LH125 What's The Vibe, Don?

In 2023 we were completely on the back foot, shocked by AI, not knowing what was going on. 2024 things really, it was overwhelming in 2023, 2024, the shock said. In 2025 it looked like actually things were getting better. There was a sense of recovery. And then 2026, the year we're in now, there's a sense that actually this is bigger than we thought. It's almost like we've got the hangover now from a big party we had. That's the VI

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Results of the Global Sentiment Survey 2026 are out. This is an annual fixture in the Learning Calendar now and and I for one, always find it really useful and valuable.

Many of you will know about it already, but for those of you who

don't, here's the skinny.

Hack Facts the L and D Global Sentiment Survey is the profession's longest running annual pulse check on workplace learning Trends. Launched in 2013, it gathers responses from thousands of practitioners across more than 100 countries each year, asking what will be hot in the year ahead and what challenges they face. Published every February, it has become a benchmark for tracking how priorities shift over time, especially in moments of disruption like the AI wave. The survey is led by Donald H. Taylor, a veteran analyst and commentator in workplace learning. Don chairs the Learning Technologies Conference in London, has worked in learning and skills since the mid-1980s, and advises organizations and ed tech firms worldwide.

This is a difficult time in workplace learning, and even more so for technology vendors in the space. Many say that AI poses an existential

threat to L and D as a function.

Others are more sanguine, but I don't

think any learning professional believes that the way they work is not going to

look very different in, say, three years time. I spoke to Don on the day after the latest GSS was released and I asked him what it told us about the state of mind among you people out there right now. What are your hopes and expectations, your priorities for the year ahead? What are your darkest fears?

Hello, Great to have you back on the podcast again, Don. Friend of the podcast. Welcome to the Learning Hack.

I'm delighted that you called me a friend of the podcast and I hope this means this will be an easy interview, unlike your excoriating excursions that you sometimes put people through.

Well, you can hope. I am by no means casting shade on the Global Sentiment survey released yesterday at the time we're speaking. If I refer to it as a vibe survey, knowing what's on the mind of learning professionals right now is enormously valuable to large number of people and not just content creators in the space like me, who need to know what headlines people will click on. So tldr as the youngsters say, what's the vibe, Don?

Sorry, what's the vibe, Don? Jon, I love this conversation. Let's get down with the kids and touch grass. The vibe is that in 2023 we were completely on the back foot, shocked by AI not knowing what was going on. 2020 things really, it was overwhelming in 2023, 2024, the shock said in 2025 it looked like actually things were getting better. There was a sense of recovery. And then 2026, the year we're in now, there's a sense that actually this is bigger than we thought. It's almost like we've got the hangover now from a big party we had. That's the vibe I'm getting interesting. I don't know how the kids express hangover these days, and I hear that they drink as much as people used to, so perhaps they don't have a word for it.

Yeah, terrible, terrible for the economy. Really don't know, don't care. So let's look at the top three.

Yes.

Number one, I'm not even going to do the drum roll because it's been there for so long. Artificial intelligence. Maybe it's peaking. Number two, Reskilling, upskilling. And number three, personalization, adaptive delivery. Now, should we take those one at a time? Artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence.

Has it peaked?

It has peaked. It's come down by 0.1%, thank goodness, because it has absolutely dominated everything. This does not mean, of course, that we are all completely au fait with our artificial intelligence and it's bedded into everything. What it does mean is that the hype around it has stabilized. And if we think back across those three years, that sense that we were overwhelmed, we were shocked, we recovered. I think we're now in this phase, I see it, of stepping into a new world, the new world, which is the AI world. We don't know how it works, we don't know what the implications are going to be. But we now accept this is part of the furniture. And I think that's a pretty profound change. So the idea that it's gone up and it's flattened off is actually quite significant. And I predicted this last year. I try not to predict things, but I predicted it last year on the basis that the American numbers for AI had actually dropped in 2025, which is very unusual. When it drops in the US normally the rest of the world follows suit. So I think we just got to the top of the roller coaster loop and now we're on our way down with AI.

Interesting.

Reskilling, upskilling. This has sort of strong followings in different parts of the world. So there are some parts of the world where reskilling, upskilling is absolutely the thing they are super interested in. And so Malaysia is one of those. So Malaysia voted very heavily for reskilling, upskilling, just as Cambodia voted extremely heavily for skills based talent management. There are just some times when some parts of the world very strongly back one thing. Risking upskilling's been on the agenda really since. About the report from the World Economic Forum, I think in 2020, which put it on the map as an idea, and it dominated the survey in 21, 22, 23. It was number one. And I breathed a sigh of relief when artificial intelligence took over in 24, only for it to dominate for the next three. It remains an issue. And I think it's one of these big blanket terms that has people's concern because now it's referring to how do we reskill people to deal with AI? Now, when it first became a hot topic in 2020, it was how do we reskill people to deal with an emerging knowledge economy? Then it was how do we reskill people to deal with. With life after Covid and working online? So it's one of these chameleon terms that has taken on a different form over a period of years. The same is true for personalization and adaptive delivery.

All right.

Which originally, when it came onto the survey in 2016, it was number two. It was number one in 17, 18 and 19. Again, three years at the top, but. But with a lower share of the vote each time. Personalization at that stage, I think 2016 meant something very different to what it means now. So again, it's taken on different meaning. I think now it's very much about how AI can personalize delivery and content at a quite granular level. I think in 2016, it was much more about tailoring things according to your job title. Probably that was the level of personalization we were looking at.

Yeah. So the continued hotness of option one leaks into options two and three as well, because there's a kind of substantial element of reacting to changes from AI in both of those two. Is there anything looking down the list that really surprised you this year?

Well, I think we're probably going to talk about it later on, but the contrast between the rise in personalization number three and the falling away of learning analytics, that is odd, isn't it? Well, why do you think it's odd, John? I mean, I agree, but why do you think so?

Well, because people bag on about it so much and there seemed to be a tide in recent years, people getting more interested in it, because for years people complain that, you know, L and D just doesn't evaluate and that's why no one takes them seriously. And there seemed to be this kind of train and a lot of people speaking very intelligently about it like that, Kevin Yates, the L and D detective, and Derek Mitchell and so on. And then suddenly here it's gone down and quite substantially, I should say, most of your percentage increases are kind of 0.1%. Yeah, it's not very exciting. But this one is. It's a whole number. Yeah, it's one point.

And these small percentage changes actually are quite normal on the survey. It's only AI has blown everything up by leaping so much. I was looking through my notes from previous year from 2018, and I astonished that something had gone up by 2 point something percent. So a change of more than 1% is actually quite large. Learning analytics and personalization had pretty much the same values from 2019 through to 2024. It was very close. But since then they've diverged And I think if we go back to this theme that we are adjusting to the world of AI, AI on the survey is having an impact. It is making people vote more for personalization because that's how they're going to use it. It's making people vote more for showing value because they're afraid for their jobs. I think that's the reason we don't know explicitly but I think that's the reason I think we would want them to vote more for learning analytics because, well, I can use AI to manipulate data but there's a widening gap over the years between these two over the last two years, last year, this year. And I think it's because L and D people are focused on what they can do. Now if you imagine you've got three votes on here and people are voting for typically, let's say AI, personalization and value, there isn't a third vote to give for learning analytics and people make a choice and it's that choice making that's really important. I'm going to choose this rather than that and I'm going to choose typically something around content development, personalization and delivery rather than something around analysis, learning analytics.

I think that's a front end.

Yeah.

And I think that tells a story about where L&D's focus is right now.

Yeah, to, to give a kind of really anecdotal person kind of experience to this. The other day I was talking to a head of learning for a big retail bank in the uk. He had a real light in his eye about stuff they were doing with AI. But what it was he was saying at last we can get rid of all the redundant courses on our lms. And I know this has been a problem because I used to run think tanks back in the early noughties and even back then people were complaining about we've got all this content because of the all you can eat deals that LMS providers did and people like skillsoft. We've got all this content. I know some of it is useless, a lot of it isn't used, but I don't know which bits are good and which bits are bad. And this head of learning was telling me that we've been able to eliminate about a third of our courses with the help of AI. But again that's front End delivery stuff. It's not about proving effectiveness. Was there anything else in the list that surprised you?

I've had a little comment. As you said earlier, the survey was released, the results were released yesterday, and we've had a lot of comment about the parlous behavior of the Metaverse, which lingers nailed to the bottom of the survey at 0.8. I feel a bit sorry for the Metaverse, which I shouldn't, because I should be impartial, but I put the Metaverse onto this in 2023. If I put it on in 2022, it was all the rage. It would have spiked, but unfortunately it didn't. People were. There were a whole bunch of redundancies around this in 2023. People weren't interested in it. And it's never got above, I think, 14th position on the list. And to be underneath other, because you can say other, you can suggest something yourself, to be underneath other is the ultimate death knell on the list. It's gotta come off. It's gotta come off.

Yeah.

Some people are banging a drum for it. And I think the fact that it's got even 0.8% of votes overall means that there's always a certain amount of noise on any survey you do. And I think that's where we're at. It's basically noise level of participation.

Yeah, interesting. For me, the Metaverse has always been a hype, and I was really surprised when Zuckerberg went big on it a couple of years ago. Everyone now accepts it's a very bad bet, and that shows in these figures, among other places and all the layoffs and so on. But I think the tragedy of that, because we'd kind of seen the hype first time around with the Second Life and things like that much earlier, and. And we saw that it didn't really. So I was surprised he was throwing so much in and even kind of went into doing some projects with the podcast where we were going to do a podcast in the Metaverse with a sponsor, and it was horrible to be back in that clunky place. I mean, it's just not good user experience to the extent that it is. On the other hand, I feel bad about it because for me, it masks a really interesting area, which is virtual and augmented reality and, you know, the very worthy Make Real, who I have to plug as a Brighton company and our founder sponsor, but also another company whose name I forget who I was talking to at World of Learning recently, who are doing really interesting things with interactive stuff facilitated by interviews and so on, you know, difficult conversations, training staples like that, using AI, which I think is a really kind of interesting place, but it's not hot on here, as you say, virtual and.

Or better. Droughty came onto the survey in 2017 and it was fourth position then, and it has slowly made its way down. But when something makes its way down, it's one of two reasons. It's either because it's become business as usual. Sorry, one of three reasons it's become business as usual. It's hit a niche, or it's just something that people are no longer interested in. Now, very, very rarely do things go mainstream. Mobile learning or mobile delivery is one of those. So that was number one on the very first survey in 2014. I took it off a couple of years ago. Virtual reality, I absolutely agree it's got a real value, and particularly at the moment because costs have come down so much. And I think that that's. It's a great tool, but it's niche. It's still niche. Perhaps it won't always be, but it's certainly niche at the moment. The value of V and virtual and augmented reality, but they're two very different things. But the value of virtual reality for me is this ability to immerse yourself in something. But in addition, what you've now got with AI is the ability to make sense of the huge amount of data that you generate with VR, which is something nobody talks about, but you've got, you know, what people are doing. You've got maybe 50 data points for each second of interaction. There's so much stuff that you can really go back and look at somebody's training history and say, ah, well, okay, they didn't do this task well. And we go back to the training, we can see we're doing things in the wrong order, so let's switch things around. Or this person had this issue here or whatever in a way that would just take too much processing time previously. So I think there's a tremendous amount we could do with it again thanks to AI. But because it's low on the survey doesn't mean it's not being used. On the contrary, it means probably here is hidden niche.

Yeah, I think that's one to watch for the future, really. Okay, so I think we have to come back to AI and more about. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And it's not even for the algorithm, because it just doesn't tickle the algorithm the way that it did. It's just that when we. What? I mean, this is A vibe survey about L and D. And I think what your, your summary was very cogent right up the top and very right about what's going on. We, we feel a lot of unease within L and D about, about AI, this, about job replacement. You know, do I personally, as an, as a learning professional, have the skills to be able to do this? And we're at a very odd place now where I think what people are adjusting to is the roller coaster dips and ups in AI. Should we look at the opportunities, should we look at the horror stories and the fact that it keeps on throwing up new curveballs on a really quite alarming rate? And this is exponential development. I mean, it really is. Most recently we've had the Open Claw phenomenon, which people will have heard about and then bought up by OpenAI. Very interesting post this morning from Ethan Mollick talking about people have to get their heads around the difference between models, apps and harnesses.

Harnesses. I missed that.

Harnesses. Yeah. Okay, well, this is, this is really about agentic and it's about, you know, the Open Claw example. I can't go into that, you know, those fine differences here, but this is a whole new world that people are trying to transition to and it's not really technically easy enough for people to do. Interesting that Peter Steinberger, the guy who founded OpenClaw, has said that his aim in life, he's a cash out entrepreneur. So he's got a load of money, he's working with OpenAI now. He doesn't really need to do it for the money. He says his one aim in life is to build an AI agent that his mother can use. And when Peter Steinberger's mother can use it, I can use it to do podcasts. We can all use to do everything. So I think that's a much more interesting goal than producing AGI. Still, I'm rambling a bit, but I'm trying to give a flavour of the roller coaster. The roller coaster and the kind of almost panic that you feel in L and D people in this new world,

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It's real. It's not just L and D people. We track what's your biggest challenge each year. And, you know, I put that on in 2022 as a. As a question, and I'm so glad I did, because I was able to capture people coming out of COVID and also capture a world before AI. Well, not before AI, but before the launch of ChatGPT, the word pressure. And I looked at a number of words. Obviously, we do sort of thematic looking at things as well, but I also count words because you've got to check your bias. And it's very easy reading tens of thousands of words and thinking, oh, we've got a theme here. So it's very important to go back and just say, well, actually, how many times are people talking about this? So if we look at the word overwhelm, the word, I don't know, stress, these things crop up. But there's one word pressure, that was higher in 22, then it dropped in 23, bottomed out in 24, but picked up again. So that in 25 and 26, it's risen again. And when you look at the context of how it's used, it's not, oh, our learners, our managers are under pressure. It's, I'm under pressure and the department's under pressure. And this is a real feeling, I think, that people have got. Now, I've done a couple of webinars about, and I've talked a lot about the results already, and people, when I say to them, why is value going up? It's a slightly loaded question. So showing value has been up and down, but it's hit its highest level over this year. Just I say, why is that? People say, fear. There's no question about it. I want to show value because I'm concerned about my job. So there's a recurrent theme, and it's not just in L and D, but there's a recurrent theme around this. I think L and D is particularly hit because of this focus on content and the sense that, well, if we're not doing that, what are we doing now? There's a whole bunch of things that can be done with AI and without it, but I think largely powered by AI that L& D can do that's phenomenally important for individuals and organizations. But throughout the course of L and D training and then L and D, We've always been about the creation and the distribution of content, and that is fundamentally threatened by very basic generative AI. And we have to consider. I think for some people, that's a real concern in conjunction with, in a number of countries, Thai economic situations.

Yeah. The survey is mostly a practitioner, if we like, that you have a kind of a certain amount of vendors in the responses. Do you separate by. By the. Separate out by that? I mean, there is a. Look, quite a lot of sort of panic in the vendor market at the moment as well. You know, a good deal. And. And there have been some kind of real shocks and a lot of people being thrown out of work.

And I'm hearing that Tom Robinson song in my head, which you will remember from our years. Panic in the county hall. Oh, yeah. And there is panic in the vendor community there. And, you know, I think we all probably know, sadly don't have a job anymore because of what's happening. And it's not necessarily that the organizations are suffering because of AI, but they're taking action in case it's a bit like the day after 9, 11, I think British Airways laid off something like 3,000 workers. And it wasn't just BA. Every airline thought, right, there's gonna be no air travel for a long while now, and it's all gonna change. So you've just gotta take action. So I'm not saying necessarily the vendors are struggling, but they will be taking action about it. Interestingly, when you break down showing value by the four main different workplaces, 50% of the responses come from workplace L&D. 8% come from the vendor community. So that's 305 people. It's a fair number on the workplace group. 6.8% of people ranked vendor ranked. Sorry. Showing value is one of their important things. And it was number six on the list with the vendors. It was 10% of people. It was number two on the list after AI. So I think if we're looking at showing value as a proxy for how concerned am I about my job, then yes, there's lots of evidence there. The vendors are concerned.

Yes. And showing value not through doing great learning analytics, but in cutting costs, probably cutting the cost of delivery, being able to do the same amount of work or more with less people.

And that's a recurrent theme, by the way, in the challenges for next year that people answer. It's the recurrent thing we've had for a number of years is trying to do more with less.

Yeah, okay, I see that you've about doubled the number of respondents this year from the U.S. i don't know if you want to talk about why that is. Does this relate to your personal profile and itinerary or why that's happened, but has it had a significant effect in the results?

No, it hasn't skewed the results. That's very interesting. But it is really interesting to be able to get an a nice chunk of responses from the US because then we can start comparing US and UK and what I call continental Europe, which is a slightly old fashioned term, but refers to Europe as a geographical rather than a political entity. And so if we look at the U.S. i think actually they topped out. They got 572 people from the U.S. versus 550. And actually this is largely down to some really good work by the partners rather than my own personal profile, although I am probably a bit better known in the States than I was. But to have those two together and then to have Europe excluding the UK coming in with 1,200 and Southeast Asia 479, if I can divide Europe, as I probably can into east and west, then you've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 different chunks which are worth looking at. And interestingly, across Europe, of course, the votes are always different geographically. What I'm really looking forward to, John, I haven't had time to do it yet is dividing up the votes in the US across regions because I've now got enough data to compare the east and west coast or rural and urban states and see is there a difference? And well, you could always find a correlation somewhere. And I'm always wary to say after one year's data I have proven something. But I can start getting an idea of something I want to follow next year.

So the reason for asking about global differences. Well, one of the reasons for asking about global differences in the results is I think this was a question because you mentioned places like Malaysia that have very different results in certain categories. But overall, are we one big happy globalized family in learning? Or how marked are the differences in vibe between the different territories?

Do you think the dominance of AI gives this allure of homogeneity, if I can put it that way. I can use these words, John, because I know you have a very intelligent audience.

They are extraordinarily intelligent in their choice of podcasts, if nothing else.

And guests, it's a mask because we know in the past that actually there are really strong regional but absolutely country based differences. And yet there are a couple of things I want to say about that. One is that there is definitely a shift from predictable patterns to unpredictable patterns. What I mean is, I talked about this business of the AI shock in 2024. In 2023, the survey came out just after the launch of GPT and it affected the results a bit, but nowhere near as much as in 2024. So in 2024 we've had a year. The survey comes out at the end of the year 2023, and we've had a year of obsession with AI and it sucks up all the votes and everything else apart from personalization, pretty much takes a hit downwards. Okay? Now, this is true of countries where there has been a regular, systematic, predictable support for a particular vote, a particular option. In the Netherlands, there's always performance support. In UK showing value. Ireland, coaching and mentoring. Sweden, collaborative learning. All of these took a dip of about the same amount in 2024. And then the next year, 2025, they all bounced back almost to the same level as before. It was extraordinary. But then this year what's happened has been utterly unpredictable. So the first thing I want to say about this question of regional differences is that I think in this entry into the new world, the AI supported world of learning, we are in a world where we don't know what's going on anymore and the old norms don't hold true anymore. So I think that's one thing. But the other thing, if we go back to the Swedish vote for collaborative and social learning, the Swedes have been very, very supportive of that in the past. And I was talking to some Swedes yesterday and I said, I've been told in the past this support is down to the Swedish tradition of folkbildening, which is the tradition of informal adult learning from each other after education. And give us that word again, folkbildening. I'll write it down for you so that respect so that you can jot it in the notes. I may be pronouncing it writing it completely wrong, but that's a Swedish and actually a northern European thing as well, particularly Scandinavian countries, parts of Poland, parts of Germany as well, they don't call it the same thing, but there's tradition of adult education, people supporting each other. A bit like, in a way, the working men's libraries and institutes in the valleys of Wales that you had people coming together and learning for themselves. So that idea has supported this idea of collaborative and social learning. But that was already on the decline, it has to be said, in Sweden, and it really took a knock this year. But another country where that's happened is Brazil. And Brazil has always been supporting the idea of collaborative and social learning. And talking to the Brazilians about it, they're very clear. They say it's definitely down to our collaborative culture. And if you look at Gerd Hofstadter's dimensions of culture, one of them is. I can't remember the exact terms he used, but it's something to do with communalism or being together versus individualism. This idea of collectivism and individualism as being two dimensions, and you sit somewhere along it now. Brazil has always been way over on the collectivism side. The US has always been over on the individualism side. That's been reflected in the votes. I don't like putting things down to cultural differences. It's too easy. But in this case, that's what the Brazilians tell me. But we've noticed over the years a declining support for collectivism in Brazil. And this year it bounced back. But it's still the case that it has dropped over the years. And I think I'm seeing in the world coming back to this idea of homogeneity, I think I'm seeing a shift towards greater individualism and less collectivism in the results. This may be too grand a statement to make, but. But there are straws in the wind ideas that give me that sense.

That issue has come up again and again the last few years. I mean, our last podcast was about the Learning Hive with King of Petravai, which is really about peer learning, a more kind of collective approach. She's great and she's marvelous. And last year came up a lot at the event of event that I did a special forum. It comes up again and again. People are aware there's a difference. I personally think that may be because the technology is driving us down a kind of hyper individualized, personalized route where everything is for you. Spotify affects to know what you want to listen to next. Consistently gets it wrong.

But that's a good point, John, that our commercial experience of technology is not just something that we step into, but something also affects our behavior. And so increasingly you see people interacting with electronics in a way that is them as an individual rather than anything that's collective. And this is a pity for learning and development, because one of the great opportunities for learning and development for the future that I see is the ability to facilitate conversations between groups of people and have them learn from each other. That's a human and a technological endeavor. So the person can facilitate those conversations and bring out the great collective knowledge and spark new ideas and Technology can help in noting it, putting it down, summarizing it and making it available for other people. I think that ability to surface knowledge that's held in people's heads is crucial for organizations and individuals. And I think it's definitely a collective learning approach. Now there are some people who are doing interesting collective learning things. A company in the States, I have no interest in them. Sparkwise, sorry. No financial interest in them. They get people together in groups in order to do online effectively. They have to just solve a task together without a facilitator. And the whole thing is managed in the background by AI and they learn through each other on the way. I think that sort of collective learning is something that we are simply not giving enough attention to.

Yeah, interesting one. And many people, most people I suppose work in teams, so it makes sense. Kind of learn in teams.

Yeah.

Can you also comment on the breakdown of new respondents versus returning respondents? To me, look down at that.

Jom is exciting. How geeky do you want to get on this?

Well, we're time limited, but we're all about rabbit holes, I must say. I mean, to me, superficial. Look at this. It looks like they're laggards by the things they choose. But you know, and I don't mean to kind of cast shade by that because for some people being up and au fait with the latest technology, it just isn't as relevant to their jobs and the jobs of their learners as it is to in other organizations. But am I right in that I'm not anything like as close to the data on this?

No, you aren't. And that's fair. I've got the data at my fingertips and in my head and I live and breathe it. And I sort of what you get in the report is about 5% of the work that goes into looking at these numbers, finding something exciting, questioning it, realizing it's not viable, putting it to one side, and then I only put out the stuff that I think I can absolutely support. Let's talk about, use the word laggard. Let's talk about that for a second. So we're all familiar with the Everett Rogers diffusion of innovation curve. And you've got the innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and the laggards. Now the laggards are right at the end of that. It's very unfair to call anybody on the survey a laggard. There may be a few, but it's a self selecting group of people. And the people come on the survey because they are interested in technology, because they are connected to the Internet, everything's done online. And because they want to share their. These are people who are definitely on the innovator, slash, early adopter, possibly early majority area of the curve. But there is definitely a difference between them. And in the past I noticed this and I sort of put it to one side because I couldn't track exactly who was behaving in which way. It used to be that if somebody came on as a result of being asked to vote through social media, they were definitely in group A and everybody else was. Group B, typically people who joined through emails. Now it got more complicated, but now I just ask people for their email each year and they don't have to give it, but if they do give it, they get a message straight away with the link to the report. And the, the people who voted last year, which is group A, which is the much smaller group, about 450 people. Those people do behave differently and they do look like they are further to the exciting innovator end of the curve than the rest of the people. I think it's. I think. And I don't want. I haven't put this in print because I don't want to suggest it in writing, but we can say it verbally. I think that the behaviors of the two groups of people are different because of how they work and live. Group A is focused on exciting new stuff, being online a lot, discussing ideas, and probably doing stuff as well. Probably doing stuff as well. We don't know that they're actually putting into practice any of the stuff they're talking about. Group B learns about it typically through email. And these are the people who are new onto the survey this year and they do behave differently. So it's very interesting that group A is much more excited about artificial intelligence 25.5% than Group B, which is 22.1%. So they're more excited about that, but they're also more excited about other stuff that gets talked about a lot online. Group B less excited about it, but maybe because they're laggards, as you put it. I think it's more likely they are just trying to get on with the day job and they can't be bothered with all this conversation online. So the group A people, when it comes to showing value, they are rating 84%. Sorry, 84%. 8.4%. Group B showing value at 6.7%. So that's a really good indicator of the value of conversation, which we know we've got. We spend a lot of time Talking about online isn't landing so much with people who are probably more concerned with just getting on doing stuff and spending less time online talking about stuff. So that's a very brief conversation about group A and group B. Yeah.

It's interesting. Having done some awards judging this year, you really see the kind of spread and the differences in organizations. You have organizations in hospitality, all different vibe from those in. In say, banking.

Yeah.

As far as challenges go, and I know you look at challenges nowadays, it looks like the top one's technology is that a historic high. Technology is always a problem for us all, as we found where we tried to record this thing from the first time last night. How has it figured previously? And what part is AI playing in that? I mean, is AI. So is technology now all AI? That's the sort of thing for the purposes of this. What part is AI playing in it? And do we see evidence of a real unease here about the future or is it just, you know, plus sachong, same as normal technology?

Yeah, it's definitely not. Definitely not plus essential change. Now look, technology. So I do two ways of looking. I do a quantitative and a qualitative analysis. The quantitative is just counting words, basically.

Right.

You can do it in any other way you want. But I'm counting words and I don't count how many words times a word gets used. I count how many comments are there in a particular theme which uses these words. So if you say AI 100 times in one comment, that counts as one. Technology dropped to second place in my group of nine categories last year, in 2025, having shot to number one, 2024, but it's back to number one this year. And I think that the. But I should say also generally on the challenges question, it was introduced in 2022, and in 2022 and 2023, 40% of people answered the question. In 2024, after that year of news about AI, 95% of the people answered it. And then last year it dropped to 85, and this year it's back up to 95. So that sense that we had a bit of a sort of a bit of a recovery year last year, but now for this year's survey, we're really worried again. That sort of adds up as well. Plus this year we've had more words than ever written about this. It was just 29,000 last year. This year it's 41,000 words written about the challenge. So that's a lot of people sharing a lot of concerns. The five themes are, number one, technology. Definitely AI adoption and integration. How do I use this? How do I make it work with everything else? Demonstrating value and impact is definitely a theme as well. Budget resource constraints. Not as much as previous years, actually, in the quantitative sense, but still, people are definitely talking about it, learning, engagement and application. So people are concerned to actually get people to do some learning and then when they've learned something, to go and make it happen at work. Now, that's not new, but I think it's exacerbated by the other things, particularly the budget restraints. So if you haven't got the time or budget resource constraints, if you haven't got the time and the money, how do you develop the systems which enable people to learn properly? But underpinning all of those, there's this fifth concern which is all about just change and what L and D should be doing. So there's a Troubles never come singularly but in battalions. And I think that's what's happening here. We've got 41,000 words of concerns about what seems to be a little bit back to 2003, 2004. The overwhelm of just too much stuff going on and people wondering, well, I don't have the money, I'm concerned about my job and I'm expected to do all this stuff. What's my role? Sorry, Jon, it's a very negative, downbeat way of ending the podcast or coming towards the end of the podcast. Are you gonna find some way to lift us positively towards the end?

I'm not gonna ask you what your karaoke favorite is, because I think we've done that already. I have got another one. But before we leave this subject, I would hear more as a reflection than a question. When people do that in conference sessions, I always say, oh, God, here we go. But maybe I'd like to react to this. I wonder if kind of AI for the last few years has seemed slightly theoretical, an idea of something we could do with technology and so on. But as we move deeper into the weeds of actually trying to make increase productivity within organizations, it kind of knocks onto other areas of technology. So we saw last year it became all about the chips and Nvidia, biggest company in the world and so on, and about the data centers. And suddenly it emerged that we. Not that suddenly, but gradually emerged that we need all these huge data centers built to make it happen and the 2 trillion, what's his name? Investment and so on. As we move into agentic, it's clear we're going to have IT issues. We've got cyber security issues. We've got data privacy issues. A lot of people want to move to agentic, but their IT department won't let them. It's a bit unfair on IT departments because in some organizations they'll be racing ahead and trying to spearhead adoption. But it certainly has within a large enterprise that has a good, secure. Picking me words carefully here, technology environment AI is beginning to have much wider implications. So we do hear about people doing fancy stuff with agentic AI at home because their IT people won't let them do it at work. Some people want to use ChatGPT, they have to use Copilot, blah blah blah. So technology in general becomes the challenge. Perhaps

I think you're right. There's this spillover effect of AI that it's now all pervasive. I don't think the technology impact for learning and development is particularly strong, although integration does seem to be an issue. But I think there is so much happening that I don't think we've got to the stage yet where people are saying, well, if own I could do this, things would be okay. I think it's more people are concerned, well, I don't know what I should be doing. I think that integration issues and data security certainly is an issue. And there's a general issue, isn't there? This doesn't just apply to L and D. There's a general issue about shadow AI and people using tools they shouldn't be using and then spilling data onto the Internet they shouldn't be sharing. And I think that will happen with L and D as people start to try to get more adventurous with stuff. But I don't think if you speak to the average L and D person, they are concerned about the battles between Nvidia, ASML and Taiwan and chip production or anything like that. I think it's much more local and focused than the big picture.

Yeah. So I may be talking about early adopters possibly.

You could possibly hang out in Brighton

with a bunch of exhibitions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so we get to that last question. Regrettably, I'm going to ask you a really selfish question. I apologize in advance. It sounds a bit like I'm trying to prompt an LLM rather than interview you, but put yourself in the position of a CEO of Learning Hack Industries. What a wonderful thing that would be, having acquired the brand from me at enormous expense. And you want to get the downloads on.

Yes.

What would you say, judging from the results of this? Not that we don't have good downloads. We do. Thank you very much. Just to Be clear. But what would you say, judging from the results of this survey, Learning professionals are wanting to know about more this year. I realise this is completely craven. I try to get you to help steer our editorial look ahead, but you know, it's something you do for conferences. What would you say, looking at these results learning professionals really want to know about for this year?

I'd say two things. I think you've got tactical things, you've got big picture things, and by the way, I love the idea of being the CEO of Learning Hack Industries and I hope that you have a vast mega complex HQ with a vast bunker that you sit in with a swiveling black chair.

Well, to be honest, out of my cold dead hands. Carry on with the thought experiment.

Thought experiment takes us to the particular and the general. So the general is preparing yourself for the future. And I think this idea that there's a new world out there, nobody knows what's going on, but the only way you can create a map is to share ideas of things that are happening and working. So I think a focus on. I would get people talking about what they're doing as activities that are breaking the norms and helping them achieve things. So I think that it's very basic, but I think just giving people a steer of what's going on through practical action is terribly important. And Egla Vinauskiter and I wrote this report last September. It's our fourth report on AI and L and D. It got tremendous reception because it was talking about AI and L&D in a real sense. 20 pages of case studies, 15 pages of analysis of what people say they're actually doing, doing with this. So stripping away the abstraction, looking at the reality with real people's real stories, that's one thing I do. Unfortunately, John, that's quite a lot of work. You've got to go and find people, you've got to get them to ball down their stories and coax them out of them. But I think that's invaluable and I know that people want to hear that, so that is if you like the particular side of it. But I think on the general side of it, I would say if it's crucial to have advice that enables people to know where to aim for on the horizon as we're trying to make our way through this uncharted land. And I think I would look at what are the key things that L and D is going to be looking like in three years time. Wouldn't go further than that. Three years time around the use of data to understand people and organizations around personalization and around skill. So these are the buzzwords that come high on the survey and I think would draw people in. So I'll send you the check for my invaluable consultancy fee. Sorry, I'll send you the invoice for my invaluable consultancy fee in the post.

John okay, well, address it like this. David J. Thank you very much, Don, for another great session and for unpacking the report for us and doing our editorial for

taking care of your editorial calendar for the year. It's always a pleasure, John. At some point in London or Brighton, let's get together for a cup of tea or something stronger and continue the discussion.

I'll see you soon.

All right, Great to see you John. Thanks for being having me on the podcast. Bye.

That's all on the Learning Hack podcast for this time Time. Many thanks to our guests and to our sponsors. The Learning Hack is completely independent and transparently funded by sponsorship. It is produced by John Helmer and hosted by him and also me, Mariana, a Synthesia AI avatar. If you want to help others find us, please like follow, rate, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube.

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