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ELE is a peer-powered community where people leaders don't just reframe challenges — they leave with decisions, next moves, and 30/60/90-day commitments to move real work forward.&nbsp;For 22 years, leaders from Fortune 1000 companies have brought their hardest problems here — and left sharper than they arrived.

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This is where people leaders get sharper — and their teams get smarter.ELE is a peer-powered network of people leaders who accelerate business results through shared intelligence and real-work collaboration. Learn more below about why ELE has been the trusted choice for leaders building high-performing teams for over 20 years.

About ELE

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Bring a real talent challenge. Name what's at stake, what you've tried, and why it matters now.

Community-Powered Calendar

Signal what matters most. Your vote shapes what your peers tackle next.

Companies In Our Network

Contact ELE

Find the peer conversation that moves your work forward.The right exchange builds better leaders, closes capability gaps, and cuts through what internal meetings can't.

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.

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.

Where people leaders share what's working, ask what's hard, and learn from peers navigating the same talent challenges right now. Search before you post. When referencing a resource, paste the key insight directly into your response with a link to the source.

Real conversations from people leaders tackling today's toughest talent challenges -- captured live, ready to apply with your teams when it fits your schedule, and connected to what's happening right now.

Insights on Talent Challenges | Captured Peer Conversations | ELE

Welcome

Pick your path — each plan reflects a different commitment to accelerating business value.

ELE Plans — Find your place.

Want ELE to come to you? Propose a local gathering — the community decides what gets scheduled.

Executive Learning Exchange (ELE)

<div style="font-family: 'Calibri', 'Candara', 'Segoe UI', 'Optima', Arial, sans-serif; color: #333; line-height: 1.6; max-width: 800px; margin: auto; font-size: 1.1rem;">
<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 20px 0; padding: 10px 20px; background-color: #f8f9fa; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"There's no way in today's crazy busy schedule that a series will actually have the right people." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/dirk-tussing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dirk Tussing</a></blockquote>
The real work the ELE community is moving forward isn't a program refresh — it's a structural shift in how peer intelligence gets built and activated. For years, the community ran on a curated calendar: ELE scheduled, ELE sourced speakers, ELE sent the invites. That model hit a ceiling. What's replacing it is an agile, crowdsourced ecosystem where members surface real challenges, self-organize into focused cohorts, and practice problem-solving together — before they need the answer, not after.
This closing exchange made that shift concrete.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 30px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">Moving the start line</h3>
The community has spent years focused on upskilling topics. The reframe in Milwaukee was sharper: stop waiting for training to begin and move the starting point to the live challenge itself.

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"Training doesn't end when the class ends. All we're doing is moving the start line." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/dirk-tussing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dirk Tussing</a></blockquote>
In practice, this means a practitioner brings a client situation — collected through the Action Planning Worksheet — into a Design Charrette or AI Practical Lab. The community works it in real time. The practitioner walks away with a peer-sourced 30/60/90-day action plan, not a summary deck or a Gartner citation.
It's a different model for how expertise moves. The community becomes the R&amp;D engine, not a backdrop for a speaker.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">Shifting from curated to community-built</h3>
The hardest thing Dirk said in the room wasn't technical. It was this: the curator model he'd run for 20 years had become the bottleneck.
Top-down scheduling couldn't reliably land the right five people in the same virtual room on the same Friday morning. So the new model inverts it. A member with a challenge submits it. The community votes. Once five aligned people opt in, they set the time — not ELE. ELE handles logistics and socialization. The cohort handles the work.
The July through September calendar on the ELE website is intentionally empty. That's not a gap. That's the invitation.
Informal meetups follow the same logic. Two or three people, a conversation starter, a venue (Chicago regulars tend to land at Cooper Hawks). No formal agenda. The community decides what's worth the time.

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"We get caught up in our day jobs and this requires an extra move." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/jane-shlaes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jane Shlaes</a></blockquote>
That extra move — submitting a challenge, adding a meetup, showing up to help someone else's problem — is exactly what builds the ecosystem. It compounds. And it only takes five people to start.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">Renaming the horizon</h3>
Two conference name changes came out of Milwaukee — and they're worth pausing on.
The Milwaukee Conference becomes the ELE Spring Conference. The Chicago event on October 1st at CNA becomes the Fall Talent Intelligence Conference. As Dirk put it plainly: a lot of people in the room aren't from Milwaukee. Geographic names were limiting how the community understood itself and how it showed up to others.
Talent Intelligence is the frame now. Not a location. Not a season. What the community actually does.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">From automated workflows to reasoning — a live build</h3>
One of the sharpest moments in the closing exchange wasn't planned. Community member Kimberly surfaced that she'd told Chris Olson in a breakout that her action item was to learn how to build an agent — and suspected she wasn't alone. She was right.
Chris Olson, co-founder of Scout, built a functioning AI agent live in the room in under two minutes: a corporate buzzword translator, constructed from a single prompt, with tools selected automatically by the platform.
But the demo's real signal was the distinction Chris drew between automated workflows and agents:

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"It moves from giving you information to actually doing work for you." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/chris-olson" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chris Olson</a></blockquote>
Automated workflows are brittle — chain-linked steps that break when one process changes. Agents have reasoning capability. They recognize when something's broken and find another path. They mimic the user's role and permissions rather than operating with unchecked access. They can be evaluated, versioned, and refined over time.
For people leaders watching AI adoption stall inside their organizations, the practical takeaway was direct: start with one repeatable manual task, build a single agent around it, and let it run. The hard part isn't creating it.

<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"The easy part is creating it, but the hard part is managing it." — <a href="https://www.ele.llc/people/chris-olson" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chris Olson</a></blockquote>
Scout offers a free tier for experimentation. Chris offered continued support to anyone who wanted to keep building after the session wrapped.


<hr style="border: 0; border-top: 1px solid #eee; margin: 40px 0;" />

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-bottom: 15px;">What to try next</h3>
Three moves you can make on the ELE website right now — no event required:

<ol style="padding-left: 25px; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Submit a challenge to the voting board. Go to the ELE website and use the top section of the Action Planning Worksheet format: what's getting stuck at work, and why does it matter now. Once enough aligned members vote in, ELE schedules the cohort. You only need five people and a real problem.</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Add a meetup to the summer calendar. July through September is open and community-owned. Name one or two people you'd want to think with, add a conversation starter, and submit it. ELE handles the rest. Informal, no agenda required, often involves a bar tab.</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Check and update your ELE portfolio. Every Zoom appearance, question, slide, and contribution is already building a public profile on the ELE site — with highlight reels. If you've been active, the profile exists. Check it, share the URL, and consider adding it to your email signature. It's a personal brand asset most members don't know they already have.</li>
</ol>
<div style="background-color: #f1f4f9; padding: 20px; border-radius: 8px; margin-top: 40px; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">
Bring your work into the room
If this connects to real work you are trying to move forward, bring it into the ELE community. Share the challenge, compare signals with trusted peers, and leave with practical next moves you can use.
Submit My Challenge Now: <a style="color: #0056b3; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.ele.llc/faqs/share-top-of-mind-talent-challenges">https://www.ele.llc/faqs/share-top-of-mind-talent-challenges</a>

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What Moves Forward | ELE's Spring Conference 2026 Closing

future of work

Engagement &amp; Culture

Integrated Talent Management

Strategy

Future of Work

Digital &amp; AI

Leadership

dirk.tussing

chris.olson

Talent Strategy

peer-learning

organizational capability

change capability

business speed

wise2026

design charrettes

peer-powered decisions

Signals to Action Planning

insights-wise-2026

workforce challenges

talent models

speed to confident action

practical execution

real-world impact

leadership commitments

strategic choices

execution engine

implementation in action

Marquette University

<div style="font-family: 'Calibri', 'Candara', 'Segoe UI', 'Optima', Arial, sans-serif; color: #333; line-height: 1.6; max-width: 800px; margin: auto; font-size: 1.1rem;">
<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 20px 0; padding: 10px 20px; background-color: #f8f9fa; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"If the capability sits outside the work, it will always arrive too late."</blockquote>
The real work on the table: People leaders are being asked to do something most talent models weren't built for: support execution while the work is moving, not after it stabilizes. The stuck point is structural — learning gets designed beside the work, then delivered too late to change what actually happens. With AI compressing decision cycles and roles becoming less bounded by the day, the gap between when capability is built and when it's needed has become a real business risk.
Who was in the room: The day brought together people leaders, L&amp;D practitioners, HR business partners, and executive education faculty at Marquette University on May 21 — practitioners carrying live business challenges across industries, alongside community members who have been building peer intelligence together since ELE's earliest days.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 30px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">The old model assumed a world that no longer exists</h3>
<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"Who here wears one hat in their job? Anybody? Nobody does."</blockquote>
Stable roles. Periodic planning. Learning separated from work. Managers translating strategy after the fact. That cadence made sense when change was slower than the operating model. It doesn't hold anymore.
The room confirmed what most people leaders already know but haven't fully designed around: work is cross-functional, fast, and less bounded than any org chart suggests. The talent systems built for the old world keep producing capability that arrives after the moment has passed. The signal isn't that programs are bad. It's that placement is the problem. Confidence, capability, and clarity have to be built where decisions actually happen — not in a separate track that runs alongside the work.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">The accountability shift is already here</h3>
<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"Talent leaders are asked to support execution, not just learning. Make it real."</blockquote>
This reframe landed early and stayed in the room all day. The ask from business leaders isn't "build us a course." It's "help us move." That requires a different entry point — and a different first question.
The old first question: What topic should we cover? The new first question: What's getting stuck in the work, and why?
ELE's Signals-to-Action Planning Worksheet — introduced in the opening and used throughout the day's working exchanges — operationalizes that shift. It starts not with a learning objective but with a business gap: what's happening now, what should be happening, and what's in the way. From there, the conversation moves to shared signals, strategic choices, risks and tradeoffs, and 30/60/90-day leadership commitments. That's a different conversation than most L&amp;D teams are used to opening. It's also a more useful one.

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 10px; border-bottom: 1px solid #eee; padding-bottom: 5px;">Doing nothing is a risk decision too</h3>
<blockquote style="border-left: 4px solid #990000; margin: 15px 0; padding: 5px 20px; font-style: italic; color: #555; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">"Most of the time the highest risk is to do nothing."</blockquote>
One of the cleaner reframes from the day: inaction isn't neutral. Organizations pausing on capability-building while AI accelerates the pace of work aren't playing it safe — they're absorbing risk quietly.
The three questions framing the day put this in practical terms. Are leaders able to act without waiting for perfect certainty — confidence? Can people do the work better inside the flow of decisions and tools — capability? Do teams know what matters, where judgment is needed, and how to move with focus — clarity? When the answer to all three is "not yet," the instinct is often to wait. The community signal was clear: waiting has a cost that compounds.
The AI adoption arc playing out inside most organizations right now reinforces this. A community poll shared during the opening found that almost everyone now sees more career opportunity in AI disruption than they did a year ago. That shift in sentiment is real — but sentiment alone doesn't close the capability gap. Action does.


<hr style="border: 0; border-top: 1px solid #eee; margin: 40px 0;" />

<h3 style="font-family: 'Montserrat', sans-serif; font-weight: bold; color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-bottom: 15px;">What to try next</h3>
<ol style="padding-left: 25px; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Replace "what topic?" with "what's stuck?" Before scheduling any program or working exchange, surface the actual business issue first. If you can't name what's getting stuck and why it matters now, it's not ready for the agenda. Early signal: your business partners start bringing you problems, not requests.</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Run a 90-minute charrette on one stuck issue. Bring the right people, use the Signals-to-Action Worksheet, and move from shared signals → strategic choices → risks and tradeoffs → 30/60/90-day commitments in a single working block. Early signal: the group leaves with a named next move, not a follow-up meeting.</li>
 	<li style="margin-bottom: 15px;">Test the three questions against everything on your current plan. Does it build confidence to act without perfect certainty? Does it build capability inside the flow of real work? Does it create clarity about what matters and where judgment is needed? Early signal: you start cutting initiatives that can't answer the questions, and the ones that remain get sharper.</li>
</ol>
<div style="background-color: #f1f4f9; padding: 20px; border-radius: 8px; margin-top: 40px; font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif; font-size: 1.1rem;">
Bring your work into the room
If this connects to real work you are trying to move forward, bring it into the ELE community. Share the challenge, compare signals with trusted peers, and leave with practical next moves you can use.
Submit My Challenge Now: <a style="color: #0056b3; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;" href="https://www.ele.llc/faqs/share-top-of-mind-talent-challenges">https://www.ele.llc/faqs/share-top-of-mind-talent-challenges</a>

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What We’re Solving Today | Milwaukee Talent Development Conference 2026 Openning

jim.orheim