Future-Focused with Christopher Lind

Overnight our world was turned on it’s head. For many organizations, work has been completely disrupted. The same holds true for many employees in their professional and personal, lives dramatically impacting their emotional state and professional capacity. When chaos like this happens, it’s easy for panic to set in resulting in organizations and leaders scrambling for bandaids at the expense of strategically solving big issues. The reality is, on the other side of this global event is an entirely new normal that every organization needs to be preparing for, and at the core of that new normal are the employees that make our organizations work. Listen into this special episode of Learning Tech Talks when I talk with Matt Burns from Bento HR to talk about how #learning and #hr can better work together to strategically plan for what this new normal will look like in our organizations and how we can proactively prepare for it.

Unless your leaders are deeply steeped in the latest research and learning tech trends, informing them you’re going to change the way you deliver content to be more adaptive is going to do more than raise some eyebrows. The word ‘adaptive’ will mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And, how will they react when they realize that people won’t necessarily all be exposed to the same content? These are just a few of the important considerations you need to make before embarking on this type of transformation. And, even after you start your journey, there will be plenty of challenges ahead as you bring the organization along for the change. In this episode I talk with Nick Howe and Joe Barrow about what to expect when introducing the concept of adaptive learning to your organization and how Area9 Lyceum can help tell that story. After all, while the concept is great and the capability is powerful, you’re going to have to sell it to your organization long before you implement a platform.

It’s been a common practice for years. Recently, it’s even made major headlines. As organizations seek to improve diversity and reduce bias, learning programs and initiatives are frequently at the forefront. Logically, creating awareness about our biases results in a change in behavior and ultimately a better outcome, right? Well, logic and data don’t always match up. In fact, is it possible our efforts may actually be contributing to the problem? In this episode I talk with Dani Johnson from RedThread Research about the research that addresses the truth about Diversity and Unconscious Bias training. Listen in to hear what the research is showing and what steps you can take to effectively improve D&I in your organization.

We’ve all seen a catchy animated video at some point that grabbed our attention. It’s a nice break from the shaky selfie video or stuffy, corporate talking head stuff. You may have even paid to have one made for you because you thought it’d be too difficult or expensive to build in-house. Well, I don’t believe engaging animated videos should be limited to organizations and individuals with big budgets or intense technical skills, and neither does Vyond. They’re on a mission to democratize animated videos and transform the way we communicate through video with a dash of fun. This week I’m talking with Stacy Adams from Vyond (Formerly GoAnimate) about their cloud solution that’s making engaging animated video a reality for individuals and organizations alike. Whether you are looking for sketch animation, animation, or a combination of the two, they’ve got you covered.

As an L&D or business leader, does improv immediately jump to mind as a solution to a number of the human challenges we’re facing amidst the coronavirus pandemic? I wouldn’t be surprised if many answered no to that question. However, I’d advocate it should be. Amidst the ever-growing, gloomy news about the coronavirus and the negative impact it’s having on the world around us, this conversation is a breath of fresh air that’s focused on solutions instead of problems. In this episode we talk with Bob Kulhan about how he has focused his experience and team at Business Improv to harness the power of improv and translate it into a solution that solves real business problems. He’ll also share more about how their latest solution that is not only preparing people to operate in a virtual and distributed world but creates an opportunity for people to see how to do it in practice.

With the coronavirus continuing to spread, social distancing is one of the most effective strategies for flattening the curve. However, this leaves many organizations scrambling to figure out how to communicate and collaborate in a world where employees are suddenly required to work from their homes. Given the speed and agility required to address the crisis, there isn’t time to explore new technologies and navigate the implementation process. Fortunately, many organizations already have a number of tools in their portfolio that can help them bridge the gap. In this episode I’m talking with Jordan Fladell from mLevel about the current state of affairs and how to successfully leverage your existing tech stack to quickly adapt to employees rapidly shifting into the remote work world and some of the resources they’ve created to help.

Greater speed and efficiency while at the same time delivering content with a greater degree of relevance than ever before? Impossible, right? Wrong. That’s the beauty of today’s leading technologies. By modeling a learner’s skill signature and pairing that with #machinelearning, modern technology can quickly and efficiently determine what content will be particularly important to the learner, and when it gets it wrong, #machinelearning allows it to learn from its mistakes, so it doesn’t happen again. And, by allowing the machines to take most of this time-consuming activity off our hands (and do it better than we ever could), it allows us to focus on the higher-order activities. Listen to our conversation with Toby Harris and Rob MacAllister about how magpie by Filtered is making this a reality.

Emotions like learning are brain activities and are far more deeply interconnected than we often give them credit. The way we feel dramatically influences the way we think and perceive the world. As a result, it can have a dramatic influence on what and how we learn. That means it’s critical that we do our best to take them into account when we think about learning and learning technology even though it’s a complex variable and not universal for all our learners. Listen as I talk with Mike Kirk & Lea Sorrentino from BI Worldwide about the impact of emotions and feelings on the learner experience and ways we can be more intentional about ensuring we’ve accounted for that in our planning. You’ll also hear more about their Learning eXchange platform designed to keep that at its core.

For many organizations, the challenge in supporting employee’s knowledge management needs is not a lack of content. The content exists, but it’s everywhere, lacks context, and is impossible to find. The act of curating that content through traditional methods is near impossible. Curating it and delivering it in a way that’s personalized to the end user and reaches them where they are, absent of technology, is beyond reach. Enter in the Learning Experience Platform or Intelligent Learning Platform. Designed to sit on top of all your existing content sources, curate based on industry relevance, and measure skill progression while connecting into the platforms where your employees are actually working, they’re designed to deliver relevant information to employees where they need it most. Listen as I talk with Nelson Sivalignam and Jon Magnus from HowNow about how their platform is using Artificial Intelligence to tackle these problems with speed and at scale.

If you’ve been in L&D for a while, you’re probably familiar with the buzz around microlearning. And, if your even vaguely familiar with learning technology, the platform Axonify probably rings a bell. However, microlearning means a lot of things to a lot of different people, and there’s no shortage of companies that have attached that term to their brand. Add to that, simply distributing bite-size chunks isn’t a silver bullet solution to any L&D problem. It’s about breaking content into manageable chunks, delivering it to employees when it’s relevant, reinforcing the desired knowledge and behaviors, and measuring the impact are all important elements of a successful learning experience. However, pulling all that together often proves to be a challenge. Listen to my conversation with JD Dillion, Chief Learning Officer, at Axonify about what microlearning means to them and what else their platform has to offer that makes it a full-service solution.