Beyond the 70/20/10: The L&D
Round-Up on What is Next

Introduction

Nolan: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Learning and Development podcast sponsored by Infopro Learning. As always, I’m your host, Nolan Hout. Joining me today is Autumn Carter. Autumn’s a seasoned L&D strategist with over 18 years of experience driving corporate success through various innovative employee development projects, engagement initiatives, and retention strategies. But she’s not a leader within the confines of her own office. She’s also a thought leader in the L&D space.

She recently served as the president of the ATD chapter in Philly, which is a very large and prominent chapter, so kudos to you, Autumn. And so, there’s really nobody better to talk with today about popular L&D trends. Not just trends of today, but I think we’re going to go back and look at some of these things like 70, 20, 10, you probably haven’t heard that in a while and see what’s come, what’s gone, what’s new again, and we’re going to cover it all. And we only have a short amount of time, so let’s go ahead and meet our guest, Autumn.

Autumn, welcome to the podcast.

Autumn: Thank you so much, Nolan. It’s great to be here. I’m really excited. Wonderful. Well, Autumn, we always start by learning a little bit more about our guests. Obviously, someone like you, you’re an established leader in your company, a leader in our space, but you weren’t always. You didn’t just come out of college and, here’s the, you here, here now, the ATD president of Philly. Tell us your origin story. Where did you start, and how did you do it?

Autumn’s Career Trajectory

Nolan: How did you get into learning, and what kept you captivated and motivated to stay with it?

Autumn: Yes, I, what are those people who had that accidental trainer title? Do you remember? I started at Blue Cross and joined their team, where I assisted as a very junior trainer. And from there, it impacts almost every aspect of learning and development, from trainers and instructional designers to coaching and leadership in large businesses. Over the years, I found myself in various positions within learning and development, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. I originally wanted to be a teacher, so this was a nice sweet spot of not going into education, but still being able to share my passion for learning and help people reach their goals.

What Sparked Autumn’s Teaching Passion?

Nolan: Totally. And what, so did you, what is it about the teaching component that you like? Is it that you didn’t have good teachers, and so it’s almost as if I want to be the person I saw in the movie? I want to be a Coach. Or was it that I had a really great teacher, and I just realized what a big impact that had in my life, and I want to pass it on if you would? What was it you thought?

Autumn: Yes, yes. I had a really great teacher. I would say that combination. I had a really great teacher, and I thought, ‘My gosh, if I had had this teacher years ago, I probably would have changed the direction of where I wanted to be.’ But I was like, well, I like that. And I never knew that people could really help you see something within yourself that you may not have seen. So, when I was in middle school, I thought I hated math. And I was like, my goodness, this is horrible until eighth grade. I thought, ‘It’s not too bad.’ But then I had a teacher in my junior year of high school, and I realized, ‘My gosh, I love math.’

And I would have been on a different path, more focused on math, had I had this teacher. And it was just a way that she helped others; she would say, ‘Hey, it’s not a hard subject.’ It’s not different from what you’re used to. It is something that you can enjoy. And I love that about the person. Ironically, her last name was too, so that probably helped.

Nolan: You know what, I didn’t connect the dots. The only good teaching moment that came up was Coach, the movie Coach.

Autumn: But I never forget her.

Nolan: I didn’t even connect your last name with this, so it’s very odd. If anyone hasn’t seen Coach, it’s a great movie: basketball, Samuel L. Jackson, Heartstrings, all the stuff. Yeah, so definitely hear you. Sometimes, I definitely feel that these good teachers are especially valuable, depending on when you encounter them in your life. It can really open your mind to what good looks like. And it’s great when you have those moments. I’ve been fortunate. I’ve had two bosses essentially my whole life.

Well, maybe three, four, you know, if you count like the guy who paid me $10 an hour under the table when I was a bouncer at a club in college, I don’t know if you call that a boss or not. So, let’s exclude those people from my bosses. However, I recall that my first job was in an abandoned bowling alley. They converted into something like a call center. It was a truly unusual occurrence in the state of Utah.

And it was a boiler-room-type situation. Salespeople know how to sell small business websites and similar products. And I remember, like, I walked in and I was like, how does anybody stay here, right? I’m right out of college. My brother got me the job. And I know it, I was like, such an odd environment here. And then my manager, Greg Woods.

And I realized, this is why people stay. People didn’t like the ownership or the leadership of the company, but they loved this guy. So early on, I was like, it’s like the person who can make up for so many different things, and they can help you do so many different things. And then, thankfully, when I came to this company.

The gentleman who hired me has now gone on to be the CEO. So, obviously, he’s doing something right—and I’ve been able to learn from them. Yeah, and I think your bosses sometimes are like your teachers in the corporate world, right? And they can really, if you get a good one early on, as you said, set yourself up for success.

Autumn: As you said, you really said, and it’s still prevalent exactly what you’re saying today, right? Bosses still make a significant impact, as seen in the person and how they build that relationship, as well as how they share important information with their teams to help them reach their goals. It remains a highly relevant topic today and is crucial for efficient and productive teens.

Modern Take on 70/20/10 Model

Nolan: So, part of that, you know what we talked about today, and it was funny when we were kind of chatting, what do we want to talk about in this? We said, let’s talk about a little bit of everything. And so, we called it the L&D roundup. One of the first topics was the 70/20/10 framework. Always a really fun topic for me because I mean, what we’re talking about here, right, is like the, know, like 20%, I guess, you know, or 70 % kind of an opinion on how you say your boss works with you, but that peer learning having such a big impact on what you do or the 20%.

However, it’s always one of my favorite topics because I think it’s a good place for us to start, and I haven’t actually had a conversation on it in a long time, as many people are so caught up in AI and related topics. I think we’ve lost sight of fundamental strategies like that. It’s interesting because whenever I have a conversation with a budget holder in L&D and a leader, such as when you’re interested in the 70-20-10 model, how well does your budget align with that? How much?

If we really believe 70 % of what people learn is on the job, 20 % is through peer, and 10 % is formal, where does your spin track against that? How much do you spend on the 10 % versus the 70 %? And unfortunately, it’s usually the opposite. However, that’s always a fun topic. I love to learn. How are you looking at 70-20-10 today?

Autumn: Yes, you know, I think, well, how I look at it is I think it’s still very important to do today. You may not have to outline it as, I’m thinking of 70, 20, 10. You don’t have to keep saying it.

But if you have it in the back of your mind as you’re putting together learning opportunities for employees, I think it’s very important, and it stands today, right? However, I have always liked to reverse this model in my career. I wrote an article a couple of years ago, simply by applying the 10% rule, which states that formal learning lays the foundation for what a person needs to learn as they move forward, based on the learning gained through that formal learning.

Then, you enhance or stretch that and expand the learning by incorporating peer learning, experiential learning, and other approaches. And that can really help an individual take what they’re trying to learn and make it impactful for the goals that they’re trying to meet.

Nolan: Yeah, and I think that’s a nice way to realize kind of, although the way that it’s written is like through hash marks, which makes it seem like it’s, like, you first do this and then you do this and then you do this. But I think it’s probably, you know, one of those things where text doesn’t do a great job. You know, it’s better to envision it as a pie. And you’ve got 10%, 20%, 70%. And maybe not even that; perhaps the inner circles are expanding because they all interact and engage with each other.

And again, like if you recognize that 70 % of how I’m going to do my thing, know, learn my thing, new skill is being applied on the job, then how do I make that 10 % just focused on that? You know, like how do I drive, or how do I even ensure that 70% happens faster? How do I equip them with the tools, or how do I ensure that they learn what they need to do? A lot of that is through, for example, if we look at 70%.

These are your teachers. These are the people teaching them. So sometimes it can be, well, let us take a look at how they are learning on it. Let’s not necessarily push something, but let us say, okay, how do they acquire this skill? How are they acquiring this knowledge from their peer? What does their peer actually know about this? It’s supposed to be the teacher. And I know that’s kind of always a sore topic because it’s like, okay, well, these managers need training. Do they have time? Are they?

Autumn: Yes, yes, yes, yes. But you make a good point. It’s also a way to personalize it. And I think that we don’t talk about that enough, even though I know it’s a lot of things. But just that personalized learning, what may work for Autumn may not work for Nolan. So, how can we combine these concepts to help Autumn be successful going forward in what we need her to do? Not losing that personalization will also be helpful.

Personalized Learning and Peer Influence

Nolan: Yeah, and if we look at, on the personalization level, especially nowadays when the ability to, a lot of times we say, well, people are auditory learners or they’re visual learners or they’re whatever learners. Some people also learn like.

They learn those channels, but they learn it through the 70, the 20, or the 10. Some people actually need to understand the concept; they don’t understand anything unless they’re building the engine. Some people will hear something a thousand times and say, ‘That’s not for me.’ But then their peer, their friend, says, ‘Well, did you know that there’s a show called Love Island? It’s a very stupid show.’ I encourage nobody to watch it, but I watch it a lot. I don’t want to admit how many hours I spend watching this show, but it’s a significant commitment.

And there are so many seasons that I wait for my friends to watch and then tell me, ‘You should watch this season,’ or ‘Don’t watch this season.’ So yeah, I’m not even willing to engage unless my friend says, Hey, go ahead and take this. And that is how people learn. We’re talking about Love Island, which is a show that’s very popular, but not necessarily for the right reasons. People do the same thing. Should I attend this off-site sales conference?

You know, hey, you went last year. What did you think about it? It sucked. Don’t go, or you’ll have raving fans. I loved it. We look forward to it every year.

Autumn: You’re absolutely right. Yeah, word of mouth is very powerful. We’re actually trying to implement that in the company I’m in now, which involves using a culture of word of mouth and other people’s feedback to determine our next steps. Basically, that’s what it is. And it happens a lot in learning, as you said, should I take this course? Well, Autumn took it and she loved it. So, I’m going to take it. How can we promote that more through the firm? For instance, how can we utilize those influential people to disseminate those words?

That’s the word: this is what you want to do, and this is the training you want to be in, or this project, etc., to help people with their learning.

Nolan: Yeah, and there’s a lot of psychology around it nowadays, actually. I think that it’s interesting, right? Like, the world gets wider or flatter, you know, depending on not actually flat. Don’t, I’m not talking about that. But, as we’re getting a little bit closer with technology, right? You’re attending this conference from Philly, and I’m in Idaho; we’re participating remotely, but we’re still talking together.

You know, it’s really, you would think that that would help us trust each other a little bit more, right? I want to buy this pencil. Let me look on Amazon and see what Autumn in Philly, Joe in Missouri, and Jim in Europe thought about it. But the reality is, I feel like now is we have learned to distrust all of those channels or like get a pause for concern about, like is that so the only real like word that we take is from a person that we know, trust, rely on, right and we’ve seen this right through these micro influencers.

Making Learning More Social

Nolan: These meta-influencers have become one of the most popular channels because we’ve realized that, actually, one-to-one, like a trusted person making a single review, somehow carries more weight than 10,000 people saying they like or don’t like this product. That I haven’t heard from you, how are you? If you don’t mind my asking, have you implemented any strategies, or are you incorporating this in some other way? Let’s share, how are you incorporating this kind of social component?

Autumn: Yes, sure, Technology aside, we haven’t gotten to the technology, and we’re still in the early phases. First, we examined individuals within the firm who are repeat learners. They love to be a part of our programs. They love to be part of our initiatives, learning opportunities, and whatever else they may be, whether formal or informal. And then we basically asked them, ‘Hey, do you want to be our ambassadors?’ We call them that.

There are influencers, right? So, you want to be our ambassadors? What you do is share your passion for our learning opportunities, love these programs, and encourage others to join in. Within your circle, within your fear of influence, so it doesn’t have to be you have to go out to someone you don’t know, but it’s, hey, you know what would help you take this course over here or join this ERG, this really helped me, and just sharing that with your circle to spread the word. It’s been really successful and started with a pilot first.

The ambassadors love it because they get to meet new people. They get to talk to the people they know more, which they like and have different topics. And then they get the information a little earlier. So, we do give them sneak peeks. So, they feel like they’re in. And whenever we have a pilot of anything, we ask if they would like to participate. That helps them, you know, I know a little bit more about what’s happening in the firm than others. And then we ask them to share it, share what they like. They can also share with us what they don’t like. So, it works two ways. They give us our opinion, like, you should make this different somehow.

Nolan: Yeah. That’s really cool. Yeah. Well, wonderful strategy. I love that. That’s really, really great. So now let’s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, now let’s shift gears a little bit—one of the things that we started.

Autumn: Yes, early stages, I’ll keep you posted.

Navigating the Digital and In-Person Learning Landscape

Nolan: Actually, on this podcast, we were just kind of talking about why this podcast existed, this kind of need for a casual conversation that used to happen in person at conferences. That’s how this podcast came to be. During the COVID pandemic, we obviously didn’t have those, so we picked that up. And so, you know, now we’ve gone on a very interesting journey in learning where we wanted to be digital, but we didn’t really want to be digital.

And then COVID made us digital. And so, we’re like, well, now we’re digital. Like we are digital. And now we’ve cycled back, where in-person is now a channel that does exist. So, we were forced to adopt all kinds of digital. Now we’ve gone that route where like well gosh this is great, it’s so much easier where I can spin things up quick they cost me pennies like I don’t have to deal with personalities and like managing events and conference rooms and blah blah blah it’s so fun so we’ve swung this pendulum so far one way.

What are your thoughts, Autumn, on that? Do you think we might have gone too far? Do you think we ought to be turning back a bit? Have you seen some good strategies for maybe that middle ground?

Autumn: You know what’s interesting? We need to find a middle ground that doesn’t involve hybrid options all the time, because, although I appreciate it, many people, from my experience, seem to prefer the option. And they’re just as torn as we are. So yes, they like eLearning because I can do it right from my home.

I can hurry up quickly, come here, and then right when it’s over, I can turn around and take my child somewhere. So, I don’t have to worry about driving to this location, and so on. However, on the flip side, they miss the in-person experience. I actually enjoy having dedicated time to speak with my peers, which I don’t often get to do. So, even you know, as present, when I was president of ATD, we saw this kind of challenge that people had, which made it a little difficult for us to offer the programs we wanted as well, because we’re like, OK.

Eighty % of people say they’ll attend something online, but they also want the in-person option. So, it’s really a struggle. However, almost back to what we were saying before is that personalization really involves knowing your audience and seeing, specifically in ATD, that if we made it smaller, the location of our events helped people attend in person.

For instance, we have geographic information groups, which means that the location determines who we market to, such as people in the South Jersey area. Here’s an in-person event for you guys, and we saw a really good number of people come versus just having it in the middle of some place, hoping that people would travel to that place if we brought it to their neighborhood, that would help them a little bit more if we found out what times work best for them.

Nolan: For instance, we have these geographic information groups, which means that, depending on the location, it determines who we market to. So, people in the South Jersey area, here’s an in-person event for you guys. We saw a significantly higher number of people attend, as opposed to just having it in a remote location, hoping that people would travel to that location if we brought it to their neighborhood, which helped them a little bit more. If we found out what times were best for them.

Autumn: Where they’re not rushing, then that helps a little bit more. On the other hand, you’ll always have people who prefer to stay online. It’s just so convenient, right? It helps them in their day-to-day schedule. So, I really think that going back to understanding who you are trying to reach and what their limitations may be, or what their concerns are, and personalizing it to that is the sweet spot.

The Importance of Timing and Location in Events

Nolan: Yeah. Totally. We’ve gone through this a lot. I don’t experience it as much because I’m not in sales, but our salespeople have mentioned that it’s harder for them to meet clients these days because they don’t like one, and they’re not as centralized as they used to be. And two, like, they don’t want to meet. And I was thinking about my own, just like, you know, propensity to go to a meeting or go to an event.

And I realized that now that I’ve come to like it, I work in a hybrid way. So, I’ve always worked remotely. Since, pretty much from day one, our company has been a remote company. So COVID didn’t necessarily change our rules of working at all. However, I have an office that I visit because I film these at home, rather than bringing my equipment to the office. But I’ve realized that if I’m asked to do something after 4 p.m. or 5 p.m., I think, ‘ Are you kidding me? ‘ Like, what? You want me to do what? Like, you know, like a networking event or a drinking or whatever.

Like, even things that, like, are fun. And I don’t know why my mind has changed so much, because, again, I’m the one who literally changed due to COVID. I mean, except for my kids, we’re now working from home as well, but I haven’t really changed my work routine. And yeah, anytime they have, and I work at a coworking space that’s one of the acclaimed ones in the nation for having the best community engagement. And I’m just like, ‘ You’re just hanging out on a Friday at 4:30, you go and chill with these folks? ‘ Is that more fun than your buddy? There’s something you brought up that was quite interesting, and I equate it to this: I was discussing this with my wife earlier this week.

And I said, ‘Man, when I have such a hard, long day, what I want to do is come up to my office and start playing my video games.’ I’m a big fan of video games. And I was like,

But the other day, my wife said, ‘Hey, we’re going to take the dog for a walk, go to the park. You want to go?’ I’m like, ah, no, I got to sit this one out. I told her when she came back, I said, as I’m playing video games, I am like, you know, I don’t know, like and a romcom I’d be like crying playing video games, being like, why I’m not even having fun doing what, like I’ll never find happiness again. I realized that sometimes I have to get out, and it’s actually fun. I have to remind myself that these things are actually valuable, but I have the convenience of getting this fun, Pavlovian response of getting my treat. I can get my treat a lot easier with no effort at all. So why would I exert any effort to get my treat when I already know it?

Autumn: Yes. Yes.

The Stigma of In-Person Events

Nolan: The treat isn’t good. And I think maybe a lot of this ties back to kind of that socialness. I think you mentioned making it easier, making it as easy as possible, removing as many roadblocks as you can. Maybe I recall that some people in larger cities were saying, ‘We don’t have events that end at five.’ They’re either like a 12 to two, so that they can continue to go out early if they have to come in, we don’t have an event at 9 a.m. because people that don’t come into the office aren’t going to have to commute to get around it, or they’ll start the event at five and end it at seven so that you’re not leaving at the end of rush hour. So, there are many things you can do, but I think it is essential to remember that, often now, people view anything in person as if it’s outdated; anything in person now carries a stigma attached to it.

But I think there’s, I mean, I’m trying to blur kind of a line between a CEO’s mandate of you have to come back to the office, whether you want to or not, because we know it’s best for you. So, I’m trying to figure out how to say that, but there is something so valuable about being in person, whether you recognize it or not.

Autumn: It is. Yes, and I get the struggle. I definitely do. But to your point, when we do have something and we get the people there, so when we take them to an after-hours event, they’re like, ‘Oh, I’m glad I went.’ We should have more of these. And I’m like, it took us, you know, we pulled every trick out of the hat to get you here. We’re like, ‘ Bring a friend and you can win this, and you can do this to get here. ‘

But then once they’re there, they’re like, oh, this is nice. I will not throw a wrench in it. On the other hand, think again and make it easy. I know everyone likes eLearning online because it’s very convenient. If we design it the right way and build it out, we can incorporate that social aspect. Convenience, and that’s going to be probably another sweet spot that people can take advantage of. It just surprisingly takes more workforce to do that.

Nolan: Yeah. Workforce. Right? I mean, you stick people in a room with booze, your job is done. If you try to do that digitally, you have to draw out the Pictionary on lines, and what is Scrabble, whatever it is. So, I want to dovetail this into it. Our favorite topic is always AI and technology because it is. As I’m in marketing, this is my field, and I have a really hard time spending money on in-person things like brand awareness events because you can’t track the results.

You can’t track a, I mean, it’s harder to, right? Often, they say, ‘Hey, if you’re going to spend $ 20,000 at ATD or DevLearn or whatever, expect zero leads, and then be happy when something comes down the road.’ So, it’s very hard to afford that. So, I’m very much like a digital native, and I understand the need to do that via eLearning. But what I’ve realized is that the value of the input is obviously where we met. We met in person at an event.

So, there’s some real value in that; I would say probably 50% of the people on my podcast are those I’ve met and then done something digitally with. However, what I’ve realized is that my budget was really holding me back because I didn’t want to spend all this money. However, now that you know what we do in marketing and what we try to educate many of our clients on, you can offer both eLearning and in-person training. If you’re able to leverage tools like AI, we’re seeing production results. We just got the results back, and we’re five times more efficient, which means we can do things five times less expensively. Than the way that they had been in the past for our clients. What are you going to do with the other $4,000?

Lump that into an in-person event. I think we used to, but now, with budgets so tight, I think a lot of us are holding back and saying, ‘I don’t know if I want to spend that,’ because in-person events are historically a lot more expensive. So that becomes a barrier internally. We discussed some of the barriers to getting people there, but we recognize that there’s a significant barrier to hosting an event like this within L&D and obtaining a budget sign-off.

Navigating Budget and Learning

Nolan: And so, what we found is a big way to get that back is to say, let’s not look at these tools, these technologies, and AI as a reason to cut my budget. No, I’m still going to spend $100, but instead of spending $50 on eLearning and $50 on events, I’m going to spend $20 on eLearning and still accomplish the same thing. But now I’m going to spend $ 80 on events because I do recognize that I can see some deep, deep change in my skills.

The 70:20:10, in-person peer with tech. How are you leveraging eLearning in-person with technology being so pervasive? How are you making these tough choices, such as cost versus impact versus budget?

Autumn: Yes. Yes, we’re still probably like many different people, we’re still feeling our way through how best to use technology and be strict strategic about it. Right. And then also, you know, I’m always going to be a learner at heart. Right. And how do I translate that to whatever we do, whatever we promote, whatever we use, is a learning opportunity for the individual. For instance, one of the tools we’ve been experimenting with is the ability to help people provide more appropriate feedback. So, hey, you want to give recognition to Nolan. Thanks, Nolan, for that project.

Okay, what did he do that was so exciting? You know, so trying to change it and turn it into a learning opportunity so that you get the best of both worlds, right? So, you have them using the tech; they’re still learning, still given recognition, and so on. So, we’ve been really trying to swim through and detect how best to utilize AI and technology to its full potential, while also ensuring it aligns with our vision.

Autumn’s Role and Company Insight

Nolan: Then, just so people understand, Autumn, can you talk a little bit about what your current role is? I think it’s always, I think people, sometimes when they hear people, especially talking about AI, they’re like, okay, well, maybe she’s not like me, you know, and so I know, you know, but can you tell people a little bit about what your role is and a little bit about your company so that they can understand the space that you operate in?

Autumn: Sure. Yes. So, I lead the learning and organizational development team for my firm. So, I’m over all of our learning and development. I also handle engagement. And I sit within our HR department. I always like to differentiate that because many companies have two different sets of learning. They may have learning opportunities within sales and within HR. So, I sit in the HR space and I work for a financial company. So, we’re always looking at, or I specifically am, learning, development, and engagement. Additionally, I also take on HR responsibilities. So, I’m always looking at this too, like different.

Common Roadblocks to AI Adoption

Nolan: In addition to that, I take on HR responsibilities as well. So, I’m looking at you touching all these different things. So, when we look at leveraging AI a bit more, and speaking specifically about some of the roadblocks you’ve seen in your field, what are they? Finance is historically kind of a tough one. What are you seeing as these roadblocks that you’ve hit?

Autumn: Yes, yep. So, the biggest issue for any finance, or I would say health insurance, is going to be the compliance part. So, with our HR hats on, our biggest roadblock is that we want to ensure we comply, right? It won’t affect or negatively affect our image, right? So, suppose something gets out or private information is incorporated into an AI capability. In that case, we certainly don’t want that to happen from a compliance and legal perspective, as it would be our biggest roadblock here. How can we slowly and strategically release tools that can help the firm open us up to risk? So that’s always at the forefront of my mind. And I would say probably most people within the firm are aware of that risk aspect.

We don’t want to fall into a situation where it could negatively affect the brand. So that’s the biggest roadblock. The next is what, right? There are many different tools. Yes, there are numerous tools available. What do we want to focus on? Right? How do we want to convey this? Do we want to start with small wins? And what does that entail? And what’s a small win for us to help our firm understand the capabilities of AI tools and technology, while also building trust in the tool, because, after all, it’s about change management, right?

As soon as you introduce something, you have a very limited time to get people to be all for it. And then it might derail the situation. So, how can we select a couple of different opportunities where we can infuse AI and tech that can help us drive to the efficiency we want, achieve the productivity we aim for, and utilize these tools while also building trust and limiting risk? So really heavy stuff when we’re thinking of that. When you look at the learning side, it’s a little safer, right? Because it’s learning. You’re not using an AI tool like ChatGPT or something similar that can disrupt someone’s learning catalog.

So, you’re looking at tools like personalized learning that are easy to use. Like many companies, you can take your job title and description, and personalize them to craft some eLearning that suits you. Those are nice, soft ways to get into the AI space through the learning side. But company-wide,

Nolan: Take your job title, your description, and personalize and practice something that you can. Those are nice.

Autumn: I’m on a work group now, we’re thinking hard and long on the best way to handle it because we’re in such a regulated industry, and it can affect lives.

Nolan: Regulated industry. Yes, I’m not in sales, but I will say, since you brought up the issue of payment, I didn’t pay Autumn to do this; I swear. One of the things I lead for our company is our AI practice. And one of the things I realized, because we received a lot of feedback, is that this is great information.

I agree that those are great tools and that’s insight, but how do you get me started? And I realized that that actually wasn’t the thing. Getting started means something different for everybody. Like, you’re in a position where you’re like, know, God, can you simplify this world for me? Could you please do a quick assessment for me? Like, what are the tools that I could use? What are the areas where I need to focus my attention? Because I can’t boil this ocean right now. What would make the biggest impact, right? In that other companies are, yeah, yeah, and a lot of other companies are like, well, I want to see it. They’re like, I don’t want a strategy. Just take this asset and convert it.

I want to see what AI can do and demonstrate it to me. So, build out a video, an eLearning module, an audio script, a podcast, or an infographic, but use AI and show me how you did it, so that I can then see what type I can get. But then you have your whole third bucket, which is where I have the most fun. You mentioned the like, where do I start? And it’s an interesting conversation because it’s the same conversation that we have every day for the past 100,000 years. And L&D is not, nor is it, HR or whatever.

It’s like, what is the impact of my business? Where can I make the largest impact on my business? And I think when companies ask that question, it’s very, it’s always very successful because they’re not actually looking to see like a widget. I do understand that sometimes that’s needed for sure. But where you can have the biggest impact is where, like, so we did this project with this client, and they’re like, where can I, how much money can I actually save?

Put together a feasibility study on how much money I can save in my production if I were to leverage AI, and explain to me what that means. As you come in, analyze my world and make it realistic. Don’t care. And again, interestingly enough,

We started with 30%. That was what we found, because internally that’s what we found. We have a team of 500 people who create these assets for all types of clients, primarily enterprise. You mentioned heavily regulated, for sure—super heavily regulated organizations.

As a vendor, we’re held to even higher standards than employees, many times, because if an employee messes up, it’s just a matter of so what. If we mess up, we get sued, lose all our money, and face other consequences. And so, we said, ‘Okay, we’ll start using AI, and we’re able to save 30%.’ We’re like, oh, that’s pretty damn good. That’s nice. But then now we’re like, well, 50 % can actually be easy.

And so, we actually started guaranteeing a 50 % reduction. That’s where, but the funny part about the whole thing is, in reality, it’s more than that. But you get to a certain point where you can’t even believe it. You’re like, I don’t believe you, like, sorry, but I don’t believe you. And so, it’s a really interesting time with AI, because I heard somebody say, ‘What do they call it?’

A clickbait kind of thing. And the guy, he had said, I think what will shock us the most about AI in the future is that it was like underhyped. People actually think AI is overhyped at the moment.

And if you think that, it’s because you don’t actually understand what it can do for you. And so that, I think we are in this space, I think right now, where we have a lot of people who believe it can help them, but they don’t understand the extent to which it can help them is so much higher than what they believe and as an AI like native, I have this problem every day. Like every week, I listen to something new. Just yesterday, someone said the head of marketing at HubSpot is the head of product at HubSpot.

She’s like, ‘Yeah, I take all of our recorded conversations, I load them into a tool, and I just ask, ‘What do our customers say about our product?’ And then I take reviews, like one to five-star reviews, and I gather this information, as well as the actual job titles of the people. I’ve built out a living, breathing AI customer. Now, the sales representative wants to conduct a mock call with a customer.

I can engage this agent. If marketing wants to send a marketing email to somebody and see how they’d respond, I have this agent. I am just every day. Like, whoa.

Autumn: Yes, very. It’s so cool. I think we would be remiss if we didn’t bring up that second question. Usually, where do I start? But then a second question is, if it’s taking or making it more efficient for me on this side, then what am I going to do? Kind of what your budget question, right? So, if I’m spending less money over here, what do I have to do now? And then that’s where the strategic part comes in.

So, if I’m saving Autumn time over here because now she doesn’t have to spend two hours developing, or she doesn’t have to spend X amount of time creating job age. Now what do I need her to do? So, looking at it this way, AI is here to help in this aspect, and now she can really focus on this portion of her job. Communicating that to people is going to be a key part too, and it will alleviate some of those fears that are coming up in the public.

Nolan: That’s 100 % it. And I think that is the area that actually takes a stop, like you have to stop. What you’re completely realizing is that AI is not helping me do my job better. I need to do a different job. It will force me to do it, and this is not a very popular topic, but right now, many of us are going through budget reductions. You know, this is nothing new to L&D, but organizations are facing layoffs and other challenges.

And one of the things I was talking to a person at a conference about, and I was like, listen, you know, anytime somebody comes to you and says your budget is cut by 10%, the first thought is like, okay, who do I have? Who are the vendors that cause me pain? What contractors are my pain? Let me stop that.

Right, so it’s like, let me just cut that cost. I know I need it, but I’m just going to cut it. And then when the budget comes back, I’ll bring them back. But few are thinking, ‘Well, how do I just change my model, where the cost to do all this would be less?’

Is there a way to do that? And it’s not, and you’ll never get there from a high-pressure situation or a hose that you turn on and turn off. You’ll only ever get the same amount of water from that hose. And the only thing that turns the tap is money. And if that’s the only way you can do more, which is with more money, you’re not creating exponential scale for your company.

The Future of AI in Business Strategy

Nolan: So, I’m like telling, what we were talking about is like those that are using that, just like people were using, because they had asked me what I think it’s going to take for AI to really take center stage. I said, it’s going to take just like COVID pushed us off the cliff to go digital; I think eventually we’re going to say, ‘ You’ve pushed our budget too far, you’ve officially asked us to do a huge amount more with an enormous amount less. We’ve always said more with less, but now that gap is so wide that you can’t even see it on the screen. It’s substantial, and it’s going to force a relook at maybe my operating model.

Should be different. So, you said it was absolutely odd. Once you dip your toes in the water and start seeing these efficiencies, you’ll reach a point where you’ll say, ‘ Okay, now that I know this exists, let’s think about it. ‘ Where people get in trouble, though, is when they don’t do the first step.

They’re like, ‘ Well, I need to think about what my world’s going to be like 10 years from now, so I won’t even spend $100 on this tool that will save me $100,000. ‘ Yeah, very, very right. So, Autumn, as we wrap up for the day, we’ve covered, as I said, the goal of this was to look at some new things, examine old things with a new perspective, and then touch on some of the popular topics of the day. Anything else, Autumn, that you wanted to leave the group with?

Autumn: Yes, yes, I agree. You know what? I think we covered a lot. I guess encourage people, right? Sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with going back to basics when examining a few things. You know, we started with that; we began with the old, which can help us as we move into this new one.

And I don’t want people to lose sight of that, especially when we discussed personalized learning and its potential benefits. And, you know, as you know, right, AI can really help with something like that. So that’s all I would leave people with. I think we’ve covered everything else, which is really good.

Nolan: Yeah. And, well said, I just made a post on it before we started this podcast. I had interviewed somebody who was an I/O psychologist. And I had said, like, I don’t even know what the heck that means. I don’t know how to spell IO, let alone know what it means. I still don’t know. I mean, I know what it means, but I don’t, I always get the I in the O I’m like, those words don’t. And, it was interesting because it was like the foundation. If you know the foundational knowledge of how people learn, of how people do their job better.

It doesn’t really matter how you get there; actually, it is irrelevant. The more you can personally stay relevant in the why. You can. If what gets changed is the AI, blended learning, mobile learning, micro eLearning, WBT, CBT, or whatever comes out, then that’s what we should focus on.

You will always stay relevant if you know the why. So, focus on that, why, and what you can apply.

Closing Thoughts

Nolan: So, really sage advice. Autumn, thank you so much for joining us. Look forward to talking with you again soon. Thank you, Nolan. I appreciate it. Yeah.

Autumn: I agree. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Nolan. I appreciate it.