Learning Insights: Lan Tran embraces transformation, technology for creative learning

Chief Learning Officer’s “Learning Insights” series is dedicated to showcasing the thoughts and career journeys of chief learning officers and learning executives – the tireless trailblazers who are transforming the landscape of corporate learning and workforce development. In this Q&A series, we garner strategic insights, innovative approaches and challenges overcome from visionary leaders worldwide. 

What initially drew you to a career in L&D, and how have your experiences evolved over the years?

I was an Information Systems major and took a lot of coding classes in college. My first job out of college was a developer for the Performance Learning Simulation group at then Anderson Consulting, now Accenture. That was my first introduction to learning simulations and learn-by-doing. I fell in love with creating learning because it elevated my software development game. It wasn’t enough to build a cool app. If someone didn’t walk away with the behavior change we wanted, then our app failed. That made creating a learning app so much more exciting.

Through the years, I have taken on various roles in technology and learning. I learned strong learning design, learner engagement and learning analytics during my time with Socratic Arts through my various roles and projects. Through my time at Kraft Heinz, I experienced what it was like to run the day-to-day operations of a learning team and what it took to elevate and maintain the learning technology ecosystem. At McDonald’s, I’m learning how to support over 2 million learners with different backgrounds, languages and learning preferences. Through my experience, I’ve grown to be a big believer of people first, learner-centric, authentic a-ha moments, focusing on behaviors not knowledge and bringing out the emotions that drive the behavior change. I also strongly believe that learning can elevate the employee experience and be a disruptor or strong force within a company.

What key initiatives have you implemented as a learning leader to drive employee development and foster a learning culture?

During my time at Socratic Arts, I created programs that moved the needle on workforce performance for our clients. While at Kraft Heinz, I led the effort to create the next evolution of their online corporate university and drove many learner engagement efforts that increased the number of monthly visitors to their corporate university. These efforts included a companywide 24 hours of learning, a companywide annual book reading, a monthly learning newsletter and helping to operationalize the annual learning challenge, which resulted in Learning Champions that we leveraged to help drive the learning culture.

At McDonald’s, I lead our global design team in creating all of our custom programs for corporate and restaurant staff. We are changing how we approach our course design to create more engaging, impactful courses that help learners feel supported and confident they can do their job well. We are just starting our journey to transform learning at McDonald’s. Early results of some of the courses are showing performance improvement, as well as high NPS and agreement on content effectiveness and value. At both Kraft Heinz and McDonald’s, I have led learning analytics efforts to provide us with the data we need to show how we are making a business impact and to help drive our changes and strategy as we move forward.

What is the most impactful learning program you’ve introduced in your organization, and how has it contributed to employee growth and business success?

At McDonald’s, we are just starting our learning transformation. Part of our strategy includes providing something for everyone to help them grow their skills and careers, including our restaurant staff.

What is a common misconception people might have about the L&D function, and how do you address it?

Many times, people mistake awareness for learning. Wanting someone to know about a process is not learning; that is a communications project. As learning professionals, we cannot say yes to everything. We must be strategic about where we are focusing our effort and budget to make the most impact. We must change how we view our role in the employee experience. We create more than training; we create experiences that can have real business impact and elevate the employee experience. We can create experiences that can really change how someone behaves, and that can have ripple effect on their team and others in their lives.

What excites you the most about the future of workplace learning, and how are you preparing your organization to adapt to the changing landscape?

Learning and technology have been in a great space for a few years now. There’s so much potential if learning designers are willing to move away from traditional design and use examples from our real world as inspiration — like YouTube, TikTok, movies, commercials, reels — there are so many ways people are learning outside of work that we can leverage. Also, many times, we embrace changes like gamification or VR/AR, however, we still have traditional learning now with these new mediums (e.g., not engaging, too much reading. click-to-learn vs interacting with the content). Again, embracing how non-learning apps are built and designed will help us create better learner experiences. I share articles, podcasts and webinars with my team so they can learn. I find, at McDonald’s, that people are willing to try new things, as long as it is practical to implement in the restaurant. So, we do user testing and pilots to get learner feedback.

What essential qualities or skills make a successful L&D leader, and how do you cultivate these traits in yourself and among your team?

We have shared a long list with our team. For an L&D leader, being savvy of what is going on in our industry and other industries to garner inspiration. I tell my team all the time to find inspiration in what they see and do outside of work. We also do learning boosts to bring in different topics the team can learn about.

What game-changing advice would you offer if you could go back in time and mentor your younger self?

Prioritize yourself: I’m a workaholic and nurturer; so very easy for me to prioritize others before myself. I’m learning the grace I give to others I also need to give to myself. I’m finding making time for me actually makes me more productive. Keep asking all the questions: Some day, you’ll find a team that embraces and loves your inquisitive and challenging nature — I’m what Adam Grant calls the “Disagreeable Giver.” I challenge to elevate. Trust yourself: So many others trust you, why aren’t you confident to trust yourself.

What do you feel is currently the single biggest challenge facing L&D professionals and the industry as a whole?

It is how to stay on top of all of the emerging technology and related skills with the budget and resources we are given — not only are we being asked how we can use GenAI in learning, but also, how can we help support employees in learning about GenAI. Many times, by the time we implement a solution, the next technology evolution is knocking at the door, which costs more time and money. And, many times, we implement a solution so quickly that we may not have time to really identify the problems we are solving or how best to solve them, and then the business gets frustrated when they haven’t seen the performance change they were wanting.

We’re always looking to showcase innovative tools and technologies. Can you share one work or learning tech product or platform that has significantly improved your work processes and why you find it valuable?

Miro for collaboration, Teams and SharePoint for collaboration across documents for review, Socialive for video capturing and editing and Brightcove for video storage and streaming.

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