The PHIT Podcast with Ben Kite – “I’ve got a brand new car! It’s not a…”
Joining us on this week’s episode of the PHIT Podcast, we are putting the human back into technology and talking to Learning Tree International‘s UK Managing Director Ben Kite. Learning Tree are a Microsoft Gold training partner and Learning Tree are a global organisation, Ben heads up the UK and EMEA arm of Learning Tree.
You will need to read to the end or listen to the end of the podcast to understand the cryptic joke in the title above, I don’t want to give it away it but it involves a new car, seats and family members.
It was a really enjoyable interview, thanks to Ben for coming and being our guest.
You can also watch the podcast on our YouTube channel
Tell me a little about what you do, your business, job role?
Ben is the Managing Director of Learning Tree International’s EMEA region. “We deliver Learning Solutions globally, mainly in the IT / PM / Leadership space. That’s traditional learning solutions but also increasingly consultancy and coaching on wider strategic transformation”.
My responsibility is to Lead the UK and EMEA Operations encompassing Sales / HR / Tech / Operations & Programme Management. Some corporate functions such as Marketing / Product Development sit in the USA. My background is Sales but I’ve learnt that many other areas need to join up to deliver together successfully.
How has the last year impacted your business?
The core parts of our business remain learning delivery. We quickly realised that during the pandemic organising “Public gatherings” was going to be hard! We went through the unknown, assessing the impact on business. We pivoted to run everything virtually both for LT’s own infrastructure and the learning platform. The Solutions side [Learning exclusive to a client] stayed reasonably constant, Open Public courses did take a hit. Pre pandemic we had 30% virtual attendees and 70% attendees in classrooms, quickly we reached 100% virtual attendees.
“We learnt that some [UK] Customers were not accustomed to virtual learning and our International Customers were neither flying in [to the UK public course] ”.
“However, we saw a progression, a sort of ripple effect during last year”.
Initial indications from our clients were to wait until physical classrooms returned, then customers started changing their minds. “A realisation then set in that there are certain decision points/times and customers need to decide, whether they don’t get their learning and don’t move forwards or, bite the bullet, go virtual and make progress”.
“One good aspect of the last year is that the majority of our customers have now have sampled virtual learning, and this has accelerated Virtual learning culture by several years”.
“Customers are realising the benefits of virtual learning such as cost efficiencies and flexibility and as we’ve been steadily moving not just our delivery but also many other aspects such as our content to be right for virtual learning, we were probably ahead of many and perhaps now have a competitive edge as a result.”
There are lots of advantages to modularising courses however we’re still learning what best practice might be particularly on organising attendees to attend such modularised public courses. From our side going virtual has perhaps made modular delivery easier…most instructors now deliver from a home studio setup which makes a commercial proposition easier.
How do people fit into your IT departments/business delivery model?
The instructor community is fundamentally critical to our success. Our model is to identify independent expert consultants, so we don’t have any salaried trainers and we aim to turn them into expert facilitators of learning. We think that helping our instructors convey their practical work-based experiences is vital to achieving successful learning outcomes for people being trained.
We have 3 main Pillars for our people
- Sales Pillars – develop relationships
- Programme Management – delivering blended, multi-model learning solutions
- Service delivery – operational focusing on coordination around content and the learner experience
In addition, there are support functions in the business such as technology, HR, finance which all help everything go around.
How have different types of people coped?
Some more used to Hybrid working, I used to say “I don’t want to see my salespeople at all” so they are with customers, and they’ve probably coped fairly well. Others are perhaps more reliant on the office such as Finance who have perhaps been on the biggest learning path.
I’ve been more impressed with how we as a company have adapted to pivoting not just the learning delivery but how our whole structure worked”.
We’ve proved to ourselves that the remote working structure can work really well, however, there are elements such as the social discussions “strategy by coffee!” that are missing! So there will be some hybrid versions no doubt.
Globally our operations were at different stages of virtual. Here in the UK perhaps we were at 30% the Virtual learning culture was more mature in USA maybe 50%. The further you go east…the less mature the virtual learning culture appears to be. And then there are other cases like Sweden, which most know have a very different approach to dealing with the pandemic, who have a different culture again.
How do you drive value from data /technology for your business? Are you on a cloud journey – which cloud? And are you there yet?
Clearly delivering virtual learning mandates the cloud but there’s more to do. Looking at the Technology first, data how do we use it? We use it for all sorts of reasons, such as buying trends, to analyse and inform product offering, scheduling and tracking specific to the client.
We’ve also developed our Learning Management Platform, which hosts a number of different components for a learner’s journey specific to that learner. Our social platform allows the clients to promote peer to peer promotion of learning.
We work in collaboration with our clients to help them evidence the ROI they achieve from the learning.
Who is best placed to drive transformational change?
Leaders must drive the transformation – it is not about the actual technologies, it has to be about the business objectives, not just the technology. Driving this change doesn’t start with “what is digital transformation” training…it has to start with the outcome and what the business wants to achieve.
The areas to drive transformation for most though are – Cloud, which is at the centre of digital transformation. But aligned to that is the human element, organisations are most successful when they have a robust methodology to underpin the technology transformation model, to help their humans. [we couldn’t agree more Ben], Agile and Dev ops are common here. Our curriculum will grow the most in these areas and also the Cyberthreat.
What advice would you give your younger self or those starting or changing their career into the IT industry?
My advice is simply:
- Focus on personal effectiveness as well as technology – I realise that the role of technology is much broader than 15 years ago. If you’ve got the technology aptitude AND the ability to build relationships, you’ll go far.
- Look at a broader range of tech skills to focus on…so you can migrate quickly to working with others in the team.
Tell me a fun fact about yourself that perhaps nobody else knows about you?
So, the punch line is – “I’ve recently bought a new car”.
It’s a little bit embarrassing, my new car, couldn’t fit my family in
I was in the market for an Audi A5, it’s a nice family car. My wife calls it the mid-life crises car. I test drove some, wasn’t in a hurry and wanted a “deal” and, eventually, a deal came along. Dealer said ” it’s a convertible, but the deal needs to be done today!” I said “I’ll take it”
But, when delivered, I realised it’s a slightly different arrangement to a normal A5! There are only 2 seats in the back not 3 and the soft top takes up a lot of boot space. We are a family of five so the next 18 months might be interesting!
You can view our previous episodes here
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