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ELE advances leadership development in the flow of work through ongoing community-powered reflection and exploration. People leaders listen, question assumptions, and simplify complex talent challenges while exploring opportunities to create business value. Across years—and sometimes decades—these conversations build trust, belonging, judgment, and mutual support. Everyone can contribute, including by listening.

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This is where people leaders get sharper — and their teams get smarter.ELE is a community of people leaders who work through real talent challenges together. For more than 20 years, leaders building high-performing teams have learned with—and from—one another here.

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For more than 20 years, people leaders across these organizations have shared experiences, tackled talent challenges, and built lasting relationships through ELE. Some remain active today. Others are part of our history. Many connections continue long after people change organizations. Looking to connect with someone? We can often help make an introduction.

Organizations Connected Through ELE — Past and Present

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Get answers about how Executive Learning Exchange (ELE) works — peer-powered leadership development that fixes real work issues, reverses burnout, and accelerates business value. No programs. No vendors. In the flow of work.

What issues and talent challenges are your leaders working through right now?Bring a real work issue into conversation with the community. Fresh perspectives help you reframe the challenge, simplify complexity, and find a practical way forward.Continue the conversation between meetups and working exchanges. Read and reflect, or contribute when you’re ready.

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Insights on Talent Challenges | Captured Peer Conversations | ELE

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Welcome

ELE began in 2002 with an internal Learning Leaders Conference at Baxter. Since then, it has grown into an international community where people leaders share experiences, work through real talent challenges, and build relationships that last. From remote work to AI reshaping the workplace, the challenges keep changing. The value of learning from one another hasn't.

Work through real challenges with trusted peers. Build judgment and relationships through ongoing reflection, exploration, and contribution.

Leadership Development in the Flow of Work.

Gather people leaders around a talent challenge that matters to your work. ELE handles the logistics. What you explore together helps shape the community’s calendar.

Hear from the ELE community—real stories of peer collaboration, learning, and growth from leaders across the community.

Alter Domus

Lake Forest Center for Leadership

Executive Learning Exchange (ELE)

HumanSide

AI Learning Agency

<div style="font-family: 'Calibri', 'Candara', 'Segoe UI', 'Optima', Arial, sans-serif; color: #333; line-height: 1.6; max-width: 800px; margin: auto; padding-top: 1.5rem; font-size: 1.1rem;">
After years of broad AI experimentation, enterprise leaders face a critical shift: demonstrating tangible business value. As adoption grows and technology costs become visible, organizations must transition from widespread exploration to focused, high-impact investment.
This Design Charrette uses ELE’s Signals-to-Action framework to work through a realistic adoption scenario. Small peer groups evaluate existing workflows to determine what initiatives should scale, which efforts should stop, and how to navigate key strategic tradeoffs without scaling low-value activity.
Facilitated by Dustin Brewer, Gretchen Hartke, Anton Maletich, Patti Ouzounian, and Matt Sernaker, this Design Charrette equips leaders with clear priorities and a practical way to decide what to scale, change or stop.
<h3>What we heard</h3>
Tables sat on a fictional AI committee at an insurer spending nearly $1.4 million a year on AI, with 41% weekly usage against a 70% target and a course that hit 94% completion but changed no measurable behavior. One table would pull licenses back, charter a team to standardize underwriting and claims with AI, and ask other departments for a business case to regain access; another would keep the investment, require use backed by tools people want, and accept losing a resistant veteran. The shared lesson: set a baseline now, treat year one as year zero, and weigh license cost as an investment in people.
<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-46260" src="https://wp.ele.llc/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2026CHIE_Design_Charrette_AI_Adoption_Scaling_Takeaways.jpg" alt="Session takeaways from ELE's Oct 1, 2026 Fall Conference: AI Adoption — Scale What Works, with key points, quotes and facilitators." width="1920" height="1080" />
<blockquote>"I think that if you didn't have something to measure it against for your year one, that has to be your year zero, right?" Community voice</blockquote>
<blockquote>"We are all talking about this as a technology expense. Actually, what if we looked at it as an investment in our employees?" Community voice</blockquote>
</div>

Design Charrette: AI Adoption — Scale What Works

Strategy

Digital &amp; AI

digital transformation

Operations

anton.maletich

gretchen.hartke

CHIE2026

patricia.ouzounian

matt.sernaker

operational efficiency

AI Adoption

dustin.brewer

Design Charrette

scaling AI

signals-to-action

innovation strategy

AI investment

workflow friction

business performance

enterprise value

AI ROI

strategic focus

technology governance

&nbsp;
<blockquote class="ml-2 border-l-4 border-border-300/10 pl-4 text-text-300">
"We get through so much information in such a short amount of time — and the fact that we have a speedrun workshop that's still tangible is impressive." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/matt-sernaker" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Matt Sernaker,</a> Lake Forest Center for Leadership
</blockquote>

<hr class="border-border-200 border-t-0.5 my-3 mx-1.5" />
This isn't a presentation. Here's what it is instead.
ELE introduced something new this year — and if you haven't been in one yet, it's worth understanding before you read the rest of this post.
A Design Charrette is a structured, time-boxed peer experience built around one real business challenge — submitted in advance by a community member. Not a topic. Not a theme. A problem someone is actually living right now.
The format runs on two roles. An Internal Client owns the challenge and grounds the room in what the business actually needs. A Strategist helps reframe it, surfaces the tensions, and starts mapping what a path forward might look like. Then the full group breaks out — three rooms, 15 minutes, rapid ideation on a single piece of the problem. Everyone works from the same tool: ELE's Signals-to-Action Planning Worksheet.
As Matt Sernaker framed it at the open:

<blockquote class="ml-2 border-l-4 border-border-300/10 pl-4 text-text-300">
"We're moving away from just presenting out on specific topics — focusing on the workshop mentality, making it tangible, a safe learning environment for people to really practice." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/matt-sernaker" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Matt Sernaker</a>, Lake Forest Center for Leadership
</blockquote>
The group comes back together, debriefs the moves, and leaves with a co-built Action Planning Worksheet — a 30/60/90-day path grounded in peer input, not someone else's framework. That worksheet then feeds the next event in the series: an AI Practical Lab, where the group picks the work back up and builds an implementation plan.
This is ELE's 2026 pivot. Not content delivery. Peer-powered problem solving.
👉 See it in action: <a href="https://www.ele.llc/moments/design-charrette-the-art-of-strategic-listening" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Watch the Design Charrette highlight reel</a>.


<hr class="border-border-200 border-t-0.5 my-3 mx-1.5" />
Who was in the room: <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/lorna-malloy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lorna Malloy</a>, Education Design Manager at Allstate Insurance, as the Internal Client; <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/patricia-ouzounian" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Patti Ouzounian</a>, AI Workforce Transformation Strategist at ELE, and <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/megan-bickle" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Megan Bickle</a>, Head of Talent Management at Rothy's, as Strategists; <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/matt-sernaker" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Matt Sernaker</a>, Senior Business Development Director at Lake Forest Center for Leadership, as Executive Producer; plus contributing members from the ELE community.


<hr class="border-border-200 border-t-0.5 my-3 mx-1.5" />
The challenge: when speed overrides listening
The business problem Lorna brought to the April 24 Charrette was one most people in the room had lived personally.
Leaders move fast. Agendas are packed. A decision needs to land before the call ends. Someone asks if there are concerns. Silence follows. The meeting moves on.

<blockquote class="ml-2 border-l-4 border-border-300/10 pl-4 text-text-300">
"Don't assume silence means alignment, right? That's what we're saying." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/lorna-malloy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lorna Malloy</a>, Allstate Insurance
</blockquote>
Patti Ouzounian, stepping into the Strategist role, reflected back what she heard — and in doing so, modeled exactly what the format is designed to practice:

<blockquote class="ml-2 border-l-4 border-border-300/10 pl-4 text-text-300">
"Leaders aren't always available to listen to their teams, and they often make assumptions, and base their decisions on those assumptions — and that really overrides any chance for listening, leaving teams and people feeling really unheard, especially during times of change." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/patricia-ouzounian" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Patti Ouzounian</a>, ELE
</blockquote>
That reframe — from "people aren't speaking up" to "we haven't created the conditions for them to" — is the move. It shifts the problem from a people problem to a design problem. And it's exactly the kind of clarity a Design Charrette is built to surface.


<hr class="border-border-200 border-t-0.5 my-3 mx-1.5" />
The reframe: thermostat, not thermometer
Megan Bickle pushed the room on a question worth carrying back to your own team:

<blockquote class="ml-2 border-l-4 border-border-300/10 pl-4 text-text-300">
"Is this a temperature gauge or a thermostat, right?" — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/megan-bickle" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Megan Bickle</a>, Rothy's
</blockquote>
Annual engagement surveys tell you what already happened. Real-time listening lets you adjust before the resistance hardens into a pattern. The group named the cost of the gap clearly: slower execution, eroded trust during change, and a growing disconnect between what leaders think they're hearing and what teams are actually saying.

<blockquote class="ml-2 border-l-4 border-border-300/10 pl-4 text-text-300">
"Without the listening, you don't have a feedback to know if you're on target." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/dirk-tussing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dirk Tussing</a>, ELE
</blockquote>

<hr class="border-border-200 border-t-0.5 my-3 mx-1.5" />
What to try next

<ul class="[li_&amp;]:mb-0 [li_&amp;]:mt-1 [li_&amp;]:gap-1 [&amp;:not(:last-child)_ul]:pb-1 [&amp;:not(:last-child)_ol]:pb-1 list-disc flex flex-col gap-1 pl-8 mb-3">
 	<li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">30 days: Add "What did we hear?" as a standing close to key meetings and decisions. Treat silence as an open question — not a green light. Early evidence signal: are different groups still surfacing the same concerns after the decision moved forward?</li>
 	<li class="whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">60 days: Build listening checkpoints into change initiatives at the 2–4 week mark — when quiet resistance typically becomes visible. Early evidence signal: are you catching friction before it calcifies into disengagement?<img class="aligncenter" src="https://wp.ele.llc/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/20260424-ELE-Strategic-Listening-90-Day-Implementation-Map.jpg" alt="" width="865" height="477" /></li>
</ul>

<hr class="border-border-200 border-t-0.5 my-3 mx-1.5" />
If any of these insights resonate—and you've got a top-of-mind talent business problem you'd like the ELE community to work on—send it our way.
Members can submit their challenge here: <a class="underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href="https://www.ele.llc/faqs/share-top-of-mind-business-challenges">Submit My Challenge Now</a>
Looking to turn these ideas into action? Access the <a href="https://community.ele.llc/t/pre-chat-post-chat-the-art-of-strategic-listening/5861" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Idea Exchange Post-chat</a> for an updated Action Planning Worksheet.

Design Charrette: AI Adoption — Scale What Works

Design Charrette | The Art of Strategic Listening