LH #118 Human Moments: the View from Crotonville w. Jay Moore and Doug Scott

The leaders really ensured, John, that when you were attending a class, all your other work was put to the side. Your focus was completely on the learning.

You go to Crotonville and egos just evaporate. And I think the fact that egos evaporate allows learning to happen, allows challenge to happen, allows feedback both ways.

Welcome to the Learning Hack, a podcast about the people and technologies that are creating the future of learning. I'm John Helmer.

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For the first few episodes of this season, we focused pretty heavily on AI, culminating in Brian Murphy's plea for a more human centric use that this powerful technology. So in this episode I want to look at what it really means to be human centric in learning. What are the things about training that were good in the days when we didn't have any digital intermediaries? Which are the parts that really worked and which are the ones we perhaps dispense with at our peril in the drive to technology fuel deficiency? If you're old enough, you could cast your mind back to the era of bricks and mortar training centers and listen to this interview with two of the leading figures from GE's legendary training centre, Crotonville, Jay Moore and Doug Scott. Facts. Jay Moore is a former global director at GE's legendary Crotonville Leadership Development center, where he shaped programs that became a model for corporate learning worldwide. With a background in human resources and leadership consulting, he's known for bringing authenticity and curiosity to learning design. Doug Scott led Crotonville's digital learning transformation, championing innovative human centered approaches to leadership development that bridge classroom and workplace. Together, they represent two generations of Crotonville's enduring learning philosophy. This was not a nostalgia trip. It was about what happens when the CEO sits down to lunch next to the company's newest hire. Or when people from different divisions or regions of a company's operations mingle informally and trade perspectives and ideas about what people do together that can help the company learn and grow and preserve its knowledge. What do we most value in these human contacts? And what can we least afford to lose? So, Jay and Doug, it's a great pleasure to have you on the podcast. Welcome to the Learning Hack.

Thanks very much. Thank you.

So I had a great time researching this podcast. In particular looking at your conversation with Temi Bamboy. So sorry, Temmie, for mangling your name on the Iventive podcast. People who I should say people who follow the podcast will be used to me mispronouncing names at length. We have another podcast called the Great Minds on Learning with some very challenging names, but I won't go into them. Anyway, you two are inspired and inspiring people I could see from my research. And GE is of course famous in the business community for its learning culture and its Rockstar CEO, Jack Welch, who you know, Rockstar CEO is a bit of a kind of 21st century coinage, but he was a Rockstar CEO when there actually were rockstars. But for those who don't know, can you tell us about Crotonville, which is probably what we're going to be talking most about? The training center for ge. What is it, what's its history and what has its place within learning? Been in Germany?

Jay, why don't you kick off with that?

I'll kick off the last one in. You're going to fill in the blanks, Doug. So, John, thanks again for everyone that's watching or listening to us. And to be with Doug in this conversation is just time well spent. So it dates back to the 1950s, John, at the Crotonville site. And the CEO at that time, Ralph Cordner, was looking at a way to scale the professional manager at ge. The company was growing at such a pace and speed, the typical schools and graduate schools just couldn't keep up with the demand. So he and the board made a purchase of a farm in Ossining, New York, titled the Wind Rose Farm. And from that they created Doug. I believe it was like a 13 week class for the advanced manager class that started in January of 1956, all focused on developing the professional manager for GE. So massive investment in some ways. You could even look at a way where it even substituted for a master's degree at that time. So that's the origins, John. Over the decades, each CEO made various investments. You'd mentioned Jack, earlier. Yet each CEO has leveraged the site in various ways to drive their strategy, the leadership capabilities and the culture of the company. And it became a real value add for the employees and being able to go to one central location to have this type of investment. So, Doug, let me just stop there. What else would you add relative to the history and just set up for the question.

Yeah, I was a late starter in GE. I joined GE in 2006 and I think, and in the UK, I'll be honest, you know, when I joined GE, it wasn't as well known as it is now, but I would say within about three days of joining the business I knew what Crotonville was because everybody talked about it, and I knew within three days I wanted to get there as a participant because it just had that. And it wasn't, hey, you've got to get there because people look at you. It was, you've got to get there, because good people go there. They learn to do great stuff with great people, and it helps you on your journey. And we spend a lot of time talking about growth mindset nowadays. Yes, I'd say that was the original growth mindset people wanted. You didn't get there because you'd served time. You got there because of who you were and what you brought to the business. And I think as a driver of growth mindset, for me, in 2006, when I joined the business, I'd say Chromeville was a massive draw and a massive reason to stay and develop within such a great company. And the problem being in GE is everybody's trying to coach you because it's a great company.

Yeah. Interesting. Because you get that grounding. Yeah. It's such a contrast to, you know, my kids sort of say. I say, oh, how's it going at your new job? So, oh, got to do some E learning. And, well, what's the E learning about? Compliance. And they get hours and hours of it. You know, people in financial companies especially have all these hours of this kind of mandated stuff, and that's their image of the kind of development they're going to get very often nowadays. I mean, you know, obviously it's not the same in organizations, but it's so interesting to focus on this. I think with this interview, in a way, it's the thing of the past, but there is something enduring about the promise of that. So with regards to leadership especially, but also learning in general, what's the ethos and culture of Crotonville? What more can you say about that? And what does make it special?

I mean, for me. And our motto about leading, inspiring, connecting people, I think summarizes everything it's about. And it's one of the big things with Crotonville. And it comes down to eating. Breaking bread is always a good thing. And you come into the dining room and there are tables of 12, 14 seats around them. And the rule is you walk into the dining room and you sit down, which means you could have someone who's pretty junior in the business sitting with one of our top 200 officers. And the exchange of information, the thought exchange, was encouraged both ways. There's a lot our younger generation can teach the older generation. And Vice versa. So I think the encouragement, it was the place as well as the ethos created that place for people to. To have permission to learn both ways and have permission not to know things and to ask questions. Over to you, Jay.

I think, yeah, I hook onto that. Right. Because there's a lot of richness in that, Doug. Right. I think of John in that question. Just building upon Doug, like, when I would have the opportunities in the P and L to go to a classic Crotonville, I always felt it just represented the best of George. And what I mean by that is, at any given time, you have customers that are at the facility, you have the multiple business units you have, whether it's new leader to the company, to a senior vice president or the CEO themselves at the session where those leaders really played a part in supporting the learning, but also acting as faculty in many cases in supporting. So I always just felt like this was a way of what when I was. When I would go, it would be a big marker of wow, I. I got the green light to actually go. I was nominated to. To attend. But then when I attended to Doug, your point? My network just expanded in a large way and my. My perspective grew in a much larger way because my lens on the business units and the cycles and the styles and then a lot of self introspection in peer coaching. You just came back with just a different lens at any one of those experiences.

Yeah, I think I'd add something else in there, which is quite important. And I came out of pharmaceuticals to come into ge and I love my time in pharma as well. But it's interesting. You go to Crotonville and egos just evaporate. And I think the fact that egos evaporate allows learning to happen, allows challenge to happen, allows feedback both ways. And I think that's really encouraged. And it was quite interesting to see. And I remember having conversations with people about big leaders I'd worked with in Crotonville, and people like, how did you talk to them like that? We're wary of them because they're such a big part. And it's like, do you know what? There's none of that there. It's all about how are we helping each other? And it is, you've got a hand, you've got to help yourself, but you're also there to help each other. And I've not seen anything like it in my time before or after. I've seen patches, but nothing so strong.

Yeah, not to that level of investment as well as the global framework. Doug, that we had at the regional level. And I'll just underscore another piece, Doug, that the leaders really ensure, John, that when you were attending a class, all your other work was put to the side. Your focus was completely on the learning. And look, there can always be some, like, outliers of that. But I would say the majority of those people that attended, their mandate was to enjoy and experience that learning and bring that back. So I would just say that culture of learning, of where we give the individual space to learn, is very much protected. And I think that's very much a cultural anchor of the company.

Very much learning not in the flow of work.

Well, I was going to say I'd add on to what you said there, Jay, around just the environment, because I'd say probably about a third of the learning is not done in the classroom. A third of the learning is done. People are for walks, people in the coffee shop, people in the bar, people having dinner, people are singing. And this is going to sound a little bit silly, but people are singing karaoke in the bar. But you've got senior leaders. And sometimes some of the people I work with, them. I know you, Jake, play the piano. So they play the piano. And you know, you would have a group of people from super seniors to super junior all together. And again, the environment wasn't Crotonville. It wasn't the buildings, the group of people in Crotonville. I stayed in Crotonville first week in January, coming to one of my team meetings. And I just flew in a little bit early because I flew in from London and I had a night in Crotonville on my own. Scariest place I've ever been because dark corridors. I was trying to get some water, but I walked around in the morning, first thing, and I realized this is a group of buildings. What makes Crotonville Crotonville are the cadre of people there and the cadre of participants, cadre of people teaching. We all have a common theme and a common culture and that brings it alive. And there's no textbook for that. You choose it.

We've had 10 minutes talking about something which flies in the face of modern digital learning. Everything we've been talking about is physical world. The architectural, the meetings, the mingling, the kind of talks away from the actual class. Crotonville is, of course, a physical world campus. And I gathered something that most companies dispensed within the 2000s. I remember this. People were. Were selling off their training centers, getting into E learning. But we live in an increasingly digital world in Training. And I do understand that Crotonville has actually been sold off now, although people from GE can still use it. What's been the process of embracing digital as part of the reality at Crotonville? I kind of feel like it, from what you're saying that it persists as an idea, but, but we've kind of moved from that world of physical face to face training to something else and something more mixed. How has that happened?

I would say, you know, the company, this is what I always enjoyed about the company, John and Doug, is that they were always forward leaning, you know, credit to the CEO and the CHROs that held those positions. So Doug, I remember back in what, you know, 2016, 2017 area with the start of the Brilliant U academy of where we were bringing digital components. So it was like, this is like pre LinkedIn, John. Yeah, where we built out organically digital content. But as we were doing that and experimenting with a lot of different tools, Covid did accelerate it for us, as it did for everyone. And Doug, if you recall this, you know, we were ready to launch just at the start of COVID like our next term of curricula. We put it on hold because of the environment we're in. And we made a mad dash to how do we take care of the employees in this moment and how do we give them experiences where we can't physically be together? So we started to play around with what is the art of possible with this. John Right. So as many companies did, and we started with our employees in China, that's where it was first affected. Then it was to Italy, Doug and River College, the European locations. And then we started taking all the curriculum we were building out for the year that was to be face to face. We redesigned it for virtual learning. So we did accelerate that in many ways. Fast forward. Of course, now it's more John Upland and we can get into that. But Doug, I'd love to hear your reflections as well with that timeline as we reflect on that.

This is where I have to ask for forgiveness because I and I had a colleague called Elena who was working in elearning for a long time. And I used to quite openly say to Elena, you cannot change people with E learning. It doesn't work. You can't do it. And then we had Covid, of course, and then I got my hat and ate several of them and apologized because you know what? And I still think, I think you can get information and you can get some behavioral change. I think if, if emotions are high, face to face works better. For example, I do a lot of work with teams who have fallen out for whatever reason.

All right.

And bringing them together face to face is most effective. You can do it virtually. But I would say, I remember when we ended Covid. I think if you look at some elearning you can have, it's almost like, hello, welcome to the elearning. Get ready to get bored. Hear me, I'm better than you. You could be like me. And I remember we shot some videos. I shot some videos in my kitchen. Johnny, remember them? Jay?

I remember. Oh yeah.

I shot one called Cooking Up Great Meetings.

That's right.

And I was in the kitchen. I'm like, okay, a little bit of this. What this is invitations. And it was just funny. And in fact, one of the GE businesses still uses that video and I did ones about change. And the whole piece is if you make it entertaining, people engage. So I am actually a convert. I think it's a multiplier. I think it allows people who wouldn't have the opportunity to have great learning to have great learning. Because it's expensive. Not even Crotonville or anywhere else you go, it's expensive to get bodies together. And I think is it 100% for everything? No, it's not. Is it 75%? It certainly can be. And if you aren't going to get the opportunity to grow and learn, but you can do it that way. I think it's got a massive place and I put my hand up to go. I may have made an ego driven error in saying it'll never catch on. And here I am doing a lot of it myself. So yeah, I think there still is a place for face to face. And it's not to do with level. It's to do with the level of emotional energy involved in the level of psychological safety. You need to get where you're trying to go. But I think the blend of the two allows many, many more people to get learning and to lift their careers and to lift their own personal journey as well. Because I'm going to be. This is a holistic thing. We can work with somebody at work, but it still affects the family, still affects everything else that they're going to do. So I think it's a real opportunity to help more people. So I'm a strong believer now. But I don't think it's an either or. As Jay said, I think the blend and making a cognitive choice as to what will work best rather than being in one camp or the other, is what matters.

The technology obviously has changed Times have changed. Values have changed quite radically quite recently. The Crotonville values you talk about, positivity, camaraderie, support. Corporations are inspiring, but in many ways these run counter to the spirit of the times. The new exemplary business leaders, the ones who are making the most money, people like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Marc Andresen, they talk a very different language. I was talking to an oldie learning lag like me just today over coffee and I said, it seems to me that we have kind of information age technology and Bronze Age ethics, and Thucydides has more to do with it than some of the leadership learning gurus. Thucydides who said, the, the powerful do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. That seems to be the spirit of the times. And it's at odds with what you're telling me about Crotonville. But this is the world in which those aspiring leaders will have to operate in. Is Crotonville an ivory tower?

Can I jump in there? Because I, of course, I don't think it is. I think what we do and did at Crotonville and the ethos still runs through the businesses. It's around human beings working and working with human beings and working well with human beings. You know, when we talk about the Elon Musk's of this world, of course, you know, there's huge money involved, but they are the, you know, for every one of them, there's a thousand who are different. And I work with a lot of businesses across the world now who are not ge, obviously. And I still see a lot of the drive from what we had is what helps them make money. Because you want to keep people. I think it depends what your sector is as to longevity, but certainly in things like high end engineering, electronics, all those type of businesses, there is a war for talent. And you need to be working hard to keep your talent and to make them very hard to poach. So I don't think we're an ivory tower. I think I look at someone and say, we all drive our cars, we all fly in these planes and we're all great. But if I'm your boss and I say, john, can I have a word? And you say, yes. I say, in my office, John, your heart's just going up 20 beats a minute. So while we pretend we are still cavemen, cave women with the chemical and physical reactions that go on in our body, so we can pretend all this stuff, but the end of the day, you have a bit of elastic and certain people can stretch it and will suffer it, as you say. And other people, the elastic snaps and they say, cool, I'm going to go find somewhere else. Talent and knowledge nurturing it is the way to make business. I get very frustrated when people talk about soft skills because in my opinion I can buy anyone in to do hard stuff. Engineering, doctors, medic, you can learn that stuff. But getting an engineer who's an amazing leader, they're much rarer. And I think soft skills genuinely are the things that significantly uplift return on investment.

Just briefly John, because I love the setup on that question. Right. Because that is a reality. It gets the headlines every day. Right?

Yeah.

And I think people make a choice. Some people choose to go into that type of culture, they need to go into it wide eyed as to what those expectations are. When I left ge, it started with a culture of focus, transparency and humility. Your leadership are expected to act as a coach, to be able to help problem solve, to be supportive. Now are there outliers in any one of these systems? Absolutely. But people make a choice as it relates to what that is and then ultimately you can see what the results are as it relates to profit retention and Doug. I agree. I just see with clients I work with today I see those that are just a very supportive environment growing or even just managing through better in a tougher cycle. And I've got there are others that look extremely strong performance based culture that are trying to figure it out under very difficult and challenging circumstances. And what I always enjoyed about our work at ge, just as tough and demanding the performance culture was for any one of the CEOs, I as a leader would not have performed well unless I could exhibit the cultural aspects. Right. So think of that tension of performance. But also you've got to exhibit these attributes which means you're not just like running over everyone in the system to get there. So I think those two that calibration is really important.

If you're looking to connect with the top minds in learning and talent. There's no better place than an iVentive event that's I V E N T I V. Since 2009, they've hosted nearly 300 interactive conversational events exclusively for senior leaders like Global Header Learn. I've been a sponsor myself and found these events invaluable. Less about sitting and listening, more about real impactful conversations. It's an unmatched opportunity to collaborate with leading chief learning officers on the challenges they're tackling today. Join the conversation visit iventive.com learninghack that's iventive.com learninghack to move on to talk a bit about GE as a business. It's now three businesses in fact. Aerospace, energy and Healthcare. Healthcare that you mentioned, Doug. All those sectors face exciting new opportunities, but also awesome challenges, to name just a few. Climate change, geopolitics, the politicization of energy policy. We have now technology's disruption from AI, which is kind of all over this podcast. I have to say, when it comes to all those challenges in those three different sectors, how is Crotonville or the Crotonville idea helping leaders address these challenges?

Now? They're not separate businesses, right? So they have their cultural anchors, they have their own learning and development academies. When we broke up and readied the business units to launch, we made sure they had all the best technology for learning, the best people from the corporate center, the relationships we built over the decades with our vendors and partners, and then they chose as to which direction they go with. But I would say what still is consistent for each of those three, John, is they still focus and make even bigger investments than they've had before as it relates to the leadership capabilities and cultural aspects of their businesses. And now they're more focused too. Right. They've got separate boards that have that expertise. They've got leaders surrounding that business unit with specific expertise in those industries. And now they're also launching as it relates to. Okay, how does the learning academies within each of those groups support those. Those leaders? Doug, you also have managed as well just from a client based perspective and just staying in contact with some of the alum. What else would you add to that?

Yeah, do you know what the piece of that. And it's not just Crotonville, it's all good businesses who have this. It's around getting that helicopter view. And it's around while we're focused on the business. It is making sure people, not just at the senior level, but as they cascade below, down through their hierarchy, that people understand the wider aspects, the political aspects, the whole piece that's going on within the world. And going back to Crotonville, I remember I used to run MDC and Jeff Immelt would come in every time we ran mdc and without fail, Jeff would sit on the table and say, where are you from? And somebody would say, India, for example. So what's going on with your prime minister there? What's going on with your finance leaders there? What's going on with your head of energy? And I genuinely think a broad understanding of the world and the sectors in it, from politics to finance, to wars, et cetera, all those things that go together to make the environment that we have. I think that there was a value attached to that for people knowing that, and that continues on because that makes you a rounded business person. So maybe that's the hard skills that mix in with the soft skills that really create that nugget that people want to be working for them. So, yeah, no, I think keeping up to date is important and I think that that is valued and it's still valued. And my other clients as well, it's very much valued. Because how do you navigate unless you can have a look at a map.

Yeah.

And you've got to create the map and you've got to encourage people to get out of their silos and to understand what other people do and to understand how their environment works when you're working with people. I think of some of the times I've worked in GA in Conflict, where I've had two or three teams in a room, and without being rude, they really did not want to be sitting next to each other. And actually, when you actually ask people, you know, you have a good end of year, what does that look like? Talk to us about your end of year and they talk about their end of year and then someone else talks about their. It's like, oh, my gosh, there's a reason we're fighting your objectives or fighting my objective, and suddenly there's an under. And it's just about when people talk about what they agree on, then suddenly the disagreement's much smaller. And I think some of the pathway for that is that broad understanding of all the geopolitical things going on and also being careful not to get caught on a wave. Something that is super popular in the moment, but actually in nine months time, sorry, years time will cease to be because there's a danger of some of those putting a company off track or putting a strategy off track. So it really is about making sure that people's information is coming from several good sources and also the cognitive thought process within the individual. And they can talk about it because sometimes they may be talking complete sense and they've got to turn a lot of people to go. Actually, we do need to look at this. So bit of bravery as well, which I think encouraged in Crotonville.

Yeah, that's interesting. Do you think kind of mixing the age cohorts the way you were talking about at Crotonville is important in that as well? I mean, look at something like technology change. I was at a networking thing just this Week with a load of people, a few guys kind of in my own vintage, and a lot of young people there in the room as well. And of course, the subject was AI and so on. And we'd been through together the introduction of the Internet around the 2000s, and we'd seen the, you know, we'd seen the initial enthusiasm, the hype, the correction, and then the long slow crawl up there. And, you know, for us, we have that embedded in our expectations is that Gartner hype curve. And that any day now we're due for a. A kind of a bit of a correction on the AI enthusiasm. But as I was saying to kind of my contemporaries, you know, we don't talk a lot about that because people just say, well, you're old guys, of course you could be resistant to technology, but there are kind of insights I feel that you can pass on to people about these massive changes in things like technology. It'd be the same in energy and geopolitics and, and pharma and climate and all the rest of it.

So if I can pick up on that, John, I mean, I think one of the biggest things I hear from colleagues and friends as well as people I work with is around AI is such a massive subject. And there's two things. One, there's an expectation that we know. So sometimes that stops people understanding it because they've got to hide the fact they don't know.

Yes, a lot of that going on, covering ourselves.

But the other side of it is having some guidance from. And I don't care what age range people are, because I think there are skills throughout, but identifying the people who have the knowledge to tell us where to look and what's important, because there's such a huge amount of noise and making it work for us rather than us working for it.

Doug, let me add to that, because we had an example, John, to this very point where Susan Peters and Janice Semper introduced him to the organization, a class that was called People Leadership Expectations, where the whole idea was to get any new leader to the most senior leader together in a room as a cohort to talk through the values of the company and what the expectations are and how do we learn for each other. So it's interesting, you know, that question you have, John. I think it's all based upon the outcomes you desire, because in some cases you do want, like, populations and experiences together. In other cases you want exactly what you want. So I think it's. So much of it is in the design and what we discovered in that class, Doug. Right. Was that both groups learned from each other, so we kind of respected the expertise and the lenses, and I think all generations kind of came out with a different frame of reference by the design of that. So I think it is healthy if you're looking to introduce and enlighten in some way, having cohorts together, it can be very powerful.

Yeah.

There's something else to add to that, and it's perhaps not to do with what's not to do with AI, it's to do with what you just talked about, the pleasure. One of the things that sometimes happens when we're on the older side, I'm in the older gang, is people will say, oh, yeah, I know all about that. And what they mean is, they knew about it 15 years ago, but they've stopped using it. It's about, I know how to lose weight, but I still put food down my throat and don't lose weight. I know how to do it. So about knowing something versus using it and valuing it. And I think the younger generation are really useful because some of the things are quite new to them.

Yes.

And I think the other way around, they're very useful because things like AI are not new to them. There's no fear, there's excitement. And perhaps sometimes it needs to be calmed down a bit. Perhaps sometimes it needs to just have that energy and that fire to then get people like me and my cohort of Asia people to one understand that this can actually be a massive help. And again, knowing where the danger lies, they can help us with that because they're not scared. So they've seen it and experienced it and that helps us. Shortcut.

Yeah. And I've had that experience of some young person coming up with some great technology tool and say, yeah, no, I tried that. We tried that five years ago. It didn't work. And it's like, yeah, but it does work now. I remember Fred bought the first iPhone friend of mine. I said, no, Newton was rubbish. I'm sure this is rubbish too. How wrong I was. You know, Conversely, though, to kind of argue against that. I'm really surprised talking to my kids who kind of like early 20s. Well, they range quite a bit, but early 20 something in particular. How incredibly negative about AI they are. They're not enthused about it at all. They hate it. They tell me off for using it. They say, you know, you used to have a team of people, now you will do it with chatgpt. That's shameful, dad. You should be ashamed of Yourself, I.

Think it's a pivot. It's a pivot needed because there is that fear of will it steal all our jobs, will it do anything? And I think it will adapt and change some very heavy lifting jobs to actually make that. And the jobs, let's be honest, many times are not particularly most exciting things. It's moving stuff through process, etc. I think there is a threat to that and it's a bigger threat than it probably needs to be because we don't know what the threat is. So we just imagine in our heads what it could be rather than pivoting and thinking, okay, if that's where we are, how can I use this? And what other things may be opportunities for me? Because nonetheless, we are still working with humans and who knows what's going to be 20 years down the line, 10 years, five years down the line, five years. At the moment, the nuance of the human being and the understanding of the human being, I think is far, far more complex. You can memorize patterns, but genuinely making those connections, if we think of love or we think of distress, I think there's different things. So I just think there needs to be one eye on the threat. I get that. But one eye on what opportunity can I pivot to.

And I'll add on Doug, because, John, my children are similar age profiles as yours. And just think about this. They're the most connected generation on this planet. Right. They grew up into that system, whereas we had to unlearn and learn new things along the way. They grew up in that ecosystem and they have similar responses because they've seen the social impacts just within their grade school or high schools or college years. I think they're a bit more aware because they have more access to knowledge and they get concerned, my children are concerned about the energy consumption patterns around what this brings. Right. But like in any technology, and granted this one's coming at us in such an accelerated way, you know, we have to figure out how do we best use this. I mean, do you remember, let's pull the clock back 20 years ago, 30 years ago. What's the web going to do?

Yeah.

Are we still going to be all take orders Right. In the way that we did? Right. And oh, she's. Now we have. Right. So we go through these moments and introductions, but this one is at such a rapid rate at all geographies. It may just because we're a little bit smarter with use of these technologies that we're seeing that impact hit us so quickly.

Yeah. And as well Something that you're more aware of as your honour, I think, is that things can be a bit cyclical with these enthusiasms. I mean, for instance, a lot of UX people are being laid off at the moment and kind of a putative son in law of mine just got laid off from a big communications company as a UX designer and one of my daughters is an illustrator and so his work appears to be drying up. And you hear a lot about this. That kind of a is starting to impact a lot of entry level jobs especially. But you do also hear of companies where they kind of laid off a load of people and then had to hire them all back a year later when they found that ChatGPT couldn't, chatbots couldn't do it and so on. And Ida thought a UX designer is going to be on pretty safe ground because as Doug said, it's about kind of matching human needs and abilities to what machines can provide. And who does that better than a UX person?

There's something else to add to that, John, which is really important. You just both touched on it, which is if we think of how our companies have existed, whatever company it is, we bring people in, they do the heavy lifting, they do the junior work, but during that they're understanding and building knowledge and building knowledge through decisions that have worked, building ability to take decisions and responsibility and consequences for them. If AI takes all of this up, who's going to be a middle manager in 10 years time? Because all that cohort of people where we sifted, the smart ones, the ones that can get things done, we've got all those people and they become the next level and the next level, if that pipeline starts drying up, we're in trouble. So I do think again, another pivot, we need to find a way of being able to get them the experience and it's decision making and it's having your reputation and perhaps your livelihood in the line, sometimes with decisions, learning how to do that in a good way for when you go to lead big companies and even lead divisions or 10, 20 people. So I do think we have to have some caution around or some attention to where's that pipeline going and how do we, if it's not going to be the original way, how do we circumvent that and what type of things can we do to make sure that we can keep that going? Because at some point we will always have to have people in businesses running business. Certainly at the moment.

This is such an interesting topic because the clients we work with are Facing this real time. Yeah, look, there's high expectations for companies today to actually prove out their productivity. And generally what happens is, John, just like you described, they do the layoffs and then three months later they come back and they have to rehire at a higher expense. And lesson learned. I was on with a major airline just a week ago just to make a simple change to my flight that they canceled. And I went to the messaging app, which was an AI driven app, and it was absolutely rubbish. Absolutely rubbish. And I'm thinking through what's the brand implications, the dissatisfaction scores that come out of this. When I spoke to the human.

This.

Individual was able to help solve for that within just moments. And it was delightful experience coming out of that. So, look, I don't want to say I'm myopic. I think you have to have eyes wide open as it relates to all of these things, Doug, that you're mentioning and John, around privacy and employment, et cetera. But I am encouraged about how do you use it for good and how do you still keep humans as part of this? Because even in our own learning sphere, we are seeing work that would have taken us days and hours to do, being able to free up some time to do some deeper, thoughtful conversations. And I would say it actually enables the conversations as we started out when we're face to face to set relationships that are even stronger than what we had before.

Yeah. This brings me to my next question, which is going to get more specific about AI and learning. Doug, I was struck by something you said. People get energy from being with each other. And you've echoed those sentiments in this interview today. We're at a moment when a theme that comes up again and again at conferences now is how do we keep humans not only in the loop and preferably still in charge? How should we think about the priorities we need to maintain an effective balance of human and virtual content versus experience, et cetera, in the way we learn in the new age of AI. And that content question, of course, people are saying all the time we're too focused on content, but maybe we get a new balance of that. And how do we focus on those things in learning?

You know, I think I'd jump in there and talk about, you know, when we look at sending people. You talked about doing compliance training. When you're watching a video of someone going, do this, do this, do this, I think that's probably the lowest level of engagement. And people can be disengaged and do other things and tick the box. And I've Watched some online learning and some of it's been brilliant, but lots of it has been mediocre and minus. Then I watch online learning where there is a live person running it and you might have 20 or 30 people in the virtual room. And if it's done well, the engagement's really high. And I think that's the perfect middle ground. I think the motivated will always be motivated and they'll sit diligently and watch whatever they need to watch to get the information. I think you've got that big chunk of people who they're motivated when they're engaged and when they're not engaged they are disengaged. And actually there's a huge amount of talent there that we need to capture. So I think we are back to this. You've got to choose what are you doing. If you're just giving information, give information and a test. If you're giving information and you need attitudinal or behavioral change or self reflection, very hard to do that. That's why we have coaches, because we can't sit in a room and coach ourselves. I know what I need to change. I know the questions I need to ask myself. But you know what? Because I'm coaching myself, I can choose not to ask the questions that I really need to be asking myself. But when someone else does, like Jay, it's a very introspective session and helpful.

Yeah. And I'll hook onto that. Doug. I look at the coaching certification I did last year was brilliantly curated. I mean, brilliantly curated. It was over an eight month time period. And. And I think if you do it in a thoughtful way, with just the right tools, the right way of being able to connect the right production and support, you can have incredible outcomes. Back to the hybrid piece, Doug, that we were talking about.

Yeah.

G.E.

And I'm sure they continue in some spirit. They did do a blended approach, John, where I just. I'm more in this mindset today of where you have these longer platform programs. There's a tremendous value if you can get people together the first time together.

Yeah.

Build those relationships, send them off right back into the flow of work. If there's some midpoint where they can get together, great. If you can't, some way of celebrating together. So I just think this notion of bringing people together, being able to go back out and then coming together again, there are those moments. But again it's program design that you think through in all of those aspects. But I just went through eight months last year and I'll tell you, it was one of the best courses I took, Doug and John, just based upon how well designed and curated and how skilled the faculty and the producers were in that room.

One of the things I really like when you're doing, and I do it when I do, I'll do like a virtual course over like three, four months. Every week or every two weeks we'll meet and you might have 30 people in the room, split them into groups of four and get them doing things as a cohort on the road and then reporting back to the bigger group. Suddenly you get camaraderie there and you get support that it's more than just doing it with a leader up front. And if you're really sneaky, you get them to find TED talks and you get them to find books and you get them to find all sorts of things that then create a library for the group. So the cohort, even though they may be all over the world, they have an identity. And I think if you can create an identity, people hook onto that. So there's an identity of my small group, there's the identity of my small group amongst the other groups within the cohort. Then suddenly you've got something more than just virtual. There is that human connection.

And of course that's something that happens at the eventive events to plug the sponsor, which is not entirely gratuitous because, I mean, really, what this question about, are you optimistic about us being able to keep those kind of human connections in the mix, or is it just too expensive? But we can kind of simulate it virtually. But I mean, it's also really important to get people together in a room still.

No question, John. I mean, and that's credit to Russell and Susan and the Inventive team constantly looking at that very question. So that when we do get the individuals that attend along with the sponsors supporting, it's an enriching conversation. And I can tell you firsthand, based upon that detail and curation, I still stay in active touch with participants and peers and sponsors because of that community built and the level of trust that's built in the time that we have together. Doug, you've experienced this as well. What would you add?

Yeah, I'd say exactly the same. And I sit there and think, if you look at sponsors, for example, being part. I mean, I think the model that Russell and Susan is wonderful. And the fact that none of these type of things, you're not going to sit down with somebody and go, oh, actually, yes, I'll buy. Let me sign in the Line. This is about getting trust. This is about these people are putting a lot on the line when they choose to go with a platform vendor, for example, or any of these things. This is about trust and understanding and comprehension of each other and the fact that it's not a sale, it's a relationship and not everyone's going to buy things, it's just the way it is. But actually that trust creates safety, ironically, it does. And I think that method of doing it where nobody's sitting again, I mean, we've all been to confidence, haven't we? Where it's coffee time and coffee is 150 meters away from the door of your meeting room and literally there's a hundred people there trying to catch you and you've got to figure out how can you run through the shark tank and get a coffee before the doors close and next session starts. That's high pressure. It's not pleasant. Whereas I, I love that. I think that the whole session is very. Yeah, it's all encompassing. It's. And I think trust is the key thing there. And that makes the ability to have honest conversations about what connection works and what doesn't work and all those things and the openness to have those conversations creates good connections and good business all around because obviously the sponsors being there allow Russell and Susan to have the business they have and then allows people like us. And I know we now chair some of the meetings, but when we were within ge, we went along as participants and we also spoke there. So the whole piece, it's an ecosystem that is creating around that.

And I mean, of course events are, it's quite a select group. But I think what you were talking about earlier was the Crotonville spirit is the CEO and the new recruit sitting down to kind of eat together. That's a very valuable thing, a very important thing to keep going. I think that you have that kind of face to face contacts still in an age where digital has kind of in a way lessened our ability to get together as well as the pandemic, of course. And perhaps AI threatens to kind of be another pressure on that. Anyway, lastly, this is usually the bit where I ask if you have any people that you recommend they can follow or any books for that instance. But because of this conversation, I'm going to ask you what is your favorite song to perform at karaoke?

Yeah, Doug, how about for you?

I'm going to help you because, Jay, as you know, I seem to get a reputation that all our gala dinners even we just got a Computer and a mic and a speaker. We'd always have karaoke. I used to get people to always sing the national anthem, which is a real feat because we'd have dinner and they go, we're not singing karaoke. Of course we're not. And we get. Let's do national anthems. And as soon as you start that, they're off. And then I. Because you have to lead from the front, I would do my complete sheet of a karaoke song. And I remember Huey Green used to run a program in the UK called Opportunity Knox. Yes, I remember that range and the range. High notes, low notes. And my range is awful.

Yeah.

But the Beatles have a song called Back in the ussr which is full. I'm probably a little bit on PC now, unfortunately, but it's full of energy and it's a really narrow range. But people think you're an amazing singer because it sounds so good, but actually you get away with it. So that would be my go to karaoke for. And you only have to do one song because then you never get the microphone again.

Yes, well, actually, it's really close to mine. My karaoke favorite is Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads, because David Byrne, to be honest, he's a great Sega. He doesn't have a great voice. And you can get people to join in with the difficult bits. So it's like a closed mind. So, Jay, what's your karaoke favorite?

Yeah, so I'm similar in the genre of Beatles. Twist and Shout is one that I'll use just to get the energy going and scream that out. And then if it's a more pointed song, I might pull some from, like, Crowded House. I just love. I love.

Oh, yeah. Great, great songwriter, great songwriters. My Twisted Shout, my. My first record I. I ever. I could ever remember getting really excited about. And when I was a kid, brilliant record. And of course, it's by the Isley Brothers, wasn't it, originally?

It was.

That's right.

That's right. Yeah, it was definitely a cover.

It was definitely a cover. And one thing I really remember about it is that we had the. That it was a little kind of single record, an ep, and they used to have copy on the back in those days. And I was a big reader when I was little. And the liner notes for this said John Lerner must have something like. John Lerner must have built himself a larynx of steel in a throat of leather to be able to sing like that. And I was kind of gobspacked to read this and to try and visualize it, you know. And I think that kind of led me on to going to study English literature.

Well, you know, it was the last cut of that evening. John, you're spot on. And I remember for my band, we called ourselves, who get a kick out of this Minimum wage. Because that's what we were making, Minimum wage. And we played at a biker bar in Albany, New York, in upstate New York. And the first song was the song cover from U2, Desire. If you've heard the song Desire by U2.

Oh, yeah.

And I distinctly remember hitting the first chord. It was a D chord and the guitar string broke.

Yeah.

But we were prepared enough. We always had a guitar sitting in the back and we just, we didn't miss a beat. You just pick it on and go. So I actually think music and entertainment for the three of us actually has helped us in our careers and learning because you've got to engage the group and you also have to have the confidence being in front of a group to be able to deliver upon.

Yeah. Well, you guys have certainly sung for your supper in this session. I think it's been great. It's been really enjoyable for me and I'm sure people have a lot to take for that. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

It's been a real pleasure, wonderful time to spend with you, John and Doug, as always, to reminisce a little bit, but also speak ahead right as to what we're hoping to solve. So, John, thanks for the time and Doug as well.

Lovely.

Thank you.

Onwards and upwards.

Bye bye. Take care.

That's all on the Learning Hack podcast for this time. The Learning Hack is completely independent and transparently funded by sponsorship. If you want to help others find us, please like, follow, rate, review and subscribe on your podcast platform of Choice or on YouTube. The learning hack is among the top 5% of shows most listened to globally, according to listeners. And if you think your organization could benefit from sponsoring the Learning Hack or from using our knowledge and resources to start your own learning podcast, you can contact me on johnarninghackpodcasts.com until next time, stay curious, learning people. Now I finally get it. The Learning Hack podcast is supported by Learning News, the Learning Sector's newswire. Rob and his team are good friends of the podcast and we really value the help and advice we've had from them and they do a great job. For the very latest news from around the learning sector, for interviews with learning leaders, the latest from Learning Sector vendors, and features on workplace learning, go to learningnews.com.

Sam.