The Future of Programming with Skillsoft’s Orla Daly

This is Textron tv. Hi everyone. Welcome back here to Tech Trunk tv.

Our next segment feature is a first time person here on, uh, Textron. Her name is Orla Daley, or is the Chief Information Officer for a company called Skillsoft. Orla.

Welcome to Text Drug tv. Thank you Evan, and thanks for having me. It's our pleasure to have you on.

So, Orla, as I mentioned, you're the CIO here at Skillsoft, but you know, you weren't born that way, I, I assume, but, or maybe you were born to be a CIO, but why don't we give people a sense of kind of your journey as you sit here today? Absolutely. Um, so I started out my career, um, in the uk You can probably pick up on the accent as Irish.

Um, but um, started there with ExxonMobil. Um, had the opportunity to spend some time in France, in Belgium before I moved to the US and joined ENC, um, in high Tech and then worked there before a couple of more moves that ultimately brought me to Skillsoft. Um, and sure of my career, I've really been passionate about just how technology helps solve business problems, um, and have been involved in a lot of large transformations as a result of that.

Um, and certainly, you know, was drawn to Skillsoft really just based on skillsoft's business and the value proposition around upskilling and re-skilling, which is something obviously that we see a lot of need for in the tech space. Absolutely. So, you know, the, the people in our audience may not be familiar with Skillsoft.

Uh, you, you mentioned upskilling. It's, I have a little bit of experience. I co-founded a company called DevOps Institute that we sold a while back.

But, you know, same kind of thing, upskilling people specifically in DevOps there. Yep. Um, talk to us a little bit about Skillsoft.

Um, so Skillsoft is our mission is really to work with companies on their workforce transformation and help with skilling and reskilling, um, across all lines of business. So we're focused on leadership and business, um, compliance training, as well as also tech and dev with the acquisition of Core Academy that we did, um, a little while back. So it's really working with companies to help them understand the skills that they have, um, to assess those and then, you know, work with you to develop your learning programs to ultimately upskill, reskill align to your business needs and objectives, and obviously partner with you along the way to measure and make sure that you're getting the return on investment from your learning programs To Skillsoft actually deliver this upskilling training and courses.

Yes. So we offer blended learning solutions. So we have online learning, um, we have now interactive, which I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about.

That's enabled by ai. And then we also have instructor led training and we also offer coaching. So individual coaching more for geared towards the middle management level, um, which is in person.

Excellent. Before we jump into our topic of discussion, for people who may want to get more information on Skillsoft, what's the URL? com, it's very easy.

Um, and you can check us out. You can also sign up for free access for a period of time so that you can, um, just get a little flavor off the different products that we have on offer. Excellent.

Okay. I'm glad we got that kind of foundation set. Now, you know, how long are we in?

We're in about five minutes into our interview. We haven't mentioned it yet, but AI has, you know, November will be two years since chat GPT Burst on the scene. Um, you know, they've recently launched, launched something called Cry Critic, GPT, GitHub.

Microsoft's GitHub. It's not just GitHub. All of the code development, code repo, you know, developer tools are all starting to have AI functionality built into them.

I gotta imagine, you know, Skillsoft looks at this and says, uh, number one, how does it change Skillsoft, right? How does it change your mission? And you already sounds like you're already using it to help supplement the offering and, and make them more efficient.

But the bigger question is, especially let's say as it relates to Dev and, and you know, tech jobs like this in general is, you know, what's the right approach? You, you can't put your head in the sand 'cause that doesn't work. Yep.

But what, you know, you can't run around saying the sky's falling either. Um, what's your advice and what do you see? So There is a motto to unpack, I think, in that question.

Um, and I guess first and foremost, I would say, you know, we're seeing AI really as an enabler, not a replacement. Um, and that's, you know, as we think about enabling from a speed perspective, but also even a quality of product, um, and you know, how that reflects itself. But Skillsoft, I would say is in terms of the content that we deliver, but then also how we're delivering it.

Um, so to spend a moment on the how we deliver it now we have leaned into just leveraging AI to provide more interactive learning experiences that allow for a more personalized experience. Um, whether that's our interactive skills benchmark, which allow you to really understand the skills that you have as an individual or within the organization by not just testing you on the theory, but also testing you on the application. Um, and that can be super helpful, just that in terms of understanding where the development needs are and being able to grasp learning and develop with moments aligned to that.

Um, we also have kc, which is our AI coach, that allows you to role play. Um, so it's a nice opportunity if you need to have a tough conversation or you're trying to help someone, um, convince them on a change management effort, for example, then you can role play, get some feedback directly from the coach in terms of what you did well, as well as suggestions for how you may have a better conversation. Um, so that's one aspect of that in terms of just how we deliver our learning materials now.

And then the other piece is just the content. And so what we're seeing with AI is it's not just obviously the development and the developers that are impacted, it's the whole organization. And so as you think about your managers and particular first time managers, how they need to know is different and the things they need to think about are different.

And how do you support that? Um, security ethics, compliance, you know, as we think about AI and managing for bias, they've become hugely important. Um, and that's not, again, just for management, but here on this side, I think it's where we're seeing that different skills need for even our developers, um, where it's no longer just about writing the code.

It's really about understanding now, especially as you're leveraging some of those AI tools, um, watching for bias, is it giving you good feedback? Is it something you can rely on, et cetera. So I think across the, the board we're seeing just a different set of skills that are needed.

And it is the combination really of technical and how do you embrace it from an AI perspective, but in also some of the power skills. Um, and you know, that broader skill set in terms of taking advantage of some of these new tools responsibly. Absolutely.

I I can't agree more. Um, I'm wondering though, so you and I could sit here and talk about this rationally, I think, I hope to me there's a generational question here, right? You know, there's a lot of talk in the US here, but I, I read this great article about this new term I never heard before, the Jones de generation in between baby boomers and Gen X, which kind of is me, right?

And, and so, but we're also seeing where Gen X is now clearly taking the reins of society and our world in general, right? From a leadership, well, we still have some old people running for president, but that's a whole nother story. But you know, for the most part in business and stuff, we're seeing Gen X is really move forward.

But when it comes to tech jobs, gen X are all, I mean, they've been run, they've been in charge of things for a while in tech. But what we're really, I think about to see is a generation, we used to, I used to call them web native people, right? Gen Z people who grew up, my kids, they grew up, there was always a web, they don't know a time before there was an internet.

Yeah. We've got a group of people growing up right now who are not gonna know a time before there was ai and those people, they're gonna be intuitive enough to use AI to, to supplement themselves to, you know, 10 x themselves. It's the previous generation of deaf, and it's not just deaf, it's security people, it's ops people, it's tech folk in general who, you know, everyone resists change, well not everyone, but usually people are resistant to change.

Yeah. Usually people are suspicious. How, how could Skillsoft really help with that?

Right? Because to me that it's kind of a legacy you gotta deal with here, not what, what are you rip and replace? I mean, that's a terrible thing to say when we're talking about human lives.

Yeah. But that's the market. And I think it's ultimately at an individual level, I think we just need to embrace the change.

And I know that's easier said than done, um, but I think it starts with, you know, hopefully people coming to the table with a left of curiosity. And I think then where Skillsoft and others can help, it's really about then just how do you support folks on that journey. Um, and I think a lot of it is understanding, you know, and this is where we like to partner with our customers, to understand what their objectives are from a business perspective, but also just as they think about their talent, what motivates the talent and what are the skills that they're trying to develop.

Um, and I think if you can ultimately get at what's motivating that individual and most people do want to learn and they do want to grow, then understanding that personal motivation and that supporting that with the learning plans that can help them advance is hugely important. Um, I think just providing learning that is multimodal or blended is important, especially as we think about more technical, um, job families because people want to learn by doing and want to have the opportunity to get hands on. And that's certainly what we see with, you know, some of our products that just give you that opportunity to get real tight feedback in terms of the quality of your code and how we can enhance it.

Um, and I think that's where some of the, you know, you reference Gittel copilot and others earlier, I think that's where they are the enabler where folks can get real type feedback or just get easier access to information that allows them to do their job better, which I think obviously is ultimately what we don't. Yeah, let's do it. So let me now talk to, or of the CIO, how resistant to change are you, give us examples where you are using ai right, to have Skillsoft.

So I would say, you know, we've been all in an AI for a while. Um, and you know, as we look at our customer facing products, they've been doing AI in some capacity for many years. I think AI has now become more popular since Gen ai, um, became a topic.

But obviously there's a lot of companies out there that have been using AI for quite some time. Um, I think G AI is now an accelerator and we're certainly, um, leading into that as we talked about as a CIO. You know, as we think about our internal applications, um, looking for opportunities to drive efficiency, drive automation, and deliver a better experience, continue to be the forefront end.

I think that probably hasn't changed in quite some time for CIOs, but now Gen AI is just giving us another tool in our toolkit, um, to be able to do that more effectively. Um, what we're also seeing is just as we talk about AI and Gene AI in general, it's also highlighting a lot of opportunities just for automation that frankly if we hadn't maybe leaned into or embraced fully in the past. So I think what's been good about gene AI and just the noise that is created, it has made us think about just efficiency in general and how know what are better ways to do things and how do we deliver more effectively that has resulted in some gene AI products, um, especially in data space, but also has just got us now meaning much more into automation and process simplification.

And that there may maybe wasn't the same focus at before. Fair enough. You know, I just came out of recording a Textron gang episode before I jumped in this studio.

Um, and we, we, we were discussing as we often do, you know, gen AI and, and what's going on or what does it become every day and not special? Do, do you know what I'm asking? Like Yes.

Um, and it's a hard question to answer 'cause I think different companies are at different pieces on this, but I think in general there's still a lot of help needed, um, on how we take advantage of these tools. And you know, I think you'll see right in the press, there's a lot of talk of last year everyone was just embracing gen AI in whatever format they could. It was a little bit more feeling our way in the dark.

It's more important to explore and learn than it is to focus on the outcomes. Um, and I, that's now shifting, I think where a lot of people are thinking about it in a more responsible way on how could I leverage it, not just do one things, but to really advance my business and how do I tie the efforts around gen ai, um, to the business outcomes that we're trying to drive. Um, so I think that's definitely a shift I would hope.

And, and I know there are still companies out there that are still a little bit on the sidelines and not willing to jump in the water. I guess I, you know, what we're seeing is you really do need to jump in, um, find that safe space. Um, but you know, we started with putting the right governance process in place, making sure that you've got, um, the right policies in place in terms of how you use AI responsibly, et cetera.

But even now, the assets to support that are much more readily available. They were 18 months, two years ago. So you can start relatively quickly.

And I think the important thing is giving people space to explore, giving them an opportunity to try different things. Um, because that's how we are at least seeing some of the, you know, best ideas come through in terms of just in innovative solutions, um, that we can apply at scale with business. Fair enough.

Paula, we're about at a time. com, S-K-I-L-L-S, uh, SOFT, just the way it sounds. Um, thank you for coming on Tech Shock TV and talking to us about this today.

I, you know, look, certainly if you're a dev, you're feeling and seeing AI in all of your tools is add-ons and capabilities. And, and as I think you're saying, you gotta embrace it. You have to embrace it, otherwise you're left behind.

Good luck to you. We'll see you soon and thanks again for coming up here on Tech Shock tv. Thanks a Okay, Orla Daily Chief Information Officer at Skillsoft here on Tech Drop tv.

We'll take a break. We'll be back in a moment.