Chris Taylor Chat

Alaina Szlachta31min

Alaina Szlachta

00:00

Hear from all the things that you've been up to this year. So before we dive into your lessons learned, can you share with our listeners? What would be a couple of words or a phrase that might describe who you are in the world of learning and development so that we can have that as a lens to filter the lesson that you're about to share?

Chris Taylor

00:21

Sure. So, a couple words, behavior change would be right up at the top and learning impact could also be in there.

Chris Taylor

00:33

I run a technology company called actionable. We help l&d professionals to sustain and measure the behavior change impact of their programs.

Alaina Szlachta

00:44

And you can't be in that particular sector without caring about behavior change and impact and of course, having a technology solution to help us all with that is absolutely incredible. So, so tell us about what you can start with lessons learned or you can share, you know, some of the projects that you've worked on this year. But yeah, we are dying to know like, of all the work that you've done in 2023, both as a business owner, as a professional who cares about putting good learning out into the world. What are some of those lessons that you're taking away? And we'll help you figure out what to focus on in the new year.

Chris Taylor

01:26

appreciate being invited to talk about this because 2023 For me, has been has been reasonably transformative, and I know that word gets used a lot but it really has for me and for the business. I came into the year with some fairly aggressive scale plans for the business and sort of failed to recognize that the goals that I had, weren't going to be met by doing more of the same but faster, harder. It was going to require a fairly different way of thinking for me as the business leader and a different way of going about things from an implementation standpoint. A couple of key lessons for me when I was reflecting on the year thanks to this question. Was that simple. This was my big one is that simple. is better than complete. Had these sort of Taj Mahal ask plans, these things that I wanted to build and it was it was just a ridiculous level of detail. And you know, we've probably all heard the expression of minimum viable anything. It was such a great reminder that it's so much better to start with a basic thesis well stated, then to start with a 10 page scoping document that covers all the detail but maybe misses the kernel of why at the basis. So that to me has been really key if we can start anything from a position of why are we doing this and have that crafted into a succinct, meaningful, non ambiguous sentence, as we're talking about it floated by the people that are going to be impacted and see if that resonates with them. I think we can save ourselves a lot of time and headache versus you know, trying to map the whole thing out ahead of time, and then go out and try to you know, sell the vision on that.

Alaina Szlachta

03:21

Yeah, I the Start With Why is, is I mean, it's it's common sense in some ways, but also I think in learning and development, especially when it comes to the measurement side of things, I think is really missing. And here are two examples. So I just saw a post that was put out about standards for metrics for learning and development. And I looked at that and I won't go into that detail, because I think we could talk for hours and hours about standards and pros and cons. But the one thing that I noticed that was missing as I just perused that sample of the of the standards was that there wasn't a start with why there wasn't like, Hey, what are we doing and why that was just completely missing. It just launched into, you know, here are all the things you could do but not any guidance on like, why are we doing this in the first place? And then let's Yeah, let that be the lens for everything else that you decide there on out. And anyway, there's a few other examples I could share that I've seen on LinkedIn when it comes to metrics in particular and frameworks and I appreciate people thinking about it. But nobody's thinking enough about what are we doing and why.

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