Catalysts: The Leaders Shaping the Future of Learning and Growth

Making Learning Stick: David Grad on the Science, Strategy, and Business Case for Live Training That Delivers

• Jacob Ratliff

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David Grad was once leading creative teams at MTV. Now, he’s solving one of the toughest problems in learning and development: how to make live training actually stick.

In this episode of Catalysts, David shares the origin story behind elevator9, the learning tech company he co-founded to ensure live training drives measurable, lasting impact. Drawing from learning science, cognitive psychology, and real-world application, elevator9 has created a platform that transforms what happens after the workshop—so that insights aren’t lost the moment people return to work.

We also explore the mindset shifts L&D leaders must embrace to position learning as a strategic value driver—not a cost center—and how David’s journey from media to learning has shaped his passion for empowering people through evidence-based design.

We cover:

  • Why most live training fails to deliver—and what to do instead
  • The core learning science principles that drive behavior change
  • How elevator9 uses AI to gather and analyze qualitative training data
  • A step-by-step look at how companies implement the platform
  • How L&D leaders can finally prove—and improve—their business impact
  • Why learning is a revenue driver, not just an expense
  • David’s advice for L&D professionals who want to grow their influence

Connect with David Grad:

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Hey there and welcome back to Catalysts, the leaders shaping the future of learning and growth. I'm your host, Jacob Ratliff, and this is the show where we spotlight the bold thinkers, builders, and leaders who aren't just responding to change in our industry. They're actually the ones driving it. And today I'm really excited to be joined by David Gratt, who is the CEO and co-founder of Elevator9. David is a former Emmy-winning creative executive who made a bold pivot from media and entertainment to leadership development. And now he's built one of the most exciting platforms in learning and development. What really drew me in is how Elevator9 tackles one of our industry's most persistent challenges, which is how do we make live training actually stick and deliver? measurable business impact. In this episode, we'll explore the future of learning, the evolution of leadership, and what it takes to create a lasting impact, not just inside of organizations, but across the industry as a whole. David, thank you so much for joining me here today. I'm really excited for our conversation. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for such a kind and generous introduction. You got me excited about what's to come. So thank you for that. Excellent, and I'm glad that I, it sounds like there weren't any surprises in your introduction because that's always fun where, you know, I somehow misinterpret something, so that's always a good start. um So I always like to start with, you know, one of the big kind of big questions. So, you know, as I mentioned, you made a major pivot and you were leading creative teams at MTV and you pivoted to launching a learning tech startup. What sparked that shift? And what I'm really curious about is how did your background prepare you for that new chapter? Well, I appreciate the question. And yeah, I've had that question asked many times. You know, how did you go from, you know, being in TV media and entertainment to doing, a learning practitioner and wanting to start a learning tech company. And here's what I realized in the, in the eight years or so that I was leading teams at Viacom that while I loved driving great results, terrific projects that launched and really had an impact, especially And particularly when I was leading the production arm and creative development of social impact campaigns, you know, that was gratifying to know that we were having an impact. And what I started to really realize that the thing that got me most excited about my job wasn't necessarily driving those tangible outcomes. It was creating the conditions for my teams to be successful and creating the conditions for each of the individuals on my teams to thrive. And. feel valued and therefore really drive even better results. And it got me interested in researching more about kind of the field of learning and development and leadership development. So I went back to graduate school, which Viacom was kind enough to pay largely for. And over the next three to five years, I made my pivot. So 22 years in media entertainment and marketing and branding. And all of a sudden, I found myself starting to develop a new career. in learning and development, leadership development, and an array of different roles. Excellent. So, you know, I you've mentioned to me that, you know, Elevator 9 was really born out of this kind of very specific pain point that you were experiencing firsthand. So I'm curious if you could first, I guess, give us the high level overview of what Elevator 9 is, but really also give us a little bit of the origin story of how you came to develop it. Well, Elevator9 is a learning tech platform that integrates the best principles of learning science and cognitive science with technology to ensure that the learning from live training sticks and is applied and really drives its intended outcomes. And one of the ways that we ensure that learning sticks also simultaneously collects and provides some of the most powerful and unique and differentiated data that anyone in the sector is able to collect because of the methodology that we use to ensure that that learning sticks. So we really have kind of a two-pronged approach with Elevator9. One, our platform walks teams through a process where we have created some really specific logic and rules on the platform that integrates questions based in learning science to ensure that a training is really targeted towards driving the intended business outcomes by achieving the learning outcomes. And the reason I did this is because about a year into becoming a course designer facilitator, I was being asked to do a lot of one day trainings and a few maybe half day trainings and I was really feeling good about the work I was doing. know, a company identifies skills and behaviors that they need their employees to acquire in order to overcome their biggest challenges and leverage their biggest opportunities so they can increase revenue or drive better outcomes for their organization. Maybe it's a nonprofit or something. And they have this hope that one of the most impactful and effective ways to train people to get those new skills and behaviors is through live training. And yet, typically, employers want their employees in their jobs performing. They don't want them in endless live trainings. So those trainings tend to be the way I was experiencing them. A one-day training or a few half-day trainings, maybe even over the course of a week, there'll be a number of trainings. And then the training's over. people go back into their job to perform and people kind of do this, they cross their fingers and they really hope that the learning from that training sticks and it's applied and it drives real uh performance shifts, really drives the outcomes that were intended. And so about a year into starting to do these trainings, I also was asked to design and start teaching a 12 week graduate course called Values Based Leadership. And simultaneously I was beginning to, I got certified as an executive coach. And I started taking on coaching clients who worked with me for usually at least a year. And over the next year, here's what I observed. Wow. Teams will come together and have a really great experience for a day with me or a couple of half days. And then they go back into their job and I generally don't see them again. Maybe I'll do the same training for the same company with a different group. But my graduate students, they've got 12 weeks with me, three and a half hours a week. They learn a lot in that three and a half hours. They go back into their day-to-day lives and they apply that learning. Then they come back and they share how they've applied it and they get feedback. And that process is spaced out over 12 weeks with a lot of practice, a lot of feedback, a lot of reflecting on it and on and on. Same thing with my coaching clients. And it started to occur to me that the transformation that the students and the coaching clients are able to achieve, how is it even possible? that companies that spend so much money on training, live training, can expect the same outcomes when it happens really in one shot. So I spent a significant time researching learning science and cognitive science. I took a course by a guy named Dr. Clark Quinn who had written a number of books on learning science and I ran into Someone I was introduced to who is leading a learning and development team for a division of Nestle Corporation. And over the course of about a three hour lunch, I said to him, Hey, what really keeps you up at night? We both clearly love learning and development, we get so passionate about leadership development, what keeps you up at night? And his answer was what I kept hearing over and over again, no matter how amazing the training, and no matter how engaged the participants, it's just impossible to know whether the training really achieved its intended outcomes. it's really hard to know whether the learning stuck and is applied. And even if it was, we don't really have any good data to demonstrate that. And I asked him, hey, what if I white boarded the idea? What if I tried to solve this? Would you back kind of a pilot? And he said, he kind of laughed at me. He said, you're gonna solve this big problem. And I said, I'm gonna try. And we did it. We... White boarded it for about a week. He came back into New York City. We shared the idea with him and that was our first pilot. We did A-B testing with a leadership development training that he had with two separate groups and he found the results to be remarkable and the data to be incredibly helpful. In fact, he hadn't experienced anything like that before, so he reinvested. We built it um on a no-code platform. We built a second and then a third prototype and we kept bringing in paying pilot partners and that's how we were off and running with getting Alamute or nine to market. Now it is significantly further along now than it was when we first had a no code uh platform. We're now building our own full stack platform. Since then I have somehow persuaded Dr. Clark Quinn to come along. and spend a couple of years with me really embedding his knowledge of cognitive science and learning science into the platform's logic and rules and algorithms. And I have a terrific co founder, Dr. Paige Chen, who has PhD and learning experience strategy, I'm sure I got something there wrong, but she has a PhD that also really allows her to understand the kinds of data analytics that we are pursuing with the platform because we get large amounts of qualitative data in addition to quantitative data. And to be able to use generative AI to analyze qualitative data that really helps demonstrate whether or not the live training achieved its intended outcomes is one of the most exciting developments with our full stack platform. So I don't have to go any more deeply into that right now, that's uh the story of how Elevator9 was developed. Excellent. Thank you. And something I heard you mention several times is really how deeply learning science is embedded into the platform. And in fact, I think you said to me previously something along the lines of, know, elevator nine is first and foremost a learning company and the tech side is kind of what we use to enable that. So my question is from a learning science perspective, what can you give us a glimpse into some of the core principles you're drawing from and how that shapes the user experience. Absolutely. So most people in learning and development are familiar with Herman Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve. You you do an initial learning or training and most participants on average will forget somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of what they learned in that initial event within the first six days. In fact, within the first 48 hours, most people will forget up to 60 percent of what they learned. Now, if you forget what you learned in an initial learning experience, There's really no hope you're going to be able to apply that learning. There's really little hope that that learning is going to be accessible in your brain in the moments when you most need to draw upon those new skills and behaviors. So what elevator nine does by incorporating learning science is it builds what we call a lift learning journey. And our platform works really hard by asking the lift learning journey creator. on the learning and development team, a series of questions that are rooted in learning science. And those questions are unique to the training that we're looking to reinforce and reactivate learning from. So the principles of learning science that we incorporate are space learning, first of all. In fact, Dr. Clark Quinn is just finishing a white paper for us right now that will really go into detail for this. I'm really excited for us to launch this. um The way that learning sticks, after an initial training is we need to give learners a little bit of time for the learning to kind of bake in their brain. And after a little bit of rest, what is most effective is spacing that learning out over a period of time. And over that period of time, you need to reactivate that learning by asking prompts of each learner that has them reflecting on questions about each learning objective from the learning event itself. So you're going to reflect on what have you retained from this learning? You're going to then be asked to elaborate on that. And that's another principle of learning science. When you elaborate in your own words, whether you're responding with text or answering a multiple choice question or a survey question, or by responding with a video response, your initiating more cognitive processing about that learning objective and that very process is making it more likely that that learning is going to stick and is going to be persistent in your brain when you need it down the line. So in addition to elaboration, we also have people doing things like practiced learning and recontextualize the learning. So you're thinking about something that you learned in a training, but we're now going to compel you to reflect on How are you actually applying that learning in your day to day? And not only that, how are you starting to experience the impact of applying that learning? So these are all parts of the best principles of learning science, which we embed in these little two to three minute learning interventions that we call LIFTS. And LIFTS stands for Learning Intervention Fueling Transformation. And each LIFTS, like I said, takes about three to five minutes, and they're spaced out over a period of time called the LIFTS Learning Journey. And that lift learning journey is gonna be different depending on the training and depending on the questions that you answer before we actually build your lift learning journey. Questions like how much prior experience have these learners had in these, with using these skills and having these behaviors? What is the level of complexity that you're training them on? What is the level of urgency? For example, Is it a soft skill where it's important, but it'll be fine if it takes a few months to develop the skill versus maybe you're an aerospace engineer or you're in some other company where it's a technical skill. And the level of urgency is such that there could be an awful lot of money lost if they get this wrong or someone could get hurt or very badly injured if they get this wrong. So in that case, the platform identifies those and it adjusts the frequency of lifts that arrive. and the spacing of those lifts so that it can meet the needs of the particular training. So those are some of the ways that we really incorporate learning science into the logic and rules on the platform to ensure that all the learning objectives from your training are going to be reinforced, reactivated, and really applied throughout the next weeks and months after the training. Excellent. I have a question I had initially not planned on asking this because it didn't feel relevant, but it really does to me now, which is, can you give us just a high level overview of what the process is of a company comes to you and says, hey, I'm interested in working together. What's that process you take them through all the way from committing to working together and through implementation? Well, look, at a really high level, we want to explain the whole process to them so they really get excited. And we want them to know, we think your trainings are awesome. As a person who designs and delivers trainings myself, I know how very passionate we can be and how much work and how much real research and background and development that we have to make incredible live learning experiences. And so we want everyone to know we really believe in the work that you're doing. And the unfortunate thing is the way that our organizations want us to deliver this learning in these short snippets so people can really get back to work, that's where the learning fails to stick. So we get them on board with that. We get them really aligned with what we do. And then we sign them onto the platform. We have multi-tenancy on the platform, so every company has their own really safe, secure environment. And we will train whoever is going to be the lift learning journey creator on their team. We're going to train them on the process. And our full stack platform is built to walk you through step-by-step in the process. And what's really exciting to us, which was kind of a dream of mine when we were creating the prototypes on no code platforms, is that Every step of the way, you're prompted to answer a question rooted in learning science about your unique training. And each step of the way, as you're answering these questions, like the ones I talked about previously, you get a learning science tip that pops up. And that learning science tip is based on all of the work of Dr. Clark Quinn and Paige Chen and the body of work out there in cognitive and learning science so that not only are you answering these questions, you're not answering them kind of mindlessly. You're seeing the context. Why are we asking you this question? Why is it rooted in learning science and cognitive science? And what are you gonna get as an outcome because you're answering this question? So the Lift Learning Journey creator or author will go through, answer those series of questions, including what are the learning objectives for your training? What kind of team is this? How many events are there? Is it just one event or is it a series of Because... the platform recognizes that and then will either schedule the lift learning journey in between learning events or after the learning event or in some cases both. And then it will ask you what are your business objectives? And the reason for that is because we want to be able to tie that data analytics at the end of the lift learning journey, at the end of the whole process to be really taking a look at what were the learning objectives you were intending to drive and what were the intended business objectives. Now there's one other piece that we haven't talked about, which is you're collecting a lot of really meaningful data from responses to every prompt in every lift along this lift learning journey. So like I said, it's simultaneously ensuring the learning is sticking and that it's gonna be applied. And those responses are gonna be analyzed with how we're using generative AI, it's analyzing the responses within the context of the learning objectives and the intended business outcomes. And you also have an opportunity to send a lift before the training ever happens to each manager or leader who sponsors a participant in the training. And that will give you some benchmarking data. that will give you some idea, not just of the self-reported data from the learners in the training, but also the learner's manager or leader. So they're asked before the training ever starts. So here are, let's say, the five learning objectives for this training. On a scale of one to five, will you please assess the proficiency of this particular sponsor of yours against each of these learning objectives? And then we ask the manager or leader, what would you like to see as an outcome of this participant? taking this training and we get that qualitative response. So then the training happens. The learners from the training will receive all of the lifts in the lift learning journey. And then after a small period of time at the end of the lift learning journey, the sponsor or manager or leader will get another lift and that lift will say to that person, so here's what you said was this person's proficiency against each learning objective before the training. Where do you see it now, these weeks and months after the training? And then here's what you said you'd like to see as an outcome of this person taking this training. What have you observed since then? So what that gives us is it gives us a really big picture of not only the responses to every prompt of every lift of each individual, and you can look at it at the cohort level, you also have benchmarking data before and after for each person who was in the training. So there's a lot going on on the platform. And we're taking a lot on so that you don't have to do that thinking. You don't have to be a learning science expert in order to drive these kinds of results. There's one thing I will say, though we are using generative AI to analyze the qualitative data and deliver to your team really meaningful, differentiated and unique data, there's also a human in the loop because nobody really knows the training, your organization, and your people like your learning and development team. So while the platform recommends all of the spacing and the frequency of the lifts, and it will make recommendations about what kind of prompt should be delivered at what time for each of these lifts, it is the human in the loop that actually fine-tunes and creates the prompts. So the platform may tell you, this prompt needs to be a retain prompt. This prompt needs to be... an impact prompt. This one needs to be an apply prompt. And we have a formula for all of that. So it tells you what kind of prompt it is. And then your lift learning journey author is the one who actually crafts the kind of prompt. So at the end of all of this, we will give you access to the data. We have a team that will gladly work with you to look at the data learning experience strategists that will say, hey, It appears as though this data represents that your training actually did achieve the intended outcomes. Or you may look at it and say, you know, it achieved the intended outcomes here, but here it maybe fell short of achieving those outcomes. Let's take a look at the data so we can understand why. Because we actually provide the why. We don't just provide the benchmarking, we provide why did this occur or why did this not occur? And we can help you revise the training if you so desire. There's a lot going on with our MVP. We have big ideas about what to do once we're in the market and learning more from the companies that we work with. But that's what our platform can do at this point. Thank you. And you alluded to something really important here, and I want to highlight it and ask you a follow-up question. So you and I have previously talked about how so many organizations view learning and development as a cost center, and how it's so critical that we as L &D practitioners learn how to position ourselves as a value center instead. So the question is, how does elevator nine help? People like us do just that in our organizations. Well, I love your question and I was hoping we would get to this. ah We really believe, know, look, as a course designer, facilitator, I did a training earlier this week in Pittsburgh. You know, I believe in what we do and I believe that learning and development, just like many, if not most of us in the learning and development field, we believe that learning and development is not a cost center. It is absolutely a revenue generating function in your organization. And it's so clear. The organization needs people to develop new skills and new behaviors to overcome those barriers and leverage those big opportunities to drive better outcomes for the organization. How are you going to do that? There are myriad ways to do that. One of the most powerful ways is to do it in live training, but there's no, you know, it's kind of like branding. You build a brand, you get all this affinity and people start, over the years, a brand really develops uh incredible value. But it's hard to clearly define that value in terms of quantitative data. Learning and development, it's really hard to track the outcomes of trainings. But what Elevator9 does is it provides that for you. And it significantly increases the likelihood that the learning from that live training is going to be retained and applied. So on both sides of the equation, when you use elevator nine, not only are you significantly increasing the likelihood that the learning is going to be retained and applied from that live training, you're going to have the data to show it. And when you have the data to show it, all of a sudden you can walk into a room with confidence and say, this learning and development training is going to drive revenue in your company because you had intended outcomes. We built the training for it. We reinforced the training. And here's the data that shows you what occurred after the training. So we really believe we're really excited about the opportunity to further demonstrate that learning and development is indeed a revenue generating function in an organization. And what I love about that is just so very clearly, it's going to help us better communicate the thing that we as practitioners already know to be true, giving us the tools to do just that. So in our last couple of minutes, I want to shift gears and ask you a slightly different question. So as someone who's really standing at this intersection of learning, leadership, and impact, ah I'm always curious to ask, how have you thought about how sharing your ideas publicly, whether through a podcast like this, speaking, thought leadership in general, how does that and what role does that play in being an LND leader? Is it something that's even important? just generally, how do you think about that? Well, I appreciate the question. um Look, I think what we do in learning and development is so very important. I mean, I get, it's funny, I kind of geek out on this. uh I spent a lot of my career in a really sexy job, you know, in media and entertainment and... Yet I've never been as absolutely on fire, passionate about what I do as I have been since I've pivoted to become a learning practitioner because learning is where it's at. From the moment we're born, we only continue to evolve if we learn. And the same thing goes for organizations. Whether we're developing brand new talent, right in new to the workforce. or we're looking to re-skill and up-skill our existing workforce. Learning and development plays such a critical role. You know, it's right there alongside an array of other ways that we can develop people. But I just get so excited about what we're able to do when we really focus on it. And I think talking about it has the opportunity to get other people really excited about it, other people really passionate about it. And the more we can kind of keep moving towards the idea that learning and development, it's not a cost center that you should think about cutting when things get tough. It's actually such an important revenue generating function in your organization that if anything, you need to have those in learning and development closer to having a seat in the table with senior leadership to make the big decisions. And it shouldn't be like we're taking an order based on some kind of training that you. that you feel needs to be done, we should be a partner in helping to identify and hypothesize where are our biggest barriers for our employees? Where are the biggest opportunities? And let's really take a hard look at what are the skills and behaviors they already have to overcome those barriers and leverage those opportunities? And where are their skills and abilities that they need to do better on or they need to develop for the first time? So let's... figure out the right modality. Is it live training? Is it some other form of learning? Let's figure that out really strategically together so we can achieve our organizational imperatives together. And then let's design for it, deliver it, and make it happen. And I think the more we talk about that, the more senior leaders who are not necessarily in learning and development hear that message, the more welcome the L &D leaders will be at that table. And... the more we can let our passion shine through. And so I love being out here. I I love talking about learning science and cognitive science. I absolutely, I just, I love doing it. So the more, the better. And so another question I always like to ask and kind of in a similar vein for emerging leaders in learning and development who want to expand their influence and really make a bigger impact, you know, either in their organization or beyond their organization. What's one piece of advice you would offer them? Well, you know, I love the question actually, because it's no different than the advice that I give very senior leaders that I coach, my graduate students who are in my course, um and anyone that I have an opportunity to talk to. Not only is increasing your knowledge and the skills that you have in terms of the learning science and the cognitive science that you can be applying to your role, but just understanding how to more effectively lead yourself. That's how you influence people. That's how you become a more emotionally intelligent and strategic communicator. So it's kind of the one-two punch there. You know, there's the learning science and the cognitive science piece that, you know, really focus on that, really get good so you're knowledgeable and you can bring that to your conversations. But the other piece is not, doesn't really necessarily have anything to do explicitly with learning science or cognitive science. It's how can you be confident? How can you be strategic and how can you be a great listener? So you're actually listening and responding in the moment to people when you're talking about your function, you're talking about learning and development. So to me, there's that other side of just real personal and professional development to increase your persuasiveness and your ability to influence others. Absolutely, and I'm hearing the values-based leadership uh piece. I don't think you didn't say that explicitly in that answer, but right back to that uh graduate course that you teach. No question. Absolutely. So finally, for people who want to stay connected or follow your work online, where's the best place to find you? Well, you can find me obviously on LinkedIn. Look up David Grad and Elevator9 and I should pop right up. You can email me at David at Elevator9.com or David at Davidgrad.com. Any of those ways you reach me, I love to have conversations. uh I love to talk about my work and I love to share it with others. And I also love to hear about other people's work because again, Every day I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm continuing to develop and expand my network. So please, if you heard anything you like, please do reach out. Absolutely. David, thank you so much for this conversation, sharing your perspective, your experience, and your vision. It's been such a great conversation. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate you. Thanks so much for having me on. I'm honored that you invited me to have a conversation. You're really good at what you do and it's been an enjoyable time. Thank you. you, and if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe. so you don't miss what's coming next and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn as well. I'll put that link in the show notes as well as the links that David mentioned. And if today's conversation got you thinking about how your own online presence could better reflect your expertise and create a bigger impact. Feel free to click the link in the show notes as well to learn more about how I might be able to help you with that. Thank you again for listening and I'll see you next time on Catalysts.

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