Workplace Stories by RedThread Research

Jackie Barefield, Head of Future Capabilities and Operations at BAT, joins us to discuss how L&D is shifting from a traditional cost center to a value-adding, future-focused driver of change, requiring leaders and teams to unlearn outdated habits and embrace data-driven, innovative approaches. She also shares more about the central role of skills measurement, the real-world application of learning, and how organizations can prioritize human connection in an increasingly digital, AI-enabled environment.  

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[06:35] AI's Impact on learning and development
[08:42] Learning beyond the L&D bubble
[12:56] Emergence of DIY tech solutions
[17:46] Changing approach to AI learning
[26:52] Realizing the need for further education
[29:41] Embracing constant unlearning
[35:17] Developing necessary training programs
[38:18] Impact of AI on expertise development

L&D in the Age of AI

Most people recognize that AI will fundamentally reshape not only what L&D delivers but how it operates at its core. This isn't just about digital tools or online learning methods—it’s about radically rethinking how learning creates business value and drives organizational change.

Leaders in the field are no longer simply tasked with supporting business transformation; they are expected to act as agents and accelerators of change themselves. L&D professionals increasingly build their own solutions, experiment with new technologies, and challenge the conventional boundaries of their roles. This newfound freedom and responsibility are fueled by greater access to tools and a recognition that traditional incremental improvements are no longer enough.

Leadership Humility and the Power of Unlearning

We also discuss humility in leadership and focus on three core principles: acknowledging that no one has all the answers, intentionally seeking out and listening to others’ needs, and always questioning the status quo. These mindsets are especially important as AI introduces ambiguity and complexity that even seasoned experts cannot master alone.

We explore how leaders must continually let go of outdated assumptions and be open to reinventing their roles and methods. The discussion identified being comfortable with letting go—of old metrics, legacy processes, and even personal expertise—as a pivotal leadership skill. Jackie believes comfort with unlearning grows with experience and that real change often happens when leaders invite open debate and are transparent about their own learning journeys.

The Enduring Value of Relationships

As L&D moves towards digitalization and AI-powered individualization, one concept discussed was the risk of losing vital human connections. In-person gatherings offer irreplaceable value for building networks and relationships, something online learning can’t replicate. Skills like judgment, pattern recognition, and tacit knowledge, built through social interaction and shared experience, may become an even greater focus for L&D in the coming years.

 Resources & People Mentioned
The Learning Awards 
Fuel50 
Workera 
TechWolf 
GitHub 
UC Berkeley Haas School of Business 
British American Tobacco 

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Jackie Barefield on LinkedIn

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Building a skills-focused organization isn’t just about creating learning content or adopting the latest technology. As Cisco has shown, the journey to a skills-first culture is as much about cross-functional collaboration, purposeful data use, and intentional alignment with business strategy as it is about implementing new platforms. In this episode of Workplace Stories, Lawrence Stevens, Director of Cisco Skills Strategy and AI-Powered Learning Ecosystem, and Marci Paino, VP of Enterprise Learning and Growth, share how Cisco transformed its approach to learning and skill development to prepare its workforce for the future.

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[08:14] Focusing on skills-first learning strategy
[14:17] Reimagining company culture and learning
[16:18] Analyzing current state for vision
[29:38] Building a universal profile
[32:48] The HR knowledge graph
[41:44] Creating a Minimum Lovable Product 
[46:05] Discussing data privacy challenges
[57:11] Prioritizing continuous learning
[59:12] Scaling solutions for growth

Breaking Down Silos

Unlike many skills initiatives that begin in a single HR function and slowly attempt to wrangle other departments down the line, Cisco’s approach was intentionally cross-functional from day one. Many organizations start skills work in isolation—often in learning or HR—and invite others along later. But at Cisco, collaboration among learning, talent acquisition, workforce planning, and IT was built into the initiative's DNA.

This deliberate design enabled the team to craft a skills strategy rooted in both business needs and employee realities. IT’s involvement was critical, as they owned the product build while learning held the vision and strategy. The resulting triangle—business as product owner, IT as builder, and vendor partners as enablers—helped accelerate innovation and ensure alignment.

Leading with Culture and Business Alignment

Cisco’s journey began with culture, not technology. Marci Paino first sat down with every member of the executive leadership team to understand business direction and set guiding principles before building out the learning and skills strategy. This top-down alignment was a deliberate move away from fragmented, optional learning ecosystems with little accountability.

By rooting skills development in company-wide guiding principles and leadership behavior statements, the team ensured that new ways of working and the future of talent were not HR projects, but business imperatives. This approach fostered executive buy-in and role-modeled cross-functional partnership from the outset.

Data as the Universal Currency

Laurence describes skills data as the universal currency that created common value for talent acquisition, workforce planning, learning, and the business. But getting there was no small feat: the team inherited a tangled landscape of 17 separate learning platforms and over 220,000 learning activities—each with its own taxonomy and data standards.

The solution was a ground-up rethink of data governance and taxonomies, with an eventual move toward a universal knowledge graph. This clean, connected data infrastructure enabled personalized, AI-powered learning and more effectively measured both skill proficiency and business impact.

The Power (and Challenge) of Partnerships

Whether negotiating the complex relationship with IT, co-innovating with vendors like Cornerstone, or role-modeling collaboration across HR, the Cisco team showed that no single function can go it alone.

Crucial to this was ruthless prioritization and maintaining clarity on the “minimal lovable product.” The ability to listen, compromise, and focus on delivering a core outcome—rather than perfection—allowed the team to build credibility by shipping iterative wins, even as they worked on long-term transformation behind the scenes.

Practical Lessons for Skills Transformation

Cisco’s story offers practical takeaways for any organization hoping to make the leap to a skills-first strategy:

Start with culture and executive alignment: Secure top-level buy-in and root skills programs in business strategy and guiding principles.
Design cross-functionally: Involve learning, IT, talent, and workforce planning partners from the start.
Clean and connect your data: Streamline platforms and taxonomies to build a universal profile that supports analytics, personalization, and business reporting.
Role-model partnership: Set the expectation for collaboration at every level, not just among leaders.
Prioritize and iterate: Ship progress, gather feedback, and demonstrate early wins—even as you build for the future.

Cisco’s experience reinforces that building a skills-first culture isn’t a tech challenge—it’s a people and partnership evolution. 

Resources & People Mentioned

Cornerstone Technology Partners 
SkyHive 
The AI Workforce Consortium - Cisco 
Udemy 
LinkedIn Learning Solutions 

Connect with Marci Paino & Lawrence Stevens

Marci Paino on LinkedIn
Lawrence Stevens on LinkedIn 
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The rapid transformation of work, driven by technological acceleration and evolving business needs, is leaving organizations scrambling to keep their employees future ready. ServiceNow’s Chief Learning Officer Jayney joins me to share her thoughts on how organizations can move beyond traditional skilling to focus on comprehensive readiness, including the unique human abilities that set people apart from machines. Jayney discusses ServiceNow’s model of a "talent signature"—a multidimensional skill profile that brings together AI fluency, functional expertise, and the elusive but critical human advantage. You'll hear how ServiceNow is transforming learning into a personalized, playful, and data-driven experience, why curiosity can’t be taught but can be learned, and how measuring what makes us uniquely human is key.  

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03:46 Measuring uniquely human skills
13:08 Assessing employee skill readiness
15:03 Emerging AI skills and demand
18:56 Creating conditions for curiosity
27:26 Workforce readiness and skills gap
32:32 Focus on customer-centric strategy
35:43 Debating centralized vs. federated learning
37:33 Introducing SimStudio for training
47:04 Creating a unique learning environment
48:12 Solving the learning experience puzzle
56:09 How the Lead Boldly model works

The Shift from Skilling to Workforce Readiness

Workforce readiness has become the new clarion call for organizations. Between 30 and 100% of skills are going to change in the workforce over the next 3 years. This volatility demands a seismic shift in how we think about people development: not as one-off, reactive upskilling, but as continuous preparation for evolving roles and technologies.
At ServiceNow, readiness means aligning workforce capabilities with both current role requirements and the unpredictable demands of tomorrow’s jobs. Readiness isn’t about checking boxes on completed learning modules—it’s about ensuring employees can confidently perform in their roles now and adapt to what’s next.

Rethinking Skills: The Talent Signature Model

Central to ServiceNow’s approach is the concept of the “talent signature”—a model that assesses employees across three dimensions:
AI Fluency: The understanding and leverage of AI, scaled according to job requirements.
Functional Skills: Core competencies needed for specific roles (e.g., technical, sales, marketing).
Human Skills: The human advantage—skills that remain when AI takes over routine work, such as critical thinking, judgment, curiosity, courage, and interpersonal connection.

This framework recognizes that the interplay between these domains is dynamic and context-dependent. An AI skill alone, without a human skill, is actually a skill that AI could do on its own. The difference is the foundational human layer. The model leverages nearly 200 signals—from learning completions and assessments to project work and interpersonal feedback—to generate a unique skill profile for each employee. This data-rich fingerprint enables more precise, personalized development paths and better workforce planning.

Can Curiosity Be Learned?

We discuss whether qualities like curiosity and courage are innate or can be developed. While training modules for curiosity might fall short, Jayney’s perspective is that these attributes can’t be taught, but they can be learned. The distinction matters: it's about creating the right conditions for growth rather than direct instruction. By fostering environments where it’s safe to experiment and fail, organizations can unlock these human traits. 

The Power of Safe Experimentation

To build a culture of learning, ServiceNow draws on the “science of play.” Drawing inspiration from educational theorists like Johan Huizinga, Jayney advocates for “magic circles”—playgrounds within the organization where different rules apply, and the risk of failure is reduced. In these environments, employees are more willing to try, iterate, and improve.
The shift from passive consumption (read-and-test courses) to hands-on, playful approaches is evidenced in their adoption of AI-driven roleplay. Strikingly, 93% of participants returned to repeat these immersive simulations, a testament to the draw and efficacy of playful, experiential learning.

Leading Boldly in Times of Uncertainty

In a climate of rampant change and declining organizational trust, leadership takes center stage. ServiceNow’s “Lead Boldly” model encourages leaders to trust boldly, communicate clearly (even without certainty), and champion change—a people-centered approach that recognizes leaders as the primary catalysts for psychological safety, resilience, and adaptive learning.

 Resources & People Mentioned
Bill McDermott CEO of ServiceNow
Rachel Botsman on LinkedIn
Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture
LOL- Learning out Loud!
Jayney Howson on Substack  

Connect with Guest Name
Jayney Howson - Chief Learning Officer @ ServiceNow | Global Workforce Skills & Talent Readiness 
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When we think about culture, compensation is rarely at the heart of the conversation. But how organizations approach pay, structure, transparency, and performance ties speaks volumes about their values and priorities. We sit down with Colleen McCreary, former Chief People Officer at Credit Karma, to explore the intricacies of compensation as a strategic organizational system. 

Colleen shares how a convoluted pay structure led to a complete overhaul at Credit Karma, resulting in a transparent, role-based compensation system focused on fairness and impact. We discuss pay transparency, the difference between impact and performance, eliminating performance ratings, and introducing a living wage initiative that aligned pay practices with organizational values.

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[01:25] Transparent processes for compensation decisions 
[06:01] Alignment of compensation practices with company mission of financial wellness 
[10:41] Discussing compensation systems
[20:11] Designing the employee compensation structure
[30:46] Restructuring team roles and pay
[33:19] Addressing pay equity issues
[53:10] Developing a promotion budget model
[56:14] Managing underperformers and their compensation

Building the Relationship

Pay is central to the employment relationship, the systems around it are often opaque, and inconsistent—and that breeds confusion and erodes trust. Many leaders default to inherited systems or fail to connect the dots between compensation and the broader organizational culture. This neglect carries hidden costs of noisy complaints, employee disengagement, unhealthy attrition, and management headaches. 

Redefining Pay Transparency

Traditionally, pay transparency means posting salary ranges or employee pay for all to see. Credit Karma’s approach went much further. In their context, transparency meant everyone understood how compensation worked: how often it was evaluated, by what benchmark, and through what decision-making process. It wasn’t about broadcasting individual pay; it was about demystifying systems, leveling the informational playing field, and removing the perception of favoritism or randomness.

When Credit Karma rolled out its new compensation structure, employee perceptions of fairness soared. Surveys found over 90% of respondents felt their pay was fair, even if it wasn’t always exactly what they wanted, compared to a baseline closer to 50%.

Leveling the Playing Field

Credit Karma moved to a role-based pay system: everyone in the same role, at the same location, received the same compensation—no negotiations or special deals. Annual and merit bonuses were rolled into base salaries, and instead of annual performance increases, pay adjustments were driven by market comparisons at regular intervals.

This meant that newly hired employees could no longer leapfrog existing ones in pay, removing a frequent source of managerial angst and employee resentment. Managers were freed from salary negotiations and instead spent energy on developing talent, while systemic reviews twice a year ensured pay stayed competitive without employees having to ask.

Decoupling Compensation from Performance Ratings

An innovative move was uncoupling compensation from traditional performance ratings. By eliminating ratings, Credit Karma relied on promotions and defined job architecture to help employees progress, using clear criteria for advancement. To recognize outstanding contributions, they created an Exceptional Impact Program (EIP), using stock grants to reward employee impact rather than routine high performance.

Acceptance rates in recruiting increased, and attrition rates fell during tumultuous periods in both the company and the wider world. The new system also built organizational trust, employees no longer questioned whether newcomers or others were being paid unfairly; they could focus on their roles and development, knowing the system was both transparent and fair.

 Resources & People Mentioned

Credit Karma
Confluent
Intuit
Culture Amp
Radford McLagan Compensation Database 
Salesforce
Living Wage Calculator 
Colleen Wheeler McCreary on Medium 

Connect with Colleen McCreary

Colleen McCreary on LinkedIn 

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Website: RedThread Research
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In this episode, I welcome Tracie Cantu, Chief Learning Strategist and author of Running L&D Like a Business. We discuss the operational challenges facing today’s L&D teams, the critical distinction between workflows and processes, and the dangers of succumbing to “shiny object syndrome” in the era of AI. From the looming risk of a mid-level talent gap to predictions about the future of L&D itself, our conversation offers practical frameworks, strategic advice, and a glimpse into what it will take for learning leaders to thrive in an uncertain future.  

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06:39 Optimizing learning function operations
08:14 Defining workflows vs processes
16:33 Evaluating investment value in L&D
18:35 Using the ‘5 Whys’ method
24:29 Discussing the problem-solving mindset
30:09 Training models and workforce readiness
36:45 AI in talent acquisition and L&D challenges
43:09 Expectations and projections for L&D's future

The Power of Process Over Workflow

Traditionally, L&D departments have been highly reactive—responding to requests, putting out fires, and churning out solutions, often without a clear line of sight to business goals. Tracy sees L&D as an optimizer of systems more than anything.

She distinguishes between workflows—a series of tasks, often repeated for each new problem—and processes, which are more strategic, goal-oriented, and repeatable across scenarios. Many L&D teams are stuck in workflow mode, leading to reinventing the wheel rather than building scalable, impactful models. Processes enable organizations to rise above reactive task management, free up resources for strategic initiatives, and lay the groundwork for measuring real business value.

People, Processes, and Technology

Tracie’s operating model blueprint has three pillars—people, process, and technology:
People: Are the right skills in the right roles? Or are teams over-indexed in content production but lacking capabilities in data and strategy?
Process: Are you operating by checklists or by cohesive, strategy-backed processes that align to business goals?
Technology: Do your tools work together as an ecosystem, or are they siloed, duplicating effort and data?

L&D teams often falter at the process stage where prioritization, governance, and strategic trade-offs live. Without this backbone, even the shiniest technology will fail to deliver.

Why AI Isn’t a Silver Bullet

Too often, L&D falls prey to “shiny object syndrome”—embracing new technologies before understanding whether they solve any actual problem. Tracie shares the story of a company that spent half a million dollars on VR headsets for employee training, only to realize that what the team needed was human interaction and real feedback, not another gadget. Lots of organizations see AI as a means to crank out content faster, rather than as a tool to fundamentally rethink how we solve business challenges. For AI or any new tech to really be transformative in L&D, the back end—data, processes, and governance—needs to be tight. Otherwise, as Tracie says, “garbage in, garbage out, only louder with AI.”

The Future of L&D

Tracie shares why she thinks L&D may be split into a production-focused function in the future, essentially an in-house content shop, and a more strategic workforce enablement team, possibly absorbed into talent or HR. The risk is that as organizations cut costs and chase efficiency, they neglect long-term skills development, creating a skills dearth by 2032.

Who will be responsible for upskilling and reskilling when L&D is gone? If L&D disappears, the job may fall to talent acquisition or management, but neither is equipped to oversee ongoing learning at scale. L&D professionals who embrace business partnership, systems thinking, and continuous reinvention can still carve out vital space within organizations. The path forward requires tough choices—rethinking team structure, adopting true process discipline, and resisting the allure of fast fixes. 

 Resources & People Mentioned
Running L&D Like a Business 
Shock of the New: The Challenge and Promise of Emerging Technology by Chad Udell and Gary Woodill  
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein 
Rep. Liccardo Introduces SKILL Act to Prepare Workers for AI-Driven Job Market Shifts
Connect Education To Jobs And Create An AI Workforce Transition Plan
MEEK - Fabulous (Official Video) 

Connect with Tracie Cantu
Tracie Cantu
Tracie M. Cantu on LinkedIn 

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Website: RedThread Research
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