Learning’s Complete Transformation

Disruption is change, but it’s change on a scale that we probably haven’t seen before, says EY Global Chief Learning Officer Brenda Sugrue. And it filters through virtually all aspects of learning and development.
Read the full transcript of Sugrue’s interview below:
Disruption is change, but it’s change on a scale that we probably haven’t seen before, and it’s multiple sources of change all coming together, global markets changing, workforces changing, businesses changing, jobs changing. It’s just we’re in a period of complete transformation.
Learning itself is undergoing a huge disruption. Technology, I guess, is at the heart of it because you can do things now with the technology that we could only dream of before. Personalized learning has really become a reality. Peer-to-peer learning, having employees be able to share learning with each other in very rapid video-based ways, is a reality now. Building AI into the back end of systems is a reality right now. It’s like Netflix. You have systems where they’re monitoring what learners are choosing to learn or what’s most popular, and then you can give more personalized recommendations to learners through the system, all happening through the system.
I think the focus on the user experience and making the whole learning environment very integrated for the learner so the classroom isn’t very separated from what they’re doing online, all of that is a good disruption, and allowing us to do different and more just-in-time type of learning, more relevant learning.
Another thing that’s disrupting is having more off-the-shelf content that’s of high quality and that’s really relevant, especially in domains like analytics, AI. Even at EY, we get a lot of our content now from external sources, and we license libraries. We curate out of libraries instead of building it ourselves. We also give our people access to the full libraries because we want them to pursue whatever they’re interested in, not just what we feel they need for their roles.
For a good definition of disruption, we should look at our own reports because in the upside of disruption, which was our first report on disruption, we identify eight key dimensions of disruption that are going on right now, technology, workforce. I can’t even remember them all, but there is a science, and there is an understanding of what is causing this disruption, and then depending on what industry you’re in, what you should be doing to address the changes that are happening or that are going to be coming that would affect your business.