Future-Focused with Christopher Lind

Technology being aware of your environment and augmenting the it with digital information, guidance, and support. Experts guiding you through new and challenging tasks from anywhere in the world in real-time. It may sound like something from a science fiction film, but it’s actually a powerful capability being used by organizations around the world to dramatically improve performance by enabling technology to augment our reality for the better. In this episode I talk with Mark Rydman and Troy Segale from CraneMorley about the work they’re doing in partnership with Microsoft to combine AR technology and the Hololens to reimagine the possibilities. We will not only demystify the technology but talk about the ways it’s being used today amidst travel and proximity restrictions as a result of COVID19.

The way people communicate or fail to communicate may be one of the biggest inhibitors to the success of your organization. But, what can you do about it? One of the most impactful ways shape and develop human skills is through coaching. It develops the confidence and skills required for an individual to effectively to share their ideas and develop their own teams. One of the biggest challenges with pulling this off is that coaching done right requires a personal experience tailored to the unique needs of the individual. This proves to be exceptionally difficult to accomplish at scale. In this episode, we talk with Tyler Muse about why he and the team at Lingo Live have set their targets on unlocking the potential of talent through coaching and how they’re technology is making it possible.

When many people hear the word elearning, it doesn’t invoke a positive response. It's often associated with poorly designed content that forces people through a painful user experience. While there are reasons why people don’t typically see it in a positive light, it doesn't mean the tool and delivery mechanism is completely ineffective. In this episode I’m talking with Alexander Salas from eLearning Launch to dig into this often polarizing topic and address the reasons why elearning has the reputation it does and what we can do about it.

When you hear Artificial Intelligence, what’s the first application that comes to mind? Perhaps robots or a mischievous computer program comes to mind. How about workforce development or employee experience? The reality is, AI isn’t just for IT or business functions. It’s something every talent and HR leader should be intimately familiar with as a powerful tool for transforming our work and our workforce. In this episode, I’m nerding out with Ben Eubanks from Lighthouse Research and Advisory. We’ll be exploring the different possibilities and important ways augmenting the work we do with technology can dramatically impact our organizations and employees for the better. We’ll also address the risks and important considerations we need to make to ensure we’re making these decisions carefully and ethically.

One of the top challenges employees face when it comes to continuous learning is the limited time they have. This is often because corporate learning is viewed as a separate activity from their daily work. Add to that, the technology we’ve historically relied on to support continous learning has further reinforced this belief. The reality is, when people are forced to go outside of where they are working to get the answers they need, we’re battling for their limited time and attention. Furthermore, we’re creating unnecessary hurdles for them by forcing them to relearn a user interface. However, emerging technologies are moving away from the idea that learning needs to be separate and tapping seamlessly into the places employees are spending their time at work. In this special episode of Learning Tech Talks, I’m talking with Vineet Taneja from Microsoft about the new and exciting development in Microsoft Teams that’s breaking down the silos of work and learning to create an environment where they are one and the same.

It’s agonizing to passively sit through a presentation of endless slides that seem to never end, especially when it feels like the presenter is figuring things out alongside the participants. And, whether you’re delivering a live training session or giving a keynote presentation, keeping your audience engaged is a key metric for success and there’s no shortage of ways to lose them. Some of the basics include having a clear message and staying on task. However, interacting with your audience in real-time is one of the most effective and dynamic ways make it happen. However, doing this well takes more than throwing in a random poll or saving a few minutes at the end for Q&A. You need to field and address questions in real-time and adjust the flow based on audience feedback. In this episode, I talk with Shannon Daniels about what it takes to make the most of a live presentation and discover why she founded Encaptiv to help make accomplishing it easy.

#Upskilling and #reskilling is a topic in almost every learning and talent conversation. Regardless of what industry or function you’re in, it’s important as the half-life of employee skills continues to dwindle. For some organizations, the need to pull it off is important for staying at the top of their game and maintaining a competitive advantage. For other organizations, it’s a baseline requirement for staying in business. So, what should you do if the livelihood of the entire company was balanced on your ability to reskill your employees? In this episode I’m talking with Vinod Uniyal about what it really means, what it really takes, and what it looks like to close the skills gap and how #IBM is managing to pull it off. We’ll also dig into the journey they’ve been on as they’ve completely transformed their business and the role #upskilling and #reskilling has played in making the transformation possible.

Knowing how to deliver the behaviors that drive success is one thing. Actually being able to do them and do them well is another. So, how do you make the transition from knowing to doing? Practice! Since it’s so important, why don’t people do it? In reality, people often don’t really know what they should practice and how. In this episode Naomi Davidson and I dig into the importance of practice when it comes to developing human skills. We talk about the importance of breaking down some of the most common human skills into actionable behaviors. We also talk about why this important step is so often overlooked and hear how #Trybe has been designed to simplify and pragmatize the most important behaviors into habit forming practice.

Despite all that’s happening with technology and digital transformation, people remain the engine that power our businesses. As a result, people and the skills they bring to the table are ultimately one of the biggest variable in determining whether a business will thrive, survive, or die. The recent #coronavirus pandemic has recently exposed the quality and diversity of the skills in our organizations validating many of the concerns c-level executives have been losing sleep over before the crisis. So, what can we do about it and how can technology help? In this episode I talk with Koreen Pagano and Chris Milligan to find out how the forging of Adepto and Degreed is creating a technological powerhouse that can play a leading role in future-proofing your organization and unlocking the potential of your talent. Hear firsthand fthe journey they’ve been on and how they’re bringing this concept to life.

It’s probably safe to say that the vast majority of people in our industry, and probably outside our industry, have heard of the LMS. The learning management system has been a foundational piece of technology leveraged by companies big and small from around the world to manage their learning. If it’s such a foundational piece of technology, why is it that when most people hear the term, it conjures feelings of distain or instinctivly makes us wrinkle our noses? That’s a really good question. To be fair, not all of the problems associated with an LMS have anything to do with the LMS itself, but many of them certainly don’t encourage the right behaviors or create the right experience. On this episode David James and Ben Muzzell talk with me about some of the key points of failure where legacy learning technology continues to struggle. We also dig into the ways they’ve designed Looop to address these challenges and provide users with the right resources in a way that doesn’t disrupt the flow of work.