Simon Brown (00:21.184)
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Curious Advantage podcast. My name is Simon Brown. I'm one of the co -authors of the book, The Curious Advantage. And today I'm here with my co -author, Garrick Jones.

Garrick (00:32.784)
Hi there.

Simon Brown (00:34.582)
Paul can't be with us unfortunately today. We're delighted today to be joined by Chris Smart. Hi Chris.

Chris (00:40.119)
Hi Simon, hi Garak, delighted to be here.

Garrick (00:42.939)
All right, Chris.

Simon Brown (00:45.026)
big welcome to the Curious Advantage podcast, So let's kick things off. So your Chief Learning Officer and HR Operations Technology Business Controls and Portfolio Management Lead at MetLife. Can we start with just sharing a little bit about your role and the journey that brought you to where you are today, please?

Chris (01:03.329)
Yeah, no, absolutely, Simon. As I said, I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for the invitation. And as you said, I'm primarily the Chief Learning Officer for MetLife, have been for the last seven or eight years. But the long title is because recently, about a year ago, I added those other areas around operations, HR operations, technology, business controls and portfolio management. So it's quite a mouthful. I think, well, as we'll go on to talk about,

think the reason I got a bigger title and more responsibilities is that desire to that curiosity about sort of trying to find out what other people are doing. And how did I get here? I mean, I, it's a very good question. I look back and wonder how I did get here often. But I mean, I started out of school into university and I'd like to say that university for me was all about learning, but I think I was more curious about living and university sort of gave me that opportunity.

And anyway, long and short of it, came out of university, like many people, not sure what to do and more curious about work than what sort of work I did. And I joined an insurance company. think, I think I was rejected by Weetabix because I failed to turn up for my second interview because I got the wrong date. And that sort of precluded me probably from advancing in the process. And Friends Provident, UK insurance company, you probably remember from years gone by, offered me a job. They're the first people who offered me a job.

Simon Brown (02:18.229)
you

Simon Brown (02:28.352)
me.

Chris (02:29.537)
That's how I joined insurance and I'm kind of insurance industry man and boy. And I went into sales, went into sales management and very quickly became very curious about people managing people at a very young age with a lack of experience. You learn quickly and you learn the hard way by making mistakes. And I became very curious about the behaviors of different people and how when I do one thing with one person, I get one reaction and another with another, I get another. So anyway, long and short of it.

That drove me sort of to more and more into training and learning. So I ended up moving into learning and development, started running my own consultancy around sales training. MetLife became a client and you know the story of what happened next. I joined MetLife in the UK with the promise and curiosity of, you know, maybe working globally rather than just in the UK. And anyway, the rest is history. I progressed, got a global role and...

became the Chief Learning Officer and then, as I said, more recently picked up some more responsibilities. So not by design, I don't think I'm here.

Simon Brown (03:38.646)
So you're currently in New York, is that right?

Chris (03:41.387)
No, I'm at home now back in the UK. No, I'm doing New York in a couple of weeks. So yeah, back at.

Simon Brown (03:47.638)
Sorry, your role is juggling though between New York and UK, is that right?

Chris (03:52.813)
Yeah, we're a bit like head offices out of New York, 200 Park and Central, Grand Central. So yeah, I spend quite a bit of time there and then the rest of the time I'm either traveling into market or yeah, working from home and sort of running the global team from here. London, you know, UK is a great place to be and go left and right from covering the global.

Garrick (04:13.999)
That's the timeline, isn't it?

Simon Brown (04:14.528)
So you've... Go on, Gary.

Chris (04:15.307)
Yes, yeah.

Garrick (04:18.937)
It's the timeline, isn't it, Chris?

Chris (04:20.033)
Yeah, it's much, much easier. you know, the danger with the timeline is you can end up working every hour that goes since because, you know, you could do Asia in the morning and US all the way through the evening. So, but, but no, works well.

Garrick (04:28.548)
Yeah

Garrick (04:32.943)
Yeah. I'm fascinated that you could have combined learning of some HR tech and all the business controls. So learning, it's interesting to me that learning is the same role and that you combine those two. How does that work?

Chris (04:49.227)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, a lot of people ask the same question and they often say, you know, shouldn't learning be with talent or, but when I look at learning in this day and age, you know, there's such a technology component, there's such an operational component of running a successful learning organization. I mean, the commercials of it, you know, as well as the delivery of it, you know, clearly there's a lot of thought leadership goes into what learning you're going to provide and how you're going to provide it, but actually a very big

part of it and being successful is the operational side. So we found huge synergy in working closer with the HR operations team, the HR technology team and things like that. And then when we look at business controls, there's so much that we do to support our control functions around trading, around risk and things. there's a lot more synergy than many people would think.

Simon Brown (05:29.728)
you

Garrick (05:40.721)
Would you call yourselves a learning organization?

Simon Brown (05:41.248)
and

Chris (05:43.437)
Well, my organization and MetLife, I think we're becoming more and more a learning organization. And it's interesting because when we talk about learning, think often we're talking about employees learning. But one of the things that we're trying to instill is that people say, well, learning is this thing you maybe do on the side traditionally. But actually, when you look at the use of data, I say to people, why do you use data? Will you use data to learn from the data to make better business decisions? When we talk about

some of the agile principles of test and learn and iterate. Well, that's about being a learning organization. So I think, you know, it's to me, being a learning organization isn't about how much learning people do. It's actually about learning as a way of working. And I think that's a clear distinction that often we have to sort of represent that quite strongly to business leaders because, sometimes they've been brought up in an environment where learning is this thing you go to a course to, or you take a course online. And that's something that we're doing a lot of work on.

Simon Brown (06:44.576)
That's interesting. We had John Hagel on the podcast some time ago, and he talked about his definition of learning being around sort of discovering new knowledge. So that that aspect of learning that is something new, as opposed to how typically we talk about learning of learning something that already exists. So it sounds like within MetLife, you're thinking more in that vein of how do we discover? How do we learn? How do we experiment? How do we find new ways of doing things? Is that is that right?

Chris (07:11.275)
Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned experiment. I think you can talk about it, but also it's how do you make it systemic and how do you build in processes to encourage people to do it? we've had a sort CEO led sort of drive to encourage experimentation over the last two or three years. mean, our CEO has been in place now nearly five years. And one of the first thing he wanted to do was to harness the sort of power of

I don't think we did. We never really call it curiosity. We don't call it out as a word, but when you look at experimentation, we've had an experimentation fund where people can put ideas for and get seed funding for ideas. I think that's been really powerful in harnessing. I think one of the things about MetLife is we've been 150 years as a risk management company. So if you think about the inherent culture, the inherent culture is one of, we're probably...

Garrick (08:02.607)
Hmm. Hmm.

Chris (08:07.519)
risk averse traditionally and in today's world we have to be much more open to exploring new ways of doing things and this whole drive to experimentation, the experimentation fund and campaigns and hackathons is all part of the sort of moving that DNA so that we were able to embrace all the opportunities that are out there.

Garrick (08:10.107)
Yes.

Simon Brown (08:33.14)
That sounds very much like curiosity to me. And how did you, how did over that five year period, I guess, you go about that change? Because as you say, going from all about risk management and maybe more conservative and avoiding risk through to all those things you're describing of experimentation hackathons, that's all about embracing the risk and taking smart risks. So how have you found that culture journey?

Chris (08:35.105)
Yes, exactly.

Garrick (08:35.441)
Me too!

Chris (08:59.009)
Yeah, I think we'd always like to say we've always taken measured risk. But I think that the cultural piece of that, you know, it's more now about not just the assessment of risk, but it's actually about risk reward, you know, risk got to be taken in balance with reward. And I think, you know, we've done a lot around culture, you know, from day one of our new CEO, you know, they really recrafted our purpose as well, you know, and that's been a big

Simon Brown (09:04.672)
Mm

Chris (09:28.895)
foundation of the shifting culture. And, you know, we have a purpose of always with you building a more confident future. But the beauty of that purpose is it's for all our stakeholders, whether it be for our customers, you know, we're there for them in their times of need, you know, our CEO often says, you know, we're actually we're not a risk management company, we're actually in the business of keeping promises. You know, and that's the promise to the customer in their time of need. It's a promise to communities, we do a lot.

as many companies do in the communities that we serve, but then to our employees, you know, and that's the real piece around it harnessing them around experimentation, around opportunities, around learning, around career, you know, and these things, don't think any of them stand alone. They're all codependent. You you don't, you don't get people to experiment unless they're curious about what that could mean potentially for other work to do, new work to do, et cetera, et cetera. So a lot, a lot around that.

And then just really a focus, we've had a big focus on learning to support that. So yeah, they all go together, but I think it's really that purpose and that culture that's been the biggest engine to make that shift. like all companies, we still have work to do.

Garrick (10:43.082)
Exploration and experimentation are really at the heart of our definition of curiosity is like if you wonder about something, go out and find about, know, do lots of little experiments that don't break the bank, but that allow you to kind of take little steps to move along the way. I'm fascinated by you talking about funds and campaigns and hackathons. Can you tell us a little bit more about the kinds of hackathons, for example, that you you encourage to enable this experimentation in this?

Chris (11:10.807)
Yeah, absolutely. yeah, they've evolved. mean, the experimentation fund is heavily promoted. Anyone can sign up to put an idea forward and it's then assessed. they literally get granted an amount of money to try things out. Obviously, that has to be a business outcome, whether that be for customer or efficiency or whatever. So I think that's one area we've done it. We also had a whole campaign.

Garrick (11:11.279)
highly risk averse organization.

Chris (11:38.529)
you know, around process improvement. But again, that is around, know, the whole idea, you know, people need to question things. People need to question the status quo. Is there a better way of doing things? We call it removing pebbles and boulders, you know, so people literally have a whole campaign where people can submit, you know, where they've actually improved things by removing blockers. And I think this came out of some of the, the sort of employee survey data that said that, you know,

Garrick (11:50.629)
Hmm.

Chris (12:07.085)
just sometimes some of the silliest things get in the way of people being able to do more, to move quicker, be more agile. So they started this campaign around removing pebbles and boulders. And I think we've had thousands and thousands of examples across our workforce of sort of 45 ,000 where things have been made better because employees have put their hand up. And I think it goes hand in hand. You know, it's hard to embrace curiosity without empowerment.

Because if people are curious and they don't see things happening, that was really a real challenge to this working book. The empowerment has come alongside. people, words are one thing, but when they see action, when they see money being committed and when they see things actually being removed in process, it gets an inertia and energy of its own.

Garrick (12:35.12)
Hmm.

Simon Brown (12:57.896)
Absolutely, I love that curiosity needs to have that empowerment. So I know when we talked previously, you talked about how during the pandemic MetLife sort of pivoted in order to sort of demonstrate agility and had some significant success around that. So maybe could you take us through some of the successes you had over that period and how that's carried on, I guess, since then into sort of everyday life post pandemic?

Chris (13:23.703)
Yeah, no, and I think the one thing about the pandemic that strikes me when we look back, obviously at the time, it was difficult, it was challenging, it was unknown, people, and it was indiscriminate the way it treated different employees in different ways depending on their circumstances. But the one thing looking back is it just proved that our propensity for change was far greater than any of us actually realized. And I think the one thing...

that we've embraced are some of the things that changed that we were kind of forced to change, but they actually changed the company for the better. And, you know, we shouldn't take away from the move, like all companies from, from office to virtual, which happened literally, you know, overnight. And that was good. But I think, you know, we also had a new CEO, as I said, sort of mid 2019, and we launched a new whole strategy at the end of 2019. So you can imagine we launched a strategy. We want to cascade it once.

Obviously to the board, to our investor community, and then to the employees. Well, the first sessions were starting sort of end of Jan, February, 2020. And we'd done 10 cascades, which were all planned in person. And suddenly everyone's working virtually and can't meet. And, you know, what do you do? You don't just stop and tell the investors, know, well, we've stopped our strategy. We continued the cascade and we switched to pivoted to virtual.

I think in the space of three weeks to run and it wasn't virtual. Let's just talk at them for three hours. was literally interactive participation. you know, and it, it actually didn't just cascade the strategy and get the alignment and the vision, but actually at that time it pulled people together in a virtual way, which was really important from a culture and a community. so I think that was a, that was a big,

a big defining moment, not just in the pandemic, but also for the company. And then, our CEO and leadership team were fantastic in their engagement. We started something that we call Let's Talk Live, which is where our CEO hosts sort of chat sessions with employees and brings employees in. And it's mainly employees rather than necessarily leaders. And that was done, I think, to respond to the pandemic. And guess what?

Chris (15:46.413)
It happens every month still, and it's one of the most popular things that we do in the company. It's done virtually, and that's great. So I think that, but I think lastly, just the role of the leader. The role of the leader in the pandemic was critical. They became more than a manager. They had to lead in the way they brought people together. And one of the things we also did at the same time was launch something called Lead in the Future, which is where we took 6 ,000 people leaders.

through a leadership development program when I think many others were thinking how, what were they gonna do? We were actually January, February, March, April, know, launching this and, you know, we ran pathways, virtual workshops, speaker series, leadership peer circles all through the pandemic for sort of the next five quarters. You know, and I think this really made a difference in terms of people's engagement.

from a people leader point of view, but also we saw employee survey scores increase and everything. So very proud of the ability to run that kind of program at that kind of scale so quickly at a time of need.

Simon Brown (16:58.863)
And it's fantastic to get that sort of result from such a quick pivot to virtual and then I guess before that the perception was virtual you sort of sit back and maybe not engaging your listening but it sounds like you went for the full interactive experience and all the benefits that come with that.

Chris (17:07.97)
Yeah.

Chris (17:16.587)
Yeah, and all the painful lessons that go with it as well as you're learning on the go. mean, know, Pete, you know, talk about curiosity. mean, you know, I think everyone learned more about all our virtual, you know, tools in this, you know, we had an accelerated learning curve because guess what we were doing, you know, and that's when you learn.

Garrick (17:35.099)
Hmm.

Simon Brown (17:38.498)
I know we went through a similar experience at the same time with that sort of pivot to virtual. I'm really, really curious around how now you're seeing things. So having sort of been through that period and we proved, you like, that you can get highly engaging, highly impactful learning virtually. Now...

Personally what I'm seeing is a strong desire to get back together face to face as well for the right things, for reasons of community building and culture and other pieces. What are you seeing in terms of having proved that it can work virtually, still are you seeing value in that face to face time as well?

Chris (18:18.763)
Yeah, no, absolutely. mean, I think we're very similar. We've seen a desire for people to want to come together, but I that's as much about community and an acceleration of peer learning as opposed to learning from someone else. So I think that's key. I think what I'm, we've always talked about blended, but I think we're probably getting better at blended now because we've actually done virtual better.

that makes sense. think when we used to talk about blended, it was let's use online, get them prepped and then let's do face to face. I think now blended has kind of come to a more true reflection of what blended can mean. For example, we do a lot with our distribution teams around the world. Some of those are MetLife, others are sort of agents of MetLife. And we've really leveraged now the learnings of the pandemic of what can be done virtually so that when we bring ourselves people off the road,

We drill them, it's role plays, it's all the things they probably said they didn't want to do when they didn't get everything else virtually. So that's been a lesson, but no, we're similar. I think there's nothing wrong with people wanting to come together from a community point of view. What we're also finding is from a sort of vitality of the office, in -person training is also a great asset when people come to the office.

collaboration, but also you can do in -person training. You know, it becomes an enabler of more than just training then.

Garrick (19:52.258)
You know what strikes me, Chris, we always being asked, how do you do this? How do you put curiosity into organizations? What are the pragmatic things that can be done? And what strikes me about our conversation is how pragmatic the things you're doing are things like the funding and the campaigns and the hackathogs. But also you talk about curiosity is useless without empowerment and the role of the leader. And then your programs like Let's Talk Live. That's something to do leading.

in the future another program to put these things into place. What are the other things that you're doing that are the tools that are helping you cascade and put these things into place?

Chris (20:26.124)
Yeah.

Chris (20:30.091)
Yeah, no, I I think you're actually right. I think I'd be quite proud to say that as a company we're very practical. know, talk is cheap, you know, and it's easy to do, but actually it's putting actions and making things, you know, operationalizing them. talk a lot about it to my team. And a good example would be as another, you know, I think a really powerful example is, we have a digital learning platform, like many people, we call it My Learning.

Garrick (20:39.503)
Hmm.

Chris (20:55.725)
And it's digital, people can go on and they can take as much digital learning as they want. And that's great. But we also know that, you know, it's well established now, the 70 -20 -10 is the experiential learning is 70%. And so when we were first sort of looking at the whole skills arena and what we needed to do and what our strategy would be, we came across the talent marketplace. And we...

Garrick (21:11.726)
Yeah.

Chris (21:23.137)
long and short of it, decided that we wanted to launch a talent marketplace. And my way of describing it, that is operationalizing experiential learning. It's actually putting something in the hands of employees that can allow them to be curious about things outside their job. And the way we run it is it's discretionary effort and people are empowered to go. They don't have to ask permission of their manager to go and do it. They just have to take the responsibility that they've got their day job, but they want to do something

Garrick (21:32.624)
Yeah.

Chris (21:52.749)
experientially to learn, then they go to the platform and basically the platform, it's a marketplace. People put on projects and people apply for projects. People can network if there's someone who wants to know someone, something about, I don't know, agile and they make connections and then the AI behind it makes the connection. And what I love about it was there was some, I wouldn't say reservation, but some interest in

Would people be interested to do this if it was discretionary effort? So one of the things we did before launching is we went out to an employee population, think, at least four or 500 employees around the world, different markets, and said, if you were able to go and work on something new with different people, how much time could you find in the week? And 60 % of people said they could find two to three hours a week.

Simon Brown (22:44.884)
Yeah.

Chris (22:50.477)
not to do more of the same thing, but if it was something new with new people, in other words, something that they would be curious about, they would find discretionary time to go and do that work. And that was really a pivotal point in the socialization of the platform. to give you an example, we saw it's voluntary, 70 % of employees signed up, so that's 32 ,000 employees.

Garrick (23:02.672)
Hmm.

Chris (23:17.581)
We've had 13 ,000 project assignments, 7 ,000 connections between people. And it's not just satisfied curiosity and made it very practical, but we've seen engagement scores rise. We've seen hundreds of thousands of hours of capacity released. And the one I love most is one employee said, my path has made my life seem a smaller place to work. So very practical, but really helping people to

satisfy their curiosity.

Garrick (23:50.681)
amazing. I was very interested in you talked about the pivot that happened under COVID and so on. But what about in less stressful times? What about you know, now when things are whatever the new normal is? What drives keeps on driving the change? What's the stuff that enables your organization to keep on changing and keep on innovating, keep on being curious, while they're sorry, and keep on being curious, while they're not under duress.

Chris (24:19.159)
Yeah, I know. guess great question, because as I said, you know, we're kind of all reverting to type a bit now, know, COVID, everyone moved at pace and everyone changed and we're, you know, we're just, we're humans, aren't we? So it kind of, you know, and I think, when I think about the things that are driving us now to change things, and, you there's a lot of changes, we all know around the corner with the advent of AI and things like that. I think, I think our purpose is key. You know, one of the things about the purpose is we're always looking about the outcomes

Garrick (24:27.075)
You

Chris (24:49.111)
for our stakeholders. So I think a strong purpose and a strong vision is a driver of change because it gives you a focal point as to what those changing outcomes need to be. I think the other thing is exactly as I said there, vision and focus. One of the things I always say to the team is change is hard when there are too many things going on. Yeah, because if there are too many things going on,

Garrick (25:15.269)
Hmm.

Chris (25:17.259)
Change is a conscious engagement of people to do something differently. If people are too busy, it's really very difficult to get into focus on a change agenda as opposed to say a run agenda or a BAU agenda. I think that strong vision and focus and prioritization is helping us change quicker than maybe we would have done in the past. And when you look at both of those things, leadership's key. I mean, the leadership.

Garrick (25:32.239)
Hmm.

Simon Brown (25:32.692)
Thank

Garrick (25:45.071)
Hmm.

Chris (25:45.737)
ability to drive change has been just fantastic in the last five to seven years. I think the empowerment alongside that means that you actually get a force from within and change doesn't have to be done to it's done with and it's done together. And My Path is a great example. We always talk about My Path. My Path was built by employees for employees. We got the employees to promote it.

And that's just a different dynamic in maybe many big companies from the past.

Simon Brown (26:23.574)
Yep, so we're talking with Chris Smart. Chris is a seasoned HR leader with over 15 years of expertise in HR practices. Following an early career in business and financial advising, he joined MetLife back in 2011.

currently serves as their Chief Learning Officer. And his responsibilities include overseeing HR portfolio management, operations, technology, and business controls, as well as leading the firm's skills strategy and AI capability development. At MetLife, Chris has led key initiatives such as creating a world -class sales capability development program, implementing a transformative learning and development strategy, and launching a successful talent marketplace, my path that we just heard all about. He's also established an HR portfolio management capability to enhance focus

and commercial acumen. So we've heard you Chris mention AI a couple of times. It'd be great to get your thoughts on what's your stance on AI, what do you see its impact is going to be on learning, on the industry, and what aspects maybe sort of spark your biggest curiosity.

Chris (27:23.693)
Yeah, how long have we got? It's a big subject and I know you're passionate about as well. look, you know, well, firstly, it's not new, you know, I just mentioned my, you know, we've been using AI in different guises, but I think that the excitement that, you know, the launch of ChatGPT, you know, what is it? It's got to be 20 months ago now, something like that. I mean, that has seen a

Simon Brown (27:26.949)
Yep.

Garrick (27:27.313)
As long as you need.

Simon Brown (27:35.051)
Thank you.

Simon Brown (27:51.168)
Yep, that's good to at.

Chris (27:51.597)
explosion of interest. but that's flown by hasn't it? mean, 20 months and the only seems yesterday, but I'm really excited about the prospects of responsible adoption of AI. was just using Copilot a second ago and I was asking it to do something and it made something up because it didn't have the right reference points. So I think the responsible adoption of it for me is important and as a company that's clearly important when you think about all the stakeholders that we have to represent.

But I think it's also very exciting for our businesses and also for L &D and that we're keen to embrace the opportunities as they unfold. But when it comes to education, the one thing is education on AI is kind of a no regrets move. One from a responsibility to the workforce. In the end, AI is...

whether you're at MetLife or somewhere else in your career, AI is going to be part of how you do work and how your work is enabled. So that responsibility, you know, as one of our key stakeholders is really important for our employees. And then clearly for our business, it's about how we use AI in a responsible way to enable the work we do for our customers day to day. I think what really sparks my interest apart from obviously serving, I mean, is

What is the role of an L &D team if we vision out in, I don't know the pacing of this, no one does. So in whatever time scale, in a totally AI enabled workplace where I'm talking to you now and everything on, for example, my path, I could just click a button, it's just giving me the information and all the stats, it's to my hand and I'm still talking to you. I'm speaking too quickly, so I'm being coached to say, Chris.

Simon Brown (29:24.406)
Hmm

Chris (29:49.229)
slow down. What does it then look like when every bit of knowledge is, you it's like a cockpit suddenly. And the question then comes is, what intrigues me and I'm sure we'll find it is where does L &D's role and its day to day value creation to employees in the business, what does it look like? And then just as interestingly, once we kind of have a vision of that,

What is that transition from today to tomorrow's world? You know, discuss.

Garrick (30:26.907)
Heh heh.

Simon Brown (30:27.19)
Yeah, that's a curiosity I share. I mean, that's exactly where I am at my day job at the moment, which is sort of trying to shape the UI learning strategy or learning and development strategy for the next five years. And exactly that question. What's it going to look like? And what role do we play? And therefore, what do we need to be focusing on in order to support through there? I think, yeah, we could have many a podcast on that topic alone.

Garrick (30:31.535)
Me too.

Chris (30:52.641)
Well, exactly. I think, but more tactically, back to the point about being very practical in what we tried to do is, in the L &D world, really on the creation of a roadmap, because I do worry that as things come to market, if we're not careful, you'll do this one and then this one comes to market, and you'll have a look at this one and this one. I think we're trying to build a strategy out.

on even the adoption and roadmap of what we try in L &D with AI around efficiency outcomes. What can we do that we do now, but we can do it quicker, we can do it at less cost to release capacity. And making sure that that doesn't rule the day against the really important bits about how can we actually drive, use AI to drive the effectiveness of the outcomes for our learners. Because a lot of L &D in the corporate world,

Garrick (31:48.176)
Yeah.

Chris (31:51.467)
is done and we measure it on engagement, but we don't actually really know its impact. And I think AI could really help us there. So those two things are top of mind as well.

Garrick (31:59.503)
Mm.

It strikes me how much L &D has changed over the last five years, and certainly in the last two years. Whereas you used to have a group of people who were doing a lot of the heavy lifting, making events, organization, moving people around production, getting, learning courses designed and so on. It's completely different world now. People aren't flying around the world to deliver things anymore.

They're enabling people to learn. They're looking at outcomes. They're much more strategic. And they're using the online tools in a way that we never thought possible five years ago. Remember the debate about whether it was possible to learn when you weren't face to face? I mean, that's no longer even in question. But the thing about that fascinating me too is all about the AI and how AI is doing the heavy lifting. And what is the role of the L &D team?

and what are they, how are they supporting the organization going forward? I think that's starting to emerge. You mentioned efficiency outcomes and measurement and I'd love to explore just a little bit about how, what is your view on how we measure firstly the experimentation that you were doing and I'm using experimentation slash curiosity. How would you measure the efficiency outcomes of experimentation and curiosity?

Chris (33:01.452)
Yeah.

Garrick (33:23.694)
not necessarily ROI, but how do we measure this? Are we trying to get our hands around the financial impact of focusing on these ways of doing things?

Chris (33:32.929)
Yeah, I think it's not easy. think the first thing I'd say is I'm a great believer in that we shouldn't always look to try and measure and quantify everything. think personal view now, but I think a lot of L &D professionals have spent a lot of time trying to justify things that don't need justified. Maybe that's just part of your go -to -market value proposition for employees and that's that. Whereas other things...

Garrick (33:56.623)
Hmm.

Chris (33:57.569)
you know, if you actually invest your point, Gary, or, you know, money to something you're experimenting, you know, I think you need tangible outcomes, but I think there are different levels. You know, the first thing is you need engagement. If no one even engages with what you're experimenting, well, you've got no data to demonstrate. So, and then the next thing is, you know, what are the outcomes? Are they financial? Are they time saved? Are they time to competence? Are they, you know, there are many measures, but what I think we try and do

much more now is use the measures that we use across HR in the business anyway, rather than trying to find new measures. We don't need L &D measures. can just, what are the business measures? What are the things that it drives to that they measure as well? So trying to be, rather than being duplicative, just trying to to more complement what's being measured anyway. So that is one thing.

It's not always easy and that's why I think when it's not easy, maybe don't spend quite so much time trying to measure the things that aren't easy to measure.

Simon Brown (35:00.531)
I love that piece that it's just part of our go -to -market value proposition and that's out and sometimes that is enough. That people find value in it and yeah, it's a compelling.

Chris (35:10.987)
No, I think you're right. I think, you know, sentiment is a measure. Is it softer than dollars? Yeah, of course it is. But is it a measure? Yeah, sentiment's important in this day and age of culture, retention, engagement. You know, so, you know, I think, as I say, I think there's a whole range, you know, and then it's just important to do. But I'm just interested in, Gary, what you said about the changing role of L &D. And, you know, one of the things that

Garrick (35:28.357)
Mm.

Chris (35:39.775)
You know, my team will laugh if they listen to this, but, know, a strong believer that maybe one day soon L &D will be a marketing organization that just happens to have L &D as a product. Because if AI is able to create, if we have digital as opposed to face to face, I'm not saying we will not have face to face, but it's all about engagement, you know, and if it's about engagement.

Garrick (35:55.599)
Hmm.

Chris (36:08.189)
L and D professionals, including myself, are not trained and steeped in marketing discipline. know, one of the things we've just read literally in the last three, four, five months, is started working with our global brand and marketing team and looking to try and adopt some of the principles that they use with clients and customers around marketing with our employees. It's early days, but it's a great example where...

Garrick (36:30.416)
Hmm.

Chris (36:32.937)
changing nature of our industry means that we're going to have to have changing skills and maybe changing perspectives on, you know, what our key disciplines are.

Garrick (36:44.143)
Yeah, I came across somebody the other day who told me that they're changing the name of their marketing organization to social media managers. Can you imagine?

Chris (36:51.117)
Yeah, yeah, no, mean, it's amazing. My daughter is studying at university. She's studying sort of social media and influences and she's just gone up on her placement started three weeks ago and she said, first she said, this is great, this job. She said, I just do what I do in my spare time and I get paid for it. So that's fantastic. But what she then said, which she says,

I thought I knew a lot about social media and influences and how you do it and how you get the best penetration. She said, I've learned 10 times more than I knew, even though I'm studying it, learning from experience in three weeks. She's only been there three weeks. yeah, it's a whole new world, especially I think for L &D professionals.

Garrick (37:30.713)
Nice.

Garrick (37:36.449)
really is. I have to ask you Chris, how do you personally define curiosity?

Chris (37:42.839)
Yeah, I'm sure I stole this, but I don't know where from, but I always, I like simplicity and I always just think about, I define it as, you your desire to inquire. Yeah, because you've got to have the desire. I don't think you can force curiosity. I think I know it's a dangerous thing to do. I think I know you can't force curiosity on anyone. And it's just that you can see kids who are curious. They're the ones who ask all the questions. It's the same with adults. It's the same with anyone.

And it's that desire to know about things, learn about things. So I know it's pretty simple. sure there is, I know that you guys could give me a much more researched, but I just like the simplicity of it. Just desire to inquire.

Simon Brown (38:19.281)
you

Garrick (38:31.589)
Like it too.

Simon Brown (38:33.236)
Yeah, that's interesting. We've asked that question to many, many of our guests and everyone has a different way that they seek curiosity in a different definition. So there's no right answer. We talked about it as an attitude of wonder with a spirit of exploration. yeah, wondering, inquiry, then putting it into action through exploration.

Chris (38:49.517)
far more articulate than I, Simon, but yes, it, yeah. But that's what I love about it as well. Curiosity can be, it can still have its essence for everyone, but be slightly different in its interpretation. That's why it's such a nice, nice word.

Simon Brown (39:06.779)
So what are you curious about at the moment Chris? What's piquing your curiosity?

Chris (39:11.253)
Well, I'm a Liverpool fan, so I'm very curious how our new manager's gonna do, but he seems to have started well, but I'm curious about that. no, I think, I thought personally, it's interesting, I was in a bookshop at the weekend. I just popped in into one of these quirky book shops and I was in Cambridge and I actually saw a book on the history of the High Line.

And I love the High Line in New York. It's one of my favorite places to go, to think, to walk. But I actually realized, I knew a bit about the background. So I've literally from the weekend have been very curious to learn more about the place I love. I think sometimes you take things for granted and you don't realize the effort that's gone into creating something you so enjoy. So I've made a real conscious effort and started reading the whole history of it, how it came about, you know.

Simon Brown (39:40.968)
Garrick (39:42.949)
Mmm.

Chris (40:08.001)
the challenges, I don't mean to that. That is something that personally, and I'm going to go and walk it again with an enlightened maybe different view. So that's that. Professionally, I don't want to sound on message, but it is AI, but not the technology, really the pacing, the change, the challenges, and as I say, not so much the technology, although we need to know about that, but more that just the human behavior.

Garrick (40:17.659)
Mm.

Chris (40:37.421)
aspect of what it's going to take, where it's going to fall over from that perspective. So I think that really, I'm very curious to see how it plays out and to help hopefully inform and shape how we move on it.

Simon Brown (40:58.29)
I shall pick your brain about the history of the High Line that finishes just by our offices in New York. next time I'll wander down there, be thinking about that.

Chris (41:02.613)
Alright.

Garrick (41:03.065)
It's so strange how these, you know, these topics kind of... Sorry Chris.

Chris (41:05.303)
Yeah, well I've, I've, I've... Yeah. Sorry, y 'know.

Garrick (41:12.337)
I was going to say it's so strange how these topics kind of bubble up and we get this. I was talking to Michael Craig Martin, the artist who has a huge retrospective coming to the Royal Academy in September, and he's 84 and he has the energy of somebody 30 years younger, astonishing. But he just mentioned out of the blue that he's been asked to do sculptures on the High Line as part of their ongoing cultural thing. So the High Line keeps on pitching up in conversation at the moment.

Chris (41:34.477)
Yeah.

Chris (41:39.191)
Well, there you go, highlight in the highlight. so ask me again. I'm going to New York in two weeks, so I'm trying to read this book before then and then walk it again. I'm looking for some epiphany and we'll see whether it enlightens me.

Garrick (41:43.153)
Exactly.

Garrick (41:58.331)
So beautiful. If there's one thing to leave our listeners with Chris, just one thing, what would it be?

Chris (42:04.492)
wow.

just think in what is, I think we all believe going to be a time of even more change, because we've had lots of change, but even more change. I just think the power of curiosity is a catalyst. People have to want to change. And I think curiosity can inspire that desire to change. That's where I see curiosity's power in the current climate.

Simon Brown (42:36.374)
It's a great way to leave things. So Chris, we've covered a huge amount. from your time at MetLife, your desire for curiosity, how you got there from your time at university, you became curious about work rather than any particular area and how that took you then into insurance and through sales management ultimately into learning and development.

how you use data to learn, the sort test learn and iterator approach, how you experiment, so we heard all about your experimentation fund and the way you've evolved the culture at MetLife to be around experimentation and with the hackathons and move.

to that sort risk reward element. So recognizing there is time for a risk, but we need to understand the rewards for those risks as well. I love the way you talked about how you encourage people to challenge the status quo and the remove pebbles and boulders from along the road. I think that's a very visual way of, yeah, how do we remove those pebbles and boulders to make things easier?

Then we went down the route of pandemic and how you pivoted and changed and some of the strengths of the approach that you took of moving to virtual, training your leaders and making things truly virtual so that you had the interactive elements and the impactful and some of the painful lessons you felt along the way as well. And how at the end of that we actually can do now better blended approaches because we really understand what good virtual looks like and the values of face -to -face. We heard about the pragmatic approach, the practical approach.

Dived into then Talent Marketplace, My Path, some fantastic stats around 32 ,000 people using it, 13 ,000 project assignments, how it's impacting engagement scores. And then the power of a strong purpose and vision in order to be able to become the focal point for change and how leadership is so key to that. Then we dived into AI, as if that wasn't all enough. Heard your thoughts around responsible AI, how exciting it is, and greater than here.

Garrick (44:41.22)
Yeah.

Simon Brown (44:47.286)
questions around what will an L &D team look like when it's enabled by AI and the importance of AI for efficiency, but also not to forget the effectiveness element as well. And then, yeah, will the future of L &D be as a marketing organization and hearing about your daughter's experiences from social media in just three weeks as a power of learning on the job? And then finally, curiosity as a desire to inquiry.

Garrick (45:05.424)
Yeah.

Simon Brown (45:16.756)
and then leading people with the power of curiosity as a catalyst. So what a conversation. Thank you, Chris.

Chris (45:22.581)
Thank you, Simon Garrett. Really enjoyed the conversation. I'm sure there's many more to be had over time.

Garrick (45:23.173)
Thank you, Chris.

Simon Brown (45:31.739)
You've been listening to a Curious Advantage podcast. We're always curious to hear from you, so if there was something useful or valuable from this conversation with Chris today, then we encourage you to write a review of the podcast on your preferred channel, saying why this was so and what you've learnt from it. We always appreciate hearing our listeners' thoughts and having a curious conversation, so use the hashtag curiousadvantage. Curious Advantage Book is available on Amazon worldwide, or to your physical, digital or audiobook.

now to further explore our 7C's model for how you can build your curiosity skills and subscribe to the podcast today to follow the curious advantage also on LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube to keep exploring curiously. You can find the links to all of those in the show notes so see you next time. Thanks and bye.

Simon Brown (46:19.328)
Thank you, Chris.