The Speexx Exchange Podcast with Donald Taylor

Episode 25

Do you know your way around badges and credentials? Or, are you like most people and struggle with the terminology and what achievements they actually recognize? Listen to this episode for an entertaining deep dive into the topic of badges and credentials, as Donald Taylor sits down with Dr. Doug Belshaw to discuss the importance, various fields of application, and actual value of badges and credentials. Some highlights include Dr. Belshaw addressing the question of credibility and verification of credentials, the difference between badges and credentials, and the motivation and value of a badge. How will hierarchy be influenced by badges and credentials in the future? Listen to hear more on this fascinating topic!

Episode 24

How important is accessibility to you and your company? Probably not too much. But that is about to change. Michael Osborne, a user-experience-driven developer focusing on accessibility who recently took on his new role at Upskill Digital as a Learning Experience Designer, sits down with Donald Taylor, the host of the Speexx Exchange Podcast to discuss the importance of accessibility in L&D. Find out why it is vital to make accessibility a priority instead of an add-on and why it benefits everyone. Listen in and learn from the expert!

Episode 23

Are you focused on efficiency, or are you focused on effectiveness? Founder of the Global Curiosity Institute (and former CLO for Cognizant) Stefaan van Hooydonk, a well-known educator, strategist, innovator, and consultant, sits down with Donald Taylor to discuss this and other pertinent inquiries for the Speexx Exchange podcast. As someone who oversaw the learning of over 300,000 people at Cognizant, Stefaan shares his thoughts on learning generosity, and insights on how to best magnify the voices of every single person within an organization.

Episode 22

We’re in “the age of the centaur,” where the best teams (like the mythological centaur – half man, half horse) are made up of two parts: part human, part machine. Data consultant and former Channel 4 Chief Data Scientist, Greg Detre, speaks with Donald about the interchange between people and machines, starting with the identification and recognition of skills. From there, they discuss how to trim these insights down to a manageable set of resources (akin to data visualization) and make teams more efficient and effective in the workplace.

Episode 21

“A really well-thought-out and implemented technology solution,” is what Donald Taylor calls Mitja Kulcar’s (MOL Group’s Frontline Training & Development Lead) digital transformation and learning efforts for frontline employees. It’s hard enough to train people in an office; how do you do it with frontline staff? In this episode Mitja Kulcar explains how he and his team pulled this off. Give it a listen to hear tips on how to best fit learning into one’s workflow, and how to get away from “nightmare” face-to-face learning.

Episode 20

In this episode, Speexx and Donald Taylor are fortunate to get a deep dive on stakeholder engagement from Banco Santander’s Elisabetta Galli, and why proper stakeholder mapping is crucial when it comes to talent management and digital transformation. Elisabetta is Group Executive Vice President and Global Head of Knowledge, Development and Talent Management at Banco Santander, where she is responsible for knowledge development and talent management across the group.

Episode 19

Donald has the fortune of speaking with Chief Learning Officer of the Year 2020, Air New Zealand’s CLO Dr. Sydney Savion. With more than 20 years of experience in learning, culture, and workforce capability development, Dr. Savion offers suggestions on how to improve learning cultures. She provides input on how L&D managers can create more strategic relationships within their organizations so that L&D is able to bring the right decision-makers along on the transformation journey.

Episode 18

What can the L&D industry learn from the railway industry? Quite a lot, apparently! In this episode of the Speexx Exchange podcast, Donald Taylor talks to Guy Wilmshurst-Smith, Head of Professional Development and Training at Network Rail. With years of valuable experience coaching leadership, educational and professional development, Guy explores how an organization can use analytics to produce provable links between training and performance.

Episode 17

In this fascinating and cerebral Speexx Exchange podcast, Donald explores the world of cognitive neuroscience with Dr. Itiel Dror, a Senior Researcher at University College London. In his daily work, and for this podcast episode, Dr. Dror shares insights on the human brain and cognitive system and shows HR and L&D managers how to apply this knowledge to enhance learning, decision-making, and human performance.

Episode 16

On this special episode of the Speexx Exchange podcast, Donald interviews not one but three people – co-authors of the book “The Curious Advantage” (Simon Brown, Garrett Jones and Paul Ashcroft). The four of them discuss curiosity in relation to learning; how people can be “better” at being curious; and also introduce the seven C’s of curiosity model – a useful tool for anyone wanting to lead a curious organization, or who wants to challenge him- or herself to be actively curious.

Episode 15

In this episode of the Speexx Exchange podcast, Donald Taylor has a conversation with Helen Smyth, Group Digital Learning and Design Manager at a leading UK retailer. She shares what she learned about learning during the COVID lockdown period. Donald is nothing short of impressed when Helen details how her organization was able to onboard 25,000 people – online! – during this time. They also trade thoughts on how the pandemic has actually instilled some good learning behavior in all of us.

Episode 14

Donald Taylor interviews analytics consultant Derek Mitchell. They talk about learning data and analytics from the past few months, with workforces adapting to a global pandemic, and also make projections about the skills needed in a post-COVID future. Derek explains why people in the field of L&D and training are historically wary of data and demonstrates the benefits of “experimenting” with data in the field of L&D (providing his own professional experiences as examples).

Episode 13

Donald Taylor and Dr. Hannah Gore – Learning Experience Director at The Canonbury Consultancy Group, discuss developing online content in this “new normal”. Hannah addresses what people are doing wrong when it comes to putting content online during these work from home, learn from home times: specifically – people putting PowerPoints onto SharePoint and calling it online learning. She claims that this is not online learning, but merely some learning that has been put online.

Episode 12

In this special episode, Donald and Sarah Sullivan – Speexx’ Head of Digital Content & Communications, reflect on the current state of learning, how it’s changed – and will continue to evolve – since the emergence of COVID-19. They discuss the results from Speexx and Donald Taylor’s joint survey, which asked the following question of HR and L&D managers worldwide: What will be the three biggest challenges for corporate L&D in the new age of learning from home?

Episode 11

Donald Taylor talks to Kinga Petrovai – an educational specialist working at the intersection of research and practice – about how people learn, and the role of learning technologies in various strategies. Kinga points out precisely where the adoption of technology very often stumbles and warns that a lack of technical understanding, coupled with overenthusiasm, can hinder learning, as this might stall an instructor or coach’s adoption of said technology.

Episode 10

Donald Taylor chats with Bob Mosher, CEO and Chief Learning Evangelist at Apply Synergies, about the “five moments of learning need.” Donald has Bob walk through these moments, which are: Apply, change, solve, and finally, learn new things, then learn even more new things. The pair share transformational learning best practices and suggestions on how to begin putting learning in an organization’s workflow. Speexx Exchange Podcast Episode ten

Episode 9

Donald Taylor chats wit founder of Sea Salt Learning’s, Julian Stodd, about social leadership, social learning, and the importance of storytelling. Julian describes older, more outdated models of learning and contrasts them with the newer concept of “social learning” – when regular people, each with their own understandings of the world, make sense of things together.

Episode 8

Donald Taylor chats with Trish Uhl, Founder of Owl’s Ledge, about how to apply AI, data science and advanced analytics to organizational learning. She explores “engineering” learning systems, how to connect training environments to operational environments, and demonstrates how her team is doing this through chatbots.
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Episode 7

Donald Taylor chats with Megan Torrance, CEO & President of TorranceLearning, about how she helps create custom online, live and blended learning solutions to quickly and cost-effectively meet needs. She shares her expertise on xAPI, a data specification for how we talk about learning and performance experiences, and describes how it does much more than SCORM.

Episode 6

Donald Taylor talks to Mirjam Neelen, Learning Experience Design Lead at Accenture, about what it means to “design” learning and how she defines the “learning experience.” Mirjam explores what she calls “complex skills,” and designing learning experiences specifically for these types of skills.

Episode 5

Donald Taylor chats with Bartlomiej Polakowski, CEE Learning Technologies Leader and Learning Methods Manager at PwC, about the most cutting-edge technologies in the learning and development industry, sharing advice on how to experiment and prototype new things in your organization.

Episode 4

Donald Taylor chats with Lori Niles Hofmann – Digital Learning and Transformation Strategist at NilesNolan.com – the pitfalls and pivots of digital transformation, as well as upskilling and reskilling, pointing out one-third of skills will not be viable in three to five years.

Episode 3

In this Episode Donald Taylor chats with Steve Wheeler about “connected pedagogy” – how technology allows us to learn on-the-go, at our own pace, while satisfying our human cravings for social contact – as well as crowd-sourced learning and “digital tribes”.

Episode 2

In this podcast episode Donald Taylor speaks with IKEA’s Learning Designer at Inter IKEA Systems, Jeff Kortenbosch, about how can you go from feeling like your L&D program is a tedious “course factory” to effectively meet your organization’s learning objectives.

Episode 1

Donald Taylor interviews learning technologies specialist Laura Overton. In this inaugural podcast episode, the two discuss evidence-based learning, the dangers of “analysis paralysis,” AI’s role in the learning industry and what is next for Laura Overton.