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How to Connect Learning Outcomes to Business Objectives – a conversation with Carrie Graham PhD
14 Plays12 days ago
Fix the root cause, not the symptoms: a smarter way to train.
Most workplace training doesn’t fail quietly — it fails expensively. In this explosive episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds, learning architect Dr. Carrie Graham and host Michael Millward identify why organisations keep pouring money into training that never changes behaviour, never fixes the real problem, and never delivers the results leaders expect.
Carrie brings the precision of a healthcare diagnostician and the insight of a seasoned professor to expose the hidden mistakes companies make: treating symptoms instead of causes, forcing everyone through “sheep‑dip” learning, ignoring how people actually learn, and preaching values they don’t live.
If your training feels like theatre, if your people aren’t improving, or if your organisation keeps repeating the same mistakes, this conversation will hit uncomfortably close to home — and offer a smarter, more strategic way forward.
Bold, honest, and packed with practical insight, this episode is a wake‑up call for employer that wants employee training that actually works.
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Transcript
Introduction to Independent Minds
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. The all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast production process so easy. All the details are in the description.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abbasida and people who think outside the box about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
Meet the Host and Guest
00:00:32
Speaker
I'm your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abusida. Today, i will be learning about how to make employee development activities more focused so that business objectives can be achieved from Dr. Carrie Graham, a learning architect.
00:00:50
Speaker
Carrie is based in Charlotte, North Carolina in the United States of America. I have never visited North Carolina, but if I do, I will be sure to take advantage of the trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, and holidays that being a member of the Ultimate Travel Club gives me.
00:01:09
Speaker
You can as well if you're a member, and you can become a member at a discounted price by using the link in the description.
Purpose of the Podcast
00:01:18
Speaker
Now that I've paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Mind that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:28
Speaker
As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. Hello to Dr. Carrie Graham. Hello, Michael. Thank you so much for having me. It's a great pleasure. How are you? I am very well. Thank you very much. I hope that you can say
Carrie's Career Journey
00:01:46
Speaker
the same. Yes, yes. I am doing well in North Carolina.
00:01:50
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Please tell me a little bit about your career in training and development. Thank you so much for for asking that question. It is an interesting start. My early career was in sports medicine. So I'm a, I was, I'm now retired, but a board certified healthcare care provider. And that was really where it got me started in the work that I do today, because i had to fit as a healthcare care provider in athletics, I had to figure out what was the problem in a very, you know, high stress environment in a very short period of time. I had to figure out the assess the problem, figure it out, and make an accurate diagnosis so that I could then make a very clear recommendation for treatment and care.
00:02:44
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So I started my career with that foundation and in healthcare care and then spent about 15 to 17 years as a university professor teaching future healthcare providers.
00:02:59
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And with that, it required my teaching and creating learning experiences that not only built skills of the students, but it also built their confidence so that they can become board certified and effective healthcare providers in the future. So that's where my start and my journey in training and development and workplace learning started toward the the end of my tenure as a faculty member. I got a PhD in adult learning. And that's when i realized that trainings, workshops, a lot of it all outside of a classroom, there's there's a significant opportunity to make improvements in how people are learning in the workplace.
00:03:53
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So that's my journey to what I'm doing today. Great. Sounds like being a university professor, you started right at the top of the ah of the training tree, so to speak.
00:04:04
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Yeah, yeah, it really did. the The personal development and the internal skills that I learned as a healthcare provider really built my confidence in recognizing that Like how do, what is the skill that I need in order to assess a seemingly complex problem and solve it? Mm-hmm.
00:04:30
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That was a really critical skill that I was able to refine as I was then developing curriculum development and program development skills and and taken together. Now I'm able to, when I meet with a client, I'm able to sift through all those little, you know, nuance challenges that they're facing to identify the root cause and and then provide a solution that really makes sense.
Addressing Business Problems
00:05:01
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Yes, I'm thinking that the challenge that employers of perhaps all sorts of sizes face is that they don't really analyze the situation that they're looking at. They might decide that, you know, we've got a problem here.
00:05:17
Speaker
We should train our way through the problem to the other side, remove the problem, resolve the problem. Training is our route to get to there. But it sounds as if, and I'm thinking about my own experience here as well, is that very often people, when they're running a business or they're running a department within a bigger business, they don't really look beyond the symptoms to the root cause.
00:05:43
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And until you've got to the root cause, you can't actually create the right type of solution. Absolutely. You know, on the one hand, my heart honestly goes out to those individuals because it's,
00:05:56
Speaker
It is, I don't want to say an easy ah path to take. it It appears that it's the easy path to take, right? Because you you identify, okay, i I believe this is the problem. If I just, like you said, if I train, we can train our way through it.
00:06:16
Speaker
There may be a short-term fix or a benefit. However, that root cause that has gone overlooked or unaddressed that is going to linger and it's going to rear its head again. Oftentimes in small businesses, it's the attempt at let's do it quickly or small divisions with, as you said, within a larger organizations, it's the let's do it quickly so that we can get on with, you know, the rest of our work.
00:06:52
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That's a short-sighted solution. Yes. That doesn't account for is training actually the solution or perhaps we have cultural like an organizational or departmental issue, culture issue? Is that really the problem? Is there a mismatch between our vision and the issue that we have right now? Is the problem outside of our organization and we haven't made those adjustments to meet the market? there There's a lot of...
00:07:29
Speaker
opportunities for exploration but because people are intensely feeling the tension they want to just move quickly with a training and it's not always the solution it really isn't and i've i've encouraged people to think about that um before is that perhaps Creating a new training, that's not the issue. Or if you already have an existing training, it's not to add more information. It may be the way it's structured or formatted that is the problem.
00:08:10
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That's true.
Training Preparations and Personalization
00:08:11
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i think ah listening to you, i was thinking, you know, the amount of time that people spend training to do something, which only takes a short period of time.
00:08:23
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You wouldn't want a doctor who'd spent five minutes or a short period of time, um, learning how to be a doctor. It takes many years to learn how to be a doctor. And I was thinking about sort of the sporting situations and, um,
00:08:38
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um I don't know very much about American sport, but I know that Americans know David Beckham. Yes. And David Beckham is was famous as ah as the the midfield football player, I'll call it. You'll call it soccer. Yeah. But the midfield soccer player who could kick a ball from a free kick into the corner of the net and score a goal and pick where it was going to enter the goal. And he's got a a real skill for being able to do that. Right. And you then think about the amount of time that he trains to be able to do that. There's talent involved. But, you know, it takes how long to kick that ball? You know, it's a matter of minutes at the most. Right. But he'd spend days learning, fine tuning his technique to be able to do that.
00:09:28
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You know, it's this talent, but there's also a lot of fine tuning, training, learning. redoing again, practice, practice, practice. You know, strange, the more practice I do, the luckier I get. And yet your your business people, and anyone at work will be watching that and go, yeah, that's amazing.
00:09:49
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And then don't apply the same principle into when they've got to learn to do something at work. It's like, how quickly can I do this? right yeah tell me what Tell me what it is that I need to do, I'll do it.
00:10:02
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And it's we don't provide the time in many ways for individual employees or groups of them of employees to actually learn how to do their part of the process and how their part of the process combines with other people's part of the process to create something that really does deliver results and allow objectives to be met. And that's really where you come in, isn't it? That's that's your, and you're that you're the David Beckham of my learning architects. Well, well well Michael, as ah as flattered as I am, i don't know if David Beckham would appreciate it,
00:10:44
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um ah But to to your point, absolutely. And it it's, first off, let me say this. i view my role as being invited into someone's home and meaning their workplace. It's a place where they have intimate attachments to. And so I honor that experience of being invited in. And it's important that for anyone who's listening, that when you think about whatever your training may be or or something that you're a behavior or belief system that you're trying to evolve within your organization, there's lots of little pieces that you don't see, right?
00:11:33
Speaker
We all have a little dust bunny in our home in a corner. And unfortunately, we don't see it. Right. Because that's we we walk past it day by day. And and it's just something that we're we're so close to. We're not able to see it.
00:11:52
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But when you invite someone in you're opening your home to say, OK, look for the cobwebs. Look for the dust bunnies. Look for those gaps for improvement. And it's not for judgment.
00:12:09
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but rather it's what are you missing because you're so intimately involved? Can't see the wood for the trees is is what you're saying in many yeah smaller businesses. You're so emotionally, physically involved, intellectually involved with the the operation of the business that it becomes difficult to see where that learning problem, learning challenge might actually be.
00:12:37
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Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. there Well, there are two places that I find it to be prevalent where the training issue lies. And and I always encourage people to think about this. One is, is your training truly supporting and giving an account for the people as learners, right? And so no more of this, oh, we have videos for the visual and audio. I'm not talking about that, but rather what are your users prior learning experiences? Did they have positive learning experiences in the past? So training is exciting to them.
00:13:24
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Or was it a negative experience that they've had in the past that you ultimately, without knowing it, you're repeating that experience. And so they're not going to engage. They're not going to learn in the ways that you want them to.
00:13:38
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one of things One of the phrases that I would often hear in the early times of of my ah HR stroke training development career was sheep dip. We're going to put everyone through this training program. Everyone must go through this training program. And it was like a sheep dip approach. Everyone went through it. Regardless of how relevant the training program was to their current or future jobs or the training relevant to their particular learning styles, everyone was going to go through this. And it became, know you've you've still got six people who haven't been through it. Why?
00:14:13
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think Let's beat the trainer up a little bit. yeah that no longer works, does it? it's It's got to be much more individual approach to how someone is going to learn to make sure that they they learn the optimum amount of knowledge and skills that they need in order to help the organization fulfill its objectives.
00:14:33
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Absolutely. And that is different for everyone. yes And even if they're at the same role, right? So you've got five managers the ways in which those managers approach learning is different.
00:14:50
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we're we're beautiful We are all individually and beautifully designed. And so you have to give an account for that. The other thing though, that I often see that people don't acknowledge or that they overlook is the misalignment between their training and their vision the vision of the organization.
Aligning Training with Values
00:15:13
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And that one is ah is challenging to to connect. But if your organization says, and you know, as a core value that we we value our employees and we support innovation, but yet the training doesn't directly reflect that, then you've got, you've
00:15:39
Speaker
hired individuals who bought into the vision they believe you're going to do these but yet when it comes to training the tr their experience within your organization isn't matching what you promised them that is such an interesting point and a really important one yeah you really made you stop and think there in that you have all these values We can all be cynical about organizational values and how they're very important on the day that they go up on the wall and then people go back to their own old ways of doing things because we don't actually explain to people what a value is and how to how to live the value.
00:16:20
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But if the way in which you train people, the way in which you employ people doesn't actually live up to the values, the way in which you make decisions about them, they cannot see the the values being exhibited in the way in which you make decisions that affect them, then you start to lose the credibility of the organization and of the management team itself.
00:16:45
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Absolutely. I have seen that. repeated time and time again over the last number of years is when I've been invited in to support an organization, we'll have these conversations about, you know, where their program, their training program exists at that moment.
00:17:09
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And oftentimes it's either the users are viewed as sheep, as you mentioned, or it is, there's no connection to the vision.
00:17:20
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And it's, it's heartbreaking. I really find it to be heartbreaking because you now have an organ that you potentially have an organization with people who are resentful of training. So the the company has invests money to train their teams, but yet the teams view it as a waste of time. This doesn't apply to me. Why isn't the leadership here?
00:17:47
Speaker
on da da da daah on down the line. And it goes back to these two issues of the not being matched with the vision or not providing a training that meets the learning needs of the user. And it it it really is, i find it heartbreaking. It is, but there's an awful lot of logic. about what you are saying and here abysidha we like logic it's what our name means but the to actually say we have an issue a challenge a problem within the organization something is not right our objectives are not being met we are not performing to plan why right we can look at the symptoms
00:18:32
Speaker
and we cure the symptoms, but the underlying cause is going to come back to the surface again and will probably be worse. So we need to look beyond yeah the the symptoms and try and identify the root cause of that challenge. And in order to deal with it before it becomes a problem,
00:18:54
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I think you're quite right. We need to look at our team, our learners, and work out the best way to incorporate them into a learning process so that the learning outcomes are at the optimum level. Yes.
00:19:11
Speaker
and it seems very logical, very sensible, but an awful lot of organizations and even an awful lot of trainers, if we're perfectly honest, don't really take the time to work out how somebody learns as an individual. Absolutely.
00:19:29
Speaker
One of the things that i I have to say this, this conversation that you and I are having cannot be addressed with AI.
The Pitfalls of Ineffective Training
00:19:39
Speaker
right So as someone who is a training to developer or coordinator, you can't simply say, well, I'll just pull up and type something into AI and the AI will fix it. right Because you really need to understand the nuances within the organization. And even if- The individuals. Yes, I was going to say, even if the vision and the core values never change for a hundred years, you've got multiple generations of individuals, learners.
00:20:18
Speaker
If you, whether you are a local, small family-run business, or you are a global organization, you also have to consider the context of where people are coming from and their prior experiences um in addition to their generation you know age and generational classification. So it may not be an easy fix for someone who doesn't look at trainings in this way. It, for me, i find it interesting and, and relatively easy to tease out these parts, but I I've also been doing this for almost 30 years now.
00:21:04
Speaker
In some capacity, there is light at the end of the tunnel. i I have to tell your listeners, Michael, like there are some, some smaller steps that you can take to at least start thinking about your training differently and thinking about your, your users differently. Yes, but it's a bit like making a suit, yeah making clothes.
00:21:28
Speaker
You've got a piece of fabric in front of you. it can be a sack or it can be the most expensive silk. But to make sure that you make the perfect suit, you're going to measure two or three times, yeah maybe even four times, yeah because you can only cut once. yeah I'm listening to you and you talking about your experience and thinking about my experience. When I've seen trainers and everyone who's ah ever worked as a trainer has has made the same sort of mistakes. If we haven't, then we're not but're not as good trainers as we think we are.
00:22:02
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But sometimes the easy solution just delivers some training and that is to just cut the cloth. yeah But actually what we're talking about here in being training learning architects is it's the delving down into the foundations of the building. yeah working out what type of soil you are going to build your mansion on. Is it sand? Is it mud? Is it clay? Is it granite? What is it that you're building on? What have you got now that it works?
00:22:33
Speaker
What is it that isn't working? yeah And then thinking about, okay, how does the solution have to tap in, map to our values?
00:22:44
Speaker
How do we need to deliver something for an individual that works for that individual? not that easy to deliver because you do the same thing for everyone else cheap to deliver because you're doing it just once in one style everyone will fit into place I was often told you know if you buy cheap you buy twice yes and you your business is any business is dependent upon the skills of the people that work there yeah sometimes you don't get a second chance do you
00:23:17
Speaker
Sometimes you don't get a second chance. Here's a story, a very quick experience that I have that I often share to put things in perspective. I was a employee of an organization and i was attending a mandatory sexual harassment training.
00:23:36
Speaker
And so there were about two to three hundred people in the room. And yeah, I was sitting there looking around at everyone you know surrounding me. There were people playing you know games on their phones, people having conversations, people sleeping.
00:23:52
Speaker
The lot of it and the organization had spent, it was clear they'd spent a lot of money to bring in the speaker. Well, at the same time, the organization was in a very public litigation for sexual harassment. That's when the light, like it really became so bright. I was blind because here you are as an organization, you've read you've corralled two to 300 people. So their work is going undone, right? So you've corralled them and you've spent
00:24:28
Speaker
to have you know a presenter come in on a topic, something is still not working because you are also battling in court.
00:24:42
Speaker
There's expense to that. like I have no idea how expensive it was, but I'm going to guess it was well over six figures. That would just be my guess, all of it taken together. And so no matter how small your organization is or your division that you're training for, if you are not measuring twice, right, assessing three times before you provide that training, you're going to lose money.
00:25:14
Speaker
It may not appear in the short term that you're losing money or that there's some type of waste, but I'm confident that there will be waste, whether people are making workplace mistakes, health and safety mistakes, and now you have to, there's an expense to that.
00:25:32
Speaker
poor customer service, there's an expense to that. Regardless of the industry, there is a cost, a fiscal cost, when training isn't done well.
Reflections on Training Success
00:25:45
Speaker
And the secret to successful training, doing training well, is not just having a great trainer at the front of the room. Right. It's having that planning, that analysis, yeah that preparation, in place so that you understand every aspect of the solution you're trying to create. You understand the problems that it's trying to either remedy or prevent. And you can put everything into place with the confidence that everyone who goes through that training will come out of it
00:26:21
Speaker
knowing what you need them to know and be confident to put what you've explained to them, what you've trained them in, into practice, because the training ties in with the values of the organization, which they can see senior managers living.
00:26:38
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I love that you mentioned that last word there. something that I often talk about as well. It's the confidence. Yes. You you you can consistently train people, but if they are not confident, if they don't have developed the skills and if they're not confident to apply the skills, they're not going to do it.
00:27:03
Speaker
that It's not going to happen. And so, again, we go back to what is the most appropriate way and effective way to train this team or the organization so that they do the thing that we want them to do. Yes.
00:27:20
Speaker
You know, Carrie, before we started, before we pressed the record button, we did say that we're both longstanding HR training type people. And we both enjoy talking to other trainers because every opportunity to talk to a trainer is an opportunity to learn.
00:27:39
Speaker
I have certainly learned today and I do appreciate your time. I hope we have an opportunity to talk again soon. Oh, you know, i feel the same the same way, Michael. It is really, yes, always having conversations with fellows in the field. it's There's always an opportunity to learn something new. I will be walking away with another another idea. Okay, great. That's brilliant. you know Thank you, Carrie, for helping me to make such a very interesting episode of The Independent Minds.
00:28:13
Speaker
Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Michael. i appreciate it. It's been a pleasure. I am Michael Millward, the managing director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Dr. Carrie Graham.
00:28:28
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abbasida.co.uk. I must remember to thank the team at Matchmaker for introducing me to Carrie. If you're a podcaster looking for interesting guests, or if you are someone with something very interesting to say, matchmaker.fm is where great hosts and even greater guests are matched.
00:28:49
Speaker
There is a link and an offer code in the description. That description is well worth reading. I'm sure that you will have liked this episode of the Independent Minds as much as Carrie and I have enjoyed making it.
00:29:02
Speaker
Please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure that you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by our preceder is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:29:20
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.