In this Brandon Hall Group™ Excellence at Work Podcast, Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer, engages in an insightful conversation with Ryan Austin, Founder and CEO of Cognota, Josh Cavalier, Founder and CEO of joshcavalier.ai, and Matt Mason, Talent Operations Leader at Truist Financial. They explore how Learning Operations is transforming workplace learning by driving operational excellence, business alignment, and measurable impact at scale. The discussion explores how organizations can transition from manual, siloed processes to create unified, data-driven learning functions that deliver strategic business value.
Key Discussion Points:
- Learning Operations Definition: Understanding LearnOps as the “boring but important” foundation that unifies workflows, eliminates silos, and creates systematic approaches to learning and talent development investments
- Business Alignment Imperative: Shifting from initiative-based thinking to investment-focused strategies that directly support CEO priorities and corporate objectives, with 30-40% of HR budgets under pressure
- Operational Excellence Crisis: Recognizing that under 10% of learning and talent functions operate at peak performance, creating urgent need for unified data, streamlined processes, and efficiency gains
- ROI and Impact Focus: Moving conversations from “butts in seats” and instructional design templates to dollars, cents, FTE time savings, and quantifiable performance improvements that resonate with business leaders
- AI Integration Maturity: Progressing through phases from basic chat tools to autonomous AI, with most organizations still in early maturity stages requiring process optimization before advanced technology implementation
- Data-Driven Decision Making: Accessing structured and unstructured data to enable real-time personalization, automated learning experiences, and measurable business impact across global organizations
- Talent Retention Strategy: Creating healthy organizations through operational alignment that reduces attrition while maturing talent capabilities in the age of human-machine collaboration
- Strategic Transformation: Elevating learning operations from cost centers to strategic business functions that provide fiduciary responsibility for company investments and competitive advantage
- Future Workforce Evolution: Redefining roles like instructional designers as “human machine performance analysts” who measure collaboration between humans and AI systems
The future of workplace learning lies in Learning Operations that unify data, workflows, and business strategy to create scalable, efficient learning functions. Ryan, Josh, and Matt’s insights demonstrate how learning professionals can transform from order-taking support roles to strategic business partners who drive measurable ROI, operational excellence, and organizational performance while maintaining focus on both business outcomes and workforce development.
Social Media Handles:
Cognota – https://www.linkedin.com/company/cognotahq/
Ryan Austin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanaustin3/
Josh Cavalier – https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshcavalier/
Matt Mason- https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewthomasmason/