What 100+ L&D leaders reveal about learning strategy maturity & what we're doing about it

All right everyone. Hello and welcome to today's Learning Experience and Webinar with Achieve Engagement. My name is Zach Doms, president of Achieve Engagement, and as your head of the community, I thank you and appreciate you for showing up today, dedicating time out of the busy schedules and madness of the world of work that we're always serving and working within to sharpen your craft and to develop yourselves and expose yourself to new ways of thinking, thought leadership, strategy and frameworks so that we can continue building a better world of work. So thank you for joining today. I already love the activity happening in the chat. Kat, I see you in Somerville slash Boston. We're coming to Boston soon, Kat, so I can't wait to see you again. Karen and Maplewood, welcome Todd and Dallas, I see you here too, Melissa, San Antonio, Pittsburgh, Sarah's in the house. We got New Jersey, North Carolina, Atlanta, Florida. This is awesome. I think one of the more powerful aspects of these programs is yes, we bring in some amazing thought leaders and subject matter experts for you to learn from and get exposures to, and that's gonna be huge part of today's program. But there's also the peer-to-peer social learning side of things. That's the community experience side of it, and that's all of you joining. So I'd love, as we go through this program and this learning experience, share your own insights, share your own strategies. Like if there's certain things we're talking about and you approach a certain way at your company, put that in the chat for us to learn from. And vice versa. If there's certain things that you're navigating and you're like, Hey, I'm trying to elevate, you know, and specifically today this l and d strategy, but I'm caught up against this barrier, put that question in the chat. Put some of the things in the q and a and you'll actually get live coaching and strategy from the experts that are joining us today. So I really encourage you maybe set aside some of the emails, set aside some of the distractions for the next hour, and let's make this a really powerful learning experience together as a network. Before we jump into that though, just a couple updates and things I wanted to review with you. We have a ton planned over the next couple weeks, so continue the learning journey with us. If you haven't already, you can check out some of our free programs here and other upcoming sessions. We're super excited about the lineup and the curriculum we're building for all of you. So make sure to check that out at our website. Uh, achieve engagement.org/programs. And then on top of that, I just wanted to quickly highlight some of the things we're doing in the Ex Leadership Network. This is really our peer community and sub community where we get a little bit more intimate into the weeds and more in a peer to peer coaching strategy mentorship format. And on top of that, we are scheduling out a number of in-person experiences, which is the main thing I'd love to highlight to some of you. I see some of you are in these cities or in these area. Uh, you can see some of the dates we're already jotting down ex leadership networks, uh, members. They kind of get priority access to that. And then we kind of build a waiting list for additional members who just want to join for the evening. But you can start to see we have a ton planned throughout the year and we're adding more cities and dates to this schedule. And then on top of that, we have some amazing virtual programming, like the first of our AI innovation for HR mastermind series next year, next week, which is being hosted by one of our own global chief people officers who've made some amazing strides in this area at their own organization. So super psyched about that. If you want to check out some of these things, I would say at the very least, like start with the trial. We have a 14 day trial for this. You can get in there for free, poke around, engage with some of the members, join some of the experiences, and if you like it obviously would love for you to stay. So those are some of the things we have going on with the EX leadership network. But what we're really here for today, what I'm super excited about is this whole topic around learning and development and what is actually working today. Like what does good look like, where should we focus first? As you remember, maybe last week we talked a lot about like skills and what are the skills needed to thrive in today's world of work. And I'm sure we'll touch on some of that today. But one thing I'm excited about is like, okay, if we understand the skills and we have these aspirations as a organization that we're trying to grow into, what are the actual like learning strategies that can get us to those aspirations, to that next level of growth, the things that we're striving for as a organization. So we are very blessed and lucky to have these four leaders with us. Yeah, Sarah, I agree this is a powerhouse panel. So I'm super excited to welcome these four amazing leaders to the stage and the community with achieving engagement. So we can really dig into what some of the research and data is showing them as well, some of their own experience in the field around what does learning strategy maturity look like and what does good look like, where should we focus and what are some of the things you can do about it? So if we can give a warm welcome to wa welcome these four individuals to the virtual stage with us. We have Roberta, Lauren, Jennifer, and Karen to lead up this conversation. I'll let these four individuals introduce themselves, but show them some love in the chat and with the emojis and we'll get this kicked off. So let's stop sharing here. Uh, it's great to see all your beautiful faces with us in the network. And Lauren, I'll actually just pass it over to you to kick us off, but I appreciate you all being here and the stage is all yours. Thank You so much, Zach. I'm Lauren Sanders. I am the VP of learning strategy and consulting at weLearn, and I am here with a few other folks, so I'm gonna let introduce themselves while I get our slides teed up. So I'm gonna turn it over next to Roberta. Hey, thanks Lauren. Um, my name's Roberta. I am a HR and learning tech industry analyst with Lighthouse Research and a go to market leader as well. Um, over to you, Karen, Roberta. Nice to see everyone virtually. Uh, my name is Karen Gki. I work at 3M, uh, located in Minnesota and I am the global sales learning and development leader for the Safety and Industrial Business group, which represents about half of 3M sales. And I'll hand it over to Jen. Hi everyone. Jennifer Myers. I am the Senior Director of learning and development at the Center for Internet Security. If you've never heard of us, what we do is we're a nonprofit with a mission to help make the world a, uh, connected world, a safer place by helping organizations safeguard against cyber threats. So I'm so happy to be here And we are all happy to be here with you. And before we get started, I just wanted to share something with you. I was just looking at some recent research that training industry had put out that said 50%, 57% of L and D leaders lack confidence in their learning plans. That was staggering to me. But what's even more staggering is that 60% have budget increases planned. So we're spending more money without knowing if we're going in the right direction. And why am I telling you this? Because when we asked learning leaders how mature their organizations were, the first overwhelming response we got was, I have no bleeping. You can fill in whatever word you want there idea. So we are here to change that. Let's get into the research we talked to and this, this is ongoing research. So we we're actually much higher than this now, but for our intents and purposes today, 118 l and D leaders across 27 different industries completed our learning scorecard, our learning strategy scorecard. And it covers six dimensions that you see here, uh, alignment to business strategy, learning, governance, technology, e ecosystem integration, content experience strategy, measurement, analytics and culture and change readiness. We looked at 30 questions. Each of them were rated on a five point scale and the scores ranged from 30 to 150. They get categories then into four maturity levels, which gives us a very solid foundation to identify the patterns, which we're gonna talk about today, to see clearly who is struggling and who is breaking through and where. Roberta, do you wanna tell us a little bit about who responded to our survey? So when we were, um, so first of all, who took the assessment? About 40% of respondents came from larger organizations. That's like 5,000 plus employees, approximately half were mid-size. There were 27 industries. It was heavily led by manufacturing, financial services and healthcare. Um, this last number's really important, that 56% reported having a, um, formal learning strategy in place. Um, I I'm wondering, is that shocking? Is that standard? I'll let you decide. We'll be talking about it, but I think that, that there's one thing that we really need to acknowledge in today's uh, session is that this sample skews toward already engaged learning and development leaders because people who take assessments like this are already thinking about strategy. They're already wondering what their peers are doing. So if anything, these results are probably much more optimistic than the field as a whole. So I think that's something we keep in mind as we go through this today. So as an activity for all of you, I would like to hear everyone take just an exhale and congratulate yourself for being here because this means you care and this sample does represent engaged leaders like you. And if anything, the results are showing us what's possible when leaders care. And it will also show us what's holding us back. When we look at the maturity model, we're looking at it through the lens of this ladder. And what you see here is how learning shifts from reacting when you're reacting to the demand, to how you shape the outcomes and what has to change at each stage for that impact to compound over time for you to climb the ladder. And it's a progression model that really shows you how learning systems evolve. When we're reactive, we're firefighting, we're responding to requests as they come in. It's what I like to call design, develop, flip it over the wall and do it again and again and again. And I can almost audibly without hearing you hear some of you laughing because you know how true this is and what the reality is here. Then when we get a little bit more operational, we've got the systems, but we're still taking orders. We're seeing a little bit more as a service desk than when we get strategic. We're in the room, we're using the data, we're shaping the decisions, but transformation doesn't really happen until we're fully embedded and we aren't just supporting the business, we're helping to drive performance. And that is really what makes the biggest change. Something to note here is you can't skip rungs. You can't go automatically from reactive to transformational. Each level really builds the foundation for the next, the question is, what does each next rung require? And I'm gonna turn that back then to Roberta. Thank you Lauren. So, so where did the 118 organizations land? Around 80% scored at reactive or operational. And those were the bottom two rungs that that Lauren, uh, Lauren just showed you on the screen. The average score was 86 out of 150. So that's smack bang in operational territory. And only 22 organizations that's 18% from that sample reached strategic or transformational level. So if you think about that, it's about one in five. So what's that say to us, Lauren? What that says to us is that most learning functions, oops, sorry, I don't know what just happened. That most learning functions are in limbo. They've moved past the reactive, but they haven't yet gotten too strategic. Not that they don't want to, but kind of don't know how. And as we look deeper at that, I wanna talk a little bit about the six gaps that we have, the strategy gap. This was really understanding your documented strategy was the single biggest differentiator. We're talking about a 26 point advantage in the data. Knowing where you're going becomes really important if, especially if you know where you are. But if you don't know where you are, you can just be drifting and have no idea where you're going. I wanna spend a little bit of time on the KPI and the measurement gap. 'cause those two things fit together really well. The KPI gap. We often hear L and D teams tell us that my organization doesn't even know what their KPIs are, so how am I gonna have a KPI conversation with them? And our best advice around that is ask them what they're responsible for at the end of the year, what are the ratings based on? And then reverse engineer that information into your learning objectives. You will never go wrong if your program is based on what the people are getting measured on at the end of the year. A lot of times we focus on measurement, but we're a little bit afraid of the math that might be involved. And so I want you to think about metrics a little bit differently. There's a difference between reporting, which is a lot of times what your stakeholders think that they want from you. And actual measurement reporting will tell you what you did. Measurement will tell you whether it mattered. And when we avoid those kind of metrics, it's not because we're incapable, it's because we're unclear. This is why the KPI component fits so well with the metrics conversation. I want you to think about it like this. Imagine for a moment if metrics were chunked, like learning content is chunked, your leaders would understand the metrics a lot better. They would make more sense. I don't want you to think about it as mathematical. And as much as I want you to think about it as outcome versus output reporting is the data and the information, but your measurement, that's the real story. That's the narrative that goes with the data. And there's not a real story in completions, but that story in the data that gets you the dollars, that gets you the people. And that's what moves you from cost center trust, str from cost center to strategic partner. Let me say that again. That story moves you from cost center to strategic partner. When we're talking about strategic partner, we hear people crying on a regular basis about, we need a seat at the table. This data tells us the seat's there, we already have the seat. What are we doing with that seat? So I want you to think about it now in terms of starting with the outcomes. Work backwards from what the business needs. What do you expect people to be able to do? And you'll end up with better programs and better results. When we talk about governance, some organizations have really robust structures and some have not at all. What this means is that a lot of times decisions get made without any consistency. Priorities often shift based on who's in the conversation, who happened to be in the meeting that day, or who has the biggest voice. And I'll pause so you can laugh at that because we all know that there are some people that have really big voices. But this comes down to decision criteria and accountability. Who's responsible for what? And this is why we need clarity. My favorite way of of making things clear is using something like a racy model. Because when people actually stay in their lanes and know their roles, the decisions get made better and faster. And the example that I like to use here is LMS because LMS is something that most people have. So who is responsible for your LMSS? Is it the learning and development department? Is it hr? Is it it? And before you quickly answer it, say, hey, us right here we are the ones that are responsible for the LMS in L and D, who's responsible for the system updates, who's responsible for the way the metadata is set up? There's a lot more to those decision points that we often don't think about as the user of the tool that go into our ability to be able to use it as effectively as possible. And some of those governance rights really make up the difference here. Then there's the AI readiness gap that scored lowest across every organization. And it wasn't because people didn't have access to technology, but because we really have done a poor job in l and d of defining our role in it. Are we consumers of the AI tools? Are we curators? Are we strategists? Are we helping the business navigate ai or are we helping create AI driven change? Most of the organizations that we're in what we're learning haven't decided really where that fits and or whether to use a tool and or how much tool to use. So we can talk about that in a whole separate webinar. We could go on all day when we talk about, uh, culture, we're talking about leader behavior or culture might say learning is important, but does that really show up in what we're doing about it? There's a lot of data in the marketplace that says, when leaders are invested in the learning programs, the results improve dramatically. So if you would in the chat, tell us how are you involving your leaders in your learning? It could be something as simple as doing a welcome video in your onboarding, having a leader say when something new is rolling out. Wow, I'm really excited about this because when it comes from the learning and learning department, it becomes one more thing that's like compliance. But when your leaders are involved and engaged, it makes a really big difference. Way better engagement, way better results. That's just one small thing, but it shows what's possible if your leader participates, think as a trainer, think doing a podcast related to the thing you're training on. Think broadly beyond the initial learning program. And I, I'm seeing them come in in the chat here. So I wanna say, um, Emily says they have email promotions come from the leaders, having them co-lead workshops. Sarah says she always tries to have an executive sponsor partner to drive that really stresses the importance when the new training is rolling out. But we all have some semblance of these gaps. It doesn't matter how good we are unless we're 100% transformative, there's gonna be gaps here. And we have another one. We work with business partners and provide them the training tools. My CHRO also invites me to present at SLT meetings when it's a big learning event, keep those ideas coming, share with each other. But what happens is the gaps don't really resolve themselves. And what I want to do is introduce you to our panel because organizations mature by decisions and decisions are made. Oops, sorry, by our panel people. They have made it real. They have taken the data and they have done something with it. So I am now gonna introduce you to Karen and Jen who are going to tell you a little bit about what they've done with the data that they've seen, how they've implemented, and how it really works in the real world. Because we can tell you all day about the data, but you wanna know what happens to it. Hi Jen. Hi Karen. The first question I have for you is, which GAP showed up first for your team and did that impact the way that decisions were made? I'll go first. Karen, go for it. Kicking it over to me. Thanks. Um, I would say that governance surfaced as our first and biggest gap. I know it's everybody's favorite thing to focus on, but we really had to kind of take a step back and say, okay, governance covers a lot of different, um, playing field. What exactly is making us confused or not in consensus with what we're doing and and why that matters? And what we recognized is that our learning strategy that we were developing annually was greatly, um, dependent on inconsistent ways. We were ga gathering input across the organization. And so I'll dive a little bit deeper into that. The way our, our l and d model is structured in our organization is that we have a, a full-time l and d team, but then we have what's called learning champions. And, and those individuals, they have full-time jobs in the organization and they sort of act as our liaison and they were helping us observe and pulse learning needs and they were bringing those learning needs back to the team. And then we were prioritizing based on what was coming in. Um, we weren't necessarily observing it herself. So what was happening is, you know, these people are stretched really thin. Some people were more invested in the opportunity and, and being, um, embedded in their organization's learning needs. Some people, um, felt more confident speaking to leaders. So there was a large variation of how and what data was coming in. Um, and so back to your point, Lauren, whoever was speaking the loudest, maybe that day was what got brought in, not necessarily what was the most strategic. Um, and so we had to adjust our, our, our model and say, if we want, uh, data consistently, we need to be in those conversations so that we can level set and calibrate and determine, okay, somebody's saying this, but is it really, really going to be critical if we don't do this right now? And what is the impact of that on the business? So I would say governance, it told us a lot and, and, and we're making some really large moves in just the way that we operate as a team. Thank you for that. We have a comment in the chat that governance is like wallpaper. It covers a lot of surface. It sure does. Onto you, Karen. Excellent. Yeah, so I love Heather's comment in the chat and I'll say that for us, I'll talk to our two greatest gaps were governance and strategy. So governance I was not surprised by because I as the leader of the team have kind of been putting it off because it just seems so overwhelming the way obviously 3M is a very big company. We have about 70,000 employees globally and we have three different business groups. I am one of them, right? I represent sales, learning and development in one of the business groups. But you have an HR organization that has an L and D component and you have the other business groups. So when I thought governance, I was like, I don't even know where to start because HR owns some pieces. We own some pieces and the other business groups, I don't even know what they own, not a lot, but I try to communicate with all of them. And then when we got the assessment, I had this like light bulb moment of I don't need to define the governance for the whole of three MI can start with the governance within my team from what's in our span of control and with our partner division. So our business has six, if you wanna call it market or product aligned divisions. I hate that word by the way 'cause we're literally dividing the company but conversation for another day. And so they have expertise delivery leaders. So I can work within my organization and with them around the governance that is in our kind of circle of control or even a little bit expanded. Then we can talk about HR and the other business groups, but I don't have to tackle it all at once. So I'm having my team come here in March and we're gonna dedicate a day to that portion is how can we establish governance within our team? And then I can show that to the rest of the divisions and show and see how that we can expand to them. So for me, that gap wasn't an aha moment, but what was an aha moment when I saw the results was the solution which Lauren and the team weren't even talking about. It just kind of popped into my head. And then on the strategy side, that one surprised me a bit because I think I have it clear in my mind and I believed that what we were executing aligned to the business and then that that would naturally be seen by my team. But I don't think we've really mapped out our longer term strategy and how what we're doing, like beyond a certain transformation that's happening now at 3M that we have aligned to beautifully and we're considered extremely valuable at this time. My question is how am I gonna sustain that in time beyond this transformation? So that'll be the other portion that we're gonna tackle in that meeting in March. So maybe invite me back after March and I'll tell you how it went. Thank you, Karen. It's interesting that you realize that you didn't have to, for lack of a better term, boil the entire ocean, that you could stay in your lane and get a whole lot done before you tried to get really strategic and cross the different boundaries or the different lines of business. And sometimes we have to remember that our impact sometimes starts exactly where we are. When did you realize that access existed, but ownership didn't or where did you realize it? So that's, It's a loaded question. Um, and I remember I had a really good answer for it and now I forgot it. But, um, we had Our training department before, and I say training because that's what we were called. And I've been pushing hard to change it to learning and development. 'cause training is a one-time event. We were seen as an onboarding organization and that's the way we interacted with our stakeholders. And through all this transformation, what we brought forward was a proposal to help them drive change. And that's where we really took on a different value to our organization. So I think when you talk about access, but we were just execution arms not really seen as high value. And then they started seeing us in a different light with moving into this transformation and really becoming change agents for the business. And so we're not even at the strategic point. So full disclosure, we're between, we're like in, we're in a 2.5, so between aspirational and that next rung. Um, so we've still got a ways to go do, but it really, I believe, transformed there and it's our job now to maintain it and to keep that seat at the table. And I'm gonna out you just a little bit because for the people here on this webinar, I want you to know that Karen's been in her role less than three years and has, that's been able to move it in this way. And, and I think there's a lot to say about the way that you're looking at your organization and doing the things that you're doing. Yeah, we became a team late 23, like 2023. So we had 24, 25 was our big year, and we're continuing that momentum this year. Thank you for that. Jen, how about you? Where did you realize access existed, but ownership didn't? You said something earlier, Lauren, that I, I wrote down immediately because I was like, I cannot lose this. But you said reporting will tell you what you did. Measurement will tell you why it mattered. And that to me speaks volumes to, you know, in l and d we have access to a lot, but we also don't own very much at the end of the day. Um, and one example is, you know, all of our learning metrics, everything that we create, how engaged, um, our organization is in learning their participation rates, all the reporting that we do, um, we can track that and we can report it. We have access to it, right? But leaders own development. And that might be an unpopular opinion, but there is only so much we can do from an l and d seat in someone's personal application of what they learn at some point. It's the, the ownership falls on the employee and the leader to help, um, model that learning, prioritize it, reinforce its importance. And so at some point, um, you're kind of, you're, you're speaking the story, but you really need to speak it in a way that gets the leadership and the employee engaged and actually making a difference with those measurements and with the metrics. So thank you for saying that quote. I love it and I will continue to use it. And I'll also say that going back to Karen, the more I know about Karen, the more I will confirm she is an absolute rock star in what she does. And she's very humble, but, and so, yeah, And, uh, don't sell yourself short there. Miss Jen, what gap did you choose not to fix immediately and why? Uh, there's another unpopular opinion, but, um, AI readiness I think is tough because we're a tech organization, right? So our people are very eager to use ai. They are, they think it's like a no-brainer, right? They're like, why are we not doing this? We should be doing this. This makes no sense that we're doing things in this way when we could be doing it better, faster, more efficient. Um, they want things approved and they want no parameters and how they use them. But as a cybersecurity organization, it's not just about innovation, right? It's about risk. It's about, uh, we have to build alignment with how we're gonna use these tools. Um, we have to make sure we have some parameters, clear guidelines, risk thresholds, um, and before we cannot build learning programs and scale AI learning initiatives until we gain consensus as an organization as to what we're gonna use and how we're gonna use it. And, and everybody needs to be on, you know, in uh, agreement with the policy that we create. So I think we're sort of running in place sometimes because we wanna do so much, but you know, our legal teams and are like you, let's hold, we're still developing, you know, our policy and our structure around that and we have to provide training to the organization before we can move forward with that. So it can be a little daunting at times. Um, we, we wanna run and we're being told to walk or crawl at some point and it can be frustrating for employees. So not that we're choosing not to focus on AI readiness, it's just the nature of the beast. And sometimes we can only go as fast as we can go. And I think it's important that our friends here hear this because oftentimes others are having the same challenges or are crawling or trying to run up the same hill backwards in the snow both ways. Mm-hmm. Yep. And, and it's really important to know you're not alone. I'm gonna go back to Karen and say what changed once you stopped treating these like l and d problems and started treating them like leadership once, Go back to something I said, and by the way, Jen is an absolute rockstar and I love being on these panels with her 'cause it feels like we're just like huddled over a cup of coffee. It's a love fest over here. It really is. Like we just like, I love these women on this screen. Um, so I'm gonna go back to kind of that transformative piece because we were, again, like when you're a training organization and when we came into this globe, it was such a big opportunity to do something meaningful and almost by, I keep telling Lauren like it's a chance, like being in the right place at the right time with the right people. But it's also seeing that opportunity and grabbing it and using it to your advantage and that transformation from a training organization to a learning and development that is a strategic tool for the business to execute change. That for me was groundbreaking. And the biggest, one of the hurdles that I saw was I had no people on my team that were on different teams before. How do I quickly bring them into, and this is a leadership problem, so you have a training team, but have you transformed that team is a leadership problem, and how would I take my team and have them buy in quickly to where we were going when they were all it, it was change management in itself. They all came from roles, they had commitments in those roles. So we couldn't just flip a switch and get them like, okay, now this is what you're doing. We had to bring them along and make that switch fast, but with their buy-in. And that is a complete leadership trait. It's, it's not a technical skills that'll get you there. It's the way you align to the business is a leadership component and how you get the team on board so you all move together in the same direction. Thank you for that. Jen, how about for you? What changed once you stopped treating it as an l and d problem and looked at it through a leadership lens? Well, I'll, I'll preface by saying we're still on that journey. We, it will be ever-growing. Um, but you know, we've seen the shift that we need to make. Um, the reality is that some of our challenges, as Karen said, they can't be solved by l and d alone. They, we need leadership support buy-in, but it is on us to speak that story and make it visible. And so I think that's what's changing is that, um, we're inserting ourselves in, um, more visible places and we're telling the story in a way that shows business impact in a way that gets their attention. And that's on us to do. If, if we're not doing that, they, they will continue to not care. Um, and so our goal is to move from, you know, l and d reported this, or L and d produced this to leadership is co-owning this with l and d. Um, and so that's sort of, you know, what we, when we stopped treating this as just, this is something we can solely change and started looking at it as something that we can bring the leaders in on and hold some accountability there. Can I add something to what Jen just said, which I think is super valuable because we had a unique opportunity to do something big because it happened to come to us. We weren't necessarily involved. And it may be easier even for those who have returned to office, because you could hear these conversations going on, even if you're not involved. But speaking to stakeholders and just asking those questions of, Hey, what are the challenges you have, you're faced with right now? They may not be even thinking that l and d can be a solution, but when you bring that to them and it's just a short conversation on how's your business doing? Like what are the issues you're having? And if you can help bring that back to a skillset that you can help shift, you just need that one window of opportunity, big or small, to start doing that transformation and bringing leadership to see you in a different light. Thank You for that. Well Sarah, That nugget is, is really important for us to take away, especially sometimes when we feel like we're just banging our head against the wall. With that said, I wanna talk a little bit about the maturity model and the assessment. Um, I'm gonna go back to you Karen. How easy was the assessment for you to take, and then once you saw the data, what changed for you? What are you gonna be able to do now that, you know? Was there any real aha for you? Yeah, it was so easy. So I'll say one of my concerns, I have a, so I have a team of about 19 people, and I know that sounds huge and I'm very excited, but I could use more, I could use like 50 to be honest, for everything we have to do As we all could. Yes, As we all could. I literally mapped it out once and the suite number was 52. Um, but I'd say first the assessment was easy to access, getting it to the rest of my team. I had, if I'm not wrong, 12 people respond. One of my concerns was I have quite a few people who are new in their role who didn't come from l and d as many of us. Um, and I thought, will they even understand the questions because they've never be call me Sarah. Um, and I, they, I was like, they've never been in an l and d role. Will they even understand the concepts? But then as I answered it again, I was like, it's so easy. You don't have to know l and d. And then the results, the way that we're presented back, I didn't even imagine what, what the output would be. So I loved, we got a good sample size, super easy five minutes to fill out and gave us incredible insights and to what I'm gonna do with it, I'll let you know after March and we have, but it's the input to what we're gonna do in this workshop. We're gonna leave together. I'm just gonna comment, I'm the one who delivered Karen's results to her. And what I saw all over her face was a sense of relief Yes. That she was doing the right things. And I know, and it was glorious to actually see that in real life. So I'll add to that, Lauren, thank you. Because one of the big things is I think we all know in our gut we might think I'm doing a pretty good job, but I'd really like to know. And so when I first reached out to Lauren and we learn and the whole organization was in part because I thought I was doing the right thing in 3M but no one in 3M could help me understand that. So I was, what if I was inventing something or creating something that was 20 years old? And so this assessment just solidifies that I'm on the right track and I'm ahead of the game for the years we've been a team. And so it's super validating, but also provides an insight and some order to how to tackle the next phases. Thank you so much for that. Jen. How about for you? Uh, how easy was it for you to take and once you saw the data from the model, what changed for you? What are you gonna do with what you know now? Are there any real aha moments? Well, I will just second the fact that Karen, I feel like no, none of us have those subject matter experts within our organization that we can pulse check and, and say, Hey, is am I on the right track? So they really, they look at us to be that. And so I will say, had I not found weLearn, I would've still been in that realm. I think what, just having this network and and participating with all of you, um, brilliant people, that is my network and that is how I, I, I pulse check it. And the survey just reiterated, you know, the things, it brought me back to the basics. I think it had been a couple years since I thought about the six categories and what we were doing in each one of them. We thought about it when we created the organization initially, but then you get moving, right? You get in the flow and you just start working and doing things out of habit. And to take yourself back to the basics is so helpful sometimes because you're like, oh, we forgot all about that. That's kind of important, you know? And so very, very simple, very helpful though. I mean, it's, it's, there is no room for, um, trying to understand what something means. I will say that I had a smaller sample size, so it was beneficial for me to follow up with my team, um, and really try to understand some of the answers. And I would recommend that as well for anybody who was in a similar position because the data can be subjective, right? De depending on where they sit in the organization, what their mood was that day, you know, that this is just the nature of surveys, right? That's, it's one, it's one point of view. Um, and then following up and getting more deep dive conversations going. I think that's where the magic happens. But this gives us the tool to be able to have those conversations. And so I loved this process. I'm very grateful that we were selected to be part of the pilot. By the way, not all my team speaks English as a first language. And it was still very easy. So even with my team members across the globe, it was simple. Thank you for that. I think, Jen, you bring up a really good thing when you talk about the flawless execution of the basics and how often we forget that when we do the basic things well, the harder things get easier. But if we don't know, again, if we don't know where we are, we don't know where we're going. So I'm gonna take us back to our slides just for a moment, then I'm gonna open it up for questions here. Just wanna tap into the top five priorities here. Don't forget to formalize your strategy because you cannot measure what you have not defined. Spend time to build that foundation, that flawless execution of the basics that Jen was talking about. Establish your governance. Establish your measurement. That's how you're gonna prove your strategy is working. Position yourself for tomorrow, whether that's AI or actually choosing not to focus on AI too, as, as Jen was saying for her group. But engage your leaders as visible helpers to you. The more you do things like that, the more you'll move from that operational to that strategic level because each thing reinforces the other. And that is how you break out of limbo. If you want to take the scorecard. We have got a QR code here for you, and I know Zach has been putting the link in for us every few minutes here, so feel free to go ahead and take that if you want to. And then we are gonna move into some q and a. If you've got questions, you can put 'em in the chat or you can use the q and a. And Zach just put that link in the chat as well. We have any, so there's one, there is one question that's coming. Lauren. Um, what's the single most important thing for someone stuck at operational? What is the single most important thing? Mm-hmm. I have a, uh, opinion on that. Lauren, go ahead. Go Ahead. Leadership support. Mm-hmm. I think if you cannot move and you want to make a bigger impact and have a more strategic impact, you have to get, you have to make it more visible why learning matters and get it in front of the right people. Thank you. Just throw in again what I said. Sorry Roberta, go Ahead. No, go ahead Karen. Are you sure? Okay. I just say like, re re reinforce what I said before, find that small, even if it's small issue or pain point that you can help them solve, that's the place to start for me. That's the place to start to building towards strategic. Yeah, you actually, you, you guys have answered the next questions anyway, which was what's the, what's the quick win for improving, um, measurement and getting that str that buy-in for strategy development? Um, there's one question that came in about, uh, what it being a small team with no budgets for new tools, where do we start? Where's a good place to start? Any any takers for that? When I say ask for it, like you don't have a budget now, but what if you build a proposal and go get it? That was my first task. I was a month into the role and they said, you have in one month, congratulations. You got the role in one month. You have to present what you need in budget. I had no idea, guys. I had to go to HR to figure out what were the contracts that they had that they were gonna kill, that we still needed. And I went with, I literally did like a basic intermediate and premium offer thinking I would have to fight for the basic and they approved premium. I had to like, pretend to be professional and not jump up and down. It was like the happiest day of my life, aside from when my daughter was born and when I got married, but I could not believe it. So I'd say don't assume you don't have budget. Try and ask for it. That would be my first one. And then if you don't, then that's another conversation. But as for what if you do, That's great advice. Anything you wanna add, John? I have an opinion, but I'd love to hear if you have anything you add, you go First. I would love to hear yours, Lauren. Sure. Uh, for both of the questions that just got asked, I, my first thought is, what is your north star? Where, where do you wanna go? What are your non-negotiables? How do you get there if, if you don't have your strategy and your measurement? Neither of those requires anything new. A lot of organizations in our dataset had platforms, but they lacked the clarity and their maturity came from focus, not spending. Totally agree. Well, if anyone has any more questions, get them in. If otherwise, you could always send them over as well. Um, you have in the chat, uh, the scorecard link, so you're welcome to take that. It's free. You get an automatic assessment out of it that you can check out. Um, and then we also have, um, I've added a link to our benchmark benchmarking data report so you can compare your data against your peers. Um, what resources on measurements are available is a question from Tam. I'm gonna answer that. Um, I was actually just about to go here anyway, so if you're not already a friend of Wheel learn and you have not seen our website, there is, and, and Roberta, if you could put the website into the chat for everyone, that would be great. But if you have not been a part of weLearn, have not experienced us, have not scoured our website for information. There is a ton of information on everything that we're talking about today. Specifically on measurement. There is a, um, a white paper available. There is a webinar available on data visualization. There are conversations with friends available to you. You can reach out to me. Measurement is one of my favorite things to talk about and my typical soapbox is we don't measure the effectiveness of people, we measure the effectiveness of programs. Uh, and once you're a friend of ours, you're a friend for life. So please feel free to reach out, scour our information on our website, ask questions, interact with us, follow us on LinkedIn, and just be a part of our story and take the survey, figure out where you are. Anything you wanna add? Roberta? She just gave you the link to the EBooks. No, yeah, yeah, there's a link. So there's eBooks. We have, um, um, stories from other, um, leaders as well in the case studies section. So just you can nerd, totally nerd out on the, um, in the knowledge hub. And we do have plans to, um, build a community of learning leaders around this as well. So if you're on our newsletter list, you'll certainly hear about that and receive an invitation. Thank you so much. Thank you, Karen. Thank you Jen. Thank you Alberta. Thank you Zach. Thank you guys for having us. This is, this is always fun. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks everyone for joining. Have a great afternoon. Alright, thanks everybody. Take care everyone. Bye. Bye.