ATD Accidental Trainer

In this episode of The Accidental Trainer, ATD's Lifetime Achievement Award-winner Bev Kaye discusses how she quit her pursuit of K–12 teaching to become a career development pioneer and corporate trainer. She also talks about successful career development programs, how to get buy-in from leadership, and how the only true failure is a failure to learn.

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Resources

Bev Kaye and Company website

Bev's author page on TD.org

Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go, by Bev Kaye and Julie Winkle Giulioni

Bev Kaye's other books on Amazon

Bev Kaye's Twitter account 

Managing Partner at Float Chad Udell discusses his accidental entrance into the field of learning and development. Talking to Justin Brusino, ATD's learning tech content manager, Chad discusses the importance of keeping your finger on the learning tech pulse. 

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Justin: All right, hello everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm Justin Brusino, content manager for learning technologies at ATD, and we are recording live from the 2019 ATD International Conference And Exposition in Washington DC. So I am joined today by Chad Udell, who is partner at Float. Chad, thanks for joining me today.

Chad: It's good to be here, Justin. Thanks for having me.

Justin: So Chad, we're keeping you pretty busy at the conference. I know you launched a new book, you're speaking, you have a lot going on. But you didn't necessarily start in the learning field, can you talk a little bit about your background and what led you to the talent development, the learning and development field?

Chad: Sure, I guess I'd be almost that stereotypical accidental instructional designer, a very similar story that a lot of folks, I think, in this industry tend to fall into—had another course of study, had another discipline, and then just plunked into here.

I went to school for graphic design, and then taught myself multimedia design, and then gradually, the things that I was building, became a little bit more educational in nature, so it just fell over fully full time into this space.

Justin: Yeah, and what have you-- so I think that we've known each other probably for 10 years now. And I know you've been in the industry a little bit longer than that. What keeps you engaged after all these years?

Chad: Well, it's very easy to become cynical and think, oh, things don't ever change, and things just stay the same, and why would I stay so engaged in this community if it's moving slowly or something like that, but we need to remember that 10 years ago, so much was very, very different, even then. Like smartphones and tablets really hadn't quite happened yet. They were just getting going. Things like AI and adaptive learning.

All the things that are so hot right now were basically just the glimmer in some product designers eye at that point. And so things do change, and things do shift, so being engaged, I do see incremental improvements and incremental changes, and I think that keeps me engaged and energized. And then also seeing the wonderment or the new blood that comes into some of these events in a year to year basis.

What I have to remember that, while I might come to a lot of these conferences and you go to a lot of these conferences, there are many folks here that are experiencing this type of spectacle, this type of thing for the very first time. And so I try to maintain that level of freshness in my approach to coming to these events.

Justin: Yeah, I think that's what's interesting about the industry in that there are always people sort of falling into it, so there's a lot of people experiencing things for the first time. But we'd love for you to talk more about how you see the industry moving or not moving, because I think it is a certain interesting dichotomy, where I think some of the things we're talking about 10 years ago we're still talking about now. But then there are things like adaptive learning that people seem to be talking about a lot. So at one side, certain things that move, but then there are trends that pick up and take fire.

Chad: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, training development or talent development industry, the learning and development professions oftentimes are having to deal with the aftermath of either bad people, processes, tools, technology that might be existing in the workplace. So those types of things I think are the same, and probably always going to be the same. It's difficult to source talent for your organization.

It's difficult to hire, retrain, train, and bring people into the fold and keep them engaged as an employee. So those types of challenges are not really ever going to probably go away. At least not ‘til it's just robots doing all the work and humans no longer have to actually show up their 9 to 5 gig. So those things I think stay say very similar, but the way that we're reaching these learners is definitely being reshaped, right?

Most organizations now have moved to some level of acceptable use policy and can allow mobile communications and social engagements and alternate channels of learning. And I think that there's also a little bit of a tidal wave here, where a lot of people, especially those that are in-the-know, that are progressive, and that are really thinking in a forward thinking manner realize that the source of control for who holds the knowledge in the organizations is also shifting. And so therefore, they need to move to those different corners of the organization in order to stay tapped in.

Justin: Right. Yeah, and just the way-- I think the way work is getting done is changing. And technology has a lot of force on that.

Chad: Yeah, I would say so as well. I mean, I think the-- I joked earlier about the 9 to 5, but I don't know about you, but I don't really have a 9 to 5 anymore. It's like a 9 to 9, and then maybe a little bit of a break, and then have some dinner something else hopefully catch up on some TV or hang out with the family, take the dogs for a walk, but then it's right back to it. And so I think all of those types of things have been dramatically flipped over, especially in the last 10 to 12 years, right?

Justin: So going back to you and your journey in the industry, is there something that, going back, you wish you had known when you started out?

Chad: Yeah, I think that from my background as being a graphic designer and just acknowledging the fact that, to me, good learning design is good information design, which is good graphic design, so it kind of trickles all the way back through there. But I think that if I had maybe approached it from just a slightly different angle and earlier in my career acknowledged that some people hold certain design tenants and approaches for teaching and for learning very personally and to maybe be a little bit more sensitive. To be more welcoming in that. It probably would have saved me a few bumps and bruises earlier on in the career.

Justin: Right. Yeah, it is interesting that it all comes back to good design, right? So your background in graphic design, and now people are talking about user experience design and how we can sort of adopt that in the instructional design and learning space. It's really interesting.

Chad: Yeah, without a doubt. We want our content to be accessible, we want it to be inclusive, we want it to be easy to use, welcoming. All those types of things that make a good interaction between yourself and an e-commerce website or yourself in the streaming box that's hooked up to your you know HBO subscription so that you can watch your favorite movies or Netflix or whatever it might be. You want to emulate and reuse those same sorts of tenants and heuristics in your day-to-day learning technology design explorations as well.

Justin: Yeah, so I look at you as a resource-- as someone that I know is always on the cutting edge of what's out there. I think you're always curious and interested about new Technology, so what is your approach to that in just keeping current with what's out there, whether it's in the learning technology space or just the broader technology space?

Chad: Well, I like to think that I'm a chronic early adopter. I know I use that as a little bit of a joke in some of the intros to my presentations, and I'm just not afraid to try some things out. I buy new gadgets, I try them out with my friends and my family. I try them out at work, and I read a lot.

I'd probably say at least 15% to maybe 20% of my day-to-day just spent researching and keeping current. Reading technology blogs, reading venture capital funding websites, like TechCrunch or Ars Technica, or reading development blogs and software development technique news, and so on and so forth just to stay tapped in. So it is a deliberate and intentional action on my part. It doesn't happen by accident.

Justin: No, absolutely. And I think it's awesome that you-- I mean, you have to build that time intentionally, right? You have to allocate that time in your daily schedule, or it's easy to fall behind. Because like you said, that takes time. Reading and research is a very time consuming process.

Chad: It is. Absolutely. And I don't think if I wasn't tapped in or reading or able to have the cliché thumb on the-- or finger on the…pulse or whatever it is. It would limit my ability to be able to deliver leading edge solutions to my customers and clients. It would limit my ability to hire and source talent for my business as well. It would limit my ability to-- I guess-- ensure some level of sustainability for this entire of endeavor that we're going through-- that we're all going through.

As an accidental trainer Chad U-dell fell into the field of talent development through his graphic design background. He wants to remind other accidental trainers that when you are starting out, be sure you are sensitive to other points of view, especially on other people’s learning methods and perspectives. Being more welcoming can help lead you to success relationships and a career. Keep current by researching and not being afraid to try new things. Change is inevitable so don’t be left with your finger off the pulse!

Justin: So looking back at the industry as a whole, what's something that you would like to see change in the industry?

Chad: I think-- well, I'm obviously biased because I'm a learning technologist, but I think that one of the things that I'd really like to see happen in the talent development, the training learning development industry vertical market is to regain some level of leadership in assessing technologies for the workplace. And this doesn't mean just learning technologies, but actually actively engaging with the rest of the enterprise in technology sourcing and selection.

So why hasn't training being invited to the conversations when you're looking for a new supply chain management system or a new CRM or ERP or order entry system or whatever it might be. Because oftentimes, training is going to have to come in and basically act as the cleanup crew to show somebody how to use these software and tools and processes. And if you're not engaging as the training department or manager or someone that has a distinct and very real interest in making sure that everybody's day to day is easier and better and more productive, if you're not engaging in that sourcing and that procurement process to bring the technologies into your space in the first place, you're taking a backseat and you're ceding control of something that you could have a much more active hand in.

Justin: Yeah, and so your recommendation is for people in the field to really get more involved in those conversations, right?

Chad: Yeah, we want to get invited to those conversations and put in those tables around those meetings earlier in the process. Far earlier in the process than we have. I mean, I think there's way too many people of us could-- there's way too many of us could relate to, it's two months away from launching this brand new order entry system, oh, shoot. We didn't build any training for it.

Well, one. If the order entry system actually needs a tremendous amount of training on it, maybe the order entry system hasn't been designed in a very human centric process in the first hand. But again, why would training be only alerted to this a couple months before the launch, or even worse, two weeks before the launch, build the e-learning, build a screen capture, dump it out, and make somebody watch a 30-minute video in order to do a five-minute process in a software. That's just a darn shame.

Justin: So thinking about preparing people in the industry for the future, what sorts of skills do you think are going to be important in the next five or 10 years?

Chad: There's so many of them that are-- I think-- just on the horizon right now, and a lot of it has to do with the ways that technologies might grow organically inside of the organizations. Not to flog the book too much, but the new title that Gary Woodill and I collaborated on, The Shock of the New, we do talk about a number of technologies in the book, like augmented reality and virtual reality, which is obviously making a ton of waves right now.

Things like enter the internet of things or the internet of everything, if you want to talk about it in all encapsulating view, those are obviously going to be impacting us. Artificial intelligence and machine learning is going to dramatically reshape how things like performance support and performance management work. So I think there's a tremendous amount of potential out there.

It's just going to require-- I think-- a huge amount of acknowledgment that there is flexibility, humility, the ability to move forward and acknowledge that things are going to change, and so therefore, we have to be receptive of that change.

Justin: Yeah. Yeah. Things are just going to change faster and faster, there is no going backwards at this point.

Chad: Correct.

Justin: So to wrap up, we're asking everyone this the same last question, and we'd love for you to tell me about something that you failed at in your career-- or in life-- and what you learned from it and how that changed you.

Chad: Yeah. I can give you a really specific example, and this is-- it's a failure, but I think in that failure, we learned a tremendous amount, which I think helps me look back on it as time well-spent, where it ultimately does become a success when you look through it through the rear view mirror, if you will. So a couple of years ago, our company was engaged and involved in an incubator program that was made available through Google and Lenovo to do some augmented reality applications.

And at that time, we built an application called Cydalion, which was made to assist the visually impaired individuals in society navigate interior spaces, essentially turning the real world objects, the rooms map, if you will, into something less visual and more sound based. So transmitting a sonar of sorts to these individuals. Where we succeeded was the software is actually highly usable. People liked it. People engaged with it.

It worked. That was a big win, right? Obviously, when the software works, that's a win. But there were some things that were I guess a little bit beyond our control that we hadn't really foreseen. So I think where we failed was we assumed that if we built software, made it available, and then it worked, that people would flock to it. There was challenges related to the market size and scale, right?

So when we talk about technology investments, oftentimes, the larger organizations, they want to be talking about userships in the millions and millions and hundreds of millions. There are not as many visually impaired people in order to make a technology buying decision that would have justified the product market fit and the pricing strategy that was necessary in order to make a business like that's sustainable.

And then furthermore, there were also technology challenges. Because it was built on top of some technologies that were made available by a very large organization, we had almost no actual control or influence over the direction and roadmap of those types of technologies that were also out there. So we had internal controls-- not necessarily hubris or anything like that, but maybe a lack of understanding of the constraints of the actual business marketplace.

And then we also had external factors that contributed to our failure, which were, sometimes you just don't have-- you don't get to pilot the ship. You're a passenger on some of these types of technology journeys that we're all going on, and so therefore, you have to acknowledge that, sometimes the rug can get pulled out from underneath you, and you better have some sort of an exit plan or a backup plan.

And what we built was an application and a system and an experiment, if you will, that ultimately, was really, really successful. We did learned quite a bit in the long-term view of it, but at the time, it hurt a lot.

Justin: Yeah, so how did that change the way you looked at future projects and evaluated future projects?

Chad: So the things I think that we've continued to leverage and use from that is understand that we want to have-- when we move into a technology space, that we have some form of an exit plan in place. What happens if this particular technology goes belly up or gets sold out or folds or the VC funding for that runs out or something like that. So how do we get out of it?

And then also, are we building in a way that's incremental enough in nature that if, for any reason, we need to pull out or leave or get out of it or stop building, that we haven't overbuilt or over engineered to the point where we feel like we've invested unwisely.

Right. Yeah, there's no assets that you can pull out of it that are useful still.

Justin: Awesome. Well, Chad, thanks for being with me today. So where can people find you?

Chad: So people can find me at my company's website, gowithfloat.com, of course. I'm on Twitter. My username is a throwback to my graphic design days. It's VisualRinse. And of course, you can find me at TD.orgs bookstore with the new book, Shock of the New.

Justin: Awesome. Thanks, Chad. Have a good rest the conference.

Additional Resources:

Shock of the New, by Chad Udell and Gary Woodill.

Chad’s LinkedIn page

Chad on Amazon

Learning Tech Topic page at ATD’s website

ATD International Conference & EXPO 2020 in Denver

In this episode of The Accidental Trainer, ATD's Justin Brusino sits down with Chief Learning Architect at Axonify JD Dillon to discuss how he got his start in the field as an instructional designer and how he keeps current with the latest trends and technologies. 

Justin: All right, everyone. Thank you for joining us. This is Justin Brusino, Content Manager For Learning Technologies at ATD. And we're recording here live from the ATD 2019 International Conference and Exposition in Washington DC. And I'm joined today by JD Dillon who is the founder of Learn Geek and the CLO at Axonify. JD, thanks for stopping by and chatting with us.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Hi, everybody.

So JD, you attend a ton of conferences, probably more than anyone else I know in the industry. What got you started in the industry? What is your path here?

JD: First I'm going to say Karl Kapp probably beats me. Because I see Karl everywhere I go. So I'm assuming he travels a bit more. But from a learning and development perspective, I'm one of the classic examples of someone who didn't go to school for this, have pretty much no formal training in this experience.

I was an operational manager for the first half of my career. So I started out in movie theaters and was often the HR manager, which meant that I was responsible for things like training and all the other human resource functions. And then when I transitioned into my role at Disney where I spent about a decade, I was in operations management in the beginning. And then kind of got lucky, right place, right time in terms of taking on a role as a facilitator in learning and development for a big initiative that was going on around the company.

And at that moment, I just kind of had this strange combination where my undergrad studies were in radio, television productions. So I have some media development capability. I'd done a lot of work around public speaking. I had been in HR. And I was very focused on the front line employee experience and enabling employees as a manager. I was kind of always seen as the employee's manager.

So I think when you start to combine all those things, by the time I got to Disney and was serious about my shift in learning and development, I had built this set of skills and kind of a sensibility with my particular take on L&D. And then from Disney, after that, I kind of went serious about learning development, ended up at Kaplan in a director role. And then now I'm with Axonify and, of course, my own entity Learn Geek, and whatnot.

Justin: Very cool. So I guess that you attend a ton of shows. You're very active on social media. You blog. You're very engaged. So what sort of keeps you engaged in the industry kind of after all these years? Because you've been doing it for a little while.

JD: Sure. So I generally, I think I'm one of the people who's in this business for the altruistic reasons behind learning and support in the workplace. I am not in learning and talent development for the money, let's say. So if you are, I'd love to talk to you.

But I generally look at it as I'm the one who's trying to do their best to enable other people to then help people not get hurt at work, or to just be better at what they do. My tagline with Learn Geek is something to the effect of, helping other people do what they do better.

And again, my entire career, whether it be in a front line manager role, in a senior manager role, in L&D roles, it's always about trying to help people have a more enjoyable working experience and kind of come to the level of performance that they wish to be. Because I personally believe everyone wants to do a good job. They just typically don't have the type of support they need to get to that point. And I've always been the person who's trying to help and get there.

So from an industry perspective, I look at what I do is just trying to help the people who are trying to help those people in the front lines. And that's what keeps me focused on exploring new ideas, sharing information. And also just from an engagement perspective, I always look at it as, like I still don't believe anyone reads anything I write, ever.

So I look at that experience, and even talking in a conference like this, an experience of exploring my own thoughts and ideas as a way to evolve where I can focus next how I can improve on a particular idea. So I get more value out of sharing and then getting feedback and kind of sensing how people are leveraging information I share than I do sitting in a room reading and white boarding to myself and things like that.

Justin: So from an industry perspective, I feel like we sort of talk about the same sorts of things year after year. Do you think the industry is one that changes or doesn't change fast enough?

JD: I think learning and development is generally a great example of how much faster thought leadership-- put big air quotes around that-- thought leadership moves than corporate reality moves. And even being on the technology side of the conversation now, I mean, there's a million things you can build. There's a ton of directions you can go.

But it's a question of, how do you advance the conversation while at the same time meeting people where they are and helping them evolve at a rate that's meaningful. At the same time, in my L&D moments in corporate roles, I have felt the pressure of, the business is changing around us. If we don't change, we die because our ability to provide value is considerably lessened.

So I think we, in our roles inside of organizations, need to evolve more quickly because many other people say, it's no longer our choice. People are going to find support, whether it be management, front-line employees, they're going to find their way to help whether or not it's provided by us. So I think we have to do a better job moving more quickly.

And I think that the industry as a whole can move faster. But it's that day-to-day corporate reality that has to drive the charge forward. Because we can come up with tons of great ideas, but if they can't be used in the reality of life in an organization, it's just talk at that point.

Justin: Yeah. And that's what I think is interesting about being at events like this one and talking to people that are in the offices every day and doing the work every day, is that there sometimes is that gulf between what they're dealing with and then what sort of, like you said, the quote, unquote "thought leaders" are talking about.

JD: Like I said, I could sit here and talk all day about how we can leverage AI and machine learning in order to automate a variety of functions from a learning and development perspective. But then when you go back into an organization, and the legal team is still requiring every employee to view every slide of an e-learning, there's such a disconnect between the potential and what is reality that you can't ask people to make the leap. I look at it as, can I arm people with discussion points, ideas to help start shifting the mindset that opens the door to greater evolution and improvement for L&D.

Justin: Yeah. It is a really incremental change type of thing. And you're right. It does start with a mindset shift. So thinking back to sort of your personal growth, is there something that you wish you knew when you started out in the field?

JD: I wish I had realized there were other people trying to solve the same problems as I was way before I did. This is going to sound odd, but one of the best things I ever did was join Twitter and leave Disney. Because I still remember the moment that I joined Twitter and found a learning development community out there talking. And it was a person walked into my office at Kaplan and said, have you seen this person on Twitter. It was Bianca Woods by the way.

And I said, no, I don't know e-Geeking. And I started following her. And it just kind of snowballed into growing this greater network of people that helped me drive my practices forward. The challenge with Disney was just the fact that when I worked there, we were very much wrapped up in how we did things because it is truly a unique organization and a unique culture. So I wasn't in a position to go out and I didn't make the effort upon myself.

I think in the moment in time it was, it wasn't like pre-internet or anything, but things like YouTube weren't where they were now. Social media wasn't what it is now. So it wasn't coming to me. And I wasn't enough of an effort to go to it. So changing roles and going into an organization where the roles weren't as clearly defined, it was an organization that had 50 years of doing it and doing it right, helped me kind of expand my worldview to say there are other people out there that are solving similar problems. Let's learn from them in addition to the things I do day-to-day.

Justin: You’re someone that I think keeps  up to date on trends. So what's sort of your process? How do you kind of research things, look at things? How do you stay current on all the stuff that's going on in the industry?

JD: Sure. So one,  I would say I'm still heavily connected to a network of people that I rely on. So it's less about me going out and hunting for what's new. Obviously, I get some exposure from events like this and whatnot. But I have the benefit of knowing a lot of the people who are doing the presentations and leading the conversation. So staying connected in those conversations on the side, knowing certain people who, if they share a resource, I know it's something that I should take a look at in greater detail.

At the same time, I think I always try to make the comparison between the experience of having in everyday life and the way that things like technology and whatnot are changing around me, and asking the question, well, how does this contextualize to the workplace. And recognizing-- and having made the mistakes in the past where it's not a deadlift. You can't just take Facebook at everyday life and put it at work and expect it to do the same thing so it's happened in everyday life. 

So recognizing that and having done a ton of experiments early in my career has helped me kind of develop a way of looking at things that are based on one fundamental principle. So what is this really beyond the trend? When we say microlearning, what are we actually talking about from a principal's perspective? Because there's so much commonality between different trendy things when you break them down far enough.

And then two, applying it in the context of the people we're trying to support. Because saying virtual reality is a great idea in one context, it could be a really bad idea in another context. So really grounding it in the reality of what it is to work inside of an organization and kind of put it through those multiple lenses to determine, is this something worth exploring further. Or is this a lot of-- a conversation I had earlier today used the word snake oil, which I still don't know if that's ever really been a thing. But is it more of that or is there actual promise here if positioned in the right context.

Justin: So what sort of value do you see in in-person events? Because obviously you attend a ton. And you're not-- I mean, there's some speakers that come in. They come in for their session. And then they leave. You're definitely someone that comes in. And you engage with the conference. You attend the keynotes. You attend other sessions. You're chatting with people.

So attending so many events per year, how do you continue to sort of get value out of them? And what value do you see from conferences like this?

JD: So my value has changed considerably over the years. So the first conference I ever attended professionally was this conference in Chicago several years back at this point. And it was a kind of a rough place to start just because of how big and fast this event moves. Since then, I've done big and small events of all types.

I even do a lot of events outside of the L&D space. So I'll be standing in front of a group of loss prevention professionals at a safety and security conference, talking about the value of microlearning and things like that. So for me, the values evolved to a point where, one, the members of the network I mentioned, a lot of them are physically in place only at those moments where I won't see them coming into the country or into a particular state at other times. So being able to connect face-to-face with people who you engage with online.

Same is true especially for members of the network I don't know because they're not necessarily contributors. They're more kind of lurkers and they're listening. And like I said, I don't think people read what I write. And then I come to a place like this and people start talking to me about things that I've said or things that I've written and how it's relating to their work. I never would have known that unless they saw me and talked to me here. So there's a value there.

And then it is an opportunity to kind of surf around where maybe I don't attend sessions as much as I have in the past and sit through an entire session, but to kind of see what people are talking about, what types of questions people are asking, where the kind of interests are, and, again, just kind of getting grounded.  Because I don't, in the work that I do every day, face the same challenges a lot of these folks are facing. And the same challenges I faced when I was in corporate roles, working directly with subject matter experts, trying to influence senior management teams to make decisions, working in the front lines, and I can feel that disconnect growing over time. So I do different things to try to make sure I come back into a world where I am as practical as I can be. So you walk away from anything that I do with insight that you can actually use as opposed to being highfalutin pie in the sky type ideas.

Justin: Yeah. I mean, I think events are great to keep you grounded in a way. Because again, you're talking with people and actually learning what their actual challenges are. I think that sometimes all of us can tend to operate in a bubble, whether that's in work or even on social media and Twitter and what certain experts are talking about. But being here, I think you learn a lot in a few days chatting with people.

JD: Yeah. After my most recent session I just finished, which is why my voice is a little bit hoarse-- I go hard for two hours. But one gentleman I spoke to after the session works in federal aviation safety. I have no experience in federal aviation safety. But I'm very excited about it because I fly a lot and would very much like him to do well.

So it really helps when I have those moments where people come up and say, like I like your ideas, how would you think about it in this context. It helps me think about my own presentation content and the things that I talk about in a different way. Because I may never directly interact with that line of business in any of my work. But it helps me kind of come through a lens of a world that I didn't necessarily know existed or maybe never necessarily think about.

As an Accidental Trainer himself, JD wishes he had known about the L&D community online when he found twitter he found his people and he was able to grow his talent development career. You listeners have already found ATD and this podcast, so you are one step ahead. JD still goes to a number of conferences and is on LinkedIn and Twitter, this is really how he builds his network and keeps up to date with the trends. There is so much you gain from researching and reading online, but leveraging your connections and attending conferences can really help drive your career forward. JD discusses this in-depth in this podcast.

Justin: So looking back at the industry as a whole, what's something you'd like to see changed in the industry?

JD: Where do-- how do I make this a shorter list so this isn't an hour conversation. I think one of the biggest challenges I have, and I can kind of connect it to events, is that I get the sense that a lot of people are like me when I was younger in my career, which is I do things the way I do them in my organization. I'm in a relatively siloed bubble. And then when I have an opportunity, I come out for four days. I learn as much as I can in four days. But then I retreat back into the bubble.

And I don't necessarily pick up new information or evolve until I maybe have another opportunity. And a lot of people don't have an opportunity to go to an event like this. Or maybe they have an opportunity once in a while, if not maybe once a year. So I wish we would do a better job of a bit of eating our own dog food when it comes to building network, sharing of information, doing our best to kind of get around a lot of the limitations.

Because I know when you're a corporate employee, a lot of times you just can't share. You're not allowed to talk about what you're doing because lawyers exist. But are there ways to talk more about practices and principles and less about your name and logo, and share and engage in a community conversation whether that be a social media conversation or something else that doesn't require the effort of always having it all go to a city, and spend a couple of days doing it, and then run away.

Because when we talk about things like microlearning, and learning science principles, and space repetition, it's kind of the best example when you go to an event, learn as much as possible, go home. How much did you remember? How much did you get the opportunity to apply immediately in your work? So I'd like to see more of that kind of tangible information sharing, experience sharing outside of an event and kind of build events off of that for what you really get value of being in place. So the biggest thing I see is getting out of that bubble, engaging with folks.

And the other thing I would, and I talked about this earlier today with another group, is not be swayed as much by the vendor side of our work. And this is strange for me to say because I am a vendor. But it makes me look at things with a little bit of a different lens in terms of what is noise in marketing and what is value added information that's trying to drive the industry and the community further along.

And I mean, how many webinars could you attend today in this industry? Like 30? How many of them are actually driving the conversation forward versus being a sales pitch? And in the work I do with my teams, I'm always driving for practical information you can use regardless of if you work directly with me or you're doing something on your own.

So that's the other thing. I hope we can see through things a little bit more, see through trends, see through when it's marketing noise down to, again, those fundamental principles that can really help us improve our work and iterate along the way.

Justin: So let's have you kind of look into the future a little bit and give a prediction for what the industry might look like or how it might change in the next, say, five to 10 years.

JD: Yeah, 10 years, good luck with that. I'm talking more and more as a topic of focus in the area of AI, machine learning, and whatnot and trying to help cut off the trendiness that will emerge or is already emerging around that type of topic.

I always use the example of mobile learning. Well, we got distracted away from how can we best use the devices people are carrying and made it more about learning and development things than the actual topic. AI is not an L&D thing. It's a discipline that's well established with decades of information and experience and very smart people, way smarter than me, who understand the potential for these types of ideas.

So I think that's the big quote, unquote "trend" that I'm staring down and trying to help interpret the potential for the type of work we do, both from a front end user perspective, how employees are going to benefit from our ability to scale, support, and data more effectively than we ever have before.

And then also, on the L&D practitioner side, it will change the conversation around what content development is, what systems administration is, how we figure out where to focus our resources, the role that we play. So we're supporting people who work in an AI-enabled world with AI-enabled capability.

So if five years from now, I would be shocked if that's not a core of the conversation. And even if you look at the schedule-- I don't know if you search the schedule for this event as much as I do for trends and words. If you search all of the session descriptions from this conference, the letters or some reference to AI shows up almost twice as much as the word microlearning. And last year, microlearning was in and AI almost didn't exist at this conference.

So that leap, I think, is indicative. Not necessarily everyone's got the answer here. But it shows a shift down a path that technology overall in the workplace is taking us. Because the first people to introduce AI in your organization, not going to be L&D. It's going to be somewhere on the operational side. And it's going to change the environment in which we operate. We'd be silly not to use similar types of tools to improve what we do.

So in five years, I think it's a similar type of evolution that to our world that's happening in the front line space to say, what skills are actually required, what can be automated, what can't be. And then, what role do we play?

Justin: So keeping those sorts of changes in mind, what sorts of skills do you think people in the L&D industry, the talent development industry, need to develop to sort of stay prepared, stay current?

JD: Yeah. The first big thing, especially around topics like data and AI, is realizing we don't have to do it ourselves. We tend to, often and again, I've done the same thing, is try to recreate the wheel in our own image rather than look around our organization and realize there are people who are very good at certain things that we could be leveraging one way or another.

But make sure that we're doing such to build a relationship before we need to go get them. There's this constant battle between-- I mean, an easy joke to make as a presenter at an L&D event is to say something about how you're always struggling with IT, hahaha.

Right. Back on IT.

But that's unfortunate because we need them, especially doing anything at scale. Same conversation needs to happen around folks like data strategists and data analysts inside of organizations who are already there. Someone who's driving an AI machine learning kind of automation conversation in your business, they're already there. They've been hired because they're very skilled at these particular things.

So rather than try to evolve L&D to match, how do you work with people, buy them lunch, grow relationships, to realize how you can work together. And then start to realize, where do you need to develop skills in areas like data science and maybe bring on people or evolve your understanding, what not. And then where can you partner?

And I think it's figuring out where those specific skills are required. And then, make sure that you're dangerous enough to engage in a strategy conversation, understand where your organization is going, and where you as an L&D team can take advantage of these types of topics rather than trying to become an expert in everything.

Because I know the eLearning Guild and Jane Bozarth did some research recently around things like job descriptions. And if you look at today, an instructional designer job description business to business, it's a radically different job.

So rather than try to become something to everyone, figure out what do you know to be dangerous enough in a variety of topics in order to be able to be efficient at helping people. So that's kind of what I would urge people to do is make relationships with influencers inside your organization and figure out what do you have to be better at, things like, well, you have to be a better writer. But in what way? You have to be smarter about data but exactly how?

And I would say, it's going to lean less and less about content development and more and more about influencing people, working to solve problems, those skills that people are already talking about that are important and inherently human as opposed to things that we can automate out of our workflows.

Justin: All right, JD. So we'll get you out here on this. We're asking, kind of wrapping up with everyone, asking about failure. So we'd love for you to tell us about a time that you failed at something and what you learned from it and how it maybe helped change your perspective or helped you grow.

JD: Sure. So I would say this one's a little bit less of my-- I've failed plenty. I once tried to use a cartoon to teach people about a compliance topic. And that did not go well. So I got laughed off the-- I don't know what I got laughed off of. But I got laughed at for that one.

But a different moment in time in a different L&D role, I was chugging along doing things in what I would traditionally term a traditional way. A lot of click Next to Continue type e-learning, a lot of instructor-led training. Because I didn't necessarily know much beyond that.

Like I said, not formally trained, not really exposed to a greater community early in my career. I was relatively new to the organization. So I didn't have a ton of grounding in the organization. But I thought I was doing my job. And then I come into work and they laid off half the company.

And it wasn't my fault. It was like training failed, therefore we lost half the business. It was more of a-- to not use corporate jargon. But it was a right sizing moment where the organization had grown and it didn't quite match the strategy where they had to evolve. So it was more management's fault than L&D's fault.

But that moment clicked in my head. It hurt me. I didn't get laid off. I lost a lot of my resources. My world changed around me. Because suddenly, I had to support a larger audience with more diverse skills than the smaller group I had been supporting before the restructure took place. But I took it personally as why didn't I know this was coming, why didn't I know we were struggling to this degree, and why wasn't my focus on saving people?

And I couldn't have headed it off one way or the other. But that day changed the way I looked at what I did and made it more about focusing on what was most critical to the organization and what would make people successful so we were successful as a business. Because that's what learning can do, more so than, learning is a good idea because we offer so many courses and things like that.

So I think that moment, kind of an institutional failure, is what really turned me into someone who thinks practically focuses on what's going to make a business more successful and what can make you, as an employee, more successful day-to-day. And then, what are all of the ways that I can do that, not just about training as a way to do that. So I it was a helpful moment. But it was an unfortunate moment for everyone that was involved in that particular change.

Justin: Well, that's a great story. JD, thanks for chatting with me today. I appreciate it. So where can people find you if they want to reach out, get in touch, see what you're up to?

JD: So a couple options, so from a social media perspective on Twitter, I'm @jd_dillon. And from a website perspective, I share a variety of information in two main channels. One is through Axonify. So if you go to axonify.com. And the second is my personal blog, which is learngeek.co.

Justin: Cool. Awesome, JD. Thanks for chatting with me today.

Thank you very much, Justin.

Thanks for tuning into ADT Talks Talent. Please share this podcast with your colleagues. And if you've got ideas for future episodes, we'd love to hear them. Email us at [email protected].

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Resources:

Follow JD on Twitter or read his blog. 

Visit ATD's Learning Technologies Topic page.

ATD has a number of local chapter and national events happening all over the country and world. Visit our events page to see the next conference you can attend and connect with others in the field.

One event you should consider attending is the ATD International Conference and Expo, which is where this episode was recorded in 2019. ATD 2020 will be held in Denver, CO. and offers four days packed filled with learning and networking opportunities.

In this launch episode of The Accidental Trainer podcast, host Lisa Spinelli is joined by William Arruda, personal branding pioneer and author of Digital You: Real Personal Branding in the Virtual Age, at the ATD 2019 International Conference & EXPO. Arruda discusses how he got his happenstance start in the field and relays tricks about how to develop your authentic personal brand as well as what L&D professionals can expect in the future.

Don't forget to like this episode and subscribe to our podcast!

We are here with William Arruda at the ATD 2019 Conference and Exposition in Washington DC. And my name is Lisa Spinelli. I am the Content Manager over at ATD for Career Development.

We have, as I said, William Arruda here, personal branding guru and pioneer, founded Reach Personal Branding almost 18 years ago and is the co-founder of a video micro-learning CareerBlast. He's a three-time author, former brand and marketing executive at IBM, and an all around nice guy.

Thank you, Lisa. That's awfully nice.

Your next book, Digital You, is available right now!

Yes, and I'm super excited about this one. This is really one of the most important things people need to be thinking about with their careers.

Yes, personal branding, we know, is huge in this day and age. And I'm just curious. How did you get your start in personal branding? What turned you on to become a pioneer in this field?

I would never have thought this would have been my life. I worked at IBM Lotus, loved my job in branding. Every Sunday, I'd say, oh my gosh, I get to go to work tomorrow. And I thought I was going to work for the man, or the woman, for the rest of my life. And in 1997, I read an article in Fast Company Magazine, The Brand Called You by Tom Peters. And in that article, he said in the future, every one of us will need to have a brand to be successful.

And that day, in my head, I said I am going to start the first ever personal branding company, so just one of those random-- if I didn't pick up that magazine, we wouldn't be sitting here today.

And that was before social media really took off or anything. So what did that kind of mean to you at that time?

It meant absolutely no business, starvation, selling everything I owned, selling my stock, going into debt, literally. I finally started the company in 2001. There were four people already doing personal branding. So I wasn't the first. But two years later, there was just me. The other four realized that they needed to make money. And personal branding the-- things that were happening in the world did not create the need yet for personal branding.

And it wasn't until a few years later where downturn in the economy, real issue on getting the best talent, and social media and LinkedIn. In 2003, LinkedIn emerged. And that was it. All of a sudden people realized, oh my gosh, I need a brand to be successful.

And were you always honed in on LinkedIn? Or were you always kind of looking at all the different social media platforms? I know you're really honed in now with LinkedIn, and professional development, and your image on LinkedIn.

Yeah.

Yeah.

LinkedIn, I think, created the big light bulb moment for people. I need to build my brand. But where I'm really focused is on the personal branding piece of it. And digital is one part. And real world is the other. But most of my clients are corporations. They hire me to come in and help their people deliver greater value by being their best selves and by understanding their brands.

And some of that means how they show up in a meeting room and how they determine what they're going to do next. And some of it means how they show up online and their digital brand. And that's what the new book, Digital You, is all about. It's really, how do you make sure that real world you is congruent with those online profiles that you have?

Right. Yeah, you do talk a lot about authenticity, and being yourself, and being yourself online and offline. What if the offline version of you is not someone you necessarily want to project that much online? What do you keep hidden? What do you keep out there?

It's a great question. I think everyone has to decide how transparent and open they want to be. But what we know about the world of work is people want to work with people that they know, like, and trust. And the like part comes from authenticity and transparency. The know part is, I want to get-- I want to have an easy way of getting to know this person.

So your LinkedIn summary, for example, a great way for you to share the things that you want people to know about you, so that you can connect. And of course the trust part is all about credibility, doing what you say you're going to do.

And so people have to decide, the more they're not willing to be their authentic selves, and they aren't transparent, the harder it's going to be for them to build relationships. And relationships are the currency of business. So people need to decide for themselves. But I think the people who can be more open, more real everyday are the ones who'll be more successful.

So for all you accidental trainers looking to flourish in this field, it’s really important to take just a little bit of time out of your busy day to think about your personal brand—and especially your brand online. As William says, before anyone meets you in person nowadays, they find you online. Make it a habit to spend just nine minutes a day to update your profile, post a comment or well-thought out status on LinkedIn as William suggests in his book. By just taking a few minutes every day to work on your brand, you will start build a network and recognition. Having these can help spur you to keep current and connected. Remember to stay authentic and transparent yet professional and compelling. Check the show notes for more information on how to develop your LinkedIn profile and start developing thoughtful personal brand.

Definitely. If you had one prediction for the future about personal branding, then kind of seeing the span of in your career, looking at how far it's come, what do you is going to happen in the next 10 years from now?

It's a great question. So the digital revolution is going to continue. I think the biggest thing that will happen is everything will move to video, so that we will have almost that same experience, if we meet somebody online through video, that we would meet if we had met them in person. So the interesting thing about video is you deliver complete communication. You have words, tone of voice, intonation.

When you normally communicate in the digital world, you have words, which are 7% of a communication. So I think the video revolution is key. The people who can jump on board now get really good at delivering video. Let's think about thought leadership video, things that they want to tell the world about themselves and also synchronous video.

How do you deliver a great video teleconference? How do you work remotely, but seem like you're always there, because you're using video? So I think that's kind of the next frontier is everyone embracing that.

So are people going to be doing micro-videos, like a lot of the career blast videos that you have out there? Or are they going to go back to long form, you think? Are people's attention spans going to catch up? I know right now, it's like, three seconds. You have a goldfish attention span.

Yes, shorter than a goldfish. That's a Microsoft study you're talking about. Yeah, I think it's all going to be micro. Twitter came on board right now, that 280 characters is what you have to tell your story. And people start thinking in small bursts. But what's going to happen, I think, is we're going to be creating these webisodes. They might be two minutes long. But each one is going to lead to the next one.

And when it comes to learning, where video is going to be the most powerful tool in learning, we're going to learn something. And it's going to be so enticing in those two minutes-- let's say we're learning about values, what are values? We're going to get people to the end of that in two minutes.

And they're going to say oh, my god, what are my values? And the next video is going to be what are your values? And so I think what we're going to do is create short, potent, valuable videos that help tell people who we are, why we're great, and why they should care.

Just mini cliffhangers everywhere.

Exactly. Exactly. We have to feed people into that next stream. So how do you keep current, then, with what is coming up? So you know what? Conferences like this ATD Conference, absolutely brilliant for me. Just walking around, I look at what is happening in each of these sessions. By the way, I just passed a session that is all about how using video and storytelling is a way for learning. The session is happening around the corner right now.

So there are so many transformational leaders here at the conference. It's absolutely amazing. You go to the exhibit hall. The things that people are doing, the future of learning is here. And there's a book called The Expertise Economy. It's by Kelly Palmer, which is a brilliant book which is about how learning is the center of success for companies in the future.

So where do you learn about this? At conferences like this, where you get exposed to things. We wear blinders every day. And this opens those blinders. So that's what I'm doing. I'm kind of seeing what's out there and who's talking about what and what's happening. So it's exciting.

Yeah. So do you follow any other thought leaders online that are also doing interesting things or other places besides ATD?

Yeah. And I think a lot of those thought leaders are here. I follow a lot of people who are talking about disruption right now. And we have to disrupt ourselves, so we become our own personal disruptors. And so I think people who are writing about that, I follow a lot of social media people.

And what are they doing next? What do they think are the next things around social media? And how can we take advantage of them now? If we start thinking about what's going to become prevalent, how can we jump on that bandwagon now and be successful for when that happens?

That's awesome. So did that kind of help drive your desire to do this book, to inform people of what's coming up next, or what they should be doing in light of the future?

Yeah. What I've realized, and I never thought I was this, but people have called me a futurist. And in my tiny, tiny world, in my tiny world of personal branding, maybe I am. I live in total obscurity in the rest of every other topic that could be out there. But it's true.

And I think that that's what Digital You is about, people who are the forward thinkers, the people who really want to be ahead of the pack, who want to stand out, who want to try new things, who want to take a risk, be a little afraid, they're the people are going to really like digital you, because it's going to make you feel uncomfortable.

And it was written that way to kind of light a fire and make you feel a little weird. Probably not-- don't put that on the back cover, because I don't think that's going to be a good description for the book.

So speaking of risk, what was a time that you took a risk and you failed? And what did you learn from it?

How long is this show? I have about 1,000 of those. I will tell you one of the biggest ones. I took a risk and pursued a promotion. And I pursued a promotion that I had absolutely no business pursuing. But for me, I got caught up in this corporate mindset, that wherever you are, you don't want to be there. You want to be in the next place, even if the next place is not the right place for you. And this was so not the right place for me.

And I pursued this promotion. And I did all the right things to make myself the perfect candidate for this, even though it had nothing to do with number one, what I'm good at, and number two, what I'm interested in. But it was a raise, and more title, and more people, and all this stuff. And by the way, I was not selected, despite all of that.

And I was originally, initially devastated. I was like, my gosh, I prepared myself. I was so relevant. I ticked all the boxes next to what they needed, until I got to know the person who got the job. And I thought, oh, my god, I would die if I had that job. I was like, I would be miserable every day.

And so the big learning for me-- so I'm so lucky I failed-- and the big learning for me is all about alignment, align who you are with what you do and how you do it. You're going to be more valuable. You're going to be happier at work. And you're going to be more valuable to the organization you work at.

And what happened was I ended up getting a promotion doing the stuff I was doing after that. It was a better promotion. It was a bigger team. It was a bigger raise. And I got to continue to do what I love. So someone's dangling something in front of you. It seems shiny and exciting. But you really have to look deep into yourself to see if it is.

Yeah. I think that's important to not necessarily just take the first thing that comes across your path.

Yeah, and to be-- there's something about ambition. And there's something about directed ambition, I think. And just to be ambitious for the sake of it, only gets you into a place you don't want to be.

Thank you so much for being here with us, William. I really appreciate it. And do you want to talk a little bit about where people can follow you or find you? Not that we can't find your personal brand really easily.

So WilliamArruda.com is a good starting place or CareerBlast.tv. I will say the new book, Digital You, it's available for—Pre-sale right now.

Pre-orders, yes. And that's thanks to the ATD publishing arm for that. So that's a good place to learn about what I'm thinking about for the future.

Great. Thank you so much, William.

Thanks, Lisa, always great connecting with you.

You too.  

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Key Takeaways

More Resources:

Digital You is available for sale right now! On Amazon, on the ATD website and at Barnes and Nobles. 

Watch some of William's videos on the ATD's website discussing how to create a best in class personal brand:

Digital You webcast 

Building a Powerful LinkedIn Profile

Read William's Forbes column. Visit his website or follow him on LinkedIn.