Future-Focused with Christopher Lind

"You can't really know where you are going until you know where you have been.” Maya Angelou. It's interesting to think about how amazing podcasts like Learning Tech Talks didn't exist 20 years ago. Even within the last decade, we’ve witnessed tremendous growth in the industry.  While "audioblogging" has been around since the '80s and "internet talk radio" in the 90s, the technology was primitive, and its reach was limited. To those of you early adopters, what a time to be alive! In this episode, I'm podcasting a podcaster with Director of Communications of Podbean, Shannon Martin, and talking about their platform that hosts a wealth of opportunities for publishing and monetization for podcasters everywhere and provides an easy-to-use interface that includes analysis and insight to help businesses communicate their messages and build community.

Learning has changed and organizations need to adapt rapidly to ensure their current and future solutions deliver learning experiences that are effective and efficient.   Responding to these changes can be challenging, and can often feel like a lonely journey on a long road with no turning.   Having a partner to ‘leg it’ with on your learning journey makes the road go faster and FURTHER on our never-ending voyage on a pathway to create impact.  In this Learning Tech Talks, I’m going to hop over the pond to Gavin Woods, Director of Client Services at Aurion Learning to talk about Aurion’s new platform ‘ByteKast LXP’ that helps leaders address the change necessary for organizations handling post-pandemic learning. I’m going to dig into the rationale, intent, and purpose of ByteKast while highlighting the “new age” learning management platforms' intuitive design and its next-level features that create learning that works.

I recently read an article that robots have started exercising. To build endurance, they are doing circuit training. Chatbots have come a long way since my ICQ and MSN Messenger days. Granted, most of my conversations at that time with chatbots were juvenile jokes or existential concerns. "Are you real?" It has been fun to watch the technology advance and grow into something more than just a boredom killer to a real tool for organizations to disseminate information more efficiently and effectively. In this episode, I'm getting a chatbot workout with CEO & co-founder of Mobil Coach, Vincent Han, who created his first chatbot in the 6th grade and has continued to lift his skills to help companies create personalized conversations at scale that facilitate a multitude of critical frontline processes and provides insight to help drive action and give employees the personalized mental strength training they need.

You’ve got questions about #learning and #talentdevelopment; I’m hoping to provide answers or at least some valuable perspective.   Over the past few weeks, I’ve been collecting some of the top questions from practitioners globally.    In this unscripted Learning Tech Talks, I’ll be responding to some of the top questions while taking your questions live.

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.