington, DC-based think tank for research and education on culture, leadership, innovation, connection, and knowledge he set up called the CLICK (Culture, Leadership, Innovation, Connection, and Knowledge) Institute. When we spoke last year, Sr Sanchez-Arias was Head of Learning, Cultural Diversity, and Innovation at the body after being Chief People Officer; now he is now the organisation’s pro bono Co-Chair of the Advisory and Academic Councils. It was great to talk to Fernando last year, and it’s wonderful to be able to share this with you now. I am also delighted to say this is another episode in the Season sponsored by our friends at The Future Workplace Academy—a curated collection of five week online cohort courses to up-skill HR and HRIS team members for the future of work, with all content designed by and for HR leaders and which is being guided by an advisory board led by Future Workplace. It’s a great project, and I hope you have time to join us—but first, let’s hear from Fernando and his current schedule of splitting his time between D.C. and a ‘beautiful, green’ planned community in North Houston, as well as: his personal journey from studying business in Venezuela to Texas via Belgium, via time in armed forces, oil &gas and academic contexts that’s included many great milestones—including his years leveraging Learning as a way of building Trust with the world’s largest home improvement firm, Home Depot (which we dive right into!); his deep interest in multi-disciplinary approaches combined with a primary alliance to data, research and the science wherever possible; the way he’s pursuing the Lifelong Learning pathway, including an on-going Micro Master program; the aims and tactics of the CLICK Institute and the international network he’s rapidly building with it; the five ‘diseases’ that ‘kill’ innovation; the mentors who challenged him to leave his original love, business administration, to this world; and much more.

It’s our first birthday as a podcast! Though actually just over a full circle round the Sun, we’re still celebrating… yup, an amazing 16 months of podcasting, with this as our 50th episode—landmarks accompanied, we’re amazed to say, 20,000 downloads. And the way we’re doing that isn’t so much with cake and candles, awesome as those things are, but a new format for ‘Learning Is The New Working’ we’re calling ‘Season Eight.’ With an overall theme of ‘Connecting The Dots,’ our aim in this new collection of episodes is to move away from our interview format to a more ‘feature’ audio style, where we pull together sound clips and insights gained from all of our conversations and research in short chunks we will lay out our manifesto for what L&D needs to do to catch up with The Fourth Industrial Revolution, natch). In this scene setter we review where we are, starting with that great quote we reference from President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel back in 2009—that you should never let a serious crisis go to waste as, “it’s an opportunity to do things that you did not think you could do before.” We then fast forward to remind ourselves about when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told us about the Future of Work arriving, a great observation from Kevin Oakes of i4CP, who we met back in Season Six, as well as: an audio snapshot of me asking CLOs if they feel they’re confident they’re adding value back in February in London; reminding ourselves what some recent podcast guests like E&Y's Mary Slaughter and Cargill's Julie Dervin have been saying about the crisis; a fascinating look back into when the robots started coming… and it’s been longer than you think! and much more.

Last week, in our on-going COVID-19 related mini-Season here at ‘Learning Is The New Working,’ ‘From What-If To What Now?’ we kicked off a special three-part discussion on the importance of Listening. That was with the fascinating Oscar Trimboli, who’s all about Deep Listening, but this week in the second in our trio of dialogs we go in a new direction: the Listen-Think-Speak approach to communication and collaboration in. That’s with today’s guest, Colorado-based Dana Dupuis, who is about to take you on a journey into deep background into the science of Listening. Dana and colleagues have spent eight years developing a truly cognitive-based listening assessment that’s got real science behind it, and is emerging as statistically reliable. Now, the assessment helps leaders and teams quickly understand and adapt to the listening styles and corresponding behaviors of team members, prospective clients, individual employees and future hires. So, as Dana is very much a Learning Scientist, that’s why we’ve put her here in Season Three, ‘The Learning Scientists,’ where we’re meeting practitioners drawing on science based practices to move the L&D profession forward. Be assured you’re in good hands here, as Dana’s actual day job is about knowing this amazing stuff: as of February this year she’s Executive Director, Research and Development in what her employer has specifically called out to be ‘Listening Science.’ That new employer is none other than virtual communications and leadership experts Mandel, and I don’t need to tell regular listeners that Mandel is a friend of the podcast and the on-going sponsor of these ‘Learning Scientists’ profiles. So, thanks once again to Mandel, and to Dana, who walks us through how important Listening has been to her over her career, which actually started in Sales, before she got to her current position, as well as: why she lives in Carbondale, Colorado and why the people and the mountains make it such a special place for her and her family; what she decided was a consistently poor approach to speaking to customers in Sales told her about the importance of Listening; why she gravitated to Mandel (hint: its emphasis on presentation skills acquisition); our different Listening ‘habits,’ what they are, and why it’s useful to know what the range is; a brief history of 70 years of study of Listening in business; why Microsoft saw a need to move from ‘Pitch’ to ‘Listening’ Perfect (and how spotting your customer’s Listening style connects to more effective selling to them); the connection between Listening and Empathy; how your humble podcast did on her test! and much more.

In our on-going COVID-19 mini-Season at ‘Learning Is The New Working,’ ‘From What-If To What Now?’ we’re exploring what the massive change rippling through the worlds of Work and Learning looks like on the ground. This episode, we get a unique perspective from author, mentor and free-thinker Oscar Trimboli, who is 100% all about using what he calls “the gift of Listening.” This conversation also starts a mini-season about Listening on the podcast, incidentally, as I think it’s such an important topic; and as Oscar tells us, we listen at 125 words a minute… but can think at 900. Essentially, Oscar believes that if we learned to Listen better, we’d be able to see positive change in homes, workplaces and the world itself—and that leadership teams need to focus their attention and their listening on building organisations that have impact and create powerful legacies for the the people they serve, today and, more importantly, for future generations. An Aussie marketing and technology industry veteran, with over 30 years' experience across general management, sales, marketing and operations for major brands including Microsoft, PeopleSoft, Polycom, Professional Advantage and Vodafone, Oscar now consults with organisations such as AstraZeneca, Google, and Qantas, from his Sydney home base. Let’s ‘Listen Deeply’ together, then, to Oscar, and it’s a Listen that involves a fascinating mental experiment and some great war stories, and what he has to say about: his quest, which has already touched 1.7 million; the many costs of not Listening, from the start of COVID to project failure; his definition of Listening, which centers on the willingness to have your mind changed; the invisible internal and external distractions that keep us from really Listening (but also, some tools to help!); silence, and its different cultural weights; the deep business value of listening beyond the first few words to what hasn’t been said yet; some excellent tips on how to make Zoom effective for you and your team; and much more.

What’s it like trying to lead change at a two century old beloved brand? Precisely the question we asked this week’s guest, Gina Jeneroux, who’s doing just that at one of Canada’s biggest financial services companies, BMO Financial Group. Toronto-based Gina, who’s Chief Learning Officer, more than answers that intriguing question—and is thus the perfect next up in our on-going dialogs with ‘Learning Leaders’ in this thematic season of Learning Is The New Working. Tune in, then, as they used to say, to hear her thoughts on her role and contribution which covers everything from advancing performance through enterprise learning strategy, design, operations and governance. It was great to talk to her, and I am also delighted to say this is another episode in the Season sponsored by our friends at The Future Workplace Academy—a curated collection of five week online cohort courses to up-skill HR and HRIS team members for the future of work, with all content designed by and for HR leaders. The all-online courses are being guided by an advisory board led by Future Workplace, an HR Advisory and Research firm providing peer networks, professional development and research on What’s Next in Transforming and Re-Imagining HR. Future Workplace operates the Future Workplace Network, a consortium of HR, Talent, and Corporate Learning leaders from FORTUNE 1,000 organizations who convene four times a year to discuss and debate what’s next in preparing for the future of work. It’s a great project, and I hope you have time to dip in, but as an appetiser, let’s hear from Gina and her twin role of leading the Bank’s Corporate University, a beautiful real-world facility called the Institute for Learning, as well as: her personal journey from working as a Saturday morning teller as a teenager to leading a 200-strong internal L&D resource for her company; what BMO’s trying to do with a CAN$80m a year formal- and informal-training war chest across the group a priority investment; how training is changing to meet the needs of BMO’s 12m customers; practical D&I; ‘that March weekend’ when she went to helping 500 people #WFH to over 30000; why her University is shaped like a bow and arrow design; and much more.

With a 25-year plus pedigree in applying advanced algorithms to Learning, Danish company Area9 Lyceum believes that we should encourage Learners to make mistakes and pursue misconceptions so that we can better duplicate real-world cognitive situations. Driving that idea both internally and externally for the company for the past four years is its Chief Learning Officer and Evangelist, Yorkshireman Nick Howe—the perfect next guest in our on-going ‘Learning Scientist’ thematic season here on ‘Learning Is The New Working.’ Why perfect? Because he’s another Workplace Learning thinker (and doer) who also sees himself, as so many of you guys do, too, as “Fighting the good fight against outdated, misused, misleading and just plain wrong approaches to Teaching and Learning.” So buckle up, as we get through quite a lot of deep theory in our hour’s sit-down with Nick, covering everything from public sculpture to the intriguing work of pioneering Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson (prior to his sad recent departure, on the firm’s Advisory Board), and what it might mean for us in L&D going forward. Listener warning; there’s a little break at about 49 mins in due to connectivity issues on the day which we have hidden with a music cue, but please don’t think that’s the end of the episode! Along the way, we also rap about: his personal journey to where he is today (Northern England to Southern Florida, from Chemistry to Learning personalization); the Area9 Lyceum story (hint: there’s a cool story between both parts of the name!) and its origin story in medical and computer specialists finding common ground in helping doctors stop making mistakes; what terms like ‘confidence’ and ‘adaptive’ really mean for him; ‘not a buzzword company’—the on-going relevance for academic research into what his company is trying to do; why giving access to 10,000 courses doesn’t mean your job is over as a CLO; why he thinks so much about the centrality of motivation; and much more.

In our ongoing ‘Learning Leaders’ thematic season here at Learning Is The New Working, we’re super-keen on getting real insights into how the Chief Learning Officer’s job is changing (and how they themselves are leading that change). We’ve got a perfect example in this week’s conversation with Julie Dervin, since 2016 Head of Global Learning & Development at the largest privately-held corporation in the entire US in terms of revenue, Cargill, a Mid-West headquartered leader in everything from food and beverage to meat and poultry production. Minneapolis, Minnesota-based Julie has actually been at the organisation in senior roles since 2008 after coming over from eight years with information tech firm Insight. At Cargill, she is currently charged with leading the execution of a whole new L&D vision and strategy in order to accelerate organizational learning, strengthen the learning culture and dramatically improve the employee learning experience—a role she sees as also encompassing positioning Learning as a catalyst for accelerating positive change and transformation. Incidentally, Learning Futures Group is collaborating with Julie and other CLOs on a September course for The Future Workplace Academy—a curated collection of five week online cohort courses to up-skill HR and HRIS team members for the future of work, with all content designed by and for HR and HRIS team members. The all-online courses are being guided by an advisory board led by Future Workplace, an HR Advisory and Research firm providing peer networks, professional development and research on What’s Next in Transforming and Re-Imagining HR. Future Workplace operates the Future Workplace Network, a consortium of HR, Talent, and Corporate Learning leaders from FORTUNE 1,000 organizations who convene four times a year to discuss and debate what’s next in preparing for the future of work. I’m delighted to say the Academy are also sponsors for this episode, but let’s dive into our great conversation with her, covering everything from: how Cargill’s HR sees L&D and how that maps on to her firm’s federated model of content ownership; drivers for change and transformation in her vital, global market—agriculture—and a ‘need for speed’; connecting her company’s purpose of safe, responsible and sustainable food production with Learning; what making L&D more useful and effective at Cargill’s looks like (hint: less specific content change, more a whole new way of delivering Learning); the importance of building a strong relationship with her peers in IT; DevOps and Agile as L&D aids; a peek into her Innovation Lab (and how she’s ‘hard-wiring’ Innovation into management goals); how she and her team might have found a better way to organize all these virtual calls we’re having to do! and much more.

Hi y'all, hope you are all staying healthy and safe. We're taking a vacation this week, and so we're re-publishing one of our most listened to episodes from last year, our second-ever episode where we sat down with RedThread Research's Dani Johnson. A big theme for Dani (now and then) is the importance of putting humanity back into our Learning Programs. That's a passion that feels even more relevant today in our COVID world, where digitally mediated interaction is making true human connection a little tougher, but it remains an essential goal for any Learning Leader. Though we're sure Dani doesn't need any introduction, but she is of course Co-Founder and Principal Analyst at her company, and has spent the majority of her career writing about, conducting research in, and consulting on human capital practices and technology, in such contexts as leading the Learning and Career research practice at quality brands like Bersin, as well as the Human Resource Competency Study (University of Michigan) and the RBL Group. That last gig resulted in her co-authoring the book, HR Competencies: Mastery at the Intersection of People and Business, while her great ideas and CLO community observations can be found in high-prestige L&D/CLOp publications such as CLO Magazine, HR Magazine, and Employment Relations today. PS: we are working with RedThread on an exciting new project we will announce later this month, but in the meantime, enjoy the episode, stay well--and try take a break, too!

How will COVID impact Workplace Learning? One person I thought could definitely answer that in our ongoing ‘Learning Leaders’ thematic season here at Learning Is The New Working is Simon Brown, who in 2019 became the first-ever Chief Learning Officer at focused medicines leader Novartis—and who helped move 60,000 people onto remote working in just a single weekend. With a resume that stretches from co-founding one of the UK's leading eLearning companies, Brightwave, to a senior advisory role at Accenture then leading cross-organizational Learning transformation at a major British bank, Simon joined his current employer in 2013. Since he’s been on the Novartis global HQ leadership team, Simon’s led a number of global Learning initiatives, including enhancing effectiveness of Learning for its global pharma salesforce, creating the cross-divisional Global Development University, running the Novartis-wide Learning Centre of Expertise and Corporate Universities, as well as also defining the strategy for how Novartis can develop deeper digital capability right across the company. He’s also the co-author of a great new book, The Curious Advantage, which he describes as an exploration of curiosity and its central role in the digital age—and how it’s going to be at the heart of the skills required to successfully navigate our digital lives when all futures are uncertain. As you’ll know by now, in ‘Learning Leaders’ we’re looking to work with a range of influencers and practitioners from industry, academia, and technology who have made significant contributions to workplace learning, EdTech, and talent leadership disciplines, and I honestly can’t think of anyone that meets that description more than him! In our time together we touch on all this, the book and it supporting podcast (yay!) as well as a snapshot of his current life in Basle with wife, children, their cat and various chickens, as well as his recent minor mountain bike accident—plus: what a day job that means looking after the training needs of 100,000-plus staff looks like; a career path that led from studying Management at college then into Accounting and out, quickly, then the Brightwave experience; how his organization’s mission statement and state of purpose directly informs what he does and maps tightly onto his team’s 5-year Learning delivery strategy; the importance of ‘Curiosity’ in what Novartis is trying to do (and what he learned from other companies trying to do something similar, e.g. Microsoft) and how he came to write a certain Amazon best-selling business book; how Novartis is people getting to 5% of their time Learning—and how that’s an initiative being set right from the top; what the company did (and is still doing) to help beat the novel coronavirus (hint: you can’t research molecules from home…); how quickly digital learning’s been adopted at this multi-national company because of Lockdown, e.g. use of of LinkedIn Learning internally was a thousand hours a week, in March, seven; his first insight into how technology can help with creativity and Learning; and much more.

Human capital strategist Sarah McEneaney, Digital Talent Leader at consulting giant PwC US, and who works alongside L&D professionals on a daily basis, joins us on this latest episode of our ‘Learning Leaders’/Season 5 stream of the podcast to talk about everything from why she thinks Improv is something we all should be interested in if you want to Lead and/or Communicate in business to the radically changing role of in-house mentoring at corporations like hers. Sarah is a strong proponent of the power of employee experience as the key to future-proofing organizations at scale, and is passionate about amplifying business potential by combining talent with technology, skills and tools—and permission. Currently Chicago-based, Sarah has also spent time with the in Boston, Ireland, London, New York, Seattle and Sydney, where she also gained private sector experience. She earned a Bachelor of Science from University College Cork, an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and is a CPA in addition to holding an Irish Chartered Accounting designation. On our call, we hear about everything from why she loves living in The Windy City so much, being one of ‘the seven’ Chicagoans who actually like the weather! to: her day job ‘future proofing’ 50,000 of the 200,000-strong global PwC workforce, and how she got to this ‘coolest’ after multiple accounting and business roles right over the world, starting in her native Ireland; her interest in data analytics; the changing talent strategy approach of big consulting firms like hers (and how that’s changing traditional coaching and mentoring styles) and how that maps onto PwC’s multi-year digital transformation strategy; details of the special two-year internal ‘Digital Accelerator’ training program she helps deliver, and how a detailed L&D process supports it; why we need to move away from standardised learning to ‘infinite’ learning; the PwC philosophy of digital transformation as a’cultural change powered by technology;' her advice on how to not get replaced by a robot; her interest and passionate work in not just business, but also, citizen-led innovation and the PwC internal ‘GitHub’ that’s been set up to help first the latter; and much more.

The 2020 Covid19 Pandemic might just be the most disruptive event in the last 60 years. It has, amongst many devastating social and personal effects, also propelled us into what seems to be a ‘New Normal’ of work, with a speed and force we could never have imagined three months back. And as we emerge out of Lockdown into Recovery, the worlds of Work and Learning are changing radically—indeed, will arguably never be the same again. In our new COVID-19 mini-Season at ‘Learning Is The New Working,’ ‘From What-If To What Now?’ we’re exploring what that’s looking like on the ground—and this week’s guest, Russell Butler, Founder and CEO of Learning event creators iVentiv is literally thinking and responding in-flight to these issues. After all, industry conventions are so important to our industry, and most L&D teams use some form of convening to practice our ‘trade’—but it’s one that hasn’t worked for everyone for a while. What’s really interesting is that Russell had been disrupting that model for some years… but that COVID and travel bans present an existential threat to even his new way of fostering learning. Listen in to hear about the genuine drama of this possibly terminal crisis and what he’s done to save it, including:how he ended up in ‘Silicon Spa:’ a place ‘bang in the middle’ of rural England with a ‘serious gaming’ heritage that he found highly impactful on his own growth as a business professionalhis workspace—an office between the Motor Sport Industry Association and the National Beekeeper Society next to where the Queen retired some of her ceremonial horses; the first ten years of what’s very much a family business, iVentiv, and the evolution of its ‘Learn, Connect and Develop’ mission; what he learned from the first 100-plus iVentiv events; how well his pipeline looked at the start of the 2020… and then how much it changed; the day he had to tell his staff in their brand new offices that the business faced huge challenges, and that none of it was their fault; the pivot/postpone conundrum; a steep learning curve: the start of iVentiv’s virtual and what’s proving to be a surprisingly strong, Zoom-based way back; the usefulness of the self-challenge, ‘What are you doing to keep yourself relevant for us - and not just for us?’; and much more.

This week we dialog with a very well-known figure in L&D - and one who’s definitely been applying Science to Learning, so much so that you’ll need to prepare to have quite a few assumptions shaken! That’s in the shape of Mary Slaughter, a human capital executive with 25+ years of global experience and strong C-suite expertise and who, since start of 2020 (and so, immediately pre-Pandemic), has been in post as Managing Director, People Advisory Services at E&Y. There, Mary’s working in the Purpose, Culture, Leadership and Inclusion space, where she is tasked with helping clients better understand behavior change at scale. When she sat down with me from her Atlanta base just before her move, though, she had been for a number of years with an organization everyone in our field serious about finding new ways of thinking about Workplace Learning needs to be aware of — the NeuroLeadership Institute (NLI), and which, like her current post, is also very much about using science, technology and data insights to help organizations. Mary and I talk mostly about her work at NLI in our 50-plus minutes, but as a long-standing L&D practitioner as everything from CLO to CHRO, she also naturally adds her own deep perspectives on many trends in our industry. As such, she’s a perfect guest for what we’re trying to do in our on-going Season 3, ‘The Learning Scientist,’ where we are meeting engineers, business leaders, academics, and designers who are drawing on Science and design thinking to better understand the interface between Learning technology and neuroscience — so join us, as we find out about: her personal journey from studying Psychology and Communications to Workplace Learning to ‘a place with a good airport;' NLI, a place all about ‘using science to make organizations more human’ but also change behaviour at scale across those organizations; the shrinking half-life of Knowledge; the many sins we’ve all inadvertently committed in L&D because we didn’t know how the brain works, especially in things like Feedback, Capacity and the process of how we actually *learn*; how we have totally misunderstood why Evolution came up with what we call ‘bias,’ and how to work better with that if you want to do things like implement a D&I agenda; the need to be aware of the lure of ‘neurobling;' the usefulness of the AGES (Attention, Generation, Emotion, Spacing) Learning model… and why the ’S’ will make you wince if you’ve ever crammed too much training in one ‘convenient’ off-site; how much your brain is doing for you and to you, without asking; the danger of getting better at what you do — and the harm confident Leaders can cause! and much more.

We are taking a pause this week. A pause for reflection and learning, a pause in recognition of the systemic racial injustice in our societies, our workplaces and our culture, and a pause to mourn at the sickeningly casual taking of lives such as Ahmaud Arbery, Breona Taylor, George Floyd Manuel Elis and countless and an uncounted victims of racism everywhere. Addressing these badly broken systems is a super important subject for all of us as human beings, and for us in our professional of workplace learning, after all we are charged with helping shape the culture of our organizations and the develop our current and future leaders, leaders support D&I initiatives. It’s a topic worthy of deep investigation and understanding and there are leaders in our profession that we should invite in to our ongoing conversation on this podcast, but not this week. This week we pledge our support for the black lives matter organization and others fighting for social justice for all. We share our deepest condolences as parents for everyone who has lost loved ones to senseless violence at the hands of those pledged to protect and serve, or as victims of racism. We’re educators right, our first instinct is to teach and seek to understand but we think at this time it’s best that we cede this tiny space that we are lucky enough to occupy in social discourse, to better let other voices be heard. We have listed some podcasts that we love or have been suggested, to us, podcasts that we humbly suggest might be a good use of the rest of this hour, and produced by people way better qualified to help you understand what to do next. Thanks. Chris Pirie and The Editorial team at LITNWSuggested Podcasts at https://learningisthenewworking.org/season-six/season-6-episode-5/

How do you help get a new podcast off the ground? In this new episode of our on-going Learning 4 Good season, we’re working to find out. That’s because we’ve been working with Ugandan-based social investment innovator, entrepreneur, governance, public health and strategic leadership expert Joyce Tamale to do just that! Tune into my conversation with Joyce, a Humanitarian Sector practitioner with over 20 years experience in managing and transforming organisations. Along the way, we hear all about her own personal growth journey across both the public and private sectors and her training in finance, marketing and other business disciplines, which have teed her up perfectly for her latest role: Co-Founder & CEO of Capital Solutions, which is all about inspiring, transforming and building her fellow African-based social entrepreneurs. This is definitely relevant for our on-going mission in the season - to see what corporate L&D can learn from the innovative Non-Governmental Organizations, Private Social Enterprises, and Community Organizations using Learning and ed tech to build trust and capacity for social good. Look to hear, then, about an impressive multidisciplinary set of competences laid in Uganda, Scotland and the US, as well as: the story and mission of Capital Solutions and what she’s trying to achieve with it (as well as the business model that makes that happen); what social entrepreneurship and investment actually means today; an example of how her team’s helped a young business happen: Ugabus; her drive to build capacity and scale up social enterprises in East Africa; her dilemma: that young people are flocking to cities for opportunities that might be easier to grab where they already are; how (spottily distributed) tech’s proving a great way for the Ugandan microbusiness to get the airplay they couldn’t have afforded before; her focus on women’s experience and work to support getting women into leadership positions - and why helping one woman has such a magnifying effect; and much more.

With over 20 years of experience working in math, applied linguistics and engineering in both Higher Education and industry, applying his skills to everything from cloud & middleware infrastructures to data science, Natural Language Processing to Machine Learning/AI for knowledge networks, graph systems, interactive visualization platforms, and behavioral modeling, our guest this week, Microsoft’s Krishna Madhavan is easily one of the best examples we’ve probably had so far in Season 3 of what we mean by a ‘Learning Scientist.’ You’ll recall that in Season 3, our ‘The Learning Scientists’ mini-season on LITNW, we’re meeting the innovators drawing on Data/Social Science/Computer Science and Neuroscience-based practices to move the L&D profession forward and mining the new insights and tools we need to help us build a better model for Workplace Learning, especially as we start to move to a post-COVID ‘New Normal.’ A winner of multiple academic rewards and a former tenure faculty member at a leading mid-Western US University, Krishna is now a co-founder and Director of the new Worldwide Learning Innovation Lab at Microsoft, an innovation center set up in Redmond to cross boundaries and experiment - again, things we love to hear on this podcast! Please note that we recorded our chat with Professor Madhavan before the Lockdown, but in our convo we still heard a lot of great things, starting with how a math and stats guy ended up with a PhD from an English department to: what his 1.5-year old research entity is all about, and why being able to sit across so many product groups at Microsoft helps it achieve that; the kind of higher-order problems he’s interested in now, and in his past, all the way back to his start in India; why speaking six languages isn’t seen as that big a deal where he comes from; the differences (good and bad) between The Academy and The Corporation; the central role of ethics in what he and his team are looking at; why accessing Microsoft’s incredible data treasures is actually (and reassuringly) made as hard as possible; how, in practical terms, you lead for innovation and set up an experiment-minded culture; the benefits of a truly multi-disciplinary approach and what that means for the Learning Science project; and much more.

With a third of humanity still in various forms of Lockdown, the worlds of Work and Learning hare changing radically, indeed will arguably never be the same again. As Learning Leaders we can be forgiven for asking ‘What Now?’ In our new COVID-19 mini-Season at ‘Learning Is The New Working,’ we’re reaching out to some smart folks who might give us some useful food for thought here, and you can’t get better than this week’s guest, Oxford University in the UK’s Robert Poynton. Poynton, an Associate Fellow at the University’s Saïd Business School, first came to my personal attention when, just out of Microsoft, I read his fascinating 2018 book Do Improvise: Less push. More pause. Better results. A new approach to work (and life). The basic idea couldn’t be more timely; access improv skills that an actor might use on stage to the everyday business of work and life as a way to embrace change as a natural process, putting creativity and innovation at the heart of all you do. I love this, and it definitely inspired me to try new things, so I decided to reach out to Robert in his home office to capture some of his reflections on our current global situation. We find out about his personal intellectual journey studying Psychology and Philosophy at the same institution he still works in then a move into Advertising for a few years, then: how he works in both Oxford, but also “off grid” in rural Spain; the range of brands, including Nike, and leaders he works on in both his Executive Education and Improv work; the ‘Do’ series of books and its guiding ideas; why improvised theatre fascinates him so much - and why it should you, too; how it turns out improvisation is actually based on a set of practices that can be studied and learnt and help us deal with Change; why we end up spending too much time in our own heads and that noticing your environment can really help; how to map his ideas onto being a better Learner; his reflections on the clues the response to COVID-19 is giving us; and much more.

In our on-going Learning 4 Good season, we’re working to find out what corporate L&D can learn from the innovative Non-Governmental Organizations, Private Social Enterprises, and Community Organizations using Learning and ed tech to build trust and capacity for social good. This week, dial in for our 50 minutes of great interaction with an online learning platform that partners with NGOs, leading agencies, and experts in humanitarian aid and development to make the best online learning available to anywhere, anytime, for free (and which is supported by the Cornerstone OnDemand Foundation). That is, of course, DisasterReady.org, and we were so happy to get the chance to talk to its Director, Tina Bolding, former Accenture partner-cum-humanitarian sector and Tulsa, OH leader. In our conversation, we ask about her connections with the Mid-West, as well as: a snapshot of the 160,000 humanitarian sector Learners who access her organization’s material round the world, as well as how it connects with the wider Cornerstone OnDemand mission and the distinctive services it offers; its roots in the Pakistan 2010 Flood crisis and how quickly a new learning portal was spun up to help Save The Children; its commitment to multilingualism and how that affects its content creation strategies (hint: collaboration!); the most popular topics sought on the platform; the complexities of serving a complex humanitarian ‘market’ - which also hasn’t quit caught up with online learning, in many ways; next up on the agenda: boosting accessibility for users with poor Internet access; her views on how to make Partnerships really work; and much more.

In this latest episode of our ‘Learning Leaders’/Season 5 stream of the podcast, I have the privilege of sharing one of the most stimulating conversations I’ve had since starting ‘Learning Is The New Working.’ It’s with a true Workplace Learning giant - global Influencer, serial entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist engineer, former Obama Digital Fellow and one-time public servant Karl Mehta. Gain the benefit of our near-hour of conversation and insights the CEO (or as he jokes, ‘Chief Plumber and Problem Unblocker’!) we uncover with the Founder of what he calls the ‘AI-powered Knowledge Cloud’ that’s EdCast. Karl gives us an overview of a very busy life running not just that company but a bunch of great non-profits like Code for India, as well as: a life journey from growing up in India and adopting an engineering but also an entrepreneurial mindset from very early on; the personal reasons behind his comparatively recent move into the $7bn edtech market; his conviction that Learning and Working can and should be the same thing; a deep dive into the EdCast product story - and why 250,000 Indian IT experts are already on-board with it; the story of his time in the White House; why, and soon, the L&D department will have to get involved in the learning and training of robot talent; why edtech procurement can get so (needlessly) complicated; why there can be no digital transformation without workforce transformation; if there's a specific Indian approach to education, and is it one America wants or not; and much more.

On last week’s ‘Learning 4 Good' episode, we broadcast a late 2019 interview we’d conducted with one of the Directors of the Humanitarian Leadership Academy (HLA), Nicolas Kroeger. If you haven’t had a chance to listen quite yet, the HLA is an exemplar, really, of many of the things we set up the Season to explore: to find out what corporate L&D can learn from the way NGOs, private social enterprises, and community organizations are using Learning/ed tech to build trust and capacity. The mission of teams like HLA - now becoming part of global charity Save the Children - is, of course, becoming even more important, but also challenged, by the on-going Global Lockdown, or ‘The Big Reset’ in Josh Bersin’s useful summation. So, in a rapid follow-up, we jumped on a late Friday afternoon with Nicolas to get an update on all that, which includes the astonishing fact that its global Learner intake has increased by 20,000 since the Lockdown started, as well as the fascinating fact that HLA’s talking to the UK Government about helping train up the 750,000 regular citizens who’ve signed up to help the country’s NHS fight Covid-19. But we were also lucky enough to get his colleague Atish Gonsalves, the body’s Global Innovation Director, on the call, too - enabling us to understand his approach as a non-profit CLO and create of Innovation opportunities around global Learning. So, tune in to hear more on: just how do you help locales with already weak health systems deal with a novel virus; HLA’s concerns (but also preparations) for helping countries that may face not just Covid, but a natural disaster (which haven’t stopped); the kinds of training people are looking for, which range from technical but also Project Management and even help to bolster their personal resilience; how both Kroeger and Gonsalves are concerned that online training gets properly supported by the human element, and that we need to quickly evolve something between self-guided learning and what we get as people from a face-to-face mentoring session; how the truth of the statement, ‘People we serve know what they need’ is even truer than ever now; Atish’s personal career journey/what being a Chief Innovation Officer means at a global NGO, and a hint of the next stage in his growth - him setting up a mixed reality gaming system company, Gamoteca; and much more.

In our on-going Learning 4 Good stream on the podcast we are trying to find out what corporate L&D can learn from the way NGOs, private social enterprises, and community organizations are using Learning/ed tech to build trust and capacity. In this, our eighth such encounter, we’re hearing from someone right on the nexus of where international development meets humanitarian aid and so perfectly placed to enlighten us about all of these major issues. That’s the Director of The Humanitarian Leadership Academy, which was set up to empower local responses to crises - Nicolas Kroeger. A French-German national who’s raising a family in London after many years of field assignments in places such as Zimbabwe, Tajikistan, Sudan and Timor-Leste, in our near-hour of conversation Nicolas outlines the HLA mission and its specific relationship with Save The Children, then helps us better understand: the Academy’s main offerings - Kaya, a digital learning platform accessed by over 115,000 Learners in 190 countries, and HPass, its standards and certification offering for aid professionals and practitioners, as well as a fast-growing consultancy practice; how development and aid are starting to interact in really interesting and new ways; its key resources, including its thought-provoking ‘You Cannot Argue With A Flood’ immersive 360-degree educational movie (which we highly recommend you check out); its work with Paolo Alto’s Institute for the Future on trying to spot the patterns in global affairs it needs to be on top of; the importance of data and learning from its wealth of experience to do just that; and much more.

In our first episode since COVID-19’s grim debut and the lockdown of three billion of us worldwide, we offer some thoughts on ‘What-If’ to ‘What Now?’ - an attempt to curate timely, useful conversations to surface best practice, build community, and share what we in the Workplace Learning community are doing to best cope with what Josh Bersin’s calling ‘The Great Reset.’ We’re kicking off this new conversation stream pretty strong, with a very thought-provoking meeting we had online with highly-respected Learning tech veteran Kevin Oakes. Kevin is, of course, CEO and Co-Founder of HR think tank i4cp (the Institute for Corporate Productivity), a leading research firm all about discovering what makes the successful people practices of high-performance organizations so effective, and which claims to produce more human capital research than any other firm on the Planet. In the course of a focused 38 minutes of dialog we review the mission of i4cp, then dive into: why he lives in Seattle - a city he moved to from Boston to start work with MSFT founder Paul Allen on what was originally Asymetrix then became a small company you may have heard of, Click2learn; the rest of Kevin’s unique resume, which includes entrepreneurship and leadership at major detect brands such as SumTotal Systems; the concept of the ‘next practice’ and how that can help the CHRO; how, if the CFO was the hero that emerged in the 9/11 crisis, it may be that the HR and CLO is the figure brands are coming to in this one; how new work practices like employee swaps and new (overdue!) attitudes to gig workers are being rapidly brought together because of Coronavirus; how the long-term effects of remote working and learning will change our world for ever; and much more.

This week we go back to that mysterious, pre-Pandemic world where we all went outside and met other humans! Remember them days? Sigh. In this case, it’s one of the excellent Workplace Learning humans I had the deep pleasure to meet at last September’s ‘Learning Leaders’ conference in Washington, DC (and after which we’ve named this Season 5 stream of the podcast). That’s Marie A. Cini, Ph.D., who’s the President of Strada Education Network affiliate CAEL (the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning). In our half hour together in that warm, balmy Washington afternoon, Marie was kind enough to explain to me the CAEL history and what’s changing with it now, as well as: her organization’s new focus on the whole post-secondary education universe, as well as employers and even regional development policymaking teams; how places like Pittsburgh and Houston know there aren’t that many steel mills or oil derricks any more for locals, and so are working with her team to not just spot the next careers for residents, but help seed them; how CAEL helped McDonald’s develop an app to inform team members of what they could do next if they wanted to, either inside or outside the Golden Arches; her call for dialog with CLOs like you to better inform her and her colleagues about the adult learner challenges and opportunities in your industry that she needs to know about - so go to the CAEL conference in November! And much more.

In our latest episode in our on-going 'Learning 4 Good' season, where we are finding our what corporate L&D can learn from how Non-Governmental Organizations, Private Social Enterprises, and Community Organizations, who are all using Learning and ed tech to build trust and capacity for social good. We’re hearing from the people on the ground who are experimenting to help build skills and capacity in under-served populations and using learning technology and design to build relevant skills for social enterprise and humanitarian leadership, and we’ve got a perfect guest to help us do just that this week: Sheila Jagannathan, Lead Learning Specialist over at The World Bank over at Washington, DC (not an NGO, of course, but still part of the infrastructure fighting global poverty through capacity development, not building, as we’ll soon see). Sheila is also Program Manager of the Bank’s Open Learning Campus, which is part of its Development Economics Knowledge Management practice, which we hear all about in our near-hour together, as well as: her personal journey, which saw her being explored to the ideas of AI pioneer Seymour Pappert back at MIT in the early 1980s which led to her transferring her interests into ed tech and the forerunner of adaptive learning - Intelligent Tutoring; the wide span of her current responsibilities, from monitoring skills development to preparing for the Fourth Industrial Revolution; how her portfolio fits into the overall mission of the Bank, and the extensive profile of the people she needs to help; why she prefers capacity development to capacity ‘building’ - and why she thinks the latter is no longer a useful concept; why Learning also involves UnLearning, letting go of no longer useful ‘knowledge;' her conviction that investing in early childhood education could be critical for our common future; the importance of Learning Analytics to what The Bank's trying to do; and much more.

In the light of our current extraordinary circumstances, our host Chris Pirie takes stock of where we are, what we need to focus on, and what we need to all do together to get through safe. As we will.

What has the impact of digital been on the Higher Education sector? Is it almost kind of easier to get ‘into’ Harvard or MIT at postgraduate level now instead of for your Bachelor’s - and does that really matter? How is the sector coping with the challenge of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and how is it faring in terms of partnering with the world of work to help us all cope? How do we square the alleged decline of value in a first degree with the fact that the majority of US job openings ask for a BA? There’s probably no sector in the economy as important to the future of Workplace Learning than the world of the modern University, but we need to know what are the major trends emerging that can help us plan ahead. This week we talk to someone in the catbird seat in terms of helping us understand; Dr Sean Gallagher, Founder and Executive Director of Northeastern University's Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy, and who also works at the college as Executive Professor of Educational Policy. With an impressive mix of tech, business and educational research forming his own career choices, Sean’s full-time focus now is on getting the answers to all the questions we posed, plus ones you and I haven’t even thought about yet - making him the ideal guest for our next episode in our ‘The Learning Leaders’ mini-series. In nearly an hour of great conversation we hear about his own journey, then dive into the context, a buoyant - maybe surprisingly buoyant? - $650bn HE market; is re-training actually a Corporate Social Responsibility action? The emergence of the ‘middle’ skill level; the changing demographic of US education versus other geographies; online degrees - the first 20 years; what ‘sustaining’ disruption may look like; why the MBA is the lab for Learning change; where we are with Credentialing (and likely go next) and Experiential Learning; and much more.

If the age of permanent work is over, should we start talking about 'trampoline careers' instead? This week, we talk to a Learning Influencer at the eye of the storm of just that very trend. Born in Egypt but educated in both the US and Europe, that's Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator's CEO, Maryana Iskander, is now based in Johannesburg. To use her word, 'priviliged' to have exposure to both the private, public and now social enterprise sides of the world of work, in this episode my 'Learning 4 Good' mini-season co-curator Lutz Ziob works with Maryana to understand how she sees many of the core issues in modern Workplace Learning, including: the value of a personal 'board of Directors' to mentor a professional; Harambee's roots, why it does what it does, and why a combination of the human and technology has been best to do this; the problem of the mis-match between traditional education pathways and traditional employment structures in South Africa (but is actually increasingly global); why young people have to change - but so do policymakers and employers, too; how help with social skills and guidance is sometimes more important than brushing up a young person's Math for a job application; insights into a very useful HR tool, the Harambee Youth Employment Map; why giving young women some weight-training overcame a hidden barrier to entry changed an 8% job offer to rate to 77%; South Africa's emerging role as a global employment source; and much more. Enjoy!