Simon Brown (00:03.997)
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, Paul Ashcroft. And unfortunately, Garrett can't be with us today, but we're delighted to be joined by Dr. Serena Gonzalez-Fersh. Welcome Serena.

Paul (00:16.384)
Bye there.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (00:25.592)
Thank you for having me, Simon and Paul.

Simon Brown (00:28.317)
Ah, it's great to have you. I'm looking forward to our conversation. So a warm welcome to the Curious Advantage podcast. So, Surina, you're the global head of talent at SoftwareOne. You're also co-founder of Women in Learning Leadership and your career span talent, strategy and learning. So maybe to get us started, can you give us a little bit about your journey and how curiosity has shaped you to getting where you are today?

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (00:55.566)
Absolutely. So yes, I had talent at Software One. So it covers L &D, our academy, DEI, performance, succession, and anything else I might have forgotten in the talent space. I've always been in HR and L &D. My master's was in HR. And then 20 years into it, my doctorate was in learning and development. I constantly tried to see how where organizations

are evolving and changing and how learning leadership and talent have been evolving to meet those needs, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so.

Simon Brown (01:37.085)
fantastic.

Paul (01:37.109)
So you mentioned your doctorate there and I we've been talking for the past few years and really keen to hear more about that because I know it was a labor of love but also really, really fascinating work. Could you dive in a bit to your thesis and tell us what were some of the most exciting, surprising or maybe provocative things that emerged from your research?

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (01:59.36)
Okay, so I started out, this sounds terrible to say, but in complete honesty, it started off as a midlife crisis. And I realized the next time I hit a round number, I'm probably gonna buy a Maserati, because that would be a lot less of a crisis. And you know, much easier. And I can't drive, so that's a real crisis. But it started off as a crisis, but it also started off as I would go to all the conferences and I'd go to all these exhibitions and I'd go to...

Paul (02:12.065)
be easier than a PhD right now.

Ha ha.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (02:26.478)
all these vendor events and realized that nothing that was happening there was reflecting my life in the organization. Everything was being sold as the next magic bullet that would solve Ellen B's problems. We were talking about the same issues that we had been talking about for decades. You could pull up most books, up yours as well. Sorry, I'm looking because it's right there on my shelf. And you go and go.

So there's all of this thought leadership, there's all of these methodologies, and then what I'm seeing in the marketplace doesn't reflect my life at all. So the original objective was to see organizations are changing, the workforce is changing, there is so much research in the future workforce and the future organizations, and what must L &D do to stay relevant?

Actually, all bets were off. It started off with even the premise of if you remove the learning function from an organization, would anybody notice? It started all. Well, in a lot of cases, it would be no. If you start keep on, we could do this back and forth. go, OK, compliance has gone off to legal and we've given functional learning back to the functions and leadership training that.

Paul (03:31.166)
Okay, so provocative then.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (03:49.784)
thing which nobody manages to measure for or bothers to measure for efficacy further enough, we just go let people figure it out for themselves. What's left? What would be the role of L &D? And that was where I started out with the questions. I was supposed to do 23 interviews. I wound up doing 68. Simon was kindly one of them. I then reached data overload.

Thankfully, the pandemic happened, which meant I couldn't go anywhere besides analyze and or do anything besides analyze my research. So there's some big elements that came out of it. I'm very lucky to be have been with software one for the last five years. They've allowed this mad scientist to try out her findings in various aspects of talent and learning. And here we are. So there isn't a black and white.

answer as to whether learning should exist anymore. There definitely is an answer which goes L &D shouldn't exist in the current form, in its current form or remit anymore. I sort of have this tagline saying L &D is dead long live learning, but that's just a little anecdote.

Simon Brown (05:04.493)
So we've got to dive into that one then. So really keen. So it shouldn't exist in its current form. Is it dead in its current form? And what should it look like then? So we'd love to hear your thoughts.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (05:19.32)
We'll always need organizations at some point, at some scale, we'll always need a tick box which says, especially if you're listed publicly, to go, we do learning and development. We develop our people. We invest in our people's growth. We need that tick box somewhere. The question is, what do you want to be as a function? So if you want to own catalogs of courses and own the platform on which they sit,

and own the content libraries from where you acquire them, then great, that becomes you. And that becomes something that AI will probably kill off very quickly because never before in history has knowledge been so freely accessible to anyone at any level. So there's that bit where you're a tick box. You might continue to exist because regulatory reasons or listed reasons.

But to the overall success or failure of the company, there is no way to measure that. So how many of us would exist in that construct? I'm not entirely sure. When you've got the other end of the spectrum, which goes moving into this more sort of systems thinking way, people are learning all the time. Humanity is learning all the time. Organizations are living, breathing, learning beings. So what should our

role be. And I think our role becomes one providing the framework, those elements of psychological safety to go and try bits and break it and try again, the opportunities where people get to on the job and for experiential learning faster than dragging them onto a classroom and not calculating the opportunity cost of that. I think that we need to step back from the mentality of

If we can't measure it, then learning hasn't occurred. Because if I don't put you through happy sheets and count the butts on seats, can I say butts? You have a bleeper later. Then it does not, my existence hasn't been validated. And if I stop at providing and measuring the efficacy of learning in that point of time piece, like I don't tie it into performance, I don't tie it into the talent pipeline.

Simon Brown (07:28.413)
Yeah.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (07:47.67)
I don't look at promotions. I don't look at where the business is investing in its strategy, either by location or by service, then what am I doing and why do I exist? So I think the old construct of us being this little pillar and the custodians of knowledge, that's going to go or that really will go away. I'm already seeing it. We're an organization in hyper growth. We've got people, young people.

Also from the research, people working in robotics and machine learning and AI, they're building things, they're breaking things, they're rebuilding them, they're trying things out at a faster pace that we can all ever imagine. Then you have somebody, Nelandee, going, no, no, no, that's not how you try to learn. Come and take my eight hour course and then you'll be proficient at something. So I think those are all the old constructs. And we've been saying

There's nothing, none of these, none of these conclusions are new. I'm not saying I've revolutionized everything, but I think it's a practitioner led research. It's somebody who's had their nose to the grindstone for 25 years in L and D and is now getting to try it in an organization. So it's practical and real life. And I'm hoping that counts for something.

Paul (09:06.259)
I really hear what you're saying. I want to click into, you just mentioned towards the end there, Serena, that even in software one, but in lots of organizations, we're learning AI, we're learning robotics, we're learning how to use advanced algorithms in our work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And meanwhile, the LND department is saying, yes, don't forget to make time to come on our course or to do our particular program. To what extent do you think that is going to

you know, still happen, is L &D going to still continue to push a need to put leaders and managers and people in organizations on these sort of mandatory programs because this is the way we lead or this is the way we manage? Or will it become more and more open and learner centered and learner led, do you think?

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (09:57.774)
So the leadership bit is very, very interesting, Paul, because you know, and we all know that the least amount of being able to prove efficacy is around leadership training. It's the highest amount of spent and learning functions around the world and least amount of effort put into measuring it. And I really think that there's two elements to this, which is what I'm hoping to bring into our strategy as well. There is, if you start

teaching people leadership once they're already leaders, you've missed the boat. I mean, it's too late. I think right from the start of a person's career, there should be leadership skills embedded into their ways of working. So how do I give feedback to a colleague? How can I be a buddy or a mentor? What does it, how do I react to a situation that's new or different to me? And I think there are, there's

leadership competencies that if you bring in from a really, really early age when it's still possible to influence, I think you're already starting bringing in better leaders. I then think that when you get to a particular point, you have to have where people have a little bit of self-awareness on what it is. They want to go and help themselves and create that again, that safety net so somebody goes and accesses learning as and when they want.

But I think we should completely acknowledge the invited, the bit of leadership training that makes you feel special, that makes you feel part of something, that makes you feel like you are contributing. And it turn around and go, you know what, it's okay not to measure that. It's okay not to go on the traditional ROI way and go, you know, I did this and therefore somebody did this. I think that's the, doing.

a leadership network within the firm where somebody feels like they're part of something or that anecdotal emotional feedback is good enough. And I think that balance between I need to know what skill I should develop over time so I can develop vision and strategy and people leadership alongside what is it that makes me a leader in my firm and how do I feel part of this community? And I think they both go hand in hand.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (12:22.818)
and they don't start only when people become leaders or manage people.

Simon Brown (12:30.173)
Yeah, I think I would maybe put a build on there. I agree with you. The earlier that you start, the better in terms of building those leadership skills from an early age. I hope once people become leaders, however we define that, that there's still an opportunity to continuously develop, given that that's one of my tasks ahead of us at the moment, is how do we develop all of our leaders. I think that what's different is it becomes so much harder than I think then it's...

Sending someone on a two-day program is not going to fundamentally change my mindset and my beliefs and build the skills. think it becomes a much more longer-term piece and probably needs also tying to KPIs and incentives and communication and culture and all of those other pieces to really sort of significantly shift behavior.

which then comes back to something you said earlier, think, which is learning can't just be in our little bubble. We have to look across, what does it mean in terms of succession? What does it mean in terms of business strategy? How do all of these things tie together? Which is a different skill set to someone sort of just leading a training team, if you like.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (13:34.83)
And the pace I'm at which this has gone. I have to say my research was, know, start-ups, scale-ups, hyper-growth, technology-accelerating firms, firms that have had to fundamentally change their business models because of technology, like an oil company investing in renewables or a tobacco company now going tobacco-less or smokeless. And even a traditional industry is changing at that pace. But then there are new industries.

evolving or new organizations evolving, the pace at which they're moving, the pace at which they're merging, acquisitions are happening, roles of people are expanding and contracting, you cannot have a static leadership offering, you can't have a static learning offering because the organization's not waiting for you to come up with a solution. So how do you make sure that your

your offering or your catalog or your direction and your framework is agile enough that it works for all sorts of the reasons I mentioned below. You also have in a lot of the organizations I looked at, know, founder led or founder CEOs who had a brilliant idea and they're visionaries for their product and their service and sort of wound up with 500 people under them, not exactly knowing.

We're quite chuffed that they got there, but not exactly. That wasn't the goal. The goal was to make good stuff and sell good stuff and continue creating good stuff. now, I was about to say bloody hell. We now have 500 people under me and I've got to figure out this is now an organization. So I've gone from the startup bit of you letting my mates know, telling, talking about it on social media, selling it to my wider network to now having to think about.

my funding, about my organization structure, about my regulatory needs, how you keep people in, how you keep the brain within the organization and still motivate them. So all of those things you put together, you can't have the old static learning function. Something's got to change and we've got to be more as agile as the organizations we are going to be serving on.

Paul (15:58.077)
You mentioned there just earlier about framework. And I know a lot of companies at the moment are thinking, particularly in the sort of context of AI and digital and how our world is changing, we need to refresh or update our framework of how we're developing our leaders and our people. But then at the same time, Serena, you're advocating for a much more flexible open model. So what's your advice there? Or what have you tried or you seen works in terms of that balance between

What's actually driving what we want? to what extent do we allow what needs to happen?

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (16:34.99)
So I use framework in the very broad, the very systems thinking sort of sense. So let me give you an analogy. We used to be, if you think about how learning started, old Henry Ford model, I teach you how to do your job, you do your job. There's a whole assembly line, you're taught how to use a machine, you use the machine.

We sort of them involved using the analogy sort of like a coach from the sidelines, right? The play is happening and people are doing their things and we keep shouting and pulling people in and out as and when we need to talk to them or give them stuff. so we're very much not directing the play, but being in control of the knowledge that people then need to execute on. And then one, the last bit, what I call framework is sort of like the scaffolding within which somebody is free to experiment. I have a

diagram which I finally arrived with, I'm very, very happy to share it public and on the doctorate, which goes, what are the elements that underpin your learning function? And the first thing I probably want to start with is what is your skill as a learning leader? And the first thing you should probably have is understanding how adults learn in a corporate context. you know,

Ask 50 L &D people how adults learn, you'll probably get 57 different answers and 40 of those will be what a vendor told you. going back to the basics to understand how is it that people learn and why they are learning. They are learning to do better in their jobs, they are learning to contribute to business value and they are learning to contribute to their success and business success because the two are intrinsically linked in a corporate context.

So yes, we want the happy employees and employees who feel that they are growing and they are developing. But let's not forget that scaffolding. scaffolding is the corporate context, the business value, the what are you bringing to your career and your organization, what the organization is giving back to you in return. And that's sort of what I mean by the framework, the safety to go and try new things.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (18:41.952)
ability to go and pull out data for yourself, the ones where you have to share. Because if you ask anybody in a company when you don't know something, what do you do? They'll first say ask Google, they'll then say ask Jack J.P.T. and then they'll say they ask the guy next to them. Your LMS doesn't crack the top five, maybe not even the top 10 if you're being fair. And so I think that's the bit which

Paul (19:03.268)
.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (19:11.534)
which has to change the need for us to control or define everything. And that's what I mean by framework. So you're sitting sort of as the architect of how learning works within the organization. You're providing that scaffolding. You're making the links. You're making the links to performance. You're making the links to promotion. You're making the links, as Simon said, to succession. You're making the links to pipeline and all of those bits. And then

people see the value of what they're doing for themselves as opposed to you dragging them into your course or trying to force them onto a system.

Simon Brown (19:51.901)
And how are you managing that agility? Because I agree with everything you're saying in terms of, you know, think things are speeding up from a learning function. We are in a learning industry. We need to make sure that we are keeping up with the pace of new developments. And if we look at AI, that's almost on a sort of weekly basis that there's new developments. So, you know, the days of being able to take six months to produce a program and six months to roll it out and have everyone take it.

in six weeks, things may be very different, let alone six months. So how are you creating that agility within your teams to be able to respond to those changing needs?

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (20:31.904)
It's a very good question. So there's three separate elements that I can think of. in some ways, we're starting from scratch. So the wonderful thing about technology now is we can think in terms of skills so we can look at everybody's roles in the organization, the skills they need to perform their job functionally, leadership and core. And we can start to map that to

whether it's a learning intervention or it's an experience and sometimes bring those two together. It's a very, we're still in the very early stages. And I know that a lot of organizations are far further along in their skills journey than we are. But the ability for us to do this for an organization that is so tech forward that it's constantly changing every day. Software One did 21 acquisitions in three years, right? It grew its tech.

stack and its client base and its market just at a rapid pace. And so we had to go dial back in learning and in talent and go, OK, so what is it that people need from us? They're coming with X. is the delta that we're going to give? I think everybody is talking about skills organizations now. I'm not talking about it in the purest definition where you remove.

jobs and hierarchies and functions and organization structures. I think that's a bit too fantastical for us. I don't know whether it's actually practical for anybody, but I'm sure some of the organizations listening in might have tried it. But for us, it makes sense to give people the pathway. And skills is a brilliant way to do that. Defining that at each level, associating it to the

the client need and the business need and then associating learning interventions. And when I say learning interventions, I don't only mean courses. We've got our experiential learning. We've got on the job hands on and case studies and GitHub and Code Academy and make and break things and associating all of that to skills development. The other element which I want to mention was around the Software One Academy because that

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (22:53.698)
was where we genuinely stepped back and went, okay, what are our problems? Our problems are time to competency. Our problems are fighting for tech talent in an already saturated market. Our problems are the cost of this tech talent and the talent pipeline. And our problems are then getting them to stay because attrition rates are so high and you don't have the name that you would have with, know, a Meta or an Apple or a Google in order to retain the best.

So what the academy did is take ownership of the whole talent pipeline. So from sourcing to recruitment to onboarding to training to on the job experience and learning to deployment on client side, following young talent, career changing talent, women and people returning to work after long career breaks.

looking at all the talent in the market that wouldn't necessarily have a chance at a career in technology and starting from their grassroots communities going into regions where we could didn't have offices but people could work remotely and then building these learning fluid learning journeys. It was a really really good place for us to start because we could actually calculate it in business terms. So I know that in India and Brazil I

knocked off attrition from 38 % to near zero. I know that in managed services, we managed to increase the efficiency of people handling calls by 7,000 calls a day, just by bringing in a different skill set and people who are enthusiastic, who want to learn and then who want to try.

I have metrics from the business that I could use and then I could take those metrics now into the learning function and go, this works if we do this in a concerted way, if we sit at the table and look at what your business priorities are for next year, what are the type of projects, what are the type of customers, then what we can come back to you with is both skills and behaviors that work for you for the next year.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (25:07.958)
And if that changes during the year, you bring in clients and you bring in technologies that we never have, we've now created this framework that's agile enough to pivot to your needs. So that's where we're at. And we're not, I'm not saying it's perfect. The Academy has been going on for four years now. This week's its fourth anniversary and it's managed about 30 odd countries and over 50 different work streams and curricula. So.

Taking that then to the thousand odd people and multiplying that by the nine and a half thousand people and going all the way up their journey to win their leaders. That's the sort of way we are thinking at the moment.

Paul (25:47.732)
But that sounds like there's a really interesting model, Serena. And is this what you mean by sort of shifting L &D to sort of sitting under a broader talent umbrella? you start, what I like very much about what you said there, you're starting with the problems the organization is trying to solve. You're then looking for the specific intangible ways you can go and solve them. And it seems like you're bubbling this up from, you know, specific talent pools or areas where you can actually apply

focus, make a difference and then amplify that in the organization. Is that then a model that then expands? How does that work in practice?

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (26:24.07)
So I'm fortunate because I started off with the academy, wound up with talent and then had learning and development as well. Every single person's trajectory in this profession will be different. I think that there is zero way that L &D can function without being tied, without tying into these elements of talent in the future, which is coming back to what I said in my doctorate even before I had this role.

to be able to sit in isolation being custodians of knowledge, being driven by job descriptions and compliance and a disconnected understanding of leadership and business isn't going to be the place where L &D will need to be or will even be asked in the future.

Paul (27:15.497)
So, Reena, sorry, I don't know if we lost just your audio, but we certainly lost the video connection. don't know how that...

Simon Brown (27:22.381)
and the audio as well.

Helena Gonzalez (27:23.249)
Yeah, we did. Is it possible to repeat this question?

Paul (27:26.258)
If you could start the answer again, Serena, sorry. Do you need it teed up again? You started off with the zero way that the L &D can function without being strongly connected to talent.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (27:32.073)
Hang on, let me just.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (27:40.526)
Okay, let me try that again. At what point did you lose from when Paul...

Paul (27:48.787)
From the start of the answer it dropped off, yeah.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (27:52.718)
Okay.

Sorry, you're going to have to team me up again, Paul, because now I'm trying to remember the things I said. you.

Paul (27:59.519)
So broadly, was asking you, okay, let me ask you the question, right? So one of the things that you point out or you refer to strongly in your doctorate is about how L &D has a very strong connection within and into talent. How do you see that? Is that what you're talking about here in terms of these academies and how you're focused from what problems the organization is trying to solve and then how you can expand out some of these methods?

out into the organisation and really solve tangible problems. How does that work and what's that going to mean in terms of that relationship between L &D and talent in the future?

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (28:38.262)
Okay, so I'm quite fortunate because I I started off owning the Software One Academy, our corporate university, education, philanthropy, and moved on to owning broader talent management, and then finally having all of L &D under me. Every single person who enters our profession has a different trajectory. And so it differs, the answer differs. But what I'm encouraging L &D to do is rather than see themselves as the knowledge

custodians or the knowledge providers or the platform, the technology, the design guardians of content and knowledge to start with a different starting point. To start with, your question Paul, what is the business's raison d'être? Why does the business have this population? Why are we here?

not from an existential point of view, from our job point of view, and then go, what are the other elements contributing towards that organization's success? So I always find it very odd when L &D has no contact with talent acquisition. That's bizarre. They're the ones who are getting people into the business. They're the ones who know what skills they're hiring. People come in, and then they trust upon learning

after they're along with their onboarding. And then three or six months later when they failed their probation, the number of people who write, I wasn't trained enough goes through the roof and then it's my fault. I didn't even know the dude was coming in. the de-linking between learning and talent acquisition for me is really bizarre. The same thing, workforce planning, understanding what your organization benches, how I would be resourcing.

Do we bring in contractors for a short-term basis or skills on a particular project and then have them go away? Or can we be building in-house? This build versus buy conversation, we never are part of it, which is so bizarre considering we're supposed to be that build element. Everybody take another element, performance management, right? Every single person in every organization has some form of performance management or the other. Most organizations have something called development goals.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (31:01.686)
I often stand in front of rooms and go, as L &D people, how many of you go and have access to those development goals or even think to ask for it, knowing that would literally be the training needs analysis of your entire organization in one file? And you'll be, always amazed by how few people have that. And you can keep going on every single, know, succession, succession, we don't.

talk about how much of a learner was this person, how much of a leader was this person, did this person have a coach? We're not even brought in half the time on to why somebody is promoted to leadership because we haven't set ourselves up to connect to those elements. So I'm in a fortunate position being able to see all the various aspects and have L &D draw from that. Coaching is a really, really good example because I brought it up.

There are organizations that go off in various directions and every leader finds their own coach and then assume that there is some sort of anonymity associated with it. And I'm going, no, no, coaching is a learning intervention. It is one way to address an issue or address a development need. If you want it to be a great secret, go get a therapist. This is your organizational to make you a better executive and a leader.

have no insight into that because again it sits somewhere else in the ether. So I really, really believe that this isolation that we've sort of brought on ourselves over the years by confining ourselves to the analyze, design, develop, deliver, implement, manage the catalog platform and content libraries, that's just not a sustainable or a strategically relevant way for us to exist.

Simon Brown (32:53.565)
So think a strong message there for us to integrate more widely into the HR talent and the business as well. So we're talking with Dr. Serena Galvez-Fursh. She's the global head of talent at Software One and also co-founder of Women in Learning Leadership, which we need to talk about in a moment too. She's also winner of the 2024 Collins-Deed Award. She holds a doctorate from Middlesex University focused on the future of learning in tech-driven organizations. And at Software One, she leads performance management succession.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (33:00.59)
you

Simon Brown (33:23.037)
talent strategy, workforce planning, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, and the Software One Academy that we've just been hearing about and her work bridges the critical talent practices with impactful learning solutions. And then she's got background in consulting, internal leadership, and brings expertise in learning strategy, skills frameworks, career development, and predictive learning. She also champions a modern integrated approach that prepares organizations and individuals for the future of work, which we will also come on.

talk about in any moment in terms of your thoughts on AI. maybe before we go there, let's dive into this co-founder role that you had for the women in learning leadership. So tell us more on the important work that you do there.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (34:04.558)
Happily, it's still in its infancy. We just had our first anniversary last month. We started this with the LPI, the CLO of the Learning and Performance Institute and a group of women learning leaders. It was triggered a few years ago by this research that Don Taylor did, which said that 70 % of people who enter the learning profession are women.

When you start looking at CLO level, 70 % are men. So it sort of flips around and we couldn't understand why. I also believe that the concept of women in leadership transcends learning. I don't believe we have a problem with women in HR or women in learning and all those hashtags that we put around it. We're doing just fine. Where we have a problem and that transcends not just our profession, but every other is women in leadership.

I don't have an answer, but I definitely want to explore the question. So what we do is we run webinars into topics which really ask, we talk about the NDAs, we talk about your rights in employment, we talk about how you could be mentored into taking on or putting yourself forward. We actually offer the mentorship programs. It's meant to be on a very

Let's bring to the table things that people don't want to talk about. And I'm not interested in the platitudes. I had DEI. I've never been one of those that...

So it's a Monty Python sketch from Life of Brian. know, when he comes out ringing the bell saying, bring out your dead, I feel like every March we ring that bell going, bring out your women. And then in June, we ring the bell going, bring out your LGBTQ people. then a few months later, we'll do all that. Look, we'll bring out your green. We're on Earth today. I have never been one of those people who go, let's talk without action. So the webinars, the mentoring,

Paul (35:57.156)
Thank

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (36:16.692)
We also support a charity, so we encourage everybody who attends our sessions to contribute to the United Nations Women's Refugee Foundation because we really believe that women and girls suffer disproportionately in war and in crisis. So bringing in that element of girls education as well. So it's very, very early days. I would love to see where it goes to.

But right now, the focus is on a safe space to find out what it is that we can do to support anybody who wants to be leaders, but especially women. The DI has become a huge bit of conversation. So our next seminar is on the evolving corporate world and what's happening the other side of the pond.

especially with DI and what is the role of us as corporates in order to fulfill that. And that transcends women, right? That's everybody. So yes, that's a little bit about Will.

Simon Brown (37:18.429)
So for anyone listening that is keen to get involved or learn more on that, how can people find out about it?

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (37:28.59)
The Learning and Performance Institute have a page dedicated to Will. Is anyone else hearing my echo?

Simon Brown (37:37.757)
All good.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (37:39.406)
Okay, I'll just repeat that sentence again, because I'm hearing myself twice, but if you're not hearing it, that's fine. So the Learning and Performance Institute have a page dedicated to women in learning leadership. Fill out a form, drop us a line. Follow us on LinkedIn. There's Sarah Hatton, follow me on LinkedIn. We're constantly posting when the next webinars and when the next meetups are coming about.

Paul (38:04.474)
Serena, in the first part of our conversation, you've made a really compelling case for how L &D should be more systemically connected into the organization. And clearly, we're not going to able to let you go without talking about one of the biggest drivers of change for L &D, AI. And also what that means for learning and predictive learning. I'm really interested to hear what you think are some of the big things that are going to change. And what does that mean for the role of L &D professionals at the moment?

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (38:33.578)
I'll talk about it from my context. the first thing is when you open any sort of pitch, everybody talks about using AI for more content creation, faster, better, chat GPT, talk about your LLMs and all of that. And everything is about, it can make, build faster. And I turn around, roll my eyes, and go, because that's what the world needs, more content. And so that's the bit of AI in learning that I'm not interested in.

Paul (38:58.627)
Thank

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (39:03.04)
I willfully choose to ignore it. If my instructional designers within the parameters of our organization, we're a co-pilot organization, we all have access to it. If my instructional, I don't call them instructional designers, I call them learning design leads. If they choose to use AI to accelerate the journeys that they are building, then that's absolutely fine within the ethical and legal parameters of our organization. But that's not what

keeps me awake at night or what as a learning senior leader I care about. I care about what to your point Paul, the predictive ability of it. The ability to bring about information from various different systems to work like BI on steroids and give you information that informs how your people develop. To give you information on how people are choosing to develop.

outside the learning function so that you know how you can pivot. And to then go and look at the skills coming into the organization, that link to talent acquisition, that link to performance, that link to forward-looking business strategy, and be able to say, this is what is coming. How do you prepare for it? So I know that sounds very idealistic. You may say I'm a dreamer.

sure I'm not the only one, but I do really, really believe that that's the area that we should be focusing on. So that's one. sorry.

Paul (40:34.514)
And are you starting to see, have you started to see some examples of this? Like have you started to see some of this predictive analytics either in succession planning or in learning design or what you can provide for people? What have you seen that's working?

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (40:48.398)
Not fully incorporated into organizations as yet. I'm seeing it in small jumps. we're starting with obviously taxonomies, skills taxonomies and associated learning with that. And then our job frameworks and architectures getting a bit more easy to update on the skills with the AI support. it's on, it's it's in tiny steps at the moment, or at least it's a tiny steps for me.

But I see where it will be reflected more is in this bringing together of the big talent platforms and talent management platforms, talent acquisition platforms and the learning platforms. And that's how I think it will be reflected technology wise. I think in every organization, you know, as usual, it's garbage in garbage out. You ask the wrong questions, you're going to get weird answers. So I think that as learning people, we need to get savvier in knowing what to ask.

of AI and it would be very disappointing if the only thing we're asking of it is to continue to build more content.

Simon Brown (41:52.157)
Fully agree. So I've been trying to give lots of thought on where is it going and try and read the sort of weak signals on what's going be the impact of AI on learning. And what do you see as the biggest disruption that's likely to come to corporate learning in the next few years as a result of AI?

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (42:12.046)
This is this might sound really weird, but it was actually brought to my attention by By by Laurie Niles Hoffman who I think the world of and and it's nobody's actually considering the the absolute sensory overload That AI is going to give us we're already talking about The social media and the impact it's having on the next generation and the impact it's having even on

on learning and absorption and changing behaviors. I think if AI is creating knowledge at a pace that we have never seen before, I don't know how we as humans should be supporting people to cope with it. When we talk about the top 30 skills, the World Economic Forum says that

people need in organizations of the future by 2030. Knowledge of tech doesn't feature so highly at all. What comes to these fundamental human skills of empathy, of critical thinking, of problem solving, of reflection, of innovation? And I'm wondering with this whole, it's something to think about with this whole sensory overload of what AI can give us, what

is the role of the human or what are we doing to help the human process differently or better? So I think that's definitely an element I wanted to highlight when we were talking about AI. Simon, there was a second part to your question which I hadn't answered for and I have clean forgotten.

Simon Brown (44:00.285)
I guess it's sort of the biggest disruption. I think that sensory overload and more knowledge, I guess, always on the go, more extrapolation of some of those pieces. I guess any, any wider disruption you would see for corporate results of AI. Yeah.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (44:14.956)
That's it. the the other bit is, it's also because I look after the I.B. and therefore which has touch points into into ESG is we've not actually start to think about the environmental implications of this. Right. So the massive trend now to make your little toy, you you've probably seen that on chat. You could you can make a little action figure of yourself. It saw spikes in in in the in the grid and the usage of power to create that because I

Simon Brown (44:34.653)
I'll asked.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (44:44.562)
uses a lot of resources. So that's another element which I think that now we're just all excited about it but as it starts getting more intelligent and its processing becomes or its use becomes more vast, something to consider will be the environmental factors as well. So I think those are the two elements. Everything I've said before, everything we talked about before are all about the positive.

aspects and yes, you're absolutely right. There's a lot of positive disruption. But I wanted to bring out these two elements because they're not often talked about and I do wonder what it will be like. I wonder, know, the seven years it took me to write the doctorate, what that's going to look like in 10 years time with AI next to you.

Paul (45:33.706)
I mean, I think you're absolutely right. to connect those two thoughts in the first one, you talked about, you know, the L and D, you know, part of the organization needs to be much more systemically connected. When you mentioned that, okay, in the past, you say, well, you can go and Google that, or you could go and ask chat GPT. To some extent, is the learning department even bothering to provide content? Yes, you said it the early, maybe there is some, but actually you can make the assumption that it's not necessary. The assumption is to enable people to

find the right things to learn and how more importantly they're gonna actually apply that to problem solving their organization and grow their career. It's quite a fun, it sounds easy to say, but that sounds like a pretty fundamental shift in how people are seeing and interacting with their L &D teams in their company, right?

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (46:10.435)
Yes.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (46:19.138)
Yes. Yeah. So your pathways are skills to be successful and your learning journeys are suggestions on how you can acquire and hone in and develop these skills. There isn't actually which says if you do this in it. I don't ever believe that there has been a straight out besides maybe in how to use machines of more functional learning. There was I was taught this so I can do this. We saw and then I can do this.

Therefore, organizational performance has improved. Hmm, how do we make that leap there? You we never have fully managed to suss out how we move from business problem, learning solution, individual performance, team performance, organizational performance. We have never managed to do that. And I therefore think that instead of trying to force ourselves down that hole of now trying to do exactly that by defining

interventions that pull you away and result as a cost to the business of taking somebody out of their context. We loop back and go, what do journeys mean in the new world? What does an acquisition of skills mean in the new world? What are options that I can give you in order to do that? What are experiences I can give you in order to do that? Or what are experiences that you've gone out and get and you can

come and tell it back to the organization. So we have another way of filtering it down to one of the other 59 countries. So I think that's the element. then content probably will exist, but it's secondary. It's not your starting point for your solution.

Simon Brown (47:54.845)
and

Simon Brown (48:05.383)
So we're coming up to time. We've covered a lot. So we've gone through some of your career, your masterates, the seven or eight years you spent on your doctorate in learning and development. What triggered that around how nothing really reflected the life you were seeing inside your organization and the question of what must learning and development actually do to stay relevant? And if we remove the learning and development function, actually, would anyone notice what that would mean?

your quote on learning and development is dead long-lived learning. So hopefully L &D isn't dead, but let's see where things go. The impact of, if you're just doing a tick box exercise and providing catalogs, then yeah, probably things are going to change dramatically as we see the developments in AI. Talk about some of your thoughts on system thinking, learning all the time, you know, what should the role of a learning leader be, difference of sort of on the job and experiential learning and how...

some discussion around measurements and should we or shouldn't we prove the efficacy, particularly when we're talking about leadership development, some of your experiences from working in a hyper growth organization and looking at skills around AI, ML, robotics, et cetera. Talked about pace and the increasing pace and particularly what you've seen from a startup perspective. We can't have a static offering, we need to help people change. had the discussion around agility.

And the need for us as learning organizations to make sure we're creating that agility, which means we can't control everything. Then went into some of the discussion around skills organizations and the role of skills, maybe not in a totally pure way, but our skills creates the transparency around where to focus. Importance of focusing on things like time to competency, retention and tying into some of the wider talent processes.

You showed some great data around some of the metrics that you've done, 38 % to zero attrition for India and Brazil, 7,000. Cool efficiency improvements in some of the other areas. So great to have those metrics. And yeah, there's no way that a learning and development function can operate without being tied into talent in the future. And the importance of those links to workforce planning, to succession, to coaching, to development goals, to talent acquisition, et cetera.

Simon Brown (50:25.849)
We heard about the great work you're doing for women learning leaders. And if people are interested, check out the LPI website for more details on that. And then we dive into the world of AI and the content development, how instructional designers may be using it, that we don't need the content tsunami of just more and more content. And then some of the things we need to consider around sensory overload.

and also environmental impact. So a lot we covered. If there's one takeaway for our listeners, all of that's a room.

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (50:57.242)
my goodness, I didn't realize how much I That's to be the takeaway, wow, the girl talked. I really think that it's a time for you listeners. And this is where the harken back to your curiosity element. It's that step back to go and understand, I need to understand how fundamentally organizations learn.

Paul (51:00.616)
Simon is great at this, Serena. He's like a synthesis machine.

Simon Brown (51:00.996)
you

Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (51:26.124)
And I think we stopped doing that in the whole mire of the day-to-day job and what we're producing and delivering. I think it's to go back to the thought leadership that's coming out from the industry, which never has changed. Think about how the elements of the future skills, which curiosity is one of, and how do people want to find out more? Think about the...

the reset of the organization and how people learn. Nigel Payne's got a book on that. Go back to the Clark Quinn's when he was talking about revolutionizing L &D. All of this, we've been performance consulting in organizations and learning was written in the 90s. There's so much that we can take a step back and go back to our roots and go, how do people learn? To what end are they learning?

and how does this contribute to business success and therefore what's my role in that journey? And I think if we did that, we'd come up with a very, very different answer than catalogues, courses and content.

Simon Brown (52:33.533)
Great thoughts to end on. So thanks so much for joining us. You've been listening to Curious Advantage podcast. We're always curious to hear from you. So if you think there was something useful or valuable from this conversation, please do write a review for the podcast on your preferred channel saying why this was so and what you've learned from it. Always appreciate hearing our listeners thoughts and having a curious conversation. So join today using hashtag curious advantage. Curious Advantage book is available on Amazon worldwide audio, physical, digital or audio book copy now.

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