“The smartest person in the room, I’ve learned, is usually the person who knows how to tap into the intelligence of every person in the room.” — Scott Kelly
Empower your team to build courses without bottlenecks
When your L&D team is stretched thin, relying solely on instructional designers just doesn’t scale. One team needs onboarding, another wants upskilling, and leadership needs a course by the end of the day.
If that sounds familiar, join iSpring’s Anna Poli on September 23rd, 11 a.m. EDT for a live webinar. You’ll learn how to set up a scalable, self-service content system powered by AI and help subject matter experts build polished courses quickly.
The Rundown: L&D often builds one “perfect” course and hopes it works. A/B testing flips that—letting teams run small experiments to see what actually helps learners perform better.
The Context:
A/B testing is simple: show one group Version A, another Version B, then compare the results.
It’s not about fancy stats—it’s about replacing assumptions with evidence and learning faster.
Why It Matters: Instead of relying on “best practice” (someone else’s success), A/B testing helps you make safer, smarter decisions grounded in your learners’ real context. Over time, these small experiments build valuable internal insights.
What’s one assumption about your learning programs you could test tomorrow?
How Zapier’s L&D Team Saved 1,000+ Hours with Automation
The Rundown: Zapier’s Learning & Development (L&D) team built an “L&D robot” using automated workflows (Zaps) to take on repetitive workshop admin. The result? They reclaimed over 1,000 hours a year, improved consistency, and boosted workshop participation.
The Context:
They started by listing all the repetitive tasks in running internal workshops—calendar setup, promotion, attendance tracking, pre-work, follow-ups.
The L&D robot handles event creation, targeting invitations at the right time, sending reminders, recaps, and feedback surveys—all automatically.
Because the system is automated, human effort is focused on facilitation and coaching, not logistics. Additionally, attendance rose (up to ~20× in some cases) due to improved promotion and messaging.
Why It Matters: For L&D teams, automating admin doesn’t replace people—it frees them to do what humans do best: design, engage, and teach. It also creates more scalable, consistent learning experiences.
What repetitive, low-creativity tasks in your L&D workflow are draining time that could be automated—if only you built your own “robot”?
The Rundown: Dual coding — pairing visuals with words — can enhance learning. But when overdone, it overwhelms the brain and hurts retention.
The Context:
When words and visuals support each other, learners retain more.
But unnecessary text, cluttered images, or redundant narration create overload.
Designers can avoid this with cues, segmentation, and minimalist slides.
Why It Matters: Using visuals ≠ using them well. For L&D pros, dual coding is powerful when used intentionally — not just decoratively. Clean it up to boost learning and cut friction.
How often do your training materials combine visuals and text or audio without checking if learners can keep pace?
This is the conversation that caught my ear this week. Check out previous episodes in the Friday Finds podcast playlist.
Challenge What You Think You Know About AI
This episode will challenge what you think you know about AI.
Benedict Evans challenges the AI hype machine, arguing that while AI represents the biggest technological shift since the iPhone, it's only the biggest thing since the iPhone, not the new electricity or industrial revolution.
If you or your event needs a speaker or workshop that is highly interactive and super practical, we should talk.
Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro
This book is for everyone tired of watching marketers effortlessly grab attention while we're over here begging people to care about compliance training.
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