Better Learning Starts with Clearer Goals | Jackie Baxley of HRP Associates

In this episode of the Smarter by Design podcast, I’m joined by Jackie Baxley, Principal and Practice Leader for Environmental Health, Safety, and Sustainability at HRP Associates. Jackie has spent years helping HRP evolve from a more organic, apprenticeship-driven learning culture into a more intentional learning organization that thinks carefully about competency, capability, incentives, mentorship, and organizational performance. Her perspective is shaped by the realities of consulting work, where the product is ultimately the people themselves. One of the central ideas Jackie returns to throughout this conversation is that not every learning experience is trying to accomplish the same thing. Organizations often get into trouble when they fail to define the actual goal upfront. Is the goal simply communication? Awareness? Skills development? Demonstrated competency? Different goals require different approaches, different investments, and different ways of evaluating success. Jackie walks through the practical frameworks HRP uses to think more intentionally about learning design, including her “inverted pyramid” model of communication, awareness, training, and competency, as well as the EDGE framework: Educate, Demonstrate, Guide, and Evaluate. We explore why awareness is not the same thing as competency, why repetition matters, how HRP approaches skills validation and quality audits, and why some learning experiences work best asynchronously while others must remain in person. The conversation also explores the operational and economic realities of learning inside consulting firms. Jackie discusses how HRP has worked to remove the stigma around training and development by redesigning incentives, rethinking billability, and treating learning as a strategic investment rather than overhead. We also discuss HRP’s evolving employee lifecycle programs, their growing focus on soft skills and management development, and the challenge of building deeper organizational capability without turning learning into bureaucracy. If you lead an AEC firm, manage teams, oversee operations, or are thinking about how to scale expertise more intentionally inside your organization, this episode offers a thoughtful and highly practical conversation about designing learning around real outcomes. A conversation about clearer goals, stronger capability development, and building modern learning organizations that keep getting smarter, by design. == Episode Resources == 🧑‍🏫 Kent Jonasen — CEO, Leadership Pipeline Institutehttps://www.leadershippipeline.com 📚 The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership-Powered Company — Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter, James Noel 📚 The Specialist Pipeline: Career Development for Technical and Professional Specialists — Kent Jonasen, Stephen Drotter, Aigerim Edwards == Learn More == 🚀 Synthesis, the Intranet, LMS, and AI Search Solution for AEC: https://www.knowledge-architecture.com/ 📬 Subscribe to the "Smarter by Design" newsletter: https://www.knowledge-architecture.co... 🔔 Subscribe to our channel:    / @‌knowledgearchitecture   == Credits == Host: Christopher Parsons Executive Producers: Denise Parsons, Christopher Parsons Editor: Coe Hoeksema Theme Song: “We Took the BART” — Written and Performed by The Parents == Chapters == 00:00 Welcome and Episode Overview 02:49 Introduction to Jackie Baxley, HRP, and HIKE 10:16 Inverse Pyramid Framework: Communication, Awareness, Training, Competency 24:06 Building Skills with the EDGE Method 34:07 Reframing Training as a Strategic Investment: Time Tracking, Overtime, Stigma 43:54 Defining and Measuring Competencies 49:15 The HRP Employee Life Cycle Program 01:00:03 Balancing Internal and External Role: Serving Clients and Developing People 01:04:48 Future Goals: Skills Development Matrix