L&D In Action: Winning Strategies from Learning Leaders - Conscious Change Management: Pacing Company Evolution to Support People-First Learning

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

Change is inevitable. But that doesn’t mean we lack control over the kinds of change we subject ourselves to, right? With a new era of technology squarely in front of us, and a global pandemic directly behind, it can feel like our organizations MUST embrace radical change if they expect to thrive. While this is generally true, Consultant Erin Shearer has some words of caution and recommendations for change management drawn from more than a decade helping companies undergo major evolutions.

You're listening to L&D in Action, winning strategies from learning leaders. This podcast, presented by Get Abstract, brings together the brightest minds in learning and development to discuss the best strategies for fostering employee engagement, maximizing potential, and building a culture of learning in your organization. Today we speak with Erin Shearer. Erin is a consultant, leadership development expert, and change agent. She was trained as an educator and got her start in the education industry, even working as a school principal for a stint.

As a strategist focused on improving organizational health, Erin has worked in a number of industries. At one point, she held an L&D leadership position at Aetna, where she was responsible for rolling out the Adoption of Healthcare Effectiveness Data and information set, HEDIS, performance measures. She is a decorated agency trainer, certified change management leader, and a founder. Let's dive in. Hello, and welcome to L&D in Action. I'm your host, Tyler Lay, and today I'm speaking with Erin Shearer. Erin, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. So I was reading through a book called Learning at Speed. It's by Nelson Silalingam.

He's the CEO, I believe, of HowNow. He believes that adapt or die is how I like to put it very simply. I'm not sure he uses as severe words, but he believes in the power of learning. And those who learn most optimally, organizationally, are going to win out. Those who do the most important research and do it fastest, those who innovate the most successfully, those who develop their people most actively and in the best manner, they're going to win. Do you believe that we're heading towards sort of like a war of attrition of learning

here, kind of like he does? I see this a lot among learning leaders that they feel like, you know, learning is just becoming more and more critical. Do you believe that's kind of where we're headed right now? So I think learning has always been critical. I think in the business world, it's becoming something like consume as fast as possible, iterate as fast as possible. What I think I say is true, though, is I say it with caution. I find that we have a

tendency to consume and to do so with such speed that at times we do not apply it really that thoughtfully and we move at what I would consider to be too fast. And maybe we don't think about what we're seeing or we're gathering as our learning and we're not reflecting on that. And so then we apply it so quickly that sometimes it doesn't resonate. There has to be like a stickiness to our learning. And then we also have to do a needs analysis to our learning. Not everyone in every place in our organizations needs the same thing. And I think that is where like some of those general statements that the gentleman that you just talked about has gathered and kind it can be kind of a reckless application when we get into what corporations are maybe doing and thinking about learning. In addition to that, I think sometimes it's not external consumption and it's more, what does it mean internally for our corporations to be learners? That can be

listening to our own customers and what they need and then determining what that means to us. It can also be listening to our own employees and then determining what we do with that information. It doesn't always mean that we listen to external information and then apply that. So there's a lot of layers to learning and it's very complex. And when we just apply broad brush strokes, it can be like whiplash. So I would say that while I think it's true, I say apply with caution. Well, the way that this author describes how he thinks we should go about learning in the future is lean management principles. He talks about being agile and implementing lean management principles. And this is like a pretty serious concept. He talks about

doing minimum viable learnings, which to me, like I almost have to draw the line a little bit there just naturally because minimum viable product is a really popular way to go about, you know, product development when you're sort of like an entrepreneur startup, that sort of thing. That concerns me a little bit. It gives me pause because at the end of the day, if what you're doing is you're just kind of like, you're throwing things against the wall until you find like what the market kind of will scoop up at small rates and, you know, establishing sort of like a foothold. That's kind of how I think about MVPs. I just feel like you're shirking the opportunity for a greater, better researched solution, something that's more thorough, that takes its time and that really sort

of analyzes things appropriately. I feel like putting solutions out there as hypotheses is just a slightly more dangerous way to do that. And I feel that way about things in general, not just, you know, products or learning. But specifically, if we're talking about minimum viable learnings, that to me is saying, you know, it's quick, it's fast, it's, you know, you're gathering data on your learnings. But even still, I feel like that puts us at risk of superficial understandings and that sort of thing. But how do you feel about this idea? Lean management principles for learning and minimum viable learnings.

Do you have any thoughts on those things? Yes. Oh, I have so many thoughts. So yes, lean principles are smart when it comes to sprints. I'm actually trained in that. And it's an entire philosophy in itself about how quickly you can move and get things in place. So I love what you just said about it, that sometimes it can feel very surface level. What is risky about it is that it can be very hard for people to adapt and apply

when it comes to learning. So people learn at different speeds. And depending upon how challenging the content is, it can take people more time to apply that content and make it stick. So the way that I would explain it is like we all have a different, if you think about like Velcro, like we all have a different ability to take knowledge and adhere it to something that's meaningful to us. So if I have a skill base that I can grab something and apply that concept to, then it's easier for me to grab that and hold onto it. But if something is totally new to me that you're teaching me, it could take me longer to make that thing that you've just taught me stick to me and hold onto that concept.

If I am being told like, I have to take this new thing and I only have this much time which usually a sprint is a duration of time so there's a cadence to it if I have this much time to try to get this put in place and stick to it and then we're going to turn around and do something new and I'm supposed to still hold on to that previous concept and then move on to the new thing that can be very hard for your workforce. So while I think sprints are great for certain things, it really depends on your team. It depends on the industry you're in, the project you're doing. There's a lot of variance to that. And so I think that it is important for leaders to know if a sprint makes sense. It also is important that whoever's running those sprints,

that the people who are participating in them understand lean concepts. There's a ton of philosophy that goes along, theories that go along with that. The people that are involved need to understand what they're doing. If you're doing it to others, they need to understand what they're participating in. What I also go back to and I think about is that this all comes down to leaders knowing their people. And when you come to the table with your workforce, you need to know what the skill gaps are and why you're doing what you're doing. Everything that you were talking about before I started talking had to do with like, why do you exist? So if you're trying to figure out

what's best for your workforce, when it comes to learning and what's best for your workforce when it comes to learning and what's best for you putting forward for your consumers, it's like your whole entire purpose needs to be examined and why you're in existence in the first place. So if you're trying to figure out a product to put out, why do you exist? And is that product the product you should be putting forward? Or are you just throwing a bunch of stuff out there to see what sticks? I mean, I would go back and ask you what your purpose is if you're having to make decisions by just putting stuff out into the universe and seeing what people grab. That isn't a great way to determine if your community of followers or your consumers are really interested in you as a company. Yeah. Ultimately, I'm a believer in business for the purpose of solutions,

not business for the sake of business. And I think you just did a great job of articulating what I was struggling to when it comes to learning. So if everybody's on board and understands the principles of what we're going through in terms of the learning, that means that you can do it well. And then this is what you do. You do change, you know, if you have to sort of change the structure of that learning and how it's disseminated and everything, that can be very complex. And I'm glad that you mentioned leadership because we are going to come back around to that at some point and the importance of leadership and learning. In a similar vein though, so Don Taylor, he does his annual sentiment survey. And something that is consistently popular among the things that are top of mind for learning practitioners is consulting more closely with the business.

And this, I think you already brought up in your first response to my first question, when you mentioned that sometimes you have to kind of listen to the market or listen to your people. What do we actually need to learn to make sure that we're hitting our business goals? And the things that you've done, you've had a very sort of wide ranging career, it seems, and you've worked with many different kinds of people, many different departments and on many different jobs. How do you ensure that learning systems that you put in place will have a positive impact on the most important goals of the organization? Yeah. So I think first and foremost, it's so important to

understand that there are lots of different levers that you can pull when you're trying to determine how to reach an outcome or a goal. And learning systems are just one of those levers. And figuring out, does that learning system help us to get there? And how does it help us to get there? I've been in organizations where leaders have decided to put a learning system in place, thinking this is the magic bullet to get us to this end goal. And we've done that and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to reach that end goal and not really asked the people who would then be implementing that if they will buy into that. You know, when you think about hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's not just in the tech that that costs, but it's also in the manpower and the resources to see that through. And then in the end, the people don't really buy in.

So they all might act like they're going to be using that tool, but in the end, they aren't really going to use that tool or they aren't going to use that tool with fidelity. that tool or they aren't going to use that tool with fidelity. And so it's really critical to know why are we going to use this to have strategy improvements? And then how do you figure out are your people really going to agree with this decision? And how do you get them to want to do this? And what is the purpose behind it? And I think that is a huge missed opportunity from leaders. So fleshing out those desired outcomes and goals and the overall results that you're trying to reach is probably one of the most important steps to get first. And then going forward and really listening to your people and hearing them like, what are the pain points that this is a solution for? And how can you show them that this tool is a solution for those pain points

versus we're just going to put this in place and make this be an answer to those questions. So from a consulting more closely with the business, that would be an action that I think is a great thing to train leaders to do. That is a consulting step is really looking as a leader, like, how do I go to my people and talk to them the way that a consultant would? Like, what is a solution that we need to have? What are the pain points that you're seeing internally that we could fix with a solution instead of just putting things in place and then making people do things? I think that that is from a change management standpoint, something that people get really tired of those decisions coming from the top down and not really understanding why those things happen to them instead of for them and for

the organization as a whole. So that would be one example that I would say, and it costs so much money. And usually in the end, it is not a great outcome. When done right, it can be huge time savers and wonderful outcomes from a learning management standpoint, as just an example, from an L&D practitioner standpoint, I bet you could ask a ton of L&D leaders and they would tell you just endless stories of where things could have done a great job with a really great tool or a really great resource. And then instead it goes sideways. We all probably have lots of stories. Yeah. I've had those conversations on the show a handful of times, actually. I guess I'd like to hear them. What are the other levers that

we should be pulling? So the other strategic levers for those improvements that you mentioned, is it larger scale change? Is it a change in leadership, hiring differently, recruiting differently? What are the levers? What do you focus on? Yeah. So sometimes it's you already have all the right people. They're just not in the right seats. Your people know usually what is going well and what is not and where the changes could

be made. We just don't always slow down and ask. And when we do ask, we don't always do anything with the information that we get. And so people aren't really forthcoming with their thoughts. Sometimes their thoughts aren't well received. So they're afraid to give them and they're afraid to give them authentically and truthfully because maybe in the past, the feedback they've given has unfortunately been used against them that I could give you stories of how that has happened.

So surveys are not always a great way to get information. I love to do like field studies or, you know, listening tours, teaching leaders how to do something strategically. Like there's a tool called rounding where you can have leaders sit with their direct reports and actually ask meaningful questions that you design that has to do with the projects that you're actually implementing. And then you aggregate that information to learn about what is going on and how to move that information forward. Doing those things before you make structural changes. But there are usually the right people in your organization already that you can get

in the right seats. And then you probably do have people that are in the wrong seats. How can you train them up or level them up to get them into the right seats or help them to know that maybe they need some things that they don't have and then make some different decisions? Those are things that I think are great levers to pull. It does not help to hire outside people into an organization that is already unhealthy. You won't keep strong people in either capacity. Also to add to that, if hiring practices have

brought in poor performers, then hiring practices would be something to change. So that would be an indication of a place to do some work, but you can't ascern all of that unless you have been able to determine what's going on already. So those would be all places that I think are leverageable. Okay, so you're a change agent, ultimately, you brought this up a few times.

What kinds of changes have you helped organizations with? Has it been technological, structural, otherwise? So both of those, and they both require different things. Some of them I just touched on, but also systematic and procedural changes, implementing evaluation procedures is a big one, figuring out how do you determine how your organization is performing from a strategic standpoint. That is a very fun place to do some work is how do you put strategy in place that helps us to perform and move forward. So those would be spots that are exciting to work

with organizations. And then all of that is rooted in leadership development at every layer. Yeah. As I understand change management, which is minimal, I'm, you know, never worked in that realm, but there are some obvious critical components to making sure that change goes over well, especially right now when we're talking about changes as radical as what is the workforce going to look like in 10, 15 years with AI? We can dive into that a little bit later, but you have to get buy-in on things outside of just, you know, what is the change going to look like from A to B? Like, how are we going to organize it?

You have to get buy-in from everybody. You have to assess the skill gaps and the needs and all of that. And then there's just the communication of everything to everybody. What do you focus on most when you're managing change? Are you brought in for a specific facet of this or are you kind of, you know, helping do it all? And what tends to be the most challenging for you? So change management overall is very challenging, no matter what part you're working on. Usually, I would say the hardest thing is if it's cleaning up a poorly implemented change, that is very hard. So it's like the aftermath. So that is a challenging thing. But when it's done well, the things you

can pinpoint are like communication has been very well thought out all throughout because there's different stages of that. And I would also say that thinking about how often an organization is going through change is really critical. So when you think about change, if you step back, one of the things that I really think is important is to think about buy-in, but from the standpoint of respecting the history of like what has happened here, what have we done that's worked and honoring the people and the things that they've accomplished. When you think about buy-in, it's really how do you get people to understand the need of where we're headed and why we're headed there, not in a manipulative way. And I think sometimes leaders and corporations will not really be fully transparent with all the things that they can be. And that is where

you break down trust. So if you can honor the fact that we've done these things, there are different orders of change for people. And so some people, change is no big deal to them. It's just like, this is what it is. And there's not emotion to it. And so I can just live with it. I'm just thankful to have a job or whatever their mentality is. For some people, every single change, whether it is small or large or however you would

describe it, is very hard. whether it is small or large or however you would describe it, is very hard. And so if leaders utilize the person who changes no big deal to them as their benchmark for changes no big deal, then they will not get change right for their team or their workforce. So it's thinking about how do you measure the impact of this change based off of everybody, not just the person who's changed feels like not a big deal. And those are important things to think about. I'm going to open up to you really quickly, Aaron, because I recently was listening to a podcast where the host was speaking with a business leader, like a pretty big time business leader. And I'm going to leave names out of this,

but the host was speaking to this business leader and they just kept using the term change fatigue. And the way that they were talking about change management, they were referring to change fatigue as something that their people are experiencing and how to fix that. And that to me, it just felt very dehumanizing. Like our people are, they're getting sick of change, but we have to make sure that they go through it. At the end of the day, it just sounded like they don't really care how their people feel

as long as they get them through it. Like it's not democratic enough. They're gonna do it to them no matter what. Yeah, they're gonna do it to them no matter what. It's not democratic. They're not giving them the option. They're fatigued and we're gonna do our best to make sure that they're not.

But like the fatigue that they're describing is a description of like many different things that are happening in society as far as I'm concerned. it's an exhaustion of like, you know, the change in workforce and you know, what AI could create. It's an exhaustion of like just general job insecurity, the challenge of, you know, finding work and sticking with it. And just, you know, the state of industry and the economy, like there's a lot of really good reasons to feel fatigue right now. Like that's what I believe. So to me, it's like, we need to be more critical with the changes that we're implementing from the top down. And I

believe we should be doing it more democratically. And I recently saw a post of yours actually on LinkedIn, where you actually advocate for leaders going through like a visualization practice, where they pick somebody in the company and they say, okay, what is this person going to experience with this change? What's actually going to happen to their daily work life? You know, what projects are they going to have to halt startup? Who are they going to work with? What kind of partnerships are they going to develop? How is this going to change their life? And that really like blew my mind that you like you as a change agent, you weren't just thinking about like, how do we push through change? It's like, do we really need to make this change? So do you feel like we need to be more

critical in the decisions that we're making when it comes to change? That's my ultimate question here. Yes. Well, thank you for telling me about that podcast. So just being a person right now, it really is hard. So I led in the school system and that is exhaustive work. And I think we underestimate just what it is to be a people leader. I think we underestimate what it is just to be, you know, there are people who are parents. I think we underestimate what it is just to be a person. And that's just normal. It's just normal. But I think when we are leading in an organization and we believe that a business decision has to be made, right? Like we're like, this decision has to be made no matter what. Okay. Maybe it absolutely does. But I've worked in organizations where I would argue with you

that does that decision have to be made? And I love the five whys. So that is, first of all, it's super annoying. It makes you feel like you're living with a toddler. But if somebody asks you five whys back and you start to realize like you can't answer those five whys, the problem is we have a lot of maybe like bandwagoning. We have a lot of like, yes, I'm going to say yes men, sitting around some of our leaders. And there are people who are very afraid to do the five whys or to say like, wait a second,

do we really need to be doing some of these things? I can tell you there are some businesses that would maybe still be afloat if somebody actually said, hey, do we need to do that right now? So I just feel a little bit like if somebody actually closed their eyes and thought about that frontline worker, thought about that middle manager, they might not make some of the decisions that they were making because the change that they're requesting is too close to the change they just requested two weeks ago. The problem is they don't think about the implication of those changes being so close together. And they might go, well, it's not really that big of a deal. I would tell

you that to ask somebody to switch gears on a project or to completely halt on a project that was just six weeks long. And now all of a sudden we don't need to do that project is a huge request of a team that just dedicated all of this time to that. It wears your team down. Now, if that project doesn't need to happen anymore, and all you're going to do is send them an email telling them that that project doesn't need to happen anymore, there should be some reasoning around why. Why does that project not need to happen anymore? What is happening in the organization to express that? And then what are you going to have them do for work after that? Because what ends up happening to that team is they start to question if they have a job. They start to question if it's their productivity. Is it their performance?

Is it something else? And then your workforce stops trusting you. They start to look for other work. They stop putting their effort in. You give them another project. They're like, yeah, I'm probably going to give it 50% of my energy instead of what I just gave that last project, which was 100% of my energy. It really deteriorates. And that last project, which was 100% of my energy, it really deteriorates. And then let's talk about learning and development. You want to ask your people to then jump on this call and do learning or show up in a meeting and do learning, they are not going to do it. So I think the domino is huge. And, you know, from a change management standpoint, you just can't ask people to do that over and over and over again it's really bad for your culture and in the end if you are a consumer driven place it's really bad for the way that people interact with your customers

whether you want to believe it or not it just is so i think from a leadership standpoint people need to look at how they make decisions because it really impacts your organization. And it's not just about sitting in the big seat and doing things. You have to look at your organization. People look at you as the compass to navigate the waters and you have to know why you're doing what you're doing and be able to answer to it. Yeah. But those waters are just, they're so rocky right now. I do have empathy for leaders at the end of the day, especially big business leaders because competition is so great right now.

It is, it's hard. I wouldn't want to be in a position of, okay, I have a company with hundreds or thousands of people and there are big competitors and guess what? Like AI is revolutionizing many business models right now. There's a good chance that my competitor is doing something pretty radical. So like, do we have to, you know, be preemptive and proactive and maybe do something there too?

So, I mean, do you have any just like general advice for how to sort of make this decision? Here's what I would say. Nobody can predict what AI is going to do in the next five years. Nobody is. I mean, it is changing every day. That's true. But I think it's exciting to do innovative things. If you are prepared to try to play in that space, then explore. But putting all of your energy into a space that's uncharted, I mean, I don't know.

I think if you can do some cool things in that space, then try it. But I think AI is awesome. And I think that it's doing awesome things. I also feel like there is an opportunity to look at AI as a support to really great things that are already happening, probably in people's organizations already. It is just a tool to support the really great things that are already going on. I would caution people to know a couple of things about AI as a tool, though. It doesn't have copywriting that's caught up to it yet. So those of us in L&D are monitoring how that looks. For intellectual property, we have copywriting laws already to support that. But when it comes to AI, if you're putting your precious intellectual property into an AI tool that you do not own, you do risk your material living somewhere that might not be protected.

So that would be just one cautionary thing I would share with companies. You know, like I will give the example of ChatGPT. You don't own your stuff once it is in ChatGPT. So that's something we're coming across. If you work with a company that claims that your stuff is protected when it's in their tools from an AI standpoint, then that could be different. But just being cautious about how fast you're racing to this end that we don't know, just be monitoring what you might be giving up to get there. If you aren't sure what you're giving away from your own intellectual properties, that would be something

I would just caution. The other thing I would say is that just like our data, it's never good by itself. You have to have great people who know how to use those tools and read those tools and analyze those tools and then use them with someone else from a teaching and learning and instructing standpoint, you know, AI could never do on its own what it could do with someone who is highly skilled with those tools. So I would just share that nod as well that is when a company has a really incredible person in a role to use those tools, it'll go much further than if it just expedites its things on its own. I feel like there's room for it to be a great resource, but I do caution people just about what they put into

it just because I don't think people know. And, you know, I know for a number of us, like I've had my own intellectual work snagged and that's in the current world. And I don't know what it looks like if something happens to your work when it's in AI, I have no idea. Well, I think the writer's guilt is going through that right now and the strikes and everything, because there's the whole thing that if they can take their, you know, likeness through the movies that they've already been in, like, I'm sure it'll be even simpler to just take the words that you've written than somebody's visual, you know, likeness. So I, it's bleak as far as I'm concerned. It really does shorten our curves, right? Like it makes things feel so much easier. But like, if you go back to the very beginning of our conversation,

when you think about learning, like when is learning best done? If you think about Bloom's taxonomy, it's when you have your own experience with learning. So it's that hands-on opportunity. And then it's also when you get to teach others. So if you think about how AI cuts those corners for us in certain capacities, it's probably okay. But in other capacities, it might reduce the opportunities that we would want to have for people to learn on their own. I know there's predictions about the school system in the next five or less years that won't even look the same.

I laugh at those because of having my own experience in the school system. To change a hundred plus system in five years, I think would be relatively impossible. But, you know, who knows, who knows, the world is changing constantly. It's very true. I really appreciate that take on AI, because I've had many conversations about it, as you can imagine, and many people agree with what you're saying, but very few give any specific cautions. So I really appreciate that you went through the intellectual property component to that. I think we're seeing this in the Writers Guild Association strike right now

where there's a concern that big production companies will take people's likenesses and have access and rights to them permanently. And that feels like a complicated thing to do. Whereas just taking what somebody has written or put into a machine that takes text and that sort of thing feels like a much simpler way to take advantage of somebody

or to own what you've given them. So I appreciate that word of caution. Thank you. I want to cycle back to change management, though, because I did want to ask, do you follow a particular step by step method or model when it comes to enacting change? Yeah, so I've been trained in Cotter's and then also Studer Education Group from when I was an administrator. And both of them are great frameworks for anyone that is learning or wants to follow a roadmap for change management. What's also nice about them is they are not gated. So you can pull them up and look at them and apply them to your organization as a leader. Every leader goes through change. So it walks you right through there. What I love about Dr. Cotter's is they truly are step-by-step and very fluid to what

you would want to review. For example, it starts with creating urgency. Like why does this change need to happen? And forming a coalition around that change, which means that you're trying to figure out who you can get to help you create that buy-in. So who would be the people that would be for this change and then creating a vision for that change. One of the things I love about Studer's change management philosophy is, and it's written for the education world, but it truly applies to anywhere. So as you look through it, if you're not an educator or not from the education space, you can really look at it with eyes to any organization. It talks about honoring the current reality, which is an important thing that I think gets lost when you're applying change management to an organization. I know I mentioned that earlier.

And then it talks about setting the vision. So what is already happening here? What can we honor that has taken place, the history of this, and then tying that to the vision that we're setting forward. If we don't know what's happening already, it's very hard to decide from there, where do we go? If you don't do that, then people will sometimes feel like you haven't really acknowledged what it is that we're doing. And then you don't know the stair steps that we really need to put in place to get to the next spot. From there, you can also use really amazing tools that are in a book that's called, it

sounds kind of funny, but called Tool Time. And they have all sorts of really great tools. I know it reminds you probably of that TV show from back in the day, but they have really great tools. I know it reminds you probably of that TV show from back in the day, but they have really great tools. One of them is like, you can create like a bone diagram and all sorts of other tools to help you to know, like, where are we now? Where do we want to be? What are the things we need to do to get from point A to, it might not be point B, but how many things do we need to do between them? And that's where all those important steps come in and how you can communicate them with the people that you're asking to do the move from this step to that step. Because as the

leader, you're not really the one that's going to have to do those things. But if you don't honor the history, that can make it really tricky. So those are a couple of the frameworks that I love and then the tools that I love to use. Okay. Thank you for those recommendations. Another post. I love your LinkedIn posts. You're really good at posting on LinkedIn. Oh, thank you. When it comes to simpler change, so not the whole organizational thing,

but when you need to learn something, when something needs to change in terms of skills or capabilities, you actually suggest book clubs are a great way to just get started on something. Especially if you have limited budget or something like that, limited time, if you just, maybe you're even a small organization and you just have limited L and D resources, but you know, picking the topic, getting a sort of seminal book on that topic, and then having your team or the people relevant to it

read through the book and just do a book club. I love that. I'm a big reader, you know, work for good abstract. So that's very important. But do you think that this sort of interpersonal and collaborative learning is going to stick around permanently? Like kind of, you know, back to the AI question a little bit, but is it always going to be as critical or will we develop tools and resources that make, you know, the more tedious type of learning, you know, reading an entire book obsolete? What do you think? Oh man, I hope that reading doesn't go away just because we've got these tools. I mean, I think like Get Abstract has, you know, we've found little ways to find resources. Like we can pull things for ourselves to give us opportunities to read in condensed ways already. Like let's not

do away with reading. Come on, everybody. I would hope not. I have a very specific experience here, though. I started in publishing, in textbook publishing. And I can tell you that every major textbook, basically in the last, you know, few decades, those that have, you know, many editions that have been coming out forever, they've all been not only reduced in size, but most of them have been given an abbreviated version. So, you know, it's just true. This is generally proven that our attention spans are lesser and we prefer, you know, to talk over books at this point. So listen, I refuse to believe this. I will not succumb to this. I think that we will read and we will consume what interests us. I know

that about our brains. I've studied our brains. I will not. So us. I know that about our brains. I've studied our brains. I will not. So Tyler, I believe you about certain texts being shortened, but there are still people who will read and read and read and consume more than the TikTok videos that are scrolling. I just know people will still read. Now, what I will say, I wrote, I love that you are,

I've taken a little break from the LinkedIn world. I spent lots of focus time with my family. So I love that, you know, you've looked at my post. This post was in response. I had a number of leaders who were saying like, what do we do? Our budgets are slash. I still have people wanting community. You know, I don't have people in these roles like I used to. And I was like, listen, this is such an easy way to pull people together from a common interest or a like or something. These are the ways that you can do it. So a book club is a great way to watch a particular video clip or read a get abstract. I mean, there are so many ways to find an article, let somebody on your team present a topic and then come around that topic about a project that your team is working on.

I mean, it could even be an interest project if you wanted to just do any particular topic. It doesn't have to be a text. It could be anything that they just like in the world. pulls your team together that they can share about themselves or about content is such an easy way to let people shine, to practice really important skills, and also to let them get to know each other and learn at the same time. So I am hopeful that this doesn't go away from the world of learning and that we start to like shop it out to AI. I do know that teams though, you know, if you can't afford to hire someone like me, or you can't afford to work with someone like me fractionally, or as a consultant to support your company, this is a way for leaders to work

within their teams and not lose sight of the importance of growing and learning and building community, which is such an important part of learning at the core of it. So that's my hope. I'm on the same side here. You know, I don't want us to stop reading and I don't think that we will, but I think the point of my question is more so, you know, structurally when we are learning, is it going to become more accessible for organizations, especially smaller ones, maybe to be able to implement really effective learning than, you know, kind of making the decision to go and do a book club. Like, will they have access to some sort of a resource, a tool that, you know, analyzes what people are up to on their day to day

and sort of determines, you know, okay, you guys are all doing this. Maybe you could optimize here. And here's a thing that you could learn. Like, I feel like that's broadly the direction that we're going. I've seen workforce intelligence tools, you know, I feel like that's kind of where we're headed in when restrictions of budget, like you said, and timing and all of that, you know, maybe that will just become easier. I hope we don't stop reading amidst all of that, but maybe there's another solution maybe in the future that will add on top of that. I know, I know there are companies that exist that do that kind of thing. Yeah. So it's just a matter of, though, when there's no budget, you also have to have a desire from a leader to say,

we want people to do those things. And so then you have to be able to have the budget towards that kind of work. Seeing that a company who does that or an AI, well, it would still be a company that probably designs that particular thing, and you'd have to shop out to that. So I guess in the respect that I had people saying, what do we do? Because we have no budget, we just cut our entire department that was building tools and things. There have always been teams that are building learning, learning and development arms of organizations have existed. So I think that in lieu of that, if you don't have that, it's like,

what are the ways that you can think outside the box? For example, school districts have been doing these kinds of things from a professional development standpoint forever. So, you know, when you don't have any money, it's like, how do you do things? Do I think those companies will exist or have currently in the works building things like that? Totally. It's just whether or not a company can afford it. But I do hope people will read. We're on the same page there. And you mentioned that it comes down to leaders as well.

You know, the decisions that the leaders are making and what they put in place. You have, it seems based on your LinkedIn resume that I was checking out, you've worked with a lot of different kinds of projects. It seems like you've been involved with logistics, operations, project management. You've worked, you know, with the education system. You are an educator, but you've also worked, you know, with CVS and Aetna. And I guess I'm just curious,

leadership development is in your title. Does it all come back to leadership? Is that always a constant point of emphasis for you, regardless of what facet of business you're ultimately improving? Oh, I think so. Yeah, I feel like it's just at the foundation of everything. John Maxwell is probably one of my favorite leadership gurus. He talks a lot about the law of the lid, and how your leadership ability defines and determines the impact you have on an organization. determines the impact you have on an organization. So it matters how much we do with a team and how much an individual is able to be impressed upon from a training and development standpoint. But if the leader is never moved, never grown, never impressed upon, their own lid will always impact what the group or the organization is able to do. So I think that when I set out to work with someone or within an organization,

recognizing that the goal is that everyone grows, the goal is that the organization is able to foster as a healthy organization. I think that's really my ultimate joy of being able to help people within the organization just feel like they're living their best work life. And whatever that looks like for one individual there could be different to the next. And that's what makes learning and development so fun. So then to wrap up, I guess, what advice would you give to leaders about ensuring organizational health? I know this is a very broad question, but I'd love to just hear if you have any general advice. So I think organizational health, what makes it so important to reflect on is how your organization looks and feels and the way it moves as a daily place to be.

And you being able to really think about that as a leader and reflect in the way that you impact it is something that as a leader, I think needs to take time each day. I know you and I have talked about the fact that leaders are really the stewards of the organization. They're the ones that make the place work and grow and tick. And I think sometimes we just get going and going and going, and it's easy for us to not pause and reflect. Leaders are doing really hard and great things every single day. And we have opportunities to grow and improve and take pause and decide what tomorrow is going to look like and recognize that we can make differences. So from an organizational health standpoint, you know, it's up to us to determine if the culture and climate is what we

want it to be for our people. And if the strategies that we're putting in place are making an impact and how we can help people perform at their best. And so being able to really reflect on all of that as a leader and then make the differences each day is something that is an honor to be able to do. You know, you sit in the big chair for a reason. So that's the part that I think as a leader is the best part, maybe of the job that you really have a huge impact. Yeah, I agree. Thank you for that. It's huge. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, this is a perfect place to wrap. I think before we wrap up, can you just let our listeners know where they can learn more about you and the work that you do? Yeah. So you can find me on LinkedIn and also at erinshearconsulting.com.

Again, Erin, thank you so much for joining us. It was a pleasure having you. And for everybody listening at home, we will sure you never miss an episode. And don't forget to give us a rating, leave a comment and share the episodes you love. Help us keep delivering the conversations that turn learning into action. Until next time.