Transformational versus Transactional with Jeremy Berman

Luis Malbas  
All right, welcome, everybody, to another training learning and development community virtual event. I'm watching to see make sure that people are entering the room. We've got just over 300 people registered for this conference are crafting success talent development event. So it'd be great to to have these conversations through today and tomorrow. Very excited for all of you to be here. Yep, there we go. I see Bridget in the audience. And Joe is here. My Isha. Excellent Pirie. Gabby, thanks so much for being here. All right. So if you can, some of you know how to do the emoji thing on the bottom of the screen. If you do throw some emojis at me just to make sure that you're I know that everyone's in the audience. Right. There's Kim. Trish. Nice to see all of you. Excellent. All right. So thanks, again for being here. Now this talent development event. I'm not exactly sure we came up with the idea of this, I think late summer. And we wanted to do something that I think was a little more just straightforward. l&d type of vibe to it. versus you know, we did the d&d one, the Dungeons and Dragons one last month. And and we've been doing some pretty, just very, very different events over the last couple months. But so this one is a little more straightforward, and we all know how important talent development is to l&d. So I'm just glad that everybody is here and joining us for this one. Our first guest is Jeremy Berman. Jeremy is somebody that I met through I think it was forehand who introduced us and forehand is a member of TL DC. And Jeremy and I, when we had our conversation we were talking. We met a lot. Well, I think Farhad first introduced this because Jeremy is also a songwriter as I am and played music and so thought might be kind of cool, a kind of a cool connection. But Jeremy is also very value centered in the way that he looks at l&d and I think is a great, great fit for the community overall, just with the conversations he's had even the planning for this event, we had a brainstorm a couple or a few weeks ago and, and Jeremy was right in there, in the middle of it with everyone talking about the importance of talent development. And in fact, his whole topic for today, which is trance formational versus transactional. So a little bit about Jeremy I'm just going to read his bio here as a lifelong learner. Jeremy embodies the dream, see do mantra of always learning and loves to create elegant digital products that help people bring their best gifts to their work families, communities in the world as they engage in whole person development. One of his favorite parts of his role with dreams he do is connecting with a range of interesting, heart centered and dedicated people that he's fortunate to engage with. Jeremy lives in Connecticut with his lovely wife and two daughters is an avid yogi and meditator. He practices whenever you can find the chance he also loves sports like soccer, skiing and volleyball. He's a former music producer, lifelong musician, and writes and plays music whenever he can. I've what was a silent monk Wait, I had it around here and said, Listen to your tunes to a level. Yeah. stuff. Go check it out Spotify. It's great. So you can find me on Spotify. Thanks. Yeah, and with that, Jeremy, I'm gonna go ahead and hide myself. I will jump in whenever I need to. Okay. Awesome.

Jeremy Berman  
Thanks, y'all. Yeah, I'm super stoked to be here. Appreciate you having me here. Louis. I'm gonna share my screen. Welcome, everyone. Good to see you. Anyone here is live. And anyone that sees the recording, just really happy to be here and be part of the conversation. It seems like an extra table. chair back there. Yeah, let me just share my screen. Can you one second. Y'all go? Yeah, so y'all, I'm going to be honest, I've been thinking deeply about this. I mean, first of all, you know, I'm really honored to be here to kind of open things up for this, this important conversation and dialogue. And it was really nifty for me to be able to participate in that community discussion the other week to really derive this topic. So this kind of was a community conversation that led to this, this topic that I'm going to be discussing, and I've been spending the last couple of weeks since that conversation, just thinking about like, what, what can I share here that will be really valuable for everyone in the community. I'm new to the community. I really, I feel like there's a kinship already. But I wanted this to be valuable. So I'm going to be honest to raise my hand and say like I do, I think deeply over time, and then my thought sort of coalesced like The Matrix last minute sometimes and some people call it procrastinator I guess in some ways, I am diligent, but I take some time for me to coalesce ideas. And so I'm going to also read some things today as I go through this deck, I'm memorize anything and, and I also want people to, you know, interject and share ideas and have a discussion. So I try to keep this as concise as possible. So we can have a dialogue and open it up for other stories and q&a. But let me get going. Um, so hopefully, yeah, this is I'm screen sharing properly loose, right? You can everybody can see my screen. Okay. Looks good. I think so. So yeah, I'm really, really honored and stoked to be here. And it's such a juicy topic that this community chose for the kickoff session. And, you know, as I said, I've been deliberating how to run this session for a couple of weeks. And Louis can attest to that with a few emails and texts, we've kind of shared back and forth. You know, I've given a lot of these kinds of talks and discussions before, but I'm not like a typical standard delivery kind of guy, although I have enjoyed that in the past. So I'm hoping that this can be, you know, a conversation with some really passionate, intelligent, caring folks that I've started to meet in the community so far, and so excited to kind of engage together. And so the topic today is, let me just get back, I'm going to lose you for a second as I change the slide, is transformational versus transactional. And so I've been thinking a lot about, you know, what to share with the session to stoke the fires. And these are, there's so many different ways I could go about this incredibly important topic. Again, very thankful, grateful that we derived this together a few weeks ago, and something that I think will deeply resonate with the community as well. And and then it hit me transformation, maybe this is a statement of the obvious transformation is something that is not simple or easy, right? It's a complex process that involves a lot of energy, whether it's in nature, or created by humans, when we think of transformation, you know, we often think of working through deep trauma, perhaps, or transforming one's career in a big, big shift, for example, behavior change, mindset shifts, those kinds of things. Transactional, so what do we look at? We see that in this in this space, and I just want to double check. Yeah, signs are showing, okay. Well, I've, you know, I personally, and I'm sure, you know, as we talked about a couple weeks ago, folks have seen this as well, in this space, which is why this topic came to bear. You know, we've come to see this quite a bit in this space, unfortunately. And it's the notion, I would say, of like, a quick and easy fix, you know, candling people in some one size fits all manner. And there's no judgment intended with this. But it's unfortunately, a big part of Western society in general. And, you know, folks want an easy answer, I understand there's a there's a lot of forcing agents involved and challenges that people face. But again, in the business of people development, there really is no quick and dirty answer. I think we all can attest to that. And anyone here that's managed people knows this, right? Like, it's a constant process of listening, providing resources, and even like a shoulder to lean on. And checking a box and choosing a platform for content dissemination, let's say, or a program that is not designed to aligned to strategic objectives. That's really a transactional choice. And it's what we often fight upstream to avoid in the work that we do, right, y'all. And when we, when we're designing programs, for true outcomes, there are forcing agents around us, as I mentioned, that, you know, kind of are begging for a quick fix. And it's it's challenging to kind of fight upstream. I mean, all these decisions are challenging. And there are many variables, as I mentioned. And I'm not saying in any way that I don't understand why a transactional approach is often taken. I'm just saying, I've always personally cared more about creating impact, and through values and finding others that share the same worldview. So I'm sure that there's a lot of folks in this community that that resonates with them. I hope so. And, you know, please add some comments if, if, if your anything is resonating with you. I'm sharing today. And so the pathway of transformation of continuous learning behavior change, shifts in mindsets. None of that is transactional. And that leaves me always pondering like Who out there is ready to do the difficult work to truly unlock human potential. And I've met many along my journey. And so I thought I'd share a bit about my story to see if others have a similar experience. So we could share stories together and feel the same way. And I imagine you do. But before doing that, I'd love to hear some thoughts about this topic. And I'll just ask a couple quick questions. I don't know. You know, I think Louis would probably just have people put it in the chat. Because I don't know if you let people hop on his share ideas now or in the q&a, but what is transformation look like to you? And what have you seen most common in the work that you do, and the requests made of you and your work? Is it a focus on transformation? Or is it a focus on a transaction to kind of just get it done? I'll kind of give a little bit of a pause just for people to share some ideas there if you would, again, what it what is, what is transformation look like for you any quick ideas, and what do you most see that's common in the work that you do when you're designing or you're leading a program or creating something? Is it more of a siderophore transactional, let's get this done. Let's check a box and everything every answer is okay. Obviously, just kind of curious for people to share what they've experienced. All right, so we'll kind of take a look at some of those.

Luis Malbas  
So Jeremy, I want to I just want to point out like, I'm not sure if you can see the chat, I know that you're sharing your screen. But um, let me read off some of what the folks are

Jeremy Berman  
just about to thank you. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Luis Malbas  
Let's see Gabby saying lasting change in perspective, I think that's in regards to like transformational and then Teesha, like a transaction for sure the focus is on transaction for them. And then Gabby saying, unfortunately, there's a lot of focus on transaction because universities dig in their heels against change. Brad Bridget saying transformation is shifting how you see the world and your place in it. Unfortunately, a lot of work requests are bandaids for larger problems. And Cindy's saying, yes, the belief that we can create a one size fits all learner journeys often expected. Yeah, lots of great comments in here.

Jeremy Berman  
It's awesome. Yeah, really, I'm really enjoying them too. And I think that the end comment, I mean, sort of, you know, conceptualizes, that. And I think we all understand, like, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of sort of variables at play and how decisions are made. And so, as that kind of go through a little bit of our story, you know, to share a little bit of how we've come across this in our work. And hopefully, that'll resonate, people can have other choices share when I'm gonna cut it down. So thank you for sharing those comments. And I'll keep going. All right. All right. So I thought I'd share some of the Genesis story of my company, just as it's close to home. And probably one of the most clear stories I can tell that highlights my purview on this topic, and why I care so much about this work of unlocking human potential. Now, if I go way back before I started DSD, my mom reminded me when I was starting the company that when I when I was younger, I was a peer counselor in high school. I also babysat and taught swimming lessons and was the armchair psychologist for most of my friends. So this is sort of like started really early. And I wonder, Does this sound familiar to anyone? Or does it feel close to home, just maybe share some emojis or some thoughts, I'll keep going through the story. But you know, Louis, feel free to chat and chime in if there's any interesting things you wanted to call out. But I was curious if that felt close to home. And you. Although I didn't realize this at the time. I think this was a pathway that may have always I've always been destined for. And so when I when I met my co founder in 2013, at a social good conference called the Feast. And during a hackathon actually, when we met after many years of self discovery, trying on different careers for size, like a music producer. See the guitars consultant and coach, I was in a place ready to truly began a new journey of transformation for myself. And, and that's what I've really been working on with dreams you do in the last 10 years. And as you might notice, with some of the pictures here on my team, I tend to find my happy place when I'm with them. You know, we're kind of each of these pictures, I think we're in a deep dive of some type of cool session that is focusing on transformation with partners, designers and other folks in the industry. And so, let me see where we're saying you're sorry. And it doesn't mean that we don't have challenges. But we all are aligned on values first, which drives our work every day. And just recently, I was coaching my team through a challenging moment. And I kind of joked with my co founder, I'm not sure if I'm our CEO or our CPR Chief People Officer, I think I'm kind of both at times, which I love doing. And we work extremely hard and our team to hire folks that walk the walk we even have socks that say walk in the gym on the bottom for GMC do and when those values are pressure tested with some kind of less than ideal behavior, which happens. Um, it really tests the the kind of structural integrity of the system, and we need to work to kind of figure out solutions together. So over the years, we started working with young people just a little bit more background to help them reimagine their future career options in 2013. That's how GMC started, and we prototype to the initial version of the SD, in school clubs. It was an awesome experience, working deeply with teachers and students. And when we decided to shift our focus to tilt learning in 2015. After all that beautiful deep learning, we applied the same rigor, dedication and curiosity to the space. And we have worked with so many amazing coaches facilitators, talent development firms, and l&d professionals over the years. And we've also always had learning experience designers specifically on our team to both help craft the vision for a product with through their lens and also our design principles to really help guide best practices and blended learning, training and coaching. So it's been an amazing experience to have folks like that on our team on throughout the process. And so our pathway to transformation is involved in queue a few key elements, and as I head over to share those before I do that I'd love to hear if anyone else wants to share a quick story or just a note about their journey of transformation. It's really always so powerful to hear other people's experiences so we can learn from one another. So I don't know, Lucent, that feels like a moment now people share in the chat, just some quick snippet, or we could wait for people to share. After as well, you want to?

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, let's do it. Now that I mean, I would love to hear from anybody in chat, especially just, you know, in relation to talent development, just like what are things that you've seen that? That, I mean, because when it comes to talent development, how the woman is, you know, I think that at its best transformational, right, so I would love to hear especially because I know that we've got lots of senior people in in our audience right now, that have been doing this for a long time. Just, you know, elements of like, what what what they've done that has that that has impacted the most, which would ultimately be transformational. I know, when I think about it, some of the things that I have been that I've felt that's transformational is anytime that I've been part of leadership development, just I think that is a huge thing, or when I'm in an organization, and they really try to foster say, innovation or creativity, that always feels transformational to me versus, you know, getting sent something from HR where I just have to go through and do my required be, you know, cybersecurity testing or something, something like that. So let's see it in the chat. Anybody have any comments about that things that that they felt were transformational, especially in relationship to talent development. I'm pretty sure just posted some nice Bridget. Alright, Bridget says I helped develop high reliability training for hospitals. And that was transformational. For me. It provided a philosophical framework for managing uncertainty. Ooh, I love that. That's beautiful, really, really good. Anybody else want to share something?

Jeremy Berman  
Good, as we're waiting for that was I was just sharing a quick anecdote, years ago, as we were prototyping and coming up with ideas for gmct. Because it's, you know, this journey of transformation for us has been, you know, as I, you know, kind of that cliche of the the salmon swimming upstream, I couldn't think of a better analogy. I feel like people have used that before. But it just felt apropos. We have really done that in our work. And I think that people that are focusing on transformation versus transactions, and maybe people can, you know, send some emotions that they agree, it is it does feel often, like you're just you're trying to fight against the grain the status quo. And I think the connection I felt in this community in the first couple of conversations have been like, wow, people really see it that way. And there's people in all different disciplines here that are feeling these things. And that makes me feel inspired. And it's kind of related to a couple other things, I'll bring up some actionable things that we've seen coming up. But one quick story, I'll say is like, I stood up a hackathon one time, and that my co founder had a hackathon running a hackathon. By the way, all of Louis could share a link in Boston, if anyone's in that area, in January, around that, you know, creating new ideas together in the space, which can be really fun with a TD Boston. But um, I also stood up a hackathon with REI in Seattle several years ago, before GCB really started to mature and like 2018. And it was super cool, because there was like a disconnect between the leaders and the core teams. And it was like a big challenge. Like there's these waterfall practices happening in some areas of the business and agile practices and others. And there was just a lack of communication. And so I can't remember I brought that up in this last chat, but I figured I'd share that it was a really cool experience to kind of dry people together. And I feel like people came together to make that happen. That was the special sauce anyway. Right?

Luis Malbas  
No. And I think that that's one of the reasons why it was I think it was, you know, the choice to have you open this event, I think, was compelling to me, just because you're you are so value centered and mission centered. It's actually changing people and I know a large part of this community and in fact that I would just say, kind of the community as a whole, a lot of the you know, are really focused on doing that on helping people change. You know, we're not like focused on selling products or doing anything like that to each other, we're more focused on actually doing better jobs and just helping other people meet their potential. And, you know, you know, and I just want to add some of the read out some of these comments that are that are being posted in chat. Gabby's saying fighting against that human instinct to cling to the status quo is part of what makes creating something truly transformational hard, it usually requires sneaking in small things long term, and that is such a I mean, that's it right there. That's, that's that's the fight. And then Arthur. I've delivered change management and team integration. Soft Skills training helps a lot to help people improve and enjoy their work. And Teesha saying creating training that was accessible for diverse target audiences. Enjoy the challenge and reward of making sure the online training information was able to be shared to a broader audience. And I think this is part of what satisfies us as educators is seeing that transformational aspect, versus, you know, the transactional one where I have worked places where the, you know, l&d department was basically all about just, you know, publishing PDFs and handing them out to the sales team. Real impact there.

Jeremy Berman  
Yeah. I mean, it's true. There was Yeah, it's like, it's it, listen, I get it. Like, it's when you're when you're when you're asked to say, hey, we need to do this thing, whether it's important topics like DNI dealing with equity inclusivity, dealing with emotional intelligence, you know, if there's tools out there, you know, I think from a purview of the technology lens, because that's where I come at this in this, you know, sort of like, collective state that we're in. But it's, it's, it's often easy to say, here's this sort of glossy thing that we can check a box and say, we have these videos, we can watch and we realize like, listen, there's there's room for that, right? Watching a video sometimes can be powerful. Doing a compliance thing, sitting a stand and deliver a lecture can be powerful, but how do we create like a longitudinal approach, and I have this woman on my team, Lana, who's been, you know, she's in the Netherlands, she's been our head of learning design for years. And she's just a magical person. And she's, you know, taught around the world around and her whole focus has been transformation, as has been mine. So we're so hard aligned. And we've been talking using language, we're since like, I wonder if this resonates with anyone since like 2017. Things like online learning communities. And you how do you get your committees of practice together online? How do you all these different things that we're, I think, becoming more clear, I don't think this is new knowledge that people in this room, but how do we surface this and socialize this in ways that people can understand that maybe aren't the status quo. And part of my belief is we have to start with people that are get it and ready to do it, show some exemplars of the work we can do together to other people to say, Hey, this is what's possible, and then maybe some of the bigger fish will follow. You know, I don't know if that resonates. But it's

Luis Malbas  
true. And kind of speaking to that Cindy just posted something that I think is, you know, I mean, this is really poignant. Cindy says I worked on a large ERP implementation, and it required us to break down our business processes and simplify, we were trying to avoid any customization, it truly transformed our business in an incredible way. And, you know, that is actually a really, really interesting thing, Cindy? Yeah. Love to talk about that more later on. That's, I think that's significant. Because you know, that customization can actually get in the way, right? Like, if you're like, if you're trying to become transformational, sometimes just simplifying everything. And I mean, Jeremy, you'll even understand this for music. I mean, it's sometimes it's like, what happens between the notes right, that is really what's important. Yeah. So anyway, go there. You

Jeremy Berman  
just did. You just did you see my face when you said, I was like, I have to spend just a minute on that you crack that open? So I started writing music again, y'all and I, I was a music producer. I've actually got a couple times in my career. And it's such a cool story, because it's like when we started with youth years ago, I would tell the story, like I had dreams of becoming a professional music, you know, artists, and I had a development deal offer in high school from a famous manager guys and like, we were working with high school students early on with Tootsie do but it was so powerful that they weren't like, you know, there was this big disconnect with what happens in the classroom and what what you may want to do, and there is such a pressure to go to college, nothing wrong with it. I went to Wash U I love college. have kind of an education like XQ shirt on from one of our prior clients. But like the what the story would tell us like, Hey, I ended up as a music producer, sort of like through college, finding my own path. And I turned down to development deals as a musician. And it's just such an interesting exploration. And I've had music, I became a music producer, and it kind of crushed my spirit for music. It wasn't the right path. I wanted to help people. I ultimately, as you could see, by my backstory of like being that peer counselor or the babysitter, all those things on the lifeguard, the teaching demolitions, swimming lessons, I wanted to help people. And it was in finding some of the digital transformation work I did with library systems and yoga retreat centers before June CDU that got me on that path. But recently, I started writing music again. And just getting back to your point, that simplicity like I'm with this new writing partner, we're kind of feeling each other out. And it's been so exciting. sipping a little training can help writing music, and it is distilling things down to their essence. And I'll only add one other point to that, even from the product standpoint, like we years ago, created this learning model of our own called CPR, which is kind of a cool thing, because you can say CPR, you know, get them get the visual for your training and coaching. And it's all about connection, practice and reflection. And we've really fundamentally focused on that for all the work that we do with amazing thought partners. And the focus of distilling it down to just like iterative cycles of just connecting, practicing reflecting around whatever training is happening is really what I'm focused on focusing our team on how do we Just how do we not focus so much on content and distill it down? So I love what Sandy's comment was. And I think if after I finish shortly, we could talk more about that and have her maybe jump on or something. That'd be awesome.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, let's talk about the the people development piece of what you're trying to, to share with us. Can we go into that?

Jeremy Berman  
Yeah, absolutely. So, um, let me let me shift over to the next slide. And

Luis Malbas  
I'll go ahead and hide myself now. Okay, cool. It's probably talked too much.

Jeremy Berman  
So there, you just set me up the art of people development. So basically, yeah. So we, I mean, kind of a few different topics if your front elements are. So we, amongst many, we've, we've seen three key elements, that it that really helped sort of, coalesce, impact with with people development. And, and it begins with a collective impact approach. And so there's a there's an expression, as you all know, it takes a village, it's, and you know, it's cliche, but it's very apropos in this work, because we cannot create transformational experiences for others on our own. And I think everybody can kind of attest to that. And there's so many important actors in our space that needs to come together to work on innovative learning experiences, to figure out how to best measure outcomes and to hold hands in the process. And that's what we found in our experience, you know, taking one angle, this includes learning experience designers, l&d professionals, technologists, like me, and my company, I'm consultants, and of course, the learners are so important in the process. And those we're all we're all seeking to help. And that transformation can happen from what we found, when people find collective ways to work together with open hearts and willingness to experiment and try new things. And I think our whole approach has been, you know, it's kind of plastered all over your communication and things that we shared people's we've we've taken a very human centered approach. So, you know, my co founder worked at IDEO, which kind of for years, which coined the term design thinking and we, we've just kind of, I think curated our own careers and our own thought processes around deeply listening and having curiosity for, you know, what are the true needs from the various stakeholders? Like if you're working at an organization in a corporate sense, like, what are the leadership teams needing? You know, how do we align to strategy? But how do we also make sure that we are thinking about what the learners deeply need? And can we create unique pathways for them? And can we work together across disciplines, so as a technology company, for people for you know, what I call the art of people development really is about digging in together, rolling up our sleeves, and finding ways to work with other people, as I mentioned, to create impact across the various disciplines, because for us, we feel like technology is a complement to the magic that can happen in person. And we want to create lightweight tools that like I said, around connection, practice and reflection, that amplify the experience and create real outcomes. And we want to be able to measure that so we can show, hey, this is some things are happening here. So collected impact approach. It's something that I saw in a different industry that my wife originally taught me about years ago, she works in the nonprofit space, and there's a collective impact, where there's like a backbone organization, and they find all kinds of organizations in a community to kind of coalesce often around learning initiatives. And so I've sort of adopted that nomenclature to, to in the work that we do. So that's sort of the first piece. And then the next piece, you know, as I said, we've spent sort of 10 years as a business, working authentically in our role. And I think, you know, trying to tackle things in authentic way. And we have one rolling per view. And so when I met my co founder, you know, one of the first things that we did, and you said, you share this earlier, Louis, was to craft our shared values. A really neat story I can tell was, we met and we met this super cool guy, who started the Republic of t, which is like, a month after he won this hackathon that we met, at the feast, around a learning challenge. And he and he loves what you're doing. And we're like, two months into what you're doing. And we're just coalescing, even deciding to form a company. And he's like, I want to invest in you guys. And like, I love what you're doing. And here's some good ideas. And we're like, Whoa, dude, like, we're just figuring out like what we want to do together. But he's share this amazing HBR article from 1997. If you haven't read it, check it out. Think the author's are Collins and Porus p o r a s. And it's basically about forming your ideology and your values. And so if you're part of a company, and that's a practice that we look at, and we map to our strategy to our ethos, every single year, my head of finance in our sort of we also call them our ethos, and finance. He's run like Google X type, strategy sessions. around creating we call it the ethos exercise, like how we map our strategy and our vision towards our ethos every year, we're looking at our values. And so we've mapped our values like within two months of meeting and then Josh ended up moving to New York within four months and we started the company and, and it's been a thing from there. So shared values are hugely important, and really working to tackle things authentically. And then the last one is, I find it the most interesting in many ways. And because there's a natural tension between transformation and scale, and we all we all, I think we all can agree, we all want to amplify our impact more people, I mean, please shoot out an emoji. If you can agree with that. I'd love to see some some some good some hearts and thumbs up if you if you want to scale your impact. Thanks for sharing that. So you want to amplify that. And as you said, the transformation requires a deep work, and it's messy at times. It's complex. So how do we balance the two? It's something I think about a lot. I'd love to hear any thoughts about that? How do you balance this deep work with transformation and the challenges that come with that the juiciness of that with, you know, the desire to scale the work? You know, Cindy pointed out, you know, the need to simplify things. So there any other thoughts? Was this might be a moment where we can have people chime in as well, just with thoughts around balancing, you know, thoughtfully scaling, transformation. Any any thoughts there?

Luis Malbas  
All right. Yeah. Not seeing anything yet. I inject it in. Yes, it is such a challenge, right? You know, I mean, yeah. And Gabi saying, I think this is where acknowledging that most processes are iterative, is important, you probably not going to get it right immediately. And I totally agree with that. And it actually really kind of aligns well with the way that I think that like communities like the training, learning and development community are built, which is, you know, there are things that you can do that or just, you know, sort of textbook transactional ways to like build a community. And then there are other things you can do that are transformative, where you got to just take risks, and bring people together to just have real honest conversations about things. And I feel like, that's kind of the direction that I've tried to take this community is to make it more transformative is just to connect people to have conversations that are relevant to them, you know, versus like, Okay, I just found this speaker, and we're just going to talk about this. And that's it. You know, which is what traditionally, I think many communities are sort of accustomed to. But yeah, that's, that's really, sort of the only thing that I've been able to sort of figure out when it comes to, to building this. One is that I just wanted people to be able to transform ourselves. We just I just needed to get them together to talk about what what was important to them.

Jeremy Berman  
There's some other good comments here, seeing here. Digital, like some of the stuff and thoughts that have been shared. Linear said, using a framework that people get plugged in or experiences can help. And then Bridget said, I think looking at processes that are sustainable over time, love that small things done consistently over time with more impact than big things done. inconsistently. Beautiful. Clear said. Seems so tough, but awesome that your team saw the benefit. You know, Jen said self examination, right? Yes. self inquiry, analyzing and comparing values with best practices. Beautiful. It's a show that's an open community practice. Yeah, no one is the leader or knows more than another. I love that creating safe spaces. Absolutely. There's a little heart emoji there. And then Gabby said, providing a venue for asynchronous feedback that you can keep looking at as helpful as well. That's great. Any other thoughts there? Louis? You wanted to?

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, no, that's great. I that last comment about Gabby, it's with Gabby. That's really interesting. Yeah, chat always just kind of blows my mind, because then I just start thinking in a million different directions. So yeah, no, this is great stuff. And Teesha. You know, like open community practice, no one is the leader or knows more than another, creating safe spaces. It's surprising how challenging that can be with trainers and educators. Because by default, a lot of educators really like to kind of walk into the room and be the smartest person there. You know, I mean, that's just my experience. And I love it, when there are people that you are collaborating with and working with that are absolutely willing to say that they don't know, you know, the answer for whatever. And I think that's really, really important. I agree. Yeah, open period. Yeah.

Jeremy Berman  
That one, I remember when you're being open and flexible with a growth mindset, yep. Versus rigid with a fixed mindset. And that's some of the challenges. You talked about transactional earlier. Janet's a great point, you know, I think there's some rigidity, some might be an understatement, you know, in the space and, again, this whole idea of collective impact the way that we've dove in to play our part, it's just a part. You know, it's, we're, we're doing the best we can, I will say, what I'm really proud of, and again, just driving, you know, the point home of values, as well is. And when I speak to younger folks that are starting technology companies, as we talked about this, it's so much about like, hey, there's a different way to do this. You don't have to take a huge VC money to start there's nothing wrong with getting investment. But you know, as as one example that I can share, you can you can really push to bootstrap your efforts to deeply learn with other people and to really focus on figuring out what it's going to take. We don't have the answers to some of these points here. We're not planning to we're just constantly trying to learn this last year for my company has been to truly transformational, so it's so cool to like be having this talk in December of 2023. When at in January, I sat down my team, I'm like, Guys, I feel like we're gonna be going through metamorphosis this year, like, on that, you know, and, you know, I sometimes bring up like, we've been crawling with like this toy my daughter gave me, it's like a little, it's like a little caterpillar. Sorry, there's the head. And we've been crawling along the floor with our thought partners and designers we work with and l&d professionals and clients and learners just to learn, like what it takes to, for us, our goal is to be able to balance that skill of transformation and impact with the efficacy of that and having good fidelity. So it's been really interesting. There's some other things here. Did you want to jump in with us and Chinese? No, no, go ahead. Great. So what do we hear? We got shifting the thought process from talking to talking with has been important, changing how I deliver workshops. I love that sort of a shared conversation that was analogous to what I was talking about with the hackathon we ran that really resonates with me, gave me a really design a workshop with the idea of talking for about 30 to 50 minutes anymore. I think that's great. For me even talking this much feels a bit uncomfortable, honestly. And it's almost done. Like I love that we can have this conversation. I really enjoy the Lewis Lewis, thank you for jumping in and talking as well. And I'm looking forward to finishing up soon. So we can have other people maybe join. You can bring them on stage. You want to give and take showing tension if needed. That's great. Oh, jazz. Oh, music again. We can't see the toy. Oh, no. Oh, wait. You can't Oh, they can't see the toy. They can only see my screen.

Luis Malbas  
You got a There you go. You got it. Okay, cool.

Jeremy Berman  
Okay, cool. Let me let me finish up y'all so so we can kind of keep chatting together some great comments here. So just finishing on that thought for us, this has really been about finding the people that are pushing the envelope, and working together to scale the impact. And so it's that collective impact thing again, and it's and that's, uh, you know, you know, who could hook it for us, it's been like, who could put our tools into their hands. And, you know, we want to put our tools actually into people's hands to elevate their experiences in a scalable manner. And recently, we've been thinking a ton about, about this on from our purview, and focusing a lot on the energy of like craters in the space. You know, learning experience designers, l&d managers, consultants, facilitators, the folks that we work with, this has been the thoughts that we've been having, you know, these are folks that we see as the glue and the kind of on the frontlines, all, you know, crafting powerful experiences and people that can really lead transformation. And so we've really oriented our work around ways where we can collaborate with people. And, you know, we really triple down on on sort of, like learning what supports the various stakeholders that we collaborate with. So that I think, I think everybody can attest to the fact that like, being able to do that, you is like a very powerful thing. So I'm gonna just switch this last slide and finish up here. And so what does that look like that really looks like, to me, that looks like finding allies. And so you know, people are really realizing that there has to be a shift in how they handle people development, I think a lot of people in this room already are doing things that are transformational. But I think a lot of folks are also realizing that the shifts need to happen. And it's for us, it's key to find your allies. And so you can kind of mutually support each other toward more profound outcomes. And I would say, Louis, you know, I was so drawn to this community immediately, because it's really an ideal reflection of a space with, you know, passionate people of varying backgrounds, all of whom want to help create transformation within people development. So let's really seek out those who share our vision and elevate each other's voices, appears, you know, and also focus on social capital, which is this notion of like, how do we collaborate together to create new knowledge, new innovative practices and ways of working together? This is, there's someone on our team named Barack who studied his did his PhD on social capital. He's taught me so much we've been sort of writing some white papers around leadership and management, development, the history, how can how can we help and be a part of that in this collective impact way but I think it really boils down to finding your allies and, you know, I help them out regurgitating a story I told before, but a quick anecdote a woman, it's a thought partner of mine who works, does work in the Boston area. She said, Jeremy, you know, I was sort of like struggling a couple years ago trying to figure out who my allies were. And you know, feeling like I was fighting upstream, because that's so much with status quo around me. And I had this moment where it's like, it was crushing. And I didn't know what to do and to turn to next and she was a definite, pure ally. And she said, Jeremy, you really got to look for the zeros and the 10s. And I wrote an article about this recently, y'all can check out on LinkedIn, if you want around, discover your allies, and it was around like the zero sort of the person that you know, really doesn't see your see things. Similarly, it's great to have differing points of view, don't get me wrong, I think that creates tension, natural tension, where we can learn from each other. But if someone's sort of derogatory or not trying to make an impact, for instance, you kind of say, okay, that's not going to work. But here's someone that's a 10. And I don't like necessarily this binary feeling that you have to be a zero 10. But it was just so like, nice framework to look at, where you could say, wow, this person has a similar shared view. And I want to elevate their vision in the work that we do. And I want to elevate their voice. And I want to share this vision so we can work together to create knowledge. And that's what this slide is all about. It's just those things. And so I kind of want to open up to q&a or a conversation around, you know, this, this topic of transformation and finding and discovering allies and finding ways to work together in a collective way. And so anyway, thank you so much for having me, guys. And I'll land there. And Luis, come back in and kind of finish up in chat. Really appreciate you.

Luis Malbas  
Cool. So let's start with this one. We have one question and q&a. Everybody, you can actually go into the q&a, if you have, if you want to add anything, I can show it on screen, even if you want to come on stage, happy to have you on there. But we show this question on stage. Any suggestions for where to go to continue reading about and or discussing ways to build transformational experiences? Jeremy, I know that you yourself just even just knowing your background, you're so human centered, right? Yeah, I mean, I think that you see transformation from a different perspective and are really just trying to bring it to the world of l&d. But is there what what has influenced you in that way? Or do you have any direct sort of replies to this? Yeah,

Jeremy Berman  
I mean, there's some really cool models out there. I didn't bring them with me. But I think if it's cool, I can lose, we can share some after is that something as a follow up that you can, that you can share with the community, there are some really cool models around kind of like moving through chaos, really, from status quo into a place of transformation. I can, if you want to keep chatting, I can kind of look for that. And I apologize, I don't have that raise my hand, Gabby. But this is something that Lana shared with me years ago on my team, that's a really cool exemplar model that was created around working through chaos as an example, I think, from a reading standpoint, you know, we we've been writing about this too. So again, like, you know, you know, ever like I'm not trying to be self promoting, but we write about this kind of topic a lot, and reference other folks that do in articles as well. But I think there's so many different interesting writers out there around the topic of transformation. I am just put on the spot a little bit. Don't have that at my fingertips. But I'd be happy to share something after if that's okay. Yeah,

Luis Malbas  
absolutely. Yeah, send it over. I can actually I'll post I can post links in the in the conference chat altogether.

Jeremy Berman  
That's a great,

Luis Malbas  
I will do that. We can do that. All right. So let me go ahead and hide that from stage and market. All right, so Teesha is asking, I'd like to know more about your work the size of your team? Are they all virtual? Assume your team is all like minded. And that's how you all came together? And maybe how you took the dive to start your own biz?

Jeremy Berman  
Yeah, great question. So we are all virtual. We started Josh and I started together in New York, we actually like we're living in the city and used to be able to take the ferry to see each other was a pretty, it's pretty awesome, fun experience. He was renting an apartment and found this like this, like rubber duck that we'd bring on the ferry. It's kind of random. Anyway, it was fun. It was a fun time together just to get to know each other years ago, this is in 2014. When we met and we were prototyping for years, just learning y'all, we really did start to mature as a business until like 2018. But we are all remote. I have folks in Kazakhstan, in Netherlands in Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Chicago, kind of all over the map. We're a team of 12 people. So we're pretty small. I'm particularly for technology company, when a lot of the companies in this space are these massive companies that have more developers on one of their teams and our whole company. And that's a that's a that's part of our value system. I want to be able to have a relationship with everyone on our team and it's very familial, you know, and I also want to be well have relationship with our clients. So that's sort of how we've grown the company. It's really staying true to our values. And it's allowed us to think differently and to articulate what we want to do from a feature set to like who we work with how we support people. And most recently, what's led to our biggest realization in the last year. So if like, really elevating any kind of person that's creating, so we've really created tools that GMC do through the lens of learning designers that have been on our team. And now we realize like, wow, like the people that are creating the things in this space have are, I think, not valued enough, not supported enough. And that we really want to like listen and provide support for them. So yeah, we came together with like minded, you know, and we we interview to shoot around those values, like it's very important to us, we don't do these, like 10 rounds of interviews with like, we're just really feeling into like, hey, are people going to come together and want to make an impact? Do they care about this work, like, deeply? And we have a lot of quirky, interesting, brilliant, beautiful people on the team. Anything else? I can add an interesting question.

Luis Malbas  
Are you getting some great comments, Bridget, saying that's so awesome, you grew your business organically, so much of entrepreneurship is focused on explosive growth? It's nice to see an alternative model. Yeah, and I'm sure you could probably talk a bunch about that. But I'm going to ask you this. Jeremy. I mean, this is great. We're all talking about impact transformation, all that good stuff. I mean, this community is really centered around that even with the topics that we chase after but, I mean, how much of your work is transactional? Reality?

Jeremy Berman  
Great question.

Luis Malbas  
Um

Jeremy Berman  
very little. Yeah, I think it's what's meant to be totally truthful, it's very, very 10 15%. It's probably why we haven't grown as much as we'd like to, if I'm going to be totally honest. You know, I mean, that's what we were so heart centered. And so this is an interesting inflection point, we have been, if I'm going to be real, we've been acting more like a lifestyle SAS, which is software as a service business for like, five, five to seven years, like we're not, you know, if you don't have your clients at most, I mean, our competitors have, like, 1000s of clients. And they are, I'm not going to dive into that topic, you know, that you just mentioned. But I'll just quickly say, that is unfortunately, the common track, it's like, looking to grow so quickly and to have volume. And we're really focused on impact, and how do we do that with other people. So we don't have a lot of transactional, I can't say that we don't be want to continue to feel the company. So there are moments where we have transactional things that come up. But we focus so heavily on deeply engaging with our clients and learners that we have focused almost entirely on how do we unlock transformation. However, we're now in a moment coming through this year where we're really thinking like, because customer intimacy has been one of the top two things that are important to us, how do we create innovative tools to support creators and innovators in the space that are going to create the cool learning experiences and work together with them hold hands? And then how do we really provide customer intimacy? How do we deeply connect with people? And so the question I have, and that that transformation versus transactional approach is, how do we continue to support and the advocates of transformation, yet scale that in ways that are meaningful since we do have a platform. And so I think that there may be some more transactions that happen in the coming years where we have to open up things a little bit to cast the net a little wider, and maybe only 60 50% of the people that come on board are going to truly be working on transformation. And that's okay. If we cast the net, we invite people in, and, you know, maybe in a way where it's easier, there's less friction to use these cool tools we've created, then we can see how that goes. So um, yeah, sort of, like where we've been and where I see things going.

Luis Malbas  
Right. No, because I Well, my, I have just met, you know, some really, I mean, incredible l&d leaders, that I feel like, perhaps they are able to accomplish transformation through transaction, you know, and, but, you know, so maybe there's that balance that kind of needs to be considered. Because I understand, you know, between both, like, transformation through transaction, I mean, like, as somebody who is builds, like, has built this community, my whole thing is really about transformation. But I do have to maintain a level of transaction just to exist, you know, and oh, entrepreneurs. Yeah, yeah. No, and but it's really finding that balance. So. So yeah, just want to throw that in there.

Jeremy Berman  
Can I just add to that, so I let me just thank you guys for contextualise in that, I don't want to come across as saying that transaction is not valued, right. That is not I just the goal today was to open up dialogue around like what it might take to create transformation in a space that we also deeply care about. And I mean clearly like we can't survive as a company without having through everything we do has a transaction. What I meant and saying that to your to your question was our primary focus is not around transaction. I mean, you can ask my wife about that in terms of like what I've paid myself. Like, you know, like, it's not the money is it first for us, it's I mean, we want to feel we all need fuel to do this work. And I always tell my team that and we get there, we slowly incrementally improve that, which is beautiful. But its primary focus for us is truthfully, always been impacted in transformation. And now, to try to balance the two is the goal. So I appreciate you sharing that, like she has and and to your point it, I don't have the same force agents, in some ways. I'm sort of beholden to my clients and the environments I'm in. But I'm not a corporation where I'm like, I have these various folks saying, Hey, you gotta do this, that revolves around maybe a transactional approach that you can't control. I'm just hopeful that we can find that someone said before those little spaces to make slow system change, you can't just make some massive change on your own in a minute. But can you do a thing to step into additional learning? Can you work with a thought partner? Can you try a new product skunkworks style on your own? Even if you have you can't get it into your system? You know, yet? What are the little things that we could do actionable things that take little micro steps, you know, of habit change? And yeah, there's a there's totally a transaction involves so sorry, if that wasn't clear, and I appreciate you No,

Luis Malbas  
absolutely. No, I just wanted to get, I just wanted to, to sort of point out that, that distinction or make that distinction? Let's see, Charles is saying in this era, where work environment is so dynamic transform must be every employee and employers way to go? No, I like that. And, you know, Jeremy, just, you know, and I don't try to I don't like to really share a lot of my thoughts when I'm when I'm doing this stuff. But you and I just have so many things in common. But was it it was Quincy Jones, you know, Quincy Jones, right. And Michael Jackson producer all the way horse?

Jeremy Berman  
Yeah. So when I talk about this last night, what

Luis Malbas  
did he say, and this is the way that I look at the community, he said that as soon as, as soon as money comes into the picture, God walks out of the room. And when it comes to the training, learning and development community, that is the thing that I'm terrified of is when if I, you know, like, whenever like, because I get sponsors regularly wanting to come in and purchase like just spots of, of the community and just saying, Yeah, you have, you have a really strong, you know, group here that, you know, that, that pay attention to what you're doing. But I know that as soon as I do that, the impact of us being able to talk about issues with diversity, you know, women's issues, with, you know, accessibility, things like that. I don't want anyone to have any other other control over that. Because I do believe that, you know, this community, Ken, is having an impact. And so, you know, and so that's a thing like, how do you manage a business with maintaining transformation as your primary objective and still meet your revenue objectives?

Jeremy Berman  
Yeah. Is that a question? You're just sort of putting that out underneath those

Luis Malbas  
kind of a question? Because it's like, Dude, I guess you're we have a secret. How are you? How are you? How do you make money?

Jeremy Berman  
I mean, wow, that's a whole other hour, but like, but this is so cool. We should talk about this for another time, the community, it's great. I'll just quickly answer a couple things. We started a podcast recently that you're going to be on. So I want to promote that a little bit. Just to say, I'm so stoked to have you on guys in the 18th. But we're not we're not we're not sharing it when it's not live. But Louis is gonna be on our podcast, always learning. It's about cross disciplinary, collective impact in this field of working together with these great voices, like, what does it take to like be able to feel like you can innovate? What are the challenges we're facing? So what are today's conversation so that that's a space where like, my the guys, you know, my team is producing that who brought up Quincy Jones the other night, by the way, in topic of conversation of producing a podcast, by the way, which is new to us, you're way more experienced in this than we are, and I can't wait to get feedback from you. But like, do we ever want to have ads as an example? So there's transformation topic? Like, it's literally fireside chat, y'all. It's like, like we're doing here. I mean, I did a little bit of a presentation. But how do you typically run your community? And I'm just like, the thought in that thought experiment would be, can you find aligned? Advertisers, we won't ever have advertising on our core site, ever, ever, ever, ever. But I think that there's room maybe this is new for me for the podcast advertising to your point. If it's really an aligned product, let's say not someone pushing their wares to the community, but like, is there something that's adjacent? It's just I don't even know, because we haven't done it yet. And we're not even close. We're just launching. But it was a question that my guy might that Adam and my team had, because he's produced podcasts before. And he's like, this is how you can monetize it. So you can feel it. And I'm like, Oh, I don't know if I want to do that. That's not our style. But to your point, maybe it's an inquiry. I don't know. I'm just kind of putting that out there. And so I think, to answer it from a fundamental standpoint of our businesses, it's been hard. Like, it's been really challenging. And so for us, we have just deeply held hands with thought partners that really believe in the work in the same way we do. That has been, you know, put a, they've put dollars behind that to work with us because we provide them a valuable platform and support with our team. And it shows outcomes for them. So there's this virtuous cycle. But again, I'm working moving to this place where we're drastically looking to lower prices, because we want to provide a cast a wider net to highlight and elevate the work of any kind of creator that wants to create cool work in the space. And we couldn't do that before. Because it was so hard to feel the work, we had to have a smaller set of larger clients, we're almost we are flipping the script coming in at 2024. So I can share more maybe in six months. But it isn't easy. And it's really, it takes a mindful, thoughtful, continuous process with our team, to always elevate the people that we want to elevate and to support and value them and listen to them. And to know that they know that that dollar will come to support that for everyone. That's sort of in my module.

Luis Malbas  
I love it. You know, Jeremy, I gotta wrap up here, because we're at the top of the hour. But I do want to say for everybody out there, like if you look at every single speaker for this particular event are people that are focused on transformation. And I know this, everybody that even speaks at a to DC event is really focused on that, because they give their time freely. They're interested in really just sharing their thoughts and their ideas to help improve other people. And so, you know, so I'm really honored to be a part of the community not just being, you know, somebody who keeps an eye on and make sure that it's that it's working. And Bobby right changemakers Absolutely. I feel like there's this funnel that's at the top. And people sort of come down and like the people that end up dropping through are the ones that are really interested in transformation and impact. And so Jeremy, thanks for doing this. You're a part of it now. So and I'm glad that we've got to meet and we got to have these conversations. And please, whenever you have anything that you've learned that is valuable, and you'd like to share with us, you know, get back to us. And yes, we got the podcast. Yes, I got another thing where we're going to be talking about GMC do a little bit more. And then also, I'll definitely send everything everybody a message about the hackathon that you're doing next month. That's

Jeremy Berman  
awesome, y'all. I would just want to thank you for having me, man. Again. I'm super honored to be here. I can't tell you how thrilling it's been to be introduced this community to find like minded people. It's incredible. So I can't wait to to to participate. And y'all thank you so much for this chat. I'm looking forward to future combos. And

Luis Malbas  
absolutely, thanks. Thanks, everybody for being here at 10am. Pacific. I guess that's 1pm. Eastern after lunch for all you folks on the on the other side, or the coast, Pacific Time. Deborah Decker is going to be here another person transformational designing a talent development strategy to support the organization's goals. She's a senior leader, Director of Lean earning experience at the LA care health plan. So So join us back then for that. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and close it out. And we'll see everybody in the next one. Thanks, everyone.

Jeremy Berman  
Thank you so much.