The Learning Evolution Podcast

Bonus Episode

For our first episode of 2023, we are offering a bonus episode form my interview on the Distant Job Podcast.

Enjoy this opportunity to hear Adam switch from interviewer to interviewee.

The Distant Job Podcast features interviews with people who are experts in remote work and management.

Our first year producing The Learning Evolution Podcast has come to an end.

Thank you to all who listened, interacted, provided feedback, and shared the show.

This final episode of the year contains my top five lessons learned in 2022.

• Brief 2022 recap (0:42)
• Lesson 1 - Put yourself out there (2:34)
• Lesson 2 - Gamification is more about driving behaviors than adding gaming elements (5:05) - Reference episode 25 with Yu-kai Chou
• Lesson 3 - L&D Teams alone do not create learning (7:45) - Reference episodes 57/58 with JD Dillon
• Lesson 4 - Formal learning programs are often not the best way to drive change (9:32) - Reference episode 37 with Matt Bibby
• Lesson 5 - Diversify your skillset to create more impact (13:23) - Reference episode 54 with Dan Gallagher

We will see you with more new episodes in the new year. Enjoy your holidays and end of year wrap up.

Connect with Adam:

JD Dillon is the founder of LearnGeek, CLO at Axonify, and the author of the recently published book The Modern Learning Ecosystem.

On part 2 of my interview with JD, we discussed:

• How to support performers when things go wrong for them (1:52)
• Reinforcing what people need to know (5:51)
• Using learner personas to create individualized learning solutions (11:21)
• How to help managers create a coaching culture (14:43)
• Why training should be the last deliverable that L&D teams should spend their time on (18:48)
• How L&D teams can get past the order taker mentality (22:29)
• Why all training should be microlearning (25:54)
• How Axonify helps train and support the front line (30:36)

Connect with JD:

JD Dillon is the founder of LearnGeek, CLO at Axonify, and the author of the recently published book The Modern Learning Ecosystem.

On this episode, JD and I discussed:

• His focus on developing frontline employees (1:30)
• How training can appeal to people's motivators (9:30)
• What we can all learn from Wile E. Coyote (16:08)
• Why modern today is antiquated tomorrow (20:21)
• How we can hold people accountable for learning in the workflow (23:52)
• How to take advantage of the ecosystem employees are already using (28:44)
• Being comfortable with giving up control (33:50)
• Why the foundation of modern learning is shared knowledge (40:21)
• Tune into part 2 of this interview on our next episode!

Connect with JD:

Dr. Barbara Covarrubias Venegas is a remote work & learning expert. She has more than 12 years of experience in virtual training, coaching, events, and collaboration.

Barbara has founded Virtual Space Hero, a collection of ****remote work and hybrid leadership experts who work with organizations from across the globe delivering keynotes, workshops, coaching and more.

On this episode, we discussed:

• Barbara’s extensive background in virtual training and team leadership
• How you can make your virtual training more engaging
• Making virtual training more real and applicable for participants
• How to deliver long-term results from your training sessions
• The best ways to develop trainers to deliver better virtual training
• Her company’s award from the Wharton Global Case Study Challenge
• The top things company’s struggle with in the remote and hybrid space

Connect with Barbara:

Hannah Frankman is the founder of Rebel Educator - a resource that provides professional development for schools to build a concept and project based learning culture, and resources for entrepreneurs starting their own schools.

Hannah had a non-traditional schooling experience and is an advocate for fostering critical thinking, mental models, philosophy and argument formation with children in order to set them up for success in life.

On this episode, we discussed:

• How Hannah’s non-traditional education experience set her up for success in her career and life (1:08)
• Modern alternatives to college (14:15)
• What Revel Educator is doing to evolve the K-12 education space (25:56)
• Innovators to follow in the schooling space (37:13)
• How transitioning teachers can become involved in the K-12 evolution (49:10)

Connect with Hannah:

Dan Gallagher is responsible for line management of Quality, Talent & Development within the insurance industry in the UK.

Dan marries talent development and quality processes to support his people. His diverse interests and background have lead him to incorporate unconventional L&D methods based on systems thinking and behavioral economics.

On this episode, we discussed:

• Making Compliance Training Effective (1:06)
• Offer more than just courses (3:33)
• Linking Training and Quality Programs (9:06)
• Purpose Measures Methods (11:51)
• Systems Thinking (16:40)
• Avoiding the checklist mentality with quality audits (28:23)
• Resources to learn more about Systems Thinking (31:16)
• Behavioral Economics (33:17)
• How to use Behavioral Economics to nudge employee behavior (41:04)
• Motivating employees with autonomy, mastery, and purpose (47:11)
• Get to know Dan (52:45)

Curated Systems Thinking Resources

Jerome Myers is a developer of people and places. He is the founder and Chief Inspiration Officer of DreamCatchers and The Myers Development Group.

Through these entities he gets to live out his childhood dreams of helping people manifest the things they imagine and create social proof that dreams should be real.

Since leaving corporate America after building a 20MM division, Jerome has become one of the most sought after thought leaders in the multifamily development space. In addition, Jerome offers leadership training to businesses that want to be the top leaders in the industry.

On this episode, we discussed:

• Escaping the Matrix (1:19)
• Transitioning from corporate work to doing what fuels you (7:59)
• The employee dissatisfaction crises (12:00)
• Building trust and communication skills with leaders (17:26)
• Maximizing long-term impact of learning programs (27:14)
• Steps to take to exit the Matrix (30:12)
• How to reduce stress and ascend into timelessness (36:22)
• How employees can gain fulfillment (40:04)

Connect with Jerome:

Joe Dunlap is a Learning leader with over 15 years of experience and a comprehensive background in continuous learning and performance improvement, skills/capability/competency modeling, social & collaborative learning, cross-disciplinary learning teams, measures, technologies and analytics.

Joe is a keynote presenter, panelist, podcast guest, author and influencer for the transition of traditional Learning and Development to transformational continuous learning and performance improvement.

On this episode, we discuss:

• Why classrooms - both virtual and in-person -  are often the worst ways to facilitate adult learning
• How to provide learning and performance support solutions closer to where the work is being done
• How Joe has driven results in large bureaucratic organizations, including NASA and the US military

Connect with Joe:

Kate Tonda is the Senior Director of Learning and Development at Walmart. Over the last 20 years, Kate has worked for several large companies in roles of increasing responsibility in the L&D function.

Kate has managed employee training for multiple verticals and has overseen all aspects of the L&D function in her various roles. Kate’s teams have delivered innovative and award-winning learning solutions, experiential events, and have trained many thousands of employees.

On this episode of The Learning Evolution Podcast, we discussed:

• How Kate has partnered with senior company leadership and navigated both bureaucracy and silos at the companies that she has worked for to deliver training solutions that drive real performance impact
• What she has done to progress her career and how she develops the L&D professionals that have worked on her team
• The projects and impact that have made her the most proud over her almost 20 year L&D career
• How she has become involved within her community and with organizations like Fierce Lab to learn and grow

Connect with Kate**:**

Welcome to the Learning Evolution.

This episode discusses our show’s rebrand and how it helps us to drive our mission to help you get better at making other people better.

We will discuss the mindset behind where the show is going and what to expect going forward.

Connect with Adam:

Matt Smith has worked for over 20 years managing people across a wide range of industries, 12 of those in formal L&D roles. He has worked as an employee at larger businesses, run his own business, as well as operated independently.

His wide range of experience has given him a unique perspective on what it means to provide effective training.

Find Matt at:

L&D is often seen as a cost center, and for good reason.

With the economy slowing and recession likely on the horizon, some companies are laying off staff and many others are cutting budgets.

Prepare yourself for what is ahead and prove your value to business leaders to navigate the coming uncertainty.

Heidi Kirby transitioned from being a college professor into a more than 9 year working in a variety of L&D roles. 

She has worked as an instructional designer for NASA, a large health insurance company, a small tech startup, and a software company in her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. She has led instructional design functions for small and mid-sized organizations throughout Northeast Ohio. 

For her PhD program, she is studying leadership competencies instructional designers need to be successful. She is focused on growing new learning and development professionals and to bring positive change and a sense of belonging and learning culture.

Heidi is the host of the BLOC podcast and recently founded Useful Stuff.

On this episode we discussed:

• How she has combined her academic background with the practical experience she has gained working with multiple companies
• The top skills that somebody transitioning into a career in L&D need to be successful
• Where a lot of professional training is missing the mark and how to avoid these pitfalls
• How the perspective of Gen Z can lead to a better future for L&D

Find Heidi at:

There is a perception amongst many employees and business leaders that their training teams are not providing value.

But they want more training.

We've talked over many episodes how to create and deliver trining and support experiences that drive better performance.

Today we are going to look at skills that may seem unconventional for a training team to have, but are absolutely needed.

This episode is full of resources and references galore:

Katja Schipperheijn is an internationally recognized learning strategist, consultant, author, guest lecturer and keynote speaker on innovation to support learning and knowledge sharing. Her area of expertise focuses on the symbiosis between humans and machines to achieve sustainable growth with attention to engagement and well-being.

From her experience with multinationals, learning institutions and start-ups, Katja launched a non for profit organization in 2017 to support children and young people with the challenges of digital citizenship and the competences that go with it. More than 15,000 children participated in these workshops. This was also the inspiration for the first book 'Digitale Burgertjes' (Little Digital Citizens) published in Dutch in 2018 to support educators and parents in guiding children in an increasingly virtual world.

Based on her experience with organizations and her work with children, Katja published the book 'The LearnScape, Learning as Oxygen for the Nimble Organisation' also in Dutch in 2021. In this book, she focused on the symbiosis of humans and machines to enable organizations to achieve sustainable growth from human talent and to support the expectations of the future of work.

On this episode we discussed:

• How Technology can impact how we learn and train others
• The future of work and what companies and workers need to do to be successful in it
• What we can implement from how children learn
• How to be a lifelong learner in the rapidly evolving future

Find Katja at:

People that work in L&D don’t get enough development.

Their entire career focuses on helping other people to get better at what they do. But most of the time, they have to own their development or they don’t get any.

They can complete certifications. Go through courses. Join a mentorship group. Or read a book.

Those things are all great. But L&D leaders must evaluate work, provide feedback, and offer development paths.

While the roles and scope of work may differ, here are some simple ways to do this:

1️⃣ Have a clear and objective way to measure work.

2️⃣ Regularly evaluate performance and provide specific and actionable feedback.

3️⃣ Provide Development paths and work to help your people get better.

Connect with Adam:

Sharon Koifman is all about remote management. He has over two decades of experience running three companies 100% from his computer, with two toddlers in the room! 

He is the President of DistantJob, a remote recruitment agency that focuses on soliciting full-time remote workers worldwide. Along with a rapidly-expanding new media company, Think Remote, Sharon's organization has also created a successful podcast featuring interviews with tech industry professionals about remote management and leadership.

During the wake of the COVID crisis, Sharon wrote a best-selling book on multiple Amazon categories, "Surviving Remote Work." His goal was to help businesses thrive in this new environment. Koifman has studied and researched not just how to operate remote companies but also how to establish an exceptional work culture, one where people love to work in.

Find with Sharon at:

This episode is fourth and final part in our Trainer Roles series.

Everybody who leads learning sessions - whether a business leader, a subject matter expert, or someone in a formal L&D role - has multiple roles that they must fill. Over the coming weeks, we are going to highlight each of these roles and provide actionable tips to deliver when in each role.

So far we have discussed how to be a good host, how to make training real and relevant, and how to be engaging. This final part in the series covers how to be adaptable with unexpected things that come up - AKA: how to roll with it.

Best laid plans can often be interrupted, disrupted, or interfered with.

On this episode we discuss the 4 ways to be adaptable and ensure that you are able to achieve your goals no matter what happens.

Connect with Adam:

Harris Fanaroff was drafted to play for the Washington Nationals baseball team out of high school.

While in college, he ran into a mental block that resulted in him pivoting from his planned career as an athlete and focus on academics.

He finished college and pursued a career in both coaching and in onboarding.

Now, Harris helps businesses to get better results from their employee onboarding. He focuses on pre-boarding - the period between offer acceptance and Day 1 - as a way to help employees feel like a part of the company culture. This focus on pre-boarding has lead to companies seeing more people show up and stay.

On this episode, Harris and I discuss:

• How his background playing, and pivoting from, baseball has helped him in the business world
• How to help employees feel like they are a part of the company culture
• What companies can do to improve their employee onboarding programs

Find Harris at:

This episode is part three in our Trainer Roles series.

Everybody who leads learning sessions - whether a business leader, a subject matter expert, or someone in a formal L&D role - has multiple roles that they must fill. Over the coming weeks, we are going to highlight each of these roles and provide actionable tips to deliver when in each role.

So far we have discussed how to be a good host, and how to make training real and relevant. This week we will discuss how to be engaging.

Most training is boring and does not give people a reason to want to learn.

On this episode we discuss 4 ways that you can make your training sessions more engaging so people learn more, participate more, and come back to you asking for more training.

Connect with Adam:

Matt Dicks is a man of many talents.

This episode is part two in our Trainer Roles series.

Everybody who leads learning sessions - whether a business leader, a subject matter expert, or someone in a formal L&D role - has multiple roles that they must fill. Over the coming weeks, we are going to highlight each of these roles and provide actionable tips to deliver when in each role.

Last week we discussed how you can be a good host for those that you conduct learning sessions for. This week we will discuss how to make the training you deliver real and relevant.

Far too many training sessions are plagued with hypotheticals, unrealistic information, and just do not prepare people to do the things that they need to do.

On this episode we discuss 4 ways that you can make your training sessions more real and relevant so that people perform better afterwards.

Connect with Adam:

On this episode, I am happy to welcome to the show Matt Bibby.

Matt has worked in L&D and instructional design for more than two decades. During this time, he has experienced a lot of change in how businesses support their people, delivered thousands of trainings at countless companies, and has developed a unique view of what the role of training should be. This interview has the potential to ruffle some feathers in some L&D circles as we discuss:

• Adam & Matt's backgrounds that led to views of what at-work training should be
• Challenges with the traditional training delivery model
• Why most eLearning does not provide value
• What good at-work training and development should look like

Connect with Matt at:

This episode features Apex Mind's first two-guest interview!

We are pleased to welcome to the show Dr. Kuva Jacobs and Charles Masuku. Dr. Jacobs has worked for years provided evidence-based instructional design in a variety of industries and verticals. Charles has leveraged his extensive sales and marketing background to deliver performance impacting learning solutions.

Many people who work in support roles, like training or enablement, struggle with influencing senior leaders. It is easy to feel imposter syndrome that leads to being an order taker, a content factory, and not being able to implement the solutions that you know will drive results.

In this episode, I share the blueprint for a process that has worked for me to influence business leaders to accept quality training and performance support solutions, has prevented my teams from just taking orders, and has lead to better performing projects.

Article:

Pat Michaels is the Director of Business Development at Great Circle Learning. Pat works with instructional designers, instructional writers, subject matter experts, and training industry professionals to make it faster and easier to design, develop, and maintain professional facilitator guides, participant guides, speaker notes, audience handouts, and more.

On this episode, Pat and I discuss:

• Techniques to drive more effective training
• How to create quality participant and leader's guides that drive consistent results
• Delivering virtual training that is engaging and applicable

Connect with Pat at:

While working with her husband, who is a pilot, Linda Reynolds identified a pattern that most training in the aviation industry was boring, was not interactive, and had opportunities for improvement. To address these gaps, Linda developed a Solomon's Facilitative Model to develop other training professionals in the aviation industry to train adults well.

On this episode we discuss:

• The models and training methodologies that she follows
• The gaps in the aviation training space and what she is doing to address them
• How she develops other training professionals to drive greater impact in what they do

Connect with Linda at:

Joshua Remerowski is a strategic thinker with a knack for creating new ways of working through strategic planning, training, talent development, technology, and execution. He is a self-described learning and development nerd whose works have led to awards from Brandon Hall Group, Association of Talent Development, and Training Magazine.

Joshua is a seasoned L&D leader and is currently a Senior Director at Fortive.

Connect with Joshua at:

Recently, a story went viral online about a CEO of a small start-up tech firm that laid off a handful of staff.

Some people supported this CEO's openness and vulnerability.

Others found the CEO to be tone deaf and alleged that he was using the situation as a publicity stunt.

So what is the truth?

Nobody truly knows his intentions behind the original post, but on this episode we break down:

- What happened with this company and how the CEO responded publicly

- The consensus of people that are attacking and supporting what happened

- What we can all take away form this situation

Articles:

Fred Baker has more than a decade of experience in Instructional Design and Project Management, having worked in both higher education and in business.

On this episode, Fred and I discuss:

• His experience working in higher education and its influence on his approach to L&D
• How systems and processes can help organizations to run better
• His approach of using project management techniques in the L&D space

Connect with Fred at

Liz Reveles has worked for over 25 years developing high-impact leaders and Training professionals. Today, Liz consults with businesses to provide leadership development, business coaching, life coaching and speaking engagements.

On this episode, we discuss:

On this episode, we  look at how the skill of learning effectively and efficiently is necessarily in today’s world. 

This episode will provide you with a 4-step model to learn just about anything as quickly as possible.

Guy has been an external consultant since 1982 and is known for his writings and presentations on both Performance Analysis, and Curriculum Architecture Design. On this episode, we dive in to Guy's experience, what he thinks about the change to L&D teams over time, and what we all can do to focus on performance improvements.

You can connect with guy at:

Yu-kai Chou is an Author and International Keynote Speaker on Gamification and Behavioral Design. 

There are a lot of people that seem miserable and complain constantly these days.

While there are certainly problems that need solving, I believe that these people just lack perspective.

By most objective data, we live in the greatest time in human history.

We need to take advantage of this. For ourselves, for those around us, and for how we motivate and engage ourselves in our careers.

We look at two articles today and discuss how they can help us to gain perspective and how we can use this data to support our people.

We don't have to do things the old ways anymore.

Articles:

Today we welcome on our first guest - Jason Klietz.

He has an inspiring story about self-improvement, accountability, and learning.

Jason started a health journey and has inadvertently experienced social media fame. He talks about his unexpected attention and what he is doing to allow his experience to motivate others.

This is a great episode to learn from. We can all improve ourselves in multiple areas of our lives.

You can connect with Jason at:

- Twitter: @earbuds_music

On this episode, we discuss:

***Oops, I did it again - We continue to have technical issues with the video. We will be adding video soon once we sort this out, but I did not want to hold this episode back any longer. Despite what is mentioned during the episode, this is audio only***

Episode 21

The Economy is slowing and we are likely heading for a recession.

Apex Mind is back!

After a brief break away from the podcast and socials in order to reassess and focus, we have returned.

This being our 21st episode (counting Episode 0), Apex Mind has now entered the top 1% of podcasts, based on episode count.

Thank you to everybody who has listened, engaged, and helped us to grow.

On this episode, we shared some excited upcoming changes to Apex Mind - like the inclusion of video and some upcoming interviews.

We also look at the concept of the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) and how it applies to your top performers.

We share what you can do to support these performers so you can retain them, unleash their "rockstar" qualities, and improve business performance.

Articles discussed on this episode:

Companies have been having more trouble retaining their people for the last few years. We are going to dive into the reasons why this has been happening and how your employee performance and development programs can help you to navigate this and keep your people.

Articles referenced in this episode:

In this episode, we are going to look at the world of video games to see how they teach players to learn the rules and immerse themselves in the world. There are some key lessons that many businesses can learn from how video games teach their players.

We dive into the most popular video game of all time - Super Mario Brothers for the original Nintendo system and analyze how the thrifty game developers built in innovative teaching tools into the game.

What can at-work training learn from these innovative teaching tools?

This episode is all about influence. 

The best ways to have more influence. 

How to change minds. 

How to have more of an effect on others without the use of force. 

This is an invaluable skill for anybody that is trying to develop others, for making a difference with people who don’t report to you (or may be a higher position), or when you have to change minds.

Most education and attempts and learning fail.

Why is that?

This episode breaks down the top reason why - a lack of affective context.

Human memory does not remember everything that you experience. Instead, your memory remembers the emotional reactions to things and then you fill the rest in when you have to recall it.

This is why people often do not remember, or learn, from most of the content they read, watch or listen to. It either is not important to them or it was not presented in a way that created an emotional connection.

After listening to the episode, if you'd like to learn more about affective context, you can check out these resources from Nick Shackleton-Jones:

In 2020, companies had to completely redesign their work arrangements. Most white collar workers went remote. Most offices closed. Now that many parts of society are returning to normal, some business leaders want to as well.

The problem is that many workers do not want to go back to the old normal.

There is a great debate going on today - Should we return back into our offices or stay remote? And this debate has impassioned people on both sides of it.

In this episode, we are going to look at some recent news and comments from political and business leaders. We will provide analysis and share what the best steps forward should be.

Articles shared in this episode:

This is a packed episode folks.

Today we look at some recent news and tie it together by sharing a technique to learn anything.

Byte Dance, Tik Tok's parent company, recently reduced 100% of their talent development team.

Was this a good idea or will it leave their staff with inadequate development opportunities in the future?

What lessons can you and your business takeaway from this significant restructure at a large tech company?

Many businesses use Slack, Microsoft Teams, or WebEx to connect and collaborate. A missed opportunity is in using these powerful tools for training and employee support.

This episode builds on our two previous episodes that focused on microlearning and performance support. Platforms like Slack, Teams and WebEx can be used effectively for employee training and development.

This episode will teach you how to use these platforms for:

1. Virtual Training & Presentations
2. Huddles, Collaboration & Coaching
3. Linking to internal and external training content
4. Using Chat groups to support and develop employees

Keep these conversations going on Social: