The Fabulous Learning Nerds

Scott
I'm Scott Schuette, your host, and with me... yeah.

Dan the Man.

Oh yeah.
Zeta
Boom, right to it.
Dan
I know.
Scott
Daniel-san, how are you? I'm fair to middling.
Zeta
All right, awesome.Fair to middling.
Scott
I gotcha, I gotcha.
DanZeta
How you doing?
Scott
Oh, I'm beside myself.
Dan
Really?
Scott
Just getting ready. Yeah, I like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got a couple more days and I got my yearly annual Halloween vacation coming up. That's right. Oh, my goodness. It's going to be awesome. Dude, Halloween really is the most wonderful time of the year. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year, and we've got, my last day this week's gonna be Wednesday, and then I'll come back in November, which will be fantastic, and that'll be great, and we're gonna go to Halloween Horror Nights, and everybody's griping about Halloween Horror Nights this year, because every year they oversell the thing, because they wanna make money, or make some money, so people are waiting in lines for like if they are two hours long. But we have always lived it up. We have always spent for the tour. They call it an RIP tour. I know personally my tour guide or tour guide, I ask for him every year and he and I become friends because he's really freaking great. His name is Chris. Chris, if you're listening and I know you're not, but if you are, you're awesome, man, it's great. And we don't wait in no lines, and that's the best. Like, the best thing is, I mean, it's great not waiting in any lines, like, that's fantastic. It's like, you know, get right up front, and we pay a good amount of money to not wait in any lines. But the even better part is to look on the people's faces who have waited in line for like several hours and watch me walk right in front of them and be like, yes, see you later.
Dan
Big.
Scott
And I know, I know it's a terrible thing, isn't it? Oh, it's awful. And then, oh, oh, but it gets better because Spooky Empire, we, I planned it, Spooky Empire is a Halloween convention. It's in Orlando. It's fantastic. And all the big wigs are going to come this year. I can't believe how many people are coming. And you want to guess who I have paid money to get my picture with? I can't even imagine.
Zeta
Who?
Dan
Who, who, who? Robert Englund, everybody.
Zeta
Welcome to my nightmare.
Scott
That's right. Yes. Yes, Robert Englund's going to be there. Kane Hodder, aka Jason's going to be there. Dude, that's awesome. Tom Savini. Do you know who Tom Savini is? No. As we lose more and more listeners. Tom Savini was a makeup artist. He's very, very famous for Dawn of the Dead. That's where he got his start. So the original DanZeta70s version of Dawn of the Dead in the shopping mall, which is like
Dan
one of the greatest things ever. Sorry, dude, I tell you, like, listen, Halloween and just like this But I feel like we're in like this really great revival of like horror and suspense Like maybe not in mainstream like box office maybe not in like the big theaters, but like the access to like the old classics and just old awesome like Just schlocky horror movies is like better than ever and it's like so great. It's so great my kiddo you know Dan7 cool kid is just like I really want to watch like this these schlocky horror movies like hey do you want to watch this and oh hey you want to watch reanimator with me this week and I'm like yes yes I do okay we can't be nerding out on Halloween without our
Scott
favorite design Oh on got us with a small G you'll ever say to everybody
Zeta
You'll have a Mercedes, everybody. See, girl, hello, hello. How goes it goes great.
Scott
So you guys are all watching spooky stuff. Oh, yeah. I was just saying, I know you guys talking about horror movies. I have a very, very good, deep part in my heart that I just love the old classics.
Zeta
And when I'm talking classics, I'm talking about the classic Universal horror movies.
Scott
Universal Monsters?
Zeta
Yes, like Horace Karloff as Frankenstein, Bela Lugosi as Dracula. Like they were the ones who walked so the others could run, you know. Like my dad would be very happy.
Scott
You've seen my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Universal Monster mashup display, right?
Zeta
No, no I have not.
Scott
It's glorious. It's glorious. So they decided to go ahead and take all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and turn them into classic monsters.
Dan
Oh my goodness.
Scott
And they're all action figures and they're just fantastic. Like Raphael is Frankenstein, April O'Neil is the Bride of Frankenstein.
Dan7
Of course.
Scott
Master Splinter is Van Helsing. It's just glorious. Oh, Casey Jones, of course, because he has a mask, is the Phantom of the Opera. It's just glorious. It's my favorite new thing. I love it. I'll send pictures to everybody. It's great.
Zeta
Please, please. I want to see this.
Scott
Oh, yeah, yeah. No, no. Universal Monsters are where it's at. And back to HHN, that's one of their things. They always have a Universal Monsters house. It's my favorite house.
DanZeta
Awesome.
Scott
I can't wait. Like it's always so much fun. Cause that's what I cut my teeth on.
Dan8
It's groovy.
Scott
Same. So I have to ask, have you, okay, two things I gotta watch. You have to watch, you haven't watched them yet. One is, if you have Disney Plus, like a lot of us have.
Dan7
Yes.
Zeta
Yeah.
Scott
Goosebumps on Disney Plus.
Zeta
Oh, like the original Goosebumps?
Dan
Brand new Goosebumps.
Zeta
There's a new one? No, brand new Goosebumps.
Scott
Oh my goodness, I know what I'm doing. They basically took your favorite stories, like the Haunted Mask and the Night of the Dummy and they made it into one segmented serial movie. These kids are all dealing with these things and they're all kind of weaving themselves together.
Zeta
Oh my gosh.
Scott
It's fantastic. It's glorious. Oh good, Zeta's excited. I'm checking it out right now. This is awesome. This is this is so good. Oh my god. Yeah. It's all together. It's all weaved together. You'll binge it all. It's so good. Like it's just it just oozes with nostalgia. And I don't know if I have enough popcorn. It's scary. It's not that scary. It's kind of scary. You know, it's not like it's like the one where
Zeta
you just shovel popcorn in your mouth and just enjoy and just, yeah, you turn off the lights.
Scott
Disney plus. Um, if you're listening, we would love the kickback. And when you're not going to give us one, that's fine. That'd be pretty nice. That is of the stuff I've watched. It's fantastic. The other thing is, um, if you're a Friday the DanZetath fan, there is a series of movies that just came out there, um, by Wompstop Films on YouTube. Nice. And the first one that came out was Never Hike in the Woods Alone. And then it was Never Hike Alone in the Snow. Jason in the Snow, yeah, glorious stuff. And-
Zeta
Just in time for Christmas.
Dan
Yeah, yeah.
Scott
And then they have, now they have Never Hike Alone Scott. And they all weave together. They brought a lot of the old cast members in. So it's, yeah, really well done. Some of the best, I'd say better than a lot of the movies because the movies are not great. But this is, if you're a fan, you have to watch. They got the guy, I can't remember the guy's name, the guy who played Tommy Jarvis, he's in all of them. He's great. It's fantastic. Awesome. Yeah, two big high recommendations for this time of the year.
Dan
That's awesome.
Scott
Heck yeah.
Dan0
Gotta watch Goosebumps.
Zeta
We just planned your next weekend, guys.
Dan
That's awesome.
Scott
Well, we could nerd out about Halloween for the next 30 minutes, but probably not so much because again, we lost most of our listeners, but hey, we're nerds. We might have gained a few. It's the way it is.
Dan
I know, right?
Scott
Well, maybe. I don't know. It's lots of fun. Without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into our topic of the week. We're gonna get a little bit serious about some groovy, important things.
Zeta
Are you ready?
Dan4
Are you ready?
Zeta
Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready?
Zeta
Are you ready?
Scott
Okay, this week we wanna talk a little bit about learning and employee engagement. Like, they kinda go hand in hand. And employee engagement's super important topic these days. You know, how do I keep my people engaged? Last time we got together we talked a little bit about, hey, how do we create a learning culture? So really super important stuff in our world and how they go together is going to be really important. To start it off, I kind of want to frame up, I'm really struggling with something these days as I take a look at what we do and what we produce. And I produce learning, not necessarily for my organization, but for the organizations that we serve.
Zeta
Great, right?
Scott
So we're always looking at that, well, how do we add impact? How do we create change with people that we don't have direct influence over? And so that's always a big challenge, right? And one of the things that we've been doing for many, many years is this idea of a stand-alone quiz that we just put out for people and say, hey, take this quiz about our products and services and hope that that'll be a good thing. And I gotta be, honestly, I'm kinda, we're looking at what are we gonna do for the remainder of the year and in the QDan and I'm kinda really struggling with standalone quizzes as a learning modality and I wanted to get your opinion on it. I have my own opinion, but I will toss it out. And we sort of kind of talked a little bit about it in the front end of the show. So I know Dan's got an opinion, so we'll start with Dan. I have an opinion on a lot of things. Standalone learning modality, sir.
Dan
I think that standalone quizzing is this really great and really powerful tool to test your learners, to reinforce facts, and to even sometimes, if done correctly, introduce new things that you want your learners to become part of their daily repertoire. But as long as you're on engagement, you can even use it to help increase employee engagement. That being said, I cannot tell you how many times I have seen a learning development org just be like, well, just push out a daily question, a daily multiple choice question. And at that point, it's like a speed bump. It's like a, I log in and I have to do this thing. And I cannot tell you how many times I've looked and talked to learners. And like, I've been the guy writing those daily questions. I've been the guy being like, all right, cool, let me go ahead and take some time. I'm going to write out Scott00 questions for this year. And that'll leave me some room to do some important one shots, I think, in case like other important criteria shows up. And all right, let me go ahead and this will take the next like, you know, month of my life. And listen, I'm not proud of all of those questions that I've written. And when you make it a daily activity, you go talk to learners and they're just like, yeah, I guess they're fine. But we all know what that means. We all mean that they're crap.
Zeta
I have seen people use
Dan
quizzing and questioning as a learning tool and I've seen it used super effectively. I worked at a place one time, we had an offshore site and one of the trainers during like a employee nesting time had taken it upon himself to produce a daily like reflect question. And he would give it to his teams at the start of the day and they would have, it was open response. And he would just say, hey, I need this back by the end of the shift. And so, I mean, this is call center world at the time. So it's not like there's a whole bunch of free time, but telling employees like, hey, I just need this back by the end of the shift, gave them the time to think about, to do things. And he would use it to introduce concepts that he felt either weren't being really hit really well, like during the new hire training period or that he saw affecting his nesting group particularly strong. And there were all these open essay questions. And so these learners would have to go in, they'd have to dig, they'd have to research, and they'd have to come up with these answers and responses. And I will tell you, we only noticed it because his group was performing so well. Like his group was like, we'd see his numbers and be like, wow, that's, I mean, honestly goodness, I think the first thing we said was, that's weird. And then we were just like, man, like, let's double check, let's see what's going on. Because they were like leagues ahead of anybody else. And when we reached out to talk to him, he was just, he was a super humble guy. He was just like, oh, you know, like I'm just doing my thing. I'm just doing what I can, you know, like, you know, I've got, I've got all these people and like, you know, I'm gonna spend a lot of time with them. And as it took us like two conversations to finally get to, well, you know, every day I do give my, my, my people like this question and, you know, like I use it to like troubleshoot and I use it to give them time to think and I ask everybody to like, get me the answer back. And he held his team accountable. Like if they didn't give him the answer, you know, he'd be like, hey, you know, you owe me that answer tomorrow. You owe that to me, you know, as soon as possible. You owe it to me. And like when we talked to like the teams underneath them, they would all talk glowingly about this quiz, about this like question. None of them were like, oh, it's fine, I guess, whatever. They would all be like, oh no, it's really cool. Like, oh no, like I have a lot of time to really think about my answer oh you know it really makes me think through steps a steps b step c like they all loved it and I'm I'm gonna say I love the idea we talked about internally it was so awesome it was so great and like we were like we need to implement something similar and do you know how that got implemented how a daily multiple choice quiz.
Dan
Oh gosh.
Scott
See, there's the thing right there. So you hit on something really important, which is like, I wouldn't even call that a quiz. I would call that daily reflection. Yes. Right, so here's your question for the day. I want you to think about this, and I want your answer. All right, so that was really important. So it's not this, hey, here's a question. Here are four choices that you have and. Expecting that in the process of answering this question, that someone's really going to two things, one, learn something, but also change their behavior from it. Like I struggle with that. But the other part of where you're hitting on is like, here's a stately reflection, which is really aimed at helping you think about your behavior and how you approach things, I'm assuming, right? And then we're all going to align on that and that reflection, like reflection is an awesome tool for learning, right? I'm saying, you know, sometimes I would say that we learn the most from how we reflect on things and we don't take time to reflect during the day. Like, I think that that's fantastic. So if you're if you're telling me that this is open-ended reflection question, then Groovy cool. That's awesome. Oh yeah. Implementation into multiple choice question every day.
Zeta
So there's a big difference there's a big difference between, I'm gonna get nerdy here, there's a big difference between an open-ended question and a closed-ended question which is like multiple choice. One is qualitative and the other one is quantitative, right? One of them is like, oh, hey, one is a you're looking for something. It's more of an icebreaker than an assessment. Right. And the other one is just check the box. And I think having those open ended questions allows for people to like like an icebreaker at the beginning of a course, start thinking, get the process going, right? And I think it's much more valuable than like having a multiple choice.
Dan
I do think there's a hierarchy of value when it comes to quizzing and testing. And those open response questions are probably like near the top and multiple choice are probably near the bottom. True, false, checkbox, if you agree, those being the absolute bottom. That being said, I think any quizzing or questioning moment of reflection type setup, when used properly, is a powerful learning tool. Too often, quizzes are a checkbox. They are a, hey, I have to do this because I have to have some way to prove that you took this course and passed with an 80%. So here are five questions, and I hope you get at least four of them right. Have a great day. And the thought that goes into those questions, like, let's be real. How many of us have built a course because we know it's a checkbox, and we get to the end, and we're like, ah, let me come up with five questions real quick. Like, I try never to use true-false, but I cannot tell you how many times at the end of a long day, at the end of a long build, I've been tempted to be like, this course was good, true or false. I mean, or something like that. Like just terrible questioning because writing good and effective questions is a skill and it's tough. Yeah, it's difficult.
Scott
So I'm all in line with quizzing as a form of retention. I think it's great if you can put it in within your design. So I go over a chunk of stuff, we chunk it out, and then I have a nice little retention question so I don't get lost in what's important. I'm gonna reinforce. So I think from a reinforcement perspective, quizzes are fantastic, right? And you're right. Like, oh God, true or false? Like, ooh, I hate them. Because it's Zeta0-Zeta0 and most people just stop, whatever. And then same thing with all the above. By the way, if you're taking your quiz or your test or whatever it is and you get an all the above answer, it's nine times out of ten,
Dan
it's the right answer. If I wrote that test and all of the above is the option, it's never all. I always put all of the above and it's never all of the above and it brings you devious joy to do
Scott
So I hate the choose A and B or C and D are right. Like I have the choose all that apply, that's the greatest form of question in my humble opinion. I can put only one answer in, which is devious, right? But I could also put all four. So it's really an awesome chance for us to reflect. So. Yeah, it's good to mix it up too. Not all platforms allow for that, but those platforms that do are great. But I think you've really hit on something, Dan, and I appreciate your wisdom around all this. I can certainly take it back. For me it's a matter of how do we really change behaviors and also from a retention, not a retention excuse me, from a relevancy standpoint the drop in participation is significant. So where I spend my time and how I spend my time is super important and if my audience isn't required to do something and they're telling me that they don't want to do it anymore by not doing it and we should find something else. That's just my humble opinion on all that kind of stuff. But I also know that that's really, really hard because we are all creatures of habit. We are all like, well, we've done this way, the way it's been done and most of the way we're going to do it. And I totally understand and appreciate that. But, you know, I really feel that's where the challenge from us from a learning perspective is just really challenge people and say, hey, we can do better. What should we do instead? I, you know, stand on top of those things, which leads me into this whole idea of, you know, learning in employee engagement, right? So we have significant input there. It's just a example, right? Here's an example of where we could have
Dan
significant input. So, I mean, like right now, and this is that was a great segue. This is this is this is great to go from quizzing, which it doesn't on the surface seem like a powerful segue into employee engagement. But I really think it is because the problems that we just got done discussing, I think are the problems that are happening in employee engagement. Like right now, I don't know the exact number of talk I had. I could go look it up. Maybe I'll put in the show notes. But it's something like one out of three employees are completely disengaged from their work. They don't care if the building burns down. Yeah, but why?
Dan
That's...
Dan
Yeah. I mean, I think there's a bunch of factors. I think just a rapidly shifting workspace, first to remote and now like the clawback. And I think just the change of what is important to employers for retention and just the new reel of finding, attracting, and maintaining top-tier talent. It's a difficult dance. And I think we just got done talking about why multiple choice and true false are bad quizzing because you don't put a lot of thought into it and it's just box checking. And I think that's where we're at
Dan
with employee engagement.
Dan
And I think that's where learning and development can really swoop in and save the day because I think so many of employee engagement techniques are just like check the box. I send an email, you know, I told everybody I appreciated them, I bought a bunch of pizzas and I put them in the break room. Why does everybody not wanna come to work? Why does everybody not wanna work? Like, because you're not working to attract them, you're not working to speak with them. And like, as L&D folks, that's our superpower. That is like... Excuse me. That is like our superpower. That is like the thing where we excel at is how do I get people to engage with the material I'm presenting to them? And how do I get them to view that as an experience that's worthy of being remembered and retained? But I think too often companies are just going back to the same, like, I told everybody I appreciated their efforts. I gave everybody a high five. I gave everybody, not everybody, I gave a few employees a quick bonus. I bought a bunch of pizza. I bought a bunch of food. Those don't work.
Zeta
That's...
Scott
Well, I think fundamentally, this is a bigger opportunity, right? So if we think about, oh, everybody's got, you know, their culture and everybody's got opportunities within their culture. Like I don't think that there's any perfect culture anywhere, right? So there's the aspirational part of culture. And I think it's important for leaders to identify that. Like, here's how things are done today, right? Here are the expectations around those things, but you know what? We can be better and we get to choose that we want to be better so that's cool. So when we make that choice to follow down the path for aspirations and trying to be better what we normally do? Well we put together a course on it right? So empathy great example right? Everybody needs to be more empathetic right? EQ huge topic we're going to teach everybody about empathy. Right we get everybody together either we create an online course we go ahead and go through the course, or let's do a webinar series, let's get smaller people in the room, we talk about empathy, we have a little bit of practice, and that's great, and that's cool. And when it's done, we just check the box, we talk about empathy, everything's going to change, right? And then we're shocked when it doesn't. Like okay, but it didn't change. Whoa, I know, that's amazing.
Dan0
Like what?
Scott
So how do we make it better? How do we make that aspirational change actually stick?
Zeta
Maybe by setting at the end of the training, having steps that you can then, hey, this is what you can do going forward. Like, more than just a checkbox, like, hey, this is what you should do at this time. Say, if you want to be more empathetic, you gotta start incorporating that into your life. And step by step, I know change is hard, we talked about that, right? But change is also good. We are creatures of habit, so how do we incorporate that into our day to day?
Scott
The opportunity here is that the assumption that people wanna make the change. So the assumption is that everybody's on board and they wanna make the change, right? And so call to action, for any kind of learning that you put together, having a call to action is super important. Like, okay, make sure you do this. I'm gonna be, and be very clear about what that is. Like, make sure you're practicing empathetic listening with your partners at least once a week by doing A, B, and C.
Zeta
Got it!
Scott
Okay, cool, I can do that. That being said, there's no guarantee that I'm actually gonna do it when I'm done. So what are those things that we can do to help ensure that people are actually doing the things that we want them to do to that will create real change because behavior is the only thing that's really going to change make the change that we're looking for over time not going to happen overnight I want to steal a page out of the Scott Shoeley playbook that's going to cost you sir. That's royalties now. I I've heard you say this I've heard you talk about this and this is one of those things that's like
Dan
for right here, right now. And it leads off with the quizzing. Look at that. It's a circle.
Oh, nice.
Dan
You've talked about feel-good training, fluff training, training that just says some things, some good things, and then tells everybody to have a good day. And I feel like that's where we're at with employee engagement and using and leveraging your learning development teams to help foster that is, hey, will you build a training on empathy? Like, yeah, sure. Okay, great. All right. I built this training on empathy and I've asked everybody to go and practice empathy three times this week. Okay, great. Well, that box is checked. Let's move on. Zeta0 days later, Zeta0 days later. Why isn't everybody more empathic? Well, because you didn't follow up. You didn't actually see if anybody went and practiced it. You just told them to and then went, cool, great. Well, this will definitely do the trick. This is definitely what we need. And yes, it is what you needed, but no, it will not do the trick because you didn't follow up. You didn't test, you didn't verify. You built a really nice, really good, warm and fuzzy module that made everybody go, oh, yay. But then you didn't put any teeth in it.
Scott
It's that accountability factor that I think is super important. So somebody at the end of the day has to be accountable for it. And then everybody has to be aligned on the accountability factor of it and agree to, this is important, we want change. Zeta is going to lead this change and she's accountable for it and I'm going to do the things that she does and Zeta's got the authority, agreed upon authority, to follow up and make sure I did it. And then being targeted and being specific about what it is that we want to do. So love your example of like, hey, let's create this training and then we'll have some follow up and maybe it's a, hey, here's some activities that we're going to have you do in an email. Do this three times a week. Super important that there's some follow-up to that, right? Like, hey, let's practice empathy this week and I get it in my email.
Great, cool.
Scott
If everybody gets that email, who's accountable? Who's responsible to make sure that that's actually happening?
Dan
At that point, that's not a training, that's a communication. And listen, communication has its point and has its value in broadcasting out facts about the business, quick heads up for some changes, things you maybe should know. All that is is you're just using training like a communications tool.
Zeta
Gonna have a bad time.
Dan
Oh yeah, and it's not gonna be impactful.
Zeta
It's not gonna have any lasting results. Like, whenever you do anything new or different, usually the most successful way to do that is to have an accountability partner, right? Like, if you're trying to lose weight or whatnot, you need someone to make sure that they hold you accountable that they follow up on it. Like usually I would think like leadership would step in and be like, oh, hey, are you doing A, B and C? Are you following those steps?
Scott
Listen, nothing against people working really hard to want to make change and want to improve engagement and putting out the learning, even the communication, like, hey, this is important, let's do those things. But, you know, we're actually going to create change with prescribed practice and some accountability around that, right? So, and it's super important too, like, what does new look like? And can we all agree on what, you know, going back to our empathetic listening or more empathy, what is, what would that look like? Right? So what does that look like? I don't know if I can put a pin in it right here, right now, but I think it's super important for leaders that want that aspirational change to agree on, you know what, this is what it would look like. And therefore, that's a form of measurement, right? So we can come back and say, all right, we did these things, have we seen any change? No. All right, well, what do we need to do now to ensure that we get some stickiness with our
Dan
Dan00% I feel too often most leaders and most employees aren't a hundred percent certain exactly it is what they want. They show up to a job, the job is okay, they get an okay paycheck, they have an okay experience, they have an okay leader, with it. And man, okay is like, I mean, it's the enemy of good. The same as perfect is the enemy of good. Like you've got that sweet spot that is good and everything on either side is bad. I don't, I don't want to like get crazy about it, but I think for employers, they obviously want to attract talent, they want to maintain and keep talent. And I think it all boils down to like communication. There's lots of great books on why, on knowing your why, knowing why you're here, why you're doing this. And I think too often, businesses just assume that everybody's on board with that why. They just go, yep, we said it once in orientation and so everybody knows the why, everybody knows why we do stuff, all right, great. Off to the races, why isn't everybody happy? I know as an employee, I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a project and been like, why am I doing this? Like what value does this bring? To the greater business like I'm not silly I know that I'm there to bring value that like the the subscription service to Daniel Coonrod is predicated on the fact that I will bring More value than what it costs to have me. That's that's everybody's deal. So when I get a project and I'm like, man, why am I doing this? And that is part of the way that learning and development can help. I mean, being able to talk to employees and being able to build training and materials that tell employees, hey, this is the big why. You learned about it in orientation, but it's been a year, maybe you've forgotten. Maybe the why has shifted. Maybe the why for your department looks and sounds a little different than the why for this department. It all serves the big business why, but it might come in different shapes and sizes for your org, your department. And learning and development, again, I go back, I said this already, it's our superpower. Being able to step in and say, hey, I'd like to talk to you guys about why we're here and why it matters. And then I'd like to talk to you guys about how your why intersects with our why and why that matters. And then I'd like to talk to you about when you get a project and you don't know the why, how to find out that why and how to relate that why to the larger business goal. There you go. Boom. Anybody listening who wants to solve employee engagement or at least a part of it, there's the training outline. Good luck. Godspeed. Go do it. And that's it. Like Dan00%. I cannot tell you the difference. I have worked at several businesses, but I've only ever worked at one business where the why was clear and present each and every day and each and every weekly team meeting, somebody said, this is why we're doing this. Hey, real quick, let's review our big whys. And I never, ever, ever was upset when a giant project got dropped to my lap because I knew why it mattered. Because just that week, somebody had said, this is the big why and this is why what we do matters. And I was like, man, I love this job.
Zeta
People need to know the why. They need to know the relevance, because otherwise they're gonna be lost. They're not gonna feel, they're gonna be in the meh. They're not gonna be engaged.
Scott
Awesome, so one of the things that I think you really tied into, and I've been kinda talking about this, as organizations go through aspirational change, there's this big, ah, I don't know how to do that. So you're right, bring your L&D people in.

And sometimes we have departments,
Scott
well-meaning departments that all have different KPIs, different things, but they end up doing the same thing that other departments are doing without thinking about it. And so I feel like sometimes what you just need to do is just bring everybody together in a room and align on the why, align on what's important, and align on how and what we're gonna do to make it better. And I gotta tell you that there are the person that has to be in that room, the person that has to be leading that discussion is your is your learning and development expert. Because one of the things that I think is really important, what value that we bring is creating a safe enough space where everybody's thoughts are valued, where everybody can contribute, where that person in the back who hasn't said anything, those are people that I notice and go like, hey, Bobby, what do you think? Right? And we level set on that because the reality Reality is this, reality is this, folks. Once you align on the why and what everybody desires, then the rest of it is super easy, right? So if we're all in agreement that this is important and it needs to get fixed and that we need to do something about it, great, let's start there, right? Because I think that it is such a powerful tool when everybody's together like, oh, yeah, I guess we all agree. The problem in our world today is that too many people are not focusing on the things that we agree on. Everybody's focusing on the things that we're disagreeing on or the things that are different but what do we really want what we really desire if we can align on that first and do it in a safe way. Do it in a way we don't have egos in the room then then we can move forward. So critical stuff, if you're seeing that things aren't where you'd like them to be, suggest that. I don't have to be an expert in anything that's going on in my business. I'm an expert in the process, I'm an expert in ensuring that the process is safe and effective, and I'm also an expert in ensuring that we've got follow-up in the right places that we're not just sending hey there's some feel-good stuff to think about nope I'm gonna hold you accountable to this and then we're gonna go ahead and ah boy folks if you don't have post-mortem and it's your SOP get it in your SOP and do it today like talk about did it work because if it didn't work that's okay we learned something we can get better. Hey folks, if you've got any additional thoughts, Dan is going to share how you can share that with us and the rest of the community.
Dan
Dan? Absolutely. All right, party people, if you haven't already, email us at nerds at the learning nerds dot com. We are in weird times like every time and we would love to know about what you're doing for employee engagement from a learning and development perspective. Heck, we'd even like to know if you're just how you're feeling at your present role. We'd love to learn, hear more, and talk about it. If you're on Facebook, you can find us at Learning Nerds for our Instagram peeps, BabLearningNerds.com.
Scott?
Scott
Thanks, Dan. Hey, everybody. Could you do me a favor? Could you go ahead and hit that like button, hit that subscribe button, and please share this episode with your friends. Don't care how you do it, but be sure that you do. If you like what we're talking about, go ahead and leave us a review. iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever, that's great, because you want to know what? It's going to help us get better, and it's going to help us get the message out to more people. And with that, I'm Scott.
Dan
I'm Dan.
Zeta
I'm Zeta. I'm Zeta.
Scott
And we're your fabulous learning nerds, and we are out.