Preface

This book is a little different . . . because it’s my story.

Before we get into it, I want to thank you for buying my book. Or, if you borrowed it from a peer, thanks for trusting them to make a super smart recommendation to aid your professional development. Or, if you won this book as a prize at a conference when you were really aiming for the latest version of the Apple Watch, my condolences. If it makes you feel any better, this book can also tell the time.

Unfortunately, it’s only accurate twice a day.

See what I mean? This is going to be different.

There are so many great L&D books out there. I’m sure I’ll reference Make It Stick by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger III, and Mark McDaniel several times before you hit the back cover. It’s the first book every L&D professional should read. Then there’s Design for How People Learn by Julie Dirksen, the most dog-eared book in the biz. Reuben Tozman’s Learning On Demand totally changed the way I think about learning in the workplace.

I want this reading experience to stand out. I want it to feel like we’re having a conversation, so I wrote just like I talk in real life. I also hope this book lives beyond your first (hopefully complete) read as an ongoing reference guide. My goal is to help you and your peers think differently about the role of learning in the workplace and how you apply proven practices to help people do their jobs better every day. But mostly, I want to geek out with you about cool L&D ideas. I hope that’s OK with you!

This is my first real book. By that, I mean it’s the first time I’ve ever written this many words in one place. I’ve published hundreds of magazine articles, online columns, and blog posts. I’ve dropped dozens of podcasts, livestreams, and videos. I’ve delivered somewhere around 1,000 presentations during my 20+ years in corporate learning and operations. I’m always grateful to have the opportunity to share my ideas and perspective with professional peers like you.

If you’ve heard me speak or read something I’ve written before, you may have seen me explore a variety of L&D topics: Microlearning. Adaptive learning. Artificial intelligence. Gamification. Data. Curation. Technology ecosystems. I touch upon several of these topics in this book too. But no matter the topic, my content always has one thing in common: stories. Stories make me more than just a guy with an idea and a publisher. They make me part of the L&D community. They show that I’ve done the work, that I’ve failed more than I’ve succeeded, and that I’ve learned along the way. This book includes lots of personal stories and reflections.

Several chapters open with a story about a time I faced a particularly daunting learning and performance challenge. I explain the steps I took to overcome these disruptions and what I figured out about modern workplace learning practices along the way. I’ve managed to duct-tape together an L&D methodology through years of experimentation and doing the best with what I had available. This book explains how I did that.

There’s one more thing I want to mention before we dive into the good stuff. You don’t have to read the entire book front to back to get value from it. If you’re new to the profession or trying to figure out how to reshape your organization’s approach to learning and performance, I suggest starting at the beginning and consuming the story in sequence. The concepts build upon one another—moving from philosophy to framework to application. On the other hand, if you’re an experienced professional trying to overcome a specific disruption or fix a specific problem within your learning ecosystem, jump to the chapters that are most relevant to you. The main concepts stand on their own and each chapter offers plenty of practical suggestions to enhance your problem-solving efforts. I also added Spoiler Alerts at the start of each chapter so you’ll know what’s going to be covered.

So thanks again for buying/borrowing/winning my first book! I hope it helps you provide even more value to your organization and the people you support. And I hope you chuckle a few times along the way, even if it’s sometimes at my expense.

Now, let’s commence with the AHAs and HAHAs with my first story.