The Importance of Embracing Technologies and Practices in Instructional Design with Terry Godfrey

this is the ideas podcast the show where l d professionals discuss ideas over a nice cup of tea warning other beverages may be consumed in this episode i chat with terry godfrey about his career in learning and development and how he continues to try new things and adapt to changes in our industry today hello hello and welcome to another episode of the ideas podcast thank you very much for joining us with us today is a somewhat familiar face to those of us who attended the idtx conference uh earlier this year it feels like many many years ago at this point to be honest but it was earlier this year i did check with this is terry um terry shared with us uh some fantastic uh 360 degree storyline work he was doing um earlier in the year so we will pick up where we left off there shortly um first things first though terry thank you so much for making the time to come and talk to us well thank you for the invite and i look forward to just sharing some of my experiences so awesome really appreciate it but um as you know this is kind of a more of a social podcast kind of camouflaged under the guise of l d um i always like to describe the ideas podcast as uh it's the conversations you would have down the pub after work um if all you ever spoke about was learning and development which is all i ever talk about so i guess it is the conversations i have down the pub but anyway on that note uh what are you drinking as we uh as we chat today well actually i'm drinking water very soon yeah i i gave up uh soda pop uh in any of the energy drinks which i never did and then actually gave up all that i got enough for the beer drinking way back in college so i just kind of outgrew that in my younger days so uh so just stick to stick to water so hey why not that's the it's the sensible move certainly with the temperatures we've all been getting recently right that's this is this is one of many podcasts being recorded today uh so for those of you who tuned into the last episode you'll know i'm enjoying a lovely beer sent by member of our patreon community thank you once again for that it's still very lovely uh i'm still working my way through it but uh it's good one one beer and we'll get three podcasts out of it it's great it's it's it's worth every bit of what you spent to send it to the show so thank you um so without further ado let's dive into what we're here to talk about then um so i think often we get caught up in l d at that kind of um strategic level implementation we want to talk about strategy and grand plans and how we're going to i don't know conquer the universe next year or whatever it might be um but at a much more day-to-day level um a lot of us it's about creating great content it's about creating something that works for our people that makes a real difference and that's kind of what you were sharing with us at idtx um so kind of picking up where we left off what are you doing at the moment around that uh right now we we we haven't stalled out any on the the 360 images we're kind of waiting more so for the video to come out but we are uh experimenting uh with some of the compressor stations that we have local we you know i work for a natural gas company that's based out of calgary canada um i actually i'm in the states on the east coast in the state of west virginia there's two of us here the rest of the group that i work with including my managers in calgary which is pretty good so um it's a good setting but um one of the things that we deal with here is is how things are so spread out and remote even out west and so there's times to where uh individuals have to to go to a particular location and it may have been you know a while since they've been there so we're looking at utilizing the 360 imaging to take really decent tour type photography of that facility and and make it available for them to actually almost feel as if they they've walked into that facility currently working on a course right now um with one of my co-workers out of canada and it's on what's called uh orifice meter plates it's it's the meter plates that's used to measure gas and so as a part of that course we we actually have where they actually go into the facility through the 360 images and and move actually into the the building that has the uh the information uh and the plates uh and we've done some things with some video and and then they exit that facility and that's just a small portion so uh we're blending it ends with some of the existing material but i i'm with you tom um you know if we're not changing behavior if we're not moving them in a direction to be able to do things perform them better uh then we really don't need to be creating anything so uh and publishing it so no absolutely and i feel like sometimes especially with a lot of the amazing technology that we've got at our disposal these days um that point can get lost um it's very easy to get excited about the latest you know insert whatever you want to talk about here kind of thing um you know whether it's you know we've got a real big focus kind of skills based technology now which has the potential to be great but also the risk of technology being the solution when in actual fact we still need a human element um i think you know authoring tools has plenty of that stuff whereas a lot of whiz-bang and not enough useful content out there um if you will um so i mean what's your process i guess of making that differentiation when a request comes to you or someone's asking for something in the business how do you decide whether or not it's something you know you can and should be supporting with content we have a formal process uh it's called a request for service um unfortunately and i say that wholeheartedly with our particular technical group just recently moved into hr which i'm not too fond of in terms of the type of career that i've i've been in for the last 30 years but we we get a formal request normally from some stakeholder it could be a stakeholder a client it could be an sme a lot of those could be end up in the being engineers could be a department head or a director so and it's pretty flat out straightforward as to requesting uh the most recent one i i received uh said we need an lms course so you know the the the solutioneering had already taken place before it even got to me so my responsibility after probably within the last year or so has really been um approaching that from a from a different angle instead of beforehand it was okay send me the material and and we'll get it out there we'll get it published get it pushed whatever but more recently within the last i'd say six months to a year um i initially i have a discovery call with with that individual and and within that call i do not mention anything about a course uh job aids videos i don't mention anything i just want to find out exactly where this request is coming from is there a need is there a gap that sort of thing um for i do know a lot of the smes i've worked with them over the last three or four years so that relationship's been built they know where i'm coming from my background for as a technical trainer in another gas company for eight years they know where i stand uh you know i have some experience uh and some knowledge uh you know about this industry so they're very comfortable with that so once i get that particular information like the most recent one um i kind of pondered over it and and really decided that a course was not needed so then it was a matter of going back to those subject matter experts and trying to convince them but once i got back to them i was able to dig out some more information and in all reality a course is needed uh but but it but approaching it from a different way so um i remember uh i think in in kim tooney uh the conversation you have with her one of the things that you had mentioned that you all had started doing was was uh approaching the users of the people in the field without even talking with the smes and i began doing that myself which i before i even speak with the sme i talked with the users i work in a field office so it's not difficult for me to go round up some individuals that's actually going to be getting their hands on this and find out some more details and then i go into the conversation or the kickoff meeting or the discovery meeting at least having a good understanding of what they really need based upon those individuals out there so from that point it's just it's a matter of staying in communication we we set um deadlines uh we we set normally uh like a due date and then what we'll end up doing is what we call a published date and a push date we just recently as a corporation changed lms systems uh and went to workday and yeah it it i think it's going to be a better system but it's really pushing back it's pushing on to the the workforce the employees a lot of responsibilities and we have a very older generation of technicians here in the states that they just want to come and move gas they weren't hired to learn so you know to take 140 you know e-learning modules every you know year so uh you know we do fight that or battle that and i've been there so i can sympathize and empathize with them uh which is a benefit so definitely and funnily enough i think actually to in my experience anyway um my drive to speak to the end users first actually started in exactly that kind of environment where i knew i was going to be asked to create content or create some kind of interventional support for people who had 30 40 years experience um you know laying laying pipes and cables and digging holes in streets and doing stuff safely and there i was going to be in my kind of early 20s trotting out going now listen to me because i'm going to train you um that's probably not going to go down too well as you say there's uh you know for better or worse it's human to say well hang on a minute i've got all this experience just leave me alone to do my job right and i found engaging with that audience and almost acknowledging that look i want to speak to you because you know we may have smes and stakeholders but you're the boots on the ground you do this day in day out no one knows the job better than you and i think the thing that always sort of never fails to surprise me even now in every organization that i work with the stakeholder and messimi perception of what's happening in the business is wildly different to what's actually happening in the business um so i mean how have you found that and how have you kind of um bridged that gap because i know it can certainly be quite challenging i've found one of the things that that that i how i approach the smes that i work with and we work with a lot of smes in a lot of different areas um uh you know we we still support the the um the corporate side through safety i mean it's everything now i'm more of a blue collar type uh e-learning designer actually it's something i've even thought about creating some kind of a podcast called blue-collar podcasting or something i don't know but one of the things that i do is approach my smes under with the understanding that they are presenting to me in the context of what they know not from necessarily the experience uh and if they're not really presenting to me the content they're re they're presenting to me their context of what is actually needed uh good or bad sometimes it it's not so good uh you you may have uh the the lowest um sme on the totem pole they got pegged for you know to to create this course uh with you know less than a year of experience in this industry and they're coming to me uh you know with all of this content and again i'm a very very relational type individual uh when it comes to working with especially field technicians i get in a little trouble with uh kind of the white collar type people because i speak my piece but um but i think that comes from an experienced side but um but yeah they the smes come from uh i work with them in in the sense that that i i try to find out where they're coming from from their context of what is needed uh and that's so you know you're sharing that one day kind of changed that around uh to where now i'm comparing the two with with the you with the in the end uh user i think is what you refer to them as um you know we we used to say the learner and i'm like no they're not learners they're technicians that are here to move gas they're not learners they were not hired to be learners and you know now that we're in hr um you know i i have to kind of mince my words a little bit because of you know the hr side of this industry is more from an educational standpoint the old school you learn things you take a test and then you move on what we need to do and what i'm trying to do is is create experiences to where they they are able to understand the process but it carries through from from one job to the next my goal is is to create e-learning that they want to take not just take to get off their learning plans and we've had an awful lot of that unfortunately in the industry that i work in so no and i think it's i think it's true in most organizations um that i would say 90 of training is created because well we've got to have training on this because well we just do and therefore it gets created with that mindset behind it but i also think there's sometimes i think a bit of immersion a misinterpretation sorry um of what someone enjoying training is going to be because i think often we fall into the trap of thinking well if someone's enjoying training they're going to be non-stop laughing or they're going to do it in their spare time it's going to be the thing they want to do before anything else so when you talk about people kind of enjoying learning what what exactly are you looking to create for them um you know we use all the bells and whistles we're we're really big on articulate that whole suite you know the storyline but what i try to do yes i use the drag and drop and all of that but once again trying to create an experience and and this course that i i referenced to early on about the orifice meters uh that's one of the things that we're actually doing in this particular course to where uh when the technicians log into this course it's more of a of a journey of going into it it's taken into consideration their existing level of knowledge concerning this topic their experience level uh yes there are some things that that we i hate to say force feed them to take not necessarily take but read so the enjoyment is is when they leave there uh you know the the highest accolade that i could receive is like i actually learned something and so that to me is the the joy behind it or the enjoyment of you know i'm not i'm not big on gamification i know that's a big old huge word out there about including you know i don't i don't include the bingo games and the word searches and all of that in any of my e-learning courses um i just i like sometimes we just let it speak for for what it's worth um long story short one of the first things that i had to build about three years ago is working with a gas storage director who was involved with writing the rewriting procedures for osha and so he wanted 26 courses created on this new procedure and so he had all of these powerpoint presentations that he was that he was feeding me and the smallest one i i kid you not was about 65 slides and each one had was full of text no graphics it had stuff pasted and so one of the things that it was a really big paradigm shift for me as a as a designer and a developer because i'm like this could be a royal nightmare for for the user for the person but it's going to kill me you know putting it together so uh i i went to the director and he was very cooperative and i said hey you know out of this what do they actually need to know in order to perform this and that narrowed it down to to less than half of what he supplied but he still wanted that additional information in there so we created opportunities for them if they wanted to go take a look at it they could if they didn't that's fine you know they're adults they're not children this is not the school system to where you will learn this but um that was a very successful endeavor 26 of them in one year uh and uh you know it saved the company somewhere around three hundred thousand dollars uh internally which i i saw none i think i got a 500 spotlight award or something so uh but uh you know the recognition was to know that that we succeeded so i don't know if that answered your question or not but i i think it's it's not so much enjoyment i guess or having fun it's a matter of adding value um to where they stand existing with their knowledge level and skill level yeah and that's kind of what i was touching because i think it's with enjoyment i think we tend to jump to that extreme end of it's got to be funny and a game is a prime example we love just the word gamification it sounds daft i'm not convinced it's a real word uh i'm fairly certain it was created by a marketing department somewhere but um more importantly to me when i think about i want my or it's saying with engagement i suppose when i talk about things what i want is it to be in context and relevant absolutely because i don't think at a human level when you learn something it is an enjoyable experience we all get that right whether it's and you broke something at home or something broke at home and you've found a youtube video and you figure out how to fix it and you succeed it's a great feeling and i think actually that feeling of enjoyment if you can get that in your learners as you say that accolade of i learned something sounds simple but actually how much workplace learning have you attended where you've left gone yep nothing at all what a waste of my time um and i think that's why when we see that hesitance around do i have to do this do i really need to learn anything more i think that's where that comes from is the fact that they've gone to so much training and taken nothing from it they just perceive it as dead time well i you know to be honest with you and tell you a little bit about our our company uh when a new technician comes on board and and again the favorite words as i kid you not uh a hundred and twenty e-learning courses are automatically assigned to them um and that in and of itself just completely destroys them uh from from a learning standpoint because and i've shared this with with my manager uh and the the people that i work with and we have a really good staff and a really good manager um i think they're really good because they're all in calgary but and i'm in west virginia but but i shared i said you know when they see that their their number one goal is to get that down to zero it's not to learn anything it's to go in and knock one off to knock this one off because they're out there moving gas and and so you know if if those are uh laborious and and not put together well and don't add value it just makes things even worse um you you made a statement in in one of your other podcasts i think it was with uh heidi kirby you were talking about being up in front of a classroom uh or or teaching which which then uh gave you more of a leg up on on the ability to create things i actually started out as a school teacher in the early 80s i grew up and wanted to be a football coach and a phys ed teacher and i grew up in southern part of west virginia so i didn't want to be in the coal mines so that was my ticket out of there i did i was able to get that so i actually started teaching and for three years i coached high school football and we had a local chemical plant here which was booming back in the mid 80s and was offered a position as a chemical process operator which the thing that lured me there was the money it wasn't that i was gonna have to turn wrenches because i had no idea you know but spent four years doing that and then was asked to be in their training department that had just started a year before in my third year and spent 15 years there as a training administrator now we did a lot of safety teaching a lot of training but part of my responsibility was was to administrate the the qualification process for our operators spent 20 years total there was downsized and then went to work for a natural gas company and was actually a technical trainer teaching skills and compressor measurement corrosion so from there i moved over to an instructional design position where i'm at now with that background which has been nothing but a total blessing uh you know i have smes just hand you know tell me what they need and they just get out of the way we put i'm a v i'm a big person on prototyping i like to get them something that looks really good to the point to where they have a good understanding of what where it's going to go and and then you know they've got full-time jobs you know they have day jobs and the least amount of burden that i can put on them the more cooperative they're going to be so i've had great success with that i'll prototype something give it to them so the review process is normally about one or two maybe three maximum times and we're off and running to the next one but you know my background has really enabled me to be successful so long story short i've actually been in this field since 1991 um so i'm i'm one of the old school guys in the group that i'm in um you know we've got all these 30 year olds and i'm soon to be 63. so but i don't i find it so interesting because i it's kind of one of the things that i've when i was chatting to some people the other day about becoming an instructional designer and a lot of them um you know there's nothing wrong i don't think we want knowing that you want to go into l d and you want to be an id that's that's great if that's definitely what you want to do and you genuinely know what an instructional designer actually does because it's not just sit and make e-learning as we all know unfortunately right wouldn't wouldn't that be a much easier quite a few yeah there's quite a few other hats that you you kind of put on so that's it um but i was kind of saying the the the one experience that i wish all these people could get is a year two years maybe three years of standing up and delivering training to rooms of people especially on boarding training um i feel like it's first of all it's a baptism of fire of do you actually understand learning do can you get your head around what that process looks like and what works and what doesn't and you get very real very immediate feedback because if someone doesn't get it they're going to ask um if i feel like if you dive straight into the world of digital you never get that immediate feedback you can maybe get i mean i chat with someone the other day they they were very honest and said look i've been making e-learning for five years i don't really know whether or not i'm any good at it um wow i'm still employed i said but can i guarantee that all my courses are really effective from a learning perspective no so i've got no data to back that up so i've got data that the company collects on hours delivered and general performance stuff so but can i say that is because of my understanding of learning no not really um and we kind of chat about that is exactly the experience that they wish they'd had is standing in front of a room of people and say and seeing what works getting a genuine organic feel for it i don't feel like there is a kind of alternative to that i've never found another way of getting that experience well i i know when i was working for the other company as a as a technical trainer with my primary focus uh in the compression side but also was was still designing and developing and publishing e-learning courses as well but you know it wasn't uncommon for every other week me to be in front of technicians and you know teaching them about operator qualification so at some point you know you know i was uh asked to put together uh some training material on training out or actually changing out the valves on a compressor and so to do that i actually went out in the field down in the southern part of the state these guys i didn't necessarily grow up with them but we knew each other from because of where where we grew up and actually turned wrenches with them for four days and if i could i do it now no but but you know the thing the thing they bought into me when i was even willing to do that so if i was standing in front of a classroom they didn't hesitate to kind of let me know that what i just said really wasn't the right way and i was able to kind of move it into their lap and get them more involved and say well you know um then share with us you know where was i wrong with this because they knew i didn't i hadn't operated compressor station so um yeah that's you can't do without that i think there's so much benefits and unfortunately and i say this you know our instructional designers out in calgary uh and i'm not saying this to be bad or say anything uh negative about them but none of the ones out there have been in the field and they're designing courses for the field um you know they're and so uh you know they they have their hands tied a little bit it's a little bit more difficult it's a little easier for them to put a next button which i'm you know that's that's another pet peeve of mine so no i i think it's interested in this i i i always remember that one of my favorite managers that i ever worked for before going out on my own was um it was a fantastic lady and she was very adamant when i started on the team before you do anything you're going to go and do the job that you're going to be training people to do and the first week of my paid time working in that business in the l d team was an actual fact spent doing a little bit of time in the call center and going out to the field and going out to different places and going huh this is what our people do and then coming back and going okay so now look at the induction training and tell us what's wrong with it [Music] and you actually can that way yeah absolutely and and you know when i when i was at the when i first started in the chemical business i spent four years as an operator on shift you know i mean we moved chemicals pumps valves everything so you know everything and and actually enjoyed it learned an awful lot so when i moved into that training group we had a an apprenticeship program that all of our operators went through was through the federal government and and it was really really good we were tied in with a local college you could complete this apprenticeship program take i think it was seven classes and end up with an associate degree so um but my background one of my degrees is in science so i also taught the sciences of the apprenticeship program so you know to know and to have that experience is just uh so valuable it's just i i can't stress it so but unfortunately i mean you know we've had a tremendous exit of school teachers in this country and your country i mean and i think you know and i'll just be very honest with you and i think we can do that if you don't you know i think some of them are being misled i think uh you know uh tremendously in terms of you know go online get these this experience in in terms of learning how to do this learn how to do that get these certificates and make six figures and um you know i i'll be very honest with you i mean i get compensated very well but the big thing with me right now is i i would go out and branch out as a freelancer tomorrow the big thing is insurance uh at my age it is just astronomical and i've got a wife she's retired uh and neither one of us are sick but you know we're at that age that it could be right around the corner so you know that's one thing but i don't think here in the state of west virginia that i would come close to making six figures as an instructional designer you know yeah i i do feel like that that particular um thing so i think a lot of a lot of different places have either promised it or heavily suggested it in different ways and i do just feel like it's first of all they're not giving out jobs right you know it's anyone that kind of says you'll get a salary of unless they're the ones hiring you they got nothing to do with that so absolutely um and certainly i mean like i've been i've not been in the industry like a huge amount of time i'm coming up on a decade here but i'm nowhere near six figures and in all likelihood i will never if i'm in this industry until the day i retire i will probably never have a six figure salary i run my own business at this point right yeah absolutely it's not a multi-national thousand employee business you know but there's enough of us whereby you know i think a lot of people would expect there to be that kind of salary there is money in l d but i i i wouldn't suggest joining the industry if money is your um your primary concern in a job if you just want to make money there are much more lucrative businesses to go into that are far less demanding oh absolutely and you know um you know you know i'm not going to deny that i haven't sat down and and really kind of um i don't want to say analyzed uh a move such as that nature of nature but you know when i start looking uh all of the tools that we have i mean the camera that i'm looking at the microphone the headset the computers the monitors the desk uh software where we've got brand new um uh computers on order right now that have you know terabyte hard drives i mean just all of that supplied for us you know as a corporation uh my big thing is retirement you know fantastic 401 so there's a lot of other things involved but i will tell you that that i literally after 31 years 91 i have literally the best job that i've ever had in my career right now it's i live 15 minutes from here we work a hybrid schedule if i want to work from home on the days that i need to come in i can i've got a great co-worker working a field office i can wear blue jeans tennis using a t-shirt to work so there's a lot of a lot of things you know you know when you branch out on your own like like yourself there's so much that i don't have to worry about which enables me to be better at what i enjoy doing um i saw a quote the other day from dirty jobs i don't know if you all get that over there it's mike rowe here he he actually goes out and actually performs these dirty jobs that nobody wants to do out in the and they videotape it it's a reality show if you ever go out on the internet you can just call his name's mike rowe it's called dirty jobs it's it's worth watching but he said a quote he said you know don't he he said don't pursue your passion bring it with you and and i kind of like that uh to the point to where you know i'm not pursuing something i'm already there uh somebody asked me the other day you know uh have have you reached the pinnacle of what you set out to do and i said one i didn't set out to do this set out to be a school teacher and coach football but yeah if you want to ask me what i'm doing right now absolutely i have no desire to be a manager i have no desire to move down that realm at one time yeah but uh my wife was a principal and a vice principal for 33 years and um according to her i could never be a manager i didn't have the patience for it everybody does not think like you and everybody does not do things like you but uh but it's people like you tom that that that are on the airways and that are in writings and stuff that i think a lot of the new people need to latch on to and and and i don't think you're out there trying to be any type of role model what i like about your shows and your writings is uh is you're just blatantly honest and and you speak from your heart uh and from what experience you have and it makes me think i mean even with the years that i have and and it's changed my perception and in direction uh tremendously within the last six to eight months and even a year so uh oh well thank you that's very very very kind of you you don't uh we don't do a lot of that on this show but um but it's funny before we started i'm aware we're coming up in the end of our of our time slot but um before we started we touched on the fact that you know quite often when someone's been in the industry a very long time they very much i don't know get a little trapped in there this is how i do things um i have reached the the pinnacle of my career and therefore i'm done adopting new ways of doing things and you were saying you're kind of at the polar opposite of that which i found really really interesting and really exciting well just recently uh i i would say within the last year um you know i don't set new year's resolutions but i set some goals this year and uh one of the things and some of the goals were to do what i'm doing right now which i'm very thankful to to to share some of my experience not necessarily my knowledge but more so my experience there's a lot of knowledge out there but within the last year i journeyed into the ar realm and took an ar class uh and absolutely loved it you know i was the grandfather on that cohort i mean everybody on there was in their early 20s and you know they're probably saying what's this old guy doing on absolutely had a blast now you know we had to turn in assignments and one of my assignments was it was an ar augmented reality on the the walking dead which is a show over here i don't know if they have it in the uk so i'm a big fan of that so uh i created a walking dead with a quiz it's from the early days so uh here recently i i went through um chris carroll's um video for learning six week cohort i want to i want to learn more constantly on linkedin learning learning adobe premiere adobe photoshop actually j went out and watched uh your three tutorials on uh what is it is it a um adapt yeah now the thing that you know i'm still learning from uh from a technical when you started talking about servers and i'm like oh okay so i'm not giving up on it but uh i like that software i'm like wow this this is some good stuff i mean rise is good and of course they just made it so wonderful here recently with all of that pretty stuff that they published but um you know what you shared that that is some really good software uh and i'm not done with that yet i went through a course here with luke hopson on working with um and collaborating with smes so here i am 30 31 years into this and and learning about working with smes but we can always be better and always get better um and some people was like i'm already there i don't know what do i need what else do i need to learn hey you know the world that we're in right now i can assure you is totally different than what it was when i was 25 years old but you know i i can i can honestly say in 1992 i saw in a computer magazine that some guy left in my office and it was talking about computer-based training and i looked at the guys that i worked with and i said this is where this is going to be going in the future and so from that point forward i just kind of uh kind of pursued that love learning love reading that sort of thing used to love playing golf but you know you blow out knees and all kinds of good things and you just can't do stuff like that too much anymore so nice yeah no it's it's it's it's really refreshing i think regardless of how long you've been in the industry i think it's very it's really quite challenging to continually embrace not knowing everything i feel there's an urge to be an expert now everyone wants to be seen as an expert or be an expert and you know whether you've got 10 minutes experience or you know 40 years i always kind of think i don't know i never want to be an expert i because there is always going to be something i don't think you can really master a subject because as soon as you have mastered it something new will come up or a new interpretation will arrive or whatever that might be so i think it's uh not only is it great professionally i think it's a human level it's a really healthy way to view yourself and life and everyone else around you because if there's always someone thing you can be learning then that's true of everyone else as well i think it naturally makes us a bit more generous towards others whereas someone says something you think oh that's a daft thing to say well you never said anything a bit daft i know i have heck i i've regularly done it on the internet for everyone to enjoy for it to be in waterline i enjoy i mean i i actually stand up and applaud sometimes i was like oh wow i wish i had the nerve to say that but uh but i've been very blessed i i will say this throughout my career uh especially with my wife of 38 years so uh she's supported me um in in learning new things and and encourages it um i've had managers that uh you know in my earlier years that put me out there to learn new things that pushed me made me uncomfortable and now i've got you know a co-worker that's right across the hall that's constantly coming over and saying hey i want to show you something i mean he's teaching me things in in photoshop where he's a photographer he has a side hustle type thing and so he's teaching me how to uh take a a photograph of a technician out on a right away in a field and uh what we do is we we just you know do things with the background and make him stand out in color and people in our courses some of these technicians i mean we'll get phone calls and they'll be like you know in that module the thing that caught my attention was the graphics that that you know in in it i could relate to them and and so yeah i mean we're constantly you know handed stuff and some and told to make this pretty you know irregardless of whether it adds any value or not just make it pretty and uh and i'm very big on making things pretty but i also want to make it as you said in the context of of adding value to that those individuals that's going to be taking that so you know my big push now is uh if it's not a course um i'm trying to get up the nerve to just kind of say listen you know we do not and i i've done that here recently we don't we don't need to build to build a course you know and i had a director looked and said well you know we we just need to address this issue whatever you come up with up with i trust and and they left and i'm like that's what we want we're the experts in this area or the uh the subject matter experts so uh so when you get a director at that level but once again and and people have to realize this um i've known this individual for about six years and so there's been a relationship built and she knows where i stand and she knows that i have the best interest of the receivers of this material at heart i tell the the people i work with constantly we are not building these courses for ourselves we're not bill we shouldn't be building for an sme you know and so uh uh and it's still an uphill battle um and uh we'll see we'll get there we're getting there slowly but uh um i'm impatient so and that's standard for all of us isn't it we all wish you were there but i think making progress to be honest is is the best any of us can ever achieve it's never going to be a final state for any of us it's always going to be you know whether it's in my case moving to another organization to help them start making the progress or if you're in the same organization you just got to focus on moving the dial until then you hand it off to someone else it's you know it's kind of the best way to be but um we are coming up on the end of our time i just want to finish up with one last question i'm asking everyone at the end of these episodes which is right now when you look at the lnd industry the whole field what do you see and get really excited about and want to see more of and what do you see that is maybe a little bit more concerning or that you're not sure about right now well i think uh a little bit more concerned with i think i think the shiny new toys that seem to be coming out um every you know so often we we are choosing to not stick with something that's working we see something that that allows us to do something a little bit different or new um and and that's a concern i mean there's just software one after another coming out so that that's part of the thing but as far as what's exciting is is the opportunities i think to um create performance and behavioral changes still exist we we've not even come close to addressing that side of this business and i think there's there's just opportunities galore for us to make a difference in that area and i'm talking about behavior change not necessarily knowledge i think there's just way way too much knowledge dumping out there uh we're just throwing stuff around uh and calling it training when in reality it's it's it's might be good information but it's not training so fantastic no i think i think that's a that's a really interesting point there to kind of go away and think about because it's uh certainly i'm sure we've all seen plenty of knowledge dumps out there disguised as e-learning or training um and it's uh it's a challenge right it's a challenge to get rid of the existing ones and not create more at the same time but um thank you so much for taking the time to appear on the show um if people want to get in touch continue the conversation where's the best place to uh to contact you i think just uh out on linkedin um you know i have a you know i'm not a poster for lack of better words uh okay i think i got a notice the other day i said you made your fourth post and i was like i did so um but that's that's something that um um you know i'm gonna begin doing uh it's it's a part of of of the change that that i'm pushing myself to do to offer up some experience out there but that's the best way is uh just to see that type of messaging and if they want to look at our our company which i don't i don't necessarily need to mention it but you know they could find me through there so fantastic yeah no um and we'll we'll make sure there's a link to uh to terry's linkedin in the description of this episode i'll also include a link to the idtx um session that you did for us so people can see that work it was a really interesting use of um 360 and storyline which up until that point i'll be honest i had only ever seen used with some really terrible gimmicks that kind of served no purpose it was the first example where i went okay yeah i can see why this is actually adding value from an end user perspective um you know this has a purpose this use of it rather than just being isn't this impressive look what we can do well i i learned so much that experience was just so valuable i'm actually do redoing that again here in august for our our state local atd uh lunch and learn and so i've kind of changed it around but it's really encouraging to hear what you're saying because that is that's the intent is to create an experience not just an event thanks for tuning in to this episode of the ideas podcast before you go please do let us know what you're taking away from this conversation and how you'll put it into action in the comments below if you're watching on youtube please consider hitting the subscribe and like buttons as it really helps us out you

2022-09-25 05:35

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