Combining Learning Theory with Practical Application w/Russell Sweep
Episode Overview
In this episode of "Making Better," host Matt Gjertsen sits down with guest Russell Sweep to explore the fascinating intersection of learning theory and practical application. Russell shares insights on the importance of applying behavior change principles to oneself, and discusses the balance between theoretical knowledge and practical skills in the field of education. They also delve into the challenges of bridging the gap between theory and practice, drawing from their own experiences and the need to communicate effectively with stakeholders and subject matter experts. Join us as we uncover the secrets to combining learning theory with practical application and making a positive impact in the world of education.
About Russell Sweep
Russell Sweep is a Content Development Manager for Goodwill Industries International. Russell made the move from higher education into corporate instructional design and has had to work with teams on merging learning theory with the practical realities of instructional design. That merger is always a big topic in our industry which is why I wanted to have him on today.
Full Transcript
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Russell Sweep [00:00:00]:
When I started working in this position, one of the things that I brought to the table was timelines. I wanted to ensure that we were sticking to specific timelines and everyone knew it. Full transparency, the entire process, what it would look like broken down. I wanted to make it so the team kind of understood the work that was going in, but also the stakeholder.
Matt Gjertsen [00:00:20]:
Welcome to Making Better, a podcast from Better Everyday Studios devoted to helping small learning teams have a big impact. Today I am talking to Russell Sweep, content development manager for Goodwill Industries International. Russell made the move from higher education into corporate instructional design and has had to work with teams on merging learning theory with the practical realities of instructional design. That merger is always a big topic in our industry, which is why I wanted to have him on today. Let's dive in. Russell. Welcome to the making. Better podcast.
Matt Gjertsen [00:00:52]:
How are you doing today?
Russell Sweep [00:00:53]:
I'm doing awesome. Thank you for having me. This is really exciting.
Matt Gjertsen [00:00:56]
No, absolutely. I mean, you and I, I was on your podcast recently. We had a really fun discussion. They're always love to kind of cross pollinate between channels. We have a little bit different take of what we're looking for for our podcast. So I think this will be a really fun discussion, so I'm excited to jump into I
Russell Sweep [00:01:15]:
It's always great to be able to do that. I love that term cross pollination too. It feels like we're building something together. It's growing.
Matt Gjertsen [00:01:22]:
Yeah, exactly. So to kick things off, I did a brief introduction of you. We got to know each other a little bit more, I think when I first came across your profile, the thing that most intrigued me was the transition that you've done relatively recently from more of the higher education space into corporate learning and development. I always think that's an interesting transition, but if you want to give just like the couple minute background of how you've moved into the learning and development space yeah, absolutely.
Russell Sweep [00:01:54]:
So, like you said, I was in higher education, I taught over in Southern California, and then my wife and I decided to move to the East Coast. So we just packed everything we owned and our two dogs and an RV and just took a big road trip. This was in 2020, and when I set up in my new home, I started looking around for college opportunities, teach at a couple of community colleges, look for some full time adjunct positions. And then I very quickly realized that there just wasn't the same type of support over here on the East Coast that there was on the West Coast.
Matt Gjertsen [00:02:30]:
You mean like within higher education?
Russell Sweep [00:02:33]:
Exactly. But I would imagine that it would extend towards like K through twelve as well.
Matt Gjertsen [00:02:38]:
Sure.
Russell Sweep [00:02:40]:
The unions just aren't as prevalent. There doesn't seem to be as much job security. I was in an interview one time for a full time position. And the person literally laughed at me because I told them how much I made in California, and they're like, there's no way you would make that here. So it was very eye opening, and it was one of those moments where I had gotten a call from a local community college. They offered me a full time position where I was going to make one third of what I was making previously. And it was one of those moments where I told them, I was like, I'm sorry, I can't take this. I got a better offer.
Russell Sweep [00:03:16]:
I had no offer on the table, but it was one of those moments where I just had to get out of that conversation and very eye opening and just kind of pushed me in a different direction, kind of opened up the trajectory. So after that, I started doing more research into instructional design, and I just got very captivated by all the adult learning theories and all the different techniques and the concepts and all the different tools you could use. So I kind of embraced it. I would imagine, like most educators, I stumbled at the beginning thinking that maybe my same skills would be able to apply, but they didn't. And recruiters definitely let me know. So it was a bit of a rocky start, but definitely a humbling one because I learned a lot about what my skills are, what I can bring, and what I need to upskill in. So about six months in upskilling. Then after that, I started doing some contract work, learned what I did and didn't like.
Russell Sweep [00:04:18]:
And then after that, about six months after that, I got my first full time position, and that's where I currently am.
Matt Gjertsen [00:04:25]:
Awesome. Fantastic. So, I mean, since you put it on the table, I have to at least kind of open the door a little bit of what were some of those things early on of those gaps in your own abilities? That the kinds of things that recruiters were letting you know about, which is actually pretty kind of them, other than them just ghosting you. I mean, that's actually great.
Russell Sweep [00:04:44]:
Don't get me wrong, I have 100 ghosting emails coming from some sort of AI SEO management software. No, I agree. Some of the things that were very eye opening were the transferable skills that I needed to start to develop a little bit more. So I wasn't very good at creating content. I had done video editing and sound editing for quite some time, but when it translated towards Elearnings, I had no experience aside from maybe PowerPoint and Talking head. So I needed to upskill on that and every job that I looked into, it seemed like they wanted some version of an articulate program. So I was also a Mac user at the time. Well, I didn't need to, but I did purchase a cheap laptop just so I could start to dabble in articulates programs and then learn a little bit mean everything that I learned at the very beginning, I learned from YouTube.
Russell Sweep [00:05:51]:
I have a friend that says if there's a YouTube, there's a way. Yes, and it definitely helped me at the beginning because I also spent so much time in school when I was getting my degree in psychology, when I was learning to teach others, I didn't really feel like I wanted to go back to school. I just wanted to see if I could do this myself. And it might have taken a little bit longer to get there, but I was able to achieve it. So I'm pretty happy about that at least.
Matt Gjertsen [00:06:21]:
Yeah, awesome. I think that's one of the best things about our field is when you take, if you are willing to take all the things we learn about how to change others behavior and teach others and reflect it back on yourself, it can be an incredibly powerful skill. So it's awesome that you were able to do that. So it sounds like then from your time in education you had a lot of the theory background and then there were some of the practical skills that you needed to develop in yourself. And then the last time we chatted, it sounded like that's something that you saw too, kind of, with other teams that you would work with except coming in the other direction, where people who were in our field who didn't have that formal education background, maybe they had more of the practical skills, but they didn't have the theory to back it up. I'm always really interested in this interplay because I think it comes up a lot in discussions in our industry about that separation between theory and practice. When you reflect on your experiences, where do you see the biggest gaps in that separation between theory and practice when it comes to our industry?
Russell Sweep [00:07:38]:
It's a great question and coming from a standpoint where I learned everything on the ground floor, I didn't go to college for this or I didn't go to boot camps. I kind of just picked it up and wrote it in my little yellow journal that said instructional Design on the COVID and I just tried to absorb everything I could. And then going into contract work, I feel like it is very much like I don't want to say grindy, but there are certain jobs when it is just repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. And so you do learn those practical skills very quickly. The three things that I think would probably really relate towards the difference between theory and practice are time, money and quality. And I feel like this does really you can't really conceptualize this until you start to do the work, but everyone always wants things to be chapter. Sorry. Everyone always wants things to be cheaper, faster or better.
Russell Sweep [00:08:34]:
And the truth of the matter is you're just going to have to sacrifice at least one of those if you want the other two to be successful. So it kind of reminds me like I've got a family motto that I started and my wife really dislikes. I always say everything is always harder, everything always costs more, everything always takes more time just to prepare yourself so that when you do come across a new project, you kind of know what to expect or at least you're kind of preparing for the worst. And I feel like understanding those three things are an incredibly useful skill whenever you're actually applying it in the real.
Matt Gjertsen [00:09:12]:
Yeah, yeah. And spoken like someone who has definitely seen Southern California construction projects, they definitely do always take longer, cost more and just a lot more work than was originally envisioned. And I think that totally makes sense and I think that maps to a lot of what I feel like I see in the theoretical discussion or the theory discussion is it's all of this just like ideal world applications. In an ideal world we would do XYZ and in reality, like you said, you don't have the time, you don't have the money, you don't have the resources or some combination of all three in order to get it quite done. So of those three, is there any particular one that stands out to you? I don't know.
Russell Sweep [00:10:10]:
I feel like time is always one of the biggest ones because there always seems to be some sort of rush with projects, whether you're trying to meet a deadline or you're trying to get it in by a particular quarter or you're trying to demonstrate your value for the next financial time. There's a lot of different considerations when it comes to deadlines and when I started working in my current position. So I'm a manager now with content development. And when I started working in this position, one of the things that I brought to the table was timelines. I wanted to ensure that we were sticking to specific timelines and everyone knew it. Full transparency, the entire process, what it would look like broken down. I wanted to make it so the team kind of understood the work that was going in, but also the stakeholders because a lot of times they may not understand everything that goes into this project. And so being able to break it down into saying kind of like, hey, the task analysis is going to take this long, the learning objectives are going to take this long to write it would give a little bit more kind of visibility towards the overall process and just kind of bring everyone in on the loop.
Russell Sweep [00:11:27]:
So they are kind of invested in it, they understand it and they'll be able to kind of advocate when maybe you need a little bit more time.
Matt Gjertsen [00:11:36]:
That makes a ton of sense. I think you're totally right. And when I think back to a lot of projects, that ambiguity of timelines is a very consistent problem in that nobody's ever really clear. And I think this could probably go back to some of the discussion around learning and development. Often not having clear goals that we're trying to achieve or clear metrics that we're trying to achieve. I think a lot of times it can serve you to have ambiguity in what you're delivering, whether it's via what you're actually delivering, what you're trying to achieve, the timeline that you're trying to deliver on, because then you can never really fail or you can't fully fail. You can always just kind of move it along.
Russell Sweep [00:12:26]:
I've always appreciated mechanics that will overestimate how long something will take and deliver it earlier, as opposed to the other way around when you ask for more time. Yes. So being able to kind of like, even if you overshoot it a little bit, being able to break that down, I feel like everyone's on the same page, and they can kind of be like, okay, I know in two weeks they're going to come in and show us a review cycle. That's something that you can always kind of expect. And within the field that I'm working in, I feel like that's so important because there are so many projects happening. Right. Everyone has a timeline for every project. Being able to look on your calendar, it's one of the first things I do in the morning.
Russell Sweep [00:13:08]:
I look and see, all right, what do I have going on for today? It organizes things so everyone's on the same page.
Matt Gjertsen [00:13:14]:
Yeah. So you said you came into this role as a manager, and this is one of the first things you wanted to introduce. How did you go about introducing that to your team's workflow?
Russell Sweep [00:13:23]:
Yeah, so my team very talented and has a lot of skills in different departments. So one of the things that I think was really important was to ensure that we had standardization on how we ran projects. A lot of people would build with kind of based upon an idea and kind of build it forward. And in doing so, the scope would kind of go off track. It would take longer. It might not meet those learning objectives that they had thought about maybe applying. So it was important to try and establish kind of a prioritization going in. And that's something that I tried to work really hard on, and I feel like we're starting to really encompass in a lot of our work.
Russell Sweep [00:14:10]:
So a big thing about that was ensuring that people had the tools that they needed. So templates were really helpful because then everyone could kind of look at that. They had the document, they could apply it in that position. So if you're doing a design document, if you have a timeline, if you've got a project plan, these are all templates that can be readily available. And when I was first working out, first doing the job, I reached out towards all the resources, I had to try and bring together these templates. Like, I know Tim Slade's book was incredibly important. When I was starting off, I really appreciated everyone who was posting on LinkedIn, and I'd ask my community like, hey, do you have recommendations? So taking all of those resources and applying them and putting them into the job was incredibly helpful. And I felt like there was a lot more support because it wasn't just me coming forward and saying, like, hey, we need to do it this way.
Russell Sweep [00:15:03]:
It was me bringing kind of evidence and materials and resources that everyone could apply in their positions.
Matt Gjertsen [00:15:10]:
Okay, was this done through kind of weekly team you'd bring everybody together, weekly team meetings and kind of say, like, hey, I've kind of noticed that maybe there's a gap here. Maybe I wonder if you was it a very collaborative thing of how you approached it?
Russell Sweep [00:15:26]:
Yeah. So the first thing that we did is we tried to get to know each other and what we're working on, where our skills lie. And whenever we had a conversation about whether something would work or not, it was important that I felt it was important that everyone be heard because I wanted to make sure that I could bring some reasoning. I could provide the why on why something is changing or why I'm bringing something into the table. But I also wanted to listen in, in case someone thought that maybe their way was better or maybe something functioned within that company and that company culture that maybe I wasn't aware of. So it was incredibly important to have those discourses, but in order to follow the standardization, we kind of just implemented it in a project. So we started bringing those. We would try it out and see if it worked and then make some small tweaks along the way.
Russell Sweep [00:16:23]:
And having those review cycles internally was really helpful because we could kind of have this, like you said, like a weekly check in throughout the process and kind of learn as we went.
Matt Gjertsen [00:16:33]:
So it sounds like you kind of approached it very experimentally, where it wasn't like you were coming forward and saying, like, hey, this is the better way. This is what we're going to do now. Just like, let's see what happens. I went out to my community, some folks that I know, they suggest that there's this way that might work better. Should we try it this time? And then you kind of just did that.
Russell Sweep [00:16:53]:
Iteratively it sounds like, yeah. I've never really been like, an authoritative kind of person, like, saying, like, hey, my way or the highway. I've wanted to listen and hear what people have to say. I want to grow alongside people, and I feel like that's a very important kind of emotional intelligence skill to apply as well. Like, listen in on how people react, how they do things. Maybe your method isn't the best method. I read this book, the first 90 days that talked a lot about stopping and listening when you first come into a new position and when you're a first manager, because coming in, stirring the pots, it's not a really great way to make friends.
Matt Gjertsen [00:17:38]:
No.
Russell Sweep [00:17:39]:
So coming in, listening, treating people with respect and listening to what works for them, that's been incredibly helpful, especially for trust and mutual respect.
Matt Gjertsen [00:17:52]:
Totally, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I can say in the brief amount of time that we've gotten to know each other, I wouldn't say authoritative is the thing that I get off of your personality. So it makes a lot of sense the way you are approaching this, I think. So in all this, in kind of these various ways of you trying different things out and pushing things forward, I think you developed kind of a framework for how you think about developing a learning development team specifically, is that right?
Russell Sweep [00:18:25]:
Yeah, I feel like there was like a checklist that we would focus in on. So I mentioned earlier, timelines were one of the biggest issues. Regardless of the amount of time we needed to upskill as a team, we still needed to meet deadlines. So you kind of had to do it as you went. So we had to prioritize on what was the most important at that moment. And so building the product, ensuring that people will be able to access it, and ensuring that we can show the results, I feel like those were the three things that were incredibly important. And then there's like sub modules that kind of fall under that or subtasks not to say that it's not as important, but I view everything else as kind of like that umbrella term and other things that fell under it. So the learning objective was incredibly important to determine how we were going to build something and then also how we were going to prove that it was effective.
Russell Sweep [00:19:24]:
So ensuring that there was a proper kind of flowchart for a checklist was incredibly helpful for the team and ensuring that everyone was kind of on the same page and we all knew what step we were at so that we'd be able to move together.
Matt Gjertsen [00:19:40]:
That makes a lot of sense because the last thing you want, especially in most HR spaces, is chaos. Right. And I feel like that's something that very often actually holds HR back is that companies are willing to accept a lot of experimentation outside of HR. But when it comes to benefits, pay, that kind of stuff, just like, no, we can't mess with this stuff. And so having that kind of hierarchy and that checklist of like, these are the things we have to deliver on. And then under those, as long as we know we're delivering on those things, we can kind of play at the margins of seeing if we can improve on the delivery of those things. But always preserving the delivery of these things.
Russell Sweep [00:20:33]:
I think I've probably gotten some pushback when it came to kind of creative people's creativity and how they wanted to put their own individual spin on a particular project. Mostly because recently we just finished a very large project for our retail sector. And I needed to ensure that because we had multiple developers who were working on it, I needed to ensure that it had a similar feel throughout the project. So we worked together on a kind of design guide, some standardizations to hit that would reflect what the company's interests were and that culture. And so there was some pushback. Some people wanted to have their own individual differences on that. And I kind of needed to take a stand on there in order to summarize what the company and the mission was trying to push there. But I think that that was something that, again, having a conversation and talking about your reasoning.
Russell Sweep [00:21:36]:
I like to be able to bring my reasoning to every conversation. I like people to be able to know why I'm thinking a particular way. Otherwise I feel like there's going to be more resistance when people don't know the why.
Matt Gjertsen [00:21:48]:
Yeah, diving into that because I think you just highlighted something that is probably one of the biggest barriers to bringing standardization into any creative field is that we like to be creative, we like to do our own things. And I know there's always a fear of systematizing things and just like sucking the soul out of it. How did those conversations tend to go? I mean, you mentioned that you would kind of say, like, hey, you kind of put on your business hat and said, this is what we're trying to achieve for the business. But anything else about kind of how those conversations went that might be helpful to folks?
Russell Sweep [00:22:29]:
I think there's always leeway for creativity. There's always opportunity to put your own spin on something. I think it's just the big ticket items that need to reflect what your goal is or what the mission is so that everyone understands it properly. And it has a similar feel. Like if you're introducing some new things into your training that are going to take away from those goals or take away from what that mission is because you kind of want to.
Matt Gjertsen [00:22:58]:
Oh.
Russell Sweep [00:22:58]:
I want to put in a really cool, multiple choice question here that has some nice graphics or I want to.
Matt Gjertsen [00:23:05]:
Interview three days making the graphics or something.
Russell Sweep [00:23:08]
Yeah, I want to film something and put it forward for an Academy Award. It's one of those things where you kind of have to look out for the time, the money, the quality at the very beginning and ensure that this is going to fit within that standard, but also that your learner isn't going to be distracted or you're not going to take away from what it is. A lot of times, and I talk with a lot of people on this. In some of the groups that I'm part of the idea of does this necessarily need to be any learning? Does this need to be a training? Can it be an infographic? Can it be a PDF? Can it be something else that is going to cut down on the time that the person has to put into it and are they still going to get value out of it? So I think creativity is fantastic, but done is better than perfect. And when you're within those timelines, sometimes you got to do the work and then maybe you'll be able to fit it in every once in a yeah, definitely.
Matt Gjertsen [00:24:07]
Yeah, I think you definitely hit the nail on the head there. Have done is always better than you know, a lot of what you're saying really reminds me of a book I read. I believe it was a world without email. I know it was a Cal Newport book and I believe it was A World Without Email, where he really talked a lot about how in honestly, a lot of quote unquote white collar work, but certainly creative work. We kind of mistake having the freedom to make what you want with the freedom to make what you want, however you want. And that however you want is the processes, the tools, those things that standardize and that that inability to set those standardized rules is what has really limited productivity growth within a lot of white collar spaces and creative spaces. Because we're unwilling to say this is the project management tool that the whole company uses. This is the way we do email at our company.
Matt Gjertsen [00:25:13]:
And though most of us probably don't have the ability to say that for a whole company, speaking from my experience, if a company isn't setting the stage, doing it within your team can just transform the productivity in a team. If you can get through that initial friction of and I think it sounds like how you did it was just so perfectly encapsulated. Kind of like, what is it? The forming storming norming performing cycle of team formation, right where you come together. And one of the key ways to get through that storming phase of when you have a lot of friction is by having empathy, asking for input, really not saying my way or the highway, but really having discussions about it. But if you can get through that into the norming phase where you set these norms of these are the way we do things, these are some of the standard tools that we use, standard processes that we use. It can just unlock so much performance within organizations. Is that kind of what you've seen as you've kind of turned the corner? Has it really helped your team in that way?
Russell Sweep [00:26:19]:
Definitely. I think that's what a leader does is they will be able to advocate for their team and choose a lot of those tools and choose a lot of those barriers that are going to be not necessarily preventing people from moving forward, but are going to guide people down the right path. And I think that analysis paralysis is very real. So if you have too many options or if things are unclear, you could definitely just wade around and try and wait and that eats into your timeline. So having clear expectations, but also having clear tools, I mean, the whole point of a tool is it's supposed to make work easier. So understanding how to utilize that to the best of the ability for your company and the best of the ability for your workers, that's so important.
Matt Gjertsen [00:27:10]:
Yeah. If you started every project with like, am I going to use captivator Storyline and just like blue skied at every time? Or more realistic scenario would probably be am I going to use Storyline or Rise? You kind of start every project with that question, but if you don't have any guidelines at all as to how to make that decision, then you're just like making it up on the fly. You're just like wasting a lot of time. Whereas if you have some standard questions that you ask some standard things to guide which one of these tools you're going to use, it's just going to allow you to move a lot faster and allow you to apply your creativity to the places that matter.
Russell Sweep [00:27:53]:
Absolutely. Learners we often talk about, learners have a specific bandwidth, their cognitive load. I mean, developers do too. If you're staring at a project for so long, you're eventually going to have blinders or it's going to cloud over. You need to have some sort of progress to move forward.
Matt Gjertsen [00:28:15]:
Yeah, no, I agree with that 100%. Awesome. Well, as you think back on the transition, anything else comes to mind in terms of important things for the development of skills of an LND team? Practical skills?
Russell Sweep [00:28:32]:
Yeah, so I think a big one would probably be understanding how to talk to stakeholders and understanding how to talk to SMEs or your subject matter experts. I think that's something that we in the L and D field, we get that kind of ingrained in us at a very early step, and it's in all the books, all the education. We'll talk about, like, here's what a difficult Smee looks like. So we kind of prepare ourselves for that difficult session. But the truth of the matter is that these are all people skills. These are all skills that you develop being around individuals and spending time with them. And I think that's something that you really just need exposure with. But also understanding how do you show what you're doing is valuable, how do you demonstrate that it's going to provide value to another person? When you're talking to subject matter experts, how do you show them that this is going to make their life easier as opposed to take their job? When you.
Russell Sweep [00:29:38]:
Talk to stakeholders. How do you show them the ROI on what you're producing? And how can you break it down in a way that you don't have to get into the nitty gritty, but you can show them at the end, this is what the result is going to look like. This is what we think is going to improve productivity or change behavior.
Matt Gjertsen [00:29:55]:
Yeah, I think being able to have those conversations is so critical to being successful in the LND space. I would definitely agree with that. Awesome. Well, thank you for kind of running us through that. As we wrap up, I know you have a podcast of your own, the LND Hot Seat. What are you trying to achieve with that? What are the kinds of conversations that you have there?
Russell Sweep [00:30:24]:
Yeah, so a lot of people who come on, we talk a little bit about nightmare scenarios and everyone loves hearing that. Right. We talk about what didn't work and how they solved a particular challenging scenario. So whenever someone comes into the hot seat, you came onto mine as well. I provide them with three challenging scenarios and we talk about how we can overcome those. And I like to view it as a way that if someone is running into a problem similar to that in their own experience, they'll be able to reflect on those words and someone else's kind of wisdom and apply that to their own experience.
Matt Gjertsen [00:31:01]:
Yeah, it's kind of like mini case studies, almost diagnose and walk through in real time.
Russell Sweep [00:31:08]:
Sometimes I feel like it kind of sounds like an interview. Like, tell me a time when you dot, dot, dot. But in reality, those kind of questions, I like them best because they paint a picture in your audience's mind and they can often relate that towards their own experience. Think about that story and it sticks with them a little longer.
Matt Gjertsen [00:31:28]:
Yeah, no, I think telling stories is always the best way to learn, so I think you got a good format there. So for any listeners, if you haven't checked it out, make sure to go check out the L D hot Seat. Yeah, I had a blast being on there, and I hope you had fun being here today. I certainly enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much, Russell.
Russell Sweep [00:31:48]:
Thanks for having me. This was fantastic.
Matt Gjertsen [00:31:50]:
Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you liked the discussion, make sure to hit like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. As a reminder, if your team is struggling keeping up with the training development demands of your organization, we want to help. Better Everyday Videos is a full service instructional design team that can help you with everything from ideation to actual content creation and delivery. Please reach out to us using the link in the episode notes below. Have a great day.t.
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