Brain Aware Podcast

Plumbing for Success: How Building Infrastructure Enables Organizational Change

• Brain Aware Training • Season 1 • Episode 5

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JD Dillon takes us on a fascinating journey from Disney theme park manager to learning and development leader, sharing powerful insights about enabling frontline workers and navigating workplace change. Drawing from his 25 years of experience "being a frontline worker, managing frontline teams, or enabling support for frontline employees," JD offers a refreshingly practical perspective on organizational transformation.

The conversation explores a pivotal moment in JD's career when his L&D position was eliminated during recession cuts, forcing him to return to operations management literally overnight. Rather than asserting authority, he built trust by working alongside his new team members, creating relationships that proved invaluable when operational challenges arose. This experience shaped his philosophy that "the best way to manage change is to help others do the same."

JD shares three fundamental strategies that guide his approach to workplace transformation: providing meaningful context that connects to daily realities, over-communicating while keeping messages simple, and practicing genuine transparency that treats employees as trustworthy adults. He advocates for L&D professionals to think of themselves as "organizational plumbers," focusing on creating adaptive infrastructure rather than just producing content.

The conversation takes a particularly powerful turn when JD reveals his ongoing struggle with public speaking anxiety - something you'd never guess from his polished presentation skills. Rather than eliminating fear, he learned to channel that energy productively - a metaphor for how we might approach organizational change more effectively.

Looking toward the future, JD discusses his upcoming book, "The Frontline Enablement Playbook," which aims to elevate conversations about the 70-80% of global workers on the frontlines. His message throughout is clear: by understanding the day-to-day realities of frontline workers and creating systems that support them through change, organizations can build more resilient, adaptive workforces ready for whatever comes next.

Announcer:

Welcome to the Brain Aware podcast, where we explore the science of success. Today, we're joined by JD Dillon, a passionate advocate for frontline workers whose career has taken him from Disney theme parks to becoming a leader in learning and development. Get ready for an inspiring discussion about navigating change and enabling success in organizations. And now your hosts, Dr Britt Andreatta and Justin Reinhardt. Welcome, JD Dillon.

Britt Andreatta:

Thank you for joining us, JD. I'm super excited to have this conversation with you and just learn more about what you're up to. Tell us a bit about yourself and your career journey.

JD Dillon:

Thanks so much for having me on the pod. I started out managing movie theaters and theme parks, so that's where I came from. I started out managing movie theaters and theme parks, so that's where I came from. I worked for Disney for about 10 years doing a whole bunch of different things. So I managed at one point big Thunder Mountain Railroad. I managed a giant indoor interactive arcade. I managed custodial operations and then I was a jungle cruise skipper.

JD Dillon:

I did a bunch of different stuff in the entertainment hospitality world before transitioning into learning and development as an operations manager.

JD Dillon:

I was always a bit HR oriented or I was a bit kind of the person who developed additional training curricula really focused on frontline employees, helping them do their jobs effectively. That took me into that kind of right time, right place, right skill set moment of becoming an L&D professional, because I have no formal training in what I actually do for a living, just been figuring it out as I go. So I transitioned into learning and development at Disney, then went on to work in contact center operations as an L&D professional. Now I've been on the technology side of learning and enablement for the past nine years with Exonify, again with the continuous focus and, I'd say the overall theme of my career has been helping frontline workers and enabling the people that our organizations, as well as our communities, rely on to do the heavy lifting. My entire 25-year career has been spent either being a frontline worker, being a manager of frontline teams or in some way enabling support and performance for frontline employees.

Britt Andreatta:

That's where the work gets done right. The heavy lifting is done at the frontline, with the folks dealing with the product of the issues every day.

Justin Reinert:

Absolutely so. JD, thinking back on your career, you've probably gone through a lot of different changes. Career you've probably gone through a lot of different changes. I'm curious if you wouldn't mind sharing just one that was memorable, either one that was, you know, maybe went smoothly, or one that was particularly challenging.

JD Dillon:

I can wrap both concepts smooth and unsmooth into one example recessions, if you rewind about 15 years or so. At this point I, like many other L&D and HR professionals and professionals at large but I think other L&D and HR professionals and professionals at large, but I think the L&D and HR community has a particular relationship with workforce reductions and layoffs. So I have seen that relationship take place in every job I've ever had. When organizations make budget cuts and when it impacts people, talent acquisition gets hit first, learning and development gets it second in a lot of ways. So I was unfortunately in one of those positions at that point. But I was lucky in the fact that my job was eliminated but I was not removed from the organization. So I, by the grace of my boss's boss, was saved, but my job wasn't there anymore. So I was no longer an L&D professional. I was sent back into operations management where I had previously worked before becoming an L&D pro. So literally overnight I went from building instructor-led training sessions focused on guest service and the next day I'm managing the world's busiest roller coaster.

JD Dillon:

And it was a bit of a whiplash, not a great experience at the time A lot of sadness, a lot of people left the organization. You know everything that you go through through one of those experiences but at the same time, a significant learning opportunity of what it's like, relatively early in my career, to be faced with the unexpected, to manage my way through it and understand what's important and what helps you and others get through. To the other side of the conversation and you know everyone there's that kind of trite comment that everything's a learning experience and you don't feel like that at certain moments, but it is true. It's a moment in difficult or uncertain times that I often look back to to say, well, what made that change or transition successful or meaningful to me and what can I take, given that I'm in a different place now professionally? It's been several years since that particular moment. It's an important moment in the overall story of my career and my life, so it's something I continuously reflect on, especially in those moments where you don't quite know what tomorrow is.

JD Dillon:

And that's kind of one of those moments for me.

Justin Reinert:

Yeah, thank you. I can totally identify with that 2008,. I was in one of those L&D roles that was cut. At the time it was so devastating I was just devastated. I thought I was going to retire with that company. In retrospect, it was the best thing that ever happened to my career. It's funny how time gives us that perspective. I'm curious if there's any other key learning from that that you hold today.

JD Dillon:

I would say the biggest lesson I took away from that moment was that sometimes the best way to manage change is to help others do the same. I went from sitting in my office building media-based content to the next day I'm in a completely different outfit, learning something completely different at like seven o'clock in the morning that I only found out the night before where I was going. So I joined the new location and instead of becoming the manager right away I you know I was I was going through it, but at the same time I also knew that the entire team that I was now joining that did not know me. They had lost several members of their management team in the same rift, and I liked several of those people. So I spent a lot of time working side by side with my front-line team, sometimes working 12 plus hours a day in the area, before I ever attempted to play the role that I was meant to play, or kind of take on the responsibility of being a manager. I thought that was the most effective way to be helpful during a busy time. Rather than tell other people what to do, help them do the work. I thought it would be a better demonstration of who I was going to be as part of the team. It was about me putting their interests and their needs forward, as opposed to me trying to figure out what my next career move was at that particular time, and it helped me navigate through the change because I was focused on the job for a period of time, as opposed to trying to think big at that moment or trying to make big decisions. I can zoom into something that I've done for a long time and done really well, in my opinion, in operations help guests have a great time. Help the team be successful, help them solve problems that I understand how to solve, even though I'm new to the area. In doing so, try to help people see what type of addition I'm going to be to this team. I put the team and the work first for a little while before starting to think about well, what does this mean to me? Where am I going? What's my plan? What I think became very apparent very quickly was that move and that focus on well, how do I help other people who are going through different versions of change? Because I don't know the people individually, I don't know their relationships. We're with people who are no longer here, but I know there's significant change impacting everyone involved in the story. Well, how do I make myself available and helpful for a little while, start to foster the trust and relationships I'm going to need moving forward? And how quickly that turned around because, quite literally on my first night in charge, you fast forward a week or two into the story.

JD Dillon:

After I joined the team, I slam into a relatively hilarious but unfortunate wall of operational challenge. People still talk about that night. It ended with me having to call an executive to explain things. You know it's one of those. Anyone who's ever been an operational manager, you know what it's like. When you got to make that phone call and it starts with hi, you don't know me, I'm the new guy.

JD Dillon:

Let me explain what just happened. It wasn't super bad, it was just disruptive, right, it wasn't anything big like a story. It was one of those like and that happened too type of type of evenings. And the only way I get through that shift is by relying on the frontline team, because they had been in place for in several cases, several years, in some cases several months all more experienced than me in the operation, so they knew what to do. So it was more about me stepping back and trusting this team that I had been asking to trust me for a couple of weeks at that point and rely on them to get me through that challenging moment. It was one shift but it shaped the way I think about the relationship as a manager to the front-line team, what it means to foster relationships and trust, what it means to delegate and all of these different things kind of added up to that. If you put people first and you think about the fact that we're going through it together, despite the fact that there is obviously a very personal nature to change, there's benefits to be yielded on the other side and what that can turn into. So it's guided kind of my perspective since then.

JD Dillon:

But it was just kind of interesting how it kind of all comes to. At one particular moment You're like thank goodness I have the benefit of relying on other people around me because otherwise I'd be one of those many managers out there thinking I don't know how to do this. Where do I go for help? Do I have to make a guess about how to solve a particular problem and make sure guests are happy? In my case I got to rely on the team, a lot of whom were interns. That was was. If you look at any busy hospitality operation, a lot of people who work late shifts are usually younger, a little less experienced. They're not the higher tenure people on the bid lines. In my case, a lot of interns who'd been there for just a short period of time executed so well that not only taught me a lot, made me look good when I had to make that phone call to the executive because we got the job done. It was just one of those technical things happen, then this happens, then that happens.

Britt Andreatta:

So it's kind of change on change on change that all ended up working out pretty well. Going through a rift is so disorienting. I ended up writing the first edition of this book when we went through the acquisition with LinkedIn, buying Linda, which was equally disorienting for a variety of reasons, and I got to keep my job. It's interesting how those moments make us look at like oh, what is change and how do I successfully navigate this and take other people through it? You actually have hit some of the best practices in managing change just from your natural instinct to pay attention to what's happening to people and how do I listen to them. I want to bring us up to today, because we're in the middle of chaos right now, it seems like in the world. I'm wondering what kind of changes you're navigating right now and what's up for you, as we are all looking at this kind of confusing future.

JD Dillon:

I work in technology, so you can probably guess where this conversation starts to lead, and I don't know if, in this industry, you're allowed to have a conversation without saying AI within the first 15 to 20 minutes. But it's not just about the buzz and the hype and the oh, let's slap AI on the booth at the expo and, as a result, what is exciting? I look at this as a fundamental rethink about the nature of how work is done through technology, and it's not about adopting a different tool set or when do you use AI versus when do you not use AI. I believe this is just a rethink of the workplace ecosystem through technology, as has been done several times before now just happening in kind of its own unique, accelerated way. But still a lot of hype and promise over here and then a lot of very real, practical decision-making. In reality, there's no way to avoid this conversation.

JD Dillon:

Regardless of what you do, if you work in technology, it's very much in your face. You start to wonder about, well, the practices that you adopted yesterday. Are they still relevant today? On the other side, there's the opportunity of well, I can do things today that I simply couldn't do yesterday. There was a very much a time where there was no way I was ever thinking well, if I'm going to speak at an event in South Korea, I can translate all of my materials and appear in a version of myself speaking Korean at that event. That was not a thing, and now suddenly it is a. Technology is shifting how you not just do the job, but think about the type of work you do. Which work is handled by a person, which work is not handled by a person.

JD Dillon:

There's a lot of smoke and mirror conversation around this particular change. The unfortunate reality is that we have to navigate this shift while navigating a bunch of other things that are impacting people who did different types of work in different types of industries. There's ever a time to have a meaningful conversation about what it means to properly navigate change. It always feels hectic in the moment. I'm not going to say a big conversation to be had around things like managing change, managing burnout, those types of factors. The question is are organizations and professionals alike putting aside the time and resource to do it? Because, frankly, the biggest problem I see happening right now in the AI transformation space actually has nothing to do with the technology itself. It's the fact that I see an unfortunate number of organizations managing this transformation through loose experimentation. Let's say there's a lot of. Let the employees play and figure out what can the technology do and what practices are they adopting. That's how we'll manage perhaps the most significant digital transformation of work in a generation, as opposed to a more strategic allocation of resources to help people navigate this change.

JD Dillon:

I don't think there's anything wrong with people experimenting. It's all in a risk-free and smart way. But at the same time, how many people out there, regardless of what you do for a living, are sitting on extra time where you can just say you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to carve out a few hours this week to work with some new tools. So I think, when it comes to any significant change that you're looking to make in an organization or as a professional, time is one of the biggest variables and if we don't afford people time to work their way through or have the right conversations or experiment, we might end up either lagging or just making strange decisions. So the AI thing I just think there's a bigger conversation to be had. That's not specifically about technology. Ai thing.

Justin Reinert:

I just think there's a bigger conversation to be had that's not specifically about technology. Yeah, brent and I were fortunate enough to see a speaker a couple of weeks ago and he was talking about, you know, this transition of AI and how organizations are managing it. What was interesting, I had seen him speak a year before and it was very tactical, hands-on, like here's how to use the tools. We got into Chat GPT and built a custom GPT this year. I was excited to see him again because I was ready to get into the tools.

Justin Reinert:

It was a totally different direction in existing processes and how we can better enable people with technology to be successful, rather than thinking about technology and people as separate things. It's an interesting conversation as organizations kind of wrestle with how they adapt this new technology. On a similar note, kind of transitioning and thinking about your role in learning. As a head of learning, you are at the front of all the changes in any organization, right, and so I'm curious if we think about learning and change, how does that play into the programs and initiatives that you've driven inside of organizations?

JD Dillon:

I always liken learning and development in the workplace to plumbing. It's not an exciting metaphor, but I think it's an apt metaphor both for where we've been as well as where we need to go, because I'm very much on the page of people who say what you did yesterday to make yourself successful is not necessarily going to make you successful tomorrow. That's been a reality that I've been trying to navigate in every job that I've ever had, and I think when we're at our best as learning and enablement professionals and where we can have the greatest impact on people as well as the organization, is when we focus more on infrastructure and less on content and programs. When we think about how do we make sure we can put the right tools and channels in place so that the organization has those channels and those resources they can rely on to help people navigate what the next change might be, regardless of what it is. This was a message that was reinforced when I was writing my first book back in 2021, awkward Plug.

JD Dillon:

I was writing the book in the midst of the pandemic and I had that moment where I said is this useful, based on what's happening around the world and what people are dealing with in their day-to-day lives. Let's talk about change. I had to stop for a minute and say is anything that I'm saying here about practices that I've applied in the past up until this point useful, moving forward? Is this a story that people need to hear now, or do I have to seek relevance in a new way? I went on a listening tour, so I stopped writing for a little bit and I just started talking to people supporting front-line teams. I started to come to this realization that the story that I'm telling, which is grounded in this idea of, instead of thinking about learning, courses and programs and curricula, think about plumbing and connection and making sure that the pieces are in place so that, as the world changes around you, you've got an agile infrastructure that can change with you. Oh, that's what people are doing now I'm actually late was what I started to realize. This might have been helpful before this particular moment in time. The organizations that were most successful in helping front-line teams were the ones that had tools and mechanisms and technologies and tactics that they didn't know that they were going to need at that time, but when people suddenly were furloughed and sent home, or when the job fundamentally changed and they needed to reach people in new ways. The plumbing was already there and they were able to take advantage of it.

JD Dillon:

When it comes to change in the workplace, especially for front-line teams, it could be as simple as a new product launch or a process update. There's a regulatory shift. That's an everyday reality that we don't necessarily know what the next change or priority will be. There are certain things we can predict. We know the state of California is going to require certain things when it comes to the workplace. We don't know about other things, which has become increasingly true over the last couple of years. So that's where I keep coming back to that idea of it's our job as enablement professionals.

JD Dillon:

I like using the word enablement a lot as opposed to learning and development, because I think it just opens the door to a bigger toolkit where it's not about helping people learn. It's about helping people do the job, solve a problem, navigate change. There's a bigger kind of mandate underneath that word. For me. We don't know when it's coming, we don't know what it is. So how do we do our best to quote unquote future-proof the workplace? Well, you can't. But in my opinion, you can future-ready your organization by making sure the plumbing is there so that we have these different tools and channels we can rely on as the priorities shift. I think it's also super helpful to take that perspective now, given the advent of various AI-enabled tools. That's fundamentally shifting everything from what knowledge management means to what communication means, to what content development and training means.

JD Dillon:

In my opinion, l&d's job is becoming more and more about infrastructure, because we can start to outsource a lot of that day-to-day tactical development content development to other parts of the organization. And a problem we've always had as L&D, which is that I've never met an L&D team tell me if you have that has all the time and all the money Never met that organization. So as a result of that, we're naturally limited in the number of problems we can go get. We can't help everybody solve every problem because there's only so much time in the day and so many of us. Your off-the-shelf content library is not going to do it for you.

JD Dillon:

We could either wish for more resources or rethink the way we come at these types of problems and say, well, if I have the same tool set all of a sudden as all of my subject matter experts and all of my stakeholders and employees, and they all have tools that allow them to rapidly share information, rapidly restructure information, push information in different ways.

JD Dillon:

Well, what if, instead of having to be the arbiter of truth for the organization and having to be in theiter of truth for the organization and having to be in the middle of those who know and those who need, what if my job becomes connecting them and making sure they're using the right tools, they're using those tools in the right ways, not just throwing bad PowerPoints at employees and saying there are 300 slides and it's all 10-point font, good luck.

JD Dillon:

Instead of having to be the person who gets in the way, what if I put a tool in place or a channel in place or the plumbing in place that can help the person get what is likely at least some useful information to the people who need it in a way that helps everybody? So that's what I talk about. I think L&D's job is more and more becoming about how can we outsource parts of our kind of legacy responsibility in different ways across the organization and become more about making sure that the right people can connect to the right other people, whether that's something that happens in person, whether that's a coaching conversation, a classroom session which is still a thing whether that's a digital solution, it's an article, it's a job aid, it's a digital assistant, and that's where I kind of come back to that word, and I really like the word enablement, because there's so many different things I can do to try to enable someone to do their job well. It's time to break out the toolkit in new ways and become good organizational plumbers.

Britt Andreatta:

I love that analogy. I think that's a great way to think about the systems and the structures that need to be in place for all the rest of the stuff to happen. I want to dig in a little bit because of your role as really facilitating change, or even being a change agent in your organization. Share a couple, maybe three, of your favorite tools or strategies that you really lean into when you're helping people navigate a change, whether that's a tech change or some other change in the organization. What are your go-to tools or strategies that you have found really effective over the years?

JD Dillon:

I don't think anything here is going to be necessarily groundbreaking, or I've never heard that before, but for me it comes back to a couple of simple basics, starting with context what's happening, why and how is it going to impact me? Right, Not the organization. We make the mistake in every company when it comes to what people ultimately care about. There are very few employees out there who have this grand perspective on organizational strategy, especially when you start talking about front-line employees, front-line managers, middle management, district managers these types of folks. I'm thinking about day-to-day problem solving. I'm thinking about everyday reality. I kind of live in hour-to-hour. In a lot of cases, when I was managing KPIs as a manager across different types of front-line operations, I was making decisions hourly based on changing factors within the organization. If you had a conversation with me about quarterly or annual stuff, that's so far removed from what I'm doing day to day, I just can't connect the dots between that conversation and what I'm doing here. I think that context really comes down to understanding the people, connecting the dots between whatever the change or new thing might be and their everyday reality, and don't expect people to make giant leaps over chasms that don't quite make sense to them based on how they spend their time. The truth of over-communicating I think it's always true, but I don't think necessarily. People always combine, over-communicate with, and keep it simple, please, because, again, if we don't understand people and context and impact, we're going to throw a ton of information potentially at people and they're just looking for simple information. How does this do? I have a solid job in these changes. What do you expect me to do? I know I can't understand. I'm an adult. We don't know what six months from now maybe looks like, what's next week look like for me? Can you just kind of distill it down to the pieces I need? At the same time, if there are people who want to know a bigger story, give people a chance to understand the bigger picture, but keep the direct communication simple so that it doesn't add to all the different things going through my head.

JD Dillon:

The last one I would add is transparency, but the real version of it, because transparency is a corporate value in a lot of organizations but we don't necessarily define it consistently. Let's just say, and I fully believe, based on simple evidence like the fact that if you have a workforce that works in an office, those people are smart. They got to work today and they're okay. It takes a certain level of intelligence to navigate. People are smart, people are adults, people are trustworthy and deserving of respect. I think those have to be the pillars we lean into when we start thinking about what does transparency mean?

JD Dillon:

Because I think sometimes we mistake the concept of transparency for a corporate communication strategy. Those are not the same thing, right? Well-worded, word-smithed messaging is not the same as we're going to actually tell you what's going on and how it's going to impact you. I'm not saying every organization has to tell every employee everything. Employees are smart. They know you're not going to tell them certain things or certain things they can't be aware of for reasons.

JD Dillon:

Right, there are guardrails inside of every organization. Help people know what the guardrails are. Respect the guardrails and just treat people like trustworthy adults, because we can't give them partial information one day and then expect them to own their roles and own the organization. It's, you're part of this, but we're not going to treat you like it. So I think there's those kind of fundamental elements of understanding and respecting people that often get in the way of the bigger picture of change management and business transformation, because we kind of leap at the big piece without really stepping back and asking ourselves questions about you know, do employees believe that we're being meaningfully transparent. What does transparency mean to the people who work here right now?

JD Dillon:

Might be different than what it means to me in an organization.

JD Dillon:

It's the best way to communicate to people, what's the best way to provide people more robust information and what's the best way to really understand the day-to-day reality of the people we work with?

JD Dillon:

One of the things that my team finds over and over again in our research focused on front-line employees is that the biggest challenge isn't necessarily that anyone's thinking negatively about someone else. It's not that the executive team is sitting there saying you know what? I hope we make decisions that make the job harder for front-line employees. No one says that it's, more often than not, just a disconnect in terms of the understanding of day-to-day reality, because how often does the corporate team or senior management see front-line reality and deal with it themselves? So I think just prioritizing understanding people is where it begins, and empathizing with people and respecting people, and then from there I think we can make better decisions when it comes to how do we help people navigate something new while at the same time, driving the type of results we need to see and the continued execution we need to see to keep an organization moving forward.

Justin Reinert:

I like your comments about transparency and corporate communication. It makes me think about a friend of mine who was going through an acquisition. This company was being acquired by a much larger company, but the smaller company that was being acquired kept messaging it in we're entering into this partnership, we're now partnering with this larger company. But they could see the news, they saw the headlines of what was actually happening and no one was coming out and saying of what was actually happening. And no one was coming out and saying, no, you are now an employee of this larger company. That confusion was really messing with the way that people were behaving in the organization, because they're like wait, is this a partnership? Do we have any ownership? Do I have any boss? What's actually happening? And it continues to be just really fumbled language around what's happening in the organization.

JD Dillon:

You can wordsmith your way right out of understanding. Oh yeah, that's part of the challenge when we have different functions that truly have overlapping mandates and opportunities but operating, in a lot of cases, in silos and not playing nice with one another. I've worked with organizations where corporate communications, operations and learning and development sometimes just don't like each other right Because they're all kind of driving towards the same general outcome in a lot of ways, but have their ways and processes and tools, and politics gets in the way. And who feels all of that friction? The people You're trying to help. So that's where I think it's stepping back and rethinking. What does it mean to enable a workforce, what do all these different functions do to come together? Instead of making it about.

JD Dillon:

Well, this isn't about learning, this is about communication. My argument would be are they really that different when you really distill things down, especially as the tool set continues to evolve? I'm very interested to see where this type of conversation around empathetic, respectful communication, transparency, context and understanding where it goes through the age of AI with content, especially Because you're already getting emails that are written by AI usually sales outreach emails and you're staring at these emails going really Really, and then we have the avatar conversation with fake people and I've been asking this question of folks for a while now. I don't think we're quite there yet, but I'm interested. When we get there, say, we have a very human-like avatar of your CEO and the CEO has a message for the team.

JD Dillon:

Maybe the CEO is not a great speaker, maybe it usually takes a lot of extra takes and a lot of production to get a message from the CEO down and the CEO also doesn't speak 15 different languages and the people who work in your organization do. Do you deploy the avatar and what does it mean? On the other side, where maybe the message is great, the information's great, I as an employee receive the message. I get the information I need. Does it matter to me that that's not the person, because I know the CEO probably doesn't write their messaging anyway? It's probably the PR team or the communications team that's writing what the CEO would typically say. I'm very interested to see how all of that starts to fit together, as we have different ways to communicate and different tools to use. I'd like to see more debates about how this is all going to work out, what employees are going to lean into and prioritize when it comes to training, communication and the like in an AI enabled workplace.

Justin Reinert:

Yeah, the avatar conversation is interesting. It makes me think about the role of authenticity, because if I know that the CEO doesn't speak 15 languages, but I'm watching them in a video delivering a message to me in my language that I know they don't speak, there's some incongruency there that might be lost. I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about in Britt's book Wired to Resist, we talk about some of the brain structures that are activated by change and one of them is the amygdala, which is all about fear. Right, when we see something different, you know triggers us into this fear response. I'm curious, as you look at the work that you do, that's again in change, when we're introducing change. I like a lot of the concepts that you're, a lot of the concepts that you're talking about of the plumbing and the blurred lines between communication and learning. But I'm curious what role does addressing fear? How do you go about dealing with that?

JD Dillon:

in your work. I am afraid of public speaking. I very much knew that growing up as a kid. I was the kid who, in high school, I had a speech class with 12 people I had known for over a year. I went to a very small high school. I could not get up on the first day and talk about myself for two minutes in front of 12 people that I had known for a year. I was that version of the person who's scared of public speaking and I struggled with that for years. Then I have this one moment in time, right when you break through finally and start to realize, oh, I can. So there's one hour in my life where I go from incredibly afraid of public speaking, having cried in front of people as a result of it, like all of the bad things happened to me as a public speaker in the early part of my life. In one hour I went from I can't do it to oh, I figured it out and suddenly was unleashed to be able to speak in public. Fast forward years. So I have this transformational moment I start leaning in to speaking. I started majoring in radio television communication, hence the large microphone.

JD Dillon:

I I speaking in front of audiences in different places, giving tours of my college campus. I'm the person you throw in front of the movie theater when the movie goes off screen to try to calm the upset people who just wanted to see a Marvel film. I'm the one who steps in front and says hey everybody, I'm a Jungle Cruise skipper. At one point I'm dressed like a cowboy, screaming yeehaw at 75 strangers every eight minutes on a different theme park ride. So I go through this journey of now. I'm clearly fine, right, speaking in front of people, thousands of people, in an audience. I'm getting ready to deliver a 20 minute session in front of an audience at a retail event. I am well prepared for that session, written everything out. I've got a prop, I'm good to go. I'm standing in the back of the room as I'm getting introduced and I started to collapse Because, all of the sudden, I started to feel exactly what it felt like 20 years prior, every time I tried to get up in front of an audience and failed.

JD Dillon:

And I had. Not only was I like losing it in the back of the room, I was losing it because one why am I, I'm afraid, and can I do this? And then the second part of me was saying why, right After all of this time, this is supposed to be over, like this was over years ago. I managed to get up there, do my thing, was successful, got off stage and had a moment to understand, and what I started to realize, as I kind of thought about how I felt and then compared it to what I'd been going through over the years as a speaker, was I'm still afraid. But what I had managed to do, without really thinking about it, was I had re-channeled the energy that was coming from the fact that I was so afraid into the way I was communicating and engaging with people. It wasn't that the fear was gone, I had just used it in a particular way. I had gotten to a place where I don't think I properly respected the fear and it came back at me harder than ever because I wasn't ready for it.

JD Dillon:

That moment in that room changed the way I think about fear. It's not about getting past it or mitigating it entirely. For me, it's about accepting it, embracing it, understanding it and working through it in a way that takes advantage of. I'm afraid of a bunch of stuff, but I had one big fear growing up. I thought I had beat it and then, years later, I realized the fear never went away. I just managed it differently, and that's something I continue to do today.

JD Dillon:

I talk in front of a lot of people all the time and I think people are sometimes shocked when I say, no, I'm still really scared of talking in front of people. I've just figured out what that means to me and how I can use it differently. So not to say that lesson is completely transferable to everyone who has a fear of any particular thing, but at least for me it comes down to. You know, I could try to fight or escape the fear, or I could try to understand it and then, based on that understanding of how I'm reacting, what do I need to do about it? Based on what I'm trying to accomplish, that's great.

Britt Andreatta:

Thank you for sharing that. It's so funny when we look at people who seem so comfortable in certain settings. We don't always know their journey or their story to get to that place. I've seen you on stage a whole bunch of times and I would not have thought that you had that journey of fear through it. I want to hear a little bit about what you're looking forward to in the coming months. What's got you excited? It could be professional or personal, but what are you really to accomplish or tackle as we roll through 2025?

JD Dillon:

I am currently trying my best to balance all of the different things I'm doing to finish my second book. So first book, modern Learning Ecosystem, came out in 2022. Second book is slated for release in early 2026. It's called the Frontline Enablement Playbook. The idea is to bring together at this point of working with some number around 50 plus practitioners and experts in the space of front-line learning and performance and operations to tell the story about how we help front-line employees do their best every day. How do we improve the experience of work for people in retail, grocery, distribution, logistics, food service and hospitality? How do we help the experience improve a little bit so that people can be a little more capable, a little more confident on the job every day and be able to perform at their best? I'm not attempting to change the world when it comes to a book in this regard, but my hope is that by writing this book and reflecting on both my own experience and background in 25 years of working with and being part of the front-line workforce and collaborating with the people from around the world, we can elevate the story of the front-line workforce and kind of create room for more conversation, given the fact that front-line employees represent 70 to 80 percent of the global workforce, and we don't have a lot of conversations about that part of the workforce workforce and we don't have a lot of conversations about that part of the workforce including in learning and development and human resources, unfortunately. So I'm excited to one publish the next book but, at the same time, hopefully elevate a conversation that can continue on so we can help front-line employees have a better experience. There's a constant state of change that we're in right now. I think a big part of 2025 story and beyond is helping others navigate that change, doing my best to navigate it myself. I'm always committed to trying to share as many good ideas and proven practices as I can through the professional community, so that will continue. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you probably see me sharing job postings a lot. I know a lot of people in a state of change and transition when it comes to career opportunities, so something that I'm continuously committed to doing and I've heard great feedback about. And then the last one I'll add is that in a couple of weeks, I'm going to see Back to the Future musical, which is on tour right now.

JD Dillon:

I didn't manage to get to New York before it left the Winter Garden Theater, but it's coming to Tampa in a couple of weeks, so I will be there, because if you saw my office right now and you look to my right, the entire wall is covered in Back to the Future fan art. I'm kind of into it to the point where if you get my first book, the Modern Learning Ecosystem, and you turn to the first page, there's a behind baseball moment the clock there. This is a joke about the fact that, thanks for buying my book or maybe you want it as a prize You're trying to win an Apple Watch at a conference and they gave you my book instead. So I put a clock in the book as a way to be like. My book tells time too. That's the time that the lightning bolt struck the clock tower in Back to the Future. So this book is riddled with Back to the Future references. If you're a fan, I'm excited to see the musical in a couple weeks.

Britt Andreatta:

I love that. That's such a super fan thing to do and I'm sure you're going to enjoy your time, Jeannie, thank you so much for joining us.

Justin Reinert:

We'll have some links in our show notes of where people can find you, but if you want to learn more about your work, what's one or two best ways to find you?

JD Dillon:

You can start on LinkedIn, always happy to connect, continue. Anything I can do to be helpful, let me know. I've got several websites I can list off If you want to find anything. I'm writing book information, upcoming session schedules all that's available on my website, learngeekco. If you want to learn what my team at Exonify is up to in enabling front-line teams through the technology, content and services that we build, supporting 4 million front-line workers around the world right now, that's exonifycom.

Britt Andreatta:

If you want to check out the first book, modern Learning Ecosystem, that's available at the website jdwroteabook. com. Thank you, j. It's been a pleasure having you and I can't wait to read your book when it comes out, I'll make sure I put that on my list.

Announcer:

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People on this episode

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Britt Andreatta, PhD

Co-host
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Justin Reinert

Co-host
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JD Dillon

Guest