L&D in 20 is your go-to podcast for quick, actionable insights on employee learning, training, and development. Hosted by Dan Hayward, Go1's Chief Customer Officer, each episode delivers expert advice in just 20 minutes.

With a deep understanding of the L&D industry, Dan leverages his experience at companies like Degreed, LinkedIn, Yum! Brands, and now Go1 to bring you interviews with influential thought leaders. Together, they'll explore strategies to build employee engagement, drive organizational success, and foster a culture of continuous learning.

Hear insights from industry leaders, learn new strategies, and elevate your L&D game — in just 20 minutes

L&D in 20 Podcast

(00:49) Getting results from online learning, soft skills and upskilling the new generation

How can you ensure online learning initiatives drive effective results? In this episode, Dan discusses with Peter Horwing, CEO of CHART Learning Solutions, a performance improvement powerhouse designed to help organizations reach new heights in leadership, sales, customer service, and more. Peter shares best practices for ensuring effective results from online learning platforms, emphasizing the importance of application activities, peer-to-peer coaching, and community discussions.

A World Sailing Champion at 15, a management director for IBM's key Swedish partners, chairman in 15 countries on all continents and now the CEO of Chart Learning Solutions – a top-ranked Ed-tech company boasting a library of over 400 courses in leadership & sales. Peter's entrepreneurial journey is nothing short of awe-inspiring.

Peter has devoted his last 10 years to understanding and developing online education which makes impact within behavioral change. This has resulted in Chart Learning Solutions being globally recognized as one of the top leading online learning vendors. 

In this episode of L&D in 20, Dan sits down with Peter Horwing to discuss how you can ensure online learning initiatives drive effective results

Best practices in online and AI-enhanced learning with CHART Learning Solutions’ CEO, Peter Horwing

Dan: Welcome to L&D in 20, your go to resource for all things workplace learning brought to you by Go1. I'm your host, Dan Hayward, Chief Customer Officer here and industry veteran. Today we'll be speaking with Peter Horwing, founder and CEO of CHART Learning Solutions, a performance improvement powerhouse designed to help organizations reach new heights in leadership, sales, customer service, and more.

With over 450 award winning courses and a best-in-class chart learning management system, they combine technology and expert coaching to deliver results that stick. Peter, welcome to the show. 

So the topic today that we're discussing is all around getting results from online learning, soft skills and upskilling the new generation. We're also going to sprinkle in some AI training in there as well.

As CEO of CHART Learning Solutions, you obviously have a lot of experience in online courses and creating online learning that gets results. Can you describe some of the best practices that you've seen and that you've developed to ensure that we're getting results from those online learning platforms?

And I think it's a very important thing. Of course, if you look at online, online learning and looking behind, what has happened many times is that people do the online learning, it goes in from the left side, and then it goes out on the right side. And we saw that in our very early phase, and we actually stopped, and we went into research to understand how their brain actually work and how you can actually get the results out of the online learning.

And there are a number of things, which I believe many are now considering. First, you really need to know where and what you're looking for, and that could be research internally. See what skills, for example, in upskilling, and then you choose the high-quality learning online learning assets. That is normally combined with the knowledge checks, but in the next step, that's where things the magic could happen.

And we call that application activities. That's really how to start applying those skills right immediately after you do the training to translate that into your personal situation or your business situation. But you can also use this to do peer to peer coaching. When you do peer to peer coaching, you get another reflection moment on that.

We also, uh, encourage companies where possible to have communities set up so people could actually discuss things because these discussions, that's really building, you know, the confidence in doing the change and the learning. We also run what we call cohort training or group training. So, let's say we're now.

Having a training in performance management, then we apply those skills. We maybe discuss peer to peer, but we can also have a cohort. So, we actually get the best out of each other. And that's one level more than the traditional online learning where you just look into something, you go to the end, and you do a little quiz because it does not always stick.

So, there you have a typical example on how to move to the next step with online learning, especially. When we're talking about behavioural skills, so called soft skills.

Dan: And so that, that integrated kind of cohort or academy type approach, how do you, how do you ensure and motivate people to kind of do the activities post the, the online session?

Like, what are some of the ways that you've seen your clients engaging with their, their cohorts off platform to ensure that, you know, what’s required gets done?

Peter: Well, it is always a dialogue with the customer to have an understanding of the importance of doing training. I mean, we always emphasize that should be input from either the top management if it's a company or mid management.

It's to emphasize the importance of training. And actually when, when you mix people together, because all those assets are always supplied when we sell through go one or go direct. So, it is quite interesting for people. And we also see companies having different offices in different places, sometimes in different countries, and suddenly bring those people together.

They get to know each other. They may even learn different cultures. Why it's doing a time management training or coaching training or whatever is on the topic there.

Dan: Yeah, that's great. I know we spoke earlier a little bit about the difference between getting results and, and measurement or tracking. So maybe you could just share kind of your thought and your approach to that for, for the listeners.

Peter: Well, measurement, when you do a training, it's important to know why we're doing the training and we highly recommend, you know, very clear objectives or towards the business objectives. So, we connect that to the training, but it could also be a business objective. Say we are a leader, and we need to move that forward.

We may do, for example, emotional training. We have courses in leading with kindness. Which is closely connected, so that's a way for setting the targets. The measurements in the end should be measured towards the business objectives. But of course, you can also have with today advanced analysis, which are in many LMSs, we can also see other types, you know, how well are they performing?

We can see if there are things in the content which is actually not performing well. To reach these things, if there is a deviation on the outcomes. Yeah, fascinating.

Dan: And I know we also spoke about kind of generational needs and in particular kind of the incoming generation and the need for all of us as employees and, you know, educational establishments to focus on the soft skills.

So maybe you could talk to me a little bit about kind of how you're thinking or how, as an organization, you're, you're focusing on teaching these important intangible skills to different generations.

Peter: Yeah. And I think you're pointing out a very important thing here. Uh, I mean, first of all, the new generation and it's actually you and me also, what we really have to know is how to do great questions.

Because if we look into tools like artificial intelligence and generative AI. Which we actually had built into each and every course also, because when you do a training and then you try to see, okay, how does this fit into my situation, et cetera, you may have other ideas and then having the AI built into the training.

Well, I'm having a, a call with my employee tomorrow and I have a typical situation, then you've got the training, but you actually get some live input, which you can reflect upon. So, there you can see how we utilize AI, which also stimulates the new generation. So, it's not just as we had before, but we build that in as part of the training.

And we also see that many of the younger guys and girls out there, just great people, but they also have a technology background. Many of them, they had been thrown up with. The computers, they've been playing games. They've been doing all that stuff, but there are some time missing elements in, okay, how do I work with people?

The intercommunication, the communication skills, sometimes presentation skills, uh, influencing skills. In an organization. So, because if I have a good, great ideas, then being able to influence those ideas to other people so that we actually can move forward is so important. So soft skills for the new generation is so important and get them interested and part of that and build the bonds in between them, which you do.

With, for example, coaching sessions, et cetera.

Dan: Yeah, that's great. And I know you touched on AI there. Maybe we can just move on to AI upskilling. I know that, you know, it feels like we've been in the AI bubble for 80 months or so, and we know it's going to be huge for all of us moving forward. What are you observing about AI training?

Peter: Well, what we see right now is that it's on the table in each and every company. And, uh, I'm having also a podcast show called ‘Growth Leaders’ by shot. And we have this dialogue, and we see very different from company, how they approach it, what everyone do recommend. And also what we recommend is to make sure that we actually get project running and we can actually delegate the projects that we have, that if we take our own company, we really make sure each and every one is using this, even though they can think themselves, okay, just use it as a sounding board.

Maybe we need to create a new thing, have it as a sounding board in the credit to, to bring the ideas on, uh, and then we can move to the next, uh, as we have it also when we create or when we let customer create content today, we actually have the tools available to do fast tracking. Maybe we have been doing classroom training for product training within a company.

Well, now we can just bring that in. It does not cost much for the customer to get. Us or anyone else doing it, or you actually may have a resource who can do it in a very, very short time than you didn't have before. So I see this as a must for each and every one. And I just said to my wife the other day, I'm so happy living in today's world, being, seeing all these things.

happening and actually being part and doing the change in the industry and giving the tools to L& D and HR organizations around the world.

Dan: It's super exciting. I think kind of that, that efficiency, efficiency plan driver is, is one that a lot of customers are leveraging right now. Are there any mistakes that you've seen or anything you'd guard, guard L& D teams away from, from an AI at this point?

Peter: Clearly there, there are, I mean, AI. It has to be a tool where you always have to make your own judgments in the end. You cannot just trust out of the box because it's going to be your responsibilities. So that's, I mean, the wavering red flag.

Dan: Okay, fantastic. So now let's move on to our next segment. It's called the 60 second budget breakdown.

So can you share with us if you are advising L&D teams or an L&D leader? What are the three most important things that you'd spend your budget on right now?

Peter: Well, if I know what I want as an L&D, then I would really look out for where you find the high quality content. Where you actually know you get the results of the invested time for each and every employee.

So that's, that's clearly one of the most important pieces here. The other piece of me, which I should mention then is of course to make sure there is both on the individual, the accountability and the accountability, you build that through having the endorsement from the management. So this is what we're going to achieve.

We're going to reach this objective. This is why and then you build the accountability by the employees. Yes, I want to do that one actually show that we can provide straight results and I'm doing a good work so we grow all together.

Dan: And so is that accountability? Would you say that's kind of akin to the, it's a bit of a buzzword, but creating the culture of learning.

Is that, is that one of the first things like top down leadership setting expectations?

Peter: It is absolutely, and building the accountability into the training is vital to get the results. And there's a lot of small tools you do that through. I mean, clearly having a great analytic system is one, but having people seeing you, what you do and actually follow up.

So I was. The training them today. Have you actually tried out what we have learned today?

Dan: That's great. I'm making sure that the training is consistent with the, I guess, the objectives and the key goals of the organization. It feels congruent. I'm doing this for a reason, whether it's organizational or personal or community wise.

That's great, Peter. So let's move on to our next segment, Lifelong Learnings. I would love for you to describe a time Where a situation turned out differently than you expected, either positively or negatively, and most importantly, what you learned going through that.

Peter: Well, I'll go back to some older days.

Uh, you know, I'm a vivid sailor and a race sailor. I've been working, uh, as a coach or even up to national levels here. And I wrote a book and, you know, for me, how, how to become a successful sailor from a beginner to, to a champ. And, uh, before it was published by one of the known publisher, I got a request, well, we have about 15, 20 grownups adults here who was learned to say, yeah, I'll take that.

I'm going to go buy the book. And so I did. And what happened after two sessions, two weeks, and I came back, we don't understand what you're talking about. And that was a realization that. If you know a topic, a subject, and then you say, you're going to start teaching it, you really have to go down to your feet.

I thought I had done that since I'd been working with this so many years, but in reality, I was just down by my knees and I had to go all the way down to start all over. So I just had to go home and rewrite those two, two chapters. And that, that was a lesson learned. Okay. If you know a topic. Make sure you actually start from the scratch.

And if it's newbies out there, that's fantastic.

Dan: Well, yeah, meet the meet the learners where they are. And I didn't realize that you were, yeah, you were a sailor. I, I recently got my, my day skipper license. So yeah, I, I'm a beginner, but yeah, it's fantastic. Okay. So now for our final segment, self development hacks. In this segment, I'm just going to ask you, what's your favorite self development hack, your learning resource, or somewhere that you go to, to grow.

Peter: I think my, my hack is really my own curiosity. I think this is so super with things happening all the time. I mean, clearly the tablet is traveling with me all the time, but, but I really try to dig into everything on what is happening and try to translate that into, okay, what could that mean for us as a leading training company?

What could it mean for the customer? Implementing it and how to get the results. And you find so much things, uh, out there, which is great. Uh, but it's my own curiosity, curiosity, and that drives my motivation also.

Dan: That's great. I know we mentioned earlier a little bit about kind of your you're traveling, you're working kind of globally would be interested in your perspective of learning the cultural differences from a learning perspective and what you see and how as an organization you focus on that or you lean into ensure that again meeting the learners where they are not only kind of from a educational level but also culturally.

Peter: It's interesting because, you know, I've been living on a plane for 25 years. And when I started Short Learning Solutions, there were a few things. It should be 100 percent cloud based. And it should be independent where I am. And that means also we are a hundred percent virtual. We are a hundred percent remote.

We have all our employees spread around the world, which means we build the company with a high level of trust. We require our employees to think, and for me as a leader, I have to have a big cultural understanding that, okay, in India, this happens, if I'm Asian, this happens, and so on, and be humble, have an understanding for it.

Because that's the way many companies are moving. And as a leader, you have to get that understanding. And you can even ask, okay, I'm new to this country. So what should I do? What should I not do? Because just running the Western world or the U. S. world into it, it will not give the results we want to have.

Dan: Thank you, Peter. And thank you so much for coming on today's show and sharing your insights with us. Thank you so much, Dan. Great being with you. Thanks. So thanks for tuning into the show. I'm Dan Hayward, Chief Customer Officer, and that wraps up another great episode of L&D in 20. We hope you found today's discussion as engaging as we did.

Whether you're listening on the go, at your desk, we'll catch you on the next episode. And until then, keep learning.

Episode 5 - Best practices in online and AI-enhanced learning

How can L&D support and empower frontline leaders? In this episode, Dan sits down with Monica Rothgery, a sought-after keynote speaker, consultant, and author who is on a mission to help organizations unlock pent-up productivity and growth by empowering their frontline leaders. Monica shares her insights on simplifying operations, fostering self-sufficiency among frontline leaders, and the importance of mentorship.

Monica Rothgery began her career as a Taco Bell restaurant manager and rose to become the first woman COO of KFC in the U.S. and later, the first LGBTQ executive in the C-Suite at Yum! Brands. Dedicated to empowering frontline leaders, Monica inspires transformation through storytelling as a sought-after speaker.

Monica’s lifework is helping leaders, especially frontline leaders discover what is theirs to do and realize their potential to change lives, starting with their own. A sought-after speaker, Monica’s uses the power of story to entertain and empower leaders around the world.

Her upcoming book, Lessons from the Drive-Thru: Real Life Wisdom for Frontline Leaders, shares insights on servant leadership, emphasizing teamwork, authenticity, and resilience. 

In this episode of L&D in 20, Dan sits down with Monica Rothgery to discuss how L&D can support and empower frontline leaders across the workforce.

Empowering frontline leaders: Lessons from fast food to Fortune 500 with Monica Rothgery

Dan: Welcome to L&D in 20, your go to resource for all things workplace learning brought to you by Go1. I'm your host, Dan Hayward, Chief Customer Officer here and industry veteran. Today we'll be speaking with Monica Rothgery. Monica is a sought after keynote speaker, consultant, and author who is on a mission to help organizations unlock pent up productivity.

And growth by empowering their frontline leaders. Monica started her career as a restaurant manager for Taco Bell. 30 years later, she was the first woman COO of KFC US. She's the author of the great book, Lessons from the Drive Thru, Real Life Wisdom for Frontline Leaders. And today we'll be chatting about empowering frontline leaders.

Monica: Dave, what's up? How's it going, man?

Dan: It's going great. Awesome to see you again. As a former KFC assistant manager from the UK, I'm really excited for this topic and the fact that we're going to be discussing, you know, empowering frontline leaders and the best practices that, that you've seen and that you offer for really creating impactful learning opportunities.

Monica: Yeah. Like, I mean, we worked together for a while at Yum and CrossPass when you were in talent. Right. And, and that was a great, Yum was always a great place to experiment with, like, how do you really use L& D to not just put out programs, but to drive the business. Right.

Dan: So for some of our listeners who may not know what Yum is, do you want to give us a quick overview of just the scale of that business and, and, you know, and the size of the, yeah, the size of the, you know, the operations you were leading.

Monica: So Yum Brands is the largest restaurant company in the world if you count sheer number of restaurants and all the brands they own. And right now they own four brands, Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Haberberger Grill. If you count just one brand of restaurants, McDonald's would be the biggest.

So it's a huge, you know, restaurant company. And I was fortunate enough to work in all three brands and most recently, or the last job I had was the COO for KFC in the U. S. So I ran one Taco Bell restaurant when I started my career and I ran 4, 000 KFCs in the United States before I retired and started my new passion to help companies get their frontline leaders empowered and excited and engaged.

Dan: That's amazing. That's amazing. So if we think about it, that's well over probably 15, 000 frontline leaders at KFC that you were servicing from kind of shift leaders all the way through. You have many thousands. So as you think about that kind of context, what unique challenges did you see that frontline leaders in the service or the retail industry face when it comes to L& D and how can kind of L& D teams that are listening now kind of best help to address some of those needs?

Monica: Well, you know, Dan, I mean, the restaurant manager, we'll just talk about restaurants for a second. It's just such a unique proposition. First of all, it's a retail store and a product, a manufacturing facility, all under the same roof, right? Raw product comes in the back and they have to turn it into a pizza or fried chicken or tacos.

And then 10 steps from where they make that, they have to turn around and sell it. And so they have to have skills in retail, in customer service, in, you know, delivering speed and accuracy, and they have to have skills in production, efficiencies, standard operating procedures, food safety in our case, procedures to make sure that the, all of the ingredients are handled safely so people don't get sick.

So all that happens under one roof led by what, you know, a 27 year old leader whose experiences. Last week, they were the shift manager and they lead a workforce that are mostly entry level with, you know, extra high turnover. So these frontline leaders is, I think it's one of, you know, I had a lot of jobs, I was an army and I was an army officer and I tell everybody that the hardest job I ever had was running a restaurant for the reasons I just said.

You have a lot of turnover, you have a lot to train people on, everything happens really fast. And you throw all that together and it's a really big learning challenge. It's just a big execution challenge.

Dan: Yeah, absolutely. It's competing priorities that, you know, you don't, you absolutely do not control from kind of open 7am in the morning all the way through to close.

Monica: That's a great point. You brought up day parts. Yeah. What other, what retail store, what factory, you know, well, factories might have 24 hour shifts, but yeah, you open at, you know, seven or eight in the morning and you're open until two in the. Two in the morning. It's a challenge. It's tricky.

Dan: So then as in your, yeah, your experience, I know it's vast and vast in terms of kind of innovation, trialing, testing different things.

Was there anything that you saw that kind of really stuck any specific kind of format or content delivery that you've seen work particularly well for this, this environment and for these, these frontline leaders?

Monica: Yeah. So I want to go back even one step further from there and I want to invite leaders In learning and development to position themselves as partners to operations, way that you can support your operations partners and the people in your units, whether they're retail stores or hair salons or oil change, you know, facilities or restaurants is to make it easy.

Simplify the operation as much as possible. When there's less to know, there's less to train. There's a lot of complexity that gets built into unnecessary complexity that gets built into operations that if you can partner with your operators and say, well, like, You have four size cups. Do you really need four sizes of drinks?

What if we cut that down to two, medium and large? And they'll say, well, what about kids meals? Well, how many kids meals do you actually sell? And so if you can get, partner with your operators to get them to think about simplifying the operation, making it easier, then you have less time. Things you need to train.

That's step one. Step two is how do you make, how do L and D folks help make. The execution foolproof. What job aids can you put in place so that it's impossible to make mistakes? These would be things like job aids built into the wrap. Here's an example. At Taco Bell, you have a wrap that the burrito goes in.

Well, on the inside of the wrap, we put little lines to show how to line it up. So they never again, never again had to say or, you know, put the burrito three inches. into the center of the rack. There's a line there. They don't, they, that kind of creativity and engineering can help execution. And then you don't have to train that.

You don't have to memorize it. The more we can get those kinds of in station job assistance tools to make it easier and foolproof, the better, more successful we're going to have. And then there's job aides at the workstation. And then ultimately what you asked about is content delivery, right? And what I would say about content delivery in 2024 is fast and short and at the workstation.

You know, I think, you know, we could talk about content delivery via LMS, you know, but ultimately hands on work is learned.

Dan: Yeah, no, I love that. Meaning, you know, it's kind of learning in the flow of work. Like the reality is you can't get past the wrap, like you can't get past that sheet that's there.

That's great. And that she just reminded me, one of the things that really impressed me about YUM was we don't have headquarters. We have restaurant RSCs, restaurant. Support centers, right? And I think kind of like that kind of that mindset sometimes in the day to day it's missed, but I think when it's really functioning best, it's really enabling or each of those corporate functions enabling the success of the restaurants to service those customers.

Monica: frontline leader can't execute what the marketing team or the operations team wants them to do, then the customer experience won't be what you want it to be.

Monica: remember once in Thailand, I was a COO of KFC in Thailand, and once in Thailand they wanted to put a sprig of parsley on the plate, on the rice bowl, and I'm like, no guys, it's not gonna happen.

And we're not a fine dining restaurant or, you know, QSR or quick service restaurant. And that sprig of parsley between managing the produce, making sure it's clean and safe for consumption, and then making sure that the right size sprig of parsley ends up at every dish. It's not worth. It's not worth the upside that you think you're going to upscale the.

So that's a good example of like really standing up for simplification and not complexity.

Dan: And I think one of the things that obviously I read your book, it's great. Like it, yeah, there's a lot of kind of scenarios and stories that you tell there that, you know, if anyone has worked in any kind of quick service restaurant or any service environment, you know, you connect to it.

But I think one of the questions that I wanted to kind of call back to one of the first things you said was, Literally, you could be the shift manager yesterday and you're the assistant manager today. And, you know, at some point, six months in the future, you're the store manager and you may have started in the last year.

And so one of the things that I was interested in was the, you know, how do you, how do we equip those leaders from a cultural, maybe like a soft skills perspective? So I was wondering if you can kind of maybe connect the two there, because I think, I do think it, it very much is top down. People learn from what they're seeing and how the area manager and the regional manager is operating.

Monica: One of the beautiful things about our industry is that you can grow. You can start out as a cook or a dishwasher and find yourself, and not in 20 years, you know, like a lawyer, it takes 20 years to make partner. In a matter of a few years, you could go from line cook or dishwasher to running the restaurant.

And, you know, having a real opportunity, like a career where you can provide for your family, send your kids to college, buy a home. And so that's, I think makes our industry really special. I always tell people there are more, there's more opportunity than there is will people willing to be leaders. And so if you want to, it's there for you, that's a plus, that's an upside.

But then there is the responsibility on the organization because all that young leader person knows. Is what you've taught them. They haven't worked anywhere else. They didn't go to school for leadership. They only know what you've taught them. So everything starting from the most basic tasks around leadership has to come from your organization.

And whether that's mentorship, whether that's putting people in learning circles and having, you know, above restaurant or more senior leaders talk to them about the duty of care. What it means to be a leader, how to love and engage on your team, how to do things like delegate, have crucial conversations, hold people accountable.

They don't know how to do all that. In the absence of an organization telling them, they will either make it up, but most often they'll mimic what they've seen, which, if it wasn't good, will just create disruption, and ultimately turnover. So the responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of the organization.

And I think you have to use, the organizations have to do it well, use every lever possible from mentoring to classroom training to, you know, even giving books like mine. I had one franchisee say, I'm going to give every new shift manager a copy of your book because it's so easy to digest. And they immediately understand that their role isn't to be a boss, it's to be a servant leader, right?

Dan: That's great. That's awesome. I keep having kind of flashbacks. It's like, yeah, I started off making the, the gravy in the old school KFCs when we used to make it, make it from the crackling coming out of the Henny Pennies. That was my job. Like every Saturday I would just go in and make the gravy. It was so much fun.

So now we'll move on to our next segment. It's the 60 second budget breakdown.

So obviously, you know, you're working and consulting with a lot of different businesses. So we're really interested to think about where you maybe advise them or the most important things that you're seeing that they're spending their money on right now.

Monica: The biggest problem I see in organizations is that often everyone's doing the job of the person underneath them.

And so you have shift managers. Who can't really run shifts, they're just team members with keys. And then your restaurant manager isn't really running the business, running the restaurant, she's busy running shift to shift just to survive. And so, the advice I have, place to invest, is to build self sufficiency starting at the bottom level.

Your shift manager, who you're paying them a premium, should be able to run a shift. You should be able to leave them alone, and they should be able to lead the team, make sure the guests get served, all the administration and food safety things get done, and that's the definition of someone who is self sufficient in their role.

They don't need to call anyone. Once you have the bottom level of your organization, the first level of leadership, self sufficient, then you unlock. The potential for your restaurant manager or the next level up to do something different. And then, so your next responsibility then as an organization is to teach them, okay, you don't have to make food.

You don't have to work the shift. You don't have to make sure that the team members are all deployed. Your shift manager is going to do that. So what do they do? Then they don't know what to do. This is where we have to teach skills like, Sales building, analyzing their P& L to find profit opportunities, building check, increased frequency.

These are skills they don't know, and so if you want to get more sales, drive more growth from your frontline leader, the organization can teach them those skills, and then it goes up to the next level. Every organization you and I have worked with, Dan, has top tier managers. And then we send them to, you know, best of the best or top 100.

Well, those guys do something that the other guys don't. And so I would challenge, especially L& D organizations, find out what is it that top tier does and then train the rest of the organization to do that. Build the rest of those skills into your wiring, your compensation, your incentives, what you measure.

I'll give you an example. We did this and one of the things that the top tier What leaders do is they have five self sufficient junior managers, assistants and shifts. Now the number is based on your volume and your brand, but that was something they all had in common. And so they realized this is such a powerful thing that became a KPI.

You know, we took off turnover because turnover is a hard thing to measure, but measuring self sufficient managers, how many managers aren't just certified but can actually do the role. Was an unlock. So if I was a franchisee, if I was running a brand, a portfolio of units, I would first invest in my very first frontline leader so that I'm not over, they're not just overpaid team members, then I would invest in frontline leaders.

In, in leadership skills, in development skills, in sales building skills, right? You don't, we don't, we didn't need to teach them how to make chicken. They were awesome at that. We didn't need to teach them anything about how to do things in the restaurant, but we needed to teach them how to think and behave and like leaders and business owners.

Dan: That's great. I think, yeah, absolutely. Raising that horizon. So moving on to the next segment, Lifelong Learnings.

We'd love to hear from you about a situation where something, you know, a situation turned out differently to what you expected, either positive or negatively from a, from a learning perspective.

Monica: When I got to Thailand, I had gone there to be the head of HR. The business was about I don't know, 400 restaurants, no, maybe, yeah, 450, couple hundred were owned by one franchisee and the rest were owned by, by the company.

And after I was there six weeks, the general manager, her name is Phum, Khun Phum came to me and asked me to be her COO. Now my wife and I had already relocated from Southeast Southern California to Bangkok and now she was asking me to not be the head of HR. But be the chief operating officer. And I couldn't think of a worse idea.

Number one, I don't know how to make chicken because I'd only worked in tacos and pizza. I'd been out of operations for 15 years, 20 years. I'd been in HR and training. And the third reason is I didn't speak Thai and all the reports were in Thai and all the managers and the team members in the restaurants didn't speak English.

It was one of those junctures where you're like, okay, what am I going to do? I told her, I think it's a bad idea. She said, you're going to be fine. And that's kind of the first thing I would want to share is when you tell someone you're going to be fine, you've got this. You put your faith in them. You tell them you believe in them.

It's remarkable what people can rise to and do. And, you know, with her support, I, you know, I was able to do that job. The other thing I did was I put on the hat of a learner. Like for 15 years, I've been in. Learning and development. I've been in HR telling operators, this is what you should do. Could I do it?

I've been telling them, this is how they should, this is what you should lead. This is how you should communicate. This is how you should do strategy. Now, could I do it? Could I practice what I preach? And it was a really sometimes humbling, but fun way to say yes to an organization. And that I think is the lifelong learning is like saying, yes, when opportunities arise, don't be too siloed in what you think is your, your path, because that's when amazing things open up and happen.

Dan: And it led to so much more like coming back to, yeah, that's phenomenal. That's great. And so now for our final segment, self development hacks.

What would be your personal, your favorite kind of self development hack or learning resource? Where do you go to, where do you go to grow?

Monica: Yeah. It's funny, I'm an entrepreneur now, okay? So for two years I've been building my own speaking consulting business and I don't know anything about what I'm doing.

And so I'm reaching out and trying to find avenues. to build my know how. And it's so fun because it's all new. And then I've reflected back on my restaurant career and what I realized is I probably spent too much time being insular and not enough time looking out. And if I could do something different in my career, it would have been to spend A lot more time networking with other leaders in the industry, other associations, service providers, vendors, because when you're like this, you only know what's around you.

And I, I think I limited my understanding of solutions. By not looking out more. And so I wish I would have, I wish I would have met a lot more people outside of my immediate sphere and just to have coffee with people. It's amazing what you can learn and the commonalities that you find and then the solutions you realize you can apply.

Dan: I love that insight. Thank you, Monica. Really appreciate you coming on the show today and sharing all of your insights. So thank you so much, Monica Rothgery.

Monica: Oh, you're most welcome, Dan. Great to be

Dan: here. Thanks for tuning into the show. I'm Dan Hayward, Chief Customer Officer, and that wraps up another episode of L& D in 20.

We hope you found today's discussion as engaging as we did. Whether you're listening on the go or at your desk, we'll catch you on the next episode. Until then, keep on learning.

(00:52) Practical AI use cases and personalized learning 

How is AI being used by the workforce, and how should L&D leaders leverage AI to improve learning outcomes? In this episode, Marc Zao-Sanders, Co-Founder and CEO of Filtered joins Dan to discuss how the workforce is currently using AI, top use cases and the benefits of personalized learning, and determining its ROI.

Marc Zao-Sanders is the Founder and CEO of Filtered.com, a tech company that leverages AI to enhance learning and upskill individuals. With a degree in Maths & Philosophy from Oxford, he has founded two social enterprises supporting disadvantaged youth in their education and career paths. Marc is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and other publications, focusing on AI, learning, and timeboxing. He recently keynoted the Harvard Business Review AI Summit in São Paulo and has relocated to the South of Spain with his wife, three children, and pets.

In this episode of L&D in 20, Dan sits down with Marc Zao-Sanders to discuss how AI is being used by the workforce, and how should L&D leaders leverage AI to improve learning outcomes.

AI use cases for personalizing learning and measuring impact with Filtered’s Co-Founder and CEO Marc Zao-Sanders

Dan: Welcome to L&D in 20, your go to resource for all things workplace learning brought to you by Go1. I'm your host, Dan Hayward, Chief Customer Officer and industry veteran. Today, we're going to be speaking with Marc Zao-Sanders, co-founder and CEO of Filtered, a learning tech company that helps organizations get the best return on their L&D spend.

Marc is heavily involved in shaping the future of educational technology, focusing on personalized learning experiences, powered by intelligent algorithms. He's also the author of Time Boxing, the power of doing one thing at a time, Marc, welcome to the show.

Marc: Dan, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Dan: know that Filtered technology has recently conducted a survey around kind of generative AI in the wild. I'd be super interested to hear kind of what was some of the, the most common and real world applications that you uncovered.

Marc: Sure. Well, what we wanted to do with the research was to get to real gritty. You know what people were actually doing, not the pontificating commentators of which there are just, you know, there's so many so that approach, which was unusual, really resonated with people and actually the graphic made it into the print edition of Harvard Business Review.

And what the research said, well, number one, I mean, there are a hundred use cases and for each use case, there are several stories that we've dug up mostly from Reddit. The number one use case really resonated for me personally, because that's how I use large language models myself, mostly is idea generation.

So you're thinking about something, you're writing something, maybe it's a business plan and you're looking for some ideas to get you going. And bring that momentum to you so you can get going. So, I do that a lot and that was cited by the greatest number of Reddit users. So that was number one. I think number two was therapy as a companion, which, you know, makes, it raises some eyebrows and makes some people laugh.

I mean, personally, I think it's very interesting because there are some aspects of using an anonymous non-human LLM that are actually an advantage versus a human; a human adult to speak to. So, I think, you know, working out in general where generative AI has an advantage through not being human is a really interesting take and that's a great example.

And because you and I work in L&D, it's nice also to see that positions eight and nine, there were two learning entries. So, the first was to enhance the learning experience in general. Yeah, so an example is I'm learning if I put in one like, um, talk to me, explain this concept as if I'm a 10 year old, that was very effective for someone who's not super experienced with the programming language.

And then number nine, which will be, you know, close to your, to Go1’s heart was personalizing the learning experience. So personalized learning. And of course, with the generative, with generative AI, the whole experience is personalized because you're putting in that prompt. It's very unlikely that exactly the same prompt would be put in by someone else.

So, so actually the whole experience is personalized anyway. And then, you know, very much from, it's very much from within our L&D world. If you think about pull versus push, so the whole experience here is pull and not push. So, so there's so much and, and obviously a lot of it, it touches on education in some way.

Excel formula was, was another one. And one that I quite liked was making complaints. So very often something will happen in life, which is a, you know, inconvenience, you kind of feel like you should complain and move the world on in some way. And we'd also get some, you know, revenge on whoever's imposed on you in this way, but it just takes too long, it's too much hassle.

So some people, someone said, you know, their car was wrongly towed away. They made a complaint, they got some money back, justice was done, and the world was a better place. But I say, if anyone listening, watching, who is interested in this, there is a, there is an HBR article. I'm sure you guys have put the link out there.

There is the graphic that's in the magazine, but more importantly, or more usefully, I think, there is the, you know, there's the report. The report has all the actual use cases drawn out of the depths of Reddit. I mean, it was pretty painful, to be honest, going through tens of thousands of posts. But that's what we did.

We mined it. And, you know, for your viewing, reading pleasure.  

Dan: Yeah, that's great. I think kind of just to double click on the companion piece, one of the, an interesting article I read recently was around AI as kind of like coach and mentor, so less of the companion, but more around. Okay. Yeah. I may not have a mentor in my workplace, but I can ask those sorts of questions.

Is, was that a use case or something that you came across or something close that came up?

Marc: Yeah, exactly for that use case. So, it was therapy companion. I mean, those are the two words that we use to describe the category. Anything that was mentor or, or coach fell into that as well. Actually, Sam Altman, about just over a year ago, so maybe three months after ChatGPT came out, he was asked on one of the podcasts here, what do you think is the best use case that you can see helping us imminently?

And he said, a learning mentor. So very close to what you're talking about there and very close to our industry. So I think this is one of the respects in which, of course, everyone's interested in what's going on here. But if you work in L&D, you really should be because if, you know, the CEO of one of the world's most influential companies, certainly in this area, is saying that, you know, learning mentor is one of the best use cases, you've got to have some ideas about how to be implementing that or experimenting with it or deciding not to experiment with it, but at least to be intentional and have thought about it.

Dan: Yeah, if you think about kind of the L&D professional right now, where are some of the ways that you think that they should be thinking about incorporating AI or some specific kind of like first step use cases if L&D teams are starting to kind of dip their toe in the water here?

Marc: I think there are two things to say here. One is that to first of all see your role as facilitating the, not so much the learning of your workforce, but the performance of the workforce and learning is a means to an end. And if you see it that way, and if you buy some of the studies that say that this technology can enhance the speed of knowledge workers by 25%, improve the quality by 40%, even if you dispute those numbers a lot.

Let's say you bring them both back down to, say, 10%. Makes you 10% quicker than 10% better at what you're doing. Well, you compound that for a start and you've got 21%, so that's a substantial shift. And that's already a lot lower than some of the studies. It's one of the Harvard studies in particular that came up with this 25, 40 percent quicker.

But anyway, if you discount substantially then, and you see L&D is being there to enhance performance. It really is incumbent on us to help the workforce make sooner, better, safe use of the technology. So, and to do that, I mean, what do you need? Well, you need safe experimentation. You need to help people find the use cases, and this is a nod back to the research that we did, but obviously it's not just our research, you know, there's lots of research into use cases, because the use cases won't necessarily just fall into people's laps.

So helping people find the use cases that really make sense, and getting that to happen, I think is the, is a, is a, you know, the best thing that L&D can do being. Also being really clear as well about what the risks are, what the policy at the company is. Some companies we speak to say, okay, we want our staff to do this, but we don't want them to do it at work because we don't want to have any of the risks.

So that kind of unofficial policy is experiment on your own time and there'll be benefits for you back at work. So there's a few ways of doing and also recognize that, you know, whatever your company is, however, sort of tech sort of progressive it is, even Microsoft. They don't have everyone just using generative AI all the time, be it in a copilot or some other version.

So every company is still sort of, you know, exploring and finding out where it's going to work best. I mean, just like, you know, that happened with the internet. It's been around for what, 30 years now, but it wasn't mainstream like the start people didn't know how they're going to best make use of it right from the start, and it's very similar.

Dan: Yeah, obviously, a lot of the work you do is around personalization. So, can you just talk me through the listeners through kind of what do you see is the real benefits from a personalized learning and development experience? What? How would you frame that up? As, you know, as a benefit to the organization.

Marc: Well, if you think, okay, so personalized learning, I mean, certainly in our industry and our sorts of conversations, it's become a little bit of a cliche. And the problem with cliches is that then people are hearing it and using the term unthinkingly. So I just want to remind people that are listening, watching that what's the opposite of personalized.

The opposite personalized is where everyone does the same thing. So you have an entire cohort, an entire workforce doing a piece of learning or, you know, some sort of click next experience, which is what you get, actually, with mandatory learning and compliance. Personalized is different from that, because it is an individual finding or being led to some learning experience that they just wouldn't have otherwise, which expands their minds, um, really kindles their curiosity, makes them more confident in their role, these are really important things that I think we lose sight of a lot of the time in conversations in, in L&D.

So I think that's the main thing, that people will encounter experiences, think about things in ways that they haven't, and which aren't appropriate for the, the colleague next door or, you know, in their department, but with different interests. That said, I would say kind of, not against it, but just to sort of, you know, give a measured response.

It is hard to aggregate and benchmark the benefits of personalized learning over non personalized learning because, you know, if you're trying to help people with their curiosity and to satisfy their interests and intrigue, putting, um, you know, a dollar sign, pound sign, euro sign by that is very difficult.

I mean, arguably impossible. So I think as always in conversations with learning, um, getting to the ROI precisely in financial terms is, it is tough. Um, but the benefit of personalized learning is those, um, those magical learning experiences that happen to us all occasionally. And, um, and part I think of our job is to make those experiences happen more frequently.

Dan: That's great. And then can you kind of just talk to how you're seeing kind of the advent of AI or kind of those initial steps into AI really being able to offer more impactful and personalized learning?

Marc: We actually don't do it now, but we've, we were in that game for our personalized learning experience, intelligent learning recommendations.

Most providers will do something on this now. I know Go1 does, but it's become kind of more or common. I think the idea has caught on in learning because of, or largely because of social media. So with social media, we all are presented with a personalized feed, be it on LinkedIn or Instagram or X, whatever the platform, there's so much content out there.

How do you give an individual exactly the content that they want to need to see? And with social, it's very easy to measure success because it's just eyeballs on the page. That's it done. It's clicks with what we're doing is that. But it's then it's a little bit more, you know, to provide a worthwhile learning experience, you're staying with the user with the learner in some way over a number of weeks, months, I mean, maybe even years.

And some of that, you know, the positive impact of that is hard to capture. But that ultimately is what AI is, is, it's doing right now and doing for us in our industry is getting people to the right content through, you know, these intelligent learning experiences. Of course, with generative AI, it's, there's additional functionality.

I mean, you can generate new content. So there's so much content before and now there's, I mean, near infinite amount of content that can be generated. So I think we're going to have even we call it the content chaos. Problem of content chaos. That's the problem that we feel to the trying to you know, address.

That problem became, you know, 10x, 100x, 1000x more difficult. We're in, actually it's getting on for two years ago that OpenAI came out with ChatGPT. So yeah, that's, that's an additional benefit for power. So a capability that the industry now has, it's also a danger, but that's the case with all technology that, you know, it can be used wrongly, can be used to good effect.

Dan: Yeah, so the ROI challenge has been around, you know, as long as I'm guessing both of us have been in the industry and wait, and long before that, but I think what I, yeah, what we see a lot more now, and I know that's something that you advocate is really around. Maybe it's not just tracking ROI, it's actually tracking progress against skills.

So, I think kind of one of the, one of the things that you see within social, I see with my, you know, my, my own kids, you know, my son taught himself to play guitar from, from YouTube. Yeah, it's very hard to be able to track kind of the ROI of hours sat there on his phone or on his, on his, on his laptop. But, I can see the level of, yeah, the skills that he's at.

And now it's, we're in a hybrid world where he has a, you know, has an instructor as well. So talk to me a little bit about how you think about kind of like tracking, measuring skills through, you know, through this, this interface. And as we move forward, forward with AI, some of the opportunities there.

Marc: Well, I think, okay, so with measuring learning, it's, it's very difficult.

I mean, one of the, we faced this ever since the beginning of Filtered, which is now some 15, 15 years ago. One of the things that we can do, which gives you some sort of an ROI to start off with is that because what we do is we run algorithms through content. Match them with skills. We say we get give a some advice to a client.

Okay, well, given the skills profile that you're after it, your workforce, you maybe don't need this library. You don't need this library. You could bring this one in, and that makes better sense for, for you. The great thing about that, in terms of our ROI is that you could just say, well, there was this cost saving.

So that's not all that interesting, but it is ROI. That is a number that you can really point to, to make the case. And then, of course, you're the downstream impact of learning and discovery and all the wonderful stuff. The magic that can kind of be added on top. So, I mean, the other thing I'd say, though, is that with  AI coming in, it may be that we can use the technology to give us a better sense of how we're progressing. I mean, for example, I don't know, let's say, let's pick a specific example. One I generally use is listening attentively, which is important in an experience like I'm having with you right, right now. Okay, so it's how are you going to assess?

Whether I listen attentively or not. I mean, you could ask me some questions about it, but that would just test whether I know what is involved in listening attentively. It doesn't mean I listen attentively. You can't stay with me over the next three months and monitor my progress and give me a score, but AI potentially can.

AI can get its claws into a lot of areas that no human being can. So I do think that if that's a, a path we want to go down, we really want to track everything, you know, and take the opposite approach of this tech company I just mentioned, then AI potentially does offer some solutions. Against that though, you've got privacy issues, because for AI to really know everything about you, it needs to know everything about you, and that might be good for your boss, if you have that kind of a boss.

Or, uh, but it may not be good for you. You may not choose to, to have people delving into, you know, every email that you've written, every team's message that you've sent. So, you know, again, there's a flip side with all of this technology. It comes with tremendous, it comes with a, it's very powerful and that can go either way.

Dan: Awesome. Thank you, Marc. So now let's move on to our next, uh, it's called the 60 second budget breakdown.

So obviously you're working with a lot of L&D leaders, and I'd be interested to get your perspective on if you had to kind of advocate for them to focus their budgets on one or two things, what would that be right now?

Marc: I think first of all, you need to think about what your strategy is. So the best CLO is the best learning leaders that I've come across.

The ones that have found that I found most impressive when they talk about what they're doing at their firm. It always starts off with developing a strategy. And actually before they're developing a strategy, they're finding the lie of the land. They're working out what's going on in in the industry. So that sounds very obvious. Is it always done? I mean, absolutely not. And if you've got a strategy and some sort of a vision, then the downstream decisions, they don't get taken care of. But you've got a guide for each and every one of them.

L&D in 20

About L&D in 20

Episodes

Best practices in online and AI-enhanced learning with CHART Learning Solutions’ CEO, Peter Horwing

Empowering frontline leaders: Lessons from fast food to Fortune 500 with Monica Rothgery

AI use cases for personalizing learning and measuring impact with Filtered’s Co-Founder and CEO Marc Zao-Sanders

More than a checkbox: Unlocking value and professional growth through compliance training with Emtrains Director of Partnerships and Strategic Accounts, Jennifer Dowdy

Building empathy and trust on teams with Mindscaling’s President and Founder, Shawn Hunter