A Virtual Chat Among Senior L&D Leaders Early in the Pandemic

On March 25, 2020, I invited a group of six senior L&D executives to meet in an informal virtual "watercooler" setting to share perspectives on issues they face in light of the Covid-19 crisis, which had then just started. They all were members of the Executive Corporate Learning Forum (ECLF)¹ who knew each other well from before.

At that time, they all occupied senior positions in large and global organizations, with global responsibility for areas such as Leadership and Organizational Development, Global Learning, Transformation and Change, Digital Partnerships, Talent Networks, and Knowledge Management and Collaboration Systems.

The pandemic had just started, and Zoom meetings were still a novelty then. Everybody was still in shock and scrambling to redesign interventions that had a strong social component into yet unproven virtual formats.

As initiator and host of this event, I felt that some highlights of the conversation are worth sharing, as they touch key challenges L&D professionals and social and organizational architects face in times of physical distancing.

The members of the group were²:

1. Kai Liebert - Head of Global Learning Campus, Siemens AG
2. Thilo Bendler - Vice President Knowledge Management and Collaboration Systems, Otto Group
3. Nandani Lynton - Chief Transformation Officer, Siemens Energy
4. Achim Wolter - Head of People and Organizational Development, Baloise Group
5. Irena Wiederspohn - Manager Talent Networks, Helmholtz Association
6. Verena Reichl - Senior Manager Digital Health, Roland Berger
   
   

On Virtual Content vs Virtual Social Texture

Kai Liebert - "Content for me is not the main issue. There's enough content there. Every two hours I get at least one offering of fantastic webinars. Content, content, content. Content is there. I think now we must think about how to overcome social distancing. And that's a topic - how can we keep people engaged? How can we make these coffee breaks virtual? Or bring teams together over lunch? We normally go to the canteen, to the restroom, just walk around the office. How can we recreate a little bit of this? Because people are not doing another webinar of two hours. My training guys are into webinars, webinars, webinars, content, content, content. I don't think that is really what people need to get engaged."

Thilo Bendler - "After eight hours of video conferencing, nobody feels like another hour of e-learning. What we need is to just give people the opportunity to virtually exchange among themselves, because that is something that in this busy time, nobody wants to organize. How are you dealing with the situation? What are your experiences right now? And one of the rules we have is no shop talk. We just try to talk to each other on a personal level, which is difficult in the beginning. But you feel that people are actually missing this kind of interaction. BTW, I'm all for grassroots here. We don't need to formalize that. Just make them aware of these formats."

Nandani Lynton - "Given that at Siemens we're now forming this new company 'Energy', there are a lot of new teams. And even the kind of tough business teams are now starting with check-ins that quickly become personal - personal from everyone. And for Siemens, this is not a normal thing. I've been amazed, and people comment on it. Saying 'I've actually learned things about people who I might have known for 20 years that I didn't know before.' Because we're talking differently now."

On Curation and Perspectives for the Future

Achim Wolter - "I feel it's also part of our role to curate what's out there in the news. What Roland sent us⁽³⁾ from this guy who had analyzed the Wuhan story and then explained the implications for Europe – I shared that with our CEO and other CEOs, and it became viral. Such good material is extremely helpful for people to figure out what the pattern behind these dynamics really are. Yes, we don't know how long it will take, but we can clearly see what the picture is, and we can anticipate what the next discussion will be about each stage."

Thilo Bendler - "Okay, what does that mean going forward? Short-term crisis management is very important. But if you only focus on that it's not very motivating and probably also not really future-oriented. We've just had a virtual meeting with all the 200 top people from our group. Our slogan, for the time being, is hope for the best and prepare for the worst. And hope for the best means we are pretty optimistic that we will come out of this very deep crisis. We must prepare for that. Not just wait for the moment when it’s over and then say, well, wow, what do we do now? Some of the given dogmas of the past, such as blind globalization, might not hold up anymore."

Irena Wiederspohn - "Somebody earlier on said that this kind of crisis right now serves as an accelerator. I think that is also something that we will are going to see - at the interpersonal level or from a system's perspective. Everything that is being pushed right now we will have to sort out later. Does it really make sense in different times as well? Or was it just enthusiasm and desperation that took us certain ways? Do the things that we establish now really make sense - middle or long term?"

On the Value of an Executive Network in These Times

Thilo Bendler - "Physical meetings in a relaxed atmosphere with the possibility to exchange remain important. So, it's not that you need to do them less, but you need to do things like we do right now, more. For me the value of the ECLF community has always been this open exchange among peers, nobody wants to sell me anything. I can be very open with things I do not know and I don’t know what to do about. Another aspect I like about our community is that we are all in the same league, I would say. You can talk and exchange with people who are on a similar organizational level. That's for me the real benefit of this network."

Kai Liebert - "Precisely. That we just came together here and immediately have a set of thoughts is because we know and trust each other. It's much easier to connect on a virtual level if you have a certain amount of trust. I really rely especially on ECLF here, compared to other ones. Vendor-free, not too structured, and building up a network of trusted people. Based on this we can also build up virtual formats, but I think still, it would be necessary and important that we meet again, of course, in person."

Nandani Lynton - "Look - several of us are at the end of our long days, and we are not yet done, right? And we still choose to come and attend this session. This conversation, it feeds me. It gives me something back. This is why peers and people we trust and value are so important. And frankly, you know, at this point in time, to have seven people attend out of 80 - honestly, I think it's not bad. I'm actually glad we don't have 30 on here."

Verena Reichl - "I think we've all been trained to expect online formats to be content heavy. Through this experience, we start seeing the value in virtual informal or less formally structured meetings as well. So, I think as we progress in this situation, Roland, you might be seeing more and more participants joining these kinds of sessions."

After two years of working under Covid-19 restrictions, we have become used to using virtual platforms and working from home. L&D executives showed a remarkable ability to pivot and accommodate to the new realities by creating high-impact virtual formats, encouraging self-organized learning in horizontal communities and leveraging rapidly growing ed-tech solutions. The pandemic turbo-charged the practice towards some digital/virtual capabilities which were already on the horizon.

Still, much of what was said then still rings true today.

[1] Founded by the author in 2005, the Executive Corporate Learning Forum (ECLF) is a community of senior executives from major global corporations, who are responsible for building organizational capabilities and driving large-scale learning, change and transformation processes. In 2021, ECLF joined forces with Executive Networks, a family of HR-focused networks.

[2] Corporate affiliation and functional role at the time of the virtual session

[3] The community had received curated material to help them make sense of the new realities.