#HRTechChat: Do More With Less Is Breaking Managers (and What to Do About It) - with JD Dillon

Speaker A: Hey everyone, it's Dylan Taggart here with another 360 insights HR tech chat podcast. Today I have the pleasure to be joined by JD Dhillon. JD is an advisor, speaker and author of the modern learning ecosystem. Uh, throughout his entire career he's had some focus on frontline workers performance and readiness. And I'm really happy to have him here today.

Speaker B: Thanks, J.D.

Speaker A: yeah, my pleasure. Do you mind filling people in a little bit more? Anything I may have missed, I am

Speaker B: really good at popcorn. It's really the thing that I like to talk about the most. My, uh, first job was in a movie theater, so I came out of frontline operations. I managed movie theaters and theme parks for the first half of my career before shifting over into the learning and development and HR side of the world. And spent the last 10 years in frontline enablement technology with Axonify. And then today, as you mentioned, I write, speak and advise organizations on how we can help people do their best work every day.

Speaker A: Uh, amazing. Yeah. And with all the changes kind of happening today in the workforce, I feel like you're kind of the perfect person to talk to about what's coming up. You know, it's the beginning of the year or almost the end of the first month. So for companies looking to be proactive in 2026 and companies, uh, you're currently speaking with are advising on what are the. What's top of mind right now.

Speaker B: Do more with less. How long can we get into a conversation before saying AI? It's really the test of presentations and podcasts today. But I think the do more with less mandate the whole conversation on economic uncertainty, societal unrest. It's the same conversation we've been having for the past couple of years. It's just a different flavor of that conversation. Anytime anyone asks me what's the one thing I should do because it becomes really hard to distill constant change in the inability to predict beyond a certain point, yet still maintain a focus on short term results. What do I do with that? Especially when it comes to this side of the fence, performance enablement, human resources, talent and whatnot. I always recommend the same thing. I've been talking about the same thing for several years now. If you're going to invest in one place, you're going to prioritize one part of your business. Just make it managers. I think everything comes down to how effective we can make management teams, especially the closer we get towards the operation. The people that are taking the brunt of change right now is that group of people, because it's that group of people that translates corporate priorities into actual execution in a day to day way, uh, of, uh, working. So where does most of my conversation kind of go nowadays of all the things we can do to enable performance, to drive outcomes, to really tackle the people side of work? I just want to talk about managers.

Speaker A: What are you kind of seeing right now with the good and bad of what's happening to managers?

Speaker B: 40% of managers feel burned down on a daily basis and their engagement rates are falling fast because organizations have been crutching on their management teams for an extremely long time at this point. And then managers led their teams through, let's just use the word unprecedented level of change a couple of years ago. And it hasn't stopped. Right. There was no break after the pandemic. We went from a pandemic period of work to rapid growth, investment, hiring and everything that went with that and then immediately turned the corner into do more with less. Pulling back, finding ways to drive efficiencies. The mandate to introduce AI into operations without real clarity of vision around what we actually are expected to do with this technology and how it's going to reshape work around us. There's still a lot of organizations that are saying make it AI without meaning behind that. And again, it's the management team that has to make sense of that while trying to take care of their teams. Provide some level of certainty in terms of how is this change or that change or this technology going to impact me? In my day to day experience, managers are simply getting pressed from all sides. I often say being especially a frontline or middle manager, it's a lot like being in the middle seat on an airplane. Uh, on one side you have corporate demands and priorities, on the other side you have your team and you're just trying to do your best to find some elbow room for yourself. That's what it's like to be a manager today. And I think the traditional structures of support and development around managers simply don't meet the moment. If you just look at how much money we spend on things like leadership development every year and how much of an impact it's having in terms of people's ability to feel like they know how to do the job, the investment doesn't lead to a meaningful ROI at this point.

Speaker A: Yeah. And where do you feel like that pressure? Look, this concept of do more with less, where do you feel like that pressure is originating from and what does it really mean in practice?

Speaker B: Oh, shareholders and ownership and senior executives. Right. Like, you know, there's a particular corporate executive that kind of coined the term, the phrase a couple of years ago. But at this point, it's just become the rampant mandate across every industry, every line of business, every type of organization. And it kind of feeds off of all of that other uncertainty that we've been talking about. And then it's, it has a direct impact in every way on every organization. I, as you mentioned, focus a lot on frontline workers in industries like retail and healthcare, grocery, hospitality and food service. And in those spaces, I think the most valuable resource that anyone has in a frontline space is labor hours. And, uh, all you have to do is go outside, right? Go to any frontline operated business, whether it be your favorite restaurant or your favorite grocery store, and just compare the staffing that you see today to the staffing that you saw seven years ago. Meaningfully different in terms of the amount of labor budget made available to frontline management teams who then have to pick up the slack and make up for the fact that they're just not able to put enough people into the operation in order to drive the level not just of efficiency, but the level of customer service that people expect. I say it's harder to be a frontline employee today than it was to be a frontline employee during a pandemic. And in this case it's because of the fact that organizations are finding efficiencies. It's not about an AI conversation when it comes to this part of the workforce. It's simply about the balancing act between, uh, customer experience and profitability. How much do we have to put in? How much, uh, do we have to invest in order to hit our goals? And then we're going to do more with less from there. So the idea of do more with less, it's interesting to contrast that to conversations around things like HR and engagement. Right. Because it's not give more, get more. Right. It's not invest more in people and as a result we'll see greater outcomes. It's I want you to do more and I'm going to give you less to do it. So it fundamentally, I think, shows the idea that work is optimized for performance and not for people. I don't think that's a new idea. I think we're just feeling it differently now given everything that we've gone through for the past several years and now the renewed focus around driving even more efficiency and productivity through AI.

Speaker A: Yeah, last time I agree with you in it and I feel post pandemic. You know, you mentioned this in the first, uh, call we had wasn't recorded, uh, for the audience, uh, you know, you know, you're watching organizations use the pandemic as a reason to change labor budget. We already saw that happen, obviously, you know, even if it's a brick and mortar store, if it's in a call center or if it's just in an office, I think people in a weird way got a taste of what it's like to, to work with less capacity, you know, less people in the store, less people on the, on the showroom floor or whatever it is. And then they see, okay, how little can we spend to get customers back? Just enough. So we're still making, our margins are still good. Um, but it really ties into, what you're saying is it's harder to be a frontline employee now because the expectations have changed and performance is not. I guess, you know, this expectations we had as customers fundamentally was smashed open during the pandemic. And in the aftermath of that, our expectations about what you get when you go into a store have fundamentally changed because we all have this residual experience in the back of our brains about how things used to be. Maybe as generations go on, they'll feel differently about that, or maybe this is just a new norm. But I feel it's like a bit of an austerity mindset and, uh, as I mentioned to you previously, a very private equity mentality. Um, so when you talk about improving workforces and investing in teams, do you feel like leaderships are too shortsighted because of this taste they still have in their mouth from the pandemic? And are they really missing out on the big picture here in the long term changes that it's going to have on their business.

Speaker B: I think it's interesting that we're seeing kind of play out in real time. An example of what happens when there's a short term mindset when it comes to how we invest in the capability of our organization, meaning the capability of people. Because for years before, AI just took over the conversation in the workplace, especially in the HR and L and D side of the fence, the word skills was everyone's favorite buzzword, right? We were talking about skill, strategy skills, ontology, skills, uh, taxonomy, skills, platform. It was just skills all day, every day. It's still a very kind of vague concept. We talk about skills, right? It's not a word that we use on a regular basis. It's also not a term or a concept that we use to manage an organization, but it's an attempt to say that we need capable People to drive long term capabilities in organization and overcome that kind of short term mindset. But I don't think it necessarily landed outside of the people who are focused on building a skill strategy. It's one of those things that sounds great on paper, it's common sense, but does it actually change how an organization operates the systems of work in order to kind of take advantage of it? Fast forward to today. There's constant conversation, entire practices being spun up around this idea that people don't know how to effectively use AI. Organizations are having a change management problem when it comes to getting people to not only have the skills, but the desire, the motivation to embrace new tools, new processes, take advantage of the opportunity to adjust their practices because again, you have to get the people to change in order to get the productivity boost that's going to get you the value return on your investment in the technology. And organizations across the board are slamming into this particular wall because to get the technology to work, you need people to change. Implementing systems is way easier than motivating people to do something differently, especially if they've one, been doing it a certain way for a long time. Two are not afforded the time in order to figure out how to change as they're still trying to get their work done and deliver on their goals. And three, I don't even remember where I was going with the third point. I'm sure it was great, but I think what you're seeing right now is that organizations don't have systems in place. They're not built for this type of agility. They're built for short term gains, they're built for drive towards the goal as fast as we can and then we'll decide what the next goal is. They don't have dedicated pockets of development opportunity, they don't have systems that people use every day in order to support their performance and help them incrementally change how they do their job. There isn't this kind of long term thinking and investment in how do we help people continuously refine and develop their capabilities, their skills, and as a result we don't have those mechanisms available to us when it's time to embrace a significant change in the workplace. So we kind of have to recreate the wheel every time something new happens, we have to find a way to kind of brute force the change into the organization. And, and over time people figure it out. They embrace the things that work, they throw away the things that don't, and then we play it out again the next time the big change happens. And if you rewind again to the reference to the pandemic. I was writing this book in 2020, interesting time to write a book about how work works. And I stopped writing in the middle of 2020 and just went and talked to people because I had the question, does any of this make sense? Like, is this what we need right now, given everything else that people are dealing with? Am, um, I, am I telling the right story? And what I very quickly came to realize when I talked to people in different lines of business about how they were managing their way through this situation was that the organizations who were doing it the best, that were finding their way, that were adapting quickly, that were spinning up new business models that were keeping their customers and their employees safe, the ones who are managing were the ones who had been investing in those systems of work, in those tools and those practices for years. They didn't know what they were preparing for. They just knew that there was uh, the ability to drive, capability to promote change, to foster that shift in behavior was important to how they ran their business. They made those investments with a long term perspective. And those investments came in particularly handy in an unexpected way. I haven't had these conversations around AI of late. I'd be willing to bet those same organizations are probably managing their way through this latest change more effectively than those who again haven't installed the systems of development, the systems of change, those processes and practices that no matter what people are going to have to deal with next, they're there to support them. Instead there's kind of chasing. And when I say systems, I mean everything from tools, technologies, to the time that people need to figure out how to manage their way through this next particular situation in addition to doing their day to day job. Because especially when AI, I find it funny when people talk about, well, this is a chance for people to explore, to experiment, to try to do their jobs in new ways. And my response is always when. Uh, because I've yet to run into the person who says, I've got four extra hours this week, so I'm going to experiment. No, they have to stack time on top of their deliverables in order to find new ways. And who has the time for that? Hence why so many organizations are struggling to gain that initial value bump from AI.

Speaker A: Yeah, I recently read a report from UKG that was saying how it's a very fear from the employee standpoint, it's very fear driven when it comes to AI. In kind of what you're saying, you know, having those four extra hours, um, and the Report was saying that people were skipping lunch breaks, you know, working overtime, skipping vacation, just because they were fearing that, well, they got this tireless competitor who doesn't sleep against, against them. Now, whether or not it was valid or not, um, like you're saying, it's kind of a training and communication issue at that point, because they're not telling them, um, they're not disclosing to them or being transparent to them that this is how this is going to be laid out, this is how it's going to help you. And that was a part of the report as well, which, you know, and, and for an employer, you know, what would you, you know, let's say you tell them what you just told me, or we're saying, and they say to you, well, you know, it's kind of a buyer's market right now in terms of employment. The market's flooded with people who got the skills I need. Why do I even need to train my people there? I just haven't found the right one yet. And, uh, what would you say to someone who has that to say in return?

Speaker B: One I would challenge depending on what industry we're talking about or what roles we're talking about, if it is in fact a buyer's market or if there is still a gap in terms of certain capabilities. I mean, if we're talking about healthcare, we're talking about air traffic controllers, we have a definite problem when it comes to finding people and then developing them at the speed necessary in order to close operational gaps in those kind of nuanced spaces. Um, it's unfortunate, but I think emblematic of how the workplace functions at this point, that that is often the thinking I can change the way that I run my business and make decisions about my people because I can find other people. So if you want to have a conversation about what engagement really means in today's workplace, I think the fact that that mentality exists shows you the reality of kind of the situation that we're in. I think when it comes to justifying any type of investment in people, we have to find the ways to anchor that conversation as tightly as possible to the metrics that drive decision making. That's not new. I don't think I just revealed any type of new information for anybody because we've been talking about that forever. I just think we really struggle at figuring out how to make the case for the people side of work by making it about the business side of things. Because sometimes it can feel not nice, I think, to talk that way. I'm not a fan of. When we use terms like human capital, it just feels like the wrong terminology. It doesn't feel respectful of the people that we're relying on to do the work, to refer to people in that way. Um, I wish we just referred to people as people and had human conversations. And I think we have a hard time bridging the business side of the conversation with the people side of the conversation and not making it entirely about outcomes and still reflecting something about the experience of work. I wish I had an answer to say, this is how you balance those things in a way that works for everybody. Like you said, I think right now things are tilted in a particular direction. But I think when it comes to people who really zoom in on and focus on the people side of work, a lot of times being the HR side of the business, The better we can be at the business side of things, the more we can talk, like, the less we can talk about the altruistic side of work, and the more that we can connect decisions that are meaningfully beneficial to people to outcomes that are meaningful to stakeholders, I think the better position that we're in. Um, but I do think we have to leave certain things behind. That's why I'm a big fan of saying that employee engagement should not be the top of anyone's priority list. It should not be the metric by which any function is judged at this point, because it doesn't mean what it once meant and it doesn't mean what I think people want it to mean. Um, I think we have to come up with better reflections of what the situation is like, how people feel about their work, and how we can connect those to, uh, the types of outcomes and metrics that are going to drive positive decisions for people and not think that there's an altruistic bent that we can rely on when it comes to how work works. At this point, I'm getting depressed throughout the course of this conversation. How are you doing?

Speaker A: I don't know. I kind of just exist in this state. So it's all good. I'm used to it. No, but I think it's productive. I think, uh, getting the cards out on the table is important, whether or not it's, uh, productive. Because I feel like we kind of spoke to this a little bit as well, where you were saying engagement is dead. But. And then the first time we talked about this, I was saying, well, maybe that's a good thing. Maybe that's actually what we want. Because chasing after this dream of a job that fulfills Our lives is, I think, is a myth. And, uh, perhaps it's an unhealthy way to work. Maybe what drives the importance of your life is the time with your friends and your family and not what your title is, you know, and because ask elderly people, what are the things they valued in life?

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: It's not going to be their job. It's not going to be their job, you know. You know, Mike, you know, ask your parents or your grandparents. It's not going to be, well, I got an award for sales in 1972, you know, it's going to be. We had a great family vacation, and that's what matters. And I think. And I think reframing work is, uh, like, that is the silver lining to engagement being dead.

Speaker B: We're having a you can't take it with you conversation, which, again, it's gone like, but I'll come all the way back around.

Speaker A: But that's vital. But it's vital because it comes full circle, I think. So that's in, um. Let's go back to the circle here.

Speaker B: But I think that if you really want to actually bridge this conversation, because I think, uh, someone out there who's still with us is also getting sad because we're having this conversation. Maybe work doesn't matter. Maybe people will never be happy. Maybe it's just clock in, clock out, and here we go. I don't think it has to be that way, but I also think it doesn't have to be this grand realization at the highest levels of an organization that, oh, my gosh, what they've been saying the whole time, if we invest in people, if we reduce turnover, if we drive engagement, people will deliver greater outcomes for us. Like I said in the beginning, it's not give more, get more, it's do more with less, which I think just shines the reality of the mentality that's driving decisions. I do think it can be overcome. And I'm going to come back to where I started with managers, because I think it's with, uh, the team manager, with the frontline manager, with the location manager. That's the person who actually experiences the difference between engaged and disengaged, between motivated and unmotivated. And it's a person who, if just mildly enabled, not even going to say huge investment, huge amount of resources and training and development, just enough time and enough of the right priorities in terms of how they're measured, and as a result, what they prioritize. A manager can change a decent job into an outstanding experience, even if the organization is driving towards profitability, even if. Even if they're making decisions that maybe aren't in the best interest of the people who are doing the heavy lifting every day. So if you are focused on the people side of work, if you're in the human resources space, or maybe you are in operations or another line of business, and you do understand the connection between people having an engaging experience at work and being able to do their best to drive to the outcomes that the organization cares about. I think if we can just get managers a little bit more time to focus on their teams, a little bit more resources, a little bit more of a mandate to say, can you help us bridge this gap and make every. Every day is not going to be great, but can every day be a little bit better? Can you appreciate people a little bit more? Can you help people see why a certain decision was made, how that decision is going to impact them? Can you provide a bit more of the transparency that the organization is struggling to provide around particular changes, the implementation of AI, how it impacts people? It drives me nuts that every email ends with, if you have any questions, ask your manager, because what are the odds that the manager knows any more than you do or is able to decipher everything? But if we can help them out a little bit more, help them focus on and give. I always talk about giving managers permission to lead. Just because you're in the role doesn't mean you have the resources, the mandate, the time and the training to do it well. But if we can do a little bit better by managers, I think they can stand in. I've experienced it myself many times and kind of make up for some of the gap that exists in the employee experience. Not going to solve every problem. They're not going to completely change a company if they don't value their employees. But for a lot of employees, especially frontline employees, they don't work for the company, they work for their manager because they don't see the executive team. They see the person who hired them, who trains them, who provides them feedback, who makes sure they get paid. That person is a significant part of their experience. If we can help them be a little bit better care a little bit more. Not that they don't, but be able to demonstrate that care, I think that can make up for a lot of the gap that we're talking about in terms of how employees are valued today. Because instead of trying to make the company value employees, that's a big machine. It's really hard to. Even if people say things it's hard to echo that in all of these decisions. But the person who's right there, shoulder to shoulder every day, we can demonstrate that care right there. I think you can make a huge difference for people and still drive towards the outcomes that the business is prioritizing. Managers.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think, I think the end goal we're both heading towards is the same here. I think it's kind of that rule of averages where it's just, you know, you don't want work to be like this all the time. Even though that's going to happen. You know, there's going to be peaks and valleys, but it's trying to straighten that curve in that trajectory. I guess if on camera, it's going to be this way, uh, you know, heading towards a positive direction as much, as much as possible for everyone involved. It's kind of, you know, solving that prisoner's dilemma, you know, where everyone, everyone, everyone wins, but no one wins big because that'll, that'll twist this, you know, the scale will not be leveled anymore. Um, one thing I wanted to mention, talk about is, you know, you've mentioned that a lot of the people talking about frontline workplace are vendors. Um, and then tying that together with the way employers and, you know, the shareholders or the C suite is looking at a business. How do you bridge, how do you bridge that gap between the vendors and the people they're selling to? Ultimately,

Speaker B: what's interesting is I hear more and more technology providers especially, but vendors of all types talking about the fact that there's a big shift happening in terms of trying to sell solutions that are people focused, that are typically a little bit more on the HR side of the fence, selling it directly to operational teams instead. Why do you lean towards the operations team? They have a clearly defined problem and the juice to try to solve it. And I think operations teams understand the direct link between the people who are doing the job every day and the priorities that they're trying to achieve. As long as you're able to demonstrate how your solution is, will bridge that gap and help them get to that goal. When you have a conversation that's more focused exclusively on the people side of the fence, it's hard to have that bridge. You're having loose conversations about things like engagement, right? Numbers, like metrics like turnover are your desired outcome as opposed to improved safety, improved sales, improve basket size, improve. Insert operational metric here. So even if your solution is the type of solution that maybe it's a training solution, it helps people improve their knowledge and Skill. It's something that uh, is meant to improve recognition and appreciation in the workforce. How do you tell your story in a way that connects to that uh, operation value proposition? And I think the best case scenario is when you can bridge the gap between those stakeholders, when you can help the HR team, the learning and development team, be a champion alongside their operations partners. Because HR&L and D people always talk about the seat at the table conversation, right? Not having the ability to influence decisions, not necessarily being regarded or valued or invested in. I think sometimes as a solution provider you can help demonstrate the value that these functions can provide and provide that operational framing, that language, because you have the experience of engaging with different stakeholders and different organizations and seeing what resonates consistently. So how can you, if you're working with the HR team in an organization, increase the value of your offering as well as your partners inside the organization by translating what you do on the people side of work to an outcome, short and long term, that an operation stakeholder might be trying to drive to. But I think it's, it's problematic, I think it's always been problematic to anchor the story in altruistic sides of the workplace, things like development, career pathing skills. If that's not further anchored into a value proposition that's going to resonate with the people who determine how work is done and even more importantly, how work is prioritized day to day. Because you could have an amazing system, an amazing platform, an amazing technology, if people never go, if people don't have the time to take advantage of. If you're selling a content library and I have uh, 70 hours of work to do already, it doesn't matter how great the development opportunities are in that content library. I'm never making it there. So you have to influence and build champions from the people who decide how that time is spent. That's usually not the people who are typically driving the people side of the conversation, it's the operations side of the conversation. And I've seen successfully, probably providers can help bridge that gap. Um, especially because you're bringing in expertise from outside the organization. There's a strange thing that happens that if you work inside a company and you say something's a good idea, sometimes people put you in a box and it's like, well, that's not what possibly be true. That's not what we've always done. And then you go get someone else that they haven't met before and bring them in and they say the exact same thing that you say, but they're bringing in external expertise suddenly I haven't thought about it that way. We should explore that because this external subject matter expert who's done this before at other companies that I respect says this is a great idea. So sometimes you're also providing that level of validation and expertise in addition to the solution that you're trying to provide to get people to think a little bit differently.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Uh, so you know, but with some of these abstract approaches you're going to maybe butt up against kind of the, you know, especially for frontline workplace manager or owner operator that is actually interacting with the front line or just with their business in general a lot more than someone maybe who's in a different office or location, you know, and trying to control the business from there. I feel like you often, or like one often bumps up against kind of the vibes they're feeling, you know, maybe from being either too close to the business to realize those problems and to the point where I found it sometimes difficult to explain these more abstract macro or kind of average or you know, mean approach like in terms of an average. That is where it's like if you change this thing on average, it's going to improve your business. It may not be as explicit, but it actually is going to have a big long term impact for someone who maybe struggles with the numbers, struggles with keeping up with the metrics of a business and, and mainly has found their success through just feeling it out. How do you, how do you break through to someone like that?

Speaker B: Feel like we're having a conversation about old school sports. Right. You have like the data science teams and athletic teams now the real money ball situation. Yeah, uh, yeah. The old school is like, well it's I watch the game so I understand

Speaker A: he's a good looking ball player.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's really hard to read the label from inside the bottle. Right. In terms of not knowing what you don't know and then being open to people that don't have the experience that you have and as a result maybe haven't earned your respect to say. Not necessarily. Sometimes here's a great idea comes across as you're doing it wrong in terms of translation. So one again, I find this to be especially true of frontline teams. Maybe it's true for everybody and I'm biased in a particular direction. But I believe especially like you said, the people who have been running family businesses for generations. Right. Like my grandfather started this store, handed it down and now I'm running the store. I very easily can tell who knows this stuff and who doesn't know this stuff, who respects this work and this business and doesn't necessarily do it. And I'll go out on a limb and say that a lot of providers and a lot of service providers, technology providers, one, they don't know. I mean, some solutions are created by people who come from the industry, and as a result, it's imbued with a sense of understanding and appreciation for that work. A lot of times it's people who very well understand technology and data and content, but maybe haven't played in this particular space. So it's not just that you may be in the story that you're telling in the way that you're presenting a solution that you don't know the business, because I don't think people expect their providers all know the detail. They do expect for you to appreciate and understand and respect it. And I think that requires doing your homework. It could be getting out there, going shoulder to shoulder with people. I've been to a lot of grocery stores and had a lot of conversations around loss prevention and produce, because a lot of people who run grocery stores want to talk about loss prevention and produce. And it helps me understand what's the right conversation to have. 2. The example I gave earlier around kind of, uh, examples and case studies coming from outside the company, I found success in bringing in examples. Not necessarily from a company just like this organization, maybe it's not even from this industry, but if you do the work to understand the people that you're working with, because ultimately that's what business is, just people making decisions. If you understand the people that you're working with and understand what they value and what they respect, you might be able to bring examples or subject matter expertise from places that might be unexpected, but it resonates with this individual because it's how they think about their work. It's how they think about the type of service they're providing or, uh, the types of products that they're providing. So it's doing the homework more than just talking about how we have a solution that solves a problem that you care about. And let me show you how it's. How do you make sure that you go into that conversation with a respect for and appreciation for the work that these folks are doing? Because a lot of these folks grew up in these organizations, right? They've been in retail for 40 years. They know you don't know what they know because this is what they do. But they can very much sense when someone doesn't have an appreciation for the work. And that may set you back in the conversation before you can even get to the point to say, I have an idea or I have a product that's going to help you solve a problem that you understand, but do it in a different way that maybe you haven't seen before. And when you can, I talk a lot about bridging gaps today. When you can bridge that gap, demonstrate that respect and appreciation. People are willing to have a conversation because, uh, you're as excited about their work as they are. And now they're open to that new idea, that approach they haven't thought about before. And now you have to show. And this is how it's going to help you really solve the problem. And that's the part that I think providers are generally better at than the first part.

Speaker A: That's great advice and I think that's a great, uh, place to leave it for today. J.D. uh, you mind telling people where they can reach out to you?

Speaker B: So many places. I'm, um, not even joking when I say that if you want to check out my book, the Modern Learning Ecosystem, the website is actually jdroteabook.com Not a joke, that's a real website. But you can check out everything I'm up to over@jddillon.com so my speaking calendar, various services. If you want to bring me in and deliver a keynote presentation for your next event, that's all available right there. Also, connect with me on LinkedIn. Happy to continue the conversation. I constantly try to share cool ideas that I come across, including the work that Dylan and his team m do. So, uh, connect with me there and then also be on the lookout for my next book coming in May 2026. May 5th of this year, the Frontline Enablement playbook will drop. So if you want to really dig in to over 600 pages and 50 different contributor stories about how we can make work better for the frontline workforce while driving outcomes for the organization. Be sure to check out my new book.

Speaker A: Amazing. Well, jd, thank you so much for joining me and it was a great conversation.

Speaker B: Thanks so much for having me. For everyone out there who hung out with us, thanks for everything that you do.

Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for tuning in, everyone and see you next time. Thanks.