10 Powerful SEED Questions I Use to Thrive Amidst Change
A Compass for Learning Leaders to Set Up Their System for Unprecedented Change
It’s hard to ignore what Gartner predicts as the future impact of Generative AI(GenAI).
By 2024, 40% of enterprise applications will have embedded conversational AI, up from less than 5% in 2020. By 2027, 15% of new applications will be automatically generated by AI without a human in the loop. This is not happening at all today.
Do these numbers make you feel uneasy or bring up concerns about what the future holds? You’re not alone. I too have felt the urgency to assess the viability of our existing L&D practices.
Indeed, the accelerating pace of change might require us to transition from yearly upskilling to a monthly, or even weekly basis. It’s a daunting prospect, and the risk of falling behind and becoming dated is very real.
It’s in situations like these that the 10 powerful questions have enabled me to respond quickly to my stakeholders’ needs and adapt to any change.
The questions have guided me to act swiftly, connect deeply, adapt readily, and make decisions with Insights. I categorize them under Speed, Empathy, Elasticity, and Data, coining them as SEED questions. A recap on SEED is presented as flash cards below for quick reference.
SEED questions are powerful tools that I assess myself against monthly, and they can serve the same purpose for you.
Rapid upskilling is our reality.
But armed with the right questions, we can thrive in the face of exponential change, regardless of what is driving that change, such as AI or other catalysts.
In this article, I share the 10 powerful questions that you may want to give a try.
Before that, let me share a slice of my journey to shed some light on how the SEED questions came into play.
A Recent Example How SEED Helped Me Align to the AI Impact
When I ventured into entrepreneurship in 2022, I had thoughtfully risk-managed my business. My services were bolstered with the modern frameworks I’d developed that had shown promising result.
As entrepreneurs, we are fine tuned to difficulties and responding to changes for our progress.
However, the sudden wave of GenAI that I paid attention to only in the second quarter of 2023 surprised me. It’s nature and speed were unlike the past trends. For a minute, the prospect of becoming dated, dinosaur in this field, loomed large.
However, I’ve learned that change is the very essence of existence.
So, I tapped into my SEED practices to act swiftly, connect deeply, adapt readily, and decide with Insights.
As I found myself lagging, I asked myself what was slowing me down, preventing my progress, and began uncovering my own doubts about the impact. This nudged me to start researching and looking up data, which indeed revealed a significant and transformative impact on the L&D field. Beyond just creating content.
Embracing this change, I discovered that I could now leverage AI to solve complex problems associated with L&D space.
I chose to be flexible and share my learnings with the wider community without waiting for the perfect moment.
The reality is: given the pace at which things are evolving, aiming for perfection is like chasing a moving target. — Author
As a testament to this journey, I’ve published a guide to aid our L&D community in integrating AI just three weeks ago!
The pace of change is so rapid that I’ve already updated this guide twice in just three weeks of publication.
My takeaway was that this shift is going to need for everyone to approach it with an authentic continuous learning. Learning is crucial for survival, not just desirable.
Reflecting on my own experience, here are the SEED questions that have guided my practice and can of use to you as well.
10 Essential SEED Questions
The role of L&D continues to broaden and deepen, increasingly interacting with DE&I talent management and employee engagement. We need to transform our approach. Not in a huge, daunting overhaul. But through “Transformational Atomic Actions” — small, impactful changes.
We can do this and more importantly “Ask Questions.”
The effectiveness of a solution depends on the quality of the questions you ask.
Leading Leaders have tapped the power of questions to drive business transformation and growth. You can also use these questions as a catalyst to navigate the rapidly changing landscapes ahead.
The important and difficult job is never to find the right answers.” Peter Drucker
Questions can help you uncover obstacles, open your mind, see different perspectives.
A quick recap of SEED [ Speed, Empathy, Elasticity, Data] tools and practices are presented in the flashcards embedded below.
If you want to get a quick summary, you can click the link below.
Consider these thought-provoking questions to address obstacles, evaluate your L&D practice, or accelerate your response to changing needs. Reflect on how they might apply to your situation.
- How might implementing the SEED approach transform your L&D function?
- How large an overhaul do you envision transformation to be?
- Think of one action you can take this week to increase the speed of your decision-making processes.
SEED Questions: If you want to deep-dive into each practice here is a few more questions to lead your exploration.
S/ Speed:
- What decisions are you not making?
2. What aspects of execution processes have you not looked at?
For more ideas on Speed, check out this article.
“It’s in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.” — Tony Robbins
By asking these questions, you can determine if you want to go fast or slow, uncover hurdles, and streamline the execution of your solutions. This equips you to respond quickly in a rapidly changing landscape, enhancing both your performance and resilience.
E/ Empathy:
3. What do you NOT know about your customer ( learner)?
4. How are you viewing your learner?
For more ideas on Empathy, check out this article.
By taking a human-centric approach, you are able to design learning experiences that address your customer's true pain points and build trust in L&D offerings.
E/ Elasticity:
5. What aspects of your current training programs are least flexible to changes and why?
6. What enterprise technology is not included in scaling learning programs and building new learning experiences?
7. How might being stuck in your old ways be hurting your potential?
For more ideas on Elasticity, check out this article.
Elasticity refers to adding options in order to make your system grow or shrink based on the training requests. This is not about just adding more resources or bandwidth.
However, by embracing flexible methods, such as agile design and using enterprise technology, you can readily meet unplanned and unknown demands, while maintaining the capacity to cultivate curiosity and innovation.
D/ Data:
8. What valuable insights might you be overlooking in your current data analysis approach?
9. How often are you tracking the interaction of your customer ( learner) with your content?
10. Do you drive to focus on metrics that matter most? (Or only completion.)
For more ideas on Data, check out this article.
This involves evaluating your current data analysis methods and observing your customer’s engagement with your content. It helps you to identify important patterns, focus on key metrics, and make informed effective decisions.
Conclusion:
It is crucial now for L&D leaders to acknowledge and set up a system that can empower them to navigate the changes happening now and the unprecedented and unknowns to come in the future. It is crucial they take the lead in transformation and inspire their teams and learners to do the same. With this context, let’s reflect on what these questions mean for the L&D leaders.
The SEED questions offer an effortless way for leaders to:
· Respond quickly in this dynamic landscape
· Engage profoundly with our audience and stakeholders
· Have empathy for their own self and team
· Adjust easily to new scenarios and
I’d be curious to learn how you are supporting yourself, your teams, and your learners in times of uncertainty.
Still, have questions? If you want to delve deeper into any of these practices, I’ve blocked out some time for free ‘coffee chat’ sessions until the end of August.
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Additional resources:
- Integrate Design Thinking into ADDIE — How To Read More about Design Thinking and Addie
- LUMA — This offers a set of Design Thinking tools and processes
- Grab a copy of the AI in L&D guide. This guide includes copy-paste prompts for you to experience skills mapping, filling in gaps, and designing and creating unique learning experiences.
- SEED recap — The SEED framework consists of Speed, Empathy, Elasticity, and Data. This provides a practical approach for L&D leaders to navigate through rapid changes. Speed encourages prompt decision-making and execution, Empathy emphasizes uncovering your customer's ( learner’s) hidden pain points and understanding their context better, Elasticity advocates incorporating flexibility in the process, mindset, and tools to adapt to changing circumstances, and Data underlines the importance of analyzing learner interaction to drive focus on critical metrics. Utilizing this framework empowers leaders to adapt, engage, and make informed decisions amidst uncertainty or change of any kind.
