How Apple Designed Its Learning Culture
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we sit down with Joel Podolny, CEO of Honor Education and former Dean of Apple University, to explore how learning, collaboration, and organizational culture intersect.
Joel shares insights from building Apple University, why collaboration is a contact sport, and how to design learning experiences that foster trust, feedback, and innovation.
🎓 In this episode, Joel discusses:
Why collaboration should be a "contact sport"
The role of organizational design in innovation
How to scale learning without losing engagement
Building Apple University and lessons from Steve Jobs
The future of personalized, collective learning using AI
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There is this tendency for people to think that collaboration is, like, you know, kinda one of those posters where everybody's holding hands. Nope. And it's not. Right? In an effective organization, you want people bumping up against one another.
You want them to be direct with their feedback. You want them to be resilient, and not take personally a conversation around ideas. Right? You want people to understand that you can't have a great debate when 50 people are in the room. You want people to understand that that a mark of a great debate is it ends.
Right? We've all and when it ends, regardless of the side that we were on, we're all in as a group going out so that nobody knows which side you were on based on how you execute afterwards. Hey, Joel. Welcome to the show. How are you, my friend?
I'm great. Thanks, Chris, for having me on the show. It's a real privilege to be here. Good to see you. I love how organized your background is.
It's way too organized for my liking. Okay. Well, fortunately fortunately, the camera only points in this direction. If you saw the other side, it's complete chaos. That's the that's the secret.
Backgrounds. I love the, I love the picture right above your head. It looks really cool. Is that like pencil? It it is.
Yeah. It's, yeah. It's sort of a it's kind of a mountain, in the in the background. It's it's, it's got sort of an education vibe, to it. Yeah.
It's really cool. Like, I, we was we were talking just before we hit record about, the way we learn, right, and which we'll get into today and I love the work that you're doing. And, one of the things I didn't say which that reminded me of is whenever, Shane and I create our business plan or a launch for our product, I write them I don't write out the business plan, I draw it. So rather than writing, you know, here's the next three to six months, I actually paint or draw it. And then different objects in the painting represent different milestones of what we're trying to achieve.
So like I did one recently where you know the trees in the painting represented the new employees I wanted to hire and grow and develop. And then we had a kind of a stream coming down to a waterfall which represented the journey they were about to go on as well and the mountains. And so when I rather than having a list of bullet points on my business plan, I just had that on my wall. So At home that represented to me every day I saw it, it brought it to life beyond here's some bullet points how exciting is that About what we're gonna create, right, or or or a deck. Yeah.
So so so what I love about that, right, is, you know, we we talk about the importance of passive versus active, learning, you know, often. But I think we tend to narrow very much the way we think about, like, what active learning, you know, has to, you know, has to mean. Right? And, and so, like, you know, we think, like, oh, a seminar rather than a lecture. That's the major distinction between passive and active learning.
But, like, what you're pointing to is, no. Really, it's just trying to bring in other senses. You know? A you know, sense of movement, sense of touch. Right?
You know, having, you know, hearing in addition to seeing, you know, in addition, you know, to having kind of a muscle memory. Yeah. That that's what really deepens, and and frankly motivates, the learning experience. So that's that's a great example. Yeah.
It it came to me because, we were went to a work a master class where we kind of was all around kind of understanding your why and connecting your why personally to your work. And at the end of it, everyone had to write kinda come up with a purpose statement and you'd write it down and they're like carry it with you, you know take it, you know make it part of it and I was like had it written down I was like that's very boring, not really I mean not really like for me personally a lot of people were really excited that they had a sentence. I was like this is supposed to be my purpose statement so I did this that was the first that was the first time I I drew it and painted the the piece of art that represented my purpose and the why. And then from there onwards I was like actually I'm just gonna do this with anything I wanna achieve or my goals in life and then just have it placed around the house or the workplace so it's a visual representation Yeah. You know of what I wanna achieve and everyone was I did get some strange looks because I did it at the event so at the end everyone presented their sentences and I was like here's I actually had a piece of like whiteboard paper, it was like scruffy whiteboard paper with marker pens and I was like here's mine.
A boy is. Listen before we jump Go on sorry, go for it. No, I was gonna say it points to the power of visualization. Yeah, oh and I'm a big fan of that you know like always had a vision board as a kid growing up. All my friends were like, what is that on your wall?
And I was like, these are all the cutouts of all the things I'm gonna achieve in life. And everyone's like, that was one of the first things. Visualization is huge, it's so important. Yeah, absolutely. I'm not a religious person but honestly I don't know how to explain some of the things.
Because a lot of times I've put things on my visual visualization board or just visualize them in my mind intentionally. And the amount of things that have come to fruition in my life that I just could not explain to you. But you start to your subconscious mind finds it. It starts to pick it up like during during the day without you even realizing because you you can train it right? To do that.
And when I first heard about that I was like yeah whatever. And then the more I started to do it and the more be intentional every day about like go even when I go to sleep I like I visualize like what it would feel like to achieve that and like as if you've already succeeded right? Whatever it may be. I used to do it with sports. A lot of athletes do it actually.
You know, you see you hear about a lot of athletes, basketball players, basketball players about visualizing hitting the shot or in Shane's case when he played ice hockey hitting the save. Right? As well and and when you visualize that it's incredible how if you keep doing it your game begets better. Your shot begets becomes better because you can even almost play basketball in your mind before you hit on hit the court as well. That's great.
That's great. Yeah. And and then I love kind of what you're doing because you're bringing that to life through technology. Right? And and making learning accessible and and personalized in a way that we just couldn't do Which is before.
But before we do that, tell everyone a little bit about your background because it's super interesting, and unconventional to your journey to where we are now. Yeah. I, you know, I, I began my career as a as a as a professor, as an academic. I I taught at the Stanford Business School for eleven years, in organizational behavior and strategy and then became senior associate dean. I then went to Harvard, where I was a professor in the business school as well as in sociology.
Sociology is what my degree is in. Then became dean of the Yale School of Management, and that was when I got, recruited, by Apple to start, what was, what and still is, Apple University. I had the privilege to report to Steve and to Tim during my time there. I also ran HR, at Apple for, for three years. And at the same time, Apple University was was very much, my, my passion, while I was while I was there.
And and now I'm CEO of of Honor Education, which is, focused on reimagining learning, in light of, you know, the the best technology that we can bring to bear on it. Yeah. I don't even know where to start because it was such a interesting what was the, how did you how did the transition go from from education to Apple? Like, how did that Yeah. Just I love to hear that story.
Yeah. No. And and and, a lot of people, you know, who and, you know, kind of saw me as being, you know, on an academic path where we're, like, you know, how can you make that shift from a job that, once you get tenure, you have lifetime employment, to working for somebody who had a very strong reputation for, sort of deciding very quickly that you are no longer right for the job. Let's put it that way. Especially at the time when you joined Right.
Exactly. Yeah. So so here was here was the fascinating thing for me, about Apple. Apple is functionally structured as a company. It has one p and l, till this day.
So no separate business units for iPhone, iPad Really? You know, whatnot. Yes. And so the CEO is the the first person, like, if you're looking at, like, where does marketing, you know, manufacturing, r and d meet, it's up at the CEO. What comes with that is you're essentially organizing by expertise as opposed to organizing by a business.
That's the way academia is organized. So it was actually easier for me to make the transition to Apple because I come I immediately got that structure. I think the people who who wrestle with that are the ones who've operated in a more traditional business unit organization, and then they come here to Apple. And they wanna know what's my p and l? What's, you know, my headcount?
And the answer is, well, you know, that's all determined very centrally. If you've got a great idea, there will be resources to support it. But ultimately, it's your job to be able to be accountable for delivering with collaborating with others over whom you have no control. And again, that's just like academia. Right?
You're accountable for collaborating with others for whom you have no control. When you're a dean, like, it's the faculty who are there permanently, you're the one who's the temporary help. So, you know, so it actually you know, it was it was a more seamless transition than than people would think. Would you say then that Apple was one of the early companies to be to become more of a skills based organization. You know, everyone's on this journey now to remove silos, to remove functions, become more collaborative, and focus on skills rather than So so I I probably word it slightly differently.
It's an expertise based organization. Expertise based organization, which is which is still a far far far away from the traditional, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the the the the the principle that you're trying to apply is you want the people who have the expertise to have the decision rights, and you want them in the room when the decision is being made.
Love it. That tends to be easier to do when you're in a smaller organization. When you get to be a 80,000, how you get that to work, that that becomes more challenging. That was one of the reasons Steve created Apple University was there are distinct aspects of the culture, there's distinct aspects of the organization that need to be in place in order for that model to really work at, at scale. Yeah.
With with that model then, what what were the, benefits obviously through that model? But also what were the challenges that come along with that? Yeah. I mean, I I I I mean, having thought about organization design for many years, I always say, like, you know, there's no perfect organization design in the abstract, and there's no perfect organization design for any organization in the specific. You basically have to decide what are the problems that you don't wanna deal with and what are the problems that you do wanna deal with.
Right? And so with a functional structure, the problems that you don't have to deal with is you don't have to deal with generalists making decisions where they don't have the expertise themselves in order to make those decisions. You don't have to worry about lining up accountability and control because there's one person who's got budget Yeah. And they've got a set of targets, and you're gonna hold them accountable to that. In a functional organization, you have to worry about, you know, well, who's accountable when everybody's accountable.
Right? You you have to, you know, worry about how do we get collaboration across these different functions and these different areas of expertise, when each area of expertise has its own way of approaching things. Right? Software engineering is different than hardware engineering, which has a different mindset, you know, than marketing and finance, and you can sort of go through. And you've gotta get them all to work without, you know, having, you know, that one person that everybody reports into.
Because if because while everybody does, at the end of the day, report into the CEO, if the CEO is having to sort of go into and create coordination throughout a 80,000 person organization, the organization, you know, comes to a halt. So so you get the expertise. You, you know, you get to the this is and then but but if you've got a really, really focused strategy and you've got a really strong culture, that can pull everything together. And so a big part of making something like that work is, you know, committing to that level of focus, committing to the things in the culture that allow for different functions to resolve differences of views and perspectives, so it's so interesting. Do you do you think that that was one of the main re bent so it's so interesting.
Do you do you think that that was one of the main, reasons why Apple continues just to move quickly, stay innovative, disrupt themselves is due to that model? I I think it makes a huge difference that the people at the top of the organization, have the expertise and the intuition that comes with it, around how when there's uncertainty about how the world is going to unfold, to have to be able to essentially place the right bets. It doesn't mean they're gonna be right all the time. At the end of the day, they're bets. It's always about probabilities.
But but more often than not, right, it it does give you that ability to to use the Wayne Gretzky quote, see where the puck is going to be as opposed to, you know, sort of looking at where where it is. Yeah. I love that. Where where did you start when you built Apple University? It seems like a monument a monumental, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, so so, it's it's it's actually a funny story. So, when, I I started Apple University, I knew when I was in academia, it would take me, like, you know, sort of three or four months to build out a course. And I thought, okay.
You're at Apple. You gotta you're gonna have to do this quickly. This is Apple. Right? In, like, my first two weeks, I started, sketching out what that would look like.
And I had, even though, he wasn't CEO at the time, he was COO, at the time. I I had the privilege to meet with Tim Cook really early on. I started walking him through what I was about to do. And about, like, two minutes in, he sort of pauses me. And and and he says, you know, what you came up with might be right, and it may be wrong.
But it would be great if you would get to really know us first before you start building something out. And that was absolutely, like, the best advice anybody could have, provided me, because it absolutely gave me the patience. And and this was something Apple was always really good at, was the ability to sort of give patience for the things that needed it even as they're trying to be fast around those things that don't allow for it. And the other thing and and and this is one of the things that I think is a a mistake, when CHROs or CLOs are building out learning programs, is they'll focus on the vision in the large. Right?
By which I mean okay. You know, what's the full matrix of across all our employees, all the programs that we're gonna develop? And, you know, there's sort of a whiteboard somewhere that's got this matrix filled out and then all the skill competencies that are going to be addressed and so on. Steve allowed for me, and, again, it was a real gift, but it was also you know, I learned from this is he essentially said, let's begin with the vision in the small. Like, what one really, really great learning experience would be like.
Because if you can, like, build one really great experience would be like. Because if you can, like, build one really great class where the people who come to it say, like, I need another. I wanna tell everybody they've got to go through this. Right? You'll get to that vision in the large.
But but so often, I think we feel this the in some ways, I had already, just because of the experience teaching at Stanford and Harvard and and and Yale, kind of had had focused on experience. But it was just not you know, it it was more than an affirmation. It was sort of an endorsement that, you know, get this right. Get this as great as it can be, and then scale it. Don't scale and then sort of figure out at scale what you think great could look like.
Because now you've you've confused the the vision in the large with the vision in the small. Yeah. No. That's that's so I suppose Apple made that same approach when they built out their app store. Because like they slowly one by one released and everything.
The first kind of original set of apps that they released were just mind blowing. Yeah. They brought out. But they could have easily put twenty, thirty apps out there, as well. And that first impression is so important.
Like you you only get people's attention once. And if you don't make a good first impression so what what I feel like what you've done really well which is I hear from many search heroes that I interview who join businesses for the first time is they really spend the first six, even maybe even twelve months going on that sort of listening tour. Really, really Yeah. Truly understanding the business and, you know, I spoke to Citro recently. She's like, like I've been on the plane pretty much every day for the whole year like flying around the world and and one of the locations she was in one of the mines.
Like on the giant diggers in the middle of like in the mine. Because she's like I really wanna get to know what the challenges are like not just, you know I'm riding around in a construction site right in the middle of a mine in Africa to get to know it and then go about making change, right? And really understanding the business and people go okay she gets it. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Now I when I when I used to teach, you know, one of the pieces of advice I would give my students is integrate before you differentiate. Oh. You're gonna be much more effective, in where you wanna lead people if they get that you get them. And and that's and that's important.
And and and and the other thing that is also important in that, because, yes, I also talk to a lot of CHROs or CLOs who, you know, talk about the importance the the one thing I I try to add to that is make the transition gradual. Don't, like, abruptly say, like, I'm gonna get to month six, and then I will come out with my plan. Yeah. Because I think there is this tendency to, like, you know, say, okay. I'm going from lit listening mode to, you know, use your word choose your whatever word you'd like, advocacy mode, leading mode, you know, whatever whatever it is.
The problem with that is you're sort of formulating these hypotheses. You can't help but do that during those first six months. You lose the opportunity to get some feedback on your hypotheses. If you go Right. Right.
If you if you kinda right. If you go from asking a lot of questions and and I've seen that mistake too. So, you know, while you're on the listening tour, say, you know, I'm thinking about this or, you know, I've got I've got some thoughts that this could, you know, maybe be a way to go. And and and I'd love your feedback on that. And and if you you make that a more gradual transition, I find that's a that's an important thing to add into the listening tour is is but start putting some ideas out there just for people to to to poke at them, and it it'll all and it'll be more helpful.
It's the same in, in a startup world of our products. Right? A %. I get I get them out there as soon as possible. Start start getting feedback.
Right? Because you could spend all this time and months building and then you launch and then you're like wait a minute. I wish I would I wish I would have put this out earlier to get some feedback because I just wasted so much time building. I'm sure you get that more than anyone. As well.
What were the main, in the Apple University, what were the main skills or areas that really you're focusing on in terms of the upskilling and reskilling? So collaboration is huge. You know, and and, you know, and what does that look like? I would often say at at at Apple, collaboration was a contact sport. Because I think there is this tendency for people to think that, you know, collaboration is, like, you know, kinda one of those posters where everybody's holding hands.
Nope. And and it's not. Right? In an effective organization, you want, you know, people bumping up against one another. You want them to be direct, you know, with their feedback.
You know, you you want them to be, you know, resilient, and not take personally a conversation around ideas. Right? And, you want people to understand that you can't have a great debate when 50 people are in the room. Right? You want people to understand that when, you know, the that a that a mark of a great debate is it ends.
Right? We've all and, and when it ends, regardless of the side that we were on, we're we're all in as a group going out so that nobody knows which side you were on based on how you execute afterwards. Those are all things that, you know, you can say. You need to sort of ground it in cases and stories that demonstrate it, that create a sense of empathy for how hard that can be in the moment. Mhmm.
But collaboration is big. Another thing, you know, is, at at Apple in particular, which, you know, I think they're known for you know, is is incredible attention to detail. In in order to make that functional organization work, you need, you know, leaders to know the details, you know, three levels down or more in the organization. And it was a place that no matter how detail oriented somebody was when they got there, they realized that that they're being asked to be more attentive to detail than any place that that they've that they've been. You know, if my slides when I was, you know, sort of giving a presentation, you know, a presentation.
You know, if it's if it's a couple pixels off, you could see, like, you know, there'd be people in the in in the room and be like, I think that I I think the pixels you know, I mean, it it it would literally be like that. You know? Like, be like, musicians who who, you know, hear a note if it's just slightly out of tune. Right? Like, so, yeah.
Things like that. I drive my, cofounder crazy with stuff like that because he will have something which is, like, slightly one millimeter out of line in the presentation and I can't unsee it. And he's like what exactly what are you even looking at? I'm like look that is not exactly in line with that and he's like really? I'm like yes really.
As well. I wanna go back to your collaboration point though because I love that and I can see how that makes perfect sense because you don't get the type of innovation that Apple created by having the nice fluffy poster in the wall like you just said. And, I'll give you a good story actually. Today, JC, my editor came into the to the, to the office and I said, oh, I didn't know you was, even in because you didn't come upstairs and say hi. He was like, no I came upstairs but it seemed pretty heated so I didn't come in the room.
I was like, what do you mean? And what he didn't realize is we were all standing in front of our whiteboard as a team having quite a heated debate about some of the new products we're building, a healthy debate, really exciting. Right? But there was some disagreements like to your point and and, it was so like, you know, that's part of our culture. Right?
And I say like if it doesn't if there isn't friction and we're not kind of disagreeing on things and we're not really innovating and and and challenging ourselves. But it's taken a long time for us to get there. Shane and I have always been like that. We've worked together for twenty years and we even grew up as, you know, childhood friends and that's quite hard to separate your ego and emotions when it's your friend. It's even harder to be able to do that.
But we always say to the team a couple of things. Assume positive intent, right? So or always assume that. So whenever you're getting feedback or someone's saying they're not doing it because they wanna attack you or belittle you in front of the group, it's you know they're just being honest and open. And that's something that a lot of people ask.
It takes a bit of time and it's not for everyone if I'm being honest. That culture is not for everyone. You know I had an employee a few months back say, I can't believe so and so said that to you, you're the CEO of the company, how can they disagree with you? You're the CEO. And I was like, why did you think I hired them?
That's the whole point, They're hiding to get a diversity of thought and they're like oh I didn't know that that you know I never worked in a company that you could challenge the CEO before. As well and the other thing is around to your point making sure when we do come out of that there is a clear call to action, a plan of action. And even if we disagree, we like you said, fully support that individual. And that that that's also something which is can be quite tough as well. Like I've come out of meetings where I completely disagree with my team as a CEO or founder and I'm still going like I want even if I know literally they're gonna fail, I wanna give them the opportunity to at least try you know and I don't wanna rob them of that if that makes sense to to be able to do that.
So I love that. Practically, how do you do that though at scale? Yeah. So, you know, I well, I I I it it ends up being like a a lot of little things. It It'd be nice to say, okay.
Here's the one thing to do. But, like, let me just take off of your last comment, and I'll even talk about, like, one of the things that I did, like, with my team at Apple. Because I absolutely had the the same thing where, like, we have a meeting. I think based on all my experience, like, this idea is going nowhere. But Yeah.
There's a lot of enthusiasm, you know, and and it's the kind of thing that I'm like, okay. I'm I'm I'm willing to let them take a, you know, take a take a shot at it, and and I'll support them in it. Whenever we would have our next quarterly meeting, any of those ideas that I thought were, you know, ridiculous ideas, but I kinda let them and and I was wrong. I would say, like, okay. Here's, you know, here here's the ideas, like, we talked about that I thought was, like and and there was there was one that I I was really thought was no way it was gonna succeed, turned out to be one of the best ideas that that came out of Apple University.
And I would I would go back to that because I think it that gives people the tenacity to push on me, as the leader of the organization, and I want them to have that. Powerful things somebody can do in an interview with me when I'm interviewing them for a job is they can change my mind about something that I've I've thought about. That you know, I mean, that's one of, like, the the best gifts I feel like somebody can give you is when you've actually thought pretty deeply about something and they, like, all of a sudden or, like, you may have thought you thought deeply about this, but here's, you know, here's here's another perspective Yeah. And another and and so maybe you need to evolve that. Like, and and I think when people see you are sincere in that, and, you know, that I at least when I've worked for people who I know are sincere in that, it's so motivating.
Right? Like, and so, so so that's so that's one of the things that you can emphasize is being very public, as a leader about changing your mind, and the impact that others have on it. It's important to be decisive in a direction that you're going. You don't wanna, like, hedge. You know, I I'm working with one of our clients.
They they've got a phrase that they use a lot, which I really like. You know, we want, strong opinions weekly held. And I love that. And and I think I think that's I think that is a great mindset to cultivate. You know, I am I am firmly committed to this until data presents itself that leads me to be firmly committed to something else.
Well, that's why you get the people that could disconnect sort of their ego. Because some people they do you know what I mean? Like I could deeply hold a belief and it can become almost part of my identity. So then when you're challenging that individual you almost they almost see it as you're challenging their their their value right and their identity. Correct.
And and even though they can see the data and they can and they can see the result they still you know will will combat that. And I think that's something me and Shane have done really well over the years. There's things that I've like deeply hold beliefs that Shane I just put that trust in each other. And it just like you said I've had the same things where there's things that the team proved me completely wrong. And I think one thing I've taken away from your advice is I don't do a good enough job of of of of of mentioning that, of bringing that back up.
Because it's very easy to say you were wrong and I was right but when things go right people don't then sit down and go actually you were right. Because we just accept what was right and we carry on. So I need to make space in our meetings into the team to actually like bring that up as well. So that's definitely something I'll take away from this conversation because it's very easy to point out when things go wrong. But when things are going right no one no one even mentions it because it's going right.
Right. Right. Right. Now everybody just takes collective credit. Yeah.
Yeah. You know in terms of like how wise we all are. Yeah. Yeah. I just There was a moment.
There was. I'm gonna start paying more attention, to that because I think it's gonna create even more psychological safety if I can if I can if I can make that happen. Yeah. As well. So moving on to where where we are now, where where did the idea behind Honor come from?
Yeah. The idea for Honor emerged during, COVID, when, you know, because, both both both because Apple University was almost all in person teaching. Oh, we should have mentioned we should have mentioned that part. So it was mainly Yeah. In person?
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It was almost it was almost all in person. Steve was very influenced by the seminars that he was at, you know, for his year at Reed and, you know, that that kind of environment.
I've been a case teacher my, you know, my whole professional career. So for me, teaching isn't, you know, just kinda like what I can put into people. It's what I can pull out of them, different backgrounds, different perspectives, different experience around, you know, something that our learning is focused on in common. And you couldn't get everybody into a room. And somebody who's a, you know, good teacher and I I I had many great teachers at Apple University.
You know, they can be reasonably compelling on Zoom, but not nearly for the length of time. Right? And so we had programs that were running, you know, two, three days or for a whole day, you know, across consecutive weeks. We just knew we weren't getting that level of engagement. I had the privilege to be teaching a class with, Greg, Christie, who headed up Apple's human interface team for, you know, fifteen years.
So macOS, iOS, even the iPad operating system. That was that was Greg and his team. You know, we just started talking, you know, at one point about, like, what would it be to create great collective asynchronous engagement between the live sessions? Because everybody was trying to figure out how to make the Zoom session better. But if you think about other areas where we're collectively, you know, engaged for good or bad, like, you know, the social network applications, it doesn't depend on people being logged in at the same time.
And yet there's still this sharing. But how would you do that putting a learning artifact at the center? How would you do it when you want sustained learning over, you know, a a rich and complex topic, not just people, you know, posting one picture or shooting out, you know, sort of a a quick comment and then moving on to the next. And how could you do it on people's mobile device so that they can have anywhere, anytime learning and collective engagement at the same time? That's the problem we sought to solve.
And, and and we realized, like, if if you solve that, that was way bigger than how could Apple University get itself through COVID. You could change something in education that hasn't changed for hundreds of years whether or not you're talking corporate or higher ed, you know, which is the scale economies at which it operates. Right? Because you're actually shifting the amount of instructor time to learning time. You're making it possible for people, you know, to learn, to, you know, kind of learn remotely, but also collectively.
And given the way work is today, that just seems such a powerful, powerful thing on which to focus. We we spoke about this when we first met how bad the experience was when everyone first shifted in the pandemic and and you know we're kind of using things like like zoom and other tools and sort of hashing things together to try and create an experience. Were you surprised that there wasn't a tool that already existed? I was shocked right? I mean I was absolutely shocked.
Right? I mean, here here's the basic statistic. Right? You know, $450,000,000,000 is spent on corporate training every year. 9% of those who are in charge think that their organizations are effective in in in training.
Right? Like, just try to make sense out of that. The amount of money that's being spent 9%. You know, get it. Right?
I mean, imagine, you know, if only 9% of car owners thought their cars were effective at what their cars were supposed to do. Right? I mean, it's a huge amount. And and I and I think, you know, the fundamental reason why is the technology has been so focused on delivery, you know, on taking content, right, from here and sort of bringing it to where the individual is. It's not focused on going back to what we're talking about before, it's not focused on the experience.
Right? And there are two aspects of the experience that I think are particularly important. You know, one is, you know, what is the content and where is it coming from? So many organizations are bringing, you know, third party content in from the outside in order to, you know, for even their most important courses around It's crazy. How do we lead, how do we develop our leaders.
I mean, we were talking before about, you know, you Apple's unique organization. If Apple brought content from the outside, and this was Steve's thinking with Apple University. If if Apple brought content from the outside, he said and he said this. You know, like, they'd have to unlearn half of what they learned. Right?
What you want to have a great learning organization is you need a great teaching organization first. Right? You want a way to pull from your own expertise within the organization. And that create requires a a a tool for somebody to be able to build out a course that's as easy as building out a power point or a keynote deck. That was always the objection.
Right? The objection in the past was it's too much of a heavy lift. It's too expensive. Right? Right.
So that right. So that's sort of one thing you need. And the second thing that you need is it you I mean, you and I were just talking about this with respect to a great, you know, sort of a great debate, is how much are your ideas made better when you've got other people in the room wrestling with them and challenging them? If if if everybody is just learning by, you know, us accessing content on our own without the different experiences, perspectives, you know, insights, wisdom of others, it it so lowers the impact of learn I've learned so much more through my career because of who else has been in the room with me. And so in addition to that teaching tool, what you want is you want a learning tool that essentially brings everybody's observations, reflections, comments together, as they're going through the material, you know, at their own pace and their own time.
And that's and that's a design problem to solve. Right? Like, how can you being a late night person and me being, you know, an early morning person going through the content at different times be aware of how each of us is reacting and responding. But that's what we built honor to do, is to kind of share those observations and reflections around the content in ways that are easy to understand, easy to interpret, easy to get that broader collective, sense. Yeah.
I love that. It kind of you you just basically built almost the the technology version of what we described. There. In terms of the collaboration, the ideation, that that comes together. Just walk us through quickly how like the idea of communicating and connection when you're going on a learning pathway, what does that look like?
How does that show up? Is it a nudge? Is it you know you you you you tagging a colleague to talk to them? Like how because we've seen we've seen traditional, like learning platforms try and do that and fail miserably where they have like a comment section. Right?
That that that was their version, right? And it was just crickets like no one's no one was using it right? How did you reimagine it? Yeah or or or discussion boards that exist in a learning system. And there's not we launched one years ago and me and Shane were like what's going on?
We've got all these, you know, chief HR officers in here. But the the discussion board's just empty. And we made we made boards for each topic thinking they will be full of ideas and and communication. Right. So right.
So to me, it goes back to, you know, when when I when I teach and I wanna really high level conversation around something, I need to have in front of everybody what it is that we're talking about. It could be, you know, some points on a slide. It could be, you know, a a, you know, a story, a case, and, you know, we've got some facts that are on the board, and we wanna talk about those facts that we have on the board. What, what Honor does is we do that with all the learning content. So, you know, you're you're reading through, you know, a text, or, you know, an article.
You're watching a video. And as you are, we have, you know, what we call, you know, a reaction button, which, you know, is is all designed based on research that we know from about digital highlighting, which is digital highlighting doesn't improve learning outcomes because it's too passive of an activity. And so what the design team thought really hard about was how do we introduce some intentionality? In fact, we call it intentional highlighting. So if you, you know, essentially tap something on your screen, a pop four choices.
Is it important, you know, for your job, your career, your life? Is it interesting? Who cares if it's important, but it's like a fact by, you know, one in my digital notebook? Is that unclear? I've got questions.
Or it's clear, but I still got questions because I'm not sure I agree with it. It's debatable. And so with a couple taps, you are essentially signaling, you know, how you are responding. And then we give that as, you know, essentially, you know, a color coded cue as people are reading through the content. They can see, oh, people found this interesting or important or debatable.
And you can go in and you can add additional comments. You can, you know, record and, you know, audio. You can, you know, type it if you want, you know, whatever it is. But in a way that is different than a comment section, it's always anchored in a particular location in the video or the text. The specific.
Right? Exactly. What makes those comment, you know, sections, they the you know, or the discussion boards not work and why it leads to, like, these low fidelity, very general reactions to things is either sort of responding to the whole, not I love this line or I'm not sure I understand this or I disagree with what they're saying here because, and if you can if you if you build the the user interface to allow for that level of engagement, then you can start having asynchronously the kind of debates, conversations, learning experiences that you were talking about when you and your team get around the whiteboard. I love that. So what it kinda reminds me of why social media works.
Because if you think about a TikTok video or an Instagram but the reason the comment section is four is because it's around a specific thing. Alright? So people are like, I don't agree with that. I do agree with that you know or this is debatable. Like that's the comment section of every social media post because it's specifically around that you know to your point.
So you're giving them an anchor almost to jump off of like I mean I mean or a jumping off point to actually have a conversation. When you highlight it's almost like highlighting in your in your in your book as well. Like, you know, you literally used to do. Right. How do you get does it do do I get a notification if someone says something in there?
Like like Yes. How does that how does that yeah. Right. Right. That right.
That's the other piece. Right? Which is, you know, if you're a faster reader than I am and you're, you know, so you so you and and you're faster than everybody so you get through, you're not gonna wanna look back and see the comments, the reactions that people made. So, again, in a way that is like the other applications we have in our lives, with notifications and then deep links back to the content, you can be taken to, here's where there's an interesting conversation that took place around a particular paragraph. But you'll just see that in the notification.
Or if I'm an instructor and I see that a lot of people, for example, mark something as, you know, unclear, we've built it so that I, as an instructor, can just go in, record an audio clip, or type some text that'll appear right alongside where they've marked unclear. And everybody will get notified the minute that is there. Oh my god. You're you're moving to much more of, like, an almost agile course creation methodology than, you know, kind of a set and forget, you know, sort of methodology, which is, I think, what so many of our us are used to. That brings it brings it all, you know, full circle.
I mean, we've got, you know, what we obviously survey, you know, users on our platform a lot. You know, over 90% say, you know, the platform by itself increases, engagement. Over 90% say it increases comprehension. And, and and there's just no doubt that that is because of that choice to link individuals around content at this much more specific level. Yeah.
It's so interesting that you're doing it in the flow of learning because the way we've been looking at it with Atlas, our agent that we built is what we're doing now and maybe we need to maybe reassess that, you got me thinking. Is we ask the agent to go out to imagine if you're creating some learning materials or or a learning pathway for sales right to upskill the sales team. What Atlas now will do is it will go and and kind of survey the the sales team and ask them questions. You know what's your challenges you know etcetera. So we'll ask them a set defined set of questions.
And then based on all of those that feedback that you now can gather from, you know, thousands of sales reps that you could not do manually because the AI is reaching out to them because we've connected it to Teams and Slack. So we can just message them. Hey. We're thinking about ordering this course around x, we want to get your feedback. If it gets to all of the feedback then it builds the learning pathway based on the feedback.
So it's not like someone in the L and D team thinking I know best or I know know what our sales team needs. No it's actually that. But what we haven't done is embedded it then in the learning itself the way that you have. It kind of ends there so it kind of gathers the information, builds the learning pathway, serves it to the individual but it doesn't have that interactive element that you described. Right.
Right. And and to to sort of take what we're doing in your context, it would be then seeing as people are going through the material, what are the observations, thoughts, reactions that people have to, you know, essentially, you know, what's working for them? What was a new insight? What's an observation Yeah. In the material that now somebody doesn't agree with, and here's why they don't agree with it?
And then and then you're elevating it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, it's it's it's for me why I go back to that, you know, sort of fundamental idea and why it's just so important to put human connection at the center of learning, right, is, is, you know, the the way in which the content can be made better and better over time by virtue of bringing that, you know, human interaction, you know, back to it. Absolutely.
And I think that's I mean, I've not heard of anyone doing what you're doing. Like I think that's the missing piece of the puzzle because like I always say to the team like, it's the reason why my team comes in every Monday together face to face. Because we haven't found the platform that allows us to have that type of dialogue and that debate and you know the the radical candor in our conversations that we have in person. I've just not found a way to do that over zoom. Like in not in a meaningful way and and and a way to your point that works for everyone you know because some people are in different time zones, some people are working at home, some are off so like I've just not found a a platform that does that.
That's engaging beyond like the the comment walls in the comment sections. Yeah. And I'm like this doesn't work. Like Yeah. And and and and just to be clear, I mean, you know, somebody who, again, you know, spent most of my life casing, I'm still a big believer in, you know, getting everybody into the room.
I don't think we wanna replace all of that. They're absolutely the moments. And in fact, I think they complement one another. Right? Like, if you if you if you if if you have that, you know, kind of connection that you can build with people when you're in the room together, it actually is going to enhance the degree to which the comments, the observations that you make when you're apart are deeper or more pointed, you know, because you know you've got that bond, that trust, that that connection.
So, what what we just haven't had is the ability to keep the conversation elevated when we all leave the room and in our in our our own our own place. Yeah. We can't have this conversation without talking about the word or about AI. But we did a really good job of making it look like it's going to be out. Right?
I mean We got nine minutes to go. And I was like, and I'm already thinking of what you just shared with me in the audience like of the way that AI can show up and I can already imagine so many possibilities and the art of possible. How are you leveraging AI to further enhance the learning experience? Yeah. I mean, two ways.
One, which we've, you know, already alluded to is how can you reduce the the frictions, the difficulty, the challenge for, you know, especially those who are subject matter experts but not learning experts to create a really engaging course. Right? Because if you can do that, I mean, the ability to tap into that tacit knowledge, the expertise, the wisdom that's been accumulated in your organization over time, that's gonna be such a powerful driver of content. Right? So that's so that's one.
The second, is, and and I'm particularly excited about this is, you know, for organizations that, you know, have, you know, tens of thousands of employees, you probably don't want every one of the comments and reactions that 10,000 others are making, you know, for people to scroll. It's just gonna be overwhelming in terms of volume. So AI can do two things. One, it can summarize hundreds, thousands of comments really well in a way that can be respectful to how much time do you have and still pull the power of the collective. But more importantly, you know, all of us are, you know, learn in different ways, motivated in, you know, sort of different ways.
Some of us love to be, you know, in a group with somebody who pushes us and challenges us. Others need a little bit more support from people who think like we think in order to have the confidence to make comments and observations. Because of the high fidelity data that we have for how people are reacting to the content and the comments that they make, we can do for learning at scale what essentially dating apps do for putting people together for dates, which is I can put you together with your ideal cohort that motivates your learning. And as you grow and you develop, I can start bringing in other individuals who are going to enhance your learning. And so you take scale, which has always, since the beginning of time, been a disadvantage for learning Yeah.
And you actually make it an advantage. Right? Who would want a dating app that only has a hundred people on it? Right? But when we talk about learning, you know, we've always been emphasizing small for all the reasons that are obvious.
But if I can have a hundred thousand people and I've got the profile of how they learn, what excites them, what motivates them, and I can just match you to them so you have the soulmate equivalent of your learning cohort. Imagine how much more motivating that that would be to people's learning. And that's that's that's what we can we can do now with AI. Yeah. That's fascinating.
I never even thought about it through that lens. Is it not a risk of surrounding yourself with people that have to say just have the same thoughts and perspectives? So so that's that's a design choice right? Like you know is you know and and by the way you know for me I know I'm more motivated when I'm getting people who think differently. Okay so that could be okay.
So it's not always a positive thing. You might actually have a cohort on purpose because you like being challenged. Correct. Correct. And and you can and you can also build in but there are some of us who need at least two or three people who think like us Yeah.
Yeah. Group of 15 or 20 to, like, have the confidence to express our views. Because for some of us, for, you know, for maybe good reason, like, we walk into a room and it's like, wow. Maybe maybe I I don't know. So I'm just gonna shut up as opposed to, no.
You know. You just have a different perspective. So but, again, with enough scale, that that's absolutely something that can get fine too. But I completely agree with you. The last thing that you would wanna do Yeah.
And maybe that's why the, you know, the dating app analogy can be a little bit, you know, you know, misleading, is you wouldn't want to just put people with people who think like them. Yeah. Because innovation doesn't happen that way. Exactly. Right.
But but but what you'd like to do is you'd like to put them with people who can express themselves and express a different view in ways that that individual can hear. I'm with you. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
I'm with you. I love I mean, I've never even thought of that concept of even going down that, and we're running out of time. We have to do a part two because I really wanna because I really wanna understand how that then shows up what you've just described there because I don't think anyone's even tapped into that whatsoever and I speak to many companies every single day about this as well. So there's something really interesting to you. But before I let you go, where where can people, connect with you personally if you wanna reach out and say hi and where can they learn more, about Honor?
So so our website, it's very easy. It's, honor.education, and, you know, they can reach out to me at, either on LinkedIn or, Joel, at honor dot education. Amazing Joel. I feel like I could speak to you forever. I mean I love I love what you're doing.
I hope everyone listening goes and check checks it out. All the links will be in the description. So wherever you're listening, watching right now the links will be below to check it out. But I'm super excited. I'm glad we connected.
Thank you. And Yeah. Likewise. I wish you all the best until next week. Thank you.
Yeah. No. It's been been a real pleasure, Chris. Thanks so much.
More from the HR Leaders Podcast
Joel Podolny, CEO of Honor Education and former Dean of Apple University.