The WAY to WOW Shows
Curiosity Drives Success
April 27, 2021
Automatically generated from YouTube captions; names and wording may contain errors.

[0:00] i i will say within the three pillars of attainment which is our you know rubric for for you know the show i i would default to your definition lifelong curiosity what do you feel are the benefits of maintaining that lifelong curiosity i jokingly say you'll be a lot more fun at a cocktail party who are you and where are you going [Music] what do you want together we'll find the ideal path on the way to wow show with your host

[0:35] kevin bemel the realm of learning is central to all parts of the three pillars of attainment but i think it's kind of hard to figure out what is this thing lifelong learning it's almost a buzzword we have to keep our skills up to stay competitive in the job market but i think it really needs to go beyond that my guest today deborah albert who's coached many many senior leaders in this realm is going to help you figure it out but first phillip lee is going to make us a cocktail

[1:13] [Music] hi thanks for having me today we're going to be making a floradora cocktail it's a cocktail named after a popular broadway musical in the at the turn of the century in the early 1900s uh the cocktail is a gin cocktail so we're going to start off with an ounce and a half of gin here [Music] half an ounce of lime juice [Music]

[1:51] and a quarter ounce of a raspberry liqueur add some ice [Music] give it a shake [Music]

[2:32] [Music] fill up our eyeball here with some rice next then we're going to top it off with a little ginger ale here

[3:11] i like to add a little lime twist to it because i feel like the lime oils really help everything out and there you go again oh thank you phil you know every time i hear florador i think of the show on the town oh flora dora girl yeah can't wait to try it thanks so much of course philip [Music] floradora love it and the name sorry i couldn't figure out a way to

[3:47] send you a floor door to share with the interview but we'll we're going to work on that for the next season so deborah albert thank you very much for coming on the way to wow show i i took your you're very dense biography and and trimmed it down i'm going to read it because i want to make sure i get all of the the good parts in there and don't leave anything out in addition to her many academic comp accomplishments including at the george washington university the american university in paris and uh two par francais right yes

[4:22] and and new york university uh deborah albert has ten years in advertising and media businesses and over 14 years as co-owner and chief development officer at sequent learning network where among many responsibilities she helped people increase their skills and competencies now as the founder and ceo of blank slate learning debra is helping people upskill and reskill to stay competitive in the face of a market shortage of competent workers

[4:57] and people afraid but forced to learn new things i i think that describes a lot of the people i know and certainly a lot of viewers on the show it's really a daunting daunting challenge so so my first question deborah is what got you moving from you know media and advertising into really you know what we're talking about today which is this realm of learning lifelong learning how did you make that transition

[5:32] what was the impetus etc okay so the short story is that i had always been in advertising and then market research and while i was in market research my client asked me to basically start this company with him and it was a company that was involved in corporate learning corporate training um he was the subject matter expert and i ran the business and for me it was great because every role i've ever had has always been an intellectual property so i've gotten to see little tastes of

[6:09] all kinds of different industries and learn about all different kinds of companies and so that constant quest for learning about new things is something that just is a part of who i am so so that leads in nice i think to my next question which is we we hear this term lifelong learning in fact i have a client from my prior career real estate who after a 30-year career in banking went and got i believe it was a doctorate of an education and and explored this whole subject of lifelong learning so what how would you describe what

[6:45] lifelong learning is it's funny that you asked that i just was talking to someone yesterday about that i think people have different perceptions of what that means or it has different connotations for me and this is i'm not an expert in this so this is just my own opinion lifelong learning is is about curiosity and wanting to grow um it's become really uh kind of a buzzword in the last five years or so especially because of what's happening in the economy and i'm talking pre pre-covet

[7:20] i mean just the whole economy has been such that people are getting pushed out of their roles aarp says that ageism in the workplace starts at 40. and that was a couple years ago there's more data to show that it's actually in certain industries as early as 36. and what's happening is we're living longer we're living healthier lives clearly it's not like 50 years ago even when people wanted to retire at 65 and just you know sit and watch television people want to be engaged in in the world and the economy is such

[7:58] that so many people need to keep earning a living so um for me lifelong learning is about curiosity and about wanting to keep learning and growing but i think that a lot of other people use it a lot to mean constantly upskilling constantly revamping your skills and your knowledge so that you can stay competitive in the world of work so i i will say within the three pillars of attainment which is our you know rubric for for you know the show i i would default to your definition

[8:35] lifelong curiosity because i think learning should be more than just knowing what you need to know for your work or to get that you know that next step on the professional ladder so you know you we were just talking about curiosity besides how it can help us stay more competitive in the professional world or in the work world what are the what are the benefits of of this lifelong curiosity maybe we'll call it so that we make sure we're being more precise

[9:10] what do you feel are the benefits of maintaining that lifelong curiosity i jokingly say you'll be a lot more fun at a cocktail party [Laughter] i'll drink to that hey i actually um even though you didn't send me one i have my water right here okay um i uh listen there's no question about it there's enormous amount of data to show that the neuroplasticity of learning new things at every stage of your life helps your brain stay healthy and helps your whole

[9:46] cognitive world stay intact as opposed to you know just sitting around doing nothing for years and years and your brain will atrophy i mean there's a ton of data about that so that's that's number one but i do think you'll also be a lot more fun at a party okay and i think i think that's important too so how can we engage in lifelong learning in indulging our curiosity what are some of the things people can do well there's a ton of stuff out there i mean there's this is the the world of content um

[10:26] but let me let me answer it this way i think people who are i will call them digital immigrants or non-digital natives or let's just say people who aren't as technologically savvy i like to say um people who didn't grow up with a cell phone in their pockets they're in a slightly different position the people who are technologically savvy who know how to attain knowledge and information using technology i mean just googling

[11:01] stuff for example i don't think there's going to be a problem there because they've grown up with it they know exactly how to satisfy whatever curiosity they have but people who didn't grow up with it are often very intimidated by it and there are a ton of places where one can go to learn things whether it's any one of the um online networks like a netflix a hulu there's something called curiosity stream which

[11:36] is predominantly documentaries and other sort of um not so commercial kind of content whether it's a mooc which is an online uh conglomerate of different university uh workshops and trainings and classes that are free and just about everywhere you go you can be apprised of different workshops that are happening given by various people some might be very very good and informative and accurate some might be you know somebody's opinion and you know

[12:12] it's just all over the place for me what i want to do and this is actually sort of phase two of blank slate learning because blank slate learning was actually developed because of covid but it fits into a larger picture of what i want to do i want to help people who are non-digital natives be more competitive for either the future of work either staying in their jobs re-entering the workforce or having

[12:48] enough of a savviness about technology so that they can open up their own business here's what i mean if i just want to open up a flower shop in my neighborhood somebody else opens up a flower shop two blocks away if i don't understand anything about digital marketing if i don't understand uh how to use tools to better assess my supply chain i'm not going to stay in business very long compared to the one that's only two blocks away because now these tools are available and people are using them and if you

[13:23] want to stay competitive whether it's competitive with your colleagues in an office competitive against all the people that are vying for a job or competitive against your neighborhood flower shop you really need to learn how to use these tools however i am not i a lot of people say well what are you talking about i'm not going to go be a data scientist and i'm not going to go learn how to create some kind of a software program not the point the reality is is this if you can just understand the context

[13:59] of these new technologies these newfangled things you're already setting yourself apart from other people who let's say are in your boat not so technologically savvy so here's an example i like to give um i grew up in a time when ge general electric was you know considered just this you know fabulous behemoth strong successful company jack welch blah blah blah okay so their engine uh their

[14:34] engine manufacturing division uses a lot of 3d printed parts probably not something that someone of a certain age would think about right because we're not thinking about 3d printing and we certainly can't imagine 3d printed parts in an engine in an airplane that i'm going to get on so here's here's my example if i were a sales guy um an accountant a customer service rep and i was going to go try to get a job in

[15:10] that division and someone was interviewing me and they said so um what do you think about additive manufacturing i'm sorry what interview is over the way i would answer that question is i would just look up to the heavens and say oh i love 3d printing i'm fascinated by it about eight years ago i was at a medical equipment conference and i held a 3d printed spleen in my hand it blew me away

[15:45] i might not get the job oh that's true story by the way um and an ear um i might not get the job but i'm certainly going to get the next question so my goal is to help these non-digital natives upskill enough to be more competitive to the extent that somebody wants to go out to you know a 36-week boot camp for you know uh r or python or whatever great um i have some people who are

[16:21] working with me who are uh doctors of education and neuroscientists who absolutely will say you can learn at any age so one of the i think one of the hurdles that we don't think of it as being a hurdle is something you mentioned a a a couple minutes ago and that is there is so much out there how where's the entrance point that doesn't require you know sifting through a million options and and it's just it's a place

[16:56] where someone um a non you know non-digital native you know can can feel reasonably comfortable maybe just a little bit out of their comfort zone but can kind of step in and and and take that you know get started yeah well the answer to that is i haven't found one yet and that's why i'm going to build one okay so what are you seeing as being necessary for that i think there are several things and a couple things i actually don't want to say because it's a little bit of my secret sauce oh okay i don't want to be you know out of the vest just yet um

[17:33] first of all i think that the ageism mentality not just in the workplace but just in this country in general and i've lived in other countries and i i think it's changing a little but it's less so in many other cultures you know of a sir at a certain age you know with sort of like it's sort of that we're not uh we're invisible marketers do not target people of our demographic culturally you don't find people of our demographic

[18:08] necessarily at the forefront of what is cool we have such such an a a love of the youth culture here and so i think that nobody's really telling people who would fall into this non-digital native category where to go so what happens is maybe you've heard of youtube and so you youtube how do i blah blah blah and what happens is you go on this channel and this happens so often and they say well all you have to do is click on this link

[18:43] in your system tray well okay what's a system tray and many people who have read the documentation for software programs or apps or gone into some help support forum online they speak to someone who has some kind of knowledge i didn't know what a system tray was and it took me 40 minutes to figure it out after i googled it so there's a different way of educating people part of which is just taking your time

[19:19] so deborah before we wrap things up just tell us real quickly about what blank slate learning is and is about okay blank slate learning was actually born um out of the coronavirus really because we all the people who are around me who are educators know that you can't just take your classroom and put it online and expect that to be really good educating so we have a bunch of experts who are creating excellence in online hybrid and

[19:55] concurrent educating because if we educate our educators to be better at this new way of teaching then that is going to have a huge impact to an awful lot of people in our communities and it's a subset of the sort of bigger picture of upskilling well unfortunately deborah we're up we're out of time but i really appreciate you coming on the way to wow show and helping us explore better the the idea of lifelong learning of learning as a as a realm in our life and uh you you sent me a thing for our uh collage

[20:33] blank slate learning i'm gonna put this up here see i think we'll put it right there deborah thank you so so much for being a guest on the way to wow show you are so welcome thank you so much for having me so that's our show for this week remembering what deborah albert shared with us the idea of lifelong learning it's really about curiosity someone once

[21:10] told me one of the best ways to stimulate our curiosity is to go to a newsstand once a month and pick up a magazine that you've never read before and then just read a couple of articles about this unknown subject and think about how it might work in some other part of your life i think it's an excellent suggestion may have trouble finding a newsstand nowadays but give it a shot [Music] courage at all times my friends marie you're still my bell

[21:58] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]