Leading Learning Podcast

Whether or not most of us are even aware of it, communities exist in practically all aspects of our lives and they can have a profound impact on learning. And, as this week’s guest, co-founder of the Community Roundtable, Rachel Happe puts it, “Communities are just-in-time learning mechanisms—they're containers of trust that scale beyond individual relationships.” That’s why it’s so important for us as learning leaders to be intentional and cultivate these within our organizations.

In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Jeff talks with Rachel about the powerful role of communities including why organizations should be explicit in their management of them, ways they’ve evolved over the past decade, and what's necessary to create a successful one.

Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode180. 

We grateful to our sponsors for this quarter, Community Brands and WBT Systems.

Community Brands provides a suite of cloud-based software for organizations to engage and grow relationships with the individuals they serve, including association management software, learning management software, job board software, and event management software. Community Brands’ award-winning Crowd Wisdom learning platform is among the world’s best LMSes for corporate extended enterprise and is a leading LMS for association-driven professional education programs. Award-winning Freestone, Community Brands’ live event learning platform, is a leading platform for live learning event capture, Webinars, Webcasts, and on-demand streaming.

WBT Systems develops the industry-leading TopClass LMS, which delivers transformative professional development experiences for education and certification programs. With a single point of support from in-house integration experts, TopClass LMS easily integrates with a wide variety of systems to provide efficient administration and a unified learning experience. WBT supports organizations in using learning technology to help drive growth in membership, increase revenues, and enhance the learning experience. WBT believes in truly understanding your challenges and partnering with you to ensure the success of your education programs.

When it comes to the market for lifelong learning, pricing is a key component of success. But what is the "right" or "best" price for a particular product or offering? There is no black and white answer and because of that, pricing is an area many learning businesses struggle with.

In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Celisa and Jeff share their top tips, based on two decades of experience in the learning business, on how to effectively price educational products.

Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode179. 

Our sponsors for this episode are:

Blue Sky eLearn, the creator of the Path Learning Management System, an award-winning cloud-based learning solution that allows organizations to easily deliver, track, and monetize valuable education and event content online. Blue Sky also provides webinar and webcast services, helping you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience across the world.

Authentic Learning Labs, an education company seeking to bring complementary tech and services to empower publishers and L&D organizations to help elevate their programs. The company leverages technology like AI, Data Analytics, and advanced embeddable, API-based services to complement existing initiatives, offering capabilities that are typically out of reach for resource-stretched groups or growing programs needing to scale.

In Part II of our very first two-part interview, we continue the conversation with Jeff De Cagna, respected contrarian thinker on the future of associating and associations, about a topic all leaders in the business of lifelong learning need to be thinking about: artificial intelligence.

 In Part I, Celisa and Jeff talked about an AI first world and some common misconceptions and ethical issues surrounding AI. This time around they delve into the implications of AI for work and learning, the idea of integrated intelligences, and helpful advice to ensure the responsible and ethical future of AI.

Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode178. 

Our sponsors for this episode are:

Blue Sky eLearn, the creator of the Path Learning Management System, an award-winning cloud-based learning solution that allows organizations to easily deliver, track, and monetize valuable education and event content online. Blue Sky also provides webinar and webcast services, helping you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience across the world.

Authentic Learning Labs, an education company seeking to bring complementary tech and services to empower publishers and L&D organizations to help elevate their programs. The company leverages technology like AI, Data Analytics, and advanced embeddable, API-based services to complement existing initiatives, offering capabilities that are typically out of reach for resource-stretched groups or growing programs needing to scale.

With artificial intelligence (AI) being one of the top technologies already positioned to transform and disrupt just about every aspect of our lives, including the future of work and learning, it’s a topic that we could all use some foresight on. And return guest, Jeff De Cagna, executive advisor for Foresight First LLC, is a future-focused, contrarian thinker who has recently been applying his foresight lens to the vast complexities surrounding the rise of AI.

In Part I of our very first two-part interview on the Leading Learning podcast, Celisa talks with Jeff about what it means to live in an AI-first world, some common misconceptions about AI, as well as the numerous ethical issues surrounding AI and what we might do to deal with them.

Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode177. 

Our sponsors for this episode are:

Blue Sky eLearn, the creator of the Path Learning Management System, an award-winning cloud-based learning solution that allows organizations to easily deliver, track, and monetize valuable education and event content online. Blue Sky also provides webinar and webcast services, helping you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience across the world.

Authentic Learning Labs, an education company seeking to bring complementary tech and services to empower publishers and L&D organizations to help elevate their programs. The company leverages technology like AI, Data Analytics, and advanced embeddable, API-based services to complement existing initiatives, offering capabilities that are typically out of reach for resource-stretched groups or growing programs needing to scale.

Marketing is an integral part of any successful learning business—it is after all, one of the five domains in our Learning Business Maturity Model™. But it’s particularly important to understand digital marketing and how to generate and convert Web traffic into sales.

If you aren’t familiar with the Traffic and Conversion Summit, it happens to be the largest marketing event in North America, and what Forbes magazine describes as “everything you need to know about boosting your conversions and making your mark in your vertical”. Luckily for you, Jeff recently attended so in this episode, he and Celisa are revealing 5 key marketing takeaways from the informative Summit.

Full show notes at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode176. 

Our sponsors for this episode are:

Authentic Learning Labs, an education company seeking to bring complementary tech and services to empower publishers and L&D organizations to help elevate their programs. The company leverages technology like AI, Data Analytics, and advanced embeddable, API-based services to complement existing initiatives, offering capabilities that are typically out of reach for resource-stretched groups or growing programs needing to scale.

Blue Sky eLearn, the creator of the Path Learning Management System, an award-winning cloud-based learning solution that allows organizations to easily deliver, track, and monetize valuable education and event content online. Blue Sky also provides webinar and webcast services, helping you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience across the world.

Small groups, loosely connected, but united by a common purpose. This is the simple formula behind Greg Satell’s research that is essential to follow for anyone looking to make an impact and change the world.

Greg is one of the world’s leading experts on innovation and transformational change and his new book, Cascades: How to Create a Movement That Drives Transformational Change, explores how to successfully navigate and lead large-scale change in today’s disruptive environment. He’s also behind the popular blog, Digital Tonto, which is a must-read for anyone interested in learning more about the topics of strategy, innovation, and leadership.

In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Jeff talks with Greg about what it takes to drive transformational change including the important role of networks, empowerment, and purpose.

Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode175. 

Our sponsors for this episode are:

Authentic Learning Labs, an education company seeking to bring complementary tech and services to empower publishers and L&D organizations to help elevate their programs. The company leverages technology like AI, Data Analytics, and advanced embeddable, API-based services to complement existing initiatives, offering capabilities that are typically out of reach for resource-stretched groups or growing programs needing to scale.

Blue Sky eLearn, the creator of the Path Learning Management System, an award-winning cloud-based learning solution that allows organizations to easily deliver, track, and monetize valuable education and event content online. Blue Sky also provides webinar and webcast services, helping you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience across the world.

As learning businesses, it’s safe to say that most are striving to move the needle in the field, profession, or industry they serve through large-scale impact. However, it’s reasonable to assume that a single organization won’t be as effective in achieving that as multiple organizations in partnership. Applying the network leadership model offers a way to structure collaborations aimed at collective impact, rather than solely on organizational success.

This week on the Leading Learning podcast Celisa interviews Jane Wei-Skillern, a speaker, author, and Senior Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley who is a leading voice on the topic of network leadership. They discuss how this model differs from other approaches to collective impact, the four principles behind it, and how applying the model can help organizations work more efficiently while focusing on the larger purpose of why they exist.

Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode174. 

Our sponsors for this episode are:

Blue Sky eLearn, the creator of the Path Learning Management System, an award-winning cloud-based learning solution that allows organizations to easily deliver, track, and monetize valuable education and event content online. Blue Sky also provides webinar and webcast services, helping you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience across the world.

Authentic Learning Labs, an education company seeking to bring complementary tech and services to empower publishers and L&D organizations to help elevate their programs. The company leverages technology like AI, Data Analytics, and advanced embeddable, API-based services to complement existing initiatives, offering capabilities that are typically out of reach for resource-stretched groups or growing programs needing to scale.

Artificial intelligence. It’s one of the biggest issues impacting the world and it’s going to have major implications for learning businesses.  The key is making sure you’re tuned in to the topic and prepared for the accompanying changes on the horizon for learners in your particular field or industry.

In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Celisa and Jeff discuss how artificial intelligence (AI) is impacting learning businesses across 4 key areas in the customer engagement cycle: employment, marketing, products/services, and evaluation and impact. They also share tips and resources to help learning leaders begin thinking about how to best position themselves to meet the evolving needs of learners.

Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode173. 

Our sponsors for this episode are:

Blue Sky eLearn, the creator of the Path Learning Management System, an award-winning cloud-based learning solution that allows organizations to easily deliver, track, and monetize valuable education and event content online. Blue Sky also provides webinar and webcast services, helping you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience across the world.

Authentic Learning Labs, an education company seeking to bring complementary tech and services to empower publishers and L&D organizations to help elevate their programs. The company leverages technology like AI, Data Analytics, and advanced embeddable, API-based services to complement existing initiatives, offering capabilities that are typically out of reach for resource-stretched groups or growing programs needing to scale.

As an internationally renowned blogger, Harold Jarche is focused on providing actionable insights for organizations related to learning, work, and innovation. He’s best known for his approach to Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM), which helps professionals become knowledge catalysts through a continuous process of seeking, sensing-making, and sharing. Because it’s designed to help each of us more effectively manage knowledge networks and the communities we are a part of, it’s definitely aconcept that every learning business professional should be familiar with.

In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Jeff talks with Harold about the ongoing process of PKM, how individuals can pursue it, and the role learning businesses –particularly membership organizations – might play in supporting it. They also talk about the difference between social networks and communities of practice as well as the important role diversity plays in effective communities.

Full show notes at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode172. 

Our sponsors for this episode are:

Blue Sky eLearn, the creator of the Path Learning Management System, an award-winning cloud-based learning solution that allows organizations to easily deliver, track, and monetize valuable education and event content online. Blue Sky also provides webinar and webcast services, helping you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience across the world.

Authentic Learning Labs, an education company seeking to bring complementary tech and services to empower publishers and L&D organizations to help elevate their programs. The company leverages technology like AI, Data Analytics, and advanced embeddable, API-based services to complement existing initiatives, offering capabilities that are typically out of reach for resource-stretched groups or growing programs needing to scale.

Gary Cokins, founder and CEO of Analytics-Based Performance Management, LLC, is an internationally recognized expert in performance improvement systems, advanced cost management, and predictive business analytics.  He’s also a speaker and co-author of Predictive Business Analytics: Forward Looking Capabilities to Improve Business Performance.

And with data analytics being a focus area for those of us in the learning business—two of the leading trends that surfaced in our 2019 Trends in Learning Businesses survey were around using data to make better product decisions and show impact—Gary has tremendous insight to offer on the topic.

In this episode of the Leading Learning podcast, Celisa talks with Gary about predictive business analytics including why it needs to be a part of your organizational competency, common misconceptions and barriers, and tips for getting started with it.

Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode171. 

Our sponsors for this episode are:

Blue Sky eLearn, the creator of the Path Learning Management System, an award-winning cloud-based learning solution that allows organizations to easily deliver, track, and monetize valuable education and event content online. Blue Sky also provides webinar and webcast services, helping you maximize your content and create deeper engagement with your audience across the world.

Authentic Learning Labs, an education company seeking to bring complementary tech and services to empower publishers and L&D organizations to help elevate their programs. The company leverages technology like AI, Data Analytics, and advanced embeddable, API-based services to complement existing initiatives, offering capabilities that are typically out of reach for resource-stretched groups or growing programs needing to scale.