117 - From Order Taker to Partner Featuring Jess Almlie

Scott (00:01.356) Hey everybody, welcome to another amazing, I mean simply amazing episode of your Fabulous Learning Nerds. I'm Scott Schuette, your host, and with me, you love them, Dan Coonrod's in the house. Scott (00:16.502) Dan, my friend. Daniel (00:18.209) What's up Scott, how you doing? Scott (00:20.832) Man, I'm doing okay, I'm hanging in there. I'm getting ready, because it's that time of the year where I've gotta take care of my lovely wife, because it's Valentine's Day, everyone. Make sure. Daniel (00:32.169) That's an awesome holiday. So you're doing okay. So you're kind of in the middle. Not bad, but not great. Would you say you were maybe fair to Midland? Scott (00:39.171) I'm kinda in the middle. Scott (00:47.77) I am fair to Midland, but I know that that's typically given to you, my friend. And so you gave it to me. It's a Valentine's Day gift. Aw. Yeah. OK, so I got to ask. When we were little, Valentine's Day was a traumatic experience for me. Was it a traumatic experience for you? Daniel (00:49.453) Yeah. Yeah. Daniel (00:53.623) You know, you can borrow it. I won't tell anybody. Awwww, hearts! Daniel (01:04.116) Daniel (01:09.001) no! No. Scott (01:11.978) No, I need to explain it because in elementary school you would get Valentine's Day cards. Right. And so the kids would bring Valentine's Day cards and they would hand them out to people in the classroom. But when I was growing up, there was no rule that said that you had to give them out to everybody if you were going to give them out. think today they don't allow it anymore. But back then it was like you would sit there and go, are you going to give me one? No. OK, thanks. Are you going to give me one? Daniel (01:13.941) Yeah, you do. You don't get to come in with like Valentine's Day is. Yeah. Scott (01:42.506) No? Okay, thanks. So yeah, it was pretty traumatizing. But then I'd get a couple, so that was nice. And then some people would get like hundreds of them, which is okay, fine. But yeah, you didn't have that experience growing up? Daniel (01:57.153) You know, mean, like, honest to goodness, I think growing up, didn't get like when I was little, little, right? I don't think I got a lot of Valentine's Day cards. I was a rolly polly kid and growing up in, you know, the backwoods of Pennsylvania, not a lot of of sympathy there. but I don't know. Like I said, it wasn't bad. I got candy. Scott (02:05.09) Right. Scott (02:22.71) Yeah, no, no, no, I get it. candy's great. Love candy. Yeah, any excuse to get me some candy? You know, Halloween, Valentine's Day. Yeah. Speaking of someone we love and is deserving of candy, Zeta's in the house, everybody. Daniel (02:27.053) See, there you go, look at that. Boom. Same holiday, really. Scott (02:47.532) Zeta, are you ready? I'm doing. Zeta (02:49.112) Scott, how you doing, bro? Scott (02:55.456) I know that's your drop too, but I'm taking the drops from people today. Daniel (02:57.911) I see, I see. You talk to me, you're fair to Midland. You talk to Zeta, you're excellent. I see how it is. Zeta (02:58.218) Please do, please do share the love, share the love. Scott (03:03.682) 100 % that's how this works. Are you ready to receive the bounty of Valentine's Day Zeta? Zeta (03:12.718) I guess so. When I was in elementary school, I was the one who drew most of the valentines and I would draw really crazy little hearts with so much lace and then really bad puns. So how- Scott (03:27.74) okay. Do you have any of those puns memorized? Zeta (03:31.63) No, but none of them were near as bad as I choo-choo-choose you, so... Scott (03:38.298) man, that was pretty terrible. That was pretty terrible. Okay. Well, listen, you know, I know that between you and Dan every day is Valentine's day. So we really appreciate the fact that you guys, I know, right? It's pretty cool. of Valentine's day, we are gifted by our special guest, everyone. I'm super excited to talk to her and we're going to learn all about her in a little segment that we call, What's Your Deal? Daniel (03:38.838) You Zeta (03:39.182) It could be worse. Could be worse. Yeah. Zeta (03:51.789) nice. Scott (04:08.822) Yes! Jess Almlie (04:10.823) Hello, I am thrilled to be here. This is very fun. Scott (04:14.874) Okay, great. Hey, what's your deal my friend? Mm-hmm Jess Almlie (04:17.619) What's my deal? Well, let's see. When it comes to learning and development, I've been in this L &D profession, people development, kind of something or other for 30 years. So I'm ticking 30. That makes me feel old when I say that. I've been done all the stuff, like orientation coordinator all the way up to vice president of learning. I left my role about two years ago to run my own company. It's called Almley Consulting. That's a nod to my last name. And I'm a learning and performance strategist. tend to do two things. I either create learning blueprints for small, quickly growing companies that don't have the expertise or bandwidth in-house to do that. So that's more of the strategy side. Or I work with L &D leaders and teams to move from order takers to strategic business partners, which is what I'm really passionate about. Scott (05:08.434) yeah, and we are gonna get into that tonight for sure, but before we do, I have to ask like Valentine's Day memories. Any Valentine's Day memories there, Jess? Daniel (05:08.512) Love that. Jess Almlie (05:20.616) You know, think, Scott, I have the same thing as you where it was a little bit terrifying because there was not that requirement. Then when my own kids went to school, there was the requirement that everybody, which ultimately got very expensive, very fast, because you couldn't just give a card. You also had to give a candy and all the things. But I do remember one particular year because we had to make our own like boxes. Do you guys remember making Valentine's boxes? Yeah. Scott (05:45.857) Yes. Zeta (05:46.433) yeah, yeah. Jess Almlie (05:47.845) And I made mine out of an oatmeal container and I was very proud of it. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's why I was very proud of it. Scott (05:53.47) A round one like the Quaker Oats round one. those are awesome. A poor man's bongo is what they were for me. A Valentine's box. That is super exciting. Thank you so much for sharing that and participating in our Valentine's Day chit chat. Folks, we're going to dive into some really groovy, exciting stuff. so without further ado, let's get into it. Jess Almlie (06:02.387) Or a Valentine's box. Daniel (06:02.626) Huh. Scott (06:27.734) This week, we are talking about shifting learning and development from working as order takers to just what Jess talked about, strategic business partners. And so Jess, before we dive into the groovy stuff you're going to lay on us today, I just have one question for you. Scott (06:49.088) Yeah, so what? Why is this important? Isn't it OK to just kind of get work done and be happy about it? I mean, why is this important? Jess Almlie (06:57.949) So I would say from two different perspectives. mean, first of all, I've always been this person that thought there's got to be a better way for us to do things. And in my, when I was leading L and D teams, I kept thinking there's got to be a better way. We were creating fantastic, wonderful, lovely, amazing trainings. I mean, I had a rock star team, if I do say so myself, but they weren't, it wasn't solving the business problems. So what would happen was we create a great training, we deliver it. We get the kudos and the pats on the back and this is great, this is fantastic. And then the same problems still remain. The reason why they came to us in the first place to ask for the learning training solution. And so then where does the finger point? Scott (07:40.582) right back at you 100%. Yeah. Jess Almlie (07:42.609) Yeah. So Jess, your team must not have created a good enough training because it didn't solve our problem. And we know that, I mean, really what we found out was it's because training in many cases would not have solved that problem to begin with. But because somebody came to us with kind of this pre-baked solution of we need this training or this learning solution. And we said, great, we know how to do that. We'll help you with that. And we did that. and then it didn't solve the problem, it seemed like it was our fault. So that is, in a nutshell, what happens is if we in L &D and talent development, if we operate like that, we're eventually going to work ourselves out of a job because our purpose, I believe, is to help solve business and talent challenges using the tools that we have at our disposal to the best that we can. But if what we have won't solve the problem, then we shouldn't be engaging in trying to do that. Scott (08:42.53) Totally agree. And I've been talking with lots of people and it all boils down to asking your stakeholders that question, right? Like, hey, what's going to be new, better, or different when we're done? In my experiences, most of the stakeholders I work with don't have that answer. They don't know. They know that somebody wants a training or they wanted a video or they wanted something and we're the ones to get it done. So here you go. I want a video. Why do you want a video? What's it about? I want a video because Jess has a video. And so therefore I should have a video. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, that alignment around objectives is so important and it's critical. Yeah. So I'm really glad that we're talking about this. I do have one question. So you're really passionate about it. That was part of your deal. So how did that come about? mean, what led to your passion around all of this? Jess Almlie (09:17.085) Mm-hmm. Jess Almlie (09:38.365) So it was really when we figured out that the training and learning solutions we were providing weren't solving the problems when I figured that out. And I thought, we got to do something different here. This isn't working. And at the time, there wasn't much out there. This whole language of becoming a business partner, getting aligned with the business, all of that, I think it's been around, but it's sort of starting to bubble up a little bit more now. But at that time, there wasn't much out there. And so I started studying all these parallel industries. like marketing and sales and business, just business acumen business in general and performance consulting and project management and kind of trying to figure out what do they do differently and can we learn from them? And as a result, we started putting these little changes in place. It was a work in progress. We tried different things and eventually moved from this place where we were transactional order takers to we were working as strategic business partners. And what that looks like is instead of somebody as a stakeholder coming to you and saying, I need a 30 minute e-learning for this or I need a video because that's cool. They're saying, we have this problem on our team. Do you think you can help us with it? That's a completely different conversation because it doesn't assume a solution from the get-go. So once we were able to do that and I realized we were having a larger impact on the organization, we were solving real problems, real talent challenges, I thought, why doesn't everybody work this way? I mean, isn't that all what we're after is How do we make an impact? How do we make a difference? How do we change the organizations and the people that work within them? And so when I started to figure out, we did something here, that was when I got real, kind of real, even more nerdy about it. Like, okay, we did this at work. Why doesn't everybody else do this? And how can we get them to do that? Daniel (11:25.987) love this. I 100 % love this. This is, this makes my heart sing. I can't tell you, I've talked about it here on the show before, but like I had a very similar journey where I spent most of my career both as a trainer, as instructional designer, as a content producer, and then finally as like, as a manager and then like a leader of people, I've just focused on like the order taking mindset. And I was always burnt out. I was always stressed out. The teams who worked for me were burnt out and stressed out. because the machine eats. And if you don't know what to feed the machine, it just keeps eating. like that step to like, these are what we need. This is the goal we need to hit. Here's the numbers, here's the metrics. Instead of like, I don't know, train them. I mean, it's so transformational. Zayda, I think I stepped on you. think you were about to say something. I'm so sorry, but. Zeta (12:21.152) No, no, no, it's fine. I just had a question like, how do you get from that point when they come to you and they say, hey, we want the solution? What's a good way of going, well, why are we doing this? What's the problem we're trying to solve? Like, how do you get to that point? Is it just that easy or? I wish it was. Yeah. Jess Almlie (12:39.379) No. No, it is not. Daniel (12:41.283) Alright, goodnight everybody! Jess Almlie (12:50.557) The process to move from order taker to strategic business partner, mean, first of all, I think about it on a continuum. So it's not like you wake up one day and now you're at the other end. You have to make small incremental changes to move from one to the other because… And so I do want to answer your question, but let me say kind of why I think this is in some respects too, if that's fair. Is that fair? Okay. Okay. Okay. So think about… Zeta (13:15.979) yeah, definitely. Jess Almlie (13:19.525) your own experiences with education and learning growing up. We talked a little bit about the Valentine's Day thing in school, but Valentine's Day aside. Like, traditionally, did you have a teacher who stood at the front of the room, told you stuff, gave you homework, you took a test, and then you learned stuff, right? Is that your experience too, you guys? Yeah. Right. So here's what happens though. Zeta (13:39.522) Yeah, that's the usual progression, but that's just the beginning, right? Jess Almlie (13:45.927) We go into L &D and we realize that's not always the most effective way to do things. But we think about that because we're nerdy about it. Our stakeholders do not. They are still sitting in this place where, you know, the way that if we need somebody to learn something new, the way that we need them to do that is by some type of a formal something. And so I come to you with this idea of what that looks like already in my head. And that's why I think we get kind of, that's one of the reasons why we get stuck in this is because we're trying to move the mindsets, not of ourselves. I think most of L &D can get on board with this pretty quickly. We're trying to change the mindsets of what learning looks like and when it's appropriate to use it for everyone else in the organization. So they're not thinking about it all the time. They're not nerdy about it like we are. So therefore it does take a while to get there. So that's why we got there. or I think that's part of why we're here. So the question you asked about how do we get there is through a series of very small things all along the way that we're doing. The number one thing that I think we can do, and let me back up just a minute and say, so when I started saying, doesn't everybody do this, I embarked on a research study and I interviewed learning leaders from across the US, all different industries, all different sizes of companies and I was asking them about these questions like, if you think you're able to work this way, what did you do differently to get here? And if not, what's holding you back? And I found a lot of different things that I learned along the way, but there was one sort of prevailing mindset that those who were able to work differently had started with. And that was, they shifted from an old mindset was L and D, we are here to help, we are helpers. We are here to help you, we are here to support you. We can't wait to help you do this because we're great people and that's what we do well, right? They shifted. The new mindset is we are not, it's not we are here to help. It's we are here to partner with you. And that's a very different, when you walk into the room thinking I am here as a partner to you versus I am here as a helper to you, it's different. So let me maybe throw it back at you all. When I say that and you think about I'm walking into this room as a partner versus a helper, how is it different? Daniel (16:11.715) Ah, so I'll, I'll jump in and just, just a hundred percent exactly like what you're saying in my experience. talked about it like so, so much of my career was focused like, Oh, I'm a helper. I'm a helper. I'm a helper. I'm a helper. Yay. I love being a helper and it's great and it's awesome. And here's a new problem and great. Let's solve this problem. Oh, and there's another problem over there and there's a problem. There's a problem. There's a problem solving all these problems. Yay. I'm super great. And like that's addictive. You're like, I love it. And To your point, always felt, at least once I started, like you're talking about, like started looking at things as like, like, hey, I need to not be a helper because I think so many folks in the business world see learning and development as just in another enablement team. Hey, here's this process, here's this thing, we're going to launch it. All right, training, make it go. And like, you know, we're like, okay, cool. Like what needs to go? Like what needs to be, to Scott's phrase, new, better, different. Scott (16:59.393) Mm-hmm. Daniel (17:11.883) nothing, just get this project launched, just figure it out. And I can't tell you how many times in early my career I went, okay. And you know, like it led to all kinds of crazy adventures that were awesome and great, but by no way, or means was learning and development. helped launch a call center for a company like three years into my career where somebody was like, Hey, go here, launch this call center. Also make sure that you're writing new curriculum and training and doing all of that. You're also going to be our central point of contact. Good luck. Godspeed. And I just kept saying yes, because that's just what I expected and like what I thought learning and development was even in my career. So I think I rambled on, but yes, a hundred percent. Zeta (17:51.394) Yeah, like. Jess Almlie (17:51.409) Yeah, so when you show up as a partner as opposed to a helper, if you just showed up in the room like that, what would be different for you? Daniel (18:01.291) I mean, I know the difference now. It's for me, it's so much more about like, what metrics are we moving? What are the goals? What do we need to do? What's that look like? What are you trying to change? Why are we trying to change it? And then the big one that I have learned is so important is does the training department, does my department need to make, need to do this? Because so often, like we talked about, Scott (18:13.186) you Daniel (18:31.789) training gets that because it's full of helpers. Scott (18:36.418) Yeah, I always like to ask in addition to that, and I love the do we need to do this? Because there's so many things that we've done that, you know, we talked about it a long time ago, right? To do it all ID. We make things look pretty. Oh, give it to training. They make it look pretty, right? And so I'm not against making things look pretty. That's great. We're good at that. But I've got creative teams that can do that, too. Right. So there's much more involved. I always like to pause and ask a lot of questions and I think you're asking the right ones. But hey, what's keeping you up at night? What are the big opportunities that are preventing us? And that's a great word to use as well, right? So what's preventing us from solving this problem? And that can lead into your question, do you really need your training or do you really need some marketing? Do you really need your training or do you really need to have a new tool from an engagement perspective, right? And so I think that that's kind of how I look at it. Jess Almlie (19:33.971) Yeah, it's a yes and, right? So in fact, and go back to your questions, Ada, if you want to move the needle, you don't start by saying, no, we're not going to do that. Because that doesn't help anyone, right? You walk in and you say, yeah, I would love to partner with you on that solution. But I want to make sure that we get this exactly right for you. So we get exactly what you need at the end. is it OK if I ask you just a few more questions? Scott (19:35.776) Yeah. Daniel (19:45.123) Hehehe Jess Almlie (20:02.193) and then you dive a little deeper. But you start with the yes. It's like the, I don't know if you're familiar with the improv thing, the yes and. Yes and I would like to ask you some more questions, but really this is all about you. It's not about me. It's about you, us together getting to where you need to go. But where do you need to go and why do you need to go there? And what's telling you right now that you need to go there? I mean, one of my favorite questions, especially when people are like, we need better communication training or something kind of very vague, right? Is, Zeta (20:10.253) Mm-hmm. Zeta (20:30.978) Mm. Jess Almlie (20:31.227) What evidence do you have right now that communication isn't working? So show me some more about that. And it's more that I think one of the things too is we don't start with the learning objectives question. Because the learning objectives question, when you start there, you're assuming that learning will solve the problem. And they are too. So you say, yeah, I'd love to help you with that. Let me ask you a few more questions. Zeta (20:36.706) Love it. Jess Almlie (20:56.859) And now you start with the more the performance-based questions, the goal-based questions, the where are you trying to get to questions before you jump into saying, yes, we will create a learning solution because you haven't agreed to that yet. You're just, yeah, I want to help. I'll partner with you to do this. So there you go. Zeta (21:13.848) Now that's awesome. Yeah, because it's not always a skill. Sometimes it's an obstacle that you have to remove and that's not gonna be solved by training. So it's great. Yeah. Daniel (21:14.637) Love that. Jess Almlie (21:22.579) I have some fun stories of when that happened. One of my favorites is we had a team that came to us and said, okay, they had two kinds of tasks, right? They had simple tasks and complex tasks just to break it down. And nobody was taking on the complex tasks on this team. They're sitting in a queue, they're a queue-based team, and nobody's doing them, and they think they must need training. They don't know how to do it. So they even come to us using our language. They don't know how to do it. They need better knowledge and skills, right? Scott (21:24.385) Yeah Jess Almlie (21:52.828) And we're saying, okay, well, how do you know they don't know how to do it? Have they ever done it before? what, well, they're not taking these on so they must need training. And I said, well, can we ask a few more questions? And we did. Here's what we found out. That team was rewarded based on the speed and accuracy of the tasks they completed. So when they were completing simple tasks, they could get more done and they could get them done more accurately. The complex tasks, took longer and they're more likely to make an error. So because the rewards and bonuses, money, was based on the speed and accuracy of how quickly they completed the tasks, and it was exactly the same for both, the complex and simple, nobody wants the complex task because they would literally make less money. So when you go down that route and you say, you know, how is training going to fix that? So we went back to them and said, Zeta (22:46.274) It's not. Jess Almlie (22:48.263) You know, here's what we found out. This is really interesting to me. And I always kind of play the like, this was really interesting to me. This is what I've learned. You know, I would suggest that you work on the bonus structure first and then come back to us and we'll help you out with the training when it's needed. And guess what? They never came back. Daniel (23:08.097) I love that story. That resonates just in my personal experience. then again, just like so often, there's will, skill, and knowledge. Those are the three things that people use to get things done. And so often, like you said it, they came to you and they don't have the skill, they don't have the knowledge. Those trigger words for learning and development folks, like, that's me. But it's will. so often, will is defined by leadership. by compensation, by so many things that we just don't have the levers to pull in learning and development. I taught a class recently on how to be instructional designers. And one of the projects we give them is like, here's this project. You need to build training for it. These folks aren't doing these things, and we need them to do them. And can you build a training? And This is usually right after we cover will, skill and knowledge. And the problem is a will, a will problem. They're not paid enough. They're not motivated enough. Their leadership changes too frequently. There's all kinds of things. And my team, not my team, but the people in the class came back to me and almost to every single one them was like, well, what we need to do is talk about them about compensation and they need to raise the compensation up. And they come in with that, I want to be a helper attitude. And they, know, they, here's, here's how we raise their, their, pay rates and here's why, and here's what you would need to do. Jess Almlie (24:24.167) Mm-hmm. Daniel (24:29.731) And it's all of this beautiful work. And almost every time I have to come to whatever class is taken, if I'm tempted to be like, this is all good. You are all right, but you're all wrong. And let's talk about what that means. So I love that. I love that thinking and I love that example. It's awesome. Jess Almlie (24:45.127) Yeah, I mean, you can go a number of different routes with that. Like another example was I had two managers who kind of co-managed a large customer account team and they came to me and said, we need a communication bootcamp because we are not getting, people aren't communicating well enough. They are not getting the answers to the clients that they need in a timely manner. Okay. And so I started asking more questions about like, what does a timely manner mean? What does that look like? What's their turnaround time? And they had those numbers. So they were like, well, here's the turnaround time and here's why they're not meeting it or here's what they're not meeting. And it come to turn out, I asked a few questions like, well, what does good look like? What are they expected to do in order to meet this turnaround time? And those two managers had completely different thoughts about what that looked like. So one said, it looks like them going away to research all of this information and then coming back to the client later. Scott (25:35.017) Mm-hmm. Daniel (25:35.874) no! Jess Almlie (25:44.433) And the other said, no, no, no, we don't have that structure anymore. What it looks like is they have a complicated question. They send it to our analyst team to find out the answer and the analyst team answers, and then they can get back to the client right away and say, we're working on it. So completely different ways of expectations of how you could work in the team. and by the way, that team was bleeding people. Like nobody could stay on the team because... Daniel (26:06.795) No. What? Jess Almlie (26:09.383) How can you be successful when one manager tells you one thing and then the next day you're working and the other one says, you're doing it wrong? And then the next day the other… So again, nothing that training would have fixed. I said, you know what? Why don't you get on the same page about what good looks like and then we can come in and do the training? And again, they never came back to ask for the training. So was interesting. Scott (26:29.922) I mean, that's baseline engagement, right? So you don't have those expectations and expectations change or they're fuzzy. I'm out. I'm not doing my job, right? I'm not going to work my butt off only to have somebody tell me that I didn't do it. Right. So I think that's that happens all the time. Dan, didn't you have a conversation where you had to define engagement or sales? It was something that you had to define and everybody had a different definition of it. Jess Almlie (26:32.333) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Scott (26:57.588) Okay, great. Well, when you guys have the same definition of what that is, then we can maybe help you, right now I can't help you at all. Daniel (27:02.413) Yeah. Yeah. There's been times where we've worked with companies and like, help them define like just like what their learning and development plan is and what they mean by stuff. you're right. A hundred percent. There's so often where you just get down even to just the base definitions and you'll be in these meetings and people will just be like, that's not what I thought that we meant by that. And like, that's always like a meeting stopper. Like, hey, that sounds great. Jess Almlie (27:03.537) Hmm? Scott (27:30.37) Isn't that funny? I Pete, I've been there in the meeting and you ask that question and everybody's got a different answer and they all start looking at each other like, oh my goodness. Well, who's right? I don't know. I don't know who is right, but right now nobody's right. And until we get things right, we can't move forward. I do have one question, know, for like one of the things that I believe in is this whole idea of, you know, being a strategic partner really means it's about building those relationships, right? Daniel (27:32.076) Haha. Daniel (27:40.799) I know! Scott (27:58.918) And nothing happens without good relationships. And while I feel it's really, really, really important to ask those kind of questions and be in with those people to identify and deliver really great solution, sometimes when that relationship is young, I've found that maybe being a helper and delivering on some stuff can create goodwill so that I can ask those questions. Because I've been in that room new relationship, I start asking those questions. And next thing you know, I'm getting a phone call like, you're being difficult. Well, no, I'm really trying to ensure that we're delivering on the right stuff. talk to our audience a little bit about that fine line between, hey, finding the low hanging fruit and those easy wins to build that trust, because trust is super important, and still working our way to being a strategic thought leader. Jess Almlie (28:50.887) Yeah. Yeah. And I would agree with you that when we, in order to make these changes, so Zeta, back to your question again, how do you kind of get going? And it's these series of small things and oftentimes it starts by us taking the order, but it's what we do within that order that sets the stage for a little bit different way of working next time. So a couple of things that I talk about quite frequently is, you know, using that opportunity during the order to ask more questions and get more information while still saying you're going to deliver what they're asking for at this point because you can't push back too much. But you're going to build the relationship by getting to know them. You're going to follow through on your promises. So this is the hugest thing. And I think it sounds like something that should be really easy, but I have been a leader of teams for many years and it is not always easy. If you say to a stakeholder, you are going to get back to them by Friday, you get back to them by Friday. Whether or not it's just a, I'm still working on it. Because what you're doing with a building promises is showing them that they can trust you on the small things. So then they're going to get better at trusting you on the bigger things later. There's one gentleman that I interviewed for the book and he talked about guerrilla effectiveness is what he calls it. Like you sneak stuff in. So he said, one of his common approaches is I'm going to sneak in measurement into this. You didn't ask for it. But we're going to sneak it in. We're going to do more measurement. And then at the end, we're going to say, hey, look at what we found out as a result of this. So he'll sneak that in as a way to kind of add some additional unexpected value. It's like adding these little sparks of extra that maybe people aren't expecting. And those don't necessarily, it's not in this point where you're pushing back and saying, we're not going to do this. This isn't related to training, yada yada. You're saying we're going to do it as well as we can so we can build trust. so we can ask you the harder questions the next time you come to us, because now you're going to believe in the product that we can provide to you. So now we can push it just a little bit further next time. Scott (30:59.016) I love the extra. I love the fact that you used measurement as an extra because I think that's something that a lot of people forget and a lot of my peers forget. So if you take a look at Kirkpatrick and we're getting better and better and better at getting those end result kind of data that make for great stories for the C-suite. They love stories with numbers and data and all that other groovy stuff in there. And we're just getting to a point where we can get more of that. But I love that. Adding that additional value, especially from something that my stakeholder didn't ask that you know is super important, makes you look really, really smart. Thank you so much for sharing that. What a great idea. Jess Almlie (31:40.765) Yeah, I mean, you can always add that in. The other thing I would say is there's really two components to any successful strategic partnership when it comes to building relationships. It is in itself this respected relationship. And then the second thing that I add in is robust business knowledge. So I add those two together because what I found was without both of those being at a high level, it's virtually impossible to become a strategic business partner. Because if somebody sees you as the nice training lady, but you don't really know much about their business, then they're going to cancel their meetings with you. They're going to just ask you for orders because that's how they want to work with you. And this is, I mean, this happened to me. This was a real story. There was one stakeholder I worked with who was a really tough nut to crack. I just couldn't get past her seeing me as only as an order taker. And she saw me as this nice training lady. We had a great relationship. We would meet, we would chat. She would talk about her training. would talk about, but that was where it stopped until, and she would frequently cancel our meetings because I don't think she saw that there was value in them until one day when I was like, I kind of had started to figure out this thing. Like I need to know more about her business and maybe that'll shift it. So I was trying it out and I said, hey, you know, I know you send these reports on a regular basis to your team and to executives about how things are going. Next time you do that, would you copy me in on that? Could I see that report?" And her face was so funny because I think she looked at me like, nice training lady. Okay. I mean, I know you well enough and like you enough that I'll give it to you, but I don't know A, why you would want to see these and B, you're never going to read it anyway. Guess what? I read it. And next time I went to the meeting with her, I started to ask her a few questions about it. Hey, can you explain this to me? This, this part of the report, what does it mean when a client is in the red? How do they get there? Tell me more about this." And all of a sudden, because I was interested in her business and her challenges, and then I started talking about how that could potentially tie back to learning solutions, maybe, or even just performance solutions, she was like, it was a different relationship, and she never canceled our meetings again. And we had this very interesting relationship where I was regularly reading her business reports, and I said to her at one point, I'm like, I want to be able to tell the story of your business when you're not in the room. Jess Almlie (34:05.735) So, your team. So, I need to really understand what are the challenges you're sitting under. And it was a very different relationship after that. So, I think those two things, like, yes, we need to build a relationship. Most of us are pretty good at that. We're pretty good at having a respected relationship with people. It's we fall flat about the business knowledge piece. Zeta (34:26.51) Yeah, definitely. Scott (34:26.582) And there's so much value that we can bring to the business knowledge piece. Cause the great thing about being a neophyte on your business is that it's all new to me, right? So, it's okay for me to play dumb and ask questions that you never thought about because you're so in it. Like everybody's so in it. And I understand my business so much. Why is there a gap between this and this? It seems pretty big to me. What kind of problems is that causing you? And it asks just the What seemed like rather naive questions turn into big opportunities to solve almost 100 % of the time. Like I never noticed that. And then you're right, that value that we bring just by asking questions and try to understand their business better is really awesome. So I could talk with you just for another hour, but unfortunately we don't have another hour. And so what I would really love to do is like, there was something that you wanted to talk about that you haven't talked about yet, that's super important to that's great. And if not, if you could just go ahead and spend a few minutes just kind of tying a big Valentine's day bow on the box of chocolates that we've talked about tonight. Daniel (35:27.221) Ahem. Jess Almlie (35:37.607) You know, I think there's a couple of things I'll say. One is we sometimes want to blame everybody else for us not working as a strategic business partner. But the truth of the matter outside of, there's legacy thinking we're trying to shift this whole organization's mindset that I talked about is we are really masters in the art of unintentional self-sabotage. So we think we're doing nice things, but what we're really doing is keeping ourselves stuck in the box. So I'm going go back to something that Daniel said. earlier when you said, you know, we get real addicted to that. Hey, we did this and we did a great job on it and it looks great and we delivered exactly what you wanted and we got the kudos and people were so happy. Yes, because it is scarier to try to do something different. And so it is scarier to ask different questions. It's a place we haven't lived before. We want to be successful and we know how to be successful as a helper. And so we keep ourselves stuck in that box. So that's one of the reasons, there's a lot of other reasons that I think we self-sabotage that I won't go into, but I think it's just worth maybe considering or thinking about, are there actions that I am doing on a regular basis that I think are nice and I think are helping and really they're keeping me in the order-taking box. So that's one thing I would just leave us all to ponder that. Easiest ways for you to start making the shift, we talked about shift your mindset from helper to partner and start learning more about your business. That is the biggest thing that you can do as an L &D pro that I think we often shy away from. And it doesn't have to be scary. You don't have to learn about the balance sheets of your company. Just start learning about how the business functions. What are the biggest challenges people are facing? What's the business cadence? When are people busy? When are they not busy? Where are they contributing the revenue and where are their biggest expenses? Those kinds of things. You don't have to be an expert. I think sometimes we hear this word, business acumen and we're like, we have to know all the finances. We don't. We just have to understand how the business functions. So those are a few things that I would, I guess, leave us with if we were going to move forward and keep marching forward towards this end of the continuum that is the strategic business partner. Scott (37:52.346) Amazing stuff, Jess. Love it. We're going to have to have you back because I want to learn more and I'm sure you have more to share with us. That being said, could you do us a favor? Could you let our audience know how they could connect with you? Jess Almlie (38:05.797) I sure can. So LinkedIn is the easiest place. I'm on there quite regularly, post regularly. I have my own podcast, which is called LND Must Change. So I'm talking to people in the industry who are calling for change in a lot of small ways, because I really do believe that the only way we're going to change the way that our profession function is in a number of many, many small changes, not like one big gigantic change. So I'm talking about that in a lot of different ways. And I have a website, which is jessalmly.com. You can go there to find out more about the podcast, sign up for my newsletter. And then final thing I'll leave you with, I do have a book coming out and it will be coming out in September of 2025. So we've got just a few months and it's called L &D Order Taker No More Become a Strategic Business Partner. I wrote it to be the handbook I never had and it's full of my stories as well as the stories of everyone that I interviewed along the way. Scott (39:06.434) That is awesome. Super excited. I'm going to, I'm going to subscribe to your podcast for sure. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll get you back on Jess. It was a pleasure. Daniel San, would you do me a favor? Could you go ahead and let our audience know how they could connect with us. Daniel (39:18.412) Yes, Scott? Daniel (39:24.511) Absolutely. All right, party people, you guys know the drill. Email us at nerds at thelearningnerds.com. Joining in on the conversation, I think for this week, what we'd really like to hear is what are you doing to transition from people pleaser, helper, to strategic business partner? What about your role are you gonna do or do different to make that move? We'd love to know. If you're on Facebook, you can find us at Learning Nerds. For all of our Instagram peeps, fab learning nerds. And lastly, for more information about us, what we do and updates, www.thelearningnerds.com. Scott, back at you. Scott (41:24.298) And also do me a favor, could you go ahead and leave us a review anywhere you can leave us a review like Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a review because it's going to help us do a better job. And more importantly, it's going to help us get more of this information out to all of you. And with that, I'm Scott. Daniel (41:42.956) Damn. Zeta (41:44.45) data. Jess Almlie (41:45.573) And I'm Jess. Scott (41:47.104) And we're your fabulous learning nerds and we are out.