The Talent Forge: Shaping the Future of Training and Development with Jay Johnson

Transforming Learning Through AI-Powered Job Shadows with Frank Fusco

• Jay Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 46

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Ever watched someone masterfully perform a task and thought, "I wish I could understand exactly what they're doing and why"? In today's episode of The Talent Forge, we explore the revolutionary approach Silicon Society is taking to transform workplace learning through AI-powered job shadowing.

Frank Fusco, a fascinating founder with roots in both liberal arts and computer science, shares how his journey through humanitarian work, bootcamp education, and software development led to a breakthrough realization: traditional learning approaches are fundamentally flawed in today's rapidly changing world. As Frank explains, "We're not built for even a six-month curriculum anymore. We need something faster, more market-aligned, and more specific."

The conversation dives deep into why traditional shadowing programs often fail, how companies can leverage their top performers' knowledge without disrupting workflows, and what Frank calls the potential for "three-sigma" learning—an unprecedented level of effectiveness beyond what even one-on-one human tutoring can provide. Whether you're responsible for developing talent at your organization, fascinated by the application of AI in learning, or simply interested in how workplace education is evolving, this episode offers valuable insights into the future of experiential learning.

Ready to rethink how your team learns? Visit siliconsociety.org to join the waitlist for their platform and discover how AI-powered job shadowing might transform your approach to talent development.

Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Jay Johnson:

Hey everyone, I'm excited to share with you a little bit of a different episode, this time on the Talent Forge. Usually, we dig into human behavior, neuro insights, as well as some of the psychological aspects of talent development, but today's episode is a little different. In the best possible way, we're actually going to take a look under the hood of an emerging tool that's redefining how learning happens in the AI era. I'm joined by special guest Frank Fusco from Silicon Society. It's a company that's building the future of experiential learning, something I'm really passionate about. They're doing this one job shadowing session at a time. Imagine learning not just from a course or a manual, but by actually following someone doing the work and having an AI enhance that experience in real time with personalized content that evolves as you go. That's exactly what Silicon Society is making possible a real-world, ai-powered upskilling at scale, upskilling at scale. So, whether you're a learning professional, a tech enthusiast or just curious about how the next generation will learn at work, this conversation is going to be packed with insights that can change the way you think about talent development in action. So let's dive in.

Jay Johnson:

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where we are shaping the future of training and development. Today, my special guest is Frank Fusco, and we are looking forward to an incredible conversation. Welcome to the show, frank. Thank you so much, jay, for having me. So I have been looking forward to this conversation because I think it's a huge gap in both the industry as well as some of the conversations we've had here. We're going to talk about tech in the learning and development space, but before we do that, I want the audience to get to know you a little bit, frank. How did you land in this space? Tell us a little bit about your story. Well, it's a very winding journey.

Frank Fusco:

So I actually originally went to school. Aren't they all right, Right? Well, I mean, I think the best ones are, but I'm a little biased, that's right. So I originally went to school for liberal arts, Started out as an English major. I kind of wanted to be a starving artist author for a while when I was kind of a little bit younger.

Frank Fusco:

Then I got really interested in computer science. It was sort of this field that was calling out to me. There was a lot of almost like romantic I don't know. There was this kind of feel about Silicon Valley and tech and it's the future and it's empowering and you can transform things and really have outsized leverage on the world. And that was so appealing to me when I was, you know, 18, 19. And I never considered myself very math oriented. I'd never considered myself I don't know. I always just kind of wanted to write and to influence opinion and and and kind of like live in that realm. And then, I don't know this, this romance started kind of getting me, I think.

Frank Fusco:

So I kind of switched to computer science for a while and it wasn't what I expected in the academic setting. So you know, from a college standpoint I was okay, great, I want to code, I want to make apps, I want to change things. And it was like solve for X in blah, blah, blah and like, okay, these giant weed out lecture classes and I was just like this isn't what I signed up for, this is what I thought this was going to be. So, uh, I kind of like washed out of that really quick and I was like, nope, back to english. So I got a liberal arts degree, uh, and uh, yep, was uh just kind of like writing things on the side for a while and then pivoted back eventually to computer science a few years later, when I was like, no, nevermind, I want to do that, I have to do it. So I went back to school for computer science. So I have a bachelor's in liberal arts and a bachelor's in CS in my background.

Frank Fusco:

So after that I co-founded a nonprofit with my good friend, Samir Lakhani called EcoSoapap Bank. It was not technical to start. It was supposed to be just a humanitarian project. We hired economically disadvantaged women in developing countries to recycle soap from hotels and manufacturers so soap scraps from manufacturers and then we would train them in English language skills and other other skills that they could then go get a job in their local area. We'd pay them five to 10 times the going wage in their area as well, Uh, re-inject cash into the community, uh, and then get the recycled soap to schools, hospitals, village communities. That's amazing and it started out yeah, you know, I don't know it was just a nonprofit that we had started out, but turned out that it actually was at scale, a logistics operation that required a ton of internal logic and coordination and ops. And you know, we were pretty young, I had no idea what that was going to entail.

Frank Fusco:

But then, going down that path, I ended up really putting my CS degree into action and developing a lot of internal software. There was localization, because a lot of stakeholders we interacted with didn't speak English or speak it very proficiently Integrating with the logistics stuff. We were an early partner of Flexport, so that was interesting from a technical perspective as well. So we accidentally built a giant worldwide logistics operation backed by like a really complex internal tech backbone. So I accidentally got like a crash course in a few few things there, including learning and training. So after that I actually ended up going to Lambda School to run their experiential learning program. So the labs program there was essentially the last unit in the curriculum. So they would go through this six month course, just crash course in coding, so it was full stack software engineering and data science. Then they would end up in labs at the end and they would put it all into practice, building real software for real nonprofit organizations in teams together. So that was their practicum.

Frank Fusco:

You could say that was a really amazing experience and it was really unique. Honestly, I'd never been in a position to have so much impact at once, like so quickly. We worked with tens of thousands of learners who came from all kinds of backgrounds. We were working with people who were, you know, they were joining our classes from their car because they were unhoused. We were working with people who you know were later on in their careers and they were just interested.

Frank Fusco:

We were working with people who came from all walks of life and all situations and it was just, I don't know, it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life personally to be able to work with all those people. You know, as the program grew it got harder and harder to be one-on-one with folks, but you know, at least even still it was just. Yeah, it was really nice to have that kind of an impact. And then after that, it became clear to me that we needed something new and that the bootcamp experiment. Well, I mean, I won't sugarcoat it I think the bootcamp experiment has largely failed. So that was my thesis with Silicon Society.

Jay Johnson:

We're going to dig into why it failed and because this is something obviously we talk a lot about on the show is why talent development has been failing in a number of different ways. So I want to dig into that, but I do want to share. We have a parallel journey on some level, but mine was in communication and then psychology. I thought I was going to go into psychology, ended up getting the communication degree, went back to psychology later and then found neuroscience a little bit after that. So it's kind of funny how these you know how we end up, where we end up and what those different markers are along the way. So thank you for sharing that.

Jay Johnson:

Frank, I am super fascinated with the connection between technology, modern technology, new age technology, future technology and the L and D space, and I think it's definitely something that's underutilized by a lot of trainers, coaches or even HR departments or anything else that we're not really digging into. Things like AI at its capacity, you know, I think everybody's been to chat GPT to you know. Hey, help me write this email or help me write this social post, but there's so much that can be done, so I want to get into there. But let's start with this question of the failures. What was your experience or what were some of the things that you kind of came across along the way that gave you the indication like hey, something's not right, something's not working here, and giving you this kind of pathway forward with what you're doing in Silicon society. I love that question.

Frank Fusco:

So it was a few things, so I think that. So first, I just want to preface this by saying that the people I worked with were some of the most mission driven people that I've ever had the pleasure of doing something together with, and I just want to make sure that's super clear before I, you know, say what I'm going to say about boot camps in general.

Jay Johnson:

And I appreciate that because I work with a lot of L&D people who's literally they're so purposeful and intentional with trying to bring training, talent development, learning opportunities, and I think that they experience the same frustrations in being able to say why isn't this doing what I'm doing, or why am I being pigeonholed into a particular area? So, caveat acknowledged and accepted, and I share that for all of those talent people that are in the audience. But yeah, so, so continue Well.

Frank Fusco:

I think the nominal, the nominal goal was, you know, for most models anyway in the boot camp space, is alignment of incentives right, like that's the language that's been used and it's the mission that I think everyone really believed in, including myself very strongly, in fact. That, listen, you know, as an institution, you know we're only going to succeed if you succeed. You know we're only going to succeed if you succeed. And I think that is very powerful when you consider, okay, you know institutions of higher ed sure they also. You know they publish outcomes reports and they have to be responsible to the public about how many people they're able to place in jobs or how many people are able to get jobs after going through their program. So that's a thing. But by and large, you know you pay your tuition to an institute of higher ed and you go through the program and you know you're just kind of crossing your fingers that you've gotten the value out of that. That makes you a marketable, market actor by the time you finish. And I, you know the bootcamp sector was supposed to be this opportunity and I think it was to be clear for a window of time for many, many, many people and was very effective for those people, at least a subset of them. I saw it succeed, I saw it work over and over, but it was supposed to be an answer to that. Well, we as an institution have an incentive for you to succeed, and if you don't, then you know we die.

Frank Fusco:

As an institution, that is a powerful motivator in general, especially for the people working there, and it's a very I mean, I think it's a really valiant mission, but it didn't quite play out that way. And then I think you've got like this nominal line of incentives, but then ultimately there are only so many options out there at once for someone looking to completely radically transform their career and unless you have a very diverse space of these incentive-aligned institutions, it doesn't really work. It doesn't really actually live up to that in the long run. And especially if the market shifts out from under you, which is the second part of the way I see it, which is demand. During the pandemic pandemic, obviously, demand skyrocketed and then pretty quickly dropped back off again and you just see this curve right of just this collapse and the job market out there.

Frank Fusco:

I mean, I'm sure most of the audience here is very familiar with the current state of the job market. It's all well and good to impart these skills, but if you can't actually be marketable in those skills effectively because there aren't the jobs, then what's it for? So I think that's the other part of it. It's that we're not built for that anymore. We're not built for even a six month curriculum anymore. We need something faster. We need something that's more market aligned and more specific.

Jay Johnson:

Well, and to that point, the expense of onboarding is something that I think organizations end up undervaluing the idea of getting somebody up to speed or getting them ready to deploy, or workforce ready 30 days, 60 days, 90 days all of that it can be exceptionally expensive, not only for the cost of you just hired somebody and now you're paying them and they're learning the job to the. How much are we paying in the training or the talent development, the development of those things, or job mentoring or a manager doing this? So I love that you're bringing some of this into the space. And you said something that really caught my attention the crossing your fingers strategy, which I see.

Jay Johnson:

So many L&D departments unfortunately, unfortunately and I'm not going to blame them, because I think in a lot of places there's a lot of external pressure, either from the top or anything else, of hey, go get this done, and they're not really able to do as much that they want to do in terms of evaluation and things like that. So that's neither here nor there. So let's introduce this concept. Silicon Society does something that's kind of unique and it's AI, ai-focused, and it's tech-focused and it's job shadowing. So it's actually creating the conditions that somebody can shadow. Talk to us about that. What does that look like and why is shadowing such an important tool?

Frank Fusco:

Well, so about that crossing-your-finger strategy? It's based on the idea that, okay, well, college boot camps, even, whatever it is you design this static curriculum in advance. You have people go through this curriculum of some length of time and the crossing your fingers is that by the time you emerge, it's still relevant and you can still take what you learned and be and, and and get value out of that in the marketplace, um, as somebody, uh, who can deliver that value, uh, AKA be hireable and effective. And and Tech now is moving very fast, and I don't just mean the tech industry, I mean the tech that is impacting every industry. So, AI, sure, I mean there have been, I think, tailwinds on this in a variety of ways uh, powerful force, but the fact is that what companies are looking for, what companies need and what they will need going forward is going to be evolving exponentially faster than the ability of any static curriculum to keep up, and so our thesis is essentially that we have to probably now not in all cases, but in many cases probably start to abandon the notion that we can predict in advance some pre-baked static curriculum that we've curated and run people through it and wait for them to emerge on the other end and hope it's still going to be relevant. I think we need to abandon that. I think, by and large, the future is really about exposing people to what's happening right now in the market, right this instant.

Frank Fusco:

I think the boot camp experiment was valuable because it moved us closer to what the industry was doing. I didn't even get exposed to a single line of JavaScript, for example, in my entire CS degree, which is really funny, Because the entire world doesn't run on JavaScript, but if you're familiar with web programming these days, it's everything. So it was just way, way behind and you essentially had to teach yourself anyway, and the bootcamp experiment got us closer. But ultimately, I think what we really need is just the ability to shadow somebody just doing their job right now. What we really need is just the ability to shadow somebody just doing their job right now, and then we just happen to just now have the tools that we've never had before in human history to actually make that functional beyond. Just.

Frank Fusco:

I am watching this person and I'm just like you know. Okay, well, okay, great. You just put some brackets there. What does that mean? I don't know, or relying on that person to explain. All right, so I'm putting these brackets here for XYZ reason it's because it terminates the expression, and so what we've never had before in history is the ability for a machine to explain in real time what somebody is doing and why, and deliver all of the context around that and put it in terms that will be relevant and parsable and actionable by me, wherever I am, whoever I am, whatever my learning goals are. I personally think that is a truly epic opportunity in the arc of history to think about how we've just now, at this very moment, have this ability it's like this emergent ability to utilize this kind of technology to that end to keep people up to date on exactly what's going on, to have them shadow people just working, whatever their job is, and to have tailored one-on-one instruction that both explains what's going on in general and tailors it to them directly.

Jay Johnson:

Well, and I think it's interesting too because, let's be honest, the number of jobs that I've had and I'm sure that our audience feels the exact same way where you came in with a job description of what your job is supposed to be, where you came in with a job description of what your job is supposed to be, you can even think back you know, 10 years ago, to the memes what I do, what they think I do, what I actually do, what my boss thinks I do, what my partner. You know right, we know that there are discrepancies and let's call it gaps in what a job description, job role et cetera is going to look like. And then what the actual day-to-day looks like. When somebody sees me speaking as a keynote on a stage, what they don't see is the significant hours of research that's gone into every single aspect of that presentation. What they don't see is me sitting there messing with PowerPoint or the handouts, trying to do all of these other things, because, well, as a speaker or as a trainer, you get to see the end product, you get to see the output, you get to see some of those.

Jay Johnson:

So, being able to shadow and actually say, okay, well, what does your actual day-to-day look like. I can see that just being powerful and I love the frame that you use. It's it's partially learning by doing so as a active learner. If I'm, if I'm, you know, shadowing, whether it's through technology or anything else like that, what is the active doing aspect Like? How am I actively doing by shadowing per se? Talk me through what that looks like in your world, frank.

Frank Fusco:

I'm going to give a maybe slightly roundabout answer to this. Sure, yeah, so I know probably a lot of people watching this are going to be familiar with Bloom's concept of the two sigma phenomenon, where if you give somebody a personal tutor, then under certain circumstances at least, they will have a two sigma boost in their learning effectiveness, and so that means they'll do better than significantly better than if they were just left to their own devices or there were other learning interventions or modes of instruction.

Jay Johnson:

Well, that's really consistent too with, like, the international association for coaching. That talks about training alone is like 21%. Training with a coach, training coupled with a coach or with somebody kind of going through, that takes it to like 83% efficacy. So absolutely definitely well-founded in both Bloom's model, but also in even some of the more modern research now too, right.

Frank Fusco:

Absolutely, and so the thing that I find really compelling is so yeah, I'm going on and on about this like historic opportunity and the new tech, but part of that is also that, you know, I think for a long time we've really looked at this two sigma effect as this kind of like paragon and like this is like all right, well, two sigma, you know, that's the dream, right, but now I actually think three sigma is in sight, and I think I think it's possible for us to optimize learning in a way that has never been optimized before, because we have these new tools, and it comes down to us, as technologists, to wield those tools and to construct a system that reinforces that and achieves that effectively.

Frank Fusco:

But I absolutely think it's in reach, and so why I invoke that here is because you know that two, the reason the two Sigma model is so, or the two Sigma effect is achievable, is because you have the back and forth. You have somebody who's tracking what you are learning in real time. You have somebody who you can interact with around the content, and it's at your own pace, it's tailored to you, they know you. Now, the cool thing, though, is that machines don't get tired. They don't have an off day. Granted, we're still working the kinks out of a lot of this AI stuff and you've got hallucinations and you've got a lot of nascent stuff that we're dealing with in this transitional period. I would say we're occupying now, but, by and large, you know, the best tutor is only going to have so much in their head before they have to go Google it or something or do some research and come back to you next week.

Jay Johnson:

Or until they lean into AI to figure out how to solve the problem.

Frank Fusco:

Yeah, Well, exactly, so that's the thing. Right Is that AI just already has that, and so I think the key is that, well, we can lean into that interactivity, that interactive dimension, in a really creative way, to where we have additional modes now that are open to us, that are open to us, where, basically, as a learner who is participating in a shadow, so I'm shadowing somebody just doing their job. They don't even have to say anything, they're just sharing their screen or they're wearing, you know, meta Ray-Ban AR glasses and they're capturing what's in front of them or whatever it is. We've developed an AI tutor personalized to you as the learner in that room, and they are the one narrating what's going on. So you get these little, bite-size, parsable blurbs. We've been tuning this constantly to be the right amount of information hitting you at the same time, so that's not too overwhelming but also is providing you enough context to keep up with what's going on. So beacon is essentially your guide to what's happening, tailored to you. But the real magic is that beacon is interactive, so you can, at any time, just click a little question mark on any one of those blurbs that beacon gives you and it'll immediately give you additional context on that aspect, or you can quote something and ask a specific question about that thing, or you can just openly, essentially chat with the shadow as like a, an entity, as a concept, like it's a very abstract thing where, okay, like yeah, if I had a real human tutor with me, I could have a conversation with the tutor about what's going on. But I can actually chat with this session. I can chat with everything about the session. It knows everything that's relevant to what's going on and that is interactive in itself.

Frank Fusco:

Now we're still building out the next phase of the platform, but a lot of the additional interactivity is that it's not just about being in the room and like having this exposure to what's going on there. It's about layering other elements on top of that right. So checks for understanding that can just like dynamically be generated in real time by the machine detecting what you should be checked on. So no one has designed this in advance. Nobody has based this on something they're hoping six months from now is going to be relevant. It's being drawn in real time from what's happening and it's quizzing you on what you need to know and it's optimizing that for your retention of that material. And then the other aspect is outside of the room, there's a learning path, shadows and doing assessments that are dynamically generated around their shadows, so it's that level of interactivity that separates this, I think, from pretty much anything that's been tried before, and I think that's a pretty, pretty cool thing.

Jay Johnson:

Personally, so, yeah, I'm loving this concept because you're hitting on a number of the different things that I see as absolutely essential to effective training, talent development, workforce development, etc. Number one real time engagement. Number two not you know, avoiding cognitive overload. Number three having that sort of reinforcement or not just you know, not just somebody, not just something where it's like, hey, I'm going to do this over and over and over again and turn it into a rote task, but this reinforcement of you have a learning partner that's an AI operated that's going to be able to essentially coach two specific things. So, I mean, you're checking all these boxes.

Jay Johnson:

I want to talk a little bit about logistics, right, because I think that when I'm thinking about, let's take the technology out of here for a minute, okay, has always been a difficult aspect for the learning environment. Well, why is that? Okay, say, somebody shadows me. Well, for a good majority of the day, the stuff that I'm doing is probably going to be exceptionally boring. Secondly, you know, shadowing me during a day Well, what's a typical day actually look like for some different jobs? One day I'm running around handling a crisis, the other day I'm doing, you know, deep work and research, and so on and so forth.

Jay Johnson:

So let's talk about shadowing in general for a second. And then what is it that the technology helps to do to overcome some of these things? Because, from a logistics standpoint, does the shadowing you know, like, if I'm bringing somebody into my company, does the shadowing shadow me, or does it shadow somebody else that's doing what I'm doing? Or AI generated and I want to talk about some of the tech that gets into that. But shadowing how are you operationalizing shadowing in a way that's actually effective, given what we know about some of the internal shadowing slash mentoring programs that are an abysmal failure?

Frank Fusco:

Right, all right. Now we have studied those internal shadowing programs and many of them are an abysmal failure very, very frequently, but some of them have actually been quite effective. So we looked very specifically at the ones that were effective. So we looked very specifically at the ones that were effective and I don't even know where to start with this actually, so I won't name any specific companies. The most powerful thing was whatever's already happening, don't mess with it. Like so many of these interventions are, as soon as you even call it an intervention, like you've already messed up, you've already misdesigned the whole thing because you're mucking about with, like, the way the company works.

Jay Johnson:

So spoiler alert people don't like it when you mess up their job, when you make them less expensive.

Frank Fusco:

Stop fixing something that's not broken, right, yeah, so, like, we saw a lot of instances where it's just like, well, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna do this mentorship thing. All you have to do is take six hours out of your week and, like, you know, when you were supposed to do this one thing. Just kidding, you have to, like, be in this room and like, fill out this form with this person. Doesn't that sound great? Um, so, and there was just a lot of like, like, I, I think that one of the I mean one, one of the okay, I probably wasn't not supposed to talk about technology yet, but I will say that one of the nice things about tech in like in the HR space, for example, is that it has helped HR leaders, uh, run these things in ways that are less like that, feel less like bureaucratic.

Frank Fusco:

And I think, I think the people that I know who work in hr uh, you know, that's like one of the things I hear most frequently from them it's like oh well, it integrates a lot better with, uh, it makes a lot easier, lower friction for people, um, and it's just about making sure that they complete the thing, or making sure this gets done and it's not, uh, it's not a big disruptive thing, and so I think, yeah, we saw a lot of instances where it's just it's not a big disruptive thing. And so I think, yeah, we saw a lot of instances where it's either just like tacked on and it's like just kind of expected that people are just going to do it, which usually doesn't work, or, you know, things are moved around a lot where it's requiring a lot of people to be in compliance, and I also think, as soon as you say compliance, you've also messed up. This shouldn't be something if people don't perceive.

Jay Johnson:

HR people cover your ears that are listening in.

Frank Fusco:

Sorry, no it's all good and legal for that matter. But no, in all seriousness, the point is that if people don't perceive the value of the thing, then you have more work to do and we accept that in the market. If you don't make a sale, you should have sold better. I think that the people I know who are working inside of companies to make things work within companies have so much on their plate and they work so tirelessly to make things fit together. Priority shift. The ground shifts from under you. You have to rebalance and it's one of the most difficult endeavors, I think, to operate effectively in that kind of environment. No-transcript listen to the human beings in the very specific situations that they're in and the configuration that has emerged for what's effective for that organization, and they tailor what's going on to them rather than change it. So I think, if I had to give a high level answer or general answer, again, there are specifics on the ground at every company and the way every company works is different. But it's don't mess with what's working for the company. So the second part, then the tech it's. It's really about wherever you are and whatever you're doing. That's. That's where the shadow happens. So again, I don't have to be a good teacher, I don't have to narrate, I don't have to change anything, I just have to share my screen, I just have to start the shadow and then I'm working.

Frank Fusco:

Now there is definitely a range of goals of these programs that we looked at in terms of why you would run a shadowing program or a mentorship program or an upskilling program internally. You know, in the first place and I think that's a subtle thing so some companies are interested in just providing this as a benefit to their employees, like upskill and learn more. We know you are interested in learning more, advancing your career, help us, help you be promoted at the company. So that's a common one. But another one is that, hey, you know, we have these rock stars at the company. We have these very experienced people who've been working for many years and sometimes at great expense, have acquired really exceptional skills and are extremely effective on the job. And wouldn't it be great if we could actually leverage those folks' knowledge and experience as an engine, essentially to help others more efficiently acquire that knowledge? So I think there are kind of both sides that can motivate.

Frank Fusco:

But the way you design the program, it needs to be based around a specific goal that you have and then the shape that that takes is kind of follows from what those goals are, and that's how it should be. But the key is don't mess it up. Don't mess up your company. Have people in the room with you and the last thing I'll say on this point is you never know, you forget, you forget what you know, you forget what you've learned and what it costs you to learn that and how hard it was before you knew that thing. Uh, you develop amnesia frequently about what it was like before knowing the thing and you just forget that other people don't have that in their head right now because you've moved on. You've integrated that into your whole being.

Frank Fusco:

It's not something that you think to tell somebody, it just happens right, yep, and so like oh man, this thing I'm doing, it's so boring. Why would ever anyone ever watch this? Like who could possibly be getting value out of this? I can't tell you how many times I've like heard that from somebody who was doing something. Uh, that's just doing their job, frank I have.

Jay Johnson:

I have a huge problem with this where it's like somebody will be like okay, jay, you just you think you went from a to b, but you actually went from a to l. Exactly skip nine steps in there. Because it was just you've, you've done it for 20 years, right, what did you do next? What did you do next? What did you do next? And I would have never, I would have never saw that there was a gap, right. So that makes a lot of sense yeah, and like that.

Frank Fusco:

That's just where you just you never know what it is that somebody's getting out of something until you hear from them. Like I, in the early iteration of this, you know, when we were just kind of experimenting with this model a while ago at this point actually. So we actually operated as a software agency for a while and we did that explicitly so that we could test people shadowing us as and you know our staff as we worked and completed real world projects for real companies. So we kind of developed our own test bed, our own Petri dish there, and that's how we developed the platform. We built it around us working, um, and I was working on a client project it was like one in the morning, uh, two in the morning, I don't know and this junior engineer who was on the client team.

Frank Fusco:

One of the things that we do as an agency we still operate as an agency, by the way One of the things that we pride ourselves on is we integrate with our client's team. So if you've got an existing team, great, we'll work alongside them, no problem. That's better for us because we get more exposure to what companies are doing in real life, and so I was just coding on my porch at like two in the morning and I'm just like, blurry eyed and I'm just, like you know, going through this thing. We've got a deadline and you know it's just like you have those nights sometimes. And you know this guy was just, he was in, he was just on Zoom with me we didn't have the platform at the time just watching me do this and I was just, you know, I was finally going to bed. We figured the thing out and I was just like listen, man, I just like I got to commend you for staying up and doing this. Like nobody asked you to do this, you didn't have to do this. Like I just, you know I really got to shout you out here and he was just like, are you kidding that? Like just watching you work has been like the most valuable experience ever. Like I'm just like what do you mean? Like I was just like this. It wasn't, it didn't feel like anything special that I was doing. Like I was just, I don't know banging this thing out. You know I was just like get turning this out out. And meanwhile this person who's watching me is just like oh, that was so valuable.

Frank Fusco:

Like the like little tricks, like the way that you use console log with brackets in it, so just log the object and like, instead of like having to like log every little thing. I'm just like. I mean I think I learned that like I don't know 10 years ago or something, but like you forget that you don't, that people don't know these little tiny tips and tricks, these little like real world things. No one has ever taught a class where they say you know, if you use console log with brackets, it's a lot easier to read in Chrome's dev tools. Like no one's ever said that in a classroom, ever.

Frank Fusco:

Probably. I mean, I can't say for sure, but I doubt it but it's those little things that go a long, long, long way and that was a really actually light bulb moment for me. Actually at that exact time was huge, yeah, yeah, like, oh, that's right, there's stuff in here that I forget is valuable and you know there are many more skilled engineers than me out there in the world and you know, imagine if we could harness their experience for everyone.

Jay Johnson:

This lands for me, frank, and my experience in it is the number of times that I've had some of my teams say hey, can I come with you? I'd like to watch you present and I'm like you helped me design the materials. Why would you want?

Jay Johnson:

because I want to see how you present it, or even something so long, so much as hey, do you mind if I sit in on your next uh call, on a sales call, or your next time that you're being evaluated for a keynote or any of these things, and it's just like, yeah, you know, I I don't mind ever inviting my team to participate in those things, cause we do recognize we learn by doing or by being engaged in something that's happening. So the fact that the software really does provide this is an incredible opportunity for us to think about how can we help people to see and also experience it. And then the added component of AI is such a powerful thing. Frank, this is such a interesting concept. If our audience wanted to get in touch with you to learn more about Silicon Society, the programs and the shadowing concept, how would they reach?

Frank Fusco:

out to you. Technically we're in closed mode at the moment, but we will be keeping people up to date on when we'll be doing a wide open launch. So if you are interested, you can join the waitlist at siliconsocietyorg. You can also get in touch with us via that website and if you've got you know, if you're a business you've got a software project you need done, you can also get in touch with us about that there as well.

Jay Johnson:

Incredible. So I will be joining the wait list because I can see a number of different applications, even for training my own team and utilizing this. So I just want to say thank you, Frank, because I think this is a novel way for us to really rethink some of the ways in which we're training our internal teams and as a tool to be able to kind of overcome some of those big gaps that we're all aware of in both the learning and development space. So thank you for taking the time to speak with us today and thank you for all the work that you're doing in helping to elevate the talent development space.

Frank Fusco:

Thank you, Jay, and I just want to shout out the team Rachel Cohen, Shelby Schisler, Robert Sharp we couldn't do it without them. So this is a full team effort and I just wanted to be really clear that it's a product of the hearts and brains of everybody working together.

Jay Johnson:

Amazing. So thank you again for being here and a shout out to the team. Absolutely so. Thank you, audience, for tuning into this episode of the Talent Forge, where we are demonstrating software to help the future of training and development. Thanks a lot.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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