Strategic Learning for Today, and Tomorrow: AI-Integrated Talent Development

Rachel Cossar: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of conversations in the future of work. I am your host, Rachel Cossar, and I am really excited to have another Rachel on the show today. And we’re gonna be talking about l and d and leadership and legacy in AI. Rachel, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.

Rachel Walter: I posted on LinkedIn earlier. You know, you don’t get don’t get too many Rachels that get together. So, you know, hopefully, we don’t confuse people. Yeah. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: Would you mind sharing before we get into this first question here? Just a little bit about, your background and, you know, what you’re working on now. Of course. Of course.

Rachel Walter: So right at the moment, I am the chief innovation officer for AnswerSource, which is an educational, services company. So we deal in educational services and technology. Super proud to have brought in our new Answer TMS, which is a training management scheduling tool, that was a big problem in the company I worked for before. So I spent nineteen years, running l and d at Hilti, which is a in layperson’s terms, the easiest thing to say is that they provide tools and services for the construction industry. So I’ve been in l and d for a long time. Like many people in l and d, I didn’t start in l and d. I actually started in engineering and in the business side, which has given me maybe a little different lens, for learning and development. And that kind of ties us in, if if you don’t mind if I answer the question right away. You know, how have I seen l and d evolve? It’s been a lot. It’s been almost thirty almost thirty years now that I’ve been, in the corporate workforce. And, over that time, I think I’ve seen l and d go from everything from very structured, obviously, in person training only, because we didn’t have the possibility to do hybrid training or digital training, etcetera. And so we thought it was a big deal when we first went to being able to put information on CD ROMs and transfer it to people. So it’s it’s definitely been a transition from the technology and how we use technology in learning and development. I think the other thing that I am so happy to say has changed in learning and development is we’re finally spending more time talking about analytics. We’re finally spending more time talking about the impact of what we’re doing rather than for a long time, it was really we measured, you know, butts in seats. We measured smile sheets, how how happy were people with it. And thanks to a lot of the pioneers, like Jim Kirkpatrick or, you know, Phillips, family. They certainly changed the way we looked at l and d, and it focuses more on how we are able to determine that we’re actually having an impact with learning and development, with talent development of all different kinds. And I think the interesting thing is is that my my hope is, as we make this AI human collaboration come to life, that now the fact that that narrative had already started to change, and now we have technology that’s going to enable us to be able to really dig into that. And we’re not using it as much in l and d yet, in my opinion, as I I think we should. So I’ll I’ll give an example from another industry. I was I was listening to a podcast on, it’s about AI and health care and how that is changing. And they were discussing that now by using information from medical records, they can actually predict. If one in five smokers get cancer, they can now predict which one of those five they need to be going and doing the, you know, sort of preventative measures ahead of time long before the person ever gets cancer. And when you think, if we can do that in the medical field, what we could do with that in learning and development? So it’s it’s definitely there. The the evolution is far from over. We just now need to be making sure that we’re really, I think, remembering that we’re not I I think a lot of what L and D is talking about right now and and many fields are AI is going to replace us instead of talking about how humans and AI can collaborate, how it can how our humanity is actually one of the most critical components, for the use of AI inside l and d. And for heaven’s sakes, just don’t take it and tell it to output a course because you’re you’re gonna be you’re you’re gonna be sadly disappointed at the at the lack of impact it has. Yeah. It’s so fascinating.

Rachel Cossar: You bring up so many interesting concepts. Like, number one, the evolution of digital technologies in the learning space from to your point, like, being able to put content on a CD ROM and share it outside of, like, a classroom environment. Right? Like, we forget how much evolution has already happened to get us to this point. I think we also, tend to forget. And granted AI does seem like a pretty unique disruptor. But, you know, we do forget that some of the fears that we may be experiencing now related to, oh my god. Is this gonna, like, completely, like, make me lose my job or whatever? We’re very present when, like, computers came online. Right? And, and the reality is that, like, jobs will evolve as a result of this new enabling technology. Right? Like, there will be an evolution in in in your jobs and tax and tasks and responsibilities, and people will, like, rise to the occasion to find where they fit next. And, hopefully, it’s gonna be a place to your point where we are then like, in your example with the health care, like, if we are then able to do so much more good and have so much more impact as a result of some of the pattern recognition that AI does just, you know, measurably better than humans or the, like, redundant task components, you know, allowing us to then have more time for interesting conversations and strategic, strategic moving forward. Like, that it that that is such an interesting perspective. I think that’s helpful in many ways. So I appreciate you kinda touching on so many of those options or those those elements. Right? Exactly.

Rachel Walter: And I I was telling somebody that I was writing a book on on leadership and, and and they were sort of laughing and, like, you know, how on earth does somebody who’s in the innovation space, like, why are you writing about leadership aside from having been a leader for a really long time? And I said, because it’s actually going to allow us to do more in that space, to bring more humanity in and give us the time and the space and the tools to develop the next generations. And AI in no way removes that duty. Like you said, it it gives us tools that we can use to scale our input, our output. It Yeah. It gives us a mirror to look into. It has so many positives. And in some cases, I think we’re letting fear hold us back Yeah. Unfortunately. Right. Totally.

Rachel Cossar: I I’m I’m gonna go a little bit out of order here just based on something you also shared in in your introduction is, like, the measurements and the analytics behind l and d programs. So what’s you mentioned some of the the metrics that you used to measure, you know, before you had the tools that we have today. So what kinds of, metrics or analytics are you finding most powerful that either exist today or or, like and or, like, what what would be some metrics or analytics you would love to be able to capture more effectively in learning program success?

Rachel Walter: I think the things that we say in l and d a lot of times is we talk about why we can’t get the metrics that we need. We talk about why we don’t have access to revenue data or sales data or, business metrics, and we talk about that as an excuse for why we’re not measuring them. I think that’s the first thing that AI is going to bring into play so much more because now I don’t even necessarily have to have access to those systems if a company uses salesforce.com. I can have the reports from that that are anonymized. So we’re not talking about worrying about employee data or anything, but I can have anonymized data come out of there, and I can utilize AI to say where are people actually suffering from a talent development perspective. So Right. Instead of it being the squeaky wheel gets the attention, and so we think that it’s actually that people need to learn to ask better questions to sell better, but the reality is is actually it could be that our leads are awful. It could be that that our salespeople are amazing at finding the problem, but they’re not good at closing. Like and I think that’s where I mean, I’m using sales as an example here because it’s kind of easy to measure, but we could do the same thing in anything. Logistics. Okay. Why are our inventory costs so high? Like, we really need to get these inventory costs under control, but we don’t seem to be able to get the right inventory in the right place at the right time. I can now understand, is that a human element issue, or is that a system issue? And if it’s a human element issue, now I can stop and take a look and go, is it a human issue because of culture? So for example, people are fearful that could that is something that happens a lot. They’re fearful that if they don’t have the right inventory in the right place, so they on the side of caution. And they go in and they have too much inventory in place, which costs the company money. It could be a lack of knowledge or understanding about what the cost of that inventory is. Mhmm. And so this is why you can apply it to any job, whether it’s a kind of easy to measure job like sales. Although easy I say easy to measure, but understanding that that’s a very complex set of things that go into that. Yeah. And I think the common denominator that I’m using here is that you have got to be looking at the metrics that make sense to that business. Like, what is important in that business? What are they measuring? What are the systems that are there? Not what does your LMS tell you. Because your LMS, unless it’s very well integrated into all of your other platforms, is not giving you anything more than what we used to be able to get with pencil and paper who signed into the classroom today.

Rachel Cossar: That’s the same thing an LMS brings you. Who passed the test today?

Rachel Walter: That’s again, we did that on paper. And I think that means that if you can’t get your systems integrated, which a lot of l and d departments can’t, and that’s fine, AI now brings us the opportunity to utilize business metrics, match them up against your learning programs that you are currently delivering, match them up against any if you’re doing needs analysis, match them up against that. And now start looking at those types of metrics. Is it close rates? Is it bad leads? Is it an not understanding the cost of extra inventory? Is it a cultural component? The metrics need to relate back to what matters to your leadership. And, you know, it’s it’s interesting because as I was doing a lot of interviews for the book, I found that there were people who mistakenly thought their leadership actually wanted to know how many people they were putting through classes Mhmm. For a couple of reasons. One, because they were saying this is why I need the number of trainers that I have, or this is why I have to upgrade to a more automated system, which were important points for those specific decisions that were made. If we’re hiring trainers, yes, we need to know how many people are coming through the the training programs. But if what we’re looking at is more, I’m trying to figure out as as CEO or c suite leaders, what I’m trying to figure out is actually how do we run our business more profitably. Well, guess what? Telling me how many people are going through training is not helping me as a c suite leader know whether or not what you’re doing in training is going to help me be more profitable. And that disconnect between what l and d tends to measure and what the management actually needs to know. They need to know how fast are people getting up to productivity. They need to know what’s causing early attrition rates. They need to know conversion rates in your sales calls. They need to know what are acceptable scrap levels. You know, what is what are our quality metrics that we’re aiming at if if you’re a manufacturing facility or something like that. They need to know if you’re an IT services company, what’s my what’s my downtime that the system is is costing us? Right. Those are the metrics and the analytics, and it it does vary. It’s not as simple as saying that there’s one set of metrics that works for every single organization, But it is as simple as saying, what are the metrics that your CEO, your COO, your CFO, what are they talking about? And now how can I understand which ones of those learning and development or talent development Yeah? Can affect?

Rachel Cossar: Right. I mean, it’s really the, like, holy grail of information integration and and and and and different outputs based on, like, what actually matters. Right? I think that at Virtual Sapiens, we’re always trying to find those points of integration. Mhmm. And I think I wonder also about your thoughts on this. Like, it seems like more and more in order to get those systems integrated, The technology itself has to actually be quite integrated. Right? Yes.

Rachel Walter: And I think that’s what stops many people because, for example, not trying to call out Workday here, but to integrate with Workday is very expensive. And so now you’re stopping and you’re thinking, okay. If I integrate one system in with Workday that isn’t a native Workday system that’s not, like, already, you know, connected to Workday, Is that worth the cost to do that integration? Even if your company says, yes. It’s worth the cost. Now can I get all the right stakeholders on board to agree to this? Now what does that do to my data privacy? What does that do to the risk we’re inserting in? What happens now if somebody ends up with some type of administrative authorization and they see information they weren’t supposed to see? Like, now you’re getting into a whole new mess of Yeah. Of issues that goes way beyond, can we figure out the API to connect these two systems? Right. And that’s where I think in today’s world, okay, if you can’t integrate the systems, for whatever reason, don’t get yourself so caught up in not being able to integrate the systems. How can you get the data from the system in a way that allows you and this is where, again, you know, I mean, I know I’m kind of harping on AI here, but, this is where you can always use an AI agent. Like, it doesn’t have to be a human who downloads this report and uploads it into the system. Right. Those things can now be fully automated without necessarily requiring any type of integration between platforms, and that is going to make such a huge difference in the next five years. Yeah. I I would say in the next two or three years in most fields, but l and d sometimes can take a little longer because they’re a little further removed from some of that. But for sure, within the next five years, I think we’re going to see actually, fewer integrations and more information sharing between systems.

Rachel Cossar: Which would that, would that mean that there also then has to be, like, an AI agent that has access to those different information systems? Exactly.

Rachel Walter: And so I think that’s where, you know but that’s where I think a lot of systems already have that. So for example, you can take and you can put reports out of salesforce.com or Workday or any LMS out there, and you can have those reports emailed into an email account. And you can then have that email account monitored by an agent, an AI agent, who then moves them into the next.

Rachel Cossar: So, again, it doesn’t mean that your AI has to be able to be sitting inside Right. Someone else’s platform. Right.

Rachel Walter: Like, the the the the data obviously exists.

Rachel Cossar: The exports already exist. It’s just a question of having something super efficient be able to cull through it. Yes.

Rachel Walter: Again, going back to health care, there’s this, there’s an app out. It’s called I wanna say it’s called DocSnap maybe. Mhmm. And it allows the patient to actually have control over their medical records. They can get all their medical records from every facility that they go to, which is your right legally, it’s your right to have your medical records. But, previously, all of those medical records might be a file folder. So, like, my father, we had a three ring binder that literally, you know, was this thick. It was probably two, three inches thick with all the things that we knew about his health history, his family history, the things he’d gone through in in his elder years, etcetera. And we would go into every doctor’s appointment. We would just add the new information into that. Now there is an app that allows you to do that, and you now can say, I wanna share this information with say, I wanna share it with my partner or I wanna share it with my primary care physician, and then I go to another specialist and I wanna share it with them. Like, you have that authorization because it’s your own medical records. And because it uses, AI technology inside it. If, for example, they wanna say, take a look at my dad’s cardiac records, anything related to his cardiac health. Okay? Now it can literally categorize that for that doctor who’s wanting to do that so he doesn’t have to page through tons of unnecessary things like he did in in my case with a with a three ring binder. He was flipping and we would have tabs, you know, colored tabs on there. Now all of that’s done. So, again, I think we get back into the fact that there’s so many possibilities now that exist. And so now as a learner, imagine if I had one of those. We we don’t have that for l and d yet, but, but imagine that I had one of those that had everything from my university degree transcripts, all the courses I’ve ever taken inside the companies I’ve worked for, all the courses I’ve taken on my own, the things that I’ve added to it as I’ve learned and done certificate programs. Wouldn’t that be cool? Like and now I could have my own, like like, not just what my company says is my skills profile. I get my own skills profile. I can have my own achievements right there. And, potentially, someday, then it could even tell me, like, oh, this would be a great job for you, or this would be a perfect next step, or you’d be really well qualified to do this role. Right. That’d be fun. I mean, we’re dreaming now, but still it’d be fun. I mean I mean, what no. What a world to dream in. Right?

Rachel Cossar: I so this, transitions perfectly into the next question. Right? So we have all of this possibility, and there is a lot of change already going on. Right? Like, everyone’s trying to grapple with how AI and why AI and, like, in a way that actually makes sense and drives impact versus just, like, doing things to do things. So how do you balance innovation with strategic alignment to ensure that these learning programs are continue continuing to contribute to, engagement and then and then ROI in this, like, new way?

Rachel Walter: I think for me, it kind of goes back to what I just was saying about knowing what keeps your CEO up at night. What’s important to your CEO, your CFO, your your COO? Because innovation and is it’s it’s not about chasing every new tool or every idea. It’s really about channeling that toward the outcomes that matter the most to the business that you’re in. And and, again, that’s gonna be so specific to your company because your company is gonna have a culture of, I listen to a lot of podcasts in case you can’t tell. So I’m I refer to them a lot of times, but I was listening to one on product management, and it was, Pendo was in there. And they’re they were talking about, the culture of experimentation that they have there. So even if you’re a summer intern at Pendo, you are encouraged to experiment and try things out and all of this, all the way to the top leaders. They had three different levels in in the podcast that I was listening to. And it was so cool because it was it was not just encouraging innovation. It was directing it in a path. So it was connecting new ideas into the goals that they had as an organization and then tying those in to say, okay. Now which of these are giving us results that are leading us into the next step? And that’s where I think if a learning program isn’t aligned to those things and directed, you’ve gotta have those guardrails up. Because the reality is is that people people don’t wanna screw up at work. They really don’t. They wanna do a good job at work. And so if they’re worried that if they experiment with this new technology that it could have, some data privacy leak or it could have an ethics question, or it may be, you know, maybe they’ve had it hammered into their head that they can only use this specific language that represents their brand. All of those things will stop us then from innovating. But if we tell people this this is the things that are important to us as an organization, here’s your guardrails for what you can and should innovate within, these are the things we’re worried about. So if if if your leadership is concerned next year about profitability, awesome. You now know one of the biggest things that you can aim your learning programs at. I can focus on what is it gonna take to make our organization more profitable. Now I’m making directed questions into the managers that I’m talking to. What affects profitability in your department? Okay? Now I can align my learning programs and people development into that. And if I make that then my narrative, not only am I affecting ROI Mhmm. I’m involving all the people, which is gonna cause higher engagement. I am involving all the people in and saying, hey. Guess what? You’re gonna hear our CEO talk about profitability every time he opens his mouth next year. Yeah. We’ve taken a look in our department about what affects profitability of this organization. It’s these three components.

Rachel Cossar: So we’re gonna pull these three levers.

Rachel Walter: We’re gonna pull them hard this year, and that’s why we’re bringing in this training program. That’s why we’re bringing in this curriculum. That’s why whatever it happens to be, and people are gonna buy in. Because now guess what? They know why they’re in that Simon Sinek, start with y. They know why they’re in that training program. It’s not there because you think they’re not good at it. Yeah. They’re there because you think they’re an important part of achieving the goals of the next year. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: And that really kind of flips things on its head for l and d, I feel like. Like, there being a greater purpose to all of the learning beyond just almost like individual skill development. Right? And I think a lot of that then also relies on interdepartmental communication at these organizations so that l and d is getting that information. Right? Which I feel like maybe sometimes doesn’t happen. But get out of your seat. Get out of your seat.

Rachel Walter: Like Yeah. Totally. If you are if you are a physic physically on-site company Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: Go sit in your central you have a barista.

Rachel Walter: Do you have a gathering space of some kind? Go sit in that. If you’re a virtual organization, go look at your calendar. As an l and d person, are you meeting with in in in my calendar right now, I have monthly meetings with a wide variety of people from a lot of jobs that have nothing to do with mine and answer source inside the company. Yep.

Rachel Cossar: And every month, I meet with these people.

Rachel Walter: And every month, I learn more about this company. Every month, I learn more about our clients’ challenges. I have every six weeks, I have, like, a group that I get together outside of the organization from external people to come in and think about a topic, toss things around. What happens is we get so caught up in the day to day work, and then we expect people to come to us with their problems. And then we wonder why we’re treated like order takers. Mhmm. You’re treated like an order taker because you’re not out there making those connections. Right. Networking in l and d is not a nice to have. It is a business imperative. Mhmm. You have to get out and find out what’s happening in those departments virtually or physically. You have to be out there. You need to be if it’s physically if there’s any way that you can be fly on the wall, if you have 50 customer service agents, can you sit in one day, even even three hours a month? Can you can you sit into those calls three hours a month? Can you switch it around between different people and see what’s working, what’s not working? Yep. Can you go on a ride with, with your salespeople? Can you stand in the warehouse and watch while packages are being created and boxed. Like, l and d has got to get themselves in the middle of whatever the business is that you’re doing. Yeah. I love that.

Rachel Cossar: Like, the initiative is definitely set by you. Right? So you’ve already shared, like, a ton of advice, I think. Super super valuable learnings, I think. Very applicable. So anything else that you would I or or specific to this, like, AI thing? Like, anything else that you would share with learning professionals?

Rachel Walter: I think the biggest thing that I would say is be aware that you need governance. AI today is the wild west. Yep. And so it can create a lot of problems. It does have a lot of potential, but get your people aware of the ethics of using AI, acknowledging when you’re using AI, understanding its limitations, its hallucinations, and get yourself a governance group, just to help out to select which tools you’re going to use. Don’t just lock everything down, but figure out how to put the guardrails up that are safe for your organization and that fit your specific culture. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: I think that that lends itself well to something else that I’ve noticed, which is that, especially with some of these new AI tools, like, people in l and d are really being forced to be a lot more technically savvy. Even in the vendors they bring in now, like because we work with a lot of l and d departments through our coach partners, and our coach partners and their l and d partners have to, like, do these, like, face they are they’re not doing the technical audits. Right? But they they’re having to now do technical audits of of their vendors every single time because it includes some some kind of AI component. Right? And it’s just such a completely scary, I think, for some L and D leaders, and and certainly coach partners, you know, because it is such a thing. Yes. It is.

Rachel Walter: And but it’s also a necessary skill. If you’re going to play with technology, you need to understand some components of technology. Now, again, you don’t have to be you know, if if you’re a UX designer, you’re talking about Vibe code coding right now. Like, you 100% are. You’re not shying away from that. You’re understanding that it’s not the same as, you know, becoming a full stack developer, but you’re but you’re understanding enough about it to to make that happen. Mhmm. I do think that because l and d has gotten away with so few standards, I mean, we’re still using SCORM in elearning. And, you know, xAPI was it was like it scared everybody half to death when it came out, which is now, what, twenty years ago. And and so I think we need to we need to own up to the fact that we have to be tech savvy to live in today’s world. Mhmm. And we also should set standards. So you can have, as an organization, instead of creating a new technical checklist for every single system you bring in or every vendor or every platform, you can have a standard. You have your technical and operational measures document, and everyone adheres to that. And then it’s a matter of going, okay. Realistically, there aren’t that many data privacy, you know, security regulations. There aren’t that many, and everybody that wants to do business in the world today can be held to the same set of standards. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: It’s unfortunate, I think, that fear stops us in in so many cases from just opening those documents and looking.

Rachel Walter: They’re probably not as scary if you actually open them. And then I’ll give you another hint here is, you know, use AI as your thought partner. Like, take that document and go, what is the risk with this document to my organization giving given these parameters? Give me a high level of the risk so that I know where to dig in. It’s going to come in and it’s gonna give you, and then challenge it. For heaven’s sakes, AI is the best thought partner we have ever had. I I was telling somebody, the other friend of mine, the other day. She’s like, I really feel like I need a coach. And, since we’re friends, I cannot be her coach. And I said I said, right. But I said, just to get you started Yeah. I said, chat GPT is excellent. Tell it what model of coaching you want. Tell it what your you said, you already know your goal. You just told me your goal. And and get her to ask you a few questions. Like, and if you feel like at that point, you’re like, okay. I need a little more than say, hey. Can you recommend coaches for this topic? Now that we’ve dug into it a little, can you recommend coaches in my area? It is an amazing thought partner. Totally. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: Rachel, I wanna thank you for taking the time to join us today and sharing such incredibly valuable and helpful perspective. Anything else you’d like to share with our audience, and where can people find you?

Rachel Walter: LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me. So just search Rachel Walter. There’s not too many of us out here, and I’m really noisy on LinkedIn, so it should be easy to find. That’s probably the best way. And, I think my last piece of advice is experiment. Just go try something. You you may be surprised. If you can if you can build a habit of every single day doing one tiny experiment, whether that’s one prompt in chat GPT or one slide built with Copilot. Give it a shot. You may like it. Awesome.

Rachel Cossar: So good. So good. Thank you so much again. And as always, thank you to our audience for join.