Al Kinnear
When I think about maximizing the impact of learning and development experiences. It's so easy to go to top of mind. Classic strategies like setting clear learning goals or active participation. But if you really want to take your learning and development to the next level, it's so critical to speak to a passionate and energetic learning and development leader such as Devin Hastie of Anheuser-Busch.
Al Kinnear
Join us now on the Return on Intelligence podcast as we dive deep into concepts such as training versus learning, confidence versus competence, and what really blows me away is how the Anheuser-Busch leadership empowers its administrators, leaders and learners by granting them permission to think differently. Welcome to our show, Devin.
Devin Hastie
Hey, al. How are you doing?
Al Kinnear
Doing great. Doing great. thank you so much for joining us. I'm really excited to talk about maximizing the impact of learning and development experiences with you. And, I really want to talk about brew. You. That's, quite an exciting, platform that you've set up. And we've talked about it in the past about how successful that is.
Al Kinnear
But I think before we get there, I'd really like to talk about your background and, and, really give us an introduction of yourself as a leader and a learner and even your history, at Anheuser-Busch.
Devin Hastie
Yeah. That's, it's always easy to talk about yourself out. So that's something I think I could do. I appreciate that, no. Excited to be here and, And to join you on the podcast today. you know, as the director of commercial learning for Anheuser-Busch, I feel like, you know, if I get a rewind into, you know, my passions, I think about my job is actually the intersection of three of my passions and beer.
Devin Hastie
First and foremost, most people's passion right now. but also education and sales. And I think my, my experience in, at AB really started 23 years ago, as a summer sales rep. And I had learned about this opportunity of, you know, being a salesperson as you grow up, like my guide, my high school guidance counselor, but always tell you, you can be, doctor or a lawyer.
Devin Hastie
My guidance counselor was telling me to be a teacher. So I obviously just really leaned into that. And I pursued teaching, as a profession, but then discovered this idea of selling beer for a living. So I like to think about my role today is just that intersection of those three passions, or that's great.
Al Kinnear
And so when you were when you were a rep, like, was there a sales enablement program or were you kind of just thrown to the wolves? And what time frame are we talking about?
Devin Hastie
Yes, sir. Yeah, circa 2000. date myself. So that's, I don't know if we should go there, but. Yeah, circa 2000, as they started out in, you know, in the sales process, or the selling program, we, we had a very intricate selling, selling development program. And I think about it today is I feel like I came in with a lot of, you know, raw talent from a sales perspective.
Devin Hastie
But I look back to some of those principles, and some of those ideologies even, then and how they're still applicable to that, like selling a box of beer in the year 2001 isn't much different than year 2022. the environment and the industry has changed, but the capabilities and the skill sets are still very similar. And I feel like, you know, I've been able to bring that learning that experience to my role.
Devin Hastie
So I'm less of a teacher or a facilitator and more of a practitioner in the work that I do.
Al Kinnear
Sure, sure. And being the facilitator and, you know, director of learning, for for your commercial, you know, learning and development. Do you, do you lean on your experiences as a learner or are you, you know, reinventing yourself, consistently as, as the years go by?
Devin Hastie
I yeah, it's a really good question. And I think back to, you know, I that high school guidance counselor that told Devin you could be a teacher and, I actually pursued teachers college. And I talk about this a lot as I didn't learn to teach. When I went to teachers college, I actually learned to learn. And I think that that's probably one of the biggest skill sets, you know, learning and development role is to always be learning and be agile like you think about the way that we traditionally have learned.
Devin Hastie
We'll spend tens of thousands of hours in a traditional classroom and then as the world's changed and even as we had to pivot for Covid, we had to adapt real quickly to meet the learners where they're at. All. Right. And we often were driving curricula, and driving the narrative on development. And then things changed, and we learned pretty quickly that we have to adapt to meet learners where they're at versus, you know, us trying to tell everybody what they need to learn all the time.
Al Kinnear
Right. Yeah. So important. you know, I remember, a lot of my learning or teaching opportunities have been in sales enablement. And so, you know, we kind of have a we can strike a chord there in the fact that it sounds like your beginnings. Were you know, experiencing sales enablement and then perhaps working on that, you know, as a sales, you know, leader or, development leader in, in your role.
Al Kinnear
But you know what? I've learned a lot from sports in my life and, and, you know, I can tell you at times as a sales leader in my my previous role, I was overwhelming learners. And I can fall on that sword quite easily. but it was really, you know, kind of a, a moment in a dressing room with some 12 and 13 year olds that that taught me that I was doing that.
Al Kinnear
I can remember it succinctly. We had I was the beginning of my lacrosse coaching career and and, you know, I had the brass tacks. I had the competency to do it. But, you know, I filled this little whiteboard. It was probably two feet by three feet for my pre-game chat with it was basically full 17 points. Or, you know, these are 12 and 13 year old, boy is trying to play lacrosse at, you know, the Bantam age.
Al Kinnear
And, and, I gave my pre-game speech and I thought, man, we are prepared. We're going to go out there and, you know, we fell flat of course. And and it was just too much message. Right. And, I've learned over the years that, you know, creating those bite size learning opportunities, you know, in, in the sporting environment, what translates to business.
Al Kinnear
And, and it's been quite successful for myself. Do you have similar experiences?
Devin Hastie
Yeah. It's, it's funny that you use that example because I think very similar for me is, you know, I actually left teaching, so I taught grade seven for a short time now, and I left teaching. And when I left that, you know, my both my mom and dad were teachers and my dad sat me down and said, are you sure you want to do this, dad?
Devin Hastie
And you know, well, I was looking at dad. I said, dad, you know what? I thought it'd be more like coaching, right? I actually learned that I was a pretty terrible teacher, because teaching and having curriculums and teaching to, you know, the the rubric, if you will, was just wasn't for me. I more designed to be a coach so very similar to you is, you know, I've coached competitive sports since I was 16 years old.
Devin Hastie
But then when I started to have my own children, I learned I had house leaders, so and I, I always I said to my wife, I said, no, I'm not going to coach our kids. I'm going to let them have another coach. And that lasted for about a year, right? Sitting on the sidelines and watching somebody else be successful or not successful.
Devin Hastie
And I said to myself, can't complain if I'm not willing to do it myself. And I leaned into coaching house league sports, and that was a quick lesson learned. But I really believe that, I think and I feel like I'm successful in my role today, and I feel like a lot of that success has come from the learning and the trial and error on how to coach kids, on fundamentals, keeping it fun and allowing them to progress to whether the next year or the next level.
Al Kinnear
Yeah, it's great. And I can personally say there's nothing more rewarding actually, than coaching your children or seeing other children succeed in sport. It's just awesome. Yeah.
Devin Hastie
what what's different? It's not much different than the business world, right? And I when I start to compare the two, it's like as leaders and coaches, if we're coaching to the results. Right. The annual target. So we can put that trophy right, the sports trophy on our vehicle. And so we want are we truly doing what we need to do.
Devin Hastie
It comes down to the Simon Sinek conversation above. The finite game versus the infinite game. And the one thing I've learned about kids in house league sports and, you know, people humans in in business is that it doesn't end with the season. It doesn't end with a championship because it repeats itself the next year. So really, if we start to think about, are we doing the things to to enable human potential, right.
Devin Hastie
The results and the career growth is an output of their potential versus us trying to coach, train, develop to the results.
Al Kinnear
Yeah. That's great that that really is great. Yeah. So to change, you know, to just change focus a little bit here on our discussion, can we discuss the you know, I know the feature audience is your focus at Anheuser-Busch. But if you could share with our audience who you're educating. And then I'd really like to talk about brew you and it's just fascinating.
Devin Hastie
Yeah. That's that that's, it's my privilege to to get the opportunity early. And Isaac Busch in North America, if you will, to engage with a couple of different customers, if you will. And I talked about my sales experience. You have your customer. That's pretty, you know, clear cut. But as I started to consider in my role today who my customers are, it really breaks down into three groups.
Devin Hastie
I have our Canada sales population internally right. The Labatt Breweries team, I have the US sales population, the Anheuser-Busch team. But we work in a wholesaler network, a three tiered system in the US. So I'm also responsible for the development of 400 independent companies. There are salespeople who are all killer network that literally are selling and delivering our beer every day.
Al Kinnear
Wow. So 400 wholesalers. And would that be the. Yeah. How many users would that, you know, would would be made up by 400, you know, wholesalers.
Devin Hastie
Yeah. Inside inside that we're words anywhere between 25 and 35,000, you know, independent learners that are in the network depending on the ebbs and the flows of things. and it really makes it challenging when you think about, you know, we're operating, a service, if you will. we're delivering a value to these wholesalers based on, you know, equity agreements and, and excellence programs.
Devin Hastie
That's important to them. And we don't have we're not touching the final product all the time. Right? We need we're we're creating the curriculums. We're creating the content. But at the end of the day, we're not engaging directly with the learners. It's the general training it means. So we have one of those at each of these 400 locations.
Devin Hastie
We're engaging with them quite regularly because they have the end touch, the end communication with those 25 to 35,000 users.
Al Kinnear
Now that's impressive and would brew you can be considered like a legacy program. Or what was the evolution of brew you and what what are its beginnings?
Devin Hastie
Yeah. Were you guys long before I was into role, which is, you know, circa 2013 now. But with brew you we've had this relationship with our wholesalers for for many, many years. and really one of our biggest opportunities, was to create more value. Right. We actually we, we look for, we look for feedback every year.
Devin Hastie
So we have a voice of a wholesaler survey, which is much like an NPS survey that goes out. And, you know, my first couple years in war, that NPS was actually going the wrong way. The line was getting, you know, we were over 90%, approval. And then we started to dip below that 90%. So we had this brew you legacy, but obviously it wasn't meeting the needs of our sailors anymore.
Devin Hastie
So we needed to make some changes. And we were very intentional that those changes that we needed to make.
Al Kinnear
And so when you say that you identified changes, you know, what was it about the program that you you felt you needed to change to maximize impact with your learners?
Devin Hastie
Yeah. So a lot of the time, you know, we started to look at it from two perspectives out. So there was the word experience or the user experience. That's the people that are diving into using the platform and consuming the content that's there. But also there was the admin I started calling, I call it the ax. Now, there was the admin experience that, we needed to elevate as well, because if you think about, you know, we have to provide value to those both those customers, the user and the administrator, because we're again, not engaging with that front line individual.
Devin Hastie
So we needed to make sure that it was easy for them, to get into a platform to adapt in personalized platforms as they saw fit as well, to engage their own learners.
Al Kinnear
I'm really fascinated by Brew You, so I want to continue this discussion. It's it's amazing. so when you say you have up to 35,000 users, how many would you say are administrators or have some level of administrative access? I'm just curious about that.
Devin Hastie
Yeah, we generally we have one for sale or sometimes there's two. and then we have a very small team on our side. Like we only have 2 or 3 on our side that are acting as admins. or the master admins. So of that 25 to 35,000, we're really talking about 450 people, tops, at most.
Al Kinnear
Really great. So with with brew, you and maybe even in discussing your Canadian and US sales teams, like what challenges or opportunities do you see that differ amongst those three distinct user groups?
Devin Hastie
Yeah, I think when we think about the challenges, the biggest challenge that's consistent across all of three is time. Everybody is time starved and I think if we start to think of land as, as not as a resource, it tends to be the resource that gets the least amount of time. So being able to be nimble and agile and meet learners where they're at.
Devin Hastie
So they're consuming stuff that's actually important, that interrupts their busy routine. So they're going to lean into something they need to develop is the biggest opportunity for us. And then I think as you start to think about it, it's maturity levels. So, in Canada it's a little different route to market. So we're a little more mature in the in the way we go to market from like a business development standpoint.
Devin Hastie
So we're not taking orders. We're actually acting as consultants in the US. Our sales teams are interacting with the wholesalers. So they're bringing a full commercial lens to the to the table. So they're talking about revenue and they're talking about sales and they're talking about marketing. And then in our wholesaler network really is it's it's very legacy is you've got some individuals that have spilled more beer than I ever sold.
Devin Hastie
Right. Or have, you know, a lot of these guys and girls have actually been selling beer longer than I've been alive. So you start to think about those different interactions and how we can actually engage these learners through web based content, which we call self led content. How do we engage them to be motivated to lean into something that they need, when they need it?
Al Kinnear
Yeah. For sure. And so with these different learner groups, like how do you find yourself iterating, on these learner pathways, are they different? And and you know what the challenge is always to keep people focused or interested, motivated in what they're learning. you know, the learning is so how how do you iterate on these learning pathways and, and, you know, what's the frequency of review, I guess is, is one of the questions I have.
Devin Hastie
Yeah. So we are I'll, I'll take the frequency review. So we review our full concepts every year. We start in, September, October and we start to look at what we deliver to our customers. and we review it. So sometimes we keep sometimes we, we change, sometimes we retire on content. so we're, we're looking at it every year.
Devin Hastie
And then how do we adapt for the learner? I think was one of the biggest opportunities that absorb gave us, was how we could actually make it a little more personalized. So in the past, we used to do certifications and certifications. And even in that, you know, the feedback that NPS feedback, we heard that the certifications were very repetitive.
Devin Hastie
And if you if you learn like I do, the last thing you want to do is have to go through something again. so what we did is we, we, we had the ability with the absorb platform to, to change for you to be more of a certification. So think of that as certifying people on skills or speed to competency.
Devin Hastie
Here's what people do. No need to know or really to be able to do their job and then get into this continuing education idea where we started to offer skills and capability as badges so people, as they get feedback from their managers, they get coaching from their leaders, they're able to lean into something that's a little more personalized for their learning journey and choose something that's going to help them in their job versus doing something that I, sitting in an ivory tower tower, think they need to learn to be a salesperson.
Al Kinnear
Right? And so when you're when you're looking at these learner pathways and, and, just your approach at Bru, you, you know, it's something you and I have talked about in the past, but the confidence versus competence equation. And how do you feel? You know, what what does each have in the role of of pushing, you know, the maximal impact of of these learning issues.
Al Kinnear
Yeah.
Devin Hastie
And I think to to discuss that I think is really if we start to think about us as learning professionals, how we deliver or traditionally have delivered. We've often talked about delivery as web based and instructor led. often we even forget about this idea of experiences that people need to have. But even the coaching that that really is the binder to the blended learning experience.
Devin Hastie
So for us, as we start to look at, you know, web based training, we look at it as self led training. So basically that's what web based is, is how can you lean in on your own time, your own capacity and consider them, consume knowledge and or skill based content to help yourself? Then the instructor led piece and we learned this and Covid you know is virtual can be virtual instructor led can be quite quite impactful.
Devin Hastie
So what we learned was that, you know, is bringing leaders into doing virtual sessions. People that are meeting subject matter experts, can be quite impactful by doing it virtually. And then instructor led as we get back, coming out of some of the Covid stuff, we're really focusing on how we can leverage experts and some of the workshops to kind of encourage people on the confidence side.
Devin Hastie
So if you think about self led and web based, it's really about competence, it's knowledge and maybe a little bit of skills, that people need to learn about. But then as we evolve into the virtual leader lead or expert lead, it's really about confidence and how we can actually start to embed confidence for people to apply these new, this newfound knowledge or these newfound skills in their job or in their real life.
Al Kinnear
Yeah, that's it's so true. And when you when you mention, leaders led, do you have programs to train the trainer or how are you identifying which leaders or is it everyone as a leader is responsible to train? Like what is your approach there?
Devin Hastie
Yeah, we so it depends on the situation. Right. Because sometimes people mix communication for training. So we try to basically separate that. So leaders are responsible for their own communication. But as we, you know, through our people cycle, we're always looking at skill sets and expertise. So as we look at that, we try to go to the subject matter experts when we have a need in the business and identify that expert.
Devin Hastie
And then really, I'm not, you know, I'm not a learning design specialist. I act as a learning consultant for the most part. So we do have a train that we do have train the trainer programs. we actually are working on a coaching certification, which is the same similar skills, that you need to be a, an effective facilitator.
Devin Hastie
And then I do a lot of coaching and consulting with experts to prepare them to meet these moments where we're delivering virtually lead expert lead content.
Al Kinnear
well, I can share I can share it. Like when we talk about expert lead, there is a time in space 4 or 5 years ago as as absorbance scaling. And we had to we had to really create a sales playbook. Like we started expanding our sales team and we really had no standards of approach. People found their own way out of the forest in sales and it was a sink or swim environment, but we had to change that to scale.
Al Kinnear
And so you, you start drawing up a playbook and trying to get a sales team to shift. And there are challenges there. And, especially when you've got a successful sales team trying to push the buy in on on the sales enablement process, you're you're looking to enable. And it wasn't until I found an expert, as you call them, and we had an in-person, expert led session with a gentleman named Amos Hamish Knox of Sandler here in Calgary.
Al Kinnear
It was like a light bulb switched on on my sales teams, and they would come back to me and tell me with confidence, your word, the confidence in in his ability to show them the pathway, you know, down these sales enablement playbook, items and just the the normal approach Sandler had with with sales, it was really almost on aspiring and I have to say like game changing.
Al Kinnear
You know, I engaged Hamish long term because it was almost like being a football coach who's been around too long. You know, they were tired of my speech. But Hamish brought new ideas, a different approach, complete excitement to the process. And as an expert led session, I honestly can tell you that was the most successful thing we ever did.
Al Kinnear
in our sales. Like, do you have a similar, moment? I guess I would say.
Devin Hastie
Yeah, it's, it's it's probably two moments, to be honest. So and I think about like that's a really good example with Hamish on how sometimes we realize things by accident. So there's the two things that I think I would point out is this idea of training versus learning and, you know, is in the past, you know, when I mine, wool used to be called the commercial training manager.
Devin Hastie
And now we're intentional about using the word learning, because in the world that we work in, in the skills and capabilities we work in is you can't train people to sell a case of beer, right? You can train people on the processes. You can train people on some of the skills and capabilities. But at the end of the day, there's decision making that has to go in.
Devin Hastie
And I use an example like objection handling. If I could sit here and train everybody to handle every objection, right, we wouldn't need salespeople because we could just train somebody to handle all the objections. What's the what's the best bottle you could have that everybody's going to buy? So it's really was like this idea of, you can train somebody in our breweries on, you know, what's the steps or what's the process is to operate a machine.
Devin Hastie
But when we get into like selling in some of the some of these like professions that require decision making and adapting and and overcoming that, it's really about learning. And it really provoked this idea of, you know, when we when we evolve from training to learning is about setting the boundaries. Somebody wants to ask me is, what's your biggest fear?
Devin Hastie
And, you know, we're all going to answer like snakes or bridges or something that scares the heck. you're right. And then I asked, I asked this person said, what's your biggest fear? And they said, puzzle of a blue sky. Why would a puzzle of blue sky be scared? Don't know where to start. Right. And so he said, and he said, yeah, I don't know where to start.
Devin Hastie
And he said, where if you, you know, if you had a puzzle, the blue sky, where would you start? And I said, the edges, which is an appropriate answer. We said there's a more appropriate answer is actually the corners. Why? Because you're setting your boundaries. So for me, it was this really revelation of from a development perspective, how do we set boundaries?
Devin Hastie
We can't solve everybody's problems, but we can certainly start to build the four corners of the puzzle, which will allow people to start to lean in and see which pieces of the puzzle do I need to be able to complete this?
Al Kinnear
it's great story. Really great. Yeah.
Devin Hastie
And then the second one for me is really the confidence versus confidence conversation we're having out. Right. And this was a real we backed into that one by accident. But again when Covid happened, we were lucky enough that our organization didn't lay people off. And I talked about one of our biggest challenges being time, right? Capacity. And people had a little bit more time and capacity, and they all and became the coolest kids on the block then, right.
Devin Hastie
Hey, we've got some time. What do you have for us? Learning and development team. So it was kind of cool to be important. And we weren't prepared. So we we pivoted quickly. we went out. We asked teams, hey, so yeah, you've got some time for learning what do you want to learn? And one of our teams came back and said, change management.
Devin Hastie
We need change management training. we're we're not good at it. So what did we do? We spent a lot of time, a lot of energy and maybe even a bit of money creating some change management training when I did it. But in the meantime, we were already in conversations with the Josh Bersin Academy, and we were able to get their skill, their their HR skill assessment.
Devin Hastie
And we put this same group of people that we asked, hey, what do you want for training through the assessment? And the Josh Bersin assessment came back and said, hey, your group is actually well above average on change management. And that's when we learned that our team had the skills and the knowledge for for change management. But they lacked the confidence for change management.
Devin Hastie
And that's when we had to start to design learning experiences that allowed people to become more confident in the safe environment. So when they went out to the real life scenarios, they were able to apply the knowledge and skills they already had.
Al Kinnear
So Devon, let's switch gears here and talk about like, how does your learning and development group empower administrators, leaders and or learners, you know, within you?
Devin Hastie
Yeah, that's a really good question. Out. And if there's two things that stand out for me specific to how we empower admins or leaders, it really is communication. is one. And the second one, permission to think differently and to tackle this kind of go with communication first is, you know, it's we really leaned into the feedback from our wholesalers where there's 400, teachers or general training admins.
Devin Hastie
The one thing that we learned is we had to, when we started to increase the platform so that the UX was better and the access or the admin experience was better, we needed to increase our communication. We were communicate. We're sharing information through emails and newsletters and we know how people read those. It's probably the 8020 rule. Write 20 of them.
Devin Hastie
Read it 80% delete it. so we weren't necessarily leveling the playing field on information. So for us, just the empowerment was really about something, a simple idea where we implemented these weekly open door sessions and it was really one hour standard time. We picked a standard day. We invited or or Gta's to attend those meetings, and we basically built the even Janda off the things that we were hearing, from them saying these were problems.
Devin Hastie
We're building the agenda. We were tackling them in a face to face environment, and people could ask questions, and we saw the confidence level of our administrators rise quite quickly and to the point where we're now able to have like a general session and an advanced session. So some of our admins, they're a little more competent, a little more confident, can come and ask some of the hiring questions in some of our newcomers or our less experienced admins can lean into the the, the essentials or the basic details.
Al Kinnear
That's great. And so what's the timing on these one on ones like within someone's workweek? Like what's the optimal timing for those one on ones do you feel.
Devin Hastie
Yeah. And we've had to play with that. And I think that's the thing that we've learned is in communication is meet the the person you're trying to communicate where they're at. we again we standardize. So we we used to think Mondays and Fridays were great, but those tend to get banged up by meetings. They get, you know, people's calendars are full.
Devin Hastie
we moved to a Thursday, and then we had a lot of people saying, hey, we can't make Thursdays that Wednesday afternoons were best. So we basically do 1:00 on Wednesdays, where it's always at 1:00 on Wednesdays. Sometimes we'll have 15 people, sometimes we'll have 90 people show up. But it was really, interesting to see that as we changed the timing to meet them where they're at, how many, how much more engagement we were able to drive.
Al Kinnear
And just for the listeners, are you recording these sessions and then distributing them?
Devin Hastie
You know what, we try that track them. Yeah. No, we we thought we thought about that and we did it. And then, you know, we had feedback saying, yeah, like I'm sitting through a meeting. It doesn't make sense. So we actually tried it and it did. It wasn't effective. It was actually a waste of our time to do so that, there's some repetition that'll show up in some of these meetings because of that.
Devin Hastie
But we found that if our intention was to, you know, walk people through things face to face, then we wanted to walk people through things face to face.
Al Kinnear
Got it, got it. And then you mentioned permission to think differently. And so why is that important to the empowerment?
Devin Hastie
Yeah, I think it's on a I think it becomes very traditional in a lot of organizations out. And as we start to think differently, and we needed to give our, you know, our clients or our customers the permission to think differently. And I'll use an example. It's like what it really means. So, again, it kind of comes back to setting the boundaries, right?
Devin Hastie
Setting the for so people can complete the puzzle conversation. But we had some route to market changes. So the way that we were engaging with our wholesalers, we had a significant change, in the individuals in those roles, like it was a responsibility. you know, it was a really positive bump for them. But as we listened to feedback early on in those changes, people were saying to us, well, we don't know what's different.
Devin Hastie
We don't know what we're doing differently. and as we were preparing, you know, some, some developments of learning, some training and development, content, we were working with or CEO and working with our CEO. He had his mind set on this is how we need to do this, and this is what we need to tell people to do.
Devin Hastie
And our realization at that point with Brennan was Brennan. We actually don't need to tell them what to do, right? We've already laid that out and they're confused. We actually need to give them permission to think differently and then give them the four corners of the puzzle. So and we were very like literally, you have to stand up here and say, I'm giving you permission to think differently.
Devin Hastie
And here's the 3 or 4 items that I'm giving you permission to think differently on. And we came out of that like one day virtual training and people were like, hey, now I know what I'm supposed to do. And hey, now I know things are different. And it was a really cool experience. So we've learned that we need to give our admins, we need to give our leaders permission to think differently, that, hey, when you come to us, you, you know, you don't need to come with a solution.
Devin Hastie
What you need to come is with an open mind. And we actually implemented a implemented a process that we call the 4k assessment. And it's a needs assessment that will go through with people that are looking for development opportunities, even if they think they know what they need to work on. And we'll walk them through this process that's essentially, asking them, hey, what do you need to know?
Devin Hastie
What do you need to understand? And the example there is, if I'm in sales, I maybe need to know what a PNL is. I don't need to understand. A we're not we're not, you know, the finance team, but they might need to understand the things that we do, all the things we do impact our retail retailer or our customers.
Devin Hastie
Peanut. So what do you need to know? What do you need to understand? What should you be doing. Right. And that's a really an interesting conversation. When we ask people what they should be doing. And then who are you becoming? And when we ask those four questions, it really opens people's minds to think differently about what the end solution might be that they need for their teams or their individuals for development.
Al Kinnear
Yeah. It's fascinating. And so you have the CEO giving your leaders the permission to think differently in this learning and development environment. And so the next, you know, the natural question that comes to mind is, you know, what is the role of leadership in maximizing these learning experiences within Bru? You.
Devin Hastie
Yeah. And I think leadership is the most important to building culture. And I think if you start to think from a development perspective, every organization probably says in their in their mission statements that we strive to have a learning culture or we might even strive to have a coaching culture. But I would say in my ten plus years of experience in learning and development in corporate America and Canada is, creating those cultures is super hard.
Devin Hastie
And I often joke about this idea that people think that land is learning and development is boarding school. I could take my individuals, I could drop them off, you know, imagine a world where if you could take your baby somewhere and drop them off and they came back to you, toilet trained and they could already eat solids. How easy parenting would take.
Devin Hastie
Yeah, it would make life a lot different. And I think a lot of organizations treat the team as that boarding school here. You take them, you do all this stuff and then give them back to me when they're ready to go. And then I could do amazing things with, you know, the talent. And that's just not the way that the world works.
Devin Hastie
Like you need leader engagement to, you know, create space for their teams tomorrow. That's the one thing is, if leaders don't buy in, learning development isn't always about dollars and cents, right? It's about time and commitment. How do we find these other resources and that was one of the like. The permission to think differently to people is we don't have to spend money on external lenders, etc. to do things effectively, but you need to create the time and the space or potentially even provide some time and space for subject matter experts to lean in, which was really important.
Devin Hastie
And then I think from a leadership perspective is, you know, balancing leaders. If leaders understand your programs that or understand the programs that their employees are going through, it connects a lot better. So if you're going to train somebody on, you know, a skill or a capability, but you're not going to incorporate it back into your feedback models or your coaching models, there's going to be a disconnection.
Devin Hastie
So we need to make sure that our leaders understand the things that we're doing to develop our teams, so they can bring that into the natural evolution of coaching and feedback. That's just as important to learning. Development is web based modules and and, you know, expert led workshops if you want.
Al Kinnear
Right. And so when you're developing, you know, these experiences, you know, you've got leaders who have got permission to think differently. You've got leaders who've, walked the walk, so to speak, or have, you know, tremendous amounts of empathy. It sounds like, are you in your design thinking or focusing on learner backgrounds or learning styles, you know, within you?
Devin Hastie
Yeah, it's something that I would say to be completely honest, we haven't been great at, but we're evolving into and I'll use an example. I was doing an instructor led event with a wholesaler just recently, and we were doing an exercise, a breakout exercise. So it was pretty simple, pretty clear. And the individual said to me, you know, this individual been against selling beer longer than I've been alive.
Devin Hastie
He said to me, Dave, I don't get it right. I don't get it. Like, what are we supposed to be doing? So, you know, the teacher in me said, okay, here, let me mimic with another individual how this is going to work. Right? So I mimicked it with them and I said, okay, are you good now? And he was like, no, actually I'm not.
Devin Hastie
And I actually had. So he wasn't a visual or an auditory learner. He actually was a tactical learner. So I actually had to change my process to go through the exercise one on one with him. And when we left that he's like, oh, wow. And there was some really good awareness or some really good revelations. So I think as we create more time and space to be thoughtful about that stuff, we're getting better now.
Devin Hastie
We're using stuff like, we're using stuff where, you know, we're doing virtual that we can turn on. subtitles. So that, you know, if we have people that don't have English as a first language, they have the subtitles or they have the transcript they can go through later. we're trying to do more and more of that.
Devin Hastie
which is is helping. And then as we start to think about how you adapt for learner styles, it really, really is important. We're evolving our model. And to be, you know, the old 70 2010 rule, right? 70% experiential, 20%, coaching and mentoring, 10% formal and really thinking it more about the blended environment of what needs to be self led, what needs to be leader like, what needs to be expert lead.
Devin Hastie
And then how does coaching underlying all this? How do we bring coaching into the development process? Because at the end of the day it's about awareness. Go and learn something. Get feedback. Re Re Re Go through the cycle. So it's really about how do we personalize. how do we personalize for people when you're dealing with so many people is difficult.
Devin Hastie
But we are we're trying to make adaptations to get there.
Al Kinnear
Oh great. Great. Well Devon I really want to thank you for joining me today. This has been just a incredible discussion. on maximizing impact of learning, you know, experiences. You know, we've touched on things like value creation and trust. We have that great confidence versus competence discussion. And I have to say that, you know, it's obvious to me that I, as a bush, as a very thoughtful, learning environment.
Al Kinnear
So I'm just going to ask you, what would your final bit of advice for folks who are trying to maximize impact, you know, within land? What would that be?
Devin Hastie
And I don't know if this is, this is probably my own experience, but where I've seen, things become effective and the advice that I would give to other organizations is think differently about the people that you're putting into the roles. And what I mean by that is often, you know, is we even look for, you know, the opportunity to get into corporate learning and development.
Devin Hastie
A lot of the rules require instructional design, etcetera, etcetera. But when we look at our own organization, we're we're not facilitators and instructional designers. I happen to have went to teachers College and happened to, you know, fall into sales, but really is we're hiring practitioners. So as the director of commercial learning, I grew up my first 13 years in the organization in sales.
Devin Hastie
So I'm bringing a mix of what I've learned, but also experiences and applying it back to as as the world's changing. But also our director of supply is growing up in the supply, the supply chain. So this is somebody who's been in logistics and brewing locations on the shop floor learning. And even our director of of leadership development is an individual that came from higher education.
Devin Hastie
It came to us from the outside. But, had kind of cut his teeth, if you will, developing leaders in universities and that that the, the, the way that, that we approach things is a little more practical and it's a little more from experience than bring somebody coming in saying, here's the process or the, the, the SOP to develop training for people.
Al Kinnear
While it's great advice. So again, Devin, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed our time together and I, I hope we speak again soon.
Devin Hastie
Thanks Al. Really appreciate you.
