The Human Touch — A LinkedIn Live series with Keith Anderson

About the show

The Human Touch is a LinkedIn Live series at the intersection of AI integration in complex organizations, how Learning and Development is serving the integration of AI within its workforce, and more broadly how we rethink what careers look like moving forward.

These are three sides of the same coin. AI is changing how we work and what is needed to adapt. From the top of an organization to the bottom, and internally in each of us as individuals trying to figure out what our own path looks like inside all of this.

Guests on this show are leaders, practitioners, and people with real experience exploring what that integration actually looks like in practice. Not in theory. Not in ten years. Right now, in their role, with real constraints and real decisions to make.

The three tensions this show keeps coming back to

The Technical Leadership Layer

CIOs, CTOs, and Chief Digital Officers are caught between two pressures at once. From above, a board or a CEO saying the organization needs to move faster and show more from its AI investment.

From below, there is a workforce that has been given access to tools and is not necessarily using them in any way that shows up in the numbers. Deploying a platform is not the same as adopting it.

These leaders are learning that distinction the hard way, because the ROI the company expects does not come from the tech stack alone. It comes from what people actually do with it, and making that happen is not a technology problem.

The Learning & Development Layer

L&D teams have been experimenting with AI longer than most people assume. But there is a gap between experimenting with something and being able to connect it concretely to how every team in the company does its work.

The challenge is specificity. A generic AI literacy course does not tell a finance analyst, a product manager, and a customer success rep what they each need to do differently tomorrow.

L&D leaders know this. They are trying to build something that reflects how differently AI integrates across roles and functions, often without the guidance they need from the technical and executive layers above them to do it well.

The Individual Layer

Separate from what organizations are mandating, there are people figuring this out on their own. They are not waiting for a training rollout or a policy decision.

They are already using AI to work in ways that would have looked unusual two years ago. Writing faster, thinking through problems differently, taking on work they could not have handled solo before.

These tend to be people who are already good at their jobs and are using AI to go further. What they have figured out, and how they think about staying ahead of a tool set that keeps changing, is worth talking about publicly.

Guests tend to be

CIOs, CTOs, and Chief Digital Officers navigating board-level AI pressure
L&D leaders trying to move past generic AI training
Practitioners who built an AI adoption program inside a skeptical org
Researchers who study how people learn new skills under pressure
Founders whose product sits at the edge of learning and AI enablement

The audience is mostly

Tech leaders being asked to show ROI on AI investments they are still standing up
L&D professionals trying to build something specific when the inputs keep changing
People managers whose teams are anxious and looking to them for answers
Senior professionals trying to understand what needs to change about how they work
HR and People leaders trying to build something durable before the next reorg

How it works

It starts with a 15-minute call. Not a booking form.

Before anything gets scheduled, Keith has a short conversation with every potential guest to see if the fit is real on both sides. The guests on this show are people who have something specific to say about the problem, not just a title that fits the topic. That distinction matters to the audience, and they notice.

If it makes sense to move forward, Keith does his own research. He looks at your public work, writing, talks, whatever gives a real picture of how you think. You'll also get a short questionnaire to share what you want to talk about and anything you'd like to mention or promote. Flag it beforehand and he'll find a natural place to bring it up in the conversation.

The conversation itself starts with a few prepared questions and goes from there. No media training required. No talking points to memorize. Think of it less as an interview and more like a dinner party conversation that people happen to be listening in on. Organic, specific, and low-pressure.

Episodes air live on LinkedIn and run 30 to 45 minutes. After the episode you'll receive a clip package to share on your own channels.

15 min

Intro call first

30–45

Min episode

Clips

Sent post-episode

About your host

Keith Anderson

Independent advisor · keithanderson.io

After teaching high school English and then moving into higher education, Keith spent his entire subsequent career in tech. He started as an individual contributor at Google, YouTube, and Uber before moving into L&D leadership at Meta, DoorDash, and several mid-to-late stage startups, rising to VP.

A consistent thread across all of it was helping teams understand and adapt to new technologies that changed what their jobs actually looked like.

He left to build an independent advisory practice for senior leaders navigating the AI era. He's the author of The 30-Day Career Reboot and has spoken at ATD, SHRM, and the CLO Symposium.

He started The Human Touch because the conversations he was having privately with L&D and technical leaders were too useful to stay private.

HumanTouch

It starts with a 15-minute call. Not a booking form.

Want to be a guest?

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