Future-Focused with Christopher Lind

I practiced one of my tool puns recently during a meeting with our leadership team. They said it was cutting edge, and I nailed the delivery! Remote work doesn’t typically involve traditional use tools, but what we lack in brawn, we make up with brains! Technically speaking, a tool is a device to carry out a particular function. I often describe my leadership training as a toolbox of information that I carry with me to function in my role. Unfortunately, some people only have tools to organize and look cool. Guilty! In this episode, I’m hammering away with CEO & founder Ryan Seamons to learn more about how he is using their Career Cards to helping managers construct conversations with clarity which drives work forward and facilitates positive career journeys for employees while connecting teams with engagement that highlights some of the key positive elements of close interpersonal interactions.

Television has a way of insulting my intelligence, but nothing rubs it in worse than my computer. Culture assessment in an organization is about as quick as a glacier. “Oh sure, you need another week to gloss up your deck to ensure effective graphical information retention?” GET IT DONE! I’m only half joking, as there is a tremendous amount of variables and considerations in an intentional culture assessment to successfully create and manage a high-performing team. However, hear me out. Maybe, just maybe, we create more work for ourselves than necessary. In this episode, I’m tracking down with Juan Betancourt, CEO of Humantelligence, to talk about how he is helping organizations find measurable data for their team members to help align and optimize motivators and ideal environments to create analytics that facilitates decision making so that we can understand exactly who needs to be where and how to get them to accelerate with their peers.

People are re-evaluating their priorities, resulting in a historic number stepping away from their jobs in what’s being called The Great Resignation. That leaves companies desperately working to retain the talent they have while scrambling to build or buy the skills needed to sustain and innovate their business. This has rocketed career and skill development to a higher level than ever before, with business and HR leaders looking to learning for help. With the spotlight on us, what are we to do? That’s a great question and one I thought so important and timely I’m pulling together an eleventh-hour Learning Tech Talks. Joined by my good friend Ben Eubanks from Lighthouse Research & Advisory we’ll discuss what the research is saying and what we can do to help our organizations in their moment of need.

Ah yes, the classic corporate dilemma of investing in employees. What if we train our employees only to have them take a hike? What if we don’t and they STAY? For me, the answer is obvious, but I understand many concerns and fears of being used as a steppingstone. I truly believe that organizations that recognize that good human resources are as important as products are MORE effective in building sustainable competitive advantage. In this episode of Learning Tech Talks, I’m joined by Michael Brown, Chief People & Culture Officer with SchooX to talk about how he is helping organizations grow their community culture with their innovative talent development platform that allows users to go beyond simply managing learning processes, but EMPOWERS them to learn, develop skills, and drive business growth.

Jack of all trades, master of FUN! At least that's what I am to my kiddos. After doing this podcast for almost two years, I finally feel that I’m beginning to hone my craft. My repertoire of guests has given me the vocabulary to dive deep into conversations; balancing REAL discussion, on REAL topics, all with a little FUN. The cord from my brain to my mouth still gets unplugged sometimes. In my real job, I'm constantly honing my craft of congregating new ideas and implementing them within our organization to create a workplace of perpetual learners. In this episode of Learning Tech Talks, I’m virtually jumping in feet first with CEO and Founder of CoThryve, Blake Bozarth to discuss how he is taking high-potential committed leaders and making them exceptional leaders through Growth Groups™ that tap into the collective energy, experience, and expertise of their peers and consequentially starts a chain reaction of growth for teams and broader organizations alike.

I tried out one of my hilarious dad puns the other day when I was on a Zoom call with our CEO, Christopher (great names think alike). He told me I wasn’t even remotely funny. Oof. Gamification is a popular word among us L&D nerdz. Yes, I consider myself a learnerd. Let’s make that a thing. In all honesty, gamification isn’t anything new or special. BUT, it works. Growing up, I made up little games to help my, much younger and more handsome, brother with his homework. In the #futureofwork we have research, data, and AI to back up my own self-theory and when applied from a business perspective we can strategically measure ROI, team/individual effectiveness, and psychological development to create agile and high-performing teams. In this episode of Learning Tech Talks, I get the chance to sit down and chat with CEO and Founder of Aeqlia, Oussama “Ouss” Labib about his mission to make virtual team video calls suck less through a highly interactive game-based learning platform that tackles remote work struggles through a collaborative focused lens to bring about change and improvement across all organizations.

Celebrating the recent holiday, my wife had ordered me a speedo with pink elephants on them. Turns out they were actually swimming trunks!  How much does your organization spend on content creation? Personally, I  have a black budget for bad pun content. It’s probably more than you think when you consider the broad scale of costs.  How many resources are wasted or never used the way they are intended? Nothing drives me  CRAZIER than my learning content not in use, but it happens. It would be easier to blame the learners, but I prefer to take responsibility for ensuring that the right content gets to the right people AT the right time.   In this episode, I get the opportunity to chat with the founder of Olifano, David Verhaag, who also happens to be a fan of LTT, about how he embodies the mantra, ‘GSD’ (Get Sh*t Done), which led him on his journey  to solve the problem employees finding and using the resources made available to them. Olifano combines the power of microlearning and AI to elevate organizational efficiency by delivering engaging micro-moments and personalized learning content recommendations just in time and where employees really need them.

AI will never take away my job. Only an idiot would want to do my job! You don't have to be a luddite to have legitimate fears about AI. Thanks Nick Bostrom! However, AI in its many forms is meant to elevate, not replace, humans and we are only JUST beginning to see how it is shaping the #futureofwork. In this Learning Tech Talks, I have the pleasure to once again host Steve Dineen and Rhys Giles from Fuse Universal to see how they are continuing to elevate their 'engagement first'  platform that has brought success in numerous ways to countless organizations with a product that speaks for itself. We’ll also be diving into some of their new features that allow for organizational content to be scanned and recommended AS learners engage with others and relevant content and how it has the potential to pave the way for the future of #HRTECH.

Alright stop, collaborate and listen / Intrepid is back with their brand-new invention Peer-to-peer had a very different meaning to me during my freshman year of college and it had absolutely nothing to do with the file-sharing software, Napster, and “downloading” songs to burn a sick mix cd.  Today, peer-to-peer learning is something I’m more fluent in practicing and it’s at the highest priority when I’m restructuring. One of the major flaws in early learning platforms was the severe lack of a dynamic relationship between the learning content and the learner. In my career, it becomes more apparent to me every. single. day. that learning is something that grows stronger and faster when shared with others. In this episode, I have the pleasure once again to speak with Vice President & General Manager of Intrepid, Sam Herring. If any of you were watching my show a year ago (episode link below) Sam and I had the chance to debunk the myth that online collaborative learning wasn’t possible #fakenews. We finally have the opportunity to catch back up and see what he and Intrepid are doing to continually innovate and push their collaborative learning platform to the next level to inspire and transform organizations in the #futureofwork.

The average amount of time that a recruiter spends reviewing a resume is roughly seven seconds. That’s right. SEVEN. All that time precious time you spent googling, “Good CV buzzwords” up in smoke. One thing that is often overlooked during the recruiting and application process is the potential opportunity to build brand loyalty and rapport with applicants regardless of the outcome. I never got a response back from HR for the Wiggles Touring Company and the HECK if I let my kids ever watch them again. Case & point. In this episode, I have the pleasure to speak CEO & Co-Founder, Prem Kumar from Humanly about his journey navigating the #hrtech world and after having the opportunity to experience firsthand the struggles of hiring candidates that ultimately led him to develop a tool that streamlines the application process and allows organizations to engage at scale and eliminates the unconscious bias that can plague the recruiting process.