INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Corey Marcel
00:18 It’s real, it’s raw. Welcome to the L&D Real-Talk: Analyst Spotlight. I’m Corey Marcel, your host, bringing you world-leading analysts as they get frank with us on the do’s and don’ts in Learning & Development. Today I’m really excited because I’m introducing our first analyst on the show, Mr. David Wentworth!

David Wentworth
00:40 Hey! First? Okay…no pressure.

Corey Marcel
00:42 That’s right, yeah. Yeah, no. Yeah, I tried to geek out. He is the Principal Analyst at the Brandon Hall Group. David’s research focuses on how people learn and the role of that learning and emerging technologies. He’s written several reports published by ATD covering mobile learning, social collaborative learning, and more. With his background and expertise, we’re kicking off L&D Real-Talk with the hottest topic of the year – and when I’m sure you’ve spoken about at least once: “How COVID changed learning culture as we know it.” Welcome, David, to the show.

David Wentwort
01:20 Oh, hey. Thank you so much, Corey. This is very cool. Looking forward to it.

Corey Marcel
01:23 Awesome, awesome. So without further ado, I’d like to start off with something we call Real-Talk Rapid Fire. So I’m going to ask you three questions. Would love to get the first response that comes to mind.

David Wentworth
01:35 Is there a points system…?.

Corey Marcel
01:38 Just to loosen up! Yeah. Well, you’re the first guest. So you’ll be the high score regardless.

David Wentworth
01:41 Right. Perfect.

Corey Marcel
01:42 So that’s always great. Okay. So, in one word or sentence (however you’re feeling), what’s the best or worst thing about being an analyst? We’ll say the best and worst thing about being an analyst. One word or sentence…

David Wentworth
02:01 You know what’s funny is, probably in my mind, one of the best and worst things is, it’s very relative to what we’re talking to you about today, is that it was travel. I got to go a lot of places and see a lot of really cool things that I might not have seen otherwise. But at the same time, I was away from home a lot. So I loved it and I hated it all the same time. I haven’t had that problem in about a year. A lot of this. So I don’t have a new one that has taken its place. So I think it’s still up there. Now, I kind of miss it.

Corey Marcel
02:30 Yeah, same, same. We drove by an airport the other day, and the jet fuel smell was intoxicating. I was like sticking my head out the window. Yeah. Same, same. Okay, name one person who inspires you.

David Wentworth
02:45 Oh, wow. You know what, this is rapid fire! I gotta go with the first thing in my head. I gotta go super self-serving, but it’s actually our Chief Strategy Officer, Michael Rochelle. I know that it sounds like he’s behind me, pointing at me, telling me to say this. He’s not. But he is just…the wealth of knowledge and his ability to knock people’s socks off with every question that you ask him. I don’t think he’s ever had to mull anything over. It’s all right there at the front of his head.

Corey Marcel
03:16 And he has the best analogies! The best analogies. Unbelievable. 

David Wentworth
03:23 Oh! He’s the master. I keep a running tally of the analogies and try to throw them back at him at times and see if he’d notice.

Corey Marcel
03:28 The problem is I tried to use the analogies myself. And there was one about like a hot dog vendor or something along those lines. And I tried to use that like the next day and it just fell flat. Alright. You know what, I’ll try to make my own.

David Wentworth
03:40 Right. You get halfway through it and you’re like, “Nope. It’s not landing.”

Corey Marcel
03:40 Nope. It’s not working! I think there’s a sausage and…yeah. Did not work. Ok, the last one: It’s no secret. You’ve got the best hair in the analyst game. What’s the conditioner? What product are you using to keep that baby fresh?

David Wentworth
03:58 So, this is the secret: Don’t do anything to it. Like you just wash it. Listen. Right off the shelf, you know, basics. That’s the thing. I think, when women who typically have long hair, (which I have) they always asked me, “What do you do?” Well, I don’t do anything. I don’t color it, I don’t heat treat it. You know just just take it easy on it, leave it alone. It’ll be fine. Plus I think genetics help.

Corey Marcel
04:23 That’s it. That’s it! Because I grew out my hair this last year because I was like, I’m not going to go get it cut. And it looked horrifying! Finally, I’m back to like clean cut because it was just, it wasn’t you. I was going for you. I was literally envisioning you and it didn’t work out.

David Wentworth
04:37 Yeah, I do have quarantine hair. It was relatively short for me for a while, but it has grown out since I’ve been at home. And so I’ve kind of tamed it back here for everyone’s viewing pleasure.

Corey Marcel
04:52 Awesome. That was great. Well, that ends the rapid fire segment. So we’re going to get into it. Yeah, you passed. High score actually. Congratulations. You’re the top of the leaderboard. So I want to get into kind of the meat of what we’re talking about today. We’ve got some questions that we want to run by you. Again, I know you’ve been asked this a lot, and I want to get into how COVID has changed the culture of learning. But I think before we do that, we need to define what actually is a learning culture. I mean, we hear that all the time. People constantly tell me, “We want to redefine our culture. We want a learning culture.”What, what does that even look like for companies that actually have a learning culture? What does good look like?

David Wentworth
05:34 Right. And it does look slightly different for every organization. It’s another one of these things where there is no math problem that you can just plug in for x and y and come out the answer, right. But the biggest things are, it’s not about more learning, right, because more isn’t necessarily better. It’s about a mindset. It’s about everybody in the organization having that growth mindset of, you know, the quest for knowledge. And, you know, you assume that most people have that to some degree or another. But how do we leverage that as a culture? Are we giving people the tools and the opportunities to find out what they want to know, when and where they want to know it? But at the same time, also share what they know with people who want to know that. 

And I think that’s a big piece that gets missing is, most organizations, you know, you think about the hiring process right you’re sourcing candidates, going through the entire interview process and onboarding. You know, we’ve got this great process and we only hire the best people. We do all this great stuff. And then once they get in the building, suddenly, they’re not allowed to share anything they know. And so the company is sitting on this wealth of knowledge and information and people have no way to share it other than little one-offs here and there – stuff that they’re doing on their own by themselves. Which is ok, but the organization’s getting almost no benefit from that. 

So, what it is is when the organization provides those tools and those opportunities, it’s, it’s a sort of a show of we’re bought-in, we want this to happen. We know this is necessary that people need all the information and knowledge that they could possibly need for any given moment, and be able to share that. So that’s what the culture is about. It’s just that from top to bottom, everyone’s sort of bought-in with this open flow of information.

Corey Marcel
07:18 I love that. You mentioned something at the beginning. You know, I’d never heard the term “growth mindset,” right, until two years ago. And now you’re hearing it kind of everywhere. I don’t know if I was just behind the curve (which is probably likely). Maybe my mindset hadn’t grown enough to hear the term. So, do you think it’s more candidate requirements or LMS requirements? Meaning: What’s more important? Is it hiring the right people? Or the tools that we’re providing them? Or, I’m kind of assuming maybe somewhere in the middle there…

David Wentworth
07:50 Yeah, it’s got to be a bit of both. I mean, obviously the hiring part is this tricky one. Because you want to make that part of the process of identifying people who seem like they are open to learn. They have a strong learning agility, a learning ability. And there’s ways to pick up on that in a candidate process. But you know really, organizations are still trying to hire for specific outcomes. And it’s just those, those types of things, like a learning mindset, tend to be a nice-to-have. I think we need to emphasize more that it’s a little bit stronger than a nice-to-have. It’s going to be critical. Because whatever you’re hiring for in the moment, for you know this year, the next two years…what’s after that? And if you’ve hired the perfect candidate for your need over the next 24 months, what about month 36? Do you have something in place that allows this person to grow? And so the growth mindset is part of that. 

So, yes, having people who are open and willing to do this and have that same sense, but without the tools in place to do it, it’ll never happen. Right? So then that’s where the LMS, the technology part comes in. Are we giving people the tools to actually execute on that growth mindset? And, you know, having that as part of the onboarding process of, you know, yes, we recognize that you need that, you know, as you go through your organization, this growth mindset, not only for you, your own growth, but the organization’s growth. And that’s what that mindset’s all about. So yeah, definitely needs the tools, though for it to happen, or else it just it’ll die on the vine, like it does in a lot of organizations.

Corey Marcel
09:22 So with that, with the organizations that are implementing this that are doing a good job. What does that look like? They have the tools in place. I think I’ve seen a lot of organizations that have tools in place that are constantly kind of blaming the tools for things not working. What else has to go into creating this culture? Right? It’s obviously, so let’s say we’ve hired the right people. We’re bringing the tools into place. What else can help bring that kind of vision of creating a learning culture together?

David Wentworth
09:57 Yeah. There’s got to be a lot of role modelling and examples. Success cases. You know, if the learning organization can show, “Look, we had this moment here where we connected to these people on this topic, and this is what came of it. You know, here’s how it looks when it works right.” I think role modelling is really important to have leadership take part in these things. Share their knowledge, invite people to come and communicate, and to buy in. 

Because, you know, you’re right. A lot of times the org likes to blame the tools. We see it in our research when we ask about Learning Technologies satisfaction. And companies say, “Ah! The reporting analytics on our tool is terrible, it’s crap. We don’t like it.” It’s like Okay. Is it bad? Or do you not know how to use it? Do you not know how to ask the questions? There’s a little bit of blame on both sides of the equation there. Right? So I think what happens is, you know – and listen, you’re in the technology space, you guys know how to sell the product…and it’ll do your dishes and do everything from stem to stern. And so companies will roll it out and sit back and wait for all the magic to happen and forget that anything that’s good or worthwhile requires some sort of hard work up front.

Corey Marcel
11:09 Yep, that’s such a great point. I love the role modelling. Which kind of leads me to my next question, which is, that probably used to be a lot easier when we were all in the office together and certainly some people are back in the office or never left the office. But for a lot of us, this is how we’re communicating. These are our meetings. When it’s hard to role model. When you can’t bring people together. What changes have you seen people making, organizations making, to maintain or trying to achieve that learning culture?

David Wentworth
11:43 Yeah. You know, the one thing about this new environment is, while it is a change, from my perspective (for especially learning), it’s not so much a change as an acceleration. A lot of the things that are happening right now are things that I know I’ve been talking about for years, about the direction learning’s going. I know that organizations are sort of bought into the idea of a more digitally transformed learning function. But they just never had the impetus to move forward. It was difficult. A lot of work. Just too many things going on. And then suddenly overnight, “Hey, remember that thing we’ve all been thinking about? Yeah, we have to do it now.” So there’s this acceleration. So I think the challenge for leadership is, okay, well, it’s been a long time now, right, that the remote workforce, relatively speaking, it’s been, you know, a year, give or take that we’ve been working so we’re over the hump of…

Corey Marcel
12:34 Feels like a very long time.

David Wentworth
12:38 But they’re over the hump of, “Do we have the right technology? Do we have the right software?” I mean, I know there’s still some searching to go on to find the right things, but it’s no longer are you literally set up in a home office right? So we’re past that now and now it’s how do we keep connected and communicate, but not feel like it’s too much. And the managers of having a real hard time with this one. I want to be checking in and want to keep connected. I want to make sure people have what they need. But I don’t want to feel like I’m micromanaging. Which was a mistake in the beginning. I think, you know, because you couldn’t just walk in and knock on the door and check in, it had to be an active connection. And it was happening too much. And people felt like, “Okay, you’re checking in, it’s micromanaging.” So the role modelling there is, using the collaboration and connectivity tools we have judiciously. Not everything can be solved by a Zoom meeting. And I think that’s another thing we found out in a short time.

Corey Marcel
13:31 Say it again for the people in the back! Yeah. 

David Wentworth
13:34 Yeah. I mean, listen. How often in the back. You know, there’s even coffee mugs that say, “This meeting could have been an email.” 

Corey Marcel
13:40 Right, right. What was the, was it the, the word of the year, or the phrase of the year was, “You’re on mute.” I saw someone said, like you, you’re on mute. Right?

David Wentworth
13:49 Right. And so that’s now taken on exponentially, like, look, and all the things it takes for me to now get into a meeting. Do we need to use this for this? You know? And because listen, I’ve worked from home for close to a decade and I have meetings all day long. And all of a sudden, now that everyone was at home, everybody wanted to be on camera for the meetings. Now that was new for me. Because they’re used to seeing each other and I was used to no one seeing me. I had to deal with that. It’s tapered off quite a bit. People are now used to it. Yeah, you know, they don’t need to be on camera anymore. 

So this has been an adjustment for everyone. And it’s really just about, you know, like I said, making judicious use of connections. Don’t over use it. Don’t abuse it. Now that we’re all in either remote or digital or virtual, don’t try to solve everything with those tools. Use them for what they’re for. And, you know, have faith that people can continue to work in this remote environment without, like, literally constant connection.

Corey Marcel
14:48 Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that, because I mean the Zoom fatigue is really good to the end of the day, you’re more exhausted than going into the office and coming back. It’s pretty wild. So you said (and I like this) you don’t view this so much as a change as much as an acceleration. Do you see, you know, knock on wood, I’m an optimistic person… let’s say 2021 vaccinations rollout, end of 2021 things start getting back to normal. Do you see a deceleration? Do you see trends going back to pre-pandemic days? Or what do you think, what does that brave new world look like?

David Wentworth
15:28 So, you know, I have my insights, just in talking to organizations. And we’ve been talking to them non stop since March. But we also have data, we’ve done surveys on these very questions. And so I think everyone’s well aware, right, that is sort of a pendulum swing where, prior to the pandemic, there really wasn’t a whole lot of remote work. I mean, there was a subset, but there wasn’t a lot. Pendulum goes all the way to almost everybody’s remote, if possible, unless you’re, you know, working in retail or what have you. But anybody else is remote. Now, the pendulum’s going to swing back once the return to work strategies start to roll out, vaccinations start to happen, we get a better handle on this. But just like in physics, it’s not coming all the way back. Right. And we know this from our data. We know this from talking about…because all those organizations that were hesitant or reluctant to try remote work that were forced to realize, “Oh! This works. We can do this.” In some cases, they’re finding that maybe they can’t and those, you know, they’ll figure out what that actual return to work strategy is. But part of that strategy is a percentage of the workforce, a larger percentage of the workforce will be remote than it was before. 

And so, what we see is in parallel to that, there will not be a return to as much ILT (instructor-led classroom training) as there was prior. I mean, look, it was like 96% of companies used ILT to a degree. It was, it’s always been for as long as we’ve been measuring the number one modality of training. OK, so now it’s not. And what’s happening is organizations, they’ve gone through the phase of switching everything from classroom to a virtual classroom, realizing that wasn’t the answer. They’re trying a broader array of digital tools for learning and realizing that they work. And when I say an acceleration, like I said earlier, we’ve been saying and we see in our research for years that this type of approach, this type of digital approach, is effective in any environment. 

We didn’t, you know, we weren’t predicting the pandemic. We were just saying this is what works. And so now organizations have been forced to figure it out, figure out how to try it. And it’s working. And so there will be a return to classrooms, because it’s a necessary thing. I think it’s a valid, powerful learning tool that as long as, we’ll use it differently, I think. I think we’ll use in-person training a little bit more strategically and use the broader array of digital tools that have been sort of tested through this time. So that’s what I see when there’s a new normal. It’s going to, it’s going to stay relatively digital. There will be returned to classrooms. But not like we saw before.

Corey Marcel
17:54 I love that. Two questions coming out of that. One: Y’all are talking to tons of organizations. Have the majority of organizations seen any kind of drop off or dip and productivity from moving to remote workforce? Or have the majority of organizations…well, I’ll let you answer the question. Yeah.

David Wentworth
18:15 Well, yeah. Initially, yes. We’re actually going to start looking this year to see, you know, just so we can have like a year’s worth of data to go back and look at linearly. But we were asking in March, April… Yes, there was definitely at least a perceived sense of loss and productivity. I do feel like…

Corey Marcel
18:36 People were depressed, too! Right?

David Wentworth
18:38 Yeah, the number one cause of the productivity drops was distractions from home. Because most people were working from home and they’d never done it before! And their kids were home. School was closed. Right. And people just weren’t set up for home work yet. And so, in the initial months, yes, there was this drop. I think it has, you know, plateaued. It’s tapered off. Things are coming back around. And I don’t believe…I’m sure there are pockets out there where there’s a sustained loss of productivity and that just has to do with that particular organization, how they operate, you know the culture. But what we’re seeing is that once all those nuts and bolts are figured out, and people have adjusted, those things are gone. It was never about, you know, purely, “Oh, people can’t be productive because they’re not sitting in this office building.” It was all the ancillary things that were causing it.

Corey Marcel
19:29 It makes so much sense. And then the second question coming out of that is: Alright. So you’re right. It was like, we’ve all seen the stats 96-97% of how people deliver training. Boom! Overnight, we have to move the majority of it to Zoom. So have people…is training and learning now what you’re seeing mostly Zoom? Have they just basically gone from ILT to vILT? Or are people also going that one extra step and saying, “Let’s make some of this on demand. Let’s make some of this asynchronous.” Have a lot of organizations taken that next step?

David Wentworth
20:06 They have. It’s been an evolution, I think, you know, and I was sort of touching on earlier that in those early days, it was a quick, “We have to do something now. So let’s take all of our ILT content. Shove it in a webinar platform. And invite everybody and that’ll solve it.” And they realized really quickly that that content doesn’t work unless you’re in a room with people and facilitators. I think it’s a real eye opener for people who think that live facilitation and virtual facilitation is the same skill set. And so we saw a lot of quick negative reaction. And you know it’s funny, you look at our data we had when we asked the same question and we broke it out by time periods, in that first two months it’s like 86% of companies said that VILT was their go-to. Webinar platforms was their go-to in place of ILT. And then we checked back in in July and the percent dropped dramatically. Everything else came up. Microlearning. E- learning. Because they realized this isn’t the answer. You can’t…it’s not a one-to-one transition. So it’s time to figure out what do we do? You know what were we doing in that classroom? And how can we take elements of that and use different things to recreate to repurpose?

Corey Marcel
21:22 Do you think…maybe a little controversial. Do you think that it’s hard to move things from the classroom to virtual? Or also maybe once people move things from that classroom to virtual and they really looked at it they realized, “Holy crap. Like, how long are we teaching this course on this topic?” Or like, “Is this the guy that’s teaching this?” Like, do you think there were just more eyes on it that also we realized like, we got to change this up a little bit. People aren’t retaining it.

David Wentworth
21:51 Yeah, I mean exactly that. I think what happens is it’s now laid bare, right. There’s nothing else to hide behind. And you cannot underestimate the built-in, innate connectivity and engagement of a live event. The literal fact of having people in the same room creates this level of engagement that only exists in that arena. You take that and try to put it virtual, that’s gone. It’s not something you were ever able to, you know, it wasn’t tangible, you didn’t have it on a spreadsheet. You couldn’t calculate what it was. But now it’s gone. So what do we do? How do we either replace it? Make up for it? And you simply can’t take those same slides or worksheets, wherever they were, and throw them up on the screen and have people feel as though that they’re just as engaged as they were previously. And I think that was the big wake up. You know, besides the facilitation or instructor skills. I think it was this sudden disconnectivity. Like people just were not engaged because they weren’t…they didn’t feel like they were all part of the same thing being in the same room.

Corey Marcel
22:55 It makes total sense. And since we’re talking about it now. Alright, we’re transitioning to virtual training, microlearning, on demand, and you know, name a buzzword. What would you consider the top three pillars of successful, of kind of enabling a successful learning culture? And what LMS requirements would you need in order to help bring these to life?

David Wentworth
23:22 Hmm. So this is in no particular order of importance, but I think connectivity and collaboration is a big piece. Just because, again, you can’t just walk down the hall and check in on somebody. So, the ability to quickly connect with somebody on a topic, on a question, and also be able to do it in a way that doesn’t require you to start some new tool or some new platform to do it right. So the ability to kind of do it in the space in which you already live in throughout your day is important. Because, you know, any hurdles that you put in the way of people doing these things, that’s what’s going to knock down that culture of learning feeling right. It’s like, “Ugh, iit feels like too many steps. It’s too much work.” So you kind of eliminate those. 

And the other thing I think is important, especially, you know, from a technology perspective is the ability to provide context. I mean, we could say personalization as well. But you don’t even have to go as far as literal personalization. Just context. So the ability to say, “Hey. This is why this learning is important to you as an individual and your role and your path. And here’s also why it’s important to us as an organization. Here’s what we’re trying to achieve.” And you’d be surprised at how few organizations provide that connection. And it creates this level of engagement before the learning has even begun. That it’s instead of just saying…this is the thing with a lot of learning functions is they think that because they’ve created some sort of content, some sort of learning and delivered it, by definition it is good. It is effective. Because, “Why else would we have created it? Why would we have created it? So it’s good for you. We know because we made it. So just please take it.” And don’t provide any sort of context, no connection. So using technology to understand what we know about learners and their path, what they’ve done before, what they want to do in the future. Using all that information to really deliver learning, whether it’s you know, mandatory stuff they have to take. And so, showing them, “Here’s what it is. Here’s what you need to do, and why.” But then also opening up the opportunities to explore and discover based on, you know, things that we know about you. And I think that’s what’s important. So that’s a huge piece of the, you know, the LMS requirement, the technology requirement. Can you provide that kind of experience to your learner’s?

Corey Marcel
25:39 I hadn’t heard personalization as the Why. I’ve always thought of personalization, and I hear personalization, as this is content that you may be interested in. It’s content that’s similar to other content that you are other people have viewed around you. But also giving learners, the why. The Why this is important. Why this is beneficial for you. This is why it was beneficial to other people that took it before you. That’s huge. I love that because I’m also thinking about, you know, when do I go out and learn. When do I go pick up a book. It’s simply because someone recommended it that I think, “This is a really smart person. I want to be smart too. I want to read the books that they’re reading.” And so giving that kind of context or the reason why, giving that person the motivation creates that engagement before the learning has even begun. I really that’s that’s slick. You owe me one more pillar. Connectivity and collaboration. Personalization. What else do you got?

David Wentworth
26:34 For the culture of learning. I think it’s…I’m trying to give a word, but I want to say either empowerment or democratization. They kind of touch on the other things. But the ability…you know, going back, I’d already talked about it, just tapping into that vast amount of knowledge that’s that’s locked away in the organization because for some reason we’re afraid someone’s gonna say something stupid. And fine, let’s let someone say something stupid. That’s also a learning event. Right?

Corey Marcel
27:00 You’re right. We can all learn from that. So don’t be like Bill. What Bill said is terrible. So that I come up against this, you know we hear this all the time, “Oh, you know, we can’t do social here. We can’t allow comments here, because God knows what that person is going to say.” Do you hear this a lot? And for organizations that have moved past that, what, what did they realize? What help can you throw these organizations that are kind of, you know, afraid of that component?

David Wentworth
27:25 Well, we did hear a lot, maybe even a couple years ago. Especially when everyone was sort of talking about social learning. I know we don’t use that phrase really anymore because of just, it doesn’t fit. But when that was big and everyone thought that, you know, every learning platform needed to have a Facebook feed in it of some sort. That’s when people started to sort of panic about this. But the truth is, you know, we would come back to organizations who are panicking about and say, “Do you not already have any policies in place for any of this” Like, you don’t have to make a new one because you bought some new platform that allows people to talk to each other. Didn’t you already have something in place about what people should or shouldn’t say to each other?” And so there’s that. And people realize, “Oh, yeah, we sort of already do have that covered. Maybe we need to go in and tweak something, but you know we’ve got a foundation for that.” 

The other one is, just sort of what I was talking about before. It’s like, listen, you didn’t hire stupid people. You wouldn’t be operating, you wouldn’t be business if you did. So allow your smart people to help make each other smarter. It’s just, it’s a weird hurdle for them to get over. Like when you actually express it to them, you know, when the hurdles are put in place they don’t think of it like that. Right. They didn’t purposely come out and say, “Everybody in here is a dummy. We can’t let them talk.” It’s just they were thinking of process and protocol and it’s more about…No. Recognize the hidden (to use an older saying) the wisdom of the crowd. Right? You’ve got these smart people. Let’s connect them together. So that’s the other realization for organizations that have moved forward. 

And then again, yeah, it’s, it’s the sort of, you know, the inertia of it. Once it gets moving and you start to see how it works and doesn’t work, it’s a self-sufficient thing, right. It’s a living organism. It grows and ebbs and flows. And, you know, you have to have not only to have confidence that your people are smart enough to share their knowledge but also smart enough to recognize when things aren’t right. Right? If there’s a bad actor, bad information, outdated…know that your people are smart enough to recognize that, point it out. And actually that’s, again, that’s a positive thing, right. You’ve found it. It’s been identified. And we’ve actually learned from it. So, those are the realizations I think that companies need to come to in order to get this to really work.

Corey Marcel
29:34 Yeah, I think that’s great. I mean, I think, you know, there’s already so many kinds of chat and social features within a, you know, we have we have email, we have, you know, chat. We have all these other areas that, you know, people are communicating. It would be great if they’re communicating in a learning environment where we can say, like, “Hey, actually there’s a better way to do that.” And we could kind of help other people. So yeah, I’m 100% with you there. And I love, “Hey, If you’ve hired smart people. If you’ve hired good people. Let’s trust those people.” 

Are there any features, specifically LMS features, that you might want to double down on during remote work to ensure that you can achieve this kind of learning culture success. Are there any kind of, like, specific things you’ve seen where you’re like, “I would double down on these one or two things. Because I think that could really drive the culture that we’re looking to drive.” And we’ve kind of hit on a lot of them, but, I wanted to see if there’s anything like, you know, maybe something you’ve seen specifically that you’re like, “That’s something I think would get behind.”

David Wentworth
30:40 One thing I thought was interesting that we’ve been seeing is, you know, there was a big push for mobile a few years ago. And then it didn’t sort of ever really catch on to the degree I think everyone thought it would. Right? And for a variety of reasons. You know, there’s the learner side where, “Listen, I don’t want to do this on my phone.” Or the organization side where, you know, “Look, we can’t, IT can’t manage this. It’s not secure.” A lot of those have gone away. 

So what I think is interesting about this current environment is you think, “Okay. People aren’t necessarily mobile anymore, right. Because you’re in your home office. They’re not commuting. They’re not this…” But, there’s actually an uptick in the interest in mobile because, yeah, people are in their home office, but they might not want to be at their desk. Maybe they want to go to the next room or they want to sit on the porch or they want it. I know that sounds super anecdotal, but…

Corey Marcel
31:25 It doesn’t. One of my buddies said, “The only place I don’t feel depressed is working for my kitchen counter.” He’s like, “I’m getting scoliosis. But it’s the only place that I like working in my entire house.”

David Wentworth
31:34 So the idea that, you know, more of the…if the learning technology enables very specific mobile interactions, right. It doesn’t have to be everything. But for things where it makes sense. To give people that opportunity to be able to connect when and where they want. So just, you know, again, that culture of learning. Hey, the whole goal is, “I’m in a position at the moment where I don’t know something. I either need to know the answer to a question, or how to do something in this moment. I don’t know how to do it. I want to know the answer.” Let’s make it so they can have that answer right then, right there. And that’s the ultimate goal. So mobile is going to play a big role in that. I just thought it was, to me, interesting in that it got to a certain point, it plateaued, and then now that no one’s really literally going anywhere they want more of it. And that’s key.

Corey Marcel
32:21 It’s really interesting. Yeah. Maybe, are you seeing it where people want to get out of the house. “I want to go on a walk. I want to go do something else.” It’s kind of what you’re saying. And I can take my learning with me, right. I don’t have to be at the desk doing it, right. It makes total sense. Because, you’re right. I mean, going back to the Zoom conversation we had earlier, I’m at my desk all day on Zoom meetings, back to back to back. The last thing I want to do is, you know, have to sit here for anything else. Let me get up and go somewhere else and get a change of scenery.

David Wentworth
32:48 Yeah, so from a tech side that’s, that’s one thing. I think we touched on some of the others, you know, just really about collaboration and connectivity. And always the caveat, so the technology LMS requirement that I think I would throw in for that is the ability to do those things – the connectivity, the social element – but integrated into other things, right. So if your organization, your sales force is working in Salesforce, that’s where they live and breathe and eat and sleep all day. So how do we get the stuff that we need as learning professionals to them into that environment so we don’t pull them out? So they have more of a sense of, “Oh, this isn’t something separate from my job that I have to stop doing what I’m doing to go interact with this other thing.” It’s, “This is something that helps me do my job right and helps me get to where I want to be.” And so those kind of integrations are becoming more and more critical for learning technology. And any technology really. But,you know, people only are only going to put up with so many different platforms logins, what have you, in a given day. And you can’t fight it. And they’re going to default to the things where they get the most most of their work done. Teams. Slack. Salesforce. What is it. So however best we can get ourselves into that environment. Yeah, you’re going to have to pull them out for certain things. But if you can do it in a way where it’s very natural and organic and it feels like it’s part of that, that’s going to be the key. So I think those kinds of integrations are critical.

Corey Marcel
34:19 I agree. I read this book at the beginning of the year, Atomic Habits by James Clear. Really, really good book. A lot of practical information. And one of the kind of his tenants of forming a new habit is: make it easy. Make it so that it’s in the way of what you were already going to do. And so if we’re putting things in Salesforce or dropping notifications in Slack, or wherever we’re working. You’re right, it just kind of puts learning, you almost like fall into it. And I think that’s the way it has to be if you want to create a culture and a habit of people coming back for something. 

Alright, we’ve made it kind of to my last question here for you, before I think I’ve got another like quick round. Given these  – and this should have been the word of the year…I think the phrase of the year was, You’re on mute” but it should have been “unprecedented”. So, given these unprecedented times, what are your predictions for the state of enterprise learning going into this year? I know we kind of touched on mobile. We kind of touched on integrated solutions. Anything outside of those two components that you see, like, 2021, this is going to have it’s moment as well?

David Wentworth
35:29 Yeah. I think we’ll see an increase…it’s not going to, you know, shoot up to, you know, lead the pack. But I think we’ll finally see more of an upward trend for things like augmented reality and virtual reality. Now that people are remote and everything is virtual/digital. The need to immerse people in things and to, you know, when you cannot have people in a live-action scenario where you’re showing them how things work, to do that in a virtual/virtual reality environment. I’ve seen tons of examples of this even prior to the pandemic that were really solid. And it isn’t about, “Oh, I’m going to put you on Mars, and you’re going to mine for…

Corey Marcel
36:13 That’s the one I want to do! I want to try out one that sounds fun.

David Wentworth
36:16 But it’s more about, you know, you can use virtual reality to work through difficult customer conversations. Right? And have that experience without having to do it on the job. We’ve seen all kinds of things that are real-world, applicable things that help people sort through this without having to be in the environment. So I think you’ll start to see that this will open the doors for more of that.

Corey Marcel
36:41 Do you see the costs coming down on those? Because I know a lot of people were really interested in it, gosh, back when we were doing ATDs in person, two years ago, 2019. People were like, I’m really interested in AR, VR. Really like here looking for those, but it seemed like it was just like, I mean, very, very expensive. Are you seeing the tech become more affordable essentially?

David Wentworth
37:02 Yeah completely. It’s the convergence of things. It’s the convergence of bandwidth being what it is now and the availability of it.So you know you need a lot of bandwidth for this sort of thing. Processing power. Obviously that’s a huge thing. So you can create these worlds, they render really quickly. And then the actual yeah the physical tech is come way down in cost. I mean, look what kind of AR things, augmented reality things you can do with just the phone in your hand. Let alone, you know, putting on goggles. Or they have it where you can use the phone inside a visor to create it. The cost has come way down. And we’ve seen these organizations, these examples that I’ve shown, you know, they’ll buy 20-30 of these things. And that will be the class. And they can ship them wherever they need to ship them, so that people can, you know, use them and then they send them back. So there’s that. And so it’s that confluence of things – the bandwidth, the tech, and the processing power – have finally come. I mean, you know, VR. What, since the mid 80s it’s been a thing. And it’s just never really caught on until, I think now, and we’re starting to see the real practical applications.

Corey Marcel
38:06 That’s great. I can’t wait. Like I haven’t played video games in a long time. But whenever video games become like totally virtual reality I might have to get back into it because it seems awesome. Same with training. Alright. That was the last of the questions. You nailed it. This was awesome. I appreciate it. As always. Alright so closing segment. I like to end the show with what I call “10 seconds or less.” I say, “I like to end the show.” But this is our first show. Obviously that was scripted! That was a total giveaway. I’m like” traditionally this segment I end the show like this…” In 10 seconds or less. What can we expect for L&D in 2021? It’s hilarious that I just asked you that basically in the last question. But anything else we can expect in, 10 seconds or less, for L&D in 2021?

David Wentworth
38:54 I think a lot more learner-generated content. Subject matter expert-created content. A lot more democratization of content creation. I know it’s already happening, but I think you’ll see an acceleration of that as people tap into the knowledge sources in the organization.

Corey Marcel
39:10 I love it! And there you have it, folks. Big, huge thank you to our first-ever guest. Unless we air this after the next one. Unless we jumble up how we’re ordering them. Hopefully. It would be interesting to see. Yes. You set the bar super high. Mr. David Wentworth. Thank you so much for your insights. Really excited to see how this plays out in 2021. And again, Thank you so much. Until next time. Thanks so much, everybody.

David Wentworth
39:38 Thanks Corey.