Learning and Development 2026 & Beyond

Key Takeaways

So learning and development is [music] changing fast, but we still need it. Of course, we do. It's critical for the future of our organizations and for even keeping up with all the changes that are going on right now. So, how is L & D going to change though? Um, how can we prepare? Well, a discussion about [music] that is coming up right now. Hi there, I'm Andrea Adams. This is the HR Hub and [music] on the show we talk about anything related to HR. You can listen here on the YouTube channel or you can [music] subscribe to the podcast to keep learning from my outstanding guests. So today my guest is again Josh Cardardos. Josh is the chief creative and learning officer at Sponge, which is a learning agency that helps companies create better [music] better learning experiences. He spent over two decades figuring out how to make workplaces or workplace learning actually [music] stick. I should do a whole discussion with you about that. [laughter] And [music] he's particularly interested in humans in a disruptive era in the work [music] force. And all of this has him thinking about the future of L & D. Hi Josh, how are you? >> I'm doing great Andrea, thanks for having me. >> Well, thanks for coming on. uh you know with all the discussion around how AI can all these customized learning plans I'm really curious about this con conversation so starting at the beginning tell me what's happening in the L &D industry right now that has you concerned for L & D professionals >> I I I think uh if if my concern wasn't immediately uh covered with my excitement, I'd be much more concerned. The the piece that excites me that is in the concern of where L & D is right now is that the existential crisis that has been in our industry for decades has finally been brought to its kind of abrupt, logical, absurd conclusion. And that is uh for years any any good learning practitioner in our field has always been frustrated and tired with being a I always call it the learning stuff meat grinder where it's just like you've been told by someone in the or go build some stuff and you feel like that's your job. Build a training package it here. And this idea of L & D being a content generator >> when really there's been a yearning from from progressive learning practice. So I'm actually so much more. Help me understand what the business is trying to do. Help me really help people in terms of critical shifts in behavior, culture, and capability. All of those things. The AI conversation has really pushed that to its limit. And on one side >> we now are at a point of tremendous progress of taking this highly inefficient model of L & D exists as a cost center that too to the business to produce courseware and it's being blown out of the water by AI saying well I can do that too. If if the goal is to just produce sort of generic style courseware, well, AI can do it too. And it can do it a lot faster. It can do it a lot cheaper. It can, you know, and the exciting part for me and that very sensitive of course to the fact that these are people's jobs and livelihoods and career paths that are being affected is that it is finally putting a critical conversation on why does L & D exist and what is really the value that you can offer to the business. And I think if you >> Go ahead. >> Why does it exist? >> Can I interrupt you on that convers and and just like what's your take on why it exists and then maybe you can pick up where I interrupted you if you can remember. >> So So why does L & D exist? It it exists in the way that it always should have existed and that is a value creation center for the business. And the missing link to all of that has always been L & D being disconnected from business outcomes and business initiatives as if it's this lonely island that just kind of sits on the side and waits to be told by some sophisticated series of torch lighting of go deliver another training, go build another training. it. This is a moment actually for L & D to break free from that model and say leave the content production to tools that can rapidly build things and even better actually deliver far more sophisticated learning experiences than we ever could before. And I'm talking in the realms of in the flow of work or personalization and I can expand on that more >> but L & D exists to create value for the business. And that is such a radical statement to make depending on who you are and how you sit into your organization. That is actually kind of a it's a it's a liberating concept. But what does that even mean? What does it mean to create value for the business? Well, how does your business work? How does your business make money? How does your business generate value? And what's the role of people in getting there? And that is the heart of where L & D should have always existed. It's more D less L. And how do we develop people and how do we and you know and you mentioned off the top about how learning is needed more than ever in an organization. I 100% agree. As long as we challenge ourselves to understand that what learning looks like in an organization may be fundamentally different but learning is definitely needed more than ever because the pace at which organizations are moving. The skills that we need you know the skills we needed yesterday versus the skills we need today are just irrecognizable and you have roles and I always say that learning uh people are change people. You have a critical role in helping people change at work for the sake of their careers, for the sake of their next promotion, for the sake of future proofing themselves, for the sake of delivering value to the organization. That's true. That's why you exist. >> H okay. Did No, I had interrupted you. Do you know where I >> I was lost? Yeah, that's okay. >> All right, we'll go on to the next part. Um, in our earlier conversation, you described AI as a double-edged sword, and I want you to talk a little about the edges of the AI sword in an L & D context. the the the one thing that I think AI is is doing in real time and so probably two months from now this will probably already be kind of course corrected but the the pace of innovation here which L &D has always been privileged to I've always said that L & D has always been the last mover in organization not the first mover it always got to see everything else happening in organization and steal all the good stuff steal it from marketing steal it from sales steal it from performance consulting whatever that may that may be and the great thing about being a last mover in the AI space and that's a controversial statement is that you actually get to reap all the good learnings that are happening and the part that excites me about AI in this particular moment is the stuff that as a learning practitioner that I you know and I've started my career writing those courses building those courses as well too the ability to do dynamic personalized learning at a scale that is unpreced uncredented has always been the dream and has always been the challenge to be honest of this legacy model of the big fat e-learning course >> and and and I think we'll look back on this 20 years from now of like what hubris we had as as an organization as leaders to expect that one course could address the needs of 10,000 people you know what I mean like we'll look back on it and laugh you know but that's that's you know the the model that we had to work with. And we're entering an era now of extreme personalization, extremely high relevance, you know, so that you know, you're seeing some really sophisticated tools that can get all your data points about who's on your team, what their communication styles are, and I'll zip back a response in the way you coach this individual and that coach indivi that individual. And that's done in a snap of a finger. and all of a sudden you know how to work with your team as a team leader in a way that might have taken you two years to do the right workshops and upskilling and all that kind of stuff as well there. So this rapid pace of in theflow performed support combined with real time feedback combined with you know extreme personalization is just tremendously exciting and tremendously exciting in terms of just breaking the monolith course model you know you know I was joking earlier about like >> how dare we have ever have thought one course could address the needs of 10,000 people and so this idea of getting the balance right of course so you can imagine being a compliance offer who compliance officer who's actually quite scared at the concept of 10,000 versions of a company message right that that doesn't sound very compliant at all maybe I need to have a single course in order to do it so there will be a balance between those things but this is where the double-edged sword of AI comes in for me as well too and >> you and I've spoken you know uh previously about generation numb and mobilizing generation numb and one of the the things that has always stood out to me and I I take very personally I think about it at work all the time is the idea of isolation at work and loneliness at work. >> And the the thing about AI that on one side is quite exciting in terms of personalization. Uh one person's personalization is another person's echo chamber. And there's something >> the the the exhaustive dream of self-paced learning to its to its limit is actually you're just further in your own little box taking your own little learning. And >> there's actually something very special about community- based learning. Something very special about taking a course that all of us can react to. And you know, I think you and I both remember a day when we'd walk into the the the the coffee room and our boss would talk about, you know, some brand new message and all of us would talk behind his or her back for the next rest of the day about how much we loved it or hated it or, you know, that and there and there's something very kind of special about that because there's a shared experience. Yes. You know, and part of what leans us more into the world of sort of digital everything is that they just become kind of isolated experiences. And uh you know, we talk a lot about in the larger world about the death of monoculture. And you know, your your top 40 radio was irrecognizable for what it was 20 years ago. Dare you to name an artist that you recognize on any of them, you know. Uh and I think the same thing happens at work is that we we lose a sense of monoculture by diving into extreme personalization. And this is where we need to get the balance right with AI is that you know uh you know to to quote Uncle Ben from Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility. And we just need to have enough checks on balancing the human side of learning. >> That's that's what it is at the end of the day is that humans still need to be human. Yes, >> unless you've just decided to say, "Well, we actually don't need humans in this workflow and cut straight to the chase," which is a different conversation for a different day. But as long as you need humans to learn at work, you need to remember that your experiences need to be human as well, too. >> Uh, so think about someone who's been doing that old school L & D. there pumping out the courses. The, you know, the supervisor comes to them and says, uh, I need a course about, I don't know, communication. That's my favorite. And, uh, and they've, they've done it. What should they be thinking about now? How should they change? >> Well, the first thing I would say to this individual is don't be worried. Because I know it's I know it's very easy to have imposttor syndrome in this moment about oh I need to do more of this and like you know we I consider our agency to be at the forefront of learning experiences and we still have lots of clients that just want some bread bread and butter e-learning. So >> everyone's on their own journey is sort of the first the first thing. >> But the second piece of that is >> start to really understand your business. >> And you know the advice that I always give in sort of mentoring learning practitioners in our field is that no one's going to come to you. No one's going to come to you and say, "Hey learning leader, I need you to be more data accountable. I need you to really lean into better ROI. I need you to move away from vanity metrics tied to engagement and completion and move more into behavioral metrics and predictive metrics. I no one's going to ask you for that. And I think that's the that's the the challenge, the cusp that we're at right now, but take ownership of that. Take ownership of the conversation. Build a measurement plan that you wish you had. Go and get familiar with business leaders. Knock on anyone's door who's willing to give you a cup of coffee and say, "Can we just chat about what your problems are?" And often times you'll get so far down their problems that you'll be able to extract the people problem in that. So I'll give you the example of a sales leader. They know exactly what's wrong with their team. They know exactly why they're not selling. They, you know, we need more leads here. We need more strategic selling there. We need all those types of things. What they don't feel comfortable engaging in a conversation with you about is what are your training needs? That feels like such a huge jump. and also and also goes to show them I'm very mindful of my language as a learning leader to the rest of the business also kind of you kind of show your hand a bit there to say well I'm only interested in building courses >> you know but if you go in with sort of a curious mindset and you're eager to learn about what makes that part of the business tick then you can follow up that conversation next time you chat and say I've been thinking a lot about your challenge and it seems like what we really need to get our people to is from here to here from thinking this way to thinking that way. From these sets of behaviors that you're really struggling with with your BC performers to here, which you know your top performers are doing, I've got an idea for how we can build a program that helps affect it. And boy, what a breath of fresh air you become to the organization rather than saying, uh, I've been told I need to build a sales essential training program. I'm here to conduct the needs analysis. And they're just like, who are you? You know, [laughter] >> right? Yeah. Can you make it engaging? You know, like, you know, like stuff like that. >> Yeah. Um, >> I've been in I've had so many of these conversations where people say, "Get to know them business. You should get to know the business." Um, do you have any specific like implementable tips to get to know the business that someone could take away right away? the the probably the best one is and and I say this as someone who leads a team that has to get to know our clients businesses very quickly is do all the homework you can before you get to an actual conversation. >> Mhm. >> So this is this is where like this is the future proofing of L & D if you ask me here is that like everyone else in the business actually is incredibly data accountable and knows exactly how the business makes money. Why wouldn't you? Just because you reside in people, just because you think your job is to kind of create contained knowledge pieces, like there's no excuse for that. So, if you work for a large organization, it's actually really easy to get to know the business because it's all publicly available, right? If you're a publicly listed company, go read the shareholder reports. >> Attend every single town hall and be curious. That's the other piece as well, too. Oh well, our CEO said something on the town hall in your next, you know, manager onetoone. What do they mean by that? What are they trying to do there? What does that look like? And what's our role in order to get there? You know, and so there's something very tangible there about it's not get to know the business as in like have you seen our company website lately? get them on the business in a very critical way >> because when you understand the critical role of people enablement for anything that's on a CEO's agenda, then you actually understand what an important role you have to play in there >> and actually how you've been underelling your value this entire time. >> And so there's this element of earning the right to show up in those conversations with confidence to say, "Oh, well, you know," and and you'll often hear it as like a slip of the tongue. That's that's how I that's when when you especially when you talk to people outside of people teams um L & D teams you'll speak to kind of like a safety officer or a sales leader or whatever it is and they say something like gh honestly you know I think people just you know Google your clients before you get into a call is that so hard to ask for like you you'll get this kind of like half vent half blurt and then you go okay so let's talk about the performance moment then so if we can talk about what great performance looks like. What if we can talk about the five most important performance moments that are going to show up in the next 6 months for you? Now, what are the behaviors like at that? Yeah, anyone who knows their they're they're learning stuff knows I'm kind of doing a needs analysis in real time with you. But it's it's it's kind of like shifting the conversation to what matters to the business versus this kind of indulgent activity of I need to get my learning objectives right. >> I'll be the first person to tell you as a a learning leader I couldn't care less about learning objectives. >> When we talked earlier you had said something along the lines of don't use the word training or >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Can you slip that in because I thought that was awesome and that's I mean I'm basically fishing for that. >> So something and you know uh I mentioned this before about you know having learning in my job title and kind of having a lovehate relationship with with the word learning. We actually do something uh at Sponge. We we have an engagement model with our clients through the lens of what we call the compelling question which is kind of like the strategic narrative for our engagement. And there's clear rules to a compelling question. I've instituted them. It's my fault that we have it there. Five rules for a compelling question. I won't bore you with the other four, but the most interesting one for the sake of today's conversation is that in your compelling question, you're not allowed to use the word training or learning, which is quite controversial. You know, we're a learning agency at the end of the day. But that allows us to not get distracted from leading the witness, >> which stops you from having a question like, "How do we build an engaging training that inspires people to sell better?" That's a terrible question. That is a and it's certainly not a compelling question. And that's the other part of that, you know, number five of the compelling questions that needs to be compelling. And my definition of compelling is what gets the eyes of the business that we're actually trying to solve this challenge. And the business is not interested in engaging learning that sells better. That feels like a thousand jumps of logic. So what is the question that helps get to the root cause of what we're trying to do? So could be how do we enable people to have a stronger strategic mindset when entering discovery calls with our clients? focused, compelling, feels like it's solvable as well too. And so the idea of diminishing the role of learning and training is that sure on the other side of it could be some form of learning experience. But the point is that you're not leading with the format. And I think sometimes a challenge for us as learning uh professionals is that we live in this little bubble of like things things can only happen as long as it fits neatly into a rise module box or a storyline box or or or some other sort of courseware uh facilitated boxes. It doesn't have to be. Focus on solving business problems and then you take care of the people enablement side so that you don't have to distract your critical stakeholders by saying I'm just trying to build a training here. What is the future of L & D going to be? Like what in the future is an L & D professional going to be doing? And if you can keep this somewhat short because we're running out of time. >> Well, uh I mean uh anyone's crystal ball here, I would say is probably a bit disingenuous. It's it's I'll tell you whatever the role is, it'll be more exciting than it ever has been. And I know that feels like quite a weird statement to make in what feels like a very scary time for the industry and definitely going through an existential crisis, but I always come back to, you know, and you know, I have a background in teaching. I went to teachers college and I kind of got grilled on the fundamentals of what great learning is. And great learning is communal. Great learning is personalized. Great learning is relevant. And yes, I'll sneak in this world. Great learning is engaging, but it's not it doesn't need to be engaging in the way that you always thought it was. And the great thing about where the future of L & D is going is that we used to just have a very finite stack of tools in our toolkit. Now it seems like we have a seemingly unlimited set of tools in our toolkit. [snorts] And that's exciting as long as you're willing to lean into that. And it's scary if you're just going to hold on to, well, I only exist to create training and my and my job is to only create courses. And I'd probably say the last piece of the future of L & D that really excites me is that it feels like, and I'll say this quite quietly because I don't want to jinx it, but it feels like we're finally getting on the cusp of getting measurement done properly because we have been teetering on, well, how do I even get this data point, you know, and we're seeing the LMS sweat in real time because every the entire tech world is coming coming for it right now. about saying well actually all the data points can be found in the flow of work in these performance moments being done. I'm so excited that we're at that point now because now we can actually saying we're delivering impact. We're actually delivering on what needs to be able done. >> So that's where hopefully the future of L & D is going. Same. Like on an HR front. Same. [laughter] >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Excuse me. Where does Sponge fit into all of this and where can they learn more about you and about um well and I guess about Sponge? >> Yeah. Where Sponge fits into all of this is that if this sounds incredibly complex and you're trying to do it with your large group of people, well, we can help. Uh, and I I think probably the way that I can spin it for you is that we have the range to be that breadandbut e-learning uh, course creator if you need us to be. But obviously, we're tremendously excited about where we're going in terms of how do we how do we enable that business shift with your people and how do we shift your people in terms of culture, behavior, and capability. And of course, please feel free to look me up on LinkedIn. Happy to chat with you about all things learning uh, and beyond. Uh, I'm highly approachable and extremely sarcastic as well, too. >> You weren't sarcastic today, though. >> On my best behavior today, >> okay. All right. [laughter] >> All right. I'm going to close it. Well, thanks, Josh. I love that. And I'm thinking about that very tactical, useful bit of advice you gave at the end there around [music] uh going to a client and saying, "Can we not a client, just a someone in the business, can we chat about your problems?" and who isn't going to want to chat about their problems um and and [music] have, you know, someone to listen to them and be a thought partner. So, think about doing that next time. Uh Josh and I did another episode uh discussing generation numb. It's that overwhelm um in the face of all of this change. And I really encourage you to listen to that because [music] that's fascinating. A link to that is right here. Thanks for watching out there and I'll see you next