How to Build Resilient Leaders in Fast-Paced Companies
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we’re joined by Adam Lancaster AIECL, Founder & Chief Learning Officer at Alkemy, to unpack what it really takes to build effective leaders in high-growth, high-change environments.
Adam shares powerful lessons from his time at Meta and Coupang, reveals the hidden struggles of first-time managers, and explains why L&D must shift from programs to conversations if it wants to drive business impact.
🎓 In this episode, Adam discusses:
Global leadership lessons from Facebook and Coupang
How to build learning ecosystems using product thinking
What L&D teams must unlearn to truly impact performance
Why conversations, not programs, build leadership at scale
Supporting first-time leaders in high-growth, high-change environments
Deel is the all-in-one payroll and HR platform for global teams.
Deel helps companies simplify every aspect of managing a workforce, from onboarding, compliance and performance management, to global payroll, HRIS and immigration support.
Deel works for full-time employees and independent contractors in more than 150 countries, compliantly.
And getting set up takes just a few minutes.
Chris Rainey 0:00
Adam, welcome to the show. How are you, my friend? I'm very well. Thank you. How are you doing? I'm good. I'm good. Last time i i saw you, not so good.
Adam Lancaster 0:09
My Yeah, you weren't. You weren't in the best shape. I'm glad. I'm glad things have picked up for you. It must be the weather. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 0:15
what made it better? I mean, this is the annoying part, the day that is, the days in the UK that it's been really hot at the days that I my my PA is booked all back to back podcast inside a warehouse with no sunlight. So it's like, oh man, I want to get outside. And it's interesting, because it's nice and cool in here, because it's like a contained warehouse. I go outside and I just kind of get here with a heat wave. That's
Adam Lancaster 0:38
good to know, though. I'll know in future, when you're really busy with podcasts, is when I should get the shorts out, because that's when the
Chris Rainey 0:45
weather's, yeah, have you enjoyed it at all or not really? Have you had a chance the weather? Yeah,
Adam Lancaster 0:50
it's great. It's been, it's been really nice. It's, it doesn't really make you want to do any work, though, does it? I know it's definitely more of a kind of hanging out in a beer garden, kind of. I came
Chris Rainey 1:00
home the other day in the afternoon, early, and my wife was in the garden with my daughter, just like the sun lounger out Jacuzzi. I was like, what's going on in I'm like, I'm working. Like you said you are on like, holiday right now, living the dream. I'm missing I'm missing out. My daughter's like, Yeah, I've been been in here for three hours. Oh, yeah, great, fantastic. I'm going back to the studio to do a show as well. It won't last long, right? Typical UK weather, give it, give it. A couple of days we back to rain. I yeah,
Adam Lancaster 1:29
I think, I think it is going to get cooler over the next couple of days. But, you know, it gives us something to gives us something to talk about, right? Yeah,
Chris Rainey 1:36
we can't win, though, because I know I'm hearing everyone complains too hot. It's like typical English. It's too hot, it's too cold. There's no can't win. We'll always we'll find a way before we jump in. Adam. Tell everyone a little bit more about your background, because you have a super interesting journey to where we are now and then, obviously, what you're currently up to?
Adam Lancaster 1:58
Yeah, absolutely. So original background, not massively dissimilar to yourself. So I grew up on a council estate in in East Lancashire, rather than East London. So yeah, so I grew up there first generation to go to university, decided that I wanted to go to uni and get something that would be practical and helpful, and would, you know, give me a job and a career? So I picked print journalism, which in the mid 90s, sounded like a good idea, and then, you know, 2025 is a bit less of a good idea. And I ended up in various reasons, but I ended up in Southern California and worked as a kind of freelance writer there for a little bit. Decided that was ever gonna win any Pulitzers. Maybe it wasn't quite for me. I don't know if you necessarily pick the best career when you're like 16, right? No. And then, and then I, and then I went back to university study history and got a part time job working in a smoothie shop. So it's about as Southern California as you can get. Yeah, coffee save it out or a coffee shop. Basically, yeah, I went to uni in Malibu, and I made smoothies as a part time job, and basically, kind of like lived in sandals and shorts and stuff, and that's how I got into learning and development. So I worked there, and then I became an assistant manager and a store manager, and the person who trained the store managers and the person who trained the people who trained the store managers. So that was my kind of segue into, into L and D. So I've always had that operator background. I've always brought that sense into it, rather than, you know, the academic like I did occupational psychology or any of that kind of stuff. So it's been that operator piece and and so yeah, that's, that was my kind of journey into L D, came back to the UK. Worked for a similar business and then moved more into the office based corporate kind of world, being in money, research, TV, mobile phones, print finally got back into print journalism. Worked for the Financial Times for a little while. I did not tell the journalist there that I had also trained as a journalist. I felt definite imposter syndrome around, you know, kind of actual writers spent some time at Facebook, doing leadership development there. And I've just come back from a couple of years in South Korea, working for a company called coupon, who were the kind of Amazon of South Korea, and now, yeah, back in the UK, doing some some freelancing stuff and some consultancy for sort of startups and smaller organizations who are looking to, I think, invest a little bit more in their learning strategy and their leadership, get a bit more kind of support and development there. So it's really nice to be able to move from a big organizations where you got ton of resource, but it moves really slowly. It's a smaller, scrappier organizations where maybe they don't have some of that stuff, but the speed of implementation and the ability to go from an idea to a decision is is so is so different. So, yeah, really enjoying that super,
Chris Rainey 4:55
super happy for you. I mean, there's pros and cons to both, obviously, right? But. I would always, you know, choose the scrappy approach. Like, one of the things I love about, obviously, running this business is, is exactly what you said, is, like, Shane and I could have an idea today and execute tomorrow, execute the same day. You know, we've gone away, like, had an idea, Gone Home, built the website, bought the product next day, launched it, and two days later, there's money hitting the bank account, right? And that is like a drug, like, it's a suit. It's so high. For those people that haven't experienced that, like, coming from a very large business where you've got, like, like you said, so much red tape, and it's moving so slowly, so then just being unleashed. You know, don't get wrong. There's, there's also the risk, because you now own it, the cost is on you, right? So it's people like the idea of it sometimes, and then like, oh, this this land. If it goes wrong, it's on me and and also, I'm funding it. So there's that part of it which, but that's, that's what comes in, that's it comes with a territory, if you, if you want to do that as well, what was the what was the thing that made you? What's the catalyst that made what was the why behind you making that change from working in large scale to now going on this new journey?
Adam Lancaster 6:13
I think that, I think you always want to walk the walk when you're in learning and development, about constantly developing and pushing yourself and really understanding what the people you work with are kind of going through. And I'd been in a number of different organizations, a lot of bigger companies, and I felt that this was a space that I kind of wanted to get back into a little bit. It was an area that I didn't know a ton about. You know, when you work with with tech organizations, you're dealing with a lot of people who have worked in startups before, being part of that ecosystem, and so you hear a little bit from them about it and wanting to get in there and do that myself, setting up your own businesses, you'll know you learn so much you had absolutely no idea about, right? And some of it, you really wish you didn't have to learn about. I didn't think I was gonna be sitting here trying to work out what pension provider I was gonna have. But, you know, these are all things, yeah, you kind of have to pick up and, and sort of go through and. And I think, I think the more you, as I said, I come from an operator background, and I've always felt that learning and development is best when it really understands the business. And I've always been hyper interested in the businesses that I've worked in, how they operate, what their challenges are, what their strategy is, how they would approach that. I've always felt more of a business leader first, rather than an L and D person. And so I think this is just another opportunity to kind of explore in that space and do it in a different do it in a different environment, yeah,
Chris Rainey 7:45
and that's the same conversation I'm having with CHROs every day, right? Exactly through the same lens, like we literally had a session on Wednesday with Dave Orick and around 50 CHROs. And it was, we're still having this conversation around HR is or HR, you know, HR is the business, right, you know, and working back from the business and the customer, and how we how do you actually make money? And then working back towards learning in HR, and then, how do we help support that, right? As well. It's crazy that we're still having that conversation 2020, years later from when I started. It's still not, you know, evident in most companies HR and L D and most businesses I'm speaking to are still order takers to say nice. Say it nicely. I think
Adam Lancaster 8:28
you get in your comfort zone. You get in the space that you like doing. I think there's a lot of there's a lot of learning and development, a lot of HR that is done for other HR people or other L and D people, the way that we design stuff, the way that we build things, that the way that we talk about it, the language that we use, I don't think we're as business focused and business understanding as maybe we should be. You know, when I was leading my teams, I would always say to them, you know, have business conversations first. You know, don't go in with. Here's a learning and development solution. Don't go in with. Here's the latest thing that we've got. Don't go in with. Here's the program that we have. Like go in be curious about what your stakeholders are experiencing, what's happening with that Well, whenever we had one on ones or team meetings or discussions, we would always start off with, what are we hearing in the organization, what's happening there, and that would always ground us in whatever it else it is that we were doing. So yeah, I'm with you. I think that, you know, we should be part of that ecosystem and supporting it, rather than kind of off doing our own thing, which makes us feel good about what we're creating, what we're building. You know, it's our nice, happy space. But I don't think that's I don't think that challenge is enough, and I don't think that's really what our organizations are after
Chris Rainey 9:45
a big part of every conversation I'm having right now, as you can imagine, with with HR executives is upskilling and reskilling their leadership and a big focus on frontline managers. What are some of the lessons from your time? Facebook and Coupang and supporting leaders, especially in higher growth, higher change settings that you could share your audience,
Adam Lancaster 10:08
yep. Um, so I think that the first thing that you need to get, especially leaders, to think about is really focusing on impact. You know, there's a lot of Facebook's full of buzzwords, and you take them away with you, and I think focus on impact is really one of those that that's kind of lived with me. It's, you know what? What is my role here? How do I add value? What is it that I'm here to do? What is it I'm here to kind of achieve? And that should be the stuff that that guides you. Whatever your role is, if you're a first line line manager, okay, how do I add value to my team? How do I support the people around me? What is it that they need from me? And what does my business need from me? If you're an organizational leader with you know, 1000 people underneath you, again, what's my role? How do I add value? What does that what does that kind of look like for me? So I think that's the piece that people need to get super clear on. And when you work with leaders, or you work with managers and they're struggling, it's usually because they're not clear on what they're doing. Like, how am I adding value? What's the impact I'm having in the business? I think that's the first thing that people need to get clear on. The next one is around tensions. I talk to leaders a lot about how you manage tensions. You know that's kind of the heart of leadership, is making those decisions between, well, we could do this, or we could do this, and I have to pick a thing. Which one do we go with? So usually it's related to, you know, speed versus quality, or speed versus inclusivity, or, you know, kind of knowing and getting into the detail versus delegating and trusting my team. Like, where am I on that kind of spectrum, and how am I managing all of that? And again, I think whether you're a manager for the first time or or you're a leader, where are you on those and are you picking the right place for you to be at that moment in time? Like, what is it that you need to be doing? What are the people around you need to be doing? How do you do that? And I think the third thing is around just being intentional. Why am I doing the things that I'm doing? Why am I saying the things that I'm saying? Why am I acting in the way that I'm acting? Is it why I need to be doing right now? Or is it because this is my comfort zone? Is it because this is better for me? Is it because, you know, this is, this is what I've seen my previous managers and bosses do all the people around me doing. And I think you need to sort of sit down and reflect on what that is. So, you know, a lot of this is not it's usually not a knowledge piece. No, it's usually more around where and how are you spending your time and and is that really the right place and space for you to be? And I think just getting managers and leaders to reflect on a regular basis helps them to check in with themselves about where they're spending their time and where they're spending their energy practically
Chris Rainey 12:53
in your previous organizations. How did you execute on that and bring that to life? Yeah,
Adam Lancaster 13:00
Facebook. We had this idea around I love the way
Chris Rainey 13:04
we still call it Facebook, by the way, because I also call it Facebook and not meta. I just find it out there. I also my friends. I even I interviewed people recently for meta, but I still say Facebook as well. Yeah, carry on.
Adam Lancaster 13:18
I know I'm kind of old school. I guess it's because I started, yeah, there's a whole other conversation there around, you know, Facebook as an organization was very different to meta as an organization and the whole other podcast during the during the middle of all of that lot. But yeah, so Facebook slash meta, we talked about, we had a kind of moments, piece of it. So we talked about kind of micro moments, current moments, and then these kind of major moments in your career. I forget the actual phrase that we gave for the third one. And micro moments was building this practice into your day to day life. And we were talking about this a little bit before we came in here, about integrations with things. I think the more you can bring in this idea of this self reflective practice into the tools that you're using already, the easier it is for you to kind of go through that. If you joined as a leader at meta, the first thing that you got was you joined this massive tech organization, right, super, you know, on the cutting edge of technology. And the first thing you got was you got a notebook and pen, and it's like, there you go. Congratulations, Chris. You know, you're a senior VP of such and such. Here's a notebook and pen, and in the notebook was a series of these kind of self reflective practices. It was an invitation every day for you to build that habit of checking in with what am I doing today? Where am I spending my energy? Where does my team need me to be spending it. Where does my where does the business need me to be spending it. How am I approaching that? And I think that habit of doing that, taking that time away, to stop and pause and reflect and say, right, what do I need to do today, or what do I need to do this week? And building that in as a habit, I think that is one. The best things that leaders can do, or managers can do. I mean, I used to do that when I first became a manager 20 odd years ago, I would carve out a couple of hours every week where I would do that, I would reflect back on the previous week, what went well, what didn't go well, what do I need to do differently? What data do I have to back up some of those assumptions, and then what do I need to do for the week ahead? And then reflecting on that, and then again, going back and saying, Okay, I made these tweaks and changes. What happened there? Did that work? Did it not work? So I think that that habit is is absolutely kind of critical for people, and that doesn't require lots and lots of infrastructure. It doesn't require lots and lots of time. It doesn't require lots and lots of investment from an individual or from a learning and development perspective. It just requires that kind of continual focus of the importance of delivering that, and the importance of doing that, and then I think sharing the benefits and the stories that that kind of come from that. So yeah, yeah, that was the kind of micro moments piece. Current moments was focusing on what was going on in the business in the world, whatever that might be. I mean, a major, major kind of current moment was that change from Facebook to meta. You know what that meant? How you bring people through that within the organization, this pivot towards the metaverse. Obviously, you know, when you're in a company like meta, there's a lot of external noise that you have to deal with and you have to talk about, but then there are also internal challenges and opportunities that you can discuss as well. So I think also looking for how you bring that to life for people, and what that looks like. And then the major moments are, you know, probably more programmatic, getting hired, getting promoted leading a new project. You know, there's probably more of an investment of time, but I think if you're a new manager or a leader, you don't need to spend lots and lots of time. You just need to be thoughtful about how you're checking in with yourself, about how you're spending your energy, and that will give you the biggest stuff.
Chris Rainey 16:57
Yeah, what else on doing? My next question, it was like when most, most, most managers, including myself, were just thrown into the deep end. How, Chris, you're a great, you know, individual sales contributor. Surely you're going to be a great manager. And all of a sudden I found myself in out of nowhere, a manager of a team of 30 people with zero experience. You know, what advice do you give? Uh, for both, both HR leaders in terms of how they could help support first time managers and really help set them up for success.
Adam Lancaster 17:28
I think the biggest struggle for first time managers is that move from me to we, yeah, you know, it's, it's my successes because of the things that I've done, and now my success comes from how I support other people, and the tendency to lean in too much. You know it's I mean, you're parents, so you'll know this better than I will. But you know, that sense that you can't be overly protective, because people have to learn themselves. You know, they have to fail to a certain extent in order to kind of understand things. It's do I know when it's enough failure for them to learn versus, you know, catastrophic failure for them and for the business like, where's that, where's that kind of balance and where's that line. But I think a lot of it is letting go and trusting the team and checking in with them. And again, I think this is one of those where you have to say to yourself, that is my role. Now, my role is not to be a super individual contributor. My role is to lift up others around me and help them to shine. So what is it that they need from me? How do I support them? How do I work with them? You know? What does that? What does that look like? One of my favorite, I'm not a huge model guy, but one of my favorite is this action centered leadership piece, certainly for new managers, where you have this idea around, you know, balance. You like spinning plates, you got individual. So how do I support each individual within my team? Because they're all different people, and they all need slightly different things, but I also have to think about as as a collective and as a team. How do we have one goal? How do we have one vision? How do we all stay kind of connected and supportive of one another? But then we also need to get stuff done. You know, as a manager, I'm given tasks. I'm given, you know, KPIs that I need to hit, OKRs, all of these kinds of things. How do I keep my team engaged and my individuals engaged, so that we're hitting all the stuff that we need to and you're constantly spinning these plates and thinking about, you know, where am I? Where am I doing this? Well, where am I not doing it well? And I think just visualizing that and knowing that you're jumping from place to place to place, I think the final thing you can do is just give yourself some grace, but you're going to mess it up, right? You're going to make mistakes, because you're a human being, and I don't think that the. People that you support as a manager, they don't expect you to be perfect. You know, they will tell you what it is that they expect from you, but they don't expect you to be perfect. They don't expect you to get every answer right. They don't expect you to know everything. And I think being comfortable with that and being okay with making some mistakes, I think that just takes a lot of pressure off your shoulders. I think when you try to be perfect is when you kind of mess it up a little bit. Yeah. So I think, I think for you as managers, that's, that's probably the main thing to think about,
Chris Rainey 20:30
yeah, that that last part, part is a was a real game changer for me, and comes up all the time. Came up yesterday in a podcast of a chro that I was speaking to, and I said, What was the one of the main things that you've lessons you've lessons you've learned over your career and, and the first thing you said was, when I go into a new role, is, is being vulnerable in a way that you just, you know, and and understand that I'm going to make mistakes, and I'm going to have to lean on my team and, you know, sharing that, you know, hey, just because I'm the chief people officer doesn't mean I have all the answers, yeah, and it comes
Adam Lancaster 21:01
from it comes from experience, and it comes from confidence. You know, the Yeah, the most senior leaders I work with, the best senior leaders that I've worked with, have that vulnerability. I don't know everything. I have made mistakes, and they're genuine mistakes. It's not that kind of performative, you know, like, Oh, let me tell you about this terrible mistake. And it actually turned out that actually turned out it was this amazing success. It's not that kind of interview style, you know, question, you know, my biggest weakness is just have too many strengths, you know, that sort of stuff. It's, I think, when you you know your strengths, you know your areas of opportunity, you know the places where you're good and the places where you're not, and I think being comfortable with all of that lot just helps you to really kind of engage with the people around you, and it builds so much trust with everybody that you're working with. And I think as, I think as a first time manager or first time leader, you're so desperate to prove yourself, yeah, that you feel less comfortable with saying, like, Hey, I don't know how to do that, like you're better than me at that. Don't come to me for this. Here's the bit where I add value. This is the stuff that I can help and support with. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 22:09
it's interesting, because what the fear of that is obviously that you're going to be seen as less than or, you know, this sort of imposter. But what you find, and I'd love to afford to what I found is it actually, it creates incredible relationships and trust with those people. They're way more engaged. That creates a lot of psychological safety in the team, because they feel like, oh, wow, I can actually be a human being. And actually, also you'll find that they're now more wanting to share right when they're struggling, etc. So it just does the opposite area of all of the all the fears that you have. It actually does the complete opposite, and it vulnerability, even then becomes a superpower as opposed to a weakness. Yeah,
Adam Lancaster 22:55
um, we would talk a lot about courage with leaders, and that is one of the one of those areas where you need to be courageous about just being honest, the things that you don't know, the fallabilities that you have, the mistakes that you've made, the sometimes even just the the agony that you're going through making a decision, right? Like, I don't know if this is the right thing for us to do, but you know, we're going to go do it, and I'm going to take going to take the ownership of that. I think that I've always been a big believer that the more information you have, the better decisions that you make. And so I've always been big on sharing lots and lots of information with people in my team. And I think that if you can build an environment where people are comfortable with talking about what they're thinking, what they're feeling, what they're confident about, what they're not confident about, what they know, what they don't know, what their fears and concerns are. I think that just gives you more and more data to make better decisions. Yeah, I think when you're pretending or putting up a facade, I think that means that you're closing down a data set you could be using to make a much better decision. So I would rather know people in my team or people that I work with, what they're comfortable with, what they're not comfortable with, what they really think about something. And I would want them to know the same about me. I want to role model that for them. I'm a big believer that leadership really sets the tone for what happens across an organization, and so I think you have to live that if you want to have that type of environment and to have that kind of information and data yourself. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 24:34
one of the, one of the things I used to do earlier in my career, and even here tomorrow, sometimes HR leaders, I used to try think that I was doing my employees a favor by sheltering them from some of the hard decisions that needed to be made, or some of the circumstances that were, you know, that we found ourselves in that if I shelter them for that, that, you know, I'm protecting them, but I feel like I was, didn't, I'm just realized I'm kind of robbing them. A other moment to build resilience to our point earlier, to bring their their diversity of thought and perspective and insight sort of conversation. And I've said this many times on the podcast, but like the pandemic from us was one of the big ones, where I had to come to the EAP team and say, you know, we've lost 90% of our revenue because we did physical events, and that's how we made money, and obviously the world shut down. I don't know what we're gonna do, which is really hard to come back to the office and say that to the team, but we're gonna figure it out today and make a decision together. That's one of the hardest things that I've ever had to do, is because they're all looking to me like, hey, like, how am I gonna pay my mortgage? You know, I've got kids at home. And like, what's the plan, Chris, I was like, I don't know. This is like, kind of what this is, this is what I have in mind, but I don't know. And together, we made that decision, and the level of like, you know, commitment from everyone that we were truly in it together just was amazing, you know, and describe the discretionary effort that was put in and the it was just a really refreshing moment that and empowered everyone in a business that we're pushing in the same direction together,
Adam Lancaster 26:12
the greatest team that I ever worked with was was back in my kind of smoothie sharp days. Um, and from very early on, we did the same sort of thing. We had a massive whiteboard in the back of the store, and we'd ride all of the financials on there. And we're talking about, I mean, I was in my early 20s. The vast majority of the staff were 1718, you know, you're on minimum wage. You're doing eight hours a week, you know, kind of part time, or something like that. You know, this is not usually thought of as being an environment where people are kind of super engaged with what's going on. But we had all this information. Up there, and we just shared all of that really openly, and people will come up to you, they would say, hey, look, I'm looking at the numbers, and, you know, sales are kind of slow this week, so like, why don't I go home a couple of hours early? You know, people are taking that on themselves and empowering themselves to do that kind of stuff, because they feel an ownership for kind of what's happening and what's going on, and when there's success, then they share in that success. And when there's issues and challenges, then they share in that as well. And it becomes more kind of collaborative. Of course, you as a as the leader or as the manager, you take probably the majority of that kind of decision making process, and ultimately it was, you know, hey, this is my business, and I need to work out what some of this stuff looks like, but you're inviting people into that conversation. You're inviting people into that discussion. And I think the more that you do that, whether it is situations like that, or whether it's just, you know, as organizations, we talk a lot about how you deal and handle with change, right? And I think when you feel like you're you understand the reasons, and you're a part of making those decisions, you're you're much more comfortable with with what's happening and what's approaching. I think when it's done badly is when you try to, as you said, you shelter people from it, you try to hide them from what's going on, and then make the perfect decision and then land that and I think that's when it I think that's when it goes badly. To speak to the tensions, though, there are moments when, as a leader, you need to make a judgment call, of course. Where is this where is this information useful? Yeah, of course. And then where is this information noise that gets in the way right? Like I know these things. And then this is useful to help people to make decisions and to feel part of it. And then this is stuff they don't necessarily need to know. I'm not hiding it from them, but I don't think it's as useful as it could be to help them with what it is that they need to do right now. So again, I think you need to be checking in with yourself and saying, what do they need to help them? And then what would be a distraction, or, you know, would get in the way of them being able to execute right now? And I don't think you ever get that balance perfectly right, but it's definitely one of those things you need to think
Chris Rainey 28:41
about. It's a tough one. One of the things you said before, which was interesting, is, is the focus should be on creating conversations, not programs. Could you share what you mean by that and why that's important? Yeah,
Adam Lancaster 28:53
I think that programs are too slow for a start. You know, if you're building learning and development programs. You know, nobody needs to wait around for nine months for you to kind of build and create it, or for them to get an invite to it, or something like that. And I think certainly, if you're dealing with I think if you're dealing with junior ICs, or you're dealing with junior managers, you probably need more programmatic support. I think if you're dealing with senior leaders, programs tend to focus on knowledge acquisition. And leaders don't tend to need that. What they tend to need is knowledge application. I already sort of know what it is that I should be doing, but how do I apply what I know to the situation that I find myself in right now? And they need to solve those problems now, especially if you're in a fast paced, you know, high change environment, or they need to solve them before they become a problem with a big P, right? You can kind of see it coming down the pipeline. And they also live in these really hyper specific contexts where a program will give you generic scenarios and generic content that you're kind. Play around with them, and instead, they need hyper context. I also think that when you're with leaders, even if they go on a program, if you ask them what it is that they liked about it, it's the conversation they had with other leaders. Yeah, during like, you know, like, what was the best thing about that five day residential program that you went on? And it's like, oh, it was really great to connect with these people and talk about what challenges they face in their business and how they're approaching it, and then we did some kind of peer coaching and things like that. So I think it's more about, how do you create those moments where people can have useful conversations? So it could be you as a L and D business partner, or a leadership coach or whatever it might be enabling that. I'm a big believer in upskilling and working with HR business partners to do that. I mean, that was one of the best things about working at meta. They were the an amazing team of HR business partners. They're absolutely fantastic, and they were great at doing this sort of stuff. So again, they were good sounding board for leaders around them to give them that support and to engage them in those kind of conversations. And I think this is, you know, where AI starts to come into it a little bit more now, right? That ability to be able to have a conversation in the moment when you need it, but nobody's physically around for you to engage with, where you can engage with a virtual conversation. I mean, even if it's just you banging a few prompts into, you know, chat GPT and I mean, it's always good for the ego, right? Always tells me everything I put in there is like the greatest idea ever, and this is gonna be fantastic, right? So I always love that bit at the beginning, but I think you can train these models so that you know they're they're engaging and encouraging people about how they're thinking about doing it, how they're thinking about approaching it, what they're looking at doing so I think most of what leaders need, in fact, even most of what managers need is, you know, a conversation or a discussion. You know, we were the stuff we were talking about there, just as a first line manager. Hey, this is the challenge that I face. What should I do? Okay, what are you thinking of doing? I'm thinking about doing this. Isn't this? Okay? What's the impact of doing that? It's you don't need to go to a course to learn these things. You just need to bounce some ideas off of somebody, and that's a five minute conversation that just gives you the insight or the confidence to go and make the decision that you need to go
Chris Rainey 32:21
make, yeah, it's so interesting you say that because when we first built Atlas copilot, that was one of the challenges is you like, open AI, you just put it wasn't conversational. So one of the first things we did was, was train the model to be bi directional and conversational. So typically you ask chatgpt something, it just spits out an answer, right? Whereas we now, Atlas will follow up with questions like, but why? What you trying to achieve? You know, like, engages in a dialog, and obviously, over time, it learns more about the user than probably they know about themselves, in terms of that. And next month, we're actually launching the voice equivalent. So you just have a conversation actual, an actual conversation with Atlas. Then it will challenge you ask questions back, and it will also understand the context of your business. So any enterprise company we work with, we actually embed the HR strategy, the business strategy, the leadership competencies, the culture, basically, as much as we can, so that when it's asking questions back, it's also through the lens of your organization. And that's super cool to be able to have to have that he knows your job title, right? He knows your funky, like funky. Those are all really interesting things that you don't you know. Having that power in your pocket to do that is pretty cool.
Adam Lancaster 33:41
Anything you can do to reduce the friction between what you're learning and your ability to apply it is always useful so it knows, or eventually they will know who you're talking about, what the issues are, what the challenges are, culturally, how you approach some of these conversations within your own organization, right? Because how you do it in one is not going to be the same as in another. You know, you can go watch a you can go watch a video somewhere about how to have a performance conversation, but it's like, well, we wouldn't actually do that in our company, or that's not how somebody would answer it or what they would do. So you're able to really kind of train it on these kinds of things. So I think having that kind of performance support is always going to be useful. I don't think it replaces conversations with others. But I think it does give you another support tool and another support mechanism that you can kind of, that you can kind of work with. So yeah, I think having that, that coaching in your pocket, support there that you need for those moments, I think, is just going to build so much kind of confidence for managers and leaders to go into those kinds of conversations.
Chris Rainey 34:43
Yeah, one of the biggest surprises we always get is when people join go into the Atlas, they don't realize that. They're like, Oh, you have in person. Yeah, we have this. But once a month we have different events all over the world where these leaders will come together. They're like, why have you built that? Like, you got an AI? I'm like, because you can never replace that part. And we've had, like, other investors and people say you should, like, get rid of that and just make this purely a tech play. And we're like, no, no, no, no. We don't want to lose that element. So once a week, we come together virtually, and we do sort of like breakout rooms, and then Quarterly, we come together in person, and that's all part of the ecosystem. To your point, there's certain things like, like, you are, right? The main thing that people talk about, talk with asking about, you know, HR leaders, over the last 10 years, they will mention a conversation or someone they met, and how that conversation led to x, is always that, like, it always comes back to that. What we're trying to do with Atlas is in the flow of work, how can we give you instant answers to your questions and just help you, as opposed to replace to your point, all of the great things we know that already works,
Adam Lancaster 35:52
and it's the serendipity of those conversations. It's meeting somebody and talking about something that you didn't go there to talk about, or you didn't even know that person was there. But yeah, these these tools, they add value. I don't think they take away from things. They just give you another thing. I wish I had, such and such now you have the ability to be able to do that that you wish you had before. So I think they're, they're additive to to kind of what's out there and what you've got. And I think they're going to be, they're going to be so useful for people. Like, I wish I had those bits instead of having the ability to have snippets of conversations with somebody or just figure stuff out for yourself, to be able to have that reassurance and that guidance available to you, kind of on demand, in addition to all the other stuff that you got. Like, yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be super useful. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 36:40
What do you with the age of AI? What do you think the biggest challenge is going to be for L, D teams? Because this is, like, really, one of the biggest disruptors we've ever seen. And you know, you're seeing these AI tools pop up where, hey, we're going to create a learning pathway, or a course that would take you, normally, a couple of months in seconds. You just upload, upload upload your materials. Here, we're going to spit out a learning pathway. Like, there's just so much going on. Like, how do you think this is going to impact the role of someone in L, D now, or the team? I think that it's
Adam Lancaster 37:14
always hard when you're in the middle of it to know, I agree with you. I think AI feels different to some of the previous ones. You know, I've been in it for kind of long enough to have been through all the other stuff. I mean, at least we stopped talking about everything being the Netflix of learning that was, that was big for a few years, then everything was going to be VR now, AI is, I mean, I shouldn't say that being x meta, but yeah, that did kind of catch on that disappear pretty quickly, but I think that, I think it enables us to do so much more, to move so much quicker than we could have done before. You know, I think that when we were, I mean, was a coupon, we restructured the team, we reorganized the Learning and Development function so that we could be much quicker, much more agile than we had been before. Before, it was very program and moment focused. It was, you know, we'd spend a couple of months building an event, and it would be a blended event, you know, there'd be some pre work and there'd be some post work, and there'd be a workshop and all of these kinds of things, and then we switched to developing a lot more content, much more quickly. We were putting something out into the business probably once a week. It wasn't perfect, but that was the point. It was building and gathering that data and then using it, and iterating and learning for each time, and being able to test lots of different versions. How does this one land with this audience versus this audience? How does this messaging work? What about when we design it in this way like what does that look like? And I think AI allows you to move much faster from idea to some sort of solution out there, and it enables you to gather that data and information. It allows you to analyze that data and information a lot quicker. So I think it becomes something that is a huge opportunity for for L and D teams. I think it means that you can be out in the business, talking to people, understanding what's going on, gathering their needs, realizing what their pain points are, you know, really kind of embedding yourself there, rather than doing an annual learning needs analysis, locking yourself away in, you know, L and D or HR only rooms, building stuff and then releasing it, you know, twice a year, and then sitting around and waiting for the happy sheets to roll in and to deliver some sort of ROI PowerPoint deck at the end of the year. I think it just allows you to spend so much more time, actually, with the business, and less time probably, building and creating things. You know, you can speed that stuff up. You know, with AI tools, it's always about being able. To evaluate what comes out of it, you know, it will, it will create great stuff if you give it good prompts. And then you also have to know what comes out of it, whether it's really fit for purpose, and then kind of train it again, right? So you still need that, that lens, that knowledge, that understanding around, you know, kind of what really works, and what doesn't really work, but it speeds up everything else in between. I'm super excited about what it enables teams to be doing. I wish it had been around 10 years ago. I could have done so much more and had so much more impact.
Chris Rainey 40:34
Yeah, you mentioned the word like impact, like story as old as time has always been the challenge in n, d of like, how do we measure ROI of spend? How do you think AI? You think AI is going to help with that? Having the data that we perhaps that would take months and years to gather, that we now can do within minutes. In some cases, I think we can.
Adam Lancaster 40:59
I think we can I think we can do it better. I think learning and development has often not wanted to talk about ROI, because, as I said, I think for many years, and still in some organizations, we we build L and D stuff for L and D people, and we build programs that look good and look nice, and then we saw us really hard to evaluate it and impact on it and that kind of thing. And I think when you start to think more of like, what's a business problem that we're going after, and then how do we support that, and what does that look like? So at coupon one of the challenges was around top talent retention, which isn't necessarily a kind of where you would start from an L and D program, but then you take that as a challenge, and then you work back from that. So that gives you your data set, and that gives you your understanding, and I think it gives you better access to data across your business. I think where AI might struggle is most companies have pretty bad data about what goes on inside their own organization, particularly when it comes to people, and I think that needs to change. I know you've had a bunch of people analytics kind of experts on the show, and have talked to them, and I know that there's, there's improvement there, but I really do think that needs to be improved. There's definitely you want to be data driven. You want to make great decisions based off of that. Often the data is not available to you or it's very difficult for you to interpret. I think AI will help that, and I think it will also shine a spotlight on where that needs to be improved so you can make better decisions about what it is that you're going after. I mean, I say that as you know, Facebook meta, their entire business model is about understanding their users data and then monetizing that right internally didn't always have the greatest data about what was going on. I've worked for market research firms where it's the same thing. So I think that we need better internal people data so that we can have a better understanding around the impact that we're having. But it has to drive from that. The value of AI, though, is it means that your ability to extract information from that data and tell stories from that data is sped up so much more, and it's given to complete data dancers like myself, right? Like don't even don't my wife cringes every time I go near an Excel spreadsheet, you know? So, yeah, right. Whereas this just allows you to do that so much quicker than you could have done before. So I think that's gonna give you a ton of insights, and it's gonna allow you to really focus in on, like, what a major business challenges that we should be. So what are two or three things have real business impact, and then go after that, rather than, let's create lots and lots of programs and lots of stuff
Chris Rainey 43:40
I love, like, what you I wish she was in my founders meeting a few months ago and said that that was one of the biggest changes we made to our product, is that we had this amazing learning repository of all of the content, all of the learning pathways. But so what Right? Like, it's like, you start going into a supermarket and you have all the ingredients you're like, but what meal are we making? And one of the things that we end up completely revamping Atlas is to start with the business. And so what we designed is an agent that when you we onboard a client, it basically sends out some messages to the organization, and kind of gathers information from, you know, frontline managers, HR, etc, about what are the sort of core challenges, and it brings it back. So it gives you what will take you weeks and months. It can just send it out via teams and slack, ask questions, gather that information and bring it back. And on top of that, you then can upload different, you know, different data points from the business, whether it's the HR strategy to business strategy you know your your like your literally the financials we've had companies upload that, and then you basically provide all of the context, and then based on that feedback, you can then create specific learning pathways directly linked to those business outcomes. And that completely changed. Yeah, the way we view and build our product, because when we talk about ROI, well, we know exactly what the one specific thing we're focusing on and then building from there. So then we can actually measure, measure the ROI of that as well. But that was a big shift for me and the team to be like, Okay, we're not doing just learning here or the Netflix, the AI powered of the Netflix learning model. We're actually creating real change in starting at the top of the business and then coming back down. So that was a big pivot for us along the
Adam Lancaster 45:32
organization that I'm supporting at the moment, the company that I'm working with right now, same thing. Bring in, help us develop a learning strategy, and it's like, okay, what are the business challenges? What does that stuff look like for you? It's a SaaS product, a startup, a small organization, hyper growth. You know, the traditional pattern would be, okay. Let's build out your learning offering. Here's a bunch of stuff for your ICS, here's a bunch of stuff for your managers. Here's a bunch of stuff for your leaders. Let's make sure that we got the full catalog of things available to you. And for this, it's not, there's basically four work streams that come out of it, and then one of them, from a management development perspective, is entirely focused just on performance conversations. And it's not. Let's you know, your managers have a lot of skill gap areas across a variety of different things, but the thing that is going to have their biggest uplift for your organization is performance conversations. It's not all of the other stuff would that benefit them? Sure. Of course it would. But the focus area for you, the biggest uplift for you, is around helping them to make these conversations much more impactful, because the knock on effect across the rest of your business is that. So we're not building a management development program, we're building support to enable managers to have these one specific types of conversations. And then that is the thing that will give you the kind of bigger stop lifts. So I think that's where you know, learning development, learning development strategies need to be, what's a, what's an actual business challenge, what's a, what's a people related challenge to that. And then where does learning help to support that. If we apply learning here, that's how it impacts your people, that's how it impacts your business. That's the thing that you need. You don't need, you know, a bunch of just learning for you that's kind of out there. I love your piece around going to the supermarket, you know, we used to get this. A lot of people come to, you know, come to you in learning development, like, Ah, what's available for me, for my development? You know, what should I be working on? It's like, what do you want to do? Like, that's where you start with, right? You know, when you go to the like, what do you want to make? Yeah, exactly. What do you want to have for dinner tonight? Right? You don't roam around the supermarket. It's overwhelming. There's too much stuff, right? I don't tell you everything that I've got. It's like, what do you want to make? Okay? Then I can help you with, like, how you put all that lot together? What do you already have? Okay, you only need these two ingredients then to kind of do that. So I think that's where, yeah, learning strategies have got to go. It's not about content, because content is kind of out there now. It's about, you know, helping deliver what it is that you actually need for whatever it is that your kind of business challenges at that moment in
Chris Rainey 48:04
time? Yeah, that goes to a point we spoke, we've spoken about before, and is shifting the mentality from L and D from a service provider to a strategic builder, yeah. And I think that's really what you just described there, in being hyper focused on that specific thing, as opposed to, like, here's a whole library, and then no one uses it, because it's just everything as well. What is the one? What is the one or two things that you could specifically focus on as well? So, yeah, I think,
Adam Lancaster 48:35
I think that's right. And I mentioned this before. I think that's about understanding your business, being curious about your business. You know, when you're when you're talking to business leaders, when you're talking to people in your organization, you're talking about the challenges that they're facing and things that they're up to, and you're hyper curious about all of that law, and you understand the implications for them, and you understand the implications for other teams. Like, yeah, you bring, ultimately, you bring a learning lens to that. If you work in learning and development or wherever you know whatever SME kind of function you might have. But I think that understanding the business, talking to people about the business being part of that, I think that's how you become a strategic builder, because you want people to think this is a smart guy. He knows the business. He knows what my challenges. You know what my issues are. I enjoy having a conversation about what's going on, and it might lead to a learning piece, or it might not, or you become, especially if you work in learning development in an organization, you tend to be a great connector, because, you know, a lot of people, yeah. And so you can be like, Oh, have you talked to this person? Or, Oh, you're facing this challenge. You know, I was talking to this person over here about a very similar challenge. And then here's what they're doing. So you can bring those kind of pieces together. And again, I think that's where you become kind of. Useful and helpful. I think that, I think sometimes in learning about we over focus on the stress around or we want to be strategic, because I don't want to be strategic. Just go, be it. Go talk to people about that. Like, go, go live that thing, right? I think the other thing, as well as like, oh, we want to see at the table, and it's like, you know, you you want to see the table because you want people to think that you're important, right? You want to see the table because you want to have that kind of ego boost and and I think it's, it's being invited into the conversations where you add value to it. I think that's what's kind of really important. So get out there, talk to people you know, engage with them on what they're doing. Engage with them on what they're kind of working on. Working on. Just be naturally curious about what's going on. You've got learning in your back pocket. They know that you don't need to prove that sort of stuff, especially if you're a learning leader. But just go understand your business, understand the people that you're around. Be naturally curious. And I think that just helps you to be thought of more of a more of as a partner, than a than a service provider. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 51:01
I love that. Listen, Adam, I let you go. Where can people connect with you? They want to reach out say hi, welcome you. Where's the best place?
Adam Lancaster 51:08
Absolutely? Um, yeah, always, always, love to kind of connect and chat to people. As I said, best places on LinkedIn, just drop me a note on there. I'm probably, I'm probably way too hyperactive on there. I love, I have this real thing about notifications on my phone, so I immediately have to get rid of them. So yeah, I'm hyperactive. You're a brave man. I'm a real, yeah, I'm a real Inbox Zero kind of guy and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, you know. So yeah, absolutely. Connect with me on connect with me on LinkedIn. Happy, always happy to have a chat. And yeah, see what's going on in the world now. It was
Chris Rainey 51:41
a pleasure. Well, I appreciate you taking the time. You taking the time to come on the show, and I wish you all the best until my next week. Thank you very
Adam Lancaster 51:46
much. Appreciate the appreciate the invite, and, yeah, let's, let's go enjoy some of that lovely, sunny weather. While we still can, we'll try.
More from the HR Leaders Podcast
Michael D’Ambrose, Board Director at SHRM and Former EVP & CHRO at Boeing.