141 | How Learning at Work Is Changing: Mentoring, AI and What Works | Lisa Melody & Barbara Carroll

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Really excited to be here with a couple of brilliant guests to talk about challenge 3 in our Mind the Gap research report that we did. I will forget to say this later. Well, I probably won't because I haven't done on the other ones in fairness, but just in case I forget to say it later, if you want to see the full report, just pop along to inspiringchange.ie. /mindthegap, all one word. As I said, today is Chapter 3, and if you've seen the report or when you download the report, you'll see that we put a little quote on there from Alvin Toffler, who is an American writer and futurist, and he said, "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." So, I'm really looking forward to getting into today's discussion around that whole idea, that challenge of skills for today and tomorrow. Not just what we need to teach people or the skills we need to give them, but how we do that and what that looks like in the world of multigenerational workforces. Before we do that, really quick one. When you're listening, please, please, please, little 5-star or even 4-star would do me. Review would be fabulous and a few words of support or feedback into whatever channel you're using at the moment. We put a lot of time and effort into this to bring you really good guests and really good thinking and hopefully some good ideas that you can apply in your own organizations. I'd really appreciate that little 90-second bit of effort, please, because it really helps to get the podcast out there. So, that would be great. Thank you. So, our guests today, let's move on quickly, are Barbara Carroll, Chief People Officer in the Law Society here in Ireland, and Lisa Melody, the Global Head of Talent at Ornua, the global Irish dairy firm. Good morning, ladies.

Good morning. Morning, Scott.

Thanks for having us. Hope we're getting on well.

We are. It's lovely blue skies out there this morning, so that's always a good start.

Excellent.

Well, I was in Donegal last weekend in the teeth of a storm, and it was not blue skies there. It was like the windiest place on earth, but it was still nice to be out and about on giant empty beaches. People, if you're abroad, come to Ireland. You get giant empty beaches. It's amazing. Let me ask you each to perhaps just give us the 60-second intro on yourself, where you are, a little bit of background on you and about your role today. Lisa, let's kick off with you.

So, I'm Lisa Melody, I head up the talent team at Ornua. So, we're the proud owners of Kerrygold, I think that's what you'd know us for. So, we're a food and dairy business with about 3,000 employees in Ireland, the UK, US, Germany, Spain, Middle Eastern Africa. I've been with Ornua for 10 years, really enjoy it. We're a dairy cooperative, so a very strong sense of purpose, values, and very strong culture around learning. And we look after everything in my team from sort of hiring our grad programs right through to leadership development, culture engagement, performance management. So all the fun stuff in HR. So delighted to be here today.

Brilliant, thanks Lisa.

Barbara?

Great, and I am Barbara Carroll and I work currently in the Law Society of Ireland. So we are— lots of people kind of wonder what does the Law Society actually do? We represent solicitors in the country and we educate them, we represent them, and we advocate for them as well. So we have 250 direct employees and we have about 2,500 contributors who contribute to the work of the education of solicitors.

Brilliant, super, thank you. So we sent out the report, and just, I suppose, just to kick off and warm you up, Lisa, was there anything particularly perhaps in this challenge of skills for today and tomorrow, or just more broadly in the report, that particularly caught your eye? Anything that was a surprise or not a surprise?

Well, firstly, I think it's always really reassuring that organizations are grappling with the same things that you are as an organization. So there's some sort of sense of comfort in that, that we're all trying to tackle the same things. I really liked the concept of learning being part of your values, and it made me think about our own values that are new, and are we explicit enough about learning and development? So it might be one for us to revisit. And the other piece that I thought was interesting was don't assume your senior leaders have all the innate skills to kind of drive an organization's culture. And so on, that we assume just because you've reached the top of an organization that you're all over this one, whereas perhaps you may need support in this space.

Yeah, and in my experience, you're perhaps less likely to ask for that support because you are more senior and you do think that people think that you should have it already, so you just kind of don't want to ask. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, Barbara, anything that struck you particularly that jumped out?

Yeah, lots actually. Um, I in particular, I really liked the the fact that what has been drawn out is the concept of learning. And I think that lots of organizations see when there's a learning need, you send people off on a training course, you know, and you put them into a classroom-style environment, which can take a lot of time and, you know, could be a diploma and they're taking a year where they're focusing on that. What the report has identified is that actually there are lots of different ways that that people can learn and develop at work. And that includes classroom style, but it also includes participation, you know, getting involved in things that maybe puts people out of their comfort zone and means that there's some, you know, that they're learning, that they're likely to remember, they're likely to make mistakes. And making mistakes is, you know, people will say that they learn more from their mistakes than what they actually do right. And also just doing Doing, you know, unusual, creating unusual events and letting staff get involved or leaders get involved in ways that they maybe wouldn't ordinarily do in their normal working day.

Yeah, I love that because even just getting people together, I know that whenever we run sessions, leadership upskills, a lot of it is just about getting back in the room with people that we haven't done for months because the way we work now, which of course talks very much to challenge 5 in the report, which is that whole idea of disconnection, of people feeling disconnected from the organization. And I love that you picked up there about the different kinds of learning. And it reminds me of that 70-20-10 model, that if memory serves, 70% is kind of on-the-job learning, 20% is learning from others, and actually only 10% of our learning comes from courses. Yet when you ask, and we'll speak about this later on, when you ask people about their learning over the course of the year, "Oh, well, I didn't get to go on any courses." It doesn't mean you didn't learn anything. You just haven't been on a course. So, there are different things. So, if we think, Lisa, about the whole idea of training, and of course, that's a really important and integral part of your role in Ornua, and I know that when we worked together in AIB, part of your role there as well. How do we make training really dynamic and really sticky so that when it lands into people, it actually happens? They actually bring the skills to bear. Is there a secret sauce, or does it really depend on the organization?

I think it's lots of little things. So one thing that we've done that has made a difference is all of our employees have a development objective as part of their performance management process. So you're not measured on it in terms of how you're assessed rated, but it is putting focus on what's really important for you in a given year to kind of be successful in your role or to get ready to compete, I suppose, for a bigger role. I think what you talked about earlier, that whole network piece. So we definitely find there's great stickiness around programs where you're putting a group of people together and they come back at various touchpoints, be it for classroom learning or virtual sessions, or they're driving their own group coaching sessions, that your bond is with that group nearly more than the people who are delivering or giving you content. So that kind of cadence of connection really helps. And we found that has worked really well for us in terms of learning, kind of having momentum and sticking into people's day jobs.

I love the idea of peer-based learning, where actually it becomes then your peers that are kind of prodding you and pushing you and kind of making you become the one that's committing to them, and you're all committing to each other. And the idea of then prodding each other, have you tried this? Have you tried that? Did you try that thing that you said you would do? That's really powerful. Really, really powerful. Barbara, any thoughts?

Yeah, I would agree with Lisa. I find the peer-based learning is very powerful, particularly when you're bringing transformation or change, trying to change behavior in an organization, because a once-off event can be lovely and it can be created very inspiringly and bring awareness. Very often people go back to their normal day-to-day after that. So, you know, keeping, keeping groups together in particular to give them that kind of psychological safety when they come back together again, where they can talk about what went wrong and, and help each other and maybe even not necessarily wait for the next intervention, but actually connect with each other for coffee, you know, during that learning experience can be really, really powerful. But I think And, you know, when I really look at like what makes, what makes training sticky, what really works. And, you know, I've had years of working in and out of training classroom-style environments and lots of different types of training. But what I notice, what really works is when people fully understand the reason why they're there and what the purpose of their development actually is. What does it mean to them and what does it mean to their future career and to the organization? And I think we've got a responsibility not just to tell people where their skills gaps are and where they need to maybe focus on. We've got a much bigger responsibility to actually explain the why, you know, and that people are actually there and they, when they're sitting there and they're involving themselves, they're actually a lot more motivated when they understand why they are there and why there is a need for development and why there's a need for them all to come together or why there is a need for them to chair a meeting when they never chaired a meeting before.

And that's learning. That's learning. That's not a course. Jumping in to support your boss or to support a colleague on a job that they suddenly can't do because they're unwell or they've got a family emergency, just leaping in on that, that's learning right there.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And actually, you can see real development with, you know, putting somebody into a situation like that. One of the things that we've done really well in the Law Society is we've created these new interventions with staff. And it's come from this notion of, you know, there's people working in the organization for, you know, 20, 30 years and they don't know what we do on the other side of the organization, you know, and it's quite surprising. So what we've done one is we've created these— they're like, you know, in conversation, very, very informal environments where we invite all of the staff to them and we get one leader in one side of the organization to interview another or a group of staff and just ask them what their day-to-day is. And there's a lot going on in that room because there is the leader from the other side of the organization who maybe never did anything like that before. So they're developing and hosting something. In front of staff. And then there is the, there is the team who's explaining maybe for the first time what their day-to-day is actually like. And that's actually quite an enjoyable experience. And then for the staff, you know, there's a lot of, there's an opportunity for them to ask questions and to break down barriers and break down the silos and all of those good things. So it's been a really, really positive developmental event.

And for me, events like that really helped to build empathy and understanding. And when, you know, a lot of clients will come to us and say, we need to get our senior leaders to collaborate better, we need to get people within their silos to collaborate better. And actually, we can collaborate better if we know what other people's challenges and pain points are. That, you know, I'm not ringing Barbara on a Tuesday morning on, you know, the third Tuesday of the month, because I know that's the salary run day, and Barbara's gonna be up to her neck doing whatever. Actually understanding that, knowing that means that I'm not getting then pissed off and I'm saying, "Well, she never returns my calls. I call her, she never returns my call." Well, because we're busy doing stuff. But if I understood that, then I'd ring her on Wednesday or Monday. And that knowledge is really powerful, albeit a tiny little silly example, really, really powerful. Lisa, when we think about digging a little bit more into that idea of peer training, and I think we probably all agree that it's quite powerful, you know, the days of standing or sitting in a classroom looking at somebody behind a pulpit delivering delivering the word from PowerPoint slides is kind of, in many ways, gone. So from that peer learning perspective, where have you seen that work really well in action? Like practically, what's worked really well that you've seen?

It's some of the classics, I would say. We launched a mentor program last year. And because we're quite dispersed geographically as a business, we really have quite a diversity of employees across the business in kind of professional roles, manufacturing roles. And we have 50 mentoring relationships up and running. So across the business, and we just recently surveyed them to say, how valuable are you finding this? And 100% of mentees are saying this has been amazing. The world of the virtual world really helps because you don't have to meet your mentees in person. So we're just about to kind of relaunch and go out there again and kind of refresh the relationships for the next 12 months. So that's worked really well. For example, I mentor somebody who's a supply chain leader in our the Foods UK business. I know very little about supply chain and cheese production, but I'm learning as much nearly as she's learning from me in terms of kind of advice around development, careers, should I go for that next role, all that classic stuff. So that's worked really well. We launched an internal coaching panel as well, so again, that's sort of leaders sort of helping other leaders, so more aimed at our kind of mid-level leaders. So rather than always going externally, which can be expensive and is really kind of maybe for a smaller group, how do we to help other leaders in the business kind of on their journey. So that's kind of in its earlier stages. And I suppose we're lucky that the size of our business allows us to do some of this stuff, but they're working really well for us.

And Barbara, back to a point that you touched on earlier on of some colleagues that you have that have maybe been in the organization for 20 or 30 years. And actually, it was interesting, we had someone on the podcast, I think it was, I can't remember, it was maybe Challenge 5 around disconnection, that they've got 6 generations in their workforce. That's insane. Like people all the way from 18 to like 65, 17 or 16 to 65. It's brilliant. It's brilliant because I mean, all the richness of all the learning coming from perhaps from the top of the organization and all the new ideas and passion and excitement and all that coming from the bottom. And I wonder when you think about, and certainly one of the things that we identified in the report was that whole idea of different generations kind of wanting and needing different things because they're at different parts maybe in their career. But I wonder when you think about it from the multigenerational perspective, what value does this whole idea of peer learning, what can that bring to an organization and to the employees?

Oh, there's so much. And just feeding into Lisa's point on mentoring, and I think mentoring is a very powerful concept and it's becoming more and more common, you know, that the notion of kind of sitting and and kind of bouncing things off somebody who might have had experience in that area or might have done something similar in the past. But I think with the mother—

I think we lost Barbara, did we?

Am I gone?

We did.

You're back. We're gone, but it's okay, you're back. Well, I'll tell you what I'll do is I will start, maybe I'll just ask you the question again and we'll go from there and then I'll get the lads to cut it back together.

Perfect.

I think you just, I think you switched audio device. It says here, Barbara Carroll, due to a change in your devices. Anyway, it's fine, you're back.

That's the important thing. So I don't know what's going on.

Yeah, very weird. Yeah, very weird. I have to think back to the question.

So, it's about multi-generations in the workplace.

Yes, thank you. So, okay, I'll just cut in there. So, building on what Lisa said there and something that's come up in other podcasts that we've run is this whole idea of multi-generational workforces. And I wonder what value do you see in having those people maybe towards the end of their careers or the twilight of their careers and the knowledge that they bring, but also meeting that with the energy and knowledge the ideas and enthusiasm perhaps that those new people into the organization are bringing. What are you seeing that's working really well?

I think there's lots to be learned from lots of the different generations that are in the organization. And if you think of, well, look, having 20, 30 years experience working in an organization, there is, you know, there's a whole vast array of understanding of how the organization works, first of all. But also from, from another perspective, the world is changing, you know, and it's changing fast. And we have found that, you know, people are struggling with technology and, you know, new ways of doing things. And the new generation that's coming up is actually quite proficient in technology. So the notion of mentoring, both mentoring down but reverse mentoring up as well, is working really, really well. And that's something that I think certainly is growing. And we're connecting. We have a mentoring mentoring program, and it's all about building careers and it's about, you know, what's the next step and also dealing with transformation and change and all of those challenges that come with it. But there is a whole other wealth of knowledge in this new generation coming in who can simply teach people how to use platforms and, you know, get better at communicating with each other on Teams and Slack and all of these things that that some of the people who— I won't say the, the older people, but like, you know, lots of other generations— aren't as good at. So there's a huge wealth of knowledge from all the different generations, and it can be very, very fruitful with them all working together.

Yeah, and I love— I, I do love the idea of mentoring. I love the idea of reverse mentoring. Um, and, and for those on the pod who are not aware of the term, where more junior perhaps staff then are mentoring more senior staff, perhaps even up to the CEO. And I think that not only does that help to spread knowledge, but also from a cultural perspective, I think, in an organization, it helps to show that bit of vulnerability, that bit of openness to learning, that bit of, you know, look, I might even be the CEO or the CPO or the COO. I don't know everything. And actually, I'm open to learning. And that's an incredibly powerful part of your culture as well in terms of bringing that to life. Lisa, what's the role of leaders when it comes to creating cultures that are perhaps based on a strong foundation of learning? And you said at the top that one of the things that you'd taken out of the report was this idea of learning being built into your values. What's the role of leaders and team leaders and supervisors when it comes to building those cultures of learning?

I think it's, it's the really simple stuff. I think leaders have to practice what they preach. So they can't be telling everybody else to go and invest in their development if they're not if they're not doing the same themselves. So I came in this morning, my first LinkedIn feed was our Chief Commercial Officer just finished a program at the weekend at Harvard, and he was raving about it and sharing its values. That's a huge message that it's sending to his network and to our employees. Our CEO is very focused on his development, attending external events, staying relevant. So that kind of drive for new knowledge, I think people need to see that from the top. And then it comes right back down to the really simple things like are we giving people the space to go and learn and take that time out when it is, for example, classroom learning? So for example, this week we've a new female leader program, our LEAP program, and one of the cohorts has gone to a kind of immersive 3-day session in the UK. And we're saying to all their line managers, they're not bringing their laptops, their phones are kind of locked away for the day, they're there to learn. It's advised that even Friday afternoon when they're traveling back from this program, We're telling them don't log back on to emails and all that because if you need the weekend to nearly cement what you've learned over those 3 days and just give them the protected space to do that. So I think it's the really practical stuff for that kind of classroom immersive pieces as well. And then I think there is a piece about making sure our leaders feel confident, as you talked about at the beginning, around don't assume they know it all, make sure that they have the space to talk about what they need to work on and to develop, to kind of face out to their teams and to lead their teams as well and to give them the kind of our support, I suppose, in our roles to do that.

And again, back to culture, that whole idea of don't expect people to be online, don't expect people to be doing emails in the breaks, don't expect— because when they're there, let them be there. Let them be there and learn and mix with and talk to and challenge the people that are there. Let them be in that room properly, fully immersed in that room. And Barbara, it kind of It harks back to something that you said a few minutes ago when you talked about the kind of the one-off learning or the going on a course and then coming back to the office. And I wonder, Lisa talked there about the space to go and learn, but I wonder from a leadership perspective about the space to come back and apply that learning. What role do leaders play in that? And what have you seen practically that works really well? Because at the end of the day, everyone's up to 90 miles an hour. I hate that term VUCA, volatile, uncertain, something and something anything else. But it is a fast-moving— we're in a fast-moving world and there's just stuff just happening all the time. So, what's the role of leaders in making sure that when organizations invest from a cultural perspective, they're able to then come back and apply that learning to the benefit of the team?

Well, first of all, I would say I think it's important for HR teams to work collaboratively with leaders when it comes to learning opportunities and interventions. And to understand, I suppose, the cut and thrust of the demands of the day-to-day, you know. So I think that is very important. But I have been involved in some of the most glamorous, you know, kind of highly advertised and marketed courses that, you know, from the outset look like they're going to solve all the problems of the organization. But we still end up having issues with attendance levels, consistency, and those kind of elements. And also at the end of it, did we really achieve what we set out to achieve? So, and I think this is a challenge for HR functions, for organizations, for investing in training and all of those good things. So I think the leader has a critical role. It always comes back to the leader, doesn't it? What reinforcement has been going on? At a local level to actually embed the training that's going on. Now, how can that happen effectively? It can only happen if the leader is fully engaged and bought into the actual learning itself, that they understand the people on the team and that they understand what development is required for different people on the team. And it's never the same from one person to the next. So, you know, you've got a responsibility to get to know your team, to meet with them on your, on your one-to-ones, on your regular meetings, and to really understand what will actually make a difference with this person. How can we invest in them? And once that's clear, then it's a case of following up. So it's how, you know, what are you learning? You know, what have you learned? What have we invested in? What are you bringing back? What are you committed to doing? And following that up with them. So there's a critical role for the leader here to make sure that they're working collaboratively with their people on their team to ensure that they're supporting the learning, that they're allowing it to actually happen, to be in action when they go back into the workplace. But in order for that to happen, the leader has to be fully bought into it in the first place. So that's where it comes back to the collaboration between the training intervention and the leader in the first place. So there's a lot of complexity here, Scott McInnes, that we could spend a lot of time talking about, you know, but I actually think some of the most simple interventions can actually be the most effective. You know, some of those interventions where people just feel I need to just get away from the workplace and think about what, what are the solutions. And sometimes that can be just a very positive thing or just going out networking or going out to see what other organizations are doing and bringing it back to the workplace and maybe sharing that. That can be a very positive thing as well.

And I love that we kind of got to that place where we were like, you know, the leader has to make time in order for that change to happen and that learning to be embedded. But equally, you could argue that then the people above those leaders, because of course, that squeezed middle that we talk about so often, getting it from the top down, getting it from the bottom up, they're in the middle trying to get work done and trying to make sure their teams are happy and do the one-to-ones and all that stuff, that it's the people above them and the people above them and the people above them perhaps that need to really see the value and the benefit of the learning and therefore then perhaps giving up time. So this project goes a little bit slower by a week because we're now trying to embed the learning that we took from whatever the intervention was. So I think, again, it comes back for me as embedded in culture. It's all the way back up through the organization and then down to the people. Something that we talked about at the very beginning was that whole kind of 70-20-10 idea. And when we sit down with people, and Barbara, you just touched there on kind of performance management, we could rat hole on that, I suspect, on the podcast for a week about how that doesn't perhaps work as well as it should and the benefit that it could have if people did it really well, which I don't think generally they are in my experience. But when you think about the whole idea of trying to kind of pivot Lisa, from learning being about going on a course to learning being more in that kind of 70-20-10 space of it's just the stuff you're doing every day. How do we help people to broaden their understanding of growth and development and what that actually is?

I think we do parrot on a little bit of, as we knew about the 70-20-10 model in terms of what your learning plan should look like. So at any opportunity, especially in workshops or in classroom learnings, we will talk about how this is such a small part of your learning. And definitely, kind of, as we've talked about already, I think you see the dramatic shift in people's learning when they're thrown in at the deep end. So what's worked really well for us is, say, stretch assignments, somebody stepping into an interim role. We've just come through a fairly significant restructure, and that's, you know, a big upheaval, but also creates huge opportunity for people. And in some ways, once you've done that step up or that interim, there is no way back. Like, you know more, you've done more, you can't kind of go back to the old. So it's saying, well, what's next? So how How do you kind of keep the interest? How do you keep the momentum? How do you keep kind of helping people to kind of move forwards in that space? So a lot of our focus is then on the job, on the roles, on the next assignment, on the next project they're going to get involved in. So it's kind of juggling lots of, lots of balls to try and make it happen.

And it's not easy. Nobody's saying any of this is simple or straightforward. Barbara, thoughts on repositioning kind of learning and development?

Yeah, look, I think there's There's lots of ways to do it. I think, you know, I do think mentoring is a big part of it. And I think it's that kind of long-term mentoring, but also what has worked. And actually, you know, in my previous careers, I worked quite a lot in the services industry and it's about kind of getting champions of different aspects of what we do.. So it's that train the trainer type approach, you know, where it's not just coming from one area, but it's coming from the actual people on the ground and they train each other up. And people will like— people like to see their colleagues telling them what works and what doesn't work more and more maybe than management. Another interesting initiative that has worked for me in the past is this notion, and it's getting back to this idea of engaging leaders from the top down, is we set up a— underneath the executive team, we set up an extended leadership team. And within that team, it's a much broader, larger team where the exec can talk about different issues that are coming up and share it across the board.. And what that enables then is shared thinking, shared decision-making, shared culture-making, you know, because as you get back— gets back to that question on the middle management, you know, that they're kind of stuck in the middle. But if you engage them and get them part of the decision-making and learning about the issues and coming up with the solutions, then, you know, they really are part of the bigger thinking and they're running the organization effectively. That can really deal with that issue of, you know, the top-down and not really being engaged, but it really brings the top closer to the bottom as such, you know, and helps with that whole cross-organization culture. Yeah.

I think it's really interesting that that idea of an extended leadership team and then a senior team dipping into that group of people to support them in decision-making or where we should go or what's our strategy look like or whatever it might be. Not only is it the people who are very close to that conversation, conversation, but actually it's the people, it's the ripple effect of those conversations because it's people around that core of 6 or 7 people, however many people that might be making that decision, that are going, "Oh God, I wouldn't have done it that way, but that's actually really good. And gosh, I wouldn't ever have asked that question, but that's a great question to ask." And it's all those little tiny inconsequential things, arguably, that just bypass us every day. We don't really think about it as learning. And my kids, when they were in primary school, would come— I've said this on the podcast loads of times, but they would come home from primary school and I'd say to them, what do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?

I need to ask myself those questions.

I think that's a really powerful question. Now, they're 20, 18, and 16 now. They don't like me asking the question anymore because they just tell me to shut up and get back in my box. But I think it's a really important question that perhaps leaders need to be asking. Lisa talked there about stretch assignments and interim roles. Well, I wonder, do people actually ever ask people in those situations, "What have you learned? What have you learned from that stretch role or from that interim that you can bring back to your team?" I wonder, is anybody asking that question? Maybe some are, maybe some aren't. I don't know. But maybe that's a thought for listeners. Last question, conscious of time, let's talk about AI, because it would be remiss in the world of kind of learning and development and skills for the future not to talk about AI. So Lisa, where do you see AI supporting with perhaps building the skills that people need for today and tomorrow?

We have a great technology team here who are really helping us embrace AI. So we have Copilot licenses and things like that. And going back to Generations, I I have one of my team members, is in her kind of mid-20s, and she has really helped me learn a lot about AI and is even driving kind of a part of a future skills project on the go at the moment. So even to start building our skills library, she's done a whole piece of research via AI to say, okay, scan all of our strategy documents, scan our job descriptions, what are the kind of skills that are important to us as a business, and has come to our project team with things like Microsoft Skills have a new module that you can actually use that tells you how is your organization interacting with Microsoft. So what are they working on? What are they searching? What are they Googling? And it's helping us again kind of build this future skills. So it's kind of using AI to kind of push on AI skills too, as well as other things, if that makes sense. But I still think we've an awful lot to learn, but we're trying to embrace it and help us get at some of our kind of more complex pieces of work on projects.

Yeah, I think you're right. I think there's a huge amount for all organizations to learn. I love that idea of an AI looking at what people are looking for on Google, because often the first place we go when we have a problem is, I'll go and Google that, or I'll look it up on whatever the Microsoft version is of search these days.

Well, apparently Google is out. That's what us lot do, our generation.

Oh, really?

That Gen Zs just go straight to Copilot.

Okay, so that's for old people.

So now I realize I need to embrace the change. But yeah, it's fascinating. In terms of being able to give us that data.

Right, yeah, it's incredible. Barbara, any thoughts on AI to finish up? Oh, it just comes back. Barbara, looks like you're on mute. You are back in the room, but we can't hear you.

I'd say it's picking up our other speaker, maybe.

Yeah, you're on mute now. I think I can unmute. I've just unmuted you, so can we hear you now?

No.

No, so it must have switched audio on you. Maybe jump out and jump back in again and then we'll finish up. We'll only be about another 1 minute. Sorry, Lisa.

No, no problem. The joys of technology.

I know.

And it always works fine. It's just when people, you know, if people arrive in late for whatever reason, then then they're thrown a wee bit and the tech doesn't quite work quite as well. And I think we've got people at the other end of the spectrum. I'd say so.

Yeah.

I remember Ailsa doing a Rev thing during lockdown and there was like 500 people on the call and I was too vain to wear this. I wore my AirPods. It was a complete disaster because the AirPods just, you know, anyway, kept going to the other source.

Yeah, it does that. It drops.

Yeah.

Yeah. Which comes back in. We'll get this done. So I need to ask her, so building on what, building on what Lisa just said. Maybe she's had enough. Do you have an 11? Am I holding you up from something?

No, no, I'm fine.

Okay. Good conversation.

Yeah, that's interesting. Very well chaired, very well compared.

Thank you. I've done 140 of them though.

Have you? My goodness. Well, no wonder you're the pro. You should be doing master classes on how to run podcasts.

I've been busy enough trying to do my job.

Just, you know, if you've got a spare few minutes.

There she is. Hello.

Hello? No, we can't hear you.

We have no audio. Now you're on mute.

Unless she unplugs one of her speakers or something.

Barbara, stop recording. Just try that now. I've just unmuted you. Barbara, just try speaking there. No, no. Oh, was that it there? We had you. Cheers. Hopefully this is going to hold. Hopefully this won't balls up the, um, the upload of the recording, all the in and out. Now the editing's fine, he can sort that. It's just capturing the, making sure we capture the audio.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, we have you. We have you. Let's finish this quick before it breaks again. Can you hear us? You just put yourself on mute. Yeah, I have you. Do you have us? We have you. We can hear you.

Can you hear me? No.

Yes.

Yeah, we can hear you.

She can't hear us.

You can't hear me?

Yes.

Oh, I can't hear you.

Okay, so I'd say if you go down to, um, if you can hear me See down below, it says speaker at the bottom. There's some buttons there. Once that speaker— if you mouse over that, it brings up your list of speakers. I say just switch that to your headset. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? I'll just keep talking and then you can let me know if you can hear me. Can you hear me now? I can still hear you fine.

Oh, I can hear you.

Oh, you hear me?

I can hear you.

I just came out of the microphone and everything. So can you hear me?

Yeah, we can hear you fine.

I'm on the laptop, the old—

Okay, that's fine. Let's finish out quick before it breaks again. So to wrap us up, Barbara, anything to add there to that whole idea of AI and how that's supporting with building the skills for today and tomorrow?

Yeah, well, I think AI— well, look, we know it's rapidly expanding and there's lots to learn in AI. And I think lots of us are only catching up with how we can actually use the tools. I mean, I'm using them a lot for asking questions, but, you know, I know there's a lot more efficient and productive ways that we can use AI. So I think, first of all, the big focus has to be on actually using the tools those as effectively as we can and what we're getting out of them. But I think in terms of learning and development, it's going to be really exciting because if you look back to the way we have been identifying learning needs, you know, doing learning needs assessments and, you know, tracking people's development and, you know, having kind of, you know, within those performance management meetings those kind of recording where the gaps are, etc. AI is going to really streamline actually quite a lot of this. And one of the things we've done really well is we've identified in the organization different talents that are actually available to us for different projects. But AI is going to really streamline that even more. So, you know, what it will look like is projects will come up. And very quickly, the systems and platforms will be able to identify people in the organization or skills that can be utilized to really get the best out of those projects in very, very short time. Right. And that can expand then to individuals and their developments. And, you know, it can really identify what types of learning and what types of programs will suit different types of individuals because people learn different ways. So it could actually create a whole plan for somebody who needs to develop in a particular area. So like if I remember back at the, even just at the COVID times, I had some opportunity to sit down and develop a course, a leadership course where we sat and wrote out with external providers and internal providers and we collaborated on it, but we spent quite a lot of time creating a diploma course in leadership and management, which we rolled out then when we, when we all returned back to the workplace and through blended learning and all of those good things. But that kind of work is going to become less and less, you know, because AI will be able to produce some learning materials and that for us really quite quickly. So it'll enable then the learning providers to do a lot more fruitful work around the coaching, around the mentoring, around the human, the in-person type of work, the follow-up, the reflection work, which I think you were referring to earlier on, Scott. You know, how are we reflecting on what we're learning and how we're using the learning and really work on embedding the learning more than just writing the learning. You know what I mean? So it's going to be a very different environment when it comes to learning and development in the future. And that is really exciting.

You heard it here, people. I think we're going to wrap up there, but you heard it here. AI apparently is the future. But I think, Barbara, I completely agree that it is going to take away some of that perhaps drudge work that we perhaps had to do before to get to a point where we had a course, for example, in hand and developed. And allows that time for people. And I think that's really, really, really powerful. Lisa, Barbara, thanks so much for being here today. I've really enjoyed the conversation, and it's been great having you both on.

Great. It's been a pleasure. Thanks, Scott.

Absolute pleasure, Scott. Really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Take care, both. See you now.