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Understanding Learning Management Systems – a conversation with Chris Dundy
11 Plays4 days ago
How to make a Learning Management System work effectively
After serving in the US Marine Corp Chris Dundy became an educator, before founding Flagship LMS.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds Chris and host Michael Millward discuss how any organisation can maximise the value they get from a learning management system.
They discuss
- How Chris’s military experience influences his approach to delivering learning
- The need for learning to fit with the C-Suite vision
- The challenges of providing learning to employees for employers
- Create an effective learner experience
- How adult learners use a LMS
- Delivering job focused learning
- Importance of speed – get to the right learning, learning quickly
- Governance of the LMS
Regardless of whether you are looking for your first LMS or want to make better use of the LMS you have already purchased; this is the podcast you need to listen to.
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Transcript
Introduction to Zencastr and Podcast Series
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. Because Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast production and distribution processes so easy.
00:00:19
Speaker
There is a link in the description Zencastr that has a built-in discount. Hello and welcome. to The Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysseedah and people who think outside the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:40
Speaker
I am your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysseedah.
Exploring Learning Management Systems (LMS) with Christopher Dundee
00:00:45
Speaker
In this episode of The Independent Minds, I am learning about what makes a good learning management system by talking to Christopher Dundee, the founder and CEO of Flagship LMS.
00:00:58
Speaker
Christopher is based in Cheyenne, Wyoming, USA. That is not somewhere that I have ever visited, but it just sounds so much like proper cowboy wild west type country.
00:01:11
Speaker
If I ever get that chance to go, i will take advantage of the trade prices on travel that I can access because I am a member of the Ultimate Travel Club. Members of the Ultimate Travel Club get access to trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays, and all sorts of other travel-related purchases.
00:01:31
Speaker
I have added a link with a built-in discount to the description so that you can become a member of the Ultimate Travel Club and travel at trade prices, just like me. Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading, and subscribing to.
00:01:52
Speaker
and probably good enough to share it with friends, family and work colleagues as well. As with every episode of the Independent Minds, we will not be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Christopher's Career Journey and Founding Flagship LMS
00:02:05
Speaker
Hello Chris. Michael, it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thank you very much for making the time available. I know we've taken some time to get this organized, but it's well worth it to have you here.
00:02:16
Speaker
Please could we start by you giving us a little bit of an introduction to your career to date. Sure. So I spent 12 years in the Marine Corps. I was both an officer and an enlisted Marine. I was seven years enlisted, five years as an officer.
00:02:30
Speaker
And when I got out of the Marines, I went back overseas not knowing what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I figured I would take a year. I would teach English, just kind of figure out what was next for me. And that one year turned into about 14 and a half years.
00:02:46
Speaker
I lived in Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and in all of those countries did a little bit of teaching. But when um ah in about 2007, I discovered this this at the time, a new piece of software called a learning management system.
00:03:03
Speaker
And it absolutely changed how I viewed everything to do with education. It provided me with this incredible tool that I could use to record a lecture or you know some kind of a thought one time perfectly and then I would have access to that for the rest of my life and my students would be able to access that 24-7 and I would never have to repeat myself which was one of the things that I found most difficult about teaching and so I became very quickly the evangelist for learning management systems that was in 2007 And I've spent the rest of my career both being an LMS administrator for secondary schools, for higher education, a couple of universities, as well as the federal government. I worked as the LMS administrator for the Peace Corps and then eventually opened my own business 2017.
00:03:53
Speaker
We've been around a little over eight years now, and I'm loving every
Importance of LMS in Organizational Success
00:03:57
Speaker
minute of it. But I think that the LMS is still the fundamental heartbeat of most organizations. I think most organizations' success can be directly attributed to the training of their employees, and and the LMS absolutely makes that possible.
00:04:10
Speaker
Well, as someone who's running corporate training departments in various different parts of the world with global responsibilities, I can't disagree with you. We're two trainers who are going to agree that the real value of an organization is its people and the value of its people comes from how you can manage and develop their knowledge.
00:04:29
Speaker
So we're both convinced that learning management systems are an essential part of running a business. Why did you call your LMS flagship? It sort of, it it hearkened back to my naval service days. The flagship is the the leader of the fleet. It's the one where the the admiral or the senior officer calls you know his his home. And so I sort of wanted to to set myself up. At the time, it was hubris, but and and actually, truthfully, it still is hubris. But nevertheless, it appealed to me.
00:05:00
Speaker
It felt like the right name, and therefore, it is the right name. Thank you for that.
Influence of Military Training on Adult Learning
00:05:05
Speaker
The military experience that you've had How does that influence your view of learning management? You know, that's interesting because you're the first host to ever ask me that question. And the answer is it influenced me heavily because. the the stereotypes, and I don't know to what degree you know about stereotypes of US Marines, but they they are absolutely true. And that is that for the enlisted guys, and I was one of these, you know, you didn't do particularly well in high school, you you came from a broken home, probably, you know, you were
00:05:39
Speaker
maybe on some sports teams, but you were never the captain of the team. there was you know there's These kinds of things are true about the average enlisted Marine. And so what that the the reason that that affected me is because um as a senior enlisted Marine, as an officer, you are responsible for doing the training for all of the people below you. We don't have a separate training department. So the senior guys teach the junior guys. And in those circumstances, what I what i found very rapidly is that your training needs to be succinct because the attention span is not infinite and it's actually going to be fairly short.
00:06:15
Speaker
In addition, the the things that you're teaching have to be directly applicable to that Marine's job immediately. It can't be something that he's going to need to know three years from now because it's just going to go in one ear and out the other. And the truth is he may not even be in the organization at that point because enlisted contracts are only for four years.
00:06:31
Speaker
which mirrors a lot of the churn that corporations these days experience at about the three-year mark. A lot of corporations are losing employees at that point because they're not seeing the challenge. they're not seeing a future in the organization. There's no clear pathway for promotion or for lateral movement. So all of these things sort of combine to cement my view of how Marines get taught best and then by extension, how adults learn best, because I think they are i think they are applicable, all of those
Challenges and Strategies in Corporate Training
00:07:01
Speaker
lessons.
00:07:01
Speaker
I agree with you. One of the biggest challenges in in providing training in the civilian environment is finding the training course that the person needs at the time that they need it rather than, well, the provider will provide it at this time, but we don't need that really for another six months. So it's the old adage, if you don't use it, you lose it.
00:07:25
Speaker
Yes. You can spend a lot of money on training that you've forgotten by the time you actually need it. yeah I think it is very interesting that so so that the training has to be delivered in a way that will be instantly usable and engaging for the person and for the Marine.
00:07:45
Speaker
That is something that as trainers who have obviously been in a learning environment for a long time and enjoy learning, we forget sometimes that other people don't necessarily have that great joy of learning. It's like, tell me what I need.
00:08:02
Speaker
when I need to know and we're going into all of the issues and challenges that employers face when they're trying to provide learning for individual employees and because that's different in different industries and different types of people but what are the challenges that you have seen employers having to try and address in terms of providing learning to their employees Yeah, no, yeah Michael, that's a great question as well. um You know, the thing, the biggest challenge that I face with my clients, and this is, it's almost universal. I've got a handful of clients that that are good at this, but but you you almost universally, the the issues with training don't stem from the training itself.
00:08:46
Speaker
And they don't stem from the creators of the training, or even the middle management who is in charge of administering the training and, and administrating the platforms. The the primary challenge that I see is that there is a lack of clarity of thought from the C-suite.
00:09:05
Speaker
The reason that I say that is because if the C-suite has a very clear understanding of where they are and a very clear idea of where they want to be, let's say in five years time, then your training management team is they're solid enough and they're intelligent enough and they're educated enough to be able to plot you a course from point A where you are to point B where you want to be. But unless you can clearly articulate that vision, They're going to meander. They're not going to be able to put the kind of training onto the LMS that's necessary to get your people there. There's going to be there's going to tend to be bloat because the courses that are going to be added are going to be good to know or maybe possibly need to know, but they're not going to be specifically dialed into the to the needs of the users in the next quarter in the next six months.
00:09:54
Speaker
So I see that you know that lack of clarity, that lack of vision, or maybe it's not even lack of clarity or lack of vision. Maybe it's the inability to clearly articulate the vision to the the people who need to know it that keeps the training at the sort of you know the the middling level. And again, it's not the trainers and it's not them. I just think it's that lack of vision. You can't you can't go on a road trip if you don't have a map.
00:10:21
Speaker
That is true. You could end up anywhere unless you know where you're actually planning to get to. It's not what we set up to talk about today, but just express my view on that, I don't disagree with you. I'm not one of those people that's going to get upset about that view.
00:10:37
Speaker
Part of the issue is that senior managers have not learned to delegate in the same sort of way as the military is structured to delegate through the chain of command.
00:10:49
Speaker
And too many people in senior level jobs who should be involved in strategy are still involved in day to day firefighting. So they don't actually have the headspace to think about what is happening in the future.
00:11:03
Speaker
They know more about what is happening today. And that should be done by their line managers, not by the C-suite people. you know, I love that. I love that observation and that to bring that back around to the content that you were talking about being available to the people who need it at the moment that they need it.
Governance in LMS and Organizational Alignment
00:11:22
Speaker
One of the things that I see as a great problem with learning management today in companies that are larger than one or two or three levels of of supervision is that
00:11:34
Speaker
the training on the learning management system, the courses that are provided by the by the trainers, these are specifically aimed at the frontline troops. These are aimed at your salespeople. These are aimed at your accountants. These are aimed at people in the warehouse, the OSHA safety training, that kind of thing. But I have very seldom seen courses on a learning management system that address the the deficiency that you just mentioned, which is the that people who get promoted.
00:12:01
Speaker
Michael, you've heard of the Peter Principle. Yes, very much said. The Peter Principle is the idea that you will get promoted to the highest level of incompetence. If you're ah a great frontline worker, you'll get promoted to middle management. If you're a good middle manager, you'll get promoted to, you know, senior vice president. And that's where you stop because you just weren't amazing in that particular level. But training for people who reach that senior level of management, it's just not usually on the learning management system. And that is a different skill set than was necessary for your success as a middle manager and middle managers have a different skill set than it is necessary for your frontline troops. If we don't recognize that, and if we don't tailor our courseware to that, we risk putting people in situations in which they are not going to be successful and also are going to end up negatively influencing the people below them just because we didn't prepare them for the types of situations that they were going to encounter. We didn't give them the skills they needed to be successful.
00:12:58
Speaker
Okay, just a moment. I'm adding something to my to-do list here. We'll have to remedy that, I think. We worked on that together. People do get promoted into the job that they cannot do, and then their career can fall apart around them.
00:13:13
Speaker
People need to be trained to do the job that they're promoted into and receive continuous development whilst they're in that job. We just assume very often that someone can automatically do it because we trust them to do it.
00:13:26
Speaker
a lot of what you're talking about is ah not necessarily about the training that is delivered through the LMS, but how the LMS is managed.
00:13:37
Speaker
Oh, nice segue. You're absolutely right. No, that's brilliant. Yeah, it's about the governance. right It's about the governance of the learning management system. I'd love to talk about that.
00:13:48
Speaker
these do People's eyes tend to glaze over when we talk about governing the learning management system and governing the training. And the reason is because it's not particularly sexy. But unfortunately, it is the key to making your company's training successful. And there are basically four levels that need to happen. and And the senior level, the top level is what's called the governing board.
00:14:11
Speaker
The governing board consists of all the members of your C-suite. These are the people who have that 30,000 foot view of your organization. They're the ones who are the keepers of the vision about where you're going to be five years from now and what the market's going to look like and what skill sets are going to be needed. They've got that long view of of the game that you're playing. And so the governing board, they're not involved in technology. That's not their purpose. Their purpose is to meet twice a year to refine that vision.
00:14:41
Speaker
to make that vision communicable to everybody below them. And if they can do that well, then when that vision is passed to the next level of governance, which is called the steering committee, ah they're going to be able to then implement that and but and create a strategy that will allow your organization to be able to progress. My my analogy for this is,
00:15:02
Speaker
that you're standing on your side of the riverbank. That's where your your company currently is. The opposite side of the riverbank is where you want to be in five years. And the method to get there, which the steering committee is responsible for coming up with, are the stepping stones across that. And so they are the ones who are going to put that actually into place. The steering committee is your your senior leadership.
00:15:23
Speaker
They're not the the C-suite, but they are definitely the ones who are your department heads. They are the ones who are going to be responsible for actually making sure that the people underneath them are you know accomplishing the things that they need to do. this So this is your you know your senior sales guy, your senior HR person.
00:15:41
Speaker
um You know, your senior operations person, all of those those level of people. and they're going to meet quarterly. And essentially what they're going to do in their quarterly meeting is they are going to ensure that all the stuff that they said needed to get happen last quarter is now has gotten accomplished and that there is a clear view for the people underneath them.
00:16:01
Speaker
And the the people underneath them are what we call the LMS working groups. And there's really three working groups that are are really important for this. The first working group is your is your operations working group. And these are the things like, these are your content owners, your content creators, maybe compliance officers, people who are you know making sure that the the content is you know touches all the legal things that are necessary to be to make sure that you know the the federal regulations are are are met.
00:16:31
Speaker
This group is going to meet as often as necessary to ensure that the LMS has the appropriate training that the steering committee has said this needs to be it needs to be on there. The second working group is the administration working group. These are the guys that actually make the platform work. These are your administrators, your HR representatives. They're the ones who do the technical nuts and bolts. getting people into the system, making sure that the training gets assigned to them, making sure that their certificates are are completed and that the reports are pulled, that everybody can see progress, etc. And then the last group is your technical support working group. And these are your IT staff. These are the the vendor staff that you know if you're if you're having your platform hosted by somebody or you know you've got other people that are responsible for applying training from the outside of your organization. And those three working groups meet as often as necessary to do what the steering committee has implemented. And the steering committee is responsible, as I mentioned, for making those stepping stones that go across the river. yeah It's really genuinely that simple on paper, but obviously the implementation of this is something that has to be closely managed by the C-suite or supervised by the C-suite.
00:17:39
Speaker
Yeah.
Aligning Organizational Needs with Employee Benefits
00:17:40
Speaker
You're talking about an LMS system there that I can turn around and say, well, actually what you've outlined is ah the way in which any organization or any function of an organization should be managed starting from the top.
00:17:53
Speaker
This is what we need to achieve and gradually getting more detailed as that information and the responsibilities go down the organization to the delivery. It sounds in some ways, oh, that's rocket science. That's so earth mind blowing. But actually it's how an organization should be run. And if an organization should be run like that, then training development is as important as the overall strategy because the training helps the people perform to the standard that is required to fulfill the strategy and achieve the objectives so it needs to be there and really bought into if I wasn't already a trainer Chris you'd have convinced me like we need to do more and more all of that is brilliant you know because now we've got this perfect system right and it's like you could have run a perfect hospital if you didn't have to deal with any patients how do you turn all that, that great logistical system into a fantastic learner experience? That is the $64,000 question.
00:19:01
Speaker
It is why people like you and I have a job because it it is definitely not an easy thing to do. One of the things that is really important i think is that experience that you had in the Marines where The people from outside can sort say, okay, this is the the typical person that comes in.
00:19:22
Speaker
But actually, the typical person that comes in is not necessarily the same person who leaves four years later. Because the learning development has almost said, don't care where you've come from, but I can see where you're going if you want to.
00:19:39
Speaker
I can see where you're going. If you want to, and this is what we're going to do in order to make it possible for you to go where you want to go and where we need you to go as your employer.
00:19:50
Speaker
So we've matched those two things together. That's the first part, I think, of ah getting a great learner experience is answering that question. Why do I need to learn this?
00:20:01
Speaker
And then the second question you need to answer he's like, what's in it for me? Right. And when you've got those two things coming together, what the organization needs and what the employee needs, the person needs or wants, then you've got a motivated trainer, a motivated learner.
00:20:18
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you. to to to sort of further clarify how the that military system applies here, so when you, the Marines, and I can only speak about the Marines, I haven't been in any other services, but for the Marines, you know as an enlisted person,
00:20:32
Speaker
you know The very first thing that I did was you know you went to boot camp and boot camp is three months and then you go to a marine combat training and marine combat training was a month and a half and then you go to infantry school. and This is just for my particular job, infantry school, which is another i don't know what it was, two months or something like that. And then only after that do you get assigned to your unit.
00:20:53
Speaker
And then once you get to your unit, when you get in range, so you're a private or a private first class, and you know you spend a year or so there, but then you're coming into range for being a corporal. And you can't get promoted to the NCO ranks, the non-commissioned officer ranks, until you go to the NCO academy.
00:21:11
Speaker
and or nco school and you go to the nco school and that's another you know i don't know what it was six weeks or however much it was and they're going to train you about what they need you to do and to know at that level now you're not going to be typically trained after you get there they're typically going to train you you know as a as a senior lance corporal a junior corporal they're going to they're going to give you what they expect you to be able to do at the corporal and the sergeant ranks and when you get senior to be a senior sergeant, they're going to send you to what's called the staff NCO Academy. So they're going to teach you what they need you to know at the next rank, which is the staff sergeant rank.
00:21:45
Speaker
And it's and it works that way, you know, throughout every rank structure, they're they're not going to expect you Because nobody promotes you based on what you can do. They promote you on your potential.
00:21:57
Speaker
And that's the same, I think, in any organization. But what we want to do is we want to say this person has potential. Therefore, I want to put them through some kind of a training program so that when they get into that bit position, they're already familiar with the the things that need to happen. And I think that we do a terrible job at that.
Balancing Immediate Learning Needs with Strategic Planning
00:22:15
Speaker
in corporate America in general, because we put somebody into the position with the expectation that they will be good in that position or they will know that whatever it is they're supposed to be doing there, when in reality, they're having to essentially learn on the job.
00:22:29
Speaker
And maybe they're successful, maybe not. What you've got in the military is the opposite of the PETA principle. Yes. Yes, I think that's generally true. preparing people for the opportunity rather than just saying, yeah, you can do this. It's your turn to be promoted. You've been there the longest. yes You've got the best results of the salesperson. So we'll make you a sales manager. That's ah taking a very long term view.
00:22:52
Speaker
Sometimes with online learning, people take a very short term view and they take a short term view for a very good reason. though People want the answer to the question. They want to know what I need to know now today in order to do this job.
00:23:07
Speaker
And they almost use an LMS as a search engine to find the right way to do something. You're right, Michael. And there is two viewpoints that are in place simultaneously. And the first is the viewpoint that you just articulated, which is the end user.
00:23:23
Speaker
And you're absolutely right. They do have ah you know more work today to accomplish than they have hours to accomplish it in. And they do when they have a question need to go to some kind of location, we prefer the learning management system where the material has been curated, and find those answers quickly, so that they can accomplish whatever task is immediately in front of them. And you're absolutely right, that needs to happen. And this the user experience needs to be streamlined so that it it works in exactly that way. But The second viewpoint is the only way that that happens is because the senior leadership did the planning in advance so that they could anticipate the needs of the end user and they could put those pathways and those courses in place so that when it comes time for that person to search for it, they've got it available to them. Unfortunately, it takes sustained consecutive thought in order to be able to do that. And that is one of the most difficult things I think for human beings in general to do, you know, to take that long view, but but it is so critical. So those two things operate simultaneously and you're and you're not wrong about that at all.
00:24:28
Speaker
Yes. And what you just said there is takes us back to that strategic view and get the C-suite, the senior managers of the organization involved as a result of their decisions.
00:24:40
Speaker
So cascading down the organization to the person on the shop floor who's using a learning management system to access the right type of training that they need on that day in the right way to learn how to do that job better. You can very clearly see the connection the other thing that you mentioned there is this element of like just because you've got a learning management system and you've put you've populated it with all sorts of interesting learning experiences does not mean to say that you can just say okay there is yep we'll come back and look at it when the contract comes up for renewal it's something that is living and breathing tell the trainer again you're all emotional about this
00:25:25
Speaker
But it's it's it's a living organism that has to change as much as the employees who are using it have to change. You need to know what is being used and you need to know where the gaps are so you can constantly be renewing and refreshing and giving people new learning experiences because no one wants to go back to the same thing again and again. You know, I love that.
00:25:44
Speaker
You know, you use the word refresh there. And i the the thing that just ah it just occurred to me when you said that is the learning management system is should be treated much like the produce section of your grocery store.
00:25:56
Speaker
Yes. The last thing you want to do is have lettuce from six months ago there, ah you know. People need new vegetables. They need vegetables that apply. And there is a shelf life to training as well as anything. yeah And you've got to constantly be refreshing it. There has to be someone going around checking the mangoes.
00:26:15
Speaker
Making sure that they're not too soft. you know that's it so Not too hard and not too soft. So if your listeners take anything from this, I want them to take this phrase, squeeze the mangoes.
00:26:29
Speaker
Well, it's perfectly legitimate phrase to use. is that Make sure that the training that you have, the learning experiences that you have within your learning management system are fit for the purpose that you intended them to have there. And the purpose is decided by the C-suite, deciding where the organization needs to go.
00:26:47
Speaker
And then the Marines metaphor of that, getting those that bridge across the river from one side to the other, and putting all the various things in place so that almost like your most junior employee on the shop floor who's got to use the learning management system to access a new skill, some new knowledge, can connect that directly back to what the C-suite has decided.
00:27:10
Speaker
Well articulated. Thank
Wrapping Up and Call to Action
00:27:12
Speaker
you very much. Thank you for giving me the opportunity, you know, Chris, for just to get excited about learning management systems. I first started using computers for learning Well, the year started with a one the first time that we launched a bit of e-learning.
00:27:27
Speaker
it's It's been a fascinating conversation. I've really enjoyed it, and I hope that we get to talk again and again because I've really enjoyed it and I've learned a lot. Thank you very much. Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm looking forward to talking again.
00:27:39
Speaker
I'm Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abusida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Christopher Dundee, the founder and CEO of Flagship LMS. You can find out more information about both of us by using the links in the description.
00:27:55
Speaker
If you are using an LMS on a mobile phone, you can sometimes have problems with buffering. So if you're in the UK and you're doing that, you will want to know that 3 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data.
00:28:11
Speaker
So listening on 3 means you can wave goodbye to buffering. There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code.
00:28:26
Speaker
I am sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of the Independent Minds as much as Christopher and I have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:28:38
Speaker
To make sure that you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. You'll probably also want to share the link with your family, friends and work colleagues as well. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:28:54
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.