Future-Focused with Christopher Lind

It’s agonizing to passively sit through a presentation of endless slides that seem to never end, especially when it feels like the presenter is figuring things out alongside the participants. And, whether you’re delivering a live training session or giving a keynote presentation, keeping your audience engaged is a key metric for success and there’s no shortage of ways to lose them. Some of the bas...

#Upskilling and #reskilling is a topic in almost every learning and talent conversation. Regardless of what industry or function you’re in, it’s important as the half-life of employee skills continues to dwindle. For some organizations, the need to pull it off is important for staying at the top of their game and maintaining a competitive advantage. For other organizations, it’s a baseline require...

Knowing how to deliver the behaviors that drive success is one thing. Actually being able to do them and do them well is another. So, how do you make the transition from knowing to doing? Practice! Since it’s so important, why don’t people do it? In reality, people often don’t really know what they should practice and how. In this episode Naomi Davidson and I dig into the importance of practice wh...

Despite all that’s happening with technology and digital transformation, people remain the engine that power our businesses. As a result, people and the skills they bring to the table are ultimately one of the biggest variable in determining whether a business will thrive, survive, or die. The recent #coronavirus pandemic has recently exposed the quality and diversity of the skills in our organiza...

It’s probably safe to say that the vast majority of people in our industry, and probably outside our industry, have heard of the LMS. The learning management system has been a foundational piece of technology leveraged by companies big and small from around the world to manage their learning. If it’s such a foundational piece of technology, why is it that when most people hear the term, it conjure...

While the passive learning that occurs when consuming content will remain a staple in the diet of every professional’s development diet, there’s tremendous opportunity for us as L&D professionals to do more to foster active learning. This means taking learning to a new level where participants not only participate in a dialogue but perform and practice the actual behaviors and actions they wan...

Everybody is talking about upskilling and digital transformation, but what on earth does it really mean and what do we do about it. Ben Eubanks and I sit down to talk about exactly that. With his broad industry analysis and my practitioner lens, we bring a balanced perspective to how we can play a role in solving these big problems for our organization and hopefully keep you laughing along the way...

Imagine a future where machines can listen to your conversations and provide you with dynamic, personalized feedback and guidance in real-time to get you to a better outcome. Imagine no more. The future is now. Now, some may say machines listening and analyzing to our conversations sounds creepy. However, when done right, it has tremendous potential for improving performance, whether it’s reducing...

Impactful, collaborative learning always requires an in-person component, right? Afterall, how can you possibly collaborate without being together? I can speak from first-hand experience that it’s possible but not possible without the right tech. Historically, we’ve relied on in-person events for collaborative learning opportunities. Unfortunately, events are trapped as moments in time and rarely...

Business and HR leaders are recognizing the value of a positive and inclusive environment. Unfortunately, uncomfortable situations still occur stunting or even reversing forward progress. Unfortunately, people struggle with navigating these situations when they arise. As a result, some stay quiet, inadvertently encouraging bad behavior. Others respond inappropriately further escalating an already...

Video is all the rage in learning and development. Whether it’s short-form explainer videos or long-form instructional content, they’re everywhere. And, with everyone carrying around a high-definition camera in their pocket, using video to transform learning in your organization should be a piece of cake, right? Just point, shoot, and presto, video learning magic. Not quite. Great videos are about...

There is no shortage of platitudinal statements in the corporate world and L&D continues to grow our marketshare. We’re digitally transforming the learner experience, crafting meaningful and human-centered learning journeys, and one of my favorites, building a learning culture. The challenge is not that these statements don’t address critical and meaningful activities. It’s that they’re often...

All of us in learning, talent and HR functions are being faced with what can often feel like impossible challenges as a result of the coronavirus. We haven’t even had time to fully establish a steady state for the current situation and are already being challenged with predicting the ‘new normal’ and how we’ll manage that. Trying to solve for these monumental challenges in an environment where it’...

Preparing your workforce with the skills they need now and in the future is no easy task. It requires timely, relevant, and meaningful content that addresses needs at the pace of business. For global organizations, that complexity is exponential as you factor in adapting to and ensuring relevance for regional culture and languages. It also requires a platform capable of providing meaningful data a...

While many organizations struggle with volume of learning technology in their portfolio, others are just starting on their digital learning journey. This can often feel like an overwhelming task. Finding the right content, deploying it through and user-friendly tool, reinforcing the principles, and having even basic data.    Furthermore, successfully navigating the transformation of lear...

For those of you who have heard of LinkedIn Learning or maybe even taken a course, you may be wondering whether there’s really a need for yet another content provider. However, when you scratch beneath the surface, you’ll find that LinkedIn has done a lot more than build an ocean of content. You’ll see how they’ve connected learners professional experience and skills to content that can enable the...

Whether you’ve historically been for or against #virtual #learning, it’s a reality everyone has had to embrace amidst the #coronavirus pandemic. For some, it was business as usual or a relatively seamless transition. For others, it’s been an overwhelming and painful challenge, leaving learning professionals frustrated and learners disengaged. And, just because a lot of what’s been done in the past...

A lot of things have changed in Snagit and Camtasia since I was first introduced to it during my youthful days as an instructional designer, and it’s been interesting to watch the products evolve and the features advance over the years. They remain laser focused on improving visual communications and making it easy for users. And, despite the massive growth and transformation technology has made,...

Reinforcing existing #learning, maximizing the reach of compliance training, strategically streamlining onboarding content, and improving the way you develop your salesforce are challenges anyone in Learning & Development should be familiar with. In a world where so many others are pushing to solve these problems with HD #video, massive content libraries, or complex #ai based technologies, cou...

For as long as many of us can remember, you take a test at the end of a lesson or class to validate and solidify the learning. However, what if science revealed that we should actually move it to the front? The brain is a fascinating and complicated organ that is involved in every one of our functions, including learning. Unfortunately, the complexity can make it difficult for us to truly understa...

Creating visual stories that breaks down complex concepts and information into simple, easy-to-follow videos can’t be done by just anyone, right? Or can it? In this episode we’re talking about how today’s technology is enabling individuals to take complex information and concepts and break them into simple, digestible stories your employees will watch. How is that possible? Well, when you combine...

Overnight our world was turned on it’s head. For many organizations, work has been completely disrupted. The same holds true for many employees in their professional and personal, lives dramatically impacting their emotional state and professional capacity. When chaos like this happens, it’s easy for panic to set in resulting in organizations and leaders scrambling for bandaids at the expense of s...

Unless your leaders are deeply steeped in the latest research and learning tech trends, informing them you’re going to change the way you deliver content to be more adaptive is going to do more than raise some eyebrows. The word ‘adaptive’ will mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And, how will they react when they realize that people won’t necessarily all be exposed to the...

It’s been a common practice for years. Recently, it’s even made major headlines. As organizations seek to improve diversity and reduce bias, learning programs and initiatives are frequently at the forefront. Logically, creating awareness about our biases results in a change in behavior and ultimately a better outcome, right? Well, logic and data don’t always match up. In fact, is it possible our e...

We’ve all seen a catchy animated video at some point that grabbed our attention. It’s a nice break from the shaky selfie video or stuffy, corporate talking head stuff. You may have even paid to have one made for you because you thought it’d be too difficult or expensive to build in-house. Well, I don’t believe engaging animated videos should be limited to organizations and individuals with big bud...