The LearnLogic Podcast - With Nick Webb

In a time of massive change, stakeholders are looking to be led by managers and leaders that want to collaborate and co-create. Today employees want to be involved in a mission that is part of their own personal evolution that is in the service to others.

Most organizations fail at innovation because they’ve never really committed to it in the first place. To make innovation real and to provide a return on investment organizations need to craft thoughtful strategies that include all of the many disparate parts that make up innovation.

This is an introductory video on Nick Webb’s upcoming video series on how to Master innovation, leadership, a culture of happiness, and current trends in healthcare.

Well, today I'm going to talk about one of my favorite subjects, something I've spent my entire life researching, and really trying to understand this bizarre and a morphus area of enterprise success. Well, we're gonna call it customer experience, because, well, that's what everybody calls it. Some people refer to it as customer service. And of course, those are two separate things. But we'll talk about that in a minute. But I'm going to make a proclamation here. And it's taken me a really long time to realize this. And that is that customer experience is actually an innovation activity. I mean, think about what is innovation? Well, I describe innovation in my book, The innovation mandate, very simply, innovation is the creation of novel value that serves your enterprise and your customer. Okay, let's layer that definition. Now on to customer experience, customer experience, is the creation of novel value, as serves your enterprise and your customer. Wow, isn't that interesting? Well, the problem is, then most people that are the owners of customer experience within their organization, don't really understand that it's an innovation activity. And as a result of that, they don't do a very good job. In fact, it's interesting to me when I hear the term best practices around customer experience. These are organizations that are horrible, that are using these systems, Net Promoter scores, customer surveys, blah, blah, blah, it's a joke. They're trying to McDonald lies and create assembly lines around understanding what their customers care about. And they fail at it with mathematical certainty. Like, it's just not that easy. But the good news is, it's fun. It's fast. And it's doable, if you apply a different principle to customer experience. And it's what I call CSI customer experience innovation. Now, there are some elements of this that have to always work really, really well. And these are what I like to call the four dimensions of customer experience success. Now, before I introduce these concepts, I want to point out again, that some of the people that are out there that are considered to be the so called thought leaders in customer experience, are actually ex executives from some of the worst companies in the planet.

Now, I'm all about love. And I never like to mention names because I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. But you know, name a major brand that you hate, and chances are their ex chief director of customer experience is now an author out there telling you how you can be crappy too. It's ridiculous. Alright, let's talk about what really works. What really works is that in order to innovate, in order to create better experiences, we have to get far better insights. And we can't do that through CRMs. nps is and customer service, in my opinion. Now, everybody's welcome to their own opinion. But I can tell you that the statistics show that a lot of the worst companies in the world are in fact using these so called gotta hate to use the term best practices. Alright, so let's talk about what you really need to do. And unfortunately, I don't have enough time in this podcast to tell you everything. I sometimes feel like a doctor that doesn't get enough time with their patient. I know that they're going to leave they're in a situation where they don't really have all of the answers to optimize their health and I I really hate that. Although at Learn logic at my learn logic, comm we have created certification programs. So no matter where you live within your organization, if you're a strategist. In other words, if you own customer experience, you can take our certified master of Customer Experience Program.

You know, today I want to talk about, I guess what you could call the elephant in the room, the post COVID economy. I mean, now what, with vaccines rolling out quickly, and everyone's scrambling to try to figure out what the new future looks like. I think it's important to understand that there are many, many changes that will occur as a result of the C 19. economy. And I want to categorize them for you today in a way that makes them understandable and approachable. And, and most importantly, what I want to share with you is a way to make these changes actionable within your organization. So I call this the C 19. Economy because it really accelerated the rate of disruption. In other words, see 19 disrupted disruption. And what that really means is that it increased the speed and the size of change. It's really just that simple. We were already on a high level of acceleration in terms of the nature of change, societal changes, economic changes, emerging technologies, new connection architectures, new economic and value models, all of these things were happening at a very, very fast rate. In fact, these were unprecedented how quickly they were occurring. So what happened when c 19 hit us, it really sort of worked as a multiplier, it increased digitization of everything, it increased consumers pickiness and demands, it increased new innovations in the area of new economic and value models, right. And it also increased competition, meaning that they were maybe less money flowing, yet they were the same amount of people wanting access to that money, that revenue. Okay, so let's talk about the C 19. Economy and the three big shifts. There are three big shifts that really are your future. And if you can keep these in mind and your strategic planning process and the way in which you deploy your future ready strategies, I think these can really help you in a very, very big way. Now, before I go into the three big shifts, I want to make a very simple proclamation here. And that proclamation is that things are now different. I know that doesn't sound very profound. But let me say it again, things are now super different. So in a time of differentness, we have to be really careful not to double down on sameness. Now, unfortunately, in my management consulting practice, I see especially a lot of my large clients are really doubling down on their legacy view of the universe. Remember, you can't get anywhere, if you're focusing on sameness in a time of different nests. You can't serve your customers, you can't find new economic models, you can't deliver future readiness and scalable growth and profitability. It just is impossible. So if we're in a time of differnece, we know now or at least I hope you believe me that this is not a good time to focus on sameness. Then that means that we now have to focus on differentness. Oh yeah, there's another word for that. Innovation. We have to create new ways in which we serve our customers new ways in which we manage our financials stewardship, the way in which we operate the efficiencies of our enterprises, the way we gain access to technologies and products and production and everything, everything has changed. At a time of different notice. We need to commit and lean into innovation. Okay, let's talk about the three drivers of change the three big shifts. Here we go. Shift number one is what I call hyper consumerization. Consumers now have decided that they expect a lot more because there's a lot more people wanting their business.

And one of the biggest and anatomical features of the consumer demand the new hyper compute competition landscape is friction. customers do not want friction If your organization isn't involved in a friction elimination process right now, in my opinion, this should be priority one. How can we eliminate friction? How can we make it easier to do business with us? How can we eliminate processes and, and steps that customers have to go through to make t

Today, I'd like to talk about the oil and gas industry. When you think about innovation, it's really hard to exclude oil and gas has been at the very top of your list. And the reason for that is the oil and gas industry has made unprecedented levels of investment in trying to identify new alternative sources of energy. And they've had a great deal of successes in that regard. But there are many complex factors that are changing the oil and gas industry, one of which is hyper consumerization, and consumer demand of new alternative energy sources. We also see major changes in the way in which consumers are using energy. And as a result of that, they are in a state of massive massive disruption. So the future of oil and gas is basically the subject of the C 19. Economy. There are three big shifts, and these big shifts will impact oil and gas. And I guess the key word here is innovation. Because in a time of differentness, the oil and gas industry simply cannot double down on sameness. They have to move away from some of their legacy ideas about oil and gas. Although I must say that most of the organizations with in oil and gas are in fact disruptive innovators, and they have put an inordinate amount of time and effort and resources into innovating the changes that are occurring around them. So here are the three big shifts that will affect oil and gas. Number one, hyper consumerization we realized that most organizations in oil and gas see their business customer as their primary customer often. But there is an end user, and that end user needs to be connected to a product in a way that delivers higher degrees of value and in a way that enjoys friction freedom. Understanding customers better in a time of massive change will be critical for the oil and gas industry. What do they love? What do they hate? Who are the personas that they serve? What is the customer's journey look like? So the best organizations in oil and gas will build out what I call CXI customer experience innovations, and they'll build it out as a formal innovation strategy. And as a result, they will continue to deliver incredible value across the supply chain. The second major shift of the C 19 economy is the big shift of enablers, and connectors. Now this is a very important part. enabling technologies will help oil and gas organizations increase efficiencies, reduce waste, leverage technologies like artificial intelligence to improve environmental impact and to identify new sources. The enablers of technology will be incredibly important over the next five years, as oil and gas continues their great trajectory. The second component of this big shift is the connectors. And we're now seeing sensor technologies, connecting everything to everything. It is the Internet of Everything. And when everything across the supply chain and every valve and every instrument and everything that lives within oil and gas is connected, we will do a far better job of understanding how to improve efficiencies, how to reduce waste, and how to create more positive impacts on the environment. enabling technologies and connection architecture is an incredibly important part of oil and gas future. Lastly is new economic and value models. It used to be that most innovations occurred at the level of new product development. But today, the new innovations are primary Lee new economic models. Let's face it, Instagram didn't invent music. Netflix didn't invent movies. They invented new ways to deliver it that was convenient and friction free and beautiful. Those are where the great opportunities are for oil and gas. So there you have it. Those are the big three shifts, hyper consumerization, the enablers and the connectors and lastly The new value and economic models. Hope you enjoyed this brief primer on the impact of the C 19. Economy on oil and gas. Until next time,

Today, I'm going to talk about the tricks and the tips and the hacks and the best practices for managing remote teams. Now, the first thing we have to recognize is that managing remote teams is very different than managing captive teams. Now, it would be easy to believe that the exact same leadership principles and managerial principles apply, but the truth of the matter is, they really don't. So we have to begin from that trajectory of realizing that, you know, this is a very, very different discipline. So from that beginning, let's talk about those differences. You know, what are the key differences is that your team members are feeling isolated, they're feeling disconnected. Oftentimes, they're distracted, they have many things that are going against them that could adversely impact their quality of life, and also significantly, adversely impact their productivity, presenteeism, and output yield. So what we really want to do here is we want to make sure that we serve these amazing people who wake up every day to serve our mission. So I believe that any good leader should always begin the process from the perspective of looking at the quality of work life as the foundation for their leadership skills while managing remote workers. What do I mean by that? Look, if we want them to be productive, if we want them to serve our mission, if we want them to do the things we want team members to do? We first and foremost have to make sure they're okay. You know, it's not easy for many people to create what I call compartmentalization. And that's one of the first things I'd like you to think about. compartmentalization suggests that an employee is happy and productive to the extent that they compartmentalize work, and home. Now, there are two aspects to compartmentalization. One is the fact that they have to compartmentalize themselves physically, we know that we can have far more productive employees that are far more happy. If they can go to a physical space that feels like a workspace, that's a way from distraction, where they can really feel kind of emotionally that they are at work. The other thing that is important to this whole scenario is that in their physical space of compartmentalization that feels like an office, they also have to be in a psychic space. And that's why most of the successful workers that work from home, create environments that really look like a work environment. If you're working from your couch, you're probably not going to be very productive. And you're also going to always feel like you're at work yet, you're gonna feel like you're never at work, you're gonna feel like you're always at home, you're gonna feel like you're never at home, it's really important to create the visibility, through compartmentalization, both spatially and psychically. That's my first recommendation. Now, the other thing is, is that we want to really be able to increase engagement and the management of productivity and yield. Here's something that's interesting. And I've used this method with my consulting clients with tremendous, tremendous success is it turns out that your team wants really clear and crisp and very specific direction every single day, without it feeling like specific direction every single day. And in this presentation, I'm going to talk to you about the way in which we use sprints that are agile, that are fast, that are measurable, and they're really received well by your teams, we're gonna, we're gonna build out weekly sprints, because that's the way the best organizations are providing a beautiful experience for their teams, while also serving their enterprise goals of productivity and presenteeism. 

You know, things are changing really quickly. And so many individuals are now working from home or working in some other remote environment. And you know, it's either good or bad, depending on how you manage your remote work life. Now, I've had the great opportunity to work as a management consultant. And as a CEO of several organizations, and much of that time over the last 30 years, I would work remotely because our corporate offices were located in another city. And I had four children and two dogs during that period of time. So I had to create a work life that was remote that was also productive, and you know, really a happy work life. And, you know, I made a lot of mistakes. In the beginning, one of the biggest mistakes I made is that it took me some time to manage the number one cardinal rule of working remotely. And that is compartmentalization. In other words, you really have to create both spatial spaces, spatial environments, to work, but you also have to create psychic spaces, meaning that you kind of have to feel like you're at work. And I know that may sound superficial, but the truth of the matter is, if we don't know how to feel like we're at work, then the way in which we approach work is very, very different. And usually defunct, for an example, I have people that I know that try to work from home from their iPad from their couch, it just never really works. Because you always feel like you're at home. And you always feel like you're at work, and you never feel like you're at home, and you never feel like you're at work. And it's incredibly stressful. So the first recommendation I would have when working remotely is master compartmentalization, both psychically and spatially. Go to a place that feels like work. Always work in that space. When you're home, never work in any area of your home. That is not a pre designated workspace. Now, again, I know this sounds superficial, but trust me, I've done I've done this for 30 years. And as a management consultant, I've worked with a top brands to help their teams do this better. So the first thing you have to do is get to that space, where you're really and truly, both physically and psychically divided. Now, there are four things that you really need to do to thrive and prosper as a remote worker. Number one is you need to learn how to manage, monitor and improve your quality of work life. Now, I'm going to say this emphatically and I say it in my certified remote worker training program is that you come first, your self care, your happiness comes first. Because you can never be a productive employee, you can never do the work that you need to do for your enterprise if you're not happy. And happiness requires, again, the divisibility of where you work and where you live. Right. So managing that quality work, life is important. There's some other things you should definitely factor in, you need to create both virtual slash digital, and physical external connectivity. Now, what I mean by that is, is that we humans are happy when we're social. And we really need to be able to collaborate with our team, our team members and our co workers in a way that is satisfying to us because we we love that we love to co create into Ida. So always schedule time to be able to collaborate with, with team members and co workers so that you feel like you're part of a collective effort, that social engagement is really, really important to your quality of life. Now, here's the other thing. One of the biggest pitfalls of working from home is that it's 1130. You've got a proposal Do you look up and it's now six o'clock, you didn't take lunch, you didn't take a break, you didn't really move. That's only something that you can do for a short period of time. 

Hi, this is Nick Webb and welcome to another episode of the disruption podcast. Today, I'm going to talk about the skills based economy. You know, the skills based economy is actually a real thing. It's not a unicorn, it means that the economy is driven by particularity of skills, not by generality of skills. Yet, it's interesting. You know, I've served several years as an adjunct professor at a top medical school and one of the things I realized is that the traditional educational model is really based on delivering generality of skills. Even in something as granular as a particular course on something we still can't resist to add lots and lots of generality, ised skill can take a fraction of the time and be far, far more valuable to the student and to the company, or organization they serve. Let me give you an example. Recently, we were going to hire a project manager at one of my companies. So we took a look at the average price to hire a graduate, somebody that graduated with a bachelor's degree in LA County at the time, it was in this 60,000 range to hire somebody that had some expertise in project management with a four year investment. They thought, you know, that's probably not good enough. We want somebody that has real, real real skills around project management. So we decided we wanted to hire somebody that was a certified project manager. You take a look at Jeff, that job description and the average salary was $120,000, double the value of a four year college, yet that particular certification took on average about 18 months, half the time, twice the value. Let me say that again. In a skills based economy, you can take training that is possible to acquire in half or less the time with twice the financial value to you the employee. But wait, there's still more. The Enterprise also benefits significantly from the granularity of a skills based education. So there you go. The skills based economy says that if you have contemporary skills that meet the three P's of the skill based economy, you can make more money. Be more relevant to the organization you serve, and provide provable real value to the enterprise you serve. I think that's incredible. Now, I said there are three P's, to the skills based economy. Let's talk about that. The first one is what I call priority. Priority says disruption, market trends, the economy, all the complex variables that make up the ecosystem by which an organization lives determines what skills are most valuable. So the ecosystem, the economy, the marketplace, technologies in some cases, but it's all of these complex variables that says, hey, today, the overwhelming majority of ads are put in the form of Google advertising, not print advertising. So we're looking for a certified AdWords partner, somebody who has been trained by Google to know how to manage a Google AdWords campaign. Right so the technology change the direction of the educational priority. Or it may be that your organization uses a CRM like Salesforce and you need to be certified in Salesforce. The point is, is that sometime we hit priority to changes in technology and technology utilization. And other times it's driven by market changes. Were an example innovation certifications have become very popular because people need to learn how to identify new ways to deliver novelty In terms of internal and external innovations. So when you see the overall first p, it's about the priority that's driven by the complexity of the marketplace.

Hi, this is Nick Webb and welcome to another episode of the disruption podcast. I'm really excited about today's podcast, I don't have a guest, but I wanted to share with you five principles that are really shaping the future of education. And these are important whether or not you are an educator or somebody who's looking to take your career, or your organization to another level. Things have changed in education in a very, very big way. It surprisingly, universities and other online programs really haven't seemed to sort of get it. And in this short podcast, I want to share with you what the best organizations are doing to help students learn skills that are targeted, that are relevant, and that really, ultimately provide mastery in a particular area. Now learn logic is a company I founded with the Express idea of taking the science of what I call the nano Pac technology, and apply it so that students can learn really, really complicated things really, really fast. In a way that doesn't seem too painful. Also, it allows them to be able to really understand the hacks and tricks and the tips and the things that the superstars are doing in order to lead a particular area. You know, it's interesting that as much as two thirds of the information that's delivered in most educational programs is a complete and total waste of time. And I can tell you as a best selling author, if I were to write a pamphlet that was 30 pages of a summary of one of my books. I mean, I could never sell it for 2995. Right, my publisher could never get top dollar for it if it was just 30 pages. So what authors do, and what do publishers do, they have a minimum page count. Because we write, by the pound, we write, by the pound, we have a value perception, perception of quantity. And that's what creates a lot of problems. When you take a look at an average lecture, if you really listen to the lecture, they could have told you what they just talked about in about 10 minutes. Why didn't they? Why didn't they give me 75% of my life back? That's what we should be doing in education. But wait a minute, what happens if we pull away all those non meat fillers? Are we reducing the quality of the of the content? No turns out that we actually can increase the student's ability to retain the content if we remove the white noise and the wasted hypotheticals and theorems and concepts and historical perspectives. We're in a skills based economy. The skills based economy is where we teach people to do skills at a master level. And that's the logical way to learn. And that's what this podcast and for that matter, my company learn logic. That's what we're all about. So here are the five things that we do, and the best organizations do when attempting to deliver amazing curriculum to students. Number one is it's about granularity. Not in generality. I don't care if my dentist is a good golfer. I don't care if my dentist is familiar with post reconstructive history. I only care if my dentist knows dentistry. Yet the overwhelming majority of education that dentists gets have nothing to do with dentistry. We're changing that. We're beginning to develop high degrees of relevancy and granularity so that we can take the focus away from irrelevancy and make it granular and specific to what we want a student to learn. I mean, duh, right. The second component of the five components of the logical way to learn is content density. If we remove the amount of time that we want students to suffer through learning, but it's important that we give them content that is highly dense. In other words, we do have a little bit of a caveat when we decide to offer are students by not making them wait through long, horrible lectures. The challenge that we have is we've got to make sure in the time that we do have students that the content is very, very dense that has lots of great stuff that they can use. The third component to the science of education today is speed.