Milda Beyer
0:00 every level. It's all about the new rules for careers, growth and performance. Just today I actually woke up extremely early and I was reading the article in The Economist and I shared it with Daria today that just last quarter in the US only the job and hiring for junior roles has decreased just over the last quarter by 300,000 junior job openings which does show that AI does have an impact on and creates new rules for careers and growth and performance so I'm really excited to be hosting this this webinar and maybe to start with the webinar is being hosted by myself Milda Beyer. I'm the VP of marketing and go to market at Lapaya and Lapaya is a learning impact company. We make sure that you can connect your business goals to your workforce needs to your learning activities. We make sure that you accelerate business strategies through learning, that you close your skill gaps at every career level and that you scale learning world worldwide and while you can measure the impact and ROI of all things learning. We work with the brands as you can see in the bottom of the screen quite a few corporates like Maersk, Rabobank, Picnic, ING, BCG but also other brands like Hunter Muller, Binder and more so we're really happy to be providing these companies and their employees with the right skills, the right time and the right place and right now I would like to introduce our panelists so Dieter Feltzmann is one of our panelists. Dieter would you like to give a quick introduction to yourself?
Dieter Feltzmann
1:40 Yeah good morning everyone and good morning Milda, lovely to be here. My name is Dr. Dieter Feltzmann. I'm the chief HR scientist at the Academy to Innovate HR and we're an organization focused on upskilling and preparing HR professionals for the future and looking at what are some of the newer trains and that will impact our profession and how we can prepare for it. So lovely to be here with all of you and look forward to the discussion.
 Milda Beyer
02:03 Thank you for being here Dieter. Daria what about yourself?
Daria Rudnik
2:08 Hi well I'm happy to be here. I'm Daria Rudnik. I'm a team architect and a leadership executive coach. I help leaders build amazing teams and before that I used to be chief people officer for mostly tech and telecom companies and ever since that time I'm like I'm fascinated with building amazing teams with AI without AI and I'm just you're the one of the like first people to know that I've recently published a book about building self-sufficient teams and the skills people need and teams need in this era of great disruption.
Milda Beyer
02:39  Love that. Thank you so much Daria and also good promotion if you want to you please share it in the chat link to your book. I think people would love to hear and read more and if there's any good deal just asking for other marketeers and sales people and so on. On behalf if there's a good deal or a discount feel free to also share that in the meeting chat. Having that said let's continue to our agenda of the day. So we'll be touching upon three really really important topics. So number one is how AI is transforming roles at different levels and what that means for career growth. Number two is about redesigning career frameworks for the AI era so balancing clarity with adaptability in AI driven organizations and then of course we will dive deeper into how performance evaluations should evolve as I think most of the organizations or most of you are going through performance cycles today and as AI changes the relationships between activity effort and output and I believe that both Peter and Daria have a lot to say about all of these topics. So with no further ado we're going to start with our first question and topic. How is AI redefining roles across different career levels and what does this mean for traditional job hierarchies? Maybe as you've also just shared your book Daria maybe you can start by answering the first question.
Daria Rudnik
04:04 Thanks Milda and it's a very interesting question I don't think there is a like one answer one correct answer to that but I wanted to share the recent research that I've read it's a Harvard Business Review did the research with a GitHub co-pilot where they kind of looked at how people how developers actually work and what they found out which is unsurprisingly yes developers could do more work with the help of AI we all knew that what we didn't know is that managers had less work the traditional command control delegates set goals for developers cycle didn't work because they could take those tasks AI could control those those tasks so all this admin stuff that managers that line managers or middle managers usually do and get involved in which takes most of their times is now redundant AI can do that for them so it either leaves managers more time for strategy for collaboration for like helping teams learn and develop as a as a unit as a team or they just have to be let go because the value that they used to bring in the organization in managing cycle is no longer needed with the help of AI and that was very interesting discovery for me personally because we all know that some technical things can be automated with AI and that would change the traditional kind of hierarchy and but with the middle managers being at risk that was a very interesting finding and it also showed that again there was a question like I think probably mentioned now that like lots of there were less junior developers being hired today and it is still a question with AI being able to do what juniors can do what does it mean for organization does it mean that you don't need juniors anymore or does it mean that any junior developer can fast track to middle developer because they can learn faster with the help of AI and I mean I don't have the answer to that question and I think we'll still need to figure it out and I think it depends on whether it's a developer or a marketer or an HR person or someone else or a financial person so it does redefine roles we do not know exactly how but we know that it can help people grow faster we know that it can transform roles like managers and we know that some roles will be automated like they always are automated within the like all the digitalization era we all see jobs being automated and redundant.
 Milda Beyer
06:53 Before we we jump to Dieter, Daria, very quick follow-up question here then do you see that as the roles are being redefined and the organizations and the typical hierarchies are being redesigned do you see that companies tend to now opt for more hiring more or upskilling more towards generous roles versus functional and specialist roles do you see a difference there in organizational design not just the levels or is it still quite unknown and we are still speculating because we're just scratching the surface here?
 Daria Rudnik
07:23 What I see and again I saw a recent like report recently is that companies tend to hire more experienced people because those people they knew processes they knew how the good process should look like and they know where AI can bring value while when we talk about junior people they are not familiar with the process yet they can use AI but they cannot optimize the process with the help of AI.
Milda Beyer
07:47 Okay yeah thank you so much for sharing Dieter what is your take on this question and maybe what Daria just shared?
 Dieter Feltzmann 
07:55 So I think there's a there's a couple of things that stand out for me I think the first one is we first have to acknowledge that AI always exists in a particular context right and I think it's it's important to interpret some of these changes that we are starting to see also in the context of what's happening globally also in the context of what we're seeing in terms of what's happening from an economic point of view because that will influence some of the decisions that organizations will make pertaining to what all design is going to look like. I think kind of zoning in on AI a little bit more there is a couple of interesting things that we're already starting to see on the horizon that also links into what Daria has mentioned. I think the first one is that organizations that are starting to leverage value from AI and that isn't for all organizations necessarily the case do see it as an organizational design challenge. So what I mean by that is to fundamentally look at the tasks and activities where we can utilize AI tools or AI agents in future and thinking about that holistically and not in isolation. If you think about AI as only a tool and not necessarily as something that you have to incorporate in how work gets designed in future I don't think you're going to be able to leverage the value. That then leads towards the conversation around how is that then changing the way that we've thought about roles across the different career levels. I think Daria is absolutely correct we have seen a decline in middle management over the last two to three years but even going back further than that it wasn't only as a result of AI. It has been as a result also of changing org designs people trying to be a lot more fluid trying to be a lot more agile in how they've set up organizations. I think AI has accelerated that a little bit more and I think it's an interesting thing to think about that we are probably dealing with the last generation of managers that will only be managing people related teams and what I mean by that is that I think in future we will start looking a lot more at a blended workforce where agents and human beings have to augment each other a lot more and the role of manager around orchestrating what the workforce and how work gets done is going to become a lot more interesting and I think that leads us towards a conversation around new competencies for managers in the future. I think it's still the jury for me is still very much out around does that lead towards a decline in middle management inevitably. I think you know that's always dependent on other contextual factors industry type of work that happens type of organization you are also currently at and the last point I want to make here is I think it is really interesting for me you know there's this big conversation that you've also mentioned Mulder around entry-level jobs right and when you scratch a little bit below the surface AI is only one of the factors that's kind of influencing the ability to hire people into the workforce we also need to acknowledge we are a growing population with a changing demographic so that will always influence what the workforce composition looks like but there's two different schools of thought here the one is that yes AI is replacing entry-level jobs so in the future we need to prepare people to kind of step into the roles that today we classify as your second or your third role as their very first so that means that we're going to have to develop early grassroots careers very very differently or there is another school of thought which I think is a little bit of a doom and gloom perspective that says you know there will be no entry entry-level jobs for the future which I do not support I don't think that's going to be the reality and I think there is however a conversation that we need to have as at a societal and organizational level a little bit more there around saying but okay if how are we going to develop talent because I don't worry about functional or technical skill I think people can learn that rather quickly I worry a lot more about your durable skills your maturity the things that you kind of learn by entering into the work environment and I think that's what we're going to have to figure out in our workforce strategies for for the future.
Milda Beyer 
11:33 Thank you and let's dive a little bit into the workforce strategy 2026 so as you know I think most of the people's teams currently are in workforce planning and I think myself as a go-to-market marketing leader I'm also looking into how should my team look like for 2026 and there's this conversation should we start looking at AI as a full-time employee or a tool because of course when you're talking about cost reductions or process optimizations the first question that sea level management tends to ask can't this be done by AI and where do you see sort of 2026 workforce planning going towards
 Dieter Feltzmann 
12:09 so our recent trends report that we've also released on like exactly what does the workforce look like next year showcases that there's three strategies that organizations are following all of them with different benefits and limitations the first one is very much the one that you've mentioned a lot of people are saying you know we call it capacity extraction so can I utilize AI to do some of the work and then do it with less people in future and we see that typically in the headlines right it's the big headlines we see around salesforce it's a big headlines that we see around Klarna etc those organizations that we find you know in the public media I do think with that type of strategy and this is my personal view I think there is a risk something we call AI regret where people make a decision based on what they think AI can do and once they've replaced the people a couple of months down the line they actually have to rehire because you know surprise surprise AI doesn't replace the full human being it replaces tasks and activities right so I think that's a cautionary strategy to follow and again I would caution there to say do a proper organizational design so that you know the decisions that you're starting to make the second strategy is one that's a lot more about capacity amplification so it says great I've got AI let me add it to what my team is currently doing and let's actually extend our scope around the things that we've never been able to do before you know we work with a lot of HR professionals I usually ask them you know what's inhibiting you from you know insert outcome there and they usually say you know it's time or skill or the resource so in this strategy you kind of utilize that more as an extension of your team and then the third strategy is one that's more longer term around reinvestment saying realistically AI is going to take away tasks and activities that could influence some roles in its entirety how do I actually shift people across into new domains and new areas where I do want to invest into the human workforce for for the future so those are kind of the three strategies that we see there so I would caution don't make knee-jerk decisions do proper investigation around what do you want AI to do what do you want human beings to do and how does it augment each other pilot that and then I think there can be transitions over time and this AI regretting I think in the next 12 to 18 months we'll see a lot more of that with people then typically say I actually have to rehire some of the people that I let go and there's already a couple of good examples out there where it's already starting to happen where people just laid off people at scale as a result of AI and again it's in a context that's not only as a result of AI I think AI gets blamed at the moment a little bit for kind of everything that changes in the workforce.
 Milda Beyer 
13:33 Yeah well it's good that hopefully it doesn't have any feelings just yet because getting blamed is never fun but let's talk a little bit about who actually owns the AI transformation and workforce transformation within the organization and we've prepared a poll so Linda who's on behind our La Playa Amsterdam account today she just launched a poll about who shapes the future of AI adoption within your organization and we would like to ask the audience to vote for this is it a CTO is it a CHR or CPO is there a transformation officer that currently has a seat at the table on the C level is it a dedicated task force that owns this or is it someone else and of course please let us know in the chat if you see that someone else should own this and while we're getting the results in I would like to already invite Darya a little bit of like who do you think shapes the future of AI adoption within the organization and who should take that role because it is a very challenging very unknown almost job description that requires a very very versatile profile so curious to hear your thoughts Daria before we end the poll.
 Daria Rudnik 
15:45 Thanks Milda I mean when I see that poll I kind of I'm reminded of the I don't know if you've seen that during the COVID there was a man who leads a digital transformation CTO CEO COVID-19 so with when COVID-19 hit everyone became went digital so something will happen that will all like go into AI no matter what I mean I can't choose one and I don't see one person actually leading transformation I mean they can be project manager or project leader whatever but you need input from all the all the functions you need input from HR obviously because that's a skill based you need certain skill and not just like data set not just technical skills not technical skills but skills how to collaborate with AI skills how to use AI output and critically evaluate it and process it and think it through and kind of make a decision make a human decision skills of how do we identify areas that are not relevant for AI that need to be human led how do we use like emotional intelligence in those questions that are not like that AI is not capable of dealing with them all those skills skill sets and human transformation and human collaboration should be like HR should be play huge role in this AI adoption together with technology officer and CEO and finance and whoever else is on the team so it's it's definitely a team like yeah
Milda Beyer 
17:22 and we can really see that it's becoming like a dedicated some people hold a dedicated task force and that's the second most popular answer Dieter are you surprised by the responses of this poll
Dieter Feltzmann 
17:32no I think we we've started to see from our own data and it's also backed up by a couple of other studies a very similar view you know in terms of how the audience has voted I think to Daria's point if you are thinking that AI is a technology transformation I think you're in trouble as an organization because it's much more of a mindset culture and a ways of work shift that you are trying to make having said that if you flip it completely to the other side and it's only HR led then I don't think you necessarily pulled it in a way that is sustainable and then I think you focus only on isolated skill culture components and not necessarily the technology data etc that we require to give each value so what we are finding at least is a very good approach to take is to have centers of excellence that focus on AI that comprises of multidisciplinary teams so that you have a shared view around the table of what we need to do and then I think very similar to some of the comments made in the chat then utilizing that team to build excellence and then actually incubating it and then sending it out to start equipping and enabling other people to drive guided experimentation in their own areas because ultimately you want to infuse AI as a way of work into your culture and give people the skill sets to make the right ethical decisions on how and where they apply it but you have to have some central place where a joint conversation about the strategy and the direction goes but that has to be multidisciplinary in nature otherwise unfortunately it becomes what people it becomes aligned to whoever leads it if it's only the CTO it becomes a tech project it's only HR it becomes a people project you need something a little bit broader that actually integrates and pulls it together.
 Milda Beyer
19:05  I see it in a very similar way I do however also see a lot of challenges where if every leader is responsible and starts taking so much ownership and responsibility of developing their own AI stack can become a bit of a Frankenstein type of situation so I think this excellence center is exactly what we need to start seeing and thank you so much for of course for sharing the results and let's move into the next topic which is on when career progression is no longer vertical how should organizations redesign career frameworks and I'm excited for this one because there's also some personal stories behind this one so Daria do you want to kick off?
 Daria Rudnik 
19:51 Yeah thanks Milda and again to be honest it's a new question all the questions we're talking about today we've had them before I've had them as a chief people officer how should we redesign career frameworks and like my personal career journey it's like I started my career in Deloitte and I moved I moved up the career ladder up to chief people officer but at some point I switched I mean I changed it it's still I'm still in my career progression it's just different type of career it's not this vertical hierarchical career and when I see what my coaching clients the leaders they also thinking okay what's my next step and the next step is not necessarily to be an executive or CEO or CXO whatever it is it's what is that the place where I can bring the most meaning and it could be either setting up your own business or like going into consulting and there are some very interesting examples within the organization when leaders actually take roles like they as they take one part of their current role and expand it like there was a there was a lady who became a contingency workforce expert across the organization whereas before it was just one part of her role and the other one became a sustainability expert for the whole for whole organization and where AI can help here is to identify the need for those new roles that can that can evolve within the organization and again recently last week actually Google has announced their new platform Google Skills and what they say this Google Skills platform will be able to do launching end of October is that you can learn skills there with AI you're not just learning skills there yourself you have labs where with other people together you learn and some other people share knowledge and you gain this skill and again with the help of AI you can evaluate those skills and then companies who need skills that you have can hire you all so AI can create this platform for learning and identification where the skills are needed and that will help you grow in your career whether it's hierarchical like vertical horizontal whatever it is but that's the main I think benefit of AI in organizational growth and career growth.
Milda Beyer
 22:18 Thank you Dieter what's your response on the AI career progression not being any longer vertical?
 Dieter Feltzmann 
22:26 So I think to Daria's point right I think the the nature of careers have changed quite a bit I think where AI has started to accelerate that we know that over the last couple of years organizations have been trying to go a lot more skills-based and skills-focused and that's been very much driven by availability of talent globally as well as also needs internally to drive a lot more mobility and to optimally utilize the workforce that we already have so I think the nature of careers have started to shift and change a lot more also taking into account that we know that the employer and employee relationship has also changed quite significantly so I think people do want a lot more and something different from work so we talk about career life fit you know I want a job that fits into what I want from life broader touches on Daria's point around the fact that I think in the past people have been and remember career success is defined subjectively and the moment that we realize that then we know that career success for everybody is not necessarily defined by moving up vertically up the career ladder for other people it's meaning for others it's status for others it's wealth for others it's balance so that's always going to be slightly different where I think AI is starting to have an impact on career progression to bring it back is that it is forcing organizations to think in a lot more task and activity-based manner and it is then also starting to utilize the technology platforms that allow us to do things related to internal mobility skill matching and be a lot more fluid in how people move around in the organization we've seen talent marketplaces already go that direction a couple of years ago and to be honest I think until AI started to progress that has always been a very difficult thing to do in an organization because it is a culture change but you need very solid technology to understand the skills I have at a verified level and how people can then go and apply them outside of the way that we've thought about traditional jobs and roles in the past so I think something and I've added a slide here on that is just how organizations should start thinking and we've actually changed our own language to say you know the traditional career ladder it still exists but it's not the only way to think about career progression so we think a lot more about what we call a career lattice which is more of a 360 based approach that is driven by a couple of other factors the first one that I've mentioned is very much driven by how you define success as an individual the second one is what is available in your immediate environment and there I think AI plays a role to help you understand what is your transferable and durable skill as an individual because usually that's what holds people back I don't know what else I can do we've grown up in a world where you define your role as part of a functional disciplinary area whereas AI doesn't work in verticals it works in horizontals so if you are able to understand what is my durable skill and what I can transfer to another domain all of a sudden the traditional career path is just one of the options that are available for you in future when I talk about transferability and durability you know I work with the HR teams a lot I ask them you know what is your core skill they'll say recruitment I'm saying no that's one of the skills that's not your durable skill that's your functional skill durable skill is something a lot more around critical thinking it's a lot more around planning and organizing and those things you can actually go and apply in various different areas so I think there's a there's going to be a sequence here as roles change people will think a lot more in terms of the skills I have organizations will be defining work a lot more in tasks activities and skill requirements and AI will enable us to have a lot more matching and mobility that gives people options but there has to be a bit of a mindset change as well to be able to understand how do I actually access the lattice in an organization and stop thinking hierarchical about what career success is going to look like.
Milda Beyer
25:58 Before we jump in the poll now like you triggered me to ask this question how long will this take?
Dieter Feltzmann 
26:04 I think organizations some organizations are already starting to do it right but as I said at the beginning it has to be joined together with you know careers don't change in isolation you have to think about my org design is changing our culture of mobility is starting to change how we utilize people and help people access new opportunities start to change. There are already a lot of organizations that's made significant strides in terms of mobility especially those also that tap into the can I say the non-employee or permanent employee workforce in the past so when we think about big workers short-term workers etc but I think it will become more of a general norm over the next three to five years in terms of how people think about talent as opposed to what it is today because skills-based organizations have been a great idea for a number of years it's been very difficult for people to get it right in practice again wearing an HR lens it's easy to do that in learning and development it's easy to do that in certain project-based environments it gets really difficult when you want to hire based on skills only and not roles and not jobs and I think that started to change a little bit more that people understand that these things can co-exist but there's some changes we need to make in some of our practices and processes to allow that to happen so I think to answer your question we're closer than we think but there's still a lot of work to do to be able to get us there and I think AI is a great enabler but it's not necessarily going to be the driving point or the only driving force that will lead towards this future state.
Milda Beyer 
27:29 So Daria do you agree with the time I love Dieter then do you agree that we're closer than we think?
Daria Rudnik 
27:34 I'm not sure how close we are but I do believe like I totally agree that organizations need to change they we've seen that during COVID when like everyone went remote and some organization broke because not because people can't work remotely but because organizations didn't support that same thing happens with AI some organizations will break because not because AI will break it but because they cannot make sure people work and collaborate effectively together and the work structure is ready for this disruption so it's first of all it's like human or org design question and then AI.

Milda Beyer
28:09 All right so let's jump into our next poll that will be discussing this question exactly I think Linda is going to be launching this in just a moment and it's about career growth in an AI-driven workplace so the question is as an HR leader what concerns you most about supporting career growth in an AI-driven workplace? Is it identifying which skills employees should develop next? Is it fewer traditional promotion pathways so we're struggling with promoting people? Is it helping employees demonstrate their unique value and I'm actually this one triggers me a little bit of how much further can we help employees demonstrate their unique value and are we approaching this times of a coach also becoming a really important skill and even potentially something that we outsource in the business? Is this keeping up with the pace of change or you're rather optimistic and you're not concerned because you know where you're going so everyone I invite you to participate in voting and while everyone's voting maybe Dieter anything that you would like to elaborate a little bit on this one?
Dieter Feltzmann
29:19 Yeah without leading any of the answers that people are providing I do think there's an interesting thing here around the fact that firstly we need to acknowledge that a lot of organizations don't really know what the skills are that they need and they require but they think they do but when we start looking at workforce planning very often people don't boil it down to how do I actually define what the skill sets are that I require but then on the other side to also just cut them a little bit of slack I also don't think often people know what skills they actually have so there's this two-sided coin that I think is quite difficult that organizations don't always know what they want and that's right and talent intelligence will become a lot more important in the future. But on the other side, we need to equip people to understand what is it that I have and what do I offer, and then start bringing those two worlds together. So I think it's not just one answer that, you know, would keep me awake at night.
Milda Beyer
30:05  All right, Daria?
Daria Rudnik
30:08 When I look at the third question, like helping employees demonstrate their unique value, it kind of triggers a lot of conversation that I had before. When people say like, organizations do recognize their best employees, they do recognize that this person is high performer, but they don't know what to do next. They don't know what to do with those people next, people don't know how they can grow next. So it's kind of a we are at the stage where, okay, these are the high performance, they are great people, what's next? And again, as Dita said, if like we will be able to identify skills needed for development, and analyze skills that we already have, that might be an answer to that question. Okay, what's next?
Milda Beyer
30:46  And it's really about the team modeling, maybe that's what I also wanted to add. So there's this theory of A players, I think there's like a high growth, high growth handbook written by someone who worked at Stripe, and they were talking, what can you give your A players, that's not just money, that's not just like career development, and A players want to work with A players. So it's also about team design, and how you design your team and A players around each other. So yeah, in an AI driven workforce, I think it will also be important of how do you design your teams, and how do the synergies and skills and competencies interact together. So I'm really actually excited, and I would say I'm the optimistic one that I'm not concerned, because I think it will just cause and prompt us to match and create better teams across the organization. And with that, then, let's go into our final question, actually, how should performance evaluation evolve when AI changes the relationship between activity, effort and output? And Dita, maybe you could kick off with this one first.
Dieter Feltzmann
31:54 So I think we've been talking about outcome based performance management for a number of years, right? So I think there's been a general acknowledgement across the board that it's much more about what the outcome looks like, and the impact of that versus what the effort and the input is, right? When we think about the way that productivity and those types of things have been defined traditionally. Having said that, though, I do think that there's two things that is going to be a challenge in the future. The first one is that, to be honest, performance management as a concept, and it's the practice everybody loves to hate, right? It's the practice that unearths a lot of other things in organizations that's not currently working. And I think it is a very human process there around can people actually do things like set goals, give feedback, you know, manage people, which gets us back to the earlier point around what is the role of managers going to be in future around workforce orchestration. I do think that there will be a shift a little bit more, and I hope that we are able to guide organizations there, that we start really embedding what the value is that people deliver, so that activity, effort, outputs, et cetera, actually gets conceptualized in what does value look like? Can we define what value looks like? And then let's have a value-based conversation when we start thinking about performance in the future. But I think we are still a very, very far away from there. And again, I have to, and I know I'm sounding like a broken record player this morning, but I do think the all design discussion with what is the expectation from people, what does good look like, has to fit into this ecosystem. And within that, we then design what performance is going to look like in future. I do think where I will help is definitely, you know, there's an organization in Singapore that they've already incorporated AI to help managers, for example, have more data-driven conversations and prepare talking points and employees to kind guide them in the discussion to improve the quality of conversations. So I think we'll use it at a very tactical level for the short to medium term. And then maybe in the longer term, it will play a role to actually start redefining and bringing new insights around how we measure value and what value is going to look like in, you know, in future. So I hope that's where we go. But this one, I'm a little skeptic about because I think that there's some foundational people-related competencies that we first need to build in managers and in employees before we just start adapting AI into the process.
Milda Beyer
34:04 I agree with your detail on this one, because also recently had the conversation on if you start expecting much more from your senior people in just, you know, not just their functional leadership or functional management, but also AI literacy, what's the scope that we're evaluating during these performance reviews? What is the expectation? So before we give the baton to Daria, maybe we can launch a poll, Linda, because it's very much adjacent to this question, which is about performance evaluation. What do you primarily measure in performance reviews today? Is it task completion and productivity metrics? Is it output quality and business impact? Is it skills developments and learning or is it a mix of all the above? And Daria, the question stays the same. How should performance evaluation evolve? And of course, curious to see what change do you see in evolution with all of the HR leaders that you work with?
Daria Rudnik
35:05 Well, I would support you on that as well. Well, about 15 years ago, when I was a chief people officer in a telecom company, I stopped the annual performance management process because it didn't bring any value to business. And it caused lots of frustration for people. We changed it to something else. We changed it to developmental conversations every two weeks or every two to three weeks. But it has nothing to do with AI. It has to do how we evaluate skills, how we evaluate outcome of people. And I'm a true believer of more fluid team-based organizations like you, Milda, said. How do we design teams that can bring the most value? And when you design teams, you need to evaluate the team output, team outcome, not individual outcome. Because if team is designed right, you can have various outcomes from individual performance, which might be okay for this team because that's the best way this team will operate. And what is the organization? Organization is a team of teams. So kind of looking at the performance evaluation, or I would say value evaluation, understanding the value those teams bring is the next very complex question. But I don't believe in a traditional performance management approach where you sit with the employee and try to tick the boxes where you hit your goals and you didn't hit the goals. Well, the world has shifted three times since the previous evaluation process.
Milda Beyer
36:44 Wow.Actually, like now I felt a little bit schooled because I thought performance and development conversations, they're the same thing, you know, but I see that you're distancing yourself from the performance evaluation and going towards sort of the developmental conversation. So, you know, do you want to share a little bit more about that? Why have you stepped back from this? And why is it more about development actually that we're talking about? Is it just a little bit more on that?
Daria Rudnik
37:11 Well, the thing is when performance evaluation, you meet with the manager and you kind of evaluate your past performance. What have you done from what you have recorded in the system before? And again, in our case, in our organization, things have been shifting so quickly. So the things that we put three months ago were irrelevant now. So what is it we're going to evaluate now? Okay, maybe some skills development, but that's one of the things. But it's the traditional performance management. It's about what you've done, what your goals were, and how you achieve those goals. And developmental conversations. Okay, so what is it that we need you to be able to do in the future to be resilient, for you to be more resilient, for our team to be more successful, for our team to create better outcomes, for our organization to be ready for future disruptions and changes? What kind of person, expert you need to be? And again, this can change, but this is the conversations focused on the future and helping people and teams grow. And I also like to have these conversations, not again, not one-to-one, but when team gets together. And again, that's what I'm writing about my book is how team get together and talk together. What is it that they need to develop? Because like Dita said, we don't know what skills we have and we don't have, but collectively we can understand what skills we need to have in our organization and who is the better person to develop those skills and bring them on the team, like as a team. So together we sit and decide, okay, that's how we want to work together within the next few months. And that's what you need to do. And that's what you need to do. 38.54 Milda Beyer That's what we all need to learn to reach that goal. Thank you for sharing. And before we jump into wrap up, Dita, any final thoughts on this particular question or on the performance evaluation poll responses?
Dieter Feltzmann
39:05 So I think to Daria's point, I think performance evaluation has also evolved from various different approaches. 15, 20 years ago, I think there was the one approach, you use cascading down with a balanced scorecard or with smart goals. I think organizations are doing well these days with much more dialogue driven type of performance conversations. I'm also a big supporter of splitting out, let's talk about performance versus talking about development. I'm a firm supporter of having a performance process and approach in place that fits with your culture or that actually drives the culture that you want in the organization, but not necessarily to do something that is more, you know, checklist, check box driven. I think that it's a bigger conversation around value contribution, development, where do we go from here as part of that. And yet to bring it back to the AI topic, I really believe that AI can help us improve the quality of how we do those things and actually lead towards people having more human but more focused on outcome conversations in future.

Milda Beyer
39:59 Yeah, wouldn't agree more. So with that, we're going to start wrapping up and then we'll take a question. So the key takeaways are, if all of us three will want for you to take something from this conversation, is that AI is redefining roles at every level and it requires new ways to develop talent and structure of work. I think both Daria and Dieter has shared that. And career growth now happens through skill, development and lateral moves, not just promotions up traditional ladder. And we see that here as well. And of course, performance reviews must measure impact and outcomes rather than hours, work, tasks completed or simply performance. I really agree of like splitting that a little bit and making sure that we acknowledge people's work more inclusively, looking from a 360 perspective. And one question that I see that actually had quite a bit of a conversation around it, I think was by Gabriel Shepman, where the question for I think both of us was, what are the largest tasks that might be reduced or not needed anymore to be done by middle managers thanks to AI? And any examples that you could share? Because middle, we talked a bit about junior talent, but what's happening with middle managers? And what are the tasks that might be reduced or not needed to be done by middle managers? Maybe Dieter, you want to kick off?
Dieter Feltzmann
41:20 Yeah, I can grab on that. I think it's important to ask the question, what is AI good at? So I think AI is really good at replacing repetitive, predictable tasks. It's great at identifying patterns. It's great at consolidating large information sets and providing insights. So I think at a middle management level, to be honest, in a lot of organizations, there's a lot of administrative burden around things like regular reporting. There's a lot of administrative burden around budgets, tracking, those types of things that I actually think AI not necessarily replacing completely, but can play a critical role. And we've already seen a lot of organizations starting to utilize AI for more automated reporting, for example, and interpretive reports, et cetera, that managers used to have to do manually as part of that. So I think it's about asking that question around, if this was the tasks and the activities that a middle manager did, what is AI good at and how can AI then help there? But I think in a lot of the things that we typically just term as business as usual, I think AI can play a critical role. And to be honest, get people back to defining what a manager really is, because we've kind of blended that a lot more with managing people plus managing work plus managing tasks and activities that has to happen at that level in the organization. And I think that's where massive time saving can actually happen.

Milda Beyer
42:31 Thank you, Dieter. Daria, your take?
Daria Rudnik
42:34 I totally agree. And I just recently had a conversation with a manager and he told me, I don't want to be a people manager. I like coaching people. I like developing people. I like having conversations. But what the role of manager is, is that like reports and kind of control. And I don't like that. I don't want to be people manager. So in some organizations, manager is someone who just controls tasks and does the reporting. And what they can do and they will have potential to do is develop people and develop teams.
Milda Beyer
43:12  That's, I think, an exciting expansion of the scope for those who never wanted it or never anticipated that will be the case. So after the Q&A, we also want to prompt all of you who've joined us to download our organizational design in the Age of AI or Evolution of Skills 2030 report. I think Daria and Dieter also managed to be part of one or another actually as a contributor. This is really, really useful material for you where you can dive much deeper and have a deeper knowledge on organizational design on the Age of AI. I have to say, I personally really, really like this guide. That's why we at Le Pai are also proactively looking into how to redesign our teams to make sense for 2026 and beyond. And was really prompted, I think, by both Dieter and Daria from my side. So I would really recommend to scan this one and explore. If you want to, of course, and if you have additional questions for those who joined, don't hesitate to reach out to Daria or to Dieter on LinkedIn. I think both would be excited to have a conversation there, of course. And I know that we are going to send a roundup over the next couple of days by Le Pai where we're also going to link Daria's and Dieter's LinkedIn profiles, which will make it easier for you to reach out to both of them. They're true experts in the topic, so I would really recommend having that conversation. And I think, yeah, both would be excited. And I see also that the Le Pai team also just shared that you can follow Daria and Dieter on LinkedIn with both of their profiles shared. So feel free to connect, feel free to continue having these conversations and the questions. And we are, yeah, very excited to host these webinars with the right, of course, speakers. And for the next topic, we want to hear a little bit more from you of what should be the next webinar topic. What is the more relevant for you? Is it AI and bias? Is it leadership in the AI era? Is it building workforce resilience and change readiness in AI age? Or is it AI and employee well-being? As you can see, AI, like COVID, not exactly like that, but that's the phenomenon that is really changing of how we all need to function. So the topic continues to stay really relevant. And we want to make sure that we provide as much quality conversations for you in the coming future. So feel free to vote. And until then, what I really want to say, thank you so much, Daria. Thank you so much, Dieter, for joining us and providing all of this information and having this conversation. I'm really looking forward to hopefully host you at some point soon again, because it's a really valuable conversation. And yeah, thank you for those who joined and stayed with us throughout the conversation. We're looking forward to receiving your feedback and hearing from you and seeing you on other webinars. So thank you so much for joining and wishing everyone a wonderful rest of the Tuesday. Thank you. Thanks.

Thank you, Milda. Yeah, thank you.