Leading Learning Podcast

Many association learning businesses have a decidedly undiversified revenue base—a cash cow, like the annual meeting, accounts for most of the revenue, and the work to pull off that event each year leaves little room to innovate, even as members’ needs and expectations evolve. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Jeff Cobb talks with James Young, founder of Product Community. J...

Decades of research say the traditional learner survey—the smile sheet many learning businesses still rely on—is virtually uncorrelated with whether people actually learned anything. So what would it take to do better? In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Celisa Steele talks with Dr. Will Thalheimer, author of Performance-Focused Learner Surveys and someone wise in the ways of...

The new year will be here before we know it, so now is a natural time to make plans. While it can be tempting to copy and paste this year’s plan, make a few tweaks, and move ahead, now is a great time to reflect more deeply on what your learning business does and why. This episode of the Leading Learning Podcast pulls on past interviews to offer six perspectives that might help you rethink and rei...

Many learning portfolios accumulate over time—a Webinar added here, a course there—until nobody’s quite sure which offerings are still earning their keep and whether, collectively, they reflect what the organization is trying to accomplish. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Celisa Steele talks with Lauren Brechner, founder of Ember Forge. Lauren shares how a portfolio audit...

Courses and conferences are the backbone of many learning businesses’ portfolios, but for frontline and deskless workers—who make up roughly 80 percent of the global workforce—that model often doesn’t fit how the jobs actually get done. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Celisa Steele talks with JD Dillon, founder of Every Shift Counts and author of The Frontline Enablement P...

Many learning businesses are data-rich and insight-poor. It’s easy to track what’s easy to count—e-mail opens, registrations, completions—but harder to know if the products are doing what they were created to do. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele discuss what learning businesses should be measuring and why. They identify the most common metric traps—inclu...

Many learning businesses evaluate their programs with data that only tells them what already happened. By the time a lagging indicator like a completion rate reveals that a learner is struggling, the window to help has often closed. The good news is that shifting to real-time and predictive analytics is readily achievable for most learning businesses. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcas...

The association sector is at a genuine inflection point because so much is changing at once. AI is reshaping entire professions. Federal funding is in flux. University pipelines are shrinking. And, in the middle of all of it, associations have an extraordinary opportunity to play a critical role in workforce development—if they’re willing to move fast enough. In this episode of the Leading Learnin...

The credentialing landscape is changing fast. With 1.8 million credentials now in the U.S. marketplace and AI reshaping entire professions, organizations need to understand not just what credentials to offer but how the meaning of competence is evolving. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Celisa Steele talks with Denise Roosendaal, executive director of the Institute for Cred...

Many learning businesses market what they offer. The ones that get better results market what their learners need. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Celisa Steele talks with Amy Michalski and Shelly Strickland, who handle business development and marketing at the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM). They share what moves the needle in marketing educatio...

When everyone has access to the same powerful tools and technologies, polished content becomes table stakes, and learning businesses that compete primarily on content will find it increasingly hard to stand out. So what do you compete on instead? In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Jeff Cobb talks with Panos Siozos, CEO of LearnWorlds. They discuss why engagement remains the c...

Learning is, at its root, a neurobiological process. But most workplace learning doesn’t recognize that reality. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Celisa Steele talks with Dr. Tessa Forshaw, cognitive scientist and faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she studies how people work, learn, and create in the flow of their work. They discuss five prin...

Many organizations say they are mission-driven. But mission drift is real and often happens because of the very structures and activities organizations have been told represent best practices. So what does it take to build an organization that stays true to what it set out to do? In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Jeff Cobb talks with Eric Ries, entrepreneur and author of the...

It can be frustrating when your marketing doesn’t convert the way you expect. You put in the time to craft messages that you feel are clear, compelling, and persuasive—and still prospective learners don’t act. Part of the challenge is that people don’t make decisions the way we think they do. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Celisa Steele talks with Nancy Harhut, author of...

Learning businesses are operating in an environment that feels more demanding, more uncertain, and harder to parse than ever. It’s natural to rely on familiar instincts—gather more data, add new offerings, work harder. But those instincts are sometimes counterproductive. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Celisa Steele and Jeff Cobb explore what learning business leaders may...

Many learning businesses struggle with decisions about what to create, improve, and retire. With input coming from committees, volunteers, subject matter experts, and staff across the organization, it’s easy for the learning portfolio to become fragmented, duplicative, and difficult to manage in a coherent, sane way. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Celisa Steele and Jeff...

Many associations struggle with pricing their education offerings. Should education be bundled into membership? Sold à la carte? Packaged as a subscription? And how can learning businesses set prices in a way that reflects the value they provide and supports financial sustainability? In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Jeff Cobb talks with Dr. Michael Carr-Tatonetti, founder a...

In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Celisa Steele and Jeff Cobb wrap up their three-part look at reach, revenue, and impact by focusing on impact—often the least clearly defined and measured of the three pillars. Celisa and Jeff explore how impact looks different depending on whose perspective you consider—that of learners, employers, and the learning business itself—and why...

In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Celisa Steele and Jeff Cobb focus on revenue and why it—along with reach and impact—is fundamental to the success of any learning business. If you’re unsure which offerings are truly pulling their weight, whether you’re leaving money on the table, or how to decide what to keep, cut, or redesign, this conversation can help. Celisa and Jeff e...

Reach, revenue, and impact are familiar concepts to long-time listeners of the Leading Learning Podcast. But they’re often treated as separate challenges. In this episode, co-hosts Celisa Steele and Jeff Cobb revisit these three pillars and explore why they need to be approached as a connected system rather than isolated priorities. Drawing on recent research, client experience, and conversations...

Most learning businesses are rich in content, but far fewer are intentional about which pieces of content sparks collective learning? In this episode, Leading Learning Podcast co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele explore the concept of social learning objects: shared artifacts that anchor attention, create common language, and turn individual consumption into collective learning. Social learning o...

Many learning businesses know they need to innovate, but moving faster and experimenting can run headlong into culture and the fear of being wrong. This episode of the Leading Learning Podcast looks at why that happens and what to do about it. Elizabeth Engel and Jamie Notter, co-authors of the white paper “Lean at Ten: Culture Eats Methodology for Lunch,” join co-host Celisa Steele to discuss the...

Strategy is about making choices—where to focus, what to invest in, and what to stop doing. Data can help bring clarity to those decisions, especially in a complex and competitive environment. In this episode, Leading Learning Podcast co-hosts Celisa Steele and Jeff Cobb share insights from a survey of learning businesses to help you think about strategy in 2026. They explore top strategic goals a...

Mindset shapes how adults approach learning, challenge, and change—and it has important implications for learning businesses. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, number 468, co-hosts Celisa Steele and Jeff Cobb explore Mindset , the influential book by psychologist Carol Dweck, and the broader concept of mindset. They unpack the distinction between fixed and growth mindsets; examine h...

Content is everywhere, governance is slow to change, and technology expectations keep climbing—association learning businesses are feeling squeezed. Most are still operating like catalog providers in a market that now needs architects. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Celisa Steele and Jeff Cobb share a Rumelt-style diagnosis based on conversations with 27 association CEOs...