Hey Megan, let's do a podcast.

Great idea.

What should we talk about? Let's talk with Jess Omley about her book L and D Order Taker no more.

Jess Omley, welcome. It is so awesome to have you on tangents for torrent starting and I'm really excited to dig in. And you promised a little bit of feistiness while we were doing our email prep here. So just let it come. Can you introduce yourself and the origin story for your book?

Like, sure.

Why?

Yeah, why? Well, we'll see how quickly I get feisty. Maybe I'll hold it back for a little bit, but maybe not. We'll see. So I've been in this learning and talent development space my entire career, which just ticked over 30 years. Goodness gracious. Happy birthday. First job, HR coordinator or in charge of orientation. Last corporate role, vice president of learning.

So everything in between there and then. I went out on my own about three years ago now and I am primarily working with learning and talent development teams now to help them up level to be more effective. So that's the space I find myself in these days. I love this profession. I can't imagine doing anything else. And I am also incredibly critical of it and incredibly skeptical. And so she's getting feisty already. Nobody here can see Megan's face, but you would enjoy it if you could.

She was like, really? Yes, it's true. But I think I'm wired. I've always been this person that there's gotta be a better way. So all throughout my career I've always thought, is this really working? And when I was younger, I thought that the better way was to create really engaging interactive learning experiences. So we're not doing lecture anymore. We've all heard enough lectures. We're not going there. So we did.

I did that. And I think it was working for the most part. But was it? I mean, can people really learn leadership in a classroom? That was my thesis research that I did. Answer is, I mean, sort of like you can introduce concepts, but you're not really walking out with a bow on top of. So I did really engaging interactive learning experiences. And when I started leading L and D teams, I led them to do the same. And so we had really great products. And I will never forget the day I was sitting across from a stakeholder and she looked at me and she said, jess, your team's training isn't good enough.

And I went, hold on a second, it's good enough. I knew that the product was good enough because I seen it. It followed all the best practices. It did all the right things. But what really was the problem there was that the training that she wanted us to create, which we did beautifully, didn't solve the problem that she needed it to solve. And so at that moment, I realized, we have to do this different. It is not enough for learning and talent development to spend all of our time perfecting our product. We can do that, but that's not enough.

And so there wasn't much in learning and talent development at the time to kind of talk about, how do we do this work differently? So I went to parallel professions. I studied sales and marketing. I studied project management, product management, performance consulting, all these different things. And started pulling pieces in and slowly shifted how my team worked until we got to this point where the business stopped asking us for training. They started coming to us, requesting collaborative conversations on how to solve their talent challenges. That is a very different way of working. And we were having a blast. We were doing really great work.

We were in lockstep with the business. We were working on the biggest talent challenges. We had the measures to show that it was working. And I stopped and said, why doesn't everybody work this way? What's going on in our industry that we're spending all this time perfecting our product? But that only gets us to this certain point on the spectrum. We can't get all the way. We can't make this impact that our team was making. And so at that point was when I asked more questions. I interviewed people from learning leaders across all different industries, sizes of companies, and started asking them if they were able to work this way, what did they do differently if they weren't, what was holding them back? And then I thought, everyone needs to know.

And that is the reason why I wrote the book. I wrote it to be the handbook that I never had when I wanted to make this shift for my own team. So it's based on my experience. It's also based on my research. It's based on the stories of all these people I talk to. It's full of tips, templates, practical guides.

I am so glad you wrote this book.

Yeah, totally. It's like the passion in your voice and knowing that this is happening all over the place, that people are creating a great product, but it's not solving the problem. I mean, it's so needed. So needed. So speaking of your book, I listened to the episode of your podcast where you were first launching that book out into the world, and you said, you know, it's kind of like having a baby. And I was wondering, you know, your baby. Your baby is now six months old. It's been out there in the world.

It's been, you know, it's on its way towards, you know, fully walking in the world. What's that been like? Do you have a different perspective on that book now? Like what. And maybe what are some things that you wish people would have asked you when it first came out?

It's really interesting, and I know Megan can probably relate to this. You write a book, you put it in print, you send it out there, and then you're right. Like, you do have additional thoughts later, but it's too late. You can't go insert those like you can on a digital document. So I appreciate you asking the question. It is really fun and sort of surreal to see it making its way all over the world and have people using it and commenting and reaching out to me and tabbing it and highlighting and. And. And so that's really fun.

And that part. There are a few things I guess I would emphasize maybe at this point differently based on the responses that I've gotten and the questions that have bubbled up since the book has been released. So I'll give you two. One is we still need to do learning really well. Like, that's not going away. This is not an excuse to do a subpar product. So in. In.

And I would say that in some ways, we almost need to do it better and differently than we're doing it now, which we might get into later on in this conversation, I think, but, you know, not just leaning on what we've always leaned on for many different reasons. But the two need to go hand in hand. Good learning with working as a strategic business partner. And then the second thing that I would emphasize is what we're talking about here is not a process change for learning and development. So I think oftentimes I'll talk to groups and they'll think, oh, great, we just need to do these things differently. And then we'll be strategic business partners. And that is not the case. I mean, yes, we need to do things differently.

I'm not going to argue with that. But it's so much bigger than that because what we're really talking about is a mindset and cultural shift for everyone in the organization about how they work with learning and talent development overall and what learning and talent development can do. So we can do things to change, but it's going to take a long time. And most of the things we can do in learning and talent development are small things. That eventually lead up to bigger things. That makes sense. So those are the two things I think I would emphasize more based on conversations that I've been having.

Well, and it's interesting, right, because in the book you say that strategic business partners are involved early, collaborate on problem solving, and are trusted advisors. I think that's even a quote, right? And I wonder, is there an opportunity for us to even step ahead one or two steps earlier and get involved in not just problem solving, but problem definition, root cause analysis? How early in the process should we be involved?

So this is a good question, Megan, because I would say that's the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is that we are in on the front end in the strategy meetings. And some of it to me is we need to just reconsider even what is our purpose in the organization. So we love to do nice things, we love to have fun programs, all of that. We love to create fantastic products. But our ultimate purpose, in my definition is to equip and enable the people in the organization with the skills and knowledge they need to move the organization forward. Like no organization hires an entire learning and talent development team to be nice. There is a reason that is business specific why we are there.

But for many different factors which, which for many different factors, we get stuck in this kind of this transactional churn, this transactional box. But if we're really going to equip and enable people, we need to be even eventually on the front end of what that means and looks like as we're listening to the conversations, we need to be putting the pieces together of, oh, the organization is going this way, that means these skills are going to be needed. That means here's where we can have the biggest impact. So ultimately, yes, I don't think we're there yet as a profession. And so there's this middle ground that is maybe we can get to a root cause analysis with a particular request that comes to us. Maybe we can problem solve in the interim right now. Because I don't think we're that far up the chain yet for the most part overall.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I think for a long time L and D has operated kind of with this assumption that people that are coming to us with these questions, they've done that root cause analysis and therefore we should just fulfill their request because they know what they're talking about, they've done their homework, but that's not really always the case. And so then we end up in that order taker mode because we're making an assumption There. And we need to stop making that assumption perhaps.

Yeah, it's. I mean, I think going back to that story I told where I was kind of knocked off kilter when the stakeholder flat out told me this wasn't good enough. That was my moment. But I think we unintentionally, this is one of the things that unintentionally keeps us in that transactional box because we think we're being helpful by responding to what somebody asks for. We assume they vetted it, but the truth is, mo, at least in my experience, most of our stakeholders are extremely busy. They are people who are used to quickly solving problems and moving on. They don't take the space or the time to think through that. Maybe what they first see isn't exactly the direction they need to go.

And so one of the things, I mean, I almost feel like it is a gift that we can give stakeholders is to start asking those different questions because we give them a slice of time when they may not have spent that time before thinking about whether or not something is an effective solution to the problem that they have. So, yes, I agree with you, Megan, is what that whole thing meant.

Yeah, yeah. You mentioned, like, being helpful. We try to be helpful. And I think I've heard you say that, like, because we're helpful, we're kind of self sabotaging ourselves because we try to say, like, oh, you know, you need that thing, great, what can I do for you? It makes me wonder, you know, maybe L and D just attracts people of a certain type. The people that like to be helpful, that like to be of service to others. Have you seen that or have you found that as you talk to other people in the industry and how can we, can we keep that helpful identity? Or do we need to say, no, we're going to shed that altogether?

Yeah. Okay, so a couple things there. First off, I do like to say that we in learning and development are masters in the art of unintentional self sabotage because a lot of the things we're doing we think are helpful, but they're actually doing the opposite because they're keeping us in this transactional box. And we like to blame others. Oh, it's the fault of the organization. They don't see us this way. They don't. And some of that is true.

But we have to also turn the mirror around and do a little bit of work on ourselves at the time. Same. Same time. And so a couple things, number one, you said, are people just helpers that go into this profession. And I would say yes. I mean, when I used to interview staff, I've done a lot of hiring of learning and development professionals over my career. And I'd ask them, you know, why are you interested in this role? There are two most common answers were, number one, I want to help people, and number two, I want to share my knowledge. I want to bestow my knowledge upon other people.

Um, that second one, by the way, was a huge red flag for me because this work isn't about us. It's not about me bestowing my knowledge on you. It's about. It's about enabling this learning atmosphere, this learning process in somebody else, not me, just telling what I know. So anyway, I do think that, yes, helpers is a thing. Is it possible to hold onto our helper hat, but still shift ideas? Yes, I think so. So here, let me share with one thing in the research that was really, really clear, both with my own team, but also as I started to interview others. This was a really strong trend.

And it was that those who more often are able to sit in that strategic business partner seat, they have one primary shift in their head. They do not approach any conversation as a helper with a helper mindset. So they're not showing up thinking, how can I help? What can I do to help? That's the old way of thinking. Instead, they're thinking, how can I partner with you to solve this problem? And it's a very. It's a very interesting shift because what happens is all of a sudden now you've placed yourself as an equal with that other person. No matter the hierarchical differences, I am here to partner with you in problem solving. And that makes me have a very different conversation with you. When I say I'm here to help you, my goal is to please you.

My goal in when I am here to partner in problem solving, my goal is to solve whatever the problem is and that you have, or at least help you to get on that track. I think we can still help people and probably better help them by solving the problem or helping them solve the problem that they have. Because there's a problem, that's a reason they come to us in the first place. It might not be in the way they asked for, but it gets to the outcome that they desire.

Yeah, speaking of outcomes, you know, I wondered the degree to which, you know, learning and development, it's that we need to do. We need to shift the way that we think about the profession or the, you know, the business that we're in. Because learning is about the solution you know, the solution to the problem is learning sometimes. Sometimes, but not always. You know, so if our profession is called learning and development, maybe we need to shift away from that a little bit and think instead about the outcome, think about what we're aiming towards. And so maybe we become, you know, behavior change agents or performance improvement specialists or something along those lines. And that's how we're positioning ourselves in the business instead of as learning and development. Because that's only one thing and we could do many different things.

I think there's also several layers of mindset and shift here. Right. So Meg, you're talking about that individual mindset. But I know you used to work, Meg, in an organization that had a shared services L and D function. And I know you've told stories about just how the org structure itself supported that order taker approach.

Yeah, yeah. We were the point place that people would come from all across the business and they'd say, oh, we need a course. Okay, we'll go to the learnings shared services in hr. They were trying to be efficient by not having a learning and development team and every single business function. But then it just ended up being that we were the people that you go to when you need a course built. And it was like we had an order form that they could fill out. What do you need? When do you need it by? How many videos should it have? So it's hard to know like what's the first step that a business that has somebody in that's like pegged them into that role. What should they tape as a first step?

Well, I'm a big fan of you can only change beginning where you're at right now. So if that's the spot that you're in in this current time place, you have to start figuring out what are some small things that you can do to shift even within that structure. The first thing you're gonna do is not change the structure. So for example, let's talk about intake forms for a minute. Like let's even redefine what's the purpose of the intake. If the purpose is to be able to have a checklist that now you know how to create a video, Maybe we shift what's on the intake to begin with. So the purpose for me for an intake is not do what do I need to create the training. The purpose is for me to know whether it's not.

It's worth my time and energy to dive deeper and investigate whether training will solve the problem. Because sometimes an intake comes in and it's really simple. Like we already have a learning for that and. And you just didn't even know because you haven't seen it in the lms. That's really easy, right. Sometimes it comes in and you can pretty easily identify that it's someone's pet project that they want the training team to create. Well, what if we added questions in there like, who's the executive sponsor? What initiative? What strategic initiative does this tie to? Instead of how many videos do you need and when do you need them by? We're asking those bigger questions. And then all of a sudden, if you don't have an executive sponsor, it's not tied to a strategic initiative.

Well, now we're going to have a different type of conversation as to whether or not it's worth the learning and talent development team's time to spend creating a training solution for you. And we're going to dive into whether or not a training solution is potentially even needed. So it sort of informs our next step, which may not be creates 10 videos for you per your request within two months. So that's, that's maybe just one example of what's kind of a small thing you can do to just shift slightly from where you're at right now. Because if you try to shift to a completely different place entirely, the business would look at you like, what are you doing? Crazy L and D people. Come on, we're just asking you for training. Isn't that what you do? I mean, legitimately, this has kind of happened. Maybe not that dramatic, but that was my dramatic spin on come on now.

So we have to do it a little bit at a time in a way that brings people along with us. We crack the door a teensy bit to show we can do something different. Then we crack it a little bit more, and then eventually it's wide open and. And people don't know any different. But we can't start from closed to open right away.

Well, and I like that because what we're doing is we're taking this same instrument, the same effect, you know, efficient and effective. Because an intake form does serve many good purposes, particularly at larger scale when you're trying to manage a learn OPS function and keep track of what comes in and what goes out. I actually knew one team that even tracked how many requests they chose not to build training for.

Yes, right.

And that was. That helped them have a conversation. Another team we worked with had a question. We helped them rework their intake form and had questions like, what is your current solution to this problem? What have you tried and how do you know whether or not it's worked and really start to make them do some homework? Not as a way of providing friction, but as a way of providing thoughtfulness as you come into the experience.

Yes. And that's kind of the subtle shift that I'm talking about. So now it's as a way of thoughtfulness. I will say intake forms too work best when they align to the culture of your organization. So if your organization is not a form filling out organization and you try to all of a sudden give them a super long form, they're going to click out and call you anyway. So part of it is thinking about customer experience as well. Kind of what's the minimum you need in order to decide whether or not to move forward?

Yeah, well, and I think that's where learning consultants in an organization. Right. They're embedded in. They might not even be instructional designer types. Right. They're more on that consulting side, business analysis side ends up. That's another way of handling that, right?

Absolutely. There's a lot of different. Well, I wouldn't say a lot, but there are a few different structures out there. I've heard of that one before. An organizations who. Or there may be just talent consultants in general. So they have a little bit of a foot in the HR and a foot in the L and D and they kind of know what direction to figure out where to send somebody. So there's a.

There are some creative things out there, I think.

Well, as we think about just the different mindsets, different ways of enacting our work in the business, what are some of the different skills that a professional might need in order to engage in? Because the book is great, but what do I need to be able to do it?

So I think influencing without authority is huge. So that ability to work with our stakeholders and if you want to study other groups, I mean project management and product management tend to be really good at this kind of thing about how they influence stakeholders without the authority. I think the ability to ask really good questions, which seems silly like we should be able to lean on our facilitative skills to facilitate great conversation, not just great classes. So that that facilitative slash used with consultative. Those skills together, I think we do need understanding of measurement and data and I think we do need a really healthy understanding of the context in which we work, which means a really healthy understanding of the business. And then we need to be able to see the larger picture and the small steps that get there. That's the strategic piece, so that's just a smattering of them. But you're right, Megan.

I mean, we didn't even touch on leadership. Leading your own team and having a strong leadership there, a lot of these different things, communication, all of that falls into it. It's not an easy thing.

No, no, not at all. And I think that, um, it's something that. Well, you said, Right. You have to. To work with where you are.

Right.

Change your own sphere of influence. That's also, you know, you can rate and. And change your skills as you go as well. It's not something you're all just gonna poof, wave a magic wand. If it was easy, everybody'd be doing it.

Yeah, sorry, overachievers. This isn't one that you can study for the test and get the A next week. I know,

I know. In the. You have a section in your book, why We Stay Stuck, and you talk about one reason for that is this lack of business fluency. Certainly, we don't need every L and D leader to go out and get themselves a new shiny mba. But what are some ways that you think that we can build business fluency in order to support this shift into a strategic business partner?

Yeah, I think this is an interesting one, because a lot earlier in career learning and development, I think we think business fluency and we jump to balance sheets, and that's not really what I'm talking about here. I mean, we don't need to understand how to read or write a balance sheet, but we do need to know the story that it's telling. So where are the major revenues coming from? Where are the major expenses in the organization? That kind of thing. Now, the reason we need to uplevel our business fluency, our business acumen, is because we want to show up to conversations as a business partner or business leader with learning expertise in tow. We don't show up as a learning expert with business in tow. We want to have a conversation with them at an equal, which means we need to understand what are the challenges that they're facing on a daily basis. Why are they facing those challenges? Where are the pressures coming from? What's the data that they're watching, and why do they care about it? What should we. Should we care about that, too? These kinds of things allow us to have a conversation.

So I can share a quick story of this if it helps. There was one stakeholder I worked with who was just a really tough nut to crack. Like, I could not figure out how to get her to see me as anything but the nice training lady who did. Who provided training. Yeah, I mean, I'm a nice person, yes. But I don't prefer to do effective things over nice things. So I couldn't quite figure out how to. How to crack her.

And at one point I thought, you know what? I need to. What if I knew more about her business? And so I asked her, and we had a decent relationship. Like, she would meet with me. She thought I was a nice person. So this probably helped. I said, can I. You send out your performance spreadsheets every. Whatever they.

Quarterly, whoever she was sending them to, next time you send that out, would you just copy me? And I could tell she had this look on her face that was like, why would you. Nice training lady. Want to see the metrics that I'm providing to the C suite on a regular basis, But. Okay, you're never going to read them anyway, but what does it harm? What's the harm in copying you? And she sent them to me, and guess what? I did read them. And I came back to her with new questions about her business specifically. And all of a sudden, our relationship started to shift because I was now having conversations with her about the real challenges she was facing, what was behind those, and how we could maybe work together to help solve for them or work on them. And so now she all of a sudden had a partner in that, not just a person. She could say, go make me a training and hope it worked.

So that's an example of how getting a little bit more fluent just on her business was very helpful and really shifted the trajectory of how we work together from then on out.

Love that story. I feel like, you know, it's an example of, like, I see you, I'm listening to you, and I am starting to care about what you care about and what's important to you. And that's what really gets people to kind of open up and share even more with you and, yeah. Kind of see each other on that equal level. I think this is our last question before we wrap it up, but sort of. I kind of want to put on my devil's advocate hat a little bit.

Here. Put it on, Meg.

This is what she does. I should have warned you. This is what she does. Yes.

Always trying to look at things from all the angles. I think actually you really alluded to this at the beginning of our conversation. Does the entire industry of L and D need to change or the whole business function of L and D need to change, or is there still a place for this traditional L and D? There's people who that's, that is what they, their skills are and can do. They still have a place or are we going to throw it all out?

I mean, so I love to sort of envision what different futures might look like too and then think about the disruption. It's like kind of like candy for me. So this is not, this is not. My devil's advocate answer is yes, we do need to have a lot of change in our industry if we are going to remain relevant moving forward. Now I would think you could make the argue that every industry needs to have is. Is experiencing some disruption and we're no different. However, the there are still going to be talent challenges in organizations. Like that isn't going away with.

As long as we have people working in organizations, we're going to have challenges and people are still going to need to learn about their job. They're going to need to be equipped, enabled so that they can do the work to move the organization forward. And we are the function that can do that. So the inter. That if by traditional L and D you mean equipping and enabling people to do the jobs that they need to do, then yes, we still need that. But the way we do it I think will need to look much different than it looks right now. I think we need to stop relying solely on our formal methodologies, which we've relied on for many, many, many, many years. There may be a place still for that, but let's make that place that we use that extremely intentional so that we get the maximum benefit out of it.

And that's not the only way that we do our work. So I think, yes, we need to shift and change and it is, it is time. We are ripe for disruption and the time is now, if you ask me to start making that shift.

So basically what you're saying, there's no point in wasting a crisis.

No point in wasting a crisis. It's a gift in many ways. It is a gift that we have been given to envision a better future.

Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Okay, I know you do promise some feistiness. So I'm going to ask as we wrap this up, what is your most feisty but from a loving space message for your fellow learning and development professionals,

Stop complaining and stop feeling sorry for yourself. So I hear a lot of people like, okay, if I have to hear the phrase seat at the table one more time, I might crawl out of my skin. That is, to me, that's one of the worst complaints. Like we don't have A seat at the table. So that means we can't do this work. But my response to that is, you're never going to have a seat at that table if you're not doing that work. So we can't sit back and complain and wait for somebody to invite us in. We need to start doing the work differently so that they see, oh, you are a strategic function.

We do need you at this table. We're never going to hire somebody who has no experience. We're not going to ask somebody to be in the strategic conversations who's never showed us that we can think strategically. And so I think we need to, in many ways, step into our own power, think about the work we do differently, work strategically and not complain about it. Start to make the small changes in our own lives that will lead us to. To get there. That's a pretty feisty take. I don't know.

I think it is pretty feisty.

Show up and do the work. Yes.

Don't come up. Try. Just try some different stuff and see what works.

Yep. Jess, thank you so much for taking time to talk with us today. It's been a pleasure. Can. Can we wrap this up with a little bit of a bow? How can people stay in touch with you? How can they learn more? What are some next steps?

Yeah, I think best. Let's see. In touch. LinkedIn is a great place to connect with me for sure. I also have a podcast that you alluded to earlier. It's called L and D Must Change. Thus why your feisty devil's advocate question wasn't. I'm.

I'm aligned to it. And that when I'm interviewing people from all over the industry who are calling change in various ways, big and small. And then my book, which is L and D, Order taker no more. Become a strategic business partner available wherever books are sold.

Love it. Jess Almlie, thank you so much for joining us today.

You are welcome. This was lovely.

So, Meg, how'd that go?

I think it went pretty well. We, you know, that was our first time with both of us on interviewing one. One other individual. And so it went well.

We.

We kind of did a little bit of prep beforehand, had some questions. You know, it was. It. I think it was a good flow and we were well prepared.

I think one thing that was helpful was the. The podcast setup we have here. We can. All. Even though it's all audio, we see each other while we record, so we have the benefit of that additional channel of communication visually as we go.

Oh, my gosh. Yes. Speaking of visual communication. I mean, that's why we at Torrance Learning, like we our cameras on always in meetings. Because it's so helpful to see the subtle cues on the looks on the faces of the people that you're in a meeting with. So, quick, hot tip for everybody you know, turn on your cameras.

Camera's on, if you can.

This is Meg Fairchild and Megan Torrance, and this has been a podcast from Torrance Learning. Tangents is the official podcast of Torrance Learning, as though we have an unofficial one. Tangents is hosted by Meg Fairchild and Megan Torrance. It's produced by Dean Castile and Meg Fairchild, engineered and edited by Dean Castile, with original music also by Dean Castile. This episode was fact checked by Meg Fairchild.