The Business of Learning, Special Episode: A CLO’s Look at L&D in the Future of Work

Speaker A: M. When endless information is within arm's reach, modern learners demand something worth reaching for. They need skills training that translates to career outcomes, not just acronyms and accolades. With Canvas Career, you can easily align skills training to real world outcomes that keep learners coming back. Uh, learn more about Canvas Career today.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Business of Learning, the Learning Leaders podcast from Training Industry, where we speak with industry experts and thought leaders on all things learning and development. Hi. Welcome back to the Business of Learning. I'm Sarah Gallo, a senior editor here at Training Industry.

Speaker C: And I'm, uh, Michelle Eggleston Schwartz, Editor in chief. As organizations navigate rapid change, shifting business priorities and the growing influence of AI, expectations for Learning Leaders are expanding in real time. So what do these shifts mean for learning and development teams? And how can L and D professionals better align their work to support the business in this new environment? To learn more, we're joined by Melissa Lobel, Chief Learning Officer at Instructure. Melissa, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here.

Speaker B: Awesome. Um, I'm looking forward to our conversation today. And to kick us off from your perspective as a clo, Melissa, what are some of those biggest shifts you're seeing in how L and D functions are really expected to operate today compared to five or even 10 years ago?

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, that's such an important question. And I see two big shifts happening for clos. The first big shift is how are we developing our employees, our broader community, so that they can handle a really rapidly changing future. That's everything from understanding how to leverage AI where appropriate, all the way through to how do you build resistance and how do you build, um, you know, how do you build the ability to, uh, indeed endure a really somewhat unexpected environment that we're all trying to operate in? So it's sort of one category of big changes happening, and then the second category is technology itself. Um, and how are we meeting the expectation of our employees and how they want to learn, how they want to engage in content, how they want to be embedded in their own development processes, and how do we use technology to do that?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: So there's this, how do we deliver the learning experience that's changing, and then also, what is it that employees need in order to face an uncertain future? Uh, changing as well. So we've got these two dynamics kind of folding together, and I think CLOs are really trying to figure out how do I grapple with both at the same time so that I can create a really engaging, inspiring, and development oriented environment driven My employees definitely there's, there's

Speaker C: so much change happening in the workplace and um, I kind of like to dig into that a little more. And how is the CLOS role changing, um, kind of in this new AI driven workplace, like both in terms of responsibilities and even influence at the executive table. Um, what, what's your perspective there?

Speaker A: Yeah, the CLO's role is changing not just within, um, the key elements of what they're trying to deliver. Again, ensuring that employees are um, prepared, excited and engaged in what they're doing. But that CLO is really, as you just described, a key part of the executive team because that CLO has the same set of goals as the rest of the executive team. How do we drive to the business outcomes we're trying to seek? Those outcomes aren't just arrived at, uh, because of good business practices or because of good leadership. They're also arrived at because of an evolving and um, deepening experiential employee base. So we're all, as we think about it, working towards the same set of outcomes in business and we have to remember that. And then what we need to do as CLOs, and I've been working a lot with this is thinking from a backwards design perspective. I know many of your guests will probably joy a little bit of learning. Nerd. Um, but from a backwards design perspective then if these are our outcomes, how are we designing the right kind of environment for both formal and informal learning that then our employees can be significant contributors into achieving those outcomes. Also, I think the CLO needs to have a voice in what are those outcomes, what is possible, how can we rethink our workforce? Especially as you mentioned with the disruption of AI, it's really causing a lot of conversations to surface around where do I need talent, where do I augment my talent with, with AI and how do I create a, a hybrid environment or a human AI environment in the workplace so that we can not only maximize efficiency, which I think is a, a bit of a table stakes, but also that we can actually accelerate our growth, we can accelerate the achievement of those outcomes. So they need to be a voice in that and they need to be a voice in the technology behind how are we driving all of that? And again creating that sort of hybrid environment in which technology and humans sit right alongside each other in order to reach outcomes. I love that kind of, that outcomes

Speaker B: first approach is so, so important right now. Um, and when thinking about AI, I think there's often a lot of challenges and also opportunities. Right. For learning leaders. So I'd Love if you could dig into kind of what opportunities does AI present for CLOs to drive more business impact and where do you see businesses still struggling to use AI effectively?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think as I mentioned at the very beginning, those that those two sort of main tracks of work that the CLO is grappling with or that are, that are changing rapidly. I think the first place, um, if we want to think about the development of learning experiences, this is a great place for AI. I don't see AI replacing instructional designers or trainers, but you can absolutely see AI augmenting the kind of creation that's being leveraged of content. Augmenting. Uh, how do we create contextual learning experiences? I'm a big advocate for scenario based, um, simulation based, context based experiences where employees can um, learn in a directly relevant way to both their role and those larger outcomes we're talking about. So AI gives lots of opportunities for, for content creation that even three, four years ago would be really burdensome to develop. Similar to that, AI gives you a lot of opportunity to rapidly update content and actually automate a whole content, uh, development process. So that piece I think is really exciting when we think about the learning experiences we're developing. The last piece that I think AI enables from those learning experiences themselves, themselves is it allows for personalization, which is essential. Many companies are facing, or I shouldn't say facing, many companies are, have employee bases that are multi generational and um, uh, I do some research around generational differences or how do people like to learn. Depending on which generation you fall in, how do you engage in those learning experiences? Where are you comfortable, where are you not? What are your technology preferences? Well, many companies have multi generations and there are pretty distinct differences in how and where and why you want to engage. And what do you expect from that learning process? Again, three, five years ago it was really challenging to create personalized tracks of learning. Um, there's a lot of content, a lot of leaning in, especially if you're trying to keep that content relevant. But now AI can really do that. It can create Personas for you so that as you're thinking about your different audiences or your different departments and you're delivering, delivering learning, you can now match to the kinds of preferences that those different audiences have. So I think that's AI's first track is how do we create more engaging, meaningful learning experiences at scale? How do we manage the content process differently and even automate that so that trainers and um, you know, instructional designers and learning leaders in organizations can now be the uh, facilitator of those and can reflect on the progress employees are making in their own journeys. Which is what I think the second piece is. If we think about how do employees address the fact that the world is changing and the skills you have now are probably not the skills you're going to need in two to three years. You know, as much as you need to relearn and reskill regularly, you also need to be aware of yourself as a learner and where AI can really help. That is, AI can, can visualize your paths. It can take insights and data from what are you doing in your work, how are you achieving your own outcomes? Visualize that not only for learning leaders and managers, but also for individual employees so they can see their own growth trajectory and how they're developing the skills needed to be more and more successful in this rapidly changing world. And those are just kind of a couple of examples of where I think AI can have real opportunity for Clos to think their, to rethink their practice perhaps, or even to leverage and scale their practice in different ways.

Speaker C: I love that it's really such an exciting time for learners to be able to have this personalized experience and it's really helping um, L and D make that a reality. Um, and so from that aspect it's very exciting. Um, but with all that change, uh, comes with some challenges. Um, and as we see um, technology evolve, um, skills also evolve. Um, so I'd love to hear um, what skills or capabilities um, are you seeing that Clos really need to develop in order to be successful in this technology enabled environment?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think Clos to be successful in this rapidly changing and very technology rich environment they need a couple of really core skills. One is um, resilience, um, you know, finding and being positive. As you path through those changes, uh, things are going to rapidly change from either the technologies that you're using and the capabilities within those to what's expected of you as a clo. I'm seeing significant shifts away from for example compliance work and more towards continued employee development so that you can maximize both the employee experience and what they're delivering within the organization. So there's a resilience, um, component, I think creativity and even desire to think completely differently about your practice and be comfortable with that. It's hard. One of the things that um, is just natural in our brain is we tend to hold on to information or skills or competencies that we've had forever because we think those make us unique. But the challenge is a lot of those are irrelevant now and so we have to learn to let go of those and be comfortable replacing with new skills and be constantly curious about how can my role evolve with the organization and even help drive those outcomes and innovation within the organization. So this creativity and this willing to think differently and, and let go and add skills is really important. Then I think m perhaps the last, and I'll say this as a collection of skills, is there is a need for um, an understanding of the impact of all the technologies that are changing the workplace. So it's not just necessarily how can AI be used in creating really engaging learning experiences, but how is AI for example being used in my R and D organization? What are the tool sets that they're using? How is AI being, how is it changing sales and our go to market motions? These different components, um, learning leaders need to understand technology in a, in a broader, more rich way because so many of that, of those different technologies are pockets of insights into employees, pockets of how are we driving towards those outcomes through learning. And they also create really interesting opportunities for rethinking our own work. I'll give you a super simple example. Our R and D team, um, heavily manages all of their development work in jira. And JIRA is typically thought of as a very product or engineering oriented platform. Well, one of the things that my team's adopted is leveraging that to manage our own life cycle of the work. And what we found as a side benefit is we can now start to tie the work that we're doing with the work that R and D is doing and see a more holistic dashboard to show where do we have skill gaps, where do we have skills we didn't even know and that we can leverage as we're trying to implement new opportunities. So, so me being willing to go, I don't know jira, but I'm going to learn it, I'm going to understand, I'm going to be exposed to it. I don't have to know it in the very deepest ways, but I'm going to be exposed to it to see is there an opportunity and is the synergy of me using it for my needs alongside what R and D, is using it valuable? Uh, is it a one plus one equals three kind of situation? And for us it has been as a learning leader.

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Speaker B: So good insights there. Melissa. I love kind of what you said earlier about the need to sort of unlearn skills that are no longer serving you or that may no longer be relevant. I think that can be really scary, you know, and it's something we don't talk about enough. Um, that's so, so important. And I guess while we're talking about skills, another one that we often see come up for learning leaders, especially um, in the C suite like clos is business acumen. Do you have any practical tips that CLOS can take to deepen their understanding of the business and align their strategy with business goals?

Speaker A: Oh yes, that is such. You're so spot on with business acumen. And, and I think I didn't mention it, I take it a little bit for granted. I have to remind myself I actually stepped into a CIELO role from an operational role in our organization. So I am an educator by training. That's where most of my work is done. But um, I've been 12 years at Instructure and prior to the CIELO work over the last two years I was our chief customer officer for eight years. And then prior to that I was, I ran business development functions. So I was already somewhat attuned to it. But let me um, coming from being an educator into those roles, a couple of things that I did that helped me understand the different facets of the business in a sort of safe and relatable way. So one was um, you know, I spent, I spent a fair amount of time and there's a lot of opportunity for AI in this just trying to go and learn what are the common metrics each of the divisions in larger industry leverage. So for example, on um, a customer success side, a lot of the metrics revolve around customer retention, revenue retention, um, uh, uh, price increases. There's a common set of metrics there that for a chief learning officer as an educator, I didn't know what do those mean more broadly in the industry and then how do I relate those to what those specifically mean to my organization so that when I'm sitting in executive meetings, I can actually look at dashboards and be able to understand what I'm looking at and even start to ask questions or make suggestions related to those, even if it's not related directly to my function as a learning officer. So, so that's one piece and, and you can do that. There's some really great stuff, um, around just business acumen, metrics, free courses out there, even AI or, or you could even um, depending on the AI tools that you use within your organizations, just take in and just a PNL and have an exchange with an agent around what do these things mean? What are these things mean? Of course, do it safely within your own work environment, but, but like you can start to really ask questions and understand. So I would start with metrics and backing into what are the metrics actually tracking. And one of the things um, related to that is not make assumptions that, you know, because I was surprised. There are probably six different metrics for managing customer attention, for example, and they all slightly mean different things and they all calculate differently. And then we calculate them very, in very specific ways. So once you get a higher level understanding, challenge your own assumptions about those metrics and then start to peel away that onion. So it's one thing, um, for a business acumen development, the second is lean into your industry. This is again another great place for AI, um, setting up alerts and agents that are tracking to key thought leaders in this space, that are tracking to research publications in this space. Um, you know, tracking to the work you all do is, is really important I think, I think making yourself knowledgeable about your industry will also help ground the way you can contribute to those executive conversations right alongside unpacking metrics and understanding what metrics mean. And then the last thing I'll say is don't be quiet and ask a lot of questions. I know that, um, especially as an educator, sometimes I worry about, well, I'm the educator in the room and people are, you know, why is she asking that? But it's actually the opposite, um, is what I found that when you do ask questions and you do um, you know, have conversations either individually with your, the rest of your executive team or as a collective, it's helpful for them as well because you're coming at it from a different perspective than they are. And again, this is another one plus one three situation where you can actually surface up things just by each of you taking different frames that you might never see in your organization. So just be out there and be comfortable and be curious and ask questions, um, and just own the fact that you're the, you're the learning expert, but you may not be the expert in either of those metrics or the industry.

Speaker C: I love that, um, because as we know, building and having those strategic partnerships with senior leaders is so important for L and D to build and strengthen. And so kind of from that perspective, I'd love if you have any advice for how close can. Can can position themselves as that strategic partner to other executives in the organization.

Speaker A: Oh, I love thinking about this in that way because, um, again, the, the Cielo, we have so much to offer to the conversation from a different perspective. So a couple pieces of advice. One is, um, as you're, as you are developing your own plans, naturally connect your own plans to those either business outcomes or business strategy or both. So if you, if you tie it into language that the other leader will understand. So let's say you're building a strong relationship with your revenue leader. Helping them, helping them. See, I'm doing this work, um, this AI training is really valuable. And embedded in it are key ways that we're making sure as your team goes out to visit customers and prospects, they have all of the information they need to have more strategic conversations. Speak it in their language, relate your strategy to their strategy, because not only does it, um, show that you're understanding and driving towards being of service to them, but it also gives them a good sense that, oh, well, you actually do have that business acumen that we were just talking about. And I actually want to come to you and ask you questions because I need another thought partner in that. So that's one piece that I, um, would suggest, and then the second piece that I would suggest to close is regularly surface all of the really powerful workforce data that's being surfaced that's being discussed right now.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: We see all sorts of stats from really, um, impactful organizations that are doing large studies on the changes in the workforce. And so everything from, you know, how much, how much do CEOs value learning? Or do they see it just as a compliance, um, aspect and they can't see that connection. Right. So that's kind of data that we're needing to combat or surface alternatives to, to what are the most comm. Skills that we're seeing as skill gaps, or what are the challenges that we're seeing coming out of the education environments in which your employees will come from, and how are those influencing the preparedness of your employees?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: There's so much rich Data, and those are the kinds of things. So we do this all the time. I'm always sharing in our Executive Slack channel, for example. I'm always sharing articles around. This may not be relevant to our industry, but understanding the workforce inside and out and the changes we're seeing in it more broadly is actually really, really important. So I'm always sharing articles, different experiences, different expressions of that, that establishes you also as a thought partner for each of those executives, because you're helping them navigate. I mean, they're all thinking about how am I hiring, how am I retaining my employees, how do I make sure, you know, they have the richest skills possible to be able to be as successful as possible. They're thinking about all those things. And so you're giving them the background context in which their employees are existing in. And, and that helps them reframe their own thinking. So I would do both those things.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Align strategies to each of the leaders that you, that you're becoming thought partners with, and then also be the expert in workforce changes and all that's happening in that space.

Speaker B: Love that. Well, we've covered a lot of ground today, Melissa, but to close us out, what's one piece of advice you'd like to leave other close or executive learning leaders with as they navigate the future of work?

Speaker A: Uh, one piece of advice. I think it's, uh, while I've always thought clo and learning leaders, we are essential and critical parts of organizational success. We're coming into our day in a lot of ways because of that change I talked about earlier. It, um, how people learn, how people skill, reskill, upskill, forget skills like we talked about, how that that is, is going to be a key business differentiator. And those that do that well and foster that among their employee base are going to be those organizations that succeed, those organizations that don't lean into that are going to struggle, especially with the kind of disruption AI is having. The other part to that is employees are craving this. The younger generations in particular actually look to organizations where they believe they can develop themselves and have a positive contribution. And so not only are you serving, um, the organization in a really meaningful way, you're serving those employees in that organization in the way they want to be served. And so it's really, like I said, we're coming into our day as clos. This is our time, and we need to step into that and really help shape and guide the way all organizations are shifting and, uh, in this era of rapid change.

Speaker C: Love that. On that note, Melissa, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. How can our listeners get in touch with you if they'd like to reach out?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. It's been an honor. Your questions were amazing and I love that we're thinking about these things and I am super easy to track down. Any listener can email me anytime. It's melissa@instructure.com uh, super easy to find me or just reach out to Instructure that I'd be happy to chat and I would love to learn what you all are doing out there in the field because this we have to help each other, right? We have to lift each other up and let's have a continued conversation.

Speaker B: Awesome. Well, for more resources on topics like this one, check out the episode description or visit the show notes on our website@trainingindustry.com podcast and don't forget to rate and review us wherever you tune in to the business of learning. Until next time.