LM Ep 82
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Hello. Hello, Lisa here. Since you're listening to this particular podcast, I imagine you're likely a leader in the area of talent, HR people, culture, l and [00:01:00] d employee experience or od. Are you also a talent leader who is longing for a safe sounding board to bounce ideas off of who's thirsty for some fresh new ideas that will actually work?
Who maybe needs to influence multiple stakeholders who don't always know what they want? Maybe you're somebody who wants to get out of their own way and who's ready for expert, ongoing, and confidential mentoring. If you answered yes to one or more of those statements, then we need to talk In addition to my group programs, I work privately with a select few clients as their talent management thought partner. I will help you over the next 90 days. Finally, create the space, the intention, and the strategy to implement an initiative that's critical to your team's, longer term impact and legacy.
Let's chat and see if there's a fit. Book me [email protected] slash contact.
Are you a collector of knowledge, skills, and experiences? Well, my guest [00:02:00] definitely is tune in to hear about her non-linear career journey and her thoughts about the seasonality of life and career. My guest is Alexandra Hyland Alexandra's, head of Capabilities and Culture Academies, global Senior Director of Learning and Diversity at Craft Heights, bringing her unique background in political science.
Ethics and law as well as a master's degree in counseling psychology. Alexandra has worked to develop authentic and robust learning and change strategies in supporting employee brands, talent, acquisition, engagement, diversity and inclusion, and learning and development. In this episode of Talent Management Truce, you'll discover reflections on the concept of seasons in life and career, the powerful green housings effect of a certain favorite phrase, and the strategic shift we are seeing in organizational learning.
Enjoy the episode. Hello and welcome back to Talent Management Truce. I'm your host, Lisa Mitchell, and [00:03:00] today I'm joined by Alexandra Highland. Alexandra is the head of capabilities and culture at Craft Hines Global. She has a particular focus on learning and diversity. Welcome to the show, Alexandra. Thank you for having me. It's been a while, a long time coming, and I'm thrilled that we're finally together today. Me too. I've been looking forward to it all week since I saw it on my calendar. I'm like, yay. All right.
Well, let's, let's help people get to know you a little bit. If you could share you know, how, how you got to where you are and a bit of your career journey. Such a great question. You know, and we take for granted that this is the easy question, right? It's like, we'll start with the, the lob, you know, the easy question.
But to be honest, I've actually spent a lot of time thinking about how to answer that question. In a really meaningful way because my career is not a straight line as many people can relate to. I really relate to the quote, I think it was JR Tolkin who said, not all who wander are lost. Yeah. And so when I think about my career journey, I would [00:04:00] start by saying, you know, I'm a collector.
I'm a collector of skills. Experiences, opportunities and the collection that I have amassed is really what brings me to where I am today at, at Kraft Heines. But it started, you know, with an appetite as a young person to see the world. I had the opportunity to travel to Australia when I was 16 for four months. And I had this just sort of insatiable curiosity and frankly, a burning desire to prove to people that. I could do it, I could do whatever it was gonna be, but I was gonna do it. And so I started my undergrad career, I think as many, a young person does with what I thought was a pretty clear vision.
I was gonna be a lawyer. And so I went to the University of Toronto, Trinity College and studied a special program called Ethics, society and Law and Political Science. And what I learned from that, what I, the skill that I collected there was that while I enjoyed the [00:05:00] intellectual pursuit, I realized that that was not gonna be my life's work. But I collected all that I could in terms of what I loved about the law and so on. And took the opportunity at that time to go teach. I taught at a local private boarding school and had that opportunity to. Really kind of connect into what it was that I wanted to do if it wasn't going to be the law.
And reflecting on my time at university, I had the privilege of being an elected student leader. And at that time was deeply troubled by some interactions that I had with students who were encountering really their very first mental health crisis as often young people do. And so while working in this school, it occurred to me that.
My, what I believed at that time, my passion, my purpose was, my why was to get into the field of mental health. And so I pursued a master's of education in counseling psychology, and I collected that. I collected all the skills there and realized that empathy was my [00:06:00] superpower. But as with many superpowers, it has a shadow side.
It has sort of the, the flip side, and that was that it's an almost an overused superpower for me. And I realized that, you know, pursuing this as a full-time career was not gonna be possible for my heart. I was not able to do that sort of separation that is required to be successful. So at this point, I've got law, I've got poly sci, I've got counseling psychology.
And after having returned to the school and worked there for a number of more, you know, number of additional years, I realized that what I was missing was business. And when I sat down and kind of mapped out my collection as it were, you know, you can think about me unpacking this virtual suitcase of things, I realized that there was a common thread, there was a red thread that was going through all of where I had been.
And that was the idea of human resources and empowering people teaching, teaching adults you know, [00:07:00] I'm sorry to say, I don't remember much from undergrad necessarily, but I do remember my buddy Maslow and his hierarchy of these. Yes, and I realized that I had the ability to leverage my superpower of empathy, to leverage my knowledge of the law, of organizational behavior, of psychology, of education to really.
Empower people to live their best lives and be their best selves at work. And so went back to school again, collected another piece of paper to really train in the area of human resources. And you know, from there, my career, I. Has sort of, you know, been all in that space, but increasingly in the learning and diversity space. And so again, I say not all who wander are lost. My poor parents, I think I gave them quite a run for their money thinking. Where is she going to go? I'd love to tell you that I had the foresight to know that this is what was gonna happen. But being a collector, I think it's about understanding how to maximize your collection and what to do with all the [00:08:00] experiences and match them to seasons of life and, and what makes sense at any given given season.
Ooh, so much stuff here. Okay. To unpack. So the seasons of life really resonates with me and this idea of being a collector. Of skills, knowledge, experiences, you know, some of, some of our listeners are probably familiar with strengths Gallup strengths. Mm-hmm. And I, I was really interested when I got my results back a few years ago, and one of the strengths was input, which is this idea that you value, you collect things sometimes arbitrarily just.
For the fun of it. Not just things, but experiences, people, connections, relationship. Like it's just, you know, there's, there's, there's this insatiable curiosity, and that's what I think I'm hearing from you is input one of your strengths. Alexandra, you know what, it's not interestingly enough but I actually think that I.
It probably could be, but my top strength is relator. Followed by intellectual, intellectual and empathy. And [00:09:00] I think when I put those three things together, collecting actually seems like kind of a logical action or output of those three things. Well, and I'm you know, with your permission, I'm actually gonna share this concept of collecting with my, my soon to be 17 year old son because we've been touring universities and so on.
You know, he'll be making his decisions later this year once he gets into grade 12 where he wants to apply and he's, you know, thinks he wants to do history. Before it was English and now he's like, I don't really wanna do English. And so he's, he's a little bit all over the map trying, he doesn't know what he doesn't know.
And we've just said, look, we, we, we want this to be a time of exploration because you're gonna have many seasons in your life and it's okay to. To pursue something and then realize it may not be for you. And I, I personally, I wish I had known that because I pursued teaching. I was a teacher for two years and then, you know, and that's all I'd ever wanted to be.
And then realized, oh God, this is not for me for a variety of reasons. [00:10:00] And then, you know, ended up having this wonderful career that I'm very proud of. So, I think those zigzags in life and career are, are partly what leads us to be. Great. Right. It helps us become who we're meant to be. Yeah. And I think, you know, this idea of seasons of life, I have the tremendous privilege of often getting to speak with.
You know, trainees, students that have joined the organization. And, you know, I often think to myself, my gosh, what? You know, I feel like I'm still in their shoes. I, you know, I look in the mirror and the lines around my eyes would tell you otherwise, but you know, I wonder what am I supposed to impart? And it's this idea of seasons of life and at different moments in our life.
We need or want different things. And that's okay. You know, I think when we're, you know, going through our formal education, there's this idea that you wanna be the top of the heap. The, the, you know, most senior job title or, you know, making the most amount of money. And that might [00:11:00] be true for a certain season in life where money is really important.
You know, maybe you're trying to invest in a home, maybe you're supporting family members and, and really getting that biggest paycheck is what matters the most. At other times, it's the title, right? There's no shame in that game. You just wanna say like, look, I, I earned the big title. There's other seasons where it's about exploration, about taking risks, having courage, and whatever is happening in the rest of your life can support you in doing that.
There's seasons where security and stability is most important. Mm-hmm. You know, and so I think honoring and recognizing the different seasons is really important as is honoring and recognizing the experiences and journey. So I went through a period where I was really hard on myself about. Not becoming a lawyer and thinking you just wasted four years, you wasted your education.
You was, you know, and then the same thing with, with doing the masters. I thought, my gosh, you've trained to become, you know, a [00:12:00] qualified counselor. You're a member of the Canadian counseling. It's like therapy associate. You're committed, did all the work. Why aren't you pursuing this? Right? How could you have made this mistake And what I have come to learn is that it's okay to honor that experience as a collector, dig in, figure out what pieces you can pull out.
And then I sort of symbolically in my mind, put it on the shelf and not to collect dust, not to to disappear, but as a place of honor on my shelf. I thank, you know, it sounds so goofy and corny, but it's like you take a moment and I. Thank myself or the, or the, you know, powers that be for the experience. I honor what I got from it and know that it helped me in the journey, even if not in the traditional sense of it.
And that gives me more of a sense of. Purpose in a sense that, no, I'm not wandering, I'm not lost, I'm collecting, and I appreciate the collection. Do you know what that makes me think of too is as you [00:13:00] probably heard about this idea of, you know, we, we get physical scars on our body, you know, c-section over here for me.
Mm-hmm. You know, oh, there's where I skin my knee in Quebec City one time, you know, when I was 20 and, and this kind of thing. And, and yeah, those weren't pleasant getting hurt in some way and yet, They all led to other experiences and I sort of look at them and sort of think, wow look what my body's been able to do and what it's brought me.
So it's that idea of of of honoring and that, you know, I really wanna acknowledge you saying, you know, it really took you a while to sort of get over the feeling of, oh my God, I gave up. I what, you know, I gave up four years and, and what did I waste time on that for? Because it took me at least four years just to grieve, leaving teaching.
Before I finally let myself off the hook a bit, and I think it's important that now that we have a better understanding of mental health and how we all tend to be so hard on ourselves and have this, this loud inner critic that we help the next generations really understand that there's a normalcy.
It's all one [00:14:00] big experiment in the end. That's right. The the other thing too I wanted to touch on around seasons is that. You know, it's almost like quite literal. I've been really exploring this in my business as an entrepreneur, cuz it's a real up and down ride sometimes. But it's this idea that, you know, sometimes things look like, like it looks like nothing's happening.
You know, you've been putting yourself out there, you've been, you know, doing the work wherever you are. And you feel like nothing's coming to fruition, and it just may be that what you're doing is honoring what the earth needs, which is to lay fallow in the actual technical term, right? Mm-hmm. To lay fallow, have time because it was, it was.
I love the French word. Like just like, just squeezed out, just exhausted. Could no longer nurture anything that was planted there. So it's laying fallow and once it's ready, you know, and has had time to regenerate, you plant the seeds now, you still don't see anything coming up. You still might be feeling a bit impatient at times.
Like, wow, why are, you know my [00:15:00] career? You know, why aren't things moving more quickly? But trust that you water those seeds and then they start to grow and then it's time to harvest. So embracing that idea, seasonality, I think takes the heat off us a bit. Any thoughts about that? I mean, I, I think that's exactly right and.
You know, there's this Greek proverb that, you know, a society grows great when you know, you plant trees in the shade of which you'll never sit. Yes. Oh yes. Great. That just poof. Right. And I think in the learning and diversity space in particular, it's really true. Because we're so used to seeing immediate impact of what we do.
We live in a society where we want instant gratification, and certainly we get that when, you know, we, we run a program, a training, and, and we get that wonderful, hopefully feedback afterwards. The, the honeymoon period of, wow, this was so great, but often we're playing the long game. And so you have to be willing to plant those seeds knowing that you may not see the results, but they will [00:16:00] most certainly be carried forward. And I think that that also takes some getting used to, because, you know, how we measure success is, is influenced by the fact that we are influencing or we are trying to, to change behaviors, to grow people to empower. And it takes time for. People to process that. Just like it took me a long time to process my journey.
I, I don't ever want to come across as, you know, this polished package that I knew all along. This was what, you know, yeah. Look at me. No, this has been years of reflecting and, and kind of going through the trenches. N and now being able to look back and see that the seeds that I planted as an undergrad, the seeds that I planted as, you know, a master's student or in any of the jobs that I had.
They, you know, at that time I didn't see the flowers, I didn't see the trees, the, you know, whatever proverb or metaphor. But you have to have that patience. You have to have that sense of resilience and belief in yourself. And frankly, I don't think I always believed, I'm not [00:17:00] sure I would've ever let anybody in on that, but even if you feel like you've gone down a winding road, there is something to be.
Explained from it in retrospect. And you can amass your collection at any time. You can look back retroactively and build your collection. You don't have to have done it in the moment. And I think that's really important for young people to understand too. You're subconsciously collecting as you go.
You just don't realize it, you don't realize it until you have a, a moment of peace or reflection. Your mountaintop moment where you look in the bag and see what you've got. Because you're too busy in the process of collecting to really, you know, assess that. And I think for me, winding up at Kraft Heines, I mean, I can't say enough good things about the organization and the room that they give me, the team, the, the employees to plant those seeds.
I mean, of course we want to see immediate impact and results, and we do, but they also value the long game and developing people for the future. And so it's been a, and they [00:18:00] make mean condiment. And they do, they do. I mean, you know, life without ketchup is a life I'm not prepared to, to consider. But it's such a, it's such a rewarding experience to work in a place that values that journey, that sees the opportunity for people to move cross-functionally in my career within the organization as a, as an example of that taking risks on people growing them.
But again, you know, even when they hired me, they planted a seed hoping that, you know, it might bloom to, to stick with the metaphor we're going with, but it's f fantastic. I think this, this seed metaphor is really really working for us, frankly, because, because I love that idea. You know, you just relate it back to, to employee experience or talent management, which is, which is my area of passion, right?
Like that whole continuum of the employee journey. And, you know, I think it's so important from the time we start trying to attract great people in and how we recruit, how we treat them, you know, we're planting seeds all the way along that, you know, in your case, Kraft Hines is an amazing organization [00:19:00] with a long-term view, right?
We're playing for the long game, as you said. So I think there's opportunities to plant seeds all the way along to, to create that. Expectation of a great experience and, and possibility. The other thing that came up too when you were speaking was like, I remember with, with my last boss, certainly when I was still in corporate, but but previously as well, I think planting seeds is a core part of influence.
Mm-hmm. So she was a person who, who would automatically say no. Like that was sort of her default. Mm-hmm. And, and because she would, she needed and wanted time to, to think and to. You know, mu over things. So I learned pretty quickly don't go in and expect a yes right away. Plant a seed, so to say. I was sort of thinking about this and what do you think?
No. Oh, okay. Okay. You know, what are your objections? You know, what are you thinking? Is it could get in the way? Well, it's this, this thought. Oh, okay. So use it as a way to build perspective and understanding myself. Take it away. Work that [00:20:00] piece into the messaging, right. Anticipate and try to mitigate for, for those concerns and come back and drip again.
Right now, I plan to see, now I'm dripping some water on it, just gradually and be patient if it's something that you really think is important. Mm-hmm. No, that that's so true and I think one of the things that has. Always resonated with me is this idea of business improv and the skills you can learn from doing business improv.
And I don't just mean goofy role plays, but one of the most impactful things I think I've learned is the power of Yes. And so rather than an immediate no or a yes, but which is generally just a. Dressed up version of No, you're just canceling that, what you just said. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's the yes and, and the green housing effect that happens when you Yes.
And an idea no matter how outlandish because that initial idea may not work as presented, but when we. Empower people, trust people, engage in conversation. We [00:21:00] greenhouse these ideas and they may morph into something completely different, but we would've missed that if we had just gone with the no. And, and again, I go, you know, I go back to the privilege that I have for where I work because I have leaders who live that every day. to them with ideas and I, you know, I don't know what they're thinking when I bring them, but. To their credit, they, yes, and, and so we've been able to do some really interesting things, but that's a muscle that requires flexing and practicing because the No. Or the Yes, but it's not, it's not often intended to be negative or deflating.
There's often really good reason sound logic around it. But it doesn't often lead to something even cooler. And so really sort of forcing myself to embrace that yes, and, and see where things go, has been I think, kind of a suc a piece of the success of my life, saying yes to things that maybe terrify me. And then at work, things [00:22:00] that maybe I'm not sure I'm capable of doing, or then my team as well, being able to sort of give them the, the green space to do. Cool things. So I mean the power of yes and two little words and yet what they can unlock when said with authenticity and, and honesty can be pretty.
Pretty amazing. Yeah, it was, it was a core, core part of, I, I remember my coaching training and, and we practiced building that muscle. I will tell you I, I really appreciate how you described it as having a green housing effect. You know, I hadn't, we gotta keep with the seeds, right? We gotta keep, yeah.
But it's so brilliant. I haven't, you know, but heard that used that way, but it's this building or multiplier effect that it, it really. You know this Yes. And has this, this kind of, it's like a catalyst to further our thinking and not to shut down possibility. The other thing that I think is really critical about Yes and. As an essential muscle for all leaders to develop and ideally employees ultimately, is that [00:23:00] it improves relationships. It, it cuts down dramatically con the amount of conflict. Mm-hmm. And the amount of misunderstanding. Mm-hmm. Because if somebody presents you with an idea and you're initially thinking, What, what, what, where is she coming from?
Like, oh my God. No, no. But, but, but instead just being quiet. Just nice saying, oh, okay. Thanks for bringing that. Yes. And I'd like to build on that. You know, I think there's this, and I think we need to consider mm-hmm. That there's these, these things over here that, that could create some obstacles. What do you think?
Mm-hmm. You know, so it's, it, it allows us to To move away from that straight up. No, that can be, that can land with a thump, right? And break things down. So it allows us to continue the conversation and I think it empowers then actually the use of no. That when you do use no strategically, yes, it carries a different importance and a different [00:24:00] weight than when it becomes the default you know, answer to things.
And it's easier said than done. And I think. My team would tell you that I'm an idea machine and that in and of self has a shadow side. It can be overwhelming. I see that in myself. I try to hold back the floodgates. Sometimes I do, sometimes I'm not successful at it. And so a yes and can be dangerous when again, it's not used constructively, but I think it's what you've said.
It's about relationship building. It's about being open to possibility and recognizing that. The first idea is not always the end game, it's the jumping off point and what can be co-created when there's psychological safety on the team, when there's creativity, when there's, you know, Interest and everyone understands the purpose and the why.
What can come from that is just, it's, that's what excites me. Me too. That's what leads me too. Me to tell people that I have the Disneyland of jobs. Yeah. Because literally we get to spend all day, every day figuring out new [00:25:00] cool tried and tested ways of helping people be the best, their best selves.
And I mean, how, how cool is that? It's very cool. I love it. , and I love your energy around it. Y you know, coming back to this idea that the seasons metaphor, which we are just loving up today, you know, if we extrapolate that back to the workplace, something you had mentioned to me when we first got acquainted was this idea that, you know, sometimes you can have a program, a talent or HR program that that's no longer serving you or your organization.
And, you know, it kind of makes me think of. You know, when you notice that sometimes we hang onto it, you know, I talk about this in, in another episode of the podcast called, you know, mistakes That Talent Leaders Make. And you know, it's about this idea of falling in love with your program. I see this in a lot of clients and people that I speak to, like, they're like, but it's so great.
We've put so much work into it and now it's not getting us the results we want. I see it in my own business. You know, I just totally revamped a [00:26:00] pro, a process because even though I loved it, it poured so much work into it. Initially it was no longer serving. So how do you see this show up where you are with your team and the organization?
It, it's a hard one. I mean, let us not pretend for a moment that there isn't emotion connected to the work that we do. You know, we create programs with blood, sweat, tears, joy, pain, all the things. And you know, we, we. Metaphorically birth them in the world and hope that they're gonna to, to have the intended effect.
And you know, 99.9% of the time they do and we run them and they're fantastic and they build a great reputation and we're so glad. And then the world changes. Something changes. It's not that, not the pro. Yeah, yeah. Right. Get in in the way. It's not that somehow the program suddenly. Changed and lost value?
No, the, the [00:27:00] circumstances around a program can change. A business strategy can change generations change, technology changes, and it's, for me, that's been a really hard thing to kind of look at something and, and initially feel like this is failing. It's not failing, it's just not serving. It's purpose in the intended way anymore.
And so, kind of like I said about honoring the journey, I look at programs and, and I honestly sort of say to myself with gratitude, thank you. Because I think it was, is it Marshall Goldsmith that said, what got you here won't get you there. Yeah. The book, this program got us here. So we thank it for that.
We, we, we appreciate the energy, we recognize what it did, and then we. Put it on the trophy case and say, now we can jump to the next thing. And I think when we acknowledge it in that way, it doesn't necessarily make it easier to walk [00:28:00] away from something. But you're then not walking away. You're walking to the next thing you're jumping off or walking to.
If any of my team are listening to this, they're just gonna be cracking up because I'm nonstop with the metaphors. And most of the time they don't make sense. But whether you're jumping, leaping, walking, whatever it is, It's not then about your tail between your legs and sort of slinking off into the darkness.
It's about sort of walking with purpose to the next thing. And the sooner we are able to kind of do that and acknowledge that and let go of some of that sort of attachment that we have, the more agility we can bring and we can leverage parts of an old program that are still great. Or the learnings. And yes, and there it is.
We can bring in the new and do so with hope encouragement, hopefully strong analytics that tell us that we know what we're doing. Yes. But it just changes the, the narrative. It changes the feeling, releases us maybe to be working [00:29:00] the word in there. And I, I sort of had this reaction because I had just written down agility.
And you said it, you know, this is this collecting of skills, experiences, knowledge outputs from programs we've put in place. You know, like the, the impact of those things. All of that with reflection leads to new learning. Leads to new action, right? So it helps us be very agile and responsive to changes in our environment.
And the only constant is change. Well, and, and that leads me too to something that I talk about a fair bit in the learning space, which is that, you know, in the, in the good old days, I joke the days of the eighties training room windowless with the flip chart and the fad sandwich tray at the back. Just kidding. You know, it, it was that. There was just so much effort put into custom content would take months and months and years to build. And then of course you're gonna run that as much [00:30:00] as you possibly can because think about how much went into it. But the reality is we can't do that to the same degree anymore.
We need to be agile. We need to be delivering learning at the speed of culture. And if we look at speed of culture today, blink and it's changed so. What do you do? And I think that ultimately it comes down to sort of three big buckets. We're gonna create learning and experiences when it makes sense, we're going to collaborate with others who are working in the same space.
We're gonna get the best of what our subject matter experts have. We're gonna leverage, you know, partnerships. And then lastly, we're gonna curate. Because in this world of. The internet chat, G B T, everything else. There is no shortage of learning out there. No shortage of resources. You know, this is not something that we hold the key to alone, and we can move with a lot of agility when we learn how to effectively curate good quality content because we can deliver that at speed of culture.[00:31:00]
And we can teach people how to be discerning learners in the sense that, again, we no longer hold the keys to all the knowledge. The knowledge is out there free for anyone to have. But I believe that agility in the learning space and what's gonna set a company apart is how effectively we can create critical thinkers, how effectively we can empower critical thinkers, discerning thinkers who can go out there.
Get information and then rapidly know how to kind of sift through it, make the sense of it that they need, and then move with with confidence. So agility to me is, is really being able to kind of do those three, those three Cs as it were really effectively. Beautiful. Yes. This curation idea and teaching people to be discerning learners.
I, it, it's, you know, I, I cut my teeth in a nineties classroom with the flip chart, no window. Six weeks onboarding training for new hires in a very complex environment with multiple product lines and so on. And, you know, think about the content and the customization. And now, [00:32:00] now part of it is, After many, many years, you know, moving through li living through the evolution of, of learning and, and, you know, culture to today where.
I mean, what I do for a living is literally help people be critical thinkers, right? Not, not serve them new content, but help them talk about it. Think about it, reflect and figure out what does that mean for you in your, in your day-to-day life, right? So it's this, it's this creating space for people with, with really thoughtful facilitation to figure out.
So what about the content that's, that's, that's available to us? That's right. And I think that reflects the strategic shift from sort of quote training. You know, I, I, I say at tongue in cheek, the eighties training room, no disrespect to my colleagues that blazed the, the trail but it was about really earning that strategic place at the table to move from sort of the, the manual based training, which still has its place depending on the context [00:33:00] and, and you know, the need, but really more into this strategic business partner.
You know, ride or die with the senior leaders in terms of how we are getting folks ready to deliver on the business of tomorrow and the day after. And to be able to see what's around the corner. And, and that really is about, you can't teach everything, but you can help people be self efficacious. You can help people to understand how to leverage what's at their disposal to make sense of it.
And to allow it, to empower them to be their, their best selves. And I think that's the strategic shift that we're thinking, that we're seeing rather in the learning space, and reflects, I think, the business acumen. Increasing levels of business acumen of learning leaders and, and learning professionals to really be able to partner with, you know, their, their operations leaders, their commercial leaders and so on to, to deliver.
Yes, absolutely. So would you have an example you can share from, from [00:34:00] your organization around where you, from a program level have, have created sort of a curation an opportunity for people to, to become critical thinkers around that? Absolutely. So, you know, we leverage using our online learning platform.
We leverage this concept of playlists, so much like a music playlist. You know, you've got your cooking playlist, you've got your getting ready to go out playlist. You know, we create playlists that provide content on demand to target specific what we call power skills which are really, again, if we go back to the.
The good old days, we would've called those soft skills, but there's nothing soft about them, Power skills, things like communication, presentation, emotional intelligence, project management. Of course we could go and run, you know, live learnings on all of those things, but in order to have the scale, the, the reach, even just addressing different time zones, what we do is curate available content in that space that, you know, is [00:35:00] licensed for us to, to use.
And what it does is kind of, I don't know if this is a word, but it's about to be Netflix sizes makes it like Netflix. You know, the, the learning experience. So we're serving up what we think might be helpful to you. And we try to democratize that in the sense that it is on demand. learning available at different levels.
So someone who's just sort of, beginning their professional career through to a, a senior leader. And you know, that's just one small example, but it's really about this idea that we as people want learning that's personalized to us. I wanna learn when and where I want it in the moment. Sometimes I wanna learn at work, sometimes I wanna learn outside. I want you to know me and I want you to. Serve me up what I think I need or what, you know, I do need. And so that's one way that curation has become, and it's often a supplement to a live learning that we might run. We then send, you know, what we affectionately call a party favor after, which in, you know, [00:36:00] contains nudges and curated content that folks can then take to extend the learning. So that's one way, that's one way that we lean into curate as it were. Yeah. Beautiful. And, and I think that, that, that type of curation is, is, I see that in a lot of my client organizations, certainly, and to me, the, the word that came up from my teachers college days is curricula. It's really creating curricula based on level and, and discipline and so on.
What I really appreciate here though, is You know, really appealing to more modern language and concepts that are very relatable playlists, you know, Netflix like party favor. I think that kind of. I don't know, bring some oomph to it, some fun if you will. Now, do you do anything when, so, so somebody's looking at a playlist and, and there's a, a whole bunch of different things that they could be doing.
I used to call them learning Pass and one organization, so it was really hybrid, you know, some was online. Yep. Some might have been classrooms, some might have been meeting with a mentor [00:37:00] or a buddy or, you know, or an experience in the field. Do you have sort of suggested activities or ways for people to come together to, to chew on that content?
Mm-hmm. So I think what you're referencing is the good old 70 20 10, right. Sort of, you know, the, the traditional learning and then you've got sort of the, the social learning and then the on the job learning. And so absolutely we try to lean into that as much as possible and any opportunity in particular that we can provide for on sort of on the job.
Learning. You know, Josh Burson also calls it learning in the Flow. Yes. Any way that we can bring it to life, whether it's stimulation based experiential is really, really critical. And we're trying to lean more and more and more into that. So we, you know, that's something that's really important.
Helping people build their networks I think is critical for any leader in the organization. Whether it's through a traditional kind of learning path as you described through. You know, activities, for example, we run programs and bring alumni [00:38:00] groups back together that have been through programs to help with that networking element.
That's a formal thing, but I think any leader has an opportunity to invite people into their network and extend their network and help make those connections. And certainly that can often make the difference to take a very good traditional learning program to the next level. Is, is really being able to forge those new connections, build that network, and then have the opportunity, of course, to, to try it on for size, you know?
Yes. To be what it means, practice, play. Someone recently said to me, you know, that the expression fails fast is so common, but like, who wants to fail? I, I don't wanna fail fast or slow, frankly, I'd rather not fail at all. So instead, let's talk about learning fast. How can we learn from something quickly and, you know, ingest it?
Play with it, try it, and either if, going back to our metaphor, it's either gonna go in your collection or not. Yeah. But how can we do that again, at [00:39:00] pace, at scale, speed of culture and in ways that are sticky and meaningful. And you said it should be fun. I, I said it's a Disneyland of jobs. If, if we think about what learning really should be, it should be fun in so much as, you know, not the, the good old icebreaker that, you know, makes it fun, but, That it empowers you, it makes you feel good because you can now do something better, faster.
It's gonna advance you or it's just simply going to enlighten you. And don't we all want that? Don't we all wanna feel better in some way, shape, or form every day? So it should give us those vibes, even if it's hard. Learning isn't always easy. Yeah. You know? But it should, at the end of the day, add to our collection, which makes us happy.
Right. Yeah. Well the trick, and this could be a whole other podcast, is, is the buy-in, right? Because I just had a conversation with a woman the other day who's a one person department in a much smaller organization, and so common. Yep. And you know, they brought in a, you know, an [00:40:00] online content system. It wasn't LinkedIn learning, but it was, it was.
Something like that. And there's no uptake, right? Because there needs to be a strategy behind it. We talked a bit about that, but also people weren't buying into why is this a good thing? So clearly they haven't understood why. So that's, that's part of our job as talent leaders to help make the case and make it clear in language that, that our, our target audience understands not what we understand, right?
Not that's right. We know it's a good thing, this collecting of learning. But I really loved how you, you know, talked about Helping people build their networks and embrace this 70, 20, 10, or whatever you wanna call it. Some, some, you know, some blend of experiences. Try it on for size, it's, mm-hmm. It goes back to that.
It's all one big experiment. And the other thing too that I wanted to comment on, Alexandra, is this, it, it's really weird today. There's so many connections with what you're saying, with what. You know, conversations I've had in the last few days, but this idea of failing fail fast or fail forward. I think I've used that [00:41:00] term myself cuz I kind of appreciate.
The intent, which is to be okay with it, to iterate, to embrace that we make mistakes. But I think I'd rather say, let's embrace that we make mistakes. So I wonder if instead of saying fail, cuz that does scare people for me it was great cuz it scared me so much. I avoided failing and you know, got tripped up in yeah.
Perfectionism for much of my life. But I wonder if we could replace fail with Tripp. Yep. You know, just, Hey, oops, I tripped a bit and it hurt. I stabbed my toe, but it wasn't the end of the world. And so now I'm gonna, you know, like move forward more intentionally one foot in front of the other. Right.
And, and, and watch for the, you know, the raced sidewalk. Yeah. And I think at the end of the day, it's whatever lights the fire, for some people it's this idea of, you know, overcoming fear of failure. For others, it's maybe that fear is all too acute, and so we need to engage some other motivational tactic.
But I think at the root of it, it's just this idea that, [00:42:00] and this is one of our values at Kraft Heines, we dare to do better every day, and it's this idea that there's always an opportunity to learn and grow. Whether that growth comes from tripping, falling, failing, whatever you wanna say, or whether it comes from jumping from one strength to the next.
The idea is that we can always be flexing that muscle challenging ourselves, challenging those around us to, to grow. You know, there's that seed metaphor, but I, I think it's, it's really about everyone being able to identify for themselves. What is that motivator? What's gonna light that fire in you to.
Collect your skills to learn from them, to share them with others, to bring others along in the journey. Because to your point, it, it is all one big experiment and you know, yeah. We don't know what's coming, but boy, it's, you know, we wanna have fun on the way. Exactly. Yeah. And not get so caught up and.
And some stuff not working right now, it's just Right. You know, we're not [00:43:00] there yet. It's that growth mindset. I, I thank you for sharing. You know, that, that the, what is it, the vision or mission statement? We dare to do better every Yeah. One of our six values. Yeah, six values. Because I had just taped this, post-it on my, my screen the other day, get 1% better every day because it was a day where I was feeling a bit overwhelmed, like, oh my God, I'm.
For some reason I was telling myself I was so behind and I had too much to do and all this kind of stuff. And anyways, I had picked this up in a course and I thought, yeah, I need to remind myself. It's, it's about the incremental, you know, that slow seasonal metaphor, incremental growth. Absolutely. And it's, it's overnight, it's easy to sit on a podcast and reflect on the journey, and it all looks so neat and tidy and, But again, make no mistake, it has been years of figuring out how to turn those trips into something else. And you know, it's easy to say, oh, it's not failing, it's learning. I am pathologically afraid of [00:44:00] failing. I mean, you wanna talk about what keeps you up at night? Absolutely. Failure is terrifying, but, A lot of what we classify as failing is actually not failing.
It's experimentation. We had an hypothesis, we tried something, it didn't work. That doesn't make it a failure. It's a learning. And so, you know, again, I, I often listen to these types of interviews with folks and I think, gosh, they have it all together and, I just think it's important to recognize that hindsight is what gives us the ability to put the pieces together.
If you're on the journey, if you're on the ride and it's not looking clear, that's okay too. And I anticipate many more a twist and turn in mind. And that's also Okay. Well, and to remember that those twists and turns actually serve us. You know, that's the reason. That's right. It's the collecting. Go back to the collecting.
Yeah. What you can from it. Even if it's the conscious decision not to take. Something from that experience that's just as valuable. And that's, I think that's where we can [00:45:00] derive meaning, is just in the reflection on it and not trying to decide if it's good or bad. It just, it is. And what can we take from it?
Yeah. Yeah. And it ma it makes me think of, you know, when I went on mat leave, you know, and there was this sort of fallow period in my career and that's okay cuz I wouldn't change it. When my father passed during Covid and even just covid itself for my business, you know, I was able to step away and I needed to cause the grief was so deep.
And, and, and that was kind of a fallow period, you know, because the ground beneath my feet needed to re, re regenerate. That's all that there was to it. And knowing that, reflecting on that in the moment, I think got me through it. And, and I think it's important to recognize too that if we, you know, the seasons again, one part of your life might be sort of quietly on pause, regenerating, but growth and learning and, and personal development is happening on hyperdrive in some other area of life.
Whether it's the grief, whether it's being a new mother, whether it's moving, whatever it is. We're not foul the whole, [00:46:00] our whole life has not gone on pause necessarily. We're just shifting gears in terms of what part of life is really taking the, the front, the, you know, That's at the forefront. That's a beautiful way to look at it.
I, yeah, I appreciate that. Well, thank you so, so much. The time has flown and what a rich conversation. I appreciate you coming, coming on with me today to share your insights. Thank you so much. It's been a joy and a joy to connect with you and, and Conti consider you part, I hope of my network now as well, which has been just a, a joy.
So thank you. Likewise so much. Yeah, I'm sure we'll have many other awesome conversations. Thanks so much. Thanks.
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