Chief Learning Officer Podcast

Despite years of experience and a wealth of research on practice, learning organizations still stumble when rolling out development programs on a global scale. Quite often, culture is the cause. Mandates and directives from headquarters fail to take into account the nuances of work at the local office.

But it's not just geography or nationality that can sink a global learning program. Internal cultures play a significant and often underestimated role. Even within a single company, there can be scores of different cultures spread across divisions and functions, each with their own norms and rules. Engineers are different from salespeople, IT and HR don't always align.

Jim Irvine, global program manager for learning and development at Renault-Nissan Alliance, knows the challenges firsthand. With operations in nearly every country in the world, his learning organization grapples with the geographic diversity of culture daily. But they also have learned to recognize and work through internal cultures as well.

In this podcast recorded live at the CLO Breakfast Club event in Nashville, Jim shares why culture is such an important consideration for learning organizations and why lack of budget and power are no barrier to being an effective learning leader. Plus, co-host Justin Lombardo shares his biggest mistakes when it comes to culture and what they taught him about being a more effective learning executive.

Thank you to our episode sponsors:

This episode of the CLO Breakfast Club Podcast is brought to by DXC Technology. DXC Technology human capital management solutions are powering the next-gen workplace. Learn more by visiting dxc.technology.

This episode is also brought to you by Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and BetterUp.

Learn how you can partner with Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business create a one-of-a-kind executive development program for your leaders at choosegeorgetown.com/clo.

Help your organization cultivate a coaching culture with BetterUp, the industry's first mobile platform that provides personalized coaching at scale. Learn more by visiting betterup.co.

For many organizations, the extent of their campus outreach is a few college recruiting fairs and a summer internship program. That's a big miss in a competitive economy where talent is the currency. Either due to a lack of vision or a short-sighted strategy, organizations simply don't think long and hard enough about how to build a robust pipeline that delivers talented people from schools into the workplace.

When Meredith Oakes took over BNY Mellon's talent pipeline development in 2017, she set out to change that dynamic. That began with looking beyond the stereotypes to understand what early career professionals actually want from work and turning that into programs that deliver long-term value for them as well as the 200-plus year old Wall Street stalwart.

In this podcast recorded live at the City Winery in New York City, Meredith shares why BNY Mellon made pipeline development a strategic priority and what other learning executives can learn from their programs about how to build long-term relationships with early career professionals. Plus, co-host and resident CLO Breakfast Club health expert Justin Lombardo offers his tips for navigating flu season and how working with schools and universities is exactly the type of work at which chief learning officers can excel.

Thank you to our episode sponsors:

This episode of the CLO Breakfast Club Podcast is brought to by O'Reilly Media. O'Reilly's online learning platform can help your employees learn on the job, get quick answers on the fly and advance your organization's goals. Learn more at oreilly.com.  

This episode is also brought to you by BetterUp and DeVryWORKS.

Help your organization cultivate a coaching culture with BetterUp, the industry's first mobile platform that provides personalized coaching at scale. Learn more by visiting betterup.co.

DeVryWORKS can help with workforce solutions to attract, aquire and develop the leaders of tomorrow in your organization. Learn more at devryworks.com.

Among the many goals organizations have for their learning and development team, building resilience and agility are near the top. Companies want agile leaders and nimble employees able to rapidly adjust to changing business conditions. For CLOs, building those capabilities is a critical part of the mission.

For Tim Tobin, that mission became personal. After several successful years as a learning executive, he found himself on the outside looking in after a corporate reorganization at Marriott. How he bounced back after losing his job and what he learned in the process now inform his work as the head of learning for Choice Hotels International, the company behind a dozen hospitality brands including Comfort Inn, Cambria Suites and Econolodge.

In this podcast recorded live in Washington D.C., Tim shares what setbacks have taught him about himself as well as the critical importance of paying attention to relationships and not just results in the quest to be a successful learning leader.

Thank you to our episode sponsors:

This episode of the CLO Breakfast Club Podcast is brought to by Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. Learn how you can partner with Georgetown to create a one-of-a-kind executive development program for your leaders at choosegeorgetown.com/clo.

This episode is also brought to you by DXC Technology and Bridge, the makers of Practice.

DXC Technology human capital management solutions are powering the next-gen workplace. Learn more by visiting dxc.technology.

Practice can scale the competency and confidence of your teams to ensure your organization thrives in today's fast changing, unpredictable world. Visit getbridge.com to learn more.

Show Notes:

Tim's Personal Website: Tobin Leadership

Chief Learning Officer 2015 Profile: Checking Into Marriott's Leadership with Tim Tobin

Cameron Hedrick wasn't always on the path to being a chief learning officer. His career has taken twists and turns and includes stints as a stock broker and in sales and marketing roles. He even took a swing at being an entrepreneur and running his own company before settling into senior HR roles at New York-based financial giant Citi.

It's not all business either. When Cameron first moved to New York City after college he earned money playing trumpet in jazz combos around town. And despite the many years between his time as a working musician and now, when he leads Citi's learning and development organization, Cameron has never forgotten the lessons he learned from his time in the jazz clubs of New York.

The ability to create something new and original on the fly as an ensemble is an experience that continues to inform his work in developing talent.

In this podcast recorded live on stage at the City Winery in New York City, we talk to Cameron about the improvisational nature of organizational learning, the need to help others constantly evolve so they don't become obsolete and how chief learning officers need to champion behavior change as much if not more than they emphasize transferring knowledge across the organization.

This episode of the CLO Breakfast Club podcast is brought to you by BetterUp. Learn how you can cultivate a coaching culture with the industry's first mobile platform that provides personalized coaching at scale by visiting betterup.co.

Education is the thread that ties Dave DeFilippo's career together. After college, he taught Spanish at a high school and coached the track team. He worked his way up the training ranks at UPS and held corporate learning roles at Comcast and Capital One.

He eventually became chief learning officer at BNY Mellon, helping navigate the financial services giant through the depths of the Great Recession and the subsequent recovery. In what spare time he had, Dave earned a doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania's CLO program. Learning is in his blood.

So in 2015 when he joined Suffolk, a Boston-based construction management company, as its first CLO, he looked forward to building out a first class learning function for the growing company. What he didn't foresee was taking on the rest of the company's HR operations. It wasn't part of the initial plan.

In this podcast recorded live in Boston at the Chief Learning Officer Breakfast Club event, we talk to Dave about the moment when his CEO asked him to become the company's chief people officer, the particular strengths that CLOs like him can bring to the position and what his experience means for other learning executives.

This episode of the CLO Breakfast Club podcast is brought to you by O'Reilly. To learn how O'Reilly provides individuals, teams, and businesses with expert-created and curated information covering all the areas that will shape our future, visit oreilly.com.

Show Notes

Chief Learning Officer 2013 Profile: Building a High-Performance Team

Chief Learning Officer: David DeFilippo's On the Front Line Columns

Defense Acquisition University may be the most significant learning organization you've never heard of.

With more than 700 people serving a population of more than 160,000 employees, DAU is large. That size is matched by a big mission. DAU is the education arm of the U.S. Department of Defense's acquisition function, providing a critical education resource for the people who buy the tools and supplies that support the men and women in uniform who protect the country.

When Jim Woolsey took on leadership of the organization in 2014, DAU was in a good place. Their work had received many awards for excellence, including a 2017 recognition as the no. 1 organization for learning and development on the prestigious Chief Learning Officer Learning Elite list. Despite that success Jim and the team at DAU set out to radically re-engineer how the organization trains and develops its people.

In this podcast recorded live in Houston at the Fall 2018 Chief Learning Officer Symposium, we talk to Jim about why DAU decided to change the way it operates, how to formulate an effective learning strategy and tips and ideas for keeping your organization focused on the things that matter.

This episode of the CLO Breakfast Club podcast is brought to you by BetterUp. Learn how you can cultivate a coaching culture with the industry's first mobile platform that provides personalized coaching at scale by visiting betterup.co.

Show Notes:

DAU website

Chief Learning Officer: 2017 Learning Elite Issue

After a career spent primarily in internal learning and development roles, Karen Kocher took a new turn in 2017. As Microsoft's general manager for 21st Century jobs, skills and employability, she has a broad mandate to work inside and outside the Seattle-based technology company to develop a pipeline of talented people who can fill the jobs companies like hers need to be successful.

Microsoft is a company at an interesting place – it's a massive legacy technology business yet simultaneously trying to be more more like a start-up disruptor. To make that shift, CEO Satya Nadella is pushing the company to operate in different ways than past leaders and Karen finds herself at the vanguard of those initiatives. In many ways, it's the perfect meld of experience and opportunity.

In this podcast recorded in Seattle at our CLO Breakfast Club event, we talk to Karen about what her new role means for other internal learning executives, how she built her credibility and confidence by focusing on evidence-based practice and what she sees as the critical capabilities of successful learning leaders.

Show Notes:

Chief Learning Officer 2013 Profile: Karen Kocher

Quartz: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Takes Control of the Microsoft Narrative With His Book

When he stepped into the role as chief learning officer at McDonald's Corporation in 2014, Rob Lauber had a unique opportunity. The company was about to move from its longtime suburban headquarters into the heart of downtown Chicago. But it was more than just a simple change of location. McDonald's wanted to inject fresh thinking into the business, spark innovation and attract the kind of young digital talent that would spur the company forward.

Rob and his learning team took the opportunity to rethink the purpose of Hamburger University, the company's storied corporate university, and design from scratch what a modern corporate learning institution should look like.

In this podcast, we talk to Rob about that move, the personal and professional risks involved, and how the decisions he made reflect the trend of learning leaders playing a bigger and more influential role in business strategy.

Show Notes:

Chief Learning Officer 2013 Profile: A Taste for Growth

McDonald's: Archways to Opportunity program

CNBC: McDonald's Is Tripling its College Tuition Benefit

Companies have no shortage of problems that need solving. Chief among them is how to build the workforce of the future. In this episode, Aaron Olson, global head of HR for health and retirement solutions at Aon, talks about how his company is using apprenticeships to build a pipeline of talent and just how important is that chief learning officers think of themselves as problem solvers.

The chief learning officer role was born out of necessity. Visionary business leaders looked ahead and saw a problem: a future driven by innovation but an organization lacking in the essential skills. So they hired the first CLOs to take up the charge - but their success was never guaranteed.

Veteran CLO Justin Lombardo was there at the beginning and recounts what that moment was like and how the role continues to evolve to meet the needs of modern organizations. Plus Justin and host Mike Prokopeak, editor in chief of Chief Learning Officer magazine, explain exactly why the world needs a CLO podcast.