Certainty can be a comfort and a trap. In this episode, host Bill Banham sits down with Julian Stodd, author and founder of Seesaw Learning, to explore how the Social Age is reshaping learning, leadership, and power.

From radical connectivity to the fracturing social contract and the rise of AI’s dialogic potential, Julian maps the landscape where old organizational structures fail to hold and new practices must emerge.

Key discussion points include:

• The paradox of personalization: Generative AI enables on-demand support but undermines the ownership and control L&D once held over programs and platforms.
• Scaffolding social learning: Creating lightweight, peer-driven spaces for sensemaking, divergent outcomes, and performance embedded in practice.
• Erosion timelines: Why structural change may appear slow but can surface dramatically within 3–5 years—and why the next 18 months are critical for deep thinking.
• Performance management as cultural litmus: How AI makes feedback continuous and authority more transparent.
• Hybrid work and belonging: Research-backed strategies to build trust, agency, and connection beyond the “back to office” tug-of-war.
• Early-career development: Reverse mentoring, diagonal connections, and dialogic cohorts that privilege judgment and evidence over tenure.
• Second-level analysis: How organizations can hold multiple interpretations of events without rushing to closure.

If you’re ready to rethink learning design, capability building, and the ethics of AI adoption, this conversation offers both a map and a mindset.

Listen now, subscribe, and share with a colleague. Where should your organization loosen control and where must it hold the line?

Connect with Julian Stodd: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julian-stodd-6774377/

Connect with Bill Banham: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-banham-a932a0b/

Learn more about Connect Conference: https://thelearning-network.org/event/connect-2025/

Voices of the Learning Network is the Learning Network podcast connecting the learning and development community. https://thelearning-network.org/