Latest / Humanity Working / Interview: The Hidden Value of Learning and Development with Dr. Keith Keating

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Interview: The Hidden Value of Learning and Development with Dr. Keith Keating · Humanity Working

• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so welcome to uh something that we're gonna be doing fairly regularly now again on the Humanity Working Podcast, which is uh a series of longer form interviews.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh for those of you that are new to the podcast, you'll know that we do uh kind of normal like 10-minute mini pods and then occasionally we've done deeper dives.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm really delighted to say that we're gonna uh go back and do some more of these deeper dives now over the course of uh of the next few weeks and months.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to start that off um with a topic that many of you have spoken to me about, I would say, over the course of the last uh six months or a year.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: As you'll know, we have a lot of people who um listen to the podcasts who will know that we focus a lot on how to grow humans and make them central to the success of organizations.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: But what we're hearing back from you a lot is that people are frustrated.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they're seeing that organizations are not invested in this.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and this is something I wanted to go deeper on, and who better to do that with than Dr.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Keith Keating.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um Keith is a is the workforce futurist and chief learning officer for BDO.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he's previously written an award-winning learning and development practitioner's guide called a trusted learning advisor.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: And he has a new book just out just this week, um, which uh Keith was uh good enough to send me an advanced copy of uh called Hidden Value: How to Reveal the Impact of Organizational Learning.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Keith's a respected industry author and sought after a keynote speaker.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and he really champions lifelong learning as the pathway to seize control of a career trajectory.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's something that we'll definitely touch on a little bit uh today.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: He's also an advocate for talent management and he uses his platform to emphasize human talent as the cornerstone for organizational success, which is something we passionately believe in on this podcast.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so it's great to have him on and welcome to the podcast, Keith.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Pleasure to be here.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mentioned that we've been hearing a lot uh kind of uh uh from both both from people who listen to this podcast and then also people that we work with uh with directly um that is really centered around two themes simultaneously happening.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: One that the world of work is changing really rapidly, and employees and companies are not really prepared for that.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: But while that is happening, uh learning development leaders are getting their budgets cut in many cases, and they're seeing layoffs.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: We've seen examples of that um literally over the course of the last uh uh over the course of the last month or two.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: So on the surface, these things seem to directly uh conflict with each other.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's this apparently greater need, and the people that can fulfill that need are being laid off.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you think is going on?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's a bit of a paradox, absolutely.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: So we're facing this future where change is constant, complexity is rising, and the need for continuous learning, in my opinion, is undeniable.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, in the 1960s, Professor Professor Reginald Revend, Revens, rather, he coined the term action learning, which means you learn by doing.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: But he also gave us something else.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: And he gave us this quote, and it's called Revan's Law.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: What he said, and again, interesting, this is in the 1960s, he said, in order for an organization to survive, its rate of learning internal must match the rate of change happening external.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: So said a little bit differently, if we know change is happening exponentially, externally, internally, our organization needs to continuously be learning, otherwise, it gets left behind.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so that reminds us that the faster that the world changes, the more valuable learning becomes.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: But yet, like you said, learning teams are struggling.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes people will say, Well, we're the first on the chopping block.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: Part of this is because when uncertainty is high and organizations default to cutting what they can't clearly see.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: And what they can't clearly see is the value of what we're doing.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's the real issue here is that the value of learning and talent development is often hidden.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: And if leaders don't understand the impact, they don't understand the value, they treat it as a cost rather than an investment.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so for me, the problem isn't that we're not providing value.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's that our value isn't visible.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really interesting point.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I having spoken to a lot of people in in learning and development, what I see is a lot of frustration from learning and development teams that people can't see the value.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: A lot, in many cases to them, they think that it's it's self-evident, right?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: That um surely everybody understands that what we're doing is helping people learn and grow inside inside the organization.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: And surely people understand that there is massive value and the value extends beyond what can be clearly seen.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, one of the great jobs that you do in the book is is you discuss the different ways in which uh the value itself can be hidden, right?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: You discuss the ways in which uh there might be this perceived level of value associated with it, but here are all the extra uh ways that can't clearly be seen that are still there inside inside an organization.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: But that frustration about people uh people feeling that the value should be self-evident.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: We've seen that that sometimes translates to organizations sort of behaving as though the rest of the organization, the alone development part of the organization behaving as though the rest of the organization, are just the dumb people who don't get it, and they should get it, and so they don't do anything different.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you you kind of talk about this a little bit in a concept uh in the book that you call the mirror.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, could you talk a little bit about that and how that translates to the way teams operate and how they are perceived?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: I think a mirror in general can be uncomfortable.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: And this is an important concept in the book because it's not about looking out at our stakeholders or our budgets or our constraints, but rather it's about looking inward at us.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: We have a lot of accountability here, and I don't think we take enough of that.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: Too often we blame all these external factors.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Our leaders don't get it, our budget's been cut, I have a small team, they see us as order takers.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: All of that can be true, but the mirror asks a tougher question.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: What are we doing or what are we not doing that contributes to that perception?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's about us taking accountability.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: Are we speaking the language of the business?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: Are we aligning with matters that value to our leaders?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: Are we measuring what they care about or just what's easy for us to track?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: When I was doing my doctoral research, one of the many pieces of data that stuck with me was a CFO who said, I have so many fires at my feet.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: I can't care about what you care about.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: You have to make me care.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the piece that I don't think that we do enough of is we do, we we we assume it's implicit and everybody knows learning's important and rah-rah-rah.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, IT will probably make the same argument.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody knows technology is important, so we need that budget.
• 8:14
  unknown: Yeah.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: HR.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone knows that HR is important.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: We need that budget, marketing.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: We've got to be able to market our product, sales, we've got to be out there selling a product.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: We all think that we are the most important special child in this family.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: And really, we're all potentially equal.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's just who's better at demonstrating the value, telling the story of the value, and making those leaders care when they have all of these other fires that they're dealing with.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: Why should they care about us?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so for me, when when we avoid the mirror, we end up staying in this reactive mode and we're always defending our value.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: But when we look in the mirror and we face it honestly, we start to unlock the power of what it means to reframe our role.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: And that's really what I'm arguing in the book, is that we've got to reframe our role from being a cost center to being seen as critical enablers of growth and change and resilience.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: And if our value isn't seen, then we have a responsibility to make it visible, not just sit back and be like, oh, they'll they'll get it one day.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: No, they won't.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Inside almost any investment in an organization, there are tangible benefits and there are intangible benefits associated with it.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're in a field where there's kind of a lot of intangible benefits, and you're not doing your part to make those intangible benefits tangible, then by definition, you're gonna you're gonna be at risk for exactly the same uh points that you're making here.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not it as sometimes it does feel unique to LD, but it's definitively not.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: We're not special.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Marketing goes through the same thing, sales goes through it, HR, IT, any support function that is not revenue generating goes through this cyclical value.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so part of the hidden solution that I talk about slightly in the book, but not a not a lot, but is becoming revenue generating.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: How can you do that?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's something that I've given to my team.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's our third mission statement and our five-year vision is that we want to be revenue generating.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: I want what we do to be so good that our customers are willing to pay us for it.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: I don't mean that I'm hiring a sales team to go out and sell us, but for me, if we become great at what we do, and then we truly are changing the way that people look at learning and development in the organization, and we are elevating everybody in the firm.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: Our clients are gonna see that and they're gonna experience it.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: And they're gonna say, hey, this person is a fantastic leader, great presenter, great salesperson.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: Where did they learn how to do this?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you have a learning team that does it?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: Can you come and help us?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then it just becomes a byproduct of that.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Makes perfect sense.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: So that actually leads me into the sort of uh second line of questioning that I wanted to go into here, which is there's this idea of displaying uh the value and showing the value that you create.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, in order to be able to do that, you've got to create maximum value in the first place.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: So um there's a story you tell about uh Sarah in your book who's asked to provide safety training.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think it beautifully illustrates the difference between being an order taker and providing actual strategic value.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: So can you share that example for our audience?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is a good example of what it looks like when LD shifts from being a transactional function to a strategic business partner.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: So she was initially asked to deliver just a basic training program.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: And most of us know this is how it goes.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: You get a request, and sometimes we call it an order, and you build this course, this program, you deliver it, you check the box when you're finished.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: But instead of just doing that, Sarah went at it differently.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: She paused, got curious, which is something that we don't focus enough on, in my opinion.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: And instead of just asking, what content do you want in this, it was what problem are we trying to solve?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: And what she ended up uncovering was pretty powerful that in this specific organization, they were experiencing a workplace accident spike increase.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: So that was the problem.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: The problem was we have more accidents, and so someone else's solution was, well, that means we need more training.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: And it turns out that it wasn't because people didn't know about the safety protocols, they did, but there was actual deeper culture issues at play here.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: So employees were afraid to speak up.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: There was a lack of trust between teams and supervisors, and so more training on these rules wouldn't have solved the root issue.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: So instead, she spent time focusing with stakeholders to create a completely different intervention.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: And it was the focus on psychological safety and open communication and empowerment.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: And as a result of this, in the end, incidents went down, but also the morale and the collaboration improved.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's just a great example that if you had looked at the value, yes, the incidence went down, but we also have these other value outputs that we weren't necessarily looking at that increase.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's what value creation looks like.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's not about saying yes to every request that comes up, it's about stepping back, diagnosing the real need that's in front of us, and then designing solutions that drive meaningful outcome.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: And at the end of the day, for me, it just the reminder in my head is our job is not to build courses.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, our job is to solve problems.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way, I'm Sarah.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: I just didn't want to constantly use myself, so it's like, you know, give different experiences.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: But uh Sarah did a really good job.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Good, excellent.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, there's there's a there's a paradox here again, which I've which I've got to say, Keith, I find I do find fascinating, um, which is that we're in this field of literally helping helping people learn and grow.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that we know, and we've known for decades at this point, is that if you're on this if you're if you're on the side of the learner, as it were, then uh the biggest superpower you can have is a form of intellectual curiosity, right?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, very simply put, if you like to learn, you're gonna be a better learner.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: If you like to grow, you're gonna you're gonna grow better.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: And this is framed in various different ways, and you know, growth mindset being one of them and all this kind of stuff.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: But the most interesting thing is that if you spend a lot of time in this field, the degree to which uh uh people in the field have uh positioned themselves in their own minds as the people that dispense information and dispense learning versus learning themselves, there's quite a lot of that, right?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's quite a lot, there's quite a lot of people who are like, no, no, no, I'm I'm I'm the person who tells other people who tells other people what they should be doing, but I'm not the person to learn.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, the problem with that is exactly what you're talking about, right?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Making assumptions that you know what the solutions are, right?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Not learning from uh from what you do.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think about like the work that we do in my company, um the day things flipped for us was when we started shifting the degree to which we were learning from our students versus dispensing information to our students.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's why I love I love your story because Sarah, you are um is developing a deeper understanding from the very people that have the problem.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: And there's so we we do that so infrequently, and the moment that you do do it, you make that jump from being highly tactical to strategic, and you're finding a path to value.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's a huge game changer, and it's it's very simple.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: Qualitative versus quantitative research.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: We spend the majority of our time on the quantitative, on the numbers, something that's can go in in a pretty Excel spreadsheet.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: We do not spend enough time out with our learners, just talking with them to understand what problems do you have?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: What's keeping you from being successful in your job?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: That is a much more important question than tell me about you know learning experience, or I don't even like to use the word learning.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: My question to them is what's keeping you from being successful?
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: What's the biggest struggle you have right now?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: Most of what we uncover, no, we can't fix with just a course.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: But what we're tapping into is A, that relationship with them, B, learning more about the business.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: And at minimum, I can take this information, I can use Chat GPT or whatever your Gen AI tool is of choice, I can repackage it and then give it back to my stakeholder.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I can say to them, hey, just want to let you know I spent some time talking with our learners, uncover these three problems.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: I can't solve these with a learning program, but I can at least bring it to you to let you know your frontline workers are struggling with this.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way, I did spend some time talking to this other service line.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: They're struggling as well.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe you and you can meet and solve this problem.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm here to help you along the way.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: That starts to position us differently from being an order taker to just being somebody who knows the business and who's trying to solve problems.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and has unique insights into the business that a lot of other parts of the business don't have, which brings us pretty neatly to um the thing you referred to as the value creation compass in your book.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and really what I took from it is is four distinct, sometimes connected areas where LD should be having some form of measurable impact.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone, Matt here.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the producer of Humanity Working.
• 18:35
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• 18:40
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• 18:45
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• 18:49
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• 18:52
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• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: All that work results in no meaningful change for anyone.
• 19:00
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• 19:01
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• 19:16
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• 19:24
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• 19:26
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• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: So why don't you briefly talk us through what those areas are?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think for people that are in the mindset of like, oh, I offer this program, I offer this program, I offer this program, that might be a little bit unusual.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's taking a step back from that mindset.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is one of the core frameworks in the book.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I created it to help us expand how we think about impact.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: Too often we limit ourselves in these narrow metrics like uh course completion or satisfaction score or even the more complicated ROI.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: But in reality, we create value in multiple directions simultaneously.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: There's not just one.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: My goal is for us to be able to turn in any direction at any moment and be able to find where there may be value that we're creating.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so, of course, the compass has four cardinal directions, same here.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: North is about empowering people.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, that was the true North because people are at the core of everything that we do.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: That means we need to be focusing on leadership development, on reskilling, upskilling, second skilling, whatever version of skilling you want, employee engagement.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: You said at the beginning, it's about helping people grow.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's about unlocking potential.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: And are we helping our people grow?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: And are we closing these skill gaps?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so again, North is focusing on empowering people.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: East is about driving business growth.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: This is what executives care about first.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, they know learning is important and all of that, but what we care about is growing the business.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: If we're not growing the business, the business may not be able to stay as a business.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: That's the ultimate goal, is growing.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: So it's about us supporting that.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: Are we enabling innovation?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: Are we increasing revenue?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: Are we improving efficiency?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: Are we accelerating time to market with new products?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: We have a direct role that we can play in there when we're training teams on new systems, on sales enablement, on operational agility.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: We're driving growth.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: But these aren't language terms that we're used to necessarily.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: Then there's South, which is building organizational resilience.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: And what I mean by that is change is happening exponentially.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: We've got that.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: That means that our organizations constantly need to be changing.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: We are ripe to support that.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: This is about adaptability, it's about change readiness, it's about cultural alignment.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: How can we?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: We help our organization pivot.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, COVID was a great example of that.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: There were organizations that were able to shift overnight.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: And all of a sudden, we went from being this back office function to rising to supporting our organizations to do that.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: So we we have a critical component that we can play in this new world of change being constant.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then the West is delivering customer value, which sometimes we overlook this, but it's vital.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: Every business, every organization has customers.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: When we are training employees to improve customer experience or increase service quality or strengthen relationships, we're creating value for the end user and we're also reinforcing the brand.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so each of these areas, we should, we could be measuring different value propositions.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: And by mapping these initiatives to these categories, we're not just defending learning, we're helping to demonstrate it as a strategic driver.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: And the last point I'll make is that the compass isn't a tool just for us.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's for you to take to your stakeholders and have discussions with them so that they can start to get aligned and see the value propositions in these four core areas as well.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I've got to say I love this because to me it's doing uh uh uh a few things at the at the same time.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it yes, it's a way of articulating values, you say.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's a way of having a discussion with the uh with the different parts of the organization as to where you should focus your efforts.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's also uh providing clues to help you understand internally, are you actually providing the value that you believe you're providing, right?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good it's a good way of uh of being able to measure that.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm curious about another aspect of this as well, though, which is uh which is sort of almost like a a level, uh a double click into or level deeper um into the overall picture of skills development, which is the nature of the skills themselves.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: So um regular listeners to the pod will know that that our main focus is really on uh durable skills, soft skills, things like that, uh things of that uh nature.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And what we see in the organizations that we work with is that if you're speaking to the CEO of any organization, invariably they have a uh full understanding that durable skills, things like communication, collaboration, conflict resolution are vital.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: They know that they're extremely important to their organization.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: They might even hire or fire leaders in uh in their executive team based on whether those things are strong or not, and they'll have dedicated, highly expensive leadership training for those uh for those people uh in their own team.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: So they have a good understanding these things are really, really important.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, they and the other people inside their organization find those specific skills harder to measure than things like job-specific skills, right?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: An engineer has to be trained to be an engineer, right?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Or regulatory compliance uh training that are is absolutely required inside your organization.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so that challenge of the relative difficulty of measuring certain types of training versus other types of training, um, where the durable skills training may be as or more important, but just more difficult, uh difficult to measure, can create challenges inside organizations.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think your compass really helps here because it helps quantify uh some of uh some of those things and it helps tie those things directly to uh to business outcomes.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm curious, what other guidance do you have for organizations that are looking, if you like, to raise the standing and raise the level of investment and raise the profile of durable skills training or soft skills training?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: Part of it is recognizing that not only is it difficult to measure for durable skills, the time that it takes to truly build those skills is difficult to put a calendar timestamp on.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: If you think about just leadership, we send people to leadership programs.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: So you go to a say five-day, 40-hour program, and you come out and all of a sudden you're a leader.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: No, you're planting seeds that are going to germinate, grow, hopefully, that you're you're nurturing because you have a growth mindset and you're continuing to build on these, versus a technical skill where you go through and you're learning a new trade, you're learning something that you can kind of it's it's tangible.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: I can go and I can apply this immediately.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: Huge issue.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: So here's what I encourage organizations to think about.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: Instead of asking, can we measure this skill directly?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: Ask, can we measure the outcome of this skill?
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: What is the outcome that this skill is enabling?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: So, conflict resolution, for example.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: You might not be able to really directly measure someone's competency in this, but you can measure team retention rates.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you can measure frequency or severity of escalations, you can measure employee engagement in high conflict units, you can measure customer satisfaction if there's like an internal misalignment.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: There are deeper aspects of the durable skills and the outputs of them that we need to take a look at.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: And communication, another one.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: Communication, you might look at how does it correlate with project delays or the number of project reworks or cross-functional scores or leadership effectiveness rating.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of other ways that we can be measuring.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: And honestly, this is where Gen AI comes in.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_02: And Gen AI is way smarter than I'll ever be.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's starting to take a look at if you have a list of these are the five ways that I'm measuring today, put it into Gen AI, ask Gen AI to look for correlations between other outputs from these skills and how you might be able to measure it.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: The key is ultimately connecting the dots between the skill and the business pain or problem that it's alleviating.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: That connection.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: We can't just have skills over here in one category and say by themselves this is solving the problem without connecting it to the business problem that we're trying to ultimately solve.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where I'm hopeful that the compass is helpful, that it gives you these different dimensions where you can explore the connections.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: Are we improving resilience?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: Are we empowering people?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: Are we delivering customer value?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: And what one word of encouragement, I would share a few words, is that just because it's harder to measure doesn't mean that it's less valuable.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: It means that it's probably more strategic, more systemic, and we have to work harder.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes we have to be more creative in this to make the case.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: So my advice is pick one or two high-impact durable skills.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: Align them with a real business problem, define a couple of proxy metrics, and then run a pilot and tell that story loudly, clearly, succinctly, have other people tell that story.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's when you make the invisible visible.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's so important.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I was speaking at a conference about a week ago, and I I I said I thought the nine most dangerous words in the English language were if you can't man if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason, which by the way, Drucker never actually said, uh, but the uh but um the reason that I the reason I believe that is because that has become conflated in so many people's minds as if you can't measure it, it's not important.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: Or if you can't measure it, it's not impactful.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you touch on this in the book, which is that we have this uh this tendency to drift towards the things that are easier to measure because they're because they're easier to measure.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: But our North Star, as it were, should be what uh do we know has the the best impact for the uh for the business, even if we uh even if we can't measure it directly.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I'm I'm curious.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: So what we found is that the tendency to war to flee towards the things that you that you can measure um can lead to particularly learning and development um uh organizations to focus in the wrong areas and overall create less substantial impact than they would do otherwise.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Have you seen that?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to just put a caveat, I am by no way a measurement expert, and in no way I'm saying that we have it right.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know anybody that has it right.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: We're still running buttons-seat reports.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: And my response to my team when I get this is so what?
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we had 95% attendance.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: Who cares?
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what was the outcome?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: Did we change anything?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: Did we impact anything?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: Was this a great experience?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: What so just giving that caveat, but yes, when we focus on what's easy and comfortable for us, we're not growing or challenging as well.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what's keeping, in my opinion, some of our own evolution is we're just still telling the same story.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: We had 100% attendance rate, we had 75 people complete this program.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, last year we spent this much money, our Kirkpatrick, you know, level one, we got our NPS scores.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: That that's a whole different conversation.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: But we could do another podcast about that.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: One on my team came to me a couple weeks ago and was like, we had a hundred percent NPS score.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, bull, beep, that so that just doesn't happen.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and if that's if that's the data we're getting, then this isn't real data.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not gonna tell this to anybody because I don't believe it myself.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: So go out and find the real story that's there.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: I would rather have some some meat, some just something from a human rather than hearing we had a hundred percent NPS score.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you touched that that's again, you're we're segueing us beautifully, Hickey.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh because you touched on uh on frameworks there in terms of how you go about articulating value.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to know how you how do you how do you best tell?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: Let's assume that you're creating good value and you really need to tell the story in a way that is going to resonate with the with the rest of the organization.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess the the key people that you need to resonate with are the line of business leaders, um CFO, CEO inside the organization if we're really gonna lift this to something that is more strategic and then is regularly and consistently funded.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you go about telling that story in a way that will resonate with those stakeholders that are not experts in learning and development?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, I see a piece of art or I see a painting behind you, and I would assume that you would classify that as art.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: One of the aspects of art is that it's subjective.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: Now I could say to you, oh, I think that's hideous.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: And you could say, okay, great.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's my piece of art.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: And that doesn't negate whether or not it is gorgeous or not gorgeous.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the same when it comes to value.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: Value is ultimately in the eye of the stakeholder.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: So what matters to an HR leader is not going to be the same thing probably matters to the CFO.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: What a team lead cares about is not going to be probably even on the radar of the CEO.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: We have to know our audience.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: What outcomes do they care about?
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: Not what do I care about?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: And the way that I flip that is my question is, what are they accountable for?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: So when it comes to articulating value, I always recommend a blend of quantitative and qualitative.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: So said a little bit differently, your numbers and your stories.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: Data alone has rarely inspired anybody.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: Again, NPS score 100%.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: Great, don't believe it.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: Excel spreadsheet with all these numbers on there.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, what does this mean?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: I have to sit down, I have to analyze it.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: But stories also don't always convince.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: So when you combine the two, for me, that's where the magic happens.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of times we just don't know how to use our data effectively.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a stat that I put in the book from Deloitte.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: 95% of LD organizations struggle to use data effectively to align learning with the business goals or measurement of impact.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so what that means is at the end of the day, we're not struggling necessarily to create value.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: We're struggling to show the value that we're creating.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so the result is that our contributions can go unrecognized.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: We have low influence or it stays limited.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: And ultimately the business doesn't see their full return.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: So, how do we fix this?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's a simple storytelling arc.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_02: You have the challenge.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: What did the business need?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: What was the problem that arose?
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: You have the intervention.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: What did we do to help address it?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: Doesn't always mean it's a learning program.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like I mentioned earlier, going out and spending time with your learners, collecting the stories of the problems that they're having, looking across the business, figuring out what other stakeholder has a problem and connecting these two stakeholders, that's an intervention.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't have to create a learning program.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: Not every problem has a learning program that's needed.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what are the outcomes?
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: What changed?
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_02: What got better?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: What business metric moved?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: And then looking at the human angle as well.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: Who was or were the individuals that were impacted?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what did they experience?
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then ultimately it's the connection, the connection to why should this matter to the stakeholder right now?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's not about again, excel reports, it's about creating a narrative that's backed by evidence that shows that learning is not just a luxury, it is a lever that can be pulled to have business impact.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: And that's how you start to shift it from explaining what you did to demonstrating why it mattered.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is fascinating because basically what you're describing is a means by which this type of work turns you into the experts in how human capabilities translate into business success.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that translation layer does not obviously sit anywhere else inside an organization and yet is critically important for the success of an organization.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: So the moment that you can do that, the moment you can create that connection between the function and that uh and and that ability for an organization to have, now all of a sudden you've transformed the function into something that is that is deeply, deeply strategic, right?
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're that connection.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: We are connectors.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's part of what we need to be doing.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that means, again, sitting with the learners.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'm in the classroom with them, I'm following up with them one-on-one, I'm having conversations.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not looking at Kirkpatrick Score, Phillips ROI, or whatever other quantitative data my team is giving.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: That has that there's a component there to it.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: But I want to know the story behind that.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so it just means you have to be spending time with your learners.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_02: And we often think of ourselves as something separate from them.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: I don't see us as a separate entity or service line.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_02: I see us as completely integrated within the business and the functions to know the business just as good as my stakeholder does, if not even better.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's the ultimate goal, being able to speak their language, knowing their people, and knowing the stories of their people.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: And part of those stories, again, are the struggles that they're having, the challenges that they're having, and being able to repeat it.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just about us getting other people to tell our story.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: I want to also be able to tell the story of our learners and not just that success story, but the struggles that they're having as well.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, Keith, if I know our audience, I think there are gonna be elements of it are gonna be thinking of two things at the same time.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: So one is gonna be this sounds awesome, this is how uh development of humans inside an organization uh should happen.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: And whether there are learners, you know, employ uh employees that are looking to learn and grow, they'll be taking away some stuff from this discussion.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: Or if they're involved in helping people learn and grow inside the organization, they'll be taking some something away.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I think they'll probably also be thinking something else as well, which is this sounds like a lot of work.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we're already under pressure.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we've uh lost some resources, we're certainly under financial pressure.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, we should never let a crisis go to waste.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: So let's look at that from a couple of couple of different angles in terms of what people should actually do.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start from the perspective of an of an employee.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's not the main focus of your book, but what would you focus on as an employee right now to make sure that you're continuing to provide value to your organization, wherever you are inside that organization?
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's a great question, in fact.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: When I started writing the book, I didn't want to limit it to LD.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_02: I started going much broader and then came back and focused on LD.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: And this sounds self-serving, but the most valuable thing that any employee can do is to lean into learning.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, at BDO, we've created our tagline, which is never stop learning.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so we repeat it at the end of every program.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's everywhere visible.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not just in the traditional sense of taking courses or earning badges or whatever, but it's a the mindset.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: And you already talked about it growth mindset.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's the ability to observe, to adapt, to grow, to ask questions.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_02: Where can I contribute more?
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: What problems can I help solve?
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: You mentioned earlier that uh you're you're the the nine most dangerous words.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: For me, the three most dangerous words in any organization is not my job.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: The minute you say that, you are sending so many signals.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: I have closed mindsets, I don't care.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a lot of different, we can have another full conversation on that.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: It may not be my job, but I can help solve, I can help connect, I can help move forward.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so if I were an employee right now, which I am, but I'd focus on three things.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: Stay curious about the business.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: And what I mean by that is understand how your company makes money.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: There are some individuals that don't know how their company, like what does their company do?
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I know what I do.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what the company does.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, what challenge is the company facing?
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: How does your role connect to that bigger picture?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: I started in the book, I don't want to ruin the story, but it's it's a mythical story about a janitor at NASA.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: And supposedly uh President Kennedy sees him pushing the cart in the hallway and says, Hey, sir, you know, what do you do here?
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_02: Knowing full well he's a janitor.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: The janitor says, I'm helping to put the first man on the moon.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: So the janitor knew that he was part of a bigger purpose, even if it was 70 layers down from that.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: You should know where you fit into or how you fit into that bigger picture.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of people don't.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: Business fluency makes you more valuable.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: So, number one, stay curious about the business.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: Number two, be building the skills that machine.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Machines can't replicate.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: Gen AI is way smarter than I'm ever going to be.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, what that means is I believe we're evolving from a skills economy to a value economy.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: This device in my hand, again, smarter than I will ever be.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: So why would I ever try to compete with ChatGPT at this point?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: Instead, I need to figure out how ChatGPT is going to make me better at what I do, or Gen AI is going to make me better so that I can continue to drive more value.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: Knowledge, skills, life expectancy, or skills, you know, shelf life expectancy, and all that is decreasing, blah, blah, blah.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: We hear the same thing.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so again, for me, it's moving to a value economy.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: How can I create value for my firm?
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: And part of that is about the skills that machines can't replicate.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_02: And then I would say the third is being solution oriented.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_02: I don't call myself an LD practitioner.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: If we met on the street and you said, hey, what do you do?
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't say I'm an L and D.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_02: I would tell you I'm a problem solver.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: I happen to use learning as a way to solve problems.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_02: Businesses, organizations, firms are going to always have problems.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_02: The people who stay employed are the ones that are just focusing on solving those problems.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: And part of that means you don't have that not my job mindset.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have this mindset of I'm inside this box, and this job title defines me.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: We are so much more than our job titles.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so if we just break past that, it's being solution-oriented so that we're constantly solving problems.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_02: There's value in what you do.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_02: You just have to dive in to figure out what is that value that you're providing and make sure that you're sharing that value with others so that they're aware of that as well.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I know that was a lot.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, it was a lot, it was a lot, but it was a good lot.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, right, you talk about not my job, but what if what if learning and development is your job?
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you're you're in one of those situations that we've talked about, right?
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: The budget has been cut, you've lost some colleagues, you're deeply stuck in this order taking mode.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um we hear that a lot.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we hear uh that they'll the mode, unsurprisingly, is keep your head down, better times ahead, we can have these kind of like more strategic conversations at some at some point in the future.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I get a sense from talking to you and from from reading the book um that you think that's probably not the best strategy.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: So if you if you are in that situation, how do you go about resetting the conversation?
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, I want to just give another caveat that I don't have and I'm not in the perfect LND function.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think that that that exists.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_02: And specifically, what is important for listeners to remember is think about a doctor, a nurse, a dentist.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: There is not one single day that they're going to wake up and not have a problem to solve.
• 47:16
  unknown: Yeah.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: And it feels like we often forget that, and we're waiting for this moment where we're not needed.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: And not being told that there are orders or problems to solve, there's always going to be problems that we can be solving.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so, long story short, I just want to reiterate for listeners, there are days I still wake up, I'm exhausted, I'm struggling.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_02: But I have a post-it note, and I'm holding up the posted note, and it just every day with this posted note that learning changes lives.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's what we do.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like the janitor putting the first space individual on the moon, we change lives with learning.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: So we're often overworked, underfunded, small teams might be treated as an order taker.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: But when that moment is happening, this is where we can reset that narrative.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_02: Because if we don't, no one else will.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I use this example a little bit earlier on with one of the CFOs that I was interviewing who said, I have so many fires at my feet.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: I can't care about what you care about.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_02: So in those moments where it feels dark, heavy, it's not us going to hide in a closet, but it's us going out to find those little fires and understand what those fires are and how we might be able to support.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: Because we often think that the program that we're launching or we're creating, that's the most important thing for the business or for all the stakeholders.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's probably not.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_02: So find out what is the most important thing.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's finding a quick win that speaks the business's language.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's starting with maybe one project, one stakeholder, building those relationships, figuring out what their fire is right now, what's the most important thing for them at that moment, and figuring out what are you doing to help support them?
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're not doing anything to help support them, that means you need to pivot and now help support them because whatever your earlier priorities were need to change.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_02: And that's one of the challenges.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_02: I see a lot of LD functions, they'll create their learning strategy at the beginning of the year.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: And they're like, okay, great, this is our marching orders for the next 12 months.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing stays static for 12 months anymore.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: We are constantly revisiting our strategy by looking at has the business shifted?
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_02: Has the world shifted?
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we've got what tariffs now, we've got border issues, we've got uh just things that weren't even on the radar six, eight months ago, which means we've got to constantly be pivoting.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_02: Change is our new normal.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's just being able to stay connected with your stakeholder, find their little fires, and help them put them out.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's how you're going to win.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: And change people's lives.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for joining us today.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: Keith Keating, once again, the uh the book is uh Hidden Value, How to Reveal the Impact of Organizational Learning.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, go get it.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it is out this week.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so um I would recommend it thoroughly to yes, anybody in uh that's in the business of learning and development, but really anybody who is struggling with being able to articulate value well, um, whatever organization you're in, you're gonna get some really interesting uh learning moments from from reading the book.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks once again, Keith.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: Really appreciate the time today.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: My pleasure.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me on.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Neal.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: Our interviewer is Paul Slater.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: Music is by Dolo Records.
• 51:04
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• 51:08
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• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to learn more about how Billion Minds gets companies ready for the future of work by building adaptable, resilient employees, look for them on LinkedIn or visit their website at billionminds.com.