Learning leader · Writer
I’ve spent fifteen years building education teams, programs and platforms for customers and employees. Come along for a few minutes and I’ll show you what shaped how I do that work.
It starts with my father.
He taught for nearly forty years. Much of what he gave his students showed up long after they left his classroom, and most of it he never got to see.
The value of teaching isn’t always visible to the teacher.
Education
I studied engineering before I trained formally as an educator. Engineering taught me to understand how something is built before I try to improve it. Teacher training showed me how much of good learning is decided before a learner ever shows up.
SPS Commerce · 14 years
I grew from individual contributor to leading customer education and experience design, and built a learning platform from concept to 16,000 active learners.
What worked borrowed as much from customer experience as it did from instructional design. Those two usually live in different departments. Where they overlap is the learner’s experience, and that’s where a small team can do a surprising amount with very little.
I also learned what it means to lead people who were recently my peers. A new leader still remembers the struggle, and that closeness is an advantage that fades if you don’t use it.
Perforce Software
I led technical education across a full suite of developer tools, including instructor-led courses, on-demand learning, certifications and hands-on labs. I also brought several certification programs together into one.
The more complex the product, the more the learning has to carry.
From out here, the pattern is easier to see.
It means learning what people value, where they find fulfillment, what scares them and what makes them feel invincible. In practice I’m looking at each person two ways at once.
What someone needs from me this week, what they’re proud of, and what they’re quietly worried about.
Who they’re becoming, even before they can see it themselves. Growth like that takes time, so I offer steady support and stay with them through the stretches where progress is hard to see.
Now
When an education team outgrows the way it was first set up, it usually shows up as busy people and slow progress.
I help organizations take an honest look at how their education function is put together, and find where what they’re building and what their learners are asking for actually meet.
A good place to start is the Customer Learning Assessment. It’s a free 15 to 20 minute self-assessment of how your customers learn and what you have in place to act on it. You’ll get a written summary right away.
Writing, in progress
The Teaching Tree
Why the best leaders may never see their greatest work
A book for new managers, mentors, coaches, parents and anyone else who suddenly finds themselves shaping someone else’s path. It’s about investing in another person’s growth when you may never see how it turns out.
This is where we land.
Whether it’s a role, a project or a good conversation about learning, I’m glad to hear from you. Off the clock I’m usually on a golf course in summer or on skis in winter.
Matt Shroyer · Minneapolis–St. Paul