Daria Rudnik (00:02.37)
Welcome to Built by People Leaders podcast brought to you by Aidra AI, your AI-powered coach for leaders in tech. I'm Daria Rudnik, your host, and this show is for HR and L &D leaders in fast-growing companies and scale-ups, those building real impact from within and building AI-ready organizations. If you go to dariarudnik.com, you can download the State of HR in AI Transformation, 2026 report based on interviews with HR leaders, as well as industry trends. And today we have a very interesting conversation with our special guest, Jason Aydelott. Jason developed his belief in the transformational power of learning by watching his father, an art professor, who challenges his students to grow as human beings, not just artists. That belief has guided his 25 plus years career building human centered, performance driven, islandy organizations that deliver measurable results while ensuring people feel seen, valued, and capable of performing at their highest level. Welcome, Jason.

Jason Aydelott (01:12.133)
Thank you, Daria. I appreciate you inviting me. It's an honor to be here and it's honored to talk to your people.

You say 25 years it really doesn't feel that that much but when you say it it sounds like a lot it feels like Just yesterday. I was starting out as a in a actually I was drafted into or as I like to say Shanghai in the VAL and D world when I was in college I was working at a at a pizza place in Boone, North Carolina and

I was actually a shift supervisor and one day the assistant manager who was supposed to do the training called in sick and we had a bunch of trainees there. And so the manager came out and Jason, take care of the trainees. I was like, okay. And so I actually ended up putting them through the whole session and really focusing more on the application versus just

here's the manual, read it, do this, which is what the assistant manager did. And lo and behold, they were actually more effective and they achieved proficiency faster. And so that kind of became my role within the company. Every time we had new hires, they said, Jason, go take care of them. And that was the beginning of what is now, what, over 25 years, which again, it doesn't feel that long, but.

Daria Rudnik (02:45.198)
It's amazing how things that happen to us in life, they actually help us build the path. And it's so unexpected sometimes. So I'm glad you had that experience and you sharing your experience with us here today. You know what, I'll go straight to the most important question that I have. We had this conversation before and you told about the business case for learning and development. The thing is, I'm talking to leaders

Jason Aydelott (03:02.005)
Absolutely.

Daria Rudnik (03:14.826)
Alan DeLietha's, somebody Charlie's will say, okay, how do I prove that I'm worth being in this organization? How do I prove my business value? Things I'm doing, I cannot, it's not something that you can evaluate in numbers, but you can. So tell us about that.

Jason Aydelott (03:35.509)
Yes, and one of things that I've been doing is I've been looking back on my career and saying, what's helped me be successful? What's helped me turn in organizations I've worked with, turn learning and development from a cost center into a profit center? And it's all about alignment. It's about being outcome focused. And I think we see all these ads now of these AI tools that are gonna help you measure your ROI and show that you're being effective.

We can't start at measurement. We need measurement. It's important. And I'm not saying we shouldn't be measuring. What I'm saying is if you're relying on a tool to do that, you're too late. It actually has to start with us rethinking how we design what we do. And I think too often, depending on your organization, L &D can sometimes be in this HR silo. And so we come up and we say, for example, when we're

doing onboarding, we think, okay, what is it we're supposed to be doing? And then we think about what are the knowledge, skills, and behaviors that drive that? I say, let's take a step back and let's start with what are the key performance indicators? What is the business measuring that says, hey, we're successful, right? And from there, we say, okay.

For example, if it's a call center, it might be a customer satisfaction score, CSAT score. Okay, so now we say, so our KPI is 4.5 out of five on average for CSAT, for customer satisfaction. Great, now we can go back and say, are the skills, knowledge and behaviors that actually drive that number? So for example, we get into the human centric skills, so human skills.

like empathy, probing questions, voice tone. So now we have these capacities, these capabilities that we can build, these skills that we can build that are driving the numbers. And if we do it right, now we can say, well, we started out with the CSAT of 4.3, which was under what we consider perform under proficiency, right?

Jason Aydelott (05:58.098)
We did this learning intervention, very heavy on practice. So we should be building experiences and resources versus content. And now we're at 4.6 on average. So now there we go. Now we can say, how much time and effort did we put into this versus how much money we make by having higher CSAT? And there's our ROI.

And we also need to make sure that we're not focusing just on money for ROI, per se. So one of the things that we know is that if people feel like they're doing good jobs and they feel like that they have the skills they need to be successful, they tend to be more engaged and they're less likely to quit. So attrition is another ROI, reducing attrition because people actually feel like we care about them, we're helping build their skills and they're successful, they're not gonna leave.

Right? So by doing these things, can actually report ROIs. In short, we need to become more outcome focused, if that makes sense.

Daria Rudnik (07:12.248)
Well, thanks. I mean, like, it's not always direct. I mean, when we train and coach leaders, we can then measure engagement. again, engagement is not only about leadership, it's about other areas as well. It's about organizational processes and other things. How do you, like if you are in leadership development, for example, how do you measure that? How do you prove that what you're doing is

Jason Aydelott (07:17.704)
Correct.

Jason Aydelott (07:30.535)
Mm-hmm.

Daria Rudnik (07:41.528)
like worth it.

Jason Aydelott (07:44.451)
If what we're doing is we're building leaders that are better able to hit their KPIs, then we're being successful, right? So I think one of the things that we really need to look at in developing leaders is especially in this new world with AI, right? It's much more important now that we're treating, that we have leaders who are actually leading, not managers.

Right. And to me, the difference between a manager and a leader is a manager manages things. They manage processes. A leader actually leads people. Well, guess what? AI is really good at managing. Where what we need though is we need people leaders, which is why I'm, I'm also kind of trying to spearhead this campaign to change the name of soft skills from soft skills to human skills, because soft skills have all what quote unquote soft skills.

the human skills have always been critical to business success. Even more so today, because it's really the human skills that will separate leaders from managers. And if you're just a manager, you're replaceable by AI.

Daria Rudnik (08:59.981)
Yeah. And it's, there's a leadership theory that actually tells that every leader need to have three set of skills. They need to have strategic skills, they need to have technical skills, and they need to have people skills. And the higher you grow in the organization, the less technical skills you need, and the more people skills and strategic skills you need. So yeah, I'm all for changing the name.

Jason Aydelott (09:24.037)
And the other piece of that is that we're getting to the point where organizations are flattening because if you think about it, the role of the quote unquote individual contributor is changing. So an individual contributor is no longer in this little bubble just doing their thing. What's happening now is that the quote unquote individual contributor is actually

overseeing AI agents. So they actually have a team of AI agents. And what this means is that even at the level of the individual contributor, the frontline employee, we need to start building these human skills, these skills that we traditionally thought of as leadership, right? They have to know, they have to know what, they have to be experts on what is the outcome, what's the right outcome look, so they have the discernment so they can.

they can take a look at the work that their AI agents are doing and say, hey, does this fit? Is this right? Are they doing this the right way? Are they taking care of the consumer, the customer, or is the product that's coming off the line, is it right? And then they have to be able to coach that AI agent to be able to do that. So things like discernment, creative thinking, critical thinking, they're so critical now. And I think we're doing...

our businesses disservice if we reserve those just for what's traditional leadership.

Daria Rudnik (10:54.243)
Yeah, yeah, true. Absolutely strategic thinking, like thinking why we're using this tool, like what are the outcomes, asking those questions, hard question, not just, okay, give me some task and I'll do that. No, AI can't do that.

Jason Aydelott (11:05.282)
Correct. Correct. And a healthy L &D organization will be leading the way in your organization of helping to think about this. And there's a lot of things out there right now in L &D about how do we use AI? And that's good. We need to have those conversations. We also need to elevate from those and being leaders within the organization in organizational development and say, okay, I'm...

Yes, AI is going to change how I do my job. But more importantly, it's going to change how the organization does its job and how the organization flows. And a healthy L &D organization should be leading the way within that.

Daria Rudnik (11:50.298)
Yeah, because it's good. We cannot just put AI on the existing processes. We need to rethink what we're doing, what kind of people we have. And you know what's interesting? One of the guests on this podcast shared that the organizational structure is changing. And we're going to be, like you said, having individual contributors managing teams of AI agents. And we will also be having

some fractional roles because, well, first of all, we don't need a full-time strategic senior leader. We might need them for some project or for some overseeing or we do not afford them. The different things. So for you, how would the role of chief learning office, a fractional learning office would look like?

Jason Aydelott (12:40.714)
So what happens is that now a fractional chief learning officer really is helping your team build strategy and enabling your team to do what they need to do in this AI world. Like I said, a healthy L &D organization should be leading the way with the strategic thinking, and that's really what they should be doing. Should be helping your L &D team go from order taker content producer to

a performance consultancy. Because I hear this all the time of people in L &D complaining, leaders are just coming to me and saying, this is training, but this isn't a training issue, this is a process issue. And I get that pain, I felt that pain. But we need to stop complaining and start realizing if people coming to you saying this is training and all you're doing is spewing out training that isn't useful because you're just creating content.

just so they won't bug you anymore, right? Or because, they're the leader, I'm not. Well, guess what? It's your fault, right? We need to step up and say, we're leaders, we're experts, right? And I actually have a little framework for that where really it's called ask and really the first thing you do is assure you can give them what they want.

Daria Rudnik (13:45.263)
Well, that's not funny, I know, yeah, but it is true.

Jason Aydelott (14:07.1)
because human nature being what it is, especially in this culture in the US today, is people would rather be right than do the right thing. So first thing we have to do is assure them that we can do what they want. Because if somebody's asking for training for something that's not a training issue, can we provide the training for them? Yes. Will it be effective? No. But they're not asking for it to be effective at this point, they're asking for it. So we start out by assuring that we can help them.

Absolutely, we can conduct that training. And next, we need to give them a reason of why we're an excuse for us to go farther, right? And we're gonna do that by simply asking a question. In order to make sure we get that training right, I need to ask some questions, right? So to ensure that I get that training right, and then we keep asking till we get to root cause.

Can you explain what we're trying to accomplish here? And then we just keep drilling down, you the old five why, just keep asking until we get to what's happening, right? And we'll finally get to, well, Jason, we need training on CSAT. Okay, I can certainly provide that for you. In order to make sure we get it right, what is it that you're trying to achieve? And then we start saying, well,

Really what's happening is our CSAT is not where it should be. Okay, and why is that important? Well, that's important because XYZ. And now we can say, we can take a look at the process and say, well, know, during the call, we start out by capturing all the person's personal information before we even get to the issue.

So that makes the people feel like they're just numbers, they're just commodities. We just wanna get all their personal information versus solving their problem. So really the problem isn't that anyone's doing anything wrong, it's that they're doing things right. The problem is they're doing things the way the process is telling them to do it. And now we can suggest process change.

Jason Aydelott (16:22.235)
That's what we should be doing. We should be outcome focused. We should be about driving performance because at the end of the day, L &D exists to do that. Now what makes us different, right? Really training is training and this is why I call it learning instead of training, right? Is people view learning and development like dancing. Anybody can do it. Well, I would challenge that. It's like, sure, anybody can dance, but not everybody can do it well.

And that's the same thing. Anybody can spew out content and call it training. But only a good instructional designer can actually create learning experiences and resources that work, that drive the numbers.

Daria Rudnik (17:09.712)
Well, I hear a lot of people saying in L &D, my leaders come to me, they want something. I know it's not the right thing to do, but I don't know how to tell them about that. now, Jason, your framework going out, asking your five why questions and really being curious about what is the problem they're trying to solve. So basically, as an L &D or HR person, you don't need to influence them. You don't need to tell them they're wrong. You don't need to tell them that they need different solutions.

Jason Aydelott (17:37.721)
Mm-mm.

Daria Rudnik (17:38.8)
You just need to ask better questions. Ask more questions.

Jason Aydelott (17:42.307)
Correct. When you start talking about performance consulting, and actually any type of consulting, any type of coaching, there's the push or pull idea. There's the you push somebody to an idea, or you pull them to it. And when you pull them to it, they end up thinking it's their idea. And if you've got somebody believing it's their idea, guess what?

Daria Rudnik (18:06.171)
You

Jason Aydelott (18:11.454)
Now you've got a cheerleader. Now you've got somebody who's pushing it. Right? And this goes back to doing the right thing is always more important than being right. And especially in L and D, we have to take that on. We can't be always be out there going, I got to get credit for this. Because at the end of the day, credit doesn't matter. What matters is did this move the needle? And by the way, the C-suite sees that.

Daria Rudnik (18:42.577)
Anyway, you'll get the credit if there is a result. when no one else is doing the training or no one else is talking to this leader, you'll get your credit. So stop worrying about that.

Jason Aydelott (18:43.096)
They know.

Jason Aydelott (18:52.247)
100%. That's what I'm saying the C-suite sees this. They know the capacity and capabilities of their people. And they're gonna say, wow, there's no way Jason could have come up with this on his own, right? It had to have been Daria.

Daria Rudnik (19:11.035)
Well, Jason, you mentioned something again at the beginning of this conversation that in learning and development, there are two parts. There's learning part and there's development.

Jason Aydelott (19:17.559)
Correct.

Daria Rudnik (19:20.945)
Tell me more about that. Like what is... Yeah.

Jason Aydelott (19:22.761)
Yeah, and in the learning development world, I would say we've done a pretty good job focusing on the learning piece. Where we tend to fail is in the development piece. We tend to ignore that and we say, let someone else do that. That's operations, that's not us, right? Well, the industry is called learning and development for a reason. And what we really need to do is we really need to look at the development piece.

And yes, that's the development of the individual, but it's also the development of the organization. And that falls back to what we were talking about before in terms of performance consulting. Really, one of the challenges is that in learning, a lot of us are brought to learning because of people. Because we love people, we love to be, I love to call it human centered. We're focusing on the person first.

And that's great. And businesses need that. We don't have enough human centered leadership in most organizations.

The challenge though, is that the people who are running the company think in terms of numbers. They think in terms of money. They're thinking in terms of what is the bottom line.

Really, because we know the processes so well, and we know the people so well, we have to be that bridge. We have to be that bridge between what is the business need and how do we implement that in a human way? How do we implement that understanding that people are not just cogs in the machine? People are the most important part of any organization. We don't always live that

Jason Aydelott (21:09.476)
as big companies. So our role is really to be that bridge between the business and the people. And I think that's especially true now with AI because it's really easy to look at AI and say, well, AI can do that. So we don't need the people anymore. Okay, but who's overseeing the AI? Because AI needs more

oversight than a human being does. can go through and say, okay, let me spot check this. AI needs more oversight. So you can't do that with the same, you can't say, oh, well, my managers can handle that. No, they can't. You need experts, right? The other side of it is I challenge most leaders, even if you grew up in the organization doing the role of the frontline employee,

You're not the expert on what's happening today on the front line and how to do that job. That expert is the person who's doing the job. So why wouldn't we have the experts leading the AI agents?

So are there jobs that are gonna go away with AI? Absolutely. I've seen numbers ranging between like 75 to 85 million jobs being displaced by AI. That's bad news, but there's good news. And the good news is that AI is also projected to create around 95 million jobs. And if you do your math,

Right? That's around, depending on what number you take for those that are going to be displaced, that's around 15 million new jobs that are being created. The truth is, you're not going to be replaced by AI. You're going to be replaced by someone who knows how to use AI. And we know, I know that it's a cliche at this point, but just because it's a cliche doesn't mean it's not true.

Daria Rudnik (23:09.123)
Yeah.

Daria Rudnik (23:16.409)
Yeah, that's true. I love it. Like someone said to me, I was doing a proposal for the workshop and said, did you use AI to create this? Yeah, sure, absolutely. So we don't need you. mean, we can could do that ourselves. mean, you can try, but you don't have my expertise. You don't know what to what kind of input, what kind of task, what kind of prompt to give to AI. You cannot.

like evaluate what they would give you, you can get some crap as a workshop design instead of expert knowledge.

Jason Aydelott (23:52.962)
Exactly, and there is a myth that AI is creative. AI is not creative. If you understand how large learning models work, what they do is they take this huge amount of information that already exists, based on it they make predictions, and then they come up with something. So everything they come up with has been done before.

It works because sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel. And so sometimes a tried and true method is great. When you're talking about content development or developing experiences and resources, well, raise your hand, everybody who's listening to this or seeing this, raise your hand if you've had an absolutely terrible training experience because it was...

what you experienced was horrible and you learned absolutely nothing and it was completely useless. Right? Everyone's hand is up. Unfortunately, there's a lot more bad out there than good. And let's think about this for a second. The way, the way LLMs work. If they take a look and they make a prediction based on the most common answer. And if we've already said there's a lot of bad stuff out there, probably more bad than good.

What's it gonna create? All garbage in, garbage out.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be using AI as a partner. AI is great as a developmental partner. It's a great way to create maybe a first draft or to review things that you've done. But at the end of the day, we need to have an experienced, good instructional designer there to end up, to finish the product.

Daria Rudnik (25:45.158)
Jason, it's a great conversation. I really want to hear the story. I want to hear the story when you build this organization-wide learning and development organization from kind of a small unit.

Jason Aydelott (25:58.776)
So the last place where I was, which was actually a contact center, and don't worry, we weren't the people who interrupted your dinner when you were just sitting down, but if you dialed the 800 number on one of your favorite products, you probably talked to one of our people. started out as, we had six separate contact centers spread throughout the country.

When I started, started as the quote unquote training manager in one of the call centers, in a local call center here in New Jersey. And so what happened is, although we did have some clients that were in separate locations, everybody was doing their own thing on how to create in supporting their people.

And at the time, L &D was seen as a, well, we have to have it because it's an RFP, it has to show up on the RFP and we have to do something to try to get our people ready. So it's a cost structure. first thing, of course, first thing that you do is you go in and you see what's working. You talk to people, right? I call it leading with your ears. You keep your mouth shut and you talk to people and you ask questions. You learn what's going on. You find out what's going right. What's not.

And we had a very, and of course it changed client by client, but we had a very typical structure in terms of onboarding, which was things were separated by content. So for example, you would talk all about product. You spend a couple of days talking about product. Then you spend a couple of days talking process, then a couple of days talking tools, right? And yes, I mean talking.

That's not effective. So what we did is went in, took one of our bigger clients, took a look at what was going on with the learning and development, with the syllabus. And all we did was change the syllabus. We changed it so that it felt more like a call. So that what we would do is we would start with the soft skills, the human skills of the greeting, right? The voice tone, this sort of thing. And then everything,

Jason Aydelott (28:24.526)
that had to do with the greeting, the beginning of the call. So we would do that, then we'd do a quick bite, each thing nice and in little chunks. We'd do a chunk of the process of a greeting, right? And then we would introduce the tool and we would show up to everything that we did during that first step, which most often was capturing the name of the person. So we'd show how to log in, how to create a new case.

and how to put somebody's name in. And we would stop and then we would role play it and we would practice it and do it hands on over and over again. Then we would go to the next step. for the human skills, we would do active empathetic listening. And then we would go into the process of capturing what the person is saying.

And then we would practice capturing, where do we capture that in the tool and how do we put the code that we put into it, right? And then we would do that. Then we would practice again, role playing starting at the beginning and doing that. And some of you listening might say, wow, that would take forever. Well, yes, right? The first, and by the way, we would focus on just one call type, on just one issue.

Because at this point, what we're learning, we don't need to know everything, at this point we don't need to know every process that's in there. We just need to know how do I handle this one call type? How do I code this one call type? Because we're not just learning the different codes, we're learning the call flow. And you spend a week on that, and by the time that week's over, they've practiced taking calls, they've probably practiced taking over 100 times.

Right, so now things like where do I find the subject code is now second nature, because I've done it so much. They don't even have to think about the greeting anymore. They do that. Now we can layer on top and now we do different call types and the processes around that because we're building on this foundation. So in doing that for one of our clients, took the actual onboarding itself from four weeks to two weeks.

Jason Aydelott (30:45.319)
and the time to proficiency from 90 days to 45 days.

So how did we talk about this? We talked about this as, well look, we can't bill until people are in production. So by shaving two weeks off of the training period, guess what? That's two extra weeks of billing you wouldn't have had of these people. There's your ROI.

going from 90 days to proficiency to 45 days to proficiency, that's even more money right there. Because if you're not proficient, you're not taking enough calls, not doing, you have other people having to support you, this sort of thing. So again, we show that success. So based on that, I then wrote up a proposal of what the company needs is a director of learning and people development.

so that we're doing the same things and we're driving the same successes across the company. And of course there were a couple of managers who had more seniority than I did. it was everybody, so it's okay, everybody is for this. Jason, you put this together, but we're not gonna anoint you. This has to be, everybody's gotta have a shot, absolutely. And so we did a leaders conference, which for the program managers leaders conference.

And so we all, everybody had the opportunity to interact with the people and put it together and we did that. And then we interviewed for it and I actually ended up getting the role of director of learning and people development. And then we started spreading what worked with everybody else. And so based on that, again, based on that experience, built the, I stopped and took a look at this and said, okay, what was successful? How did I do this?

Jason Aydelott (32:35.083)
And that's how I actually came up with what I call my outcome performance framework, where we break it down into easy to follow steps so that it's easy to apply to any organization and then carry that on as a fractional CLO, L &D advisor, coach, so I can bring this in to help other organizations do the same thing. And we went from being a cost structure into a cost center

to over a million dollars in savings and new revenue because guess what? Clients started seeing that we were more effective than their typical training. So we had clients asking, can you design our content for it? Redesign our content for us? And guess what? That's billable. Actual having dedicated learning facilitators, that's billable. And so started showing the company how we can actually make money through the L &D

Daria Rudnik (33:21.757)
Yeah.

Jason Aydelott (33:34.948)
organization as well as just with cost savings, that's your ROI right there.

Daria Rudnik (33:41.383)
That's a great business case for L &D. So everyone that listens, take notes, how to build a business case and prove your value. And actually, well, that's what we do. That's what we do. develop people and we make companies more successful.

Jason Aydelott (33:57.535)
And you have a choice. You can slowly build that value by proving that you do it, which can take a lot of time. Or you can buy that expertise by bringing in a fractional person, as you talked about, who has done it before to come in that automatically gets you the buy-in. Okay, so you can help my people do this. Absolutely, Mr. CEO, we're gonna help it.

Daria Rudnik (34:12.647)
Absolutely.

Jason Aydelott (34:26.71)
Then it's a combination of building the framework that helps you do that, giving the strategies to do that, and just as importantly, the language used to communicate to the C-suite so they know that you're building value, to know that you're actually developing and delivering at the bottom line of the company.

Daria Rudnik (34:45.908)
All right, Jason, that's an incredible conversation. Thanks for sharing your experience. I'd like to ask you some rapid fire questions to get to know you on a more personal level. Are you ready? Okay. Are you a tea person or a coffee person?

Jason Aydelott (34:53.857)
Okay.

Jason Aydelott (34:57.514)
I'm ready.

Jason Aydelott (35:03.03)
You know, it really depends on time of day. In the morning, very much a coffee person. In the evening, especially after dinner, a nice mint tea, can't be beat. So I don't mean to straddle the line there, but.

Daria Rudnik (35:13.98)
Mm-hmm.

Daria Rudnik (35:17.524)
Dogs or cats?

Jason Aydelott (35:21.877)
You know, I think I'm going to go with dog just because, you know, growing up I had both a cat and a dog. I like the cat's independence, but at the same time, sometimes you just need a hug. And a cat, if a cat feels like it, you'll get the hug. The dog's always gonna be there.

Daria Rudnik (35:46.396)
Yeah, yeah. Would you rather take a message or a phone call?

Jason Aydelott (35:53.802)
Probably, again, it depends. If it's something personal, a call, if it's something business, just give me a message. Unless it's something that you need to, that's complex, then let's do a call.

Daria Rudnik (36:09.874)
What did you want to be when you were kid?

Jason Aydelott (36:14.206)
Actually, I wanted to be a lawyer. So it was one of those things, especially I grew up in the late 70s, early 80s. I guess I just dated myself there. But I was really inspired by people who were on the front lines for the civil rights.

legal motion, legal movement and things like the Southern Poverty Law Center. The work that they were doing really to shut down hate groups, things like that. That really inspired me and that's that was that's what I wanted to do was be a lawyer.

Daria Rudnik (37:04.018)
What's one rule that you've

Jason Aydelott (37:04.488)
Too much paperwork, not enough people is why I ended up not doing that.

Daria Rudnik (37:08.34)
What is one rule you've broken and don't regret?

Jason Aydelott (37:14.566)
A rule that I've broken and I don't regret. I think that's probably, I think it was more of an unspoken understanding than a rule. And that's as an L and D leader, I'm supposed to sit down, shut up and do what I'm told. I don't think we should be belligerent about it.

And we can certainly become leaders. And I think that's true of anybody at any level. think we, as human beings, all have, we all see things that other people don't and we have ways of doing that. And really we need to be able to stand up for ourselves and say, and speak for ourselves and advocate for ourselves. I know I used the word empowerment before. I have a love hate relationship with that word.

What I hate about it is that too often we see that as somebody can empower me and you can't. Other people can't empower you because nobody has the power over you. You can only empower yourself and maybe somebody can wake that knowledge up in you and you can feel like, that person empowered you. No, they didn't. You empowered yourself. Maybe they opened the door for you, but you still had to walk through that door.

Daria Rudnik (38:32.5)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Aydelott (38:34.22)
And we really need, especially in L &D, it's so critical because we are really the bridge between the business and the people. And the people aren't always getting enough support. And that's where we come in and we need to do that. And if all we're doing is being order takers, we're letting our people down.

Daria Rudnik (38:59.668)
Yeah, that's true. need to break that rule. Well, thank you so much, Jason. It was an incredible conversation. I learned so much about, again, how learning is different from development and why L &D leaders need to focus more on development, about AI influencing workplaces and how it changes the structure, making individual contributors, managing AI agents, and bringing more fractional senior experts into the organization to help with strategy.

Jason Aydelott (39:03.118)
Absolutely.

Daria Rudnik (39:29.8)
how people can find you, how people can learn more about you and what you do.

Jason Aydelott (39:35.099)
Well, obviously LinkedIn. Also, I have my website at www.jsnadalot.com, strangely enough. And in fact, if you add a slash and an offer at the end of that for all the listeners out there, take 33 minutes and let's talk about what issues you're facing in L &D and...

maybe some quick easy ways that we can you can help yourself and and attack those.

Daria Rudnik (40:08.34)
Great, so please reach out to Jason and build your L and D function in your organization that really brings value. And thanks for listening to this episode. If you like it, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, subscribe on YouTube and stay tuned for the next episodes. Bye.

Jason Aydelott (40:26.916)
Bye everybody, thank you.