Episode 259

Beyond Instructional Design: Building Agile, Business-Aligned L&D Functions

What if we had to rebuild L&D from scratch? What could we do differently?

There have been rumblings in the L&D world that roles are gradually going to be replaced by AI. While we don’t predict an L&D apocalypse coming our way, maybe it’s time to start thinking differently about the role of L&D in broader business terms. 

Joining this episode is Tracie Cantu, Chief Learning Strategist at her company, Your CLO, and a Training Advisory Board Member at TechSmith. Tracie comes on the show with two decades of experience leading L&D transformation at organizations like Meta, Atlassian, and Whole Foods Market.

Tracie shares a bold vision for the future of L&D – we need to start thinking like business partners, not just L&D. She explains what she’d like to see more and less of in L&D, why we need a service catalog, and why the intake stage is the most important step in a consultation.

Learning points from the episode include:

  • 00:0001:52 Introduction to Tracie
  • 01:5202:47 Tracie’s biggest tip for using images and video
  • 02:4707:23 How Tracie would rebuild L&D from scratch as a team of business partners
  • 07:2312:13 How smaller L&D teams can do more with less
  • 12:1318:28 The most repeatable tasks you can do to scale your impact
  • 18:2823:23 Skills all L&D professionals should start focusing on
  • 23:2324:54 Tracie’s challenge for L&D people
  • 24:5428:31 Speed round questions
  • 28:31 - 29:57 How to connect with Tracie and Your CLO
  • 29:57 - 31:00Tracie’s final take
  • 31:00 - 31:57 Outro

Important links and mentions:

About the Podcast

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The Visual Lounge
Discussions about the power of visuals and videos and how to make them even better.

About your host

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Matthew Pierce

Matthew Pierce, Learning & Video Ambassador from TechSmith Corporation, has created videos for learning and marketing for over a decade. He is the lead behind TechSmith Academy, a free platform teaching video and image creation for business, which has been used by tens of thousands of users. He is the host of The Visual Lounge Podcast from TechSmith, which streams live on Youtube and LinkedIn weekly. Matthew is a regular speaker at multiple learning and development-focused conferences and is a regular contributor to various training publications. Connect with him on LinkedIn.