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Andrew Barry

Founder & CEO, Curious Lion

ICs can do more on their own with AI than ever before. This is both a challenge and an opportunity for L&D. This newsletter explores how to equip ICs with the influence skills that drive retention, accelerate OKRs, and position L&D as a strategic partner to the business. (Sent twice a month).

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A friendly robot offers eight problem-solving cards while a lion selects four glowing choices, illustrating the human role in choosing how to approach a problem.
Featured Post

[3-2-1] AI gave me eight kinds of judgment. You pick four.

Hey Reader, Welcome to the 24th edition of the 3-2-1 (check out previous issues here). Last edition I argued that judgment gets built through reps. This week I go one level deeper and try to answer what judgment actually is. A new HBR article gave me a starting taxonomy, AI helped me stress-test it, and now I need your judgment to finish the job. This edition ends with a chance to share your perspective, so read to the end! Let's get into it. 3 Things for Work (in L&D) How Do Workers Develop...

2 days ago • 4 min read
A lion lifts a barbell labeled research and the call while friendly robots offer platters of ready-made answers, showing that judgment comes from doing your own reps, not accepting AI's conclusions

Hey Reader, Welcome to the 23rd edition of the 3-2-1 (check out previous issues here). This week I sat down with alumni of a thinking-skills program we've been running for almost two years. One of them, now leading a team, described working with AI as a pressure cooker. Everyone is expected to have an answer instantly, and AI makes instant answers easy. That conversation is the theme of 1 Idea From Me below, plus I've got two new papers that landed on opposite sides of the same argument up...

16 days ago • 4 min read
Three suited animals admire a framed skills checklist while, beside them, a lion and a colleague work through a sprawling, unfinished problem map that spills off the table, contrasting static audits with real work.

Hey Reader, Welcome to the 22nd edition of the 3-2-1 (check out previous issues here). This one started with a post from Jolene Skinner at MongoDB lamenting how the skills-based movement is distracting us from the real problem we need to solve. It charged my brain for the rest of the day. The problem, in five words: skills sit still, work doesn't. Let's get into it. 3 Things for Work (in L&D) Why the skills-based movement doesn't work for most companies (Jolene Skinner, LinkedIn) Jolene...

29 days ago • 4 min read
A lion works at a desk inside a circular Seek–Sense–Ship loop while friendly robots stand outside passing tools, research, and notes into the workflow.

Hey Reader, Welcome to the 21st edition of the 3-2-1 (check out previous issues here). This one is about the most misunderstood idea in L&D, and why the way we use AI to write software is the wrong template for the rest of work. Let's get into it. 3 Things for Work (in L&D) A New Paradigm For Corporate Training: Learning In The Flow of Work (Josh Bersin) Where the phrase comes from. Bersin's 2018 original defines it as embedding learning content into the platforms where work happens, so you...

about 1 month ago • 3 min read
A lion teaches two students at a whiteboard, illustrating that when one person teaches, both the teacher and learner grow together.

Hey Reader, Welcome to the 20th edition of the 3-2-1 (check out previous issues here). This one is about the highest bar a piece of learning can clear, and it has nothing to do with the score it gets. Let's get into it. 3 Things for Work (in L&D) Learning By Teaching (Curious Lion) The Feynman path to mastery: you don't really understand something until you can teach it. Where "each one, teach one" started for us, four years before two reps proved it on the job. 🏋 Effort ≈ 4 min read...

about 2 months ago • 3 min read
A lion conductor leads an orchestra before a packed amphitheater, raising a baton as musicians perform and thousands watch from the audience.

Hey Reader, Welcome to the 19th edition of the 3-2-1 (check out previous issues here). One post on LinkedIn last week would not stop moving. It was about AI making your people more productive and more likely to quit. Ninety thousand people saw it, and the comments improved my thinking on it. The version they argued me into is the one idea below. Let's get into it. 3 Things for Work (in L&D) In the workforce, AI is having the opposite effect it was supposed to, UC Berkeley researchers warn...

2 months ago • 3 min read
A lion in an Arsenal shirt lifts a trophy above cheering teammates as a stadium full of fans waves flags and celebrates around them.

Hey Reader, Welcome to the 18th edition of the 3-2-1 (check out previous issues here). I write about transforming ICs into Impact Contributors. (By the way, did you see Elena Verna's viral piece on High-Impact ICs? So cool to see what we've been talking about here for years validated by strong external signals.) A personal one this week. I've supported Arsenal for 30 years, and 22 of them were trauma. We won the league in 2004 with a team that didn't lose a single game, then did not win it...

3 months ago • 4 min read
Lion in red shorts and sneakers clears a high jump bar with ease while a small robot struggles over a yellow ‘10%’ hurdle; cat and bear judges watch with scorecards.

Hey , Welcome to the 17th edition of the 3-2-1. Three posts showed up in my feed within 72 hours last week. They came from McKinsey, the CEO of Zapier, and the CEO of Box. All three were making the same argument. Your people are the product. Let’s get into it. 3 Things for Work (in L&D) 1. AutomationBench (Wade Foster, Zapier) Zapier built a benchmark that drops AI models into real business environments (Sales, Marketing, Ops, Support, Finance, HR) and tests whether the work actually got...

3 months ago • 4 min read
Grayscale lion family—parent lions and a young cub—sit together outdoors building a toy rocket, framed by a large yellow circle and a red kite overhead.

Hey , Welcome to the 16th edition of the 3-2-1. A few editions ago I sent you six new cognitive moves AI made possible. The piece resonated more than anything I’ve written so far. Today I want to give you the other side of that ledger. There are ways of knowing that AI structurally cannot replicate. Not “cannot yet.” Cannot ever. Each one requires something AI does not have: a body, a stake, or a life. Let’s get into it. 3 Things for Work (in L&D) 1. The YouTube Revolution in Knowledge...

4 months ago • 4 min read
A grayscale org chart pyramid dissolves into a colorful network as a lion rides a red surfboard from rigid hierarchy into flowing connections.

Hey Reader, Welcome to the 15th edition of the 3-2-1. My last edition on six new thinking skills made possible by AI resulted in a ton of great feedback from readers like you (more than any other edition so far). This issue builds on that idea. Today, we’re talking about what happens when AI stops being a tool you delegate to and starts being something you work with. Let’s get into it. 3 Things for Work (in L&D) 1. As We May Work (Taylor Pearson) Taylor borrows from freestyle chess to...

4 months ago • 4 min read