This Is a BIG Problem

Today’s Thoughts ☠️

Hey there 👋,

I have a crazier thought than usual today.

It’s probably fuelled by my current injured state where I’ve been confined to minimal mobility and a bucket load of Netflix. If you’re curious, my poison of choice has been the entire (yes the entire!) Godzilla franchise.

Watching a giant lizard fight other giant animals does something to your brain, I think.

Alongside the giant lizard destroying everything binge-watching fest. I’ve been evolving a thesis on why good L&D projects and products are often victims of self-sabotage.

One word. Yogababble.

Let’s get into it.

Get your tea 🍵 or beverage of choice ready. We've got lots to discuss!

In today’s chat 👇

• How to fight Yogababble

• The 66% AI productivity increase case study

• A retailer’s playbook on taking a digital-first approach to upskilling 320k employees

The Big Thought
Yogababble: The Destroyer of Careers

Tell me, have you been in the audience at a presentation or read a colleague’s email and wondered, WTF are they talking about?

I think we all have.

If so, you have been the victim of Yogababble.

Right now I know you’re thinking, “What the hell is Yogababble?” Good question. Let’s unpack that.

Yogababble was first coined by Professor Scott Galloway in response to the S-1 document filed by WeWork founders Adam Neumann and Rebecca Neumann. Basically, it meant using lots of words that were meaningless and confused every reader.

Urban Dictionary: Spiritual-sounding language used by companies to sell products or make their brand more compelling on an emotional level.

Prof G (as he’s commonly known) uses this term in relation to the mission statements of organisations. For WeWork (for whatever reason) it was to “elevate the world’s consciousness”.

This was quite confusing considering they were supposed to be an office space company that was masquerading as a tech company. Were they saying desks would make us smarter and more connected? It’s a strange world.

Anyway, I digress!

You don’t need to be a startup founder with a Jesus complex to suffer from the perils of Yogababble. Many of us are struck down by it in emails, slack messages and daily conversations.

It still happens to me to this day. Mostly when negotiating with my wife on a new piece of furniture. P.S. She wins, always.

I see this crime committed daily in my own industry too.

From course pages to learning pathways. The Yogababble pandemic shows no mercy.

So, what can we do about that?

How to avoid Yogababble

In Friday’s conversation, I shared a bunch of tips to help improve your writing with the goal of clarifying your thinking too.

As a build to this, here’s a few more thoughts on how to avoid the Yogababble black hole in your own work.

If your presentation, email or general conversation sounds like:

1. The Oxford English Dictionary on steroids

2. The sales pages of a local cult leader

3. The explanation of The Matrix from that old guy in the beat-up chair from the 2nd film

Then destroy what you’ve got and start again.

Instead, try:

1. Being clear, not clever with your words

2. Get to the key message first, not 400 slides later

3. Speak human, not robot (that includes AI standard lingo)

Many great products, purposes and even people have been ruined by Yogababble.

The L&D industry is certainly full of it.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been ambushed by a vendor or sat in a briefing with other L&D pros where I’ve been completely bamboozled by their level of yogababbley BS.

“We’re going to build a blended learning experience with a dash of miro-learning that leverages human-centred design to take place in the metaverse”.

Like WTF! We just want to roll out an upskilling programme to improve team collaboration.

The C-suite team were equally confused.

Yogababble in L&D

One of my best exchanges came with a vendor.

They were adamant in their statement they were ‘The complete learning platform’. I don’t even know what that means. They proceeded to try enchanting me with their talk of algorithms, APIs and machine-learning capabilities that they thought I wouldn’t understand.

Little did they know my whole education was in technology, and my inner circle were all employees of big tech firms. It’s safe to say, they weren’t chosen to partner with my team.

If they had dropped the Yogababble and tried to be clear on what they do, would it have been a different outcome? Potentially.

The point is that the practice of Yogababble does not make you look smart.

There’s a reason some people connect with my work and others with what’s seen as more elite establishments.

As the great Nikki Sixx said, “Don’t aim to be popular, aim to be real”.

My love for memes, gifs and cutting through the noise words with the occasional F-bomb help me with this. Anyway, I’m digressing, again! Typical for me to make this all about me.

Break the curse

Yogababble often strikes when we are nervous or unsure of how to say what we want.

We make the mistake of being clever, not clear.

Every human suffers from it (even AI does). You can change that though. The worst feeling is when you write or say something that you feel hits the mark but turns your audience off about 30 seconds into your 10-minute speech.

Put yourself in the audience’s shoes, what is it they need to know?

Never forget, you’re a human. Not a corporate jargon cursed robot.

Experiment with these tips above to see if you can improve on your words.

Bruce Lee has a great quote which embodies this message: “It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” 

Deep Thought
Nielsen Norman Group Research on Employee Productivity with AI: 3️⃣ Key Takeaways

Here’s a breakdown of NN Group’s employee AI productivity research. You can download your copy here. These are my personal takeaways.

1️⃣ AI improves employee productivity by 66%

The 66% figure was calculated across 3 case studies the group worked with:

🤳 Customer service agents resolving customer inquiries in an enterprise software company.

✍️ Experienced business professionals (e.g., marketers, HR professionals) writing routine business documents (such as press releases) that take about half an hour to write

👩‍💻 Programmers coding a small software project that took about three hours to complete without AI assistance

The BIG takeaway: Users were much more efficient at performing their jobs with AI assistance than without AI tools.

Here are the results:

→ Study 1: Support agents who used AI could handle 13.8% more customer inquiries per hour.

→ Study 2: Business professionals who used AI could write 59% more business documents per hour.

→ Study 3: Programmers who used AI could code 126% more projects per week.

2️⃣ Narrowing the skills gap

This is one of the top things I’m most excited about with AI as a collaborative human tool.

The research found that generative AI narrowed the skills gap between the best and worst performers. That’s a huge win.

This is the business we’re in as L&D pros.

Supporting people to close their skills gap for performance and better career opportunities. Organisations don’t care about the latter but I feel a personal human responsibility on that.

We have an opportunity to reduce the skill gap with AI tools.

3️⃣ Learning at speed

The first study in this research provides an interesting revelation.

Customer support agents were followed for several months. The research found agents who used AI support achieved expertise faster than those agents without.

Here’s a direct quote from the research:

“An experienced agent can complete 2.5 inquiries per hour.

This level of productivity is normally reached in 8 months of work (without using the AI tool). In contrast, the agents who started using the AI tool right off the bat reached this level of performance in only two months.

In other words, AI used expedited learning (to this level of performance) by a factor of 4.”

Want to work together?

I help teams and organisations crack the L&D code to enable performance.

How do I do that, you say? I’m glad you asked:

1️⃣ Maximising your learning technology

Unlock the power of your digital learning technologies with tailored strategies to empower your people to build the right skills for performance.

2️⃣ Nurturing High-performing L&D Teams

Equip your L&D teams with the latest tools, tactics, and frameworks they need to thrive in the modern world.

LinkedIn

I post so much on LI, even I lose track of all the stuff. Here’s a quick roundup of drops to keep you and me in the loop:

1️⃣ The exciting future of AI language translation for decentralised education

2️⃣ I’ve launched the Steal These Thoughts Dojo🥋. A place for no BS skill building to thrive.

3️⃣ The recording of my latest LinkedIn Live on using ChatGPT intelligently for business is here.

Smart Thoughts

Content that has caught my attention and might interest you too.

🤔  Lepaya solidifies its position as one of the largest corporate edtech providers in Europe

Amsterdam-based edtech startup Lepaya just bagged a cool €36 million in funding.

Seems they're planning to invest in AI tools (who isn’t right?). An AI-coach that adapts learning content based on an individual's career level is in the works.

💡 How Carrefour is upskilling 320,000 employees

This French retailer is going all in on digital first upskilling for their 320k employees.

Their ‘Tous Digital’ program aims to improve digital literacy across the organisation. In only 3 weeks they managed to upskill 60k employees.

One to watch. I think.

🔥  How do I get my team started with all this AI stuff?

The million dollar question which has just as many answers.

This LI post from Scott Belsky provides a useful framework to get you started.

How I can help you👇

1/ My L&D toolkit stack with 20 zero-cost tools.

2/ Work smarter with AI in HR and L&D in my ChatGPT Crash Course.

3/ Work with me on your projects and L&D challenges.

Please share your thoughts with me on these pieces or anything I share on LinkedIn or hit 'reply'. Chat to you soon.