Making Learning Fun & Engaging

Episode Transcript

SB S1 E17 – Warren Kennard

Kelly: [00:00:00] Hi, everyone. Welcome to Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby. I am your host Kelly Ryan Bailey. Each week, I chat with inspiring visionaries about the skills that make them successful, how they develop those skills, and their innovative approaches to improving skills-based hiring and learning around the world. Come learn what skills help you live your best life.

 Today, we’re joined by our guest Warren Kennard. Hello, thank you for joining us.

Warren: Wonderful to be here. Thanks so much.

Kelly: Thank you. I know it’s a little early on your end, so I extra appreciate the time. So Warren, I’m going to ask that you jump in and do your intro, but just to at least allow everyone to understand that Warren is the Managing Director of Kahoot academy.

I’d love to hear a little bit more about what you do there at Kahoot and some other things that you might be involved in as well?

Warren: [00:01:00] Wonderful. And as I said, thanks very much for having me. And yes, it is early. So if I stumble on a few things, please forgive me. So what I’m up to at the moment. I’m, as you mentioned, the Managing Director of the Kahoot Academy, where we focused on building workforce capability at scale.

And we do that in an online people mediated learning experience, which is really awesome work that we’re doing. Which I’m looking forward to expanding on. Then, as a second hat as it were, which most of us in life all wear multiple hats. But the second hat that I wear is as the Founder of ConnectEd.

And ConnectEd is a project focused on a course in Ed Tech and higher education strategy for higher education professionals, helping them at this very interesting time for higher education to build capability and build strategy for their success. So those are the two things that I’m principally occupied with.[00:02:00]

Kelly: Very cool. Thank you so much. I didn’t even know that. So this is super interesting. Well beyond what it is that you’re involved in right now, Warren, I think we’d love to hear a little bit more about what’s kind of led you here today. What are some of the things throughout your life that you would consider the highlights or you can dive into those highlights too.

Warren: Yeah, it’s a very broad question. I’ll try and make it as potted in and exciting as possible, but the short story is that I fell in love with higher education and skills, really through the conversations with my parents like I suppose many of us start off being inquisitive, and trying to be curious about the world and what it can do for us and the potential that it can have for our lives.

And my parents were obviously very adamant that we get an education. Knowledge was in those days, very much power and it would get [00:03:00] a leg up in the world. So while I wasn’t university material at that stage, my grades weren’t all that fantastic. I recognized that this was my opportunity to thrive, to choose something that I really enjoyed and follow that.

I didn’t get it right initially in the sense of choosing my own destiny. My parents were very instrumental in what I studied. So I considered myself quite a late starter when it comes to that. I was very interested in sports and just generally was a bit confused about exactly what I wanted to achieve in the world and what the world was all about.

But they put me onto a marketing track at a private institution in South Africa, in Cape Town and I really thrived. And I think it was the getting out of the school kind of environment was really important for me. Learning from really wise and interesting people was terrific.

So there was a great deal of professors and lecturers that were giving [00:04:00] us some awesome insights. And I suddenly realized there’s real power in the ability to transfer knowledge when one’s really interested in that subject matter. And this is how I could see getting ahead and doing the things that I want to do.

So that was my initial foray into the higher education environment. I subsequently was employed by that same institution that I studied at. Yeah. So I kind of fell into the higher education ecosystem. I was starting to recruit students for that institution and guiding them on the journey on what they should be undertaking in life.

And I guess part of what I realized was my own lack of making my own decisions, helped me to help others to make their decisions about what was good for them. We used to have wonderful conversations with students about what their futures look like, what they would like to achieve in life, and then direct them onto programs.

And the rest, as they say is [00:05:00] history. I’ve been in higher education for about 20 odd years, done a number of roles. Actually very many roles and worked at many institutions and I’ve done consulting as well. So I’ve been in a broad cross-section of the higher education ecosystem. Mainly from sales marketing and business development partnerships kind of arena.

And then the last 10 years of my career have been focused on online higher education. And again, just slightly diversified more into the small, private online courses that are more for lifelong learning. That’s just the little backstory.

Kelly: That’s really great. As I heard the beginning of the story, I’m envisioning sitting around the dinner table, perhaps with your parents and them guiding you.

I think back to my experience like that, and I don’t know if this was the same with you with your parents. My father was a dentist, so basically my track was to take over his dental practice. I had no other say in the matter at the [00:06:00] time. But were they pretty adamant about what direction or were they trying to gather from you what might make the most sense based on what areas you sort of excel at?

Warren: Yeah. So my father is very technical, he’s a electrical engineer by trade. And my mom did various bits and pieces of work, but that really looking after us was her primary. And that would have been hard with the three kids and especially me, I wasn’t wasn’t that easy to manage.

So I can imagine that was a full-time gig. There was no expectation on my future. They definitely try to coach and advise me, but it’s so sad when I look back now at how ignorant I was about what opportunities there are, and how callously I made these decisions. And haphazardly made these decisions.

They [00:07:00] just thought I’m really good I was a reasonable communicator at that stage and I could be quite persuasive and I enjoyed the sales and marketing part of it. And I enjoyed what was happening with brands and so on. So it was also through consultation with that institution that helped me formulate that path, but it felt like a generalist program that wanted to dive into.

Kelly: You’re reminding me of my choice in school at the time. Probably not anything to do with work, potentially to do with surfing and the location, but you know.

Warren: I resonate with that completely.

Kelly: It is funny to look back and remember like how especially when you’re young, that these sorts of decisions, I mean your mind isn’t anywhere near there.

So now, with this academy that you attended, because I love that concept that they worked with you to sort of like pull out from you those areas that may have [00:08:00] been your strong points and kind of lead you into a path, which is just fascinating. Was this something that was really personalized to you?

Did they use any methods at the time that you recognize now as a process? Or was it more just like one-on-one conversation?

Warren: One-on-one conversation. Now that you remind me, I did some psychometric testing as well when I was 18 or whatever, but the insights weren’t wonderful.

I mean, they actually recommended botany to me. So I’m working for the plants or something which I don’t recall having an interest in. Then having various chats with people having been in the sales environment within private higher education, it again, reflects on me that we will obviously steer people towards a program that one offers, because that’s commercially astute.

So there is that part of it. So was there some kind of formal process? No, I don’t think there was, I think there was a genuine interest on the people that were trying to advise me, helped me. [00:09:00] I do think that but gee was I very much wet behind the years and didn’t really give this too much thought like you, that the surfing was much more interesting for me.

And so no, I don’t think I had a great experience with finding my path.

Kelly: I’m picturing this academy experience for you and these similarities that we have maybe in our background, I was much more hands-on and I wonder if you were the same and if that was sort of an experience that you realized with this particular school. Cause you’ve mentioned these amazing professors and people that you were learning from, I’m just trying to get at was there like a different experience to that? Or was it typical learning as we might refer to, you know back then.

Warren: Yeah. Yeah, it was traditional. In fact, it was not dissimilar to the school type environment. And in terms of the actual physical layout of the facility, it was more [00:10:00] modern and there were attractive young ladies at the campus, which really helped me choose my ultimate path.

My kind of experience was very much divorced from the actual learning experience as it were. And while I brew into that, which I think they did some things well, which was to have inspiring people talk to you and not everyone was. There were subjects that I was particularly interested in.

So like economics, marketing, were of keen interest. Funny enough, like even the statistics, which I wasn’t really all that wonderful in math at school, the statistics, I could see the value in and how that was impacting my life and the future career that I would have. So it’s a combination of those economic skills, the marketing skills and the ability for those people to relay that information in such a way that it was impactful and through stories and so on that really resonate with me.

And those were the ones that I enjoyed most, but as far as the infrastructure, I [00:11:00] mean, we were very much like we could ask questions and so on, but it wasn’t a dialogue. It was very much being lectured to.

And so the model for education now, in my opinion, it looks very different.

Kelly: Much more interactive, right? It’s a different way. When you then became working for this particular academy, did you start to have thoughts around, I know you mentioned that like helping other people make decisions sort of helped you as well, but I’m wondering if you already started having the inklings of thoughts towards the work that you’re doing now?

Because I often hear in many people’s journeys that there’s moments in time where they’re experiencing either through personal challenge or challenge challenges with others that there’s really change that they’d be interested in making in that sort of process in terms of education.

Warren: I think for me, [00:12:00] I’m grappling with that question a little bit. I think my path was more organic than determined in some way. I think I had to get exposure to different things and as I started realizing more and there were wise people in my ear throughout my career peppering me with some insights and thoughts and kind of helping me to round out what that looks like and what good looks like and what I want to achieve in the world.

I think it was more organic than light bulb moments, per se. Of course there were situations where I realized a skill that I had in being able to organize processes and systems and so on when they aren’t there, because I wanted to make my life easier and I wanted to make it more manageable for me, for my workload and so on.

So I did have an aptitude to building out systems and processes that were scalable and rarely helped to [00:13:00] shine a light on various aspects of the business that I wanted to shed light on. And so data became a very, very interesting departure for me where I could start making much more informed decisions and so on.

So I remedied that particular problem that I saw. And I think it was more an evolution of understanding there’s some really interesting things happening in the space that we can do better. And how do I start building products and services to better support that?

Kelly: That makes a lot of sense. I totally agree with the organic, it’s sometimes you don’t realize what’s happening until you look back and you’re like, wow, that all just made sense. I just didn’t know it at the time.

Warren: You’re quite right.

I cannot emphasize that enough. It was very much a case for me of people whispering in my ear just being alert and observant.

Now that it dawns on me, someone referred to me as a bit of a sponge in that sense. I would very much listen [00:14:00] far more than I would speak. I think I should still be more of that now, but so I used to be very attentive to what was happening in the room and learning what my deficits were and where I was strong and where I could compliment that compensation and learn.

So I was very much eager. I think that was probably a very key skill that I developed at an early age.

Kelly: That is an amazing skill. So would you say in terms of your eagerness to learn, and when you think about this again, retrospectively, because at the time we don’t realize these things are necessarily happening. But if you look back now with the view that you have, would you say that there were certain skills like this eagerness to learn that really stood out in terms of what led you here today?

Warren: I’m very much a type A personality. And I was very ambitious and very eager. I always had this philosophy that if I was going to be working for a vast majority of my [00:15:00] career that I might as well do the best that I can and try and achieve as much as I possibly can.

And I suppose as one gets older and hopefully wiser, one kind of realizes that there’s more to life and there’s the opportunity to give back to communities that are desperately seeking the same wisdom and insight and help them along the way, and also to shape out and round out a society that we want to be part of.

So I think that’s been an evolution for me. The skills that I realized that I had was very much in this networking, being able to be a persuasive communicator, getting my point across not at six 30 in the morning, but getting my point across as succinctly as possible. And being wise to those opportunities.

So I think that was being able to connect the dots, seeing, wow there’s some real deficits here. This is a skill that I have. This is somebody that I know that I can connect into that piece and work with them and be kind of a middleman for that [00:16:00] conversation, has been very much the glue of what I’ve been doing over the last period of time.

So, yes, the networking element of being able to communicate with authority, being able to look at a situation and identify the opportunity in it. So very much having this growth mindset has been incredibly important for me and to try as far as possible to see opportunities instead of problems in the way, so problems just are our obstacles to be overcome.

And so having that mindset has been helpful for me. I don’t know if I answered the question, sorry.

Kelly: You did.

In the world of skills, we tend to refer to those as resiliency skills, but I still call them growth mindset. Some people might like to say life skills, all the good things.

Would you say that you feel like that was really a combination of life education work, or would you lean more [00:17:00] towards these skills that you feel are making you successful were more geared towards education, as in like where you learned them?

Warren: I think it has to be at the intersection of the two. I think that without the grounding, without the knowledge, those skills aren’t really meaningful in some way. So I think one has to have a combination of the two. So life gets in the way, but then yeah, you have the foundational experience and understanding of what it is.

The subject matter that you’re learning and so on. And it’s the intersection of the two that really is where the sweet spot is and where the magic happens. But if I were to lean in one direction, I would say life is probably a better teacher than academic institutions in that particular vein, albeit that we are trying to do something about that [00:18:00] in the academy.

Kelly: Definitely. Well, let’s definitely shift gears over there, cause I’d love to hear maybe a little bit like this is now on your mind, obviously this like intersection. I love the way that you guys are doing something a little outside of the box. Really enjoying a lot of the content, but let’s talk a little bit more about what you’re up to there and maybe how you’re handling that intersection.

Warren: Yeah. Wonderful. So thanks for that. The Kahoot business has been in operation for about 13 to 15 years in that order and what they realized because I wasn’t part of that business at that stage, but what they realized is that people avoid in this learning experience and not dissimilar to some of the stuff that I was talking about earlier, where you were being spoken to as opposed to enjoying a conversation.

The Kahoot team, we’re very cognizant of that and want to make that learning experience fun and engaging. So fun and engaging has [00:19:00] been part of their mantra for quite some time. And the business started off doing a series of managed webinars, where they would work with professional associations by and large to deliver continuous professional development learning and office certification. And so on.

And the business then evolved into developing a proprietary learning management system. I should use that in quotation marks because it’s not so much a learning management system, it’s far more sophisticated than that, but it’s this illustration of what it does. And this was the coining the phrase in this people mediated experience.

So that one enters the cohort with a series of expertise and skills and experience and insights. And they share that with the group together, with learning through the facilitation and curation of that material by experts. So this combination and this ecosystem that was built that amplified learning and got really good outcomes.

[00:20:00] So that was all in the proprietary veins. So working with institutions like Rio Tinto and the Australian government, and had the fortunate position to be working with MIT University and Stanford University as well, building out a series of courses there. And I started consulting with the business about three years ago when I finished off a project at GetSmarter, which was a business doing incredible work out of South Africa where I’m originally from and that business was sold to you.

So the big online program management provider out of the US and on that sale I immigrated over to Australia. And started working in some small OPM providers here, and consulting with this business that had been a quasi competitor for quite some time.

And what I realized is that this platform and the way that they build learning was just far better than what I had seen before and far more inclusive and far more aligned to what I had [00:21:00] hoped for a vision for higher education. And then rounding that out to what we’re doing now, the opportunity to build an academy of future of work courses has been something that I’ve done at a few institutions.

Also our MIT online, and the idea was to do that on a micro. So our courses are very short at the Kahoot Academy, they are three weeks long. And we cover the full gamut of experiences, learning experiences from human capabilities to digital skills, to contemporary ways of working.

And we’ve got courses in each of those that we’re building. And our main audience is workforce professionals, or working professionals seeking to level up and improve their culture and get them prepared to seize opportunity that is presented by this massive onslaught of the industrial 4.0.

So that’s essentially what we’re focused on and that human capability is something that we’re very passionate about.

Kelly: That’s amazing. I’ve seen this in [00:22:00] action and I just think it’s a fantastic experience. It’s sort of like, I’m trying to think of a better word, but what some people might call like a mastermind where like a group of people almost come together and bring in that knowledge and share and learn from each other.

And so you’re right. It’s almost like a guided experience as opposed to any sort of learning as we would have traditionally known. I think you guys have done a really fantastic job.

Warren: Thank you. First of all, I think you hit the nail on the head there. Is that we know that this world is absolutely full to the brim of content.

One is actually overwhelmed by a fire hose of information every single day. The power that we felt was being able to curate that into a sensible learning pathway where one can develop these skills in a very short space of time and really see massive capability uplift across the board.

So, what we do with the programs in our human capabilities. For example, [00:23:00] we have courses on resilience and radical empathy and these sorts of, adaptive leadership is another. And what we do is we make sure that the activities involve the cohort. So we learn, as I mentioned from each other.

But we also pepper them with their raft of experiences and content and insights from a range of people and then have a team of subject matter experts that then rate that, and that discussion evolves over that three week periods of those 21 days. And we have various exercises that helped build the habit over that period of time so that they come up the other end as hopefully a a better, more well-rounded individual and more able to cope and thrive more importantly in this changing environment.

Kelly: So true. When someone goes through one of these learning experiences, how do they then communicate to their employer or potential employer the skills that they have gained.

Warren: Yeah. [00:24:00] So that’s a great question. Most of our of the cohort comes from organizations themselves. So they send a series of people, so that can be tens to hundreds, whatever it is. And what we do is we actually report on that progress on a very granular level.

So being a proprietary system, we’re very lucky in the sense that we can share almost anything that’s happening on that platform. Time spent on page, two devices that’s being used, time of day, what learning outcomes have been achieved and so on and so forth. So it’s a very sophisticated data machine.

Again, probably going back to what I said earlier about the importance of data, being able to help you make these decisions. We provide an awesome infographic at the end of the program to the account payer and to the individuals themselves about what their performance has been like and what their team have learned relative to the cohort and how they’ve progressed on their journey.

And then on the individual [00:25:00] side of things, they’re given the opportunity to obviously surface these credentials on their LinkedIn profiles and their social channels and so on. So we’ve got credible integration and so that happens.

The testimonials that we get from these programs is just sensational. It’s amazing, all of that aside, when somebody says that they’ve been able to change their life as a result of the program or whether they’ve had just. We’ve had people that have been made redundant during a course and they are on resilience, and they say to us that look, I mean, if it wasn’t for this program, I simply would not have got through this very difficult time in my career.

That is more appealing than the data itself. But certainly the data is a good indication of success as well.

Kelly: That’s extremely touching.

I mean, especially now, right? I can only imagine the wonderful comments that you’re receiving, just helping people as they try to navigate these sort of more extreme challenges, [00:26:00] but nonetheless challenges, which that happens, but now with the employers.

So I’m kind of curious, when I think through some of the questions that I hear from employers are that once someone goes through, again, this is maybe more traditional in terms of learning and the things that I’ve heard, but I wonder how you guys address this.

So some of the things that I’ve heard are things like, well once someone goes through learning and gets a typical degree or a badge or whatever, the employer is needing to reassess that person. Are you finding that the data that you are providing to employers and sort of the visibility in their particular teams that are going through these cohorts is enough? I’m curious how deep they want to dig in and can they actually see how their team members/students are interacting?

Warren: It’s an interesting comment.

It’s not something that I’ve had terribly much exposure [00:27:00] to directly, but I think that we could draw a bright line between some of these things. I think our programs are all about capability improvement and about building oneself as part of the broader organization and part of the broader ecosystem.

Where I see that they may be a need for organizations to double check on what has been done or what has been accomplished may relate specifically to hard skills that maybe have been developed during the course, but want to reassess that capability in another way or via a mechanism that the organization prefers.

So be it that they go and do a boot camp on some data analytics program or through your Udacity or whatever it is. There may be another mechanism by which that organization wants to test those capabilities. For us, we almost get the buy-in of the organization themselves, being a B2B [00:28:00] organization ourselves.

And so the people that go through our program are, we have kind of aligned those expectations at the outset. And we do check in with those students later and we have these follow up surveys so we can assess performance of schools over time. So it doesn’t maybe relate as neatly to our organization or the work that I’ve been doing today.

Kelly: Okay. That makes sense. And now you said it, I know you mentioned it’s B2B, so is the only way that someone could actually go through one of these courses through their organization, or do you guys have anything set up where people can access them directly.

Warren: Yeah, absolutely not. So while we target specifically our B2B clients we’ve been working with for a number of years and continue to work with new ones, the program is an open enrollment program as well.

So you are most welcome and we do find any students adopting that. So they will see something [00:29:00] on social media and there that’ll peak their interest and absolutely. Because it’s part of a cohort, one learns from it from a team of others. We’ve got the very fortunate position in that week can create very unique environments for different sets of people.

So I know I’m rambling here, but let’s say for example, an organization like Rio Tinto sends a hundred people on to a design thinking program that we offer. The students that enroll separately could experience a different look and feel learning experience than the Rio Tinto group. So there can be some customization and configuration to the platform, but yet one can still learn from each other in a cohort that’s a co-created cohort. So we do some interesting things for our B2B customers to make that experience more personalized and rich.

But at the same time we can infinitely scale the number of enrollments and certainly individuals can enroll in our programs.

Kelly: That’s great. And if anyone wants to go and find out [00:30:00] more information on signing up by themselves or organization that might want to offer that, is that through Kahoot learning?

Warren: Kahoot Learning. There’s a website that one can go to and then make the necessary inquiries.

Kelly: I’m sure that this is hard to answer, but if there was one course that you recommend right now on the platform, what would you say?

Warren: Yeah, I’m a big fan of the cyber program that we’re putting together at the moment. So we’ve got a program called Getting Cyber Smart and that program starts on the 26th of October. And actually, I launched it on LinkedIn yesterday through a post, it’s still in formation.

It’s a super, super cool and fun program. I think it’s really about oneself and them as a line of defense [00:31:00] for their organizations, but it takes into account very contemporary and fun examples of how cyber threat is taking place and manifesting itself in your everyday life. But I just think the examples and the people that we have involved in that program is very, very cool.

So if there was one I was gonna highlight, that that would certainly be it.

Kelly: We’ll definitely keep an eye out for that. So we’re coming close to the end of our time here, Warren, I like to finish off with just maybe a little bit of an open open-ended question. Obviously our audience has learned so much today.

Hopefully just as much as I have, but is there any parting words that you’d like to leave with them? And that can be anything on life experience to your organization. Happy to think outside the box.

Warren: Yeah, it’s a wonderfully broad question. I’ll probably lean into one a little bit closer to my heart at the moment.

And this speaks [00:32:00] to the rhetoric displacement that we’re seeing. As I mentioned before, I’m focused on a project in higher education at the moment as well. And my eyes have truly been opened at the scale of dismantling of our current institutions and that being massive layoffs and furloughs from a myriad of people and large scale numbers yet.

So what my message to those people is I’m a firm believer like you, of course, that that skills are all the way forward to make one more employable, to allow them to open their eyes to see wonderful opportunities that exist in this space. In this time of uncertainty there are wonderful opportunities to be had and skills and through compensation is going to be the way that we unlock some of those potentials. And, nothing more than having deep empathy [00:33:00] so our courses on empathy and resilience and so on, are definitely aligned to that space.

And also the entrepreneurial skills that one needs because now more than ever, the giant corporations are getting smaller and smaller in number and they are not going to be our lifeblood, the lifeblood of the economy.

And certainly for ourselves is going to be an entrepreneurial pursuits. So getting involved in small business, being entrepreneurial, being innovative, developing your skills and constantly learning and being open to learning while I appreciate the mental challenges, the mental health challenges and so on, I really want you to know that there are communities there to support you.

We don’t say that we’re helping you with your psychological wellbeing, but we certainly are helping you develop the skills that are going to make you more employable and to ensure that you get the most out of this difficult time.

Kelly: I agree, and I [00:34:00] would just add to what you’re saying that, although you’re saying you’re not necessarily helping directly with the psychological mental health and so on and so forth, a lot of those skills that you’re focused on, which is like empathy, resilience, are so helpful in challenging times.

So I’ll just say that I’ve even listened through one of the courses on resiliency and someone that tries to be pretty much like all the time optimistic, it’s a practice at the end of the day, you can’t just pick it up once and learn it. Just like anything else in our life.

You just have to keep focusing on that every day. And there are things that come your way. I really appreciate those courses offer and I’ll just add back that personal note that it really is helpful.

Warren: Wonderful. Yeah. No, and thank you. I’m very grateful for our time this morning and just for your support and encouragement and the work that you do.

[00:35:00] It’s so important at this particular time. And I think we’re all very focused on trying to help people address these challenges and have a better future for our kids and for themselves.

Kelly: Ditto Warren. I completely agree. Thank you so much again for joining us. And I also just want to let everybody know that you can find more information about Kahoot learning on Twitter, LinkedIn, and facebook @kahootlearning or cahootlearning.com.

Of course, if anyone is interested in those courses or any offering that to your organization, you can find that information. You can also follow Warren on LinkedIn at Warren Kannard. Warren, are there any other socials that you’re available on that I should be mentioning to anyone?

Warren: Unfortunately not. The bandwidth is challenging these days. So most of my work happens on LinkedIn.

Kelly: Sounds good. Just wanted to make sure everyone knew. And I want to thank you all for also listening in to this [00:36:00] episode of Let’s Talk About Skills, Baby. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, share, offer ratings.

I’d really appreciate it. You can also find me, Kelly Ryan Bailey, on all the socials @KellyRyanBailey. And we appreciate your time today. Everybody hope you have a wonderful day. Bye Warren.

Warren: Bye.