AGENDA
This carefully crafted program combines inspiring keynotes with informal activities and time to build real relationships.
Tuesday
8:00
Breakfast
8:40
Opening Comments
8:50
International Keynote: Trust, Compassion, Stability and Hope – From the Conceptual to Enterprise Impact
Most leaders can name Gallup’s four Needs of Followers. Far fewer have translated them into the leadership behaviours, communication rhythms, and organisational systems that consistently move the needle on engagement and performance. Awareness without activation is just vocabulary; this session is about the gap in between.
You’ll see how at Disney they diagnosed which of the four needs were being underdelivered, and what they did about it. You’ll explore how to map each need to observable leadership behaviours, align them to competency models and performance expectations, and embed them into communication cadences, particularly during periods of change. The result: improved engagement scores, stronger leader effectiveness ratings, reduced attrition in key roles, and genuine alignment when it mattered most.
9:25
Skillsoft Keynote: From Skills Visibility to Action – How to Build a Skills Intelligent Organisation
As AI rapidly reshapes how work gets done, skills and roles are evolving faster than most organisations can adapt. Yet research shows that only 10% of HR leaders are confident their workforce has the skills needed to meet business demands over the next 12–18 months. The challenge is no longer just attracting talent, it’s understanding the skills you already have, identifying critical gaps, and ensuring the right people are in the right roles at the right time.
This session will explore how organisations are using skills intelligence and workforce data to drive transformation at scale. From mapping workforce capabilities and uncovering emerging skill gaps to connecting employees with personalised learning pathways, this keynote will showcase examples of how organisations are building more agile, resilient, and future-ready workforces.
10:00
Think Tank 1: Integrating Change Management and Learning for Complex Transformations
The market lacks professionals skilled in both change management and learning design.
Join your peers to discuss:
• How do you distinguish between the core skills of learning and change?
• What proven models integrate change and learning into a single roadmap?
• How do you embed communication and capability-building into a project’s lifecycle?
• Should organisations seek hybrid professionals who bridge both change and learning?
• How can leadership forums sustain behavioural change across a multi-generational workforce?
Think Tank 2: Placing Trust in Evidence-Based Learning and Research-Backed Methodologies
AI and vendor libraries are flooding organisations with content. The risk is low-quality, unevidenced learning at scale.
Join your peers to discuss:
• What does current learning science (2025–26) actually say about how people learn at work?
• How do we decide what to curate, buy, build, or automate based on evidence, not trends?
• How do we spot the difference between useful frameworks versus debunked myths?
• What role should learning science, data, and experimentation play in content decisions?
• How do we design evidence-based learning that works across demographics, cultures, and contexts?
Think Tank 3: Building the AI-Augmented L&D Operating Model
When AI can create content instantly, L&D’s value shifts from production to integration, and impact.
Join your peers to discuss:
• How might AI reinvent the way we upskill our people and improve their performance?
• How will the tasks of L&D practitioners change, specifically when content creation and curation are no longer the bottlenecks?
• What does the use of AI mean for the L&D operating model, and how will our roles evolve and what are the resultant job titles?
• What governance and risk guardrails are essential as AI becomes more prevalent in learning?
• How do we measure value when L&D becomes more about enablement rather than delivery?
Think Tank 4: Developing Leaders Who Can Navigate Constant Flux
L&D invests heavily in the workforce but often forgets to develop the leaders.
Join your peers to discuss:
• How do you unlock leaders’ enterprise thinking to drive innovation through collaboration?
• What capabilities do leaders need to support cross-functional teams effectively?
• How do you upskill leaders to cultivate innovation rather than just manage operations?
• What role do leadership forums play in helping leaders see interconnectedness?
• How do we support leaders through constant transformation when people are overwhelmed?
Think Tank 5: Delivering AI Upskilling Across the Entire Workforce
Every organisation wants AI upskilling, yet implementation remains challenging.
Join your peers to discuss:
• What skills does the workforce need to use AI effectively?
• How can we uplift these skills at scale across the enterprise?
• How do you ensure people leave training with immediately applicable skills?
• How can we help the business manage risk?
• How can we adapt when tools launch new versions mid-programme?
• What resources are available to support us?
10:50
Coffee Break & Networking Hosted by Pluralsight
11:20
LIW Breakout: The Fast-Flowing River – Combatting Post-Programme Re-Entry Disappointment
This session will get you on your feet, have you moving, and leave you with a question worth taking back to work: how do we reshape the system to deliver real impact?
Leaders who invest in development face a moment every L&D professional recognises: the learning was real, the commitment was genuine, and then the system swallowed it whole. Re-entry disappointment is what happens when a changed person walks back into an unchanged environment.
This session charts the course through both. You’ll feel the forces at play in your own system, map the conditions that determine whether learning becomes lasting behaviour change, and leave with a clear view of where to navigate first. Because the fast-flowing river is a design challenge, not a wish. And the leaders in this room have the agency to change the direction of the water.
BTS Breakout: How BTS & EY Oceania United 750 Partners Behind a Single Strategy
A global pandemic, market turbulence, regulatory pressure and the rise of AI were creating continuous disruption to professional services. Against this backdrop, EY Oceania’s leadership challenge was clear: how do you unite 750 Partners across service lines behind a single strategy when the world keeps shifting underneath you?
BTS and EY Oceania share the story of co-designing a transformational leadership experience: from AI-powered mindset diagnostics and executive coaching at scale, to a custom business simulation that mirrored real business tensions. A candid session on shifting leadership behaviour, how to measure it, and what it means to design learning that makes strategy personal, not just communicated.
WalkMe Breakout: Digital Learning Reimagined
70% of employees haven’t mastered the skills they need for their jobs today (Gartner, 2025). What if your workforce could learn as fast as it works – directly within the applications employees use every day?
In this session, discover what the next generation of learning infrastructure looks like with WalkMe Learning Arc: a new approach to embedded digital learning that delivers guidance, reinforcement, and skill development in the moment of need, inside the platforms where work actually happens.
Gain insights into how in-the-flow learning can help organisations accelerate onboarding, improve proficiency, support the adoption of change initiatives, and build a more agile and adaptable workforce over time.
11:55
Presentation: Learning Doesn’t Create Change – Systems Do
Most organisations invest heavily in learning programs but still struggle to see meaningful behavioural change. Why? Because knowledge transfer alone rarely alters how work actually happens.
This session explores the often-missed link between Learning & Development and Organisational Change Management. While L&D builds capability, change management embeds it into the operating system of the organisation – through leadership and end-user behaviours, decision rhythms, incentives, reinforcement anchors and governance.
Drawing on real transformation environments, this session will explore why learning initiatives often fail to translate into sustained adoption, and how organisations can better connect learning with the systems that make behaviour stick. You’ll will leave with a clearer view of how L&D and change management work together to move beyond training events and deliver measurable business outcomes.
12:25
Networking Lunch
13:30
Fireside Chat: Designing EX for Performance Enablement and Career Growth
Learning functions face a dual challenge: enabling today’s performance whilst building tomorrow’s careers. Content libraries go unused, adoption numbers stay low, and the fundamental question persists: are we measuring course completions or enabling both in-role excellence and career development? When tech ecosystems haven’t been set up for either objective, transformation becomes essential.
This fireside chat reveals what it takes to redesign learning for both performance and growth. You’ll discover how to bring content into employees’ daily context for immediate performance whilst creating pathways for career progression, get hardline with stakeholders about measurable impact across both objectives. We’ll explore repositioning from adoption-driven to dual-purpose strategy, transforming from disconnected function to strategic enabler across both performance support and career development, and operating cost-effectively with every investment.
14:15
Wine Tasting Hosted By Scheer IMC
Golf
Pickleball
Paint & Sip Hosted by Go1
Sit back and have fun while our talented artists guide you step-by-step to create your very own masterpiece.
Workshop: Building High-Performance Teams Through Talent Alignment
Most organisations hire for experience, credentials, and cultural fit. High-performing organisations hire for innate talent. Grounded in the work of Gallup and Don Clifton, this hands-on workshop looks at how to design and operationalise a strengths-based hiring approach that improves selection accuracy, accelerates performance, and reduces turnover.
You’ll explore:
• Shifting from competency-based hiring to talent-based selection grounded in recurring patterns of thought, feeling, and behaviour
• Identifying the specific talent profiles required for success in critical roles
• Embedding structured, strengths-based interview guides and selection tools
• Training hiring managers to recognise and evaluate innate talent, not just experience
• Integrating strengths data into onboarding, team composition, and performance development
17:15
Relax + Recharge
Wednesday
8:00
Breakfast
8:40
Opening Comments
8:50
Partner Keynote: Gari Yala – Truthtelling at Work
Gari Yala is truthtelling in action: a platform for First Nations peoples to share their experience of work, centring Indigenous voices. The truth of workplaces are concerning — racism has remained concerningly high at work, with 60% of Indigenous people facing racism sometimes, often or very often. Indigenous people are also subject to significant unpaid workplace demands, placed by the employer for no pay.
However, the solutions are clear. We need to move away from marking the days of significance to anti-racism training and culturally appropriate complaints procedures, and towards better solutions.
9:25
International Keynote: The Uncomfortable Edge – Navigating the Unknown
The bridge we’ve built over a career can quietly become a boundary. The expertise, the frameworks, the reputation — the very things intended to move others forward can be the thing stopping us from moving ourselves.
Most seasoned L&D leaders know this. Few say it out loud.
This keynote draws on 20 years of research, more than 230 interviews with learning leaders, and real professional reinventions to make the case for a different kind of leadership. Not the certainty of expertise, but the courage of the wayfarer. Not waiting for the map but learning to read the signals.
Because the expertise that built your career is not the professional edge that will carry it forward. And the leaders who thrive in what’s coming won’t always be the most experienced in the room. They’ll be the most courageously vulnerable.
10:00
University of Sydney Keynote: The 2026 Skills Horizon – What Leaders Need to Know Next
We’re in a decade of disorientation, filled with change, risk, and opportunity. To make the most of a messy future, you’ll need to learn new things and unlearn what no longer serves you.
This Skills Horizon presentation will help you navigate the future with clarity and confidence, explaining how our world is changing, then covering what you need to learn now, focus on soon, and explore in the years to come.
10:30
Coffee Break & Networking Hosted by Pluralsight
10:55
Think Tank 1: Integrating Change Management and Learning for Complex Transformations
The market lacks professionals skilled in both change management and learning design.
Join your peers to discuss:
• How do you distinguish between the core skills of learning and change?
• What proven models integrate change and learning into a single roadmap?
• How do you embed communication and capability-building into a project’s lifecycle?
• Should organisations seek hybrid professionals who bridge both change and learning?
• How can leadership forums sustain behavioural change across a multi-generational workforce?
Think Tank 2: Placing Trust in Evidence-Based Learning and Research-Backed Methodologies
AI and vendor libraries are flooding organisations with content. The risk is low-quality, unevidenced learning at scale.
Join your peers to discuss:
• What does current learning science (2025–26) actually say about how people learn at work?
• How do we decide what to curate, buy, build, or automate based on evidence, not trends?
• How do we spot the difference between useful frameworks versus debunked myths?
• What role should learning science, data, and experimentation play in content decisions?
• How do we design evidence-based learning that works across demographics, cultures, and contexts?
Think Tank 3: Building the AI-Augmented L&D Operating Model
When AI can create content instantly, L&D’s value shifts from production to integration, and impact.
Join your peers to discuss:
• How might AI reinvent the way we upskill our people and improve their performance?
• How will the tasks of L&D practitioners change, specifically when content creation and curation are no longer the bottlenecks?
• What does the use of AI mean for the L&D operating model, and how will our roles evolve and what are the resultant job titles?
• What governance and risk guardrails are essential as AI becomes more prevalent in learning?
• How do we measure value when L&D becomes more about enablement rather than delivery?
Think Tank 4: Developing Leaders Who Can Navigate Constant Flux
L&D invests heavily in the workforce but often forgets to develop the leaders.
Join your peers to discuss:
• How do you unlock leaders’ enterprise thinking to drive innovation through collaboration?
• What capabilities do leaders need to support cross-functional teams effectively?
• How do you upskill leaders to cultivate innovation rather than just manage operations?
• What role do leadership forums play in helping leaders see interconnectedness?
• How do we support leaders through constant transformation when people are overwhelmed?
Think Tank 5: Delivering AI Upskilling Across the Entire Workforce
Every organisation wants AI upskilling, yet implementation remains challenging.
Join your peers to discuss:
• What skills does the workforce need to use AI effectively?
• How can we uplift these skills at scale across the enterprise?
• How do you ensure people leave training with immediately applicable skills?
• How can we help the business manage risk?
• How can we adapt when tools launch new versions mid-programme?
• What resources are available to support us?
11:50
Fireside Chat: Leveraging Learning Partnerships Across Business for Collaborative Transformation
When technology and data teams run their own training, HR gets sidelined. When L&D designs in isolation, technical leaders dismiss content as irrelevant. The traditional approach of L&D owning all capability development fails in digital transformation: tech moves too fast, specialisation runs too deep, and everyone runs separate initiatives with no coordination.
This session reveals what happens when L&D partners with specialist business functions rather than going it alone. You’ll discover how to let technical leads determine topics whilst L&D translates complexity into applicable learning, co-design with specialists who bring expertise whilst you bring learning design and leverage functional leaders as speakers to show true collaboration. We’ll examine building three-tier models for different cohorts, structuring partnerships with regular touchpoints, and why functional expertise resonates more when fostering learning and development between stakeholders.
12:20
Live Podcast: The Mistakes That Shaped Me
Ashton Media’s hit podcast, where we talk to leaders about missteps, mistakes and failures in their careers that have helped them become the leader they are today, is taking to the stage in a special live recording. This will be a session unlike any other as we take a deep dive with a very brave L&D leader as they share what’s not worked in their Learning & Development career, and how to adapt when things don’t always go to plan…