23: Social Learning for Learner Engagement with Jonah Goldstein

professional reasons. But once I came here, I kind of continued my education, I got a master's. And I did a lot of different things, I worked for the UN in education policy, I spent nine years working for a large services company in various roles. But eventually I was sort of in charge of technical training. And for the past almost two years, I've been working at 360 learning, which is a French startup, really, although we're, you know, we're growing and expanding pretty

rapidly. And the company is, it's a SASS platform that our clients use to kind of create and share learning within their organization. So it has some of the learning management system functionalities, learning experience, platform functionalities. At 360. Learning, I, I'm in charge of learning. So we were a company today of about 200 people, with teams in the US, in France in

the UK. And but because we're a learning organization, or learning company, they felt it was important to have an internal learning and development professional. So I really look after all the programs from onboarding to continuous professional

development. And then on top of that, I kind of have another hat I wear, which is I have my own sort of interview series, which you've you've been on, where I speak with learning and development professionals about challenges their organizations are facing and how they use this idea of collaborative or social or peer to peer learning to address some of those challenges.

was I was benchmarking. So I was talking to people who, who some of them were clients of ours, and some of whom were not just people I got in touch with. And I would just always have really interesting conversations. And, you know, I just I like talking to people I like asking questions I like, like talking about myself, so so. So it just kind of flowed really naturally. And at one point, I started

recording them. And I was talking to them and I was sharing them internally with different with with salespeople to get ideas and perspectives, you know, like client client pain points and things like that valuable insight. Actually, other people in the company were were interested in and I started talking with our, with our marketing team, they're like, these are really great. We should we should do something with this. We should be sharing these there are other LMDS who

might be interested. So that's kind of how it happened. And and since then, I've recorded Yeah, I think we're coming up on our 40th one. So yeah, it's great if for each one, it's kind of a short format conversation, I write an article about it as well. But what I what I like about it also for me is that it's it's external facing like, so a lot of these, you know, we

have internal jobs. You know, we work with our internal stakeholders and everything and, and some organizations are really good at kind of putting their best foot forward and making, how they train and learning part of their employee value proposition and part of like, you know, how they attract new talent, but also how they talk about their organization.

And that's something we really wanted to do, we really wanted to demonstrate how learning is important and critical for us internally, how developing our people, you know, all the kind of important the classic things around retention and engagement and things like that, but also performance and how our teams work together. So it's a chance for us to demonstrate to the world like, look, you know,

we're doing these things. And so in the interviews, I talked to other organizations, but I talked about our organization. And I think it's, it's, for me, it's a lot of fun, because it it allows me to kind of be both the internal l&d guy, but also be talking about the importance of learning and the value of learning externally.

organization. And so I think it also gives you a really nice way to just like, network with other people in the field and see what they're up to and see what they're doing, you know,

For this one, for the time being, it's a small group of people, but it's like you were saying, individuals who are often the one learning resource in their organization. And so and the organizations that we represent, are a lot of people who work in tech or, you know, not necessarily startups, but scale ups also are organizations that are first confronted with international expansion, and a lot of these challenges. So it's a great chance for us as Elon

leads to share ideas. And it's a really open and honest community. I mean, we asked questions people share, you know, what they're doing Share, share documents, templates, and things like that. And it's been extremely helpful for me.

love. Yeah. And so you are actually part of a new manager leadership training. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

through internal mobility. We are helping current 360 learners, coach teams and become coaches of teams. So this puts them in an interesting new position. They're really actors in the expansion of the company. And they need to be role models, they need to understand all the kind of processes and procedures that they need to kind of run point on as coaches. They need to navigate difficult situations they need to think strategically

and all of that. So this was, you know, an exciting opportunity for me to work really closely with some of these new coaches within our organization, to co build a structured learning path for them to help them kind of grapple with all these these these things that they might experience as a new coach. So At 360 learning, we have a really strong culture. I mean, many companies do. And particularly in the startup world, this is really important to define who

you are. Because as you're scaling, and as you're growing, you need to have an identity that that you can, that serves as like that foundation and that bedrock, so that so you need to grow. And the company is has, has, has, yeah, has the identity that the Founders intended it to. So a 360 learning this is called convexity. And it's like, really present in everything we do, from the from the recruitment process all the way through the whole the whole life

cycle. So the reason why I mentioned this, because this new coach training is really built around convexity. So there are certain in tribes, as we call them within convexity, things like transparency, benevolence, continuous feedback, low authority, I'm not going to go into detail on all of them and what they mean. But behind each one of these are real kind of behaviors that we expect from our leaders. There are processes that make this come to life on a

day to day basis. So if you take something like continuous feedback, you know, we have specific moments of performance reviews and things like that when we expect feedback to be given and received. And there's a good way of giving feedback. So not to mention that sort of throughout the year feedback

should be given and received. So it's important for our coaches, then, as part of this new coach training, to really understand what we mean by content, continuous feedback, why it's important, what are the moments? What are the rituals, if you will, that make this kind of like, live and breathe? And what are the behaviors we expect from them. So that's how I built out

this program. And there's a lot of, it's just a constantly evolving thing, just like anything at our company, I mean, our platform, and the technology that we use to train allows us to be really agile and nimble. So if something's not working, we can change it really quick. We can bring in examples, we can keep things up to date. That's what this program looks like. And in addition, there's other

layers to it. I mean, you know, it's a blended program, just like anything else with some of its self guided learning. There's also an external coaching piece, we've we've partnered with an external organization, so we're providing coaching to these new coaches, to help them, you know, get have additional perspective. So yeah, it's a really, it's a, it's a

great program. It's new, it's, it's, um, and for me, what's been kind of the most fun is running through it with the new coaches, as they're taking on this responsibility as they're wrapping up to it as they've had three months, six months in this new role, as they've faced challenges that they didn't face

before. And then going back and them saying, oh, yeah, you know, I realized that this, this is just to continue with the example of feedback, like, it's hard to receive feedback, let's say, because I could see feedback, too. It's hard to receive feedback, what what guidance, could we maybe provide to people around how to maintain, you know, a good posture when you're receiving difficult feedback from from a

someone who's on your team. So it's been great to, to co build and collaboratively build this program with the new coaches and make it something that that's, you know, constantly evolving that really meets their needs?

have very, very few meetings. We have, you know, another one of our pillars and tribes is your life your way. So you can you can sort of work from where and from where you want. Transparency is another one, I mentioned transparency before, what does that look like? It means that, because we don't have a lot of meetings, we document the work that we're doing using a sort of a central project management system, and that's visible to everybody.

We've even gone so far along transparency recently, we've we make our performance ratings transparent now, so everyone can see what my performance review was this past quarter and I can see everybody else's. We also have transparency around salary ranges. So the reason why I'm saying all this is because we went to people what it's like to come here and work here. And it might be different from what they've experienced before. And

it's not for everybody. So there's already like a, you know, a bit of a filtering process, we do a pretty clear cultural fit analysis during the recruitment process. And to your question, one of the key things that we're looking for is, is someone coachable? And not just individual contributors, but even leaders, you know, if you're coming from another organization, you have a lot of years of experience, are you still curious and open and

coachable? Because, because, you know, you need to adapt to the culture of a company, you need to take on board our way of working, it's a group effort, you know, you can't, you can't really be a lone wolf, you got to play by the rules. So we look

for that, we look for that. And, and hopefully, by looking through that, it then makes it easier when, when that person is ready to assume a coach responsibility that they agree with, with those various ways of working, and they value the behaviors that we're trying to, to instill and share and train them on. And they exemplify them already. So, you know, that's why I've particularly enjoyed this new coach training for people who have taken on this role through internal mobility.

Yeah, so I mean, to your point, to your point about, you know, new new managers not getting a lot of love. Like, I think that organizations maybe even need to drill down a little bit more and think about what does it mean to be a new manager coming through an internal mobility, as opposed to being a new manager coming from outside the organization? Those are two different experiences, and maybe need to be to be thought of a little bit differently and accompanied a little bit differently?

heated. So, yeah, that's, that's interesting. We haven't we

authority. I mean, the reason why we don't use the word manager is because our coaches do not manage they, they do not, you know, each each contributor owns their own scope, and is able to make decisions based on you need to, if you're going to do something, or you're going to start a project, or that requires an investment or time or resources, you need to justify that through through, you know, analysis and data and everything, but it's not your manager telling you, you're

going to do this, you're going to do this, you're going to do this, and everybody owns their scope, there's low authority,

so. So being a coach in that kind of culture is something that takes getting used to also and if you're coming through internal mobility, you've already lived and breathed, that you know how it works, you know how it feels, if you're coming from the outside, where maybe you previously worked in a more hierarchical organization, the idea of that you're a coach, but you're not a manager, you got to wrap your head around that and you really need to you need to understand then what are the

processes? What are the what are the things that that really exemplify that idea of coaching and not managing?

not a power struggle. But yeah, I mean, for sure, like you need to you every organization is different. And, and if you're coming into an organization that does kind of value this low authority, you need to understand what that means. And sometimes you need to yeah, sometimes as a as a, as a manager, you need to take it upon yourself to kind of hold yourself in check.

into manager training. So that's a big project that's underway. Of course, you know, like, a big part of our learning strategy is this notion of collaborative

learning. So 360 learning, that's, that's kind of our, our bread and butter, our platform enables people to identify learning needs, through our platform, respond to those learning needs, and it's really just as simple as like, on the platform, I can raise my hand and say, like, I don't know how to use this tool, or, I'm not clear how to do that, can anybody help me, when other people can upvote that and comment on it, and someone from another part of the organization

can respond to it. So it kind of decentralizes the whole notion of like, you know, learning needs analysis and content creation or curation. So, you know, I'm really proud of the fact that there's a lot of people within 360 learning, and this is what we see in our clients. Also, once they put in place our solution, where learning is becoming decentralized, where a lot of different people are contributing to content that's on their platform. And a lot of people are interacting, you

know, with content. So, and one of the ways that we've been trying to build momentum around that and keep up momentum is this notion of learning campaigns. So every quarter or so, we introduce a new learning campaign. And it could be back last year, towards the end of last year, I ran one, which was called November, but k n o w vember. Kind of a play on words.

But the idea was to ask people within the company, there was a real broad thing was sort of share something, you know, and it could be work related, it could be something else. And people volunteered, I mean, they loved it. And people were really happy to share some something from their lives, or from, from food that they're working on. And it was, I mean, you know, this distance between people has been compounded by the pandemic

and everything. And it was just a great chance for people to share something about themselves personally, professionally, and it really kind of built some great engagement. And since then, we've done a few others, we just finished up our March learning campaign, which was entirely around women's history month. So my colleague, Audrey and, and a number of other people from our Diversity and Equity and Inclusion, kind of working for us Task Force, came

up with this idea. And every week, or no, it was every couple of days. Someone else from the company created a course about an inspiring women from from wise from history. And it was a great way to share just interesting stories of women from all walks of life. And the next one we're going to be doing, what we're launching in a couple of weeks, I think, is again, coming back to really focused on the company, it's the name of the campaign is a day in

the life. So it's kind of like a, like a virtual shadowing program where people are going to be able to walk in the shoes of a colleague, it's something that we do during onboarding, but because we've been hiring so many new people and, you know, the company has been growing, it's a great opportunity just to say, hey, like, do you know, this person who has this job, this is what they do, this is what their, what their, what their debt, what a typical day in their life is like, so I

think it's really going to gonna be great and, and at the tail end of that will, will will kick off a more formal job shadowing program, so people can have an opportunity to, to actually walk a mile in people's shoes and, and spend, spend some time with them to really understand a little bit better their jobs. So yeah, learning campaigns is like, it's just a, it's kind of a becoming a pillar of how we sort of do collaborative

learning within the company. But they've really had a lot of success, and we've been sharing them with some some clients and, and even in other organizations that are not using, you know, 360 le, our platform facilitates this sort of thing. But you can certainly, you can really do it in any in any sort of organization. It's just a way to, to get people thinking about their development to share interesting ideas and, and to and to collaborate and learn.

few reasons why. And the first one was that they said that it was like, they had found that only 1% of people actually participated in user generated learning. And then that there, there are concerns. And granted, this was a bit larger of an organization, but there are concerns that like people would, you know, share either inappropriate material or material that went against kind of the company's culture, or that was copyrighted. And they, you know, they didn't know how

to adhere to copyright rules. So So what are some of the ways that you kind of like, because it sounds like you're doing it successfully? And it's just totally opposite of what I've kind of heard? So what are some of the ways that you kind of get around some of those challenges?

pillar of your strategy. And yeah, you have to set a target, I mean, 1% is is very low, you know, we've, we aim in our clients to have, you know, 5% of the organization regularly creating content, and then a higher percentage of people interacting with that content within 360. Learning ourselves, the numbers are much, much higher, but and I think that it that that raises an interesting point around, well, how do you then get to those higher

numbers? Well, you set a target, you know, 1%, is not acceptable. But you set a target 5% 10% however, percentage of your organization that you want, interacting, and then you think about, okay, how do we want those people to do it? Are we really just targeting subject matter experts? Who are people who, you know, can share their

internal knowledge? Or are we opening it up even broader through things like learning campaigns and encouraging people to share things that maybe go beyond scope, just to create, to get that initial engagement in the platform to get people sharing to get people realized that the tool is very usable? So that's one thing, you know, setting the targets, and then having a clear strategy about how to how to how to do that, in terms of the the content itself?

And you know, yeah, I mean, we've been lucky, no one has put any inappropriate content on our platform. You know, we've set the parameters, and I don't, I don't have a, I don't play that role centrally, of of reviewing and censoring content. And I also have not come across the problem of like intellectual property, you know, of us passing things off as our own.

But if that's if that's a, I think organizations need to trust their people like, that seems like a very so but if they do trust their people, and they find that people are being irresponsible, or even are just producing content, that's not of the quality they want, because that would probably be maybe a bigger issue. Well, that's when that's when the role of l&d

needs to also be redefined. I mean, we're no longer just a central content creation factory, we are coaching the organization as to what good learning looks like how to use the tools at their disposal to train people around their area, their their area of expertise, you know, and moving that governance model away from us just creating the stuff to coaching the people who can create it on their own.

convexity is personal growth. So we asked people about that, and I've seen over the past couple of years are pretty strong, regular uptick on the our people's perception of the opportunities that 360 Learning offers them in terms of personal growth. And you know, that's no, it's that's not an accident. It's because we have structured programs it's because we give them an opportunity to learn

collaboratively from people. And excuse me, and you know, that could be in their role, it could be preparing them for their next role, or it could be just sort of more general knowledge and edification and sharing with them ideas and things that get them get their their creative juices flowing and thinking differently about problems. You know, there's no rule that says, We have to be training people very, very strictly on, you know, on how to use Excel.

And I know, there's a lot of great content in there. But what I do know is that we have some people within the company who are who are great at that, and who were more than happy to share their knowledge. So what was my role and all that it was giving people an opportunity, a channel to say, hey, I need help with this. This is specifically what I want, giving other people an opportunity and a channel to to say, Yeah, me too, we reached

a critical mass of people. And then I was able to reach out and find two people within the organization who are really star users. And they, you know, wrote a little course on our platform. And we set up a series of virtual Lunch and Learns around

the specific functionalities. So you know, it was really well received it, the, the people who were looking for help got the help they needed, the people who were the subject matter experts were able to kind of put their best foot forward and got a lot of recognition in the organization. So it was yeah, it was win win.