Stop Educating Start Learning - The Secret to Performance with Nick Shackleton-Jones OrgDev Episode 90

This week on the OrgDev Podcast we’re joined by the brilliantly provocative Nick Shackleton-Jones, a guest who never fails to challenge how organisations think about learning. Nick brings energy, clarity and a healthy dose of disruption as he unpicks why so much workplace learning fails to change behaviour and what actually works instead.  He shares a rallying cry of resources not courses along with stories about simulations and onboarding that genuinely sets people up to succeed.

This is a lively, thought-provoking conversation packed with practical insights. If you’ve ever felt frustrated by tick-box training, overloaded programmes or learning that looks good on paper but goes nowhere in practice, this episode will give you plenty to reflect on and experiment with.

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About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

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Transcript

(00:00) Hi and welcome to the org dev podcast. So if so much of what we do in workplace learning doesn't actually change behavior, why do we keep doing it? When we look at how adults learn in real life versus how most corporate learning is designed, the mismatch is striking. Nick Shackleton Jones is our wonderfully provocative guest today.
(00:20) He spent years challenging traditional L & D models, assumptions, and conventions to help us be better. Nick is the founder of Shackleton Consultant and he's extremely well known in the corporate learning industry for groundbreaking work and thinking. For example, Nick started a firestorm by coining the phrase resources not courses.
(00:38) Nick created the 5DI approach to human- centered learn design, which we're really interested to explore today. He began his professional life as a psychology lecturer and working for Seammens, the BBC, BP in roles encompassing learning, strategy, culture, change, leadership, innovation, technology, and multimedia. He's the winner of several awards for people development strategy, innovation, and learning content, including the learning and performance institutees lifetime contribution awards for services to the industry. Nick is also author of the
(01:07) wonderfully accessible and incredibly provocative How people learn which is in its second edition which is brilliant and he has a fascinating educational background to underpin his experience. He has a BA in psychology and philosophy and also an MA in philosophy which brings a unique edge to learning that we haven't encountered before.
(01:24) So, so welcome Nick. We're really pleased to have you on the podcast. Well, we're really excited to have you with us. We've got lots of questions for you. And can I just say thank you for your Tik Tok as well. So, I really enjoy your content on Tik Tok. >> You're not supposed to know that know I exist on Tik Tok. >> Yeah.
(01:47) >> It's very good. Your musings on corporate life always. Oh god. Yes. >> They resonate very strongly. >> Yes. So um Gary gave us a quick overview of kind of your your background and you know can you just kind of expand a bit more on the work that you're doing now just to bring that to life for us a bit. >> Um I think my last sort of big role was chief learning officer at toy and I think if you climb the ladder of learning roles you eventually get into a position where it feels very administrative and so I think I realized
(02:14) that I didn't want to be sat behind a desk just you know doing governance calls all days long all day long. So I I now run my own consultancy. I've been doing that for four years. do all kinds of stuff which is basically about making my life adventurous. So I I train people on human- centered design.
(02:32) I do a lot of that kind of work for organizations, big organizations and small organizations. And I love meeting different people in different contexts and different cultures. I do uh design and delivery of leadership programs. So I've just finished designing a blended uh leadership program which is a lot of fun, all experiential.
(02:49) Um, I do onboarding programs, uh, help with culture change, uh, diversity inclusion programs. Um, and yeah, I I I thoroughly enjoy the work that I do and actually working with other learning professionals who basically we're all passionate about making a difference and I think that's what connects us. So, yeah, that's what I do.
(03:07) >> Fabulous. And you said you described yourself as a corporate annoyance and kind of that kind of being bit of a revolutionary in the industry and being provocative. What was the first thing that kind of made you start to challenge that kind of traditional training a learning model that's so endemic everywhere? >> That's kind of a a deep question.
(03:23) I think I I might just have been born annoying. There's a serious sort of dimension to that. I've I've always been the sort of person who wanted to ask these difficult questions. Hence, you know, I went into philosophy. I don't think I asked difficult questions because of the philosophy. I think probably I went, you know, into philosophy because uh, you know, I wanted to challenge things.
(03:42) I'll give you a story though because that's a bit dull. Um, when I first joined Seamus Communications, which was my first corporate gig, it was the early days of CD based learning and I had this library of of CDs from a company called I I think it was Smart Force back in the day or CBT Learning Systems maybe. And I think they thought I was just going to be like this digital librarian and I was going to be like hand people a CD and say, "There you go, go wild in your cubicle.
(04:11) " But we started doing things differently. We I hired a flash development team. We taught ourselves video skills. And one of the most successful things we did was the sales director said, you know, we want a digital program for salespeople. And I said, well, you know, I don't think people are really enjoying the the e-learning modules or CBT as they were then.
(04:31) Why don't we go around the country and film successful and interesting salespeople and capture their stories? And to give you a sense of how radical this was, this predated YouTube. There was no YouTube. We just started filming people telling their stories and putting them online. People love that. They love to see their colleagues and hear the stories.
(04:50) And so I've always been looking at something that would work better, you know, and that's I think what's driven me. >> Fab. And then when you think about some of those misconceptions out there from kind of leaders and people in organizations about how people learn, what are the what are the some of the myths you'd like to bust? the the the biggest one the easiest one is education.
(05:09) Most of what goes wrong in corporate L & D is because so the the organization complains that L & D doesn't make any impact and the learners complain that the learning isn't relevant and this happens because people are doing education not learning and what I mean by that is if you're an L & D person you'll often have this feeling that you're just an order taker and what happens is that the business thinks you're school teachers effectively they think that's what you do.
(05:34) They think they can come to you and say, "Here's some content. Can you put it in a course and get it out to people?" And the reality, as many of us know, is that a lot of the learning happens in work. We wish, for example, that leaders would play a more active role in learning and learning culture.
(05:50) But the reason they don't is because then, well, I'm not a school teacher. That's the HR team that does all that. So, this paradigm, the idea that you're going to take some content, put it in a module, put it in a course, and then it's going to transform behavior. That's why we're still struggling with ROI because the truth is it's not hard to measure ROI.
(06:08) It's just that that won't deliver an ROI. If we wanted to make a difference, we'd need to do something different to education because let's face it, how much algebra do you remember? It's just a demonstrably bad way to impact people and yet we do it because that's what everybody's come to know as education. So that is the biggest misconception I think that that learning is education.
(06:32) In fact, when I was looking through your book, it you talk about the kind of the pull and the push. So, that kind of build resources, not courses. So, that that kind of shift. So, that's one of your kind of tenants, isn't it, of your your philosophy? I guess >> it is. There's kind of two things that you can do that will make a difference.
(06:47) So, basically, people who learn at work do that because they're pushed by challenges. Very similar to 702010. It's the challenges that you face. And when you hit a challenge, you lean on the resources that you got. And the resource might be Bob sitting next to you like, "Hey, Bob, how do I do this?" Bob's the resource, but it might also be a checklist.
(07:06) But so there's only really two kinds of things that you can do, push and pull. You can create resources like checklists or guides or AI bots that people pull from, or you can create challenging experiences similar to the ones that people face on the job like simulations or scenarios which push which challenge people and push learning.
(07:25) And you really you can really only do one of those two things. And and the the substance for this or some backup for this comes from Atal Gwand's book, The Checklist Manifesto, which is why I said resources, not courses. You're going to get a lot more impact on performance in most cases if you just give people useful stuff.
(07:42) You give just give people the checklist and the guides and the flowcharts that they need to get the job done instead of trying to put them through weeks of training. So yeah, resources, not courses works for a lot of the time. And then experiences and challenges, you know, when you need to push. >> Yeah.
(07:59) And I guess with the resources, something about making them really accessible, isn't there? And not buried in a an LMS or a SharePoint site where you can't get to them. So that feels like another challenge we see quite often. >> Yeah, it is. It It's so ridiculous that we do that. It's like, well, we've created some great resources and we've locked them in a filing cabinet in the basement of an abandoned building um in a lavatory with a poster on the door that says, "Beware of the cheetah.
(08:24) " You know, it's like, "Oh, how do I get access to these resources?" Well, you have to go via single sign on. Oh, no, no, no. You can't do it on your mobile. And then you have to access the LMS. That's right. And then if you you search over here, Yeah. you have to click that as well, check the box, sign up. It's like, "Oh my god, no, that's that's it.
(08:40) I'm out. I'm not I'm not accessing those. So yeah, >> one of the things you talked about there was the sort of thing like the use of simulations for example and I think you sort of said that a good simulation should make you sweat. What is what is a simulation and how would an organization go about using it to sort of accelerate learning and and is a simulation in the easy reach of a typical kind of organization or does it need a you know a specialist kind of technology or something to make it work? >> Super interesting. That quote by the way
(09:05) is not mine. It came from Jim Weatherbeby. He's captain more NASA missions and I had the privilege of working with him while I was at BP because BP would hire these kinds of people and I remember him saying that that's when we knew a simulation was in in NASA was good because it would make you sweat and if you translate that into my world what I'm saying about simulations is they have to make your heart race.
(09:31) So for example I run a little exercise that only takes 60 seconds. I ran it day before yesterday called 60-cond consultant and I say to a group of people pick a card and they pick a card and there's got a topic on it and you got to talk about this for 60 seconds. Yeah. And it gets the heart racing and everybody says yeah I'll remember doing that.
(09:49) So what we want to try and do with simulations at work is not make them gratuitous like I don't know build a raft but actually make them relevant to the job so that you're practicing something in a way that feels like literally feels gives you the same emotional experience um real and and there are some obvious ways to do that like difficult conversations some of the listeners will be doing that already I think that's great practicing difficult conversations or customer service conversations ations or sales negotiations. And so to your your
(10:21) question, can organizations do that? Yeah, I think many of them can do it quite easily already um with existing people they've got in the organization um and digitally. Oh my gosh, it's so exciting. I use Chat GBT5 voice mode. You can have really realistic conversations with AI and then get this really accurate feedback about what you did right and what you did wrong.
(10:47) So if people aren't using chat GPT like that already, they're really missing missing a trick. So I think there's a whole world that's that's exciting and opening up there. >> And I guess that's quite a nice halfway house, isn't it? Because it's one thing to drive tear into people that knowing that there's a role play coming up and it'll be observed.
(11:04) Um so that kind of gives people a chance to sort of practice and build the muscle a little bit in sort of a a safer learning context, doesn't it? >> Yeah. And actually it's a halfway house. There's a whole load of steps. So there's an organization I work with called Practice Room Online. you can have actors, you know, so you can do it the the shallow end, I guess, is like um just practicing with AI and then you can practice with somebody who's impartial um you know, who's an actor, for example, and then you can do it in a room with your peers kind of watching. I
(11:31) quite like the last one though because it does get the heart racing, but also they learn by watching you. I think that's super interesting is that people who are struggling themselves to manage a difficult conversation will watch how their peers do it and think oh that's that's interesting I might I might try and do that bit more challenging but maybe that's a good thing >> and you talked there in terms of like there's a lot of kind of myths and old paradigms that people carry and um I think I remember you saying that like
(11:58) things that we sort of base our very sort of understanding of how learning happens like the forgett forgetting curve things like that are actually myths or badly translated science science, isn't it? >> Yeah. So, Ebinghouse 1885, you know, famously gave people a list of nonsense. So, he called them trigrams, three random threeletter things like JFQ or whatever or B ZT, and you had to he he monitored how long it took for people to forget them.
(12:26) And what he discovered was that they forget them very quickly. But, you know, it doesn't show what people think it shows because what he found was if you force people to repeat them over and over again, they start to remember them, which is why people talk about space repetition. But the reality is if you put some meaningful triagrams in there like FBI, um, or even kind of, you know, really emotionally evocative words like stab or something, people would remember those.
(12:54) And all he discovered is that if stuff is meaningless to us, we forget it very quickly. So he he proved completely the the wrong point which is don't force fe people meaningless stuff. Actually find out what is meaningful because then they'll remember it first time. You know, if you think back to your own life, many of the experiences that stayed with you were one-offs.
(13:17) You don't have to do them over and over and over again. If a tiger attacks you, you know, you don't have to have that happen 10 times in a row. It's like it's all about the emotional impact, you know, and and if you're just using garbage, then you won't learn anything interesting about people. >> And I guess there's a risk of more of that, isn't there, with AI, that it's even easier to create dull, meaningless content.
(13:37) >> And this is what this is why people complain that they haven't got time for learning. They've got loads of time for learning. The average Tik Tok user spends four hours a day. you know what they're telling you is that your stuff isn't relevant. It it it's just boring. It's just they know they're going to click next next next.
(13:54) It's not going to relate to the job and they're going to forget it all. Which frankly was how school worked. You know, this is why I say, you know, education is is what's sort of slowing us up. That idea that you can just take a bunch of information that doesn't matter to people, put it in a course, they'll click through it, and somehow they'll be transformed by the experience. That that doesn't work.
(14:14) >> And and you've had a fascinating career to date. What what has been your sort of journey into the field? >> I started off at a Quaker boarding school which was a bit Harry Potter. Um and then I traveled all over the world very fortunate. I learned to love different perspectives, hearing from different people, seeing different kind of cultures, thinking about things differently.
(14:38) Um and then I went into I became a psychology lecturer, published a couple of psychology textbooks. Um and then the lure of a salary, a decent salary took me from I was it was pitiful what I was ear earning as a psychology lecturer. So I went into corporate I went to the BBC um which was BBC had um lots of creativity but almost no money.
(14:59) Uh and then I went to BP who had lots of money uh but kind of almost no creativity. But we were able to take all the ideas that we'd had at the BBC and bring them to life. And it's I'm very grateful to BP for trusting us. We did things that were transformative for the industry. You know, shifting away from e-learning, for example, all these portals that you see, you know, we we kind of pioneered that approach.
(15:25) Um and then that took me into consulting. Got to work with some amazing organizations, United Nations, um all kinds of people and do some interesting wild experiential stuff as well as really cutting edge digital stuff. uh and then I published how people learn and went to deote and and how now now I am where I am today.
(15:46) >> Brilliant. That's such a fascinating story and I guess one one of the questions that came up when you were describing that is that really interesting transition from academics into sort of the the working world. What was it like to go with sort of a really good understanding of of how learning works but then to actually see it in in the real life about how people were applying it or not? Because you got fresh eyes, haven't you? When you see that >> was an idiot.
(16:09) So I thought I was going to change the world because I knew all of the learning theory. Well say all but my head was full of all of these ideas of different learning theories and instructional principles that I could apply that at that time which is kind of the birth of the internet. Nobody was applying.
(16:28) I thought I'm going to apply you know PJ and Bruna modes of representation Vigotssky going to apply what I'd learned from people like Roger Shank and it's going to revolutionize online learning. And so we we set about doing this as I say hard a flash team. We created stuff which would still look advanced today. And what I learned was that it was completely ineffective.
(16:47) Um we actually tested this experimentally. We had groups of students use either this e-learning module which had all of these instructional design principles integrated into it versus just a text document. And then we said, "Well, we're going to give you 30 minutes with this and then test you at the end.
(17:04) " and they actually scored slightly higher from just reading the text document. And that was a turning point for me because it stopped me in my tracks and made me think, wow, maybe we just don't understand what's going on at all. And so, yeah, at that point I decided, no, I really have to take a step back and think about how people really learn, which is ultimately what led to me publishing how people learn.
(17:28) Um we're going to ask you some questions a bit more about that in a moment. But I guess what the other thing I was sort of interested there is you know how do you get the consent like to go into an organization like BP and say we're going to do things completely differently like how do you kind of get sort of that buy in and and start to sort of pilot things like that because it is countercultural isn't it? >> There's a whole there's such an interesting question I love it.
(17:53) So the one of the first things is that organizations that want to move quickly need to trust people. And one of the things is that BP was very good at delegating authority. So my delegation of authority was something like $100,000 which means that anything below that spend limit. I don't need consent. I just get off get on and try it.
(18:14) And that is fantastically enabling. And that reflected the fact that BP was obviously quite cashrich and not all organizations have the luxury. But the second perhaps more helpful thing is destination postcards. The HR director at the time at BP was a guy called Helmet. And early on in my career, I went into a meeting with Helmet with a mockup that I'd created in Photoshop of a BP YouTube that I wanted to create um a best practice sharing platform.
(18:46) I didn't go in with a white paper. I didn't go in with a PowerPoint. I just said, "Have a look at this. This is what I'd like to build." And this idea of destination postcards, just show somebody a destination they'd really like to go to. That was very effective. Um, and he said, "Yeah, I love it. I love the idea.
(19:04) Get off, go on, and do it." And we did. Um, and the third answer is the obvious one, which many people will know, which is build the relationships. Listen to people. make it clear to them that you they are heard and that you are reflecting their ambitions, their concerns, their language. So yeah, that was that was the other tech.
(19:22) Oh, and by the way, there's a sneaky one which is you don't ask for permission. And we did that a few times is you know we just go off and do something slightly crazy and by the time that it had been spotted by say the comm's team um it was already too big and too successful for people to shut down. So uh you know sometimes that works.
(19:42) I love that the destination postcards because if you think about how much time is is wasted developing papers or the presentation it's it's a performance isn't it whereas really it needs to be like a dialogue and a sort of a co-creation almost doesn't it senior people as I have been seem to spend all their time pouring over boxes on PowerPoint slides and numbers in rows and and actually just seeing something that is exciting and something which immediately appeals and you think yes that looks good we want to do that that works well internally um but also
(20:18) pitching externally if you're like I was a consultant you know selling projects you want to show people what it is that they're going to get for their money so yeah I um that kind of destination postcard is quite powerful >> I guess and one sort of follow on question on to that is the invitation like you're sort of saying is really powerful isn't it look we we need some sales training you know we need to do this can you can you docu document this.
(20:40) Can you put a course around this? It's a really strong invitation. What are the ingredients that you need to be able to say, I hear you and I know what you're trying to do, but that's not what we're going to do now. What does your typical box garden variety L &D person need to do differently to feel confidence to take it from another angle? >> Um, I'm not going to bore you with the details of 5DI, but 5DI is the methodology that answers that question.
(21:07) But the the very first thing to do and this is critical is you stop your stakeholder from going down the content and topics route because once you have done that that's it there's no ROI you're dead in the water. What you want to say to them is without argue. You don't argue with your customer. You say, "Tell me about the outcome you'd like us to achieve.
(21:35) " Because look, you and I, we want to spend the money, the company's money wisely. Um, we want to see a return on investment. So, tell me, what would people be thinking and feeling and most importantly doing differently if we spend this money on the induction program or the leadership program or, you know, whatever it is, the technical, the sales program.
(21:54) And immediately they will start to articulate the outcomes in terms of performance and behaviors and you won't go down the route of saying what goes in this course well they need some input on value based selling or whatever it is or whatever topics top of mind. So that's the first thing is stop talking about content and topics.
(22:12) Start talking about business outcomes right at the beginning. And your stakeholders love that. It's just they haven't been given the opportunity to because they thought you were school teachers and they thought you wanted to have a list of content and topics. And the second thing and then I'll stop is talk to the audience.
(22:30) So when a sales director I'll give you a real example actually because it's better. I had a customer service agent training where the business said we need we think everybody needs better rapport building skills um because we want them to build deeper relationships with customers. And I said, 'Well, yeah, just before we do that, can we go and talk to some of the customer service agents? They've all got brilliant rapport building skills.
(22:54) The issue is that the business penalizes them when they depart from the script. So, we're able to go back to the business and say, "Look, we can save your money, avoid you wasting it." Um, you actually need to look at the the systemic issues and the incentives around it because it's not about rapport building.
(23:14) So the second step is talk to your audience. That's super important. >> Yeah. And I guess just a follow on question from that as well. So you did a a really good podcast. There was a Q&A at the end and someone asked a bit of a naughty question and I think you sort of said in one in one of your last roles that you actually stopped hiring L & D people into L & D roles.
(23:31) >> Yes. >> Because you didn't want to keep deconstructing them and destroying their confidence. Sorry. Sorry to dig that one up the V, but I just it was such an interesting thing. What is it that L & D people because you know I I did certificate for training and assessment in Australia and I lost the will to live is literally competency frameworks and trying to bash things into people's heads.
(23:57) What is it that people need that a modern contemporary L & D person needs to sort of build and add to their skill set or mindset to to help them thrive? >> Yeah, that's not a naughty question at all. You can ask much naughtier questions. I mean, I'm going to I'm going to name names. So, as an example, I hired then Gemma Critley, now Gemma Patterson.
(24:18) She her background was digital marketing monsoon and she was absolutely amazing. She's now head of people and culture I think at Lloyd's Bank. I hired Kenny Tamooo who had been as kind of a school teacher, kind of philosopher, musician. Um, hadn't done kind of corporate learning at all. Went on to head up people and culture in Netflix in the UK.
(24:38) days now at Shark Ninja Charlie Nin who' done events he did just done events um and stuff and now running his own business and and the beauty of that was they didn't have all these preconceptions that needed to be deconstructed um and I did a piece recently on LinkedIn which annoyed a whole bunch of people I think um hopefully in a good way um talking about instructional design and and answering your question which is all of that instructional design stuff is fine for creating educational formats classroom training or e-learning modules but
(25:10) actually you need to develop capabilities in two adjacent disciplines. One is performance consulting, resources, not courses, checklist manifesto, perform all of that stuff that that makes a big impact. And the other is experience design creating transformative experiences that you know a transformative experience as an example can be just a get together.
(25:36) New starters getting together in a room meeting other people. No content, no instructional design. Massively impacts things like retention and belonging, all this kind of stuff. It's not instructional. And so, yeah, I think those are the two dimensions that people need to explore. Hi, we're just pausing this interview for a moment.
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(26:32) live to get the latest from Pod to Practice in your inbox and let us know what you think. We'd love to get your feedback. One of our biggest pet peeves that we have in organizations is just the sheer poor state of on boarding. Uh, a lot of effort is brought into bringing people into an organization and they're kind of inducted, but then they're just left and it's almost like spinning the roulette wheels to see if they fit in or fit out and that individual responsibility then falls on that person.
(27:00) what what are organizations getting wrong about onboarding and and what what can organizations do to take more responsibility to stake, you know, stack the odds of success in in our favor? >> I love this. I could spend honestly the rest of the day talking about onboarding programs. I've redesigned them. We run um the gold award working with solved at Deote for the redesign of the induction program and it's so easy to fix them and it makes such an impact.
(27:25) So, the worst on boarding I ever experienced, I was working for I won't say who it is because I'm not that rude. Um, I was told to sit in a room while somebody read from a script. Um, they weren't even invested in it personally. They were just like and the next thing and the next thing and then they wheeled in a TV like, "Oh my gosh, I feel I'm like I'm back at school teacher.
(27:48) " >> Yes. >> And now we're going to watch this safety video. Hit play. Oh, I can't get it to play. Or was the volume like this? It's like, "Oh my, oh my god." And it's not surprising that people, it's like I mean, some of these on boardings short of actually tasering your new employees as they walk through the building could could not be do more to depress their engagement and performance.
(28:10) And actually turning it around is so easy. And just talk to people for heaven's sakes. We did that at BP and we did that at Deote. One young lady, new consultant said, "You know what? I wasted all of my savings on um on the wrong clothes. And I said, "Tell me why." And she said, "Well, you sent me a letter saying, "We all have to dress professionally.
(28:30) " I went out and spent all my savings on professional attire. Day one, I realized that nobody dresses like that. Just find out what new starters struggle with. Systematically interview people who've recently joined and just fix the problems. You know, checklist is the most popular thing. super easy, super cheap to develop, but people lose confidence if they don't feel like they know what they're doing.
(28:54) So, simple checklists, guides to all the problems, where to park. I did a on boarding um discovery phrase for an organization. That was the number one thing. They just need to know where to park on day one. And these sound like little things, but it's all the little things that make such a difference.
(29:11) And then over and above that I do a lot of um emotional curves looking at you know how people experienced on boarding. The single thing that makes all the difference to somebody is having a buddy having somebody who is just there to help. Most organizations could completely ditch their onboarding events and replace it with somebody who is just there to help every day, you know, friendly person, maybe AI, and that would have more impact than whatever the heck else it is that they're doing.
(29:42) So, yeah, it is really strange how badly most organizations do on boarding and how easy it would be for them to to fix them. But, you know, I'm glad to be in the position of of being able to do that. Often it's again in our experience it's the more senior the role the worse the on boarding. It's almost like there's an expectation that you're capable. We're bringing you in.
(30:02) We we've got a whole snagging list of things we want you to get stuck into. On boarding you don't need it. Off you go. But the potential for damage to the not damage to organization but you know disruption to the organization is huge isn't it? So again why is that and what what can be done to sort of smooth and reduce the risk? so much um and you're absolutely right and of course the cost to the organization.
(30:25) So as a real case I think deote um lost on average something like 30% of new joiners within the first 100 days. So that's a key metric really simple we're measuring that right. So um on the pilot we ran we turned that around and we lost none. I mean appreciate it was co so there was some confounding factors. That's the sort of business impact that organizations are looking for.
(30:47) You asked what else can be done. Well, in many cases, people are overwhelmed on day one, especially if you're senior. There's just too much information. So, why aren't we making some of that available to people when they're really keen to learn and have a bit of time typically, you know, before they join? Um, and then the other thing that organizations don't understand is that onboarding is a process.
(31:10) Typically, you know, might take six months. So, why are we crunching all of the program up in this first few weeks? Why don't we have like drop-in sessions and surgeries and you know support systems which support people over time? So they're just kind of basic errors I think that people make. >> You mentioned your 5DI model.
(31:28) So we we'll not go into it in detail but one of the things that interests me is it's you you've made it kind of open source, haven't you? It's free to use. So I'm just interested in the kind of thinking the philosophy behind that because often if somebody's developed a model it's kind of closely guarded and then you have to pay and yeah so yeah what just interested in your your thinking there.
(31:46) >> Yeah I hate all that. I think ideas should be free. Uh that's the philosopher in me. I think you should pay for the work and actual experiences um and somebody doing something. Uh my dad is an engineer and I think that's you know that's partly why I think that um but I'm gr glad that you raised it that it's open source because I think otherwise you listen to a podcast like this and you think oh here we go he's going to fogg this this model this thing and no it's free you can download all of this stuff and use it and uh you don't
(32:19) need my help at all in many cases but I think my commercial the commercial side of that is you pay for for my time and my work and my effort and so if you do need help for example training people up or you want me to actually use it rather than you use it then yeah that's you know that's good use of my time but I suppose the other side of it is I think if you're too protective around an idea then that idea is stifled it doesn't flourish >> and I would and I have heard and many organizations have just gone off and
(32:50) done it themselves and I like that you know I want to change the world make a difference and that's more important to me than protecting IP kind of in that way. So yeah, um that's my thinking behind it. >> Yeah. And is it evolving as you're kind of more people are exposed to it and using it? Are you kind of is it shaping how it's developing? >> It's now I'm preparing the fifth iteration because I learn about how people are using it and I pick up new things and I get challenged.
(33:18) So I had a client for example who said we're going to use 5DI as the blueprint for our our learning organization and so we need to understand what does a business case look like you know um how do we triage um uh different things into kind of different budgets and all this kind of stuff. So many of those things those that thinking those assets then get flowed into the next version and then there's more examples of how people have used it and those go into the next version.
(33:46) So yeah, I find that quite a healthy thing and it's iteration which is the eye. So yeah, walking the talk I guess. >> What do you enjoy most about the work you do? What really sparks joy or excites you? >> Adventure and difference. Adventure and difference. I think meeting different people, hearing different perspectives, different challenges and the adventure that goes along with that.
(34:10) I I on one part podcast I said that you know um life is lived in adventures not not years. If if you as I discovered in corporate if you have a very routine life then time flies by but you don't have any stories. You have nothing to remember. Um whereas what I found is that my own growth is driven by these kinds of challenging experiences.
(34:32) And so I feel that it's a good way to live life to live adventurously. >> Yes. And what's interesting you most in the field when you look at kind of all the things going on is are there particular things you think that's really interesting. I'm I'm following that as my next thing. >> Yeah, I think two directions and and one of those won't surprise people.
(34:51) I think AI is fascinating. you know, so it's terrifying and fascinating in equal measure. And I think there there are really interesting and exciting opportunities. And it's it's barely a day goes by when there's not some new radically new kind of AI system or application or there's a system now where you can just give it a photo and it creates an entire world that you can move around in which is just mind-blowing.
(35:17) And and the other side of it is experience design because I think that people haven't really genuinely begun to think about how to design life-changing experiences. You you could you you can have a life-changing experience, right? But if I ask you about them, they're unlikely to be training courses. You can, you know, see somebody get injured in the street and and remember that and it will, you know, change your life.
(35:41) But generally those happen in the wild. We're not very good at getting people in a room and creating an experience which sticks with them for the rest of their lives. And I think we could be I think we could be able to do that. Um so I am super excited about life experience design and and how we actually transform people. >> So do you have a sense of what what are the kind of ingredients of creating those experiences that that really change people? >> I do.
(36:09) And there's also um there's I'm not the only person wondering about this. This is Dan and Chip Heath written a book called something like I think the power of moments and they also have some ideas. Um one of the things is like empty uncharted territory. So basically people run on rails in every situation they behave according to the script and there was a guy I worked with called Professor Roger Shank did a lot of work on scripts.
(36:32) But if you put people in a situation they've never encountered before you can shape the person they are. I'll give you an example. You know, the example I sometimes use is people who haven't been in a fight like a a fist fight. They don't really know how they would behave. So, they don't really know if they're brave or if they're cowards.
(36:52) But if you create that situation, they find out who they are. And if you create it in the right way, you can shape the way that they behave in future. So, there's lots of work, for example, um Stanley Mgram, where people learned that actually they they will do what they're told. they will kill somebody and and the power you might think well what's the point of that well the power is that once they've done that once they can become inoculated to that and it and it can change them and the way that I've used this in practice is we started a fight deliberately on a
(37:24) leadership program uh which won an award where the two facilitators and they were actors they started arguing right at the beginning and we did this because we had learned from the analysis that we' done is that their leaders weren't very good at handling conflict or confrontation or stepping in.
(37:42) So, we had the two facilitators kick the session off with a very realistic argument and nobody did anything. They all sat there afraid and then we stopped the action and said, "How did that make you feel? When did you notice that there was a confrontation? When did somebody cross the line? What should you have done? What would you have done? Now, let's do it.
(38:03) " And the point of that is you put people in these situations that, you know, where where they're not quite sure what to do and you give them the opportunity then to to shape themselves and to become a different person through an encounter with that. So that's that's just one thing. But I think that the common thing and and I guess you'll both know this is there has to be an emotional de dimension to it.
(38:22) It has to be something that really matters. If you think back your your own lives, it doesn't have to be somebody dropping a piano on you. It can just be a comment. a comment that really hit you hard and you know those can be powerful as well. So yeah um a couple of ideas >> which is a whole thing you know when you think about emotions they're still you know a lot of organizations are just a bit scared of emotions in the workplace aren't they? So the kind of framing experiences around creating emotions to help people kind of learn and remember
(38:51) can be counterultural. >> Everything in the workplace is emotions honestly. I I can promise you that. And the problem is that we cover it up. We pretend like it isn't. We we almost do this performative well, you know, we're just doing this for business reasons or you know the but behind this is this all of these emotions which are driving decision-m and I think it's important if we want to make decisions well or relate to our colleagues well to actually surface this part of what's really going on because otherwise it's it's still
(39:26) emotion. It's just that we're not we're not addressing it. I did this thing that that went viral where I said, "Look, the main one of the main reasons you're asking to return to the office is because middle-aged men don't get on with their wives." And it's kind of a nice illustration of this principle because nobody can understand or many people can't understand why they're being return asked to return to the office when much of the data shows that people are actually more productive at home. And you know so there's real
(39:53) estate costs but the reality is that organizations could lose that overhead. So the question is why and I am sure because we did some research into this at Deote that a big part of it is that leaders are uncomfortable at home. They don't feel important. They're being asked to do things where they they don't feel very competent and they don't feel woripped and respected in quite the same way.
(40:20) So they need everybody else to go back into the office so that they can feel like they've reclaimed their identity, like they know who they are. And I'm sure that that's a big factor. And that's an example of something emotional which is driving business decisions which is which not being acknowledged or talked about. >> We we love to postrationalize things, don't we? You know, as to why things are happening.
(40:43) Um we we were approached uh by a technology company uh sort of specializes in AI and the intent is good but it's kind of like the role of ethics in learning as well and obviously being a um person who's sort of studied philosophy part of what they were sort of proposing is that you know a lot of people that are promoted into management positions sometimes can be highly technical but find the empathy element more challenging.
(41:04) it doesn't come naturally. And so AI would they would be participating in a meeting and on a little display it would be sort of predicting what emotions others were having and therefore helping them guide with responses as well. So again with AI we're sort of moving into sort of grayer areas.
(41:22) What what is the role of ethics in in learning or is it more about achieving results more than anything? >> As you go I'm going to need your boots, your sunglasses, your motorbike like the the Terminator kind of. Yeah, I it's funny you should say that. I had um a very similar conversation with a chief learning officer and I was talking about some of the concerns I had about AI coaches because I'm seeing a lot of AI coaching and in a in one way it's a good thing but I said my worry is that leaders will think well the AI is doing that now so I don't have to do that
(41:58) anymore and she said and what's wrong with that and that stopped me in my tracks and made me think >> because I have this kind instinctive reaction that leaders ought to be able to coach that that's part of what we expect of leaders but if that starts to get outsourced where does it stop what do we stop outsourcing because the reality is I spend a lot of time teaching leaders the basics to your point they're not very good at the people stuff so I teach them skills around getting to know the people in your team how to relate to them how to
(42:34) flex your style But the truth is that AI could do that infinitely better. And so maybe we'll see that leadership are being replaced by AI very rapidly. And so you asked about ethics and I think the ethics question ultimately is a pretty deep one. I don't know how far you want to kind of go but all AI systems are inherently unethical because they don't care.
(43:02) They give the appearance of caring, but they do not in fact care because they don't feel the way that we do and they're not grown in the same way that we are. Um, and so there is a worry I think that people will continue to put profits before people until they start to put people before profits. So, I think we could talk a lot about ethics and the ethics of AI, I guess, but I'm very troubled by it because, as I say, I think, you know, AI is always a smiling psychopath.
(43:36) At some point, somebody like Elon Musk is going to stick AI in a robot and put it in your house and it will smile at you and it will cook your meals. But my advice would be make sure that it's locked up at night. I I guess the thing is, it we could be potentially sleepwalking into things, couldn't we? And you know, it it would be easily easy to be managed by an algorithm as well in terms of sort of keeping us on course and whatnot, too.
(44:01) So, it's it's about having those like conversations. I guess the big question is is where do we have those conversations? Is this a conversation that happens in the L &D team? Is this a conversation that happens broader than >> Yeah, it's a really good point and I worry that I think that L & D teams need to seize the advantage because what's happening at the moment is the business is in pursuit of performance and profits and the L &D team are inclined to look at AI and say well that's kind of tech stuff that's nothing to do with us
(44:28) that's the IT team and if we don't step in and take the initiative I think the IT team will pick up the introduction of for example or AI guidance systems or you know AI um buddies and before we know it there won't it won't look like there's anything left for us to do and I think that would be a shame. >> We asked you what you enjoy most about your work.
(44:51) What do you find most challenging on the flip side? >> Bureaucracy. I'm terrible at it and I I it frustrates me because I always look for a better way to do things and when I can see a way of doing things that's incredibly inefficient and nonsensical then I sort of I have some sort of meltdown and I have to I have to be I have to be calmed down.
(45:15) Uh so yeah admin bureaucracy you know nonsensical stuff. >> And when you look back at your career so far what are the biggest lessons that you've learned and you take forward? It's a big question, but you know, you could pick two or three. >> I think, as I say, one of the biggest lessons that I learned early on was that the instructional design, you know, doesn't really help you in the real world.
(45:32) And I know that that will possibly offend lots of people, but you know, here's the thing. Why is it that our customers are actively avoiding instructional design? Why is it that all of the formats that they really like and choose, whether that's Tik Tok or even just reading a book or talking to people, have zero instructional design? you know c could it not give us pause for thought and say actually maybe we need to kind of rethink and look at what people are finding effective for learning rather than try to impose things on them and tell them that this
(46:05) is more effective for learning that that that was a big shock to me I think early on that was sort of mid20s I think um and then other things was just an awareness that especially in a sales role >> of the way that the difference between seeing the answer and persuading people to accept the answer is a big one.
(46:28) It's not enough just to say, "Hey, I can see a better way of of doing this thing. You have to really build relationships. You It's like taking somebody to the top of the mountain." It's not enough to sort of storm through their front door and say, "Right, we're going to the top of the mountain over there.
(46:45) " You have to, you know, take them by the hand. You have to reassure them. You have to go at their pace. you can't let go of them at any point or they'll just kind of head home. And actually, I've learned a lot of lessons around how important it is to think about, I guess, the the human side of change.
(47:03) And someone who spends so much of their life giving in terms of helping others with their learning and development, how do you invest in your own? >> Two directions and they reflect what I've been saying. I spend I'm chronically online. I spend a disturbing amount of time um talk saying saying saying things on on Tik Tok and LinkedIn and then looking and responding to comments because I find the conversation you know helps me to take different viewpoints to understand other where people are coming from and so online conversations through as I say Tik Tok
(47:34) and LinkedIn and the other side of things is through travel and through the work that I do where I'm constantly challenged in different ways And so my learning tends to come from those two directions. I do a little bit of reading but less so because I find that I can just learn more rapidly through formats like like Tik Tok.
(47:53) >> And when you think of resources, is there a particular book or a podcast or something else that you'd recommend that people um follow up and and take a look at? >> Question. Well, I mean obviously checklist manifesto, one of my kind of favorites. I think Dan Chip Heath's work on the power of moments um is really good if you're thinking about kind of experience design.
(48:15) It really kind of gets gets you going. I think you start to think about that. So those two directions, podcasts, all kinds of things. Um I like to read around a topic. So Sam Harris is kind of a making sense with Sam Harris is an obvious one. Um, and then as I say, um, I'm not on commission from Tik Tok, but following interesting people and and getting diverse perspectives.
(48:40) Um, there's a guy called Nate B. Jones, for example, who is an absolute guru on all things AI. But in case you think, well, Tik Tok sounds a bit dubious, the way I use it is I I track interesting things like research and AI developments and if something looks interesting, I'll then follow the link and go off and look at the original research or, you know, the paper or the book or whatever.
(49:05) So yeah, it it just is like a little nice little signposting device. And then the final question from us is what advice would you give someone considering a career where learning is an element of it? So whether they're going into learning and development or organization development and and then there'll be an element of it.
(49:21) What advice would you give to someone? >> Yeah, I guess that's I would say don't I mean it's difficult, isn't it? Because you tend to project yourself into the advice you give to others. So as somebody who has spent a career kind of challenging things, I'm sort of hesitant to say challenge things because the truth is it won't always make for an easy life and you'll probably end up like me like a bit of an annoyance.
(49:44) But I mean that's one thing is it's good to just sort of challenge not everything that you hear. I think a lot of what you hear in L & D is just made up stuff like learning styles is an obvious one, you know, or COB, you know, all these sorts of things. And then the other advice I would say is have a look at either performance consulting or um experience designers directions because they've got both really powerful ways to influence people or business outcomes.
(50:13) And I think if you just stay in your lane and you just end up doing education, you will quite quickly reach the point where you feel like an order taker. And I hear a lot of people say this is they've spent a few years in learning and they just feel like they're being asked to put some stuff in a course and they they've lost faith that it's making a difference.
(50:32) Try and avoid the first thing is is um challenge people, which is has been my own trajectory. And there is a risk that you end up just being a bit of an annoyance, but it makes for an interesting life. If if on the other hand, you decide just to stay in your lane, there is a real risk that you end up feeling like an order taker and you're doing stuff that isn't making a difference and that can be very demoralizing.
(50:57) So my advice would be to look at these adjacent disciplines which are performance consulting which can really help people to do the job and it's very rewarding when you do it well and the other is experience design which is so much more creative. You know, Kenn Kenny and I had people sitting in ball pits.
(51:15) You know, it doesn't have to do with content or instruction. It's about transformative experiences. You know, they don't all have to be extreme. Um, some of them are just kind of very practical things, but it's it's so much more room, especially in a digital world, for growth. And so, I would say those two are interesting and exciting. >> Well, thank you so much, Nick.
(51:34) It's been a really good conversation. We've really enjoyed it as well. It's been so many insights and things. And we haven't even had time to share your and explore your deep love of competency frameworks. >> Yeah, we the listeners have been spared that. Danny, what have you taken away from the conversation? >> I've I've really enjoyed it's been a lovely conversation full of kind of provocation and kind of just food for thought and some kind of that blend of really practical tools and ideas and and techniques that I think people are going
(52:00) to take a lot away from it. So, you know, I love the idea of using, you know, chat GBD voice mode to to practice um difficult conversations or, you know, the destination postcard. I think that kind of really visual kind of really helping people visualize what where you're trying to get to. Lots and and stop focusing on the content and the topics and reframe and get people thinking about business outcomes.
(52:22) >> Brilliant. Yeah. And for me, echo with the destination postcards as well. The one phrase you said at the beginning which I thought was really great advice for all companies is that organizations that want to go fast have to trust their people. Um I think sometimes people forget and put more controls and processes and procedures in place that that holds that back.
(52:40) Love what you were saying in terms of onboarding. It's such a overlooked but absolutely essential component of really having a high performance organization as well. And and I just love the challenge to the L & D profession, which is, you know, if you if you're seeing yourself as an order taker, there's a almost like an obligation to challenge yourself to do better and be and do it differently as well. So, thank you so much, Nick.
(53:03) If people want to follow your work, you have some brilliant content out there. What is the best paper for people to follow your work, read your book, um, and those things will be in the show notes as well. >> Well, I mean, at the moment, the thing is it's harder for them to avoid me. So, I think I pop up on LinkedIn quite a lot.
(53:22) Um, uh, that's probably the easiest place. There's a website, Shackleton Consulting, um, with videos and stuff and and the toolkit on it. Um, I'm not on Twitter so much. I am on Tik Tok, but you you really shouldn't watch that stuff. Um, so that I think is is how you find me. >> Well, thank you, Nick, and and thank you just on behalf of the profession for being so generous in the way that you think and sharing your your best thoughts and your resources for so many to share as well.
(53:46) We really appreciate it. If you are watching this podcast, um, one of the things we love about the stats is just the number of shares that happen every single week. So, if you're watching this and you're, you know, a disillusioned L & D person or a manager that knows that they can equip their teams in a better way.
(54:01) Please do share this podcast. There's so much value that Nick has shared today as well. And also hit the like button as well because the algorithm gods love it too as well. But most importantly, thank you so much for your time, Nick. Thank you for making time on a busy Friday afternoon for us. We really appreciate it's a great episode. Thank you.
(54:15) I've really enjoyed it. I have. It's been great to talk to you both. >> We've really enjoyed it.