469. Revolutionizing Corporate Learning

Summary

Podcast Summary: Episode 469 – Revolutionizing Corporate Learning

The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
Host: Melina Palmer
Guest: Bob Gerard, Learning Ingenuity Lead at Accenture
Release Date: February 6, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 469 of The Brainy Business podcast titled "Revolutionizing Corporate Learning," host Melina Palmer engages in an insightful conversation with Bob Gerard, the Learning Ingenuity Lead at Accenture. The episode delves into transforming traditional corporate training programs into engaging, effective, and brain-friendly learning experiences by leveraging principles from behavioral economics and cognitive science.

Guest Introduction

Melina Palmer (00:35):
"Learning can in fact be fun and effective and valuable for both companies and employees alike. And I'm delighted to talk about the science of brain-friendly learning with my guest today, Bob Gerard."

Bob Gerard (02:46):
"I lead a team called Learning Ingenuity at Accenture, focusing on research and development to enhance how our people learn. Additionally, I co-host the Learning Geeks podcast, reaching thousands of learning professionals worldwide."

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The Challenge of Traditional Corporate Training

Melina and Bob begin by addressing the common frustrations associated with traditional corporate training:

• Melina Palmer (00:43):
  "Some of them you're trying to click through the slides as quickly as possible so you can check the box and move on with your real work."

• Bob Gerard (05:06):
  "A lot of L&D feels like box checking. No fun sort of deal."

They highlight how conventional methods often lead to disengagement and minimal retention, emphasizing the need for a paradigm shift in corporate learning strategies.

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The Journey to Engaging Learning

Bob shares his background and the evolution of his approach to making learning more engaging:

Bob Gerard (05:37):
"I studied computer science and realized early on that making technical instruction engaging helps it stick. This led me to a career focused on making learning interesting and effective."

He underscores the correlation between engagement and memory retention, supported by scientific evidence that aligns with behavioral economics principles.

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Durable Learning Principles

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the Eight Principles of Durable Learning, developed through Bob's team's research influenced by the book Make It Stick. These principles aim to create learning experiences that are memorable and actionable.

1. Relevance
   Content must be pertinent to the learner's role and responsibilities.

2. Contextual
   Building new knowledge upon existing understanding to facilitate easier assimilation.

3. Engaging
   Capturing and maintaining the learner's attention through interactive and enjoyable methods.

4. Effortful
   Challenging learners to actively engage with the material, promoting deeper processing.

5. Generative
   Encouraging learners to apply new knowledge immediately, reinforcing retention.

6. Social
   Facilitating group learning environments to enhance understanding through collaboration.

7. Spaced
   Implementing spaced repetition to improve long-term memory retention.

8. Reflective
   Incorporating reflection activities to consolidate learning and identify areas for improvement.

Bob Gerard (16:22):
"These principles ensure that learning is not only absorbed but also applied effectively, leading to meaningful behavior change."

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Spaced Learning and Attention Spans

The conversation transitions into the importance of spaced learning and adapting to shrinking attention spans in the digital age.

Bob Gerard (08:30):
"Spacing out your learning rather than cramming enhances retention and recall."

They discuss strategies such as micro-learning and leveraging platforms like TikTok for delivering short, impactful learning modules that align with modern attention patterns.

Melina Palmer (13:43):
"It's easy to say, but the things I need to tell people are so much more complex than 90 seconds."

Bob Gerard (13:45):
"Creating micro-learning modules that address one key behavior change at a time can bridge the gap between short attention spans and comprehensive learning objectives."

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Reflection Techniques: The "What Squares" Method

Bob introduces the "What Squares" reflection technique, a structured method to enhance the reflective aspect of learning:

1. Square:
   "What squares with your thinking? How does this align with what you already know?"
   (Timestamp: 24:15)

2. Circle:
   "What is still rolling around in your head? Where are you still confused?"
   (Timestamp: 24:15)

3. Triangle:
   "What changes do you want to make as a result of what you learned?"
   (Timestamp: 24:15)

Bob Gerard (24:15):
"This technique provides enough structure to guide reflection without being restrictive, helping learners identify gaps and commitments for change."

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Behavior Change and Business Outcomes

Melina emphasizes the shift from traditional learning metrics to focusing on behavior change and performance improvement:

Melina Palmer (28:37):
"Learning is dumb unless it results in behavior change that leads to improved business results."

They discuss the evolving role of Learning and Development (L&D) professionals in aligning training programs with organizational performance goals, moving beyond mere compliance to fostering meaningful skill enhancement.

Bob Gerard (35:18):
"You don't have to start from scratch. Evaluate your existing programs against the durable learning principles and make incremental improvements to enhance their effectiveness."

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The Future of Learning: AI and Personalized Experiences

The episode concludes with an exploration of future trends in corporate learning, particularly the integration of Generative AI:

Bob Gerard (39:29):
"Imagine an AI agent that helps you prepare for meetings by suggesting relevant training materials and facilitating role plays. This level of personalization can revolutionize how we approach learning."

They anticipate a future where AI-driven personalized learning experiences enhance learner engagement and retention, making training more adaptive and responsive to individual needs.

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Notable Quotes

• Melina Palmer (16:10):
  "The reflection piece is so key and I think gets overlooked."

• Bob Gerard (39:54):
  "If it shifts behavior, I'm good with it. Let's roll with it."

• Melina Palmer (43:19):
  "Learning can and should be fun, both for the person creating the materials and those engaging with them."

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Conclusion

Episode 469 offers a comprehensive look into transforming corporate learning through the application of behavioral economics and cognitive science principles. By adhering to the eight durable learning principles and embracing innovative technologies like AI, organizations can create more effective, engaging, and memorable training programs that drive meaningful behavior change and improve business outcomes.

Melina Palmer (43:10):
"Thank you again to Bob Gerard for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you."

Listeners are encouraged to apply these principles to their own training programs and share their experiences on social media, fostering a community dedicated to brain-friendly business practices.

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Resources Mentioned:

• Durable Learning Principles: Available on ATD's website
• Learning Geeks Podcast: Accessible on all major streaming platforms
• Contact Bob Gerard: LinkedIn

For more insights and resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com/469.

Transcript

[Melina Palmer]

Welcome to episode 469 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Bob Gerard, Learning Ingenuity lead at Accenture. Ready? Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Now, how many times have you sat.

[Bob Gerard]

Through a terrible corporate training?

[Melina Palmer]

You know the ones. Some of them you're trying to click through the slides as quickly as possible so you can check the box and move on with your real work. Some you're making notes about random dates.

[Bob Gerard]

Or names that you know you're going.

[Melina Palmer]

To be quizzed on later to check the box and move on. And some are are a total letdown because you were excited to learn about.

[Bob Gerard]

This topic, but it was presented in.

[Melina Palmer]

A way that was way too dense or hard to follow or boring. There are a whole lot of ways learning has gotten a bad reputation over the years, especially in the corporate space, but it doesn't have to be that way. Learning can in fact be fun and effective and valuable for both companies and employees alike. And I'm delighted to talk about the science of brain friendly learning with my guest today, Bob Gerard. Bob is a 30 year plus learning industry veteran who has held pretty much every role imaginable in the learning space.

[Bob Gerard]

At one time or another.

[Melina Palmer]

Currently he leads the Learning Ingenuity team within Accenture's HR organization, which is essentially research and development for how Accenture people learn better. Bob is also the co host of the Learning Geeks podcast, a program that reaches thousands of learning professionals around the world really quickly. Before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show, notes for my top related past episodes and.

[Bob Gerard]

Books, ways to get in touch with.

[Melina Palmer]

Myself and Bob and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com469 now let's jump right in. Bob Gerard, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.

[Bob Gerard]

Thank you Melina. Super happy to be here.

Oh yes. I have been looking forward to this conversation for so long and I know that the audience is going to love everything that we're talking about today. For everyone who doesn't yet know you, can you share a little bit about yourself and the work that you do.

Yeah, sure. So, again, my name is Bob Gerard. I work with a company called Accenture, which sometimes we say is the biggest company in the world, that nobody knows what we do, but we are about 750,000 people around the world, and we are a management consulting industry. We do a lot of management consulting industry, a management consulting firm. We work with every industry. We focus a lot on technology. And within Accenture, I lead a team called Learning Ingenuity. So we like to refer to ourselves as research and development on how Accenture people can learn better. I sit in hr, and so I'm just concerned. I'm not. Well, of course I'm concerned about our clients, but indirectly, I am more concerned with our own people, our own consultants, how we train them in every aspect of whatever's going to make their job better. So that's my main job. I also, as a side hustle, have my own podcast, the Learning Geeks Podcast, which I am now going to shamelessly plug. And anybody who likes what we have to say, come on over and, you know, just hit subscribe on that one, too. That's easy.

Absolutely. And we'll definitely. We will link to it in the show notes so everybody can go check out Learning Geeks, which.

That's great.

I feel like people like the brainy business Learning Geeks. Like, that's.

We're right in line. Yeah. And we're going to have you on very shortly, too, so we'll get that arranged. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Super exciting.

Goes around, comes around.

Love it. So you were saying there, too. So, like, you're talking about with learning and knowing that I told you, you know, we do training here. We, we do work with different organizations and individuals and we're so focused on. I've always said for years, like, whoever said learning has to be boring, right? That it has to be. Also the problem, we've all been in those corporate trainings where it's, you know, it's just about like checking a box, and I'm sitting there and doing the like, click, click, click, click, click for two hours. Whatever. The mandatory thing is to take the test, to, like, prove I did the thing. But I do not remember, you know, what, the year that the law was passed or whatever thing. I got quizzed on, like, at that.

Yeah.

And so, like, that is sort of where so much L and D or even just, you know, any sort of HR stuff. It feels very much like box checking. No fun sort of deal. And I love that you and your team are really looking at Changing that up. Thank goodness. And I know from having these conversations, other people are, too, which is why I think this is such a valid interview, such a good conversation. Can you share some of, you know, your journey in that process to fix that problem?

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I know you and I both have a theater kid background, so we have that in common. And there are so many people in my business, Molina, who are, you know, who are washed up actors who couldn't make it, but then they went into corporate training, including my theater coach. So, Ms. Daggett, if you're listening to me, when I went to college, I studied computer science at the University of Illinois in the late 80s. And one of the textbooks that we had was it in the Pascal programming language. It was called opascal. And it was a really fun book to read. It was really engaging. So when the professor assigned pages in opascal, you know, I looked forward to reading it and was psyched up about it. And it kind of clicked for me then that if you can take, like, technical instruction and make it interesting, make it engaging, make it something that people pay attention to, then obviously. Well, I mean, maybe not obvious, but it seemed apparent to me that that would make it stick. And so I wound up getting a minor in technical writing and right out of school went to work to Anderson Consulting, which became Accenture down the road. So I've really been there most of my career, and the whole time that I have been there, I've been doing either writing software documentation or doing something in the training field. But kind of my passion and my niche has always been about making it engaging and making it interesting. And again, that gut instinct that I had, which now we've proven out scientifically, the more engaged you are, the more immersed you are in a learning experience. We know that down the line, the faster you're able to recall that information and the, you know, the more of it you're able to recall. So now the science backs us up. And that's, you know, a lot of what we focus on is how do we engage with people, capture their attention so that we can focus on helping them change some of their behaviors.

Definitely. And I've had someone on the show talking about this difference between cramming and whether or not you should, like, spread out learning, which, you know, spoiler alert. You know, for retention purposes. Yeah, for retention. You know, if you want to remember this stuff. I think that was, you know, his. The advice I've heard from people kind of as we talked about this, like, if you just need to pass the test and something you do not care about at all, like, okay, go ahead and cram, be done. But if you actually want to learn something and remember it, you know, spacing out your learning.

Yeah, that's absolutely right. Yeah. You know, and I'm not a neuroscientist. I just play one on the interwebs. But so I might get, you know, somebody might write you in and go, you didn't get the science exactly right. But you know, what you want to have happen is when you, you intake something, you want to give yourself enough time to process it. And then you want to give enough time that you actually forget it, but then have to practice recalling it. And when you practice recalling it and pulling it from your long term memory back into your short term memory, that just strengthens those paths for the next time you need to do it. And that's why the space learning, the space repetition and the space practice works. There was a really interesting podcast from Andrew Huberman a couple of weeks ago, I'm sure you know who he is, about optimal trips tricks for, for studying. And we were so psyched listening to it because it was like, these are our durable learning principles. He's repeating them back, you know, validation. This is great. But he, he cited a study where they took four different groups in an experiment and they all initially got some content. And then one of the groups had a study session, a study session, a study session, and then like a final exam. Another group had a study session, a study session, a quiz, and then a final exam, and then a study session, quiz, quiz, finally, and then learn, quiz, quiz, quiz, quiz, study session. And it was the group that did the quizzes exclusively without an extra study session that did the best on the end. And again, it's that idea of learn something, give it some time to kind of fade away, bring it back, practice that recall. Quizzes and tests are one of the absolute best learning experiences that we have. It's just really sad that our educational system uses them in a way that beats the joy of that out of our children and causes extreme anxiety. You know, so we gotta change that. We gotta change that.

Absolutely. Well, and that I know in the paper you sent over, you know, talks about different brain chemicals. That made me think about the piece about cortisol. Right. So where a little bit of the cortisol is good for remembering, but too much where we feel stress is bad. Can you share some more about that fun brain side of things?

You basically nailed it, right? It's kind of the idea to use some jargon of eustress and distress. You know, a little bit of cortisol gives you positive stress that they refer to as eustress. And it is just kind of that motivator to activate your brain and say, okay, now I really have to pay attention and I have to, to do something. And you feel that while you felt that all the way through university, you know, the night before your final, you're like, okay, it's time to start going out, or it's time to stop going out. It's time to actually sit here and learn this stuff. And then you engage in the cramming session, which, as you've said, is a terrible thing to do if you actually want to remember anything. But that little burst of cortisol, you know, will give you the push to actually start learning and then your brain will accommodate it. But again, if it's too much, if the stress gets to be too bad, then you're in distress and that actually impedes the learning. And then I think a lot of times what happens then is you're trying to learn something, but the voices in your head keep giving you the panic signals and you just can't even take it in. And that's no good either. So you want that nice, healthy balance.

[Melina Palmer]

Definitely.

[Bob Gerard]

Yeah. So when we think about attention spans, this is another really important aspect. And at any point I'm, we're getting some of this periphery and then I really want to jump into those durable learning principles going through, through all of them. So if there's a point where you say I'm just going to like, talk through what those are, that, that's fine. But we think about, you know, they, you know, I remember, my goodness, now it's probably been 15 years or something. The first time I heard somebody at a conference say that, you know, human attention is less than a goldfish, which is. Yeah, yeah, not necessarily.

Yeah, that's not true. But, but that's an urban legend. But, but it's directionally correct, let's put it that way.

Right, right. And so we, but we look at things and different, you know, apps, social media, that they've really got these aspect of shorts or TikTok videos or. And now LinkedIn is showing with the shorter videos and trying to be, you know, 60 seconds, 90 seconds, no more than, you know, a few minutes of, of content. But, but then people will sit and watch that endlessly.

This binge it. Right, right.

And so it's like little bursts of things and, and, and people tend to remember where There's a story or there's something in you enjoy watching when it's.

[Melina Palmer]

Broken into little bits of content.

[Bob Gerard]

And so as we look to tap into how people are kind of naturally gravitating toward content, you know, there's a. It's easy to say, but like the things I need to tell people are so much more complex and bigger than 90 seconds, which is fair for a lot of things. And what's the balance between like 60 seconds and, you know, the longest day of my life of sitting in a really boring conference?

Right. Well, you know, you're right. I think that the attention spans are shrinking. Attention spans are shrinking. Especially in this era of social media. It's just so easy to get that those dopamine hits from the scrolling and seeing something you like. It's a very addictive thing. So I feel like as learning professionals, we, we do have to kind of code down to that, but we can take advantage of it with such things as. Like you were talking about with the spaced. Learning, right? Is if we can create micro learning. That's another buzzword that we're using a lot lately, right? The micro learning. If we can create micro learning that comes with, you know, just one key important factor, behavior change at a time. But we can find a way to string it along that you could watch that you could have a little break in between so you get some space and then the next video that easily recalls that, you know, like that kind of bridges that gap and then add something new. I think we can start to create a system that does that, but we're just starting to play around with that type of thing. You know, we, we've tried in the past to do, you know, kind of some of those short form TikTok like videos. Haven't really had a lot of success with them, but we recently just did a lot of research. We just dug in and it's like, hey, what actually do you do to make these things work? And we found out some of those tricks and when we tried those tricks, they work. So stay tuned. Next time I come on, I'll report back some of the results of that. Yeah, yeah. Or maybe by the time you come on learning geeks, we'll have some data.

We'Ll talk about that.

[Melina Palmer]

Cool.

[Bob Gerard]

All right, well, all of the above. Right. I'm excited for sure. The conversation going for sure. So well, let's transition now into durable learning. Can you share, you know, what does that, what does that mean? What is durable learning?

Yeah, I'll tell the story behind that. Several Years ago, our chief learning officer, my good friend Allison Horn, when she took that office, she was really interested of bringing the science of learning into the classroom. So, you know, historically training that we did was just kind of your typical road training. It was the cbt, the computer based training. Things like you're saying where you really just kind of checking the box or forcing people to sit in a room while you're listening to PowerPoint lectures for eight hours a day. You know, like we were doing too much of that and you just knew that people weren't really learning anything, they weren't retaining as much as we needed them to. So she asked my team, and the funny thing with that is I actually left the company for a couple of years to go work somewhere else. And this happened during that time. And so I wasn't involved in this. But my colleague Dana Koch, who just retired earlier this year, heartbreak for us all. But he, but except for him, he's very happily retired. He led our team in doing some research into what is it that really makes learning stick. And they were very heavily influenced by a book called Make It Stick, but did a whole bunch of extra research on top of that to come up with eight principles for what we call durable learning. Learning that you could go through the experience and we would have better odds that down the line, when you needed to recall what you learned, you would be able to recall it and apply it. So we did this research and I'll go ahead and run through the principles. If my Siri doesn't interrupt me, I don't know what I said. She thought I was talking to her. So the first durable learning principle is relevance. It's got to be relevant to the learner. So if you as the learner have no idea, why are they making me do this? What am I supposed, how does this relate to my day to day job? You're not going to be interested. It's got to be relevant, it's got to be engaging. For the reasons that we let off this podcast with, you know, if it's not engaging, you're not paying attention. So then nothing is happening. It has to be contextual. So we know that the brain builds knowledge by building on previous knowledge. So we have to make it as easy as we can when we're teaching you a new idea, to put it in context with what you already know. And then you can continue to build your building upward. If you think of it that way, it's gotta be effortful. So if you're just sitting back and passively consuming Anything and it isn't a little bit challenging, then it doesn't stick. And this kind of gets at some of what we were talking about earlier too, around that, you know, little cortisol boost that gets you some eustress. So it's gotta be effortful. It has to be generative. So again, you can't just like read something and say, okay, I got this, and expect to be able to apply it far down the line. You need to apply it right then. And that's one that's fairly obvious for people. You know, I mean, in most corporate learning, you'll get some content and then you'll have an activity where you try what you learn and you apply what you learn. But that's something that is really necessary. And, you know, kind of the more abstract you can make those generative experiences, the better. If it's like, here's how to do abc. Now do ABC on your own, well, that's good. But if it's now you know how to do abc, can you do A prime, B prime and C prime? That's even better. It's more generative, it's more effortful, social. When people learn in groups, we know that they learn better. Now this is interesting because in Huberman's podcast that we were just talking about, one of the things that he said that kind of was a little bit of a bump in the wall for me was he said, you should study on your own. But then I kind of sat back and I thought about it and I said, well, if all you're doing is like studying and reading a book, and I know how I was in college studying with my friends, usually you're actually at a bar and you're distracting each other, yes, in that case alone is better. But if you're doing it in a social context, in a cohort where you can talk about what you're learning, you can process things together, you can understand what somebody else is learning and how that's a little bit different from you. You can, you can discuss, you can debate. We know that that's really healthy to make the learning durable spaced practice. So we've talked about that. You know, it's kind of combining two ideas is spacing out your learning, not trying to jam it all in at once, but spacing it out over a period of time and then making sure you get that practice each of those times. We know that that makes things more durable. And the final one is reflection, which is actually the newest principle that we just added recently. But we've realized from Our research over the last couple of years how important it is to reflect on a learning experience to make sure that it gets into your long term memory. And I would even throw out there that almost anything that you experience can be a really positive learning experience if you take the time to reflect on it. You know, whether it's a success or a failure, whether it's something you understand or you don't understand. Just taking a few seconds to say, okay, wait, what happened? How did I feel about it? What did I pro. What were the steps I took? What did I process? What did I learn from that learning experience? How can I then take it back and learn from it then? Yeah, you, then you're really rocking and rolling. So those are the durable learning principles. And yeah, we, we just published those. They're available from. This was the, the article that I shared with you. They're available from atd, the association for Talent Development. If you go onto their website, look for the publication principles for Brain Friendly Learning. You can pick up your own copy and learn more about those.

Perfect. And we'll definitely link to that as well. And super worth the, the time. Like it's easy read which is good, right? As far as like it's well segmented, it's practicing what it preaches.

[Melina Palmer]

Right.

[Bob Gerard]

In a lot of ways here of, of being able to you know, digest in those check little chunks as we're learning. So we could dig in on any or all of these. One of the ones that I think and maybe it's because it's toward the end or just my approach to the thoughtfulness approach we have here at the brainy business. I think that reflection piece is so key and especially because I know so one, you know, has the note in the paper where it's saying, you know, it's the thing that people. That white space in the agenda that people tend to think, oh good, we can just like squish that out. We, we can just take, take that up. We built it in but we won't have the, the time for it per se. And so I think that that reflection is so important and I think gets overlooked and like you said, since it's a new addition is important and I loved the sectioning based on the shapes that are mentioned in there. So I'm going to let you talk about it. But I thought that was such a cool thing that I want to leverage something, you know, similar. So if you can share about.

Yeah, well, we'll start with that. So this was a creation of Dana, who wrote the paper. The Guy I was just talking about. He's also one of the learning geeks, so you'll get to meet him shortly. This was a creation of his. It's an activity that he calls what squares? And it's very punny because Dana is well known for his dad jokes. That's the one thing I don't miss about having him around every day. So the idea is when you want to take some time and reflect on something that you learned, you grab a piece of paper and you draw a triangle, a square, and a circle. You do those in a different order than what I just said. You do a square. You do a square and then a circle and a tray. You know, actually, it probably doesn't matter what order you. You do them in. Now that I think about it, I'm going back to this now. Now I'm trying to find it in the paper anyway. Oh, my gosh, Molina, I feel like such a dork. Where is it in this? Here it is right at the very end. Feel free to leave that in. I'm very big on self deprecating humor. All right, It's Monday morning for us. Okay, so you start with the square, and the square is the question prompt. What squares with your thinking? So from what you learned, what aligns with what you already know? And what this does is it hits not just on reflection, but on that contextual. So it's helping you anchor what you've learned in your own context. So what squares and then the circle is what is still rolling around in your head. So where maybe are you still confused? Where do you still have questions that you might want to follow up with with somebody? Where do you just need to take some time and reflect on it more? You jot down those ideas, and then the triangle is a delta signifying change. So what are the things that you want to change as a result of what you learned? And again, that's starting to get to the effortful and generative and making a commitment to learn. So that is a really, really solid technique. And since he created that a few years ago, we've been using that across the company quite a bit. So we really, really like that one. But as you were saying, this is just one tool that you use for reflection. And you are spot on that this is so easy to skip when, I mean, you do classroom learning too, you know, and it's very easy to be up and dispensing your wisdom. I'm saying this because I do it all the time, even though I know better. You know, I get up There I get on a rant, I get on a roll and I look at my clock, there's only five minutes left. And then I'll be like, oh, we don't have time for the reflection. So you guys make sure you do it when you get home. Well, nobody does it. So, you know. So again, two things there is, if you are hosting, like a formal learning experience, anything that's instructor led or facilitated, making sure you build in the time at the end and you treat that time as precious, as gold for people just to sit and reflect on what they've learned. And you can use that what squares technique we just taught you. Even just having somebody take some notes, you know, express what they're feeling, anything like that is going to help. And then if you're not a educator, but you're a learner and you want to, you know, you want to build better learning habits, then building the discipline of yourself to go in and do that reflection when you're done with your, with your learning experience. Really, really critical.

Yeah, definitely. I love that. What squares. So anyone who's going to be at upcoming talks of mine or other trainings, like, we know, we'll see the origin, I always cite things as well, but I think that is so helpful and the way it ties in just, you know, metaphorically, you know, dad joke or otherwise. Right. But like you said, what's rolling around, you know, tying in with change. It helps to remember what I'm supposed to do and how they come together in that, in that good way. And it's simple enough, but different than what you usually get just of like, write some thoughts. Right, right, exactly.

[Melina Palmer]

Right.

[Bob Gerard]

Like what am I?

Yeah, I mean, you know, there are some people who can get a prompt like, you know, just sit and write some thoughts and then they're off to the races. Right. Like they're good with that. There are some people who are just like, yeah, I need a little more structure than this. And so that one, I think that's part of the reason it works so well is just enough structure to help you out with that.

Well, and what I think is nice with it is, you know, you can see. So if it's just like even that person that's off to the races, right? So they write a tome about whatever they thought. But maybe it's all in this sort of like confirmation bias of the things that I already know. And I'm just writing about how this validates what I already think. And if I'm writing in that one area and I'm just Like, look at me, I wrote 10 pages on this. But you miss these other two sections that you didn't know exist and are really important. Right? So for one person, if you start to write some things down, you can say, yikes, I am not thinking at all about, I'm not acknowledging the questions that are rolling around in my head. Maybe I should stop and think about that or, or I'm not even thinking about change, so maybe I should focus on that area. People can kind of like self identify where they should fill in the gaps. And I feel like that equilibrium mindset of like, you know, if you have 10 questions in one area and you can't think of anything for another, you may start to push yourself a little bit to balance that out in a way that could be really helpful.

For sure, it, you know, doing a little bit of a metacognitive activity too, which again, a big highfalutin word, but it's, you know, thinking about your thinking. You know, if, if you do that, what squares activity and then you take a step back from it and you're like, oh, dang, I, I don't have anything that's rolling around in my head. Does that mean that this was all confirmation bias and I'm leaving here and I'm not actually going to think anything different or do anything different. Like, do I need to dig back in and push myself a little bit more? You know, insights like that will, will help you learn, which, you know, that really we were talking about this a little bit before we, before we started recording is one of the things that I am just so jazzed about in the corporate learning industry is we're finally starting to see where companies are realizing that the training organization, the job of the training organization isn't just to like hold classes for you. It's. And it's not just to do like ethics and compliance training. Because you're absolutely right from what you let in. Like most ethics and compliance is not really designed to teach you anything. It's designed to give the legal team a way out if, you know, they have to prove something. Right. My colleague Heather, who runs ethics and clients training for us, is the first ENC person I know who actually cares if somebody learns something and she puts out great stuff that people learn from. But companies are realizing it's not about the training classes, it's about the business outcomes, it's about the business results. And you know, I've been in the business for like 35 years and it finally hit me a couple of years ago when I was taking an end of the year break and I came back in January and I said I had an epiphany while I was gone. It's that learning is dumb. And people are looking at me like, maybe I need to reframe this a little bit. Okay, let's frame it this way. This is really what I meant is unless a learning experience results in behavior change that lead to improved business results, then it's a waste of time. And money. Like that is why businesses invest so much in their people is because they need them to shift their behavior in some way. And behavior is a very. Well, this is your business. It's a very big word. Right? So. But that they have to do some sort of a shift in their behavior that is going to lead to improved business results or else you're. You're not getting anything, that you're not getting anything out of it. And it is just a waste of time and money. And we are starting to see people realize that. When I was at the ATD conference in New Orleans, Jim Kirkpatrick, who's famous for the Kirkpatrick rating scale, any learning. Pearson knows exactly who I'm talking about. He came in and he made the bold statement, we should stop calling ourselves learning and development. We should call ourselves learning and performance. Because that's what it's about. It's about helping people perform. And unfortunately, I think in most big corporations, when you hear about the performance management function, it's about measuring performance and rewarding performance. It's not necessarily about improving performance. So what I'm interested in, and we're starting to see some growth and some great breaking down of silos, not just within our company, but across the whole industry of we all, really everybody in human resources is united. Like the reason why we are there is to make sure that we've got people who are doing what we need them to do to execute our business plan and get the results so we can kind of shift some boundaries. And you know, maybe something that I put out that I would put the tag on is micro learning. That looks like a little TikTok video. Well, somebody else could say, oh, really? That's part of marketing and communications. Or you know, maybe that should fall under this different category. I'm at the point right now where I don't care. It's like we're all here to shift behavior. If it shifts behavior, I'm good with it. Let's roll with it.

[Melina Palmer]

Right. And that alignment is necessary across an organization. Right.

[Bob Gerard]

The ripples and connection points like that. You Know, we could take that as a positive sign of breaking down some silos. As long as y'all are working together a little bit on it. Right? The comment.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is key.

That is key.

So for someone who's listening and that is saying, okay, we're in the same place, we have a lot of that, you know, throw all the learning into one awful day, or these programs that people aren't enjoying, or we know it's just not quite right, but we have a lot of maybe elements that we are needing to factor in. Do we have to totally start from scratch? Is there some way to evaluate, you know, what we've been doing? Are any of the eight more important than the others? Does everything need all eight durable learning principles? Like, where. Where should they start? What advice do you have?

It's a really good question. I don't think any of the eight have precedence over the other. And, you know, ideally, you've got them all covered, but you also don't want to get into a thing where it's like, okay, you're sitting there with every activity and check, check, check, check, check, check, check. We do have it. You'll find it in that paper. We do have a rubric that can help you look at what you have out there and see, are you. Are you hitting on these principles? And you can take the opportunity to maybe just ask yourself some questions like, is there anything we could do to dial this aspect up a little bit? But you don't have to start from scratch. You don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water. I think anybody can take any of the programs that they have, take a look at those principles. You know, just ask themselves some good questions about where can we make some shifts and make it a little bit better? Because, you know, every. Every notch up the dial, you turn it, it's more likely that somebody's going to remember it when they need to remember it, and you're going to get that behavior shift perfect.

Yeah. And so good to know. It's maybe you can have some shining stars, but it's not like, hey, we really nailed these four, and so we don't have to worry about the other ones. Right. You don't want to just keep amping up what you're doing. Well, you want to make sure that there's some presence of each of these and maybe focus on if you're not doing enough in that social aspect.

Right.

Or spacing it out, you know, that you need to make some tweaks.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now if you ask what the favorite is like, my favorite of them all is engaging. Like we talked like, I like, I like making things fun, right? And, you know, I figure if I'm having a good time leading you through it, then hopefully you're having a good time experiencing it. And we have done a lot of work over the years with game based learning. Not a fan of gamification, but I'm a big fan of game based learning, which could be its whole other podcast. Big fan of game based learning. We've been doing a lot with spatial learning, you know, virtual reality. Unfortunately, you know, kind of fell into the valley of despair with the Metaverse and haven't quite recovered from it. But I think it's going to happen because it's still wonderful stuff for learning. We proved that. And we're still involved with putting learners together in a virtual setting and letting them have a social, generative, contextual, engaging experience in the quote unquote Metaverse. So that's still all there. And of course, now we're doing a lot with, with generative AI, like every other learning department in the entire world is. But, you know, we're finding that technology so great to be able to practice. You know, a lot of what, a lot of what we at Accenture are trying to help our people learn is how do you have really good conversations with your clients, you know, about a number of things. You know about, you know, maybe you should be thinking about using this technology in your company or, you know, maybe you should be hiring us as a sales presentation. The chance to practice those things is really, really valuable. We've always been a fan of that. We've done tons and tons of role plays. If I had a dollar for every role play I facilitate in my life, I could retire now. But, you know, those, those are expensive. It's hard to find the expert to come in and role play. And now you can have an AI do it really, really well and then even give you the feedback at the back end. So those are very exciting things that we're working on. We've got. They're going to continue to get better and it should be a good time for learning over the next several years.

I love that. And yeah, I think it's definitely a space that is primed for opportunities to help. And I think people are ready for it.

[Melina Palmer]

Right?

[Bob Gerard]

The learners are ready, the organizations are seeing the value in it. And I think there's a lot of opportunity to start moving the needle for better trainings that, like you said, are about improving those KPIs it's about performance and not just about developing for development's sake, but that it can be valuable really across the board when it's a little bit more focused and you know, can just help, help everybody. So.

Yeah, that's absolutely right. You know, and if you think of a day, maybe not too far from now, where you have an agent that basically rides along with you all day and is working with you and you know, handling some tasks for you, like, you know, I, I like to refer to AI right now. Generative AI is an over eager intern, you know, does whatever you want, does it really exciting and then you have to check its work and make sure it's good and give it feedback, you know. But if you think about that agent that is able to sit with you all day and help you do your work, then it's going to help you learn from your work even better. It's going to be able to say, hey, you've got a meeting coming up about that particular topic and you know, you're not quite as up to speed as I think you need to be on that. So here I put together a video for you to watch. Watch this and then let's role play that conversation before you go into the meeting. Like that day is not too far from here. Right. And now the conversation about learning, it changes a lot. You know, we will still have needs for learning professionals to strategize, to do the higher level thinking and also to really create, you know, the nuggets and the chunks of learning. But I think we're going to start seeing AI able to pull those chunks together into a, into an experience for a specific learner. Hyper personalized to them, that hits the things that they need to learn when they need to learn them in a way that they need to, well, the way that they prefer to learn. Pretty exciting.

Yeah, I'm excited for that. That sounds pretty amazing. It feels like like you said, the transition from that overeager intern, which is just spot on, such a great comparison point to almost, it's like the spy, you know, where you're like out in the field and you have the like voice or I guess it's a Jarvis or.

Yeah, that Jarvis thing. Yeah.

Yep. So hey, you know, vision is coming.

[Melina Palmer]

In a positive way, I guess.

[Bob Gerard]

Well, it is, it's exciting.

Yeah. We can if you know, you know, for this like Marvel recommendation or crossover. I know, I know you get it, Bob. So that was just for us and we'll see who got our jokes.

Absolutely.

So for everyone who is now so excited to connect with you. Like I said, we'll link to the paper you mentioned the podcast, but shout it out again. We'll link to it. What's the best way for people to follow you to learn anything else?

Yeah. So the podcast again is Learning Geeks. You can find it on all of the platforms. You can ask A L E X A to play the latest episode of the Learning Geeks and she will for you so you can get into it that way. Otherwise, we do have a website, LearningGeeks Pod, and it just has the links to it on all the different streaming platforms. If you want to find me specifically, I'm on LinkedIn. It's Bob Gerard. G E R A R D and you can find me there. And I pretty much take every friend request, unless you're trying to sell me something and then I usually pass it on. But we'd be happy to connect with you there and that's where you can find me. Yeah.

[Melina Palmer]

Awesome.

[Bob Gerard]

Well, thank you again, Bob for joining me on the show. It's been enlightening to chat with you today and learn about learning.

Super fun. Yeah, thanks. Look forward to seeing you again.

[Melina Palmer]

Thank you again to Bob Gerard for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, I really love the idea of durable learning because people don't create content for themselves. You want others to learn from it. You're wanting to give them an opportunity to grow and change from the content shared, and they can't do that if it isn't durable, if they don't remember or understand or can't see how to apply it. The paper we discussed during our conversation today gives some great background on how the brain works before getting into the eight principles of durable learning. Gotta love a list you can refer back to so you can ensure you're hitting all those marks and adjust where needed instead of winging it. As a reminder, those eight principles are that your content needs to be relevant, contextual, engaging, effortful, generative, social, spaced, and reflective. Some of these may come easier to you than others, and that's okay. That is why having a checklist when you're creating learning materials is so important. It also gives you some space to iterate, review, test, try new things. Stagnant isn't on the list for a good reason. Learning can and should be fun, both for the person creating the materials and those engaging with them. It shouldn't be so easy that you forget. It shouldn't be in one big chunk and never revisited again. It shouldn't be done in a vacuum. It can be amazing. And I can't wait to hear about how you incorporate these principles into your own teaching training courses. Whatever. I'm sure Bob would love to hear about it too. Will you come share it with us on social media? I'm the Brainy biz pretty much everywhere and Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. I have of course linked to my handles and Bob's LinkedIn in the show notes for you to make it easy. You'll also find links to my top related books and episodes in those show notes. They're all waiting for you in the app you're listening to [e-mail] 469. And thank you again to Bob Gerard for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Tuesday for another brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit the Brainy business dot com.