Workplace Stories by RedThread Research

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) 

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Tracie Cantu
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This week on the podcast, we welcome Jennifer McCollum, President and CEO of Catalyst and author of the new book Men at Work: The Roadmap to Gender Partnership. Jennifer shares her perspective on whether true gender equity in the workplace can be achieved without fully engaging men in the solution. We dig into the data showing that modern workplaces are failing not just women, but men as well—fueling rigid expectations and limiting everyone’s potential. We discuss Catalyst’s new earned universalism framework in response to legal and societal shifts, and discuss practical strategies HR and talent leaders can use to advance inclusion, even as DEIB functions are restructured or absorbed into other parts of the business. 

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[00:00] Discussing gender equity strategies
[07:09] Catalyst's workplace research and commitment
[12:52] Work-life stress and gender expectations
[16:50] Evaluating post-E.O. impact study
[18:23] Balancing inclusion and flexibility
[20:54] Focus shift from metrics to fairness
[26:27] Promoting equal parental leave
[33:28] Leadership and cultural transformation
[39:48] Changing organizational culture for managers

A Universal Approach to Inclusion Can Transform Work for Everyone

For decades, the chief narrative was that workplaces weren’t built to support women. But Catalyst’s research is now surfacing a broader truth: many modern work environments also fall short for men. Data from their studies reveal that 82% of men feel immense pressure to conform to traditional “man box” stereotypes—such as competitiveness and emotional restraint—while 87% long for more freedom to express traits like empathy and kindness. Crucially, this “man box” doesn’t just restrict individual men. Because men still comprise much of senior leadership, these norms perpetuate rigid, stifling workplace cultures that limit everyone.

Introducing Earned Universalism: Catalyst’s New Inclusion Framework

Faced with mounting political and legal pressures—such as recent executive orders impacting DEI practices—many organizations are anxious about how to maintain progress without running afoul of the law. In response, Catalyst, in partnership with NYU’s Meltzer Center, introduced the concept of earned universalism.

This framework acknowledges the paradox between the desire for inclusion that serves everyone and the need to support those long disadvantaged by systemic barriers. The idea is not to abandon equity, but to earn the right to universal policies by first removing specific barriers holding marginalized groups back. 

Practical Steps for HR Leaders

With DEI departments being restructured and relabeled in many organizations, HR leaders face unique challenges. The key is to integrate partnership skills—such as curiosity, courage, accountability, and allyship—into broader talent, culture, and leadership development programs.

Jennifer outlines a 5B framework for building gender partnership:

Begin with You: Start with self-reflection and awareness
Break Down What’s Not Working: Address both individual and systemic obstacles
Build Up What’s In It for Men: Explicitly communicate how everyone gains from equity
Bridge the Gender Gap: Model and drive behaviors that close divides at all levels
Bring Humanity to Work: Foster real human connection and openness.

Workplace equity isn’t about ceding ground or ticking boxes; it’s about pushing past old dichotomies and building cultures where all people belong and can contribute fully. 

 Resources & People Mentioned

Men at Work: The Roadmap to Gender Partnership by Jennifer McCollum 
Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
In Her Own Voice: A Woman's Rise to CEO by Jennifer McCollum
McKinsey's Women in the Workplace report
Risks of retreat: The path forward | Catalyst 

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Leadership is often the deciding factor in whether organizations thrive or falter, but the way we lead matters even more. In the latest episode of Workplace Stories, Dr. Benjamin Granger, Chief Workplace Psychologist at Qualtrics and author of A Leader Worth Following, explores why so many organizations still default to dominance-based leadership, and what it means to build cultures that reward prestige-based approaches instead. Blending insights from evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and years of workplace research, Ben shares his thoughts on how leadership styles shape employee experience and business success. 

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00:00 Discussing Leadership Challenges and Trust
06:21 Understanding organizational psychology
07:30 Balancing theory and practical application
14:50 Playing the power politics game
20:00 Discussing organizational power shifts
22:36 Operating under dominant leaders
35:12 Handling Uncertainty as a Leader
37:46 Influence of environment on behavior
40:58 The impact of physical environment
50:44 Focusing on honest feedback

The Evolutionary Roots of Leadership

Most social animals, including humans, establish hierarchies where certain individuals rise to the top. In non-human species, this rise is usually based on dominance: the biggest, strongest, or most aggressive become the alphas by imposing their will on others. Humans, however, have developed an alternative: prestige. Prestige-based leaders earn followership by demonstrating genuine competence and contributing to the group's well-being, prompting others to follow willingly rather than out of fear or obligation.

Prestige is one of the things that makes us the most evolutionarily distinct. But despite its clear advantages, modern organizations too often favor dominance. Dominance works in the short term, it gets quick results, especially in high-pressure situations, but, like alphas in the animal kingdom, it’s always temporary and can be overturned by newer, stronger rivals.

Why Organizations Default to Dominance

Despite prestige-based leadership delivering better outcomes, structural pressures and cultural inertia mean that organizations still often rely on dominance. Environments that obsess over immediate results—hitting quarterly numbers, quick responses to crises—inevitably reward those who can “get it done now,” even if it means sidelining empathy, trust-building, or transparency.

Organizations often pay lip service to soft skills, layering emotional intelligence and empathy expectations over systems fundamentally designed for command-and-control. This is backward, though, every organization exists to meet the needs of other people, and if it doesn't do that, it doesn't exist. 

Building Prestige-Based Cultures

Changing leadership norms starts with both organizational systems and individual behaviors. 

Audit Your Core Values: Are they truly reflected in observable behaviors and environmental cues—from glass doors symbolizing transparency to real open Q&As in all-hands meetings? 
Measure What Matters: Don’t just reward outcomes; examine how results were achieved, looking for consistency with your stated values.
Foster High-Fidelity Communication: In an age of automation and AI, preserve spaces for genuine human dialogue to counteract the erosion of trust and connection.
Invest in Leadership Skills: Require training in rhetoric, body language, and executive presence for all leaders—not to polish surface impressions, but to deepen real influence and trust.

The Future of Leadership in an AI World

AI and automation are accelerating every aspect of business, but they also risk stripping away the very things that make organizations human. Rigid digital systems (like micromanaged expense policies) can signal distrust as surely as an angry boss. If organizations lean too heavily on these tools, they may unwittingly degrade the high-trust, collaborative communication on which true prestige-based leadership is built.
As Benjamin says, “Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, its greatest failures by not talking. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking”. Leadership for the future is about mastery of self and service to others, pulling people forward by example, not pushing them down by force. 

 Resources & People Mentioned

Dr. Steve Hunt 
Josh Bersin 
Edgar Schein
Stephen Hawking 
A Leader Worth Following: How to Master Yourself, Influence Others, and Create Exceptional Experiences by Benjamin Granger
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust 

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Benjamin Granger on LinkedIn 

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When IBM spun off its infrastructure services business into Kyndryl, it created the largest public company spin in New York Stock Exchange history—launching with 90,000 employees and a daunting reality: 60% of customer accounts were unprofitable, and revenues were shrinking. Amid intense pressure to reset the trajectory, Kyndryl’s then-CHRO Maryjo Charbonnier architected a workforce strategy that prioritized people, data, and adaptability. On the podcast this week, Maryjo shares her expertise on how to build a skills-centric enterprise ready for an AI-powered future.

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[04:22] Overcoming workforce skill challenges at Kyndryl
[13:51] Defining company culture and values
[16:45] Reducing and restructuring the workforce
[24:58] Improving employee redeployment rates
[31:05] Tackling vended labor challenges
[38:21] Managing skills across job families
[42:49] Finding allies in unexpected departments
[52:10] Improving Kyndryl resource planning
[53:02] Future workforce tracking challenges

Building a Culture First, Systems Second

While it may be tempting for HR to leap into systems and processes, Maryjo insists that everything should begin with culture and purpose. Kyndryl first articulated the culture they wanted to be by conducting research with customers and employees to distill the company’s values. These values of kinship, growth, restlessness, empathy, and devotion to shared success shaped the Kyndryl way and anchored every subsequent transformation, from talent architecture to performance management.

Shaping the Workforce with Skills Data—Not Just Headcount

Maryjo describes her central CHRO responsibility as keeping as many people employed as possible through responsible enterprise stewardship. That means managing the direct workforce and aggressively addressing contractor and vended labor. Instead of allowing easy backdoor entry for outsourced services when headcount was reduced, Kyndryl prioritized retraining and reallocating internal employees—a strategy that cut the vended workforce by 50% and drove up redeployment to nearly 80%.

Critical to this approach was creating a unifying global job architecture and skills taxonomy, merging inventory across employees, contractors, and service vendors. This required overcoming system fragmentation and forging new alliances with procurement, IT, and legal to track all labor, however it came in, and create transparency across all workstreams.

From Data Layers to Business Impact

While a single-pane-of-glass HR system was the dream for Maryjo, the reality meant integrating financial, HR, procurement, and vendor management systems and building semantic layers that could track, reconcile, and translate skill data at scale. No single software suite could do it all, so success depended on building partnerships with IT and developing custom layers, predictive tools, and AI agents for matching talent to customer needs.

Kyndryl anchored its use of AI in solving real business and customer problems rather than tracking individual productivity. The most important thing is to have someone ready to go with the skills that the customer needs to do that piece of work.

 Resources & People MentionedEightfold
SkyHive
TechWolf
Workday
Dave Ulrich 

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Artificial intelligence is transforming not just our workplaces, but the very nature of education and professional development. Our guest this week, Michael Noble, Vice President of Academic Program Development at Western Governors University (WGU), shares his views on how higher education can rise to the current moment, bridging the gap between academic learning, employable skills, and the changing needs of the workforce. We also dig into how WGU’s innovative approach might become a template for organizations and educational institutions navigating the AI era. 

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[00:00] Upskilling entry-level talent with AI
[03:59] Integrating liberal arts with tech skills
[09:34] Discussing higher education trends
[15:36] Creating personalized skill-based curriculums
[26:13] Leveraging WGU's alumni network
[29:14] Challenges in employee development
[31:43] Impact of AI on job training
[35:17] Integrating philosophy into the curriculum
[48:40] Specialization vs. flexibility
[55:28] Finding fulfillment through creative work

From Degree to Competency

Higher education is experiencing a moment of reckoning around its relevance for today's job market. Traditional models have long focused on grades and credit hours, but WGU centers its model on competency-based education. Students demonstrate mastery of validated competencies—skills verified through rigorous assessment, rather than simply accumulating classroom hours or participation credits. This approach better aligns with employer demands, emphasizing what learners can actually do rather than what they have passively experienced.

WGU’s adaptability has enabled it to cater to working adults seeking career advancement, and to students entering directly from high school, who now make up over 40% of its enrollment. By focusing on practical skills and direct assessment, WGU is closing the gap between academic learning and the immediate needs of employers, allowing for more individualized and efficient upskilling.

The Power and Challenge of University-Corporate Partnerships

With AI and automation taking over many entry-level tasks, companies and universities face a new imperative: how do we prepare new hires for roles that require immediate impact and advanced judgment, skipping the traditional ramp-up provided by routine tasks? We discuss WGU’s partnerships with companies like CVS Health, where tailored programs help pharmacy techs advance within the organization and are supported by real-time competency and skills data.

Internships, micro-internships, and simulated externships emerged as critical solutions for giving students hands-on, relevant experience. Aligning incentives between corporations seeking skilled workers and universities eager to prove their graduates’ real-world readiness could radically reshape how both sectors approach workforce entry.

AI as a Catalyst for Change in Learning and Development

AI isn’t just changing what skills are needed, but how learning itself happens. WGU is embracing AI-native tools—virtual assistants for students, personalized learning feedback, and AI-assisted evaluation—to both scale quality learning and support the work of instructors and curriculum developers.

This technological shift is also transforming the structure of learning and development teams. Specialists are becoming “augmented generalists,” using AI tools to speed up design, delivery, and personalization, but the need for deep expertise and sound judgment remains crucial. Just because something looks polished doesn’t mean it’s fully accurate or effective.
Recognizing that many students lack the networking advantages of elite institutions, WGU is using its growing alumni network, piloting programs that help students connect with industry veterans, and offering achievement “wallets” to showcase their skills and experiences—key ingredients in leveling the playing field for career advancement.

 Resources & People Mentioned

Office of the President Scott Pulsipher 
Bryan Alexander: Georgetown University 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Midwest Innocence Project 

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Michael Noble on LinkedIn 

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