Strategic Curation: How Curation Can Help Meet The Business Needs
6:55PM Sep 15, 2023
Speakers:
Shannon Tipton
Katie
Jason
Renee
Erica
Tom
Douglas
Maureen
Michael
Chris
Abby
Justin
Keywords:
curated
content
curation
learning
objectives
people
chat
great
linkedin
put
review
katie
work
lms
resources
model
training
mike
thought
l&d
But no.
All right. Well welcome everyone to another learning rebels Coffee Chat. Today. I'm very excited. We're talking about curation today. And it was so serendipitous I had planned this particular chat several weeks ago, as well as the follow up chat, which is in three weeks, not two we're doing we have a little bit of an off week happening about curation tools. And then lo and behold, what pops up on my LinkedIn feed, Mike Taylor, introducing his curated model. And I don't know how better the stars could align than when they aligned for this. So I am really excited to to not really shift gears a little bit. I think that this actually connects nicely with what the topic was going to be today, which was
curating and connecting to your business goals. I think it all fits very well together. So I'm very excited about this topic. So now for those of you who are new two hour coffee chat if you've never been with us before, this is your first time, please let us know in the chat so we can give you the nice warm welcome that you deserve. And share with us.
Where you might be at or from or where you're sitting right now.
Yes, I know. I love it when a plan comes together. Michael, welcome. Hey, thank you. Yeah, it's good to see you.
Let's see. Erica.
Milwaukee. Yes. I seem to remember that. Let's even remember that. And we'll
come back.
Yeah. The Yes, the 18. That's it. We're all the A Team. Did you bring curds? I love the cheese curds. That's just so Midwestern, isn't it?
Cheese curds love them. Yeah, you gotta love squeaky cheese. Squeaky cheese. Exactly. And my brother,
my brother in law's a master cheesemakers. So I have the inside scoop. So just say,
well, I will be happy to forward you my address.
No kidding. I think you just opened up the floodgates. Everybody's going to start DMing your their address to you. And we're going to be expecting something around the holidays. Around the b2b taste testers. Yeah, no kidding. I've got like a cheese shop in my refrigerator. So it's excellent. Michael, you're an instructional designer at Thrivent financial, just saw something about that. I don't know what it was not surprised.
There's there's usually news everywhere. There's little offices everywhere. There's one on my street down the street that I didn't even know about until I passed. So there's individual financial representatives all over the place. But yeah, I'm an instructional designer there. I work in HR, but I kind of have a dotted line to it. So I'm sort of their matrix partner. I'm on their speed dial when they have learning needs that kind of thing.
Hopefully that speed dial is a good speed dial. It's it's like the Bat Phone. Right? It
Well, you know, that's what I'm trying to cultivate it to be. Sometimes the the line doesn't work quite right. And it's about like when trying to help them understand when to contact me, and how to contact me and how early in their needs to contact me that
I could be way earlier than they already are most likely.
Yeah. So working on it. So it's always a it's always work in progress to strengthen those communication lines.
Excellent. Well, thank you for joining us today.
Yeah, thank you. All right.
Well, let's let's get down to it. So when we talked about curation? There is a typical definition, right? We think about curation as we are gathering content. We might synthesize it, and we share it. And a lot of times the sharing part gets left out. Right, we gather all of this content, and maybe we take some time to synthesize it and then we forget to share it. So there's a lot of broken links in the curation process. And I've said this before that when you gather content and you don't share it, you're then an information hoarder. So let's not be information hoarders, right? We want to we want to share it, but we want to make sure that we're sharing stuff that is helpful, you know, which is that part where we synthesize the information to make sure that what we are sending out to our businesses and to the people within our businesses, really is helped full. So let me ask you this when you think about curation. Does anyone have a different sense or a different idea as to what curation means to them in the workplace or just in general? And also, what are some of your barriers? What gets in the way of really good curation practices for you? Who would like to start this conversation off?
Eating, eating, eating eating, Chris. Hey.
Hey, um, nice to be here. I haven't found here in a while. You. Yeah, thank you. So when I say when, you know, after I saw Mike's article, I started thinking about relative to mindfulness, which is may sound like a weird link, but I've been doing a lot of work around mindfulness. So in mindfulness and meditation, you think about, yeah, the idea of focused attention and open awareness. So when I think about curation, I'm kind of on one of those two tracks, I might be like, very specifically looking for things. And I have learning objectives for them, right. And then, and then I struggle, and I feel overwhelmed picking them. And then I have this very fun, open awareness, right. I'm always finding things. And, you know, Mike's thing drops. And I'm like, Oh, that's really great. I'm going to hold on to this. And so I have files full of all these things that I sometimes can't get to. But I'm like a hoarder of all of this stuff. And it's it really feels like an affliction. And then I have too much there's too much notice about me and my curating. So I'll just share that disease with everybody.
I like that. I think that's a really good way of putting it to a too much newness. And I think that we're we all get into that space. I don't think you're alone in that. Anyone else want to chime in here? I see a lot of nods.
I completely agree. It's like perfectionism. Like, oh, but the next resource will be even better than what I have in front of my list. Right?
I don't want to share this one. I want to wait for the next perfect one to come along. Right. Well, then there's, oh, go ahead, Jason.
Rabbit Hole, you start to fall down as you look at things and you're like, Well, wait, this one's from three years ago. Maybe there's one that's more recent. He just keep digging and digging and digging, trying to find the most current study or the most current release so that if you have to quote it, it's not from me 10 years ago. Right. Right, Chris, Chris said it's just this pile of things. And as I replied in the community to question you posted yesterday. I've got stuff sitting on my desk that I've curated for years that is just sitting there. And if I don't looking at it, it's there. It just happens. piles, piles, because I'm pretty good thing because I like to read on paper.
Yep, I hear you. Definitely. Anyone else. are we feeling the pain? Yes, Mike, I
can. Yeah, I just something that we're doing. We started a learning community practice at Thrive and where we're kind of inviting all people who instructional designers learning experience design, there's like a whole group of people. And we've started a folder structure within teams of resources to share and we've got folders by like micro learning, badging and micro credentialing, instructional design, things like that. And every time I sign up for a webinar, that's going to have a recording, if I can't be part of it, I'll get the recording, watch it. And I'll save that recording in there. And then put a little shout out, Hey, we've got this new resource. Part of it is determining what are you going to use resources for? Are you just curating all the time, like, I'm kind of constantly grabbing things, or for a project, we've got this thing coming up, it's on this topic, we need you to curate some good learning for it. You got to think about, if I curate something is it going to be accessible to everyone is that the way that my company is talking about this thing like agile, we might grab some institutional stuff on agile, but it's not the flavor that our organization and so you might be sharing the wrong thing. So making sure that you have internal sneeze on that subject to kind of vet the curated material to make sure that it's appropriate, because sometimes I will just think I think this is a really good resource, but it's not the right resource for the right time, at say thriving right now. So it's having a system and a cadre inside of sneeze to help you with the curation if it's for a single project or initiative.
I like that like that. So you have, you know, multiple people with eyes on The content, right to ensure that it actually is the right stuff, the right place right time. You know, because you don't want to overwhelm people with a lot of information, you know, so then you get that. What is that call? the it's the it's the complexity, right? cognitive overload. There's lots of stuff you get, yeah, you get cognitive overload, for sure. But there is that the psychological bit of too much, when faced with too many choices, you make no choice, right? And so then you're helping to prevent that, which is great. Excellent. And Stella, with, you know, with your comment about subject matter experts, it's hard to write concise content. And I think, I think that's a great observation. And that also goes to, when you find information that you want to share, you want to share your thoughts around that content. Why is this good for other people to read? Why is this important to you? And it's hard to get those concise thoughts out. You don't want to write a whole essay around the content that you're sharing, right? You want to try to write things that are short and sweet and drives people to really want to read it. So I think that that's that's a yet the paradox of choice. Thank you, Abby, it was it was right here, along with all the other things that seemed to be cluttering up my mind. Yes. And so now, when we think about, you know, finding content, we're gonna talk about tools to find content in our next Coffee Chat. But then also, Mike Taylor is doing a learn something new in October, the an immersive dive around content curation, and content tools. So if you're really interested in that, then and you're really interested in how Mike makes his magic happen, then sign up for that. But right now with his curated model, if I saw that and put the links in the chat, so you have it in front of you, in case you haven't seen it, and also I have it on my screen. I don't know if I need to share my screen. But do you guys have it in front of you? Yeah, okay, good. Then, I love what he's done here. It's for people who are listening and not watching. He has curated model is clarify objectives on Earth content, read, review, and refined, arrange systemically transform, presentation, engage and enrich and develop and deliver. And that is just so much more deep and thorough, then what our traditional point of view is around curation. So you've got Harold jerky, right, the seat, sense share model, right? And then our typical curation definition of finding, synthesizing sharing, this helps us go deeper, and to really understand what curation can mean. And so what I'd like to offer to you is was there, one, my question to you is, is there one area of Mike Taylor's curated model that is really resonating with you, the one that either made you go, I never thought about it like that before? I never thought about that step. Or this is a step that I really connect with. Is there something there that is really resonating? And I'll start here while you guys review, I really liked the he starts with excuse me, I really liked the he starts with clarifying objectives. And you guys have already, we brought this up a little bit already, is understanding the why behind particular pieces of information. And I used to be really good at this and I'll be and I'll be fully honest and transparent, that I have fallen away from this habit. I used to have folders of things that I was interested in. And then I would put the research or the stuff that I've read in those folders so that way I could find it later. And then as my interests got more wider and more convoluted, I kind of fell away from that practice and everything just kind of all went together. And now I need to get back to that. But I really liked that he starts out that you really need to die before you dive into the vast ocean of content, as he says, You need to know what your destination is. What are your thoughts?
On share? Sure, thanks, Katie.
I actually am right with you about clarify objectives, I get a lot of random requests at very different times for, hey, I'm looking for this content, or, Hey, I'm looking for this training, or do we have anything on this? You know, in a certain topic, for example, one of our presidents for one of our franchises reached out, and he said, Hey, I really need to help this person grow in this in, in time management. Okay, well, that's, to me, that is a very broad, and so I said, Awesome, that's a great start. But I need you to outline exactly exactly what you want this person to be able to do after working with the program, or the training, or the content, or whatever it might be. And so So then I got a three paragraphs. This is what I want him to be able to delegate, and I want him to be able to do this, I want him to be able to do this, and I and he's really good at this. I can't remember the specifics. But I need to see him move here. So that helped me narrow down my resources so that I didn't overwhelm him with, oh, we'll just go search here and you'll find 1500 options, like I was trying to, here's some options for the time and prioritizing idea. Here's some for delegating, you know, trying to organize it that way. So it's more obtainable to the learner down the road? So that resonated with me?
Yes, absolutely. And I think, to build on that, I think, we fall into this hit of information, this rabbit hole of information that we then upload into our learning management systems, or we source from content providers, you know, such as Skillsoft, or go one or something along those lines, where they have all of this content, and we just put it in front of people and say, find something. Right, and that's not really helping.
That happened, because it was, it was content we have we integrate LinkedIn learning, along with our own content. And so knowing me knowing what's out there, and being the admin for that, I knew that I needed to narrow it down. Because it is overwhelming when you are someone needing that training, or needing to provide it and you don't even know where to start. So I wouldn't have narrowed it down to more feasible options. Because just because of what you just said, it's just too much.
Which is why I really think and Katie, you and I were having this conversation a while back about the importance of having a Content Curator, even on the team, you know, somebody who could help make sense of all of the content that you may have as an organization, and help to point people in the right direction, and create those paths for them. You know, so I think when we think about the future of learning and development, I think this is a position that is a need to have, within most organizations. If you're if you're a larger organization, you know, I think it would be really helpful. And let's see, we had a scroll back up here. Thomas Thomas, you mentioned the review and refine these. So I don't know Thomas, if you can. You You're usually in your cube, I realized that. So I don't know if you're able to speak right now.
Can you hear me? I can. Oh, good. Hey, see every now and that? Good things. Yeah, that's the one that jumps out at me, like first of all, is, for lack of a better way of saying it. My trainings are typically 10 pounds of potatoes and a five pound bag. So each time you look at creating the new year training, because it's an annual refresher for emergency response. And so what we ended up doing is is we you know, you you take a little off of here and you add a little here anything new, you have to add in and you think okay, what can I take out and so you end up sitting there looking and reviewing the content and of course you you know, it's hard discretion on saying, Okay, this is something that is not as important as this. And interestingly enough, we did our first session Wednesday out of our nine, it's our takes us nine months to culminate to nine trainings. And so it's first one was Wednesday, and afterward one of the managers said, Hey, I really missed you talking about this, and I'm like, I'll be a son of a gun. You know, the one thing you take out is one of the things that they they sit there and go, Oh,
well, I was looking forward to that.
And so you're like, you know, you know, darn. And, but anyway, it was one of those you saw saw, of course, yesterday, I was putting it back in and rearranging things and saying, Okay, that's it, because it was it's important, but it's, you know, one of these units, were they paying attention to this? Did they really listen to this? Are they really comprehend that? And then you think, okay, you know, given given some of the the, like I said, all those potatoes, sort of Gunny, he wanted that one fry, back in the potato bag. So, anyway, but yeah, so that's where I came from that as you start looking at how do you refine things and, and just as a pre precursor to that we part of that was we also came up with a 45 minute LMS presentation that they had to take as a prerequisite to our training. So what we did was we took a lot of the material that we are afraid was going to be would not be available in the presentation. And we actually created an LMS training module. So they had to take that prior to actually attending the live or the virtual presentation. So that helped us kind of push some of the some of those potatoes into, they had to take that before they came in. So it didn't we didn't have to waste the time in the four hour allotment we have online to do that training. So
it makes sense. That yeah, it does. And I think that fall sort of into the A part of the model, right? Where, where he talks about arranging systematically, right. And so that's, to me, what that means is, you can have the best content in the world, if people can't find it, you still got it, right. And so then putting content in a place where people can access it, or making people aware that it's even there by making it a prerequisite, say, you know, before going to a course and saying, here is content for you to access, and then not making it required afterwards, you know, so people can continue to go back and forth, you know, in and out of that content makes a difference, right. Well, Chris, good luck to you. I see your message there in the chat, thinking of everybody that's on the east coast with the hurricane coming through. And now I also would like to go back and further think about this review and refine, here's a question for you guys, is we've already discussed this to a certain extent. So review and refine, according to Mike here, not all content is created equal, it's time to polish the gems. Right. I love that. But also, does that get us into analysis? Paralysis? What are your thoughts?
Katie has her hand raised.
Okay. The end? Sorry. Yes. Thank you, Anne.
Yeah, you know, I recently worked on a project to curate some content in our LinkedIn learning suite based off of our professional competencies and our career framework. And we have around I want to say 25 competencies, and there are four levels to each. And they're and they're based on professional and then also on technical, since we do have more technical skills. So that was a very big project to be able to, per each competency, per each level, create content or curate content based off of that. And I'm glad that we're bringing this up as a topics actually also wanted to pose a question of how you do essentially do that due diligence, while also knowing I don't have time to watch every single course, for every single level. Like this is a and I actually liked that idea of maybe even seeing if that were a smaller company, but larger companies, that would be its own role, potentially of a Content Curator. But yeah, I mean, essentially, I did the best I could have of looking into the you know, the reviews for the course looking into the course description, basing it off of our competency and things like that. But certainly, you know, I think but it can lead to analysis paralysis also, if you? Yeah, want to make it. I mean, obviously, I want to make it as perfect as possible. But I also knew prioritization, that I don't have enough time to be able to get stuck on this and watch every single thing. So and that's why I also think that this news coming in. So that's going to be the next step of making sure that then that's aligned as well, and what they're looking for and having that review as well. But no, I'm glad you're bringing that up, because it is something that's important to think about.
Right. And before I before I continue, did anybody else want to piggyback on what Katie was talking about? Because I think it goes really nicely with a point that Michael has made, and also a point that Stella had made earlier. I can connect those dots. Where if you thinking about using your subject matter experts, as Stella suggested earlier, because who says you have to do this alone? You know, who made that rule, and who made the rule that we have to do it as l&d providers. Right. So if you have subject matter experts, and then jumping over to what Michael said, earlier in the chat, and also, when he opened up his mic, if if the subject matter experts understand and know what the outcome is supposed to be, right, so the outcome is clearly defined. And then you can give your subject matter experts guidance and say, if this piece of content does not speak to this outcome, then put it aside, don't throw it away. But put it aside. Right, and so this way, they can help you build the paths that need to be built. Because I think that a lot of times, we feel that it's in our job description, you know, to be the curators and define stuff, but I think it could be everybody's role.
I think as learning and development professionals, if we're not like, if I don't know, the tool, Kafka that's used in our IT department, I should not be the person curating that stuff. I don't know enough about the ins and outs and how thriving is using it, to curate effectively, I can get the mass of stuff, but I need a Smee to help me drill down and go, Oh, we're using the cloud version, not the on prem version, then I need to make sure and curate the right kind of learning for that tool, because I might be grabbing industry knowledge that isn't the right one for driving.
Right? Right, or maybe outdated or obsolete. Right. And if you work in a organization that is heavily regulated, where you want to be sure that you're finding the right stuff, that people aren't wearing orange, the end of the day, right, we want to keep them from wearing the orange jumpsuits. That's the goal, especially when you're talking about regulation. And so how can you help people do that? So I think that the more that we spread the wealth, but it also goes with training them. Okay, so here's, here's our steering committee. Here's our subject matter experts. Let's let me help you understand these particular outcomes. What this means an example of what I mean when I say does this impact that? And here's how you move forward. Right? So I think that, you know, when we we talk about clarifying objectives, and then reviewing and refining it's one and it's, it's, I'm sure we'll curate it starts with a see. So probably not as intentional but it is intentional, right, you've got to understand where you want to go before you start building the path to get there. Right now, Maureen, hi, Maureen, good to see you. I see your comment in the in the chat here about the balance of the 720 10 model. And I would love for you to expand on on what exactly your question is.
Oh, I don't know that. I have I mean, so I'm sorry. I joined midflight. And honestly, I don't even know what what is the overarching topic for today's Coffee Chat.
I love you, Maureen. We're talking about Mike Taylor's curated model. And so how does his curated model and and if you'll put the link back into the chat, please.
Oh, she sent it to me individually, so. Okay. All right. I love it.
I know right? He did a great job. And so how does this model connect to our own curation efforts when it comes to helping the business and the people within the business meet their goals?
Yeah, I mean, I can say firsthand because I've most recently experienced an awful lot of pain because I was really trying to hone in on the see clarify objectives before somebody said, Oh, well, we need content. I'm like, Well, what what are what are the objectives, you have a general topic. So I, I'm going to share this model with others in my organization. My comment was related to LinkedIn learning, and it's not to bash LinkedIn learning or any of the organizations that are out there. But I just don't know if the emphasis on like, kind of the 7020 10, like, you know, model of focusing, like really 70% of learning is, you know, kind of informal, you know, in the moment, kind of things and resources. And then the 10 is the is the formal, and it seems like with LinkedIn learning, which is what we have, but other places like, they're just really, they're longer than what we would. And medium getting it. Maybe the
courses are longer.
Yeah, the courses are longer. And so. So while it's great that we wouldn't have to necessarily create courses from scratch, I think it was Katie, your comment, like you just don't have time to even kind of audit it on your own to check to see how well it aligns with objectives. I guess it's just a caution, or it is it's to be crystal clear on those objectives. And like you just said, make sure everything links back to those objectives and the outcomes that you're looking for, before you kind of offer it up to the learner population. Right? Where have somebody it's doesn't have to be learning and development, but that there needs to be clear criteria about what their kind of as they're looking at it to do a small subset and rank it themselves on like, how closely does it align to, you know, our objectives and outcomes? And I don't know. Well, I
think what you what you touch on here is good. There needs to be guardrails, right, and I say guardrails, when I want to avoid using the word rules. We just want to keep people on a path. And we want to keep ourselves on a path. And part of that, when you bring up the length. And let's just say the length of some of the courses within we'll use this example for LinkedIn learning. Are they too long? Well, and anyone who's been a part of my own micro learning workshops, know that I say that the content needs to be as long as necessary and as short as possible. Right? As long as necessary, as short as possible. So whatever the content requires. So if I need to take five minutes to teach you how to tie your shoes, and I'm going to take those five minutes, not four, not six, right? What does the content require? And the same thing happens when you when you drive home? curated content, some of those guardrails might be what is the environment that my people are sitting in? Right. So if we're talking about curated content for salespeople, where do salespeople spend most of their time, trains, planes, and automobiles. So maybe Video, Video cure, curated video content might not meet their needs, it might be something else, right, so we put those guardrails in place and think about what the environment is, what's the context of where your particular audience is sitting, then it becomes all that more powerful, because you've really thought about everything in regards to the person and the environment of the person. And whether or not that applies to the 720 10 model, that's a conversation for, you know, a whole other coffee chat, which I should make a note to myself, well, we'll develop a coffee chat around the 720 10 model, you know, which is for those of you who are unaware, that's Charles Jenning. 70% of the learning comes from informal, with your peers, etc. 20%, which is from resources, etc. And then 10% formal patterns, etc. You know, so we can have a conversation about that. But I think that your curated content can fit into each one of those buckets. You know, so how can we think about having curated content with you've got your peers, and maybe you've got a coach or mentor, etc, you know, so is there content there that can help you progress? Is there curated content that support your formal, you know, so you can think about it in those ways, too. So there's I think that's the the great thing about curation. How do you how do you need it to work? Right. All right, let's see what we've got here now is what else do we have? We've got his you, which is unearthed the content, a quest for quality content begins here. And you know, we've talked about LinkedIn learning, finding LinkedIn learning. And Abby, I see your hand. So we we, you know, LinkedIn learning Skillsoft, etc. And like I said, in our next chat, we'll talk about specific tools and what specific tools you're using. But that's what that U stands for. So, Abby, what would you like to contribute?
No, I was just thinking about all the ways in which you know, you can go onto the internet and just type in anything, and then anything pops up. And then it when you if you have Microsoft thing, it'll also now provide that AI component as well.
But my large part, yeah, I
think so. That sounds right. Yeah. But my question on this is like, as an industry, you know, you attend webinars where people will start out like, Oh, this is a data point from the Journal of I can't even remember off the top of my head in the morning, but, or they'll say, like shirt or it's a TD or it's, but it's knowing, like, where this content is coming from as an industry? Like, is there a specific journal that we should be looking towards? Are there a series of journals? Or is it just whatever we can find on LinkedIn that people are creating? And then we just take that and run with it as far as industry standard, but I guess my question is, it's, it's, we're focusing on content curation for our learners. And then we're also focusing on content creation for us as industry professionals, am I kind of right? And so I guess might be out, like, overall, like, I'm still kind of lost in all of the content that is out there, like, what is the best place to go? Or is that even subjective for each person as an l&d Professional?
Like, yes and no. For me? That would be my very generic answer, which I'll dive deeper into here in a second. But I'm gonna let the rest of you have an opportunity here. What are what are your thoughts about sourcing information, information you can trust? Where do you go?
To get depends on the topic, again, not to go all the way back to it, because that's kind of who I serve. But if it's on a particular tool, and they're wondering, I go to the vendor, and what kind of free learning resources to the vendor have for a particular tool and work with them to source that, because that's the tool, I know that that's the version that we're using, and all that kind of stuff. So I go as close as I can to the source. We have LinkedIn learning. So we're trying to make increase usage of that. And so taking raw material there that looks right, having this means review it, that kind of thing. But again, now you're right. I mean, you can go on Google and find stuff from blogs, like this curated thing, there's probably this for all kinds of different topics that might be related to leadership development and things like that. And then having appropriate means, review it, and maybe sometimes this means even have suggestions of oh, there's this wealth of content that we go to all the time. Learning about that through them.
Yes, absolutely. And I think that there's something to be said about being cautious. You know, about this, some, some areas, you know, I think every ATD, the guild, LinkedIn learning. There, there are a lot of places to source research, you know, but I would start with Google research. So not just Google, but Google research, you know, so that way you're bringing up actual research documents, you know, and this is a great job for chat. GPT. You know, so ask them a question about XYZ. You know, tell me about the 720 10 model, sort your cite your sources, excuse me, I tripped over that. Cite your sources, and then it'll give you the research behind it, then it's up to you to say, okay, is this coming from a place that's trustworthy? You know, and another chat that I've been mean We need to get into the books is really how to do our own research. We say that a lot, do your own research, but not everybody knows how to do that, and what that looks like, you know, what? And can you pull that? Find that article that I posted in the community about how to read research papers? Thank you. And there's a little plug for the community. So if you're a member of the community, you get access to all of these good fun things. So maybe a link to the community wouldn't be a bad idea, either. And so one of the things to think about is where's the information coming from? You know, so we call that circular research. So it's, it's you look at who paid for the research, you know, and so are those dots connecting is like, oh, everybody's in favor of XYZ, but XYZ also sponsored the study. Right? So you know, you need to look into those things. And then I also say that there are even with some of our more credible places, att for example, or LinkedIn learning, there's even some questionable stuff. So you have to go in there, and you really have to review it yourself. You know, I had a coaching session with somebody here earlier this week. And he's like, Well, I took this LinkedIn learning class, and they told me this, and I'm like, What the? What the Bleep? You know, I was like, Okay, no, we need to back that truck up, you know, so you need to be aware of it do real really, look carefully. And with an unbiased perspective, you know, what is it that you really want to know about? Learn about and where's that information coming from? Then my go to sources have always been a TD is my go to source because I, for me, that's a trusted place to go and grab information. McKinsey Harvard Business Review. You know, those that's generally my starting points, you know, to see what they've got. And then a lot of times the great thing, especially about McKinsey is that they sort other research, you know, so it's like, okay, so I can go back and I can dig deeper, dig deeper, dig deeper. Okay, um, let's see, I was as I go through the chat here. All right. Any other thoughts about reviewing and refining? Because I think that's a great conversation to have.
I think there's just really, so it's like, again, having those general guidelines, but it's even polishing the gems to the right level, like, I mean, one of the things that, you know, it's, it's one of the things that we really need to focus on where I am, and especially for me is like, like, it needs to be good enough and not perfect, like, don't spend time polishing it. So that it is like this beautiful, like, it's the Hope Diamond, and people are gonna come to see it, like, you know, put in the right amount of effort. But like, as long as at the core of what it's good. People would people will overlook, overlook certain things, if it's meaningful to them, versus something that's polished and pretty, but really is just lipstick on the pig. So I mean, yeah. guidelines about what makes something a jam.
And I like, if, yesterday, I had a learning rubbles live with Mike Taylor himself. And he said something that I thought was just brilliant. When I asked him about, you know, do you ever get stuck in perfection? How do you know which content you should be forwarding? And he said, everything is a beta. Because there's never anything perfect. Everything is beta, you know, so don't be afraid to put something out there. And then don't be afraid to put something out there. That's a revision. You know, you can say, oops, this is actually a better piece, you know, so I really appreciated his honesty about that. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good. Right. And then another, another source. Just recently, the World Economic Forum, put out their 2023 future of jobs report. And I like reading their research, because in this particular case, the report was 100. No, it was 200 pages. But 100 of those pages was just citing their sources, and the research that they used to create the report. So to me, that's good stuff. You know when half of your report is the research that supports the report, that's something you want. That's a You want to know about all right now the other bit here? Engage in enrich trance, I'm sorry, transform presentation is the T is not about what you present but how you present it. I think this is another good thing. So when we talked about, you can have all this great content that people can't find it. It's dust bunnies, right? It's digital dust bunnies. So now how are you guys going about communicating your curation efforts? What does that look like? How are you sharing it? Or you just plopping it in your LMS and hoping that people find it? Or are you actually do you have a communication plan around your curation efforts? Or have you even thought about it?
Newsletters leadership meetings, Maureen very poorly, okay. Yeah, newsletters. I'm a proponent of newsletters. So I think every l&d department should have their own newsletter, outside of the corporate newsletter. Because if you're part of the corporate newsletter, you get like one corner of the fifth page and it's in 10 font. Right,
that's on a corporate, like, what's an l&d newsletter? Like, what what would go in that?
What do you guys think I'm gonna throw it over to you all, what would go in there, Katie. So
we we do this at our organization. And it's basically we use workday. And so we call it our workday Wednesday. And so when we first launched our LMS, we did it weekly, to provide tidbits of information, you know, just in time training, or just little bits of information to not overwhelm everyone. And then now that we're a little bit more established, I publish them every about every month, again, less information, but also just hitting the high points. So new programs, or I just published a program on mental health in the workplace and curated that because it was a need from another department. And so I put that, but I made sure to announce it. So those are the small things I've put in or any kind of updates like to our LMS, we had a new release just came out. And we wanted to just hit the high points, like three bullet points, nothing crazy. And it's one page to scroll through an email that my we have, you know, our column team makes it pretty, and sends it out. And so it's very simple. It's nothing crazy. And if we have maybe we have a lot of content, maybe we'll do two a month, but we try not to do it too much. Right now, because of our various populations. We don't want to overwhelm anyone. So
I think that's great. I'm looking at Katie's comment here. luff bottom line up front. Yes. Begin with the end in mind, right. So you you tell people what you need from them or what you want them to do right up front. And I agree with you, Katie, I shorter, always good that she always good. Because here's the thing with newsletters, especially if you're curating really good information, then yours is the newsletter they want to open. Right? And that's, that's the important bit, especially, you know, email is still the communication of choice for a lot of organizations, right? Email is still king. But people that means then that people get a lot of emails, you know, so your subject line has to make them want to open it. Right, make them aware. And once you get them to open it, you have to then make sure that your curated content within that newsletter really is worth their time. And then you build that trust and you build that relationship so that then when you do have important things, really important things that you want them to pay attention to you. They've already built that habit of going in and reading your newsletters and seeing what you have to offer. So I liked that Katie a lot. And I like that you've attached it so workday Wednesdays, I like that, you know, so it's catchy. People can remember it. They know what they're going to get. And that's a great way to practice your curation efforts. Yeah, and I think l&d news should be incorporated into business project communications rather than separate okay. And I don't necessarily disagree with that, Justine. I think when you put everything Gather, then what's important? Right? And so then if you are if you're putting l&d in with the business communications, just make sure that your voice is still there. You know, and it's not lost, and you're not talking about something random, you know. So if you're doing a business communication piece, be sure that your l&d message connects with the other messages that are in that newsletter, right? You know, so you just don't want your voice to get lost. And a lot of times, l&d voices get lost, because they're just relegated, like I said to that one corner, and all it is is your learning calendar. Right? So Justin, do you want to expand on your thought there.
One of the projects that I was on because I work on transformation type projects. And it took a really long time to get those columns up, because they were asking people from all across the project and including lnd. But I just feel that it just shows how everybody's working together towards the objective, rather than NMDs over there doing their thing. So I just found that was very powerful. But it did take a very long time for the comms team to really pull that together. And there was a lot of wordsmithing and all that sort of rubbish that went on. But I felt that because it was so woven in, it showed how l&d is critical towards the, you know, critical towards meeting the objectives and how integrated they are, as part of the team just like programmers, our MBAs are and but I do, I do know what you're saying you can get a very, you know, short little place, but I don't think l&d should be having a, you know, a whole section on their own. In the same way, we don't expect programmers or BAS to have their own big section. Like, we're all just part of a team. So that's, that's what I experienced.
And I think that's, I think there's room for both. Yeah, you know, I think there's room for both, especially if you are trying to communicate something that's special. You know, so if you have a leadership development program, for example, and you have curated special content for that. I think there's nothing wrong with being able to send that out in an orchestrated fashion, not just willy nilly. You know, so you've, you've got this specific objective that you're trying to hit. And maybe it's a newsletter that is specific to something, maybe it's specific to leadership or sales, or what have you, you know, just helping people grow and develop their own capability. And I think that that's worthwhile of having its own standalone feature. But I do believe Justin, if you do it well, you know, if you do it well, and you incorporate other areas of the business, so that the newsletter one is not 10 pages, you know, where nobody's gonna read it anyway. And you don't spend months like you said, trying to get on nitty gritty with the word smithing, and by then the message is obsolete. You know, so it's it's a hard balance. But I don't disagree with you, I think it is good to show that you're in partnership with the rest of the business. All right. Excellent. It's so as we we've got five minutes left. And hopefully you all have had an opportunity to review Mike's information, which is great. And also, I'll let you know that for our next Coffee Chat. Like I said, it's not, it's not in two weeks, it's actually in three weeks off week is the next one. But Mike is going to be joining us for that coffee chat, he's just going to pop in and just give his two cents worth. So that's I'm kind of excited by that too, when we start to dive deeper about the the tools that we could be using or should be using. And I think it'll be a great conversation, because there are just so many out there, you know, so many different ways to gather information and find information and you know, all of those other good things. So I'm really looking forward to that conversation. So yes, the next Coffee Chat is on October the sixth. And then of course we've got Mike's learn something new which is on October I want to say the 18th or 20th I don't have my calendar in front of me but yeah, a thank you as nodding your head. Yes. And so that'll be fun. And then Oh Also, just to make you all aware, are learning something new Wednesday for this month is next week with with Kevin Yates. And that is all about performance measurement. So if you are struggling to really connect performance improvement and measure impact, then this is the learn something new that you want to be a part of, he does a really great job of bringing up a use case. So you'll be working through a use case, probably in breakout rooms, to be able to really drill down what it is. That means impact measurement. And the questions we could be asking the questions we shouldn't be asking, you know, how should we How should we be in front of business when we're talking about performance impact and performance change? So this is really going to be a very interesting learn something new, which is next week. So I'm looking forward to that. Okay, well, we are almost at the top of the hour. And are there any other closing comments that you guys want to make about Mike's curated process, because I'm looking forward to sharing all of your input with him, because I know he's been working on this for a very long time. And I think it all leads to, you know, that D part that we really did talk about, which was the develop and deliver, which I think is a through thread, right through everything, you know, if you if you've got your objectives in place, if you're thinking about which content is good for the business, then that just naturally leads to how you're going to really deliver everything. So I think that this has been a wonderful conversation. Hopefully you guys feel feel the same way. Excuse me, my podcast guy will love that. I just in his ear. So any closing comments about Mike's curated method here?
Notes is great. Thank you so much for sharing it. This is new to me. So I'm excited.
Good, good. I'm excited too. I think that this was I like I said the timing was just perfect. It was so serendipitous for this to come out. And I know that he's excited as well. He's been working on it for a long time. So on that note, I will thank everybody for being with us today. Don't forget, we like I said our Learn something news coming up. And also we've got the immersive lab with Mayra next month. So if you're looking to hone those AI skills, you want to be a part of that. So we can a lot of things happening here at the fourth quarter this year. But I'm really super excited by it all. And thank you everybody for joining us today. And as always, these resources will be available on the learning rebels website. Under resources, you'll find the video, you'll find any other supporting resources for this chat. And if you are a part of the learning rebels community, you get access to all of these resources 24/7 365 in perpetuity, as well as great conversations with other l&d people and sharing their brain trust. So I would encourage you to take a look at our learning rebels community. Well, anyone doing anything fun this weekend? Jason is like no, no, no fun for Jason. Jason. Jason does not get fun. No, I know.
Jason has to get his hair cut because it hasn't been cut in six weeks and it's a lot longer than it needs to be.
Okay. Take it all are you gonna take it all off?
Yeah, usually is it's usually all gone. Oh, I can't
wait for the next chat when you see that. Jason with no hair. Jason winterizing his hair. That's what it is. There we go. I am getting my car service so that's not exciting either. But I think just enjoying the weekend is exciting enough joining with friends family in over
one for the weekend. All the pumpkin lattes
that's it all the pumpkins it's all out now. Right?
It's still a little too warm here in Texas for me to think that it's fully autumn. My favorite season the year
that's That's Texas get a fall. Isn't it just Hi.
I'm here in North Texas. We do a little bit right but in Houston in the Houston area where I'm from now. It's just more humidity and less
heat. And Michael from Minnesota I used to go up to Minneapolis a few times A year, way back when, when I used to have a corporate job, and I'm in Northern Illinois, and that is just a beautiful drive in the fall.
Yeah. It's really beautiful in the fall here. It's my favorite season here.
Absolutely gorgeous. Well, thank you, everyone for joining me today, Michael. Thank you. And for everybody else who's first time listening. I appreciate everybody's time and I look forward to seeing you that the next Coffee Chat where we continue our conversation about curation tools. Um, it's really filled. I'm sorry. He was asking which ballpark that was behind me. Oh, Wrigley. Yes. Yes. I think go to a ball game this year. I'm sad. That's okay. Thomas, you're on mute. I see your lips moving.
I said you did or did not go.
I did not go to a ball game this year. Okay.
I'm scheduled for a couple of White Sox games towards the end, which again is sad news in itself. Corporate. No. Be well, for 123 weeks.
Have a great season three weeks. Bye, everybody. Take care