[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to grow the reach, revenue, and impact of your learning business, you're in the right place.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Celisa Steele.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Jeff Cobb, and this is the leading learning podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: Learning businesses are facing tremendous pressure to adapt.
[SPEAKER_02]: Technology, shifting learner expectations, and crowded markets are challenging the long-standing models of education, certification, and governance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our guest in this episode, number 462, is Glenn Tekker.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chair and co-CEO of Tekker International, a multinational consulting practice that has worked with associations around the world for more than 40 years, primarily on strategy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Glenn is also co-author of three text books published by ASA, the American Society of Association Executives, and those text books are required reading for the C.A.E., the Certified Association Executive Credential, and he's a longtime advisor to Association CEOs and boards.
[SPEAKER_02]: Glenn and I talk about major forces, he sees reshaping, continuing education and credentialing, from adaptive learning platforms powered by AI to new security risk to the accelerating pace of change for knowledge and competencies.
[SPEAKER_00]: You and Glenn also dig in to governance and culture and you talk about why a culture of inquiry matters, what enables and blocks innovation and how boards can be more effective partners to staff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And Glenn emphasizes the role of risk management and experimentation, showing how organizations can move forward with confidence even in uncertain times.
[SPEAKER_00]: This conversation can help you do your listener develop a clear picture of the forces shaping the future of learning in associations and other learning businesses and that clear picture can help you act more effectively.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, Glenn, you're somebody that's I've wanted to talk to for a very long time now because of all of that experience that you have with organizations in the association world and areas like leadership and strategy, but of course my interest is primarily in learning and serendipitously, I'd seen you weigh in on some learning topics recently and I think we'll be able to dive into a few of them here probably, but
[SPEAKER_02]: Specifically, you had commented on a post in an ASA forum, and the post was about AI and learning.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you said, not quote you here, the future of much adult learning will be adaptive, curated by AI, and integrated with peer and mentor interaction.
[SPEAKER_02]: I agree completely, but I'm interested in what led you to that conclusion.
[SPEAKER_02]: What are you seeing that makes you feel like that is definitely the direction we're going in.
[SPEAKER_01]: evolution of adaptive learning platforms, particularly with a kick from AI, is moving to the point where continuing education, assessment of the education, assessment of the learning and provision of the credential are actually blending into a single place.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the tradition of barrier that existed between membership organizations who provided continuing ed and credentialing organizations who provided certificates and certifications is melting away.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's law and procedure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ancy and a variety of other accrediting agencies still require a degree of insulation so that the politics and economics of a membership organization do not influence the delta weights, validity and reliability of assessment methodologies, but technology is about to drive significant change in that area.
[SPEAKER_01]: What led us to understand that is we have been involved with adaptive learning technologies.
[SPEAKER_01]: that are being used already, primarily by the medical community.
[SPEAKER_01]: Significant one is available from for internal medicine.
[SPEAKER_01]: A significant one has been created, interesting one, by the New England Journal of Medicine, which, by the way, is owned by the Massachusetts Medical Society, not a lot of people know that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is, it's also being used in engineering.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's fascinating about it is that,
[SPEAKER_01]: it recognizes that the walls it used to exist between teaching and learning has now come down.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you move from viewing what you do from teaching, which is the provision of information to learning, which is access to information, the modalities that are available for learning and adaptive learning platforms are unlimited.
[SPEAKER_01]: It could send me to print it copy, it could send me to a simulation, it could send me to a group of mentors that would talk to me about an issue, it would send it could send me to a project that small community of learners would engage in.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of those things are possible in the adaptive learning platform what they're also doing is assessing the preference of learning strategy that works for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when it gets to the point where you're having a difficulty, it will give the learner advice on which learning modality would work the best for them in that situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: What it also does is it has identified the fact that when people fail on something three times, they're done.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it never takes you back the third time to the same thing you failed on last time, it gives you another methodology to use.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that, along with the other two things that we're seeing, one of which, by the way, is the blending of AI and what's often referred to.
[SPEAKER_01]: as a quantum computing, all these many names for it, is actually going to create major security issues for certification bodies because nothing will be secure, not even blockchain and encryption will work.
[SPEAKER_01]: The third is the fact that the body of knowledge of most areas is progressing so rapidly, mainly because of AI, but not only.
[SPEAKER_01]: what we are seeing is the need to figure out how to anticipate what the necessary skills competencies and understandings will be that may not show up in the traditional practice analysis which looks at what people are doing now.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really the issue of how will you put, how can will you begin to think about how you will prepare for these circumstances, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we've been seeing something similar and not necessarily even a I driven all the time, but those walls between the learning function and the credentialing function of just getting they're getting harder to maintain just because of the way that learning happens now and needs to happen now.
[SPEAKER_01]: the depth and breadth of potential assessment mechanisms that are available in the adaptive learning platform actually superior to the scope of assessment mechanisms that tend to be available for most of the current credentialing programs.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: We want to have these neat little boxes.
[SPEAKER_02]: You do your learning here.
[SPEAKER_02]: You do your testing here, but it just doesn't really work as well that way anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, particularly if you're moving to the ultimate level of learning, you've moved through what they need to know, to what they need to understand, to what they value and appreciate to the level of be able to.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're going to assess the level of be able to, you're going to need some sort of application or simulation.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's highly potential within the adaptive learning platform.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas, up to now, it's only been possible if you've been faced to face demonstration, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're not just speaking theoretically here on Node 2 because you've had a platform in place for a number of years now, what you call house space.
[SPEAKER_01]: We haven't been using, yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we start with that platform.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is an online platform specifically designed for group work and decision making.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's value is that it can be used synchronously and asynchronously.
[SPEAKER_01]: It also has the ability to engage in polling, assessment, and testing integrated into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We use it now in face-to-face meetings, in hybrid meetings, and in fully virtual meetings.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've used it for strategic planning.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've used it for education.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have used it actually for a membership meeting.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've used it for what we call critical issue summits.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've used it now with over 150 associations.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not counting even our private sector clients.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we've been using it over three years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every year it gets better.
[SPEAKER_02]: And how have you seen it change the trajectory of a group's work?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, when they're using that as sort of the basis for moving forward.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good news and bad news.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good news is in terms of engagement, we see it dramatically increased.
[SPEAKER_01]: even when it's entirely virtual, where we'll use Zoom, create small groups to do work together and document their work and be able to interact with each other in the workspace.
[SPEAKER_01]: It essentially has gotten rid of flip charts forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: The second thing that we see is sometimes in the asynchronous work, if we haven't done a good job in moderating the conversation and focusing on critical content, we get a signal for that because the participation in the asynchronous work tends to reduce a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've learned how to pump that up still.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the other thing that we see that's a great value, particularly in virtual groups, participation using the workspace has made the experience and level of contribution of individuals regardless of whether they are in the room or participating virtually much more equal.
[SPEAKER_01]: so an organization is able to get a much wider array of differentiated perspectives involved in the conversations and the thinking.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this really though requires a different mindset on the part of the learner and on the part of the facilitator or maybe maybe a little bit of a different skill set too to really take advantage of working in this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: obtained by participants.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you use Facebook, if you use any of the social media platforms, even email, then this is easy to use.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't require loading any application.
[SPEAKER_01]: You simply get an email with a link.
[SPEAKER_01]: You click on it and you're there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we are finding more and more folks, particularly in the scientific communities, but not only completely comfortable with this kind of sharing of information.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's different is the AI that is integrated into it, which is mode marginally but not entirely a large language model, allows for new, instant curation of the ideas that are being generated.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it facilitates the group being able to build on and build from what they've already learned or what they've already been suggesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Interestingly enough, this platform was originally created in Europe.
[SPEAKER_01]: It had began in Finland and its primary use in Europe is in companies who use it for ongoing continuing education targeted to their particular needs of their staff
[SPEAKER_01]: We've adapted it for our use as an association with primarily its strategic planning and problem solving.
[SPEAKER_02]: If what you're describing is the future and I believe it is, you know, along with you, what does that look like for your average association who's still basically, you know, relying on conferences and webinars, they see that as, you know, what's manageable, what's easy and what scales, frankly, but they need to shift in this direction.
[SPEAKER_02]: What, what's that look like and what happens if they don't from your perspective?
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are driven by revenue and not by learning,
[SPEAKER_01]: then the traditional online webinars and traditional sit-in room and listen, maybe with a Q&A, is probably going to be your best bet.
[SPEAKER_01]: If, however, you want to position yourself to continue to thrive in an environment where folks now are demonstrating less ability to find the dollars at the time to participate.
[SPEAKER_01]: then you're going to need to move to more interactive programming and a commitment to folks actually learning rather than simply being exposed.
[SPEAKER_01]: What we know, for example, is that traditional online learning reaches the levels of awareness and understanding, but it never reaches the levels of being able to.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if your learners are looking to be able to actually execute something as a result of the investment in what you're providing and you're not giving that opportunity, they're going to go somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're seeing it as a hard trade-off from a revenue standpoint.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, are there revenue models in your mind that would support this type of learning approach?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, there are.
[SPEAKER_01]: The reason being, the savings of online environment.
[SPEAKER_01]: are not that greater than the savings of the use of this technology which is far more interactive.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, it can be used in face-to-face.
[SPEAKER_01]: We use it that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: It can be used in a hybrid.
[SPEAKER_01]: It can be used in fully virtual.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this platform is not the only one that's emerging.
[SPEAKER_01]: What I believe is that in the future, most associations are going to have to do fewer things.
[SPEAKER_01]: of greater value for more targeted groups of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if that's the case, then what we're going to find is that they're going to demand their employers and their constituents are going to demand that investment of time and money whatever it is, enable them to actually do something different or better.
[SPEAKER_01]: not to take it and just go to the staff meeting and talk about what they learned about, but in fact they're able to execute something well, and people will take that risk when they previously had an opportunity to try their hand and execute it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that when they are doing it for real, it's not the first time they've done it, and that's just a fundamental tenant of adult education as it's been discussed for the last 25 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now there is an economic driver behind the need to attend to that.
[SPEAKER_02]: How engaged are you seeing association CEOs and boards with this sort of shift that's happening?
[SPEAKER_02]: Do they really engage with learning as a strategic driver in your experience?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll draw a distinction now between the credentialing organizations and in your education organizations.
[SPEAKER_01]: Unless the continuing education organization is what we call well-healed, that it has substantial revenue and participation, it's lagging.
[SPEAKER_01]: The credentialing organizations are either already moving in a direction or thinking seriously about it, and that's occurring at the governance level.
[SPEAKER_01]: My suspicion is that the membership organizations, which are primarily continually yet, and may be offers certificates, but not necessarily an accredited credential, are increasingly going to find board members if they are composing their board members of individuals with some expertise in the business lines of the association.
[SPEAKER_01]: and not just political representatives of the various components of the organization, they're going to find their boards asking questions along these lines.
[SPEAKER_01]: And their ability to provide alternative answers to those questions is what's going to position them for success?
[SPEAKER_01]: If this is the issue that the board is raising, then here are some of the alternatives.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here is the advantage and disadvantage of each alternative.
[SPEAKER_01]: And here's the
[SPEAKER_01]: that provides the board with a knowledgeable information based upon which to make a decision that they can feel comfortable with.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of these things some boards think are high risk.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the critical ingredient here is that staff provide a risk management process along with the commitment to experiment.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that each step in the development of this new way of doing things is accompanied by a set of criteria that you have to get a yes to before you move to the next step.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that if it's not working, you're able either to abandon or to adapt before it becomes a some course.
[SPEAKER_01]: So being able for staff being able to provide that what's called a laddered or sequence risk management process tends to allow governance to be willing to take the risk because they know if it's not working, we're going to go early on, we either going to fix it or we're going to try something else.
[SPEAKER_02]: What governance structures do you find either enable or block the adoption of these types of new approaches?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, to anything, but we're talking about learning, obviously.
[SPEAKER_01]: What we are finding in common is increasingly a movement to ensure that on the board, there are some individuals with experience and expertise in the business lines that the association has
[SPEAKER_01]: representation from the quote, owners of the association, whether it's chapters or components or multiple associations, but along with what's interesting to us is this is actually a metaphor for what for profit companies have been doing for decades.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the for profit boards of which I
[SPEAKER_01]: representatives of the major stockholder groups and outside directors who are there because they possess independent expertise in particular areas of importance to the organization.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the differentiation and perspectives that experience creates a more holistic view of the possibilities and the challenges.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are the boards that we find are most able
[SPEAKER_01]: to eat the governance level in consultation and partnership with staff to really engage in a three purposes of a board, to seek direction, to establish strategy, to provide oversight, including making sure that the allocation of investments match what it is they're trying to accomplish in the strategy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a trend we are seeing in composition in all three of those three or four of those kinds of non-profit organizations.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a movement to creating a knowledge base so you can have additional confidence in the judgments that you're making.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're seeing some transition strategies being used.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of organizations do not understand that a board has the authority to invite anyone to participate
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you're using robbers, oh, Garfield Jones or Sturgis, you have the board has that authority.
[SPEAKER_01]: They can participate as equals in the conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: You just can't give them a vote.
[SPEAKER_01]: So having that kind of expertise available in the conversation is possible without necessarily fighting a by-laws change.
[SPEAKER_01]: So some groups are moving to do this, either in policy or simply in practice, and then once the organization becomes comfortable and enamored of what an enables a decision making to do, it means that then it may move to memorialize it in a bylaws change.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, associations have always asked advisors to come or contracted with consultants for particular activities.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is different because this is asking for an individual like all board members to stay a praise to the theme and direction that strategic thoughtfulness strategies about seeing patterns.
[SPEAKER_01]: Strategies about looking at alternatives and being able to see the pros and cons in each, given what you anticipate current and future circumstances will be.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you have someone who's able to do that relative to the major business lines you're involved in, particularly education, because it is changing so rapidly and unders such a
[SPEAKER_01]: that adult education is facing at the moment is too much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Literally, the field is saturated.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are so many alternatives of hugely huge variance.
[SPEAKER_01]: In terms of quality, price, and acceptance, that the very choice of where to go is increasingly a question that people are asking,
[SPEAKER_01]: or whatever AI system they are using.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, what AI does here, by the way, is in those cases where you're asked for recommendations.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's choice tends to be based on what is what it harvests from the body, from that body of information, based upon what's there the most.
[SPEAKER_01]: And unfortunately, in the continuing head area, most of the stuff's there is promotions by people who are offering her selling it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it has little to do with quality.
[SPEAKER_01]: The last observation I would make in regards to this, we are seeing more and more not for profit organizations recognizing the value of distance learning as it's been practiced by higher education for over a decade.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are looking for the objective of your learning to be, people being able to, not just being aware of an understanding, but being able to, then what we are seeing and what our market research by the way continues to affirm is that what most folks are looking for is access to learning that is affordable, that is reasonably accessible, meaning online,
[SPEAKER_01]: But they also want to be able to spend time with their peers and with the experts from whom they are learning.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in most cases, they would prefer that that time be face-to-face.
[SPEAKER_01]: It cannot be face-to-face.
[SPEAKER_01]: then the technology of the distance learning classroom, which is a series of periodic gatherings with work that occurs during the gathering and in between the gatherings, executed by subgroups of the full group as an application of what they've learned from each other or the expertise tends to be what most folks are looking for.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we've felt for years that there has just not been enough focus on cohort-based learning going on in the association world, as you're saying, the academic world got that a long time ago, probably because it just built off of their traditional models so well, but they've gotten good at it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And in many cases, we're seeing that, you know, academic, continuing education departments, which are booming right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: The rest of academia is under fire, but continuing education is doing great.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're in a position to eat the launch of many associations in
[SPEAKER_01]: If associations don't abandon the old habit of simply providing webinars in response to one of the three demands, which is easy access and affordability, they're going to be I believe left it to dust by the other providers of learning.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, when associations are still in the information provision business, they have not yet many of them graduated into the business of creating opportunity for learning.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're seeing, for example, some movement towards things like open space learning.
[SPEAKER_01]: where folks can just get together online or in face-to-face and ask questions of each other, and they're a major caveat stare.
[SPEAKER_01]: The major caveat is that there's no one in the group with experience and expertise in the area that essentially what they're sharing are common practices, and common practices are not effective practices.
[SPEAKER_01]: it's the old expression that used to say practice makes perfect, practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes consistent.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're doing the wrong thing a hundred times, I'm fairly certain you're going to do the wrong thing again the hundred and first time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the dilemma, the caveat that exists with the movement towards
[SPEAKER_01]: not exemplary, but innovative methodologies that are attractive.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're innovative because they're different, but they don't meet our definition of innovative.
[SPEAKER_01]: For us, an innovation is a change that makes something better.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it doesn't make it better, it's not an innovation.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an experiment you can learn from it, you can grow from it, but it's not an innovation.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what we're really seeing is those places that are really succeeding and continuing ed in certification, in credentialing, whether it's certificate or course, certification.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are those organizations that are recognizing that an innovation requires that the change makes something better?
[SPEAKER_01]: So assessment and evaluation.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the level of the individual's ability to effectively apply what they have learned becomes increasingly important.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, if you tie this back to the history of associations, associations that provide certificates carefully warrant, that the certificate does not guarantee that the individuals' performance will be any better as a result of attendance.
[SPEAKER_01]: credentials even don't warrant that it guarantees the individual's performance will be improved.
[SPEAKER_01]: The warrant in a credential is the individual has demonstrated mastery the body of knowledge they've been exposed to, but that's different than assessing the ability to apply.
[SPEAKER_02]: What role this culture play in all of this?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because everything we're talking about is going to require overcoming a lot of, we've always done it this way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not sure associations are maybe they're more susceptible to that than other organizations.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, but they certainly are susceptible to that.
[SPEAKER_02]: They got to break through culturally to make the shift that we're talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: The culture change is to move to what we refer to as a culture of inquiry, where the expectation
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that a hard question will be asked about what we're doing or anything that's proposed?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the individuals who are known for saying, well, is there a downside here?
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you imagine if, I wonder what would occur when, have we considered alternatives?
[SPEAKER_01]: The process of thinking strategically is the application of the discipline of strategy at all levels of the organization.
[SPEAKER_01]: strategy is a discipline, not an event that produces a product, so the culture change is to move to a strategic mindset.
[SPEAKER_01]: From an analytical mindset, even from a creative mindset, that tends to address the issue of we've always done it this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Being willing to experiment and here again what we observe is many boards actually have policies that commit them to innovation,
[SPEAKER_01]: But that policy also needs to commit the organization to experimentation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And not many associations who've done that, they will commit to experimentation.
[SPEAKER_01]: If part of that commitment is requiring that risk management process, be part of any proposal of a new initiative or experiment, that gives them a level of comfort.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to try something new.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the first question the treasure is going to ask?
[SPEAKER_02]: What's it going to cost?
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the downside?
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you say to the board, we've tried it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We tried something and it didn't work.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the first comment that treasurer is going to make?
[SPEAKER_01]: How much did that cost?
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what we're looking for is a methodology that now folks to be able to track that potential problem before it occurs.
[SPEAKER_01]: That tends to create the willingness
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I like that that focus on the risk assessment component.
[SPEAKER_02]: You mentioned that earlier in the conversation as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that just does get overlooked so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you get the pieces in place, you know, if you're an organization that is forward looking, I mean, what should it look like, say, five to 10 years out?
[SPEAKER_02]: What should the learning function of a successful organization, an organization that wants to stay relevant?
[SPEAKER_02]: What's that going to look like in your mind?
[SPEAKER_01]: of thinking groups, planning groups, design groups within association communities.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the failure to take the time to agree, or the outcome we are trying to achieve before we end up in debate about what past to take.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the failure to create an envision future of what would constitute success before we begin to assess what are the potential past to get there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you fail to agree on the outcome first, two things happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: One, anybody can be right or wrong because you have no benchmark against which to make the judgment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Second, you usually end up saying yes to the idea that's presented by the loudest mouth that talks along this, or the idea that is supported by the individual who talks last before we have to
[SPEAKER_01]: So what we are teaching organizations to do, particularly as it relates to these issues of evolution within continuing education, is to make sure that you agree on what will constitute success before you begin the conversation about what paths you should take to get there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you're somebody in an organization and this is going to describe, I think, probably a lot of our listeners where, you know, you've got some authority, maybe you're a senior leader, but you're not.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to see, you know, you're not, maybe not in the sea sweet yet and you're trying to drive innovation, strategic thinking through the organization, to, to, to, you know, to get people to buy into that outcome that you're ultimately going to try to get to, I mean, what's your advice to that person, how they can help to drive that sort of innovation
[SPEAKER_01]: It's traditional in class of advice, one identify what would constitute a benefit or accomplishment for the individuals who's influence of participation you're trying to seek.
[SPEAKER_01]: And make sure that you are able to identify how the movement you are suggesting will in fact add to what the things that are important to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to use incremental success.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to demonstrate what's possible by taking small steps to get there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once you've taken a couple of small steps and earned the reputation for being able to achieve the promise that you're making, that is much more likely that you'll be given the opportunity to increase in late-take larger steps.
[SPEAKER_01]: What you want to avoid is making a promise that you can't keep.
[SPEAKER_01]: So honesty is critical here.
[SPEAKER_01]: If there are risks involved, make sure you identify them.
[SPEAKER_01]: If there's bumps along the way, make sure that when they occur, you have a methodology for figuring out how to overcome them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So demonstrating that you have in place a plan, but a plan is sufficiently flexible and nimble to be altered based upon changes and circumstances, absolutely critical.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a point in time where assuring that you have the core competencies involved in being nimble is an essential ingredient for any organization or unit that wants to commit to an innovative approach.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like to ask guests whenever I can about their own lifelong learning and what their habits, what their practices are for staying sharp and continuing to grow.
[SPEAKER_02]: What are some of yours?
[SPEAKER_01]: I am a sponge for information, a significant portion of my time.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been taking a look at thinking that other people are doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: A large portion of my time and the reasons I so much enjoy
[SPEAKER_01]: is that we are constantly learning from our interactions with the folks that we serve.
[SPEAKER_01]: We work with our clients as in a partnership.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're not a group that flies over hand as the helicopter takes a picture and tells you what to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our processes, one, we're in partnership.
[SPEAKER_01]: We consider what the choices are, and sometimes we know more about them than our clients.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then with our clients, make the choice about what the best pass are to get there.
[SPEAKER_01]: is an immensely rewarding process for learning.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have the neurodivergent attributes of being dyslexic and ADHD.
[SPEAKER_01]: My dyslexia has required me to learn from context.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I tend to be very sensitive to things that are occurring around me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my ADHD is made it uncomfortable for me to just spend the same time anywhere one place
[SPEAKER_01]: So being sensitive to what's going on around me and being constantly active in interacting with others, those are my primary learning strategies.
[SPEAKER_00]: that wraps up our conversation with Glenn Tekker, chair and co-CEO of Tekker International, but hang around for our recap.
[SPEAKER_02]: You'll find show notes and a transcript for this episode at leadinglearning.com slash episode 4-6-2 along with a link to the Tekker International website.
[SPEAKER_02]: And Glenn's also open to your emails at gtekkerattekker.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you found this episode valuable, we'd be grateful if you'd share it with a colleague that helps more people find this show and benefit from it and it supports the work that we do.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the conversation, Glenn highlighted the powerful forces reshaping, learning, and credentialing, adaptive platforms powered by AI, looming security risk, and the accelerating pace of change in knowledge and competencies.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he reminded us that thriving in this environment requires not just new tools and structures, but a culture of inquiry at the governance level and a willingness to experiment.
[SPEAKER_02]: And to make experimentation possible, staff need to provide clear risk management processes.
[SPEAKER_02]: That way, boards can move forward with confidence, knowing they'll learn quickly from what works and what doesn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time on the leading learning podcast.