Leading Learning Podcast

For over 25 years Ed Morrison, founder and director of the Agile Strategy Lab at Purdue University, has been studying challenges related to how humans collaborate and engage in complex work. In that time, he pioneered the development of Strategic Doing, a new approach to strategy and complex collaboration in open, loosely connected networks. He is also a co-author of Strategic Doing: Ten Skills for Agile Leadership, which outlines this new discipline of leadership strategy with practical ways to unleash the power of collaborative networks. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, Celisa talks with Ed about the Strategic Doing protocol including its key features, examples of related skills and tools, and specific ways learning businesses can apply it to improve collaboration. Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode210.  We are grateful to our sponsor for this quarter, Community Brands: ** Community Brands provides a suite of cloud-based software for organizations to engage and grow relationships with the individuals they serve, including association management software, learning management software, job board software, and event management software. Community Brands’ award-winning Crowd Wisdom learning platform is among the world’s best LMSes for corporate extended enterprise and is a leading LMS for association-driven professional education programs. Award-winning Freestone, Community Brands’ live event learning platform, is a leading platform for live learning event capture, Webinars, Webcasts, and on-demand streaming. 

It’s not unusual to be asked for feedback by a colleague or friend. And, likewise, it’s not unusual to be offered unsolicited feedback, whether from a boss, colleague, or friend. But giving—and receiving—feedback is arguably harder than most people think. It’s an art and a science. And it’s exceedingly important that learning professionals take the time to learn that art and science because of the critical role that feedback plays in learning. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, Celisa and Jeff delve in to the topic of feedback, including how to effectively give and receive it, common misconceptions around it, and the tremendous impact it can have on learning. Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode209.  We are grateful to our sponsor for this quarter, Community Brands: ** Community Brands provides a suite of cloud-based software for organizations to engage and grow relationships with the individuals they serve, including association management software, learning management software, job board software, and event management software. Community Brands’ award-winning Crowd Wisdom learning platform is among the world’s best LMSes for corporate extended enterprise and is a leading LMS for association-driven professional education programs. Award-winning Freestone, Community Brands’ live event learning platform, is a leading platform for live learning event capture, Webinars, Webcasts, and on-demand streaming. 

It’s hard to believe but this officially marks the 200th episode of the Leading Learning podcast! What originally started as the lead-up to one of our Leading Learning events four years ago, the Podcast has continued to grow and evolve while providing us the tremendous opportunity to connect with learning business professionals from all over the world. In this milestone episode of Leading Learning  (which also happened to be recorded live at Podcast Movement 2019!), Celisa and Jeff reflect on why they do the podcast and where podcasting as a medium is, in general. They also share what’s new with Leading Learning  ­– and where they are headed – in the ongoing effort to provide value to your learning business. Full show notes available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode200.  Thank you to our sponsors for this quarter: CommPartners helps learning businesses conceive, develop, and fulfill their online education strategy. Their solutions begin with Elevate LMS, an award-winning learning platform that provides a central knowledge community and drives learner engagement. To extend the value of Elevate, CommPartners provides a wide range of online education services including curriculum design, instructional design, fully managed Webinars, Webcasts, livestream programs, and virtual conferences. Find out more at https://www.leadinglearning.com/goto/commpartners. ** Authentic Learning Labs is an e-learning company that offers products and services to help improve your current investments in education. One key product is Authentic Analytics, a dedicated suite of visualization reports to help analyze and predict the performance of education programs. Organizations use Authentic Analytics to easily scan through volumes of data in intuitive visuals, chart performance trends, and quickly spot opportunities, issues, and potential future needs. Find out more at https://www.leadinglearning.com/goto/authentic.

If you’re concerned about how your learning business can keep pace with rapid change—AI, growing risks, shifting learner expectations—this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast can help. Associations, credentialing bodies, and other learning businesses face mounting pressure to do fewer things of greater value, and success requires both courage and careful risk management.Glenn Tecker, chair and co-CEO of Tecker International, joins co-host Jeff Cobb to talk about the forces reshaping continuing education and credentialing. They discuss how adaptive learning platforms are blurring the lines between education and assessment, why it’s essential to shift from an education mindset focused on information delivery to a learning mindset focused on application, the governance structures and culture of inquiry needed for innovation, the role of boards and staff in managing experimentation, and what it looks like to anticipate future competencies rather than react to the past.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode462.

If you’re wondering what role artificial intelligence should play in your learning business—or how to prepare your people and processes to use it effectively—this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast is for you. Many learning businesses are just beginning to grapple with AI’s implications, and the gap between the potential and the current reality is big.Amith Nagarajan, chairman of Blue Cypress and founder of Sidecar, joins co-host Jeff Cobb to talk about how learning businesses can build the capacity they need to thrive in an AI-driven future. They discuss patterns from past waves of technological change, where associations stand today with AI adoption, and the risks of standing still. Amith also shares practical steps for leaders to get hands-on with AI, the importance of reducing friction, and how AI tools are reshaping knowledge, insights, and personalization.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode461.

Associations have long played a role in supporting learning and education, but they may be overlooking the full extent of their potential. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele explore why associations are education’s sleeping giant and how they can awaken to the opportunity before them.They discuss the distinction between learning and education, examine what’s often holding associations back, offer concrete ideas for moving forward, and highlight the wide-ranging impact that embracing associations’ role as major providers of learning and education can have on members, learners, employers, and society at large.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode460.

If you know your learning offerings need to evolve, but you’re not sure where to start or how to bring others along, this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast can help. Whether you’re struggling with risk tolerance, engagement, or relevance, you’re not alone. And you don’t have to figure it out alone either.Mary Byers is an association consultant and author of the books Race for Relevance and Road to Relevance. Co-host Celisa Steele talks with Mary about how learning businesses can evolve through consistent innovation; what it means to adapt in uncertain times, without upending your core mission; practical ways to increase risk tolerance; how every threat is also an opportunity (AI being the case in point); and how comfort and complacency are the biggest threats.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode459.

If you’re a leader navigating change, shifting expectations, or questions about your organization’s identity and future, this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast is for you. It features Lowell Aplebaum, CEO of Vista Cova. Lowell works with association leaders and boards on visioning, governance, and strategy—and he brings a thoughtful, deeply human approach to the challenges facing organizations today.Co-host Celisa Steele talks with Lowell about how identity has to come before strategy because you can’t lead effectively if you’re unclear on who you are as an organization. They also delve into bravery, stability (even in volatile times), empathy, and curiosity. And, while those might sound like highfalutin topics, Lowell translates them into practical advice.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode458.

If you’re leading a learning business right now, you’re almost certainly navigating uncertainty—political, economic, technological. It can be hard to know how to lead well, plan strategically, and stay responsive without burning out.Our guest in this Leading Learning Podcast episode, number 457, is someone who has spent years helping association leaders. Seth Kahan is the founder of Visionary Leadership and the author of the books Getting Change Right and Getting Innovation Right. Co-host Jeff Cobb talks with Seth about his Disruption Playbook and the seven elements he sees as essential for leading in uncertain times.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode457.

What will it take to keep your learning business relevant and thriving in 2030? In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele unpack seven strategic shifts that are reshaping continuing education—from personalization and AI to credentials and commoditization and more.You’ll come away with ideas to apply now and questions to help you think more strategically about what’s next—and what will keep your CE responsive and successful over the next five years and beyond.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode456.

Udemy, Coursera, and edX are part of the competitive landscape your learning business operates in, so it’s valuable to understand how your learners might view your catalog in light of the catalogs of Big Learning providers.This episode, number 455, features a conversation with Dhawal Shah, founder and CEO of Class Central, which Dhawal describes as a Tripadvisor for online education. Class Central aggregates reviews of hundreds of thousands of courses from platforms all over the world, bringing together the learning-verse in a single searchable and discoverable interface.Dhawal discusses the evolution of MOOCs, community in the context of online courses, business models (including pricing and the relevant benefits of business-to-business models versus business-to-consumer), and the importance of partnerships.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode455.

This episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, number 454, is the second installment in a two-part look at how learning businesses can best navigate uncertainty. Co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele discuss five practice levers: pulse monitoring, scenario planning, revenue model innovation, ecosystem partnerships, and tech awareness. These levers can help you translate the four habitsets discussed in episode 453 into action.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode454.

If one thing is certain these days, it’s that uncertainty is top of mind for many leaders. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, number 453, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele discuss four habitsets that can help learning businesses navigate uncertain times: informed agility, strategic foresight, stakeholder intimacy, and portfolio thinking.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode453.

Leading Learning Podcast co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele discuss the powerful and sometimes limiting role of credit (CE, CME, CLE, CPE, etc.) and subject matter experts (SMEs) in learning businesses. Both are mainstays, but they can restrict innovation, often unintentionally.This episode unpacks how credit and SMEs function as enablers and as limiters—and what learning businesses can do to navigate those dynamics more intentionally.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode452.

Drawing on their own experience and insights from experts like Richard Rumelt, Roger Martin, and Michael Porter, Leading Learning Podcast co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele look at the importance of coherence and posit that strategic coherence occurs when a learning business’s choices and actions reinforce each other in the service of its strategy.They unpack what coherence means, how to spot when coherence is missing, and ways to build and sustain coherence to help make your learning business’s strategy stick.Show notes and downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode451.

Flexibility is an essential skill for those leading learning businesses. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, number 450, we talk with Kevin Eikenberry about flexible leadership.Kevin Eikenberry is chief potential officer of the Kevin Eikenberry Group and an author, most recently of Flexible Leadership: Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with Confidence. The conversation covers three pillars of flexible leadership (mindset, skillset, and habitset) and four types of contexts leaders must lead in (clear, complicated, complex, and chaotic).The world feels more complex and uncertain. If you’re a leader, this episode can help you have more clarity in what you do and how you do it.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode450.

This episode of the Leading Learning Podcast looks at why and how learning businesses can and should segment their audience—what it looks like in practice and how it can lead to more engagement, better learning outcomes, and, yes, better business results.If you’re already segmenting learners, the episode will provide food for thought and an opportunity to reassess your approach. If you’re new to segmentation, then you’ll walk away with how to start.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode449.

In physics, momentum is the product of a body’s mass and velocity. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele define strategic momentum as the product of an initiative’s strategic weight and its execution speed, and they discuss why momentum matters, common barriers to maintaining momentum, and strategies for creating and maintaining momentum.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode448.

Because good strategy is organic and responsive, it needs to be revisited periodically. There are predictable, recurring whens that are be natural times for you to reassess your strategy, like the start of a new budget year.There are also less predictable whens that are important times to revisit strategy, like a global pandemic or government policy changes.While it’s easier to plan for revisiting strategy at predictable points, it’s as important to reassess strategy when the situation shifts. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele offer Marian Urquilla’s Strategy Triage Tool as an approach learning businesses can leverage for some of those unexpected times when a strategy reassessment is needed.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode477.

For learning businesses, bringing in revenue is an essential function. Revenue is what keeps the organization going and delivering on its mission, whether that mission is solely focused on learning and training or whether it’s a broader mission tied to improving a field, industry, or profession.In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele offer five ways to increase the revenue from your portfolio that don’t involve massive investments of time or money: raising prices, packaging products, borrowing to expand, running flash sales, and offering free courses.Show notes and a downloadable transcript are available at: https://www.leadinglearning.com/episode446.