Mind the Skills Gap
Mind the Skills Gap
What's next for learning tech?
Don Taylor has a problem with learning technology! Stella was keen to dig into how Don Taylor thinks learning tech is evolving, and what he thinks has changed since he wrote his book, Learning Technologies in the Workplace.
To the stellar labs podcast, the skills of tomorrow trained today at stellar labs, we've found a way to solve the skills gap, backed by science and research to achieve the best possible performance and return on your investment. Our AI driven personal learning assistant and upskilling platform is fueled by neuroscience specialists in your organization, share their knowledge effectively so that learners are energized and engaged to master high demand skills and capabilities. In these podcasts, you'll hear from industry experts and practitioners from the world of technology and training. They'll share their experience, insights and inspiration and their visions for the future. With you, keep listening to start your future learning here today. Hello and welcome back to the stellar labs podcast. Today. We have Don Taylor with us, the inimitable Don Taylor, uh, currently known as a researcher and chair of learning tech conference. Also now I think is, uh, a friend of many in, in the world of learning and learning tech and, um, somebody that I've admired for a really long time. And I always find is incredibly supportive and helpful of other people. So welcome Don. Really nice to have you here.
Speaker 2:It's a very sweet introduction, St. Very nice to be here, looking forward to having a chat.
Speaker 1:So I think it'd be really nice Don for, you know, people see you at conferences is, and they see you at learning tech and you know, you are, you are the Don you're quite important to people and maybe they don't know so much about you as, as they might like to. So I think it'd be really nice to get a little bit of an insight into your, you know, how you got to where you got to and you know, what skills attitudes helped or hindered you to get to where you are.
Speaker 2:It's always dangerous, uh, to ask a man to talk about himself, because then normally you can just sit back the next hour and listen for him waffle on, but I'll try to keep it short. I've always been involved in learning and technology. Actually, all my adult working life, I left school and went into working as a computer programmer because that's what everyone was talking about in 1980 and then traveled, went to university, came out when I left university, I went to teach English as a foreign language in the stem and I spent the five years then, and I was always teaching English in one form or another, even though I did a variety of things. And you say, what skill or attitude has helped me get where I am? I, I don't, I'm a bit nervous about talking about having got anywhere, but insofar as it's enabled me to do what I want to do, I think the, the attitude which I had very early on in life, which was from when I left school, in fact, through being in this sample through to where I am now was just go off and do your thing and try to make it work. So when I left school, I thought, well, it's this computer thing sounds interesting. And I literally went through the yellow pages, the physical yellow pages. My dad had a photocopy at home cause he worked at home and we, I just, I literally typed out a letter and I did a very simple literal copy and paste of typing out 15 names of companies locally that were involved in computers and sticking them onto this thing, photocopying it. And then I had 15 letters that I sent out and I got, one of them came back with a job and that sort of approach has sort of stood me well in life. Uh, it does mean sometimes you go down avenues where it possibly would sound like a good idea at the time you think you it's a good idea, you'd do it. And then you think, well actually was that time wasted? Interestingly enough, though, usually I find the time hasn't been wasted at all. And later on, it turns out that the things you learn doing that thing, whatever it was turned out to be incredibly useful. One of them, I used to write in a sample, I used to write English language books for a bloke called Osman Zeki bay and Osman Zeki bay. And I spoke a combination of English, German, and Turkish, cuz we didn't speak any of those languages particularly well. Uh, but enough to communicate with three of them together. And he was talking to me about the book that I'd written from. He said to me, Don, can you do a, a, a copy or can you Don, can you do a version of Oliver twist in 10,000 words for English, for people learning English? And I said, yeah, okay. Now this is before the worldwide web, right? You sell these books by somebody getting in a car and driving across the town, across Turkey and selling these books. People literally putting them in the hand for cash in villages. Right. And Turkey's an enormous country. So it it's as long east to west as it is from Brighton to Bedo in Spain. So it's a huge country. Yeah. And I wrote this book and I gave it to again, there you are. I sec, I'm a bit worried. I said about the, the character of, of Nancy. Not sure that she's really quite right. Uh, could we, could we do something about him and he, he, he looked at me and he said, Don, uh, Don Darby or Don, Don be just it's it's it's it's okay. Uh, don't worry about it. I'll take care of everything. It sent Alice funding, marketing app or something like that. It all depends on the marketing. And at that point, a penny dropped and I said, I'd been so focused on the product that I was producing. So focused on this book, I was writing that I didn't realize I've forgotten that it was part of an enormous process that started in a basement in Astan with a very loud, very large machine printing this thing to it being bound, being put in the cars, being driven across Turkey, to some bloke driving village to village and selling it. I was only part of it. The whole marketing, the sales piece was an integral part of this process. Now across I made some money out to writing the book. I, I hope some children in Eastern Turkey learn English from reading about it. I hope they weren't too upset by the character of Nancy. But the key thing, the key thing for me, that I learned from that was that there's always more to the process than your individual part of it. And it's good to have a wide view of it. And, and also generally, generally speaking as Hank, Alice for marketing a, it does all depend on the marketing because you can produce something that's brilliant, but if people don't know about it, nobody cares and it won't happen. And I think that we're talking about, you know, lessons you learned that for me was a really useful lesson I'll skip forward to today. Right? So I, I left Turkey in 1992, suddenly it's 2022. And in those intervening years I worked full time in a training company. Then I ran the training C ran a part of the training company. Then I did a startup. Then I did another startup. Uh, I began chairing learning technologies in 2000 and suddenly here we are today, I chaired the learning technologies conference. I did a lot of work with startups. I chaired the learning performance Institute from 2010 to 2020 to 2020. Um, and I've since been sort of focusing on the research, trying to support people in getting better at doing learning or supporting learning, and at chairing the conference, which is all part of it. There are, that's a sort of
Speaker 1:Nutshell, there were some really nice things in there, Dawn that I, I really like the, uh, the idea that you it's enabled you to do what you want to do. And I think it's that ability to sort of, and, and to make it work, you know, whatever you're doing and the idea that you learn from experiences that you don't necessarily know when they may come back to you. Um, because I had a similar experience, I was a programmer in the eighties. I continued being programmed for quite a long time. And once I moved into L and D I thought, well, that's the end of my programming kind of computer digital tech life. And now I find myself in a learning technology company and it's incredibly useful.
Speaker 2:It is incredibly useful, even
Speaker 1:Though it's changed,
Speaker 2:But of course it's changed and you know, things happen entirely differently now, but, but what's interesting is that the mindset is still there. So the sort of meta side of it is absolutely invaluable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Be making sure you've got a process. And I really like the fact that you talk about, you know, it's all those parts of the process that end up with, you know, a satisfied customer
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:To be taken into account.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And it might be the programming bit. And of course at the other end, it can be the last, the last two yards. You know, I always think about airplanes and airlines in this, in this respect, you get on a plane, right? And those things cost an enormous amount of money is a vast amount of R D goes into them. They, they, the business of running an airline is incredibly complicated, but what determines whether you fly with that company or not, it's none of these things, it's whether your drink is cold when it arrives to you in your seat. And if it's not, you'll be all hump people I wont, of course, and you wouldn't sell'em, but some people be all, all, all annoyed. And they said, well, I'm not flying with so. And so again, despite all of that, so very often these things come down to that last yard. That last beat, that last bit of interaction with the
Speaker 1:Customer. Indeed. Yes. For me it's whether they smile at me, they don't smile at me. They've had it.<laugh>
Speaker 2:Who wouldn't smile at you who wouldn't
Speaker 1:<laugh> oh, you never know.<laugh> okay. So that's, that's really interesting to sort of hear, you know, that you've, you've clearly transitioned and you've taken on things and you've clearly faced challenges and, and kind of adapted to them, I guess,
Speaker 2:And probably said yes to often. Yeah. But in the end it's been worthwhile. I think, you know, my mum was a great one for saying yes to things and then working out how you do it later on. I think I inherited bit that. And, um, I don't do it so much now, but I think in your formative years, which I would say up to the age about 35 40 in terms of work, it's certainly worth doing
Speaker 1:Yes. Taking on things that you don't know because not everybody else knows how to do them either.
Speaker 2:Nobody knows how to do them, honestly. That's why they're asking you. Yeah. So say yes. And working out.
Speaker 1:Yeah. One of the things that I really like about you Don, and you've already talked about sort of supporting startups and things is you are very generous. You have conversations with people. I've spoken to people who I've never even met before. And they said, oh no, Don, Taylor's been incredibly helpful.<laugh> you know, you share people's tweets, you share insights. What's kind of led you to, to do that.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's an interesting question, Stella. And I would, I would turn the question around and say, why on earth? Wouldn't you do it? I mean, you, you, you, you walk in on the road and you see somebody they've got two heavy bags they wanna go across don't you just give'em a hand with the bags and get across the road. Of course you do. I just think it's, I think it's, I would hope it's a natural instinct that people have. And I think perhaps I'm fortunate enough to have the time, the position to be able to, to spend time with people. Um, and I hope they find it useful. And I always tried to start a call. I've literally just come off one now saying, well, we've got 30 minutes. How can we make sure this is useful for you? And apart from anything else? I think that helps people really focus on getting value outta the conversation out of me. And perhaps, perhaps lots of people do have these conversations, perhaps it's simply that I ask that question more often than most people that makes people think I'm more helpful. I don't
Speaker 1:Know. That is an incredibly helpful question, actually, Don and I think probably one that most of us should adopt, um, you know, in a conversation with anybody really it's that kind of what's, what's the desired outcome that we are looking for in this
Speaker 2:Also sneakily sneakily, you slip in, we've got 30 minutes. Right. And that just sets the expectation rather than, oh, we're gonna sit down. It could last forever. No, we've got 30 minutes and that's what we
Speaker 1:Got. That was something I learned early in my career. People would ring me up and ask me, can we have a bit of help? And I'd just say yes. And then we could be talking for two hours and I would've not got what I needed to have done. And they'd had a great time, but yeah, I probably was beginning to get frustrated. Okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna develop that one. Thank you, Don. That's a great tip.<laugh> okay. Now you're very well known for being, you know, in learning tech, your, um, chair of learning tech conference. So how do you think learning tech is evolving and, you know, Don you're very well known also for having a very useful book, um, which is behind me somewhere. I can't say it exactly, but it is behind me somewhere. Um, Anna, it has been read now what, how, how has it evolving and what's changed since you wrote your book?
Speaker 2:Well, one things I wrote in the book actually was about how the big companies, Amazon, Microsoft, and so on, we're gonna get involved with learning was inevitable. That's was going to happen, Google and that's happening. So I'm not surprised about that. What's definitely happening more with learning technology is that we have moved slowly and not enough, but we have moved from the idea that learning technology is about the delivery of content. Now we haven't moved entirely away from that, but I think that there is enough happening on two fronts to make people understand that's the case. So one thing is that there are lots of companies doing things other than delivering content. The other thing is that people now talk about learning and how we support it in ways that don't focus just on the creation and the delivery of content. For me, that's a huge step forward. I think that the traditional world of L and D where I come from, which was stand up, classroom training in the 1980s, was all about creating and delivering content because there was nothing else you could do. Well, not, not there wasn't else you could do. There were other things you could do, but that, that was the most important bit because it wasn't freely available. And I do find it extraordinary that I was doing this work before the worldwide web was invented, but the worldwide web was invented. And after that, suddenly the creation delivery of content became much less important. Other things now become possible in learning development as a result, which are fabulous. And this largely revolves around what we do to help people learn better either by supporting them through the use of algorithms and AI, or by helping them adopt great habits for learning by supporting them in it. I mean, one very simple example is cohort based learning, which is not complicated. It's what we did all through our school years. Our cohort was a class, but now you have a cohort which helps you in your workplace. You do a course for five weeks. You get together live every Friday. In between times you learn stuff, you put into place, what you've learned and you tackle a challenge. You come back, you discuss it. For example, there are many ways of doing it. Now we know that's a tremendously effective way of learning far, far more effective than spending five days, listening to content, spread those five days, contact days over a week, over five weeks. And the, the difference is enormous. And yet people have thought shy of doing it because it's difficult to arrange procedurally. Now the technology is available to help us arrange it. And people are smart enough to do a good job with it, and the practices have evolved. So on the one hand, in terms of what's evolved with learning technologies, you've got this, you've got really high end, super duper stuff with AI. And we can talk about that if you want to. But on the other hand, I think this is equal as important. The ability to support people in good learning practice by setting things up in a way that goes well beyond here's a URL, go and read this thing.
Speaker 1:So it's that ability to sort of help them connect really easily. That as you say, in, in the past, you know, it involve, I mean, we are working on a project at the moment and it's incredibly complex involving an awful lot of diaries and things. And if they had a better tool to actually just have people kind of choose, you know, even it was sort a version of Calendarly or something. Yeah. I think they'd find a lot easier to actually sort out the situation. Um, and I really, really like that idea of cohort learning. I was with the group this morning and that's what we did a action learning set type activity. They all said, you know, the guy who had the challenge, he got a lot of really helpful ideas from his colleagues and a lot of reflection. And that was the thing they all talked about. It was that ability to reflect on their normal practice and to have somebody else kind of challenge them, just think differently, come at it from a different view so that, yeah. Cohort learning, peer learning, whatever you call it.
Speaker 2:I do believe well. I mean, cohort, peer learning is slightly for these, I think cohort learning involves peer learning over a structured period of time. You can learn from your peers in variety of ways. Okay. Yeah. But I do think, I do think you're right that too often, and this comes back to the point that in the past the classroom teacher has been the source of information. Um, I think too often we've carried that mindset. That's what I call the school room assumption to the workplace. And I think that we can do a much better job supporting people of learning in learning. If we accept that often the answer, or at least part of the answer exists in the room. If we can just get people to share it, it's not just that there's information there. It's also, as you say, the ability to bring it out, reflect on it, talk about it, share it. That process helps it stick and helps people go through that mental process of saying I'm taking something I'm assessing it. I'm weighing against my experience. And now I'm going to come up with the conclusion for myself. That process of internalizing it, I think is crucial to getting people to effective adult
Speaker 1:Learning, which is far, far better than somebody telling you how to do it or what telling you what to do. But hang
Speaker 2:On. I don't, I don't wanna beat up classroom teachers. No,
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no. I think instruction is helpful sometimes.
Speaker 2:And, and also sometimes actually you just need to know you can't, I'm not a great fan of the, oh, let them work it out for themselves. Sometimes you've you've you'd need to know something. Yeah. So there was always room for instruction. I'd hate to get onto a bridge, which was built by somebody who'd figured out how to build bridges while they were building it.<laugh> so I, there is always room for instruction. Yes. But let's make sure we're using things in the right way and choosing the right tool for the job.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think it's choosing what's right at the right time for the right people. Correct. One of the things we talk about when we're doing train, the trainer programs is saying to the trainer, you are a resource if you're required, but if you're not required as a resource, then you are there to guide the process because sometimes the trainer does know something that not everybody else knows.
Speaker 2:Yes. And, and also guides the process in all those ways of facilitating and what have you, which, which are probably more difficult than being a subject matter expert. It's, it's a real skill. And of course the best teachers are both great facilitators and subject matter experts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, indeed. So you mentioned AI, so let's not, let's not brush it under the carpet. What are your, there's a massive question for you, Don. What are your thoughts on AI there in the learning field,
Speaker 2:In the learning field, there are lots of people who, who are well, uh, positioned to, uh, to talk about this. I'll talk about it from the point of view of my global sentiment survey AI, uh, five years ago was a rising star peak three years ago, it's fabulously, uh, uh, important and everyone found it super interesting. And since then it's slipped down the table. And the question I ask you about every year with my global sentiment surveys, what's hot in L and D this year, AI, in other words at the moment is not seen as being hot. I think that's a good thing. Cause I think it's moved from its point of easy fascination to a more tempered mature assessment. Also, there's less writing about it in the general press. If you remember, three, four years ago, we had all of these pictures of robots, which are half human half machine they're gonna take over the world and you know, that's not AI. Um, I think what we are seeing happening with AI now is a bit like the adoption of electric power. At the beginning of the 20th century, when steam power was on the way and an electric power started coming to factories. People initially started replacing the steam engines with electric engines. So one for one swap steam engines sat, or one end of a factory floor ran a series, ran through a belt, a series of crank shafts that ran along the entire length of the factory of which belts came. And those belts were used to turn whatever Elaine yeah. Things right.
Speaker 1:Spin, spinning wheels,
Speaker 2:Spinning things. Right. Okay. And in early 20th century, electric motors were put into the big electric, big steam motors and replaced them, which is a very poor use of electricity. Then what happened within 10, 20 years was a small individual electric motor started being used for specific jobs, which of course we're look at it now it's obvious, but it wasn't obvious. Then I think our view of AI was the view of the big steam engine. Oh, it's gonna change. Everything's gonna do everything. What we're now seeing is AI being used in small ways, small motors doing this, doing that to make specific things happen. And, and I I'm using AI slightly easily here. I mean, really I'm talking about any, any form of algorithm that, that, uh, works on a collection of data in order to produce stuff that's useful. So if we think about, uh, filtered by a non-exec director, they have a great process of, uh, what they call content intelligence, where they use a collection of algorithms in order to find, or what would be the content that actually suits your people in the needs they have of these 100,000 bits of content you've got. And you know, that's a solution to the issue of, well, what's the I'm gonna type leadership into my catalog and I'm gonna get 50,000 results. Uh, I've talked to other people who are doing great things with AI in terms of helping people change their learning habits. So you observe how somebody's interacting with content. You'd suggest'em, Hey, you're doing this. But if you thought about maybe coming back and reflecting on it and doing this and the other, so there are lots of things, but it's not the big engine, it's small things. And that's why it's not sexy. That's why it's not hot. It's because it's actually happening. It's come to the, uh, bonnet under the hood, as the American say, it's, it's being located in the various things we're doing. It's just part of the course.
Speaker 1:It's just a tool now. Isn't it? Another of the tools we have in our, our toolkit. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really interesting. So one of the questions I quite like to ask people and see if it makes them, you know, shout, smile, whatever it might be. What's, what's a B in your bonnet right now. And for anybody who's not, uh, an English person that means kind of, uh, what's exciting. You annoying you, you know, buzzing around in your head.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Being your bonnet, cuz bees are wonderful creatures, but they let's say wasp in your head. Uh, it would be a better translation, uh, a wasp in your head, cuz it's annoying. Doesn't certainly useful purpose and you can't get rid of the noise. Uh, my problem with learning technology is that people are too focused on the technology and I would find rather people focused on the people and the learning. And you mentioned my book earlier, actually the last word quite deliberately in the book is the word people. It's a bit like, uh, God rash, Tom.<inaudible> where I think it starts with the word and finishes with the word time. Um, French listenable, correct me on my pronunciation and my knowledge of the manuscript. Um, and I think that it's understandable that technology's wonderful and you could do super things with it, but it is all useless without the engagement of people and then finding it valuable. And we come back to this business of all of that work and the airline business going into getting that plane built and flying from a to B. And you deciding you hated it. Not you, me deciding I hated it because my, my Chardonnay arrived slightly warm. Um, yeah, goodness sake. Um, so that, that bit, that last bit is so important, but actually with learning, it's not just the last bit it's shot through the whole thing. So if you are creating content, don't just create it by putting words on a page, work with the organization, work with the subject matter experts, work with everything to make sure that this content is being done the way that helps people learn it, if it's necessary for it to be learned. And also of course, work with the organization to make sure that it is fit for purpose. Is it actually solving the problem that you've got in the first place? Maybe it's not a training problem at all, but let's assume it is. And it's a learning problem. Then let's make sure that we are creating this content in the right way. And then everything else follows through from that you've got, got some content. So what, it doesn't make any difference to anybody's life unless they know about it. And very, very importantly, unless they're motivated to do something about them without motivation
Speaker 1:It's doing, it's the doing that's so important. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And motivation is, is crucial and motivation to open something up, to learn something about it. And then as you say to do, take action on it, that doesn't nobody gets motivated. Well, perhaps some people do, but I can't think of anybody who gets motivated by technology, right? The motivation comes intrinsicly or extendedly, and it is supported by the environment you are in. That's nothing to do with technology. It's do with us, working with managers, working with people, working with organizations to make sure that there is a sense that learning is valuable and worthwhile. For me, none of this relies on technology could be supported by it. But the ultimate side of it is comes down to human beings, how they learn. So my being my body is an over focus on technology, stellar and insufficient, insufficient focus on people.
Speaker 1:I always think it's people first because if we haven't got the people at the heart of it, we're not gonna design learning. We're not gonna support learning. We're not gonna coach them in the way that they actually want need and make sense to them.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Okay. What do you think? So you've already said we should perhaps stop focusing on, on the learning tech as a, as a kind of strong focus. What else should we stop, start do more of in learning or should we even be thinking about ourselves in learning? Should we be thinking about, you know, within an organization?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think we should be thinking about ourselves as people who are supporting performance. And I think actually that's a, that's a crucial thing that we're not doing enough of. I think we are people like me came into this, going back to the, the origin story came into learning field in order to help people, you help individuals help them learn. Great. Uh, that's a very strong motivation. It's, there's, there's a lot behind it, but if we are working in corporate learning development, we're supporting people, learning in organizations, what actually matters is performance. There is nothing wrong with helping people learn for their own sake, but the people who are paying the checks are the people who want the organization to perform better. So I always say that the role of learning development is to help individuals and organizations fulfill their potential. And that means that yes, we help the individual, but we have to also bear in mind the strategic games of the organization and the strategic came with the organization has nothing to do with learning and everything to do with performance. So I believe that we should be focused on helping people do their jobs better. And that means that we have to move out of a lot of the traditional roles of L and D get out the cupboard where we are, get out the office where we are and go and talk to other people much, much more than we have done in the past. I think that we are too inclined to, to sit in the, the bit of the building physically or organizationally that is learning and not go out and do what Nigel pain calls, field work, which is excellent term. Yeah. Let's go out and see what's actually going on. Talk to people about
Speaker 1:It. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Find out what cause I think L and D people and you know, I'm one of them we love learning. We think it's really interesting. So then we get really focused on it. We end up gazing at our own navs and not really noticing what else is out there.
Speaker 2:The thing is the thing is that learning is really interesting. So it's understandable. Yes. Right. You know, of course we wanna have these chats. We want to, uh, talk, talk about learning. We want to understand what is it that helps people learn better. And we want to do all the things that are around that. It's not enough, you know, we, if we really want to do our jobs properly, we've gotta do the other stuff as well. And actually that is equally fascinating if we're prepared to throw ourselves into
Speaker 1:It, indeed. I mean, for me learning is the going from maybe no awareness at all of something to actually being able to do something valuable, useful at work, or it may be outside work, but it's, it's the being able to do. And eventually master something to me, that's, you know, people talk about learning in many ways, but I think they forget that it's actually a really, quite a long process.
Speaker 2:I think. Well, it, it may be, it may not be. I mean, I always use the example of hearing, um, reading, reading this, this poems, a Clara course, I'm gonna get it wrong now.<laugh> uh, it's 14 words long. It's not very difficult. D all Harry seldom troubled a dairy. He wrote the Inferno on a bottle of per. Now this is absurd Pernot wasn't around when Dan D was writing the Inferno, right? Uh, it is utterly ridiculous. It comes in a book that I got in Istanbul is living there at the British council sale. It's called a CCU. And a Clara queue is a four line poem with two rhyming couplets that are sorry to non rhyming couplets that are, um, or they can be wrong or not that reflect on absurdly on a biography. But here's the thing we talk about. You said learning's a long process. Well, it can be a long process. And very often it is, but I read that once and I remembered it. I'm not trying to make out. I'm some sort of Savan, it just struck me as amusing and it hit my head. I, 15 years later said it to my wife. She heard it once. She felt about laughing because basically odd. And then she remembered it. And then later we were walking down the road in Florence and we passed<laugh>. We passed the statue of DTI alley, Harry, and we both stopped and fell about laughing. Cuz we just had this vision of this great figure in Italian literature being drunk on pero. So sometimes we learn things instantly. We don't know why. Sometimes we learn things every period of time and it takes a long time to do it. I'm trying to improve my Turkish at the moment. I will never finish, never finish trying to improve my Turkish. I, I can keep doing this for 30 years. I won't get to the point where I'm good enough. Um, it is. And that that in itself is a fabulous journey. And I, I love that fact. Um, I think what we're describing here, and this is a, nothing I prepared for what you said, a tool seller, but it's one of, one of the, another BMI bonnet<laugh><laugh> is that we use the word learning
Speaker 1:To describe many things, very,
Speaker 2:Very widely and very loosely to describe many things. And that's a real issue for us in our community itself, but also in the rest of the world. If Jane in account says that she learned something, she will mean something. When Bob in ING logistics says a he's learned something, he may mean something completely different. Indeed. We may mean something in our, in our field. We may agree about what it means, but when we're talking with other people, we have to be clear and we have to go and meet them where they are on their definition of learning. Otherwise, all we're gonna do is alienate them. Let's keep them on side and talk about it and, and work with it and accept that actually learning has is the port Manto word that covers a whole bunch of different processes.
Speaker 1:Yes, I was. I was about to say the risk of, you know, gazing at our navs and defining different types of learning. That was exactly what I wanted to say. And just in case you need it. So Humphrey Davy, who Abod gravy lived in the Obum of having discovered sodium<laugh>, which my mum taught me once. And I
Speaker 2:He's the interesting thing. So my dad, that was the first cer I learned my dad taught me that at home. Right. And I loved her. I fell about, and it's again, if you're not a native English speaker of Lang of English, um, odium is, uh, bad repute. So why, why should Samhan fi DVY have everyone attacking him for invent for discovering. So it makes no sense at all. And it's simultaneously very funny, just slightly geeky. So I, again, I heard that once and I, but I couldn't remember for the life of me, the name of the bloke who wrote it. Ah, and so it took several repetitions going back to my dad's say, who was that? Oh, it's Clara hu. So there are some things which stick and some things which just don't.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes. And we know that rhyming helps, but anyway, let's, let's,<laugh> stop going down that route. We could be here forever<laugh> um, because you know, we are transitioning to become a learning tech company and, um, you know, learning tech for us is really important at the moment as part of that bigger package that people need in order to, to perform at work. Is the, what do you think is currently missing from learning tech? Is there anything we should be really thinking about that we should be adding in thinking about? And that's not just us that's, you know, the wider community
Speaker 2:Integration, I'd say, I think you could do lots of things with technology, but I think we are still insufficiently integrated with the rest of the business. If we are, as I said, interested in helping individuals and organizations fulfill their potential, then the learning technologies that we use have to be integrated into the overall systems of the business, increasingly that's happening. And you talk to people, who've got systems in place and they say, well, we've got our APIs and we can make it fit in, in really quite sophisticated systems even. So I think we're not doing a good enough job of it widely enough. And I still don't think it's the default that we expect. The result is again, learning is pushed over into its corner. Oh, that's the learning system over there. And here's what you use to actually do your job. Yes. Basically far closer integrated.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I can only agree there that it's, it's about making it accessible to people so that they, they use every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna ask you one last question, Donald. So if an organization had unlimited resources, is there an ultimate, an ultimate kind of solution you would, you would give them<laugh> knowing everything, you know, or have experience
Speaker 2:Ultimate the ultimate they've got, they've got no limit on their budget or anything else.
Speaker 1:No, everything's everything's available.
Speaker 2:This is gonna sound really weird. I would provide each of them with a personal assistant for learning. And this, this is an actual person, I suppose it could be technology who knows, but let's say it's an actual person whose job it is to work with this person to not answer their questions, but help them answer their questions. So how do I do this? What's happening next? What I need to do some research to okay. All of these questions, very short scale. How do I do this function Excel right through to I'm planning this thing for two years time and we need to get our report together for it. Where do I look where don't I look that person would be the person they would ask questions to and would respond in a ways. Uh, it sounds like a sort of Quai Socratic. I don't don't mean it that way, but would respond with questions to help them go and find the information. I'd say it that way around, because if it's just answering, it might as well be a walking encyclopedia. But I'm looking for is somebody that would enable that person to ask the right questions and go and look in the right places for the answers. So what they're doing is they're both solving the, the initial problem and developing the meta skill of one of, of understanding the right questions to ask and the meta knowledge of where to go and look for it.
Speaker 1:I think that would be really valuable. And I think what I'd add to that is that kind of nudging afterwards, that keeps saying, and now what are you going to do with it?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. What do
Speaker 1:You can do that? How can I help you?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, and I think they have links to other people as well. So, you know, they might say, Hey, look,<laugh>, you're doing this work, but by the way, by the way, Bob, your manager is expecting this thing tomorrow. I dunno if you remembered that. Uh, so
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we got everything. The stuff is focused on being productive, not just on learning.
Speaker 1:Fantastic Donald, I really like your new invention.<laugh> we're going to do our best to Stella labs to at least do part of that invention.
Speaker 2:I, I hope so. I'm by the way, it's trademarked already while we've been talking I've okay. It's the Don bot. That's what
Speaker 1:The Don bot, the
Speaker 2:Don bot. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Donald, thank you very much for a, um, a wide ranging conversation. And I really look forward to meeting up again and uh, I hope other people enjoy it
Speaker 2:Too. We, for too long, we will meet again. So
Speaker 1:Thanks indeed. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for listening to today's podcast. Please share it with your friends and colleagues and visit our website, www.star labs.eu, to learn more about how we help you reach for the stars tune in to the next episode.
