Last week, I spent three days in San Francisco attending the Leading With AI Summit and meeting with clients. While I was there, I also hosted my third At The Edge dinner of the year in partnership with Mike Vaughan and Charlie Chung from The Regis Company.
Together, we convened a dinner of talent and learning leaders for an evening of meaningful connection and thoughtful conversation.
Over the course of the evening, we covered significant ground, primarily across four themes:
- Leading and navigating change in talent and learning
- Driving AI adoption and enablement
- The evolving skills conversation
- Advancing the talent and learning profession
While it’s impossible to capture the full thoughtfulness of the discussion, here are a few of the insights that stood out most.
#1) Change
For those of you who know me, you know I’ve been writing, speaking, and advising on change for quite some time. But there were a few new ideas that surfaced during our dinner conversation.
The first was about accountability. How often do we truly hold ourselves, and our organizations, accountable for the results of a change before launching into the next one? Too often, we move on to the next initiative without formally assessing whether the previous change actually delivered on its intended outcomes.
The second theme was around stability. One leader shared that in the midst of constant organizational change, they made a deliberate decision not to change the core processes their team owned, specifically to give employees a sense of trust, predictability, and confidence.
The results were incredibly positive, but they admitted it was one of the harder choices they’ve made, because it runs counter to the instinct to demonstrate value through new initiatives and visible change. In many ways, holding steady can feel less impressive than launching something new. And yet, in the end, that restraint created more impact than another round of change would have.
#2) AI Adoption
Everyone in the room was involved in some enterprise-wide AI adoption and enablement mandate in some way shape, or form. What a number of people shared was that, there was progress when being incredibly focused around AI adoption efforts,either by targeting a specific population (ex: leaders) or a function or role (ex: HRBPs, the Marketing function) Another critical approach in this was thinking about the folks who can help model the change and new ways of working that you want to see. I shared some of the findings from a study in 2018 that found that social movements around a behavior change start to hit an inflection point at the 20-25% mark, which is far less than most people expect. A leader spoke about how they were investing in their AI champions program, people they have identified as both power users, and eager to share what they’ve learned. They have decided to try to lean in to making sure they can let these champions scale their impact, by providing these champions with tools, resources, and support to help spur additional results.
Another participant spoke about how in their specific organization they were testing within a business unit/function the usage of agents in critical workflows. There were signs of progress, but there were also challenges that they didn’t expect. A few of their key insights were 1) they observed that there is a difference between the expectation of success/competence we hold humans to versus the rigor we hold technology (agents) to, and we hold agents and technology to a much higher standard. 2) While there was an appreciation for the time savings and productivity, many others expressed that they were happy and eager to start interacting more with humans.
#3) Skills
Since the room skewed toward enterprise, many organizations represented in the room were not new to the skills conversation and set of initiatives. We spent time discussing the idea of latent skills, capabilities people already have but may not fully recognize or articulate, and how surfacing those, could be an unlock in fostering talent mobility efforts. We also talked about how important it is to meet employees where they are, whether through technology embedded in the flow of work or by being much more intentional about getting closer to their day to day realities and providing intentional and meaningful opportunities to practice instead of expecting them to log into a separate learning system on the side.
At the same time, there was a shared recognition that we need to be clear-eyed about how quickly the skills landscape could shift, especially if AI accelerates the way some expect it to. One leader shared that they’re already piloting a “skills and capabilities of the future” effort across two business units, mapping potential impacts by role and workflow so they can proactively bake those insights into their upskilling efforts and broader strategic workforce planning.
#4) The Future of The Talent and Learning Profession
This is a topic I care deeply about – How we as a profession need to evolve as the workplace continues to evolve. I opened the conversation by asking a simple question: What can you do today that you couldn’t do 12 months ago?
One leader shared that they built an AI agent last year and were surprised by how accessible it was, which made them realize they need to be far more intentional about carving out time to experiment and rethink how they work. Another described building an entire “learning factory” inside Claude and using it so much they can’t imagine going back to how they worked earlier in their L&D career. For them, this isn’t just innovation but also “career insurance.” Another leader who has shipped real HR and L&D “products” into production said they no longer believe the rate-limiting step in organizations will be what we can build, but rather how we prevent chaos when everyone suddenly has the tools to build almost anything.
At the same time, there was pragmatism with the implications of this. A few shared that as their teams use AI more, they are spending more time coaching for judgment and discernment because while the drafts are better, the thinking still needs refinement.
I also shared examples of leaders I’ve spoken with who recently went through RIFs and had to make hard calls about reducing L&D roles. In a couple of cases, these same leaders, during net new hiring efforts, hiring managers shared that they were intentionally shifting what they were looking for. Rather than prioritizing traditional L&D backgrounds alone, they were seeking candidates with capabilities more aligned to product management or general management consulting, people who could demonstrate strategic thinking, had the ability to face off with any leader or stakeholder, a fluency with data, and the ability to build and iterate solutions. “We have to move beyond programs.” It’s not a new idea, many have been saying this for years, but the urgency feels different now.
And finally, despite the acceleration of technology, there was also a strong desire to double down on human connection. Multiple leaders talked about creating more in-person spaces where people can learn and work together, both because of their belief in them, but also because of interest from stakeholders. Even as we lean into AI, there was shared agreement that the core principles of social learning, trust, and connection still matter, perhaps even more now. It’s also why I believe convening conversations like this, and making space to learn together, are important.
Thank you to those who participated in this dinner, along with a big thank you to The Regis Company and Mike Vaughan and Charlie Chung For co-facilitating a thoughtful evening.
Note: I’ll be hosting dinners this spring and summer in Dallas, Minneapolis, and San Diego. If you are a talent or learning leader inside of an organization and are interested in attending, please let me know and I’d be happy to add you to the potential attendee list.