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Why Representation Matters in the Workplace

This week I stepped down from my role as Research & Design Director at Year Up. My time with the team went much faster than I imagined. But if there’s anything I’ve learned over the years its that when the universe knocks on your door with an amazing opportunity, you should open it. Even if it means saying goodbye to another amazing experience (more on this later).

As I reflect on my time with the Year Up team, what is going to stay with me the most, is the importance of why representation matters in the workplace.

When we begin any conversation about representation it is inherently linked to the concept of identify. I wear many identities within life: Partner, Daughter, Sister, Aunt, Cat Mom, Adoptee, Colombian, Female, Researcher, Teacher, the list could go on and on. These elements of my identity come to influence how I exist and interact within the world. Unfortunately, these lenses can also show where I may encounter or receive bias in my life.

One of the unique benefits of having served on the Year Up team is seeing diversity integrated at every level of the organization. It is seen not only in the students that we work with but within the internal staff as well. From site staff, national, all the way up to the executive team; staff members come from all walks of life. Each with varying backgrounds, gender, race, and socioeconomic status. There is true beauty in seeing so many diverse individuals aligned and marching towards one common mission. It wasn’t until I landed with the team that I became aware of how much this was needed in my life.

I’ve spent the last 8 years of my career working in technology. For a majority of that time, I’ve been the only person of color in the room. Imagine that! One of the only people of color making product and design decisions that impact millions of diverse individuals. This is huge! Since our identities intrinsically impact how we experience the world, if our product and design teams are skewed towards one particular perspective it impacts how we identify and solve problems. Creativity is truly enhanced when you have empathy with your audience and incorporate diverse perspectives to co-create solutions.

Until 2020, I had only ever met and interacted with 1 BIPOC female at the executive level (Shoutout to Maribel). To put things into perspective, my experiences are not unique. It is estimated that only 2% of employees in todays tech companies are BIPOC. And the number of BIPOC females in tech are even lower.

That is precisely why my time at Year Up was so special. For context at Year Up, 53% of the executive team is BIPOC and a staggering 26% is female BIPOC. This experience showed me that as society we can do better. There are no longer any excuses as to why women of color cant rise to the levels of executive leadership. Let Madam VP be a true testament to that! But its also important to remember that its difficult to dream and see yourself in a specific role, if you’ve never seen examples of it before.

My expectations for leadership, representation, and diversity are forever changed because of my experience with the Year Up team. I plan on carrying this forward with me as I move into my next role and beyond. Year Up will forever have a place in my heart and I look forward to partnering and being of service for years to come.

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I left my dream job 9 months ago and I’m still healing

After a long and winding career journey (from eLearning designer, PM, to UXer), during March 2020, I landed myself my dream role. I was leading research at one of the longest running edtech companies in the world during one of the most transformational periods of education. A company that set me out on my very own career path years earlier. It felt like my entire career had led me to that moment.

I onboarded into my role at the end of March 2020 (back when COVID was still in its infancy). From the moment I stepped foot into my role, I hit the ground running. I spent my time building partnerships with team members, talking to customers, evangelizing what I was learning, and training my teammates on the value of being customer-centric. It was during one of the most tumultuous times in online education and I was fully aware of it. I wanted to do anything and everything I could to advocate for learners and their experiences. 

The trouble started during Summer 2020 when I was approached by a university to become a potential adjunct professor.  It was such a transformational time in education. I wanted to give all that I could to the mission and put my skills to use; not only inside my organization, but outside as well. I reached out to HR at the company to see if I could pursue the option of being an adjunct. After weeks of talks and synching with legal, I was informed that employees were strictly prohibited from doing any outside knowledge sharing with others.

My heart was completely shattered. How could a learning company that talked about democratizing education have an archaic policy that said it’s employees couldn’t teach? It truly didn’t make sense to me. 

After that moment, I knew the ball was in my court. I took a step back and tried to shift perspectives and think of alternatives as much as possible. I consulted with a selected group of friends and I only saw one path forward. I made the abrupt decision to step down from my role and the request of management, I never shared the real reason why I left with many of my team members or wider friend group. 

Why leave?

For over ten years, teaching and learning has become the foundation of who I am.  To be an educator is to be of service. It is one of the most rewarding experiences that you can have in life. Teaching is also a beautiful way to continue deepening your own personal practice.

When I was told that continuing to work at a company I loved would mean not teaching, it felt like going against who I was as a person. It felt like I would be repressing a piece of my soul and no job is worth that.

The Fallout 

After leaving, I spent a few months dancing through some consulting gigs trying to figure out my next steps. When I had began in 2020, I went into the role thinking I’d be there for at least a few years and in the blink of an eye it had ended. 

My experience at the employer always felt unfinished. I felt shame and frustration that I never got to stay and realize the full vision that I set forth. At the same time, I felt betrayed by a company I had given so much to. I kept asking myself whether it was a mistake to leave or not. It became difficult to trust myself and my own decisions. 

After leaving, even though I had left the role, I saw my passion of teaching start to fade.  I stopped writing on my personal blog and stopped creating content. I questioned whether I was even worthy enough to share things with others. 

Why share now?

Last weekend I watched the documentary The Wisdom of Trauma and the Dr. Gabor Mate described trauma not as the bad things that happen to you, but rather what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you. In other words, trauma means disconnecting from our authentic selves. 

In that moment it hit me. I had been through a workplace trauma. I was still responding like the threat was still there even though it was removed. 

The truth is our capitalistic societies put profit and growth over everything, including the employees who get the organizations to where they are. As someone with a background in organizational development, I’ve had some hard realizations over the past few months. For instance, despite all of our good intentions that departments like HR and legal are there for one simple thing: to protect the business. 

At the same time, I’ve also been spent the last few months reading countless articles about the experiences of women of color In the workplace. From Timnit Gebru, Vivianne Castillo, and most recently Naomi Osaka. Their experiences have showed me that I am not alone. That no job is worth giving up a piece of your soul.

The unfortunate reality is that is not the first workplace trauma that I’ve been through and it likely wont be the last. Above all, it has taught me about the value of sticking to your instincts even in times of difficulty. It has taught me the importance of gauging company values before joining a team – not only what is said, but the actions that are carried out on a daily basis.

The truth is, I’m still healing from my experience. I’m 4 weeks into adjuncting a summer course for the OPWL program at BSU and I’m learning to share, coach, and guide others again. I am truly grateful for the students. Each time after I speak with a student from the program, I always make sure to pause and find myself thinking “This is what it’s all about”.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose ones attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose ones way”

Vikor e. frankl
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Hitting the ground running as a research team of one

When I’ve joined previous companies, research was done in fits and starts by designers and sometimes product managers. I was often brought in to help the team and wider organization take a more strategic approach to the research they were conducting.

If you’re a researcher whose tasked with building the research function from the ground up, your first few weeks are a great opportunity to understand what the research landscape looks like on your new team.

Below are some questions that I have found extremely powerful when getting up to speed in new research roles!

What does the organization currently know about its customers?

The first thing you want to do on your new team is figure out where the bodies are buried. In other words, what existing knowledge does your team have around it’s customer base? This could mean digging through old research reports, product specs, or reviewing survey data. You may stumble across everything from competitive analysis reports, metrics dashboards, sales personas, and more. Remember that previous research may not have been led by designers. Be sure to connect with your cross-functional teammates from product, customer success, marketing and even sales. Information will likely be scattered across many folders and google drives so come with a shovel and alot of patience.

As you come across findings, reflect on the themes that start to emerge. Were the insights gathered as 1-up requests? Are they more tactical vs. strategic? What decisions did the insights help inform? Are the insights still being used?

During one of my most recent consulting projects, I actually created a lean canvas artifact to help visualize what the company already knew about its core customers and product lines. This allowed me to have better conversations with my stakeholders while I was onboarding.

Who are your partners?

Whenever you join a new team, you’ll want to get a sense of how the team is structured and how decisions are made. If you’re lucky, your new team might have an org chart where you can browse titles and names of your teammates. If not, you might have to do some digging. Start by carving out time during your first week to meet with the people you’ll work with most frequently. If you’re working in an embedded team, that would mean starting with the PM, UX Designer, or engineers. If you’re servicing multiple teams, start with your design peers and move out to PMs and any other stakeholders from there.

Talk to as many people from as many different functions as you can to understand what their role is and how research can help make their lives easier. I’ve always been pleasantly surprised with how many cross-functional partnerships, I’ve been able to have flourish within my first few days and weeks on a new team.

Ask questions like:

  • What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your role?
  • What are some key initiatives you’re currently working on?
  • How have you worked with individuals and teams in the past?
  • Have you ever worked with a UX Researcher before?
  • How would you describe the companies feelings about the state of UX research?
  • Based on your personal experiences, what are your feelings around UX research?
  • What are the hopes and dreams for research moving forward?
  • How do you envision working with UX research?
  • Whats your level of comfort and experience with research?

At the end of your conversations, be sure to ask your new teammates if theres anyone else you should connect with. I’ve been given introductions to many team experts through word of mouth over the years.

What value can research drive?

Once you have a better understanding of the makeup of your team and perceptions of research, you can start to dig into the overall value and impact that research can drive. At this stage, I’ll usually take some time to understand what matters most to my new team members, what keeps them up at night, and how research can help to lighten the load.

Considering asking things like:

  • What are the biggest opportunities for the business? Gaps?
  • What are some of the biggest questions you have about our customers?
  • How would having answers to these questions influence the work you’re trying to do?
  • What skills are individuals and teams looking to have around research?
  • Where can research help to streamline how we connect with customers?

Putting it all together

Building a new research team from the ground up isn’t for the faint of heart. Use all of the information you gathered to help inform a preliminary working model inside of your new team. Remember that cultural shifts and forming new ways of working takes time. With your new found insights, you’ll be well on your way with creating a culture of customer centricity on your team!

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Why do corporate learning programs fail?

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to step outside my typical role of user researcher and act as a participant during a user interview. During the session, I was fortunate enough to speak with Taylor Blake, CPO of LearnIn. If you’re not aware of LearnIn, you should be!  It was recently founded by popular learning platform Degreed co-founders, David Blake and Eric Sharp. Their mission is to transform corporate learning by creating the first skilling-up-as-a-service platform.

During the interview, Taylor asked me to explain why corporate learning programs fail. In the moment, my brain went HAYWIRE! There were too many reasons to list. After the session, I took some time to craft a consolidated list of themes and trends I’ve heard from fellow practitioners and during hundreds of interviews with corporate learners and leaders over the past 10 years. The themes outlined below are focused on parts of the learning experience lifecycle. It includes everything from learning strategy, in-course program experience to post-course experience.

I know that these topics may stir the pot for many. I also do not claim to have all of the solutions for the opportunities outlined. Rather, it is my deep belief that in order to collectively improve the current state of corporate learning experiences, we must become first express an awareness of where we currently are.

Whether you’re in curriculum design, sales, marketing, or product for a corporate learning program; these themes should resonate deeply with you.

LEARNING STRATEGY

Learning is not aligned with the rest of the business: Each company’s DNA and organizational structure is different. Because of this, the learning and development function can have many homes within a company. In a service/centralized models, this means learning being driven by HR, in embedded models, it might be driven by a manager in a business unit, or in hybrid models; it might be a mix of both. When following the centralized approach; learning leaders can often have the feeling of being disconnected from the rest of the business and performance problems taking place.

Learning programs not being outcome driven: This was a theme that frequently appeared in interviews with business leaders over the past few years. By our very nature, learning practitioners have our own unique career and learning journeys that have led us to where we are today. Some have formal training in L&D and others may not. This can lead to difficulties in having strategic conversations about learning outcomes with stakeholders inside of our organizations.

Difficulty in proving ROI/ learning outcomes: Due to Learning Practitioners not identifying ROI/Learning outcomes at the outset of creating learning programs, they’re unable to measure success after the fact. Many learning orgs will use ADDIE model when designing learning programs and the Kirkpatrick model when evaluating the success of learning programs. However, in many conversations with learning practitioners; I simply hear metrics around engagement and attendance being mentioned as success indicators.

Learning programs are often seen as an HR benefit: Learning inside corporate organizations is typically positioned in a few ways: 1) an HR benefit 2) a tool used to drive a culture of learning 3) a tool that enables learners to develop their skills and drive performance. When the company positions only around point 1, it usually leads to failure of adoption by learners themselves. 

Learning being used as the incorrect solution to solve a performance problem: Learning can be used to solve performance problems that include knowledge or skills gaps. All other performance problems such as data, tools, incentives, capacity, and motivation must be solved using other solutions. Check out Gilbert’s Behavioral Engineering Model for more information.

COURSE + PROGRAM DESIGN

Learning programs are not created with an understanding of the core audience or the performance problem occurring: Learning practitioners inside of organizations often hear requests to create training with little to no additional context. It might come phrased as “We need training about XYZ”. This combined with limited time and support can cause practitioners to be reactive and fulfill requests rather than diving into the deeper performance problems occurring.

Learning is not designed for how people learn: This means not including the most up to date practices for andragogy, how adults learn.

IN-COURSE/PROGRAM EXPERIENCE

Lack of support and enablement for learners: This includes everything from mentoring, coaching and support of employees before, during, and after learning programs. As well as providing in the moment personalized feedback/support.

Insufficient search and discovery experience for learning content: This was a major opportunity area during 2 of my previous roles. Learners and organizations need a way to search and discover content from large catalogs of content (thousands of courses) to meet their needs. 

Ability to adapt content to meet learner and organizations needs: Once organizations and learners identify content that meet their needs, they want it personalized in some way. This was a key theme during my time working at data products at a previous company.

Content not relevant to meet learner, company, and market demands: This includes content not fitting into the wider landscape of skills and roles needed in the industry, organization, and role. This impacts learners ability to discover content, decision to engage, and ability to apply what they’ve learned.

Content not kept up to date: Due to the pace of digital transformation, especially with technology content; it is almost impossible to keep hundreds or thousands of courses up to date and relevant.

Finally, there are a number of external factors that can influence a learners ability to continue in a course or program once enrolled including factors such as: time, money, life events, and motivation.

POST COURSE/PROGRAM EXPERIENCE

No support after program completion: Oftentimes there can be no further communication, resources, or support once learners complete a course or program. This can lead learners to feeling on their own and unable to apply what they learned when back on the job.

Do you have any thoughts on why corporate learning programs fail? Post them in the comments below.

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Doing Remote Work Better

It’s officially 2020 and remote work is on the rise now more than ever. Often times when people envision remote work, they often think of an ideal oasis where the employee is traveling the world, working from some amazing locations while also being super productive.

While some remote employees are fortunate enough to travel and get work done, oftentimes when someone makes the transition into being fully remote, they’re usually don’t start off being immediately productive and happy. Making remote work, work for you; takes time, practice and the development of new habits.

A less than ideal look at remote work

In reality, remote work can be quite the opposite of an idyllic picture. This picture was taken on my first day on the job at my current company, Pluralsight. A week before starting I actually fell down the stairs and broke my ankle. 

The injury forced me to work completely remote for the first 2 months in my new role. As you can see, it was not the best scenario, I had a cat on my lap, leg cast, and pillow fortress keeping my laptop afloat.

I often felt overworked, alone, and isolated. And some days I was even in front of my computer for 12 hours+ more because I was juggling my fully remote masters program at the same time.

Your environment matters

The point i’m trying to make is that your environment matters. It matters when you’re physically in the office but it matters even more so, when you’re doing remote work. Your environment can mean the difference between having a fully productive day or laying in bed all day feeling bad for your broken ankle and cuddling with your cat.

Thats why I put together some tips and tricks to help you feel empowered to set healthy remote habits moving forward.

Tips for Doing Remote Work Better

Set up your workspace

One of the first things I recommend to employees working inside of remote organizations is to carve out a space for their work. This might mean turning a spare room into an office.

With a dedicated space you can add materials like a desk or table and external monitors. I know I found getting an external monitor incredibly helpful after I started to get aching neck pain from constantly looking down at my laptop while working remote.

One great benefit of having a dedicated work space is that it allows you to close the door and physically walk away after a long day of work. This enables you to create physical boundaries between your work and home life and prevents your work from spilling over into other locations of your house.

If you’re unable to work from home, you can also investigate co-working spaces in your area. When I had some electric work done at my house, I took the opportunity to try out different spaces in the Providence area.

Set daily and weekly intentions

Often times with remote work, it’s easier to get distracted than it might be in a physical office location. That’s why I started the habit of setting daily and weekly intentions while working remotely.

This means on Fridays or Mondays, I’ll often take 5-10 minutes to look at the calendar and ask myself questions such as:

  • What did I accomplish this week?
  • What will I need to accomplish for the week ahead?
  • What would I do differently next time?

At the beginning of each work day, I’ll do a similar exercise where I’ll heat up a cup of tea and sit down to set daily intentions for the workday ahead. I have it blocked on my calendar to ensure it doesn’t get booked over with meetings.

Setting these rituals provided me with the opportunity to reflect upon my daily and weekly accomplishments and refocus on the bigger picture of my work.

Schedule self care

Often times, remote workers can be so heads down getting work done that they forget to take time for themselves throughout the day. That’s why self care can be so important and it can come in many forms.

For example, you can mess around with your schedule and adjust it to what works for you. This can mean going outside for a walk throughout the day, heading out to a yoga or gym class, making coffee or tea, or even having a virtual coffee session with colleagues to chat about life outside of work.

These can all be great activities to help you boost your energy levels throughout the work day.

Do you have any tips for others on how to be productive while working remotely? Be sure to post them in the comments below.

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Learning Leaps Part 5: Incorporating learning strategy while building products

Welcome to another edition of Learning Leaps, where I’ll be sharing lessons learned from my first 16 months as a product manager at Pluralsight. 

Since transitioning into Product Management, one of the biggest lessons I’ve had to learn was about the difference between learning strategy and product strategy. Thats why for this final edition of Learning Leaps, I’ll be taking a deeper look into the need for learning strategy to be incorporated in technology products.

Whats in a strategy anyway?

Many organizations, especially those in the technology space, focus on the importance of product strategies to help drive their decision making. For those unfamiliar, a product strategy can be defined as a set of decisions and priorities that a company focuses on in order to achieve a shared vision that wins with the users of its products (thanks to my good friend Jess Kadar for this concise definition!).

During my time in the industry, I’ve sat through my fair share of product strategy sessions. These meetings would usually include some sort of discussion about the company mission and vision, OKRs, and even product roadmaps. These sessions were great exercises for the company to illustrate why they were focusing on specific areas of investment. The outcome of the meetings would often empower product teams to drive the specific areas that they oversaw. Despite this, the more I sat in on these discussions, the more I noticed learning strategy not being considered during the creation of technology products (even when creating learning products).

For those unfamiliar, learning strategy can be defined as a set of decisions, techniques, procedures, and processes that learning creators can use to promote desired learning outcomes. As a learning strategist, I’m often thinking about the learning outcomes I’m looking to drive and the best way to deliver them. In other words, I consider things like learner goals and objectives so that I can determine the types of content or activities to help influence a learners knowledge, skills, and behavior.

Learning and product strategy are different yet intertwined

Over the years, the general theme I noticed in the industry is that product strategy and design are often driven by market and customer needs while learning strategy is driven by theory and research (Note: this is an oversimplification and I’m happy to dive deeper with anyone who may be discussing more of the intricacies).

Theres a few problems with this approach. First, as Clark Quinn mentions in Where is the Learning Science in Technology Products?, there is a documented disconnect between what learners think is good for their learning and what actually works. This is the same way that customers will ask for things that they think they want but it still may not get to the root cause of what they actually need.

Second, this approach leads me to think about the ancient qualitative vs. quantitative research debate that happens in product and UX communities. It should not be one or the other but rather a blending of the two or a mixed-methods approach.

What i’m recommending is that learning strategy should be considered an equally as important apart of a business as product strategy. If you look into the market, the best learning and educational products have a solid foundation of learning strategy. To put it succinctly, if you’re building a product to help people learn, you have to know how they learn.

Balancing customer needs with learning science

So whats the best way to balance your customer needs with learning strategy? Heres a few tips to get you started:

Connect with people who have learning expertise

If you don’t have a background in learning, thats okay! You can connect with folks who already have some inside of your organization. These individuals might be sitting on your learning and development, UX, or even product teams. They’ll be familiar with learning theories and models that could help to influence the success of your learning product. Use them!

Incorporate learning research while making product decisions

As a PM with a background in learning, I often lead and conduct my own learning research alongside the product discovery process. This often means leading mixed method research which include surveys, conducting user interviews, or prototype testing. At the same time if I have a specific research question in mind, I’ll look at existing learning research to see what it was says. I’ll incorporate this research into any synthesis and consider it when making any product decisions with my team.

Build out a center of learning research

Depending upon the size of your learning product and organization, it might be worth investing in a center of learning research. Many of the larger learning companies in the industry such as Pearson, edX, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have done just this. These centers often focus on staying up to date with the latest learning research and techniques in addition to conducting efficacy studies among customers to prove that learning outcomes are indeed happening.

Do you have any tips on how technology platforms can incorporate more learning science into the experiences they’re building? Post them in the comments below!

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Learning Leaps Part 4: Using empathy to uncover the needs of your learners

Welcome to another edition of Learning Leaps, where I’ll be sharing lessons learned from my first 16 months as a product manager at Pluralsight.

While transitioning into a Product Manager role, one of the biggest responsibilities of my role became leading my team through a human-centered design process in order to deliver meaningful learning experiences to our customers.

That’s why for this weeks Learning Leaps, I’ll be taking a deeper look into how learning practitioners can use empathy to help uncover the needs of their learners.

A human-centered approach to learning

After spending the past 9 years designing and delivering learning experiences, I was no stranger to the need to connect to learners in order identify their needs. Historically, I spent a lot of time using the ADDIE framework (analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate) to create the learning that I was creating. This all came to a head during 2016, when I transitioned to the user experience team at the company I was working for.

My time on the team exposed me to using a human-centered approach to solving problems. For those unfamiliar, human-centered design is an approach that focuses on building a deep empathy with the people you’re creating for, using brainstorming and ideation to identify possible solutions, sharing your ideas with your audience to get their feedback, and then eventually pushing your solution out into the world.

By incorporating this approach into the way that I was already working, I was able to iterate quicker and truly connect to the needs of the learners I was serving. Since moving into Product Management at Pluralsight, I’ve seen the true power of human-centered design in action. Part of my daily role is leading a team through the human-centered design process in order to deliver impactful experiences to our learners. I’ve become such a huge advocate for this framework that I wanted to share some tips and tricks for how other practitioners can incorporate this framework into how they design and deliver learning experiences.

Tips to use empathy while creating learning experiences

Identify your purpose for connecting with learners

As I shared during the last Learning Leaps article, learning interventions are proposed solutions to help solve performance problems inside of an organization. Thats why before you jump into meeting directly with learners, you’ll want to first take a step back to determine the outcomes you’re hoping for.

Some questions you may want to ask yourself are:

  • What is the current performance taking place? What is the ideal performance the organization is looking for?
  • What are my learners backgrounds?
  • What am I looking to find out by connecting with learners?
  • What decisions am I looking to make with the information that I find out?
  • How many learners do I need to connect with in order to get an accurate picture of what is happening?

Determine the best way to connect with your learners

Once you have your intentions nailed down, you can start to identify questions that you’d like to ask learners and determine the best way to connect with them.

Where I am in the discovery process, will usually impact the type of method I might use to gain empathy with my learners. For example, if i’m trying to identify the problems I’m looking to solve for customers, I’ll usually use some type of qualitative research method like sending out surveys, conducting interviews, or focus groups. If i’m trying to gain a better idea of how a learning solution is already performing, I might use some type of quantitative measure.

Below are some things I keep in mind when choosing the best way to connect with learners:

SurveysSurveys can sometimes get a bad rap because of overuse and poorly written questions.

They’re a great tool if you’re looking to collect data from a large group of people or identify trends over time.

I’ll often send out a survey to identify general themes from my audience and help narrow down participants that I may want to interview in person.
InterviewsInterviews are a great way to meet directly with learners and ask them about their needs, motivations, and preferences.

It can take some time to recruit, conduct, and synthesize information from interviews so be sure you schedule enough time in your process.
Focus GroupsFocus groups can be a helpful tool if you’re looking to facilitate a group discussion around the area you’re exploring.

As learning practitioners, we often conduct focus groups without even realizing it. It could be in the form of a group discussion or debrief at the end of a course or training session.

In any case, they’re a helpful way of getting feedback from multiple learners at the same time. Just watch out for any bias that this may cause!

Regardless of the method you choose, connecting with your learners doesn’t have to be a labor-intensive process. Connecting with only 5-7 learners can help you to notice themes and trends that may be occurring.

Practice mindful communication

Once you’re able to connect directly with learners, remember to practice mindful communication. This might include being mindful of asking non-leading questions, asking open ended questions, embracing silence, and keeping your reactions neutral when learners are responding to you.

Synthesis always takes longer than you think it will

Finally, once you’re done speaking with your learners, you’ll want to synthesize your findings into a way that is manageable for you and your team. I find that incorporating stakeholders in your synthesis process is a great way to get buy-in from them when you’re designing solutions later on.

One general rule of thumb when conducting synthesis is that it always takes longer than you think it’s going to. I’ll usually try to schedule a block of time on my teams calendar for the session.

Some questions you may want during the session might include:

  • What were our expectations going into this?
  • Are we surprised by what learners told us?
  • How does what we learned impact decisions related to our experience?
  • Whats the best way to communicate what we learned to others?

Do you have any tips for others on how to use empathy to meet the needs of their learners? Post them in the comments below!

Be sure to check out the final edition of Learning Leaps where we’ll be diving the need for learning science in technology products offered today.

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Learning Leaps Part 3: Using data to make informed training decisions

Welcome to another edition of Learning Leaps, where I’ll be sharing lessons learned from my first 16 months as a product manager at Pluralsight. Since transitioning into Product Management, one of the biggest lessons I’ve had to learn was about how to use data to make decisions related to learning products. Thats why for this week’s Learning Leaps, I’ll be taking a deeper look into how data can be used to make informed training decisions.

Data in learning (a curious past)

After spending the past 9 years designing and delivering learning experiences, I was no stranger to using data to improve learning. When I first started out in the industry, this data came in the form of “smile sheets” or feedback forms that was presented to learners at the end of a training program. This form would asks learners about their perception and reaction to the learning program that they just attended.

In general, these sheets are a great way to let learners know that we respected their opinions and wanted to know about their overall satisfaction with the learning experience. As my time in the industry went on, I found myself getting more and more frustrated with these forms because satisfaction with learning does not equal learning.

Over time, some of the companies I worked for moved beyond the simple collection of satisfaction scores and measured things like assessment scores or behavioral change. But overall, this was few and far between.

At the same time, there was an increased growth in technology platforms entering the learning industry. These platforms housed digital learning experiences and began to provide practitioners with more insights into how audiences were interacting with their experiences. It was an exciting time to be in learning!

My relationship with learning data underwent another change when I moved into learning experience design, and more recently my PM role at Pluralsight. So I decided to put together a few tips that I’ve learned over the past year that I hope will inspire others while they’re thinking about how data can help inform their learning interventions.

Tips on how to use data to make informed training decisions

Learning interventions are experiments

First and foremost, at their very core, learning interventions are experiments.

Whether it’s instructor led training, elearning, or another solution; a learning intervention is a proposed solution to help solve a performance problem inside of an organization. Ideally, it’s been proposed because there is some type of current behavior taking place that is not aligning with the desired behavior of the organization. After some type of analysis, a practitioner has determined that learning might be a potential solution to help encourage the outcomes the organization is looking for.

As learning practitioners, this means we cannot guarantee that learning will indeed be successful to deliver those outcomes. However, if we take an experimental approach to designing learning experiences we may be able to increase the likelihood that it might succeed. Taking an experimental approach means taking the time to identify the outcomes you’re hoping to implement, clarifying our hypothesis and assumptions, and determining how you’ll measure success. If you don’t determine these things from the outset, you will never be able to identify whether you’ve been successful or not.

Measure enough data to make a decision

Once you have a better idea of the outcomes you’re looking to drive, you’ll then be able to use data to help guide any decisions related to your interventions.

You can use data while you’re in discovery or identifying the problems you’re looking to solve for customers. Typically this type of data might include qualitative research like conducting surveys or observations.

You can also collect evaluative data after your solution has been released into the wild to help you assess how well it’s solving the audiences problem. Based on your overall goals, these could mean measuring things like drop-off rate, learning impact, retention rates, and more.

Whatever your reasons for measurement are, it’s important to remember that the goal of measurement in learning is to gather enough data to make a decision. It is not to collect ALL of the data you possibly can to be absolutely certain of something. If you’ve gathered enough data to make a decision and you keep collecting data, then you’ve gone too far.

Storytelling with data is a skill

Once you’ve collected some type of data is where the fun part comes in. Storytelling! Take the time to think about the story you’re looking to tell to your stakeholders. Ask yourself things like:

  • What were my expectations going into this?
  • Am I surprised by what the data is telling me?
  • What do my stakeholders care about?
  • What decisions am I trying to influence?
  • Whats the best way to convey this to others?

Have this information feed into the way that you craft your story and any decisions you make based off of the data you’ve collected. Remember that anyone can collect metrics and simply report them but it takes skills to turn that data into a story that truly resonates with others.

Do you have any tips for others on how to use data to make informed training decisions? Post them in the comments below!

Be sure to check out next week’s Learning Leaps where I’ll be diving into how to use empathy to uncover the needs of your learners.

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Learning Leaps Part 2: What collaboration looks like when creating learning products

Welcome to another edition of Learning Leaps, where I’ll be sharing lessons learned from my first 16 months as a product manager at Pluralsight. While transitioning into a Product Manager role, one of the biggest lessons I’ve had to learn was about facilitating effective collaboration while creating learning experiences. That’s why for this weeks Learning Leaps, I’ll be taking a deeper look to identify what collaboration looks like and provide some tips to help get you started!

Moving from IC to Product Manager

After spending the past 8 years designing and delivering learning experiences, I was no stranger to collaboration on the job. In all of my previous roles, I was always an individual contributor on a cross-functional team. I had enjoyed this type of role and had done well with my approach to collaboration.

Soon after transitioning into my PM role at Pluralsight, I had a huge wakeup call that my existing approach to collaboration needed to change and FAST!

Product Management is collaboration. As a Product Manager, you are driving the product you’re responsible for. This means that you’re frequently coordinating and collaborating with all of the stakeholders who touch your product. So rather than being an individual contributor on a cross-functional team, you’re the one driving the initiatives and overall decision making related to your product line.

This type of collaboration is a skill that is learned and perfected by many Product Managers over time. So I decided to put together a few tricks that I’ve learned over the past year that I hope will help others while they’re collaborating on learning experiences.

Tips for effective collaboration when creating learning experiences and products

Identify and build trust with your stakeholders

A week before joining the team at Pluralsight, I fell down the stairs and broke my ankle. This put a huge damper on the onboarding plan I had created for myself. Since I am the absolute epitome of an introvert, I knew I was going to have to make an extra effort to meet everyone who I would be working with.

Over my first month on the job, I ended up having 30+ virtual 1:1 sessions. I did them in order of priority; starting with my immediate team including developers and UX designer. I put together questions that would help me learn more about their experiences inside of the company and in their roles. By taking the time to learn more about my team and stakeholders, I was able to gain empathy about the challenges they had to overcome on a daily basis. This gave me insight on things I could do to help make their lives easier in our work together.

After the official meet and greets were done, I made sure to put reoccurring meetings with stakeholders on the calendar so I’d never have to think twice about who to talk to and when. To this day, I’m still discovering people that would be great to connect with or touch the products and initiatives i’m working on.

Define the outcomes you’re looking to drive

Once you have a better idea of who you’ll be working with, you’ll want to identify the outcomes you’re looking to drive in your work together. Whenever I kick off a new project or initiative, I’ll usually schedule a meeting for everyone to come together and chat about the outcomes we’re hoping for and why. This alignment meeting makes sure that everyone starts out with the same context and helps us to be more effective in our work together.

Define roles for everyone on the team

When working on a cross functional team, it’s important to remember that everyone brings unique strengths and perspectives to the table. It is through your work together you’re able to deliver better outcomes than one person would be able to individually. Collaboration works best if everyone has an idea of what is being expected of them. Whoever the project leader is (in my case since I was the PM, it was me), will want to make sure everyones roles are clear from the very beginning so there is no confusion as you deliver on your mission.

Communicate early and often

Once you have your stakeholder group figured out, you’ll want to figure out the best way to work together. Since Pluralsight has multiple offices around the world, much of our work is done asynchronously. Depending upon the size of the project I’m working on, i’ll often spin up a slack channel for everyone to communicate and share insights with one another.

I’ll try to limit scheduled meetings for major project milestones like brainstorming, sharing user research synthesis, or discussing priorities for a coming year or quarter. As a Product Manager, I’m usually deep in the weeds of the problems I’m involved with, while others on the team may jump in and out as their schedule allows. Because of this, i’ll also try to over-communicate as much as possible to ensure others can follow along with things as they’re unfolding.

Show your work!

Prior to joining Pluralsight, I had always worked inside companies that were smaller in size. For context, when I joined The Predictive Index, the company had around 30 employees and when I left it had reached 100. Pluralsight on the other hand, is around 1400+ people currently. It goes without being said, collaborating inside of a 100 person company is drastically different than collaborating inside of a 1400 person company.

At a smaller size company, collaboration meant coordinating with maybe 8-10 stakeholders. During a recent project I was working on I had over 30+ stakeholders I had to coordinate with.

While chatting with my teammate Patrick, he noted how important showing your work was inside of larger organizations. He compared it to showing your work during math class. I vividly remember my math teacher trying to drill into my head the need to document my work as I progressed through problems (as a child I hated this activity).

I use a similar approach today for my projects inside of Pluralsight. I use project documents to highlight the outcomes were looking to drive, hypothesis we have, links to designs, experiment ideas, and decisions about future product strategy. This approach allows others to follow along with decisions and how they were made. As much as I despise forcing myself to slow down and document my work in this way, I’ve found that it’s made me more strategic about what i’m communicating and why. It’s also made it easier for me to get buy-in, influence, and manage others.

Seek context with intention

One of the core values that Pluralsight encourages amongst all of it’s employees is to seek context with intention. I’m a huge believer that as children we were driven by our curiosity and as we entered adulthood it was beaten out of us little by little. Thats why this value is my absolute favorite and I utilize it all of the time when working with others.

When working teams, it is not uncommon for everyone to have different viewpoints because of the vantage point they have in their role. I’ll frequently question why someone has a particular opinion, ask why they did something a certain way, what their thought process were and why. By asking questions, i’m able to learn more about the constraints and possibilities of a project.

Do you have any tips for others on how to collaborate more effectively? Post them in the comments below!

The next Learning Leaps will resume in 2020, where we’ll be dialing in on how to use data to make informed training decisions.

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Learning Leaps Part 1: Tips for creating a culture of learning in the workplace

16 months ago, I made the decision to make a huge leap in my learning career and move into Product Management. With the transition, I’ve discovered that one of my favorite parts of the role is speaking directly with technology and learning leaders, in addition to learners themselves.

I’ve conducted hundreds of research interviews over the past year and one of the major themes I’ve heard from tech and learning leaders is about their desire to create a culture of learning inside of their organization. This should come as no surprise to many practitioners in the field as the phrase culture of learning has become synonymous with increased employee retention and engagement inside of today’s organizations.

That’s why for this weeks Learning Leaps, I’ll be taking a deeper look to identify what exactly a culture of learning is and provide some tips you can take to get started creating one inside of your organization.

A Culture of Learning: Defined

It’s no secret that technology has had a major impact on today’s workforce. It has changed everything from the way we work, how we work, and where we work; inevitability impacting how we learn and perform on the job. Gone are the days that learning takes place in the form of a single training event. The paradigm has shifted to supporting employees during the flow of work. Thats why it’s more important than ever that organizations support a culture of learning for their employees. A culture of learning is one where employees continuously seek, share, and apply new knowledge and skills to improve their individual and organizational performance. Ideally, an organization should have values, practices, and processes that supports this for their employees.

A culture of learning can look different depending upon the type of organization. Despite this, I’ve noticed some reoccurring trends that have come up in my conversations with customers during my time at Pluralsight. Below are a few tips to help get you started creating a culture of learning inside of your organization.

Tips for Creating a Culture of Learning

Build a foundation of trust

The foundation to any great culture depends on the basis of trust. If you don’t have trust, all other efforts are fruitless. That’s why if you’re building a culture of learning inside of your organization, the first step is to ensure that it’s safe for all your employees (regardless of rank) to make mistakes.

One of the main company values at The Predictive Index, is errors of action are better than errors of inaction. During my 3.5 years there, hearing this phrase empowered employees like myself to dive steadfast into challenges no matter how large the size. If mistakes we’re made along the way, we celebrated them and shared lessons learned with others. I frequently witnessed executive level employees get in front of the entire company and share stories about how projects went awry and how they might approach things differently moving forward. This cultural value of trust and vulnerability is one key element to building a culture of learning and should be embodied at every level of the organization.

Empower learners to take control of their professional development journey.

I’m a big advocate of the belief that career ladders are becoming somewhat obsolete. Employees are no longer staying in traditional career paths for 20-30 years. Rather, it’s more common to see employees do career pivots. Take me for example, after 8 years as a learning experience designer, I decided to take a leap and move into a Product Management role. I was able to bring skills from my previous role and apply them to my new position. I also had many skills I’ve had to pick up along the way.

During my time at Pluralsight, I’ve spoken to many learners looking to expand their technology skills in hope of transitioning into a new career. Thats why it’s important for organizations to empower their employees to take control of their personal learning paths. The employees themselves are the ones who know what skills they’re looking to expand and grow. As learning practitioners and managers, we can learn these by simply speaking directly with learners, either through 1:1 conversations or surveys.

Arm managers with coaching skills

Managers are often on the front lines helping their employees learn the skills they need in order to perform on the job. In organizations where there is a culture of learning, managers have the opportunity to adopt a coaching approach to managing. A coaching approach means enabling employees to identify problems, brainstorming solutions, and empowering them to success. This means that as learning practitioners, we need to equip managers with techniques on how to provide feedback. This could be in the form of discussion guides or reflective questions to help guide their conversations with employees.

Encourage expertise and mentorship

One of the biggest challenges organizations experience related to learning experiences is creating actual content and materials. One of the biggest untapped resources are subject matter experts (SMEs). SMEs are often passionate about a skill or topic area and enjoy sharing their experiences with others. Pull these individuals into your initiatives and empower them to share their knowledge with others. At Pluralsight, we actually rely on our network of Authors to create content for learners looking to expand their technology skills. I’ve also talked to many organizations that have even created mentorship programs where experts are paired with beginners as they begin developing skills in a particular subject area.

Set aside time to learn

One of the biggest struggles I’ve heard from many of Pluralsight’s customers is their inability to find time to learn. With an increase on their demand for time and growing responsibilities on the job, who can really blame them? If you’re a part of an organization, developing a learning culture, you must be an advocate for learning time. Your employees should feel empowered and encouraged to take time out of their day to brush up on their skills. My team at Pluralsight blocks off 4 hours of learning time at the same time each week to do just this. This ensures that everyone knows they have the time they need to continue skilling up in areas that matter to them.

Make learning accessible

Modern workplace learning means recognizing that learning is a continuous process that happens in the flow of work. As learning practitioners, this means that we need to make learning content as accessible as possible to meet learners where they are, rather than making them to come to us. This might mean adopting an on-demand learning platform that allows employees to engage in learning experiences when they want to.

If you have a learning technology platform, it might mean choosing a solution that optimizes the learner experience like mobile access and single sign on. This could also mean supporting informal learning methods like learners sharing articles or chatting about new topics or skills. Overall, the learning experience should be intuitive, not arduous.

Support social learning

By our very nature, humans are social creatures. We naturally love to chat about our ideas, share resources, and hear other perspectives. As learning practitioners, we should nurture these qualities inside of our organizations. One of my favorite examples of social learning is being carried out by my favorite supermarket chain, Wegmans. During Pluralsight Live 2019, Scott Root shared insights about how Wegmans hosts monthly challenges, hackathons, and coffee hours with employees who engage in their Developer Fitness program. These social learning experiences led to increased employee satisfaction and skills acquisition across those involved in the program.

Encourage stretch opportunities for employees

One great practice that organizations with a culture of learning often do is provide stretch opportunities for employees. This means providing employees with a safe environment to fail or test out their new skills. In many of the organizations I’ve worked at, I’ve often been placed on a tiger team where I’m able to attack a large business problem for the organization. These projects have always provided me the opportunity to stretch myself and become more confident in my new found skills. This approach could also be formalized in the form of supporting career transitions and allowing internal mobility for employees inside of your organization.

Do you have any tips for others on how to encourage a culture of learning inside of their organization? Post them in the comments below!

Be sure to check out next week’s Learning Leaps where we’ll be diving into what collaboration looks like when creating learning products.