Fueling Corporate Growth With Business and Human Skills | Anthony Stephan

Full Transcript

Malika:

Welcome to The Skill Shift, a podcast for organizations that want to future ready their workforces, brought to you by D2L. I’m your host, Malika Asthana, senior strategy and public affairs manager. Each episode, we’ll speak with guests from some of the most innovative businesses around the world about their unique approaches to learning and development. They’ll share specific actionable insights into how they’re preparing their workforces for the future and the ways they’re addressing skills gaps in their industries. You are listening to The Skill Shift.

Anthony Stephan serves as the Chief Learning Officer at Deloitte, spearheading the acceleration of agility and innovation within the learning and development. His focus is on keeping the firm at the forefront of the dynamic market, aligning with C-suite priorities, and meeting evolving business demands. Additionally, Anthony holds the position of Executive Leader for Deloitte’s Project 120, a substantial $1.4 billion investment in learning and development. This initiative is dedicated to elevating professional development experiences and establishing a new industry standard for L&D. With over 28 years of experience, Anthony has consistently served as a catalyst for change, driving balanced growth through strategic initiatives, and consistently achieving results that surpass expectations. Throughout his career, he has collaborated with some of the most innovative companies and influential figures across various sectors. Anthony, we’re so excited to have you. Welcome to The Skill Shift.

Anthony:

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Listening to that brings back a lot of memories of a lot of things, so thank you for that intro.

Malika:

So for our listeners who are not familiar with Deloitte, I want to go back in time a little bit. Fun fact for our folks in the audience, I’m actually a Deloitte alum from the Canadian firm, spent about three years there, so got to benefit from what I’m about to just tell you. In 2011, Deloitte made a visible and long-term investment in learning and development with the creation of Deloitte University. Can you tell us a little bit more about DU’s genesis, purpose, and evolution?

Anthony:

Yeah, I think there were a couple of drivers. So first off, having spent a few years at Deloitte and as a former colleague, I think my hope is that you appreciated how important investing in the growth and development of our people is. It is the foundation of the culture that we have developed over a hundred plus years. As we thought about Deloitte University, I think there’s a couple of drivers, number one, we recognize the value of in-person experiences, not only the intentional structural experiences that get created at a Deloitte University, but the unexpected, the serendipitous moments, where you run into people in the hallway or you develop new relationships in other physical spaces designed for more social interaction and development of those relationships. But the other genesis around Deloitte University was to have a physical space and an investment that made a statement not only to our people, but to the marketplace, that we will remain consistently committed to the growth and development of our people.

And Deloitte University is not just for our people, but a number of client experiences that we create within that physical space. And as the world has changed and we have evolved our commitments around purpose and social impact, we have really inspiring meaningful programs, like our Courageous Principals program, where we bring people, high school principals, into the Deloitte University space, and we help them grow into their impact within not only their schools, but the broader community. So I look at it and say it’s a space where meaningful connections occur, really intentional structural experiences around developing both business skills and human skills. It’s a space that we open with a big heart and a big mind to our clients to help them grow and develop. And it’s also a space where we drive meaningful experiences that we hope have a broader impact on our community.

Malika:

Yeah, I can definitely attest to that as an alum, and I love that you highlighted all of that right off the top. So one of the things I want to talk about is how the firm is sort of seen as this center of expertise. You’re not only investing in access to training for your people, but you’re also designing and delivering much of the training yourselves, particularly when it comes to building technological skills. Can you speak to Deloitte’s role as an education and training provider a bit more?

Anthony:

Yeah, this has really evolved, and I think one of the things that I love most about the firm is the one thing that’s consistent is we are always going to be investing in the development of our people. But what’s not as consistent is how we do it. And one of the big realizations that we had a couple of years ago is that the pace of change in technology is happening at such an accelerated rate. And one of our observations, specifically with our campus hires and the younger generation of our colleagues, is that many universities or academic institutions were struggling to keep up with the development of those skills. And it’s not a criticism. It’s just a recognition that the capital required to be able to do that and the evolution to change the intended curriculum at those institutions, those are really hard things that take multiple years to create.

And so, what we realized is, in order to take our position firmly in the marketplace as an educator, that we were going to have to make a transformational investment. So that is the baseline genesis behind Project 120, the $1.4 billion investment that we made in the development of our people. And there were two primary components within that investment. Now, on the side is this kind of little but really big thing around the expansion of Deloitte University to more rooms and more physical spaces. The two transformational programs that accompanied the expansion of Deloitte University was really around the acceleration of the development of hot technical skills at scale, which is really embodied in the Deloitte Technology Academy.

And the second was the recognition that, yes, we must continue in the development of critical hot skills, primarily focused on business skills to perform jobs for our clients, and we need to focus on the development of human skills that help our people reach their full potential, not only at work, but in their life and in their community. So the Deloitte Technology Academy was coupled with our leadership and human potential work, and the combination of those things really sit at the heart of the transformational work that we’ve been doing over the last couple of years fueled by Project 120.

Malika:

I love that. And I was just at a conference last week in Toronto where they were lamenting the use of the word, “soft skills,” because it’s anything but soft. We’re talking skills like adaptability, communication, problem solving, creativity, et cetera. And I like the way you framed it as human potential, because it really is about developing people in every sense of the being, not just the technical skills that might not have the same half-life as they used to.

Anthony:

Yeah, a hundred percent. I guess two observations on that. Number one, I just finished Adam Grant’s book, Hidden Potential, and I don’t know, maybe I should have known this before, but there’s a segment of that book that talks about the history of soft skills. And it basically describes that the United States Army had engaged a set of psychologists to help them develop skills beyond the infrastructure or the machinery skills. And because those things were considered hard physical objects, they called it soft skills, not recognizing the long-term implications of it. It was really around emotional intelligence and awareness and empathy and compassion and adding to the very specific, more infrastructure-based skills. And I think back on that and say, and I’m sure you’ve experienced it too, all the times that people use “soft skills” to mean something of high impact, but also, at some point, it lands some level of cynicism.

But yes, we believe that the development of human skills are absolutely critical to the future of the firm. And yes, we will make big investments in technologies like GenAI and any other evolving technology, but at the heart of everything that we do is the development of human skills. And the language our people are using to define the skills they are most in search of is evolving. And we learned this in a study that we did about a year ago. Our people are beginning to use language like “attention,” “awareness.” It is different than “empathy” and “compassion” and “curiosity,” which we see embedded in almost every enterprise. And we’re trying to pay more attention to the language our people are using and move our experiences in the direction of our people’s needs.

Malika:

I think that’s so important, meeting the learner where they’re at, because ultimately, you’re trying to appeal to them and get them interested in what you’re trying to offer. So when it comes to the structuring of the L&D programs that you have, can you tell us a little bit more about how you approach the sort of surfacing of the skills needs you have as a firm and how that translated into the learning programs that you’ve created?

Anthony:

Yeah, so I’ll give you a couple of thoughts on this. So we look at the opportunities in front of us through a few lenses. Now, many of our programs are focused on helping our people achieve career milestones. And as they progress through those milestones, we have experiences that help them develop the skills to continue to be successful at the next level. But we also work very closely with our business leaders at the offering or services level to understand where they see the market going and what the future demand ultimately looks like. And it’s through working with our business leaders that we define the next horizon of skills that we believe we’ll need. Now, what I’m super proud of is I’ve been in the role of chief learning officer about 10 months, and one of the most consistent points of feedback from stakeholders, as I engaged in conversations, was we needed to do more to prioritize the investments we are making, to make sure that, when we are creating experiences, that they’re always moving in the direction of the highest demand skills.

And so, having led the Deloitte digital business in the US for a few years prior to being in this role, I had become really familiar to many of our alliance partners in the marketplace had these customer success organization. And I kind of scratched my head, and I was like, “How come we can’t take a page out of their playbook and build a business success capability within the learning organization?” And super proud of the fact that, within 10 months, we stood up a business success capability that really has allowed us to have a different set of conversations with our business stakeholders. Yes, when we create a learning experience, we know we have a certain set of performance metrics we expect to hit, number of people through the program, the reach by geography, we have a set of experience metrics we hope to hit, which is, were people satisfied? Would they recommend it to others?

But we haven’t really moved in the direction of business metrics. Did the people that took this specific training apply this training in the marketplace and deliver impact for our client? And what the launch of the business success team has enabled for us is the opportunity to have more conversations with more stakeholders, that really clearly define the expected business outcomes. So I’m super excited about the impact that this has had, even in the early stages, and the ongoing impact that we’ll have and the conversations we’re having with our stakeholders.

Malika:

Yeah, I love that. And I think it’s such an important point to highlight, because we know that measuring the success of L&D programs is a known challenge for leaders across sectors of businesses of all size. I want to double click on the experience that you’re offering to learners and to what essentially the process looks like. So for this business success example that you’re talking about, how do you even identify the people within the organization that are either eligible for or can request access to those types of programs?

Anthony:

Yeah, it’s such a great question, and I love the question, largely because it’s a point of ongoing tension that we need to wrestle with as an organization. We make investments in the development of our people. And sometimes, if you look at what we’ve done with GenAI, we would love for the 175,000 people in the US firm to all be trained on GenAI. We would love everybody to have a general understanding. So in some instances, we’ll create experiences that are both accessible in person, virtual, and at your own pace digital learning, around kind of that 101 level of GenAI. But in combination with that, we will work with the offering and business leaders that drive specific services in the market, and we will make sure that the next level of GenAI training that we are creating is training people that can go capture market.

And so, it really is this combination of both. And so, we work with our business leaders and our executive leadership team to say, “In this particular instance, what is our primary learning objective?” Yes, we want level one to reach as many people as possible through as many channels as possible. And yes, we must develop the skills of these 20,000 people within this timeframe. Well, what that challenges us with is, yes, we are a firm that has grown up developing so much of our own learning. We are proud of what we design, deliver, and execute on within the firm. But if we are going to move at the pace of the market and of our businesses, what we are seeing is a higher level of dependency on other partners. So we are moving from creation to curation, just because we have to meet the expectations of our business leaders.

Malika:

That’s so important, and I think it’s important to underscore as well that it’s not one or the other, it’s both.

Anthony:

Exactly. And you know what? Interestingly enough, I’m not sure I fully appreciated that until I was in this job. I had the privilege of leading a number of businesses in the US for the firm. And I think, admittedly, I think I was one of those really demanding stakeholders, where I expected certain things to happen. And I’m not sure I really understood all the different aspects of what it takes to do it, but I’m super proud of how we are thinking about these things. And it’s not easy, but the idea of making things available to everybody, while being really intentional about very specific cohorts, I love this combination and the approach we’re taking right now.

Malika:

Yeah, it’s fantastic to hear about. I want to parse out a little bit more detail on the two aspects of skills that you identified.

Anthony:

Sure.

Malika:

So the technological and then, the leadership and human potential. So let’s maybe start with the technological. Wondering if you can tell us a little bit more about the types of curation you’re doing, the types of providers that you’re looking to, to try to meet this need that everyone seems to be looking for, which is, how do we trade up all these people in AI, in cloud, in cyber, data analytics, et cetera, et cetera? And how do we also make sure that the learning is trusted, if it’s not coming from an in-house provider?

Anthony:

Yeah, these are all really great questions. So the first thing that we do, and I’ll talk a little bit about the Deloitte Technology Academy and some of the hot skills, the first thing, as we’ve talked about, we focus on defining the skills that we believe are most in demand in the market. And our primary focus for the first couple of years have been around AI. It’s been around cloud, cyber, data and analytics. And now, the proliferation of GenAI has kind of found its way into an extension of the AI Academy work that we’ve done. And the way we’ve structured this is, within the overarching Deloitte Technology Academy, we’ve created either academies or institutes as kind of branches of the technical skills that we develop. And in every one of those situations, the strength and the power of a brand like Deloitte is we have so many partners that we go to market with already, that are trusted by our clients and that we have trusted relationships with, that we deliver services with in collaboration.

So it’s not that hard to identify who are the partners that we trust, that we would trust enough to upskill our people. And that combination of Deloitte and this specific partner adds credibility with our clients in the marketplace. So we select a number of partners to help us stand up the AI Academy, and the same thing with the Cloud Institute. And then, what we do is we work to figure out what the facilitation of those experiences look like. Then we figure out cohorts. And for AI and cloud and some of our engineering focus, it really is around the initial onboarding and the upskilling of our new colleagues and our new talent.

And then, we make the learning that we created, mostly in-person experiences for our new hires, we make those available via digital channels. And so, there’s a number of different ways we go about it, but look, it’s a really complex ecosystem. But the partnerships allow us to do this at a pace that we could not have done it for ourselves. So I would proudly share with you that, in just two years, we will have reached more than 140,000 people that we will have upskilled through the Deloitte Technology Academy. We would not have been able to do that, if not for our partners.

Malika:

I wonder if you can speak a little bit to the pandemic and its role in sort of speeding some of these timelines up. Where did this all start from a genesis perspective? Was it pre-pandemic? Was it as a result of moving everything online? You can speak to that, whether it’s the delivery of learning through multiple channels or the skills itself.

Anthony:

Wow, it’s such a great question. There were so many drivers, and I feel like, at some level, I feel like we were blessed with all of these unexpected things that actually transformed learning for the firm, in ways that I’m not sure we would’ve consciously chosen to do, if not for things like the pandemic. And a great example is one of the first things the learning organization did, in a matter of weeks, was to virtualize as many of our learning experiences as we possibly could. And that demonstration, by the way, our client service part of our business, our consulting business, tax, audit, advisory, all of our businesses were proving that we could serve clients virtually. For the learning organization to also prove that we could train or skill our people virtually was a really massive realization. It then allowed us to move into an environment where we would say, “Hey, if we can virtualize these experiences, that means that we can make things available to more people on more channels.”

So as we looked at learning in the future, yes, you’re a hundred percent right, if the firm expects us to upskill more people in an accelerated way, we now have more channels, proven channels, in order to be able to do that. So the pandemic was absolutely a trigger for always thinking about, when we have to create skills for people, there are many channels in which we can do that. And via the many channels, we can reach more people. I also think that, I don’t know that it was necessarily pandemic-driven or if it’s kind of Moore’s Law or just the pace of change overall, but we are absolutely seeing the ongoing evolution of new tech skills move at a faster pace than ever before. And that pace is really what drove us to the realization that curation was going to be an absolutely critical part.

I’ll give you one more data point. Right around 2021, where I guess you could still categorize that we were still in the pandemic, I joined our talent organization to really define the future strategy for leadership development. And this was the genesis of what ultimately became our leadership and human potential portfolio. And we went on a 120 day sprint, and as part of that sprint, we did a bunch of sensing. And something stood out for us. When you looked at our total population of colleagues, all of our colleagues, regardless of level, partner, principal, managing director, senior manager, down to an associate or an analyst level, all of our people, 80% or more, still preferred in person or on the job experiences.

But the thing that really stood out is our analyst through manager community, 35 to 40% of that community showed up in also preferring other channels, third party channels, gaming, other multichannel omnichannel ways. And so, this realization that says, “Wow, more than a third of our population, specifically our youngest generation of colleagues, prefer other ways of learning,” that was also a really critical realization for us, that says, “Look, this idea that what we do will be on the job or in person is no longer going to satisfy the evolving needs of the youngest generation of our colleagues.” That was also another trigger for us moving in the direction of depending on partners, on virtualizing and creating more channels, that we would create learning experiences.

Malika:

Yeah, I think that’s so important. There’s this feeling that the tradition of in-person learning in the corporate setting is you get to so-called have a day off for maybe three or four days. You go sit in a classroom, you look at a whiteboard, maybe a projection screen, and it’s a sage on the stage type of dynamic. They’re listening to the lecturer speak at you for maybe seven to eight hours, maybe there’s a reception at the end, you get a free lunch. That’s pretty much it. And it ends on a Friday, and by Monday morning, people are asking you how it was. And all you can remember is the people that you met. The skills themselves are not necessarily being applied. So I like the idea that the virtualizing of it and the immersion, the gamification of it all, is giving you the opportunity to sort of learn in the flow of work.

Anthony:

I don’t know if I could say I’m still coming up to speed. I’m 10 months into the role, and I always immerse myself. I am a relentlessly curious person. I get through about a book a week, but all I’ve read is as much as I possibly can on the industry. And the language that you used obviously stands out, this idea of learning in the flow, and it has such meaningful impact to our future. I use the language of embedded learning. Where are the different or what are the different ways? And where are the different platforms that we could embed learning? Sometimes it’s in our systems of work, meaning a primary platform we use to perform a job for a client.

And I also look at Outlook or Teams or whatever the communication channels that an enterprise uses as systems of work. How do we move learning in the direction of where our people spend the majority of their time, where we’re nudging them and prompting them and paying attention to what they’re engaging in? This idea of learning in the flow or, as I call it, embedded learning is a critical part of how we think about learning in our future.

Malika:

Well, let’s get into the specifics on that, as it applies to the leadership and human potential portfolio. I’m so interested to hear a little bit more about that. You mentioned, at the top, that a lot of the firm’s structure around learning has traditionally been around so-called milestone schools or that milestone achievement, as you’re moving potentially to a new level of job qualification, you’re getting upskilled in things. But I’m wondering if you could speak in general to how leadership is not just for the upper echelons of the company, it’s really for everyone. So we’d love for you to speak a little bit more about that portfolio and the ways in which you are approaching developing people from each level of the organization.

Anthony:

Yeah, it’s such a great question. Look, I look at this and say it’s pretty simple. At the end of the day, we are human, and humans thrive off connection with other humans. And growth, as humans, is at the heart of our experience. And yes, critical business skills or learning skills to perform jobs is a very important part of what we do, especially as a professional services organization. And we have a really strong track record of developing or developing experiences around human skills. So one of the most widely recognized experiences that we created is our relationship mastery program. More than a decade ago, we created programs around the art of empathy, the art of inquiry, the art of the story. And these were early indications that we understood that human skills were important. We launched our world-renowned Business Chemistry, where we could better appreciate, “Do they have a higher tendency to be a pioneer or an integrator? Are they more guarded? Are they really good at execution?”

And this language and the idea of using more human language, all of these things are points of evidence. But over the last couple of years, we’ve really been focused on what we would categorize as our enduring human capabilities, and we’ve been trying to lean into the development of experiences that move us closer to what people are really wrestling with. So it’s not hard to see that uncertainty is something that has been elevated to an entirely new level, and this idea of uncertainty is a very difficult thing for us to wrestle with as humans.

So we’ve been focused on creating programs, like adaptive and compassionate leadership. And back to the conversation that we’ve had earlier, yes, these programs become early access opportunities for many of our leaders, but the most important thing is that we are creating digital micro learnings that could be extended to the rest of the organization. So as we think about the future of leadership, everybody leads, whether you are a leader by title or whether you are a leader of a small team, as a relatively new colleague of ours. At the end of the day, human skills give us the opportunity to engage with others, to move in a common direction on a shared mission. And we’re trying to lean into, what are the skills that not only we wrestle with in our daily lives, but could be easily applied to the way we work?

Malika:

Yeah, I think that’s so important. And I like that piece about putting empathy and communication, as we talked about, into practice, with the language of adaptive, and I think you said adaptive and compassionate leadership.

Anthony:

Yeah.

Malika:

That’s great. You also mentioned when you were talking about your sensing exercise and kind of going through this process, so I’m familiar with sensing, but for listeners who aren’t, can you tell us a little bit about how you came up with the idea to do that and how you structured that listening exercise across the firm?

Anthony:

Isn’t it like undercover boss in action? Isn’t the heart of getting better listening to your consumer? I’ll never forget a masterclass that I watched years ago from Howard Schultz, and he’s like, “At the end of the day, if we’re not listening to our customers, then why are we in a customer service business?” And I kind of looked at it and said, “I’ve been in the professional services business for almost 30 years, and I’ve had the privilege to lead a number of businesses. But that doesn’t mean, because I’m the leader that’s been asked or given the privilege to lead this business, that I understand it at the level of the people in the business.” And so, we kind of looked at it and said… I look at always on sensing as active listening, right?

Always on sensing, it’s active, intentional listening. And we did this three ways. Number one, we used a workforce tool that was available to us via our Human Capital practice, and we turned that on. And it surveyed about 10,000 people. We poured through, with data scientists and data analytics team, we poured through our talent surveys over a five-year period. We also held live smaller group conversations with different cohorts within the firm, and then, we met with over a hundred different leaders across the organization to get their insight as to what they think the future is. So we took all of these data points to ultimately lead us in the direction as to what we thought the future was. But this is really interesting, because one of the things that we have just begun is I’m 10 months into the role, there’s been some really big decisions we’ve made around where we want to bring the learning organization in the future.

And I talked about some of the things we’ve done around business success, continuing to deliver on the transformational aspects of the Tech Academy and leadership human potential, but I’m not satisfied with where we are. So we have just embarked on defining the future of learning, and we’ve been taking in all this input. And we’ve worked with some partners in the marketplace and some really eminent people. And one of the biggest observations I have is that, in order for learning to be impactful in the future, we have to move closer to where the work is done. And so, this idea of a business leader saying, “My gut tells me that the market is going in this direction, so I want to create a learning experience to train more people on that,” that’s interesting, but that’s different than saying, “Engineering is a hot skill that we must develop,”

And then, working with the leader of that engineering business and then, pulling people, real engineers, out of that business, into conversations around, “What is it that we need to develop?” And then, working in an agile way to develop learning experiences, while we are constantly sensing the effectiveness of it and what might be next. It’s an entirely different way of thinking about learning at the workforce segment level. And I think that’s where the future’s going. But it also makes listening to the consumer or the learner or the colleague much easier, because the proximity of what we’re creating through that experience.

Malika:

Yeah, that’s so interesting. And I want to go back to what you said at the beginning about always on sensing. I think that’s a great example of doing that in a really strategic way to also create a bigger business benefit and speak to the bottom line. So it’s more than just preparing for existing skills gaps. It’s also more than preparing for the future of work, if you will, but it’s about fundamentally shifting the business via learning in a very specific direction.

Anthony:

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And look, it adds a lot of objective credibility when I have the opportunity to sit in the boardroom or with our executive committee and talk about the direction of learning. If we have real objective data that comes from the insights and the feelings and what our people believe they are most in search of, that objective data adds more credibility in the direction that we are going.

Malika:

Right. That makes perfect sense to me. We’re coming to the end of our time, and before we do, I want to shift gears and talk a little bit more about your role as chief learning officer. So from a governance perspective, how do you see your role as being distinct from a chief talent officer and others in both the HR side of the organization and the business functions?

Anthony:

Yeah, it’s a great question. I would imagine that many enterprises defined these different roles in different ways. In our particular organization, I look at the chief talent officer responsible for the entire talent lifecycle, from acquisition to onboarding to performance to everything that would be part of the broader talent lifecycle. Our chief talent officer also sits at the heart of driving the most transformational investments that we make across that entire life cycle. When you look at the organization overall, there are a number of peers that I have. Some are focused on talent and operations, and some are focused on rewards recognition, some are focused on wellbeing.

And so, I look at my role as the chief learning officer as specifically focused on driving the investments we make for our people to develop the business skills and human skills required to perform jobs at work and reach their full potential at work and in life. So this idea of sitting at the heart of the growth and development of our people, what a gift. Honestly, I’ve told so many people, in the almost 29 years that I’ve been in this business, this is the first time that my heart’s desire and the job I’m in are perfectly aligned. So I look at my responsibility and what the firm holds me accountable for, which is the development of skills that allow our people to reach their full potential.

Malika:

That’s so great. You mentioned a few times that you’re 10 months into this role and you’ve had a long career in the professional services side of the business specifically and managing the digital practice as well. So I think you can speak a little bit to the skillsets that you already brought to the table, but I’m wondering if you could speak in general to the skillsets you think CLOs need to develop and fine tune in order to drive their organizations forward in L&D?

Anthony:

Yeah. Look, it’s interesting. I kind of feel like it’s going to feel like I’m self-promoting a little bit, and I promise you, I don’t mean this in this way.

Malika:

It’s a personal question, so you’re allowed.

Anthony:

But I would tell you, I am convinced, with a hundred percent certainty, that now is the time where individuals with really strong diverse business leadership experience need to play a critical role in the future of learning. And I’m not suggesting that every chief learning officer should have X number of years or Y number of experiences in business leadership. I’m just saying that more business leaders with that experience need to get closer to the learning organization. And I feel really lucky. And one of the things that’s happening, very naturally, is it is easier for me, after a decade of leading three different businesses in the US, to reach into the firm, to create those connections, to develop those meaningful relationships with stakeholders.

And what I’m realizing is I love what I am learning from the 25, 30 year veterans in our learning organization about learning, and I believe, 10 months in, they would say they love what they’re learning and how we need to think about learning as a business. And I think the firm is recognizing the value of bringing that business expertise together with decades of learning expertise and the focus it creates on delivering business value. And that to me is probably one of the most fundamental things. Last thing I’d say on this, it’s not hard to go to the marketplace and look for different points of view, where learning and development needs to be a C-suite agenda item. One of the fastest ways for that to happen is have a business leader in that job.

Malika:

I think that’s so great, and it speaks almost to what you were saying at the beginning about the value of those in-person learning experiences. You’re almost experiencing that on-the-job learning through that creative friction. So thank you for sharing that.

Anthony:

Yeah.

Malika:

So we’re just about to wrap up. We want to end on a more hopeful note, so we’d love for you to share where you think the biggest opportunity is for learning and development to drive growth and surpass expectations.

Anthony:

Yeah, I think, honestly, it’s a little bit of what I said earlier. I think the most important thing for learning and development to sit at the heart of the development of the most critical skills for our business is to get closer to the people doing the work. And so, I would imagine that, over the next 12 to 18 months, we’re going to look hard at the organizational structure of our business and ask ourselves, “What would it look like for us to get closer to the people doing the work?” Yes, we will need to continue to work with business leaders. And yes, we want to hear more from the people performing jobs, because we believe the learning will be more effective, more valuable, and more informed by the people actually creating value for our clients.

Malika:

That’s great. Thank you so much for joining us on The Skill Shift. Thanks for listening to The Skill Shift. This episode was produced by D2L, a global learning innovation company, helping organizations reshape the future of education and work. You can find links to the resources we discussed in this episode on our website, D2L.com. There, you’ll also find the video version of this podcast, related content, and more. You can also find other episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Thank you for joining us.

Resources Discussed in the Episode

• Deloitte University
• Deloitte's Project 120
• "Working with providers on skills-based practices? Be sure to speak the same language," Deloitte
• "Hidden Potential," Adam Grant
• MasterClass by Howard Schultz