How to put learning at the centre of how your organisation succeeds

A lot of organisations espouse the value of "learning", some even have it as an official "value" and have fancy posters to inspire people to learn, but few really live it, putting learning at the centre of what they do.

Service industries succeed (or fail) almost entirely on the knowledge, skills, and behaviours of their people, so their ability to learn - and therefore improve performance - throughout their whole career is even more important.

In this podcast I chat to Sarah Brennan and Rachel Sedgwick of JDX Consulting, a company that has done just that: put L&D at the heart of who they are and how they succeed.

Sarah Brennan, is the Global Head of Learning and Developmen at JDX Consulting

Having worked as a leadership consultant to JDX since early 2016, Sarah joined the company in 2017 as the CEO of Create Edge and Global Head of L&D.

Sarah has over 15 years’ experience as a trainer, facilitator, HR professional and international executive coach. Fully CIPD qualified, an NLP Master Practitioner, member of the British Psychological Society and expert in a range of psychometrics, Sarah has worked in large corporate and multinational businesses, through to public sector bodies and small not-for-profit organisations.

Her vast experience, passion for the work she does and keen interest in positive psychology and neuroscience have seen Sarah successfully roll-out numerous leadership, management and graduate development programmes, work alongside multiple Boards and senior teams to offer executive coaching and strategic support. She has also run her own training and coaching business and inspires others through her public speaking engagements. She has implemented various bespoke talent identification and management approaches and played a fundamental role in the bid, tender and acquisition processes in large organisations.

Since joining JDX, Sarah has successfully rebuilt the L&D function, launched a world-class global learning Academy and implemented an eLearning platform consisting of around 500 learning modules. Sarah also runs an internal executive coaching programme, a consultant-focused mentoring programme and has led on a number of culture development initiatives.

Rachel Sedgwick, Learning and Development Manager at JDX Consulting

Rachel has nearly 10 years of learning and development experience in a variety of sectors and is currently responsible for managing the day-to-day running of the L&D function at JDX Consulting, including team and budget management, and the production and implementation of innovative learning content across the organisation.

Prior to her post at JDX, Rachel was Learning and Development Manager at Westminster Council Housing where she worked directly with the CEO and the executive leadership team. In this position Rachel built the learning and development department and team from scratch and was responsible for designing and rolling out the L&D strategy across the organisation and tying continuous learning into the existing values structure.

Rachel has also held L&D roles at Google, The Racing Post, Prudential Assurance, and Cushman and Wakefield and has an array of professional certifications from The Academy of Executive Coaching, Mindgym and the TRACOM group, as well as a BA (hons) in Drama and Theatre Studies from Roehampton University.