Graham Glass Podcast Transcript
Graham Glass joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Graham Glass. Graham Glass is the chief technology officer and founder of CYPHER Learning, the AI-native platform that puts company knowledge to work. An entrepreneur, software architect, author, and inventor, he brings decades of experience building technology companies and developing software that helps people and organizations work more effectively.
His background spans enterprise software, distributed computing, and workplace learning, combining deep technical expertise with a practical understanding of how businesses put knowledge into action. Well, good afternoon, Graham. Welcome to the show.
Graham Glass Hey, it’s great to be here, Brian.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it, really do.
You’re hailing out of Northern California. I’m in Kansas City. We’re a two-hour time difference, but again, I know it’s hard to traverse time zones sometimes and calendars, so appreciate that. Graham, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna jump into your first question. You went from teaching computer science, amazing, at University of Texas Dallas, to founding The Mind Electric, serving as chief technology officer at Web Methods, and now building CYPHER Learning.
So what thread connects those chapters?
Graham Glass: So they’re all connected by my absolute love of high tech. So I’ve been designing computer programs since I was 12 years old, and so everything I do is infused with a love of technology. And as an aside, I was also a huge Trekkie, and so I am somewhat influenced in my career path by my love of, of Star Trek
Brian Thomas: That’s amazing.
I’m not so much of a Trekkie, but I probably watched just about every episode from every different series that came out, even if it was a rerun. But that’s awesome. Appreciate that, and I know that says a lot about you because like, like you, I at a early age loved computers, and I wrote a software program early in high school accounting program actually, and I liked…
It’s not, this is not my podcast, it’s your podcast here. So anyway, I just love that, and there’s some s- some good similarities to what we both did a- when we grew up, so thank you. And Graham you’ve called yourself a lifelong Star Trek fan, we just talked about that- Yep … who imagined learning from an intelligent companion.
So how close does today’s CYPHER Agent come to that early vision?
Graham Glass: Well, the interesting thing is, I was thinking about it today, we’re, we’re demonstrating the latest version of our platform, which includes the second edition of CYPHER Agent, and it’s actually more powerful than the Star Trek ship’s computer at this point.
So you can literally talk to it, you can ask it any kind of question, you can ask it all things learning, and it will respond at least as well as the Star Trek ship’s computer. So it’s nice to kind of see that that thread through my life finally arrive at CYPHER.
Brian Thomas: That is so awesome. And I, I know you’re passionate about this stuff, and obviously anything that’s someone- somewhat in that sci-fi genre is gonna be really exciting, and that’s where people excel, obviously if they having fun what they’re doing.
So I really appreciate that, and I’m excited because I talk to CEOs and CTOs every single day that are do- building AI-type products and platforms, so thank you. Graham, your company now argues that the traditional learning management system built only to deliver courses is outdated. So what convinced you to move learning out of those courses and back into the work itself?
Graham Glass: Yeah, that, that’s a great question. I mean, we don’t even call ourselves an LMS at this point. And one of the reasons, although LMSs did do some things around, other than courses, they were very course, course-centric. CYPHER platform is centered around knowledge, and it’s actually knowledge, skills, and plans.
And so we’ve really rethought the way that extended enterprises actually want to turn knowledge into performance and build our entire platform around that concept.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. There, the… I’ve probably seen, I don’t know, 100 in my career learning management systems, and you’re taking a different approach obviously.
Skills, that knowledge that’s amazing. And of course, when people are more immersed into that type of learning, they’re gonna learn more and it’ll- they’ll retain that a lot longer.
Graham Glass: Yeah. That’s- I, I can give you a specific case. So if you look at a, an extended enterprise, which is really what our platform is built for, where you have lots of customers and partners and affiliates, you want everyone in that system to be able to leverage the knowledge within your company, which is really what learning is all about, keeping your own personal knowledge up to date.
Then you wanna make sure that skills within your company, so not just like tidbits of knowledge, but actually like, here is how we deal with a customer who’s asking about allergies if it was in a restaurant. You want those skills to be infused and reinforced, and then you want your individual employees to be able to form plans on how they are gonna continue to evolve in their career.
So the general idea is any company has tons of knowledge and tons of skills, and, they want to help their employees, but there’s no easy way to infuse that and make it readily available. So the old LMSs would try and solve that by building courses. So the course was like the main delivery mechanism for put- infusing knowledge.
But if you’re like me, I don’t like to take a course. And, and they’re usually quite clunky and they get out of date. What I want, I want a personal agent that I can ask any basic question, I, I can ask for refreshers. I want a video about something, I want a podcast, I want a tutorial, I want to be able to practice my skills, I wanna be reminded of skills, and make that super easy.
So that’s just our basic philosophy, is take all of that stuff, ingest it, and then make it available to everyone when and where they want it.
Brian Thomas: Love it. Really like on demand. I mean, you’ve got everything at your fingertips. I really appreciate you unpacking all of this for me.
Graham Glass: And also add your voice. So our platform has voice as a native mode.
It’s not like an afterthought.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Very personable. Thank you. And Graham, switching to the last question here as we look ahead to the future, what will workplaces learn- workplace learning look like once every employee has a personal learning agent? And how will leaders measure readiness instead of course completions?
Graham Glass: Well, I think, as I mentioned, our mantra is kind of turning knowledge into performance, and one of the things about CYPHER Agent is it can tap into virtually any system you’ve got, into Slack channels, MS Teams, HRIS, Salesforce, you name it. So the general idea is if you’re deploying CYPHER Agent, you wanna be able to measure the effect and how this, on-demand learning is helping people to, to turn their own knowledge into performance.
So, we, we’re a really big fan of measuring the effect of these things as opposed to just fire and forget. So I think that’s like a really core part of our overall philosophy. And then the idea is if somebody, wants to see how things are going, they’ll be able to drill down into your, your teammates and how all, all the people who report to me, how many skills have they demonstrate this week, how many of them are practicing, how many people did great in certain situations, how many people decided they needed a refresher.
And so you start to get real-time access to everything that’s happening, all things learning within your company.
Brian Thomas: Amazing. Thank you. And I love the fact that you are taking that approach of measuring, right? You– That, that analytical piece of it is, is really important. Data-driven decisions are always gonna lead the pack, and that’s what you’re doing here.
So I just- Yeah … yeah, the, the old way is checking the box, and that’s just not doing it. So I love how you’re innovating, and I really, really appreciate your vision. Graham, it was such-
Graham Glass: My pleasure, Brian.
Brian Thomas: it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Graham Glass: Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Graham Glass Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
