Steal These Thoughts!
Many corporate learning teams have been slow to evolve their philosophies. They don’t understand the value they can bring and how they structure their teams to provide the best service to their people.
Perhaps, the first question should be if we even call it an L&D team anymore? But I’ll leave that debate for another day.
Updated: Aug 2023
Practising what we preach in the L&D industry is not as common as you might think.
We always talk about the latest learning philosophies, skills and experiences other people need. Rarely do I see or hear anyone talk about the modern L&D skills needed to navigate today’s world.
In a world increasingly shaped by remote work and digital platforms, the challenges for L&D teams are mounting.
For many of you in the corporate world, I know you’re dealing with thousands of employees and archaic systems.
So, how can you maximise technology to support your skill-building initiatives?
→ We’ll explore this today.
Whilst I can’t provide the right advice for your context completely, I’m going to do my best to cover tools and features which could be worthwhile to investigate.
Microsoft has 345 million people currently using MS 365 across 150 countries.
It feels smart to explore what this big tech juggernaut offers as I’m sure many of you are sitting in a Microsoft tech stack. Fret not if you don’t, I’ll be covering other skills tech too (I got you Google Workspace friends).
Earlier this year, Microsoft introduced a new AI-powered Skills solution in Viva.
Their view is traditional job-based talent models often fail to capture individual and organisational capabilities comprehensively. I’m sure we can attest to that, right?
It seems the big aim of Viva is to push more organisations towards that sexy buzzword of a ‘skills-based organisation’.
Of course, it leverages AI.
I mean we have to say that about everything these days. Even my tea is AI-powered 😉.
If you’re company uses Microsoft services, this tool is attractive for a few reasons:
The holy grail here is to align all corners of the organisation under the banner of skills.
From what I’ve discovered on my investigative reporting trip (aka a s**t ton of googling and ChatGPT), MS is positioning this as the bridge to fill the gap between traditional structures and a skills-based future.
The focus is on three core scenarios:
For HR and organisational leaders, it aids in aligning workforce capabilities with business goals. It includes a skills dashboard within Viva Insights to visualise skill strengths and gaps.
You can see an example of this ↓
I think it looks pretty neat.
Another holy grail of our industry.
We covered the 101 of this before. This is an example of the type of tech you can use to make this a reality. With both real-time data for leaders and employees to make better performance-based decisions.
One step closer to focusing on the right skills, not more skills. I hope, anyway.
This feature is targeted at HR leaders and employees, enabling proactive workforce development. Employees can select skills to learn, search for courses by skills, and receive AI-based skill recommendations.
What is it with everything ‘in the flow of work’?
Perhaps in 2024, I will coin tea in the flow of work! Stranger things have happened, friend.
This integrates skill discovery into daily tasks. Skills are suggested based on Microsoft Graph signals, and employees can confirm, add, and manage their skills.
Although not perfect, this type of transparency can motivate and engage people in their skill journey.
There’s a slick 2-minute video from Microsoft here.
This is my TL;DW (too long; didn’t watch)
The goal of Microsoft Viva Skills tool is to help you uncover and leverage the expertise across the workforce. Here’s my non-techy explanation of how this works:
→ Viva Skills integrates two major data layers:
→ Using the data from these two sources, Viva Skills employs AI reasoning to infer the expertise of employees.
Using this AI reasoning, Viva Skills intelligently crafts individual skill profiles. It provides an updated understanding of current workforce skills and a more nuanced and dynamic understanding of emerging workforce capabilities. That’s a big win.
This information is then integrated into Viva and Microsoft 365 experiences.
Microsoft Graph is like a big connector for various Microsoft services.
It allows different applications to talk to each other and share information. Common sources of data it draws from include:
So, it’s a tool that helps bring together all the data from these different Microsoft apps to create more integrated and efficient experiences. A little big brother-ish but what isn’t these days?
The LinkedIn Skills Graph is a system that LinkedIn uses to understand and show how different skills are related to each other and to various jobs.
It looks at what skills people list on their LinkedIn profiles, what skills are mentioned in job postings, and what is taught in learning courses on LinkedIn. This helps to get a clear picture of what skills are popular and important in different industries and jobs.
I don’t know how reliable it is, but it sounds good.
The simple answer is Yes.
While specific details about all compatible systems are not provided publicly as I write this (smart move), key integrations include:
→ Transition to Skill-Based Organisation
Every company seems to be hot on this right now.
They should have been doing this all along in my opinion, but hey, I’m one guy with a keyboard. Reaching this goal is made easier when you have the right tech in your corner to support this push.
→ Clarity and transparency on real skills data
I hope this is a pretty clear one.
It’s hard for L&D and HR teams to get skills data, and it’s even harder to know how to convey this in the right way to an individual. The thing is we each want clarity on what skills we need to work on and how. Skills tech can facilitate this.
→ Awareness and engagement with skills and careers
Every L&D team chases the engagement dragon.
Like me, you’ve no doubt often been kept awake by the deep question of “How do we boost engagement with learning initiatives?”. Get people interested in skills and you’ll have more engagement than you know what to do with.
→ Connecting siloed systems and data
Don’t you just hate tools and data which can’t talk to each other?
It’s been a constant pain in my own career. The promise of tools like this from Microsoft is to centralise access in one place. Is it good? I’m not sure. Will it actually work? Not sure about that either.
I’m a man of my word, so here’s an alternative for you non-MS houses.
Check out TechWolf.
I have no affiliation with them or MS btw, these are my independent views on current tech, and I like TW at this moment. They made my top 5 emerging L&D tech solutions to check out too.
TechWolf’s technology is like an AI assistant that helps understand the skills within your company.
It digs into what everyone is good at, linking these skills to projects and learning paths.
It’s designed to work with the systems you already have, so there’s no hassle of adding a new platform (allegedly). It sounds like a useful tool for HR teams to make informed decisions about their workforce, based on real data.
The bottom line is measuring skills is hard!
Recruiting tech to help you with this can make it a lot easier.
There are two industry-leading pros I’d recommend you follow in this space for more insightful thoughts on skills on the frontline today:
If you like my writing and think “Hey, I’d like to hear more of what this guy has to say” then you’re in luck.
You can join me every Tuesday morning for more tools, templates and insights for the modern L&D pro in my weekly newsletter.
Ok, we’ve spent the previous edition in this series getting super nerdy about skills.
Find those here:
Now it’s time to get really tactical.
That means taking action people. We’re going to shift gears to unpack how you can close the skills gap not only in your company but in your skillset too. What a fabulous 2-for-1 offer!
We know from our exploration so far that skills are the biggest barrier to business transformation for many companies. The same goes for each of us with our career opportunities.
If we don’t have the right skills, we don’t have access to the best opportunities.
Data from the World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs report in 2023 tells us that companies are focusing on the below practices to bridge skills gaps.
Let’s unpack the top 3:
→ Improve progression and promotion processes
→ Offer more money
→ Provide effective reskilling and upskilling
Only one of these is an L&D thing. I’ll let you guess which one.
This can be a very fickle conversation.
If you want a quick way to scare any line manager and HR partner at one time, ask about progression and promotion processes.
They’re almost like a secret central intelligence file that no one can view.
They exist, but how one navigates these is a mystery in most businesses. However, the pressure these days to be more transparent on just how the hell does one move from here to here has never been bigger.
In reality, we have a really easy fix here.
Just make it very clear and transparent on how all this works. As much as you can of course (calm down HR managers, I’m still looking out for you).
You’ll most likely solve 70% of issues here.
It’s never going to be straightforward but a bit of clear structure will go far.
Let me be straight with you – I don’t have the answer to this.
I’ve been in the HR and L&D space for over 16 years. There’s never an easy answer to this.
It’s contextual to each person, company and moment.
I’ll leave it at that because this isn’t my zone of expertise.
Finally, something we can get our teeth into.
We know how important this is for every human on this spinning blue rock to survive. So, forgive me for not covering this like many of the fluff pieces do.
Instead, we’re getting right into the components of a killer upskilling or reskilling programme.
I see too much junk on this topic online.
Too much focus on the how, aka the delivery of using ‘x’ tool to do this, and not enough on the what and why behind this.
You can’t have the former without the latter.
Here’s the basic principles to consider:
Get clear on specific skills gaps within your organisations.
It doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it. This data is the bedrock from which you ensure your efforts are focused on the right things. Ignore the assumptions and biased opinions behind closed doors.
→ Engage with department heads and conduct surveys or focus groups with employees to gain insights.
You don’t want to build stuff no one wants.
People often don’t know what they should focus on. Yet, you should still have your finger on the pulse of what the voice of the business is saying about the skills they value.
Employee surveys are useful data mines for this.
If you don’t have this, get out into your company to run mini-focus groups and surveys. You’ll be surprised what comes back.
Your goal is to align business and employees as much as possible.
This should be obvious.
Yet, it seems to get lost in the excitement of the ‘how’.
Always know your measure of success. Without this, nothing else is worth much. You’re essentially throwing stuff on the wall to see what sticks.
→ Work with key stakeholders to define and review these. It’s a team effort after all.
Every learning experience should have this.
It’s the measure of value with any experience. We all need a safe environment and an opportunity to put what we’ve absorbed into practice.
This could take many forms including:
Whatever it is, you want to work with teams across your organisation to create something that best fits the culture and context of the work people need to do.
This is where leveraging line managers works well.
Often, I find, managers don’t take enough accountability for the development of their team. Too many are confused about their job. It’s not about the doing, it’s all focused on the people.
We can only be successful based on the environment we create and that others do too.
It doesn’t matter how much ‘learning’ or training’ a company provides. Without this practical application, it’s money down the drain.
Ideas for this include:
Setting goals that you don’t track is dumb.
Sorry. It’s true.
I see this all the time. The common situation is to track none of the agreed metrics through an experience, only to wait until it’s complete and realise none of them was achieved 🤦.
Feedback and/or retro loops in every meeting are useful to combat this.
This doesn’t need to be heavy.
Spare 5 minutes at the end of every update meeting to evaluate where you are today, and how everything is performing and review if anything needs to be adapted.
Those 5 minutes could save you months of work and lots of money!
This is all about social proof.
Nothing sells and cements the reputation of an experience more than endorsements.
Here, I suggest leveraging your senior leaders and well-respected team members to become part of your endorsement campaign. Imagine it like a political race without all the crazy backstabbing.
Case studies and personal stories work well here.
Speaking of case studies. Keep scrolling for inspiration from some of the world’s largest retailers.
This is the most popular case study on the blog.
You can read the full piece here. Get the TL;DR below:
→ 8,500 call centre workers were transformed into interior design advisors.
→ Billie, the AI bot, effectively managed 47% of customer inquiries.
→ Sales through remote interior design consultations amounted to 1.3 billion euros(~$1.4 billion).
This French Grocery retailer is on a mission to future-proof its employees for the evolving digital world.
Get the full case study here. TL;DR below:
→ Carrefour aims for a digital-first retail model by 2026.
→ The ‘Tous digital!’ initiative equips all employees, notably frontline staff, with essential digital skills.
→ In 3 weeks they upskilled 60,000 employees, aligning with EU’s 2023 Year of Skills.
→ Future plans include an exploration of emerging tech like Generative AI.
I’ve shared this before and I’m doing it again because the drum beat needs to keep going.
I find we never do enough skill health checks.
They’re the objects that grant us the power to improve our earnings and freedom, yet we don’t tend to them like you would a garden. Your skills need constant attention in the form of watering and pruning ya know.
Every quarter I recommend you do this:
The power of this exercise enables you to:
As I say nearly every week, I’m all in for a human-powered future. Digital technology is a beautiful enabler, but it is nothing without humanness.
Your biggest advantage in this world is your human skills.
Technical skills are incredibly important, but your human capabilities are what makes the difference. I’m hoping this has come through in all the data and insights we’ve explored across November.
→ Unlock human capabilities at the heart of everything you build.
Ok, we’ve reached the end of the first trilogy in the series.
Fret not, we have much more to come on the future of skills for 2024 before the year is out.
For now, feed your brain with the previous instalments.
Bonus:
If you like my writing and think “Hey, I’d like to hear more of what this guy has to say” then you’re in luck.
You can join me every Tuesday morning for more tools, templates and insights for the modern L&D pro in my weekly newsletter.
The question is no longer can you use AI for x.
It’s should you.
There’s a great deal I believe you shouldn’t delegate to AI.
Especially for L&D.
I know this is a somewhat complicated statement from someone who has spent the past year writing about this tech in learning.
I love digital technology.
AI will be incredibly useful (hence why I write about it so much). But, I don’t want it to replace some of the most fundamental experiences that make us human.
Parts of the workplace learning experience fall under this banner.
Current generative AI tools, and future AI tools, no doubt have the capabilities to make us work smarter.
Yet, I fear they have the same capability to deny us pivotal human experiences.
For example, when I was much younger in my first corporate role.
I spent the majority of my time learning not from an induction course or a pointless handbook. I learnt from all the people around me. Sometimes directly, often indirectly.
Sir Alex Ferguson (the legendary Manchester United manager) echoed this in his book on leadership.
He said the best thing to do when you begin any new role is to watch, listen and read. I still do all 3 of those in any new environment I find myself dropped into.
Timeless advice for anyone.
I have no doubt AI tech can and will accelerate the speed and access to learning. I welcome this like a cultist ready to embrace our AI overlords with loyal devotion.
Yet, this shouldn’t be at the expense of the human experience.
An LLM tool can help me onboard faster perhaps, but at what cost to my most human trait of learning with and from others?
I’m not sure anyone knows the solution.
My best advice and hope is that we find the balance between augmentation and automation.
The tech nerd in me screams simplification and speed, but the human questions at what cost. In a world of technological marvels, careers after death and AI clones. I don’t want to lose the most human experience of learning that makes it so special.
If you haven’t guessed, let me confirm now.
I’m all for a human-powered future with AI. Not an AI-first operating system. I mean, we’re all human, aren’t we? Don’t answer that one.
I feel we tend to summarise our interactions with current generative AI tools through prompting alone.
However, this is only one piece of the operating system with these tools. If you want to be a truly smart operator with AI, you need to think beyond prompting. Use your most human abilities to develop frameworks on how, why and when you should interact with AI tools.
Consider your daily workflows and how AI delegation could support this.
Don’t search for perfect prompts to fit meaningless tasks.
I believe we each need to deploy two unique human skills when working with AI.
These both happen to be two of the 5 skills identified in my ongoing skills series for the Future of Work.
Let’s walk through a workflow of these in action with an AI-delegated task:
Let’s imagine you want ChatGPT to help you craft a feedback workshop with:
Before you feed a prompt to CGPT, you should think critically about what you want to achieve with this task. Consider:
You continue doing this with each response that CGPT provides.
Your judgement and decision-making skills weave through this process too.
Use your humanness (I know it’s not a real word) to evaluate every response and help CGPT understand if it’s hitting all the right notes for you. If it helps, consider its responses as an ugly first draft.
You’ll work on this draft as a human task to provide the context and application it needs for your experience.
This is the difference between delegating everything to AI and working with AI. You will also be stronger in a human and AI approach. You can see an example of this in a recent video post.
I believe conversations like these are important. That’s why I continue to be surprised at companies which ignore or ban conversation around generative AI at work. We know people are secretly using ChatGPT at work.
So, why do we not be proactive and help with best practices?
As Ed Sheeran said, “I’m thinking out loud”.
If you fancy sending thoughts back, I’ll be here.
If this sparked your neurons, here’s a few recent conversations that link to this ↓
In sum:
If you like my writing and think “Hey, I’d like to hear more of what this guy has to say” then you’re in luck.
You can join me every Tuesday morning for more tools, templates and insights for the modern L&D pro in my weekly newsletter.
Survival is the game of the human race.
At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to figure out how to survive. Skills are the currency of that game. They’re how we position ourselves in the marketplace of employability.
That was a rather philosophical line.
Last week, we focused on the 5 skills that matter most, and why too many companies are ignoring the most important skill of this year in AI delegation. Today we’ll unpack how these skills co-exist with each other and the next 5 year outlook for our skills.
This viz is from the Microsoft Work Trend report. I’ve adapted it for purposes of clarity.
Newsflash: Learning isn’t keeping up with the pace of work.
You probably knew that already.
It’s not just AI skills that leaders are looking for employees to develop. They want those that will enhance an AI-powered future too. As we covered last time, the future is human-powered.
Human + AI skills are the winning combo.
You’ve probably seen that line in some form on social media. I believe it’s the future we’re currently building. Look at generative AI as a tool. Like any tool, it has a time and place for use, and its real power is in the hands of a skilled operator.
If these are the baseline skills, what else can we expect to craft in the next 5 years of both reskilling and upskilling programmes?
Let’s dive deeper down the rabbit hole, friend.
Like many other reports, WSE drops their 10 skills for the reskilling and upskilling scene:
The takeaway: Skills are always being disrupted. It is the nature of life.
Are you seeing the pattern here?
Human + digital technology together. These are the perfect combo to navigate the career game.
In the year of AI, is it any surprise companies rank analytical thinking as the #1 core skill for work?
Human thinking on any level is something generative AI can’t do.
In an evolving workplace where we’ll likely partner with AI tools, the ability to think like a human will be a prized asset. That’s why it’s no surprise, critical thinking came in at #2 on this list.
Digital technology is beautiful.
I’m a huge fan of what it’s contributed to and enabled in society. Yet, I’m also aware of what we’ve lost.
I feel like we struggle to talk with and engage with each other more as the years pass by. I heard from organisations recently how their next generation of talent struggles to do simple things outside of a screen.
More data on this is now coming to light.
That’s why it’s no surprise this report’s top 10 skills for the future are stuffed with social skills like:
I find we never do enough skill health checks.
Which is weird, IMO.
They’re the objects that grant us the power to improve our earnings and freedom, yet we don’t tend to them like you would a garden. Your skills need constant attention in the form of watering and pruning ya know.
The power of this exercise enables you to:
To help you with the last two columns, here’s what the World Economic Forums identified as the most pressing evolving and emerging skills across industries:
This is true for both you personally, and organisations.
We cannot understate the importance of skills in life and work. We each partake in the career marketplace. The currency in this market is skills.
→ The better skills you have, the better opportunities you can unlock.
You will see the reverse of this on the company side. For any company to succeed, they need the people with the best skills. And, those with the best skills can command the best opportunities.
Are you following me? Good.
We see this backed up in more data from the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report. The single biggest barrier to businesses evolving is skills.
We have two big opportunities as L&D operators and leaders here:
As those often responsible for helping others improve, we tend to forget ourselves.
Don’t make this mistake.
You play in the career marketplace with the rest of the world. Spend time investing in the skills explored above with the how-to frameworks shared last time. These will be your route to being a high-performing operator with opportunities knocking at your door and a strategic L&D leader, should that be the path you want.
Pair these human skills with the 7 skills L&D pros need today and you will be unstoppable.
Let’s be real, most companies have no clue what skills they have or need.
I see a lot of posturing online but very few have a real grasp on this. In next week’s chat, I’m going to share ideas and examples to help you close your company’s skills gap. For now, I’ll say this.
Lean on your internal and external market data to focus on the right skills, not more skills.
Too many of these fancy skill-based organisation strategies are focused on opinions rather than concrete evidence.
Questions to consider right now are:
You can learn more about skill-based organisations in this piece from Degreed.
In sum:
Also read: The 5 skills that matter for work and how to build them
If you like my writing and think “Hey, I’d like to hear more of what this guy has to say” then you’re in luck.
You can join me every Tuesday morning for more tools, templates and insights for the modern L&D pro in my weekly newsletter.
It seems like the biggest skill of the year is also one of the most ignored.
→ AI delegation.
It’s the word of the year, no doubt. But are the companies that don’t educate their workforce on this technology today causing more harm than good?
You can’t put the genie back in the lamp.
This is a recurring conversation between me and L&D teams. You need to educate your workforce to be smart and safe.
You can mitigate bad habits and practices by being proactive now.
Otherwise, you will be the person creating that terrible compliance solution on being safe with generative AI tools.
Your company can ban tools it wants, but you can’t stop evolution.
According to an August 2023 BlackBerry survey of 2,000 global IT decision makers, 75% are currently considering or implementing bans on ChatGPT and other generative AI applications in the workplace, with 61% saying the measures are intended to be long-term or permanent
BBC: The employees secretly using AI at work
Yes. That title is a direct quote from Jurassic Park by the legendary, Jeff Goldblum.
I believe it fits this narrative well. I see that fear and lack of understanding are leading to the stereotypical human reaction of demonising. This is dangerous.
Especially when we know that employees who use these tools will have an unfair advantage over others.
This has a huge effect on skill development too. Consider for a moment the companies who teach their employees to wield these tools to their advantage vs those who do not.
Who do you believe will have a more well-rounded skillset?
Do you think your company would prefer employees to learn how to leverage these tools in the dark levels of a Reddit forum or from your local L&D team?
Perhaps that’s the one-liner you can use in your next strategy meeting.
The point is they’re getting this knowledge from somewhere. You can bet it doesn’t mix well with your ways of working and the best practices you’d want.
I spoke about this with an L&D function at a leading telecoms company recently.
Here’s 3 simple things you can do to support your workforce:
Curate resources to educate and inform your workforce on Gen AI. A little knowledge can go a long way.
Here’s some resources to help you:
1️⃣ Generative AI explained for humans
2️⃣ 4 simple resources to accelerate your AI in work knowledge
Social media tells us 1000’s of new AI tools are released daily.
Truth is 95% of these have nothing to do with AI. They’re sub-par products riding the hype wave. It’s your job to find what’s real and works for you.
Here’s my recommendation:
→ Suggested reading: How to assess when to use AI tools.
You should never use any piece of tech just because market expectations are high.
You always need a use case. You might find current generative AI tools don’t have any use cases for you, and that’s fine.
Here’s an exercise to try:
If you like my writing and think “Hey, I’d like to hear more of what this guy has to say” then you’re in luck.
You can join me every Tuesday morning for more tools, templates and insights for the modern L&D pro in my weekly newsletter.
Join L&D professionals future-proofing their skills with AI in hours, not days.
👉 Get started with my ChatGPT beginner’s crash course.
For many of you in the corporate world, I know you’re dealing with thousands of employees and archaic systems. So, how can you maximise technology to support your skill-building initiatives? → We’ll explore this today. Whilst I can’t provide the…
Ok, we’ve spent the previous edition in this series getting super nerdy about skills. Find those here: The 5 Skills That Matter For The Future of Work And How To Build Them The Skills To Thrive For The Next 5…
The question is no longer can you use AI for x. It’s should you. There’s a great deal I believe you shouldn’t delegate to AI. Especially for L&D. I know this is a somewhat complicated statement from someone who has…
Survival is the game of the human race. At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to figure out how to survive. Skills are the currency of that game. They’re how we position ourselves in the marketplace of…
It seems like the biggest skill of the year is also one of the most ignored. → AI delegation. It’s the word of the year, no doubt. But are the companies that don’t educate their workforce on this technology today…
Let’s face it. The HR and L&D industry is slow to adapt and adopt the latest tech.
I want to help you change that. Join L&D professionals future proofing their skills with AI in hours, not days.
