The Learning & Development Podcast: The #1 L&D Show

In this special episode, David is interviewed by guest host Danny Seals returns to explore The State of L&D Maturity Report, drawn from more than 1,000 assessments of L&D teams worldwide. The headline finding is the proactive plateau, where 85% of teams sit at Level 2 or 3 with polished programmes, core use cases covered and success measured by attendance and satisfaction rather than business outcomes. David explains why that position feels so comfortable, what it costs L&D leaders personally and professionally, and why "what's your score?" is the wrong question when the real story lies in the gaps between dimensions. From there, he sets out the two walls that hold teams back, strategy and alignment, and quantifying impact, and why measurement turns out to be the biggest multiplier in the data. It's a candid look at what separates higher-maturity teams from the rest, why even the best still struggle with training processes, and the first move David would make to get off the plateau.  Download the L&D Maturity Model Report here: https://360learning.com/maturity-model/ Click here to sign up for Danny's newsletter - ⁠https://www.knotanothernewsletter.com⁠ Take your L&D to the next levelTake advantage of thousands of hours of analysis. Hundreds of conversations with industry innovators and 25+ years of hands-on global L&D leadership. It's all distilled into one framework to help you level up L&D. Access the L&D Maturity Model here - ⁠https://360learning.com/maturity-model ⁠KEY TAKEAWAYS The L&D Maturity Model consists of five distinct levels ranging from reactive to transformative. Currently, 85% of L&D teams are stuck on a proactive plateau at levels two and three, maintaining a shopfront without driving performance. Progressing past level three requires overcoming two walls: gaining proximity to business stakeholders, and building a track record of impact. L&D professionals must stop acting as order-takers and earn the right to be strategic partners by actively solving real business problems. ⁠ BEST MOMENTS "Trying to escape from any of those levels can feel as if you're running into a wall, and hopefully this report helps to reveal what that friction you're experiencing actually is." "If your achievements are launch, deployment, implementation, rather than impacting the bottom line, then that's a tough career story to tell." "You will never get permission to be the strategy partner from order taker. You have to earn that and you have to earn that hard." Danny Seals Bio Danny Seals is the founder of Knot, helping People & Culture leaders challenge conventional HR thinking, redesign People Strategies and reinvent the employee experience. He’s also the author of The Insightful Innovator and writes Knot Another Newsletter. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannyseals/ Click here to sign up for Danny's newsletter - https://www.knotanothernewsletter.com VALUABLE RESOURCES The Learning And Development Podcast - ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-learning-development-podcast/id1466927523 ⁠ L&D Master Class Series: ⁠https://360learning.com/blog/l-and-d-masterclass-home Twitter: ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/davidinlearning⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjameslinkedin⁠⁠ L&D Collective: ⁠⁠https://360learning.com/the-l-and-d-collective⁠⁠ Blog: ⁠⁠https://360learning.com/blog ⁠ABOUT THE HOST David James David has been a People Development professional for more than 20 years, most notably as Director of Talent, Learning & OD for The Walt Disney Company across Europe, the Middle East & Africa. As well as being the Chief Learning Officer at 360Learning, David is a prominent writer and speaker on topics around modern and digital L&D. CONTACT METHODThis Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. ⁠https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/⁠

Eglė Vinauskaitė returns to the pod to unpack the 4th annual report, AI in L&D 2026: Around the Core and challenge the narrative of what AI transformation in learning actually looks like. While over two-thirds of L&D departments now use AI daily, the data reveals a surprising truth: the core of L&D hasn't moved, it's what's happening around it that changes everything. This episode dives into the friction behind the hype, from the reality of AI agents to the unspoken anxiety, cognitive fatigue and tech barriers practitioners are quietly navigating. More importantly, Eglė spotlights a quiet 14% "break-out" group that is fundamentally changing how the business views L&D, offering a blueprint for how any team can advance their L&D proposition today without waiting for permission or massive budgets. Take your L&D to the next level Take advantage of thousands of hours of analysis. Hundreds of conversations with industry innovators and 25+ years of hands-on global L&D leadership. It's all distilled into one framework to help you level up L&D. Access the L&D Maturity Model here - https://360learning.com/maturity-model KEY TAKEAWAYS AI is becoming business as usual in L&D, 70% have used it compared to 54% last year. But its core uses remain familiar: content development and learning design. The opportunity is moving beyond speed. We now use AI to understand needs before designing, review quality, and to analyse what happened afterwards. Skills intelligence has potential, but progress is slow it takes more than a framework. To strengthen L&D’s value, focus on the performance problem you’re solving, not simply on the next AI use case. BEST MOMENTS “The change is slow, frankly, despite all the talk about disruption.” “Last year was about spread - this year is about depth.” “It's not in the next AI use case. It's in what you're fundamentally trying to achieve with AI.” Egle Vinauskaite Bio Named one of HR’s Most Influential Thinkers in 2025, Egle Vinauskaite is the award-winning director of Nodes, an advisory helping organisations build the capability infrastructure for AI-powered work. With a background spanning business, behavioural science, and adult development, she brings both analytical rigour and practitioner depth to the organisational and human dimensions of how AI reshapes work. Over the past eight years she has been trusted by leading companies across industries – from technology and professional services to finance and pharma – to navigate capability building, AI strategy in L&D, and the complexity of AI transformation. Alongside her advisory work, Egle co-authors the annual global AI in L&D Report series – a leading independent industry publication, now in its fourth year, analysing how organisations are applying AI in practice and what it means for the future of the profession. Her work has earned industry recognition, including the Rising Star Award from the Learning and Performance Institute. Egle holds an M.Ed. from Harvard University and is known for translating complex shifts in AI into clear, practical insight for leaders. https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinauskaite/ http://nodes.works/ AI In L&D 2026 report: https://www.nodes.works/reports/2026 VALUABLE RESOURCES The Learning And Development Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-learning-development-podcast/id1466927523 L&D Master Class Series: https://360learning.com/blog/l-and-d-masterclass-home ABOUT THE HOST David James has been a People Development professional for more than 20 years, most notably as Director of Talent, Learning & OD for The Walt Disney Company across Europe, the Middle East & Africa.  As well as being the Chief Learning Officer at 360Learning, David is a prominent writer and speaker on topics around modern and digital L&D.  CONTACT METHOD  https://twitter.com/davidinlearning https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjameslinkedin https://360learning.com/the-l-and-d-collective https://360learning.com/blog This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

Andrew Jacobs joins the pod to explore what L&D is really for and why the profession's identity has to shift from producing courses to engineering performance. Drawing on a career that spans retail banking, the fire service, retail and local and central government, Andrew explains why capability depends as much on the organisation's capacity to apply learning as on the ability L&D builds and why AI has made that conversation urgent. From there, he unpacks his shopkeeper to engineer idea and his view that L&D is like Mexican food, the same ingredients folded differently, before making the case for why people now build their own burrito and L&D's role is to help them do it better. He then turns to impact, setting out the difference between counting, measuring and evaluating, why a performance baseline matters, and how asking "help me understand" can change the conversation with the business, with a memorable example involving sickness absence and extendable lanyards. Along the way, he discusses podcasting as a way of connecting people and surfacing the insight inside an organisation, the 50 Big Ideas to Change L&D, and the health of the profession today. He closes with why he won't give advice without understanding someone's context, and, in a bonus segment, why L&D should respond to uncertainty by agreeing principles rather than writing a strategy. It's a thoughtful conversation for anyone in L&D who wants to move from taking orders to solving problems. Take your L&D to the next level Take advantage of thousands of hours of analysis. Hundreds of conversations with industry innovators and 25+ years of hands-on global L&D leadership. It's all distilled into one framework to help you level up L&D. Access the L&D Maturity Model here - ⁠https://360learning.com/maturity-model⁠ KEY TAKEAWAYS From Shopkeeper to Engineer: L&D often acts as a shopkeeper, taking orders for courses and delivering them without questioning the root cause. To drive real change, L&D professionals must become performance engineers who step back, understand the business problem, and build systemic solutions. L&D is like Mexican Food: Much of what the learning profession produces uses the exact same ingredients, just folded and packaged differently—like a burrito versus a fajita. Rebranding basic management training as leadership development without changing the core approach fails to solve actual business needs. The Capacity Gap: L&D is highly skilled at addressing ability through courses and workshops, but it consistently fails to address organizational capacity. True capability requires building the relationships, structures, systems, and technologies that allow employees to apply what they learn. Measure Outcomes, Not Inputs: The profession needs to stop measuring input data like attendance, course completions, and test scores. True evaluation requires establishing a baseline of current performance, defining the target outcome with stakeholders, and measuring the actual shift in business results. BEST MOMENTS "We can do ability until we're blue in the face. Courses, classes, workshops, brilliant, design and materials and content. What we fail to work within is the capacity part of capability within the organization." "L&D's like Mexican food. We do this all the time... it's the same ingredients but folded differently and cooked in the oven." "We are arguing about the seat at the table so much that we're forgetting that maybe the table won't exist anymore." "The first step you take as a crew manager is backwards. And that's what L&D needs to do. When someone says, we've got a fire, I need some help, can you do a course for me? What we should do is go, step back, absolutely, what's the problem? And start talking in terms of performance within the business." Andrew Jacobs Bio Andrew Jacobs is the Learning Principal for Llarn Learning, known for innovative thinking about learning, training and technology. He has significant experience across a range of roles in learning, training, talent and people development, gained across public and private sector industries, most recently in central government with HMRC and DHSC. Andrew has a specific understanding of developing online and digital solutions for learning, social profile and engagement. He is a Fellow of the Learning Performance Institute (LPI) and a CIPD Leader in Learning. He received the Internet Time Alliance award for his work on informal learning in July 2020 and was highly commended at the CIPD People Management Awards in 2021. He blogs daily at www.lostanddesperate.com and produces the podcast Women Talking About Learning. You can contact or follow Andrew via the following:Blog: https://www.lostanddesperate.comPodcast: https://womentalkaboutlearning.podbean.com/ Website: https://llarn.com/ Book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Proving-Impact-Measure-effectiveness-results-ebook/dp/B0D8LJ3VXV/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=AEojL&content-id=amzn1.sym.5e81eabe-938d-4936-a067-ca199f0f9913&pf_rd_p=5e81eabe-938d-4936-a067-ca199f0f9913&pf_rd_r=262-7492473-4010600&pd_rd_wg=2RTPW&pd_rd_r=5cf75a4d-7716-490d-8b77-65952af5474c VALUABLE RESOURCES The Learning And Development Podcast - ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-learning-development-podcast/id1466927523⁠ L&D Master Class Series: ⁠https://360learning.com/blog/l-and-d-masterclass-home⁠ ABOUT THE HOST David James David has been a People Development professional for more than 20 years, most notably as Director of Talent, Learning & OD for The Walt Disney Company across Europe, the Middle East & Africa. As well as being the Chief Learning Officer at 360Learning, David is a prominent writer and speaker on topics around modern and digital L&D. CONTACT METHOD Twitter: ⁠ https://twitter.com/davidinlearning⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjameslinkedin⁠ L&D Collective: ⁠https://360learning.com/the-l-and-d-collective⁠ Blog: ⁠https://360learning.com/blog⁠ This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. ⁠https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

In this episode of The Learning & Development Podcast, David James is joined by Danny Barrow, Lead Learning Program Manager at Ridgeline - an innovative Investment Management company - to explore how AI has reshaped what Danny believes his function is capable of delivering, and the practical, sometimes messy, process of turning that belief into something tangible. From solving live business needs to a project built for interns. Danny shares how he's laying the groundwork for taking AI to the next level, including the knowledge repository he's building and where his early experiments with AI agents are taking him. Along the way, David and Danny get into what this shift is doing to Danny's own sense of his role, and what it might mean for where the L&D profession is headed next. For anyone wanting to experiment more with AI in their own L&D practice but unsure where to begin, this episode offers a grounded, honest look at what it actually takes. Take your L&D to the next level Take advantage of thousands of hours of analysis. Hundreds of conversations with industry innovators and 25+ years of hands-on global L&D leadership. It's all distilled into one framework to help you level up L&D. Access the L&D Maturity Model here - https://360learning.com/maturity-model KEY TAKEAWAYS You need a human in the loop. When you chain multiple AI steps together without human review, small inaccuracies compound and your final output can be seriously off. At step 1 it will be about 90% correct, take that content unchecked through 5 AI driven steps and you end up with something that is only 59% right. Grounding AI in SME interviews, recordings, and a curated knowledge repository and a fact-checking process or tool is critical to avoid hallucinations and keep content fresh.   You don’t need to be a coder to build useful AI workflows: start with small “unit tests,” then turn repeatable wins into reusable skills your whole team can leverage.  AI creates space for L&D to stop being order takers and instead act as strategic consultants, orchestrating ecosystems, agents, and knowledge flows that solve real business problems.   BEST MOMENTS “I’m passionate about using AI to add business value and boost efficiency in learning and development without sacrificing the quality.”   “Where AI has come into the picture is it is making us move faster, not differently.”   “We shouldn’t be order-takers. We should be consultants to guide the business and coach them towards best practices.”   "Start small....  it doesn't even have to be learning and development related.” Danny Barrow Bio Danny Barrow is Lead Learning Program Manager at Ridgeline, an investment management technology company, where he designs and implements learning and enablement solutions to help the business scale. His recent work has included re-imagining the onboarding curriculum for Ridgeline's Customer Experience department and leading the implementation of 360Learning's LMS, transitioning the company's training operations from manual processes onto the platform. Before Ridgeline, he worked at InvestCloud as a technical trainer. He is based in Los Angeles and studied at Pitzer College.https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-barrow-4b199163/ VALUABLE RESOURCES The Learning And Development Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-learning-development-podcast/id1466927523 L&D Master Class Series: https://360learning.com/blog/l-and-d-masterclass-home ABOUT THE HOST David James  David has been a People Development professional for more than 20 years, most notably as Director of Talent, Learning & OD for The Walt Disney Company across Europe, the Middle East & Africa.  As well as being the Chief Learning Officer at 360Learning, David is a prominent writer and speaker on topics around modern and digital L&D.  CONTACT METHOD  Twitter:  https://twitter.com/davidinlearning LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjameslinkedin L&D Collective: https://360learning.com/the-l-and-d-collective Blog: https://360learning.com/blog This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

In this episode of The Learning & Development Podcast, David is joined by Erica Farmer to discuss her new book ‘AI for People Professionals: Understand How to Use Artificial Intelligence in Your HR Role.’ Erica shares the experiences that convinced her the book was needed now and the patterns she noticed in how HR professionals perceive and use AI. They explore what it means for HR to "get out of living in Hard Mode," before diving into the AI dividend and what it could offer L&D and the wider workforce. Erica unpacks the practicalities of prompting, makes the case for sustainable AI adoption, and discusses the role of HR and L&D in driving AI adoption and advocacy. She also addresses concerns around AI-supported wellbeing, sets out L&D's role as a curator of skills, and explores the opportunity in AI-augmented coaching. Erica also touches on the impact of AI on talent management and paints a picture of how agentic AI is shifting people development from generative to autonomous, closing with her vision for learning-led HR. Take your L&D to the next level Take advantage of thousands of hours of analysis. Hundreds of conversations with industry innovators and 25+ years of hands-on global L&D leadership. It's all distilled into one framework to help you level up L&D. Access the L&D Maturity Model here - https://360learning.com/maturity-model KEY TAKEAWAYS L&D has a huge opportunity to become the stakeholder’s best friend by using AI to solve real operational problems, shifting  to architecting skills, intelligence, and quality solutions. AI is an opportunity to stop “living in hard mode” by automating low‑value work and doubling down on high‑value human skills and relationships.   AI should be treated as a thinking partner and coaching ally that democratizes access to support, not a replacement for human coaches, facilitators, or therapists.   BEST MOMENTS “AI can be an Iron Man suit that can help you to achieve an enormous amount more than before. But if you're going to stay in your lane … then AI is your meteor.  .” “Using AI as a thinking partner will help you challenge yourself and develop and start to think in a way that traditionally you might not of and therefore come up with more innovative ideas.” “If you're somebody who will say naturally, I'm not techy, then become techy.” Erica Farmer Bio Erica Farmer has over 25 years of learning and development and apprenticeships experience with some of the UK's best known brands such as LV=, British Gas, Specsavers and Virgin. Her area of specialism is AI and future skills. Erica speaks about this in her TEDx talk, 'Reforming Education through the Digital First Mindset', and in her courses as a LinkedIn Learning Instructor. Erica is passionate about driving human collaborations with tech. Examples are the 'AI for the Average Joe' podcast show, making the complex, simple, alongside her innovative keynotes and workshops focusing on AI for everyone, AI in leadership and practical uses AI in wellbeing. An advisory member of the AI in Work & Skills Forum, Erica is a seasoned presenter who was shortlisted as Best AI Speaker in the 2025 Speaker Awards. She is also an AI Strategist for a leading European learning and teaching assessment organization. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericafarmer/ https://ericafarmer.ai/ AI for People Professionals book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/People-Professionals-Understand-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/139862599X/ ABOUT THE HOST David has been a People Development professional for more than 20 years, most notably as Director of Talent, Learning & OD for The Walt Disney Company across Europe, the Middle East & Africa.  As well as being the Chief Learning Officer at 360Learning, he is a prominent writer and speaker on topics around modern and digital L&D.  CONTACT  https://twitter.com/davidinlearning https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjameslinkedin https://360learning.com/the-l-and-d-collective https://360learning.com/blog L&D Master Class Series: https://360learning.com/blog/l-and-d-masterclass-home This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/