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Figure out if ELE is for you. Straight answers on what ELE is, who it’s built for, and how contributing members actually work together. Still have a question? Contact us.

Alter Domus

HumanSide

In last week’s ELE hands-on AI Practical Lab, a simple truth kept surfacing: when a team can’t see the work clearly, they can’t change the work confidently.
That’s why so many learning initiatives stall—not because the idea is wrong, but because the story is unreadable. The value stays invisible. Leaders move on.
Dustin Brewer put it bluntly in a way most talent leaders will recognize immediately:
<blockquote>“If the C-suite won’t read, they have to see it first.” — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/dustin-brewer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dustin Brewer</a>, HumanSide.</blockquote>
In other words: if your “insight” can’t travel in a glance, it won’t survive the week.
But the lab didn’t stop at getting attention. It pushed into the harder question: what makes people trust the message enough to act on it? That’s where Nicole DeFalco grounded the group with the reminder that capability doesn’t transfer through outputs alone:
<blockquote>“It still has to land—human to human.” — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/nicole-defalco" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nicole DeFalco</a>.</blockquote>
AI can speed the draft. It can’t replace the relationship.
<h5>Three insights for leaders designing team-based learning experiences</h5>
<h6>1) Legibility is a capability strategy</h6>
Teams don’t adopt what they can’t quickly grasp, repeat, and share. A crisp one-page visual, a clean infographic, even a “cover story” mock—these aren’t marketing flourishes. They’re capability tools, because they compress complexity into something a team can align around.
If your experience design ends with “we trained them,” you’re done too early. The real question is: what will the team use together next Tuesday when the pressure hits?
<h6>2) Story isn’t fluff — it’s the operating system for alignment</h6>
In the lab, “story” wasn’t treated as creativity. It was treated as structure: What changed? What’s at stake? What choice are we asking leaders to make? What proof would they trust?
That’s what makes work decidable in the room. And that’s what makes a team-based learning experience feel like real work—not a field trip.
<h6>3) AI changes roles — and raises the bar for human value</h6>
A helpful reset surfaced as a throughline in the February 12th lab: the real shift isn’t “AI is going to take my job.” It’s that AI changes how value gets created—and makes the human worker more indispensable when the work matters.
Ed brought in a quote from Shyam Sankar (CTO of Palantir) that set a new standard for how we talk about AI and work: “The American worker will wield AI to do more with less—and become more productive and valuable as a result.” That’s a stronger standard for how to view AI’s role in the workforce: not as a replacement narrative, but as a multiplier—where humans become higher-impact by focusing on judgment, clarity, credibility, and connection.
The lab reinforced what that looks like in practice. AI can accelerate drafts and options, but humans still own the parts that create trust and movement—especially verification and delivery.

<blockquote>“We’re not putting the person out of the loop. I’m going in there and verifying.” — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/members/edward-desrosiers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Edward DesRosiers</a></blockquote>
AI increases speed. Human ownership increases responsibility. And that’s exactly what makes the human worker more valuable, not less.
<h5>✨ What to do Monday: four moves that build team capability in real work</h5>
Run a 45-minute story prototype sprint. Pick one live initiative—new workflow adoption, manager friction, AI integration—and build a one-page artifact plus a 30-second talk track that answers one question: what decision should a leader make differently after seeing this?
Use a simple rhythm to keep the work moving: Clarify → Co-Create → Customize → Commit. Clarify the decision and audience. Co-create a first draft with peers and AI. Customize it to stakeholder reality. Commit by piloting it in the flow of work and capturing what changed.

<img class="aligncenter wp-image-44484" src="https://wp.ele.llc/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Four-Step-Model-for-AI-Workflows-ELE-4-Cs.jpg" alt="ELE's 4 C Model for AI Workflows" width="781" height="439" />

Make iteration explicit. Your first version should be fast—and imperfect—so people can react to something real instead of debating abstractions. Two quick feedback loops (peer + end-user) will teach your team more than a “perfect” deck ever will.
Treat prompting and verification as part of the experience design. Prompting isn’t a personal party trick; it’s stakeholder translation with constraints. Verification isn’t optional; it’s what makes speed safe. Give your team a repeatable checklist (sources, SME review, human sign-off) so credibility scales with adoption.
<h5>Continue the conversation</h5>
If you’re working on the toughest talent challenges—and you want capability that shows up in real work (not just course completions)—join the continuing thread on the ELE Idea Exchange:

<a href="https://community.ele.llc/t/2026-feb-ai-lab-pre-chat-post-chat/5767">2026 FEB: AI Lab Pre-chat &amp; Post-Chat</a>

✨ AI Practical Lab: From Insight to Influence — Telling Stories with Business Impact

Future of Work

Digital &amp; AI

dirk.tussing

tracey.wik

jean.ryan

edward.desrosiers

leadership development

anton.maletich

missy.gonzales

colin.hahn

business impact

stakeholder alignment

AI tools

AI in HR

ai practical lab

Workforce Transformation

susan.c.guest

nicole.defalco

performance enablement

capability building

roberto.seif

talent development strategy

1Q2026

AI in L&amp;D

dustin.brewer

manager enablement

AI reskilling

executive communication

team capability

learning in the flow of work

human-centered ai

Storytelling for Influence

Clarity to Commit

Co-Creation

Practical Learning Design

Culture of Experimentation

Explorance

As organizations increasingly focus on the employee experience, using a robust measurement planning process is more critical than ever. Good measurement planning discipline, frameworks, and tools ensure data collection informs analytics and insights, creates sustainable measurement solutions, and maintains stakeholder alignment.

In this roundtable discussion, from organizations when it comes to their data. We will explore the causes of random acts of data collection and how to think systemically to cure them. We will also look at the supply vs. demand for data and what each looks like.

This session will explore:
<ul>
 	<li>What we hear from organizations when it comes to their data</li>
 	<li>Defining causes of random acts of data collection</li>
 	<li>How to think systemically to cure the random act</li>
 	<li>Focusing on the supply vs. demand for data and what each looks like</li>
 	<li>How to determine if supply and demand are balanced in your organization</li>
</ul>
We hope that after attending this roundtable discussion, you will better understand how to avoid random acts of data collection and drive the optimization of the employee experience with robust measurement planning capabilities.

How to Avoid Random Acts of Data Collection

Analytics

steve.lange

employee experience

insights-wise-2023

data collection

measurement planning

analytics and insights

measurement discipline

measurement frameworks

measurement tools

systemic thinking

data supply

data demand

In The 1-Page Marketing Plan, serial entrepreneur and rebellious marketer Allan Dib reveals a marketing implementation breakthrough that makes creating a marketing plan simple and fast. It's a single page divided up into nine squares. With it, you can map out your sophisticated marketing plan and go from zero to marketing hero.

To build a learning organization as a business, you need to stop doing random acts of marketing and start following a reliable plan for rapid business growth. Creating a marketing plan has traditionally been a difficult and time-consuming process, so it often doesn't get done.

Whether you're just starting or an experienced entrepreneur learning leader, this book is the easiest and fastest way to create a marketing plan to propel your business growth.

In this groundbreaking new book you'll discover:
<ul>
 	<li>How to get new customers, clients, or patients and how to make more profit from existing ones</li>
 	<li>Why "big business" style marketing could kill your business and strategies that work for small and medium-sized businesses</li>
 	<li>How to close sales without being pushy, needy, or obnoxious while turning the tables and having prospects begging you to take their money</li>
 	<li>A simple step-by-step process for creating your personalized marketing plan that is one page</li>
 	<li>How to annihilate competitors and make yourself the only logical choice</li>
 	<li>How to get excellent results on a small budget using the secrets of direct response marketing</li>
 	<li>How to charge high prices for your products and services and have customers thank you for it</li>
</ul>

1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, And Stand Out From The Crowd

Operations

social media marketing

marketing learning

communication

Evaluation-oriented instructional design that delivers business results.

Rethink how to design instruction to meet bottom-line business goals. With his eight-step framework for measurement and evaluation-focused instructional design, Kristopher Newbauer offers a straightforward process for helping instructional designers and talent development (TD) leaders demonstrate and actualize their value while also transforming their attitude toward an often-dreaded practice.

With Aligning Instructional Design With Business Goals, improve your business acumen by adopting the language of your business leaders. Enhance the partnership among measurement and evaluation specialists, instructional designers, and business leaders to improve the TD function. Uncover the root cause of performance gaps to design more meaningful instruction—and thus increase ROI.

With case studies and examples to illustrate, learn to:
<ul class="a-unordered-list a-vertical">
 	<li>Promote your TD function as a strategy for achieving business goals.</li>
 	<li>Ensure TD programs are aligned with the company’s strategic objectives.</li>
 	<li>Design and develop effective TD programs.</li>
 	<li>Demonstrate to business leaders measurable added value in revenue and employee success.</li>
</ul>

Aligning Instructional Design With Business Goals: Make the Case and Deliver Results

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