The Learning Culture Podcast

Joining me this week is Stephanie Middaugh, who is the founder of Phoenix GTM Consulting. Stephanie also has an incredible track record and career in enablement. She, as she says in the show, was a victim of the layoffs but had been building Phoenix in the background for a while. So she clearly always had the intention and passion to go out on her own, and that's what she did. We talk a little bit about what that's been like, which is a fun way to start this conversation.The main episode is about Hackathons. Stephanie has been running these Hackathons with the Sales Enablement Squad that she runs with her partner. It is an incredible format for coming together, and it's in person. Participants fly in and get together for an afternoon of workshopping actual problems that these people want to focus on, that will be super useful. No slides, no presentations - this is just stickies, notebooks, pens, papers, and whiteboards, and off you go. And it's been a really good run that they had last year. They're now running six or seven of these next year.If you want to find out more about those workshops, you'll learn all about them, how they work, and how to set them up. And then we talk about how you can use Hackathons for sales team training or sales enablement. And this was really cool. It definitely came up with a really helpful, cool, six step framework to help you think about how to do this. And this was not prepared, we didn't plan to come up with that, a testament to how much fun it was to have this conversation. Please, sit back, relax, and enjoy this long-awaited episode with the meme queen, Stephanie Middaugh.Stephanie Middaugh LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sjmiddaugh/

Joining me this week is Stephanie Middaugh, who is the founder of Phoenix GTM Consulting. Stephanie has been running sensational Hackathons with the Sales Enablement Squad that she runs with her partner. It's an incredible format for coming together, and it's in person.  Participants fly in and get together for an afternoon of workshopping actual problems that these people want to focus on, that will be super useful.  No slides, no presentations - this is just stickies, notebooks, pens, papers, and whiteboards, and off you go. And it's been a really good run that they had last year. They're now running six or seven of these next year.If you want to find out more about those workshops, you'll learn all about them, how they work, and how to set them up in the full episode. But in this "Rapid Fire 5" segment, I gather her first thoughts on five key questions related to learning and enablement. Stephanie Middaugh LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sjmiddaugh/

Nate Nasralla joins me this week for a deep dive with SME episode.Nate is the founder of Fluint.io. He teaches sellers how to sell with buyers, not to them.His whole thesis is built on the idea that the sale actually happens when you’re not in the room.And he has built a product around facilitating the how-to of his thesis: finding and framing a high-priority problem, creating internal consensus to move in a new direction, and then quantifying and clarifying a visual of the promised land (the business impact and the personal impact to come).A lot of puzzle pieces came together during this episode. Nate’s a super smart guy.I definitely have to go back to my pipeline now and tweak some things because I learned a lot from this conversation, and I hope you do, too.Please sit back, relax, and enjoy my episode with Nate Nasralla.Nate Nasralla LinkedIn -  (https://www.linkedin.com/in/natenasralla/) 

Joining me this week for part two of our conversation is David Carter.As I mentioned in part one, David became known as one of the world's top CEO mentors. In building and exiting a company, he found that character underpinned every single thing he did.If he could help his CEOs develop character or become certain characteristics, they transformed. They started to grow.There are a lot of interesting lessons here that we can take into our work in developing managers and leaders within companies.This half of the two-part episode focuses on how David has come to make his entire life about character, and how his legacy project (his current company Entelechy Academy) seeks to develop character in people.Be sure to explore the Character Matrix that Entelechy and David and his team created under Guest Links!Sit back, relax, and enjoy part two of my conversation with David Carter.David Carter LinkedIn - https://uk.linkedin.com/in/davidcmcarter

I have a really fun new episode format to share with you today.We're calling it the Learning Nugget.The idea is to share some quick, super-practical, super-tactical lessons with all of you. After this episode, you'll have something specific that you want to try right away in your current role.My first guest for this is Jonathan Mahan, co-founder of The Practice Lab. He's also a former account executive who became disillusioned with how role plays were run.Obviously, role plays are a key part of practicing the sales conversation. But Jonathan, like many of us, believed that they just weren't working.They suck, to be honest. Right?So he spent a lot of time thinking about how to make them better.And I think he's actually done it; he's received great results from people that have gone through what I like to call “literal transformations," of who they are as a person.They're better sellers because they've deliberately practiced. That's what this episode is about.In this episode, you'll hear Jonathan's four lessons, along with practical tips for each that you can implement right away.Let's dive in and discover how to make roleplays not suck. Jonathan Mahan LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtmahan/

Joining me this week is David CM Carter.David is known as the world's leading CEO mentor. He started to build his reputation by taking a small FTSE (or Fortune 5000 for Americans) company to IPO. But then he expanded, going on to help other CEOs take much larger companies public and beyond.The things David spoke about in this conversation resonated deeply with things that I think about all the time.We have decided to release it as two episodes.In this first episode, you're going to hear David explain what it was like constructing the world's leading CEO mentoring company.You'll get tons of value out of this episode on the topic of mentorship, which, as David describes in the beginning, is different from coaching.This is applicable in sales enablement and lots of manager-to-individual-contributor relationships because, in most cases, the senior person is the one who has the experience and really can be the mentor for new hires.If you want to learn more about how mentoring works from one of the world's best CEO mentors, tune in now.Sit back, relax, and enjoy my episode with David Carter.David Carter LinkedIn - https://uk.linkedin.com/in/davidcmcarter

Joining me this week is you.This episode is a special one. I’m going to break down a recent experience I had for your benefit. I’m recording this on March 1st, 2023. We conducted a Creativity and Innovation training workshop for a client in San Francisco last week.It was an incredible experience.We partnered up with Sarah Lagrotteria, who is the wife of a previous guest on the show, and the creator of the methodology that we were teaching, Dr. Angus Fletcher.In this episode, I share my experience teaching this stuff, and we’ll weave in parts of my conversation with Angus to help solidify this view.I want to make this episode as practical as possible. For that purpose, we’re going to have a goal.Our goal together is going to be to unpack training and creativity.More accurately, training innovation in a way that’s practical.I want you to take this episode and listen to it multiple times, then put these ideas into practice yourself.I really encourage you to do it. I’ve done it.I promise you: by the end of this episode, we’ll have actionable tools to take into our work to allow us to do just that — turn creativity into innovation.So please sit back, relax, and enjoy my episode with you.

Joining me this week is Nick Lawrence.For new listeners, the Learning Culture podcast is a space to explore the art and science of what I call “Total Enablement.”Total Enablement entails creating the conditions for learning to happen - creating an ecosystem where learning is the default state at your company.And joining me this week was a guest who really gets it, who thinks deeply and writes about this idea himself.I've really enjoyed following Nick's LinkedIn posts; he really gets it.This episode is an instance of two people arriving at the same conclusions from different angles and having a good time doing it.You'll enjoy it, too.So please sit back, relax, and tune in to my episode with Nick Lawrence.

Joining me this week is Nick Lawrence.For new listeners, the Learning Culture podcast is a space to explore the art and science of what I call “Total Enablement.”Total Enablement entails creating the conditions for learning to happen - creating an ecosystem where learning is the default state at your company.And joining me this week was a guest who really gets it, who thinks deeply and writes about this idea himself.I've really enjoyed following Nick's LinkedIn posts and talking to him felt like an instance of two people arriving at the same conclusions, from different angles, and having a good time doing it.In this "Rapid Fire 5" segment, I gather his first thoughts on five key questions related to learning and enablement. 

Joining me this week is Dr. Ken Long.Ken is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army.He spent 25 years on active duty and continues to serve with the Army as a Professor of Change Management at the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas training facility. He works with a staff of over 7,000 faculty and is responsible for teaching over 200,000 students.Boy, oh boy, was this a good conversation. I asked Dr. Long to come on to the podcast to talk about his side of the story in working with Dr. Angus Fletcher. Dr. Fletcher is a previous guest on the show, and he's responsible for devising a methodology for teaching creativity (learn more in this episode).You'll realize this is unlike any method for teaching creativity that you have ever seen before. Still, both of these episodes only scratched the surface of the power and potential of that method.There's so much more to this episode. It was an absolute joy to record, and I know you'll enjoy this conversation as well.So please sit back, relax, and enjoy my episode with Dr. Ken Long.