Working in L&D media, Rob Clarke shares his view on modern learning and business performance
The reason I do this is because I want to see our working lives improve. I’d like to see the culture improve across our workplaces: less stress, less rat race, less wasted energy, better productivity, better leadership, compassionate workplaces and better mental health at work.
So, we need to unlock learning.
While we might well ask if Learning and Development has the right key, one thing is for sure: the needs in business and opportunities for learning folks are as big as they ever were.
How I got here
I’ve spent all my working life in learning, apart from my first full-time job at age 17 selling video systems to nightclubs, and a teenage part-time job digging sand and gravel. Thankfully I got sacked from that for falling asleep under a wheelbarrow.
News isn’t business-as-usual; it’s new, it’s change; it’s how it affects people.
The PC arrived in the early eighties and everyone was about to need skills to use them. I joined this opportunity very early, in 1985, and spent the first half of my career until the noughties in IT training and then performance support.
I became one of Learning News’ first customers 25 years ago. When the opportunity to work for Learning News unexpectedly presented itself, I didn’t hesitate and soon after, the chance to buy it arose. I convinced my wife that risking everything was a good idea, scraped together every penny we had, and I’ve run it ever since.
I report on what I think is important in workplace learning. I spend most of my time talking to learning folks about what they do, producing programmes and facilitating learning organisations posting their news. I feel fortunate to have this job and it’s an honour to write about it for TJ.
My week
Each day, I start on my phone around 7am, checking emails and social media. I think about what’s happening and if there are any big learning stories. Mostly, news arriving by email early in the day is ‘planned news’ such as press releases crafted in part to appeal to people like me. A lot of business news starts life like this.
Not everything neatly arrives in my inbox in time for breakfast so I have alerts on the web and newswires. I use social media, keeping my eye out for stories, and I readily take calls from the industry. I read a lot and like to see what other media outlets are talking about, especially TJ. I know its Editor, Jo Cook, well and enjoy working with her as we both want good for our industry. I look at the press releases that have been pitched, filter news feeds and see if there’s anything useful.
I can only spend time expanding on a few stories each week. Once I’ve identified one that’s interesting to learning folk, I think about its news angle. This is rarely the headline I’m first presented with. Finding a good news angle seems a challenge for many. I see too many stories about what’s happening rather than the impact of what’s happening. There are too many ‘business-as-usual’ stories: ‘Man gets on bus’, ‘Corner shop sells chocolate bar’, etc. News isn’t business-as-usual; it’s new, it’s change; it’s how it affects people.
Often, companies assign the task of creating news to the least experienced person in the marketing team. In reality it’s a challenging communications process, one of the more difficult jobs in the marketing team in my experience and far from a single, ‘bash-it-out’ task. It can make the difference between being covered or not.
Often there are things to do that I hadn’t finished the day before, like completing a feature or programme. Getting this done early before the busy day takes hold hopefully means it won’t slip into tomorrow.
By 10am, scheduled calls and interviews are starting. Interviews are the backbone of news features on Learning News. I plan them in advance as people often want the questions to consider. I’m OK with that; unlike Editors in mainstream news, I’m not trying to wrongfoot politicians who are trained to avoid the question.
My outputs
Once I have a story, my job is to publish it. For this, I have a lot of outputs. It starts with the website; every story gets posted there, either by me or by a learning organisation with a subscription. A lot of things then happen to it; some things are automated and others are done manually:
- Stories are added to Learning News social media: headline, image and link as standard, and I often intervene and add more
- Learning News programmes have a news ticker running across them. Each story’s headline is included in upcoming programmes for the period ahead
- Each story is included in a news update email, along with other stories from that day
- Some stories are published in news bulletins: short news summaries, one to two minutes’ long, usually interview-based
- I select a small number of recent news stories to include in a breaking news service.
For Learning News’ Channel Partners and the big stories that I want to pursue, I produce in-depth news features. Typically this is on research reports, industry events, significant product launches, big changes and so on.
Learning News covers conferences, big and small, and in-company events, interviewing participants and helping to tell their stories. If you go to the learning events in the UK, like Learning Technologies, it’s possible you’ll have seen the Learning News team gathering news and interviewing people around the exhibition. They are full-on events and one of the things I enjoy most and the resulting programmes are popular.
It’s people that make news stories
Having a job that covers everything to do with publishing news as well as the business side – sales, marketing, accounts, website, etc – means I can’t be good at everything and I don’t try to be. I am thinly spread across all that needs doing. Sure, much is important and I do ‘sweat the small stuff.’ I will change small things and try to get everything right.
I outsource some tasks, such as my accounts, almost entirely. I rely on external professionals to help me with marketing and design. I have a freelance team to assist with large productions, such as events. While I can code and roll my sleeves up sometimes, I entrust web development and technical support to those who are good at it, not me. Generating code with GenAI is amazing and it saves so much time and reduces errors.
One thing I do try to be good at is relationships. I like to spend time chatting with people. It’s people that make news stories and I also rely on to pay to subscribe or sponsor. I need people to meet deadlines and, in return, I try to be reliable myself. I also enjoy working with a lot of PR agencies that focus on the people profession, getting good stories and important support out to the L&D audience.
My technology
I work in a home studio and use an inordinate amount of technology, sometimes to the frustration of those close to me wondering why the dining room is covered in sound sponge, or why I spend thousands on the latest cameras.
Aside from social and productivity apps and websites, I spend a lot of time in Final Cut Pro X for editing video. It’s time-consuming, but it is improving. There are many apps, plugins and features that automate tasks that used to take ages. There are so many seemingly small advancements coming out all the time, which together have helped hugely to reduce the time it takes to edit and produce video.
I use GenAI to help me along the way as I work, summarising news, improving text, analysing content and data, filtering, etc. I use Gemini, Copilot, Notebook LM, ChatGPT and others, and AI-based apps like Grammarly and Adobe Podcast. AI is almost everywhere in my workflow. I like that GenAI is becoming more integrated into my browser and apps and that it’s just ‘there’ more and more – working alongside me and using it as needed. I love being surprised as AI suggests things I would likely not have thought of.
In this article, I used AI to identify where I had used the passive voice, a trap I too easily fall into. I didn’t let it change it all for me, rather to let me know and suggest alternatives so I could choose what to change.
Notebook LM is my latest go-to GenAI app. It’s helped me make improvements to my workflow and I like experimenting with it. I use it to summarise news and create synopses for news presentations, bulletins and breaking news, but I do find it needs the human touch. A feature that staggers me is the ‘create podcast button’ – a complete podcast in one click. Yes, you read that right!
Adobe Podcast is another favourite app: it takes dodgy audio and turns it into studio quality. I never thought that would be possible, but it is. One day I might be able to get rid of all the sound sponge!
The future
Thirty-two years ago, I asked Colin Steed why, since the mid-eighties, L&D talked about its problem in understanding and meeting business needs and why it seemed to be in some parallel universe, and that it never seemed to get solved? He said it was the same in the seventies and that each generation entering the profession asks the same question, and that it’s important to continue to write about it so that more people understand how important it is to adapt. There’s a feature about Colin Steed’s achievements you can watch to reflect on these points and more.
L&D aligning with business is a common topic on Learning News. More people in L&D are better aligned than was the case decades ago, but research shows we’re stuck with around half of L&D in the lowest maturity level, transacting courses mostly. Only around one in ten are at the highest maturity level with the strongest alignment. The digital impact on business and the need to focus on people during the global lockdown helped: L&D pivoted quickly to solve significant business problems and even those with lower maturity improved alignment. So it can be done by all.
L&D should continue to ask questions about its relevance and role, and keep focused on real learning and stay away from being sucked into its own separate world. The biggest topic today is, of course, AI in learning. Having all the world’s knowledge at our fingertips (or rather in our workflow) is a big challenge for L&D.
To paraphrase the oft-misquoted Henry Ford, will we just get faster courses? How fast can we make courses go? Content development might reach such a pace that those making them go faster and faster and just evaporate in a cloud of dust. Or might L&D continue to help people to learn, embracing AI and improve working lives?
I’m 60 next year; I don’t have any plans to retire. There’s just as much to do as ever.
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Rob Clarke is Owner and Managing Editor at Learning News
