Learning Is The New Working

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‘We really need to invest right now in human skills:’ our Purpose exploration continues, with Aaron Hurst Nov 11, 2020

Show notes

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.

Is Purpose Working? A special Learning Futures Group-RedThread Research exploration Oct 28, 2020

Show notes

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 found
why ‘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.

‘Culture is a verb, not a noun:’ a sit down with L&D influencer Melissa Daimler Oct 14, 2020

Show notes

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.

Is coding the new typing? Sep 30, 2020

Show notes

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?

Why you need to start loving problems—not your (ha ha) ‘solutions' for them Sep 16, 2020

Show notes

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.

A Commitment To True Cultural and Cognitive Diversity: Fernando Sanchez-Arias, CLICK Institute Sep 02, 2020

Show notes

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.

A SORTA FIRST BIRTHDAY SPECIAL! 'Never Let A Serious Crisis Go To Waste' Aug 26, 2020

Show notes

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.

If No Two People Listen The Same, Why Do We Think They THINK The Same? Dana Dupuis, Listening Thinker, Mandel Communications Aug 19, 2020

Show notes

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.

‘My name is Oscar Trimboli, and I am on a quest to create 100 million Deep Listeners in the world’ Aug 13, 2020

Show notes

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.

'So Many Possibilities:' Gina Jeneroux, Chief Learning Officer, BMO Financial Group Aug 05, 2020

Show notes

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.

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