Future-Focused with Christopher Lind

In the last five seasons of the Premier Football League, there was an average of 2.74 goals scored per game. In a 90-minute match, teams grind for roughly 30  minutes before they accomplish their goal of getting the ball in the opponent's net. Everyone goes insane. Can you imagine having that kind of energy pouring into you and your team when you accomplish a goal? Maybe you can, but it’s just a matter of perspective.    In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m joined by Michael Kester from Lead Belay to talk about what it means to take leaders to a higher level of thinking and give them the keys to unlock their own confidence to lead while helping others climb to provide support, guidance, and feedback as they ascend.

How does your learning technology leverage your spatial cognitive ability to lead learners effectively? Problems surrounding spatial ability with regard to learning performance have been the focus of many learning technology debates over the years. However,  the conversation is almost exclusively centered around the learner with little attention given to leaders and instructors. There is an underlying expectation for leaders to inherently understand and be proficient with the tech that we are provided with. Spatial ability needs to be a two-way street for both the instructor and learner to provide sustainable learning in the #futurowork.    In this Learning Tech Talks, I'm excited to meet with Chris Olson from Class to hear more about some of the concerns and solutions for instructors as they seek to change the way the world learns and address some of the remaining band-aids from the pandemic and how to leverage existing tools to meet the needs of both the instructor and learner effectively and efficiently.

“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backward” – Aldous Huxley    I’ve often wondered about the rate of change with regards to learning technology and solutions. Somewhat analogous to Moore’s Law of Computing, ideally humans should have some formula that demonstrates how technology increases our ability to learn better and faster. With the advent of AI and data processing, the ability to consistently track learning programs should provide us with this information, and it is our duty as learning leaders to leverage that information for continual progress.    In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m catching up with my friend Judy Albers from Area9 Lyceum to talk about an academic approach to learning that is grounded in years of research enabling organizations to create a high-impact transformative learning experience that allows learners to achieve their full potential through a truly personalized experience.

How do you know that you know what you know? How do we as learning leaders distinguish justified beliefs shared by our colleagues, and formed by ourselves, from opinion? There are varying degrees of confidence that we all have within different areas of our lives and as we navigate our careers. It's not only important to continually review our levels of confidence in key areas,  but also in others as you seek to create a high-performing culture.    In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m chatting with Josh Kamrath from Bongo about how video assessment can bridge the gap and help organizations facilitate their journey to find out what stakeholders know in their respective positions.

Keep calm, I have the meeting notes for that.  Something I’ve observed while navigating different roles in my career is that highly effective teams are incredibly organized and efficient with their meetings. Like, crazy organized.  I can’t say this is something that I always appreciated, in fact, early in my career it was something that I resented. Documentation is the lifeblood of a sustainable team and is unfortunately often overlooked entirely or not prioritized by members equally.  In this Learning Tech Talks, I'm chatting with Darren Chait, Co-Founder and COO of Hugo, about how streamlining meeting documentation and planning connects meetings to their team and to the tools that are used daily to provide a bottom-up and decentralized decision-making environment with the goal of making every meeting more productive. 

Dear Past, thank you for all of the lessons. Dear Future, I’m ready for you!   While not directly on the topic of L&D, I occasionally delve into some of the broader workplace technology that has significant potential for our industry. The ability to collaboratively connect and facilitate live conversations and share knowledge with industry leaders across the globe and reach people wherever they are is futuristic and something that was unthinkable a short time ago and often taken for granted.   In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m chatting with 🎬 Anya Razina from Restream about the obstacles and opportunities we face as video traffic continues to grow and how to leverage live video as a way to cut through the noise and create meaningful content while connecting with others.

“My flying has been mostly solo, but the preparation for it wasn’t.” - Amelia Earhart Humility is something I would argue every successful entrepreneur and business leader has a firm understanding of. You can fly great distances in your career, but to be successful in your aspirations there has to be a team behind you AND in front of you. Learn continuously and create continuous learning opportunities for maximum impact today and in the future. In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m chatting with Taylor Blake from Learn In to hear more about their journey across the learning ocean. We'll be digging into their three “I’s” of learning (Intensively, Intentionally, and Inclusively) and highlight how to build bridges for learners one skill gap at a time.

“There is a lot of talk  about all the jobs are going to all go away, which probably won’t happen, but it’s also not true that there won’t be an impact” - Stacia  Garr, Berkley Haas Interview with Prof. Greg La Blanc. It seems like every day I’m reading fear-mongering headlines about AI taking jobs away. Leadership has started to come around to the idea that replacing human capital with AI can create as many problems as it aims to solve when done wrong, but how do we use research to avoid the panic and see the future before it hits. After all, AI is a supplement, not a replacement. Stop worrying, YOU have a job in the #futureofwork! It just looks different than it does today. In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m chatting with Stacia Sherman Garr, Co-founder and Principal Analyst of RedThread Research, to talk about ways organizations can identify insights for acquiring skills and proactively develop strategies to retrain the technologically changing workforce that celebrates heterogeneity and values employee's livelihood over temporary profits.

Like a learning culture, your tech ecosystem already exists. It's growing and changing, with or without your input. Lots of choices didn't include your requirements, and there are plenty of things you wish it did that it does not. But, there is something, and that's a start. The real question is, where do you go from here? Now the fun begins as you layer what your ecosystem should look like and place it over where you are now in order to refine and shape what you need. You'll also want to pack some heavy gear since we'll be exploring outside the lanes of traditional L&D tech and into the tools where work is getting done today. For this Learning Tech Talks,  I'm flying solo to talk through this complicated mess with hopes to help set you on a better trajectory, ultimately leading to measurably improving your employee experience.

Personal and professional growth is only achieved when another person is with you on your journey.   Individualism is in, but success isn’t found on an island.    As much as we try to figure things out on our own, every success is found with the help and interaction with others.   Mentorship is often sold as a solution with false prospects of gleaning wisdom solely by interaction. For mentorship to function as a  tool for success, it needs to serve something, but there’s more to it than that. In this Learning Tech Talks, I'm gleaning wisdom from Omer Glass, CEO and Co-founder of GrowthSpace, and talking about some of his successes and failures throughout his journey and how he is on a mission to impact one million people by democratizing collaborative development that provides professional growth that is real, reliable, and relevant.