Elevate 50: What's next for L&D? Donald Taylor

Speaker A: Welcome to this Learning Uncut Elevate episode where Michelle Parry Slater explores a topic, skill or resource to help you elevate your practice and impact as a learning professional.

Speaker B: Welcome to Learning Uncut. We've got another Elevate episode today and I am absolutely, uh, delighted to be joined, uh, by Donald Taylor from the uk, which is why I'm in the dark. I've got all the lights on now that we are also on our YouTube channel. So if you didn't know that already, if you listen in rather than watch, do search for Learning uncut podcast on YouTube and you can also watch us as well. Now, before we begin, of course we always acknowledge country. Given our recent episode, um, about Gary Ella, this may well be something that feels even more important to us here at Learning Uncut. We would like to, in the spirit of reconciliation, acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community, particularly the Combermeri people whose land I'm joining you from today. I often will mention Jalurgal, the beautiful Burley Heads, uh, national park that I can see from my window. But as Don is joining me, his morning in the UK and my evening in Australia, whilst I can't physically see it, I still want to pay respect to it and to all of the elders, past and present, on the Combermeri m people's land, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples present, present and listening today. Don Taylor takes no introduction. He is a friend of the show. He's been on this podcast several times before. But for those that have been living under a rock, Don Taylor is chair of the Learning Technologies Conference. He has been working in learning and development for a number of years, I'm going to say, and, uh, we're honored to have him back on the podcast today to talk about his Global Sentiment Survey. Now, Don, you have been on this podcast many times before because we support you in your Global Sentiment Survey survey here at Learning Uncut. You've been running that survey for over a decade. And recently you've gone back across sort of five years of challenge data. You've looked at it all together for the first time. And, um, that's really what we're going to be talking about today as well, of course, as all of your other research with the lovely Egla into AI. Now, what made you go back and have a look at the Global Sentiment Survey?

Speaker C: That's a good question. Uh, and thank you very much for the support Learning Uncut's given uh, over the years to the survey, getting the view from Australia and also from New Zealand. Very important. So thanks for that. Just to clarify, when you say the challenges question. Ah, every year for the past five years, I've asked the question, what's your biggest challenge in workplace learning and development in the next year? So that's what we're talking about here. And why have I gone back to look at it? It's because the data has got richer, uh, and because we've been through a fascinating period of change. And I think that I've, in my production process of the report in the past recognized people's challenges year on year. But I haven't done what I do with the numbers, which is to make comparisons year on year. And I think that that is an important thing to do because we've been through this period of change. When I started doing the challenges question, which was in 2021 survey we had, we were coming out of COVID uh, now we are, uh, in the, let's say, the third or fourth year of reaction to AI. Those are two very big things. And it's possible over that period to see people changing their views of L and D in a way that goes beyond just what they choose on my main question, which is what's going to be hot next year? And I want to honor the fact that people are making the time to respond to the questions, sharing their thoughts. And there's a very rich trove of data, uh, there, which I think deserves more than just a one year by one year snapshot of Eulogid. And I think that that's characterized not least by the fact that right at the beginning when I started asking this question, 40% of respondents answered, um, with a total of something like 14,000 words. Now it is about, well, it's in the 90% bracket and it's about 40, over 40,000 words that people are giving in response. So there's a lot that people are saying and I think they deserve Covid taken seriously.

Speaker B: That is a lot of words for you to get through. No doubt you've been using AI to, uh, sort out some clustering of those challenge responses. And it's a. Yeah, you can't sort of, uh, sit and read through all of those, but you do.

Speaker C: Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. You can and you absolutely should. I mean, the worst thing I could do is, is to just say, oh, I've got these words. I'll stick them in a black box and see what comes out the other end. That'd be Very dangerous. So, yeah, I do read everything. But the problem, of course, you're right, is you read a book. Uh, you know, an average novel might be, I don't know, a short novel. It might be 60, 70,000 words. 40,000 words is about the length of, um, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Uh, so it's a book. Right. But of course, a book's got a narrative, and you follow the themes through it. You don't follow there is no narrative through 40,000 words. And the difficulty is that it is very easy to allow yourself a certain point into reading these things to think, oh, right, okay, well, I know what's happening here. We're talking about these five, six things. And then your confirmation bias kicks in and you start spotting those things and not spotting other things. So it's very important to read through everything and then to use AI tools to help check and go through and spot what you've missed.

Speaker B: Yeah. So what patterns have come through in those, sort of, um, you know, semantic clustering, let's use the phrase.

Speaker C: Yeah, well, it's, I mean, is actually what you'd expect. Um, there are a series of challenges that come through. There are probably five in total that come through. Um, and this is. These have been the same pretty much, uh, year on year. But there's, There's. There are two which are different to what we've had in the past. So in the. In the recent past, we've had the recent past been. Past three years, we've had a, uh, concern about AI being foremost, how do I use it, and how do I help the organization use it. And the other very common challenge people are seeing is a sort of sense of uncertainty and an existential threat. And this is very important because that didn't happen in the first two years of the survey. This is something which is undoubtedly correlated with the release of AI, but not release of AI, sorry, but the release of ChatGPT and the sense that now there is something which threatens me. And I think that comes through very clearly when you read all the words. And you can boil it all down to that sense of uncertainty about the future for L and D. That, for me, is the key theme that comes through.

Speaker B: I heard you talking on one of my favorite podcasts, the Mind Tools podcast, about exactly this and this sense of uncertainty. Individuals are answering your global sentiment survey. So this is an individual fear that people have got, although they're talking about our profession. Um, and I see it myself, I hear it when I'm talking to people, and it is uncertainty as Human beings, we like being certain. I mean, all of the research that David Rock has done with the scarf model, for example, we like certainty, but we're not living in certain times at all. There's just significant change. And you've seen those changes over the years that you've been doing this survey. AI is probably the most significant, isn't it? And so what are you doing about having that on the survey? If it's appearing more and more, what's the plan? What's going on there?

Speaker C: AI's been, uh, on the survey since 2017, and it followed exactly the trajectory we expect. I spot something, I think that's interesting. People will vote for that. It goes up for a couple of years, then it comes down. So like mobile delivery or, um, curation. These are things which started off being popular, then faded away over time. And of course, as it was fading away, it was got to the stage where it almost taken off the survey. But because it was so uninteresting for people when GPT came out and bang, it went off through the roof. This year, in the 2026 survey, as you know, the responses to the question, what will be hot next year? AI, which had been number one for the third year running, dipped. Now it only dipped by 0.1 of a percent. So that's not statistically significant. Right. You could as well say, well, it might have gone up, it might have gone down further, but that rocket trajectory of it going up had definitely flattened off. What's the plan for the future? I've got to take it off the survey. I know it is absolutely what people are excited about and want to talk about, but if I ask people what's hot in L and D and I have AI in the survey, it drowns out everything else. And I've decided that for 2027 it won't be on the surface. And I'll do a LinkedIn blog about this and I'll get people's reaction. I need to know what are we doing with it? Because everything else on that server, everything else on that list, can absolutely be done using AI or not. And I want to know, well, what are people doing? Look, AI and I've made this comparison before, it's not original, but it's a bit like going into the kitchen and saying, well, of all these things here, which is most important to you? Your microwave, your fridge, freezer, your cooker? Uh, or electricity? Well, of course it's electricity because it powers everything else. So we have to get behind AI. Ah, and see what are people doing. With it. And I think there may be some other big changes to the list coming up for next year that we'll see, which will help me get back to the original purpose of the list, which is what are people doing? And that's where the second new free text question comes in, which is, what have you done new this year in comparison with where you were 12 months ago? That's if you like, a balance to the challenges question. And, um, the idea is that 2027, I'll be able to look at that and say, well, how do these new things that people are doing match up to the challenges that everyone was talking about last year? I'm hoping I'll be able to say, oh, well, people recognize the challenge and they're facing it. Actually, that's already kind of happening, and that's very heartening to see. Um, but anyway, so you ask the question, what's happening with AI? The answer is that's the whole subject of an extra branch of research with Egnavin Al Skeja, which is the AI and L and D report. And I think that's where that's going to live now. And the global sentiment survey will be separate from it.

Speaker B: So you heard it here first, folks. Donald.

Speaker C: Yes, exciting.

Speaker B: Killed off AI. That's what.

Speaker C: That's bad journalism, right? You're taking a small thing and you're blowing up out of all proportion.

Speaker B: But that is what's happening is that people have so got this fear, uh, this existential threat of AI When I feel like we've been to this rodeo before. We've been to this rodeo when we first got elearning. We've been to this rodeo when we first got email, Internet. Huge things happen and people are afraid of them. And I think that that's perfectly valid. You know, we as human beings, we're primed for change, but living through it is difficult.

Speaker C: You surely, Michelle, surely you're too young to remember us getting into. Into elearning.

Speaker B: It's very flattering of you to say, but I think it's just the lights that I've got on my face.

Speaker C: Well, I certainly remember it. I certainly remember it. Do you seriously think this is comparable, Comparable to elearning?

Speaker B: Not really. I think e learning was a thing. It was a tool. And we could look at AI from that perspective. It's a tool, but certainly the people's response to it, um, feels very similar. Whenever we're in a discomfort, you know, any sort of discomfort as human beings, then fear is a natural response. And so I totally understand and respect why people feel the way they do. But then I often will say to people, look, we're glad we live in homes with electricity that you've just mentioned. You know, that we're not out hunting our own food and living in caves. But that was the human condition. At one point, you know, I remember my grandparents having an outside loo. And, you know, who. Who would have thought it? We have them inside. So change is definitely something that, when we're living through, feels very difficult. But at the time, um, you know, is really important. So, anyway, let's not get down the chain.

Speaker C: No, no, let's quickly just look at something here because I think it's important for whatever else we might talk about, I think there is something qualitatively different about AI versus eLearning. ELearning, or rather, we could say the birth of the web, um, ah, in 1989, effectively. But it really came into prominence in early 2000s. The birth of the web reduced the physical barrier to knowledge. Suddenly it was possible to access, in theory, all the world's knowledge through a device you held in your hand. That was it, in theory. But the mechanism of getting that information to people remained that somebody had to find, filter, interpret, and share it, which is what L and D did. The quantitative difference with AI is that AI can do all those things. Find, filter and share it. The interpretation bit, it can do a bit of. And it doesn't do it terribly well, I don't think. But it doesn't do a bad job. And it does it incredibly fast and cheaply. And I think that the fear is valid. And it comes from the recognition that whereas in the year, uh, 2000, we could say, well, I can just produce a course, but I'll do it in a different way. And I remember doing presentations about blended learning in 1999. Happy days. That idea that we could shift back to what we'd always done, creating and sharing content, people now recognize is no longer the case. That, um, uncertainty, I think, fuels people's fear, discomfort about what's going on. And I think that's valid. I think it's qualitatively different.

Speaker B: I agree with that. And I think it's also the context with which the change is taking place. Because there's real rupture in the world right now. There's economic uncertainty. There's socioeconomic challenges around that. Um, and so people aren't just living through one existential threat, they're living through multiple. And we have been for some time. And to go with that analogy, I said Earlier. We're glad we don't live in caves, we're glad we live in houses. But of course, if anyone's ever lived through a renovation, you know, the dust and the mess and all of that, that's kind of what we're in. We're in a big Renault right now. And this rupture, your research demonstrates it, doesn't it? This sense of, of redundancy and job searches and, um, you know, leadership are sort of going to AI tools before they're coming to learning and development. Is this, is this a surprise? Is this.

Speaker C: Quick aside, Michelle, that, that use of the word Renault, is that something you picked up in Australia?

Speaker B: Oh, renovations. Sorry, I forgot my good English, haven't I?

Speaker C: Thank you. Just want to get that in there. Uh, okay. Um, yeah. Are we surprised that people might be bypassing L and D? No, not at all. Because people, when they want to learn something, they want to learn it. They want to get on and they, they see a need and they want to solve that need. And it could be not learning so much. It could simply be, I need to know how to do this one particular task. I go to YouTube, find out and fix. Could be. They recognize that they need a bit more learning, uh, to take place. And so they said, well, I need to go to somebody who really knows about this. They can find that person themselves or they can go through learning and development to find the person or to find something they've created or whatever. We've already seen that people are doing this themselves through everything from YouTube to expert searches and everything. It's only going to accelerate. The issue that L and D needs to, I think, get a hold of is to reassert its authority in the field of instructional design. Now, I've made a lot of noise in the past couple of years about the fact that content's going to be. Is not a defensible moat for L and D. But I absolutely believe that L and D does know more about creating good learning content than anybody else. If we choose to use what we know and we can, we should assert our authority in that area. And it shouldn't be difficult to point out that in some cases, the stuff that people produce and share or stuff they learn online, it might look glossy, it might be fluid, it might sound convincing, but it actually is incorrect or it's poorly structured or whatever. Now, Dr. Philip Harbin's done some very good work on this and looking at how AI can be used very effectively in pedagogically sound way by L and D people but people aren't going to be coming to LMD for their content. Favorite thing. Increasingly, if you give people the chance to talk into their phone and find an answer to something, that's what they're going to do. That's the reality. And we have to work with it. And there are lots of ways we can do that. I'm excited about the future. There are lots of things we can do, but we have to recognize that our, uh, province is no longer content. And that's not a defensible differentiator. It's not something that makes us look like the experts in a field that nobody else is anymore.

Speaker B: Unfortunately, it is then perhaps something that we need to think about in terms of crafting the overall experience. Because if it's not just content, um, then it's what the overall experience looks like. And I wonder if it will come down to almost a lowest common denominator for us, where we only end up dealing with compliance training, for example, um, where we only end up dealing with the leadership programs where people throw money at it. And what happens to, to the everyman, um, you know, progress alongside pressure, essentially. We've got to find our new way. What is your suggestion? I mean, I know that you've done a lot of research around this and you're looking into it through your transformation triangle. Do you want to talk to us a little bit about that? You know, your AI and L and D report makes a really clear argument in that space.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'd like to think we're not making an argument so much as reflecting the reality. What we're trying to do with the, uh, the transformation triangle is look at what people are actually doing. And rather than being prescriptive saying, oh, you should do this, you should do that, we'd rather be descriptive and say, this is what's happening, this is what people in the world are doing, and we can see some patterns. Uh, I, uh, hope at some point Michelle will be able to come back to your point about what happens to L and D in the future. I firmly believe that there will be some significant changes to L and D. So let's come back to that point. But as you've asked about the triangle, let's just, uh, look at it. We brought out, um, the AI and L&D report for 2025, which came out in September of 2025. What we've done is we've looked at what people are doing well with L and D and the use of AI and we found that there was a pattern, that there were three what we call destinations that you can go to. I want to make it quite clear that when I describe these things, it's not a checklist of activities that people are going through. It's not something which you're just choosing um, to do some of these things and it's working out. It's more complex than that. These are things which involve probably fundamental changes to the organization. Organization. So, um, the first of these is, the first of the three destinations is a skills authority. Uh, here skills are pretty much treated like a business asset by the organization as a whole. And that's important, right? It's not L and D saying, oh, we've done skills at audit. Skills are treated as important by the organization as a whole. You know what you have, you know what you need to get, you know how to get from here to there. Everybody in the organization treats skills and learning as being consequential. That word consequential is really important. It uh, links all these three points. The enablement partner is that almost like not the alternative, but it's a different view of looking at the capability of your organization. Skills authority is quite centralized and they are uh, uh, sharing information across the organization. So consultancies will typically be uh, a, uh, skills authority if they do this well. An enablement partner is an area where you've got a lot of a, uh, diffused organization. Very often people know what they need to do. And very often, no matter how good your L&D department is, employees on the front line know more about what they need to do than you do. But that expertise is unevenly distributed. The job of L and D is to find out who's doing job, who's doing things well. Or rather to enable people who are doing things well to capture, surface and share what they've got so the rest of the organization can use it. Learning is still regarded as consequential. People want to learn this stuff so they do their job better. Managers regard people learning to do their job better as an important way in which people spend their time. You're in a hotel chain, someone in Sydney finds two minutes shaved off. Check in time by doing something great. Get it up, share it, let the whole organization from Buenos Aires through to Berlin learn the same thing. Those two minutes really add up over the day. So that's two things. Skills, authority, enablement partner. In both of those, learning is consequential and it's a central role of the L&D department. The third one is the adaptation engine. And the adaptation engine L and D doesn't so much exist as a separate department anymore. Here we recognize that the environment, the systems, shape performance more than training does. And we regard it therefore as something which requires a systematic solution. You've got like a SWAT team that goes in and it could involve people from. Will involve people from what used to be called L and D, but they're now just part of a team that goes in and looks at talent, learning, training skills, um, marketing, employee value proposition, all these things bundled together and finds out when there's a performance problem, whether it's a short term one or a longer term Capability 1. How do we, um, unpick that, find the various components and within that, solving that problem? If learning's part of it, of course that learning is consequential because the organization sees that that systemic approach is vital to the organizational performance. So that's a lot of words to describe what I'm talking about. But that's the transformation triangle in a nutshell. We raised it in 2025. It got a lot of traction, and I think it gave a lot of traction because it gave people a sense that, right, AI isn't just a matter of doing what we do now, but more of it. It's a matter of changing what we do and how we approach our work. Edgar and I brought out another report, uh, for Learning Technologies, where we talked about it in 2025, in 2026, in May and in uh, April was the technologies. The report was in May. And of course we'll be using that as a framework to explore what's happening in the next report, which comes out in September.

Speaker B: I'm curious to know from the feedback that you're getting from this as a suggestion. I mean, you talk about it as reflecting reality. And I think we've been in this, some of this space for some time, especially when it comes to that adaption engine that if we've not been looking holistically, if we've not been looking at the wider system, we're missing a trick. You don't just land L and D into a, ah, vacuum. You land it into a very complex organization, Even if it's the most simple of organizations, because human beings are involved and we are naturally inherently complex. So I'm just wondering what, you know, what, what are you getting reflected back to you, Don? Are people agreeing? Are they resisting? Are they giving you another direction? Are they asking which one should they choose?

Speaker C: Yeah, all those things, uh, people are. And I said, I think people are resisting. That's interesting. And nobody, uh, has come back and said, well, this is complete tosh. And you, you're talking through your hat. I think people are positive about it. I think some people are imagining they're doing. They're closer to one of these points than they actually are. And I think it's very easy to say, well, we're doing skills. We've got a framework, we've got, we've got assessments, whatever. But that business of learning being consequential and of the people in the L&D department sharing the information about it across the business, not because it's learning department saying something, but because it is a business asset. That's the cultural shift which most organizations haven't made. On the skills side, although many are getting there. Um, I think the most common thing is that people are not, um, they're not recognizing the drags that exist on the journey towards one of these three points. And they're imagining if they just do enough work and the leadership is committed enough, they'll get there. But it's more complicated than that and they can be stymied on the journey for various reasons. Uh, and if they're held back on that journey, simply setting a vision and saying we have to change our mindset isn't enough. There are practical things that need to be done to overcome the resistance or the drags on that journey.

Speaker B: Yeah, I would agree entirely. Because what tends to happen is if you're just hoping that your organization will come along with you, or if you're just hoping that they'll engage in the change without actually perhaps setting some strategy, being proactive about, what do you stand for? Now, we've already talked about how the default is leadership or people will just go to AI. So you become superfluous without actually fighting your corner.

Speaker C: And, um, this comes back to the point you raised earlier about what? I'm sorry, Londyn. Yes, um, and I think you're right. I think this is not the position necessarily, but this is my view of having been in this field for a long time. I think we're facing a point where there'll be two types of L and D in the future. One will be a strategic type of L and D, where people are doing stuff for the organization as a part of the organization. And learning seems a consequential and important way of solving short term performance and long term capability issues at the same time. There'll be the necessary stuff, compliance, training, onboarding, anything where everybody has to get themselves from here to there and you have to know that everybody is there and there'll be Leadership training as well. But I think leadership training might be slightly outside that. I think that those two bits, the compliance side of training and the strategic learning development bit, may end up being two completely separate parts of the organization. The training bit being called learning development or something else. The strategic bit being called something completely different.

Speaker B: What's interesting in Australia is I actually see their split already.

Speaker A: Oh, really?

Speaker B: Yeah. So oftentimes compliance will be owned by governance or risk, not even by L and D. Leadership, um, will be owned by od. There's this real correlation between organization development and leadership here, which is quite fascinating to me because I see organization development as something entirely different, totally different domain. Um, and leadership kind of tends to sit under that here. And then you've got strategic L and D doing discretionary programs, doing programs that are sort of, um, in a separation from, from compliance. So it'd be interesting to see that's one culture separate from what we've experienced in the UK we may have, you know, 105 countries took part in your global Sentiment survey. There may be 105 interpretations of that future of L and D. But to your point about you've got strategic and you've got sort of pragmatic, um, as two separate entities, um, I can really believe that to be true. For me, what concerns me especially as I see this in this governance, owning compliance, is that it's not about the adult learning principles, it's not about the learning experience. It's actually about ticking a box. It's about, you know, the reason for learning in the first place. And I wonder if there's any reflections on that in what you've been finding as your report, uh, and your research. Why are we doing it in the first place? You know, if we can just go to YouTube or if we can just ask AI create as a course in five minutes. You know what? Why bother having a strategic L and D approach? Why bother having instructional design that we know actually works?

Speaker C: Well, there's a lot in that question. Michelle. I think let's go into the compliance bit for a second. I think we shouldn't underestimate the importance of compliance and we shouldn't underestimate the value of it to lnd. So it's valuable to LMD because it's a shop window. If everybody in the organization has to do something, then they're going to judge you by what compliance training looks like. And unfortunately, if you regard the compliance training as something which you just have to get through as an instructional designer, I'm not suggesting everyone's like this. But certainly a lot of compliance training is very dull. And it's not seen as being learning by either the people who participate in it or the people who create the content. The result is that they then see that everything they're learning department is going to be like that. It's a very negative experience which spills over. So I think we need to take it seriously. But the other point is that why would we bother with instructional designers? I think organizations that recognize the importance of compliance know that it's got to be done right. And, uh, the best way I can describe this is the words of a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy who said to me, donald, when we go into action, I don't want my boys having learned how to fire their guns through Wikipedia. There are some things which you just have to get right for less exciting things, like financial regulations, right? You've actually got to know that stuff. You've got to do it right. And if the compliance isn't done properly, two things can happen. One is, well, somebody comes along, sees all the boxes aren't checked and takes away your license to operate. That's bad. But worse is somebody does something rogue and they do it in the wrong way because they didn't learn something. Now, of course, people can learn things and still do things in the wrong way. It's not a guarantee that they won't do. But if they weren't given the opportunity to learn how to do it right and they go and bring down the bank, that's a lot worse than the previous option. So compliance is something which too often gets a bad rep and I think needs to be taken more seriously. But unfortunately, that's one side of it. The strategic side of it, if you like, rather than the compliance side of it, will only be taken seriously by organizations which think that learning is a crucial part of dealing with the 21st century. And I don't know, I'd be interested to know what you think about this, Michelle. I don't know that there is much that L and D can do to shift the culture of an organization and their attitudes towards learning and performance simply by doing their job well. Maybe there are other things they can do, but it's very difficult to change a whole culture of an organization. What do you think?

Speaker B: I think that's exactly the space we need to move M towards and play.

Speaker C: Oh, go on.

Speaker B: And the reason I think that is when you talk about strategic L and D, you can't really be strategic unless you're looking at the bigger picture. Unless you're realizing how society systems thinking will play into your learning and development. Now, you know, you, you know, my book, five, um, chapters of the at the beginning are really all about the wider system. Who your stakeholders, what's your strategy, you know, the kind of approach that you're taking. Because I genuinely believe that we need to influence in the right way. Now I want to just take you back to compliance. The conversation around compliance is endurance, something you have to do. Tick the box. Uh, it's, it's, you know, my husband said this to me. He puts the videos on double speed, goes, makes a coffee, comes back, guesses the answers. Totally missing the point.

Speaker C: Hold on, hold on. Is this going to go public? Is your husband in danger of getting fired?

Speaker B: No, it's all good because then we have a good conversation. I say no, this is not how it means for me. It's about shifting the conversation. Conversation. So shift the conversation to do you want to go home safely today? Do you want your colleagues to go home safely? Do you want to make safe, legal, ethical, healthy decisions at work today? And if you have a different conversation that's cultural, that's a cultural shift. So this brings the two sides of your coin together. This is the strategic L and D and the necessary L and D. It does M. And of course, who in their right mind is going to say, I don't want my staff to be safe, legal, healthy at work? Now, of course, it depends who owns the, the narrative. Who, who controls that narrative. What's interesting is the judiciary are starting to make the shift. So in Australia in January this year, there was a case brought. It was a sexual harassment case and they were legally compliant. They, they ticked all the boxes. But the, the judge ruled that it wasn't sufficient to do E learning whilst it was a casino whilst out on the casino floor. You can't actually be learning behavior change if you're, if you're not concentrating on the learning. So to my husband, putting the video on, skipping off and guessing the answers that ticked the box, legally compliant, but actually that's no longer enough. So I think that L and D needs to really focus in on what is strategic L and D, what value are we bringing? You know, AI can help us surface the case law, but actually how do we apply that case law in play?

Speaker C: How persuasive can L and D be in this, how much contact they have? Because we know the culture comes from top of the organization. I'm not saying we can't do it, but I'm saying do you think it's Possible. Have you seen organizations where they have done it?

Speaker B: I've seen organizations that are getting interested in it. Uh, and to your point earlier, lose their license to operate. Operate. There's been organizations in Australia who have lost their license to operate, and they are now operating through a governmental board in order to regain their license. They need to look at these things differently. Um, and you know, there's a lot of licensed organizations here. So we've got mining, we've got gambling. We've got all sorts of different organizations, and they're replicated across the world. But for me, it's not even about your license. It's about the right thing to do. It's about human beings in the age of A.I.

Speaker C: uh, of course. But it's tough enough getting in to see the CEO and saying we need to get the licensing right for the. To keep the business talking about the higher picture. Um, will work in about 1% of cases. Sydney Savion, who was, um, CLO at Air New Zealand for a while, did a really good job there with, um, persuading the regulators to take a different approach to learning and making it much less around checkboxes and much more around actual behavior change. She's now back in New York working for a nonprofit, I think. Um, but it is possible to do it. I think it just, it takes a lot of energy and time and commitment.

Speaker B: Well, it's interesting that you mentioned the regulators talking recently to, uh, an internal auditor. So this is an external company that comes in and does internal audits. And they said that they are really copping the flak. So they're being told that, um, you know, we, we have to do it. And they're using their audit reports as we have to do it.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: When actually no auditor in their right mind is saying, you must do boring elearning. Uh, tick a box. Actually, what the auditor's looking for is examples of behavior change. When they can't identify an example of behavior change, they say that there needs to be more training. And so we're in this sort of. This loop of, uh, people sort of thinking that we can't do compliance well, but we've gone down a track I didn't expect we would go down, but it is one of my personal passions. You and I have had long conversations about, um, how that shop window is so important. We've got 100% of our audience, which is why I think we need, in order to have this future of learning and development, we need to go where we're needed. And I think we are needed in that compliance space, especially if it's owned by governance and risk, um, because it needs to be of better quality. We sort of need to start coming to thinking about, um, what's next. And there's one word in the research that I just really picked up on and probably having listened to me talk today, um, that word is hope. Dawn, what hope can you give? What is the data picture painted? Um, you know, when it, when it comes to hope in such a pressurized world that we're currently living in, I

Speaker C: think hope is very important. Otherwise, why do you get out, um, of bed in the morning and do anything if you don't believe that you can be successful? And I do believe that there are strong and good reasons to be hopeful. The fears that we have are based around uncertainty. I think the transformation triangle in particular, and, um, who knows, it may be in the future, it's a square or a pentagon because we discovered there are other destinations. But the clear thing is that there are places that we can go and we can do things and it won't necessarily be easy. We stress a lot in the report, the May report, about the transformation triangle go. We stress a lot that leadership is crucial. It's necessary, but it's not sufficient. With L and D, we need to have people who can drive things forward, but you can't do it all by yourself. And the question leaders need to be asking themselves is what happens if and when I leave? So the leadership needs to be able to galvanize people in the department, get them to change, galvanize the organization, maybe not all of it, but a part of it, and get interchange as well. So I think a lot of the practical side of what we come down to, what we can do comes down to hope, that we're trying to provide people here, that there is a route to success in L and D and in fact to doing a lot more in L and D using AI and other tools than we've done in the past. And I really sincerely believe that AI opens up a whole new range of new things that we can do. Simulations, expert support, uh, coaching, uh, that can be driven by, supported by, augmented by AI. Hope alone isn't enough. You leave a conference, you've heard some great speakers, you feel hopeful, get back to the office, you got the pile of stuff in your inbox. You've got to deal with it. So hope has to be accompanied by action. And ultimately, when you are a, uh, certain way down the path, it's going to get tough, things are going to get difficult. You have to make hard choices. That's where you need courage as well. So I think these three things together, you need the hope to start, you need to be committed to taking action, and you need the courage to continue. Then things are tough. I think that if you've got those things, things, we've definitely got a big future in learning and development because so much now is possible. And crucially, in a world of technology where ultimately AI becomes a commodity, as technologies always do, nobody gets ahead at the moment because they've got an Excel spreadsheet. Nobody wins because they've got a steam engine. Those things became commodities within a certain period of time. ChatGPT All AI tools will become commodities, if they're not already. The question is, how do you use them? What skills, what knowledge, what critical thinking can people use in using those tools? That's where L and D comes in. If we're doing our job right, I think it's a long way away from, I've, uh, got to teach people how to do an introductory course in Excel, which is what I started doing back in the 1990s. But it's much more interesting and it's much more important. And I think we are the people to do it. If we have the hope, we take action and the courage to continue.

Speaker B: Where do you think people are getting that courage from? Is it upgrading on those skills? Does that, by definition, give courage?

Speaker C: I hope that it comes from the community. I think that we need to be supporting each other, pointing out who's doing great work and saying, I'm going to be like them. And always when you stumble, because everyone's going to stumble on this journey, have friends around you who can say, ah, ah, look, that happened M to me. Or maybe it didn't happen to me, but anyway, keep going. The journey's worth it. So I think the community is the essential component in this.

Speaker B: Yeah, I 100% agree. I think that community is what's got us through all of these big shifts. When we think about, you know, when, when we first started using E learning and you're sitting next to somebody who's working with, articulate or don't know how to use it, that's what. What we do. We just ask the person sitting next to us. But it's not even as simple as that, is it? It's the complexity.

Speaker C: No, it's not. It's. You're right, you're right that we need to ask people, but it's a much bigger scale. And I'm not. Some people will be inspirational. BLIMEY look at what so and so's done. Isn't that fantastic? But really, I think the community of, uh, people saying, here's a small thing you can do today that's different. Here's a way you can get back half an hour in your day by approaching things in a different way. It's not technical things, how you deal with people. Here's how I change that person from being a complete saboteur of what I'm doing to being at least neutral. And sometimes they're positive about it. Those things we need to share. And that's why I'm a firm believer in conferences, yes, but also online communities and sharing generally. And I think, uh, on LinkedIn, online events, your podcast, everything, it's really important to hear how other people are doing. It's a reality check and an inspiration to give you that bit of courage. It's tough to keep going.

Speaker B: I think the courage you get from doing that is that you have a perception that everyone's further ahead than you. But we're actually all swimming around trying to find the right direction with this stuff. I don't think anyone's really nailed it.

Speaker C: So I'm going to do a post on this on how the human mind works in terms of seeing distributions and what the actual distribution is. So in our minds, we typically think about things as a normal distribution. Classic belt bell curve, which is fair. Average height, weight, everything great. For technology adoption. It's not like that. For technology adoption, you've got a skewed distribution. So it's like this. It's a lot of some people doing nothing, a lot of people doing a bit. And then there's this long tail out here of some people who are doing amazing stuff. This is what we hear about. And so we all imagine, oh, that's where everybody is, but the median is down here somewhere, somewhere. And we should try to just think, well, how do I get a bit better today? Rather than how can I possibly do this stuff that these amazing people are doing? It won't happen. So change your mental attitude, which is impossible to do, but try to just get better each day rather than leap forward into something which somebody who started three years ago is doing.

Speaker B: I think that takes us really right back to you taking AI off the list, because actually it's normalized, actually trying a little bit every day, um, and not feeling like you're being left behind. Um, I did an interview with Egler recently for People Management magazine about exactly this, and she was really helpful. So I'll link to that in the show notes as well, because that feeling of being left behind is paralyzing, actually. Um, but we can get courage by realizing that actually we're all learning, we're all trying to move forward. Um, and I'll, uh, give a shout out to Ian Pettigrew, good friend who's written a book called, called Hope Is a Strategy. And I think that, um, just as a title of a book, it gives me hope. Um, but there is definitely a strategy that you've suggested there about hope, courage and action. Now, don, your next AI in L& D report you've mentioned is due out in September. So without spoiling it, can we have a little bit of a direction of travel or is it too soon?

Speaker C: It's not too soon, but it's very dangerous to say what's going to happen before it happens because we haven't written a report yet. By the time it comes out, it could be that we've changed our minds about things. Um, but I will say this one thing. We know, looking at what's happened over the past three years, that people have used AI for all the time for creating content, but how they have used it to create content. Content has changed dramatically just between 2024 and 2025 and 2026. Well, at least that between those first two years, because people have shifted. They're still creating content, but they're doing it in a very different way. They've gone from asking chat GPT a question and copy and pasting the answer to using it as a sparring part. And that's one very simple example. There are lots of other ways in which it's being used differently. I can predict that that trend will continue. And not only will that continue, but also that the base of people who are doing that thing differently, which is a fundamentally different way of creating content to how we've done it in the past, that base will grow. So, again, coming back to our skewed distribution, not everybody's going to be doing crazy, wild, exciting things, but a lot of people will be doing their job a bit better by using LLMs in a different way. And I think that's something we should congratulate ourselves on and be happy about.

Speaker B: Okay, well, thank you. Thank you for that little sneak peek.

Speaker C: That's as much as I can say. You know, I don't want to persuade anybody who is answering the survey right now to answer in a different way. That's very important.

Speaker B: Is there anything else that you wanted to say today that you haven't yet had the opportunity Opportunity. Please do feel free to add.

Speaker C: I'll pretty much say this at the end of every podcast, please put down your phone and have a conversation with somebody. Today, the number of words that people hear has been diminishing. Now, it is true, you're still communicating with people, perhaps via text, but it's not the same as having a verbal conversation with somebody, whether it's just in the shop over a cup of coffee or you go out to meet somebody you haven't seen for a while. Talking to somebody is a different way of communicating. And you can see them, you can listen to them, you can shape your ideas on the basis of what you're perceiving. Their emotional reaction is in a way that you can't do with text. I'm concerned that too much of our interaction with people is happening online and that's removing our ability to capture the nuance of interpersonal relationships. You might say this has nothing to do with L and D. Well, maybe it doesn't. I think it does, though, because I think that we're all about people. And if we're into trying to persuade people to behave differently, that's the core of what we're doing. And it probably starts with a conversation. So let's not lose that crucial human skill we've got. Go out and practice it today, please.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's definitely something I see in Australia, despite the vast geography, people do love to get together, um, in a room and have a yarn, have a chat. Um, so, yeah, thanks for.

Speaker C: Have a convo in the arvo while they're doing their Renault, maybe.

Speaker B: Uh, yes, all of those things. But, um, I have to say, I did say to Michelle Ockers recently, how do you know if it's an O at the end or an ie? I'm still learning. I'm still learning. So, listeners, if you've got any tips for my Australianisms to annoy Don Taylor in future episodes, I'd love them. Thank you so much, dawn, for sharing with us just how the global sentiment surveys moved on, how this has been influenced by your AI in L& D work as well. And, um, let's. Let's pick it up when you do the next sentiment survey coming up later in the year. Um, but for now, that's all on Learning Uncut. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. And if you enjoy our episodes, don't forget to subscribe and to share them with others so more people can find the wisdom of Don Taylor and all of our other guests. Thanks very much, Dom.

Speaker A: Thanks so much. Thanks for listening. Head to the LearningUncut Global website to access resources mentioned in this episode and more to help you elevate your practice and impact.