Why Don’t More Leaders Build Learning Communities?

What if one of the most powerful ways people learn at work is also one of the most overlooked?

In this conversation, Gerry Murray talks to Andy Lancaster about why learning communities deserve far more attention from leaders than they usually get — not as a nice extra, but as a serious way to build confidence, capability, and innovation at work.

Andy’s new book, Organisational Learning Communities, explores why people often learn best with and through other people — and why that may matter even more in a world of AI, fragmented working lives, and increasing pressure to do more with less.

Together, Gerry and Andy explore what makes learning communities work, why some never quite get off the ground, and what leaders may be missing when they treat learning as an individual activity rather than a shared one. 

If you care about learning, leadership, culture, or how people actually grow at work, there’s a lot in this one to think about.

Andy also shares a special listener offer during the episode.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Community Premise

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Leading People with me, Jerry Murray. This is the podcast for HR leaders, LD professionals, and senior leaders who want to bring out the best in themselves and the people around them. Every other week I sit down with leading authors, researchers, and practitioners for deep, honest conversations about what great leadership actually looks like in practice. And how your own mindset, behavior, and presence shape everything around you. If you want thinking that challenges you, tools you can use, and conversations worth returning to, you're in the right place.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

From that comes Silicon Valley. We want Silicon Valley, but we don't necessarily want the garage. But the garage is where we gain confidence alongside each other. We ask questions, we try things out. And that was always the case with those historical guilds. We've got to recapture these because they are so powerful and so cost-effective.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

That's this week's guest, Andy Lancaster, author, learning strategist, and a longtime voice in workplace learning. In this conversation, we explore why learning so often gets treated as an individual activity when in reality people usually learn best with and through other people. And in the world of AI, that may matter more than ever. Andy's new book is called Organizational Learning Communities. And this episode is all about why leaders who want better learning, more innovation, and more confidence at work may need to pay much more attention to the communities people build around their work. Let's hear what Andy has to say. Andy

Rehab Roots Of Community Method

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Lancaster, welcome back to Leading People.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Thanks, Joe, for the invite. It's brilliant to be with you, and it's a great series. So really delighted to contribute today.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Thanks. Um Andy, you're which part of the world are you coming in from today?

SPEAKER_02 2:07

So I'm in West London, so I'm in Windsor. Um, yep. So those in the UK will probably be aware of Windsor, is where the royal family live in a very big castle on the hill. So yeah, West London. And luckily I'm not under the flight path today because that's right near Heathrow. So sometimes when we're doing these podcasts, you've got so uh yeah, so West London for me.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Yeah, yeah, you've got good interesting neighbours. And I I remember when I lived in London all eons ago, uh going to Windsor Park, the the park there, and actually the the f the planes seemed to almost guide in by some of the they'd fly in over the park, kind of guided by the the pathway almost. You'd think that they were going to land in the park sometimes, you know, they were coming in.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

And that park on a good day is where a lot of my book writing goes on, actually. So you've connected already. That's one of my writing places. So that's cool.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

That's where your writing flies high.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Yeah, one time, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

If you pardon the expression, okay. So Andy, you're you're a returning guest, and I was just looking before we came on the show that you were here in on Leading People in May 2022, and we were talking in that particular episode mainly about how we should embrace mistakes as a very positive thing. And before we talk about your latest book, maybe please share with my listener the journey that has led you to where you are today. And were there any sort of epiphany moments, particularly related to this book that you've you've written? And we'll get into the title of the book and everything in a few minutes.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

Yeah, I think it definitely is. I think anybody who's written a book or even planning on writing, because probably some of the people listening in have got the seed of a book in them. Um, you've got to be passionate about the topic. It's got to be something that deeply grabs you. So this whole one, and we'll unpack it a bit in a minute around community. Um, what first grabbed me, I worked in rehab. In fact, I often say I was in rehab for five years, which is a great opener at parties because people look at you and just sort of think, well done for getting your life back together again. But I was head of HR and Learning in one of the big UK rehab organizations, and we used community, it was called community as method, based on a theory by a guy called George DeLeon, which positions community as a primary agent of change for each of us, and that's essentially how people often um overcome some of these addiction um challenges that they have. So I yeah, it goes back to that season where I just realized that community is so powerful, and as we'll unpack in the conversation in a day of increasing AI, this human connection is really important. So, yeah, it goes back probably my my seed of interest came in community as method working in in rehab services.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Okay,

Defining Organisational Learning Communities

SPEAKER_00 4:50

so the book is called Organizational Learning Communities.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Um I'd I'd love to just called it learning communities, Jerry, but they're kind of the publishers have some control in this one as well. But having worked in education as well, this would work equally well in schools and colleges and and wider as well. So, yeah, organizational learning communities, and it's about empowering social collaboration. So that's that that's the title. Yeah, and um, what inspired you to write this book?

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Oh, there it is. There, I yeah, there it is.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

Yeah, we'll we're it's a nice yellow colour, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Yeah. So what inspired you to write the this book uh and who is it for and why now?

SPEAKER_02 5:26

Yeah, so why now? Definitely why now. I I think we are increasingly looking for human connection right now, and um, I'm sure we'll unpack AI a bit in a moment, but in a world of increasing technology, I think we're all recognizing that human connection is so powerful. What's really interesting for me when I when I kind of went back and you look at the the history of humankind, I mean, community was how people were successful and learned. So you think about those early petrographs and cave paintings where people, you know, worked out how to make fire and to hunt. So so community was always the very natural way that people learned, developed, and succeeded. And again, uh as someone who qualified as a teacher initially at my career, this is the way that children learn by watching each other and being around it. And and then you just go into I've got some evidence in the book around the natural world, bees, ants, hermit crabs, starlings, killer whales. It's just like, you know, believe it or not, an ant doesn't have to go on an e-learning course, you know, to learn key compliance stuff. It does it in the sense of community. So for me, it was this kind of energy around this is the natural way that we do this, and yet somehow um we lost that connection, and and I think we need to get it back again.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Yeah, uh I will be on your page already. Um, and my own experience of delivering training uh and particularly incorporating some, probably not enough, but it's usually constrained by what organizations are prepared to do. Just the few things that I've I I would use from a community point of view in a training program, even a two-day training, would um uh reinforce the value and the power of communities. And and there's a lot of neuroscience around social learning anyway. I mean, you can you can find that uh just sharing stuff and and and and debating stuff. So, it in what ways are learning communities so powerful, particularly in an organizational context then?

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Yeah, I

Five Ways Communities Lift Performance

SPEAKER_02 7:24

mean I I distilled it down into to five key ones. Um so I think you know, and I'm sure those listening in, at least one of these will will resonate in terms of um how we you know how we can connect to to make this really happen. So first one was around sharing knowledge. I mean, there's some great thinking around um James Siriki's The Wisdom of Crowds, about how we yeah, none of us is as smart of all of us. I think that's a Ken Blanchard quote. Um so this whole connection piece around sharing knowledge, and often in organizations we have this siloed knowledge, we have experts who maybe don't share that knowledge, sometimes intentionally because of the power of knowledge, but sometimes there's sheer busyness. So there's definitely a place where communities are, and we know communities of practice, which are only one aspect of this. That's an interesting one, Joey. That when I talk to people about community, everybody naturally drops into thinking about communities of practice. But again, there's a variety of those. So sharing knowledge is another one. Spearheading practice is a second one. In the UK, we if we look back historically, there've been these guilds which have been responsible for developing practice, and these have been socialized organizations. These go back to stonemasons and all these kind of um amazing careers that people had, but again, they develop people from apprentices to what we're called journeymen or women into experts through community. So, again, we see practice historically has always been in the context of community. Um, very quick one, solving problems. Um, it's very interesting that solving problems alone is very difficult. Um, and especially in our day of wicked problems, complex problems, that is but it's proven that the evidence shows that solving problems together is really important. Innovation again, very similar. I came from a technologies background having um lectured at university, and um most innovation is seen in the context of community, that's where great ideas are. In fact, we think about Apple, um fascinating. Well, we all want to be maybe, well, maybe we don't all want to be, but we all aspire to see the innovation um that the Apple Foundation and Corporation has, but it began in a garage in Menlo Park. This was a few people who met in a garage, so I think that's another one around innovation. The last one I made it last in my list is about supercharging development because we do see the natural way for people to develop is through community. And just to your point, um, it's really interesting that often what I found is community is added on as something to a program. Whereas going back to my experiences in rehab, community was the method. And I think the heart of the book is that we should treat community as the method, not as an add-on.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Yeah, because I suppose the first thing, one of the first things that comes in my head when you say that is that it it contextualizes the learning almost because it's it's quite likely that everybody in the community is on some sort of journey related to what the the whatever that is that they're learning to do, whether it's in a department, a team, or even it's cross-functional, but you know, they're on a similar learning path. It struck me as well, you you talked about knowledge, and I suppose the first one of the thoughts that came into my head, I'm I'm going back to my early career and that, and sort of the way things were done. Uh knowledge, I guess people didn't like to share it because it was seen as a source of power, but today it's so ubiquitous, and uh you know, Google and and then the AI versions of whether it's Gemini or ChatGPT or that. I mean, knowledge is no longer, you know, like you cannot, it's really impossible to have exclusive knowledge. Maybe, maybe you have momentary knowledge that you can use, but um it doesn't last very long. So what's the point in trying to hoard it up? You know, it'll it'll just be like cheese, it'll just start to smell and go off, basically. Um, so and then you talk about practice guilds and problems. This is all such amazing. Um actually, it's so it's almost obvious stuff. It is in many ways. Um and yet isn't it amazing how the obvious has somehow got uh flittered away through a desire to be more efficient and you know save money and all sorts of other things.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

Yeah. Uh and I think that's right. And sometimes it is about revisiting our roots, isn't it? You know, and when I I I actually did the research for the book of these worshipful guilds, the most amazing ones, found the worshipful guild of launderers. Um, this is as in people who did laundry and they had their own practice skills which they shared together. So there was something intrinsic about it that you hang around with people who have got the same motivations. And that's why if we look at something like Mum's Net as a you know, outside of the organization, it matters because my kid won't eat broccoli or my my child won't sleep. Therefore, you're connecting at quite a deep level because you're actually trying to solve problems or share information on these kind of things. So I guess what I found was that in many organizations, these communities, I called it they're incidental. You find them, they happen. Group of people hang together, or they have there's a WhatsApp group or something. So I wanted to move from that to intentionality, where we actually are purposely um leveraging communities as as I saw in rehab. So um, so yeah, you're right. Information is ubiquitous now, but I think what isn't is the contextualization of that, which is where community is so important that together we can stew on stuff and chew it over and work out how to apply it. So I think that's best done in the context of community.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Yeah. Okay, so um we'll we'll I think a lot of this is gonna we're gonna keep coming back to these themes now over the next uh let's say 30, 25, 30 minutes of this conversation. So I have a question here. Uh it's almost like a contextual framing, and and it relates to the basic theme of this podcast.

What Leaders Gain From Gathering People]

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Why should leaders embrace and encourage learning communities and how should they do this or go about it?

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Yep, so again, I think um we invest time and resource into things that we know are valuable, and I think we are so busy in organizations that sometimes we just miss the tricks on this one. So for leaders, you know, in days where many organizations have got very pressed budgets, this is a very cost-effective way of doing this. You know, I've I've I've run some book clubs, a community. You've you're finding book clubs popping up in organizations. So for the price of a piece of fruitcake and a cup of tea, you have a very, very powerful method of, as we've said, of sharing knowledge or solving problems or seeding innovation. So I think for leaders, this is cost-effective and it is definitely effective. So I think we need to recognise. Now the challenge is if you say I'm just gonna gather with a few people and have a cup of tea, that's seen as a waste of time often. You know, we haven't got time to be doing this kind of stuff. But that is the very place, if we go back to Apple in that garage in Menlo Park, was where a few people gather together and they trace the origins of Silicon Valley to that garage. That's it, just incredible for me. So I think leaders, it's waking up to the fact that when people connect, that we do great stuff. So cost effective, it definitely moves the dial. And I think as well, not everybody can work remotely because obviously people in customer service or hospitality or manufacturing have to be um in the actual company or in the workplace. But in this day of AI, we've got to solve this one that we are becoming fragmented as communities. And I think this for leaders, this is how we gather the organization as a very powerful community. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

We'll be right back after this short break. If you're finding value in this conversation, please subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts, and perhaps share this episode with a colleague who'd find it useful. Word of mouth is how good podcasts grow. And if you'd like to be part of the conversation beyond the podcast, I'd love to have you in the Leading People Community, a growing group of HR leaders, LD professionals, and experienced leaders who gather regularly for live sessions, discussions, and the kind of thinking you've been hearing today. You'll find the details in the show notes. I and just as you as you talk about that, you know, I a couple of things pop into my mind, and and one of them is that how insight works. It's like, you know, the neuroscience on on how the brain processes, like, yes, you're focused on a problem, you're trying to solve it. And often I think it was used to say that Einstein said he always found his uh ideas in the three B's, the bed, the bus, and the bath, you know. Nice, and yeah, and it's like um I was reflecting that uh I have I I can't think of one bleeding people conversation where I didn't learn something new just because of the the bounce back and forth with my guest. And it also reminds me of the the Swedish people's um tendency to do this thing called fika in the afternoon. Now I know that it's you know it's a getting together for some tea or coffee and a cake or whatever, and I know it's not about work. However, it's quite likely that some of those conversations, because they're just relaxed, are going to stimulate something in you know everybody knows this. That's the interesting thing, isn't it? Yeah. And and you have a I have this question here about learning communities sound obvious to use, but anyone facilitating them knows that they're challenging. So, what kind of key things underpin the you know, successful learning communities in your experience?

The Seven Cs That Make It Work

SPEAKER_02 16:57

Yeah, and this was a really interesting one. So that the the book was kind of came out of a sketchbook. So I trained as a designer originally, and we used to keep sketchbooks as we used to be assessed on our sketchbook, gathering ideas. So I actually, if somebody listening in might just want to revisit journaling, very powerful way of doing this. So I started collecting ideas where I saw these communities working well because my experience is they are quite tricky. Um, and I'll give an example in the book where NASA, you'd think if anybody could have cracked a socialized learning environment, NASA would do it, but they struggled massively. Um yeah, I won't go into all the reasons, you can read it in the book, but um, they eventually had this community which was meant to be reaching tens of thousands of people, but actually they were getting like 14 logons a week or something like that. So you you suddenly realize, and those of us who have run these, and you know, it isn't as obvious as it looks. So I started collecting the DNA of successful communities, and I'll just punt out I've got I found seven things, they're probably more, but seven things, um, which I've called my seven C's. So very quickly, this is what energizes communities, this is what makes them really work. So, first the cause I've got at the centre, it has to have some kind of energy. We go back to mum's net. My child wants to eat broccoli, there's a reason why I want to connect with others, and what we see is again in guilds, there is a clear common purpose. So we need to think about friction, about solving issues. There's a whole thing around culture, about creating a very supportive environment, but particularly on culture, psychological safety, where people are free to be themselves and to ask the tough questions and also to be vulnerable. So culture is really important. There's some things around culture about um again how much we can overmanage these communities. A little bit in the third one is conditions um C. Well, this is also about face-to-face, digital or hybrid. So there's some really good evidence around, to your FIKA point, actually meeting in the right environment is really important. And um, I used to have some of my team meetings in museums exactly for that reason that it was an inspiring environment. Um fourth one is cadence. Every community that I found at worked had a rhythm about it, and this is the same for sports communities or faith communities. You'll find that there isn't a rhythm. So to set a community up and just expect it's going to survive and thrive just doesn't happen. So we need to think about both synchronous and asynchronous interactions. Um, next one's content. Um, the communities that were really buzzing, updated, they posted information, they shared insights, so that was really important. Contributions, often we find communities are not very active, we've got very small numbers of people, so there's things like working out loud and uh enabling people to see what we're doing. And lastly, the the seventh one is credit. That was really interesting. That many communities now have recognitions around being a member of those. So if you think about TripAdvisor, from day one, you get a badge, you get a recognition for being a valued part of that community. Um, and we're now seeing things like micro-credentialing appearing. So those seven C's, you don't have to have all of them, but cause culture, conditions, cadence, content, contributions, and credit, those are the things that made the communities work, where we found that they really worked. Those were very important conditions to have and things that we overlook at our peril.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Well, if I I don't know what my any of my listeners are doing out there, if I try those on, uh, and particularly if anybody listening has had an experience of a community which is either working well or hasn't worked well, I find these are incredibly pertinent. Um we we run a community for a large client uh where we take them through an accreditation process to learn how to use some uh talent assessment software. And I learned this from some training in how to make training transfer to the workplace, and we just call it a cafe. And once a month, once a month, one hour. Um, and what we learned along the way, just to reflect on that what you've talked about is real real here. You know, what was the per cause or the purpose was to help people refine what they'd learned in the training course and to bring their questions as they started to use uh this in their day-to-day. Um that the content became quite important. We we thought we could just let it run, you know, like if it was there, people would come. But we found that we had to we needed to theme the cafes because people would ask themselves, what's in it for me to give up that hour in the morning to go to that. So as long as there was a sense that they would go there and getting back to your contact contact, the the label of learning community, as long as there was something that they they felt they might learn, people would turn up. And the other thing, the only interesting one was getting contributions from the members of the community. So we are the outside people with the expertise. It was it hasn't been so easy to get them to bring the stuff into the uh environment. Now that might be a cultural thing. I don't know about you know putting that stuff in. We've had a few people contribute some fantastic stuff. I'm not sure whether they've got a credit system in place. So that's just a small example. Um I can identify. With every one of those seven C's, and I can even go after this conversation and I'll have a lot long look at that to see whether we could improve it.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

But but it's not when you say them, they seem so obvious, but I I've designed some disastrous communities which were you know they had energy for a few weeks and then they just disappeared, vaporized. So I think with like all simplistic things, it does, you know, it it well, great things that you know, simplicity really matters. But to your point about contributions, it's really interesting because you do get this. There's there's this theory, it's it's a bit oversimplified, but 991. So, you know, 90% of the community are kind of lurkers, hang around, just watch. And I've been I I'm a lurker right now, actually, in a few communities, so I'm one of those. Uh, you then get 9% who are quite active, and only 1% are really driving the community with contributions. So we've got to think about how we do that. Now, what I've found, Jerry, is John Stepper's theory about working out loud is the DNA of how we do this. Now, what I've found is that people sometimes think what they know is too simple, but it isn't. My something that you do naturally and simply is is just revelation for me. So part of this is is validating people's contribution. But Steppers working out loud, I do that as a principle. I I tend to do that on LinkedIn. Um, sometimes I even crystallize my thoughts. But this is where community happens that we begin to talk and discuss. So there's definitely tactics in the book around intentionality, around how you do that kind of and and it probably comes back a little bit to culture as well, Joe. The psychological safety, we can't underestimate that. You know, if you've if you've got something going on where you're struggling, you've got to feel safe to do that. So again, many of these seven C's, they kind of overlap a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

I'm gonna give you an eighth C now, so we wouldn't update the book. Yeah, because this community that I'm talking about is running since uh the middle part of 2021, so we're six almost six years on on it. Um, and I'm gonna give you I'm gonna suggest you don't have to have it a continuity.

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Nice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

See, we there we go.

SPEAKER_02 24:07

Version two of the book is is yeah, it's but that's perfect. You know, it's it's it's it's in it's in community that you and I are already innovating here, and yeah, so that's great. Yeah, you're fantastic, go for it.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Okay, so so let's now let's uh put ourselves in the shoes of somebody listening to this and they're going, okay, I get it. Uh

Avoiding Common Traps And Starting Well

SPEAKER_00 24:26

I yeah, the guys are making a strong case. So, which what do you see as the most common difficulties that that people have to address? So, supposing somebody's saying, you know what, I I think this is a great idea. I'm working in learning and development, or I could be just a a manager who who looks around at a team and says, you know what, I I think we're we're not harnessing enough of, you know, we could get a lot more yeah, coh uh cohesion. Sorry, there's another C for you. We get a lot more cohesion out of this group uh around our performance and that if we were in in a more of a community context. So um Yeah. Oh my god, there's another C context, right? So you have to write another couple of books, Andrew, the stage. So what are some of the most difficult things? So somebody who might want to go about doing this now. What would you advise them to do at the beginning before maybe even set up the community?

SPEAKER_02 25:17

Yeah, so I would go. So in the model, it's a it's a sort of hexagon. I made it a hexagon shape because it was like a beehive, it just kind of worked for me. So at the center, Jerry, is is cause. So all the C's matter, and we can add continuity to that. But there's no doubt that the ones that I've pioneered and designed, which have not failed, have not got a strong enough DNA for being there. So here's here's an example. We're running a say we're running a management development program. We think, oh, we'll tag a community onto the management development program. That's that's too nebulous. So what what you find is actually to your point, it's about focusing in very very specifically. And that's where you look at things um like guild's work because they're very practice focused. So I think the starting point is to to get the cause sorted out. And I'm really passionate about writing uh community charters, um, not massive documents, but a one-pager to say this is what this community is all about, this is what we uh meeting, this is what what we expect you. We can put some stuff around culture there. Now, what I often look for is the friction in customer service. When we're trying to improve things, we look at the friction points where things aren't necessarily working as well as they could. So for those listening in, go and have a look where the friction is. There might be something, for instance, around onboarding, which is tricky. Um, we might be getting turnover in certain departments. Um, here's, I mean, absolute free tip on this one. Why not have a socialized onboarding program rather than just giving people policies and events and things like that? We we actually look at the whole thing about making the onboarding socialized. So, friction, I think, is is a really crucial one. And I think over um yeah, overmanaging these communities can squeeze the life out of them as well. And we've got to be very careful about the dynamics with managers and senior leaders sometimes coming in on these. Not saying they shouldn't be part of these, but you know, vulnerability, we know, psychological safety is really crucial. So, so those are the two I think I'd start with. Be crystal clear, what are we trying to achieve here? And also communities, you mentioned continuity, they don't have to go on forever. You know, some communities can run for eight weeks and or activities, and then that's it. So I think we've got to be really laser focused on what we're trying to achieve through those social interactions.

Spotting And Supporting Informal Communities

SPEAKER_00 27:31

And and another thing then that probably emerges from from what you're saying now is uh you talk about the the merits of naturally occurring learning communities. So not not trying to force them or or what what what have you learned about those and where have you where have you seen those uh emerge and then then take a life of their own and work very well?

SPEAKER_02 27:51

Yeah, perfect. I mean, this is really important, Joey. So thanks for prompting on that one. In every organization, there are communities already established, informal communities by the water cooler in the you know, in the coffee area. Um I've even seen them in the bathrooms where people are having conversations, you know. So these these communities absolutely exist. So often they are absolutely based around this this friction or solving a problem. So where I'd another place, great place to start is to go and spot where the communities are already happening. Now that's not for us as people professionals or leaders to go and trample all over. It's a bit like someone's having a party and you walk in and take it over. But what we ought to be doing is at least resourcing and validating those communities. So um, so yeah, I you you can often see that. I saw a really brilliant one um around mental health support and well-being. Not that the organization, I won't obviously say which organization it was, not the organization didn't care, but there were a group who had similar experiences and had um a safe place where they could go and just talk about how they were doing. Uh it was a men's group, actually, um Jerry. I you know, I I think sometimes, yeah, men particularly maybe struggle around some of this kind of stuff. You know, we can't um gender stereotype on this one, but a very powerful small unit of guys who are talking about the you know their their mental health. So so I think just have a look around. You will soon spot them. Um again, um we could even ask within the the organization, you know, we're really valuing socialized learning and connections. If you're involved in something, let us know. But I think it's about resourcing and not taking those over. Yeah, that's a good starting place.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

So allow them to flow basically.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

Yeah, yeah. Often they lack resource, Joe. I mean, this this is the issue. So, you know, these things are uh have got a life of their own, but how cool if we um yeah, lightning example. When I I went to my manager, this is when I was at CIPD and said there was a certain restriction about us meeting as a team in the building because it kind of just got us into a very particular mindset around this. So we went into I said museums, London Museums. We held our team meetings in museums, but it costed I had to buy the coffees and the cake, and it was like, well, hang on a minute, you can't buy coffees and cake. I mean, you know, you can do this at the office where the coffee's free, but you suddenly realize the price of one round of coffees and a few bits of cake in an environment which inspires creative thinking is worth its weight in gold. So sometimes I think this is about resourcing those communities and helping them.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Yeah. I actually the a thought that just pops into my mind is from my own experience. A lot of people listening know that I have been a kind of professional musician as my alter ego for most of my life. And I I look at some of the evolution of bands, for example, and you know many bands that are, you know, you try to form them because you say we have to have this and this and this in it, they don't work as well as the band that emerges from a jam session in the corner of a pub, where a bunch of people just come together because they have a common interest in playing music. Um, they start playing together and then they realize there's a chemistry, and that chemistry could be taken somewhere, and then one of them gets a call. Could you do a gig? And all of a sudden they say, I'll just ask a few of my mates from the bar, and all of a sudden they have a band, you know. So um these things can emerge just very naturally rather than forcing them. And I I think there are low we have loads of examples of this in our you say book clubs are classics as well, you know. What keeps a book club together? It's this this common interest in a certain type of book, and it's a social thing where people get together and you know, they meet each other, they see each other, they catch up on life, uh, etc. So yeah, a lot of power in that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

Yeah, and uh cheeky plug here. I actually run a book club on organizational learning communities, you know, it's a it's a cost. I mean, uh, yeah, offering that. I mean, there's there is a little bit of cost because I've obviously got to take the time to do that. But we found I've I've just done this with a uh ran this with a major global logistics company. We actually did a book club on organizational learning communities, which was kind of very meta, a community talking about communities. Um, but no, you're right. But I think it's interesting your music one. I mean, I grew up in in the punk era, although I was a good lad, so I was on, yeah in uh being respectful to the family, didn't get heavily into although Doc Martin's a key for me now. But it was really interesting, those punk groups came out of more than music, it was culture and connection, it was it was about politics, it was about identity. So, you know, when you see people gathering around music, this is a bigger deal than just playing the notes. This is about being part of something, and that's why communities in organization are so important because you are part of something that really matters to you.

SPEAKER_00 32:43

Yeah, totally agree. And um this this interesting, I wouldn't have expected this, however, the the music uh analogy and metaphor actually leads us into this uh next main major topic.

AI Learning Needs Safety And Confidence

SPEAKER_00 32:58

Uh I was listening to um the Boss Class Economist uh podcast there recently, and uh I'm I'm a big fan of it. And Andrew Palmer, who presents, has been on the on the Leading People show here, talking about what he learned from that. And the recent uh series, they've done a lot on AI. And um one of the the one there's one little excerpt where uh they interview a guy who actually writes his music using AI. And um I suppose the the thing was he was you know he's quite comfortable with it. He said it's not just asking Chat GPT to give me some notes and some words, it takes a lot of time, he says it can still take as long. However, he's leveraging the technology. But the thought, and I suppose the guys might have mentioned it, is like, would you would you cue round the block to watch some robots on stage, uh, you know, that live gig you want to go to, or do you still prefer it to be human beings on stage and all that stuff that those human flaws that make the attending a show a very special?

SPEAKER_02 34:01

Um is it's a really interesting thing on AI, Joe. I mean, this is this is so we're talking about large language models. Why are they large? Because there's millions of us connecting through technology, so we're feeding these things. So, in one sense, it's a it's a human community, isn't it? I mean, it's it is making intelligent links and things beyond we could do, but but in one sense, our connection through large language models is a community-based thing. So so for me, uh yeah, I did a podcast a few months ago on authoring books and what about AI and authoring. There's no doubt that in writing, there is part of the joy and the discipline is the process of writing, not doing it far. So I think where AI for me, particularly around communities, really helps. I mean, obviously around productivity and heavy lifting, that's often where it really happens. So AI can help communities. Often, but the people who run communities, this is only part of their job. So there's many ways that AI can support a community, and that's where it's really, really smart to be leveraging the technology alongside the communities.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

And I I would I suppose I want to get into this uh a little bit more depth around AI because I know you've done some, we've written some papers and you've been reviewing a lot of research on this around AI learning uh being more of a cultural challenge, not just a skills challenge. And uh maybe you can talk a little bit about the dynamic of how AI learning is is playing out um in an organizational context. And I know you talk about confidence, for example, and and how that might be even addressed through the community lens. You're listening to leading people with me, Jerry Murray. My guest this week is Andy Lancaster. Coming up, why learning to use AI is as much a cultural challenge as a skills one, and why confidence, safety, and community matter more than many organizations realise. Stay with us.

SPEAKER_02 36:13

Yeah, it's a really important one, isn't it? But yeah, I I think AI, we're trying to wrestle down how this really does work in organisations. So for me, AI is in terms of learning and developing AI skills, this is as much a cultural challenge as a skills one, because in many organizations we're still not sure what we're allowed to do. So people are nervous about using it. In some cases, we're being locked down and we can't use it, and that might be for good reasons around risk. So I think there's a quiet emotion involved with AI learning where we've got to help people to feel safe, they are able to make mistakes. Now, community, again, we talked about psychological safety. It's really vital that people feel that they can make those mistakes, and I think it's also about understanding that this must be contextual for our individual pathways. I need to feel that I can apply it in what I'm doing. So I think it's a bigger deal. Um, this is not, I mean, you you're beginning to see interesting things cropping up, technical skills in AI, AI technical literacy. Um, that isn't necessarily the big deal for me. The big deal is how we emotionally and psychologically and culturally embrace new technology. Yeah, and community can do that. I mean, that's a great place to try things out, isn't it? Where we together walk the route and recognize how we might be using AI to really help with productivity or heavy lifting.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

And in the context of learning, because I personally I'm I'm really passionate about, like you are, about learning and how we can facilitate it and make it easier for people. Like teaching is one thing, learning is is really the the outcome of whatever kind of teaching or instruction you've gone through. Um, one of the things that over the years uh I would have worked with, and I want to touch on this now in relation to the AI, is you know, I would have looked at performance, and this is not my my necessarily my own stuff, but through, you know, if somebody's performing ability, you would say there's the three A's. There's the ability aspect, there's the attitude aspect, and then there's the allowed, are they allowed to do it, you know, thing. And I could see that in the article you wrote. And one of the things that's so often misunderstood about ability and attitude is that they're they're not kind of exclusive. There's this little bridge that goes from ability. So when people think of ability, they think of, well, has he got the skills? Like even if we took a musical instrument, can he play the can he play the chords? You know? However, often ability has two more dimensions in it. And one of those is is confidence. Like, oh, okay, he can play the chords in his bedroom, but he doesn't feel so comfortable if you put him in front of five people or a 50 or a 500 people. And then there's the volition thing, like, do I and so now you're crossing from perfor from the ability thing into the attitude. And you talk a lot about uh the this confidence gap in particularly relation to AI. And and you talk about it and how it can be uh uh detrimental to an organization's ability to learn if they don't, if they're not first of all aware of it and then uh understand or are prepared to explore and address it. Could let's unpack that a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 39:18

Yeah. So vulnerability is the core of learning, isn't it? When we're learning something, it means that we're not on top of it already or we want to get better at it. So it you know, so that comes back to the pod we originally did around mistake-based learning. This is so crucial that people feel they can make a mistake. And sometimes we create these very controlled, sterile environments where you can't do that. Now, the risk around AI is clearly there, you know, there's an there's a risk around data, there's a risk around IP, all those kind of things. But the danger is that we then allow the risk audit department to control what we can actually do. Now, there's ways of doing this, so we can create sandboxes and closed environments where we can try things out. So I think if we come back to that, let's kind of bring these things together. If you look at young children in socialized learning, they learn together, they watch each other, they see someone make a mistake, they make a mistake. This is how socialised learning goes back to Albert Bandure and that social learning theory. So, in some ways, we've got to create environments where people are allowed to make mistakes and try things out. And I think we've created organizations where we want innovation. CEOs desperately want innovation, but they don't create the environments where uh people can make those mistakes. So I think for me that's important. Community, what a brilliant place to learn where you can ask questions, and if if if we have got psychological safety, we can ask vulnerable questions. I wasn't quite sure why I did that, and this seemed to work, but I didn't understand why. So I think maybe there's a great community around AI skills development where we can share our, you know, what we've learned of those kind of things. So there is no doubt in my mind that being able to have a go is a vital part. And to your point, you know, you learn the chords, but then that sometime you've got to break the ice and sit down with a band and do it in front of someone else. That's a vulnerable place. But hey, let's do it together because that's a much more comfortable place to to innovate and to try things out.

SPEAKER_00 41:09

Yeah, you actually remind me of uh the AI thing. I mean, I I'm a part of various trainer, trainer networks, and trainer communities that, you know, work in let's say we're doing eight or ten parallel sessions on the same topic together. And I actually you brought me back to yeah, a few of the guys are more were more up to speed on AI. I remember us having some conversations probably two years ago, we'd have these trainer meetings, and myself and another guy, we were kind of into the AI thing, as much just to understand it and and and you know, partly the curiosity with the technology, but also what can it help you do? And we would have been sharing some things with other people in the room who were like for whatever reason, it wasn't there, it wasn't in their orbit at that point in time. They knew it was there, but they weren't really tinkering with it or that. But what was remarkable was talking to each other maybe in the hallway later in the day, or two days later, and them going, you know what? I you know what you guys were talking about the other day. I went off and and I I was blown away. I I tested out what you guys were talking about. And so all of a sudden you had this sense of, and can you tell me a bit more kind of thing, you know? And then others coming in and saying, You know, I played with it and I discovered this. And even even some of us who are more uh let's say advanced in our are looking at it, we're going, Oh, because there was always something. There was nobody has the perfect knowledge of this stuff, everybody has this ability to bounce ideas, and you you you could you could sense this groundswell of wow, this is something we could we could work with as trainers to help us be better trainers. Yeah, that's an amazing experience to be in, you know.

SPEAKER_02 42:51

It it totally is, and uh, and let me take that back to Apple, you know, Menlo Park, a garage in Menlo Park. You can find the picture, it's a garage where Wozniaki and all those guys kind of met and swapped bits, and apparently they used to go down to a supermarket after and have a coffee, you know. But they were spurring each other on, and from that comes Silicon Valley. Yeah, we want Silicon Valley, but we don't necessarily want the garage. There's a quote for you, you know. Uh, should have put that in the book. That's a that's a cauka. Um this addition to addition to we're gonna we already got a version two, but but maybe that's one for for folks to reflect on. We we want Silicon Valley, but we don't necessarily want the garage. But the garage is where we gain confidence alongside each other. We ask questions, we try things out, and that was always the case with those historical guilds. You hung around, if you were a stonemason, a trainee man or woman, you hung around a cathedral or whatever you were building, you know, a town hall, and together you worked on this and you asked questions. So this is why community guys, we've got to recapture these because they ask. So powerful and so cost effective.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

Yeah. And and in some parts of Europe, they just taking the concept of the guild, uh uh, like for example, Germany, um, they have always had the apprenticeship model uh ingrained in particularly in their factory systems and that. And it is it is a badge of honor to go to technical school and part-time work, you know, working in the factory, getting day release, and honing your skills to become to eventually become the maestor, the master um person. And this all this there's a sense of bonding. You talked about the badge, the credit. There's a sense of bonding of moving through the levels and being being seen as competent, you know. And if we go back even to the work of people like Will Schultz and that around, you know, people need to feel significant, competent, and liked, you know, the the you know, you it's a psychological need we have, and these communities of learnings of learning can feed that need.

SPEAKER_02 45:01

Yeah. I mean, I I you know I trained as an instructional designer, so we always talked about spiral um curriculums, you know, where you go up and you start at a lower level and gradually you go up and up and up. You know, I put a concept in the book called a spiral community, which is essentially what a guild is. You start at the bottom with quite simple stuff, but you are in a community with people who are at a higher level who are able to mentor you, coach you, and br and bring you through. So there's no doubt that that's a very rich place. You made me kind of this is why I love these conversations with with you, Joe. You made me think my grandfather is no longer alive, he trained as an apprenticeship pattern maker, he was an engineer. And I remember granddad saying I sat on a stool for quite a few months, sat on a stool, but I was around the experts and I watched and I just soaked it up. So that that's so cool. So yeah, maybe what we've got to do I you know, I guess coming back almost to where where we started, this is about intentionality, this is about using this intentionally, not incidentally. And maybe we are recapturing some of the things about apprenticeships, about communities, all those kind of things. Maybe we're waking up, maybe the world of AI, maybe even some of the fragmented relationships we experienced through a pandemic, which now seems an age ago, but we're now recognizing that being together is really important, which is why just having conversations with you is just very cool.

SPEAKER_00 46:20

Okay,

The AI Learning Spiral And Practical Tips

SPEAKER_00 46:21

are you ready for it? Uh another question. What would an AI learning spiral look like?

SPEAKER_02 46:28

Yeah, so that's a really interesting one, isn't it? Because I think for me, I am I would consider myself fairly fairly low down on it. Um I am using it quite a lot, but my it's this comes back to confidence again, doesn't it? I think I know I probably know quite a bit about AI, but the confidence is what I'm trying to gain here and how to use this really efficiently and and and rigorously. Um but do I hang around with people who are experts in this? I absolutely do. Um I won't put any particular names out because I'm probably gonna miss someone out. But on LinkedIn, I hang around on LinkedIn communities. So my spiral community is I'm probably midway, I guess. I'm I'm kind of using it. Um, but then in conversations, I was at a conference yesterday, we were chatting about this over a coffee again, and I was talking about how I'd processed a load of reports, um, you know, and put the PDFs in there, and and it I would it would have taken me days previously to read these, and it was helping me to do that. So, yeah, so the spiral curriculum or the spiral community is get get alongside the experts who are creating the thinking and the reports, hang around with those people. There's some great books that have come out, but then develop your own practice, but then be in relationships with others where we can talk about how we can use this. I'm particularly in interested in consulting as well, because I'm also a consultant and I provide those services for organizations. My goodness, how AI is changing the consultant's role. It's just genius.

SPEAKER_00 47:51

So here's a little tip for you and and and others out there. You might have tried this already. Is um I had this idea last year, and I was using Chat GPT quite a bit, and I was kind of interested at one stage it sort of kind of told me that it knew a lot about me, and it was quite fascinating when I asked it. I I I didn't use it, but I asked it what would a Wikipedia entry look like? I don't have one, but um and it was quite fascinating because it found it remembered stuff, I found stuff out about me that I'd forgotten. However, what I did do, and this is the tip, is I said, okay, so I've got to know you now for that stands for strange, but I got to know you over the last two years or so. Um, how would you rate me on my AI skills and what would I need to do to get better at it?

SPEAKER_02 48:34

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

And it and you got some smart give me it's it's told me what how it would, you know, give me like two or three or four levels, and then it said you're in here transitioning to there, and this is what you would could do to um you know get to that level. Uh and uh it's even just you know that kind of interaction. So it's like then you might be thinking, well, who do I know that could be at that level who might have some tips for me to get there? Although you know what? I think if you go back and ask ChatGPT or something, or whichever Claude or whoever you're using, he might or she might or it might. My wife last night said to me, she she said, I'm she she has given me an answer, and I said, Who was she? She said uh Chat GPT, and I said, She? Now she's German, so she thinks in terms of D, Der, and Das, you know, there's there's the female, the male, and so we were joking. I was saying, Well, I hope I haven't graduated, I haven't ended up in the I hope I'm still there, you know. Like that's the the male version of of the pronoun. But you know, so what maybe if you ask the chat GPT or whatever, you get your answer back, you know.

SPEAKER_02 49:43

Yeah. I mean it's really interesting, just to throw this one in. Um an example of an organization really leveraging communities and technologies is Bloomberg. So they uh they they um support excellence and innovation around financial systems and stats, those kind of things. Bloomberg actually have used communities in order to stay on top of technology, fast-moving technology. So they've created a guild system where things like machine learning, natural language processing, all those kind of stuff, there are groups that that gather around those expertise things. And the primary reason is they want to stay at the front edge of what's going on. So staff are working out loud, they're sharing their kind of thinking. So it's really interesting that if we want to be effective in AI, maybe being in community, not being isolated, but being around people is how we actually develop those skills.

SPEAKER_00 50:31

Yeah. And and this this conversation, we'd have to have it again. It'll probably be out of date in the next six months because something else will happen and and that. But I think it's it's useful to be exploring these things uh for anybody out there, particularly as they talk about it being a threat to jobs and that, and then the debate is well, maybe it's not a threat to your job, per se, it might not replace you. However, if you're not don't know how to use these tools, and then you get back into other tools available, is it safe to use them? Can you experiment? All the great things that you put in your um you've been talking about. So coming to the end of the conversation, I mean we could stay here all day, I think, Andy.

One Big Idea Plus How To Connect

SPEAKER_00 51:11

So coming to the end, if my listener could take away just one big idea from you today, what would that be?

SPEAKER_02 51:19

Yeah, so I think it's move from the incidental to the intentional. So don't just tag communities onto other things, make them the primary source of how we do it. And that takes me right back to where we opened, Jerry, back working in rehab services. That community was method, right? That's how it works. So rather than thinking, oh, we'll tag something on, think about community as the vehicle for developing capability, for spearheading innovation, solving problems. So I think that's my that's my key one, and that's the nature, yeah. The whole jolly thing is around design these things. We can create wonderful communities rather than just hoping that they might work.

SPEAKER_00 52:05

Great. So how can people contact you? I'll put links in the show notes, and how can people contact you? And do you have any special offers for all the listeners who've stayed to the end?

SPEAKER_02 52:17

Yeah, and thank you for those who's staying because you know this is these are busy lives here, and really appreciate you being part of the conversation. And um, I've learned some stuff coming out of this, Jay, which we didn't expect would even go on, which is great. Yeah, link with me on LinkedIn would be great. Um so yeah, please do that. And just mention that you've um yeah, you've been listening to the Leading People podcast with Jerry and I, that would be great to do that. So link with me on there. A couple of things definitely can do. Um, I have a really good discount which I get as an author for the book. Um, so that's that's 30%. So if you're interested in designing communities, if you ping me on LinkedIn, DM me, and we'll connect. I can give you the discount code for that one. And the other one as well is if you are interested, I I do run this as a book club. We've had some brilliant book clubs around this, so I'm very happy to um to host one. Those will be virtual, host one of those with you and your community or your your organization. So, yeah, so look forward to connecting on LinkedIn and and Jerry, thank you for the opportunity to come on here. Love Leading People Podcast, it's a it's a great one, and really appreciate having the space to talk about designing learning communities.

SPEAKER_00 53:22

The check is in the pose.

SPEAKER_02 53:24

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 53:26

So, Andy Lancaster, thanks a million for sharing your insights, tips, and wisdom with me and my listener here today. And that's it for this episode of Leading People. If you're new here and enjoyed today's conversation, I'd love it if you subscribed. It's the best way to make sure you never miss an episode. And if you are a regular listener, the best recommendation is always a personal one. So, if this episode made an impact on you, please share it with a friend or colleague. It might just be the best thing they listen to this week. Until next time.