Melissa: Hello, and welcome to our inaugural edition of the
Practitioner Scholar, a Penn Chief Learning Officer podcast.
I'm Melissa Monti, and I will be your host.
We are very excited to be here for our first episode where we will use the time
to I'm going to explore some of the great work and successes behind some of the
alumni of the Penn Chief Learning Officer Program, or Penn CLO as it's known.
It's actually an executive doctoral program through the
University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.
And I'm actually a current student of this program.
The course of study focuses on organizational learning, leadership,
and development within the public and private working sectors.
It's also known as a scholar practitioner program.
That means that while there is an academic research component, a lot
of what we learn can be applied to the workplace through best practices.
Thought leadership and creating a framework to be
a trusted learning partner.
Speaking of which we are excited to introduce our first guest, Dr.
Keith Keating.
He serves as the chief learning and talent officer for BDO, a global consulting firm.
He is also the author of the groundbreaking learning and
development practitioners guide, the trusted learning advisor.
A sought after keynote speaker, he is also an advocate for talent development
and emphasizes human talent as the cornerstone of organizational success.
Dr.
Keating also received his Master of Education and Doctor of Education
degrees from the Penn Chief Learning Officer Program . Dr.
Keating, thank you so much for joining us today.
May I call you Keith?
Keith: Absolutely, Melissa.
Thank you.
And it's a pleasure to be here on our first inaugural
episode.
Melissa: Absolutely.
Thank you again.
We have several topics on today's agenda for you, which include your
newly released book, of course, Specific Learning and Development Frameworks,
and your thoughts on incorporating these into Fortune 500 companies and beyond.
We also have some lighthearted questions for you to help inspire us all to
engage in a lifelong learning journey.
But first, we would love to take a few minutes.
to get to know you as a person and also a human.
You've been very open in the past about your beginnings and how education looked
for you during your younger years.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that journey?
Keith: Absolutely.
Our backgrounds of course are like our fingerprints, very unique.
And for me, I struggled significantly with school and education growing up.
My father was in the military, so we moved every year, basically, and my formative
years were in Germany, Korea, Japan, and so when I did finally move to the U.
S., I was definitely mal aligned to the education system.
And I just struggled so much that eventually I dropped out when I was 15.
And I think that's been a driving factor for my continued education as an adult.
And my passion for this industry is I understand firsthand.
What it's like to struggle with the idea of learning and this formal construct
that a lot of times our schools or education systems like to put in place
to make everybody fit inside of that box.
And I don't feel like there's one box.
That everyone can fit in.
And so to your earlier point thank you for the introduction, but my advocacy and
my passion is around encouraging everyone to be lifelong learners, because once
you understand the power of learning.
You can take control over your future, and you're really unstoppable as a human.
Okay,
Melissa: very good.
Now, this actually segues very nicely into my next question for you.
Often you hear a lot of the times from older adults that it's too late
to go back to school, or I missed my calling, or I'm too old to start over.
So my question for you is actually two parts.
How do you feel about those phrases or the phrase too late tied to learning?
And what is your opinion on learning through higher education versus
possibly learning through the workplace?
What are some pros and cons there?
Keith: I think there's no such thing as ever too late except But I was
a dancer and I can tell you that my body is telling me that now it is too
late to continue to be in a dancer.
So there are some things where, yes, it can be too late.
But learning is definitely not one of those things.
And in my opinion, you should be learning for your entire lifetime.
That's hence lifelong learning means that for the trajectory of your
life, you're going to be learning.
to Your second question in terms of higher education versus work experience.
They bring different advantage points and also different challenges.
I think you can't replace the practical experience, that hands on experience.
It's extremely valuable.
For me personally, I think it was great that my higher
education came later in my life.
To where what I was learning had relevance and context and I understood
and I knew how to apply it because I had that real world experience
versus when I tried to start my higher education younger at 16, 17, I just
didn't understand how to apply it.
I think that there is a need for both, and the relevance and contextualization
is what's a really valuable, important concept of maybe doing
the higher education later in life.
If I had kids, I would advocate for them to get a job, get that experience,
that practice, go back and get their higher education once they had a
place where they could actually apply
Melissa: it.
Now, of course, we want to get to your book, which, by the way, is a huge
feat in itself, taking the time to sit down, do the research, compile your
thoughts, and then have it published, of course, so congratulations there.
But the Trusted Learning Advisor, as it's known, I know there are several
topics that are addressed and discussed, but could you give us a high level
overview of how it redefines a learning leader in today's organizations?
Keith: So I've been in the industry for over 23 years.
I started when I was five, if you're trying to do the math.
And I spent the majority of that time as an order taker, letting somebody else
decide who, what, where, when, why, and how a learning intervention needed to
occur, and then giving me or my team that order, and then waiting for us to
execute it, and we would execute it.
And to put it mildly, I am exhausted with being treated like an order taker,
and I know a lot of our industry is.
And, regardless of the amount of experience that I had or the
potential value that I could be providing in organizations,
this is how we were treated.
So this book is a culmination of those skills, those strategies, those
best practices that I've learned that over the years have helped me and
my teams to overcome being treated like order takers and that the
preconceived notions and biases that our stakeholders often have towards us.
The book is.
Part manifesto, part toolkit, part motivational mentor.
That's helping to support every level of L and D or talent practitioners to develop
the skills and capabilities that we need to be strategic business partners that
are embedded in the business who are.
Sought after, listened to, trusted.
That's what all of us strive to achieve, I think as leaders in our organizations.
But if you think about specifically, how does it help learning leaders,
talent development leaders?
We have a tremendous amount of value that we can be providing to the business.
And this book is a guide into how you can build those relationships,
become a strategic business partner with your stakeholders so that they
can recognize the value that you have to provide to the organization.
Because our job is simply to support the talent.
And we look at what is the most important resource in every organization.
Melissa: And one follow up question for those who maybe haven't worked within
the corporate sector or an organization where there's a shared service
function like learning and development.
Maybe the perception for people who have not come up in learning and development
may say you have a doctorate in education.
You have a master's in education.
How is the business not?
Taking you as a trusted learning advisor already.
Can you speak to some of the challenges of liaising with some of
the functional groups, sales marketing,
and although you have that experience in education, the business has
expertise in their specific function.
So how do you break down those barriers?
Keith: It's a great question, but let me just respond to the first
part of that my credentials haven't changed the way I'm treated, honestly.
I think it's important that I share that because I had this expectation
that once I got those credentials.
That was it.
And I would be invited into the room and to the conversations and to be
able to drive those strategies and I can say that it's not really changed.
It is a constant journey for us to be treated like trusted learning
advisors, for us to be treated like strategic business partners.
And it comes down to the way that we act, the way that we behave, our credibility,
our experience, our expertise.
But to your specific question, it comes down to our relationships.
That's really the core essence of what it means to have a seat at the table or
to be building your own table and to be in those conversations with any of those
other business units or stakeholders, its trust and its relationships.
And so that's the most important thing that we can be focusing
on is understanding from our stakeholders perspective.
What are their challenges?
How can we help them achieve their goals?
Another way that I like to think of it is.
Our job is to make our stakeholders the hero of their own story.
It's not to make L& D look good.
And for so many years I'll raise my hand and say I did it as well.
I had my own goals that I wanted to accomplish, and I had my own agendas.
And so L& D is often segregated from the rest of the business units, deriving
their own agenda, their own value propositions, their own measurements.
And it's only relevant to us.
And at the end of the day, we need to be focusing on what's
relevant to those stakeholders.
Melissa: Also in your book, you discuss the shift from
transactional to strategic learning.
Tell us a little bit more about that.
Keith: So I'm going to share with you three kind of Examples of that.
There's many more in the book.
So check out the book.
But traditionally, order takers are transactional.
So to begin with, learning leaders need to broaden their perspective beyond just
delivering training or learning programs.
And this means going back to my earlier statement that we've got
to broaden our business context in how our business is operating.
So I think that's where you were headed is do we have to be subject
matter experts in the business?
We don't have to be experts, but we have to have an understanding of our
business of our stakeholders so that we can speak their language because more
often than not, we're using our own vocabulary, our own lexicons, our own
definitions and acronyms, and it's not our stakeholders job to understand us.
It is our job to understand our stakeholders.
So ultimately it's about aligning our learning strategies with the
organizational goals and being able to demonstrate how learning initiatives
contribute to those objectives.
And this alignment is absolutely critical.
It's not just delivering those solutions, but ensuring the solution
drive tangible business outcome.
So that's number one.
Number two.
Building robust relationships with our stakeholders across the organization.
I know I'm repeating myself, but it needs to be repeated
because so often it's overlooked.
It requires stepping out of that traditional L and D silo and engaging
with those different departments and being embedded across the organization,
looking Holistically in following the concepts of systems thinking, and I'll
give an example to listeners and viewers.
Finance your chief financial officer.
That should be one of your key stakeholders.
We should be partnering with every business unit, hr,
marketing, IT, and finance.
The chief financial officer.
That person's role is to determine the value of every business unit
in the organization and to drive value for the organization.
If you don't have a relationship with them, how are they determining the
value of the work that you're providing?
I don't know.
That's why you need to build a relationship with them to make sure
that you're connected and that you see them as a stakeholder and they
see you as a valuable contributing member to the organization.
It's about becoming a partner rather than just a service provider.
And then number three, it's fostering a continuous.
Learning culture within that organization, this means not just focusing on formal
training programs, but really promoting and facilitating informal and social
and knowledge sharing and supporting employee led learning initiatives.
I know that was a mouthful, but those are at least three kind of examples
that I would share in terms of.
Your question.
Melissa: No, that makes a lot of sense.
And in fact, I wanted to talk a little bit more about that value that
you mentioned, because I'm sure in your experience, you've seen that
success metrics are often hard to display back to the business, right?
It's more of a long game versus short term, quarter over quarter, maybe,
halves over halves, maybe even the year.
Sometimes you need longer than that to demonstrate the effectiveness
of L& D within an organization.
So given that, can you share your insights on what success
metrics should focus on today?
Keith: Absolutely.
And this is going to be maybe a little bit controversial and different
from other speakers, but this is my perspective based on my experience.
The most important recommendation I could share for this question is this.
Success is dependent on your context.
It doesn't matter what I deem as success criteria or what you or what anyone
else in the industry says is the success criteria we should be monitoring.
It is solely dependent on the need of what you are solving for your stakeholder.
Are you solving for them?
Too often.
We try to put these generalizations on success metrics and make these
sweeping statements that, oh, we should be measuring this or measuring that.
But if we're doing that, and as LMD practitioners, we're sharing
these sentiments about measuring something we deem valuable, but
our stakeholders don't agree.
In the end, are we successful?
And I have spent so many years failing at this because we were creating
these success metrics in isolation.
And I thought that we were being successful.
And then I package this up and I go back to my stakeholder and present it.
And they say, no, that's not important to us.
That's not valuable to us.
So we have to ask ourselves the question, are we measuring what
is important and necessary and driving value to the business?
If you're not, that's where you need to be focusing on.
So start first with what business problems are we trying to solve for, and then
figure out how you measure that impact.
But if I were to answer the question a little bit more
tactically, I would say this.
Skill acquisition remains a fundamental metric.
Absolutely.
It's essential that we need to understand how the skill acquisition
is impacting business outcomes.
We need to measure how newly acquired skills are translated into improved
performance and higher productivity.
And ultimately.
Contributing to the overall organization goal.
Also, fostering a culture of continuous learning is equally as important.
In today's changing business environment, the ability of an
organization to adapt and evolve continuously is absolutely critical.
I know I started with not creating a generalized statement.
I think it starts first contextually understanding what's important to your
organization, the business goals, your stakeholders, but I think also we can look
at skill acquisition, how it's improving performance metrics, higher productivity.
Decreasing turnover and then also fostering a continuous
learning environment.
Melissa: Your book also makes note of future forward frameworks.
What does that mean exactly?
When I
Keith: talk about future forward frameworks for learning leaders,
I'm really referring to innovative approaches and strategies that help
them meet the needs of the learners.
And to me, innovation is like The word interesting, it can have so many
different contexts or meaning to it.
So innovation to me means that you're just doing something differently.
It's not necessarily technology driven.
It's just applying a different mindset, a different approach.
So the frameworks that I talk about in the book are crucial for those
who may feel that Maybe their current learning methods are falling short in
terms of effectiveness or relevance, but specifically a future forward
framework means moving beyond that traditional one size fits all approach.
And I go back to the comment a little few minutes ago in terms of There's not
a one size fits all approach when it comes to L& D, especially organizational
L& D, for me, it's more about adopting a holistic learner centric approach
that recognizes we have diverse needs.
We have learning approaches or maybe preferences.
We have career aspirations of individual learners.
And so what I look at is I'm a design thinking practitioner and I use design
thinking to help me conduct qualitative research in the organization to figure
out what do our learners need and then from there work backwards to create a
framework that can help support them.
And so really in summary, my, my answer is it's just not a
one size fits all approach.
Melissa: And I wanted to ask this question as well, too, because I'm
sure a lot of people in the industry would probably agree and or remember a
time where they were in this position.
What would you consider a best practice working with functional leaders who
maybe do not share the same school of thought of a continuous learning culture?
What are your
Keith: thoughts?
I think to be honest, I think that's most leaders.
Most leaders want that immediate return on, I'm going to say investment,
although I don't care for that phrase ROI, they want that immediate impact,
even the ones who believe in lifelong learning or continuous learning,
it's like there's two pathways.
Oh, in theory, yes, lifelong learning and continuous learning is important for
the organization, except for me, when I need to get some results now, I want
that value, I want that impact today.
So I don't have, six, 12 months.
That's something that we consistently face, I think, with every leader.
And that's where your influence skills, your negotiating skills,
your research skills come into play.
One of my preferred approaches and tactics is I try to take myself
out of the equation and I don't want I don't want my stakeholders
to say that's your perspective, Keith, you don't know my business.
I don't, I want my name kept out of it.
I consider myself an intermediary between other leaders in the
organization or in our industry data.
So for example, I use World Economic Forum.
I use McKinsey Global Institute.
I use Deloitte and I pull from these research firms.
To try and demonstrate the point, for example, if you're a question
about the sales leader, just wants that one day workshop.
What's the problem we're actually trying to solve?
What's the behavior we're trying to change?
Is it a tool?
Is it a process?
Is it actually performance driven?
Is there something else in the value chain that's stopping them
understanding all of those pieces?
But then if I'm trying to package a solution for them, it's Using the other
data that exists other experts in the field, bringing other voices into the
conversation so that it's less about me trying to prove a point and change
their mindset, but about helping them become educated in how we actually drive
change through learning and development.
And that's a slippery slope because as I mentioned earlier, it's
not their job to understand our tools, our frameworks and such.
It's our job to figure out how do we translate everything that we know
about the right way to learn, when it is the right appropriate time,
translate that into a way that's meaningful, understandable, and
digestible to those stakeholders.
And that's the real skill set that we have to constantly be developing.
Melissa: As you may know, the organizational landscape
is rapidly evolving due to technological advancements.
Of course this year, as an example, generative AI was in the news quite a bit.
So how can learning leaders stay ahead of the curve and adapt some
of their strategies to meet the demands of the modern workplace?
Keith: I've had a number of conversations recently with chief learning officers
and learning leaders even higher education professors, where they have
not yet started to use Gen AI, or specifically I'll just call out ChatGPT.
The answer to your question is you stay ahead by being aware by learning.
We're all learning right now.
We don't know how this is going to play out, but there is one thing that we know.
There is no version of the future that exists without AI.
AI, like technology or the internet, is here and it is
going to be here for our future.
The best thing that you can do is embrace it, understand it, learn it, figure out
how you can leverage it to do its job.
Its job is to help augment you, to free you up from some of those
Tasks and activities that technology can do better than us so that you
can focus on your core skill set.
So the answer to your question is we should be absolutely embracing
technology and tools when it comes to helping our organizations learn.
And the way that you start is by simply Learning them yourselves.
You don't have to become an A.
I.
Expert.
It's evolving so quickly.
I think last year towards the end of last year, there was maybe 30
40 companies focusing on this.
Now there's thousands.
It's evolving every single day, but you have to stay abreast of that.
And as a trusted learning advisor, you have to be aware
of all of the tools that exist.
I view our job as Yeah.
We need to have the biggest toolkit possible.
And that means you understand everything from LMS, LXP, MOOC, AR, VR, MR, AI.
What are the use cases for each of those?
What are the vendors that are out there?
When should you use one, not the other?
What's the difference between SuccessFactors and EdCast and Docebo?
Should you have an LXP and why should you have an LXP so that when
these organizational problems arise, when our stakeholders bring us a
problem, we identify a problem, we go into our tool kit and we find the
right tool to solve that problem.
And that means that we have to keep our biases out of it.
It's not what tool I like.
It's what tool is going to solve the right problem.
And part of those tools include things like.
Kirkpatrick's Level 4, Phillip's ROI, LTIM's, Wilhelm Thalheimer's LTIM model.
You may not like Kirkpatrick's Level 4, but you should understand it, because
your stakeholders may know what a Level 3 is and be asking you about a Level 3.
You should know the difference between, LTIM and Kirkpatrick.
So long story short, it's our responsibility to have an awareness and an
understanding of all the tools that exist.
It can feel overwhelming, but we don't have to be know it alls.
We need to be learn it alls.
I'm not an expert in every single one of those tools, but I have
an awareness of what they are.
So when that problem does arrive, I can figure out which tool do I need to use.
to help solve that problem.
Melissa: And that probably answers some of my next question for you.
In your book, also, you emphasize human talent as the cornerstone
of organizational success.
Can you share some best practices around talent development that you believe
every learning leader should be aware of?
I believe you just answered a good portion of it, but anything else
you have to offer would be great.
Keith: Get the book.
It's all in there.
If you want to know everything that I think about that,
it's literally all in there.
As I mentioned, it's, I wrote it as a way to download my 25 years of experience
and it is truly a practical guide.
It is not a thought leader, ethereal book.
It's here's the, you want to build relationships.
Here are best practices.
You want to build trust?
Here are best practices.
You want to build your skills and learning practitioner?
Here are the best practices.
So in terms of answering your question, I would say definitely check out the book.
There are other tools like design thinking.
Every talent development practitioner should be fully aware and immersing
themselves in design thinking as a tool to be solving problems.
If you think about what do we do as talent development leaders, we develop humans.
And our humans have problems and we need to solve those problems.
Design thinking is a fantastic tool for that because it is a framework that
gives us a structure that we can follow.
And what I love about frameworks and methodologies
is in some way it's a shield.
Earlier you were asking what happens when your stakeholders, push back
and they don't want to follow along?
I use these methodologies as my shield to say, Hey, it's not Keith that's
saying that it's design thinking.
This is the methodology.
It's a scientific methodology.
Stanford uses it.
These are all the companies that use it.
Here's how, why we should use it and the value of it.
And it takes the individual, the human me out of it.
So it's less about my voice and it's more about solving the problem with
this method, with this methodology.
So I would leave that one with you, a human centered design thinking.
Melissa: I have more to read.
That is for sure.
FInally, before we get into some more light hearted questions, I
would love to ask your opinion on your newer title of doctor.
In your honest opinion, what changed for you after you turned in your
dissertation, which is a huge feat, and walked the stage to receive your degree?
How did the Penn CLO program impact your career, do you think,
if you could pick one thing?
Keith: If I were going to pick one thing, I would say that It's made me a better,
for lack of better words, truer learning leader in the sense that I know how to
research now and I also know how to write.
That's, I think that's the biggest the biggest value proposition for me is
that I know how to coherently write.
I know how to research.
I know how to formulate.
But also it gave me a credibility to some people.
Like I said, it hasn't changed all of the mindsets of stakeholders.
It's given me a community of other leaders.
And I think that , is one of the.
biggest value propositions is that we're not going to solve this by ourself.
No C.
L.
O.
Is working siloed.
My network is my greatest, I think value proposition is I'm connected
to some of the most brilliant thought leaders in the world.
And when I'm faced with a challenge Or a question I can
go to them and talk about it.
And so I think understand how to research me in a much better writer
and connecting to brilliant thought leaders in my cohorts in the program
has made me a better learning leader.
Melissa: I Enjoyed your candid responses.
Very insightful.
Thank you so much.
And I would now love to spend some time on some more lighthearted
questions, if that's okay?
Keith: Absolutely.
Melissa: All right.
So here's the first one.
What would you recommend as one out of the box, unconventional way
to learn something new and why?
Keith: I think role playing.
Immersive role playing is one of the best ways to learn, at least for me, it gives
you the ability to practice, going back to trusted learning advisors, influence
skills, negotiation skills, being able to have difficult conversations while
these are valuable as a trusted learning advisor, it's valuable for any leader or
any human And also something that a lot of people struggle with, and I found that
role playing those discussions, those situations gives you the opportunity
to practice and until the words come out of your mouth, until your body
language is experiencing that situation it's raw, it's new, you don't know how
you're necessarily going to respond, and the more times that you can do that,
the better you become, it's practice.
Can you share a quirky or unusual skill or hobby that you've picked
up that others may be interested in?
My current skill is learning AI, learning chat GPT and how
to Use it to make me better.
And I love just trying different things with it every single day.
It's my, my significant other has worried that I'm having too strong
of a relationship with chat GPT, which now I just call it chat.
And I, I'm talking about it every day.
So I guess, a new hobby slash skill is learning how to use AI to.
Free me up and make me better at what I do.
Melissa: Alright, I would love to know what keeps you up at
Keith: night.
As a learning leader right now, what I'm concerned most about is the fact that
Every leader in organizations across the globe are asking themselves, how can AI
make our organization faster, more money, and more effective, and save costs?
And when we say save costs, what we're talking about is
resources, our human talent.
Every leader is asking themselves that.
Right now, we're not seeing a massive wave in job reductions
as of a I, but it is coming.
And what keeps me up at night is my concern that as learning leaders,
we're not getting ahead of this curve.
We're not necessarily looking at our organization to figure out what roles.
might be at risk.
And we've been talking about the future of learning for years now.
And by the way, I'm not a fan of that phrase because I feel like when we use
the word future, we're giving ourself permission not to take action today and
everything that we're talking about with the future of learning the future of work.
Should be actionable today.
And what has elevated this is AI is chat GPT.
I know that in one of the organizations I work with, we could reduce our workforce
by 30 percent in the next 12 months.
I know that today.
I know there are conversations happening behind closed doors
where this is being discussed.
No one is discussing it publicly.
So it's my responsibility as a learning leader.
to be taking that information and figuring out how do I help those people?
How do I help them start to upskill, reskill, second skill today, even if it's
not going to happen for 12, 18, 24 months?
And I don't think that enough learning leaders are thinking about that.
So what keeps me up right now is I'm worried about our talent.
I'm worried that as learning leaders, we're missing the opportunity to get
ahead of this discussion by figuring out what roles might be at risk.
Yes, our businesses might not have announced them.
HR might not know yet.
Our stakeholders might not know yet, but we can know at
least we can have some insight.
Again, McKinsey Global Institute, World Economic Forum, the data exists on
roles that AI can do better than us.
So if we already have that data today, we should be planning for that right now.
So answer your question, I'm worried that we're just not doing
enough right now to help our talent prepare for what's coming soon.
Melissa: So saying that, I'm curious to your thoughts of the news headlines
that we've seen in late 2022 into 2023 with layoffs, yet there is a
talent shortage with necessary skills that hiring leaders are looking for.
So how do we close that gap?
Knowing that there's talented, skilled workers out there, but some of these
positions that are open in organizations have highly prescriptive requirements.
How do we close that gap?
Keith: There's always this question of whose responsibility is it when we talk
about lifelong learning and upskilling?
Is it the organization's responsibility?
Is it the governor's responsibility?
Is it?
The individual employee's responsibility.
I'm going to say something a little bit controversial.
I think it's the employee's responsibility.
It's my responsibility as a human, as a worker, to make sure that I have
the skills that I need to do my job.
That means that it's also my responsibility to understand how to look.
It the workforce, how to look at what's changing all of the
things that we've talked about today are available to everybody.
What I believe organizations need to be doing is to create
opportunities to reinforce this point of being lifelong learners.
So I don't expect my organization to upskill me and to make sure that I
have a career for the rest of my life.
They're looking out for the skills that they need.
The answer to your question is the skill gaps.
The layoffs are real.
The talent shortage is real.
The layoffs are also real.
I think that we need to continuously be advocating for lifelong learning,
create equitable opportunity for everyone to continue their learning, create
space and time in the organization.
If you look at organizations, they'll talk about, yes,
continuous learning is important.
Lifelong learning is important.
And then you ask, how much time are you giving your employees?
each year to learn.
And I find that many can't answer that question.
They don't have a set number of hours.
So the most basic thing that every organization can do is give a minimum
number of required hours that every employee needs to have to continuously
be upskilling, developing themselves.
40 hours is typically the number when an organization does say it.
One week is not enough.
One week is absolutely not enough, so you've got to figure out what's
right for your organization, what's right for the roles, but create
space, create equitable opportunities, things like tuition reimbursement is
not the same as tuition assistance.
Tuition reimbursement assumes the employee can carry that cost.
Often the people that we're talking about are those that are hourly employees that
cannot carry the cost of tuition, the cost of certifications for six months
or however long the certification is.
They're incurring the interest rate on top of that, which
organizations don't reimburse.
So it's actually not net even, it's a negative balance.
The organization should be focusing on tuition assistance
rather than tuition reimbursement.
These are some examples of creating equitable opportunities to really
have a lifelong learning culture.
Melissa: Speaking of lifelong learning, I have just learned
today that you were a former street jazz dancer and a backup dancer at
one point for Christina Aguilera.
Of course, I need to know more information on this.
Were you in music videos or was this for concerts and
Keith: shows?
I am in a music video.
I'm not going to say which one.
And it was also for some shows.
Right before the Bionic Tour.
But then she ended up getting the voice and the Bionic Tour
was canceled, unfortunately.
I feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to have had a
professional career and things that I love, I love what I do now.
I'm extremely passionate about it.
This is my calling, but I also have to have a completely separate career.
is as a dancer what I'll say now is I'm paying for it for the rest of
my life between back issues and just every day I can still feel the pain.
Melissa: Okay.
And what was the name of that music video one more time?
Keith: The one I didn't tell you?
It's not myself tonight.
Melissa: Okay.
I will have to check that out.
But I want to say thank you so much for joining us today.
I really enjoyed the conversation and you had some really great points.
And of course, there's more to read up on in your book,
The Trusted Learning Advisor.
Definitely go ahead and grab your copy if interested.
And then Keith, one question for you as the last step, if audience
members would like to connect with you, what's the best way to do that?
Keith: One quick comment before I answer that.
Even if you're not interested in the book, you should still grab
a copy because it is for every single L and D talent practitioner.
After you grab it and start reading it, then you might become interested.
Sometimes you need that push.
This is your push.
Get the book.
To continue connecting with me, LinkedIn is a great way.
My personal website is keithkeating.
com or if you want to learn more about the book, very easy website,
the trusted learning advisor.
Melissa: Thank you again so much.
And we did it.
Okay.
Keith, we finished our first episode.
Thank you so much.
Keith: Absolutely.
Thanks, Melissa.
I appreciate it.
Take care.