Future-Focused with Christopher Lind

“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.

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.