Do storytelling & mindset shifts spark AI innovation?

In conversation with The Academy by Intuition

In this conversation, host Juanita Mega talks with Mariana Maluf and Paviter Singh about how teams can blend innovation, storytelling, and AI in today’s workplace.

The discussion offers clear tips on reframing problems, building psychological safety, and keeping human skills front and center as technology evolves.

Use the menu below to navigate between sections.

• Introduction
• How do you help teams shift from a problem-solving mindset to a problem-framing mindset?
• What role does psychological safety have in experimentation?
• Can innovation be taught?
• What is a myth about innovation we still believe?
• How can organizations balance authenticity with strategy?
• How can storytelling be tailored for internal or external audiences?
• What’s the difference between a story that sticks, and one that sinks?
• How does story-telling help teams solve complex problems?
• How can professionals balance their human and AI skills development?
• How can AI enhance creativity?
• How will storytelling evolve as AI becomes more embedded in communication tools?
• How can L&D teams measure the impact of creative learning programs, beyond just completion rates?
• How can we design better learning experiences?
• How can learning and design teams measure the impact of creative learning problems?
• If you could redesign a corporate learning program, what’s the first thing you would question?

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Juanita

Hello and welcome to Conversations with the Academy by Intuition.

Today’s topic is Innovating with Impact, Storytelling and Mindset Shifts for the AI-Driven Workplace. I’m Juanita, your host for tonight, for today’s insight-packed session brought to you by Intuition. Today, we’re diving into the future of corporate learning, where AI is no longer a buzzword, but a boardroom priority.

According to Intuition’s 2025 Learning Pulse, 72% of L&D leaders say that AI is their top learning focus. But here’s the twist. Human skills like creativity, empathy, and storytelling are more essential than ever.

And that’s why we’re excited to have Mari and Paviter, whom I used to work with in another work chapter. We’re excited to be here today to talk to you about this. Maybe Mari, would you like to give a quick introduction to yourself and then Paviter before we start to dive in?

Sure.

Mari

Thank you, Juanita. Yes, my name is Mariana, Mari, and I am originally from Brazil. The bulk of my career has been in research and innovation, helping companies better understand their consumer base and meet their sales and business needs.

And that has taken me to many countries. I’m very fortunate to have lived and worked in Canada, in the US, South Africa, China, Brazil, and now Singapore. I’ve been here for seven years and I really enjoy this opportunity to be speaking here with you.

So thank you for the invite, Juanita. Thank you.

Juanita

Thank you. And Pav?

Paviter

Thank you, Juanita. Hi, everyone. My name is Paviter.

I am born and brought up in Singapore, so very much sort of thoroughbred local.

What I’ve been doing with my career, about 20 years ago, I got into the digital world. I was a web developer a long time ago.

And through that, my passion has always been in education, which led me on a path to education for over the past 15 years. And one of the areas that I’ve always been interested in is the intersection of human needs and technological innovation. And perhaps the thing that binds them together is storytelling.

I am super happy to be here and to have an interesting discussion about digital storytelling and how AI is probably shifting everything around us as well.

Juanita

Thank you. So together, both Mari and Pav will show us how to blend innovation, storytelling, and AI into a learning cocktail together that’s practical and that is also powerful. Whether you’re tuning in from your office, your couch, or somewhere between meetings, let’s get ready for a session that’s equal parts insights and inspiration.

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Juanita

How do you help teams, Mari, to shift from a problem-solving mindset to a problem-framing mindset? And how does this matter for innovation? Because you do a lot of work in the space of innovation. Would you share some insights?

Mari

Sure. That’s a great question. Thank you for that.

This shift from problem-solving to problem-framing is all about getting teams and businesses and boards as well to understand that there are underlying issues that serve as a foundation of their challenges. I’m going to start by giving an actual example. Let’s say you work in a factory and you make laundry detergent and you have your consumer base and your main consumers are blue-collar workers.

There’s a crisis and your board tells you that you need to lower your prices because your consumers don’t have purchase power anymore. Now, a problem-solving mindset would be to go and talk to your supplier, the one that makes your product, and say, let’s use a cheaper formula for now. Let’s give the consumer something that’s cheaper that they can afford because there’s a crisis, people have an affordability issue, we need to give them something that they can afford. Now, that is a great solution, but what happens is that, and I always like to frame it this way, it is in our nature to run away from problems because problems affect ours, our integrity from even back in the Stone Age – you’re cold? You light a fire.

We are geared to solve problems. Staying with the problem, going deeper into the problem is something very uncomfortable, but it can yield better results.

So in the example of the laundry detergent case, if you were to explore a little bit more your consumer needs, and we were talking about blue-collar workers, you would understand that for that particular group, you know, we’re talking about blue-collar workers, people that work in shipyards, people that might help at receptions, they might work in the service industry.

And for these people, time spent cleaning their clothes is very precious, and the efficiency of a product that can remove the dirt from their uniforms and from their working outfits is very critical.

So if you’re giving them a product that is a cheaper formula because you’re thinking that you’re helping them by giving them a product that they can afford, you’re actually making them work twice as hard to clean and remove the dirt, whereas you could have from the beginning with the same products you have helped them understand that this is something that’s going to help them clean their clothes and remove these stuff stains faster and quicker.

So when you stay with the problem, when you try to understand that the solution and the problem is not necessarily price, but it is understanding that the consumers need to see a little different, a different value on things, a different value in your product, you understand that the solution is not necessarily to give them a discount or give them a cheaper product, but it is to remind them that you are able to solve those needs broadly. I hope that helps with the question.

Juanita

I hear what you said about digging deeper actually, not just beyond the surface, but we want to dig down a couple of layers to be able to get into that problem framing mindset.

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Juanita

We all hear and speak about fostering a mindset of experimentation or just that experimentation culture, but we need to have that psychological safety play. What role do you think psychological safety has in fostering experimentation within our workplace? Because some places do it better than others, right? So with your experience, can you shed a bit more light on that?

Mari

Oh yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s all connected actually.

That’s a good point. Because for you to understand better a problem, for you to be able to frame, contextualize, understand the layers, you need experimentation. You need that openness that you need to invite curiosity in.

And sometimes that questioning, that act of questioning, that act of curiosity, sometimes these acts of questioning and curiosity are not often welcome and accepted in certain workplaces. I can give you again another example.

I had a client once, it was a board member and a director client that was asking me for a specific number. Can you give me this specific number? And at some point I looked to her and I say, why do you need this number? And she wasn’t comfortable with that approach.

And she said, why are you asking this? I had to explain to her that if I understood exactly what she had in mind, I could try to come up with a good way to solving the problem, with a better way to find, to answer the problem. And she was able to explain to me that she was looking for information about how many households consume a particular product.

And because we didn’t have that number, but I understood what she wanted to see – she wanted to see how many people were buying the product. And was that particular product reaching the right consumers? I was able to experiment and find out other ways to reach out and access that same need. So psychological safety is the key that enables you to feel safe in asking those questions.

The safety you feel in having that kind of open and an honest conversation with your leadership, where you’re able to ask these additional questions, that is only available if certain foundational pieces are there.

Juanita

Pav, you wanted to add in something?

Paviter

It’s interesting because I was running a session recently and it was with a large legacy manufacturing company.

And while the topic wasn’t necessarily on experimentation and innovation, what we began to realize was that because of the lack of psychological safety and the anxiety of dealing with data, participants were actually not as open. We had to shift things around and really bring out the people rather than the tech. And soon enough, and it took a lot of time, a lot of patience, there were people within the organization with 25 years of experience who said, look, I’ve got 25 years of experience and I realized that I actually need to just let my habits and my ego go. And therefore now I actually feel so free. And it was almost a sense of empowerment where they went like, hey, wait a minute, I can be experimental, there’s nothing wrong. And one of the ways I’ve done it before is usually in a session, if no one really wants to share something, I’ll say, look, the only wrong answer is no answer.

And then they go like, well, okay, let’s just give it a go. And tiny things like that help to build up psychological safety.

And maybe another example I can share was it was a slightly longer program where learners were going on a 12-week journey. One of the things we shared at the beginning was that you’ll be working with different people every week. And that was a big barrier for a lot of people. They went like, well, that means I need to learn how to work with different people every week.

With strategies, we got them to build openness and trust, psychological safety. And we did a check-in about six weeks into the journey. And one of the biggest learnings was that, oh, wait a minute, I can actually communicate better with other people now.

And for them, it was just such an ‘aha’ moment and a sense of empowerment that they now feel confident to actually experiment and try new things. I think building on what Mari said, confidence, helping people build confidence is absolutely important as well.

Mari

That’s so insightful. It makes me think a lot, there is a lot of uncertainty in the business world nowadays. And it wouldn’t be unusual for people, even those more experienced, to feel a bit uncomfortable with the pace of change or with new things.

And it’s very hard for you to get someone that has had a lot of experience and a lot of accomplishments in certain fields to suddenly realize that they don’t know something.

But not knowing is not the worst part of a career now, especially in a world with so much accelerated changes. The worse thing than not knowing is not having clarity of where you want to go or what you want to know or what you need to know.

For you to do that mental exercise, it’s a new way of thinking. It’s a new way of behaving in the workplace.

It is embedding in yourself and in your team the understanding that you will always need to be learning something new. Because that is the path to relevance now, is what they call metacognition, is your ability to learn, your ability to keep on learning and to understand that not knowing certain things is not a disadvantage. It’s actually an advantage in the sense that you are aware of where you need to go.

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Juanita

And Pav, you spoke about those learning journeys, coming together for six weeks, 12 weeks. I think that’s something that we’re hearing a lot of these days as well. Our journeys help our learning stick.

Because change is just accelerating. People are inundated with requirements, requests, new changes. And this topic of innovation comes up as much as experimentation does.

What does it mean to be innovative? Can it be taught? Can I head into a class and learn innovation? What else do I need to do to continue to have that innovator’s mindset? Do I have a toolkit that can help me to be on that path of innovation? Because like what you said, Mari, if you do not make the change, you don’t have that awareness, then you risk becoming irrelevant.

Can innovation be taught, you think, Mari? Or is it more about unlearning? I mean, just to follow on with what you spoke about earlier.

Mari

Innovation can be taught, absolutely.

Can bicycle riding be taught? And can programming be taught? Innovation can be taught. And similarly, all these processes have a journey in common.

You start with, the bicycle riding, for example. You start by flat terrains, calm roads, and then you graduate to maybe you go on longer rides, and then you go on steeper terrain, different types of terrains. And as you develop a passion or an appetite for it, you explore different fields.

And similarly with innovation, there are formulas for innovation, there are resources. It takes skills, there are recipes for it. It takes effort, yes, but everything takes effort. But as a skill that is practiced and that is enhanced through practice and perfected through practice.

Now, just like bike riding or just like programming, you have amazing programmers and amazing bike riders, and you have not so amazing bike riders. How you get there is you get there with experience, you get there with practice, and you get there with passion.

Now, there’s one difference between riding a bike and innovating. And that is that when you’re riding a bike, you can ride by yourself, but you can’t innovate by yourself. Innovation is something you do with a team, and you need those principles. You need the safety and the trust. You need the creative juices to prosper. You need the innovation mindset. You need that openness to experiment and to try to come up with the solution. You need that ability to sit with the problem until you’re ready and go through the deeper layers of the challenges that your business may face.

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Juanita

Pav, if there’s one myth about innovation or creativity that you think should vanish, what would that be?

Paviter

I think one of the biggest myths is that innovation is a spark that happens. Or innovation is a type of person. Innovation is a type of persona. You know, sometimes you hear, oh, you’re so innovative. But building on what Mari said, if you look at innovation, innovation is a process. It’s a process, but it’s a process that is different in every scenario, which means that it’s not a spark. It’s an adaptive process where what you’re doing is you’re probing, you’re sensing, you’re responding, and you’re experimenting with diverse people.

It’s not a situation of someone alone in a room toiling for days and days. I mean, the days of Thomas Edison creating a light bulb, that was a really long time ago, right? If you look at all the innovative products or innovative services that are coming to life today, they are all done in diverse teams. I can give you one example.

It’s an example that I use all the time. It’s Spotify has now started this thing called Daylists, where the type of music changes at different times of the day and day of the week, depending on my behavior. And that’s one of the best things that happened to me because I have kids. Automatically on a weekend, kids’ songs come up on my Daylist. And that’s perfect.

Juanita

You don’t have to think about how to keep them entertained.

Paviter

Exactly. And it’s these things that are wonderful, but they don’t happen overnight. It’s a muscle. You have to work on it. You have to build it. And you have to build on human skills as well as learning how to learn again.

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Juanita

Pav, how would you balance authenticity with strategy when you create a transmedia narrative? And what do you think is the biggest mistake companies make when trying to humanize their brand story?

Paviter

It’s a bit of a chicken and an egg thing. Sometimes the question is, which one leads?

Is it the strategy or is it the human voice? One pitfall that organizations can fall into sometimes is by leading with strategy. Because sometimes when you lead with strategy, you might end up having to force fit the human authenticity in it.

What I would recommend and, there are lots of examples where if you bring up the authentic human voice first, that can lead the strategy.

There are quite a few examples, but maybe an example where the human authenticity has come up quite a bit; a lot of the Dove campaigns in the past, they’ve brought up the authentic beauty. I think that’s really fantastic.

If you look at some of Nike’s campaigns in the past, Find Your Greatness in 2012 was celebrating all walks of life, not just super athletes.

So allowing that accessibility, I think really helps people connect with the brand, because if we think of the world today, different people have very different needs states. We are, and you mentioned the word transmedia.

One way to approach this is by moving away from pure demographics, like age groups, but look at archetypes instead. What are their need states? Are they searching for something? Do they want to be immersed in something? Are they looking to make a change in their lives? And if you can bring up that piece and then use that to lead your strategy, it would create a much, much more human and authentic voice.

A negative example would be perhaps there was a Pepsi ad with Kendall Jenner, I think a few years ago, a big backlash because they were trying to, I guess, oversimplify a very, very complex situation at that point, because there was a Black Lives Matter movement going on, extremely complex, highly volatile, and trying to oversimplify, make it seem cute, completely dehumanizes it.

Ensuring that you’re, as a brand, you’re listening to your customers, and it’s a two-way conversation, and I think that’s what a lot of people expect today, rather than me telling you, this is the product.

I guess it’s a very fine balance, but if you allow the human, authentic piece to lead, and then you take your strategy, that would be a good approach.

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Juanita

Okay, then maybe a slight shift, another question; how would you tailor storytelling for internal audiences versus external ones? More within an organization, how would you structure that?

Paviter

It’s interesting, because I’ve worked with many different brands around the world, and I remember there was this luxury hotel I was working with, and it was on this thing about storytelling, and it was a check-in question, and I asked them, can you tell me a brand that represents you as a person? Almost everyone in that session said that that very hotel represented them. They were so tuned into that internal brand, and I’ve seen that happen in a lot of luxury hotels, and that made me think, okay, so if you’re going to represent yourself externally, and you want it to be absolutely authentic, internally, you need to be singing the same tune.

If I put it in a metaphorical way, for example, what we tend to see are movies and movie trailers, the internal speak is the script, where everyone knows exactly what’s supposed to happen. A long, long time ago, and this is a really long time ago, I worked in a theatre company for a while. I wasn’t acting, I was doing the visuals, but it was the same thing, because people come to see the performance. But backstage, everyone needs to know exactly what’s going on, we need to believe in the values, because if there’s no belief internally, it automatically shows externally.

Juanita

Yeah, I think that alignment is key. That’s when you come out as being authentic, sincere, and then more relatable to your audience.

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Juanita

And maybe before I move on to Mari, because I want to talk to her about a human-centered thinking program, maybe last question for you, Pav on this topic, what’s the difference between a story that can stick and one that can sink?

Paviter

I think it ties a little bit back to the authentic piece. I mentioned Find Your Greatness, but if I can remember one that sticks with me till today, and this is just purely personal, because I like long-distance running, and it’s a transmedia campaign by Nike, it was the Breaking 2 campaign, because it was pushing the human limits of running a marathon in two hours, but while that was at such an extreme high level, they were able to break it down to people like me, an amateur runner, who was able to understand it and experience it in different ways, where they started telling that story at marathon expos, where people could be on a treadmill and experience what it’s like to run at that pace.

So that is something that sticks, because you’ve got the spread-ability of the story and the durability of the story, and that’s extremely important when it comes to the immersive-ness of a story.

One that sinks is, you know, something that just doesn’t stay, tries to act, tries to ride on a trend that’s very temporary, for example, I mentioned the Kendall Jenner example.

One that is a bit controversial at this point, and this is just my point of view, it was Jaguar’s rebranding last year. It was a complete rebranding, it was moving away from their traditional Jaguar cat as a symbol, the roar of the car. It was loud, it was bright, and it worked for some people. But if you read up on the news, Jaguar is looking for a new ad agency now, six months down the road.

I read this piece, I think it was on the 8th of May, so sometimes, and I understand rebrandings take a really, really long time. But if you look at Airbnb, they were successfully able to change their logo and stick with it, because their values were the same; be local everywhere.

If you look at another one that didn’t stick, it was GAP. They changed their logo, there was a big backlash, and they changed the logo back to the original one a week after. If you stick with your values, I think that internal, external piece, the authentic piece leading the strategy, then there’s a higher chance of it sticking rather than sinking.

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Juanita

How does storytelling play a role in helping teams communicate complex problems or opportunities more effectively? Especially in these times, when we are navigating ambiguity and a lot of uncertainties in the business environment.

Mari

Communication is essential and there is more that is under communication. And for you to craft a story, you need to be able to connect the story with the user. I see storytelling as the bridge between a brand and the user.

The storytelling is what connects us both. And for that bridge to be sustained, that bridge needs to have certain things. You need to have authority to connect, you need to have credentials, you need to have a fit. If your consumer is too far away, your bridge is too short, your arguments don’t reach them or are not relevant, you will not land it.

The role of storytelling is to enable a company to demonstrate and to strengthen the connection between everything that they’re doing inside and everything that the consumer needs outside. And the better you’re able to connect those things, the stronger the glue, the better your relationship with that consumer. And that glue is a good solid storytelling. That glue is built with strong connections between users and products. Strong connections between ideas and needs.

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Juanita

So here’s a question for the both of you.

The results from our Learning Pulse report shows a tension between AI adoption and the need for human skills.

How do you think we can avoid creating that skill seesaw? Where you’re either trying to build up your AI skills; how to do better, how to get more productive using AI tools.

And then you get a fall on the other human skills and capability development. How do we avoid that sort of a seesaw in this space that we are in?

Pav, would you like to start first?

Paviter

I think in order for us to adopt AI well, in a good way, the first thing we need to do is actually develop our human skills.

And why is that? Because in order to use AI in the best way possible, we need to be able to think critically, ask better questions. Because ultimately, you know, an AI works on the data that it has. And we need to figure out ways in which we want AI to work better for us. Which means we need to think; okay, what problem am I trying to solve? How can I work better with other teams? What information do I need? How can I improve the value of work output that I’m giving?

What’s easier to do, and maybe not the best thing to do, is how can I make my life easier?

And then what happens is you fall into the trap of, is it efficiency or is it laziness? And there is a saying that AI can make us lazy.

Well, yes, if it’s done in sort of an incorrect way, but maybe it can make us more critical in the way we think. I mean, if I were to put it in a really simple example, can we develop better ways to teach? Because if we want to use AI well, we need to be able to teach it well.

We need to be able to prompt it well. So if we can develop our own ways of questioning and teaching, perhaps it may help us adopt AI. And, you know, like the word adoption means, it’s a really strong word.

You adopt something means you need to nurture it, you need to grow it. And that’s exactly what it means. It’s not a toy, it’s something that you need to help grow.

Juanita

Mari, do you have anything to add?

Mari

I think that’s such a nice analogy. And I think there shouldn’t be a seesaw. It shouldn’t exist. Because if you’re looking at this from a corporate perspective, if you have a business, your job is to reach your consumer base. And you do that by having a good solution to their needs, by having an offering that meets their demands.

And for you to do that nowadays, for you to work internally and come up with great products, for you to innovate, for you to connect with your board members, for you to better answer their demands and their requirements, and other stakeholders that are involved in your corporation, you need both.

You need the technology to come up with better solutions, to come up with different ways to solve the problems, to come up with new materials, new ways of organizing your factories. And you also need the human part, you need to understand what your consumers are, you need to understand their underlying needs, you need to understand that underneath a functional need that we have for a product, we also have social and emotional needs for them.

And you can’t get through those very well just with AI. You need those two working together.

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Juanita

What are one or two ways that AI can actually enhance creativity?

Mari

So many ways. No, there’s so many. I can’t give you just one. I have to give you many.

With the right prompting, and we’re just talking large language models here. Like ChatGPT, I’m just looking specifically at those. With the right prompting, AI can help you as a brainstorming partner, as a place where you can build on your knowledge of a subject, as a place where you can analyze and improve your ideas, as a place where you can visualize your ideas in many ways, as a place that can run analysis on data that you might have so you can look at it from a different perspective.

It’s a great tool to have. Absolutely. And it’s all about the type of information that you have accessible to you, what you want to know, and how to frame that with the AI, how to frame it to the AI, to the model, which is prompting. How do you get that model to do what you want?

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Juanita

How do you see storytelling evolve as AI becomes more embedded in communication tools?

Paviter

It’s evolved so much, and it’s continuing to evolve. Just over the past year or so, I’ve had to completely redesign the way I conduct learning sessions, especially when it comes to storytelling.

Just to encourage individuals to use AI in the best way possible. For example, how storyboards are created.

In the past there would always be this anxiety; I’m not a creative person, or I don’t know how to design things, or I don’t know how to use Photoshop, which sometimes would lead to one person doing the storyboard for the entire team, which has its pros and cons. But one of the cons is, it’s that one person applying what they think the storyboard should look like. What AI has done, it’s changed things where it allows a diversity of ideas to be shown, where, let’s all just try and visualize what we think the storyboard might look like.

What is this world going to look like? And then everyone is able to apply their mindset, their input, and it creates a richer conversation when it comes to storytelling. And I think it will continue to evolve even further, because it could improve the way we write, it could improve the way we think about things, it could improve the efficiency at which we can roll out certain campaigns in the future as well.

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Juanita

Let’s dive a little deeper around learning design and corporate culture.

Pav, you spoke about design just now and how that’s changed over the last couple of years. How can L&D teams measure the impact of creative learning programs, beyond just completion rates? Just to take that point further.

Paviter

Yeah, that’s a really good question, and it’s a question that’s probably asked all the time. How do we measure?

One of the ways I’ve personally seen a shift is sometimes not just completing a program, it’s trying to figure out the language that learners are using as they progress in the journey.

I can give you an example, and this was an overall one and a half month journey, but then there were one or two days of in-class learning, and then they were working on a project, and there were two coaching sessions.

At the end of the two-day program, the language was still very tactical. This is what I think I want to do.I might want to try this. I might want to try that.

Two weeks after the program, the language turned to something a bit more like, I am trying this. I am doing this. This is what I’m… So, the word ‘experiment’ started coming out a lot more two weeks after that.

Two weeks after that, two or three weeks, it was a much deeper, reflective state. They said, look, I’ve reflected on the way I use data, and now I want to change my habits. So, there was a reflection of how they were beginning to change habits.

I think my suggestion when it comes to working L&Ds, it’s just like how we talked about innovation. It’s a process. It takes time.

If we are looking for change, change takes time too. If you read the book Atomic Habits, it’s about, you’ve got this trigger, but it’s about what you do after the trigger that needs to change, and that takes practice. And, you know, when I looked at the language change, it was such an eye-opener for me. Language is such a powerful tool because it shows how we are thinking. And if you look at the shift in language, it immediately shows the thinking is different, and the approach is different, and therefore the habit is beginning to change.

Looking into things like that are potentially leading indicators of future impact.

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Juanita

Mari, how do you think designing learning experiences, how can you make it stick better? Especially when attention spans are shrinking?

Pav, you said that it does take time, and people’s attention span are also shrinking because we’re inundated with information or other KPIs.

In terms of design, Mari, what else can you do or what have you done that’s been successful that we can share with our L&D clients here?

Mari

That’s a very insightful question, Juanita, and I was thinking so much about that because when we say that people’s attentions are shrinking, attention spans are shrinking, it makes me think about the amount of time that people spend binge-watching stuff on Netflix. Their attention is not really shrinking, it’s just redirected.

How do you get their attention? I think the challenge for me or how I see this as a problem is not the fact that their attention is shrinking, but that their attention is being directed elsewhere, and by reframing that, I’m able to look at the problem or look at this challenge in the lens of how do I bring their attention back? How do I bring their focus back? How do I make this something that they want to spend time with? And my answer to that is:

I make it relevant for their lives. Whether that is their personal lives or their work lives. Choosing problems or choosing topics or choosing work themes that are relevant to their work. I’m not going to put a supply chain problem for a marketing person, and I’m not going to put something that is domestic to a board team, for example.

Let’s make it pertinent. Let’s make it relevant to their lives or to a part of their lives that matter a lot.

The second one is let’s make it tangible.

What do I mean by that? Let’s make it hands-on. Let’s make them learn by doing it.

And that’s something we’ve always been advocates for. Me and Pav as well, I know Pav from work, is that’s the way we teach. We want people to learn by doing.

Because when you practice things for the first time, you get it wrong. And then you practice the second time, you get it less wrong. And then you practice the third time, you get it even less wrong.

And for me, the role of L&D is to provide employees with that safe space where they can sandbox those experiences and minimize their chances of getting things wrong or facilitating their learning in that safe space. So, when they’re outside already, they’ve learned a lot. They’re going to get things wrong way less, and that’s going to be more helpful for them on the long term.

If you adapt your learning to bringing real life and hands-on experiences in this context of adding on additional skills, adding on other things that your business needs, you’re able to contain the failure into a safe space that enables them to go out already with some working knowledge of the topic once the training is done.

Juanita

I think that’s what a lot of our L&D clients are talking about. It has to stick and that at least the tools that they pick up in the class, they can actually apply it. Then you see the ROI in the learning intervention.

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Mari

Pav was covering the realm of empirical evidence.

And the advantage of empirical evidence is that it’s something that you feel in the air. So, if it’s sticking, you can sense it in the team, you can sense it everywhere. And depending on the size of your projects, of your programs, of your learning programs, if you have something a bit more massive, you might be able to see it translated into P&Ls, into actual performance.

Something that can span across a whole corporation, for example, can be shown in a P&L in the form of, if you talk, let me give you a tangible example. If I’m talking about marketing courses? I’m doing courses that target my marketing team, that aim at driving human-centered innovation, at leveraging a better partnership with AI and other tech, and get them to increase the synergy between user, business, and needs through effective storytelling for greater communication.

How would you see that translated into a P&L?

The first thing you would see is, you might see an increase in repeat consumers, because if the consumer is, if your user is getting something that works for them, and the message is good, they might be coming back for more, because they understand that this is the place where they can get their solution needs.

And the second thing is, you might see a lower ad spend, or you might find room to lower your ad spend, because a message that is well-crafted, a message that is well-connected, that reaches the consumers at the right time through the right channels, doesn’t necessarily need to be so loud. You don’t need to reach them with a media plan that has like 50 different channels, that’s going to last nine months, that’s going to hammer in the same message 50 different times. You can be more targeted, because the message is well-crafted, there’s a sincere and authentic and honest connection between the user and the product, and it’s relevant for them, and it’s persuasive enough. This is how you see it in an actual P&L. And of course, you might have other things like better operational costs or better margins, but those might not necessarily be there in the first look.

But these are two things. First one is that an increase in repeat rates. And the second one is better advertising costs, better advertising efficiency.

Pav

Can I build on that? Because I think you’ve brought up such a good point. Because that’s raw hard evidence, right, that the board or senior management will look at.

I think, lowering your cost per acquisition per customer, it shows a smarter way to market. Increasing your return customers shows an increase in loyalty and advocacy. And if we link it to maybe a transmedia world, let’s look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for example.

You don’t necessarily need to be a fan of the entire world of Marvel, but you could enter a small part of the universe and eventually find your way. It’s very accessible, similar to places like Harry Potter, for example.

And that eventually leads to a really interesting mix where you’ve got your loyal supporters who would stand by your brand. And these loyal supporters are helping the brand bring in new customers, for example. And if you measure the right metrics, and if you look at hard numbers, you will be able to see a shift in that over a period of time.

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If you could redesign a corporate learning program, what’s the first thing you would question? Either of you could go first.

Paviter

Why don’t you go ahead, Mari?

Mari

One of the things that comes to the top of my mind now is I often see in some of these L&D programs that some courses are available to people of a certain work level and not available to others. Certain courses are available for more senior people and not available to junior people.

I would question that. If someone who is junior is displaying interest in a senior topic, I would want to understand how that might benefit them, whether now or in the future. And similarly, if a senior person is perhaps interested in a more junior topic, that to me shows that that person is vulnerable enough to perhaps seek additional knowledge or seek to refill their foundation or re-inspire themselves in these particular learning experiences. I wouldn’t want these mandates, or I wouldn’t want these lines or these divisions to serve as a detractor for them. I want people to access knowledge.

Juanita

Thanks, Mari.

Paviter

I think the first thing I would question would be what is the learning experience like versus questioning what type of slides are going to be used? Because what I’ve seen in a lot of situations is that a learning experience ends up hiding behind the slides. It’s a very slide heavy experience, which means learners sit through a lecture which could lead to disengagement. There’s data that has proven that.

Questioning the experience, and I think just building on what Mari shared, because if you craft an experience that’s rich enough, then it could cross boundaries of seniority.

Think about crafting. And Mari, you mentioned Netflix. If you’re to craft a learning experience like you’re crafting a Netflix series, anyone is able to join at any point and still take something away, which leads to another thing. And this one might be a little bit jarring. Question where compliance should be prioritized. And absolutely you need compliance in learning because you need to ensure that learning outcomes are met.

As an educator myself, that’s one of the key things I want to make sure of; the knowledge and abilities. But where does that stand within the experience? Should it be fronting it? Should it be woven in? And how does that play a part in eventually leading to measuring outcomes? Because if the experience isn’t crafted right, the outcomes won’t be there.

So that’s the first thing I would question, is the experience.

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Juanita

We did cover off quite a lot of things today with the both of you. So thank you so much. Today’s session has shown us that innovation isn’t just about AI, and storytelling isn’t just about words.

It’s about the mindset, about connection, and also the action that we’re going to take from then on.

As you take these insights forward, think about how you can blend human creativity with AI’s potential to shape the future of learning and work.

Let’s keep the conversation going and turn ideas into impact.

I really want to thank you, Marie and Pav today for spending the time with us. And thank you all for joining Conversations with the Academy by Intuition. And until the next time, keep innovating with purpose.