Building and Improving L&D Teams with Neil Cunningham

Neil Cunningham is the founder and learning & development solutions director at Align Learn Do. He works with organisations to help build world-class L&D functions and programmes.

In this episode, we chat about what makes for tremendous L&D teams, the dangers of naval gazing and why you need some yuck with your yum.

You can contact Neil using any of the links below:
LinkedIn
Align Learn Do

The Learning Network eXchange

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Transcript

00:00:00:03 - 00:00:26:16
Tom
This is the Ideas podcast, the show where instructional designers discuss ideas over a nice cup of tea warning other beverages may be consumed. In this episode, I chat with Neal Cunningham, founder and Learning and Development Solutions director at Allowing Learn Do the focus of the conversation is Ellen teams. What makes a good one? Where are we going wrong and how can we improve?

00:00:27:00 - 00:01:01:23
Tom
But first, a message about an upcoming event that I'm really excited about. The Learning Network is hosting the very first Learning Network exchange. One of the biggest challenges in our industry is the inability in so many of our roles to share our best work. And this is what the exchange looks to solve. It's an opportunity for people to come together, share their work, offer feedback and support in improving it, but also potentially walk away with a nice, shiny award to put on a shelf behind you for all those Zoom calls.

00:01:02:07 - 00:01:24:00
Tom
The event is free for existing learning network members and well, if you're not a member, it's £29 a year. So now is the time. The event is set for the 17th of August in-person at the exchange at the University of Birmingham. It's a hold day event. Exhibitors will need to attend in person so they can share their work.

00:01:24:07 - 00:01:43:01
Tom
But if you just want to come along, be inspired and vote for the winners in different categories, you can join remotely. Details on all of this can be found on the Learning Network website, a link to which will be posted in the description of this episode. Now back to the show.

00:01:44:04 - 00:02:00:05
Tom
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Ideas podcast. This is a really smooth and explosive topic. We've never discussed before on this show. But before we go, you interact with this day is Neal. Thanks so much for making the time.

00:02:01:13 - 00:02:03:20
Neil
You're absolutely welcome. Really happy to be here.

00:02:04:05 - 00:02:16:18
Tom
To do it. So in a minute, I will hand over to you for a proper introduction. But before that, the real reason people tune in is, of course, to find out what we're drinking as we have a chat. So what have you got?

00:02:18:02 - 00:02:29:11
Neil
I'm really boring. I've just got two pints of water because it's really harsh. And if I drink any more coffee, I'll be so fidgety that without a doubt, I'll be to concentrate. Just water for me. What about.

00:02:29:11 - 00:02:57:19
Tom
You? I am in the office and I am. I am on the coffee still. Yes, that's right. I've got some coffee from many worlds Tavern, which are themed coffee company. This was like, Oh, this is it. They say it's logical to use using dates. Plus you've got coffee is like this. This is an excellent way to say what's going on.

00:02:57:19 - 00:03:01:02
Tom
Not buying the indie stuff. I'm buying coffee. We need coffee.

00:03:02:07 - 00:03:06:12
Neil
Yeah. Yeah. So this is. Just keep me awake and help me play for longer.

00:03:07:05 - 00:03:08:20
Tom
Work for longer. It's all about work.

00:03:09:02 - 00:03:10:21
Neil
Not just choices.

00:03:11:05 - 00:03:21:00
Tom
Now, whenever it whenever those sessions now that no longer games, that gamification. It's a learning with a cohort of peers.

00:03:21:19 - 00:03:26:18
Neil
That's nice. Nice splurge. Talking to the guys. I know.

00:03:26:21 - 00:03:33:16
Tom
This is it. So anyway, I promise to allow you to introduce yourself. So I will let you do exactly that. Right.

00:03:34:08 - 00:04:03:04
Neil
I'm hello. I'm Neal CONAN. And I run a small indie consultancy called Align Learn. Do Set It Up a few years ago, and we've kind of got this this mission of of moving L.A. from a nice to have to a vital part of a business. And that's like that's the reason that I set it up because I think quite often L.A. teams get maligned because of how that perceived, but that they have to own some of that perception themselves.

00:04:03:17 - 00:04:24:08
Neil
And so how do we go about doing it? Well, here's my little sales pitch. We've got three ways that we help businesses. The first one is through custom learning programs. So customers will come to us and they'll say, you know, we want to learn about X and we'll go, okay, actually, let's look at some of the systemic changes that might need to happen in order to make that learning as as effective as possible.

00:04:24:08 - 00:04:41:14
Neil
And we'll build in this custom program. The second thing we do is we work with small company startup scale ups to build L.A. functions. So that might be ahead of people in culture. Hasn't got an experience in L.A. it usually come through recruitment or PR or that critics a look come to us and go what is good look like?

00:04:42:00 - 00:05:05:10
Neil
Can you help us hire the right people, put the processes in place, assess technologies for us. You know that that piece or will work with larger customers. It's about a thousand people that can and will work with our existing L.A. team. Go, How can we improve your offering? And that's usually because like a CEO or chief people officers go, I've got some great people, but it's just not sticking.

00:05:05:10 - 00:05:08:00
Neil
And so we'll go in and we'll help them with that. Just me.

00:05:08:16 - 00:05:32:20
Tom
Awesome. So it is interesting because and we're going to get onto the topic of teams though in the U.S. there. I think you're right, the perception of only teams is a weird thing. I think it depends a lot on where you work and what you've seen. And I think kind of do a little freelance. I've see a lot of more interesting teams made up of what you maybe typically wouldn't think of.

00:05:33:03 - 00:05:56:14
Tom
And then the people if there were more. Yeah, certainly when I started I saw a lot of the training because I've been here for 20 years and I'm very I'm very good at the job. So now I'm a trainer. Yeah. And if you're there long enough as a trainer, you might become an instructional designer. But very rarely did you see people going.

00:05:56:17 - 00:06:21:02
Tom
It was my objective in my career to become an instructional designer or the head of learning. Yeah, yeah. That was the role. And I think certainly if that started to change, more people may be going, No, no, this is this was my intention. Sure. So many teams have something that well, have you seen some it's similar or is that you could be doing.

00:06:21:02 - 00:06:56:06
Neil
Yeah. I mean I want to I want to say that like that's not not keeping any illusions. I kind of fell into this. So it's very much about that first category of I was working in a sales team and we cold call in it was I mean back in the day we selling it solutions we actually said it solutions before the cloud existed if you want to kind of carbon date be somewhat and I was really good at cold calling people like I had this way of getting people from I don't wanna speak to to yeah I'll meet you over the course of a phone call and it was very much based on dealing with

00:06:56:07 - 00:07:20:23
Neil
people from an empathetic viewpoint, not selling to them, really understanding what motivation, drive, make, drives them. Yeah. What I did not realize at the time, it's kind of like core everyday, like intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. But we, we saw we were hiring lots of people and all these people were a bit younger than me or the straight graduate straight out of uni and they were really keen.

00:07:21:00 - 00:07:38:16
Neil
But it wasn't a training function, it was very much a sink or swim environment. So the culture was sink or swim and we were just, you know, not only we were just losing some great people getting really bad press about like don't work that because you won't get supported. And so I said to one of the directors, I'll, I'll do it, I'll try.

00:07:38:16 - 00:08:00:00
Neil
And then he saw it as like, why not? And he said, okay, we've got a sales target. And to try to target over three months we did that sales, you got to have a target. But then it took on these new start. Isn't it just really step by step, talking through the process of how we use the internal systems, how to talk to customers, how to build this, how to understand the technology.

00:08:00:06 - 00:08:24:19
Neil
Again, not without any training. I didn't realize what I was doing was building competencies right? And then are all these people that I trained, they all booked meetings with decision makers, first time on the phone, but that life coaching as well while they did it. And so I very much went into the sales training group and then started looking around and going, oh, what actually makes this tick?

00:08:25:08 - 00:08:49:07
Neil
Because the people who've got some of it, I'm part of it. This process is just sticks. And that's when I then moved into Aldi when I got offered, Do you want to be the agency manager? But again, I kind of fell into it and it was after that that when I took I was really different in different, different trading functions and then a business that I went, oh, now I start to see how it gets pulled together and how LNG teams can be very effective when you leverage each of the skill set.

00:08:49:07 - 00:09:11:10
Neil
So yeah, I think yeah, we've both very much falling into it until have I seen a change in people choosing to be that? I think I've see the change of people wanting to be chief learning officer who had similar day. I think they want the kudos that goes with it. Like I think these are really privileged position. Like I didn't know any other head off that speaks to the city.

00:09:11:18 - 00:09:35:22
Neil
Yeah. Well senior leadership team as much as the R&D you know ahead of other day but so whether or not people choose it I don't know. I think maybe a bit more now you can get City Day in and you can elect more by that that learning group. But I still work with customers or people and this is from you have 50 people, staff to 1000 people by SMEs.

00:09:36:18 - 00:09:55:01
Neil
You know, people have been there and they are trainers because yeah, they were great at the job and they go to training or they run the induction because they've done, you know, they've been there 15 years and that's the only place for them at the moment. I don't see a lot of people electing to go to that. So you see people kind of falling into it from other disciplines.

00:09:55:01 - 00:10:21:11
Tom
Yeah, it's interesting because that like kind of spent by the fool. But my concern is I think a lot of what makes the R&D field as rich and as kind of full of potential is, is the totally wild variety of backgrounds that people come to it from because no one at the age of eight in school go, you know, I want to be an instructional designer or I want to be a trainer.

00:10:21:18 - 00:10:26:06
Tom
You know, we have the benefit. I think may maybe maybe some eight year olds.

00:10:26:13 - 00:10:42:09
Neil
No, no, no, no. I don't I don't think it's quite difficult to say to an eight year old, say instructional design. You know, that's a bit me. But I do think you get a lot of a lot of kids who might say, I want to be a teacher. Yeah, I think I want to I want to be an actor.

00:10:42:15 - 00:11:03:04
Neil
But that was certainly my but, you know, my my route into my performance was going to drama school. So I think there's a lot of people who go and you write that like there's a lot of transferable skill sets that go into well in day. It's that that's not enough. Yeah. Like I've always been confident in front of a crowd, right?

00:11:03:05 - 00:11:20:04
Neil
It's just. Just the way I'm bel. I don't have any fear of that, but just being a good presenter doesn't make you a good trainer. Just being good trained as a coach, just being coaches make you a good, I don't know. So we still decided that they are separate disciplines. And I think people need to realize that you can be a jack of all trades.

00:11:21:00 - 00:11:38:05
Neil
Yeah, but what kind of I always say master of none, but not as masterful as other people are. The teams really need to understand what's the ecosystem, what's the setup of this team that's going to drive us for the next two years? And then how are we going to change after that? Because it's not going to happen. Sorry.

00:11:38:05 - 00:11:48:07
Neil
In my opinion, in this day and age, this is my team structure. For the next ten years. It's not going to wash off. It's not going to it's not going to be that. So I think that's where teams tend to fall down.

00:11:48:10 - 00:12:12:12
Tom
But also that's it. That's that's what is inside so often. I think it's I think the students I think general ism sometimes gets a bad rap because I know Nietzsche very popular from the field. Tricia and I kind of certainly in my team, I've focused on thinking I only I was an unapologetic generalist. I don't want to specialize in one thing.

00:12:12:12 - 00:12:33:21
Tom
Tell you why not, why not? But what that scene allowed me to do is go to show what we could do with an absolute specialist in that, right. We're going to hire that and it kind of build it that way. So this in case you have a guest list, the TS teams and what we're talking about in this episode that topic you've never touched before with, we're looking into that world.

00:12:34:05 - 00:12:58:04
Tom
And so I mean, in terms of you say one of those potential issues is trying to keep a very fix. This is what the team looks like a huge like the target ten years or so. What's the alternative in your mind? In the kind of the goal? What's the gold standard from your view when it comes to designing a team?

00:12:58:04 - 00:13:23:13
Neil
Okay, that's a very big question. So what's the gold standard for me? And I just really want to stress that this is for me. For me, a great team is led by someone who can think two years ahead and understands what the business plans are and is not afraid to go and say, if you want this to happen, this is what it's going to do.

00:13:23:13 - 00:13:42:15
Neil
So you've got real strategist leading the team. I don't just mean like series of tactics. I mean like a vision and a strategy for how Landi will support the business plans. Because and this is this is something I struggled with in my youth. So it was humbling also to realize that it's a servant. Rob Landy is a service.

00:13:43:17 - 00:14:08:18
Neil
Yeah, I had this great mentor and boss once called Alexandra that very few listening Alexandra she she taught me that Lindsey like the manager or the head of Under is like the conductor of an orchestra. It's their job to get the musicians and the venue and take the music and bring it together. And they might take it, you know, they get clapped at the end, but they're not interrupting the performance.

00:14:08:18 - 00:14:27:06
Neil
They're not the the star of the show. So I think sometimes a good lady leader just needs to take a step back and realize that they're not part of that. That's the leadership piece. Then I think underneath that, everything that you do, everything that you do should be data informed. And I get a bit of stick for this because you don't know everything.

00:14:27:06 - 00:14:47:07
Neil
That's all. Roy and I fundamentally disagree. I think you absolutely can put an hour away if you work through the points of the process. Absolutely. Do things like satisfaction, because there will be some of your stakeholders that want to know how happy people are. I've worked with sales directors who just wanted to know that people are happy, but as long as the team is happy, I don't care.

00:14:47:10 - 00:15:05:01
Neil
So I think that's the second piece here is like choose the data that people want to see and lure them for them. So it's got to be gauged with that. That's that's why I say get them engaged with the data that they want to see. So you can then tell them what interest or a full story about how it's positively affecting the business.

00:15:05:07 - 00:15:28:21
Neil
And then what are you producing? I think with that piece, I think and teams need to constantly educate themselves about what all the other teams are doing and not get precious about their own ways of working the really, really books. Me is yeah, you did something but it's not working. So how else about we do this? Like have a lot of self-reflection and that's borne out of a couple of things.

00:15:28:21 - 00:15:45:13
Neil
I've been so guilty of this. Like, what have been really big themes is there's not a lot of time to go. Action was taken out. Sit down. I'm going to look at how to actually delivers this or I'm going to ask someone, one of my connections on LinkedIn who works in civil and business and works now, and I can just run through some ideas with you.

00:15:45:13 - 00:16:10:11
Neil
It's difficult, but you've got to do that. So there's a lot of things. It's also though, I think another element is then understanding, yeah, what are the skills of each of your people and how does that, how does that function support those skill sets? And if you don't have the skill sets, how are you going to outsource it or how are you going to bring it in and don't just say you can't do it.

00:16:10:11 - 00:16:30:16
Neil
Create a compelling business case for why you need that role. But I've been in and work with large R&D teams and we've done some real time of design based on the needs of the business, have actually gone back to the CEO and gone, if you want to do make these changes, you will need three extra heads. Yeah, this is already a team of 14 they've got.

00:16:32:05 - 00:16:52:22
Neil
But you make the case for I've got two, I got two of them were repurposed so one it's a different role. But then we gave them a learning plan. This is how you will upskill to deliver those things. And then I think it's about understanding what type of hierarchy you want to do. You want to go down the model where you have a person who does design, a person who does the e-learning build, a person who does the face to face piece.

00:16:52:23 - 00:17:15:06
Neil
I could. Do you have those. Yeah. Those siloed roles and then you have a curriculum manager organizing it and you know, is it that hierarchy it's very up and down or do you go along the lines of, I'm going to work with business partners who are going to have some facilitation skills that can build things themselves, and where we can't deliver that, we will look externally.

00:17:15:12 - 00:17:39:20
Neil
I think having a healthy set of suppliers who can come in and work with you is really, really key. And I'm a final piece of this. This is going a bit haywire is understanding your budget and working with finance to understand how your spend will affect better. And so you can go to the board or the city and say, actually, if we spend X, I'm going to deliver this return and here's how we corporate fit.

00:17:41:12 - 00:18:07:05
Tom
So I know this idea just that last bit that. So you think no one has ever referred to what will once what I once worked for photo storage you called it the mighty E but the one number, the business that I actually care about. Yeah, okay, that's interesting. And then I went back to announce this week later, no one will talk about it.

00:18:07:09 - 00:18:26:07
Tom
It was. It was it is interesting. You don't say very rarely do we talk about money in the same way that the business talks about money. And I think that's certainly when I spoke to you that this seems to be a fear about that's not our world. Yeah. And so we should be out of it. But you know, we.

00:18:26:15 - 00:18:52:17
Neil
Way I see what I want to say way out for the purposes of this conversation, I mean, like music. But we often, in my experience, get caught in real navel gazing about the labels of things. So what is instructional design? I don't think this accounts to do that. And then it's just long threads of people just repeat the same point over and over and over again and treading water around the same issues because it's safe.

00:18:52:17 - 00:19:02:17
Neil
Like let's all chip in and have a go at someone because they don't know the exact meaning of learning experience design. Oh, they've got it confused with user experience design all we great right.

00:19:03:05 - 00:19:06:12
Tom
Is in fact definitions anyway so little clear anyway right.

00:19:06:13 - 00:19:14:16
Neil
Yeah. Yeah. You know these are these, you know, these concepts have been around for decades, but they just keep getting repackaged and repurposed, which is brilliant.

00:19:14:22 - 00:19:15:09
Tom
Yes.

00:19:15:18 - 00:19:37:11
Neil
Well, but then will, you know, we talk about the importance of getting the language right, of an engaging with people. And, you know, you talk about, you know, not using jargon to make sure you being talking plainly, but then we won't step out of that and go, what? Something uncomfortable that I want to talk about or I don't know.

00:19:37:11 - 00:20:04:01
Neil
And if I don't know the language of the finance team, how can I talk to the finance director about those issues? Yeah. Yeah. What's your business partner for finance doing? If they don't know about it? Yeah. How can you plan your spend around the rest of the businesses so that yours doesn't actually appear to extravagant? Like people are wonderful, but they're also well, just outside the scope.

00:20:04:06 - 00:20:26:14
Neil
They're also, you know, led with emotions. They don't often deal with just the fact it's how they feel about the facts. Right. So if you can get your FTE on side by helping them understand why you're spending, what you're spending and how that's going to help the business grow, it's a much easier sign off than than just getting an invoice across the desk for whatever amount go in.

00:20:26:24 - 00:20:46:14
Neil
That's two thirds of your budget to the air. Do you really want to spend that? I think this is also why a lot of our teams don't end up with their own budgets because they just don't show any fiscal insights. They don't show an understanding of of the fiscal world. And so it's difficult for those people to buy into them.

00:20:47:09 - 00:21:08:13
Tom
Yeah, I know. I think I definitely agree that. I think too so long we kind of that the two discussions that happened I thought were a little bit in that space. The first one was M&A shouldn't be an audit take and you should be leading the business until it's not really. And these days exactly where to go what's that you need some help.

00:21:08:13 - 00:21:26:01
Tom
Certainly will help. Let us come in and help you out there. But the second one was that kind of M&A. So long time, maybe not so much right now, but ultimately five, six years ago, that was a big move that we need to sit around the table. The business should be listening to us. Yeah, we're doing them. They're all wrong.

00:21:26:13 - 00:21:44:08
Tom
And I kind of say two things that I kind of in my gut when I don't I don't like that I feel like go back to it. It's not way that it works with a certain part of the business with us. Yeah. And help I say I felt like those two things got very combative almost.

00:21:44:10 - 00:22:12:04
Neil
Yeah. So the first one, the first one of my own or sacral or should we be leader? There is room for you to be both. In fact, I wrote a book about it, the strategical Taker, and find it on the Align Lindsay website. But the idea that was because I done that insofar as I'd started off in a business where it was very much they had one R&D coordinator who just took orders and so everyone was used to just giving on the orders.

00:22:12:12 - 00:22:30:00
Neil
And when you start being proactive, if people didn't know how to react like he's not, it's not a fair thing. It's not them trying to it would just really like, oh, right. Okay. So it took a long time for them to understand what Lindsay can do. So if you just stay in that order, take zone, more power to you if that's what you want to do because you are a compliance manager.

00:22:30:06 - 00:22:51:07
Neil
And actually it's just about getting smart people through this. We can retain our license or our ISO more power to do it right. But there is room for you if you want to, to move into being strategic by having those conversations about what's coming up next. This so you can you can do both. There's room for all of this.

00:22:51:09 - 00:23:14:11
Neil
This big umbrella is on a day like this moves every bit. Yeah. And again, it's just you are a service. So if I'm if if if every other team thought about themselves as an external consultancy and the products that they sold. Right, they would have to prove that what they sold worked on whether or not that is selling a service desk where you call up and you go, I need ten more outlet licenses, right?

00:23:14:21 - 00:23:42:21
Neil
Or whether or not you go in, you in two years time, we're going to be starting the R&D for this project product and we need to know how people on site are going to box it. Right. How do you buy that to these elements for all of that, for the see at the table. Thank you really really book and let it go now because I'm going back to that thing I said at the start about L.A. has access to more members of the leadership team than any of the head of that.

00:23:42:21 - 00:24:03:21
Neil
Just it can, in my opinion who I and I think this goes back to my sales but I was working in sales. You go to meetings I have my directors never go to a group meeting you with decision make because you want to get them one on one and you want them to agree to your face that they will buy the products, right?

00:24:04:21 - 00:24:23:16
Neil
So I was always like, I get why the whole set at the table thing is so you can sit with the sale and you get the information straight to the horse's mouth and you've got those recommendations. So I got those connections about what's going to happen next. But then I go and sit in those meetings and be like, Oh, nothing really gets discussed here.

00:24:23:16 - 00:24:41:22
Neil
There's not a lot of movement on things. It's a lot of people talk about what they've done and it's just go all. And then people would sit there on the laptops all the way through and I just go, This is a massive website, right? So don't don't get seat at the table. Build your own table, put something nice on it.

00:24:42:13 - 00:25:07:22
Neil
You know, it's use a food analogy. Why not? You know, bake something delicious. So when people want to go well and they come to you like do solid work half the day, it's a proof that what you're doing is affecting the business positively, right? From like I said, you know, from from surveys right up to the monetary amount and then get some great user stories to back it up as well, have people become champions, especially people who are super accurate with your style?

00:25:07:23 - 00:25:17:22
Neil
I really didn't like the day you get some of those people on board. Like people will come to your table. You don't need to see it. Someone else's.

00:25:17:22 - 00:25:40:00
Tom
And this is it's interesting because I think that that those debates kind of rumble on. But we always seem to find another thing where we're a contentious bunch, I guess. Well, design to a point. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. We want it. We want to debate and we want to see all of you total for calling it off. But it's not doing that until it's so.

00:25:40:12 - 00:26:24:17
Tom
You know, the but so in terms of I'm quite interested in terms of when you work with organizations to help sort of support their teams because my experience being a contractor is I'll, I'll work with our business will work with the can you and forming teams but not so much at that strategic level what the kind of practical skills level of team to be able to do stuff but some suits without kind of delving too much into tell us everything about your business level you know what are you kind of step so if someone's listening going right my team isn't doing any of these great things as the leader of that team, when you even

00:26:24:18 - 00:26:40:08
Tom
start with making that kind of change and just being the other team that sits there going, right, build a thing, right? Wait for the next thing, what is the kind of the first step on that journey, if you will?

00:26:40:08 - 00:27:15:10
Neil
So I hate saying it depends. Right. But of course, color depends. It depends. It depends on where where the business is. Maturity is at with how they view LNG. So let's I'm going to assume as we talk about an existing team, so let's take a team who is in the business and they pretty much run inductions. Yeah, over and over and over again and they might do a little bit of the stuff having that I think, I think the first, the first point is to look at how is LNG really viewed by the business.

00:27:15:10 - 00:27:35:07
Neil
You need to go and talk to people and then confront that team with the realities of how they are viewed and then look at whether or not the people you have in the team or talk to them and say, look, these are the changes we're going to go through. Is this something you want to be on board with?

00:27:36:20 - 00:28:01:23
Neil
Because what we've heard is that people really aren't satisfied with anything that we're doing. And so we're going to have to make some changes. And this is a difficult conversation to have. And I have never put forward a proposal that even with all design that got rid of anybody, that's not Lundy's job. Yeah, I think, you know, if you want to, you know, drink your own champagne, like if you're great, you should be able to reskill someone in the team.

00:28:02:03 - 00:28:34:01
Neil
The question is, do they actually want to be reskilled? Right. That we have come up against people who've gone, you know what, with all these changes, obviously I won't be comfortable. I don't want to have to be proactive, and that's fine. But it depends what stage of life you are or what kind of job you want now. So that's the first changes that help people understand that we're not about to sit back anymore and just do the same thing we're going to have to change is going to is going to be a level of productiveness in that I think the second part then if I understand what the business wants and make sure you have

00:28:34:01 - 00:28:59:23
Neil
the roles to support it, like we said, that's you going to need to change people's job descriptions, which means you might need to go into consultation, you might need to talk to that. Your like business partners understand what you can and cannot do around each of those roles. But you got to talk people through these changes. Yeah. First us to support you to support the business with why would you change your role by X, which means you need to drop these three activities and you have to pick up these two.

00:28:59:23 - 00:29:18:04
Neil
And it's going to require this skill over here, like paint a very clear picture and make sure they're still on the road for it. At the same time, start communicating out to the business about the changes that you're going to make. But you cannot overcommunicate. I will I will say this over and over and over again. You cannot overcommunicate what you're doing.

00:29:18:04 - 00:29:38:00
Neil
I would mention it in every 1 to 1. I would go and I heard a phrase years and years ago, it was a market to better market in. I can't remember a name. Now if you're listening, I will give you credit that are not just skilled jobs. And she once said to me, she's like, You sending out all these comms now?

00:29:38:06 - 00:29:57:12
Neil
So I go, Hustle. What do you mean? She don't talk to people? So like as you start to work on changing the team structure and the roles and responsibilities to better support what the business needs and what you want the R&D team to do each communicate your brand out as well. This is who we are now. This is what you can come to us for.

00:29:57:19 - 00:30:14:11
Neil
This is the email address that you use. This is the way that you access living experience platform. We're moving all everything into one place, like understand what your brand is, what your tone of voice is, and how the business can interact with you and communicate that out. Attend team meetings, people that have one, ask them to run one, right.

00:30:14:18 - 00:30:43:05
Neil
Don't hide behind the screen Down Under. That's more difficult now because a lot people are working remotely, but self teams will help a zoom call. Whatever you do, get in front of people to start communicating out your brand as you're making the changes to the team. I think another thing to do if you're not already is introduce agile working practices as part of your overall everyday team structure so you can work out what your run rate is of developing materials or reusing materials.

00:30:43:05 - 00:31:05:08
Neil
Oh, and also to update any existing materials as well. So if the business comes to you and goes, Oh, you did some amazing work, do you do that over here for this team? You can go, Oh, actually, so-and-so's on holiday for two weeks. I've got this person working over here. We've been asked by this to do this. So what we can do in the next quarter is deliver on A, B and C, right?

00:31:05:08 - 00:31:25:24
Neil
And the business goes well, we want you to do as well. You go, Well, actually, well, either I don't need to hire an interim for the six months. And this is what the book is going to what it's going to look like. Or you can drop stuff out. So understand what you can produce and how quickly can produce it and be able to go back to the business and ask them about, you know, budget and constraints of that.

00:31:25:24 - 00:31:26:22
Neil
I've offered on that.

00:31:26:22 - 00:31:47:11
Tom
Am I right? No, no, not at all. This is great. I think it's interesting because that that approach is exactly what you hear from every other department when they're asked to do something. And, you know, I think if we were all able to adopt, all these teams were able to adopt that it being a step. I think that kind of addresses that.

00:31:47:12 - 00:32:10:23
Tom
A lot of that conversation about wanting a seat at the table. It's basically good to have that conversation, right? Yeah. And actually be able to stand up and not be the one talking about fluff, which is so often the thing. It's a 60% engagement rates, which is what I always enjoy the workforce engaged like it was a mandatory training session might not be 100%.

00:32:11:08 - 00:32:15:18
Tom
Yeah. Yeah. So see, I love engagement freebies. They were always good fun.

00:32:16:02 - 00:32:24:02
Neil
I loved every day, he said. I removed the word mandatory from from all of these materials. I was like.

00:32:25:23 - 00:32:26:04
Tom
Just.

00:32:26:04 - 00:32:43:22
Neil
Saying mandatory isn't going to make people come right. Either they're scared of you or they're engaged truthfully. And the more you and all people do did so like you did for mandatory is like if that's the culture, like if it needs to come from you and it used to say mandatory people aren't engaged. That's not engagement.

00:32:44:10 - 00:32:45:00
Tom
This is it.

00:32:45:01 - 00:33:06:03
Neil
Yeah, I was engaged. Yes. So yeah. And that's that's an ongoing process. The language you use, do you want people to think it's not? I mean, I think that it's easy to rely on. It's easier to comb that kind of data. Why? You know, M.P.s, schools filing details. This came up because it more and more.

00:33:06:09 - 00:33:08:20
Tom
Let's talk about MP it just drives me.

00:33:08:20 - 00:33:35:02
Neil
Insane I'm like all so so I was it was a well a few years back a customer was doing this and it was basically the only metric they took. And this one person who was really keen on it was so adamant that they had to do it. That's how you prove value. That's how you prove value. I said, okay, well, let's just talk this through, right?

00:33:35:04 - 00:33:58:09
Neil
Let's let's say because what you're producing is an NPS result, say a hundred people attended that were producing the NPS result based on the 30 people that filled in the full. So they're not you're not going back to the business and saying actually the aggregate NPS of this 30% of people gave us this score. Right. What you're doing is the NPS for this course is nine.

00:33:59:22 - 00:34:31:03
Neil
So you're lying. You're just lying to the business. And then when they come and go back to you and go, well, you said it was nine, but we see no improvement anywhere. What are you going to say? Right. And even if you do go, even if you do get 90% of people, if you've got really solid percentiles, so the data has some validity, it's still like I would recommend this to a what to a colleague, but then but most of my colleagues don't do the same job as me.

00:34:31:03 - 00:34:55:20
Tom
So basically, even if you are doing the same job, honestly, how many of us in the audience never faced a course and don't recommend this to a colleague and then gone and done it? It's very few I would suggest, because usually in most in most organizations there is not that much free time to learn that. Well, unfortunately, I wish there was.

00:34:56:06 - 00:35:03:07
Tom
But usually if you're on a course, your T is being sent on a course or being strongly pointing towards it.

00:35:03:07 - 00:35:34:22
Neil
Yeah. I mean on that on that time to learn piece what I'm we talk about trends and things that you've seen and I've worked with a few customers not this year of our last year or maybe one this year a little bit. We talked about Time to learn and actually have now we worked on that policies like good solid Ellen day policies and chart about what will offer the business and finds out way so like some companies now offering up to an afternoon a week but wherever the person wants to split out across they can take Friday afternoon to do Monday morning.

00:35:35:04 - 00:35:54:03
Neil
They could do 3 hours over the week and they don't have to prove that they've learned anything. It's just part of the overall offering or what we. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's part of them. People go, well, how do you measure it? And you talk about they've got performance goals. You don't do anything in isolation. You don't just go these 3 hours.

00:35:54:15 - 00:36:21:14
Neil
Yeah, they have to have the management piece has to be in that. So the managers are having those conversations saying how did you use it? 3 hours. Then they talk them through it and it should be performance linked and it could be against, you know, competencies or you know, how people are progressing through the business. So I do see some businesses changing that and really actually thinking we need to get people upskilled more quickly to maintain our competitive advantage because we can't afford to buy in the skills.

00:36:21:23 - 00:36:32:03
Neil
So, you know, there's also as a business reason that the and it's never out of the goodness of anyone's heart. Let's not be naive. We are so sorry to interrupt that. I just I had seen some change in that, you know.

00:36:32:10 - 00:36:53:18
Tom
That. And that's that's really good to hear because I think even even, you know, in the last year, maybe I've worked 15, 20 businesses. That's a microcosm of this erm you know needs and, and this is one of the reasons I love doing these episodes so much is you get some of these works in totally different businesses. So yeah, but that was always one of my frustrations.

00:36:53:21 - 00:37:04:03
Tom
I was in total, I was never I actually found that people's eagerness to learn was never the problem. You gave them the opportunity 90% you workforce wanted to do better.

00:37:05:11 - 00:37:10:07
Neil
Oh wow. I've really experienced the opposite of working since six.

00:37:10:22 - 00:37:25:04
Tom
I think. Well, you know what? I do think that's because when I worked internally, it was an exceptionally young workforce. Okay. Unusual to have someone over 21. 22.

00:37:25:08 - 00:37:44:14
Neil
Oh, I see. Yeah. So I'm going to, I'm going to disregard my previous comment now that you've put that in. I think all the demographics. Yeah. No, when I've worked in start ups with typically younger people, they've yet to have actually been very, very keen to just absorb anything that they can.

00:37:44:14 - 00:38:09:06
Tom
But the flip side of most of that, so that's close to in the same business working part of it, which was very low standing energy field engineers who worked on network pipes and stuff, but not quite so much. Okay, you had to work much harder to get them to go. Oh, okay. Yeah, there's value in this. But at the same time, part of me did wonder when we were there and I kind of thought all that afterwards.

00:38:09:12 - 00:38:29:11
Tom
Is that because for years their view of errands, getting involved has been pretty poor, shall we say? Yeah. And they kind of had that kind of open lane, these pipes for 30, 40 years. And maintaining this and doing that. And that was me at the ripe old age of 21. Go. I'm going to keep you guys in training.

00:38:29:22 - 00:38:34:20
Tom
Yeah, it's like I've got pipes. Yeah.

00:38:36:00 - 00:38:58:13
Neil
I think you really kind of hit the nail on the head, though, with Elodie coming in and being like, Oh, you know, here's something new for us, or have you thought about working in this way? But that's not just LNG forward. If the course is not there, that again, you know, LNG is there to help support and it can drive a lot of the change, but it needs help.

00:38:59:01 - 00:39:22:02
Neil
I think LNG has to be better at collaborating with different parts of the business. So either it sits back and goes, I'll just I'll just sit here. I don't want to do anything. It's I've asked or it's really like, yes, there's that. Sometimes it's like just chill. Just somewhere in the middle that there's that middle management layer that are often looked over because they're always told, Oh, you need to fire that.

00:39:22:02 - 00:39:42:21
Neil
She sparked that, she needs to get this. It's never really tailored. Like, let's look at how these managers are performing. Let's see how that team's performing, and then let's target the learning to those people that need it. It can just I think it's when when LNG becomes something for everyone rather than. So that's about it is something for everyone.

00:39:43:02 - 00:40:07:05
Neil
And before it becomes so generic that it's one size fits all, that's about it describing it rather than being targeted to what people need. That's not person that came up to do this 20 years leave them like if they're doing a great job. I just believe they're doing a great job. They're happy. They're not performance targets. They're great to be around even peer energy somewhere else.

00:40:07:13 - 00:40:07:24
Neil
They don't need.

00:40:07:24 - 00:40:10:20
Tom
You. Why is that person? Yeah, that's.

00:40:11:10 - 00:40:12:03
Neil
To let it go.

00:40:12:09 - 00:40:48:00
Tom
So you go, yeah. This is something that's come up a couple of times. So we're heading on towards the tail end of the episode now. But you talk about being data driven couple of times. I mean, it's a conversation that I think is there's a lot of conversation about being data driven in the home and is not. When you look at what the core competencies in, of course is, they see very little about being able to work with data gathered data, the things which I think is a big, big gap.

00:40:48:05 - 00:41:07:22
Tom
Certainly when I started and they like, oh, just go and gather some data to back it up as they go. Sorry, Lucky. I walked across the corridor. What is this, the BLT? Excellent. Right. I need sometimes. I'm lucky there, but I think there are a lot of organizations with that easy to detect, so you don't have to handle that very remote.

00:41:08:12 - 00:41:16:09
Tom
So when you talk about being data driven, what kind of things do you think should be should be starting from at least?

00:41:16:11 - 00:41:32:15
Neil
Okay, I'm just going to pick one thing I believe is a data reform, because I don't want to I don't want that linked killer Arati to say it's a privilege to take you down. I know there was a big thing about I mean, is it data driven? Is the data reforms that you should be led by the data spoonful?

00:41:32:15 - 00:41:36:11
Neil
But again, it's navel gazing, right? We know what we mean. Well, yeah. So I think that.

00:41:37:10 - 00:41:38:19
Tom
You know, you're exactly right.

00:41:38:19 - 00:42:00:23
Neil
So I think I think for me, it comes down to storytelling and this piece, which is, first of all, what does the what's the business want to see? So when I first started producing Learning ABI for the management part, I had no guidance, there was no learning analytics, validating courses. It was like, oh, there was no ability. But it's like, What can I do with Excel?

00:42:01:15 - 00:42:25:05
Neil
And How can I automate this enough so I can build a pivot table? Which was terrible, but if I could get my business partners to put in input the information, it would produce nine graphs and that told a story when put together. So first of all, I think it's I understand what the business wants. So I used to do hours of training delivered because the CEO wanted to know that, right.

00:42:25:11 - 00:42:44:15
Neil
Yeah. I don't think is helpful, but it does help me get a CEO's attention. Right. So think one step ahead. Think beyond right. Think beyond what your data is actually showing. How could it help you see that? We used to do people that were saying they'd put in a data point. So we asked people when they left the business what their main reason for leaving was.

00:42:44:22 - 00:43:11:19
Neil
And one of those was lack of opportunities. So we found when I started 50% of leavers were leaving because of a lack of opportunities. We didn't take any further than that. So this is just correlation. We then did the analysis inside delivering opportunities for those groups and within a year the reason for the lack of opportunities was not cited as a reason at all, and it stayed that way until I left the business.

00:43:12:01 - 00:43:37:06
Neil
But at the same point in time, attrition dropped by 10%. Right? So I'm not saying that that's correlation. It's not causation, but it's telling a story. Yeah. That you can start putting. So we're delivering this training move against these opportunities. Attrition is starting to go down. Overall engagement within the business in terms of people saying that they are happy with on the insight as part of their is going.

00:43:37:06 - 00:43:59:19
Neil
And then we looked at traffic what else was on the impact now. Oh that the cost of hiring internally against cost of hiring externally for the skills based on the competencies delivered how often people will be promoted in team, how long people were stayed in the apprenticeship levy and what that was saving in terms of wages and training, cost of hiring, external partners.

00:44:01:01 - 00:44:25:11
Neil
We did a piece of work working with the with the helpdesk because they were losing of their first line engineers. So again, we put specific training and induction in place and it was again like, oh, what was the cost of rehire, retraining, saving of that over a year? So we might have spent 35 grand on the project, but actually we'd made half a million back in not retraining and not rehiring in just a year.

00:44:25:14 - 00:44:35:13
Neil
So all of these points. So off the top of my head, because I had not had this look, remember, I think there's some great places to start telling your story like.

00:44:35:19 - 00:44:51:06
Tom
Yeah, that sounds is it's the storytelling when it comes to data because that was exactly the conversation I got to be when I went to them and they said, Don't worry about what numbers you've got because the numbers don't matter. What matters is the story. The numbers tell. So I never.

00:44:51:06 - 00:45:18:16
Neil
Could reach them, but I wanted to share something. It's called The Hero's Tale. Do you know it? It's an hour. Yeah, it's all right. And listeners have already heard this before. That with me. But the hero's tale goes something like this. And our hero starts off on a journey and joined that journey. They go through a series of events which are meant to test them, and they come out the other side in a better, better, whatever that means, better, more capable than they were before.

00:45:19:02 - 00:45:37:07
Neil
And you are left with either them triumphing over what? Over adversity, and that's into the story or setting themselves up for the next chapter. That's the narrative device. And I use this when I'm talking to senior leadership teams to describe everyday programs that run or the strategy or the vision. This is what this is where people are started.

00:45:37:17 - 00:45:55:23
Neil
This is what they're going to go through. This is what the cost to them is going to be. Time, money. Yeah. At the end of that, this is the performance improvement that we should see and then we need to review. This is performance we actually saw. And even if it's negative, even if it doesn't go the way that you thought you would do, not shy away from that data.

00:45:55:23 - 00:46:24:16
Neil
People are inherently wary of anything that seems too good to be true. So you need some. And there's a phrase, I'm going to all of this. I said, Assault is a phrase when you're designing when when you're when one is designing perfumes or aftershave, they say you need to put some yuck in your. Yeah, right. So there needs to be something not smelling very great as part of the overall profile of the scent to really lift it and give it that like, oh, I want to smell this small.

00:46:24:16 - 00:46:43:15
Neil
Yeah. So I think about that when I'm talking about you. That needs to be summed up to create a great picture for it to be a full tail that needs to be some things that didn't go completely right. And the opportunity for Linda here is to really engage your audience. Yes. All these bits didn't go right. Here's why we think you do go right and here's what we're going to do next.

00:46:44:07 - 00:46:48:08
Neil
That and really own that as well.

00:46:48:08 - 00:47:07:19
Tom
But yeah, that that's what it's I think it's so important because I do I think we've all kind of seen the the white papers or the website claims where everything is perfect. And this product works the first time for everyone in the world. World's just rainbows and unicorns all the way through. Yeah, I think everyone reads it and goes, Yeah, okay.

00:47:07:21 - 00:47:26:24
Tom
Moving on. So it's it doesn't really help to dump damages. Okay. So yeah, we're coming up for we have made the episode now. Okay so I always like to finish up just on the opportunity to say that I would love to say I run this podcast for the good of the community and to give back to local select groups.

00:47:26:24 - 00:47:47:09
Tom
I've got so much from Yeah, I run it so I can nick people's ideas. Stocks, stocks. I sound very clever and I publish it so that other people can do the same. I guess. But primarily it's about me. So I always like to leave at the end to say, Right now in the world of LNG, what are you working on?

00:47:47:10 - 00:47:56:18
Tom
What are you excited about? What are you looking at and thinking, right, I need to keep an eye on that. Something great is going to come from this.

00:47:56:18 - 00:48:29:04
Neil
Hmm. I'm going to say that in my experience, businesses are much more willing to talk about making the systemic changes that are needed to help people be better, whatever that looks like. And I'm excited about having more conversations around not running a learning program, not running a trading program, and fixing some of the things that stop people performing in businesses rather than just running another the program or paper over the cracks.

00:48:29:11 - 00:48:40:14
Neil
So actually the change. So yeah, I'm really excited about businesses opening up more to the idea about the fact that they have got something wrong internally. I do need to address that before they start trying to ply people with more skills.

00:48:42:01 - 00:49:04:14
Tom
But fantastic. I think that's again, I guess it's one of those conversations where it's not flashy and exciting. It doesn't come with an annual membership or a badge, a new bit of technology, but actually it can have a huge impact more so fantastic. Well, thank you so much. That's all right. Taking the time out to play on the show today.

00:49:05:00 - 00:49:08:19
Tom
If people want to get in touch, where can they find you and your business? Yeah.

00:49:08:19 - 00:49:21:17
Neil
So on LinkedIn, it's Neil John Cunningham. Oh, Ally line do on Twitter it's Neil Cunningham and all along Linda are insta alone. Linda and on TikTok alone Linda or Neil alone.

00:49:21:17 - 00:49:37:08
Tom
Linda fantastic. I would definitely recommend checking out Neil's video tips. Yeah, actually really interesting. Certainly compared to a lot of dating videos anyway which are well, I looked in videos and.

00:49:37:17 - 00:50:00:03
Neil
I also runs a called the L.A. Social so it's a chance for people in the community to get together. There's no selling, there's no sponsorship, there's no fuss, really. I've only got two months and it's on the 23rd of July, this time at the Fence Pub in Farringdon. It's 2 hours to go as you please. There's no structure to it.

00:50:00:03 - 00:50:05:10
Neil
It's super chill. If people want to just email Neil alone, Linda and I'll take you to the list.

00:50:07:02 - 00:50:24:21
Tom
Fantastic. Look at that. An event and we can go to a pub as well. Yes, no kind of event. There we go. Well, thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. The links to everything that's been talking about will be in the description, as always, and we shall see you next time.

00:50:26:07 - 00:50:46:03
Tom
Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Ideas podcast. All the information for getting in touch with Neil can be found in the description for this episode. Before you go, please do drop me a comment. Let me know what you're taking away from this session. I know I'm taking away loads. Remember to hit like button and consider subscribing to the podcast.