John Pike (guest)
00:00:02.000 - 00:00:49.170
Friction consumes people and that's a friction we want to get rid of.

And that's, I think, a lot of the friction that adds mid career professionals or later professionals, they become like there's actually a lot of friction that AI pulls out. Other friction forms people and it's the friction that forms people that we need to ensure stays within the system.

Because if we don't let that friction live, we don't learn, right? So to this point, right, you go back to my nephews, like, they didn't learn because there wasn't friction for them to learn.

They got their money and they got the project done, but they didn't consider the fact that there was a bunch of people, me and a couple of my kids, helping them finish up this project. So we were AI for them in that moment.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:00:52.060 - 00:01:59.920
Hi there and welcome to the Step up podcast. I'm your host, Kent Knievel.

Every week I talk to experts who focus on helping leaders step up their leadership game and leaders telling their stories of growing up through the ranks. If you're new to the show, do me a favor and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

One last thing, as a leadership development consultant and executive coach, focus area of mine is supporting newly promoted leaders.

One in three promotions fail because we never teach newly minted VPs how to stop being a director, or in newly promoted director how to stop being a manager. That's you.

Or if you support a leader who has been recently promoted, I encourage you to visit my website at Kent Coach Toolkit and download a free copy of the promoted leader Toolkit filled with practical advice and tools to help new leaders stick the landing and truly step up to their new leadership level. All right, I've dillied and dallied long enough. On with the show. Welcome everybody.

Today we're going to be talking about the future of learning and that'll kind of age of AI, but even more importantly, why the future of learning is human. With me for this conversation today is John Pike. John is the founder and CEO of Parisos Partners. John, thanks for being here today.

John Pike (guest)
00:02:01.040 - 00:02:04.400
Thanks for having me, Kat. I'm excited to join the podcast.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:02:05.520 - 00:02:13.700
Well, pleasure to have you.

So for the audience who doesn't know you, would love for you to just tell a bit about your background and history, whatever you feel like getting into.

John Pike (guest)
00:02:15.220 - 00:04:46.120
Oh, boy. Well, it's, it's funny. So when we met we. You had dark hair and I did not have a salt and pepper beard.

So that's at least the, the starting point of how long we've known you. But it's funny, I started my career as an accounting and finance guy, actually.

I don't know if you knew that, but worked with early stage startup companies and founders and what was always fascinating to me was never about the numbers. I was also a bad accountant. Let's just start there. Not a very good accountant.

But what I did notice was that even when the numbers made the output, it was really people that were making the variability within it. Right.

So if a great leader with interesting results becomes excellent just because they actually have leadership, and more often than not, tough leadership led to some really difficult outcomes into it.

So can have the right strategy, the right marketing plan, even amazing margins, but you don't have the right ethos around it and the right support and hump and suddenly it goes into the wrong direction.

And that's actually what brought me to where I ended up studying humans and people at Gallup and loved the strength psychology and the positive psychology landscape there.

So why don't we just start studying what's right with people instead of what's wrong and help them accentuate and accelerate those components which are really good for themselves.

And then I landed at a place called Korn Cherry, where we obviously met and did a bunch of work within the assessment space, understanding what makes people successful and how do we actually start to codify that and look for that in others. I also spent time building audit advisory practice for a small boutique search firm.

And then about a year and a half ago, I founded threesource Partners because I wanted to be able to do it in a bit more nimble and flexible way. Wanted to keep the rigor of the science, but also deliver the work in something that was more human, more contextual, and more useful to my clients.

So not assessment or development for the sake of it, but how do we make people see themselves and their situation uniquely and clearly so that they can make better choices and so those around them can support them in making those choices better too.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:04:47.000 - 00:04:47.480
Nice.

John Pike (guest)
00:04:49.000 - 00:04:49.440
Yeah.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:04:49.440 - 00:05:41.360
And yeah, so it's interesting that you've kind of hopped through a few different consultancies in your time. Right.

And kind of bringing both, you know, probably your own experience not being in consulting, you know, initially first, you know, before sort of bringing this all together into your own practice. I'm excited today to talk a bit more about the future of learning being human, you know, especially in this, this age of AI, which is changing daily.

Right. I even think of my own, my own usage of AI. I've been using it primarily since forming my own Company, Right. I think, you know, we had.

When I was with.

John Pike (guest)
00:05:41.360 - 00:05:41.999
Absolutely.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:05:41.999 - 00:06:02.760
Yeah. When I was with General Mills, you know, we had started to kind of dabble a little bit with it.

You know, this would have been 2023 into 2024, you know, and it was. I think companies were just maybe starting to get kind of curious, but even, frankly, more trepidatious. Right. Really kind of thinking more nervous.

John Pike (guest)
00:06:02.760 - 00:06:59.460
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, and what are they going to do with my data when they get it?

And so there's all sorts of, you know, concerns around more of the cyber security challenges that represented with AI. More than like, I want to use it, but how can I use it safely? And so that was the kind of the slow end of the tail.

And we'll say that's starting to accelerate. I've been chatting with a lot of Chro's over the summer and that is. But now it's moved, right. People have access to it now it's.

How do we actually get people to start using it and not be afraid of it. So I think that there's still a lot of trepidation in using it and just starting to get it. But I think you have a great use case for it though, Kent.

Right.

When we think about solopreneurs, smaller entrepreneurial outfits, organizations that are just starting, this is a sweet spot for AI's acceleration of capability to be deployed.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:06:59.540 - 00:07:09.780
Well, yeah, I was going to say, I think with the exception of needing to maintain a level of ethics and data privacy.

John Pike (guest)
00:07:10.540 - 00:07:11.180
Oh, of course.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:07:11.260 - 00:08:23.390
Beyond that, I've had kind of free reign with it. Right. And, and, and even so, right. Other than the guardrails that any given AI system might have on data and privacy, it's on me, right.

To kind of keep that at the forefront. But it has afforded me the opportunity to try all kinds of things with it. Right. And, but what?

One thing that's kind of interesting is, you know, over the last couple of years, the conversation of the. Not even just the future of learning being human, but the future of leadership being human. Right. The fact that who is this AI coming from? Right.

When we think of like the, like the jobs part of this thing, who's it coming for? And I was just listening to something this morning that kind of reiterated it too, which is to put it simply, you know, human to computer work. Right.

Is probably at most risk, maybe even the most opportunity, if you want to think of it that way. Right. For disruption with, with AI. But it's the human to human interaction that I think is not going away.

John Pike (guest)
00:08:23.390 - 00:08:23.630
Right.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:08:23.630 - 00:09:00.370
I think people who, you know, those who can human. Well, right. Those leaders who step into people leadership.

Well are, we're probably going to see even more acceleration of their success, whether that's either performance or career, you know, however, we might want to look at that, but would love to know like, you know, I, I, I think I know my own, I guess personal use cases for it. But you know, when you're starting to think of the future of learning, you know, what made you start to kind of look at this all together?

John Pike (guest)
00:09:01.810 - 00:14:24.990
I mean, so I, I love AI, but I also know that AI is not going to replace everything. And I think the piece that really got me interested in just how is this going to adapt, change and move was just how quickly AI has disintermediated.

Let's just use the idea of instructional design, right?

Like what would have taken two, three weeks to figure out, like I want this module and that module and then, and then the actual creation of the content or the workbook or you know, the, the, the beautiful PowerPoint. And those things are now lightning fast in terms of going from a blank sheet to a completed product.

And so you get this opportunity to really accelerate some of the pieces of learning. And then the question is like, but what are we actually getting to as an outcome?

So what we've already started to see within the landscape of AI is like, oh, we haven't started to see the outcomes and the ROI and the benefits that we had expected. And I think one of the big challenges of this is we've looked at this AI tool as this tool for ubiquity. All shall use it. Wow. Yes.

And AI is technology. And what does technology require to get implemented? Well, it requires a business analysis analyst to say, this is the problem we're solving.

It requires, you know, a coder or just a technologist to fundamentally design and figure out how it's going to work. And it requires project management to say, okay, how do we start to move people's behavior from A to B?

How do we get them to start to use or leverage? And so we tried to this idea because like, oh, we can put it on everybody's laptop.

And then suddenly they're like, some people do not think in the land of prompts and they aren't going to win. Some people don't communicate well to other humans and that means they're not going to communicate very well to AI.

They're going to get the same kind of garbage. And so I think part of the challenge of getting the benefit of AI and the Future of learning.

As we think about both of those pieces is one, we need to look at AI as a technology because that's what it is. It's, you know, and when I think about AI as well, it's a very advanced regression model, but it's a regression model. It's math.

Masquerading is humanity.

And so when we think about that piece of it, there are components of lived experience, wisdom and judgment that cannot be replicated through the experience of a regression model. Now again, those models are improving and getting better, but the human to human interaction are the model right of that can't be disintermediated.

And then secondly, one of the things that I've loved about AI and this is what you were talking about, I think this is one of the benefits is it accelerates discovery. We can get knowledge right?

We can get some information really, really quickly about like hey, what would it look like to into a new leader, leadership role? Like what, what are the things that I need to be really mindful of? And suddenly you get a library of things that are really important.

Now the challenge is not every leadership transition is going to need all of that library of things. And that's where that wisdom judgment really required people to work themselves through.

And I think one of the challenges of learning today and especially thinking about the future is we might get something completed, we might get it done, but that doesn't mean that we've learned. So I, a few weeks ago I was working with my nephews.

I've been having them, I have a lot of family and I have three nephews in particular that I've been having do some landscaping work for me. And so I had them bid a project where they needed to pick all of the weeds and on, on my beach because I don't want to do that. And, and they bid it.

And I was like 350. And I was like looking up, there's no way I have not done this work in four years. There's no way it's 350 worth of work. It's way more than that.

But your bid your opportunity. And so then they went to work, they started working on it.

They started these weeks and they, and they actually needed to go to camp the next day and it needed to be done that night.

And so I had a couple of my kids, myself, we all pitched in and we finished this project because it was like, I know this is for more, let's just get it done. Let's do it together. And then, and then away they went to camp.

Well, so I had them pitch another project like what's, what's, what would the budget be for this project? And they gave me another number and again, it was really low.

And the challenge here is like, because they got rescued in that first project, they didn't learn, right. The project got complete, but they did not learn what they needed to do differently for the next opportunity.

And so I think that's one of the challenges of AI is like if we get insight, if we get something complete, that's great. But what did we learn? How are we then applying it to what we need to do on a day in and day out basis?

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:14:25.230 - 00:14:57.930
I think one thing I've thought about numerous times over the last few years when it comes to AI is the importance of domain expertise prior to AI. Right. I think absolutely one of the reasons why, I think, and this is one of the reasons why I think it should not be used in schools. Right?

Or how it is used or how it is used, used in schools should be done very specifically and, and with intention of like teaching kids how to,.

John Pike (guest)
00:14:58.010 - 00:14:59.530
Teaching how to play with it.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:14:59.530 - 00:15:57.190
But I don't think we know enough about it yet for them to be doing right.

And, and so like why, why is it that like, you know, in the early, you know, I'm thinking even just a few years ago, we were seeing teachers complain about it, we were seeing college professors complaining about it.

Well, that's because the people who are producing essays for you via their AI instead of themselves have no idea how to write an essay, therefore they have no idea how to judge the quality of the output of, of this AI essay with which to then turn it in. Right?

And I would say I've probably if I were to really sit down and dissect my own usage of AI, the things I've, I've tried to do of the trial and error that I've had. I, I'm going to make an assumption because I really would have to sit down and try to map this all out, which I haven't.

But I'm going to assume the places where I've had less dummy.

John Pike (guest)
00:15:57.190 - 00:16:00.869
Hey, I should map it out for you. Ken, come on, why are you doing all this work?

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:16:00.869 - 00:16:29.160
I mean, in the end I would use my good buddy Claude to, oh, Clyde, Chad pilot.

But my, my guess would be the places where I've had less expertise is probably where the output where I've abandoned the, even the trial and error of it to be like, it's not giving me.

It's probably because I don't even know how to do it without the AI in order to, for me to partner and I, I use that language very intentionally for me to partner with AI in such a way to do it well.

John Pike (guest)
00:16:30.920 - 00:19:19.990
Absolutely well. So I, I, I had the privilege of, of, of watching the TEDX Minneapolis chapter presentations I think two weeks ago. So I'm a speaker coach with them.

But one of the talks was all about how human forms, how human forms, how human brains form and develop. And one of the things, and this is true for adults and for kids, but kids especially.

And this is why when we look at the use of AI and why you know, mid career professionals have accelerated and are using it really well and those that are earlier in their career are struggling and it's because like there is not the framework of experience to actually apply to the partnership. They're just a novice trying to partner with this really amazing, effective, powerful tool that they have no idea how to use. Right.

It's like if you were the Knight Rider. Oh, I'm bringing in my childhood right here. Knight Rider, you're driving kit.

But if you're not, if you're not really David Hasselhock, you really can't make it happen. Yeah. So I think some friction consumes people and that's a friction we want to get rid of.

And that's I think a lot of the friction that adds mid career professionals or later professionals, they like there's actually a lot of friction that AI pulls out other friction forms people and it's the friction that forms people that we need to ensure stays within the system. Because if we don't let that friction live, we don't learn. Right.

So to this point, right, you go back to my nephews, like they didn't learn because there wasn't friction for them to learn.

They got their money and they got the project done, but they didn't consider the fact that there was a bunch of people, me and a couple of my kids, helping them finish up this project. So we were AI for them in that moment. And so they didn't learn. They got the job done, but they didn't learn too.

And so I think that that's a piece of it like friction that consumes people. That's not things that we want, but friction that actually is forming and building and has a real job in there, man, we can't subtract from that.

And I think there's a lot, a big challenge as I look at a lot of the early entry level roles that are being removed and they're Boring jobs. Right. We don't want to do those jobs.

But man, turns out when you're learning to build a spreadsheet and learning the rules, you suddenly are much better at telling somebody else how to do it. AKA AI. Yeah. And again with the Gen Zi and all of the other generative, like all of these other pieces to ensure it's going to continue to evolve.

But how do we stay in that driver's seat in terms of the learning and the awareness and the experience.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:19:20.710 - 00:19:21.190
Yeah.

John Pike (guest)
00:19:21.490 - 00:19:45.810
Which then produces wisdom and judgment, which ultimately is the value add in terms of how we are delivering value through that resource. I think of. Ken, I'm sure you use it for like. Like, how many thousands of hours did I write business proposals in the first 20 years of my career?

Like, more than I want to imagine and probably a good few years of my working life.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:19:45.810 - 00:19:46.290
Yeah.

John Pike (guest)
00:19:46.690 - 00:20:06.880
And now it can be disintermediated. But I also know what to look for. Like, did we get the right terms in there? No. Here's a template that works. Yes.

And by the way, how are we going to use it within the voice of the organization that we're writing these contracts for? So I just think that there's so much richness in the learning that we skip over.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:20:08.000 - 00:20:08.480
Yeah.

John Pike (guest)
00:20:08.560 - 00:20:09.040
Yeah.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:20:09.520 - 00:20:49.210
Well. And so is that kind of what's at the crux of your, you know, thesis here of the future of learning, being human?

That basically we can't skip over the. I don't even know that I want to call it tried and true, but, you know, maybe we do call it that for a minute.

That we don't skip over the tried and true learning pathways or methodologies or modalities, however you want to phrase it, that we've been using to date. Right. That you. Or. Or. Because I can keep barreling, I guess, where I'm going.

John Pike (guest)
00:20:49.210 - 00:20:49.650
Yeah.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:20:50.050 - 00:20:51.250
It's a little down in the.

John Pike (guest)
00:20:51.250 - 00:20:51.610
Yeah.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:20:51.610 - 00:20:53.330
But I want to make sure we're heading where.

John Pike (guest)
00:20:53.650 - 00:20:57.849
I don't think so. I think there is benefit. Right. It's for.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:20:57.849 - 00:20:58.170
For.

John Pike (guest)
00:20:58.170 - 00:21:00.810
Especially if we think about learning professional, hr. Anybody.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:21:00.810 - 00:21:01.090
Right.

John Pike (guest)
00:21:01.410 - 00:21:09.450
What we need to observe is what is the friction that is just friction and consuming us and what is the friction that is forming us.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:21:09.450 - 00:21:09.860
Yeah.

John Pike (guest)
00:21:09.930 - 00:21:56.270
And we need to know the difference between that and. I think that's the work.

If we think of a learning professional or even hr, any leader, boss, manager, like what is actually consuming your team versus forming them? And that is real work. That's real awareness to kind of figure that piece out. Because AI isn't going away AI is powerful.

How do we make sure that we get the most power and most utility out of it while also accelerating, right. And unleashing those leaders that we are supporting and delivering value through.

So I think it's, you know, it's making huge parts of learning and work easier and that is a good thing. I don't think we, you know, the genie is not going back in the bottle and we don't need it to.

But easier performance is not the same thing as learning.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:21:56.350 - 00:21:56.750
Right?

John Pike (guest)
00:21:56.990 - 00:23:19.460
And so if a tool can help someone get to a great answer. Awesome.

Or it can get great analysis or a great piece of work, but if it does that before they've developed that capability that's represented by the output, then I think we have a new responsibility, right, to figure out how do we add some of that friction in that forms that learning, that experience and that opportunity.

So I think we have to become much better at knowing what technology should actually just make easier and then what people still have to experience and practice and struggle through so that they learn it for themselves. I think that's the key because if we look at those two dynamics, like we have to actually continue to build into systems moments of learning.

And we can't just learn if we're always comfortable. Right? There's the comfort zone, the learning zone, the panic zone.

And half of us are all in the panic zone, like, yeah, but comfort was the other half of us in the AI world like, oh, I don't have to do anything. But we have to stretch ourselves, right? We have to stretch those around us to be in that learning zone. To say, all right, I'm getting stretched.

I have stress and pressure on this and I am building my muscles in, in this skill.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:23:19.860 - 00:23:34.180
Yeah, interesting. It makes me think of elearning in general for a moment here. Let me, you know, kind of wheeling back to having spent 2000's called they.

John Pike (guest)
00:23:34.180 - 00:23:36.060
Want your E learning module back. Right.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:23:36.220 - 00:24:04.340
And I'm thinking, you know, because I, I went from consulting into HR for the better part of a decade and yeah, you know, so I was, I was here in the system of like, we want to get every drop of juice, you know, squozen out of the, you know, lemon, so to speak, or orange or what have you. Right. And so some citrus, some, some kind of citrus.

John Pike (guest)
00:24:04.980 - 00:24:07.340
Grapefruit. I think grapefruit juice is delicious.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:24:07.340 - 00:24:08.140
Yeah, right. Very helpful.

John Pike (guest)
00:24:08.140 - 00:24:08.300
Right.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:24:08.300 - 00:25:39.420
And so like, you know, the, the, the coveted leadership development dollars that a company might actually be willing to spend. Company after company.

The question ends up being like, how do we get basically as many, I'm just going to like as many leaders through, you know, for the spend, right. And so what you saw then in the 2000, and frankly I think people are barely starting to abandon it today.

Maybe it's getting there finally was we saw the rise of either sort of content coming with the purchase of your lms, your learning management system, or the rise of content providers, you know, that, that hey, we've got all your leadership development already. It's, it's, you know, for a million dollars a year we'll just plug our thing into your lms.

And now, you know, someone needs to learn feedback and you know, they can just pull it up here, you know, block an hour on their calendar and, and enroll or whatever and sit in front of their computer for an hour and now they've learned feedback, right? And what was missing in that process, right? And arguably what's missing in that pro.

It all kind of comes back to the development pipeline in the end too, right? That, that if you know.

John Pike (guest)
00:25:39.500 - 00:25:40.220
Absolutely.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:25:40.620 - 00:26:48.450
Do you know what needs to be developed? Do you give a damn? Can you get the information you need?

And then where most historical and I think where leadership development got a bad, bad reputation in the past was the lack of actual practice and accountability. Right? Practice and feedback.

And, and I don't think elearning helped in that process in any way, shape or form other than us being able to say per learner, we're spending all this much less per learner than we were only being able to put 20 or 30 or 40 people through a program every year because it's costly, right. And so we, we reduced all this friction, so to speak, of getting learning into the hands of people for the sake of primarily budgetary reasons.

But I would say, you know, we could make, we could make some cases for why, you know, if it would have efficiency, right?

John Pike (guest)
00:26:48.450 - 00:26:50.170
You can touch everybody just in time.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:26:50.170 - 00:27:14.990
Learning, you're only giving it to them when they need it. But when you lack the mechanisms for practice and accountability, right? That is the learning happening.

And I think maybe that's even kind of what you're getting at with, with what we're talking about, about AI, right? Because AI shit can be quite the knowledge management resource, right? In terms, you know, it gives you.

John Pike (guest)
00:27:14.990 - 00:27:20.190
Again the discovery, the learning is right there, all of it. I don't know what I need, but all of it's there.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:27:20.190 - 00:28:08.150
What I know from a, from a just in time perspective, you, you can even faster than before get to the information you need, maybe even half the analysis done Absolutely. But again, what are you, you know, I, I'll still come back to do you have the expertise to judge the output?

And are we still going to, you know, so I have this idea of. And maybe, maybe, maybe this is coming to a question which is does it all come back to practice and accountability?

So as we think about efficiencies and learning that might happen leveraging this new technology, we need to pay even more attention to and I think you put it as friction, but it does it come back to practice and accountability? What are we actually doing with it?

John Pike (guest)
00:28:08.150 - 00:30:44.950
Well, first again, like how do we build into the system? Opportunities for people to build the muscle. And I would absolutely agree. Right. Practice and accountability are two of those things.

So you know, if we go back way further in size. So I am actually the son of Bob pike. He founded a company called Bobhead Group.

And what's interesting about them is their full focus and like claim to fame is participant centered learning.

And so when we think about that like so if they are doing elearning modules or if you are building like their whole domain was like, how do we make this about the participant and their outcomes versus a content experience? Because again, content does not feed humans. AI is not going to change humans.

It is actually the work of the practice and then the follow through and accountability and the growth that happens when those things are working together. And so what I'll say is like that participant centered learning is still the model going forward.

And whether it's in a classroom, a training or what have you, or if it's hands on with you working with your leaders, like the reason people can't learn from a micromanager leader is because they can't give people the freedom to actually grow or make a mistake. And the reason for that is like they don't get practiced. There's no accountability in there. You're just being told like, oh, you did it wrong.

Let me just. Yeah, you have to write.

And so when you don't have the model that says this is how you're going to grow and they think, you know, the, the 70, 2010 model, 70% of our learning, right. Especially as we think about leadership is coming from experience. Oh my goodness. Experience is the best teacher. Harley SMOKES.

It's a platitude that is founded in the real science of the world. Right. 20% Then comes from those mentors and the peers that are around you that you're observing learning from maybe a coach.

Then 10% is in that classroom.

And so when we think about the resources of, you know, everybody having a leadership development elearning module, like, great, you got 10% of the way there. They know something, but can they do something with it?

And that's the transformation required is that we actually need to move through that process of change. Right. And growth and development and you know, and actually, so parisos the. It's a Greek word which means abundance or excellence.

And that's the whole point. Like, how do we get more abundance in this leadership? More excellence from the leadership that's housed within. Yeah, yeah.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:30:46.390 - 00:31:27.040
So I want to, I want to just keep picking on and needling elearning for a moment because it's fun. Because I think that's, I think where it fell down was.

And I think some people started to get there, but I think companies were still skeptical of wanting to spend more money. Right. And where I saw some people kind of getting there was the rise of group coaching or learning circles. Right. Kind of coming up.

They're like, yes, this is in fact what we were doing, you know, when we were at Korn Ferry, which was, sure, we can have you watch this whiz bang amazingly produced elearning module. But we're talking about it that's hosted.

John Pike (guest)
00:31:27.040 - 00:31:28.920
By a guy that's wearing a flower shirt.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:31:28.920 - 00:33:02.410
Yeah, but we're, we're going to talk about it next Tuesday with the group that watched it. Right. With the learners and you know, we call them application sessions.

Like, we want you to learn this, try it, but we're going to get together and talk about it. And I think that's where I didn't see a lot of organization.

I saw a lot of organizations kind of wiping their hands by lights on the LMS now and not taking it to the next step of.

There is something about the accountability that comes with having to show up to a room, virtual or real, with some of your peers and, and having the facilitator say, who even tried this over the last couple of weeks and in the first session, having only 20% of the hands come up. Right. And there's something about the peer pressure there of, oh, I can't put my hand up.

And some people are, I thought everybody was just, you know, putting their feet up on their desk. That's right. But then there's the peer learning that comes from cool. So for those of you who wrote, you know, raised your hands, how did it go?

What did you learn? What are your tips for others? What, you know, what, what did you do that was your own?

Where you were kind of like, ah, the learning's Just kind of in a vacuum.

Here's, you know, how I'm tweaking it and how that then both provides peer pressure or even a permission structure to the 80% that didn't raise their hands, you know, to at least get another 10 or 20% of the hands raised before the next session.

John Pike (guest)
00:33:02.410 - 00:33:03.010
Right. That.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:33:03.010 - 00:33:26.890
Oh, well, you know, okay, this is working for some people. There's some, you know, legitimacy to what's being taught here.

So I, I think, you know, trying to isolate the learning to person to computer was kind of what was getting in the way of the person taking the learning out of, you know, away from the computer.

John Pike (guest)
00:33:28.340 - 00:36:20.640
Yeah. One. And even as you think about that is the form of my, my word friction. Right. It's a, like to have that group afterwards.

Like, that is time, that is expense, that's energy that you have to put into that experience to then recall and push back into.

And so again, just because we have a good tool and it's giving you all of the knowledge you need, that does not mean that you are actually getting it into the application. Right. I, I'll often say there's best practice and the real practice. And best practice is wonderful. We love ourselves. So best practice.

But the reality is, like, if best practice is going 100 miles an hour and your organization's going to zero, like, we need a real practice that at least starts the car moving, right? Get you one mile an hour, that's a win. Five mile an hour, even better. But you're not going from zero to a hundred. That is just not going to work.

And if you implement that 100 mile per hour best practice system, you're still going to be going zero because you're going to have crashed it because nobody knows how to drive it that fast.

And so I think that part of the challenge is just because we get some of that better output, that doesn't mean that we have greater capability at that point. It just means that we put something in a system that's not ready for it.

And so I think part of our challenge is like, how do you put the guardrails around something that could accelerate everything so fast to actually being something that accelerates, right. That helps you move it forward.

And some of the, the points you're talking about, like some of the things like, turns out, AI has been here for a couple of years. The way we've learned in the past is the way that we're going to learn in the future.

And so we need to use some of the very simple things, like humans haven't changed overnight. AI doesn't change leadership, it accelerates it. Right?

And so the future of learning, being human means that like, we have to learn things in those moments, right? Where we are learning from others become even more important because they are now those relationship moments. Right?

And so I think then those are the things that we're going to remember and be able to deliver and support through as we navigate these, you know, these, these coming months. Again, the principles of participant centered learning still apply. 70, 2010 Still applies.

The reality is how do we hold people accountable and actually wait for it change them? And so there really is this big change management. And I hate I. It's just like this word, like, hey, let's go to change management.

Throw everything into the change management bucket. Hey, that's change management. Yay. Change management. Did I get a dollar for every time I say change management? Yay. No, you don't.

And yet it is super fundamentally important for organizations to get the benefit of anything they're doing by building in the process of change to actually deliver on that outcome.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:36:21.590 - 00:39:05.770
Kind of comes back to what I was saying earlier too, which is those who, you know, I'm using the term flippantly because it's a nonsense term, but like those who can human, well are going to benefit even more, you know, as more redundant tasks get automated. Right. As, as. And one thing, you know, I had a, a guest on, you know, and he's an engineer, was a funny, you know, thing.

He was telling the story about how his wife, you know, had said something to him about like, like how come you don't check in with me, you know, during the day, you know, and he kind of realized like, oh, that's how, like how she knows I care. And so what did the engineer do? He put it on his calendar to chirp at him at noon.

Is that the most engineer way to remind yourself to reach out and show this person you care? Absolutely. And even if she were to be aware of how and why you're now doing this doesn't matter, right? It, because it. This, the technology.

And this isn't even, this is not even a statement about AI. This is just a statement about how calendar alerts work, right?

From a technology perspective that this technology allowed him to be a better human in the eyes of his spouse. Right. And I, I see some similarity to some of the use cases of, of AI making us better humans. Right?

The way you can frankly plug AI into your CRM, your, your customer relationship management software and your, your calendar and your email to say prep Prep for a meeting, Right. There is a garbage in, garbage out component to it, right? It kind of depends on are you taking good notes?

Are you taking good notes about, are you even recording the meeting in such a way where notes can be extracted? Even better. Right. But you know, can you hit a meeting prep button that says, hey, you've been talking to John about these kinds of things.

Hey, don't forget to ask about his child's, you know, try out for little League the next time you, you know, talk to him. Is there an element of outsourcing? One could make the case that there's an element of outsourcing our humanity in some regards to this tool.

But there's another way of looking at it to say, I know, but if from an anthropology perspective, you know, we only can know, what is it, 100 or 150 people with any amount of depth. Yeah, right.

John Pike (guest)
00:39:05.850 - 00:39:24.490
Well, I mean, you've already described a bunch of these tools, right? So this is the, what you're describing, Kent, is cognitive offloading. And writing a list is cognitive offloading.

Your engineer friend setting a task reminder at noon is cognitive offloading. It didn't send the text message.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:39:24.900 - 00:39:25.100
Right.

John Pike (guest)
00:39:25.100 - 00:39:27.300
The list didn't achieve itself.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:39:27.620 - 00:39:28.020
Right.

John Pike (guest)
00:39:29.300 - 00:40:07.000
The engineer had to do it. You had to get the honeydew list done. So the cognitive offloading is something that we've been using as tools. Right.

Reminder lists, test managers, CRMs are a lot. Right. Pencil and paper is one of those first forms of it, or I guess maybe chalk in the wall.

But at the end of the day, when we think about this tool, like AI is a massive accelerator of cognitive offload, and it's what needs to be offloaded and what needs to be enhanced. And so are we offloading our humanity? We're actually offloading the test that we're bad at. We're actually really bad at remembering things.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:40:07.240 - 00:40:07.640
Right.

John Pike (guest)
00:40:08.280 - 00:42:34.950
It's a lot better. Sometimes it hallucinates, but it's a lot better at remembering some of these consistent pieces of how others operate.

So, like, oh, hey, this is something that you need to do. Like, boom. How do we do that? Right? So reminders are useful.

And again, what it means is we can stay focused and connected into what we're doing right here, right now, versus going back into my mind of like, what else was I supposed to do? I know there's something I'm supposed to do. So then this is the thing.

I think some of the most time consuming parts of, of leaders of HR professionals, it's rafting and organizing and adapting and Synthesizing and verting control. And those pieces, right, are getting removed.

And so one of the things that I think is super important, and this goes for leaders and everybody else is like, how do you use that time that's freed up not just to maximize ad nausea, to add value, but to look at some of the more human experiences that you are creating. So if it's a learning experience, what does this person actually need to be able to do when they're done?

What do they need to experience to get there? Where, where, where does the practice need to be built in?

How do we make sure that there's a feedback loop so that they hear the things that need to be adapted and then what actually needs to transfer into the land of, of reality? And, and where does helping actually become rescuing? Right, so back in the nephews on the beach, like, helping was just rescuing.

And so I think that the key here is like the craft of learning. And the requirement of learning is not disappearing, but it is moving. And so when you say, is that human? Are we offloading humanity? I say no.

I think offloading, cognitive offloading is a super important process to help us have a more human experience with development. And so I think the key here is we're not trying to manufacture people.

We're trying to create better conditions where people can ultimately see and choose and practice and grow in an accelerated way.

Our responsibility as leaders, as learning leaders, as HR professionals, wherever you sit, is to be asking those questions and ensure that your team or those that you're responsible for get those moments to ultimately develop and change and deliver there.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:42:35.670 - 00:42:45.340
Before I sort of bring us into the advice column, John, was there anything else that you wanted to make sure we, we batted back and forth a bit today?

John Pike (guest)
00:42:46.140 - 00:44:37.040
I don't think so.

I think, you know, when, when I think about all of this, it's really just that, you know, we, we've, we've spent decades removing friction, and now it's a moment to say is, is there a moment where we need friction to exist? And I, I think that that is real. Right?

So, you know, one of the talks that I was listening to a few weeks ago, a child psychologist who a decade ago had three people come and complain to her about screen time a month, and now it's 20 times a week. Right?

So when we think about the challenges that we're facing, it is societal, it is at the young ages, right, in terms of how friction is being removed there. But that does now accelerate up into some of our, what we've developed, right?

We developed without screens, if you're, you know, 45 plus year old, if you're not, like screens have been a part of your reality. And so what is, what is the friction we remove that actually had a job it was doing is an important part of that.

And I think that's, you know, where we look at it and say when we think about the future of learning, being more human, it's because there are moments where our humanity is the thing that's going to make the difference, right? And where the relationship and the accountability and the change requirements really require humans to support other humans in that journey.

You could program AI to provide some accountability and feedback and say, hey, did you do that yet? And yet it's not going to actually ask that next question or follow up or say, hey, that's bs, right?

I mean, a lot of them are programmed to pat you on the back and say you're wonderful and you look good and you don't smell bad. Don't listen to him. Like you can't smell. How do you know that I might actually smell AI?

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:44:37.040 - 00:44:39.520
You don't have sniffers yet.

John Pike (guest)
00:44:40.560 - 00:44:41.280
Yet, yet.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:44:42.640 - 00:45:04.400
Because I think that's the, the funny thing is just like the pace of, you know, before, you know, we, we get into the advice column here is the pace of change, right? You know, I, I, I doubt, at least thus far, we're going to build anything that can tell us that our body odor needs a little adjustment for the day.

But even just looking at a computer.

John Pike (guest)
00:45:04.400 - 00:45:13.480
Telling me that, honestly, I don't smell in here, like, I'm the only one in here, I'm the only one that matters to this nose. I have Covid nose, so I can't smell anything anyways.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:45:13.960 - 00:45:46.780
I mean, I even look at it like, what was the technology capable of when it comes to pulling presentations together two years ago compared to today? Is leaps and bounds different, right?

And, and yet, you know, there's still, I'll still come back to one of the places we started this conversation, which is, but if you don't actually know what you're talking about and you don't know what a good deck looks like, you know, good, good PowerPoint deck even looks like, then any output, you know, I was gonna say, then any output.

John Pike (guest)
00:45:46.780 - 00:46:16.010
What are you trying to get at? Like, what are you trying to achieve? What is the outcome?

And then you have to work your way back into it and if you've never stopped and asked the question of outcome and just like, well, use your influence. Yeah. Module, like, yeah, what is that going to do but if you have, you yourself don't. Free tips on. No, you can't.

Like, what do these people need to know and how do they need to change? And then we can start to create something that actually gives them the opportunity to do that. Yeah.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:46:16.010 - 00:46:45.160
Yeah. All right, so I ask everybody to come prepared with two pieces of advice. So one piece of advice for leaders that are seeking a promotion.

One, you know, piece of advice for leaders who were just promoted. You know, it's a focus area of mine.

Just having been on the outside and on the inside, just knowing, you know, 35% of leaders fail upon being promoted. And why is that? It's because the dollars are hard to spend on an individual basis just in time when the person's been promoted.

John Pike (guest)
00:46:45.320 - 00:46:45.800
Yeah.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:46:46.360 - 00:46:52.200
So for those leaders out there, John, who are seeking their next promotion, what's one piece of advice you have for them?

John Pike (guest)
00:46:53.560 - 00:48:03.080
So especially once you've gotten that promotion, you know, stop trying to prove you can do the next job. Start becoming the person the next job requires. So people often approach promotion and as an achievement problem, how do I demonstrate more?

How do I get noticed? And it's really not an achievement problem. It's a development problem. Where does the next role require judgment you don't have yet?

Where does the next role require relationships that you have not yet built, a broader perspective or a greater ability to work through other people or maybe through parts of the organization you haven't leveraged yet. Those are the things that you have to start developing before the title derives.

And promotions tend to expose development gaps that were already there. Right. So when we think about the 30% failure rate, like, it's because there was a development gap, but it wasn't noticed.

And so I think that that's really, really, really important.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:48:04.040 - 00:48:14.520
So a leader has just been promoted. Right. They're in their first day, week, month, quarter of having been promoted. What's one piece of advice you have.

John Pike (guest)
00:48:14.520 - 00:48:23.480
For those folks, by the way, my last comment, I said especially for those who are just provided what I was actually. Especially for those seeking the promotions.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:48:23.480 - 00:48:24.500
I know what you meant.

John Pike (guest)
00:48:24.650 - 00:48:46.250
Did fail you. I did fail you, Kent. So you can either edit it out or you can just be like, know how to talk. Good. Either way, good. Um, so I think that for.

For those people in their first quarter, I. I would go back to very, like, don't be confused. Don't.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:48:46.890 - 00:48:47.370
Sorry.

John Pike (guest)
00:48:47.610 - 00:50:13.770
Do not confuse being selected with being ready.

The organization promoted you because it believes in you and believes you can grow into the role, not because you've arrived and are fully formed on day one. So spend the first quarter learning before proving.

Understand the system, understand the people around you, understand what made the predecessor successful or unsuccessful. One of my favorite questions is why is this role open right when I'm talking to leaders as I'm going to evaluate or assess people?

Because often you learn a whole lot about what's wrong right with the role or what is going to get you kicked out or lose this opportunity because of someone who is not in that role any longer.

And the thing that I think is even more important, especially for those newly promoted leaders, is you have to pay attention to the behaviors that made you successful previously but are now going to be the albatross for this new opportunity to roll. Right? So we'll catch you here, we'll get you there. It is true, right?

There are some really important assets that were massively beneficial to your career and to the previous role that aren't going to support you here. And so I think your first 90 days are going to be less about demonstrating that they made the right choice.

It's more about discovering what the role is asking you to become.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:50:14.410 - 00:52:10.390
I want to double down on that, that statement too, because you said it a couple times, right.

I think one, one trap that I've seen leaders fall into is feeling the need to prove to their new boss peers, direct reports the HR person who helped and stamped for approval their promotion, prove that they made the right choice and thus they kind of white knuckle it through without asking for help, right? Without asking questions, without saying, absolutely.

I'd actually don't know what the truly how to behave differently as a director than I did as a manager or how to behave differently as a VP than I did as a director. And to acknowledge, yeah, no shit, buddy. Like we, we knew that we, we believed you could grow into it. That's why we didn't go external.

If we wanted someone who could just do it all right away, we would have done a lateral hire from the outside, essentially. Because rarely, very rare does someone get a external promotion, right? You know, very rare.

Do we say, yeah, we're going to take this team, this team leader, or this individual contributor and give them from the outside. A management role like that doesn't happen.

And so kind of giving yourself the permit, you know, And I'm trying to avoid picking on the term readiness because frankly, and I think we always say ready for what you know, as. And that's a very fun, very fun question to ask as a consultant. People love it.

But honestly, I'm not Even sure we could ever rate someone as ready now if they haven't done the role right. Or unless.

Or if we haven't leveraged some kind of apprenticeship model or ride along model with the incumbents in a way that say, yeah, they're ready now because they've done parts of the role right. I think there, there should be a they're as ready as they ever could be, maybe category, like, they're as ready as you.

John Pike (guest)
00:52:10.390 - 00:52:14.630
You can have them. Sorry, this is their pinnacle until they're figured out.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:52:14.630 - 00:52:48.120
Right. Because there, there's some lever. There's some. You know, I don't think I've used this analogy for this purpose before, but. Right.

You know, Michael Phelps didn't learn how to swim by reading about it, right. He had to get in the pool. Right. Like you, you know, there's only so much you. You can learn until you're in it. Right.

And then, you know, but could we be more. And now I'm going like, this is podcast number two recording. And go, right, we're here for our next episode. But. Right.

The whole thing of how do you give people that experience ahead of time if you're really trying to build readiness?

John Pike (guest)
00:52:49.480 - 00:53:21.870
And I think, right, again, you're trying to build readiness. How do you expose and provide those.

Again, it is mentorship at some levels, but it's also like, how do you give them those moments of accountability to step up and step in and lean in and see what they do? Because that is real.

And, you know, there's a lot of different ways to do it, but mostly it comes down to you have to be pretty creative to find opportunities and to really have people accept them and own them. And the key is, like, the accountability piece is really hard to come by until you have the role that you're required to have.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:53:21.870 - 00:53:22.110
Right.

John Pike (guest)
00:53:22.110 - 00:53:34.710
Until you have that title. And so that's the part where you can only get a piece of that puzzle.

But I think it's super important that we do give those folks the opportunity to grow. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:53:35.190 - 00:53:36.470
Yeah. Well, I mean, to kind of.

John Pike (guest)
00:53:37.270 - 00:54:06.340
I will say that the last thing when you said ask questions, and that's what I think discovery is. It is asking questions. Right. Not having answers. And I think that's the key, is we think about how do you grow into that role.

Don't expect, right, that you know the answer. Expect that you know the question, though, and be willing to ask it.

Have the humility to ask that question, because that is what's going to unlock Your ability to discover what it is that you need to change, develop and grow through to ultimately be successful in that new opportunity and role.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:54:06.340 - 00:54:15.420
Yeah. Well, John, for those who would like a little more John pike or Paresos partners in their lives, where do they find you? How do they find you?

Who should come find you?

John Pike (guest)
00:54:17.020 - 00:54:49.830
So Parisos, we're an executive assessment development firm. And you know, when we think about that, you can find us on LinkedIn, we got a little company page and then of course I'm there as well.

And then partners. See, I do it every time. Kent. I cannot actually say my own company's name correctly. Pretty much Partners. And from Minnesota.

There's a great vowel shift in the northern climates and apparently I cannot say an O as an O. I have to say it as an ah. So my apologies to my own company for not saying my own company.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:54:49.910 - 00:54:51.750
Well, the good news is that they're spelled the same.

John Pike (guest)
00:54:52.940 - 00:54:53.500
This true?

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:54:53.500 - 00:54:53.900
Yeah.

John Pike (guest)
00:54:53.980 - 00:54:57.900
Brisos, brisauce, potato, patata, tomato, tomato.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:54:57.900 - 00:54:58.220
All right.

John Pike (guest)
00:54:58.220 - 00:54:59.020
Call the whole thing off.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:54:59.020 - 00:55:01.660
All right, John, thanks for being here today. This was a ton of fun.

John Pike (guest)
00:55:02.860 - 00:55:08.340
Absolutely. I appreciate it. And then I'm looking forward to the podcast too. Is that what you said?

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:55:08.340 - 00:55:12.420
Yeah, let's do it. Let's rip apart readiness in our next go round.

John Pike (guest)
00:55:12.420 - 00:55:30.300
I should note Ken as well, I had mentioned obviously earlier Bob pike group, but I am doing a keynote for the Bob pike group in a couple of weeks as well. And so looking forward to sharing more about the future of human being learning.

And so that'll be happening here in Minneapolis in a couple weeks time. So another awesome place to see me.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:55:30.300 - 00:55:34.060
Yeah, we'll make sure to put, you know, links to all this stuff in the show notes too.

John Pike (guest)
00:55:34.860 - 00:55:35.300
Awesome.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:55:35.300 - 00:55:35.540
Cool.

John Pike (guest)
00:55:35.540 - 00:55:36.140
Thanks so much, Ken.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:55:36.140 - 00:55:36.740
Yeah, take it easy.

John Pike (guest)
00:55:36.740 - 00:55:38.780
Have a good one. Yep. Cheers.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:55:41.020 - 00:56:03.010
That brings us to the end of our episode. Thank you for listening. I'd encourage you to head on over to my website Kent Co and start a conversation with me there.

Or check out my promoted leader Toolkit at Kent Coach Toolkit. Before you go on with your day, please take a moment to leave a rating and a review. Wherever you listen to podcasts, click the five stars. That helps.

Put this podcast in front of more ears. Till next time, take it easy.