Learning Is The New Working The Learning Futures Group

Another RedThread Rewind episode: “I think we have to help organizations get out of the way and let people unleash and unlock their ca-pabilities in ways that does not require the organization to be at the center.” Sounds pretty optimistic? No surprise as whatever else he is, our guest this week, Greg Pryor, is an optimist—and we are too, given the power of the examples and the strength of the conviction he gave us in this hour of debate over the future of HR. Greg, People & Performance Evangelist at Workday, a tech firm that is shaking up the world of enterprise software and which we’re grateful to have as sponsor of this whole Work-place Stories first season, shares many fascinating insights into what he sees as a totally new age for human capital management that the pandemic has tipped us all into. These cover the gamut from bleeding-edge academic research on the future of work to the life lessons kids are teaching their par-ents out of playing Fortnite, and keep Stacia and fellow interviewer Chris engaged and often delighted. It’s a great conversation: use it to level up your thinking about skills. We certainly did.

Sometimes you feel you’re in the eye of the hurricane: so much is happening in terms of our wider society in terms of changing expectations, changing ways of working, changing life choices. Add the potentially explosive compound called ‘Diversity’ into all this, and it can start to feel a little hot in here. But, advises this week’s special guest and DEIB and L&D expert practitioner Jesse Jackson, CLO for JPMorgan Chase with a special focus on the Wall St’s giant’s consumer community banking business: when it comes to getting DEIB right, it’s not heat you want: it’s light. This is a really fascinating chance to find out from a person deep in the midst of all the changes we’re talking about, but also deep in a blue-chip financial services firm that always has to see things in terms of achievable ROI. We’ll let you decide if you agree that’s what Jesse’s achieving: us, we’re hunkering down in the place where it’s always the most interesting… that hurricane’s eye. Because that’s where change happens.

“I think that in the future, what will be really necessary in terms of skills are people that talk different languages of skills… talking different languages of different skill sets will be something really, really im-portant.” Why is it significant that become more expert seems so fused with speaking restricted lan-guages? And what does it mean to have ‘intentionality’ about skills? How do you start to really under-stand the skills needs of an organization you join in COVID? This week, these and many other thorny but critical issues get exposed via our debate with long-time friend and highly accomplished CLO and talent leader Nuno Gonçalves, who is now starting to do at global confectionary, food and pet care giant Mars what he did at European life sciences player UCB: implement a cross-company, future-focused skills strategy. It’s an excellent conversation with a truly passionate learning ninja who’s thought deeply about these problems; we think you’re going to love it.

Are there three sets of people in Inclusion: the folks doing the ground-level work on DEIB, maybe the researchers way off in the academic stratosphere, and then the people actually affected by these issues on a day-to-day level in the workplace? If so, could we simplify this and remove a layer? If you think that’s a good idea, then listen today to someone who is doing all she can to fuse the first two roles there—Rachel Fichter, a PhD who also works for a Wall St financial analytics firm, S&P Global… but who sees herself in a fascinating new kind of role in HR and analytics: DEIB scholar-practitioner, helping her firm Integrate Inclusion while also diving into the literature on Belonging in the Columbia University stacks. So: quite a woman. And quite a DEIB thinker. You’re going to like this Workplace Story.

“What I introduce [my students] to are the kinds of skills that allow them to navigate ambiguity.” If that seems like urgently-needed capability you or your team to have you’re in luck, as you’re about to find out a whole lot more about why you’d need such a thing… and why you won’t find it, alas, in to-day’s conventional curriculum (including corporate L&D). In the first full episode of our new Red-Thread podcast—our deep dive into what we’re calling capitalism’s focus on ‘The Skills Obsession’—we meet passionate educator, innovator and bestselling author Lisa Kay Solomon. Designer in Resi-dence at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (‘the d.school’) at Stanford University, Lisa presents in her dialog with Stacia, Dani and Chris something of a masterclass in what thinking about the future actually needs to consist of—and how that feeds into her conviction that, “learning is the currency of possibility.”

In December 2020, I was invited to host three live Learning podcasts at last year’s HR Innovation and Tech Fest (#HRTechFest), a week-long event hosted in Sydney, Australia by Hannover Fairs; I’d previously attended as an in-person delegate, and loved the energy and vibrancy of the Antipodean L&D community I interacted with, so I was more than happy to help out when asked (and can’t wait for it to go back to being real-world again later this year!). You may have caught my previous excellent Tech Fest conversation with Air New Zealand’s Dr Sydney Savion—and this is the perfect follow-up: Director of Manager/Leader Capabilities, Worldwide Learning at Microsoft, Shelby Grieve. A progressive, results-oriented leader with nearly 25 years of experience building and managing high performing, cross-functional teams, as well as building impactful, highly scaled global programs, Shelby has proven leadership skills and is a 2018 recipient of Microsoft's prestigious Circle of Excellence award, and at Platinum Level. And former Basketball champ and coach! Our conversation ranges across a range of really interesting L&D issues, shaped by her experience at a Microsoft actively moving to the famous shift from ‘know-it-all’ to a ‘learn-it-all’ culture demanded by LFG's favourite CEO, Satya Nadella, as well as: what 18 months of structured modelling, coaching and caring tuition for managers is achieving; how ‘model, coach and care’ capability is genuinely a performance metric now and what she and her team do when it isn’t happening enough; Microsoft’s new rule of three (personal impact, how much you helped others succeed, and how well you leveraged the work of others); a very different picture of virtual corporate training looks like; good tools to help you; what Microsoft is doing to get ready for the imminent hybrid workplace; and much more.