The Fabulous Learning Nerds

Scott (00:01.547)
Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of your Fabulous Learning Nerds. I'm Scott Schuette, and with us, as always, you love them, Dan Coonrod.

Scott (00:13.836)
Dan.

daniel (00:15.661)
Scott! What's up Scott, how you doing?

Scott (00:18.024)
I'm doing okay, how are you doing sir?

daniel (00:21.11)
You know, I am going to take somebody's advice and I'm not gonna say what you think I'm gonna say. I'm doing pretty good.

Scott (00:27.271)
Uh oh. Oh no. What are you gonna say?

daniel (00:30.542)
Doing pretty good. Look at that.

Scott (00:33.783)
That doing pretty good? OK, all right.

daniel (00:35.818)
Yeah? To you for a loop.

Scott (00:39.499)
But you're not...

daniel (00:45.374)
I think it's safe to say I'm in a perpetual state of fair to Midland.

Scott (00:49.675)
You know what, that is an okay state to be in. I'm in a perpetual, I'm not getting enough sleep state that may or may not, no, it's not. It may or may not be due to the fact that we collect Shih Tzus and I have a veritable herd of them in the bedroom.

daniel (00:52.762)
I think so. I think so.

daniel (00:58.242)
That is not an okay state.

daniel (01:10.142)
A herd of doggos. Dude. Ooh, no! I admire and respect your dedication and your willingness to take on.

Scott (01:13.379)
Correct. Like more than four.

Yes, yes, yeah.

Scott (01:24.868)
And one sleeps on my face sometimes, which is not great, but that's okay.

Gregory Hamluk (01:27.566)
Thanks for watching!

daniel (01:27.798)
Oh no, no. We have two doggos and they are fantastic. But no, they do not, none of them sleep on face. Yeah, two is a great number. We had one and then the second one showed up like, what's up, I live here now. And I was like, oh, okay, sure thing, sounds good.

Scott (01:34.923)
Oh, two's a good number. No. Yeah.

Scott (01:47.095)
So a stray came to your house and said, hey, I want to party with you? No. Both strays. Are they coming for you or are they coming for somebody else? My guess is that they're coming for somebody else. Yeah. And folks, we're going to go ahead and introduce that somebody else you love or Zeta's in the house.

daniel (01:49.77)
Oh, they're both strays. Oh yeah, they're both strays.

Yeah, the first one somebody dropped off.

daniel (02:01.23)
Probably somebody else, probably somebody else. Ha ha ha.

Scott (02:17.879)
Zayde, what are you putting out for these dogs to come to your boat?

Zeta (02:23.494)
That would be a secret because if everybody knew, everyone would have awesome puppers like we do. Just lots of love and affection. Really? No.

Scott (02:31.943)
Is it... really? No cupcakes or nothing like that? Oh wait, I hear some more coming.

daniel (02:41.05)
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Zeta (02:41.366)
Oh no! They're at the door!

Scott (02:43.579)
Oh, three or four more coming.

daniel (02:46.01)
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Zeta (02:50.13)
Oh no, they're all Shih Tzus!

Scott (02:50.283)
actually sounds like okay i'll shut up okay sounds like my house uh... which is fun so yeah that's great so see your talking about the jury you had an update on the journey so that it inform our audience about that because i need to get on that bandwagon

Zeta (02:55.669)
Mm-hmm.

daniel (02:57.591)
Oh.

Zeta (03:01.778)
Mm-hmm.

Zeta (03:07.21)
Well, it's not quite out yet, but I was listening to office hours just earlier last week, and they were saying that version six may be coming out in a week or two. So looking forward to it. Excited.

Scott (03:18.339)
God, I gotta bite the bullet on that. I did bite the bullet today on ChatGTP paid, which there's a waiting list for. So if you wanna pay for ChatGTP and get ChatGTP four and Dolly three, right? Then you have to pay 20 bucks a month and there's a waiting list and they said, hey, we'll take your money now. And I gave him the money. I gave him all the money, which was cool. But I...

Zeta (03:25.89)
Nice.

Scott (03:45.843)
I still think that Dali 3's got some opportunities with it, so I really want to play with... I like the revision history stuff you can get with Mid Journey and with Pika. I've used Pika. Are you using Pika?

Zeta (04:00.29)
No, no, I was using.

daniel (04:01.29)
Is it Pico? Is that the one that does animation?

Scott (04:04.547)
It does animation, correct. You can text to animate, or you could take a picture that you create mid-journey. You can drop it into, I think it's Pica, and it'll animate it, which is very, very cool. You gotta tell it what you wanna do. God, I mean, just super cool. Things are changing faster than I can handle.

Zeta (04:05.476)
Oh, yeah.

daniel (04:06.091)
Yeah!

daniel (04:16.414)
Oh, it's super cool. It's super, I used.

Zeta (04:19.691)
Mm-hmm.

daniel (04:22.634)
I used something called Suno. I used something called Suno this past weekend that generates 30 seconds of music. You say, hey, I want a song about this and I would like it in this audio style. And I, it was amazing. Like.

Zeta (04:23.658)
hard to keep up.

Scott (04:28.236)
Mm-hmm.

Zeta (04:40.562)
Do you have to write the lyrics or like, does it just come up with its own lyrics?

daniel (04:44.722)
You can write the lyrics, but if you just say, hey, I want a song about this, it'll, it'll create the lyrics for you and create the music. And it's better than it has any right to be. I'm not saying it's like super, super awesome and amazing, but every time I've listened to it, I've, I've giggled if I've made something silly and if I haven't made something silly and I've listened to it, I went, Oh, well, that's not bad.

Scott (05:06.199)
So I have homework for you, Daniel. Homework for you, Daniel-san. Yeah, so I want you to go to your AI music generator, and I want you to go ahead and have that write a theme song for our next guest, our fabulous guest here. I'm sure we won't get that until maybe next week or the following week, but we're gonna learn all about our amazing guests here, folks, in a little segment that we call What's Your Deal?

Scott (05:36.919)
Greg!

Gregory Hamluk (05:38.434)
Hey!

Scott (05:39.679)
What's your deal, my friend?

Gregory Hamluk (05:41.922)
What's my deal? Well, like you all, I am in the learning and development space. I have been in this space for years and years. I started out in general management first and then moved into HR and gradually kept narrowing my focus, broadening the scale of the organization that I was working with until I kept finding the sweet spot for where I thought that I

could add value in what I had fun doing, and learning and development is where I landed.

Scott (06:18.275)
Well, that's fantastic. And we're super excited. Like, I'm a huge learning nerd. We're all huge learning nerds. Hopefully our audience are nerds too. This is something, we're gonna talk about something really important that I know very little about. So I'm super excited for it. So folks, without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into our topic of the week.

Gregory Hamluk (06:24.726)
Yay!

Scott (06:44.287)
Hey, this week we're gonna be talking about learning from a systems thinking approach. Woo, love it. So Greg, let's start off with the obvious question, right? So what is systems thinking and why should we care about it in learning and development?

Gregory Hamluk (07:03.65)
Yeah, no, it's a great question, Scott. Systems thinking really is, it is an approach where we're thinking about the kind of circular world that we live in, that things are always impacting each other, that it's always connected. And it's an awareness of the role that we're part of that system and that system is having an impact on us. So,

there are consequences to our actions. So system thinking is really a way of thinking about that. It is a way of taking a very disciplined approach to problem solving and thinking about that before we're acting. And I think the place where systems thinking really progresses is

from, I think all of us, we all observe events. We all see things that are happening out there. There are some people that have a predisposition for starting to identify the patterns. Okay, I see this happened, and this happened, and this happened. And systems thinking takes that one step further to say, okay, so here are all of these individual events. Here are some patterns that we're beginning to see.

What's the underlying structure that's actually driving that?

And I think why we care about that in learning is because it has a huge impact on performance. So when we think about helping people learn and when we think about actually ultimately changing the performance of an organization, it's great if I know the skills now that I need to have. But if I'm put in a system

Gregory Hamluk (09:05.106)
I don't have the right tools. Or I'm not rewarded for doing that. Or I've got another department that's actively working in the opposite direction of this. We're not going to see the results that we wanna see because those kind of invisible systems, if you will, those things that are operating under the surface.

are also having an impact on performance beyond just the skills that people have.

daniel (09:40.259)
That's awesome.

Scott (09:40.515)
Let me back up real quick. I want to make sure I get this right. So what you're saying is that the ready fire aim mentality that is prevalent amongst corporate America, that's my experience. I could be completely wrong, but my experience is ready fire aim really has a detrimental effect, not just on the business outcomes, but on the learning and the skills and all that other kind of stuff that surround that kind of behavior.

Zeta (09:40.754)
Wow, yeah.

Gregory Hamluk (10:07.578)
Yes, it absolutely has a detrimental effect on learning. And even beyond that, if you think about, great, so you taught me this new skill and you've told me that I should apply it, now I'm out there trying to do that and I'm running into all these obstacles. And so from an employee experience perspective, from an employee engagement perspective, from a

Hmm, maybe I didn't learn this right because it's not working. I keep trying and it's not working. Systems drive behavior. It's not to say that we don't have, you know, free will and we don't have agency and we don't have the ability to grind it out sometimes to get things to happen the way that we want to, but.

If the systems are working against us, it's kind of like pushing that rock uphill. Eventually, you're gonna run out of steam, you're gonna let it go, and that rock's gonna fall back down to the bottom of the hill again.

daniel (11:11.586)
This, I love this idea. I a hundred percent love this idea. I, for years in learning and development, I, I've always been underneath the just do something approach. Um, I, I even one time was commended on my sense of urgency because somebody like said that they had a problem and it was like, all right, cool. Let's just jump up and start building something. Cause I knew that's what I was expected of me. Like it doesn't matter what just build something.

and this idea of like, I mean, like, this is what we tell everybody. When we tell everybody like what instructional design is about and we talk about adding, we talk about all the science, we're like, hey, here's this slow, careful, methodical approach that's gonna produce the results that you need that are gonna stick and last. Okay, now that you know that, throw that all out the window because we don't do any of that here and just go, go. So I love that. I love this.

Gregory Hamluk (12:03.638)
Yeah, and I think, Daniel, you know, it's underpinned by, you know, what they call these five Cs, you know, curiosity, which speaks a little bit to what you were just talking about, getting curious about, let's take some time to actually look and see what is, what is going on here? What is driving it? What is this a training need? Is this something that we can fix through quote unquote training? Or is there a better?

Is there a better approach, a better lever to pull, a better option for us to take? So curiosity, clarity, getting absolutely 100% crystal clear on why is this happening? So going again from those underlying events to the patterns to what's driving it and getting that clarity. Compassion is definitely one of the five Cs. So understanding that

great people put in lousy situations, have a difficult time producing results and it doesn't feel great for them. And it obviously isn't great for the organization. People don't come to work saying like, wow, I wanna have a lousy day today, I want to screw up and I don't wanna accomplish anything. So having some real compassion for

people that are in that system and understanding where they're coming from. Choice, being able to be at choice with, all right, here are the options that we have. And then I think a little bit, Daniel, to what you just said, the last C, which is courage. And the courage for us as learning and development professionals to say,

You know, yeah, I can absolutely produce that job aid for you, but it is not going to get you what you want. It is not going to impact performance. So curiosity, clarity, compassion, choice, and then absolutely got to have the courage to speak that.

daniel (14:17.906)
Oh, love that. Love that.

Zeta (14:18.822)
I love that. That's that's much larger thinking and seeing how our actions have their impact and whether or not if we do have training if it's That's the real choice that we need to do a lot of times training is not the answer. So, but, but how do you get to those decisions. How do you, how do you take those first steps and understanding the system.

Gregory Hamluk (14:42.282)
Yeah, so one, it really does have to be in that order, I believe, of moving from events to patterns to structures. I think the harder jump is from patterns to structures and really thinking about what is happening in the environment. Is this a supervisory issue? Is it a resource issue? Is it a...

compensation and how we incentivize people issue. Is it a skill issue or a learning issue? And then we can start to think about what the best way is to solve that. But by taking that kind of broader approach, Zeta, I think you're spot on in terms of sometimes training isn't the answer or not the way that we traditionally think about training. I would offer that learning is often the answer,

more expansive, more generative, more systemic way of thinking about performance overall.

Scott (15:54.883)
So hypothetically asking for a friend, right? So someone's gonna come to me and say, hey, right, I would like X to solve a problem. 90% of the time it is a request that's being made under an assumption of this is what we've done in the past and therefore this is what we should do moving forward because it's the easy answer, right? It's what I would refer to as.

daniel (15:59.097)
Hahaha

Gregory Hamluk (16:14.218)
Mm-hmm.

Scott (16:23.287)
feel good work, because at the end of the day, I'm going to feel good about the fact that I got some work done, whether it produces results or not. So again, asking for a friend, that comes in, that happens. So how do we pull the reins back, right? And then begin to ask the kinds of questions within the 5C framework that you propose to help people make better decisions.

Scott (16:53.02)
infrastructure that you talk about.

Gregory Hamluk (16:56.566)
Yes, so first I would say, we're always going to have some of those requests. We're always gonna have some of those requests and we're always gonna get requests where it is a, just do it because someone six levels up in the organization said, we have to have this, we have to have it tomorrow and I've already decided what it's gonna look like. So I'm not.

necessarily advocating career limiting gestures of saying like, absolutely not, we will not do it that way. I think there's opportunities for us as learning and development professionals to get in early to hone our influence skills. Are there times when we just have to get that short term win? Yes. I think even when we're doing that, we can begin to set the seeds for our

daniel (17:24.783)
Ha ha!

Gregory Hamluk (17:49.25)
Hey, you know, I've responded to your requests. We've produced this job aid. I'm not sure that it's gonna get you what you want. Here's a more expansive approach, but in the meantime, you've got your job aid so that you feel like we've been responsive. The other thing I would say is, and I'm very intentional about this and very pragmatic, are there times when someone just wants a job aid and I will produce a job aid because...

I'm trying to build a relationship with that person and I want to get in earlier on the next project. Is there other times when it's just politically within the organization, hey, got to do this because of who's asking? Absolutely. I think if we can use those situations, Scott, for places where we can open the door to get in earlier the next time.

Or plant those seeds for, okay, we've responded to this individual request. Not sure this is going to do everything that you are hoping it will do. I've got some other ideas, but we are going to have to back up a step to do a bit of a business analysis in terms of what are the goals. Look at performance and the key performance analysis of.

You know, what are the organizational, managerial, critical outcomes that we're trying to get to? What are those other influences? And that does take some time. I also think we can be expedient about it as well. So we have to, on our side,

figure out how we can be a little more nimble and agile and move through some of these cycles quicker. I'll tell you, I'm still somebody in terms of instructional design that uses the Addi model, because I never thought that the Addi model was meant to be this long, drawn out, very linear, stale, stiff process. I always thought of it as a, okay, we're moving up, now we gotta move a little bit back, now we gotta move forward.

Gregory Hamluk (20:06.382)
How can we cycle through it in an iterative or agile fashion? So I think it's partly the way that we go about that. But identifying the opportunities to get in early, look at the business analysis, look at the influence analysis. So is it a structure? Is it a work process? Is it because they don't have the right technology or the right resources? Are we selecting the wrong people from the get-go?

Zeta (20:10.038)
Mm-hmm.

Zeta (20:38.726)
If I could, I'll say, I was about to jump in, I was like, I think there's a reason why you see Addy as like, as that end all because yes, it's a waterfall method, but it starts with analysis. It starts with understanding before doing anything else. You have to understand. And even then, I think it's also kind of a organic process as well, where you have analysis, but then you also align and evaluate before you go on to design and develop.

Gregory Hamluk (20:38.908)
Is it truly a training need? Oops, sorry, is it?

Gregory Hamluk (21:07.546)
And I probably treat it less like a waterfall than the people who originally designed it. I tend to dance back and forth between those phases a bit more than some would, which is probably why I never run into people like, Addie is over and we have to, you know, it's like, it works just fine if you implement it well. And if you don't get so like locked in on

Zeta (21:12.242)
Yeah.

daniel (21:12.54)
Hahaha!

Zeta (21:17.282)
Mm-hmm.

daniel (21:28.188)
Ha ha ha!

Zeta (21:31.687)
I agree.

Gregory Hamluk (21:35.938)
oh, well, I have now finished my analysis phase. I will now move to design. I think that that's key. And I think it's key here, Scott, to your question as well about how we use those five Cs and how we back up into our business analysis and our influence analysis to come up with ultimately what is the right solution.

daniel (22:03.522)
You know, you brought up a little bit ago just about like, like not committing career suicide, like, like partnering and like, and that courage. And, you know, I had an opportunity a while ago to, to lead a team as we were building sales material. And one of the things that like I quickly identified, cause we were just always getting steamrolled, but we'd be like, Hey, we could build this. And they'd be like, that's great. Build this instead. And we'd be like, Oh, okay. And

one of the things that we fought really hard for was like to get like a seat at the table. Like, you know, I went to like directors and senior directors and said, hey, as you are planning and strategizing, if you have us at your table, when you're doing these strategy sessions, when it comes time to develop the training, it will take us less time, it will be more effective, the training will take less time, and the impact will last longer. And, you know, like I would tell them that and they'd be like, really?

Like why? Like you just built, and I'm like, no, you guys are talking the strategy, you guys are talking the analysis. Like those are all the parts we need to build good, effective training. And we're not in the room to hear, listen, or catch those important pieces. And so all we're getting are photocopies, you know? And they, as soon as like we were in those rooms and able to like listen and take notes, and sometimes like offer like,

perspectives and sometimes practice courage and offer rebuttals like, ah, it's a really good idea. I don't know if it's going to do what you would like it to do, but you know, we can try that if that's really what you're hard set on. Uh, but no, a hundred percent like this perspective. Uh, Scott joked about it just like, if we don't see it, see it a lot in the corporate world. I love it. It's amazing.

Gregory Hamluk (23:57.066)
Yeah, and I think the relationship piece that you just emphasize there, Daniel, is key. So rather than, you know, pounding our fists saying, we have to have a seat at the table, or whining about, we don't have a seat at the table, it really is demonstrating that value up front so that people are asking you to be at the table, not us, you know, again, coming from it, from the opposite side of like, we don't have a seat at the table.

daniel (24:10.402)
Hahaha!

daniel (24:27.258)
100%.

Scott (24:29.731)
One of my biggest learnings this year is the importance of measurement and post-mortem. And I think as I listen to you, I feel like that's a big part of systems thinking or a systems approach. Could you talk a little bit about your experience and or how you feel about measurement and reporting as far as systems thinking design analogy?

Gregory Hamluk (24:59.614)
Yeah, well, I think for one, Scott, I think that taking a systems thinking approach sets you up really well to be able to measure and evaluate later because I think oftentimes, I often might be too strong a word, but I have found somewhat frequently at least that.

people are trying to craft the measurement at the end. And kind of going back to the adibald, they're like, okay, I finally got into the E, now I'll think about evaluation, rather than thinking about the system all the way from the beginning of what we're trying to build. So while systems thinking impacts the overall link between the business strategy and what we're trying to do in L&D, it also cycles through

our learning and development approach in multiple layers. And Scott, I think evaluation and measurement is one of those layers. So by looking at, I think there's two things. One, by looking at that from the beginning from a systems approach, we know exactly what we wanna measure. I think the other thing is we can begin to...

think about our measurement strategy in a way that helps isolate or account for those other factors. So when you say like, is that job aid working? Is that training course that we built working? It may be working to convey the knowledge that we intended it to, but it may not be working to have the impact.

on results that we were looking for, or it may not be driving the outcome because of these other elements that are in the system. So sometimes I think it can be without it, it can be a bit of a red herring in terms of what the quality of the learning and development intervention is. So rather than saying like, oh, that training didn't work, the training work for what the training can impact.

Gregory Hamluk (27:15.426)
However, there's other elements in the system that have to be addressed if you actually want to change performance.

Scott (27:27.479)
That is an awesome segue to my next question. Thank you so much, which is great. So you speak about the systems approach as being a layered one, right? That it often operates in a layered way. Could you talk a little bit more about that and its effect in L&D? You kind of hinted at it in the last 30 seconds there, but I want you to have the opportunity to really dive into that.

Gregory Hamluk (27:51.234)
Sure, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, as I said, it shows up in L&D because we're starting from a business strategy, or hopefully we're starting from a business strategy and something that we are trying to accomplish as a business. Now that also means that it's incumbent on us as learning and development professionals to understand.

what drives our business and how we can support that. And what are we trying to do? And I mean that beyond just the, hey, we build X or we deliver this service. Like, are we trying to be the low cost provider? Are we trying to be first to market? Are we trying to innovate? Are we trying to overtake a competitor? Are we trying to, like, what are we trying to do and how are we trying to get there? And our L&D strategy should really flow from that.

because if we're trying to be first to market, that has an implication for some of the competencies that our people are going to need to create the capabilities within our workforce to have an ultimate impact on our strategy and our execution. So that's one layer there in terms of systems thinking and connecting learning and development strategy with business strategy.

Then we start to get into the learning and development solutions that we have been talking about. Are we thinking more broadly than just a particular type of intervention or a particular way of going about this? And are we using those five Cs that we talked about to have a more expansive view? Are we doing that good performance analysis, cause analysis?

thinking of which intervention is going to work best. Is it training? Is it a job aid? Is it coaching? Maybe I need coaching for my folks. Do I have to change my policies at my organization? Because the policies that we have are getting in the way. And this is where within L&D, we start to move from that individual event to patterns.

Gregory Hamluk (30:16.11)
to what are the underlying structures that drive this.

daniel (30:23.394)
That's awesome. That's a hundred percent. You, you, you mentioned something. You said business strategy and L and D strategy. And, uh, I just want to call out just the, the observation of them as, as separate entities, like obviously one is related to the other. Uh, but literally until you had, had set them as separate entities in my head, they've always been chained at the hip.

And so I've never really thought of them as separate. So that's awesome.

Gregory Hamluk (30:56.374)
Yeah, I think our L&D strategy has to flow from the business strategy. I do see them as distinct. And if we're not doing that, then the danger is, you know, um, you know, you've said, Hey, we're all learning nerds here. You know, we can start chasing things because they look exciting or it's like, wow, here's a new tool. I'd love to incorporate this into the next, the next thing that I do, but is that what's really called for?

daniel (31:00.204)
Yes.

daniel (31:15.522)
Yes.

Gregory Hamluk (31:25.902)
or I really am very comfortable with making job aids, or I'm very comfortable with e-learning, and so everything becomes, it should be an e-learning, it should be an e-learning. And do we have an overall architecture, an overall strategy that, again, supports and flows from that business strategy for our learning and development team?

daniel (31:51.674)
See, yeah, you know, you bring up the other side and obviously as a learning nerd, I'm like, oh, well new toys are cool. I have, I've always been, or not always, but often I found myself in environments where it's the other way around, where it's business dictating what training strategy will be. And oftentimes, I mean, that's good. Like, obviously like that's why we're there. We're there to help like.

Gregory Hamluk (32:10.645)
Mm.

daniel (32:17.026)
push, you know, like efficiency and help to like make people ready to do their jobs better. But sometimes and a lot of time I've seen it where it's like, okay, a project manager, like, all right, cool. We need a CBT and it needs to take 10 minutes and it needs to cover this, that, and this. And I can't tell you how many times that's just been like, oh, okay, cool. We'll, we'll go build that. We'll be right back. And that's, yeah, that's no boy now.

Gregory Hamluk (32:45.206)
And it becomes the order taker mentality. It's like, what's your order? Yep, I'll write it down. I'll put the ticket into the kitchen. They'll go off and bake that for us and I will come and serve it back to you rather than let me recommend something else on the menu because it sounds like you might not like that. You say that you're doing keto, so I'm really not thinking that this...

daniel (32:56.239)
Ha!

Gregory Hamluk (33:12.034)
this high carb dessert that you're ordering is what you really want.

daniel (33:17.335)
Yeah.

Zeta (33:18.602)
Yeah, it might not be the best solution, right? Mm.

Gregory Hamluk (33:20.47)
might not be the best solution for what you've said your stated goal is.

Scott (33:26.763)
I love that you get this dichotomy between the fact that, yeah, sometimes we have to meet the needs of the business and then other times that we really need to step up and show some courage and use the five C's. When is systems thinking most important and most relevant? How can I help discern when I should say, sure, no problem. If we don't...

Gregory Hamluk (33:33.09)
Thank you.

Scott (33:55.455)
take a holistic approach to this, this could be very bad. Or there's some guidelines you can give our audience to think about so we can be better partners with the people that we serve.

Gregory Hamluk (34:06.638)
Absolutely. So I think one place, and I know this sounds a little simplistic, but when the issue is really important, if this is an important issue and we really need to make sure that we're getting the solution right the first time, I think that that's a place. So if there's an important issue with high consequence to the business, and not that we just

only have one shot at this, but that we really need to strive super hard to get it right the first time and we can't afford to just fulfill that order and give them their job aid and discover that that's not working and now we're six weeks later and we're back to square one. So I think that's one place I would look.

Gregory Hamluk (35:03.798)
related to that, when the problem or the issue is chronic, it's not a one-time event, it's something that continues to happen in the business, then that's another place where we really need to be looking. And there's a kind way and there is a...

a professional way of not saying like, I've told you this six times, you know, I've told I told you so I told you so I told you so I told you this the last time and you didn't listen to me, you know, there are better ways to, to say it than that. So there is definitely the positioning and influencing that we need to do. And related, you know, when we've tried unsuccessfully to solve this same problem before, it's another great time.

daniel (35:33.264)
Hahaha

Gregory Hamluk (35:59.906)
to do that. And that's where I think we can also build some of that credibility for the future. If we are producing a really great solution that they've come back to us for, so if something that was unsuccessful and now they've come back to us for, well, you're right, you know, that job aid that you told me probably wouldn't do, the trick didn't. What else, what were you talking about before that you said we might try to be able to do that? If we can get them to come back to us.

then we begin to build that credibility. That's an element of trust that they see, they see both our competence as professionals, they see our reliability in terms of what it is that we produce. So we produce on an ongoing consistent basis, it's not hit or miss. And so I think those are times where systems thinking not only is extremely relevant, but provides us

an entry point to become an even more strategic partner to the business and not just the order taker that some people may have experienced with other learning and development departments before.

Scott (37:14.423)
Yeah, yeah. Really great stuff. The one ad I would have on that is my go-to from an influence perspective is would it make sense? I love that phrase. Guys, pick that up, it's great. Would it make sense if maybe we did, because it helps people come up with their own story, which I find incredibly influential. Like, hey, the story I come up with is the best story ever, so if I can help steer them into an answer that I want them to give is really great.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. It's just a Scott thing. I do want to begin to think about, because this has been great. Fantastic. Love, love, love this discussion. I think it's really important. Are there some things, as we begin to wrap this up, are there some things that you wanted to talk about today or some last nuggets that you wanted to leave with our audience before we say goodbye?

Gregory Hamluk (38:10.046)
I think it is to begin to practice, to begin to take some time to notice and make that little sticky note that you put on the corner of your computer that says events, patterns, underlying structures, and circle that underlying structure once so that we begin to build the muscle of going there. Because I think oftentimes we stop with just identifying the events or looking at the patterns. We don't get to that third part.

And it's a muscle. So it's something that we have to practice doing to get good at. And I would say the other nugget is a little bit of a through line and thread that I've heard from all of us throughout the conversation is, look for those opportunities where you've either got that receptive audience or you believe that you've got an...

perhaps an easier sell to begin to incorporate this more robust approach and let the work speak for itself from that perspective and earn that seat at the table that people want you there because, oh wow, they've got that L&D team, they ask great questions. And having them there is going to

ultimately save me time at the end of the project, rather than having to create learning assets and support materials at the very last minute.

Scott (39:51.037)
Yeah, love it.

Zeta (39:52.427)
Yeah.

daniel (39:55.277)
Solid.

Scott (39:56.919)
Fantastic stuff, Greg. Love, love, love what you're talking about and I'm sure that you've empowered many people to be more today, so I think that's really great. Could you do me a favor and let our audience know how they could connect with you?

Gregory Hamluk (40:10.83)
Sure, absolutely. Best place to connect with me is on LinkedIn. It's my first name and last name, Gregory Hamluck. And make sure that when you send me a little invite, mention that you heard me on the podcast. I get a lot of connection requests from vendors and people that are trying to sell me stuff. So if people just send me a blind request without telling me why they wanna connect or where we know each other from, oftentimes...

daniel (40:30.455)
Hahaha!

Gregory Hamluk (40:38.546)
I will either ignore them or they go to the bottom of the pile. So if you say that you heard me on the podcast, that'll help me know how are we connected.

Scott (40:50.467)
That never happens to me. I can't believe that I'm being facetious. It happens to me every day. Every thinking day. So I totally get that. I think that's fantastic. Great, cool. So hey folks, connect with Gregory's. Awesome, make sure you mention the show. Great resource for system thinking or a whole lot of other professional development within learning and development. Really want to thank you for your time. Great stuff. Daniel Son.

Gregory Hamluk (40:52.183)
Never.

daniel (40:54.114)
Hahaha!

Zeta (40:55.074)
I'm gonna go.

daniel (41:17.816)
Yes, Scott.

Scott (41:18.883)
Could you do me a solid? Could you let everybody else know how they could connect with us?

daniel (41:24.298)
Absolutely. All right, party people, if you haven't already, email us at nerds at the learning nerds.com. Email us any questions you might have, join in on the discussion. Tell us about a time or a way where you think that maybe the this system style of like looking and building your projects might be appropriate.

daniel (42:02.03)
Sure thing, Scott. All right, party people, if you haven't already, email us at nerds at thelearningnerds.com. Email us any questions you might have, join in on the conversation. Tell us how you think systems thinking could be implemented where you're at, and if you're already using it, we would love to know what it's like. If you're at Facebook, you can find us at Learning Nerds for all of our Instagram peeps, Fab Learning Nerds. And lastly, for more information about us, what we do and updates,

daniel (42:31.842)
dot com Scott

Scott (43:24.863)
Smash that like button, smash that subscribe button. Go ahead and share this episode, this fantastic episode about systems thinking with your friends because they need it. And then also do me a favor, if you're on iTunes or Stitch or anywhere, you can leave a review. Leave a review about the show. If you like the show, that's great. If you don't like the show, that's great. Doesn't really matter. We just wanna know how we're doing so we can get better. And guess what? The more reviews we have, the more likely we're gonna get Greg and his great message out to the rest of you. And with that, I'm Scott.

daniel (43:55.267)
Dan.

Zeta (43:56.735)
I'm Zeta.

Gregory Hamluk (43:58.378)
I'm Greg.

Scott (43:59.507)
And we're your Fabulous Learning Nerds, and we are out.