Training's Biggest Blind Spot Revealed: Julie Dirksen

Change Signal

Julie Dirksen’s three key insights about modern change mastery:

• most training fails because it ignores immediate relevance;

• organizational change temporarily destroys people's competence and professional identity;

• corporate learning only addresses logic while ignoring the emotional brain that actually drives decisions.

Julie Dirksen joins me to dissect why most corporate training feels like "high school, but worse." She's spent years figuring out how to design learning that actually changes behavior, not just fills heads with information.

Her printer repair experiment reveals why engagement isn't about jazzing up content—it's about timing and immediate application. When your printer's broken and you need it fixed, suddenly that boring YouTube video becomes fascinating.

But here's what really stuck with me: change doesn't just alter what people do, it shatters who they are. Take someone who's unconsciously competent at their job and force them to learn new processes, and you've just broken their professional identity.

Julie introduces the elephant-rider metaphor to explain why purely rational training approaches fail. Your logical brain might understand why change is necessary, but your emotional, experiential brain—the elephant—often has other plans.

If you're leading transformation efforts and wondering why smart people resist obviously good ideas, this conversation will shift how you think about supporting behavior change in organizations.

Change Signal. Cut through the blather, the BS, and the noise to find the good stuff that works in change. If you’re a transformational leader seeking modern change mastery, you’re in exactly the right place.

***

WHEN YOU’RE READY

🎧 A new episode every week (and sometimes two!)

The Change Signal newsletter. Short, practical, weekly

***

CONNECT

💼Connect on LinkedIn

***

SAY THANKS

💜Leave a review on Apple Podcasts

💚Leave a review on Spotify