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Join the Nerds!
Welcome to the funtastic world of the Fabulous Learning Nerds! Scott Schuette and Daniel Coonrod and Zeta Gardner are Learning Executives with over 50 years’ experience between them. Together they share new ideas, learning tools, approaches and technology that increase learner engagement and impact. All while having FUN! To participate in the show and community please contact them at learningnerdscast@gmail.com
The nerds are all about creating a community of learning, innovation and growth amongst educational professionals: Instructors, facilitators, instructional designers, learning and development professionals, trainers, leadership development professionals, learning metric gurus, sales enablement wizards and more. So, if you want to learn, connect, grow and have a good time doing it, The Fabulous Learning Nerds Podcast is for YOU!
Daniel (00:00.543)
Heh.
Scott Schuette (00:02.962)
Hey everybody, welcome to another fantastic episode of your Fabulous Learning Nerds. I'm Scott Chudy, your host and with me, the co-host with the most Dan Coonerides in the house.
Scott Schuette (00:16.678)
Dan.
Daniel (00:18.542)
Scott, what's up Scott, how you doing?
Scott Schuette (00:21.36)
It's been a minute. Been a minute. I am recovering from allergies. Allergies are no fun.
Daniel (00:30.102)
Now, allergies are the worst. Yeah, allergies are the worst.
Scott Schuette (00:30.522)
Okay, we're all just gonna agree with that.
Because there's not a heck of lot you could do about him. You just got to write it out. that was like, hey, let's get together. I feel like death. Hey, everybody, let's do this. I just want to sleep. You know what I'm saying? And what can you do? Not a heck of a lot, right? So that was the deal. But how are you, sir?
Daniel (00:44.392)
Daniel (00:48.618)
yeah.
Daniel (00:53.55)
Oh, you know what? I'm fair to Midland. I'm fair to Midland. It has been... Yeah. Yeah.
I am silencing my phone because I just realized I forgot. Look at that. Do not disturb.
Scott Schuette (01:03.366)
You've been what?
Daniel (01:11.95)
You know, it's been, it's been a, it's been a busy kind of goodness, like month, think months. It's the last time we sat down and talked and, uh, man, oh man, it's good busy, but busy.
Scott Schuette (01:27.836)
But are you insane busy?
Daniel (01:31.082)
No, I'm not insane busy. Not like last year. Last year I was insane busy. This year it's just... This year it's just like... Like man, busy. Steady busy. Steady busy. Steady busy.
Scott Schuette (01:41.714)
Steady busy. Yeah.
Yeah, I had a few days where I just wanted to pull up all of my hair and then go right to bed, is, yeah. Yeah, which is cool. Yeah, that's good. Speaking of equally as busy, he's here, the man behind the curtain. You love him, Sam.
Daniel (01:54.168)
Yeah? Then no, that's not...
Scott Schuette (02:08.668)
Sam, sir.
these days have to shorten that drop. It's going dude! It's going! Yes! So what is up?
Sam (02:11.994)
How's it going, nerds?
Sam (02:22.246)
Not too much in my neck of the woods. Uh, keeping busy with some, uh, learning projects, adding to my skillsets. Uh, right now, particularly I'm working on. Yeah. Right now, particularly I'm working on video editing. I see a lot of, I see a lot of places asking for some video editing experience in our, in our, um, uh, area of business. So I figured, Hey, why not add that to the resume?
Scott Schuette (02:25.935)
Not too much.
Scott Schuette (02:40.261)
We talked about that.
Scott Schuette (02:44.656)
Okay.
Scott Schuette (02:49.572)
in our space? Yeah, for sure, absolutely. So what are you editing your videos with?
Sam (02:58.342)
I am using Microsoft right now, Clipchamp. Yep, just lightweight for, I do want to move on to some bigger like industry standards such as DaVinci or is it Adobe Captivate, I believe.
Scott Schuette (03:04.284)
Clip champ.
Daniel (03:18.882)
No no, activate. Boom.
Scott Schuette (03:18.994)
Adobe Premiere Pro is the video editing. Captivate captivates more LMS, not LMS, but CBL design kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a whole lot of tools. I think that's cool. You and I briefly chatted yesterday. I was working with Veed. thought Veed was cool. I will say that Clipchamp has gotten way better. some of the, oh. For a Microsoft product, it's not completely terrible.
Sam (03:21.478)
from your pro.
Sam (03:26.433)
Okay, gotcha.
Sam (03:37.36)
Mm-hmm.
So far I like it.
Scott Schuette (03:48.56)
Which I think was pretty good, right?
Daniel (03:49.102)
Ha ha ha!
Sam (03:50.919)
It's a it feels it feels beginner friendly for me because it's not terribly complicated and it very much holds your hand for doing the basic stuff. But you can get you can start getting a little bit into the weeds with it.
Scott Schuette (03:52.816)
Well no, and I think-
Scott Schuette (04:06.256)
Right? For sure. Absolutely. Yeah. I all I know is like,
Scott Schuette (04:13.319)
There's some tools I took for granted within Microsoft that now are super awesome.
Absolutely. So one of them is like picture, I think it's picture viewer photos, right? So now what you can do in photos is you can do things like background remove and remove your background before you'd have to go out to like some website to do it or go into Premiere Pro whatnot. So it just does it automatically, which is really cool. You can also erase stuff, which is very, very cool. I thought that was really neat and save it as a PNG, which is cool.
Daniel (04:22.862)
Ha
Scott Schuette (04:50.502)
And then Clipchamp will, mean, holy crap, it went actually, I got linear editing tools with it, which is nice. So we record our team meetings sometimes and people want to go watch them. I wonder how many people actually go watch them, but I like to take out the chit chat in the front, right? So that we, and I used to have a friend of mine, his name is Jim and Jim Wirt, James Wirt.
Sam (04:57.2)
Mm-hmm.
Scott Schuette (05:18.572)
call out to James Wirt. He would, in every meeting agenda, he would put out chit chat in there. That was part of the agenda, that we would chit chat for five minutes, and then we'd get down to work. so getting rid of that chit chat right there in the beginning is a really cool deal. So glad you're trying to work with video editing, and I think it's just going to get easier and easier, and it's a good skill to have, because man, you can capture more attention with video than you can capture attention with a lot of stuff.
You know they say about video, Sam.
Sam (05:48.7)
yeah.
Killed the radio star?
Scott Schuette (05:53.978)
It did. It did. But videos a lot like pizza.
Daniel (05:55.85)
Ha ha!
Sam (05:59.943)
I haven't heard this one.
Scott Schuette (06:00.051)
Even when it's bad, it's pretty good. You know what I'm saying?
Daniel (06:02.67)
man, I don't agree with that. No. man.
Scott Schuette (06:07.41)
I've seen some really bad videos, so I'm with you, but sometimes really bad videos are still better than the 80-page PowerPoint deck.
Daniel (06:16.846)
I'm going to say, so I know this is off topic, but if we've got a minute, I'm going to say, can't tell you how many times, and actually this is going to be on topic. This is a preview. It's going to work out. can't tell you how many times I've been in a room with a leader or an executive and they're like, can we just make a video of this? And I've been like, yes, we can. It won't do any better.
Scott Schuette (06:20.112)
No, that's fine. We go.
Scott Schuette (06:27.268)
It's going to be on topic,
Scott Schuette (06:38.258)
gosh, yeah.
Daniel (06:45.548)
with the time and the budget constraints that we've got here, but I can definitely make you a video. like, it's always like, what do mean it won't do any better? Why won't it do any better? And you know, we've talked about this a lot. I think Scott, we've talked about this before where it's just like, it's, you know, in today's era where everybody has video all the time, the idea of video as a definitive resource just doesn't exist anymore.
Scott Schuette (06:59.311)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel (07:12.066)
You know, video isn't always the answer, but so many people who grew up in our generation and before think it is because, know, when they wheeled out the video cart in class, you were like, thank God, a video. Now everybody's got the video cart in their pocket. It is an easy answer. People do love the idea of what videos used to offer.
Scott Schuette (07:25.436)
Great. And it's an easy answer.
Yeah, that is.
Scott Schuette (07:37.624)
I agree and it's a nice easy like, hey, I want a video. Which leads us directly into our topic of the week everybody. So without further ado, let's dive in.
Daniel (07:48.696)
Let's do it.
Scott Schuette (07:55.731)
Hey, topic of the week this week, maximizing influence in L &D in today's working environment. So today we're going to take a page from our good friend, Jess Omly, who is on our show this time last year, about a year ago. We had Jess on here. She's fantastic. And she talked about influence and we were chatting earlier this week, like what do we want to talk about? Like influence is becoming a really, really, really big deal. And one of the thoughts that
that we came up with is, and this is reality, but I'll just toss it out and see if you guys agree with it or not. Content doesn't drive impact, influence does. Content doesn't drive imp... Right. So what do we mean by that? Content doesn't drive impact, influence does.
Daniel (08:39.773)
yeah, no, 100%.
Daniel (08:46.794)
Man, so I'll jump right in. Let me come out with both fists spinning, so to speak.
So many L &D individuals pride themselves on the content they make and they should. It's difficult to make meaningful and impactful content that transfers knowledge, that gets people excited to learn, you know, like all of the tiny minutiae that you need in the corporate space. Excited might be a strong word, but to get people to hold on to it long enough to, for people to be happy, for them to stay safe. Love it, right? I'm gonna, this is...
This is going to be my fighting words. Nobody in executive leadership cares about the content. They care about the results. They care about changing behaviors, knowledge transfer and changing behaviors. And I think somewhere along the way,
as L &D professionals move up in their careers and they get into those places where they're in leadership, where they're managers or directors or even VPs, it can be tough to let go of the idea that like, my team made so much content. I go, OK, cool. What do the numbers look like? And I think that's where where influence happens. Like when you stop thinking of
how many pieces of content did my team make, manage and develop? And hey, I can trace back these changes in on the floor behavior and employee behavior to these initiatives we pushed and launched that cost X amount and took X amount of company time.
Scott Schuette (10:41.488)
Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree with you on that. And, you know, the funny thing is sometimes, you know, our leaders are coming up with us and they're not necessarily always thinking about impact. mean, they care about impact and that's what's really important. But when things need to change, like, give me some content, like, let's get the content out there. you know, we're, we're helpers. Learning people are great people. are, I love helping people.
I love putting on the cape, man. I put on the cape, solving them problems. I'm happy. It's great. We're pushing out content. But if it's not adding value, then it's just stuff. all too often, I find myself being asked to create just lots of stuff. Look at all this stuff we made.
Daniel (11:21.624)
See, and that's like.
go ahead, I over-talked you.
Daniel (11:29.898)
And I think that's the disconnect. that's what we're talking about today is influence, practicing influence over creation. even you, you're like, I love putting on the cape. love helping people. Of course, I love helping people too. Our whole industry is based on this idea of helping people to grow and develop and to be the best versions of themselves. Again, it's the thing that keeps me here when I'm staring at one o'clock in the morning at whatever project I'm working on.
One moment. Excuse me. But I think that's where we have the, goodness, excuse me. Pause.
Scott Schuette (12:14.994)
We're gonna edit this all out everybody. so you know. No, no, no, we're gonna edit. We're gonna edit the whole thing out.
Sam (12:17.176)
No, keep it in. Keep in the long, uncomfortable silence of Dan coughing.
Daniel (12:20.659)
Yeah, keeping the part where Daniel dies.
Daniel (12:26.414)
All right, let's pick back up. You ready?
Scott Schuette (12:28.464)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel (12:32.383)
So I think that's where the disconnect happens because you and I, Sam, others, man, excuse me, goodness.
Scott Schuette (12:49.394)
Try not to die, Daniel. This would be great. Try not to die.
Sam (12:51.142)
Go like grab some water real quick. Good?
Scott Schuette (12:57.424)
I even forgot like where the hell you were at, sir.
Daniel (13:00.97)
I'm going to try and pick up one more time.
Scott Schuette (13:03.994)
All right, sure you will. Please don't die on the air, although that would lead to a lot of views. I would totally post that. It's the episode where Dan dies. It would be great. It'd be good for your business.
Sam (13:04.368)
Ha
Daniel (13:07.512)
Goodness.
Thanks. Thanks, Scott. Thanks. I appreciate that. Good. Good. You have my permission to post it.
Man, goodness, had something tickling back my throat. All right.
Daniel (13:32.63)
I think that's where the disconnect happens. I think this, this want to like focus on help and actionable help. I built this to help somebody. I created this to help somebody on our end feels great. I built, I built all these decks. built all these modules that helped all these people, know, tens of thousands of people in this state, in this business, you know, wherever it's
It's tangible. It's actionable. We pat ourselves on the back and we go, good job. The business also, you your boss goes, yeah, my team built 530 pieces of content this year. Like, man, what a great number. That sounds awesome. That sounds great. It's again, it's actionable. It's it's tangible. I'm going to say something, follow up with me.
Daniel (14:31.8)
but it's wasteful. Like, if you want to practice influence...
Over.
you know, creation, if you want to see it at the table, if you're like, why won't they listen to me when I say this is what we need? It's because everybody assumes content. Everybody says, I've got a problem. Your bosses are saying, I need the, I need a deck. I need, I need content. You know, I need this video. Your boss's bosses are saying, yeah, like, let's just get some training out there. Let's just get some training out there because it's a lever. It produces actionable results.
And then as learning development professionals, we wonder why are we always going back to these same things? Why am I building another training on this? Why am I building another this? It's because you didn't practice influence. You just did, you took the order, you built the thing, and that's not what was needed. Too often we skip the step where we go, what is actually needed here? Because the business is like, go, go, go, go, go. And we find ourselves building the same courses, doing the same things over and over and over.
and we've spent all the influence we might've had because the problem didn't get fixed.
Scott Schuette (15:47.238)
Yeah. All too often, I think we're confusing activity with impact. And you talked a little bit about that, right? So how many of something did we do? And to a lesser extent, how many people showed up, right? So, hey, we just did an ILT instructor led training. We were supposed to have 30 people show up, but only 15 people showed up. Does that make that training bad or good? We could argue about that all day long, but it's like there's no tie to the business performance.
So if business goes up and only half those people show up, we win. But how often are we tying the results of what we create into business performance? And that's where we get some influence. When we think about today's work environment, what are some of the things that are making it difficult for us to generate influence and create content that has real impact?
Daniel (16:48.042)
I, so I've got, obviously I have thoughts here. I always have thoughts, you know, but like, I think so often, and Scott, you led with it. You want to put on the cape, you want to go help. This mentality of the do it all ID, this mentality of the superhero who swoops in and like builds something and fixes the day, that keeps us as order takers. That keeps us away from
the decision-making table and stuck in the order-taking mode because we're reactive. I've talked about before, I was working for a company, were changing basically our approach, one of service into sales. And for the first few months of what was already a super tight turnaround on this project, you know,
Everybody was like, I think we should build this and I think you should build that. And I think you should build this. And we were building so many things and we'd launch them. They wouldn't quite catch. you know, everyone was like, that's fine. You know, it's, it's new. It's okay. We're just, just get it out there. Just get it out there. I saw my team starting to like drag down. I was dragging down. We were burning out. Right. Because, you know, work with no results leads to burnout. You know, work with no purpose leads to burnout.
And so finally, you know, I went to a director who had a good relationship at the time and I was like, Hey, I know you've got a lot of, you know, expectations on you. You've got a lot of numbers you guys have to meet.
I know you guys are having these these strategy sessions.
Daniel (18:37.132)
you know, let me and my team in on those. And they were like, no, like, I don't know if that's really going to be good. I don't know if that's really the right place. And I was like, that's the perfect place. You guys are deciding on numbers and you guys are deciding on goals. was like, when we it's as soon as you have those goals and numbers, that's when we should be jumping in and we can even help. And if you don't want to help with deciding, you know, KPIs. Fine, but as soon as you guys have those KPIs, we can start talking about training.
And this was the thing, this was the thing that always opened doors. The sooner we're involved in the process, the training will be better and it will take less time to develop and less time to deploy time. And I can't tell you how many times like, you know, a director or a VP would be like, okay, well we have, we have this meeting next week at like 4 PM. You know, can you be there? Yes. Yes, we can be there. And that changed.
That changed the whole team dynamic that I had at the time from one of order taking to one of like influence. Like, hey, we know that your guys' KPI or metrics are going to move here. We've talked about it already. We already have a suggestion on what to make and build to help move those. And it's going to look like this. And that was it. It changed overnight. We stopped being order takers. We started being proactive.
We stopped being superheroes and started being professionals.
Scott Schuette (20:12.763)
Right. Yeah, when I think about that, and that's a really good example, and I appreciate that. Our world is changing so fast, it's making my head spin. And it really changes how I look at what I'm creating and how I influence and where my seat is at the table. So we have a few opportunities. Our teams aren't in a building where I can go talk to them. They're all over the place. They're decentralized.
My audience and the people I talk to are just incredibly distracted with relatively ridiculously low attention spans. So I have to think about those things. then AI is making content really easy for people to produce. Although to be all honest with you, there's a study that came out, I was listening to the learning geeks this morning and they were talking about it, like people hate it.
They can tell AI generated content. If you're just out there hitting the button and saying, I've got content and it's AI generated content, I got news for you, your audience is going to recognize that immediately and go, this is terrible. I don't want to look into it. Right. So those are real challenges from an influence perspective. And so what I'd like to do is go ahead and transition. Let's talk about some ways, some practical ways, everybody like how we build influence. And I would start and piggyback off of what you talked about, Dan.
is we're to want to anchor everything that we do to the business priorities and KPIs. Everything we do has to tie into it. If it's not tying into a business priority, KPIs or building culture, well, even building culture is tied into business results and KPIs, I would argue, then we need to challenge that request, right? So anything and everything before we build, like, hey, what business results are we going to sign up for? Be prepared. A lot of people may not have an answer, but they will.
Respect the fact that you're asking that because if you're gonna use this time, we're gonna use it wisely. So What's a what's another thing we could do to help build influence?
Daniel (22:13.036)
I'm actually going to piggyback off of your KPIs and metrics because
I think, yes, like we should be looking at what the business's KPIs and metrics are. And we should be using those as L &D professionals to build our own KPIs and metrics. I can't tell you how many L &D teams I've consulted with or met with or worked with or led. And as you know, we get real nitty gritty on the business's KPIs. Okay, well the business is this and this and that and this this percentage of this and this margin and that.
And then when it comes time for our KPIs, we go, well, we built a lot of courses and people rated them well.
And those metrics don't align to business needs. Those metrics don't align to KPIs. then we go, and then again, when people look at what our teams do and they go, what are their metrics? Okay, like are they being successful? I don't feel it. I don't see it because our metrics aren't aligned with business metrics.
Scott Schuette (23:19.653)
Yep. Yep. Now, I think that's really important. And one way that you can ensure that you're doing that is, number two, build executive empathy. What do I mean by that? What is building executive empathy? How do we do that?
Daniel (23:39.842)
Well, I mean, I think we're kicking on it. Like we've talked about it, like, hey, understanding that everybody has metrics, everybody has KPIs in a business and your executive staff is going to have their own KPIs and metrics. And if you can speak to their metrics, that will get you a seat at the table very quickly. That will get you in a place where you can help.
to make these decisions because if you're just another lever, like you'll just get used when there's a problem.
Scott Schuette (24:21.915)
Yeah, 100%. You one of the things that I feel good leaders do, well, first of all, take care of your people. It's the number one thing you have to do. Number two is build strong relationships. Be purposeful about those relationships because nothing gets done without good relationships. Absolutely nothing. Well, some things, but not good things. So be proactive and schedule meetings with those leaders in your organization. And those meetings are their...
designed to build a relationship, but it's also designed to really build on that executive empathy, right? So we are going to ask strategic questions that build partnership and trust. We are going to say like, hey, what's keeping up at night? What's going to make this quarter feel like a win for you? What are some low hanging pieces of fruit that we could deliver a quick value on that you could use my help with? Let's just face it, those people that are above you,
that have influenced an organization, the movers and the shakers, the sweet, sweet people are so entrenched in what's going on from a business perspective. Sometimes they fail to recognize the value that we as learning professionals can bring from an impact perspective. And when you ask those questions and get some insight as to what their problems really are, then you can put on the bigger cape, man. Then you can really solve some problems and have some impact. And I feel like
Don't ask permission. Well, you may want to let your boss know, you don't have to ask permission to go and set up meetings with directors and senior directors and VPs on regular cadence. Make sure it's a cadence that works for them. Ask those questions. And the first thing, like, hey, what's going on in your world? How can I help? What's keeping me up at night? So that would be the second thing. The third thing that I love to do, which I think is really important, we get so bogged down, I think, sometimes, in these big things.
Sam (25:50.192)
Hm, hm hm.
Daniel (25:50.542)
Ha ha ha.
Scott Schuette (26:15.449)
I like to put together big things like I'm working on redesigning and relaunching our learning portal because it needed a lot of work. mean, a lot of work. That's a big project. But it's the little projects that I think the quick wins that we can get to. So we talked about that executive empathy, like, what's some low hanging fruit, some quick wins that we can get to? If we can focus in on those quick wins and get those out, especially if you're new,
Daniel (26:36.238)
Thank
Scott Schuette (26:45.083)
Those are awesome because they build trust. So a really good example, I was working with somebody not too long ago, this week actually, who's struggling with what all of us struggle, which is getting things across the finish line. Things kind of get bogged down because all of sudden crisis come up and they kind of delay projects and all these things. like, well, things just don't get done around here. what do you need? I need webinar on this product.
Okay. For my team. Okay. Great. Well, that has to be a webinar that I've already developed for another team. So it's going to be pretty easy to put together. Hey, what if I gave you that real quick? Like in like two days, well, you'd be a miracle worker. I delivered that in two days. Now what, what happened is that I didn't get credit by the way, for being an American worker. That's okay. I'm we're slowly building trust, but that means that the next meeting that I have, which is on Monday, which is going to be bigger stuff, right? Like.
Daniel (27:29.836)
Heh. Heh. Heh.
Daniel (27:37.972)
Scott Schuette (27:44.592)
Hey, here's some other things that we're working on. Let me see about delivering those values. but this is a true story. one of the, there was an ask for a video, right? It's a how-to video on programming or controller or what, something like that. We need to film this. Okay, great. So in my process of trying to move that up the line, right? And to get a quicker win, I discovered that in a separate project that I had visibility to that we had already filmed the components of said video.
as part of a different project. So I quickly contacted an editor, sorry, Sam, an editor that I trust. I said, Hey, can you, can you put this together for me? in a way that meets this business and can I have, have that for my meeting on Monday? And that was like, yeah, this is actually pretty easy. Yeah. I thought it would be, but could you do that for me? Cause then what'll happen is Monday I'm going to show up and go, you remember that video on programming? Yeah. Like here's a draft of it.
Because we already had the components necessary. just need you to look at that. Micro solutions, quick wins. cannot tell you. Quick wins lead to trust. Trust, greater influence.
Daniel (29:00.398)
So let me ask you this. Let me dig here and see if maybe you got a suggestion. As we're talking about building influence, we're talking about building ways to measure impact. What other ways besides making more content do you think we as learning and development professionals can measure our success in the corporate space?
Scott Schuette (29:24.365)
wow. That's a great question. You got to have a data story.
So if you don't have a data story around existing content, then let's go build that. That's a component of content that we miss. Really good example, I was speaking to an ILT that we put together, right? So this big, massive crisis thing. And then for a partner of ours, and what I failed to do is like, how do we get any kind of measurable results from the audience? How do we get any kind of feedback? How do we get any kind of identification to what value we're adding, right?
which today with today's technology is super easy to do. Right? You just scan a QR code, go to your phone, duh, and then, you know, fill that kind of stuff out. So we created that and that's going to build a data story for us that I can give to the project stakeholder at the end and say, hey, here's what the audience thought about what we did. Here's all this work that we did. Here's
Here's what our partners are saying. Here's where we won. Here's where we lost and here's where we can get better. To me, I feel like we didn't, we're not really developing any more content, but we're developing and we're having that story around the content. And that's, you know, that's marketing ourselves to be honest with you, right? You gotta have that marketing of, hey, Scott's awesome.
Well, I can talk about how awesome I am all day long, but if I've got the data behind it that says I'm awesome, that's kind of hard to argue with. And that builds influence.
Daniel (31:04.078)
Yeah, I like that. I like that.
Scott Schuette (31:04.517)
Anything else? mean, do you have another idea? I mean, I'm sure there are other ideas.
Daniel (31:10.302)
I mean, like, I'm sure there are plenty. say, I'm sure there are plenty, but like, we talked about this. We talked about, you know, notoriously L and D has difficulty with building and establishing their KPIs because you know, when L and D is successful, so are, so are other departments, you know, like if you've got an operations department and they've got a large team that are
Scott Schuette (31:15.525)
There are plenty.
Daniel (31:37.846)
interacting directly with customers on a daily basis. And, you know, their KPI is, you know, that there are so many conversions per day in their department. And if they're missing and then training comes by and helps and they start hitting, you know, like who's, who's, who's, who's got that? Who's carrying that, that, that win there? Like, is it training? Well, obviously training was there. They helped, but you know, like I'm sure like,
Your, your operations team is, know, you've pushed your coaching, you've pushed your, you know, how you're interacting, changing behaviors. And so like a lot of the ways that we measure success are the success of other departments, other groups. And then, you know, how do you attach yourselves to those success? You know, like, is there a way, is there a KPI you could build that measures?
You
time from request to KPI success. Like, hey, this department was struggling with this metric. They put in a request for training and within 90 days, that metric turned around. They reached competency in that expectation, in that metric. But that gets a little dicey. Building a data store, like you brought up, dude,
Scott Schuette (33:01.904)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel (33:09.888)
Until you have numbers, you're guessing.
Scott Schuette (33:13.873)
Pretty much.
Daniel (33:14.574)
You're going on vibes.
Scott Schuette (33:18.459)
We're getting pretty close to that time where we're to start wrapping some things up. But I want to throw one more thing, just one more thing out there as far as influence. And this was a game changer for us. And this is new. That's, are you ready? We're going to leverage AI to increase our strategic influence. We are going to leverage AI to increase our strategic influence. I have a business partner today.
Sam (33:27.718)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel (33:35.406)
Yeah, right, right, right, right,
Scott Schuette (33:47.706)
And he and I were chatting, really interesting thing. Accenture just announced that you will not be promotable if you're not leveraging AI. If you're a leader and you are not leveraging AI, you are not promotable at Accenture. And he was like, that's crazy. And I'm like, no, that's really smart because innovation, adaptability and flexibility are all key things in leadership today that weren't necessarily key.
you know, five, 10 years ago, they're, super important traits and they all tie directly into AI, right? And AI also allows you to spend more time thinking about stuff because it's faster for you to produce stuff. We talked about AI content development, right? It can help you build things faster. can help you solve problems faster. So does that mean I make more of the stuff or do I spend that time using AI to think about things? So.
What are some ways that can utilize AI to give us more time to think about stuff?
Daniel (34:54.328)
So actually, I know I'm usually on the rah rah rah band for AI, but actually I'm going to pick at that one in particular.
Daniel (35:07.054)
I worry, and when we were talking show notes, had this concern when I saw it too, but I worry that the things that AI excels at, the things that AI helps us to do and helps us excel at are exactly the sort of things that keep us further away from influence and get us more and more in the space of order takers.
Scott Schuette (35:35.218)
I'm gonna challenge you on that. So I'm gonna challenge you on that. You're a Claude guy, I'm guessing, right? Or it depends. Sometimes I'm an it depends person. Okay, great. what's who? Yeah, okay, okay. All right, when you wanna think about something, I go to ChatGTP, because that's where I spend most of my time and my agent understands me better.
Daniel (35:37.601)
Okay, okay.
Daniel (35:48.198)
It definitely depends. I'm an all the AI guy, local if I can help it, but...
Scott Schuette (36:01.775)
Right? Really, the more time you spend using a serve, the more you'll know who you are. Do you use AI to help you process through things, revise critical communications, create recaps of what's going on, and set expectations?
Daniel (36:24.51)
No. so actually I'll, I'll, so, so I'll say this. I say, I'll, I'll say this. I tend to use AI after I've done like my initial assessment, after I've, after I've got what I'm going to say, what I'm going to do done. And then I end up using AI to like, help me build structure and scaffolding before I finish.
Scott Schuette (36:26.837)
you should. There. I'm sorry.
Daniel (36:53.646)
I used to do it the other way. I used to use AI to help me do the thinking, to help me do the, okay, like help me, like there's a lot of ideas, there's a lot of minutiae here, like help me clarify. But I will say, at least right now at its present, I found that I got so much better results using AI to build on my intentions.
Scott Schuette (36:54.033)
Right.
Daniel (37:22.006)
and my ideas rather than building on.
A.I.' ideas. that for me, that's not like super, that's fairly recent. Like I jumped in both feet with the A.I. band. I love A.I. It's great. But I feel like...
And we talk about this in corporate space. You talk about like Accenture and these other companies who are like, yeah, you got to be using AI. I agree. I do believe it's like a superpower. Like if you've got the skill and you use AI, it's a lever. It's a force magnifier.
Scott Schuette (37:49.328)
Hmm?
Daniel (38:01.218)
But you've got to know where to put it. If I had to leave her big enough I could turn the world, that's great. But you do have to know where to put it. And I think too often we jump in with like, OK, cool. I popped my prompt in AI. I've got my prompt superset. I know what it's going to do. It's going to spit this out. And don't get me wrong, if I'm doing something that like, I'm going say this mean, if I'm doing something I don't care about that I just need to get out the door, great.
That's AI is that's exactly what AI is great for. Like I'll clean it up on the back end out the door it goes. Awesome. But more often the things, especially things we're talking about, things that do require thought and care and intention for trying to build influence. We're trying to demonstrate strategy. Like I find more often that like that's best starts with me and then using AI to build on.
Scott Schuette (38:57.265)
Yeah, I agree with you there, but I'm sorry, every executive communication that I put together, I'm gonna run that through my agent. I'm gonna run it through Chat2TP and say, I need to do this, this, this, and this. Help me craft a succinct message that talks about key takeaways and all that other good stuff. And then I'll look at it and then I'll revise it. Because let's be honest, I think we talked about this.
Daniel (38:58.434)
findings and stuff like that.
Scott Schuette (39:26.643)
the failure rate for, AI is pretty high right now. It's like 67%. Like it's never going to be spot on the first time. So you got to look at it. Right. So I feel that that's really important, but for the things like that, I, I'm going to need some help with, it's, it's really good. Another thing that you can do is a really, okay. I'm in a meeting. I don't know why meetings aren't automatically transcribed. They should be.
Nowadays, sorry, know people may not like that. But if I'm in a meeting with people, should be transcribed. We have the capabilities of doing it. You don't need a note taker, just go. And then you can go get what you need, right? So no one was transcribing this meeting and I just took it upon myself, well, I better start taking notes because I have the least to contribute here. I'm kind of the fly on the wall in this meeting. I went to chat, GTP, and I just started to type the notes. Do you know what it did?
Daniel (40:19.704)
will do.
Scott Schuette (40:19.779)
It took that. said, I said, I'm taking notes in this meeting. It took everything that I typed into it and then I hit enter and we were just doing rolling notes. It said, that's really interesting. Here's something you may want to think about, or here's something you may want to add into the conversation based on what I'm hearing is going on. It was like my own little Cyrano de Bergerac, right? If you know who Cyrano de Bergerac was, he's the guy with the long nose telling the guy. Yeah, it was amazing.
Daniel (40:42.254)
Yeah.
Scott Schuette (40:47.601)
And at the end, I'm like, know, just summarize. at any moment in time, and I know that the meta glasses do the same thing, by the way, the new meta glasses will actually listen to what's going on and, hey, think about this. That's AI from a strategic influence perspective. And then also, again, anything and everything that I'm going to market myself as somebody that knows what's going on, I'm going to market myself as someone that's ready for that next step. Having that clear understanding about what's going on and being clear in my communications and communicating at an executive level.
which I thought I was good at, I am learning that I need help, is really important to me. Plus all the, my gosh, I hate to say it. I put together a couple of computer-based learnings today and we had to write the VO. How long would that have normally taken? Sam, have you written VO, voiceover for a CBL?
Sam (41:39.302)
a little bit and it does take a moment. will admit that AI does make that go a lot faster.
Scott Schuette (41:46.694)
like minutes faster. Yeah, you gotta read it, right? Weeks, right? Like holy smokes, like when I used to write scripts, it was a couple days usually, right? And listen, those people that do it, humans that do it that are awesome at it, I have friends that are copywriters that they're awesome at it, like I wouldn't trade those people for a computer, not today, ever, but they take their time and it's great. But for, I hate to say it, in our world,
Sam (41:50.118)
hours yeah
Daniel (41:52.517)
Ha ha ha ha.
Sam (41:53.702)
That's...
Scott Schuette (42:15.173)
Done is better than perfect. 99 % of the time done is better than perfect and a standard voiceover that helps the people learn around is good. You're going to go at me. Go for it.
Daniel (42:19.89)
100%.
Daniel (42:26.566)
no, I was going to say, I was going to say, but again, we're talking about influence and that example, that's a great example. And AI is good at that, but that's not building influence. You're just taking orders still.
Scott Schuette (42:38.449)
No, If I use the time that I save, right, if I use the time that I save by doing that to just do more stuff, then you're right. But if I'm taking that time to analyze what's going on, building a marketing strategy for who I am, sitting down and having conversations with people, to identify KPIs and whatnot, that's where that becomes the lever that I need versus I can't.
Daniel (42:44.878)
huh.
Scott Schuette (43:05.605)
Find any time to do those things that are necessary from a leadership perspective because I just tend to spending too much time building. That's where it is. So I love, I love where you're coming in. It's, a balance, right? It's this balance between content production and being a strategic partner. And I feel like, I feel like if you can leverage that and find that balance, right? If you're just using AI to build more stuff, you're missing the point. Using AI to build stuff to free up the time so that you can shift.
Right. And this is a great way to, to, to wind up shift your thinking from, I'm an instructional designer and a facilitator to, you know what? I'm a performance consultant. I'm a business partner, strategic business partner. help initiate behavior change that leads to business impact. You start thinking that and showing that and demonstrating that on a regular basis.
That's when you'll have influence and that's when fun really starts.
There it is, that's all I got to say about that. That really is all I have to say about that. There it is.
Daniel (44:13.262)
Nah, it's good stuff. It's good stuff.
Daniel (44:19.758)
Hehe.
Scott Schuette (44:22.765)
love it great discussion along in the tooth but that's okay dan could you do us a favor could you go ahead and let her audience know how they could take this information and connect with us
Sam (44:26.246)
Ha
Daniel (44:33.798)
Absolutely. All right, guys, come on. You know the drill. nerds at the learning nerds.com. Email us any questions, join in on discussion. This week, we'd love to know if you're using AI, what are you using it to do? And how do you think you could use it to get a seat at the table to practice influence with your leadership? We'd love to know more. If you're on Facebook, you can find us at learning nerds for our Instagram peeps, fab learning nerds. And lastly, for more information about us, what we do and updates.
www.thelearningnerds.com. Scott, back at you.
Scott Schuette (45:07.889)
Thanks Dan. Hey everybody do me a favor. Could you go ahead and hit that like button? Hit that subscribe button, right? That's going to really really help folks find us. It's going to help get this information out to more of you. So I think that's really important. If you got time, leave us a review on either iTunes or Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. That'd be really great. And with that, I'm Scott.
Daniel (45:31.086)
I'm Dan.
Sam (45:33.658)
I'm Sam.
Scott Schuette (45:35.383)
We're your fabulous slurred nerds and we are out.