Andrew Barry: Thought Leader Q&A

Diving Into Tech Implementation And Tradition Suits With Andrew Barry

After working for over a decade in company coaching, Andrew Barry based Curious Lion, an eLearning firm that’s keen about offering firms with significant and customised studying materials. His firm has created profitable immersive studying experiences for firms similar to Pinterest and PagerDuty. At the moment, he speaks with us about creating memorable studying journeys, making a powerful enterprise case for immersive L&D, and benefiting from fashionable tech.

You’re the founding father of Curious Lion, who’s labored with firms similar to Pinterest, Brex, and Teachable. Are you able to supply organizations any tricks to get stakeholder buy-in and make a powerful enterprise case for immersive studying of their L&D applications?

At the beginning, it’s important to set up credibility. You can begin doing that by taking the time to grasp the enterprise goals of your stakeholders. Finally, that’s what they’re measured on, so if you happen to can present how your studying expertise helps obtain these objectives, you’ll have far more probability of getting a funds permitted. One other sensible step is to get leaders to expertise the educational themselves. It’s troublesome to explain a transformational expertise, however if you happen to can present one? Then you definitely’ve bought a champion in your facet. Lastly, writing your enterprise case down intimately is so underrated. Folks attempt to take the straightforward route, which is to schedule a bunch of conferences to attempt to persuade individuals. However if you happen to as an alternative take the time to put in writing down the enterprise case, tie your initiatives to the enterprise goals you hopefully recognized, and present you’ve thought it by, then you may have one of the best probability of getting what you want.

Curious Lion is thought for being “a enterprise accomplice, not a content material improvement store.” Are you able to inform us a bit extra about the way you assist purchasers establish their wants and craft one of the best studying journeys?

We’re extremely selective through which purchasers we work with. We’re searching for a tradition match—are they doing good on the earth, and do they worth their individuals as property, not assets? As soon as we now have that in place, we go about constructing a relationship. It’s again to the fundamentals—listening rigorously, clarifying our understanding of wants, and portray an image of what beauty like. We frequently present options of labor we’ve accomplished for different purchasers to get the artistic juices flowing, nevertheless it’s extremely collaborative. We wish to make our purchasers the heroes in their very own tales, so we work on co-creating an image of the Future State. We then do a radical diagnostic of the place they’re now utilizing our proprietary 40-point Studying Tradition Diagnostic. This helps us concentrate on the place to begin. Lastly, we reverse-engineer the educational journey from the Future State to the Studying Tradition Diagnostic end result. That studying journey is dotted with milestones within the type of mindsets, behaviors, and competencies, which make it doable for us to create our studying experiences.

What’s considered one of your standout eLearning shopper success tales?

The work we’ve accomplished with PagerDuty is amongst my proudest achievements in working Curious Lion. We’ve been companions for 4 years, and along with my late, nice pal, Phylicia Jones, we created management studying experiences that reworked executive-level (senior VPs) administration and new managers. Earlier than Phylicia arrived, coaching concerned somebody presenting a slide deck to individuals in a room or on a convention name. We flipped that the other way up utilizing our Cohort Studying Expertise strategy. Now individuals eat content material in their very own time, on the go. Then they mirror on what the content material means, capturing their reflections in workbooks. Lastly, they arrive collectively for reside classes which don’t have any presenters anymore. As an alternative, they use breakout rooms and group discussions to share learnings and experiences cross-functionally throughout the group. It was an enormous tradition change for them, however leaders beloved it. Phylicia may barely sustain with the demand! That’s what we wish to see: individuals looking for out studying and having fun with it.

Is there a latest improvement mission or one other initiative you’d wish to share with our readers?

One I’m significantly enthusiastic about is our work on Linked Creativity. We’re bringing C-level leaders collectively to work on two issues: connection and creativity. We accomplice with a medical psychologist for the connection work and concentrate on fostering psychological security, belief, and self-awareness. These three issues are elementary to being artistic, so it prepares them for the following section, through which we accomplice with a professor at Ohio State’s Venture Narrative for creativity workshops. These are designed to unlock innovation within the C-level groups and are a lot enjoyable to ship. We’re witnessing unimaginable transformations in these groups, they usually’re now asking us to roll this out to their total firms. I can’t point out particular shopper names but, as we’re simply beginning this work, but when anybody is occupied with studying extra, they need to join with me on LinkedIn.

Based mostly in your in depth expertise, what’s the commonest mistake organizations make when attempting to implement studying applied sciences to empower and have interaction their groups? How can your Studying Roadmaps assist them to beat probably the most vital obstacles?

The most important mistake is failing to plan. What number of readers have entry to know-how they barely use? I’d wager rather a lot. From LMSs to LXPs, nearly each firm we’ve labored with makes use of barely a fraction of the instruments obtainable or doesn’t use them in any respect. So, I’d suggest readers take the time to plan. Return to my reply to the enterprise accomplice query—if you happen to take the time to grasp wants, paint a imaginative and prescient of the longer term state, and perceive your present state, you’re setting your self up for fulfillment. We’ve got a free model of our Studying Tradition Diagnostic that we’re making obtainable to studying leaders to assist with this, so join with me and let me know if you happen to’re .

Wrapping Up

We respect Andrew Barry taking the time to take part in our Q&A and for sharing his experience and immersive studying insights with the eLearning group. You too can learn extra about constructing a progress mindset and making a profitable studying ecosystem by testing Andrew Barry’s creator profile.