Todd Brison

Title

Supervisor, Multimedia Design

Organization

IDEMIA

Location

Dickson, Tennessee

LinkedIn

www.linkedin.com/in/todd-brison-38572239

Education

Bachelor's degree injournalism (East Tennessee State University); Certified Motion Graphics Designer (School of Motion)

Favorite Quote

"And then came the loudest silence ever heard since the dawn of time." —Terry Pratchett

After majoring in journalism and initially diving into the print industry, Todd Brison found a home at IDEMIA, a security and identity solutions company, as a technical writer. From there, he moved to the learning team. Today, he works on media production within IDEMIA's global talent development team. If anyone in the company sees video, audio, or interactive e-learning, Brison has likely touched it in one way or another.

How can learning contribute to the success of companies like IDEMIA?

Today if you aren't learning, you are losing. It's almost scary to see how fast the world is passing people by.

This century's startups—the Ubers, Facebooks, and Blue Aprons of the world—understand this intuitively. It's the big companies like ours that must adjust and be sure we aren’t getting passed because we are bigger. We have to rely on learning-focused smaller teams who can pass new ideas up as quickly as possible.

What are the biggest learning-related challenges you've encountered?

Understanding how a corporation of size works. Right now, my team and I are doing a lot of travel to try and connect our global dots—anywhere from Boston to California and from Japan to Singapore, India, or Egypt. I have been to France four times in the last six months, as well as Madrid once.

When you have a company as big and wide as ours, it can take weeks to even truly understand a product or its market fit. This is something we're trying to tackle right now. We want new employees to understand exactly who they are working for and how much good we are doing in the world. At times, this knowledge can get lost in the midst of the day-to-day work.

How do you see L&D evolving in your field over the next few years?

While I still see us as a human race integrating with machines to some degree, I have seen too much magic happen whenever more than one person tackles a challenge. I think largely we as L&D professionals will have to help our employees use the machines in a way that still allows them to harness the power of human potential.

Gone are the days when a company all sits in the same building. Now we have to figure out how to onboard a person in India, one in China, and one down the hall. We have to discover what the next generation really wants out of their work and how we can give it to them. We must learn how to teach quickly, knowing that our assumptions could all be wrong tomorrow thanks to the pace of change. It's a massive opportunity, and I'm looking forward to it.