Conversation between Carrie, Christopher Parsons, and Dan about reimagining BWBR’s internal learning. They propose a hybrid model that assigns a core set of on-demand onboarding modules (suggested "10–12" required sessions) paired with interactive live sessions for skills that need practice (e.g., difficult conversations). Examples: "door hardware" framed as a straight-forward, on-demand topic; difficult conversations require role-play/live discussion. They discuss using AI-driven quizzes to verify completion, routing training to people based on project phase (project lifecycle prompts), and measuring impact by observed performance (how employees "show up") rather than mere course completion.
Questions this video answers
About 10–12 sessions.
20 sessions.
Observed performance—"how they're showing up" (application of skills on the job).
Chapters
Instead of it needing to be so time intensive with like re hosting these live sessions with the same content with the LMS coming online, can we make this more off the shelf learning for certain things that learners could do some of this on their own. They get assigned the top 10 things that they need to know fresh out of school. And then we pair that with maybe some live sessions, some interactive stuff to help it make it sticky. That's the thing that I always concerned about like with the door hardware issue. Like obviously we've had multiple sessions about this. It is findable on our synthesis but people aren't knowing to search it out. So how do we make it?
But it's not assigned right. Currently in the state. So it's like if somebody decides to go look for door hardware, they can learn about it. But right.
They would have to know to go look for it. They would have to know that this is a gap in my knowledge which none of us have. Right. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know what you're supposed to search. And Dan already said it happens every couple of years when he starts to notice that we're slipping a little bit more and we need some sort of refresher. But that seems like something that could be like a foundational thing that you just need to learn that it doesn't necessarily need to come up in a live session. We can make the live sessions more interactive and we've heard that from a couple of folks. They don't necessarily like to be sit and lectured at. They want to be doing more hands on learning and trying to figure out ways to do that. Trying to make something like door hardware very exciting.
Let's stay with door hardware and making it exciting because I think there's probably and I might have that right example so Dan or Carrie maybe can give me a better one. But let's imagine door hardware is something that you don't need to be in a live course. Like you can absorb the material. It's pretty cut and dry. This is how you do it. I feel relatively confident saying difficult conversations probably benefits from some discussion. Right? That one like yes, maybe there is something you could watch in advance of a live discussion. But like you're going to want to go through reps or role playing or like some kind of scenarios or somebody telling stories about those difficult conversations. So are there topics like if you can basically if you want to. I don't know what it means to graduate out of landmark learning, but as you move through the sequence like, door hardware is fine. We just. You can take that on demand. Maybe that never needs attention. That's a way to kind of get after some of those perennial topics that come up all the time. We always know a new person's not going to have done this before we know this. So are you going to move to more of, I guess, a curriculum, do you think that is? Dan's nodding his head yes. So you can just take it. I think you know where I'm heading.
So I think so. Yeah.
Yeah. Carrie and I have talked about this before at the leadership level. One of the things we've talked about is are there like 10 or 12 sessions that are just. When you start a BWBR, you're just assigned.
Right.
You know, you're just going to do these. So Carrie and I talked about how awesome it would be to have AI with a quiz so that we know that people are going through. And maybe the. Well, first of all, it's, oh, my gosh, which 12 sessions would you use? You know, so it's trying to pare down. And, you know, when you talk to our building technology and standards and QA group, they'll be like, oh, we could never do less than 20. And it's like, guys, are you serious? You want us to assign 20 videos to everybody who starts here? So it's trying to figure out, where is that happy medium, how do you structure it with a quiz it at the end so they can get credit for having watched it? And then, yeah, absolutely. Chris. I don't want to do door hardware every year. I don't want to do QA every single time we update and one little topic. It would be nice to just have those in the can somewhere where everybody who comes in gets those. And we know that we can keep track of, hey, did you get through reorder? You know, it's just part of the onboarding type of thing.
We've also had discussions about trying to systematize this more. Dan is a master at feedback loops and making sure that the right people are paying attention to the right things. You asked the question about how to know whether somebody is sort of absorbing the landmark learning stuff. Is it making a difference? And I think it comes up in annual reviews. And he's talking to the project managers, trying to understand how is the team doing, who's struggling? Who can you give a task to and know that they're going to accomplish it without needing extra support. I think that stuff becomes pretty visible pretty quickly. I heard somebody make a comment that somebody's been watching these landmark learnings. They can't architect their way out of a paper bag.
The measure is not I completed the course of success.
Right, Right. It's. It's how they're showing up. You can't fake knowing something. Right. You can't fake your way through every task. So either you're absorbing it and you're applying the skills or you're not.
I think what you said is interesting there because Dan, like the was it building instructors group, it's a building something.
Group that you said Building technology and standards group.
Building technology, they have 20 things that they think everyone should know. But I would guess that depending on what phase you are in in a project, you would need some of that more than others. Like if you're in schematic design, do you need door hardware? Probably not. But if you took it, you never get to apply it on a project. So what's the likelihood that you're going to retain any of the thing that you watch. And I'm thinking, I don't know, Carrie, we've had some conversations about this, but like I kind of look at the future of the learning and development, kind of like air traffic control and you're trying to route the right knowledge to the right person at the right time. You guys have all these knowledge assets and all these people that are in different phases of their career, different phases of specific projects. And how do you land the plane on the right Runway? Right?
Yeah. And as you know our project life cycle work, I keep thinking to this as a way for us to potentially insert some of these trainings along that project life cycle. So it could pop up as a suggestion to folks. If you already know it, you're experienced, you can ignore this stuff. If you're less experienced, you can say, I'm at this point on this type of project. What are the things that I should have done or questions I should ask the client by now? Things like that. Just a more robust checklist, if you will. Not that somebody needs to actually check items off of it, but just a reminder, make sure you have done these things because I feel like I'm seeing that a lot more. Dan, I don't know if you are with emerging professionals. They want to be more self sufficient. They want to just go search, find the answer, do the task. They don't necessarily want to have to stop and have a long conversation about it with somebody or a lot of them might be too scared to go talk to people or it's just not their style for whatever reason. Some of them want to just be more independent.
It's a very different work styles now. Especially in the emerging professional group that we have now. There is a lot of I want to be able to pick up my phone and Google it. You know, you had mentioned that earlier, I could just search it on the phone and AI will come up with 10 different answers. And knowing what's good and what's bad is the struggle. But yeah, just having people do face to face discussions is sometimes difficult to do. I like to walk around the office and simply just walk up to people and ask them, hey, you struggling with anything? What are you working on right now? You know, and things like that. Just see if I can get a feel for how they feel like they're doing. But I do project manager one on one. So every project manager meets with me once a month and I ask them directly, how is your team doing? Do you have anybody that's struggling? Is there anybody that could use some help or some things like that? And we try to address that on a person by person basis if we have to. I mean, Chris, what we're really trying to do is make people succeed. And rather than just saying, go figure it out, we're here to help you.
