Future-Focused with Christopher Lind

Does the employee experience matter in 2022? I assumed it has always mattered and will indefinitely! Different organizations value and prioritize the employee experience differently.  The key takeaway, however, is organizations that excel at it get the talent, retain the talent, and continue to have a strategic competitive advantage in the market. While hybrid work has changed what this looks like, and many have struggled to find the right formula, does it really matter?   In this Learning Tech Talks, I'm catching up with Nicky Hoyland from Huler to dissect the definition of employee experience and talk about the role EXPs have in the #futureofwork.  We'll also explore some of the stats and numbers that help streamline workflows and engage teams in their ultimate effort to make work human again.

What makes a good leadership cohort? Do I have any cohort strategists out there? I  imagine there are a lot of valid arguments for what makes a good cohort, but I think a better question to ask is, what would make a bad leadership cohort? Simply grouping individuals together for peer-to-peer discussion is not enough to produce engaging, effective,  and long-lasting outcomes. Strategy and methodology are how we assemble strong cohorts and build better leaders.   In this Learning Tech Talks, I'm sitting around a virtual campfire with my friend Megan Galloway from Campfire to dive into how best to assemble effective leadership cohorts and how to continually build strength in leadership with an authentic and relevant experience that gives everyone a voice.

Innovation is a process.    Innovation is also something that many fear more often than they’d like to admit. This can sometimes hinder our ability to accept change and embrace a new generation that looks different than our own. Remember, not all of our predecessors embraced the change that we brought with us. Use  Esports as a modern-day case. Organizations that aren’t quick to embrace change often fall behind while the winds of change blow past them.    In this Learning Tech Talks, I bring back Michael Ioffe from Arist to talk about the emerging trends coming out of forward-thinking LMS  platforms that embrace tech that resonates differently with a new generation of learners and how organizations are finding success in ways previously unthinkable.

How often are privacy, security, customization, and configuration a part of the conversation on your learner's journey?   Looking back at the past few years at some of the large-scale misuses of personal data collection, I can’t help but include security and data collection in my conversations with enterprise vendors more frequently. We all love AI. AI needs data to effectively do its job. The more a  learning system needs, the clearer data privacy and security objectives need to be. It’s not something that has always been in the front of my brain, but I suspect it’s a conversation here to stay in the #futureofwork.   In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m joined by Rob Porter from CoSo Cloud, LLC to continue the conversation about security in 2022 concerning cloud-based learning solutions and what questions learning leaders should be having with vendors with the increasing importance for organizations to secure and protect sensitive data for their learners.

Will YouTube ever be a thing of the past?   It’s been some time since we’ve talked about content on this show.  How is everyone holding up with their current enterprise content manager  (ECM)? Today’s learners are now comfortable and accustomed to viewing virtual content. Their expectations and their ability to engage is predicated on their historical content consumption.    Is there an argument to be made that viewing a learning video on the same platform that hosts videos of silly cats and laughing babies may be less effective?   In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m joined by Michael Guastamacchio from MediaZilla to discuss enterprise video delivery and how to create a strategic  advantage with content for teams and consumers alike through a smooth,  slick, and highly professional client experience.

The blank stare of death. Anyone else been there? You’re new to a company or learning new software, and suddenly, you become paralyzed by the anxiety and mental exhaustion of what to do next. I remember teaching my brother how to use our family Gateway 2000 computer. I knew if I just told him what to do, he’d run back into my room 5 minutes later and ask for help. KNOCK PLEASE! Eventually, I found he learned much better if I stood over him and guided his hand on where to click through the processes. It’s weird to think of DAPs as a big brother guiding you to proficiency, but I can’t help but draw a correlation with their effectiveness over static learning methods. In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m bringing it with Luke Talbot from Userlane to talk about what makes a good DAP platform and what learning leaders need to know as the demand and market for these products increase, and how to use them to their best ability to deploy, engage, and accelerate their software adoption in the future of work.

while ( ! (succeed = try() ) ); It used to bother me that my coding abilities were rather lacking compared to some of my peers. Coding can be intimidating for reskillers, yet tons of creative minds have much high-level to offer in software development. My confidence was boosted when a colleague told me, “Do what you do best and outsource the rest.” In the future of work, a lot of coding will be done by dedicated professionals, with high level code available on a multitude of easy-to-use platforms. What this looks like concerning AR/VR and the Metaverse is still being navigated, and look forward to it. In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m joined by Rajesh Jha from SimInsights Inc. to talk about how users can directly publish immersive and interactive training content that gives learners a strategic advantage while delivering an immediate ROI.bothered

Just because we work in the field of skills doesn’t mean we’re immune from having to develop our next generation of skills. If anything, there’s an even greater need to stay ahead of the curve to ensure we can keep pace with the rest of the organization. A quick Google search demonstrates there’s no shortage of blogs,  research articles, and graphics highlighting what skills we and others believe need to be developed. Unfortunately, too few provide broader context around the need to change and the barriers often contributing to the lack of desire for change. There’s also a particular nuance to what those new skills may look like depending on the role within an L&D function. After all, an  L&D professional isn’t universal. There’s a diverse portfolio of roles within the ever-expanding L&D function. In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m flying solo to talk about how the significant changes to business and technology directly impact our work and how those changes translate to the need to grow and evolve our existing skills. I’ll also address directly how some of the changes can be perceived as threats but better leverage the higher-order skills we enjoy.

YOU are more capable of acquiring skills and unlocking potential than you think you are. Can’t is a simple contraction I’m not very familiar with. One echo chamber  I’ve noticed lately is the confidence of individuals whom I surround myself with regarding their adaptability and learning. I believe this to be a positive thing, but I’m also aware of the blind spot in my perception as others around me may not have the confidence in themselves to learn and adapt to new skills. How, as learning leaders, do we identify and encourage confidence in learners to believe in themselves to acquire new skills regularly? Tomorrow on Learning Tech Talks, I’m joined by Rashim Mogha from Skillsoft to talk about confidence in learning and how a next-gen learning experience that is personalized, immersive, and accessible to anyone has the potential to transform the workforce faster and prepares today’s learners for the skills of tomorrow.

Does anyone think that it’s time to slowly retire the buzzword “Gamification” from the L&D industry?   Just to clarify, I’ve used this term liberally to describe organizations providing creative digital solutions in the enterprise learning space.   There are some fantastic products, AND some not so fantastic. Organizations that have created a sustainable competitive advantage are ones that don’t focus too heavily on virtual Band-Aids, but create a continual experimental, multiplatform solution to continually move forward and  produce results.   Effective progress comes from a change in our language to describe what is in front of us and not the same thing in a  repetitive echo chamber.   In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m joined by Dan White from Filament Games to talk about the value of staying curious as an educational game developer and how to create playful experiences that improve people’s lives and delivery through whatever medium is best.