Leading Learning
The Community for Learning Business Professionals
Many association learning businesses have a decidedly undiversified revenue base—a cash cow, like the annual meeting, accounts for most of the revenue, and the work to pull off that event each year leaves little room to innovate, even as members’ needs and expectations evolve. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-host Jeff Cobb …
The new year will be here before we know it, so now is a natural time to make plans. While it can be tempting to copy and paste this year’s plan, make a few tweaks, and move ahead, now is a great time to reflect more deeply on what your learning business does and why. …
Many learning businesses are data-rich and insight-poor. It’s easy to track what’s easy to count—e-mail opens, registrations, completions—but harder to know if the products are doing what they were created to do. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele discuss what learning businesses should be measuring and why. They …
In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Celisa Steele and Jeff Cobb wrap up their three-part look at reach, revenue, and impact by focusing on impact—often the least clearly defined and measured of the three pillars. Celisa and Jeff explore how impact looks different depending on whose perspective you consider—that of learners, employers, …
In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Celisa Steele and Jeff Cobb focus on revenue and why it—along with reach and impact—is fundamental to the success of any learning business. If you’re unsure which offerings are truly pulling their weight, whether you’re leaving money on the table, or how to decide what to …
Reach, revenue, and impact are familiar concepts to long-time listeners of the Leading Learning Podcast. But they’re often treated as separate challenges. In this episode, co-hosts Celisa Steele and Jeff Cobb revisit these three pillars and explore why they need to be approached as a connected system rather than isolated priorities. Drawing on recent research, …
If you work in a field like medicine, law, or accounting, the basic unit of continuing education is a commodity. Credits are everywhere. Prices have been pushed down, often to zero. It is very hard to differentiate one provider from another. The usual response is predictable: more topics, more formats, more discounts. None of that …
Associations have long played a role in supporting learning and education, but they may be overlooking the full extent of their potential. In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele explore why associations are education’s sleeping giant and how they can awaken to the opportunity before them. They discuss …
If you know your learning offerings need to evolve, but you’re not sure where to start or how to bring others along, this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast can help. Whether you’re struggling with risk tolerance, engagement, or relevance, you’re not alone. And you don’t have to figure it out alone either. Mary Byers …
What will it take to keep your learning business relevant and thriving in 2030? In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele unpack seven strategic shifts that are reshaping continuing education—from personalization and AI to credentials and commoditization and more. You’ll come away with ideas to apply now and …
Drawing on their own experience and insights from experts like Richard Rumelt, Roger Martin, and Michael Porter, Leading Learning Podcast co-hosts Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele look at the importance of coherence and posit that strategic coherence occurs when a learning business’s choices and actions reinforce each other in the service of its strategy. They …
Because good strategy is organic and responsive, it needs to be revisited periodically. There are predictable, recurring whens that are be natural times for you to reassess your strategy, like the start of a new budget year. There are also less predictable whens that are important times to revisit strategy, like a global pandemic or …
