141: Continuous Learning and Growth in L&D: A Conversation with Sean Jennison, Senior Learning Experience Manager at Amazon

Holly Owens (00:01.239)
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of EdUp L &D. My name is Holly Owens.

DaNadia Johnson (00:07.758)
My name is Nadia Johnson and we're your hosts.

Holly Owens (00:11.479)
And we're super excited today because we have a very special guest and a colleague of mine from Amazon. So got a name drop Amazon there. We have Sean Jenison. He is the senior DSP learning experience manager. And I have to look at my notes at Amazon. That's a long title. Sean, welcome to the show.

Sean Jennison (00:32.43)
Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. And it's right. It's a very long Amazonian style style tile, but it sounds good. And that's, that's the main thing.

Holly Owens (00:36.023)
I'm sorry.

That's the main thing and it definitely probably, hopefully encompasses all that you do at Amazon. I'm excited that we get to talk to you, but before we jump into all things Amazon, learning and development, we wanna know more about you and your journey. So how did you end up at Amazon? Tell us about your journey into the learning and development space.

Sean Jennison (00:42.254)
Yeah.

Sean Jennison (01:02.158)
Yeah, it's an interesting story, I think, because I didn't for a long period of my life know that learning development even existed. As strange as it sounds. So when I was at university, my goal was always to be kind of a geography teacher. That's all I ever wanted to be. Yeah, that was my goal. That was a good. And as we sit here talking, I'm looking at a big map in front of me. So maybe in the future, that's where I'll go back into into geography. But.

Holly Owens (01:18.679)
I didn't know that.

Sean Jennison (01:30.734)
That was where I wanted to be. And then I had a change of heart in the middle of university where I decided actually the weather in the UK is so bad and it's so cold that I think I'm going to go to Spain and try it for six months and see if I can get a job teaching English out in Madrid. So challenged myself a little bit, moved out and nine years later, still out here in Madrid.

not teaching English, obviously not on Amazon, but to say it was only going to be kind of a short period of time. Ended up staying out here teaching English and then unfortunately when the pandemic hit and we moved everything to online teaching, online learning, I think the industry was really ready for it at the time. And I taught quite young children at the time and having to teach them online, doing English grammar exercises all day in front of a computer.

thought there's definitely something out there for me. So right in the middle of COVID is when I moved over to Amazon to do my current role, which was exciting and being on boarded virtually was quite interesting because we were in the point in Europe where you weren't allowed to leave the house. So 44 days in total lockdown and then prepping for an interview on top of that. It was quite an interesting period of my life I'd say.

Holly Owens (02:55.191)
Yeah, I did. So I think you all had stricter lockdown situations than we had in the States. Like we could, you know, we could still go out and do things. But I feel like in Europe, like you all were could not leave your house, could not leave your place of residence at all.

DaNadia Johnson (03:03.502)
Yeah.

Sean Jennison (03:13.646)
Yeah, that's right. I think we did in Spain, we did 44 days of total lockdown. So, and the worst thing about it is the first few days you think, yeah, this is great. I can be so productive. Like I can get for the series I've ever wanted to do. I can finish all the courses I wanted to do. And then by sort of day five, you're thinking, yeah, I need some fresh air. I need to go outside. So cabin fever is a good way of describing it. Yeah. Small, small apartment fever, I think.

Holly Owens (03:35.031)
We call that cabin fever. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. I can't imagine, Nadia, can you imagine being locked in your place for... So you would love that. Yeah, you would love that. I think I just need to get out and... Yeah.

DaNadia Johnson (03:45.774)
Well, you know I'm an introvert, so I love to lock down. I was like, yes. I was like, keep me in the house. I can...

Sean Jennison (03:50.286)
Hahaha

Sean Jennison (03:56.142)
Hahaha!

Holly Owens (03:59.735)
I found that my productivity kind of decreases if I'm in the house for longer, because I'm like, eh, I don't need to do that. I don't need to do that. But I wasn't aware that you were going to be a geography teacher. We might have had that conversation in our chat, but I forgot that. So, Nadia is a former teacher. You know, I'm a former teacher. And that's kind of the path a lot of people start out with is when they go into learning and development, you know, instructional design, those sorts of sectors. So it's really interesting that...

you've taken that path and now you're at Amazon. I've met a lot of different teachers at Amazon. A lot of former educators are quote unquote invading the Amazon space, which is good because corporate definitely needs a dash of education, pedagogy, andragogy in it, for sure. So let's talk a little bit about Amazon. So you've been working there for four years now.

Sean Jennison (04:33.87)
Yeah.

Holly Owens (04:56.279)
You want to give us some insight about what exactly do you do as a senior DSP learning experience manager on a daily basis?

Sean Jennison (04:56.526)
yes.

Sean Jennison (05:01.614)
Yeah.

Yeah. You're like me, like checking your notes before you introduce your title because it's it. Yeah. So it covers a lot of different tasks and responsibilities. So I was lucky enough to be promoted this year. So it's only just recently that we had the senior piece added to it. So beforehand I was a learning experience manager and it's a, it's a very Amazon title because it covers lots of different areas and lots of different responsibilities within.

Holly Owens (05:09.047)
I can't memorize that title.

Sean Jennison (05:35.662)
within learning and development. And typically now I'm working a lot more on learning strategy. So how can we actually make sure that we're delivering for our customers? Because we are in a very high -paced business, because I sit within last mile logistics. So we are the area where the packages get to the customers. And people want their packages quickly. People want their packages delivered in an effective way. So.

I sit right in the, in the training area for last mile delivery. And what I do is essentially make sure that we are serving our customers in the best way possible through training interventions and through identifying what are the, the challenges and how can we provide an appropriate learning solution to deliver against them. So at the minute we're predominantly working with e -learning, which is awesome and gives us a lot of scalability.

But there's also a lot of challenge around making sure that the team and stakeholders have realistic expectations of what e -learning is and what we can do with it. So we can't launch any learning and self -will piece as much as we'd like to. So my role is a lot of stakeholder management currently building out learning strategy and really helping our providers to better serve customers.

Holly Owens (06:58.135)
Yeah, for customer, one of our, if for the audience and people that don't know one of our 14 of the leadership principles is customer obsession. And then we say things like it's always day one at Amazon. So that definitely aligns with what we.

what we do at Amazon, but also too, I think the customer themselves, we view them as the learner in many cases and the participants, whether you're doing that frontline, you're developing those frontline things, or you're developing something that's helping the trainers who are on the frontline helping the customers.

Sean Jennison (07:30.702)
Yep, absolutely right. And as soon as we identify the customer, we can start to work backwards to make sure we are doing the right thing. So by putting that customer at the start, it makes everything so much easier from a design process, because we make sure we're always trying to do the right thing.

Holly Owens (07:48.439)
Yeah, how has, so I have a question that's coming across my mind. How has your experience in education specifically helped you in this role? So transitioning out of a K through 12 space and teaching learners online, how do you think, what are some of the benefits or the transferable skills that have helped you be successful in your Amazon role? Because we have a lot of transitioning teachers that listen to this podcast.

Sean Jennison (08:14.862)
Yes, it's something I've thought about a lot because I engage with a lot of people in my space who don't really come from an educational background. So when they look at learning, it's just the commodity that they work in at the minute. So it's not like the people who've come through an educational lens, it's people who they are program managers or project managers who just happen to work in learning. So their default is typically let's do what's the most scalable for business. Let's do what's the most scalable.

for us and what's the best thing for us to do. And the learners sometimes get lost in that environment because when you've been a teacher and you've been in front of students, like physically in front of them, you can see the struggles and the pains, but also that beautiful moment when somebody's learned something, you can see their face light up. That stays with you throughout your career. So from my point of view, I'm typically the person who's actually pushing for us to say,

Let's think of the learner specifically. Let's not think about 6 ,000 people that we're training, but think about each person as an individual and making sure that everything we do is quality. And if a sentence doesn't sound right, let's change it. Let's change the picture that nobody likes. And just like the really little things that you know, as a learner are going to distract you and they're going to make you feel like you're not represented enough. So from my side, it's always about putting the learner at the heart of everything that we do.

even though we're training huge numbers of learners across Europe, ensuring that we're really sticking to kind of our educational principles and treating the learners as individuals, not as a bulk.

Holly Owens (09:56.343)
Yeah, not as a collective.

DaNadia Johnson (09:56.75)
That's what we do. That's what we do at Zayn or Blizzard. And we call those aha moments.

Sean Jennison (10:03.918)
aha moments i love it

DaNadia Johnson (10:05.134)
Those light bulb moments? Yes. We call those aha moments. So I love that too.

Holly Owens (10:14.711)
Yeah, I, you know, those moments like just remembering in the classroom. But sometimes as an educator, you don't hear about the, you don't get, you don't reap the instant gratification as an educator. It takes a while for that to happen. Whereas in corporate, you kind of get that instant gratification right away with the reviews or the, the, the customer, the customer, whether that's trainers or the actual customer saying they really liked it or things need to change. So you get, you get that feedback loop.

incorporate into it. I think one of the challenges maybe at Amazon and definitely other places is certain barriers of working across different teams, working across with different people, different stakeholders, and you are developing content and experiences that go across Europe.

So that's a huge challenge within itself and there's different laws and there's different regulations and there's different policies and compliance. So how is like an LXD or a manager, how do you kind of deal with that? Because that is not just something that's unique to Amazon, that's across the board, you know, K to 12, corporate government, like how do you deal with those situations?

Sean Jennison (11:29.678)
Yeah, that in itself is a big challenge because as I said, we are operating across Europe and learner profiles across each geography are different because of mainly like the schooling systems and how they differ. And we tend to find that there's certain geographies where learners are less likely to try because they've come from a schooling system where if you get a question wrong, it's a minus point. So they're less likely to try. Whereas we have some who are more open.

because the schooling systems are more kind of liberal. So there is a challenge in terms of how do we make sure that we're delivering in a way that makes sense. One of the things that I've always been really keen on is trusting the team around me that I've got who are from those regions and those areas who can understand the subtleties and understand actually what is the real meaning of the training that we're providing. So we've kept all of our translations in house.

because even though it's additional work for us, we've made sure that the translations are done by regional training specialists in each geography because as you outsource things to different businesses through translation companies, you don't necessarily know that what's been said has been captured in the way that makes sense.

Holly Owens (12:45.303)
Yeah, that's definitely a huge challenge. And different languages. I know I'm very well aware from traveling to Sweden and Iceland recently that most people across Europe are bilingual. They know English and they know their language. But us, we do not.

Sean Jennison (12:51.534)
Exactly.

Sean Jennison (13:04.206)
Hahaha.

Holly Owens (13:11.063)
So I know English is kind of a universal thing and definitely not American English. That's not a universal thing. But I find that that becomes a different challenge along with the cultural differences. And like you're saying, when they're in the school system, the motivation, I can absolutely see that. I feel like at this point working in pharmacy or maybe Nadia, you can relate to working in your department and then seeing the vast amount of people across ZB.

that you have to interact with? Like, how do you get everybody on the same page? I always think about that. That probably is what keeps me up at night is thinking about how to get people on the same page and how to get them to understand like moving towards the same common goal.

DaNadia Johnson (13:58.442)
it's challenging for sure. We experienced the same type of challenges, but, and I think also with like just growing pains, like if your company is always growing and bringing new people on and I mean, that's just going to constantly be like a loop of like, not just learning for your external customers, but learning for your internal customers all of the time. And I think that's what we're trying to like navigate as well. Like,

most companies probably are.

Holly Owens (14:32.151)
Yep, for sure. We definitely have that on Amazon and other places. I've seen it in higher education, too. Like, even though the education space is notorious for kind of lagging behind in some aspects, they experience growing pain. They experience growing pains as well. And I can definitely see that corporate and education. And I talk a lot about this hat. They have some distinct similarities between how they how they operate. that's a conversation for another day.

I want to know more. I'll jump into all the accessibility, all the higher education politics. We'll leave that for the end up experience. They can cover that stuff. I want to, Shawn, so I want to know from you, like if, we have a lot of people that listen to the show that are looking to jump into the L &D space.

DaNadia Johnson (15:03.086)
Yeah

Sean Jennison (15:12.366)
Ha ha ha ha ha

Holly Owens (15:24.759)
And one of the things we like to ask our guests, if there's like three different tips or advice you could give people who are maybe transitioning out of teaching or just transitioning out of a different role, and they're jumping into like a role like yours, where you're being promoted to managerial stuff and you're managing other people, or, you know, like as an instructional designer in LXD. So what are your best, what's your best advice for them?

Sean Jennison (15:47.662)
This is a great question. And it's something I was thinking a lot about recently and some advice that I got, I think in my first week of Amazon was don't sit in a silo, reach out and connect with as many different people as possible. And we are so lucky to be an industry where there are so many amazing people across like LinkedIn and like different forums, like different podcasts. And my real key was just being curious.

like just being curious and connecting with as many people as possible. Because I found nobody's ever said, no, I don't want to help. Nobody's ever said to me, I don't have time. Everybody's always so keen to help. And I found that I think we met through a L and D kind of mentoring. Mentoring. Yeah. Not yet. Not yet. But let's, let's see aim for that this year.

Holly Owens (16:32.887)
Yeah, we did a coffee chat. You reached out to me. It was crazy and now we're besties. It's crazy. We've never met in person.

Holly Owens (16:45.623)
Yeah. yeah. We're trying to get, we're trying to get our team, our manager, we told her we want to go to Milan for our offsite. Not going to happen, but yeah.

Sean Jennison (16:46.574)
Sean Jennison (16:53.614)
really?

yeah, Milan's cool. Milan is cool. Or Madrid, another option.

Holly Owens (17:00.407)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm, for sure.

Sean Jennison (17:05.71)
Holly Owens (17:07.127)
So talking to people, being open to that networking, the human connection, I feel like a lot of people might be scared to do that when really, like you're saying, like even this community and Nadi, I don't know if you agree with this, is just like getting into instructional design or L &D, they're just so open. They really don't say, I can't help you or I don't have any advice.

DaNadia Johnson (17:25.166)
they are.

Holly Owens (17:32.791)
not the case. We are very much people who are like, here's the resources, here's who to talk to. If I can't help you, somebody else can help you.

DaNadia Johnson (17:33.39)
again.

DaNadia Johnson (17:39.63)
And I think the thing is, is because a lot of us were teachers. And I think that's also the same kind of energy or community help that teachers give each other. It's like, we're always willing to help each other because we're all, you know, at some point we're probably all struggling in the classroom. So I think that kind of carries over into the L &D space. It's like, we're all willing to help each other. So yeah, that's a good one.

Holly Owens (18:07.543)
Yep, for sure. Yep.

DaNadia Johnson (18:10.222)
Yeah.

Sean Jennison (18:10.702)
Absolutely. And the worst anybody's going to say is no. But I just committed to just connecting with as many different people as possible. And just even if I didn't necessarily know the right questions, sometimes it's just it takes as little as somebody to say, what you're working on at the minute. And you say, yeah, I'm working on some reactive training. actually, I've worked on that before. These are the 10 things that you shouldn't do. These are the five things you should do. So.

DaNadia Johnson (18:15.246)
Yeah.

Holly Owens (18:33.431)
or I developed a resource and here it is, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Yeah.

Sean Jennison (18:37.518)
Exactly, exactly. But I think sometimes you'll get stuck in a silo and you think you have to build everything yourself and you've got to do everything for yourself. And it's not like that. There's so many amazing resources out there and so many amazing people have just connect, connect, connect.

DaNadia Johnson (18:39.31)
Yeah.

Holly Owens (18:53.719)
Yep. I definitely think that that's great advice. So what are some other pieces of advice for people wanting to get into this space? What should they be doing? I know a lot of people will have a common misconception that it should be updating your professional materials right away, but I think that's a latter part of the process.

Sean Jennison (19:14.638)
Yeah, I think, I think you have to be realistic with yourself as well. And you think like there's always a push for like portfolios. There's always a push to have everything ready and it's, it comes with time and there's so many resources. If you're trying to learn, you know, how to get good at LXD, for example, there's like the e -learning heroes, there's books that you can use. There's YouTube videos that you can use. So just that commitment to yourself of being, of saying,

not everything's gonna be perfect now and I shouldn't aim for that. I should just commit to growth and commit to learning as much as I can learn and that will come with time. I mean I spent a fortune on L &D books, like I spent a fortune and I felt so bad at the time. I did two of the ones that I've got actually so it's nice that but...

Holly Owens (19:55.499)
I'm like, I'm sitting here with all these in front of me.

I got this one too. It's all sitting here.

Sean Jennison (20:09.262)
And, but that's the thing when I, when I looked at buying them, I was thinking, maybe it's a bit expensive. And I thought, wait, but if this was like a game for my Xbox, I'd buy it instantly. So why don't I just take like, why don't I take that money and buy something that's useful and, you know, reading it, rereading it. And if you commit to just, if you just commit to getting, you know, a little bit better and a little bit more comfortable. And I think the other part is applying it as well, cause it's great reading and it's great.

Holly Owens (20:25.463)
Mm -hmm.

Sean Jennison (20:37.774)
learning, but have you applied it? And we are an industry, as you said before, where you can launch stuff and get feedback and launch stuff and get feedback. So you go, okay, that didn't work. That's all right. I'm going to try something different. Whereas when I was in education, you'd, you had to wait until the end of kind of the year to see how people performed on their tests. I know how, how, which, you know, it's not the best way of judging education anyway, but you didn't really get that feedback. You could see if your students were enjoying your class, but you couldn't really tell.

Holly Owens (20:57.143)
great.

Sean Jennison (21:06.83)
to a degree like how effective it had been.

Holly Owens (21:10.199)
Yeah, definitely that's an important part of it too. I think so what you're saying is like connect with people, do the research, get resources that you can utilize and refer back to, but also to get feedback on what you're doing. I think, you know, posting out on LinkedIn if you want some portfolio feedback or working with an expert just to see what you can improve. Cause one of the things that...

people don't understand is that these things are never set in stone. They're always gonna be changing. Like your resume is gonna be changing, your portfolio is gonna be changing as you develop resources. So that's some great advice for people transitioning into the field. And those are things that are really important to do. I think I love the connect piece because...

you can't find roles. It's still very old school and finding roles that you have to know somebody that knows somebody. And Nadi and I talk a lot about, you know, the job search and optimizing LinkedIn and how to connect and all that. So great advice.

Sean Jennison (22:09.966)
Yeah, I think it's really important and I think the final piece and something that helped me a lot was not really being married to your work. So if somebody does provide you feedback, that's totally fine. It's nothing on you as a person. I remember the first e -learning I built and I was so proud of it and wanted to like print it off and have it up in my fridge. And then I did a tear down with an old manager and he said, yeah, like change this, change this, change this. And...

Holly Owens (22:23.223)
Yeah.

Holly Owens (22:30.647)
Mm -hmm.

Sean Jennison (22:36.558)
at the time, I don't want to change it. It's perfect. And then, you know, slept on it and the next day looked at it and thought, no, actually feedback is really fair. Like the feedback is really fair and it's definitely a better product. But even sometimes now, if I deliver feedback and I deliver it, not maybe in a direct way, I can tell sometimes you'll take a little bit personally. So you like separate yourself from your art. Like it's totally fine that it's not, you know, my perception may be different. but you know,

Holly Owens (22:45.015)
Yeah.

Holly Owens (22:58.743)
Yeah.

Sean Jennison (23:04.366)
If you were then to do the same project again in two weeks time, would it be better? Probably so. Awesome. That's a great place to be.

Holly Owens (23:09.239)
Mm -hmm. Yep.

DaNadia Johnson (23:11.15)
That's really good advice. Go into it knowing that you're going to get feedback. And it's probably not going to look the way that it looks when you did it. Like, just expect it.

Holly Owens (23:20.503)
Yeah, absolutely. It never looks the same as when you started. It changes throughout the entire process. So we're coming up on the end of the episode, Chuan. I really appreciated all your insight and advice and things that you shared about learning and development. I want to know, and I'm sure Nadia wants to know too, what are you looking forward to most in this field? Things that are coming out, different trends and stuff?

Sean Jennison (23:21.518)
Yeah.

DaNadia Johnson (23:23.406)
Yeah.

DaNadia Johnson (23:27.502)
No. It evolved. Yeah.

Holly Owens (23:50.423)
And then, you know, anything else you want to share with the audience about what you do and, you know, the learning and development field. So what are you excited about what's happening in the future? And then anything else you want to share with the audience.

Sean Jennison (24:03.67)
There's a lot. I mean, I was lucky enough to attend Learning Technologies in London this year and it was awesome. It was absolutely awesome. I had two days of just talking to just so many amazing people, like eating all of the free food I could get my hands on to the point of like, I mean.

Holly Owens (24:04.151)
Hahaha!

Holly Owens (24:09.527)
Yeah.

Holly Owens (24:13.431)
Super jealous. That was, I bet that was fun.

DaNadia Johnson (24:15.214)
sounds. Yeah.

Holly Owens (24:27.763)
Perks. Conference perks.

Sean Jennison (24:31.118)
Yeah, yeah, 100%. And just the connects that I made there and the friendships that I made there, definitely I'm excited to see more of those people and connect more with those people throughout the rest of the year, because those people who I've followed for a long period of my life and actually to meet them in person. So I think one thing I'm quite excited about for this year is really developing those friendships and my L &D network even further.

There's obviously a lot of talk around AI and stuff and people getting super interested in that, but for me, I'm not there yet. I'm still more focused on the human side of L &D. So for me, that's where I am.

Holly Owens (25:08.887)
haha

Sean Jennison (25:16.398)
I've also got my own team now. So watching my team develop is something that I'm really, really happy about. So being able to like develop my own team and watching their growth in L &D is amazing. So I'm excited to see how they do moving into the end of the year. But yeah, really, really keen on like the human element and developing the relationships that I've made so far.

Holly Owens (25:39.511)
Yeah, I love it how this is this whole episode is like a theme of like human connection throughout. It's just it's it's going throughout like, you know, how we met. Now, you know, Nadia, now you've made those connections at the conferences and the friendships. And one of the things that we did talk about in I did a presentation a while back is like the genuine part of that relationship, like not transactional, like it's very genuine. You know, like I told you when we first met, like.

Sean Jennison (25:48.238)
Yeah. Yeah.

Holly Owens (26:06.551)
on the show, we'll talk about what you do, we'll share it with our audience, that kind of stuff. It's fun to listen to your experiences. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing everything with us. I know that people are going to really enjoy this episode and learning more about you and definitely hearing about Amazon that always piques people's interests. So thank you.

DaNadia Johnson (26:27.15)
again. Thank you.

Sean Jennison (26:28.462)
Thank you very much for having me. I loved it.