Preparing the Future Workforce

Well, good afternoon. Good evening. Good morning. And, welcome to the holistic leadership podcast. Thank you for tuning in. Today is is gonna be an amazing day. We have Doctor Keith Keating with us. And doctor Keating, he hails from Toronto Canada. He serves as the as the chief learning and talent, and talent officer, collaborating with numerous Fortunate five hundred companies worldwide. He's the author of the groundbreaking breaking L and D practitioner Guide, the trusted learning adviser, a respected industry author. There it is. And sought after keynote speaker. Doctor. Keating, ardently champions, lifelong learning as a pathway to seizing control of one's career trajectory, and, I take his advice. He's also an advocate for talent development and leverages his platform to emphasize human talent as the cornerstone of organizational success. Which Jeffrey and I really, really love. Doctor. Keith, doctor, Keith's book, the trusted learning advisor explains what skills are needed by learning and development professional to become strategic consultative partners to the business by driving value for the organization and unlocking human potential. So I just wanna read one of the quotes that we've seen from one of the people who love his book, it says Doctor. Keating's groundbreaking work serves as a transformative compass for L and D professionals and academics alike. Offering not only an update on the latest in learning science, but is also limiting the path towards fostering trust and building impactful relationships. So Doctor Keating, Jeffrey and I are extremely happy to have you here. And just welcome. Thank you. I appreciate it. And my mom is gonna appreciate you reading her quote as well. That was very nice of you. The check is in the mail. Jeffrey sent her a check. So we'll we'll we'll make sure that we get that cashed for you immediately. So the book is amazing. It's out. It's it's got it's got five star reviews. First, let's just kick this off first. Tell us a bit about the book. Yeah. So The trusted learning advisor is part manifesto, part guide, part toolkit, part motivational mentor, that is intended to support every level of learning and development, talent practitioners, HR, basically anybody that deals with humans. From those who are thinking about maybe moving into this field, all the way to those who've been in the field for a hundred plus years like me. To help us, to help them develop the skills and capabilities that they need to be trusted learning advisers. And what I mean when I say that is It's a strategic business partner. Trust to learning advisor is embedded in the business, which is often overlooked. And I think we the the intention and and what I'm always aiming for is to be sought after, to be listened to, to be trusted, which ultimately enables us to provide a tremendous amount of value for our organizations because we're supporting the most important resource in any organization which is the talent? So, you know, Keith, it's it's really interesting, right? Because, I know Travis has has a has this as a further point, but but I always, just kinda do my own thing. Are you throwing him off now? You just jump into the Hey. He can't he can't throw me off. Well, but just give it your best shot. Yellow roles is is still relatively new in in most industries. My guess is you've been the first CLO in most of the positions you've been in. I'm curious when you call at a manifesto, What how would you describe most organizations today when it comes to learning and development? Because when you say manifesto, that to me means you have without question in all the work you've done prescribe or, you know, you've diagnosed, you now are on prescription, and you're basically gonna tell us, you know, on this very podcast, where most organizations are at. That feels like a lot of pressure. Maybe I need to go back and look at synonyms from manifesto. Because if that's what it means, I am not ready to tell you how most organizations are. What I can tell you is about the organizations I worked with as well as what I learned from other practitioners in the field, including from from you as well. I would say that it largely is dependent on the organization itself. I don't think we're at a stage yet because it is still so new that we can generally say how CLOs operate across organizations across different industries because for the the three main organizations I've worked with as CLO, but then the others I've consulted with, every single one of them is different. And every single one of them treats the role differently. The the title itself isn't standardized. The, accountability, the authority isn't standardized. I think that's one of the challenges that we face is when you look at the CEO, CIO, CTO, CMO, All of those roles are fairly standard. It's you you know what you're doing as a CEO in this organization, you'll be doing here, you know what you're doing as marketing, you know, if you're doing as HR, But when we get to learning and talent development, it's truly dependent on how mature that organization is as a learning organization it's dependent on just so many other factors that can come into play, Yeah. That's all I'm gonna say about that. Keith, let me ask you, should the CLO report to the CEO or should the CLO report to the head of HR? That's another good question, and I've I I have to just monitor my words carefully here. It depends on the organization. The reason I say that is the last organization I worked, I reported into the eight to HR. This organization I reported to the CEO. They're completely different experiences because in my current environment, I have no support. I as as reporting into the CEO, I'm not going to take that person, my my complaints, my challenges, my struggles because they've got so many other things they're focusing on. And so I have to actively partner with HR, who who also technically falls under me. So I I guess the answer to your question is it just depends. Depends on on the organization. I don't wanna say where it should fall, generally because it it just depends. Well, and it's an interesting it's an interesting thing. Right? So in health care, you know, I'm sure you price it. It depends too. Right? But I I would say overwhelmingly, it's gotta get out of HR and be in its own pillar, reporting to the CEO. Why? Because I, you know, I think, and this is where I'll get controversial. I do not believe in health care that most human resource departments have advanced and progressed to where we are from a future work perspective. What I see them do is is the normal same old, same old that I saw in the decade of of of being an administrator, same old, same old to what they are doing today. And I think overwhelmingly, generally ICCLOs is being the change agents who are trying to transform, not just learning, but also culture. And experience. And I think historically, at least in healthcare, a lot of the HR folks that are still there, have not necessarily been been those type of people. Now I think that could change. Certainly, you know, is maybe changing. But But I have a I I have a term for HR. I won't share it here because some people get very offended, but, overwhelmingly, I do believe that there's a lot of work to do in HR to get it in health air to a position of strength, compared to what it is today. But here's the challenge with that. HR, people, talent, L and D. So when you say HR, I'm thinking that you're also talking about people. Like, you have the chief people officer. You have the chief HR officer. You have the chief learning officer. You have the chief talent officer. You have the chief talent officer. We're all kind of talking about the same thing, which is we wanna support that most important resource. Our humans are talent, but depending on how your organization is structured, which I go back to my initial statement of, it depends on the organization. Whether you have a chief people officer and then you have HR or your chief people officer is then HR under them and then talent and then learning is also under them, So it really just depends, on the organization. Yep. Yeah. No. And it's a good point. Right? You know, I don't wanna dominate, so Travis, but just comment or nominate. Oh, I didn't even notice Travis was here. Oh, hey, Travis. Hey. Hey. Welcome. I'll also give you his analysis of of the of the, other sectors. But I think, you know, to your point, it's a really interesting one. And and the one thing that I do agree with you on that I think is really an important element is is is it's different in every organization, but Healthcare, in my opinion, has been such a siloed, environment when it comes to these things, because if you think about it, to your to your exact effective evaluation and analysis of of people. The fact that you have experience, customer experience in healthcare reports generally to a different area, you know, when you think of, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, usually reports to a different area. All of these things are all about people yet they're not necessarily, in every organization, one hundred percent aligned. And I think that's why there's fragmentation then when it comes to actually people experience, and then also what our consumers experience. And so I I do take, great, great feedback on what you just shared from that vantage point. No. That's alright. Now we tell oh, no. This is this is an important conversation because I think it goes it goes back to the the CLO position is relatively relatively new. So and it's it's it's about where does it belong? Where's the best where can you get the best bang for your buck for an L and D organization and program to be able to get the max you can out of how you impact humans in the organization. I think the bottom line and, Keith, you said it. Jeffrey said it. It's about impacting humans. It's about it's about and and your book is about this. How do you bring humans up? How do you how do you how do you bring pull the best out of your people through L and D? So it's that's that's kind of the the the the crux of the position as it is relatively new. And it's kind of ambiguous of where it should fit, but at the end of the day, the core of it, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Keith, because I'm not a c a a CLO or the is is to be able to impact people to break out of their comfort zones and be better people. And I think I think the bottom of the line is that's that's what that's what your job is. And and not your job, but the job of the CLO, part of the the job description is to make sure that you are training your folks to be the best that they can. So how do you, Keith, convince other stakeholders of what your role is as the CLO and talent, and talent officer. And and, like, how do you how do you convince and how do you how do you talk about the role with your key stakeholders? I think first of all, it depends on which stakeholder I'm talking to. And it starts with understanding them first. So I would say, you know, what's important to the business what's important to them, but also what are the larger organizational goals? What's the strategy of either the business partner, stakeholder, business unit organization itself? And how are we aligning to support their strategies? I think where we often get off track is when we're trying to drive our own initiatives, our own, I can't think of the word right now. Our own Jeffrey help me out here. We're trying to drive our own agenda. Thank you. See. We're together. We make a fantastic human. So, yes, driving our own agendas. I see a lot of L and D groups who disassociate themselves from the other business units. And we speak our own terms. You know, we have our own language. We have our own acronyms. We have our own ways of measuring, our value or ROI. And it's not our stakeholders job or responsibility to translate that and be able to understand what we're saying. It is our responsibility to understand what they're saying and to speak their language. So I would say first and foremost, it's speaking the language of the business so that we're translating our outcomes of vocabulary, whatever it is into something that's meaningful and relevant to them. It's being able to demonstrate value. And and value is not ROI. I and this is controversial. I think for some, I thoroughly dislike ROI. When you look at how a business measures and calculates ROI, to how we try to do it in learning and development, it does not translate because there are so many outside influences and factors, whether or not something is successful you you've got Phillips ROI, you've got a version of, Kirk Patrick. There's all these models that exist. But when you try and take that and give that to a CFO, a CFO looks at it and it's like, yeah, that's actually not gonna work for us because we cannot report out on those numbers. Not the way that we report our ROI. So it's I prefer the word value rather than ROI. And then I think two more pieces now. I'll I'll stop. You know, building relationships, is the the Cornerstone of being able to convince anyone, being able to talk to anyone about L and D, about the value, about what we're trying to accomplish as it starts and stops with those relationships. And then lastly, it's about sharing our success stories. And so I think about value instead of ROI, that the the qualitative research that we can do about our success stories really is more impactful to me. Than an Excel spreadsheet that shows they had forty people that took this class. Here's how long their butts were in the seats. They completed this. They did that rather than talking about an individual who was hired who might have struggled in their role wasn't performing very well. We were able to coach and develop them. They're they've now surpassed. Their measurements. They've now been promoted. Stories like that are much more more valuable. And I think we often overlook the qualitative for the quantitative. You know, I went to Keith keating dot com. And one of the, one of the things about it. I will send you your dollar. Thank you. It gets a dollar every time he says that. It'll help me, you know, what what go get the Keith Peating suits that I'm gonna check out. You know, one of the things that I was inspired by, and it was also something I was inspired by when I first met you, and is your mission. And I wanna read that because I wanna I wanna ask you to kind of delve into that because that mission, and Travis and I talk about this all the time, don't wanna speak for Travis, but I think both of us would subscribe to the belief that many people are in leadership without a mission. And and are just doing what they think should be done or aren't thinking about people in most decisions. But you say My mission is to empower, enable, and encourage our workforce to prepare for the future. But I was delving a little deeper into that because one of the things that I was inspired by was you have, a very strong focus on design thinking. And that is pretty rare. You know, for someone who's also led human resources, I would say. Can you just share with us, like, when you look at this topic of the future of work, which, you know, is is upon us as we speak. Every leader is dealing with people challenges. How how would you if you were sitting in the room right now with with, you know, you do this all the time as a consultant as well. If you were sitting in a room with leaders, and you were saying to them, you've gotta empower enable and encourage. What would that look like? Because I know from leaders at GM, to several other large corporations have cited you in helping them do that. So if you were, you know, there's leaders listening to this, What would you tell them is the first thing they did they need to do? A learning culture. The you know, there's got to be a learning culture. And so what what I mean by that is when anyone asks me, about the success that I have or haven't had, or even a learning technology tool that we may have deployed and used. The first thing that I will say is it is dependent on the organizational culture and whether or not they support learning. You and I, we our success is truly limited, I believe, by the culture. I can only try and drive as much change, but if I don't have support from above and below, I'm not gonna be able to drive that change. And so to empower enable and encourage talent, I think that there's three diff different strategies. Empowering them means that we're creating a culture that supports the ability for them to learn. Encouragement means that we're creating a system that helps them learn. So it could be a quick example. Setting a certain number of hours that every employee is required to take for learning and development. And I don't mean your compliance and regulatory training or in health care, your certification training, your yearly credits. I mean, we're creating a space We're creating a space that says, hey, you know, forty hours a year, whatever the hours is. We are going to provide you an opportunity continue to grow and develop as a human in areas outside of your job. So empowering, encouraging, and enabling admins. We've got the tools available. You know, I'll give you an example. Tuition reimbursement versus tuition assistance. Huge difference there. Tuition reimbursement means that you are required to pay that money upfront and carry that cost for potentially six to eight months. Many employees cannot afford that. A lot of organizations will say, yeah, we have a tuition reimbursement program. You know, it's five thousand dollars a year, whatever. Great. You're assuming your employees can afford that, which many of the people that need this actually can't. Those are our frontline workers that tend to live paycheck to paycheck. So you're asking them to carry that cost and then carry the interest rate along with it, but you're not going to reimburse them for that interest rate. So now they're actually in a deficit for your tuition reimbursement versus tuition assistance, which means I'm paying for it upfront. For the employee. I'm truly creating an environment where they can learn. So kind of three quick examples of empowering and enabling and encouraging. It's create an environment that allows employees to truly grow, learn, and develop. You're giving them the time away from their actual job where they are supported to do this. And many organizations do not do that. They will claim, yeah, we're we're we're we're training our people for the future of work. These are skills that are important to the organization, not necessarily to the human. And we're also not creating an easy, way for them to, to be able to pay, sign up, and take the training, pick the learning. Yeah. That's awesome. So I'm actually doing some consulting for a company right now is doing just that. They're they're they're kinda taking a different twist on how they develop leaders instead of the tuition reimbursement or tuition tuition assistance, they're actually doing an in house leadership. They're consulting with us to do an in house leadership two days a month where all of their leaders come to the come to a room, and they're they they what they wanna do is they wanna be a billion dollar company. So they take the stance of, like, the way that we're gonna get to a billion dollars is by training up our people to be able to become and be ready for when we are a billion dollar company. So to me, they you talk about in your in your book being proactive versus React me, they're taking a big stance on being proactive in their L and D, and they're and and and developing to be that company that's gonna be that's gonna scale and and it's gonna do great things. Can you unpack a little bit more the the proactive versus reactive approach to L and D and what that means to you? I wanna just kind of respond. You you you were just sharing that you triggered something, and that is training versus learning. And I think one of the things that as an industry, we have to be more conscious on is our vocabulary. When you say the word training, I have a visceral response to it. You know, if you if you said to me, hey, Keith, there's a training you need to go take. It feels punitive. My initial response is, well, is this sexual harassment? Is this compliant? Regulatory. Like, can I just click through it? Neck training? Do I need to go through my compliance for Can I put my water bottle to on my keyboard so that it just, like, keeps passing all the way through it, versus an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to grow, to develop? You know, so for a company that wants to be a billion dollar company, I don't think they want training. They want learning. They want development. They want growth. And I encourage you, you know, listeners watchers are industry in general just to think about the difference between when you're training someone to do something to perform a certain activity versus when you're creating space for them to learn, to develop, to do, to grow. Oh, you know, this has been an interesting one. Right? Because to your point, this is sort of one of those great debates in in health care especially right now is because health careists for so long called them trainings, and that's why I was smiling because there's been such a debate on this topic. But but I think to your point, when you get into workforce for so long, we've called it training too. I mean, everything in the workforce system is called a training. I think what you're getting at, though, is there is there is an an innate difference in training someone versus actually putting them on a learning pathway and seeing, you know, seeing what they what they experience. So it's definitely interesting. You know, from from a from a various, you know, perspective. I wanna ask you though, Keith, that, you know, I want you to kind of expand on this because when you when you announced your book, One of the things that resonated with me was how, how transparent you were of your upbringing. And I know you talk about this in the book, and I know Travis didn't put this in any of the questions, but let let's unpack that because I think it's really important because I think there's a lot of people in the world today who don't know how to get to the next place, but have so much to offer. And, you were somebody who failed out of high school, but then came back. Right? That's in high school. So, I mean, I yeah. So I dropped out. I mean, I don't know if they failed out, but it's not too dissimilar. I dropped out of high school at fifteen. I struggled significantly with the formal education system. I had grown up in Europe, in my when I moved to the US, it just didn't match. And so I had teachers saying either I was, above average and needed to skip a grade, or I had teachers saying I was mentally challenged and needed to be held back and to put in special programs. And so it at a point, I just said, I I can't do it anymore. It didn't feel like a safe space for me physically or emotionally or mentally. And I, so I dropped out I got my GED, and then I was fifteen. And so I spent the next ten or fifteen years going in and out of community colleges, you know, trying different programs and just still still struggling, with that education system in general. So that the point about my mission empowering enabling encouraging talent to take control over their future through the power of learning is based on my own mission. And my own recognizing the power of learning, and and learning doesn't mean school necessarily, and learning doesn't mean training I think that's kind of the the path you're opening up for me to to talk about here a little bit is that, For me, I'm extremely passionate about everyone in the world understanding that when you learn how to learn, you are unstoppable. I I'm not a know at all. I don't know much, but I can learn it. I can figure it out. And that is the ultimate skill set. That we want, that I want for everyone, because here's the thing, every organization has problems, and they're always gonna have problems always gonna have transformations and they're always gonna be trying to grow and develop and evolve, which is fantastic. But we as learners as talent as employees have to also fit into that cycle. We need to be agile, adaptable, resilient, and we need to be learning alls, not know it alls. And what I want is I want employees to be able to fill that next organizational gap, whatever it is. And we don't don't know what it is. We don't know what's gonna happen in three years, five years. None of us predicted COVID besides Bill Gates. And even when it hit, you know, none of us knew how to really react to it, but but we did. We evolved. We learned from it. Our organization shifted overnight and as as as much of as a tragedy as COVID is, there's also some beauty that comes from it. And I think the beauty was our resilience, our agility, our adaptability, and there are companies that did not survive. And a lot of that was related to the fact that they couldn't pivot so quickly. So long story short, for me, it's it's been I struggled with education for years and years, and it was part of the reasons why I joined my doctorate or got the doctorate was because I wanted to come out on the other side as somebody who didn't follow that linear path. I didn't come from means. I didn't come from, education. I had, you know, I was not a good student in general but I can do it. And I believe if I can do it, somebody who's a high school drop out graduating from Ivy League, then anybody else who's interested in wanting to do that can also do that. Mind you, you don't need the doctorate to succeed. I was successful before it. And it it has definitely helped evolve me as a human as a learning development practitioner, but I didn't need it. But the fact that I have it now gives me a platform to be able to say to others, you don't have to follow that traditional path Our pads are like our fingerprints. Every single one of them is unique. You know, Jeffrey your stories can be different from travis's, which is different from mine. And I think each of our stories are beautiful and unique, but I just wanna be a a voice for others who have struggled with education as well to say their education and learning are not the same. And we have so many opportunities to learn now in front of us that we do need to be lifelong learners. Again, that doesn't mean you have to be in school forever, but you do need to keep learning. But I gotta jump and I gotta jump in here too. Like, I I I could not agree more, Keith. I I was the same way I was the worst student in high school. I did the bare minimum to pass. Got to college and didn't go to school. I just I could I didn't I couldn't learn the way they wanted me to learn. And I failed out. I did fail out a college. They sent me a nice little letter, said, hey, It's been fun, but you just, you didn't go to class. You you you you didn't pass your classes, so we're gonna have to ask you to leave. And then I joined the Marine Corps And then through the Marine Corps really learned how to learn, learn how I learned, and was able to do kind of the same thing and and and again, you and I have some similar doctoral degrees. They're both doctors of education and mind in in leadership and and leader learning and development and all, it has similar paths, but I just wanna I've I've grabbed the script and I've thrown it out the window at this point. But, like, I just wanted to to highlight for those people. Like, this is not unattainable, by any means, any way, shape, or form to anybody listening, anybody hearing this, anybody in in in in finding themselves in a place where they're struggling trying to become educated. And I love the the the the what you said about the about about learning versus being edge of learn it all versus know it all. And I think I'm gonna steal that. It's just there has to be a a a a future where folks like us who would get the the traditional learning model just did not work for us, for me. I'll speak for myself. For me, a traditional learning model didn't work for me. So I had to piecemeal together these different things to be able to figure out how I could learn best. And, again, you don't need you don't need the doctorate, but it it it allows us to be able to talk about, you know, like, about the attainability of of learning. And it's just it's it's it's super refreshing to hear. And, I I just, yeah, I love it. At one point, I just wanna call it. I think, Jeffrey, you'll probably echo this, but it won't speak for you. Is, I am not promoting at all higher education and I'm not suggesting in any manner that anyone needs to have higher education. I think that is a completely separate conversation we can have for another time. And I want I'm reemphasizing that that to me, lifelong learning and the importance of learning is not necessarily connected to higher education. You can you can you can learn everything I learned right now on the internet for free. You don't have to pay a dime for it. So it just depends on the path that you want to take, and reemphasizing that I I join the doctorate program because I wanted to achieve a certain status and platform so that then I can say, look, yes, I did all of this. But I didn't follow the traditional path. And I didn't necessarily need to do this, but I had the opportunity that was presented to me, from a mentor who who created that opportunity, and I wanted to take advantage of it. But for me, the importance is lifelong learning can happen so many different ways and and can be free or very low cost. Well, and I think to your point, the other piece of that too is, right, you know, higher ed, like, lifelong learning should always be career connected. You know, and that's where, yeah, that's really where the ultimate opportunity is for anyone that's in higher education today, if you don't see yourself as as teaching pedagogy that leads to career, upskilling leadership development, you name it, then then you're you're misguiding, our future. And so I think, you know, to your point, that that's super, super critical. You know, I wanna I I'm curious though, you know, we've got probably maybe a minute or two, left. And I just wanna give you, you know, just an opportunity before Travis closes us out. Just to just to share with people, particularly a sense of hope because this is a really rough time, in a really challenging world. And many people would would say, when they hear this, they're gonna say, love what Doctor. Keating is saying. But how do I do it? And so I just wanna ask you to just share what what should they do? How should they do it? Certainly read the book, but but what will help them, bring back that desire to do, you know, to enact change in organizations if they're dealing with a really rough culture, those types of things. Few things. Yes, one by the book. It's all in there. Step two, Yes. Every answer is in there, and it's it's much more eloquently put in there because it's been edited a hundred times. Here here's the most important thing to remember. Is why are you in this industry? You know, why are you doing this? Take a step back and think about whether is this just a job? Is this just a paycheck for you? To for me, it started as absolutely that. I lucked into it. I didn't want to be in this field. It's not like I grew up, said, Hey, I wanna be in learning and development. Didn't know what it was. I was in fast food. I found a way to get out of fast food by being an, Microsoft Office trainer. Had no idea what it meant to be a trainer. I thought, yeah, anybody could do this. I was the worst trainer that ever existed. And now we know he doesn't like the word training, Travis. Alright. Make some twist. So I I studied. I I I everyday I got point zero zero zero one percent better and and eventually it turned into a job. Then it turned into a career, then it turned into a passion, then it turned into a calling. But it took all of that trajectory. I've been in the field for twenty five years. I started when I was five, if you're doing the math. But it really took a bit longer than me. Yeah. It's so it's important to first recognize where you are on that journey. I hope that you get to that point where it is a passion and then you becomes a calling. And for me, I look at, I I try and find the passion in what I do, not try to let passion drive me. I think some people get a little bit lost with that sometimes, but I look at the passion. So I found the passion. Moreless story is this. Our employees need us. Our talent needs us. Our people needs us. There is no one else in the organization where it is their job to look out for the talent and to help them grow and develop. HR doesn't do that. It to your point earlier, you know, about the difference between HR and L and D. HR looks at benefits. They look at an aspect of the well-being of an employee But no one is looking every day at are my people growing? Are they developing? Do they have the skills that they need to be successful? And here's here's the big thing, the big motivational piece. I'm gonna get to the motivation in just a moment. AI is going to disrupt all of us. It is disrupting all of us. Every industry, every role. No one is safe from it. I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing because we still have time to figure out what that means. And that is our responsibility as learning and development practitioners to be looking at our organization to figure out which roles are at risk. Either it being redundant or being significantly changed. Those employees, they don't know. They don't know until it's too late when we HR someone comes to them and says, hey, sorry. Your role is now redundant. It's time to move on and they're hit suddenly with, oh my gosh. I'm wait. You mean, we don't need copywriters anymore. We don't need anymore. We don't need, writers. We don't need editors. We don't need this the change is coming, we have time to help art employees develop and get prepared and get ready. For me, that's what drives me right now is knowing that they do need us. Here's the thing. It's a thankless job. No one reaches out to me ever and says thank you for what you're doing. And I think that is felt probably across most L and D practitioner All we see is a little sliver of what we do. So it can feel hopeless at times. It can feel like no one cares. It can feel like it's thankless. Like there's no one supporting us. And you're not necessarily wrong. But at the end of the day, people need us whether or not they know it now. When they're not laid off, When they have developed those skills, when their job is saved, or they're able to transfer into a new job, that's us. We did that. We may not be noticed for it or thanks for it, but that's what drives me is to know that I can help support my talent, the people in my organization, to have a future. And I try and think of it beyond just the organization. I do think of it as their a future in general because once they learn how to learn, once we can help them tap into that understanding the skills that they have they have a future. And that's just what that's what I want. I want all of the employees to to not live in fear because many people do live in fear for the future of their job. And it's a horrible place to be. And I I have the the luxury and the benefit of never living in fear because I know that I can solve problems in organizations. So I'm gonna always have a job. And I want everyone to have that same type of self awareness, security, self, just knowing that there is a place in a few for them. So, hopefully, Jeffrey, that was motivational enough for you. Oh, yeah. No. I I agree. Yeah. That was amazing. And first, I wanna and and from thank you. So make sure you pass on a thank you from us to you and your team because it is important. We don't see that, you know, people get promoted because of of what they've learned about the job that they that got promoted into, or they've done some kind of learning, not training to be able to help them to get into a position. So just grateful for what you do, what you what you're bringing into the space, the innovation that you are and innovation is not always tech. The innovation, the the way that you're thinking differently about L and D into the space is is it's it's refreshing, and it's something that the world needs. So before we close, I have I have two things. One, for those that are watching this, what's the name of the individual over your left shoulder who's sitting in that chair, and is he left over for Halloween? Because he's freaking me out right now. Is that funny because I was asked too. And I kept looking So for the for those who are listening, over Doctor. Keating's shoulder is a look like a mummified individual left over from Halloween. He's gonna bring him over here. There's the light. He's turning it on. There he is. Is, he's definitely some kind of zombie, no face kinda kinda human. Great prop for the podcast. I appreciate you bringing that to Joe. I actually thought he was in Moscow. And, That could've been the pen mascot. It could've been. Second thing I wanna talk. I just wanted this is where I wanna close this out is where where can people find you, where can find your book? Where do you want people to search for Doctor. Keith Keating and get a hold of you? I would say the book seller of your choice. Amazon is always the easiest one for me. Plus, you know, it's a good way to track all the reviews, the, you know, the five star reviews. You can add anything less, but we prefer five star reviews. You can also go to, Keith keating dot com, as Jeffrey had already noted, or, LinkedIn. Very act on LinkedIn. So please feel free to add me there. Nice. Well, again, thank you so much. This is a great conversation. We went off script, which is the kind of the point of all of these things is to go off and just have a really great conversation. So thank you for, indulging us, and, I appreciate your time. And for listeners out there, go check out Doctor Keating. You will not be disappointed in the book or following him on, on on LinkedIn. So Thank you all for your time. Tune in next time. I promise you, once again, I I make a lot of promises on this on this podcast, but I promise that you will not be so disappointed, by subscribing and listening to to to Jeffrey. And I talk about leadership, everything leadership, everything health care, holistic leadership. So Thank you, and we'll see you all next time.