The BLOC Podcast

22: Scalable Learning for Behavior Change with Matt Gjertsen

• Episode 22

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In this episode, I talk to Matt Gjertsen of Better Every Day Studios about how he helps small companies scale great learning experiences and how learning for behavior change is better than throwing information at people any day of the week!

Matt's journey into learning started as an Air Force Instructor Pilot where he also spent time teaching people to compete in half marathons and triathlons. After 9 years in the Air Force, Matt took his experience with him to SpaceX where he worked for 4 years as the manager of the Training and Development team. Matt left SpaceX in 2019 to start Better Every Day Studios with a mission of enabling as many people as possible achieve their maximum potential by transforming how small companies approach learning and development.

Matt believes excellence is repeatable and can be developed in everyone. By both believing more in and committing more to their employees, companies will far exceed their performance expectations and create a dedicated workforce of the highest caliber.

For more information on how Better Every Day Studios can help, please contact them here and Matt will get back to you immediately. Also, join the conversation on LinkedIn where Matt is always looking to connect with like-minded people. According to Matt, "Let’s see what we can learn together."

Matt's suggestions for helping you better focus on learners and learner behavior:

Lisa Feldman Barrett's How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

Anil Seth's Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality

Connect with Heidi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiekirby/ or on my website: www.heidikirby.com


Thanks for listening to the BLOC! To learn more and get more great resources:

Matt Gjertsen:

On any given day, it can often feel like you're not making a difference, you know, you're not really doing something new. But then you turn around at the end of the year and you don't even recognize where you're at.

Heidi Kirby:

Hello, friends, and welcome to the BLOC, the building learning and organizational culture podcast. I'm your host, Heidi Kirby. In this episode, I talked to Matt Gjertsen of better everyday studios, about how he helped small companies to scale great learning experiences, how to focus learning on behavior change, rather than hitting people with walls of information, and how to help new leaders succeed. And that's just in the first half. But seriously, we talk about what success means for our learners throughout the organization. And I'm sure you're going to love this episode. Hi, Matt, how are you?

Matt Gjertsen:

I'm great. How are you doing?

Heidi Kirby:

I'm doing good. So why don't you start out just by telling me a little bit about you your career background, what you're getting into lately? Any fun facts you want to share?

Matt Gjertsen:

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Matt Gjertsen, the owner of better everyday studios, and we're consult lnd consultancy, where essentially what we're trying to do is bring larger scale learning development programs, the kinds of things that you'd see in companies that have you know, 1000 people, 5000 people, that kind of thing, and bring it to companies that are much smaller, you know, sub 500 people to kind of get get them started right from the beginning. Honestly, my kind of career leading up to this is what made me think of the idea. So it's a good, good thing to kind of talk through that, you know, so I started my career in learning a little bit differently. I was an instructor pilot in the military for about about 10 years. So I spent a lot of time you know, like really one on one teaching people how to do very physical things. And then also on the side, I was teaching people how to run half marathons and triathlons and, and that kind of stuff. So it was very skill based, very, very skill specific. In 2014, got out of the military, because I really wanting to work at SpaceX, I'm obsessed about space, I've always been obsessed about space, some depth 100% Like my plans are to not die on this planet and want to know, want to leave leave, go somewhere else. Hopefully not for a very long time. But you know, sure. So so I'm obsessed about space and really wanted to work there. And then as I was trying to network on LinkedIn and find my way in connected with somebody at their Vandenberg launch facility, who was looking for somebody to help get training started at their facility. And I was like, hey, well, I can train. I've trained people for years. Sure, I can, I can train people, how hard can that be? And that's how I entered into corporate training, corporate learning and development. Yeah, and so did stay at the launch site for about a year moved on to headquarters, so moved to LA, and was manager, the training development team for about three years or so. And then had just like, so much fun. They're getting to know everything because it was a really small team serving really big company. And so I got to experience learning, management system implementation and content creation and facilitation. Orientation, all the Asians, you know, couldn't do all of it. And so it was, so it was a lot of fun. And then just a couple, so a little over a year ago, left there and started doing this.

Heidi Kirby:

Awesome, and like how you throw in there that you helped people train for triathlons on the side like, Oh, no big deal. Just training for triathlon.

Matt Gjertsen:

Yeah, I mean, it was it's, it was neat, though. Like, yeah, it was, it was definitely a really great experience. I mean, I was not so much now, but I was obsessed with it like I was I was working out a lot. And it was it was neat, because, you know, and again, how I kind of entered into l&d really shaped how I think of l&d so much. I'm a big follower. I'm really a big fan of like, Andres Erickson's work on deliberate practice. And though I've heard of a lot of the there's been a lot of meta studies more recently about how it maybe doesn't translate well into the corporate environment, and how much deliberate practice really helps people in the corporate environment. But I often think it's like, that's just a sign of like, how much we don't know what we're doing in the corporate environment. You know, if you think of knowledge work, it's a relatively new thing. Versus sport. You know, Oh is a well, you know, sport or music are the kinds of things where you typically think of using deliberate practice methods where it's, you know, very, you break it up into very specific skills and have exercises to practice those specific skills. We've had centuries to figure that stuff out, like, literally centuries. Sure. And so that's why we're really good at it. And I think it's a sign of how much more we have to learn, and how much more is possible, really, in terms of human achievement, and what we can do in the professional world. That if we take that kind of lens of thinking about things of like, what are the literally like, what are the synapses in the brain that we want to connect in which fashion? What's the best way to connect them? If we, if we take that to every aspect of of our work environment, that's when you're going to, that's how we're going to be able to, in, you know, a more replicable fashion create, you know, the Tiger Woods of the corporate world and that kind of stuff.

Heidi Kirby:

Right. So where did we start?

Matt Gjertsen:

Yeah, I mean, that's the that's the big thing, right? I mean, I always, you know, and this comes down to how I think of content creation. So I think of content creation, always starts with two questions. Who is the learner? And what is the behavior? Right? And though, and the more precisely, you can answer those two questions, the better your training is going to be. And I gave a talk a while back on, at disrupt HR event. So if you've never been to a disruptive HR event, you gotta go because there are a lot of fun, but the format of the speakers is these, their five minute talks, 20 slides, and the slides are set to auto advance. So as soon as you start, the train is going, and you know, the speaker just has to keep up. So

Heidi Kirby:

too bad, just Yeah.

Matt Gjertsen:

So it's really cool. But one of the things I mentioned in there is how in corporate learning what we so often do, what most people think of is they think of traditional education, because that's what most people have been exposed to. And traditional education is about transferring knowledge, right. And so that's where you get these really long PowerPoints or just, you know, informational sessions that just go on and on forever. And most of it doesn't, doesn't matter. And so we don't care about knowledge transfer, we care about behavior change. And so it's all about figuring extremely precise behavior that you want somebody to do. And that's hard like that, like, especially on some more traditional, like people development skills. That's kind of what I mean, where it's like, we were we don't, we've gone so little, like we have so far to go. And even understanding like, what does it really mean? You know, if you if you want to talk about, you know, unconscious bias, what's the behavior change that you're trying to get to with unconscious bias, there's, there's tons of them. Sure, you know, but that's a hard, that's a hard thing to like, really sit down and think about in any, any any given company, they're going to want to think about it a little bit differently. And so really figuring out what's the behavior, you want to change, and then target everything towards that behavior change?

Heidi Kirby:

Well, and you're also talking about, you know, when you were training people to be a pilot, or do a triathlon, you're like a very one on one. That's a very one on one experience, you can look at that specific person's behavior, and then tailor your training to that. Whereas in the corporate world, you might have a company with 20,000 people, right. And so, you know, the, the umbrella that you have, or the net you have to cast to get the behavior change that you're looking for has got to be a lot wider, right?

Matt Gjertsen:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's where, why it's so great that everything in l&d is shifting towards, you know, getting closer to the learner and trying to expand what we think about when we think about learning and development. It's not just live facilitation in front of a bunch of people. It's not just eLearning module. It's okay. Like, how do we how do we create mentoring programs and coaching programs? How do we create training aids that are right there in the moment when they're ready to go? And so you think about it as kind of a big funnel of, you know, I mean, I always would eat in any topic, I always like to try to pair those multi modality kind of learning environments where you start off with On Demand Learning, which is the wider net, which is the catch all where you're, you're just trying to get some of that information transfer and use quizzes to make sure some of it sticks. Then you you know, then you narrow it down a little bit more and you bring some people into a classroom and then you're touching base on what you were what the online content talked about, but push little farther, have them engaged a little bit, have them play around with the information that they learned a little bit. And then you still need those follow ons of like, okay, so like, when they go back to their work environment, what's the job aid that's there, that's going to remind them that's tied to this, what is their mentor? What is their supervisor gonna say that's tied to this? You know, it's creating that as much as possible, creating that cohesive ecosystem. You know, but I think the thing that that's tricky that, that people get stuck on is that that's always the goal, you know, but then it's just like, there's so many different pieces, and nobody ever has enough resources. And priorities are always changing. And that's when you then have to make the switch, okay, like, this is the this is the goal. But maybe we never get there. And we just like try to make incremental improvements along the way and release this course, release this course release this job, and, you know, start this mentoring program to try to at least try to connect the dots. So you have to kind of accept the fact that you're never going to get that perfect environment, especially with how quickly things change in just about any business today. So you're never going to get there completely, but you have to at least have something to aim for.

Heidi Kirby:

No, I think that's a really good point, because I'm, I'm the perfectionist that wants to get there, right? Like, I'm the person that's like, No, we like we need to implement properly and have like, all the evaluation in place, and you know, like, budget hits, or, you know, in my case, right now, I'm trying to do some really big changes at my organization, and all of a sudden, person on my team resigns, personnel change, right. And so all this time and effort that was supposed to be funneled into me developing training is now split 5050 with trying to find a new person to come and join the team, but also fill the knowledge gaps for the person who's leaving the team. So you know, it's definitely one of those things where it's a moving target. And I think that, I think that, you know, if we treat it kind of like we, we treat ourselves, we treat the work that we do that, like, we're not aiming for perfection, we're just aiming for some sort of progress. Right? That it, it'll, it'll help.

Matt Gjertsen:

Yeah, 100%. I mean, and that's where the name for my company came from better every day, you know, it's just, it's not about perfect, it's about better. And, you know, it's really about stacking those wins on top of one another, so that you just like, you know, on any given day, it can often feel like you're not making a difference, you know, you're not really doing something new. But then you turn around at the end of the year, and you don't even recognize where you're at, you know, you don't recognize what happened. And I think I think that's, that's really the goal.

Heidi Kirby:

Yeah, no, I think that's really good. So what would be one of your big wins with better every day,

Matt Gjertsen:

I think some of the some of the biggest wins, like I said, are just like really expanding the envelope or expanding what people think is possible at a small company. With you know, a lot of it's been content creation, a lot of our content has been a content creation has honestly been focused on animated videos, because I think this is a perfect example of trying to bring, like, what you typically think of as useful at a larger company down to a smaller scale, because, I mean, because everybody thinks of Adobe After Effects, and just really large budgets, and I've seen two minute videos, specked out at$15,000 or more. And, you know, if you're 100, people, you know, like, you just don't, you're not going to spend that kind of money on that kind of stuff. Sure. And that's, and that's what's really cool about content creation today is that there's so many tools that allow you to get 80 to 90% of the impact at 10 to 20% of the costs. So we work with our, with our clients, using beyond, which is an online software that anybody can get a subscription to. And we build these what I call like, semi custom, where they're pre built characters, pre built movements and scenes. And there's some customization in there, there's enough, you know, variety, there's even like three different styles of animation that you can use. So there's enough variety that you can really, you can get really, really close, really close to what you want, at 10% of the cost and time, you know, it's just like so much faster and easier. And so it allows you it's this tool that most people, you know, what used to be, oh, I'm gonna you know, just give a talk into a camera for 15 minutes on the best of situations and on the worst of situations, you just right. You know, write 10 pages of text and expect people to read it. And now you can just do it in a one minute animated video. That's more engaging, more more exciting. So that's one example of what we've historically done, the biggest thing that I'm really excited about moving forward, or one of the newest things we're going to do is starting to work with a company called end border, which is an onboarding software which their their target market is actually companies, which are onboarding 100 people a year. So if you're on like, that's, that's a good size company, if you're if you're onboarding 100 people a year. And so but that so that means there's a whole SMB group of companies that never they have this, like great, amazing software that you can create, like a custom onboarding experience for each of your hires, where they're getting text messages that are personalized to them, you can ask them questions before they start. So you can figure out what their favorite food is or what their favorite color is, you send reminders to the manager, so the manager can send text messages to them. And what we're gonna do is I'm going to be targeting those smaller companies and managing it all kind of through through better everyday studios. So allow these much smaller companies to take advantage.

Heidi Kirby:

That's awesome. I think that, especially for small companies, the onboarding experience gets overlooked a lot of times, you know, especially, you know, if you're onboarding three people a year, and you've got some serious issues in other l&d areas, it's even easy for l&d managers to be like, I really want to tackle this, but I have bigger fish to fry. I think that that's great.

Matt Gjertsen:

Yeah, it's so often just gets kicked over. It's just like the hiring manager has to handle it like and that's honestly, in a lot of places, like, given the tools that are available. That's that might be the right answer, because you only can do so much with what you can. But if you have the ability to say like, Hey, let's spend a little bit of the budget to at least create, like a curated experience that makes them feel welcome. That's a big part a big part of what you want to do with an onboarding experience. So

Heidi Kirby:

yeah, for sure. And there's a billion statistics out there that show how important onboarding is to just employee retention in general. So I won't even try to talk anybody into that here. Just Google it like,

Matt Gjertsen:

it's like, it's staggering the numbers of percentages of people that realize they're going to leave a job even within like, the first two days, you know, they that you make the decision so quickly, and because if anybody thinks back to their own experience, like, you know, like you, you want you show up, and it's like, oh, they weren't ready for me, oh, they didn't know I was coming. They have no idea what to do with me. You know, it's like, the right way to that's not a way to make someone feel welcome.

Heidi Kirby:

Well, it used to really be like, training would be a babysitter for your new hires, right? Like, let's stick the new hire in front of their training for the first two days. So we don't have to worry about what they're doing. And we could do our other stuff, you know, so but now that training is getting shorter, and like, you're saying, you know, you're creating these one minute videos, you don't have, you don't have anything to babysit your new hires anymore. So you got to come up with something better, right? And to your point about hiring managers. It's tough for managers, like I feel like new and mid career managers do not get a lot of love when it comes to training and development. And they could certainly use a lot more tools in their toolkit.

Matt Gjertsen:

Yeah, I think it's one of the most underserved markets. And it may I mean, it's weird, because it's one of the most like, recognized, I hear your sentiment a lot. You know, everybody realizes it's a problem. But it's yeah, it's there's still so much of a need. And I would imagine a lot of it stems from you know, it's it hasn't been that long, we're, you know, we're in some ways, we're still kind of finishing that shift from really long careers in one place with slow progressions, and you spend five years in your first role, and then five years in the second role, and you're 10 or 15 years in before you start to manage people. And now it's like a year out of college, you're promoted, because people are moving around so much, and all of a sudden the position, gotta hire people. And it just happened so fast, that it used to be much more you know, learning by osmosis of you just like which has has benefits but has negatives as well, because then you'll learn, you know, you might learn that. But, you know, it's just become so much more of a pressing need.

Heidi Kirby:

I think that's really true. Yeah, because if I'm, like, even just my own career trajectory, I spent three and a half years as an individual contract. leader before I was able to make the jump to a manager, that's not that long. You know? Yeah. And, you know, granted, in my case, it was incredibly intentional, like, I would go into job interviews being like, I want to be a manager one day, you know, but in the other thing is, really a lot of places just are not willing to, to grass, the fact that like, if the only way to for me to move up is to move out by like, I don't have any loyalty to this company, if you're not going to promote from within. And I think that that's another issue that companies run into is, okay, we have this, we have this manager who's filled, backfill the position, but they don't know anything about our business. Yeah. And so it's, it's like one of those things that we all know, it's an issue, like you said, but it's like, it's almost like, where do we start?

Matt Gjertsen:

Yeah, and I think that, you know, because we like, especially with leadership development, it typically starts so lofty, and just a few months ago, I was talking to somebody, and I was really trying to think about it through this lens of like, behavior first. And it was, and it was just kind of like, okay, so like, like, if you can make someone who is good at managing their time, good at setting goals, and good at giving feedback. Like, they're better than 90% of the managers out there. Like, so, including myself, often, you know, and so it's just, and so it's just about figuring out, you know, what that means in your culture in your company and really say, you know, because like, and you can get, because once you like those three things, even though you need to distill it down more, now, it's like, oh, okay, there are 100 courses that are very specific on how to manage your time that you can give to somebody. And same thing with setting goals. And same thing with giving feedback, It like makes it like, really, really precise. And I think and then, because it was interesting, like to jump on to like, the giving feedback. I remember a couple of years ago, I was at LinkedIn connect when it was here in LA. And they shared a study that they did, where they were really intentionally tracking and pushing the idea of one on ones or regular one on ones. And it sounds like they didn't even I forget all the specifics, but they didn't even like give necessarily any training on like, what a one on one is, or how to do it, or why to do it. They just said do it. And they were measuring doing it and make and you know, getting them to do it. But the crazy thing was, is even though they did that bare bones thing, like people got better, both sides, over time, enjoyed the conversation more got more out of the conversation. And so it was just the sheer act of doing it, that they got better, you know, and so, and, you know, and so, you know, again, it loops back to the idea of like, in sports and muscle memory, you know, it's just about, it's just about repetition, it's just about getting it done, and people can, you know, I don't think you should necessarily always do that, you should hopefully, you know, give, give some tools to help them succeed. But people want to be successful, people want to make the most of their opportunities. And so if you just like measure the right stuff, and push them in the right direction, they're gonna get there. So you give them a framework that says, Hey, these are one on ones, this is what we want you to do. And then you measure them and hold them accountable for holding them. Same thing is true with setting goals, these are, this is our framework for goals, go do them and make sure people are doing them follow up on whether or not they hit them or not. And so you can get extremely tactile, real tactical, really quickly, and create these behaviors that you can instill in people right from the beginning, so that they start out much better than then the average new manager, and then all the other stuff gets added on because as they get better, they're gonna wonder like, why, why aren't I connecting here? Oh, it's about active listening, and I'm not listening well enough, or I'm not understanding their their background, or I'm not understanding that some, you know, whatever it is. And so then you start to get all those nuances as you go. But I think I think this connects with that idea of creating that perfect thing, you know, so so often we think about who is we start with the perfect manager, and what would the perfect manager be in our organization? And, and try to build that first. And like, like, Whoa, let's step back a little bit, and let's just create a minimum viable product, like what are the what are the minimum tools that we can leave the gate with, and start from there and then

Heidi Kirby:

well, I think to that there's a big difference between desirable traits And what it actually takes what those behaviors are that it takes to either be successful or unsuccessful. And that's kind of, you know, in line with the research that I'm doing for my PhD right now is like, what leadership skills do instructional designers need for every day? Well, you could ask a bunch of hiring managers, what a good instructional designer looks like. But is that is that what the hiring manager thinks they should look like? prefers what skills they have? You know, it's better to look at? What's the difference between success and failure? And what are those behaviors rather than? I'd really like somebody who is very technically skilled. Does that matter? Maybe it does for your team, maybe it doesn't, right. But just because you would like the person to be that doesn't mean that it's, you know, make or break for what, what they need to do on the job.

Matt Gjertsen:

Yeah, I think that that's so important, what you were saying, right, there really reminded me I've been, I've been reading a little bit recently on about the planning fallacy. And just like why we are all so bad at planning. And a big part of how you get around, it is kind of doing exactly what you're talking about is like, looking at what past, you know, so often we just say, Oh, I think it's gonna take this much. And we don't even think about the project we did last week, and how long that one took, you know, often don't compare. And so it's exactly the same thing. You're saying it's don't just like, think high minded thoughts about what you think a good instructional designer would be? No, like, think about instructional designers that you've had on your team? What know really like, what makes them successful?

Heidi Kirby:

What's great. Yeah,

Matt Gjertsen:

I think that's so important.

Heidi Kirby:

Right? Like, think, think of it like, you're Saturday morning, if you're like me, Saturday morning, you wake up and you're laying in bed. And you think, man, I'm going to do this today. And I'm going to do this today, and you make this list of all these awesome things you're going to do, then you get out of bed and you're like, a little tired, a little sore, I haven't had coffee yet. I don't know if I'm gonna really do all that. But it doesn't mean that you didn't have a successful day or that you didn't get a lot done. It's just yeah, when you, when you try to plan and you have those big plans, it can sometimes really be also your downfall.

Matt Gjertsen:

Those that question that you do is like an icebreaker or whatever that's like, if you if what's the name of your autobiography going to be? Oh, yeah. And that I have I have two answers. And one of them is lower the bar? Because I think it's like, like, it sounds weird, especially from an elegy person who's like all about get better, like, like, go achieve your dreams. But I think it's all you know, really what it means is like, so often it's it's all about momentum, you know, and we should set goals that make it so hard. Like every everything seems impossible. And it's really about No, no, like, just just lower the bar for movement. If you're not moving. Then there's a I forget what podcast I heard this on. But there was a story about this woman who was trying to run and she was talking about how do you stay motivated to achieve your goals? And I always set this I've had this goal of running five times a week, and I keep missing it and I feel so bad. And then the person just says, Well, why why don't you just run startup I run once a week, if you're not running at all, and you want to run five mins, we just start off once a week, like, well, but like once a week, like what's that going to matter? It's not going to it's not going to make a difference like, well, it's better than zero. You don't want one is better than zero, right? And so it's all about lowering your expectation, lowering your success criteria for those initial successes. So you can like keep building momentum.

Heidi Kirby:

For sure. No, I think that's a really, that's a really good point. So many times in instructional design, we just ignore the technology piece that is such a ginormous part of our field. If you study instructional design, instructional design and educational technology are pretty much synonymous terms. Yeah. And it has the word technology in it. Right? You know, and we're so resistant to different technologies. We're so resistant to the change. We're so resistant to trying, you know, people are going to be using storyline and captivate until, you know, they're 90 years old and it's just like, Guys, I get it. These can be useful for certain things, but when you're making a five minute explainer video to open up Captivate takes you longer than to make it in another. Yeah, no, that's just joy. Like I'm gonna get a cease and desist order here. But, you know, it takes a long time to develop and Sometimes I think people don't use those tools for what they're intended for.

Matt Gjertsen:

Yeah, I think I think that's really true. I definitely agree with that. And I think that's where learning again, like with learning, management and learning, it's a learning experience platform. So LMS is an LSPs. Which I, by the way, I think of the same thing. I don't know why we like delineate the like, kind of they're slowly merging, I think, because they both I agree. Yeah, so the other one. But this is where this is there, that what you just described is where they need to meet the challenge of how do we bring all of these different publishing tools together into a seamless experience, because that's the only worry that I have with a lot of startup tech. And that's the only hesitation that I have when it comes to a new technology is, if I have to take somebody somewhere else, you know, if I have to take the learner, else, in order to have that experience, I'm more hesitant to do it, you know, for sure, getting it embedded into into alert learning ecosystem that contains everything else. But 100%, I agree with you on, you know, I keep waiting for people, like I think we should be using, like social media more for training and like use your own, you know, all that kind of stuff. So there's lots of there's lots of stuff.

Heidi Kirby:

Yeah, well, and I'm also a huge proponent of learning in the way that you learn outside of a formal environment. So like for me, you know, I'm, I like crafting, for example. So if I'm trying to learn, I've just learned how to do acrylic pour painting, for example, when I moved into my new house, and where did I start? I started on YouTube. Yep. And I watched videos of people doing the technique. And until I felt comfortable enough to okay, I know what I need to do to get started. Well, then, you know, inevitably, as you get started, you run into hiccups. Right? And what do you do then? Okay, well, I just quickly Google something, I'm not going to rewatch the whole tutorial video, right? So I really treat our learning in the corporate space that same way. What's our YouTube? What's our Google what's our you know, because that's how people are used to consuming information. And I think that's why articulate rise has been so popular. Yes. Because it looks like a website. And how do people consume information? They go on a website, right?

Matt Gjertsen:

Yep. No, I think yeah, I think that's really, I think that's and that's a great example of these publishing tools that can create a really rich experience at just nowhere near the cost, you know, or the or the effort. And it allows either you to purchase custom content that is made just for you at a much lower price point, or a lot faster, or it allows you you know, if you if you have if you have enough people that are into it, to just make it make it yourself, and it just, yeah, a whole whole lot easier. Yeah, for sure. On on this point, one thing I want to bring up, because we've just been talking about I just learned about this this morning, I think it was just recently announced, there's actually a new XPRIZE, you know, the XPrize Foundation that's like about, so it's about these really big prizes for solving global problems, right? Yeah, yeah, there's like, like, the first one was getting into space, and there's like, feed the next billion and Elon Musk just announced like the carbon capture challenge. Well, they have one now. That's the Digital Learning Challenge. And it's a$1 million prize, if I'm looking for people who want to join a team or start a team with me, so if anybody wants to hit me up, feel free. It's basically to create, you know, it's to find a way to quickly and scalable ly put out, learn a learning product or learning system or learning something, and determine its effectiveness. That's it, you know, and I think to your point, I thought of this because of your point of that you mentioned earlier of the divide between like the you know, for traditional education and the corporate world is everything in here is like they talk about how every year 80 million students 25% of the US population are in are in school or in education. So they're talking about formal education. And so the whole challenge is meant to be about formal education. And I when I shared it on LinkedIn today, I just made the comment. This is the number one challenge of corporate learning right now as well like this has reached far beyond just the Learn the classroom because this is what learning is all about efficacy, like figuring out efficacy. Are we actually making a difference are we doing In your behavior, are we making a difference in business outcomes? It's hard.

Heidi Kirby:

So what you're literally telling me right now is how to quickly and effectively measure our learning is literally right now, the million dollar question.

Matt Gjertsen:

Literally the million dollar question. That's absolutely.

Heidi Kirby:

That's great. I love it. That's amazing. Yes, yeah, I might have to hit you up on that joining your team. See, there's a way to do it, I'd love to figure it out. Because that would make my life much,

Matt Gjertsen:

much easier so much. And it's neat, because I think it's, I mean, that's kind of what all this is doing. You know, it's like, changes in the LMS environment, and that that whole ecosystem changes in the l&d Just the way l&d thinks of itself is I think one of the biggest shifts right now is like pushing l&d closer to the business, understanding the business, caring about those metrics, learning in the flow of work, all that kind of stuff. And this is kind of what we need is a true way to you know, there's tools. I'm certain there are tools. I know, there are tools out there where you can like, really customize the Billy, like, have it built just for you to kind of kind of bridge that gap of like, you know, make that connection. But we still need to do it at scale, you know, showing really being able to say like this does that this does that?

Heidi Kirby:

Sure. Nice. Well, I have one last question for you. And it's the same question I asked all my guests. Okay, if you had to pick one, book, movie, TED Talk, comic book, art installation, I don't I don't care one piece of media that would that you would recommend for people to better focus on learners and learner behavior, what would it be? And why?

Matt Gjertsen:

The book how emotions are made?

Heidi Kirby:

You didn't even have to think about it. I didn't even have

Matt Gjertsen:

to think about it. I'd like instantly thought so I a couple of if I knew it was going to be a book as soon as it started. Because I read a ton I love reading. And then as you kept asking, I was like, kind of like cycling through a number of books. And if it comes to how to figure out, Ellen, how to help l&d folks figure out the learner better make sure they can understand learn better how emotions are made, definitely is where it starts, I think because what it really helps you understand is it really sets into context, something that I had never heard before, as the concept of interoception. And the interoceptive network, which is essentially how your body under understands its its present energy state and kind of creates your, your general mood. And that's where I kind of started off with this idea of how much context matters for for people, you know, and like, why is it that it's going to be difficult for us to take a learner who, you know, take a supervisor off to a hotel conference room, where we're going to teach him how to give feedback. And then we're surprised when we put them in the loud, rambunctious production floor that they can't access that knowledge instantly, like, of course they can't. And it's because of that inner part of it is because that interoceptive network, because, you know, if you see, I mean, if there was a second place when it would be the TED talk on, I forget what it's called. It's like the how you hallucinate your reality, essentially, where if you and part of it's actually part of there's another thing that it comes from how emotions are made, where actually what you're seeing as reality is only 10% Based on the photons that are coming in through your eye. It's 90%, based on everything else, you know, memories that it's all made up, your brain is making up 90% of what you're seeing. Right, yeah. And so really understanding that about a learner. And it really helps you realize how much we how much we need to think of how we need to help them access this information, because 90% of what they're doing is based off of other stuff other than what we're giving them right now. You know, and so it's taking into account where they have worked before, what their experiences are, what the room temperature is, what color they like, were they in a fight this morning, like all that stuff.

Heidi Kirby:

Sure. Sure. Was there traffic. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, we will share the link to that book, as well as the link to better every day and how to get into contact with you in the show notes. Awesome. And thank you for coming on. It was great talking to you. You

Matt Gjertsen:

know, thank you so much. This was this was this was really great. There's a great discussion.

Heidi Kirby:

Thanks again for joining me on the BLOC, if you enjoyed this episode please share it with friends and review us on your favorite podcast platform I hope you'll tune in again soon