Speed and scale
Deloitte confirms that 70 % of leaders are now prioritizing speed over scale. But what if you can have both?
Before AI, the key question was how learning can be multiplied across teams and locations. Now, it is how fast workers can adopt to work alongside the new technology.
In my opinion, you can have both: speed and scale.
Speed through extreme outcome-focus and co-development with SMEs: What people must DO differently.
Scale through scripted material: Embedding facilitator guidance directly into the material so anyone can deliver it without specialized knowledge.
Capability building should be fast and scalable. This is at least how I work.
What do you think? Can you have both?
Source:
Individual passion supported by the system leads to higher productivity
When you start a new job, you are highly engaged and full of hope that the new opportunity will turn out as promised. You are passionate about what you are doing, and you are willing to work hard.
And then, things happen.
Over time, you feel stuck in your position, struggle with your manager, or realize that your engagement doesn’t seem to matter. You lose your spark. 80% of employees worldwide experience something similar. They are disengaged at work.
The more passionate you were at the beginning, the more disappointed you are when the company culture isn’t holding up. When they appreciate your engagement but don’t provide the environment to support your passion. When you deeply care for your job, but you realize it is a one-sided contract.
This leads to stress, interpersonal conflict, cynicism and burnout
What does your company offer you in return? What would it take for you to keep up your passion and engagement?
Source:
Operating conditions over culture
92% of leaders agree that culture drives performance. Yet 80% of employees face a direct conflict between corporate culture and their daily operating conditions.
When you force capable people to choose between hitting a metric to save their job or a corporate value, the metric wins. You’d probably do the same. This dissonance doesn't just prevent growth; it drives burnout. Not from the workload, but from a broken system that punishes people for doing the right thing.
As a leader, it’s on you to fix it:
Clarity: Translate high-level values into concrete daily behaviors. Define what "good" actually looks like.
Capability: Stop demanding agility while forcing teams to use slow, legacy tools.
Consequences: Align your incentive, reward, and review structures to match your (real) system.
Align your system, or adapt your cultural expectations.
What do you think?
Sources:
Culture drives performance
Learning is a means to an end
I was reviewing Michael Bunting’s webinar about leadership growth. What always resonates with me is his relentless focus on measurable business outcomes.
The same applies to building organisational capabilities. Learning is crucial, and its positive effects are widely researched. Still, it is a means to an end. We learn to grow. We learn to adapt. We learn to understand new technologies like AI. We learn to change how we work.
In a business environment, learning is not the destination, it is the vehicle. It’s not enough that we are all driving around. We must all land at the exact same destination.
Before designing any development initiative, the foundational question is: What is the specific business outcome we are trying to unlock? So what?
When we define the required business outcome first, the necessary organizational capabilities and collective behaviors become clear. If we don't know what we are chasing, we are just accumulating knowledge.
Are your current learning initiatives crystal clear about your why, how, and so what?
Source:
The AI divide: systemic capability vs lottery ticket
Firing your people after investing in AI is like quitting your day job after buying a lottery ticket. Even if you get lucky and win, it takes months for the bank to clear the funds while you still have to pay rent tomorrow.
Yet, many executives are presenting workforce reductions as an indicator of successful AI adoption. What it really is:
- Hope: A Harvard Business Review survey revealed that layoffs are heavily driven by AI’s future potential, not its actual performance today.
- Cover: Goldman Sachs data and reports by The Guardian show that companies are using AI as a convenient excuse to cover up poor business performance. Layoffs make the next P&L look better, no doubt.
- Regret: An HR Dive report notes that 55 % of leaders who cut staff due to AI admit it was a mistake. 3 out of 4 confessed their AI strategy was largely for appearance.
When you discard your people before your organization has the skills, culture, and infrastructure to absorb AI output, you create a destructive capability vacuum. Worse, you build a culture of anxiety and you push away the exact employees you are counting on to build your future competitive advantage.
Instead of shrinking your headcount, AI should be used to expand your strategic headroom. It pays off for those who invest in the capabilities of their “system” (not limited to AI technology) and their people.
Where do you think this widespread lack of AI strategy and the resulting strategic failures will lead our organizations?
Sources
Harvard Business Review: Hope
The Guardian: Potential
Goldman Sachs via Fortune: Cover
HR Dive: Regret
"Please don’t tell me this is a development opportunity."
It’s a common practice that mandatory regulatory tasks are bundled together with actual personal development. This dilutes the value of true development, leads to training fatigue, and breaks trust with L&D.
It pays off when you call training exactly what it is and support your people accordingly:
- Compliance & SOPs:
This is a baseline condition to work here.
The challenge for L&D: Make training as painless, quick, and memorable as possible.
- Tools & Frameworks:
This is needed to do the daily job. People will actively search for this in times of need.
What this means for your Learning Management System: Ensure access is easy and intuitive.
- Organisational Transformation:
This is an evolution or redesign of how people work here.
What leaders can do: Explain honestly why this change is better for the team, and clarify what is expected of them.
Development Opportunities: This is an investment in the person regardless of the company. It helps people work better, feel better, stay employable, and grow their career.
How organisations can help: Be transparent about future capabilities, and provide the systemic environment to build them at scale (hint: this rarely means adding more training courses).
Your team will thank you for the honesty.
What do you call a development opportunity?
Capable people need capable systems
At first, I thought it was just my bubble, but it seems to become a common understanding:
- Harvard Business Review asks if the leader is the problem, or if it is the organization. They note that without looking at the whole context, we risk trying to fix the wrong things.
- Deloitte’s 2026 Human Capital Trends
highlights that when a system doesn't support the human factor, the transformation fails.
- McKinsey’s State of Organizations 2026 reports that instead of looking for who is at fault, effective leaders should look at where the process broke down.
The learning? Instead of fixing the individual, look into your system first. Often, good intent leads to unwanted results:
Companies communicate, but they send misleading signals, and people don't see how it helps their daily work.
Organizations change, but they treat it like a software update, underestimating the human side.
Teams build new capabilities, but not the crucial ones that help people do a better job right now.
Which friction points are you noticing? I'm passionate about systemic capabilities and I’m always happy to exchange thoughts.
Sources:
Deloittes „2026 Global Human Capital Trends
McKinseys „The State of Organizations 2026“
In uncertain times, we fall back on old habits
Neuroscientists have found that when the future feels uncertain, our brains are hardwired to fall back on old habits. People will instinctively reach for the choices they made in the past.
The consequence for your initiatives: The new behaviours or ways of working you’ve worked so hard to implement simply don't happen.
While you can’t control the external environment, you can give your people a sense of control over their internal environment by being authentic and consistent in your beliefs, values, and expectations.
When your team knows exactly where you stand (because you’ve shown it repeatedly), they feel safe. This predictability allows them to stop reaching for the past and start acting differently.
It’s on you to build an environment where the new way feels safer than the one.
Intent only turns into contribution when people feel safe enough to try.
Does your environment feel safe enough to try?
Source: Psychologies, May 2026. Research: Dr. Toby Wise, King's College London.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-03-compulsive-traits-linked-uncertainty-future.html
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/compulsive-traits-linked-to-uncertainty-over-future-plans
First of all, we have a clarity crisis
In my work building capabilities, I’ve realised the problem often isn't a lack of skill. It’s that people don’t know what "the work" actually is. The data is startling.
It’s like we are playing the same game but using different scoreboards.
87 % of executives reported a workforce skills gap. 37 % of employees felt they even underutilize the skills they have.
74 % of executives felt they effectively help their team learn new skills, 38 % of employees agreed.
79 % of leaders claimed a culture of accountability (meaning “holding others accountable”). 29 % of employees agreed (meaning “consistency, within their control”).
91 % of employees rated themselves as high performing. 51 % of leaders agreed.
Zero overlap between the top five competencies that get leaders promoted and those employees value.
Staying vague doesn't lead to autonomy. It leads to unpredictability and fear. When "High Performance" isn't defined, employees feel they are being held responsible for things they can't control.
Clarity and predictability are the prerequisites for performance.
This is why I work with a simple rule: Clarity First.
Only when we’ve defined “the work” can we turn intent into contribution.
AI isn’t just a tech shift, it’s a new social contract
I recently attended an HBR webinar on "Orchestrating Human + AI Teams." The takeaway? AI only works if employees stop "leasing" their skills and start codifying their tacit knowledge (culture, values, and intuition) into company databases.
This feels like a threat. It’s the "CRM resistance" of the sales era on steroids. If we document our judgment into "digital labor," do we lose our value? Warren Buffett famously said "investing in yourself" is the one thing no one can take away. In an AI world, that’s being tested.
The solution: Don't just feed the machine; become its orchestrator.
Quality management: Shift from "doing the tasks" to building the Quality Control systems that manage AI output.
Own your content: Maintain your own files of expertise, your personal methodologies and judgment frameworks.
Adopt the explorer mindset: Use AI to build MVPs (minimal viable products) and new revenue streams, not just to automate old chores.
The new "Self-Investment" isn't just what you know. It's how well you can direct the agents that know something else.
.
Is your knowledge still "untaxable"?
Context is everything: Why AI (and people) need it to deliver real value
AI needs context for relevant answers. From a technical perspective: In order for AI to meaningfully combine information from different "semantic spaces", it needs to know the system in which it is operating.
An example from my practice:
Generic: "What are the current trends in the Future of Work?"
Better with context: "I am an expert in systemic capability building. I support companies in ensuring that their employees not only contribute more effectively to strategy but also find more meaning in their work. What are the specific trends for tomorrow's competencies that strengthen exactly this connection?"
In short: Context creates relevance. This is a valuable tip for working with AI, for developing people and for communication in general.
Axel Ebert's article (in German only: Verstehen, was KI versteht) inspired this post. It’s a great read if you want to better understand AI versus human intelligence.
What is your practical tip for working with AI?
How do you influence others?
For a long time, I wondered why I felt more energized by the "big picture" than by individual coaching. Thanks to Marcus Buckingham, I finally have the language for it. He makes a powerful distinction in how we influence:
Managers capitalize on what is UNIQUE.
They know the specific strengths of each team member and how to help individuals progress.
Leaders
capitalize on what is UNIVERSAL.
They identify the shared needs, fears, and goals that unite us all to move toward a better future.
We often feel pressured to be both, but they are different crafts. One isn't more important than the other; they just solve different problems.
Which one do you naturally gravitate toward?
Clarity is not what most organisations think it is
Companies believe they are clear because everything is defined. Employees don’t deliver as expected because nothing is prioritized.
People don’t lack information. They lack direction. They stay busy but don’t necessarily create value.
So why don’t organisations define it more clearly?
Because operational clarity means making choices under uncertainty. And that’s exactly what makes it difficult. Choosing means committing to one direction, not the others. It makes performance accountable.
Clarity doesn’t come from more frameworks. It comes from deciding what counts and making that visible in how work gets done:
• in the decisions people are expected to make
• in what gets prioritized (and what doesn’t)
• in how performance is actually judged.
At the same time, expectations have increased: faster contribution, more ownership, more adaptability.
That’s the gap I see: High expectations but low operational clarity. What do you experience?
If something doesn’t count, no one is truly accountable for it
Most organisations are full of knowledge. Far fewer are clear on what counts in the end. There's a way to do it differently:
A technical college in Texas started with a simple question: What do students really want?
→ Getting a job fast
→ Earning well (and more than others)
→ Building a career (and overall earning more than others)
So, they aligned everything to that. Not just teaching, but the system. They committed to funding tied to outcomes with remarkable results:
- job placement within six months
- + 34 % starting wages
- + 51 % cumulative earnings.
Clear outcome. Clear alignment. Clear performance.
We often act as if more knowledge leads to better performance. It can be an outcome, but it doesn’t automatically translate into results. If knowing were enough, all of us would be excellent leaders.
Organisations are not universities. And even universities are no longer funded for knowledge but for outcomes.
If you want performance, be clear on what counts and align to it.
That’s what turns knowledge into performance.
Where you invest determines what you get
In transformation, different interventions lead to different outcomes.
Training: people know
Create a shared understanding. Clarify expectations.
People understand what is expected.
Capability: people can
People experience what the change means in their daily work.
They are able to do things differently.
Performance: people do
By aligning the system and making the desired behavior the default, capabilities turn into consistent behavior. In decisions, priorities, leadership, and ways of working.
You can help people perform even in imperfect systems. That creates progress.
If you want new behavior to become consistent, the system has to support it. Does your environment support new behavior?
Close the gaps between strategy and performance
Over the past weeks I wrote about different elements of successful transformation. They may look like separate topics but they actually form a chain with potential gaps between the steps.
The clarity gap
Strategy decks and different interpretations. What’s missing is the translation into concrete expectations. "What must people actually do differently?"
The capability gap
High expectations and frustration about slow progress. What’s missing is the support to act differently. "What does it take for people to actually do it?"
The system gap
Training completed, but the environment hasn’t changed. What’s missing is reinforcement through structures and incentives. "Does the system support and reward the desired behavior?"
Performance improves when the new way of working becomes a habit. Which habits do you recommend?
People often say: “I’m learning all the time.”
We learn every day by solving problems, exchanging with colleagues, experimenting, reading, or using AI. Continuous learning builds adaptability and that matters, too.
But learning alone doesn’t ensure organizational progress. Clarity and focus do:
What do people need to do differently for the strategy to work?
Once this is clear, learning becomes aligned. Organizations move faster when learning supports what actually matters here and now.
We are working more than ever. Yet many organizations aren’t moving faster.
More hours worked. More meetings attended. More trainings completed.
What’s rewarded gets done. When activity is rewarded, activity increases. When capability is rewarded, capability grows. And it’s capabilities that change how work happens.
- Leaders who make clear decisions create focus.
- Focused teams who know what matters solve problems independently and fast.
- In short, organizations that reward contribution and execution (not activities) direct effort toward what drives performance.
What does your organization reward most - activity or contribution?
Every change comes with mandatory training
Individually important. Together, they create expectation overload.
There is a way organisations can reduce that burden: clarity through decisions.
1) Define what people should do differently. This creates focus and sets direction.
2) Decide what enables that shift. What is critical to learn. What should be easy to access. What people just need to be aware of.
Not everything needs to be turned into training. But what matters must be clear. Clarity reduces overload. It increases speed and allows people to invest their time where it makes a difference.
Where could clearer decisions reduce expectation overload in your organisation?
"I’m expected to learn AI” versus “They’re supposed to train me”
Every new standard needs new capabilities. E-mails did. Smartphones did. Now AI. The debate has already started. Who is responsible for training: employers or employees?
Companies want their investments in AI to create value. Employees want to stay employable.
Before diving into AI activities, clarify:
What will this help solve?
How does it support my work?
What is expected from me?
Learning is an investment. Both sides are willing to invest when the return on effort is clear. Aligned, targeted outcomes for companies. Transferable, high-demand skills for employees.
What creates clarity about AI expectations in your organisation?
AI race. A missed opportunity.
AI readiness is often framed as a skills race. But AI doesn’t just increase speed. It increases complexity.
Complexity shifts what matters: judgement, pattern recognition, and contextual decision-making.
Many organizations respond by analyzing current skill levels. Change the starting point! Define a new standard and enable people to operate there.
Think of how mobile technology spread across Africa. It didn’t upgrade landlines step by step. It established a new standard and people adapted to it.
Capability building is no different. It starts from the future you need to reach.
How do you define and build capability for what’s next?
Reality check
We talk a lot about how hard it is for older professionals to find work. For younger ones, it’s hard too, just different. The door eventually opens, but what they find inside often doesn’t match what was promised.
Maybe they stay silent because they can’t afford to speak up yet. Not if they don’t want to be seen as difficult before they’ve even started working.
The paradox: after fighting so hard to get in, they leave when expectations aren’t met. Job hoping, resulting in job hopping. Average tenure: 1.1 years. It's learning, trial-and-error. A costly way to learn, for both sides.
I’ve made that mistake too. I once thought I could handle a slower, non-commercial environment. I couldn’t. And I didn’t have to.
The key is self-awareness and transparency.
Applicants knowing what kind of environment helps them do their best work, and companies being realistic about who they are right now, not just about who they want to be.
If both sides were clearer, hiring would be cheaper, learning curves shorter, and frustration lower.
Capability building doesn’t start with training. It starts with helping people and organizations understand themselves so they can make better choices before they end up in the wrong place.
Do you know where you thrive? And if you can influence the hiring process where you work - are you transparent?
Source: According to Randstad’s Workplace Blueprint 2025, Gen Z’s average job stint in the first five years of their career is 1.1 years. At the same time, postings for entry-level jobs have dropped by 29 % since early 2024.
Urgency is not progress
Leaders often mistake speed for momentum. Activity feels reassuring. It gives the illusion of control and AI reinforces that illusion. As decision scientist Gary Klein said:
AI can process language and mimic fluency. But it doesn’t feel risk... Judgment requires skin in the game . Not digital - neural.
In capability building, I see the same pattern:
When leaders feel pressure, they launch more training because if feels like the safe option, instead of finding out what’s really needed. That’s bad judgment disguised as decisiveness.
When employees feel pressure, they freeze - especially in cultures where action-bias is rewarded.
The result? Shallow execution. Confusion. Burnout. Everyone doing. No one progressing.
I’m absolutely pro pace but only when it’s strategic, anchored in business goals, and linked to desired behaviours. Agility in L&D isn’t about action. It’s about learning and changing. Knowing where to invest energy, and where not to.
Time is like money. We’re careful with budgets, yet careless with hours. But here’s the difference: You can always earn more money. You can’t create more time. Building capabilities doesn’t take time. It takes direction.
Yes, move fast. But know why, know where, and know when to stop.
How do you deal with urgency culture? What has helped you to progress?
For anyone interested in context, this
Forbes article by @VibhasRatanjee inspired my post.
Learning in the flow of work
Some ideas only become trends once leaders finally feel the pressure to act on them.
“Learning in the flow of work” is trending again. McKinsey calls it the future of the Chief Learning Officer. But for many of us, it’s not new. We’ve been doing it: helping people learn while they work, not after.
Still, it takes real work. Someone must define what good looks like: the desired behaviors, the right decisions, the new way of working. That clarity doesn’t come from data or systems; it must be defined, communicated, and reinforced.
What puzzles me: just when learning becomes business-critical, some companies dissolve senior learning roles. I’ve spent my career in strategy, where learning is a lever that connects business goals with human growth and I’m grateful for that perspective.
Is learning in your company strategic or tactical?
Source:
McKinsey People & Organizational performance
Skill-based hiring is the next big idea
But the most skilled group - older employees - are often screened out. Even when inclusion was on everyone’s lips, older employees were not the focus. Now, with the return to performance, they’re pushed to the edge.
If skills really mattered, older employees would be first in line.
Decades of practice, pattern recognition, resilience.
Instead, they’re treated as the exception. Skills, yes - but only for people under 50. Or is it already 45? Even when they keep their jobs, they’re rarely seen as talent.
Hiring follows the gatekeepers. Years ago, HR came from universities and hired people like them. Later, when technical college grads entered HR, the gates shifted.
My observation: There are no gatekeepers for older candidates.
This is not only a huge personal problem. It’s a waste. Excluding older workers raises personal and social costs (purpose declines, health suffers) and we all pay the bill. Companies may think they save in the short term. Re-hiring data says otherwise.
What could be done? Hire one 55+ and measure the outcome in comparison to younger ones. Run age-blind screening. What else?
If you have positive experiences or ideas, please share. It’s urgently needed!
People don’t skip training because they’re busy
They skip it because they don’t feel it solves their problems right now.
I often hear “just offer training, people were waiting for it.” They weren’t. People say they have no time but the truth is: they have time for other things - their priorities.
Why should they invest in more skills that aren’t useful in their daily reality?
Usually, the turning point isn't another technical course, but a training that helps people work better and feel better at work. When they see a benefit, they will engage. And from there, a learning culture starts to grow.
That’s what training design is really about: creating an emotional trigger. Helping people see why it matters, how it connects to their own success, and what’s expected of them.
Mandatory training might get people to show up, but it won’t get them to care. They’ll tick the box, but they won’t learn - because learning is change. People don’t change based on what others say. They change based on what they feel.
If people only change when they feel something special - how do you uncover what that is?
The toughest question in L&D: “How do you measure impact?”
Hours. Budgets. Completions. We keep measuring what doesn’t matter. What matters: when people work and behave differently. When they progress. This can be measured.
The catch: you must define success before you start. Not just the official KPIs and slogans. I cross-examine until we surface what people would actually call success - the thing they’ll quietly judge the initiative on.
Example: Marketing Excellence.
Officially: a vague definition of “excellence.”
Unofficially, what the leaders believed would make the difference:
· Every local team uses the same corporate tools.
· Presentations align with global standards.
· No more reinventing campaigns locally.
These weren’t abstract KPIs. They were the leaders’ personal benchmarks. They believed this would drive efficiency, not some vague “performance improvement.” All measurable and, crucially, felt as success on the ground.
I learned this the hard way. After a stellar work performance, my manager told me: “But you didn’t do X.” We’d never discussed X. It wasn’t in my KPIs - but it was her hidden benchmark.
Since then, I strictly start with the outcome, not the input or the process. We define the behavior shifts we want, agree on evidence, then build learning around that and measure against it.
What was your biggest surprise in how your manager or clients measured the success of your work?
Traditional career ladders are outdated
For decades, careers were defined as moving from junior to senior, from expert to leader, from single contributor to team leader.
That’s why careers and capability-building initiatives look more like flight routes: long-haul or short, with stop-overs, with detours.
It’s not just up or down. It’s about where you want to go and how you get there.
Every career takes its own route. Every learning journey, too.
Has your career been like a ladder or a flight route?
Leaders asked me to “make people capable.” But the team didn’t feel incapable. They felt overlooked.
They were invited late after decisions were made. So they worked harder, joined every meeting, tried to be visible… and burned out.
What made the difference wasn’t “more training.” It was finding the right combination of capabilities:
Business acumen:
Understanding the problems their business colleagues were solving.
Influencing skills:
Framing and asking in a way that shaped options, not just supported them.
Context awareness: Reading the room, knowing when to step in, and when to hold back.
Here’s the key: That combination is different in every organization. Some capabilities are universal. But the ones that make a difference are the ones tied to your company's strategy, vision, and culture.
Capabilities aren’t copy-paste. If you build the wrong ones, you stay busy. If you build the right ones, you move forward.
Are you building capabilities that move people forward or do you just keep them busy?
Want to be seen as a trusted partner and as someone whose voice matters?
Being helpful doesn’t automatically make you respected. Many capable professionals struggle to protect the space to use their capabilities. The shift comes when you learn to say no - clearly, respectfully, confidently.
Saying yes to everything makes you look supportive, but not influential. Saying no builds trust, focus, and credibility. Every no is a yes to what matters most:
✔ Your priorities
✔
Your energy
✔ Your reputation
Assertiveness isn’t aggression. It’s clarity, honesty, and respect for yourself and others. That’s how you establish yourself as a leader whose voice matters.
How do you say no in a way that builds respect rather than resistance?
Our faces are telling stories
Whenever I pulled a face, my mother used to warn me: “Be careful! If you keep looking like that, it might stay.” Her words stayed with me - and my face tells a story, too.
Recently, I completed a training on reading faces and decoding human behavior. One of the striking takeaways:
Our thoughts and emotions don’t stay inside. They literally shape our faces over time.
Take Keanu Reeves. His face is almost free of the usual markers like greed, arrogance, dishonesty, envy. It radiates calm authority and trust. And if you’ve read
John Kraski’s post
about him, his actions only confirm what his face reveals.
For me, the training wasn’t about “spotting” others, it was about understanding them.
I noticed that when I’m overly critical of myself, it shows up in a subtle upper-lip movement. My mother was right. It might stay and I don't want that.
The lesson?
- Our thoughts are powerful.
- They show up in ways others can see.-
- With awareness, we can change them: unlearn, relearn, and literally reshape the way we show up.
How do you want to show up? What do you want to unlearn or relearn?
No decisions. No goals. No clarity.
I once worked in a “self-managed” team. No formal managers, and a “goals are bad” mentality.
The idea? Empowerment. Agility. Psychological safety.
The managers (who technically weren’t people managers anymore) came to me and said: “My team isn’t capable.” When I asked what was missing, they replied: “You have to find out. It’s a self-managed team.” …
- Without clarity, there was no learning.
- Without tension, no development.
- Without decisions, no direction.
That’s why I stand up for clarity, goal-setting, decision-making, and responsibility. And of course: for learning. Real learning. I help build structures that enable transformation and progress.
How do you create an environment where people actually grow?