for AI thing, make sure that it's going okay, perfect. So that's, that's on so got that set and we've got 15 seconds before I hit the Go Live button.
All right,
but crack my neck here
okay,
we go I'm hitting the go live button Good morning Lori Roth I am so excited to start off a day long event of hearing lessons learned and digging into the plans that different learning leaders have for improving their work next year. Thank you for being the first of this amazing opportunity today.
So much Elena. I'm really excited to be here. Me too.
So the format for everyone who's tuning in, we've got 15 minutes of Laurie just sharing her lessons and her focus areas for next year. And then we've got 15 minutes to share questions and open it up to our listeners. To just ask Lori and I questions and share comments and feedback. So as you're tuning in, if you want to write down some questions or notes do feel free. Okay, now that we've got our ground rules laid out Laurie, to help us frame your lessons learned. Will you share with us a phrase or three words that just might describe who you are in the world of learning and development so we can have that context as we hear your lessons learned?
Oh, gosh, well, I
would say I like to think of myself as a problem solver. I'm the kind of person where if something doesn't make sense, or super complicated, it's just my jam. Problem Solver and etail nerd.
Nice. Well, that's why we get along so well Laurie, because I would also characterize myself as a problem solver in detail nerd no wonder why we've been friends for so long. I love it. Awesome. Okay, so, Laurie, you've already shared with me some notes about your lessons learned. So let's just start with that. And then we'll focus into what you'll be doing differently next year. So I've asked you to share three things if you could give us the high level of like what are the key lessons that you've learned this year? And then I'll ask you a few more questions to get some more detail out of that.
I wish I could say they were all brand new novel things that I learned this year, but I think the universe just loves to remind me of lessons I've already learned and I need to remember they just come up in different ways. So I do the top three things I learned this year. Number one is really be a strategic business partner, not a learning specialist. A lot of us work under the banner of learning and development or talent development or what have you. But we really have to know a lot about change management, communication, culture, talent development. So I think the big lesson there for me is really zoom out. Focus on return on expectations of my stakeholders, not necessarily just proving ROI of a specific learning intervention. In the focus on how am I stakeholder is going to be measured in terms of their effectiveness and that should be my goal to what does success look like for you? How are you going to be measured? And then that becomes my success measure to sometimes it's a matter of really great project management and clear communication and that makes them happy and that's good enough. doesn't always have to be about dollars and cents. So, I think just being able to be that strategic business partner, not just that learning specialist or learning consultant and making sure that we make our stakeholders goals, our goals. That's what's going to help us be that strategic business partner we want to be
that'd be number one. Yeah, awesome.
I think the second thing I've learned as well or relearned is not to fixate on
skill development, skill development.
It is 100% important but skills do not exist in a vacuum. And skills are finite. They're only good for so long. They're only good as long as the business says they're good. Yeah, piece of technology rolls out. skill sets are completely useless and you've got to relearn everything right. So one of the focuses one of the things that I learned this last year is really to change my mindset to focus on water capabilities. capabilities, like how do I nurture agility, nurture, resilience and people strategic thinking emotional intelligence because the name of the game is having an agile workforce, and upskill or rescale quickly when things change because they will change. What kind of learning opportunities and mentoring experiences and culture initiatives we have to support those broader capabilities around resilience and strategic thinking. And some of those other pieces so that's, that's number two. All be about skills.
Yeah, again, yeah, that's fine.
And then the third thing is just a fun little reminder from the universe, learning operations, learning operations and standards. It's not sexy work. You don't get credit for it, nobody sees it. But I really feel like to be a mature learning and development department. You really have to have a high performing team and a team that can scale and that means you've got to have a curriculum catalog. You've got to list down all your reusable learning objects and everywhere they've been borrowed or plugged in so you can maintain them. You've got to maintain your content, and you've got to retire it once it's reached end of life. Not everything's gonna live forever and shouldn't, right. You've got to have standards for file naming conventions folder structures. You've got to perform regular audits, you've got to document your internal processes and procedures. No matter how large or small your team is. The operational piece is so important to be a mature learning organization. Again, not the sexiest work. But very important if you're going to add people to the team or your team needs to grow or scale back. Or if you need to put a business case together to have another FTE added to your team. It's helpful to have all your processes procedures and you know, things documented for that business case. as well.
Yeah. What I hear you sharing is that we're trying to balance a world in which change is the only thing that's going to last in our world is that change is inevitable, and we have to be prepared for that. And so I hear that being a strategic partner. Going back to your Lesson learned number one, being a strategic partner and focusing on return on expectations for stakeholders. That gives us something easier and more agile to measure in terms of are we offering quality work and quality partnership to the stakeholders and people in our organizations? And then if we don't have standards, and we don't have operational systems to help us as things change, then we'll we never have anything solid to stand on. So I really hear that balancing of okay, change is normal and we have to expect that but how do we create an environment in which we can thrive? Even with change being that constant?
Honor percent? And,
you know, in past organizations that I've worked at some of the feedback that the learning and development team got was well, we didn't come to you when we have that training. Need because you're too slow. It's too long, free to develop something. So we just went to the trainers and have them with something off or we have some sneeze whip up some things. And it really makes me question Well, are we being a bottleneck for the organization? Or maybe we're not agile enough so I think that part about being a strategic business partner is being able to come in and consult and really peel the onion. Get to the root of what exactly are we trying to do and is training even necessary? I don't want to sell you one penny of training is not going to solve your issue. communication issue. Maybe they just need better performance support. Maybe you just need to communicate expectations better. It's not an issue at all. And so we can nip it in the bud quickly. And I'm not wasting anyone's time or money, creating a training that's ultimately not going to be successful.
So that being said, that's part of it.
Oftentimes, again, we focus too much on on skill development. And you put six months worth of work into developing training to teach people a new skill and the skill is only valid for a year. Yeah, because changes that's like was that a good investment? Could we have done that differently? It was performance support tool that would have been quicker and better than whipping up this, you know, training that we did. And then again, that learning ops piece, we can't really be agile, if everyone's on the same page, they can't find the file. They don't have the technology to edit it or we don't know where we put things so that kind of work in tandem to make just more agile and make us better consultants.
I love that. Yeah. You know what's interesting and kind of scary is that, as a strategic partner, might be putting ourselves out of business. It's like one perspective, right? That if we're looking for the right solution, that's not necessarily a really in depth training program. But something else some might say, well, what if we lose our jobs or like, what if learning the culture of learning and the appreciation of learning changes because we're looking for a more effective or efficient solution? And and I say, that's part of the change, right? That we know that learning has historically been a bottleneck or if we know that learning historically has taken a long time to be a solution, well, then you know, we will lose our jobs and so trying to preserve and think about the future of how can we be more valuable to organizations and communities? These are the kinds of conversations that are really important to not be threatened by them.
Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, excuse me, you know, I'm affiliated with the Association for Talent Development at Austin chapter president here. And one of the interesting things about the history of ATD is that they saw this shift years ago, and they changed their entire capability model and even the name of the organization. They changed from being the American Society for Training and Development, Association for Talent Development, because I think they realize we can't just be training specialists. And they expanded the capability model to include things like change management insights. They broaden the horizon and I think a lot of researchers or organizations may be slow to recognize the full capabilities that we do have, if you work in l&d long enough, learn a lot about change management, you learn a lot about communication. You learn a lot about project management, you know, a lot more than what the shingle hanging outside of our department says. Really our talent development professionals, and that encompasses a lot more than I think business partners know we're capable of. So it's really just communicating that value proposition over and over and over. And when they come to you with the training needs, and you're able to tease out and actually, there are three things we can do that are quicker, cheaper, and are getting more bang for your buck. I think they'll appreciate that. It'll sooner in the conversation. I mean, how many times was learning and development get involved? At the very tail end, right? If something's being implemented, and they go hey, you've got four weeks, great training for this thing. You know, it's like, we really should have been part of the conversations happening when that project was an implement, you know, intake Much, much sooner, to help consult to kind of bubble wrap, training and all these other pieces that we need. Like change management, communication, culture initiatives, things
like that. Yeah. No, not even to mention the ability to even measure our effectiveness if we're not part of a of the project from the beginning to the end. And we don't really understand how people came to see the root cause of a problem and why training was decided upon as the solution. And then what are the metrics of success and being a part of those conversations that's critical for us to then show our value? Absolutely. So we have just a few minutes left before we open up to questions or we just keep talking and that is, what will you be focusing on to make learning more effective, more efficient and more valuable
next year?
One of the big things that I'm very interested in focusing on is learning in the flow of work. I alluded to earlier when I said we take a long time to create training, learning doesn't just happen in an end to end course, in a camp. When each of us thinks about how we learn if I need to know how to fit some kind of plumbing in my house. I'm not going to go online and look for a course on plumbing. YouTube video. Well, that's going to tell me what to do. And I think our learners in the workforce the same way. So that's a big focus area for me, whether that's, you know, whisper training that we can push out through the LMS or a daily poll or pulse survey, just to keep reminding people of some of the skills and capabilities that we want them to cultivate. I think we're also looking at are leveraging our intranet for social learning and more of a community feel. So that's a big piece, helping people learn the flow of work instead of having to protect time to go through a full learning event. The second piece is knowledge management best practices. A lot of organizations are great at putting out data or information. It's our job to take data and information and transform it into knowledge and ultimately into wisdom. make good decisions, transform that knowledge into wisdom. So another focus area for us this year is going to be how do i tee up the right learning experiences, whether that's mentorship, whether it's training, whether it's whisper training, how do I help them turn that knowledge into action and wisdom?
Yeah, making all of our work actionable is the name of the game. It doesn't matter otherwise. Yep.
And then the last one, just I'll repeat it again, consulting. We're gonna press all the levers to impact performance, not just the training lever. I think a lot of training initiatives fail because they weren't well wrapped with the change management. They weren't bubble wrapped with the communication focus. They weren't bubble wrapped with an analysis of company culture and readiness for that change. And so I think if we can get to the table sooner, and consult on some of those other things that will really help make our learning initiatives that are correct, much more effective.
So Laurie, I warned you I was gonna ask this question as we wrapped up our first 15 minutes and lead into questions. And so my question for you is, how will you know that you are improving learning for your organization with these initiatives and these lessons that you've learned and the changes that you'll make what are some of those things you'll be monitoring or tracking or instituting know that
you are improving?
Data is is very important to us. And so we do have a new knowledge management system that we implemented back in June. That's a great source of information for us. We get a tremendous amount of data. We monitor the usage of those tools, and we've seen a continuous uptick in engagement with that platform. We also see employees feeling really empowered to submit cases and questions to the knowledge base team when they can't find something we monitor which sneeze or how quickly they are monitoring those cases and responding to help grow people's knowledge. So that's a key piece. We also look at performance metrics, of course, you know, what was happening with sales what's happening with engagement numbers, so we do we do track those things as well. From a consulting perspective, it's really a little bit more qualitative and quantitative.
We really, really ask ourselves. Lessons learned
at the end of every project, what could we have done differently to be more effective next time and we implement those lessons learned next time? We also look at what happens a request that we're getting, or we're getting more requests for, hey, I want to communicate about this. What's the best way to do that? Or I think I've attorney need but I want to come to you and find out first. Are those conversations you know you're being successful as a consultant.
I really appreciate that. If people see you as a source of support and a partner in their success, and then when I say they, I mean stakeholders, individual contributors. I mean, we really are the partner for the success of anybody inside of an organization truly and so if you're seeing more people come to you for ideas for help for whatever that, to me is a simple way to know wow, we are truly being seen as a partner and we're treated as a partner, and then we're able to offer solutions inside of that. So that engagement piece seems simple, but yet also that that sort of first stepping stone to know that we are being seen and the way that we know is the value for the organization. I appreciate that. So we've got a few minutes left and I have a lot more questions for you, but those who are still tuning in might have questions for YouTube. So before I ask any more questions, does anyone want to ask a question and get Laurie's feedback as we have 10 more minutes with her before we wrap up together? And if you haven't asked a question on this platform, there should be a way to react or raise your hand and then I can pull you onto this stage and you can share your question with us. So have a think about that. And then I will dive into one more question for Lori and we'll return to the question opportunity in a moment. So Laurie, as you're thinking about becoming more of a strategic partner, what are some of the things that you really got stopped or in the weeds with because I think there's a really important relationship. You've mentioned a couple times that learning often isn't brought to the table soon enough, they're asked to deliver on a solution. But they're not asked to consult in creating the solution. And I think that, you know, not being seen as a strategic partner. It's the goal, but sometimes we aren't seen that way. What are some of your personal challenges in being seen as that strategic partner and what have you done to overcome them this year?
opportunity that I've noticed when looking back in my career, is that I am often too reactive. Not proactive. I have to question myself, am I proactively scheduling time? My stakeholders regularly to understand our needs and to suss out if they've got something coming down the pike? If they're not thinking of engaging me, I can do what is within my control to have regular check ins to say what's going on your world coming up on the radar. I can't wait to be pulled in all ways. But I can be more proactive about scheduling regular check ins even if I don't have a current project and intake for that department is still very valuable from a rapport building and relationship building perspective if I am carving out time to talk with them about their needs, even if it's just casually running into someone in the elevator, or being on hold off something else. Just proactively checking in to see what's going on can be really powerful. It makes you makes them feel like you're an extension of their team and they would they couldn't even imagine leaving you out of a conversation. I think that's
and that's so simple. You know, getting time to check in with somebody regularly, or if that's not possible, because I know sometimes our stakeholders are they're not as accessible as we'd like them to be. I used to do what I would call drive bys. And back when I worked for a national nonprofit we all did work in one building, and I like to just walk through the office and talk to the individual contributors. But then also, if the door was open for one of my stakeholders, just check in and be like, Hey, how's it going? What are you working on? What are you challenged by and all of those details are kind of I can put in my back pocket for like, Okay, what should we be focused on? Are we focused on the right things? And it's so simple to do that I appreciate.
Yeah. I mean, another thing that our organization does is we have cross departmental that we've recurring cross departmental meetings. To cross pollinate and share what's going on and to get feedback from other departments to get input. So that's another great opportunity. If you know if that's not happening organizationally, where you are, again, scheduling those regular check ins independently can be a great first step. Yeah. One
of the things that is super powerful about having interdepartmental meetings is that if you're looking at creating a holistic solution for a big like operations problem, training is never going to be the only solution. It's going to be something that complements other initiatives that are being done by different department leaders. And so being able to have conversations about hey, we have this big problem, what are some of the ways that we can solve it collaboratively? And then that helps us to as you mentioned, the start of this call, talk about expectations and how does each department or leader inside of the organization contribute to some of these larger problems? And then being able to check in on that those are metrics like that those conversations and anecdotes and talking about expectations and if we're meeting them or not, those are all metrics. We don't have to overcomplicate you know, the measuring outcomes. Sometimes it's just a conversation around expectations and solutions that helped us to know are we on track? That's wonderful. Right. So before we wrap up, I'm going to pause again and say Does anybody have a question they would like to ask Lori? I mean, I could ask Lori questions all day long and adore these conversations. Laurie, but I also don't want to steal all of your time. So again, if anyone has a question they'd like to ask. Oh, thank you, Adrian. I'm pulling you up on stage right now.
Okay, Adrian, you should be able to share and chat with us as long as you come off mute. Hey, there, are
you all able to hear me we can Yay. All right, awesome. So I was really interested in learning just a little bit about the need of leveraging a knowledge management system versus using a learning management tool or an LMS. That was just a little curious about the choice in that selection. Maybe it's industry related. So I just wanted to tap into that to see if there's a need that I should be considering. Oh, great question, Adrian. Hello, and thank you for asking. So historically, at at my organization, we had information kind of separated right? We had training experiences in a learning management system. Then we had departmental policies and procedures in a separate area, but how on our company intranet, it became really challenging for employees to find the moment to moment performance support that they needed, they would have to pull up you know, a 64 page PDF and search through many, many, many steps to find what they needed to do and it just wasn't efficient for them. And so we recognized the need for knowledge the internet system as a performance support resource for employees. So we were able to take 1000s of individual policy and procedure documents and digitize them and upload them into a knowledge management system that has really strong search capabilities. We can add keywords gives us great data insights. And it really helps us stay on top of maintaining that content and keeping it up to date. There's a feedback loop built in that employees can't find what they need or they find something that's incorrect. They can let the subject matter expert know immediately, I get back fit. So we kind of look at it as two different things. There's the the meat in the moment performance support that the knowledge base gets, and then if an employee wants to dig in more deeply and learn more about a specific topic or process we have the training courses in the learning management system where they can learn more. Does that help? Yes, that's fantastic. I think that in many cases that's that's an opportunity that I want haven't leveraged myself, but I've seen it be a need which is the intranet whatever tool that is that we're using isn't as helpful to employees. And knowledge management systems are just way more robust and sophisticated in the ways in which you describe. So thank you for explaining the differences and how you all use those. Yeah, you bet and I'll add on to you if this is helpful. It created the opportunity for us to give new job descriptions to our intranet. Our learning management system and our knowledge base employees started to ask, well, what's the difference between the knowledge base platform and the intranet? So it's a great opportunity, we really had to say okay, we're gonna double down on the intranet as a place for community and connection to share a company information and company news and stories and culture and things like that. So that's really the job description for our intranet. The knowledge base functions as are in the moment performance support tool. How do I handle this for a member in the moment? And then you know, our learning management system is really the piece where they can dive in deeper. They can take it any learning journey, and grow their skills and grow their capabilities
there. And I'll thank you, Laurie. I'll just share two there's a book Adrian you might be interested in. It's called the modern learning ecosystem. It's written by JD Dylan and he talks about the best practice for creating a culture of learning where people are empowered to find their own solutions to problems as opposed to having to go through a large course to get skills and to you know, kind of be built up in that way. That having a knowledge system where people know they can search for answers to questions in the moment of need. And then also have usually knowledge management systems can have like a chat function where somebody can be on call, where if they can't find what they're looking for in the knowledge base, they can then chat a question and somebody, you know, a real human can then work, you know, hopefully within the same time period be able to respond to their question, all of that is possible in the knowledge management system versus an LMS that is a bit more robust and has different features for helping people to have learning experiences that are much larger and more complex. And I just think that first step, having a knowledge management system, makes everything else easier, versus having an LMS and not being able to empower people to search for their own answers. So it's another distinction too, but yeah, if you haven't read that book, check it out. I found it
super helpful. Yeah. Oh, great. I
just ordered it. That's so funny yesterday, because I saw it trending as well.
Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah.
You're welcome. Thank you for asking a question. We've got three minutes left. Does anybody else have something they'd like to ask Lori and she has an infinite amount of wisdom. And I'm so glad that you got to kick off our first conversation today. Laurie.
Thank you for the privilege
and that's okay, if we don't have any other questions. We have two minutes left in our first 30 minute conversation. Laurie, I'll ask you, how would you like to leave our time together as people think about being strategic business partners, as people think about ways to improve their learning inside of their organizations, what might be a call to action that you can leave people with from your experience this year?
I'd say just remove any limiting belief that you are just a learning specialist.
Really zoo Now, consider the fact that
your capabilities go far beyond just creating learning and administering learning programs. You really are account development professional and that encompasses a lot of capabilities and skills. So I would say just I would encourage everyone, leverage your full skill set, bring that to the table in every interaction and people will eventually start to bring you to the table sooner. You will become that strategic business partner. Just don't. Don't forget all the capabilities that you have.
Wonderful and I think that speaks volumes for people. Who are wanting to enter the talent development industry. Sometimes they're afraid that their skill sets aren't going to be aligned in our industry. And the truth of the matter is, we wear multiple hats. That's why I love this work because it's never boring. There's always something for us to do and improve upon and all the skill sets I have from a variety of industries can be incredibly helpful. So if you're thinking about making a transition into our industry, or if you're new to the industry, your skill sets the the depth and breadth of your skill set will become a huge asset and all you have to do is listen for the opportunity to bring that to the table. Well Laurie, thank you so much for this first 30 minutes if you're still tuning in, every hour today I am bringing in a new different voice to share their lessons learned and their focus areas for improving learning and development and 2024. So if you enjoyed this 30 minutes, check out the next conversation at 10am Central Time 11am Eastern time or whatever time zone you're in. So hopefully you'll join us again in 30 minutes and thank you Laurie and thank you Adrienne for asking a question. It was lovely chatting with everyone this morning,