Chris Colley: 0:15

Welcome back everyone to another episode of ShiftED Podcast coming to you. Today I'm I'm have the privilege of having Steve Brown, uh CEO of Nelson Education, coming and uh chatting with us, sharing s some of his evolution with the uh with his company and also where he thinks the future of all of this uh new technology AI is gonna bring us. Steve, thanks so much for hopping on here and and joining us for a chat about education and kind of looking at the big picture a little bit today.

Steve Brown: 0:49

My pleasure, Chris. Happy to be here.

Chris Colley: 0:52

So, Steve, when you were first like I've been doing a little bit of deep diving on on kind of your journey in education so far. And I mean, when you were brought into Nelson to lead and kind of maybe shift the direction a little bit, what was the mindset that you were bringing in? Because I know that you've had leadership roles before in other organizations. What was that mindset that you felt necessary that had to come with you when you were gonna try to shift a 140-year-old company into a little bit of a different direction or a different approach that they were gonna have to get their heads around? How does how does a leader approach that challenge?

Steve Brown: 1:33

You know, it's a great question. And even that that that comment of it's a great question is one of the things I hate because everybody's sort of leaked to that. But I I truly mean it is a great question. You know, first of all, I came from outside the industry. And when I was approached to take over CEO of Nelson, for the first three conversations I had, the first conversation was very short. Steve, we're looking for a new CEO. We'd like someone to, you know, lead the company through change. We've been around well over a century. My act was, yeah, not interested. Thank you. I don't know anything about the education space. I I applaud the you know, the resilience of the board. They came back again. We had some discussion. And then the third time they came back, I'm like, look, and by which time they'd already got an executive search out with Spencer Stewart, one of the largest search companies in the world. And I sat down with a couple of members of our board, the chairman at the time, and I sat down and I said, Look, I'm happy to sign an NDA. I'd really like to have a look at the following and gave them a laundry list. I wanted to do a deep dive on the company. And what I saw was a great big bowl of vanilla. I mean, really nice vanilla, well, vanilla, but it was vanilla. And then we continued to talk, and I'm like, look, if I'm gonna come, these are kind of my non-negotiables. I don't like asking for permission. I think that slows down momentum. And I said, I want to be able to change whoever I want in the management team because frankly, if they had the ability to make and drive that change, they probably would have done it already. So that means I'm I likely will need a new executive team. So when I came in, I looked at it. I actually agreed to join in late March, but I didn't join until September. So I'd been asking for information and I continued to ask for information during that time. And the one thing really stuck out to me, and that was the relevance of a textbook. You know, I had two high school age kids at that point. They were being taught on Nelson materials. But every other aspect of the line, if you if you sort of divorce education from what it is at its core to a habitualization, relevance is really important. And a lot of people hate it when I say this, but I I figured at that point that learning or teaching or education was no different than golf or tennis or cooking. If you do it, you know, twice a year, you're not going to be very good at it. If you do it every day, you get better at it, and the better you get at it, the more engaged you are, and you know, then you've got what I call the heaven spiral of continued improvement rather than the death spiral spiral of what in education is disengagement. It was really about driving relevance, and that was by focus, and quite frankly, everybody thought I was crazy. Not only inside Nelson, but inside the empathy people is this guy who knows nothing about education who thinks he's gonna change everything.

Chris Colley: 4:45

Right. And I mean, I guess that kind of disruption in the system is what uh can push forward any kind of change. Because I mean, I was kind of thinking about education, uh you know, like the public education versus you know company uh organizations, but they're still in the same kind of they feel still feel the same pressures of relevancy and staying up to date. But I've noticed in education it's this change is uh, I mean, probably you have as well, is slow to happen. And it's it's hard to to not only get a school board to start moving in one direction, but uh uh you know, a multinational organization getting them to move in the same direction. I mean, what a challenge, but I guess it is through that disruption. Could you talk to that a little bit more about the positive aspects of when you disrupt something?

Steve Brown: 5:40

So my view was that if we didn't disrupt ourselves, somebody else would disrupt the space. And if if you look at cataclysmic change and you look at, you know, a massive paradigm shift in disruption in any sector, normally the disruption comes from outside. I knew we had the knowledge and we had the relationships. So I thought if we didn't disrupt ourselves, somebody else would come and disrupt us, and pretty much that would be the end of Nelson. And so I decided we'd go on a journey of self-disruption, and it took a lot to get the team on board and the majority, like there's nobody on my team, on the executive team, who was there when I started. And it wasn't because they weren't great people, because they were tremendous people, but their skill sets were backward looking, not forward-looking. And if they couldn't quite get the emotional journey to build the wherewithal to say the way we've been doing it wasn't wrong, but it isn't right for the future. So we decided to self-disrupt. And I think we got it absolutely right when I look at our Edwin platform today, which is the you know the largest platform in education in Canada and is also used now in 11 other countries around the world. We got it right. So I'm I'm I'm proud of that. You know, it was my idea, and it was one platform with all your learning all in one place, a safe sandbox of learning, curriculum aligned. What I absolutely got wrong was the speed. I thought in what we've achieved in nine years, I'd achieve in five. Now, true enough, there was a there was a global pandemic in there. But you're right, education moves slowly. And you know it's it is it's starting to accelerate now. There's still resistors in there, depending on which provinces you look at. But generally, everybody's realizing education has to change, teaching practice has to change, the pedagogical alignment still has to be there, it has to be tried and trusted, it has to be saved. But the methodology of delivery, I knew had to change to be relevant to the student and to give teachers back the one thing that they so sorely need, which is time. I love that.

Chris Colley: 8:05

I love that.

Steve Brown: 8:05

So by doing that, people are now starting to believe, and it was it was a long journey, but it it took a lot of stubbornness. It took the belief that if you got it right, eventually everybody would come around, and we're well on that journey now. But changing a company or changing a market sector is the same. You've got to choose the destination, not the route, because the route will change. You know, you're gonna turn left, you're gonna turn right, but if you never take your eye off the prize, which is the ultimate destination, you can achieve anything.

Chris Colley: 8:38

I love that. That's amazing. And uh Steve, when you're when you're kind of like you're making me think of all these things now, but just talking about like what we need our kids to have when they're leaving, you know, uh their K-11 or K-12, depending on provinces again, because education's all provincial here in Canada. But what what skills do you find that your material can help? Because we always hear this in education that we're we're we're we're teaching our kids for an un you know certain future. Like what is their future? Who knows? What companies will exist, what jobs will exist. Well, but one of the things that we felt like in our mindset here at Learn and and what we push with our PD and our development is that if we can get them thinking and get them problem solving and collaborating and build their resilience, that in the end, all the continent content in the world, you can't uh you can't replace that, that those soft skills, what employers are looking for. How do you guys approach where I know that you're you started as a content company with textbooks, but how are you shifting a little bit so that that you're getting kids to also develop themselves and how to have these soft skills that are so sought after right now?

Steve Brown: 10:00

It's I mean, it's probably never been more true than than it is today when you look at the advent of AI and what's going on. But my my personal belief is that the fundamentals of numeracy and literacy are because ultimately, no matter what problem solving you're gonna do or what creativity you're gonna garner, you do need those skills. So I I do genuinely believe in that. But my view is one that I've been on record of saying before is one of leadership. So I think if you can create equity and equality in education, the absence of equity and equality, you could be leading, leaving the leader of the free world behind because of social economics or religion or whatever geography. And I think if we can train leaders that have the skill sets of numeracy and literacy and also have the ability to understand that there isn't a right or a wrong million difference, so you have societal understanding and empathy, then you can you can create it. You can create a future that doesn't exist today. And I'd like to be able, if there's one legacy I'd love to leave behind, it's to leave students behind with the ability to debate. Often, no, if you take the dinner table, you know, when you're my age at least, you know, it was like be seen and not heard, and you don't question your elders and all of those things. You know, I'm I'm an old guy, but but sometimes there's bigotry around the table. And that can that came from education. If you you take, you know, what was believed to be correct or what was believed to be history, whether it be right or wrong, we're teaching kids today, uh particularly in Canada and in other parts of the world, that parts of the history of this country are not particularly something to be proud of. But their parents may have been told that residential schools or whatever it may be, there's there's a various, you know, different nuances to that, was good or right. Or, you know, religion was good or right. And I'd like kids to be able to debate their parents, and then you're talking about reverse education. And that's real leadership. You don't being a leader isn't about gaining a position. You're only a leader when you have the ability to change people's direction for the good, and you're only a leader when you're followed. So if we can do that, my ultimate measure when I look back after I'm retired will be the legacy that we've left with Edwin and what we've done shaping the future of Nelson for the next hundred years, the measure is going to be GDP. Yeah. And if you can create great leaders and thought leaders and visionaries and creative leaders, you'll drive the GDP of this nation up. And ultimately, that's the measure of everything. So I think that if you can engage kids and let them see that questioning isn't rude or or controversial, but it's about trying to find the answer to a question that isn't asked yet, then we're going to create a better future for this generation.

Chris Colley: 13:10

I love that. You know, when I when I saw you talk, um, we first met at the AI summit and you did a keynote there, which I found fascinating. And I and it's something that you just mentioned that I couldn't stop thinking about was the GDP point that you made. And thinking that long term down the road as a measurement that that it might not change within the next year or two. But if we have that long term where we're looking at the D the GDP of our country, it really starts to make it real as to what we can actually do.

Steve Brown: 13:45

Right. If you think short term, you'll achieve short term. You know, in my view, in leadership, I've been in three industries. I've been a CEO of Global Businesses now for 30 years. My job isn't about the field I'm studying. My job's the next field and the next field and the next field. Your success as a CEO or as a leader is about the people that you bring up, the career development, the leaders of the future, and creating that journey to the destination. So, like I said, if you think short term, you'll achieve short-term goals. Right, great. If you think long term, you can actually change society. You can change a multinational company, you can change a sector because you laid out a vision. And when people believe in that vision, when you're gone, the destination's still the same. So you've got to have a degree of the ability to embrace discomfort. You know, there's no there's no failure, there's a there's a right and there's a learning. You just don't take your eye off the prize, and when people believe, you create evangelists, and long after I'm gone, they'll still be going the same direction.

Chris Colley: 14:52

Right. Love that. And what do you do with those naysayers? Like in every system, there are some that the ones that just are like, no, no, we've been doing this this way for a long time. There's a reason for it, you know. Like, how do you get because oftentimes they can off-rail things, you know, because they have a stronger voice, or you know, their opinions are thought to be more important because they've been there longer or whatever it might be. How do you counter that? Or how do you address people that have these concerns about moving forward and change?

Steve Brown: 15:26

I I'm trying to avoid all major eye on this. You you've got to have self-belief to create the destination. You either change the mindset or change the person. It's pretty binary. And it doesn't mean they're not good people, but if they can't get on board with the new way, then you've got to change the person. Normally, when you have someone who is not a believer and doesn't believe in the direction, when you change them and you change their mindset by showing them, they end up being the best evangelists because they weren't believers at the beginning. They didn't just fall in line because it was going to be easier for the career. But they normally are the ones who are the big stalwarts. But some you can't. Some think that some people think they know better. And with every decision, I always tell everybody one of us is right, one of us is wrong. Time will tell. Of them still here. And, you know, we used to deliver content in paper, print, and bind in textbooks. Everybody thought we were a textbook company. We weren't. We were a content company, we were a learning company. We never owned a paper mill. So why are you in the paradigm of the textbook? The only thing that changed is the delivery mechanism. So the second called the five whys, which is if you ask why five times, you normally end up at the root cause or the root problem or the root solution. So don't just take the first why. Like we're a content company, why? Because we've been in education over a century. Why? And eventually you get down to the nucleus of what's really important. But there's people who gotta have some self-belief, a bit of doggedness. You've got to have the you've got to have a sprinkling of humble arrogance. And if you don't believe in it yourself, who else is gonna believe in you?

Chris Colley: 17:17

Totally. I love that. Yeah, absolutely. And and that's in in a way that helps get more than not enough to you know see that vision down the road and where you're aiming for. I I'm drawing the parallels between organizations and school boards. And they I mean they just they're very similar in in approaches. Trying to moment, you know, change cultures in a school is similar to changing a culture in an organization where you're you have this vision, you're trying to bring them to it. What do you think the the dawn of AI is is is gonna have an effect on? I mean, it's a tipping point again, right? Like printing press, internet, you know, like there are these moments in time that shifted the way we have to start to adjust. I think AI is one of those where it's a tool that's very powerful. How do you guys approach it at Nelson? Like, how are you leveraging the power of it at the same time recognizing that education moves slowly and this moves so quickly? Like balancing those two, like it's I think it's every seven months AI turns over now, right? It's such an accelerated pace. I mean, teachers maybe not as quick seven months of turning over. How do you address that, the speed of AI versus you know, addressing your clientele and where they're at? And how do you kind of navigate that balancing act?

Steve Brown: 18:48

I think that you know, you start off at 100,000 feet. You first of all, anybody who's denying AI is real is is you know, they're they're kidding themselves. It's not something that's gonna go back. But I look at AI as a tool, not as a product. I think that's the first fork in the road. That's the first point of differentiation. People who look at AI as a product, I feel are gonna cause a lot of problems in education. You know, that you've got some boards now who are just saying to AI, a generative engine, give me a lesson plan of X. And the misinformation that's coming out of that is hugely problematic. We talked about creating a society of betterment and of understanding and of empathy. Well, the biases and the hallucinations coming out of AI when you don't use a safe sandbox are problematic. We use AI and have been. We've got a tremendously talented tech team. They've been using AI in content development for a long time. But it's where that content comes from that's important. So we did something that I'm not sure anybody else has ever done. We built our own large language model. So to put it in a way for the listeners and viewers to understand, we basically took all the content we had and shook the words off the pages into an LLM, knowing that that's all of our material and we can change it and update it and alter it to new curriculum and so forth. But everything in there has been tried true and vetted, it's been through a rigorous editorial process, and then we add to it and change it. Well, when you just go out into the wild, wild west of public LLMs, you know, if if you don't ask the question right, you get a lot of misinformation, and then you ask for citation, and it makes up the citation to underline why it's true. I think that if we we look at it from a content development standpoint to drive speed and agility, but ultimately when when you have a reputation like Nelson, you can't dilute that with misinformation. People know when they get something from Nelson that it's been through a rigorous process. And they can it's true and they can believe in it and they can feel comfortable with it. So we don't we we're never gonna give that away. And you know, ultimately, any company is as strong as its people, but you've got to have guardrails, you've got to have the ability to ensure that reputationally you won't dilute what it took over a century to build, but now we can do it quicker. Now we take the content within Edwin and we're we're building out assessment by taking individual learning journeys. And I've been hearing about personalized learning journeys for the nine years I've been in education. We're just seeing it now. We're just seeing before it was a mythical beast. I think now it's slowly rearing its head. So I think we're approaching ideology to to delivery which has taken a decade. I I think that there are two there are two things in life. And I I say this, my kids are grown now, but when you're making a decision, a life decision or a change decision or a sector decision, there are there are two the first question is which is important, direction or speed? Sometimes it's speed and sometimes it's direction. If you're gonna get to Valhalla, it doesn't really matter how long it's gonna take, you take direction. But if you've got a burning platform, you've got to go with speed. So you've got to choose which one. And, you know, people choose correctly or incorrectly. Proud of what my team are doing, they all believe out. I was literally before we got on this, I was just walking around our office, and the the excitement, the belief is palpable, you know. After around the coffee pot, you know, people stood around. I just had a conversation with one of our editors talking about football. I'm a huge soccer fan. And my team who won everything last year are doing terrible this year, Liverpool. It's okay, whatever. It is what it is. But the the camaraderie, the belief, the trust in each other is akin to that of you know, people on the high wire or the trapeze. I know that my team, whether it be in sales or marketing or technology or content development, know that when they let go of that trapeze, the guy on the other trapeze is going to be there to catch them. And when you've built that, you've created an immovable object and an unstoppable force. And that's what teamwork's about.

Chris Colley: 23:21

Yeah. I love that though. That as you walk through, you feel that that energy. I mean, that's you know, it's it's hard to describe, but it's you know what is happening, you know.

Steve Brown: 23:32

You know, people in the education sector know that we're a fun shot. You know, a lot of people in our sector feel like every day is another day at the salt nines. It's like, oh my goodness, the market this, the market that. And we, you know, we walk through, you know, whatever event it may be, whether it's, you know, op solar or cass or whatever the major education, we have a lot of fun. We work, we work very, very hard, but we enjoy what we're doing because we're making a difference. And I always say to everybody, the only thing you need to promise me is that you'll be the best Chris you can be every day, because I'll be the best Steve Brown I can be every day, and all I expect is the same for you. And if you can do that, you can create brilliance.

Chris Colley: 24:19

Yeah, totally. I love that. Such a good I love that vision that you're laying out. And speaking of vision, kind of to wrap things, Steve's again, thanks so much for this. Like, I'm gonna be thinking about this conversation for a while to come, where you've just opened a few doors and exposed some thoughts that I didn't have, which I really appreciate. But your long term, if you're looking, you know, when you first came and you had that long-term five, eight-year vision. What is that now after you've been there for a while and and keeping that vision going of things that you could tell us about anyway? What does that vision look like for you, Steve, down, you know, another five to eight years down the road?

Steve Brown: 25:03

The the vision for me is that every educational community in every country in the world will be learning on Edwin or something like Edwin, because there will be people who are going to try and copy us to make to make education fun again. To have kids who enjoy learning. I I love learning. I love everything I do. I've got a couple of real passions in my life and I love learning. I mean, I you know, I studied wine and I'm still learning every day, and it's not about how I tell you. So if you actually enjoy learning, I look at it and I look at the educational landscape globally and think, you know, if we can get teaching to again be fun, because let's face it, teachers went into the teaching profession it for a noble reason. And now we've got teacher shortages because they're not enjoying it. Because so many things that are being thrust upon them have got nothing to do with teaching or learning. So give teachers the tools to save them time and let them have fun. Because there's nothing like being in a classroom looking at a teacher who's having a great day. Because that kid then has a great day. And they go home and they say, Well, I had a great day at school today. Look what I learned. So to create an atmosphere, a community, an environment of thirst for knowledge. If we can achieve that, then we can change the way from Socratic methodologies to uh you know a 21st century method of learning, then we'll look back. And no one's gonna say Steve Brown, it I don't care about that. I I honestly like give a damn. I don't care about that. What I care about is when I look back on it thinking I made a difference. And if you if you have that passion and your personal goal is to make a difference, whether it be professionally, whether it be personally, whether it be as a partner, a husband, a father, then if you leave, you know, if you leave a legacy of difference, we're gonna have that heaven spiral and not the death spiral that society's been on for a while.

Chris Colley: 27:05

Amen. Amen, man. Steve, this has been absolutely wonderful. Thanks so much for your time and your thoughtful reflections on education and where we're at and where we're going. I feel more optimistic talking with you. And I think disruption in the end really spurs on this excitement of, you know, we're not done yet, and we have our eye on the prize, and that's our kids and their future. So thanks for looking at that big picture and also giving us some really concrete, beautiful examples. I really appreciate it.

Steve Brown: 27:38

My apologies, Chris, it was great to chat.