Future-Focused with Christopher Lind

As learning leaders, it's easy to get tunnel vision. We spend so much time creating efficiencies for others that we often forget to create efficiencies for ourselves and our own teams. It's something I have to continually remind myself of when working with high-performing leaders in a constantly changing and fast-paced environment. Using data as a way to challenge me continually has become an increasingly go-to in my strategic arsenal.   In this Learning Tech Talks, I'm talking about working harder and equally smarter with Ryan Austin from Synapse and how to create efficiencies for L&D teams with streamlined data through their Purpose-Built platform that gives leaders real-time results to understand insights and adapt to their discoveries in the #futureofwork.

The evolution of corporate learning has shifted.   A learner’s reality is built through the senses, which convey perception to the mind.     Additionally, reflection works with those perceptions to form ideas. Our senses are a fundamental function of learning, and how we harness and utilize it as learning leaders is critical to our success.    #VR is allowing us to convey perceptions through the sense in a revolutionary way and has the potential to be a powerful learning tool in the #futureofwork.     In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m altering realities with Guido Helmerhorst from Warp VR to discuss where VR fits in the L&D tech stack and how organizations are adopting the technology and some of the successes AND failures that have come with it.

The need to think about and design for the broader employee experience is real, but it isn’t new.   People weren’t clamoring for a narrow but slightly refreshed piece of digital content buried in an LMS. Then suddenly, the world changed.  The conversation has been happening since long before entering the industry.   What’s the problem?   Some would point the finger at stakeholders. Some would point to a lack of access to tools or technology. Others might look around the room at their colleagues. A handful might take a hard look in the mirror.  In reality, it’s a complicated mix of all that and more.  So, what can we do as an industry to transition from IDs to XDs?   In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m veering off the usual path for a  special practitioner episode with my friend Kason Morris about this complex challenge and what we can do to solve it.

Education as a benefit is an effective way to attract talent. Unfortunately, many employer education benefits are unintentionally discriminatory in their design by assuming employees have the means to cover costs and wait to be reimbursed. Moreso, we are finding that employees that are already educated have more access to education, and a large chunk of the American workforce is left out of this equation. As learning leaders, we have an obligation to our learners to provide the necessary tools to complete their job, but also to provide opportunities for learners to excel beyond their role and place in the workforce. In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m chatting with familiar face Matthew Daniel over at Guild Education about creating economic and talent mobility in communities by providing higher education to front-line workers.

***Apologies for my stadium audio...I limited my talking as much as possible, but JD Dillon sound fantastic*** Will society ever return to normal post-pandemic? It’s hard to say without society being post-pandemic yet, but I hope not. We’ve had an opportunity to learn a lot over the last two years, and it would be unfortunate if all those lessons faded in an attempt to return to the way things were. I believe the attention brought to front-line workers was much needed and here to stay and hope the learning strategies employed during the pandemic successfully continue without the pandemic demand. In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m chatting with show alum JD Dillon from Axonify to revisit previous conversations from the last couple years through the optimistic lens of a post-pandemic society. We'll highlight how managers have learned and adapted with their teams and walk through some of the successes and failures that L&D pushed through and ways that we can continue to innovate in the space for the #futureofwork.

Work is changing; people are changing; technology is changing.  And, the state of things continues to pour gasoline on the fire.  What does it all mean?  A lot of things, but one that's consistent is the landscape is rich with opportunity for our field to make a demonstratable impact on the performance of our organizations as well as the performance and well-being of our people.  In a last-minute shift, this Learning Tech Talks highlights some of the biggest happenings across all three areas based on a multitude of recent conversations and the latest industry data.

Effective learning is all about precision. As billions of VC capital flows into reskilling startups, questions arise for practitioners as they look for the right model and content for their learners. A generalized blanket is thrown over the word  ‘reskill’ and often used to market reskilling to everyone for everything! While I believe a proper framework has been developed,  precision reskilling is starting to come into focus, as many find that their specific reskilling needs cannot be met through a  one-size-fits-all solution. In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m narrowing down reskilling with Kian Katanforoosh, Co-founder and CEO of Workera.ai to separate their approach from available industry solutions with their niche reskilling solution directed towards AI and machine learning through scalable mentorship with a heightened emphasis on learners' preexisting capabilities to drive measurable results and retain top talent.

Are you leading a digital transformation or a tech refresh? The semantics matter a lot more today than they did a few years ago. Digital transformation is no longer a competitive advantage, but a competitive necessity.  Leadership wants results from their digital investments, and decisions must be quantified to be understood and accounted for.  Too many learning leaders focus on solutions first and strategy second.  Purchase the license and THEN we’ll figure out how to make the software work for them. Wrong answer. If we want to transform anything moving forward in the #futureofwork it needs to be how we look at problems not how we pay for problems.  In this Learning Tech Talks, Raj Sundarason, author and founder of The DAP Strategist, is joining me to unpack the root meaning of adoption, the layers underneath, and discover how it can redirect guidance for learning leaders by narrowing their focus on the optimization of processes before premature investments in tech.  We'll highlight how to support the "Baby User" and how it pertains to the general outlook for learning leaders as they are rolling out and updating software and applications. 

What is an education without experience?   The argument of ‘education’ vs ‘experience’ is often presented as a  false dichotomy. The idea of one being more valuable than the other is something that I don’t believe can ever be universally established at face value. Education IS experience; however, the application of education is a separate experience that builds on the momentum to create who we are in our respective careers.    In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m interning with Adam Alpert, CEO & Cofounder of Pangea.app to get a better picture of their platform and what it’s providing for undergraduate and recent graduate students on their learning journey by finding freelance work in their respective studies and getting paid for developing their talent and consequently building a framework for their future careers.

How is it that in our ever-connected digital world we can still feel disconnected from our teams? As somewhat of an ambassador for digital learning technology, I’m still waiting for a product that is able to connect me to the same energy I’ve had with in-person teams. I’m not saying it can’t be done virtually as  I’ve had some amazing energy with teams that have operated 100% remote. Yet  I can’t help but think about the quality talent that doesn’t function well in a remote environment with the current tech available. With more organizations going remote, what are we doing to best serve these individuals needs to function in a high-performing digital environment? In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m serving a volley to Josh Little, CEO & Founder of Volley to hear more about his passion for communication and how that has changed, for better and for worse, in the #futureofwork. We'll also see how to help emulate the energy in physical conversations through asynchronous video chats that serve to build team relationships in a more genuine way that also takes up less time but also has the ability to communicate more. I had the pleasure to test out the platform and I’m really excited to dig more into more of the features and functionalities.