Josh Cardoz is the Chief Creative and Learning Officer of Sponge Learning, A global enterprise learning company, focused on enabling the workforces of the world. They recently released a whitepaper entitled ‘Mobilizing Generation Numb’, which tackles global upheaval, economic instability, the insidious after-effects of the pandemic, and the digital saturation that is creating a workforce generation that is ‘numb.’ This conversation tackles many of these topics including economic instability, ai uncertainty, digital overstimulation and the role each plays in creating a numb workforce. You will not want to miss this incredible conversation!
Watch the full interview on YouTube!
Chapters
- 00:00 Introduction to Change in Manufacturing
- 01:30 What is “Generation Numb”
- 07:07 Reigniting Purpose and Community
- 13:34 Shifting Focus from Knowledge to Behavior
- 19:09 Commercial Acumen and Transparency
- 24:25 Data Collection and AI Implementation
- 30:38 Cultural Shifts in the Workplace
- 35:03 Creating Effective Training Programs
- 44:33 Investing in Employee Learning
- 50:07 The Importance of Onboarding
Nate Wheeler is the owner of weCreate, a nationally recognized marketing agency that helps manufacturers grow, save money, and become more efficient. Reach out to us below.
Nate Wheeler (00:01)
Welcome to Manufacturing Insiders. Today I have Josh Cardozo, is the Chief Creative and Learning Officer for Sponged Learning. This conversation is going to be extremely relevant and important to all the manufacturers listening for a variety of reasons. The primary one is that with all of the new technology coming into the space, all of the things that need to be learned to adapt and change to, you know, to adapt and be successful in this global economy, learning is so critical. So his company has developed some interesting strategies for facilitating that. I also have my co-host, Amelia B. Theros with me. She is a passionate manufacturing advocate and a key player at Presidium manufacturing. So I’m interested to hear what her take is on Josh’s offerings. So without further ado, Josh, tell me about Generation Numb. What does that mean?
Emilia Ballesteros (00:57)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (01:00)
I’m glad you asked Nate and hi to you as well Amelia. think you know change is the word of the hour isn’t it
Nate Wheeler (01:08)
Yep.
Josh Cardoz (01:09)
and the word of the year and the word of the minute and I was actually just having a conversation leading a webinar actually on change and what change looks like in 2026 and it’s and you know organizations are moving so quickly we’re reacting to the economy where we’re reacting to all the different shifts of where we need to go, need to bring our people on that journey as well too. And Generation Numb is really the best way to articulate the mood music of the workforce right now. And the way that I always point to it and the way I always talk about it is that the signals are everywhere. And you point to whatever signals you want in whichever direction, there’s a lot going on in the world, there’s a lot going on in the workforce, and to show up every day to work is difficult. No matter on how you want to define it. And so to bring that from the context of the workforce, especially from a leadership context where you have to cascade your strategy, your CEO is telling you, we’re going this way, and we’re saying, all right, let’s go all in. What does that mean for your people? What does that mean for your leaders? And the word that we really illuminated was numbness. And we say generation numb, not because it applies to a particular age group, but because it applies to something that we’re all facing right now, sort of the time period effect of a generation that is feeling all quite numb from sustained overwhelm. We’re still trying to recover from the pandemic. Well, the only thing we’re allowed to talk about is AI. We all know what affordability looks like right now. We’re all trying to drive adoption with AI. Well, on one side, it’s the thing that’s going to take our career to next levels, or it could be the next thing that loses our job. know what I mean? Exactly, right? And so.
Nate Wheeler (02:25)
It takes your career.
Josh Cardoz (02:46)
There’s a lot going on. There’s a lot of pressure on us at work. There’s a lot of pressure on those of us that need to lead people through work. And numbness, I think, is that critical, almost invisible factor that’s getting in the way of top performance in terms of clarity of change, in terms of giving people the specificity, the security, the clarity that they’re looking for right now. So I feel it’s a really important message for the workforce right now, whether you are passionate about making sure that next training you know, is launched properly and effectively, or you’re just trying to get that 10%, 15 % extra performance out of your workforce that you know might be the difference between your company surviving or being your next sort of strategic enabler.
Emilia Ballesteros (03:17)
Yeah.
Nate Wheeler (03:27)
Yeah, yeah, and I think a big a big component of the numbness too is We’re we’re presented with all these new flashy technologies all the time and you know manufacturers are not in any way immune to that and It’s almost difficult to know which ones are applicable to you And you can take this from a company level all the way down to an individual level in a company and to know which ones you should pay attention to. You can’t pay attention to everything. so a lot of times you just kind of, you know, psychologically shut off to anything new just because you don’t know what to pay attention to.
Josh Cardoz (04:04)
And it’s one of the, and by the way, I’m speaking about Generation NUM, like it’s this big edifice. There is actually a substantial white paper that I highly encourage everyone listening today to go check it out. It’s well-researched, it’s documented, taken from over a dozen resources, independent research. So it’s not just a thing that we’re feeling, but it’s actually a real thing that we’ve studied in the workforce. And one of those key symptoms that you’re talking about is just chronic overwhelm. There’s a lot going on you know. And, and, you know, the, example that we talk about in the, in the white paper is just like, let’s bring it back to even just our digital lives, our personal lives. And one of my favorite stats in this beautiful infographic that we did was that on a daily basis, we scroll 300 feet worth of, on our social media posts, which is equivalent to the Statue of Liberty. So like, we never really think about how much scrolling we do, whether that’s
Nate Wheeler (04:52)
Holy cow.
Emilia Ballesteros (04:52)
Okay. .
Josh Cardoz (05:00)
doom scrolling or whether that’s exciting TikToks, but that’s a ton of scrolling that we do. Now translate
Nate Wheeler (05:04)
Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (05:05)
that overwhelm into the workforce, where we’ve also got an overwhelm of, and I spend so much time with clients that are like, we need to enact our AI strategy. Okay, how? I don’t know, we need to enact our AI strategy, we need to just go in. And just the overwhelming sense of, and imagine someone on the front line, imagine a factory worker. Being able to say, well, we’re bringing this new technology in tomorrow. I have no idea what this means for me. Put aside the fact, I have no idea what this means for me on a job security level. I have no idea what this means for me in terms of what do want me to do? What do you actually want me to do with this? What does you actually want me to do about it? And so one of the things that we talk a lot about in sort of painting a very numb picture,
Emilia Ballesteros (05:27)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (05:47)
which isn’t roses, but one thing we talk about is the remedy. And what is the remedy to this? How do we make people feel alive? How do we bring people back to work? How do we reignite that sense of purpose, community? And we kind of bring it back to basics. And we talk about it in a very simple structure. Me, us, it. First, take care of personal priorities, which I think is a lot of what you’re talking about right now. Us, reconnect
Emilia Ballesteros (05:57)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (06:15)
to your community. We are in a loneliness epidemic, particularly at work. And particularly for those organizations that had to quickly adopt to hybrid and remote. And on one side, they’re forcing people back to work. On the other side, they’re still trying to navigate hybrid work. We’re trying to figure out this kind of weird dissonance between hyper-connected to your employees at all time, where I know I can check my teams at midnight and be able to connect with my employees, yet at the same time, I feel so disconnected from them at the same time. So what is this sense of community, which is so important when you’re actually trying to bring it to the work, the it? Where it’s like, It’s not just about doing your job every day. People are in survival mode. They can show up and work and go and be disaster men. But when you’re trying to get to those next levels, you’re not just working for yourself or your company, you’re working for each other. So there’s value in community, there’s value in being with the trenches with your teammates in order to do it. Only then, when you’ve gone from me to us, then can you actually get to it and get to that place of innovation and efficiency and excitement and…customer obsession that every CEO is dreaming of in this moment, but there’s a dissonance right now. And to your point of the overwhelm, I think there’s an element there in the me phase, which I think a lot of organizations are in right now, where it’s like, if you’re taking me through change, tell me specifically what you’re looking for for me. On the topic of change, there’s this fantastic book called Switch by the Heath brothers that
Emilia Ballesteros (07:45)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (07:46)
talk about how to manage change when change is hard. And they’ve got this great framework for how to handle it. And one of the key things they talk about is about scripting the critical moves. When things are ambiguous,
Emilia Ballesteros (07:56)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (07:58)
when you’re not sure where you’re going, you’ve to really dig deep on a management level, on an individual contributor level, and say, what are the specific habits and behaviors you want me to talk about? Don’t talk to me at a high level about we’re going in this direction and then leave it with me. One of the ways that you can really kind of manage the overwhelm is just being super clear in what you’re asking of people.
Emilia Ballesteros (08:12)
Okay. Okay.
Nate Wheeler (08:17)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, and I think that, I think the leadership doesn’t have the clarity a lot of times. Especially in the AI age. We’re thinking about it constantly. I recently got introduced to this open cloth thing. I don’t know if you guys know about that. It’s mind blowing. I watch YouTube videos of what these people are doing. is an AI employee running in the background doing all this stuff for you. You’re like, so I don’t really want to do that?
Emilia Ballesteros (08:39)
Okay. Okay.
Nate Wheeler (08:52)
However, can I compete with somebody who is doing that? I don’t know. And so, yeah, I mean, I think the leaders a lot of times don’t even know how to apply the technology. So let’s get a little bit deeper into that. tell me about a problem a company came to you with. They’re trying to do a digital transformation and… They had a very specific problem of getting management or staff to adopt this technology. Tell me about that conversation and how you kind of started the process of helping them fix it.
Josh Cardoz (09:27)
Yeah, great question. And just to kind of put it into context, our team, we specialize really in sort of Fortune 500 space, working with really large complex global organizations and really tackling their complex shifts with their people, shifts in behavior, culture, and capability. So that’s really kind of the sweet spot that I’m speaking from from an experience standpoint. And so we’re talking about global.
Nate Wheeler (09:46)
Yep. And just to qualify that real quick though, you can help smaller companies. Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (09:56)
Oh, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. I think it’s just some of the stories I’m going to share is probably more from the space of globally dispersed teams. talking and if we’re going to kind getting into tactical things, we’re talking about like localization, translation, getting the right voices in place. I think that’s that’s relevant factors for sort of a search size of org. But obviously, that can be cascaded down to smaller and mid-sized businesses as well, But the concept,
Nate Wheeler (10:10)
Yep. Yep.
Josh Cardoz (10:22)
the topic of digital transformation, you know, which is, which is quite hilarious, know, at least certainly in my career where it’s like, we spent so much time and, you know, my organization, Spongebob, know, we kind of have a strong legacy of digital transformation and digitization, digital learning space as well there too, where so much of the conversation, you know, 10 years ago even was about like, how do I just get more digital? How do I convert my binders and…
Nate Wheeler (10:56)
Right.
Josh Cardoz (10:48)
and legacy PowerPoint decks into e-learning. And today’s conversation now is almost about like, and how do I take that e-learning and convert it into AI agents or something like that? Because we need to move faster and we need to move quicker. And it’s almost like you’re having the same, it’s the same side of the coin for the conversation for me, because it’s the same sort of obsession over things like completion and speed and engagement and stuff like that. It’s like, do I make a program that people like or engage with and take? Which is important from a compliance standpoint? We’re talking certainly when we’re talking about safety, when we’re talking about adherence to risk and those things, it’s important to capture those types of things. But when I think about, how do you do transformation really well? Put aside all of that and really start moving away. And I’m speaking now sort of as a learning expert. We tend to over-index on knowledge. Something is happening and I need you to know something. So I’m going to take all this knowledge, I’m going to package into a nice little pretty e-learning. I’m going to make sure everyone takes it, check box, everyone knows what you need to do, and now go do it. That’s what I would classify as, I would call it the myth of the rational learner, where we just kind of show up and we assume everyone’s like, oh, hello, I’m motivated and ready to go to work. Please tell me
Emilia Ballesteros (12:05)
and that’s what.
Josh Cardoz (12:06)
what I need to do. And I’m going to go do it. And that’s not how we learn. That’s not how we change.
Emilia Ballesteros (12:11)
Four emails, six.
Josh Cardoz (12:14)
Exactly, exactly. And so the first thing I do when I engage with clients on whatever their transformation is, is let’s put the knowledge there. We’ve got the knowledge. We know we’ve got oodles of knowledge that we need to cram into things. Move away from knowledge and focus on behaviors. So what is the business trying to accomplish? First most important question. What’s the business trying to accomplish? What is the shift in your people’s behaviors that will help the business get there? Now let’s design around those behaviors. And that is the most, most important part. And you can still land on, but Josh, I still need to get all this knowledge in there. Yes. But then that knowledge is properly contextualized to what you’re asking of people or what you’re demonstrating what people need to be able to do. And I think to what you were talking about, Nate, I think sometimes we have to move so quick, especially for leaders, where it’s like big change coming, we need to get our people ready.
Nate Wheeler (12:57)
Right. Yep.
Josh Cardoz (13:11)
that we don’t really have the time to think about behaviors or to think about contextualization. All we have is the what message, not necessarily the why message or the how message. So I spend a lot of time upfront before we get to it can look like this experience blended e-learning
Emilia Ballesteros (13:12)
Okay. Okay.
Josh Cardoz (13:29)
simulations, 3D, like it’s so easy to jump to that kind of stuff. Before I do that, I start with customers. We start with customers and we say, what’s the behavioral goal here? What does desired behaviors look like?
Emilia Ballesteros (13:38)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (13:41)
And I would drill it down even further because I think you could say, well, we need to hit this safety target. Or we need to create this many widgets an hour. you know, whatever. Those are all lag indicators, right?
Emilia Ballesteros (13:49)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (13:56)
Those are all things where it’s like, OK, I can measure that on a business level would happen. What I’m interested about from a people enablement standpoint is, and what’s the thing I need you to do that has the best chance of getting me there? So think about it from what are those not only just the behaviors, but what are the behaviors in a lead indicator context that allow me to do that? So whether it’s about equipment, whether it’s about awareness, whether it’s about simple stuff like checklists. Did you do the checklist? Great. Well, we know that’s a higher chance than normal of hitting our safety target if you followed and checked off the checklist. So drilling down to specific behaviors by role, and saying, do more of these things and we have a better chance of going in this direction, that’s the starting point for how you get to a place of tangibility for not just engaging programs, but highly effective programs.
Emilia Ballesteros (14:52)
Very interesting. I feel as if in this industry we hear a lot now the resistance to change. And so when a customer approaches you, have they already decided that they need to make a big change or do they look to you to say, you know, what are the things that I need to change and enforce my workforce to do in order to reach this target? And how do you kind of overcome that with the culture aspect?
Josh Cardoz (15:22)
Yeah, great question. I often think sometimes when you’re a vendor, I think sometimes you exist simply to give your customers permission. It’s like they know it, they just can’t necessarily vocalize it. Or to your point, I culture is the operative word there, where it’s like,
Emilia Ballesteros (15:41)
Right.
Josh Cardoz (15:42)
culture doesn’t necessarily allow us to do it. There’s so much red tape, and I don’t know if it’ll land with people. And I always say as well, don’t worry, this is why you brought me on board is because I get to ask the obvious dumb question that might have a lot of arrows pointed at me by the end of a meeting, but I’ll ask it nonetheless because that is why at least I exist to help instigate that. So to the point of like, well, I’m worried that this isn’t gonna land with people. I’m worried that this is gonna go. My first place to start with is, well, how vulnerable are you willing to be? And I think the AI conversation is just a really good sort of like wide enough net for us to talk about it. And that is that no one really has a real good sense of what their AI strategy is. We’re all making this up in real time. Let’s be very honest with it. And the pressure from on top versus
Emilia Ballesteros (16:34)
Yeah.
Nate Wheeler (16:35)
Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (16:40)
down below is that all the investment decisions are made up on top. And then the assumption is that, well, our team will just figure it out. We’re bringing in new technology. We’re bringing in new equipment, we’re bringing AI optimized this, and we’ve been given all these promises, and then we’re leaving it to our people to help figure it out. And so my advice in sort of, don’t know, I don’t know, is go with that. Go with that if you are willing to. And if you can’t say it, I
Emilia Ballesteros (17:10)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (17:11)
bet you anything your managers will say it, if you give them the permission to, to say, I don’t really know if this is correct, but this is our best bet. for where we were trying to go. And this goes hand in hand for me about like, what are sort of the critical skills of change in this moment, right? What are the critical skills of change? And it may not feel obvious in the moment when you’re talking about sort of like highly technical training or very like, okay, well, I’m gonna pull people off the floor to do this training. They only have a limited amount of seat time or hours like that. I would highly advocate that every single person in an organization has a strong sense of commercial acumen.
Emilia Ballesteros (17:30)
Okay. Okay.
Nate Wheeler (17:39)
right
Josh Cardoz (17:46)
Know how the business makes money.
Emilia Ballesteros (17:49)
Okay. Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (17:49)
Because when you know how the business makes money, all of a sudden that change story or that, are they doing story, or I’m not sure about it, at least of all the ways that you can or can’t justify why your business is going in a particular direction, what you can say is to protect the health of the business and our shareholders or whatever it is that you want to be able to say, we believe this is the best direction that we’re going in. And that’s why we’re doing what we’re trying to do.
Emilia Ballesteros (18:16)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (18:16)
And it may not be perfect, but this is the plan for the next six months. And this is the role I need you to have it there, because we’re trying to protect jobs. We’re trying to create growth. We’re trying to whatever the reason may be. If you bring up the level of commercial maturity with your team, which sounds kind of a weird thing to say, it does help ease sort of the cultural pushback you may or may not get. So sort of a one-two punch for me of sort of radical transparency, commercial acumen, I think is a sound approach to that.
Emilia Ballesteros (18:28)
Okay.
Nate Wheeler (18:47)
Yeah, so, you know, and I’m still kind of like applying this to things that I’ve experienced in my business and, you know, kind of within the broader context of AI. A few years ago, or maybe just two years ago, I came to my development team and I said, listen, I’m hearing a lot about how developers are using AI to troubleshoot code issues, to develop websites faster. so I came to them with a very broad, indistinct goal of we need to figure out how to use this instead of saying we need to improve XYZ processes with this. And the results I got were dismal, right? Everything I suggested, this tool, that tool, I had done pre-research. They’re like, that won’t work for us because of this reason. That won’t work for us because of this reason. I’m like, okay, I guess we’ll just go out of business then, guys. So what did I do wrong there? Because I think everyone right now is dealing with that issue with AIs. They aren’t quite sure what part of their business is going to improve from it. And you could say everything, still not specific enough. So how do you use learning to, I guess, create goals and bring tangibility to that pretty intangible process?
Josh Cardoz (20:08)
First of all, you did nothing wrong. You did what every single one of us is feeling right now, which is just tremendous FOMO. You just go onto LinkedIn for less than five minutes, and then you feel like, I even have a career anymore? Because obviously there’s a bunch of people that for whatever different reasons that are
Nate Wheeler (20:24)
Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (20:33)
all in, and if you haven’t done this, then what are you doing with your life? And sure, there’s truth in that, but there’s also a ton of fiction in that as well too. And that’s what I mean when I say is that, and you know, I’ve had the chance to work with some really large organizations that are struggling with their AI strategy and the ones that you might think, well, they definitely know what they’re doing. They absolutely don’t know what they’re doing with their AI strategy. And I think part of it is just because of how vast the scale of this is. you know, the joke I was making with some colleagues the other day was like, it’s kind of like asking,
Emilia Ballesteros (20:53)
Okay.
Nate Wheeler (21:04)
Right.
Josh Cardoz (21:07)
someone in the year 2000, hey, we really need to do something about this internet thing. Can you go experiment with the internet and tell me what we should do with our, you know what mean? It’s like, we had no concept of that, you know? And it’s the vastness of AI. And we can talk about like, you know, what’s the value of AI when it comes to automation, when it comes to AI, when it comes to replacing human value, we can talk about AI in terms of augmenting human value. Like there’s just so much that you can go with.
Emilia Ballesteros (21:15)
But.
Nate Wheeler (21:15)
Right, Right. Mm-hmm.
Josh Cardoz (21:37)
But at least the recommendation that I have here is a couple of things. Pick your focus lane. That’s the first start. Get really focused on the problem. And it’s really hard to talk about AI on an island about like, what do we do about this AI thing? And get to a place where it’s actually really easy for people to talk about what they know about, which is their jobs. People know their work. People know their workflow. They know their tasks. And so the place that I would start from there is don’t talk about AI yet. In fact, I would say, let’s not talk about AI. Let’s put it in a box. Let’s just talk about work for the first half of the day. What’s easy? What’s difficult? What do you hate doing? What do you love doing? When are you at your best? Some very deeply human questions. What are the hard problems at work we’re trying to solve right now?
Emilia Ballesteros (22:23)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (22:28)
What’s our competitors doing that we feel is better than we’re doing? OK. Now we’re starting to unlock some real
Emilia Ballesteros (22:31)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (22:35)
challenges that we have at work. Okay, now let’s start to bring in some of the FOMO stuff. Well, I saw one guy do this with that. Could we take a portion off that task and say, is there a way that AI could help unlock it? As an example, I think also one of the ways that you can sort of focus the problem as well too is to just say, well, AI to improve my productivity, so to trim something down, or AI to extend my performance. So to go to a place of quality and performance that we’ve not necessarily gone before. And I think just sort of like shaving down the big AI question, which all of us are really intimidated by and saying, okay, and this is, and I’m using AI as an example here, we’re using AI as an example here, but this is really just stripping it back to how do we navigate change? How do we enable people? How do we give people purpose and clarity in what they’re trying to do? You give people tremendous ownership and clarity by saying, I don’t know how AI is going to affect your job, but you actually know it best. So talk to me about your job and talk to me about what you’re doing. And then let’s start to talk about how we can solution around it. It’s so much easier to start the conversation from there versus being overwhelmed from, well, AI is everything and all at once and who knows what we can do. I’m already discouraged and lacking confidence. I’m just going to switch the whole thing off.
Emilia Ballesteros (24:02)
Absolutely.
Nate Wheeler (24:05)
Yeah, Amelia, I’m interested in your perspective on this because I know that Presidium is really trying to build a technology centric manufacturing model.
Emilia Ballesteros (24:16)
Definitely.
Nate Wheeler (24:17)
What kind of challenges are you guys seeing in, you know, adoption of different technologies or maybe determining which ones are the right ones?
Emilia Ballesteros (24:27)
I think in what Presidium does, which is that we want to digitalize a lot of the manufacturing process so that it’s easier and more simplified. And we actually would love to use a lot of artificial intelligence to help create something like videos that can help the, let’s say an entrant that doesn’t have so much knowledge in the manufacturing space and how to make critical components and train them in a very quick way. What we’ve seen, of course, it’s a long process, right? It sounds easier than it’s done. And what I think is really important that probably a lot of people forget is that artificial AI is only going to be as good as the data that you’re able to give it. And that data collection aspect is super important in the sense, how do I standardize my process? Because if my process is sporadic and different and I’m doing it in different ways and my operator is making changes at the machine tool, but he’s not writing those down. so now, you know, he’s maybe solve the problem, that problem is not documented. And how then to say, want AI to do it. It’s you’re kind of stuck there. so maybe this is something that Josh can talk a little bit about is that when you work with a customer, do you feel that they have successfully collected the data and the resources that you need in order to help these processes? Because that’s what I think. We’ve seen a lot what we’ve learned and that’s what at least at the stage that we’re at in the company is. Seamless ways to connect the manufacturing ecosystem so that they all talk together, they all work together. But having that process is so important before AI ever is going to touch it.
Josh Cardoz (26:16)
Yeah, yeah, a fantastic sort of like, real time challenge, I would say is, know, there’s separating out and I think this is where like, we need to also manage expectations on what we think AI can do or can’t do. It’s like, I think there’s, there’s just such a strong element there of silver bullet or nothing.
Emilia Ballesteros (26:38)
Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (26:38)
that it’s, all, and like, I’ll put my cards on the table. It’s, I don’t have an AI offering to sell you or anything like that. And so I’m quite, I’m quite indifferent and quite neutral to it. Although obviously AI is part of what we do and offer, but I think it feels like either feast or famine when we’re talking about AI and just how, how clunky it can be when you’re talking about actually deeply human things. So inconsistency,
Nate Wheeler (27:03)
Right now.
Josh Cardoz (27:06)
for example, in approaches is age-old problem. know what I mean? Age-old problem in terms of, well, you could break it down to human error or inconsistency. But as I was mentioning Nate as well too, it’s like regional differences. So often we have worked with organizations where we’re trying to put together a single source of truth on this is how you operate this.
Emilia Ballesteros (27:14)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (27:31)
and this is how you conducted this type of workflow. And we instantly run into, we’ll go talk to our SMEs in Latam and go talk to our SMEs in EMEA. And all of a sudden we got five different versions of five different things. And they work for them in their regions. And so what are you supposed to do? Then that comes down to whether you’ve got a federated or decentralized model and all those types of things. And to blanket it and be able to say, well, you know, potentially not that I’m saying that’s what you’re trying to do here, Emilio, but it’s like, potentially AI can help us correct that or put us into a single piece of thing. I would say the starting point for me is one, what’s the best value to the business? And two, what’s the least frictionless path in order to get there? So if you feel like actually we’re moving in the direction the business wants to go, and it’s okay that we do five things in five different ways, as long as it’s done according to what, what the mothership wants us to do, okay. If we’re just trying to do this because we feel like, that’s what needs to be done, get ready for some human tension. Get ready for some, because, and this comes back to the change component there where it’s like, if you don’t feel, or if you don’t believe in the change, you’re not gonna change. That’s just,
Emilia Ballesteros (28:36)
Okay.
Nate Wheeler (28:40)
Right. Right.
Josh Cardoz (28:52)
and maybe that’s where the difference between, the AI overlords and human value, that’s the marked line in the sand where it’s like, it’s easy to change an algorithm and move in a direction. On a human level, if you’ve been doing the same thing for 10 years and you’re good at your job, yeah, exactly. And you’re good at your job. You know you’re good at your job. And someone’s telling you, now what made you great? I need you to do the opposite of that. I need you to move in that direction now. First question I’m going to have two questions for you.
Emilia Ballesteros (29:08)
Or 20 or 40, it’s like some guys.
Josh Cardoz (29:24)
without expletives, but the first one is gonna say why, and the second one is gonna be what’s in it for me. And this comes back to the me, us, it framework that I was kinda talking about where I was like, okay, you need to legitimately address these things.
Nate Wheeler (29:29)
Right.
Josh Cardoz (29:39)
And the answer can be, and this is where I’m not like, I’m not trying to be the people’s champion or something like that, I’m actually quite a pragmatist where it’s like, the answer can be because, everyone is using AI right now. Our competitors are using AI. If we don’t move quickly on this in the next six months, we might be out of business altogether. That can be a legitimate answer. You know what I mean? It may not appease the what’s in it for me, but it can certainly appease the why question. And I think sometimes from a corporate comms angle,
Nate Wheeler (30:01)
Right, Yeah.
Emilia Ballesteros (30:09)
Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (30:13)
sometimes I feel like we try to over polish the comms. We try to over polish the change strategy and say, well, you know, and the, in the degeneration numb piece, we kind of draw on Maslow’s hierarchy to say that, well, corporate comms tends to be at the top of the mountain when everyone’s actually all the way at the bottom, just in preservation mode and in survival mode. And it’s like, you can’t tell me about how exciting, you know, like the line always uses, you can’t get, tell me to get excited about our customers when I’m just worried about the price of bread. There’s a dissonance there. There’s a dissonance there about,
Emilia Ballesteros (30:36)
Okay. Okay.
Nate Wheeler (30:35)
Yeah. Yeah, it’s too big of a jump.
Josh Cardoz (30:47)
It’s too big of a jump. And so how are you going to build people back up? Even to the point of like, well, I may not like the approach and I may get along with it. But if you can convince my, group around me that I’ve been working with for 20 years around me, the same shifts or whatever, they’re starting to get into it or there’s proof that they’re doing it and it’s working. I may be more inclined to change as well too. So how do you build this up from me to us than to it? Super important, regardless of whether it’s AI enablement or whether it’s just about getting someone to change in general from what’s already worked for them in the past.
Nate Wheeler (31:19)
Yeah.
Emilia Ballesteros (31:22)
And I would say that that making them feel safe a bit and about you’re holding their hand through the process in a way and you’re because at least for in manufacturing, there was of course that there’s so much talk about automation and how do we get there. And so there was fear in people of, what if these robotic arms that I’ll take my job. And so a lot of the thing that we wanted to focus on, and that’s why I love what you guys do, is that we said we’re trying to augment the capabilities of people, not necessarily replace their jobs. Maybe that one day will come, but we’re not there yet, at least what we’ve seen. And so a lot of that cultural aspect, as you say, is so important so that people understand, I’m not going to be resistant to this change because I know that it will just help me do the job better and take away perhaps the things that I didn’t like doing before, but that it was a more repetitive task and now I can be more engaged in a different way. And I think that engagement is super interesting as well because if there’s some people who love learning, I love to learn, I love to never stop learning, but there’s kind of some people that say, you know, maybe I’m too old, like I’ve learned already. And I saw that you guys…
Nate Wheeler (32:56)
Yep.
Emilia Ballesteros (32:39)
to some gamification. And I would love if you said a little bit about that, talked a little about that because I think it’s a very underutilized but extremely valuable aspect that any company can employ and especially in the learning field. I think it’s super interesting.
Josh Cardoz (32:58)
Yeah, What I can do is I can draw on a specific example from actually something we won a Brandon Hall Award on. And it was working with sort of a power access federation and their operator training course. So we’re talking about training on mobile elevating work platforms. And this was a blended version to be able to get them better prepared for an in-person class. So we created a blended learning option in order to do it. And a key part of the gamification component over there, on top of, to all the things we were talking about, increasing localization, reducing cognitive load so that you could drill down to the specific equipment that you were trying to operate rather than having to take it all off. So those are actually technically gamification techniques. I can talk about that in a second. But one of the more appealing parts of this was that we did the whole thing through the lens of 3D simulations. Of course, when we’re talking about operating
Josh Cardoz (33:54)
large equipment that can be tremendously unsafe. You can, you’ll need to stretch yourself in terms of what’s possible and what’s not, certainly in terms of, in terms of simulations. And so 3D simulations really helped us there recreate things in a safe environment to talk about actually
Emilia Ballesteros (34:07)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (34:11)
some very unsafe things that could potentially happen as part of certifying it. And so there’s an element there in gamification that allows us to, one, draw on scarcity principles. So take something quite unique in terms of whether it’s a certification component that this is actually really valuable to you and this is what you need to be able to do, or to even just sort of use artificial elements within an experience to say, this is valuable. We’ve all played it, we played a Super Mario game in our lives. Everyone’s kind of chasing a mushroom. That’s scarce item to find. It makes us bigger, it gives us more performance. Good example of gamification to use over there. But what really worked in this, and I draw on this example because it was an award-winning
Emilia Ballesteros (34:46)
Good.
Josh Cardoz (34:54)
piece that we went over there is that the use of 3D simulations allows us to do some 3D storytelling and also allowed us to do some virtual simulations that typically when you’re doing certification you have to watch, watch, watch, consume, consume and then take a large test at the end. We got to embed those simulations and those questions within the program so it felt like just in time but also felt like you were more immersed in an experience.
Emilia Ballesteros (35:13)
Okay.
Nate Wheeler (35:19)
Hmm, very interesting.
Josh Cardoz (35:22)
And then part of that as well too that was quite powerful then is then we actually also, less so to do with gamification, but more sort of just about how you structure and experience like this really well, is because it was blended and we knew that eventually you had to go into a classroom and be a facilitator certified, is that we actually upskilled the facilitators as well to help them understand this is your brain on learning. So kind of giving them a crash course on learning for non-learning experts.
Emilia Ballesteros (35:31)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (35:48)
So to help them understand here are some learning tips and tricks to help you better. And we’re talking about subject matter experts, technical experts in the field who don’t necessarily look at them as learning experts per se, but training is part of the job. We helped kind of scaffold that. And obviously our team is a team of learning experts to say, hey, have you tried this technique for learning with that? Have you heard of cognitive load? Have you heard about tying things to learning objectives, all those types of things? So giving them a crash course on that, so then that way when people were better prepared entering into the workshop, they got an even richer learning experience.
Nate Wheeler (36:24)
That’s fascinating. Yeah, and I want to hear more about that. So let’s assume that somebody moved past the process, they did a good job of kind of establishing the why, know, relating relating that deliverable or that training back to the person’s job, helping them understand the value of it. How do most companies then fail with the actual training? And what are just some good practical tips you could give companies for, you know, just creating better training programs for their employees and helping them retain and use it?
Josh Cardoz (36:59)
Yeah, do we have another hour? I’ll
Nate Wheeler (37:00)
Yeah. Yeah.
Emilia Ballesteros (37:02)
Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (37:04)
start here and then maybe we can expand from there. I think the first one is, and I’ll talk specifically about modality here because I think that’s important. Most of the time in my experience, you know, sort of in the manufacturing space and trying to convert things into a digital context is you need to remember that it’s so much more than taking a manual or taking a textbook and say, now let’s go make a course out of it. It just like, the idea is not to say, well, I’m going to give you an e-learning version of a 200 page manual. Especially in 2026, you know, like it’s, especially when everyone is a tick tock away from learning everything that they want and they can consume all the learning in the world that they’re gravitating towards through whatever social media preferences they have. Yes, we have to live in that
Emilia Ballesteros (37:50)
Okay. Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (37:56)
world. And I’m not saying that everyone needs to be an influencer and suddenly making this amazing content. But what we do need to do is just be relevant. And relevance isn’t like showing up and dressing up in a banana costume and saying, hey, look at how engaging I can be. Relevance is actually more about, you understand my job? Do you understand what I’m trying to do every single day? And the best piece of advice I can give you is, and this comes back to sort of the, the piece of making it about me and developing behaviors and habits is look at that binder through the lens of what do you have to do tomorrow? Have empathy for my workflow is probably the best way that I could describe it to you. And the way that you can do that is really drilling down to specific behaviors. So when I give you that knowledge,
Emilia Ballesteros (38:28)
Okay. Okay.
Nate Wheeler (38:38)
Yep.
Josh Cardoz (38:49)
Convert that knowledge in real time into, this is what I’m asking for for you, or this is what this looks like in practice. The strong sense of application and modeling, hence why the 3D simulations were so successful in that thing that I was saying. Seeing is believing, plain and simple. And when you don’t have the means or the resources to go and recreate the things that could potentially go wrong or right in a situation, and you have the technology to access it and to immediately what you’re talking about, AI videos are like, perfect example of that where it’s like you can go towards a realm of possibility that you just couldn’t before. Lean into that.
Emilia Ballesteros (39:24)
I make mistakes.
Josh Cardoz (39:26)
Yeah, and make mistakes and create a safe space. And that can be an interactive medium as well to let people engage with the concepts rather than talking at them. And I think
Nate Wheeler (39:34)
Right.
Josh Cardoz (39:36)
that’s one of the biggest places you can go wrong is just sort of, you know, we call it in learning circles, we call it rote learning. The type most of us grew up where it’s like show up to a lecture, someone’s gonna talk at you for two hours, and I’ll go write a test. That’s not how we learn. And that’s certainly not how we learn in the workplace anymore where it’s like, here’s my goals, I’m too busy, don’t take me away from my job, I’ve got stuff to do, why is this really valuable to me? And a really sort of quick strategy I would say for how you can flip that model. There’s this model developed by some leading experts in the field who know.
Nate Wheeler (39:49)
Right. Yep. Right.
Emilia Ballesteros (40:08)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (40:13)
Mosher and Gottfriedsen, and they came up with this concept called the five moments of need. And it’s a really great way to think about the types of learning needs you have in a workplace context. What are the five moments of need? You’ll be familiar with the first two, and that is when that’s more applied to formal training, when I’m learning something for the first time or when I’m looking for new information. We tend to over-index on those two in terms of formal training. The other side of the five moments of need is what I would classify as more performance support. So a moment of need would be when things change. Oh, that’s a good one. When I can’t remember something. So forgetting curve,
Emilia Ballesteros (40:52)
Good.
Josh Cardoz (40:58)
know, especially when you’re so far removed from the learning event. So if you take a training in January, but you don’t really have to perform, maybe you’re moving to a new factory and that factory isn’t happening until September. How the hell am I supposed to know what I learned in January?
Nate Wheeler (41:11)
Right.
Emilia Ballesteros (41:11)
Okay. Okay.
Josh Cardoz (41:12)
that moment of need when I don’t remember, but I think even more important in this context is when things go wrong. So those five moments of need, we tend to only design for two, to that rational learner. like, everything’s gonna go fine, you’re gonna remember it all, and nothing’s gonna change, so I’m just gonna give you all the knowledge up front and go do it. But how are you designing for the other moments of need? So a good example of that is we…
Nate Wheeler (41:28)
Right, right.
Josh Cardoz (41:37)
do a lot of, certainly for like on the floor associates, we do a lot of customer cards, where if a customer’s walking into a showroom or whatever that may be, and you’re trying to think about a persona that you learned about, go into the back room, we’ve got these large posters printed out, and that persona’s there, like, oh, that’s customer, that’s what their motivators are, that’s what’s driving them. That’s a good
Nate Wheeler (41:57)
Yep.
Josh Cardoz (41:58)
example of when I can’t remember. I can just pull out a performance aid and it’ll allow me to do it. A checklist, the most simple version. Of a moment of need tool. I can’t advocate more for this good old fashioned checklist of like, do you remember
Nate Wheeler (42:07)
Right. Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (42:12)
the thing that you’re supposed to do? Good. No, you don’t remember it? Well, here’s a checklist to help you go check those five things. And all of a sudden, you’re taking control of that lead indicator that you’re chasing after for that lag indicator. So I would probably say like the biggest one I just do is like a practical learning level is designed for the five moments of need.
Emilia Ballesteros (42:18)
Okay.
Nate Wheeler (42:31)
Yeah, no, and I that makes so much sense too. I love the tip of like making it Directly applicable and relevant to the person because there’s two things that could happen number one You could be giving a safety briefing to everyone in the company a safety training Well, the person in the office has different risks and has different processes than the person operating the machine so the machine operators automatically gonna
Emilia Ballesteros (42:47)
Okay.
Nate Wheeler (42:54)
mentally shut off when that portion of the talk is done and when it comes time for him, he’s already shut off. That’s super smart. And then making it immediately applicable to what they’re doing, having those, I guess, interventions, if that’s the word. But I was just kind of thinking like, you know, before we go to the range of the Marine Corps, have your weapon safety brief, Treat every weapon as if it were loaded, never point a weapon at anything you don’t intend to shoot, all those ones. But when you’re going into combat, like it’s stupid to do that. Like we already covered that stuff. Like let’s focus on the immediate threats. So that makes a lot of sense.
Josh Cardoz (43:30)
Yeah, and you know, and, you know, the, the, technical term I would use there is just cognitive load, you know, like it’s, our brains are super categorizers. And that’s like, that’s like ingrained
Emilia Ballesteros (43:36)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (43:42)
in our flight or fight response, whereas like, we can quickly figure out information that is relevant to our survival or not. Like in the, in the, know, take that AI, you know, like we can, can, we can figure that out very quickly. And there’s, there’s just like a deep seated reason of why, and this was actually talking about process of how you arrive at these types of programs. To build a program that I was talking about first required us going to almost a year long process of talking to global SMEs about how do you do the things that you do and trying to cascade that into a single unifying narrative. That’s difficult. That takes time to be able to do.
Emilia Ballesteros (44:40)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (44:24)
And then the second part of it too, and so under that context, we’re talking about equipment certification. We’re talking about using it. And the previous version of that certification, we were working with quite a legacy program in the beginning, was that you had to take the entire program. Even if that meant that of the 10 vehicles, you were only going to operate one, you had to go through all the other nine. And even if maybe part of your credentialing, your accreditation is, no, sorry. That’s just the way that needs to be done. There are still ways of distilling that into a higher relevancy framework. So then at least start the training by saying, well, why don’t I give you control? So Amelia, you were talking about gamification. Giving me autonomy there. Instead of saying, is 300 slides that you will now need to get through, and I won’t allow you to go through it, give me control and say, as part of the certification process, you need to be up to speed with these 10 vehicles.
Emilia Ballesteros (45:12)
We’re gonna work.
Josh Cardoz (45:21)
Why don’t you tell me which one you want to start with? Instantly, I’m right. OK, I’m in control of my learning experience. And I
Nate Wheeler (45:25)
Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (45:27)
may have to do the other nine because that’s what the certification body requires. That’s OK. But at least I feel better about the ways in which I can engage it versus then saying you have to go through this monolith click to explore start to finish experience. So giving the learner more autonomy in their learning experience is just kind one of the simple hacks in a gamified way to make them feel like they’re more in control of their experience.
Emilia Ballesteros (45:49)
Love it. Love it.
Nate Wheeler (45:50)
Yeah, I like that a lot. That’s one practical tip. think any manager can take and apply giving people some autonomy in their learning. I love that.
Emilia Ballesteros (46:02)
Josh, there is something I really wanted to ask you. Do we still have time for one more minute? Okay.
Nate Wheeler (46:02)
Well Yeah, we’re good no no yeah
Emilia Ballesteros (46:09)
So I got to change the subject a little bit, but I think it’s really important given the global scope. think learning is definitely a means to an end. And I love how your company has really made learning a product that you deliver versus something that’s an afterthought. I at least from my experience I’ve seen I’ve spoken to enough people to know that sometimes a manager or the director is afraid to make the investment in learning because what happens if I spend all this money to train some employees and now they are they take their newfound knowledge on my investment and go to another company that perhaps pays them a little bit more because they now have these skills. And so at least I’ve seen in my direct industry that
Emilia Ballesteros (46:55)
People are afraid to make that investment because they don’t know how long that employee is going to retain in their workforce. So have you encountered that?
Josh Cardoz (47:08)
are we allowed to drink on this podcast? It’s,
Nate Wheeler (47:13)
it.
Emilia Ballesteros (47:14)
Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (47:17)
it’s, the ROI of learning conversation is just the most fascinating one, Isolating human performance based on a learning intervention, it’s really difficult. It’s just. people are nuanced and complex and you can’t say that, well that happened because of that training and being able to do that. And so I’m happy to kind of go on my soapbox and talk about the different ways that we try and defend that and rationalize that. But to your specific question, Amelia, about like, okay, well, is the talent investment worth the talent retention to a certain degree? And the way that I would, I’ve had this conversation a few times, that’s why.
Emilia Ballesteros (47:57)
Exactly. Much, better phrasing.
Nate Wheeler (48:01)
Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (48:03)
The way that I would frame it is actually is the opportunity loss over here. What’s the value, and you could quite easily quantify that I would say, what is the risk of not investing in that individual to not hit the goals that you, to not give them the skills that you need to hit the goals that you need? What’s the opportunity loss there versus training in them? And hopefully giving them skills that they feel valuable in their career and you’re enriching your employee value proposition and you’re enriching their careers and they feel like actually I’m working at a company that invested my career and my skills and that’s the reason for me to stay at my company. So that’s one check on top of the check of their performance. I’m pretty sure that nets out at minimum even if the fear is that they’re gonna take that skills and take them to a competitor. Maybe that would be sort of my pushback on that per se. Because usually the conversations I tend to have is, why should I spend all this type of money when I don’t really know if I’m going to get ROI on this program at the end of the day? You know what I mean? But especially in light of all the things that we’ve been talking about for the last little while, where people are disenchanted with work. There used to be a time, I think about. Silicon Valley in the early aughts, think about the golden age of the auto sector. There’s a time when people, there’s just a tremendous badge of honor for, I work for Ford. I work for General Motors. You know what I mean? And I believe that purpose is still there.
Emilia Ballesteros (49:36)
Yeah.
Nate Wheeler (49:39)
Right.
Josh Cardoz (49:45)
That motivation is still there. But you need to invest in your people in order to get there. And I think of all the different, things that are working against you in this time. One of the things that actually are in your control is, well, I don’t really know what’s going to happen next year in terms of my competitors, AI enablement, the economy. I don’t. But what I do know is that if I invest in my people, they will recognize it and they will appreciate it as one of the reasons why they should stay with.
Nate Wheeler (50:12)
And correct me if I’m wrong, Josh, but a properly constructed learning framework or training program does actually reduce employee turnover risk because you now have an asset that’s going to make it easier to onboard somebody new, right?
Josh Cardoz (50:30)
Absolutely. What I always like to say is onboarding is the best investment any organization can make in terms of their training program. Because you only get one shot to have a good first impression. And this is your best first impression for employee walking in the door, who is completely scared, doesn’t know anyone, doesn’t know if they made the right choice joining their company. And you’ve got this amazing opportunity to say, hi, you’re welcome here. We value your skills. We’re going to invest in your skills.
Nate Wheeler (50:43)
Yeah. I’ve screwed that up. Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (50:59)
this is where we’re going, we’d love for you to be a part of that journey. You just get one shot to get that right. But the good, but I think a lot of us talk, ask any learning company how good their onboarding is. It’s just kind of a thing. It’s kind of like consulting companies as well too. But there’s an element there to your point of worst case that person leaves, next person up, you’ve got a streamlined
Emilia Ballesteros (51:04)
So sure.
Josh Cardoz (51:25)
way to increase their time to productivity.
Emilia Ballesteros (51:25)
Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (51:28)
And I think there’s an onboarding just as a good sort of, a good perfect combo of heart, head and hands that needs to be really well accomplished in a training program. It’s like, yes, there’s a strong what component I need to get you up to speed as quickly as possible so I can have you be a productive employee. But I also need you to get bought in so that when things, when times are tough, you feel bought in. And when times are good, you realize that you contributed to that as well too. So getting that blend between those things is super important. Don’t cheap out on your onboarding would be my advice to
Emilia Ballesteros (52:00)
The onboarding is so important. So happy you brought that up because even I was helping in my father’s company of it. We were looking at kind of the issues and things that we can make better. And on that list was what, how much time do you spend the general manager? How much time does she spend on onboarding people and how the headache that it is when someone leaves, when it’s okay, if someone leaves, it happens. But then how much time does she spend on now sending the emails of, this is what you need from what to wear to how to show up and all of these tasks that I think it’s undervalued sometimes the onboarding process.
Josh Cardoz (52:43)
And it’s not just functional onboarding too. I think that’s the other thing is like, sometimes I’ll talk to people teams and be like, yeah, we’ve got our onboarding. And it’s mostly on the people management side of things. We fill out your forms, we’ve got your equipment, we’ve got your badges, all that kind of stuff ready to go. Yes, of course that’s important. But the other part of it for me is like the human onboarding. What’s the community you’re joining? What’s the, to the point of like from me to us to it, it’s like, your job becomes so much easier when you’re psychologically safe. So what’s the speed to psychological safety? Onboarding has a role in that. And believe me, your speed to productivity just exponentially increases when you feel psychologically
Nate Wheeler (53:29)
Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (53:31)
safe. But when you’re coming back to our brains being master categorizers, is that like, of course my… my lights are up when I’m entering a space that I don’t know any of these people and all of a sudden I need to go spend a third of my life with them. So how are you going to make sure that you create a, and to your point Amelia, but manager specifically, what’s the role of a manager to create psychological safety that allows productivity to increase as quickly as possible? So really head, heart and hands need to be working in tandem in onboarding.
Nate Wheeler (54:01)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Emilia Ballesteros (54:01)
just love it.
Nate Wheeler (54:03)
mean, this is great stuff. Really any type of business I think can benefit from doing a better job, not just onboarding, but training in general. And I think you guys’ knowledge and how to, you know, if we limit it to onboarding, you guys’ knowledge of that emotional buy-in and of all the different components of creating a good, know, captivating learning experience, all that stuff going together, it very hard to replicate without the years of knowledge that you guys have.
Josh Cardoz (54:34)
It’s the, I think it’s also a point of view to be honest with you, Nate. Like, you know, like, I think a lot of, I’m gonna be careful here not to toot our horn too much because, but I just frankly kind of believe in it. There’s so much about onboarding that is actually storytelling. And, you know, like every org has their mission, vision, values that, you know, sit up somewhere in an office or a website and.
Nate Wheeler (55:28)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (55:03)
It’s collecting dust. And that’s actually a fantastic opportunity to make that stuff come alive. know, and so our process, for example, when we tackle something like onboarding is actually we go to that corporate lip service place and we go, what does that actually mean? You know, and you’ll hear this from a people team. like, it’s important that people take our values training. I would say it’s important that people live your values, not take your values training. You know what I mean? And so what
Emilia Ballesteros (55:17)
Okay.
Josh Cardoz (55:30)
we really try and do is tell the story of an organization. Tell the story of the founder. Tell this, you know, who typically has the strong entrepreneurial amazing story that started from nothing and then all of a sudden we’re doing this and now we’re 5,000 people globally. Like, that’s a motivating story, certainly for a day one employee. Something to get connected to you, to the point of being re-enchanted with the employer. And yes, you know, what’s the next chapter of the business? Where is it going? What, you know?
Emilia Ballesteros (55:47)
you Okay.
Nate Wheeler (55:35)
Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Cardoz (56:00)
Can we talk about when times were really tough for the org 10 years ago or 20 years ago? How did we find our way through it? All of these things matter in terms of the lore, the world building you’re trying to do, which sounds kind of like hokey, but actually it really matters for an employee who’s kind of like, I don’t know if I joined the right company. And our job is to come in and extract the best possible story. like, you’ve joined a great team, joined a great company. And for all the warts every organization in the world has, and you can pick it apart, there’s also lot of good that you should be connected and attached to. And don’t worry, you’re gonna find your community. Here’s your manager, here’s your buddy, here’s the check-ins you’re gonna have. And so the emotional onboarding, emotional resonance in onboarding is something that we take quite seriously, regardless of the company.
Nate Wheeler (56:46)
That’s great. Well, I will be sure to include some links to your website and to you if you’d like to share them in the bio of the video and stuff like that. And I am sure there’s people that want to reach out and learn more about what you guys are doing and how you can help their companies. But really love the conversation today. I learned a lot myself. And thanks for jumping in, Amelia. I enjoyed your questions as well. That was great.
Emilia Ballesteros (57:13)
this is great. Thank you so much for inviting me, Josh. Thank you so much for letting me crash the interview. When they
Josh Cardoz (57:20)
Yeah
Emilia Ballesteros (57:21)
send me a couple of topics, I rush to pick this one because I really know how important it is and… I would love for everybody working to feel like they work for the best company in the world and that they love it and that they share the passion. And as a person that I always say, I’ll never want to stop learning. I love this topic. I wish we could talk for longer. And thank you so much for sharing everything you did.
Nate Wheeler (57:43)
Awesome.
Josh Cardoz (57:46)
Thank you both. This was a great chat and anytime you want to do this again, let me know.