Last Friday, I hosted The Edge of Work’s Summer Connect, a virtual connection and peer learning experience for HR, talent, and learning leaders looking to connect with and learn from one another.
In my work as an advisor, coach, and keynote speaker, I talk to a lot of leaders, and I’ve noticed that people often ask similar questions or run into similar challenges. A few years ago, that observation led me to start running a virtual roundtable that brings together in-house leaders in HR, talent, and learning, a space to ask questions, meet new people, build relationship capital, and learn from and teach each other so we can all be more effective. My goals for the event are simple:
- Give people who spend their time looking out for others a chance to invest in themselves
- Create space for everyone to both learn and teach
- Make sure everyone leaves with 1-2 people they can reach out to the next time they face a challenge or need advice
This August, 50 leaders joined us, and it was a great experience. The hour flew by, but we covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time. To better understand exactly what happened, I put together a short summary of the event.
What’s Top of Mind?
I know folks are a sharing bunch, so I opened up right away with one of my favorite discussion questions: What’s a question or challenge that you’re reflecting on right now? There were a ton of great responses in the chat, while I can’t share all of them here were a few of my favorites:
- What are the most prized human skills right now, as automation takes on more of the rest?
- How do I redesign work, and my team, when the work itself keeps changing?
- How do I keep work human-centered when my company is pushing so hard to do everything with technology?
- What parts of my team’s work are better done by humans, and what’s better done by agents?
- Beyond usage numbers, what should we actually be measuring to know if AI transformation is working?
- How do we help leaders use AI to work differently, not just to do the same work faster inside an AI tool?
- What will be the karmic reckoning for all the layoffs?
What Are People Seeing?
One of the benefits of bringing together people who share a similar role or remit but sit in different organizations is the chance to pulse check with peers. For the next part of this session, I asked four poll questions to get some insight and spur some discussion:
- How much change is your organization experiencing right now? (1-5 scale)
- How much do you expect your role or function to change or evolve over the next 3–5 years?
- Where is your organization on its AI transformation journey?
- Where is your specific team or function on its AI transformation journey?
Here are some of the highlights:
- 94% rated the change their org is experiencing right now as a 4 or 5 on a 1–5 scale
- 91% expect their role or function to change by more than 30% over the next 3–5 years, and 1 in 6 believe it could be more than 75% different
- At the org level, AI transformation was split almost evenly between “building comfort with tools” and “individual productivity gains”
- At the team level, maturity skewed later: 53% pointed to individual productivity gains, and about 20% said they’re redesigning workflows for collective impact
On the AI transformation stats front, there was a comment shared at a dinner I hosted with talent and learning leaders that summed this up perfectly. They shared that their organization has no problem getting people to use AI tools. Adoption metrics look great, but based on what they’re hearing when they talk to leaders, very few people are actually working differently. They’re struggling to tell a real story about impact, because as far as they can see, nobody is actually changing the way they are working.
Peer Connection and Learning
And finally, we wrapped with a few rounds of small group breakouts, where people connected with other leaders around a series of suggested prompts, everything from AI transformation, to supporting leaders who feel overwhelmed, to the future of talent development, and more.
One person summed up the spirit of it afterward:
“I was in a group with two others, and we joked that maybe it was the universe that brought us together, or maybe it was Al, because the three of us are basically living parallel lives in three different places. So thank you, Al, for making that connection. (P.S., that is me, not AI like artificial intelligence :))
Wrap Up
Thank you to everyone who joined us for our Summer Connect. We’re hosting the next one this fall (targeting November or December 2026).
If you’re a talent, learning, or HR leader who’s forward thinking, thoughtful, and believes in learning from and sharing with others, and you like the idea of connecting with peers who get it get in touch and we’ll add you to the list.