A strategic workshop for learning and enablement teams
A strategic workshop for learning and enablement teams
The 8Levers Workshop
For learning leaders looking to deconstruct and reframe their strategy, from the “if” to the “how to”, 8Levers offers a number of options from half-day intensives to robust workshops. Depending on geography, these are facilitated by Lori or Josh, ensuring your facilitator has walked in a leader’s shoes.
For operators in Learning & Development, Customer Education, Customer Success, Sales Enablement and Partner Enablement.
Framework: The Eight Levers of EdTech Transformation by Lori Niles-Hofmann
01 What this is
A structured working session for your learning leaders and the partners who need to be in the room. Eight to ten people: a senior decision-maker at director level or above, the learning leader, three or four individual contributors who know the operational reality, and someone from the AI initiative or technology side.
The day uses the 8Levers framework as a diagnostic and a design lens, not a model to adopt. Functions often arrive already working on several levers at once, in separate workstreams. The session is where those pieces get put on one table.
The workshop gives a learning function three things most lack: clarity on where the function is strongest and where the gaps are, direction on what to invest in versus what to stop doing, and defence of its contribution in revenue, cost and risk terms rather than completion rates.
A learning strategy that holds across countries, languages and business units, including where those units are separate entities with their own governance and their own budgets.
Connecting an AI initiative to business outcomes leadership already recognises, and making the case for learning investment while costs are under scrutiny.
Moving from project-based delivery to a strategic operating model, with the governance and measurement to defend the shift once it is made.
02 The eight levers
Requests triaged by business impact rather than arrival order, so the team's capacity lands where it changes something.
The digital body language of how people actually learn, and what the data already tells you.
Content, platforms and knowledge connected so a learner finds one answer behind one door, not three.
Skills run as a supply chain: forecast, build versus buy, and an inventory you can actually count.
Learning investment defended in the terms your leadership already tracks.
The function, the AI initiative, knowledge management and operations working as one system.
Strategy before procurement, and tools chosen to fit the operating model rather than the other way round.
Learning tied to outcomes leadership already recognises, so the next round of investment is earned rather than argued for.
03 Where the interdependencies carry weight
Where a function is already working on several levers at once, in separate workstreams, this is how they connect — and why the sequencing between them decides what any single investment is worth.
Skills inference, ambient assessment, talent profiling and knowledge discovery all draw on one data architecture. That architecture has to carry learner behaviour, content performance and skills inference at the same time, often across internal employees and a much larger external audience with different privacy obligations and jurisdictional requirements. What the data layer can support sets the ceiling for every other lever.
Atomisation, retirement, dynamic assembly and knowledge discovery are deeply connected. A coherent taxonomy is what enables atomisation. Data-anchored policy is what drives retirement. Both feed dynamic assembly, and structured content architecture is what gives ambient assessment something meaningful to assess against. Each one builds on what came before.
Tools across the estate with data moving between them. Simulation, knowledge discovery, skills tagging and content assembly all depend on integration points. Where those connections sit, and where an architectural decision in one place creates a constraint somewhere else, is what determines whether the estate functions as one thing.
AI skilling, skills tagging and talent profiling are typically all in motion at once. That investment multiplies when it connects to the content, data and operating-model decisions happening in parallel: a skills layer built on foundations designed to carry it, rather than beside them.
How the function triages requests, allocates resources and scales to the complexity being asked of it. With several workstreams running at once, the operating model is what decides whether build teams can execute at the pace the programme requires.
Executive sponsorship and a senior-level pull talent strategy are significant assets. Several workstreams means several sets of dependencies on teams outside the core function, and the alignment structure between them shapes how smoothly the build progresses.
How employees and external learners find, interact with and return to what gets built. Knowledge discovery, onboarding and findability sit exactly at the intersection of what gets made and whether anyone uses it.
Maturity assessment, resource allocation and success metrics connect back to the business objectives that earned the investment in the first place: measurable outcomes, not programme milestones.
04 How the workshop runs
The workshop is built around a foundational Day 1 followed by optional deep-dive days that respond to the pains actually surfaced on Day 1. The format is responsive rather than pre-scoped. Your team decides what comes after the foundation.
Day 1 · Foundational session
A diagnostic across all eight levers and an initial pain map. It outputs a shared baseline your team can build from independently, even if the engagement ends there.
Day 2 onward · Optional deep dives
Days that respond to what Day 1 surfaced: the AI connection, multi-stakeholder coordination, operating model design. Scope is defined after Day 1, never before.
The shortest option, for teams who want the framework and the language without committing a full day. Scoped with you rather than pre-set.
One day, onsite at a location of your choice. The framework, the diagnostic across all eight levers, and a shared baseline your team carries forward on their own. For teams who want the position established and nothing committed after it.
The foundational day, then deep-dive days shaped by what it surfaced. Subsequent days can be onsite at any of your locations, remote sessions of up to three hours each, or a combination.
Workshop days, then light-touch advisory support across three to six months. The workshop sets the strategy. The advisory period keeps us available while your team executes it.
One hour of preparation between us and the workshop owner before Day 1. No pre-work for participants.
We would rather scope this with you than have you choose off a page. A short conversation about your function, the workstreams already running and who needs to be in the room is usually enough to tell which shape fits, and whether this is worth your team's time at all.
05 What you walk away with
Not a slide deck of aspirations. A working diagnostic of where your learning function is strongest, where the gaps are, and where the trade-offs sit.
Connected to making money, saving money or reducing risk. The language to take into conversations with senior leadership, the AI initiative team and budget holders across the business.
What to invest in, what to stop doing, and what to revisit when conditions change. A lens to evaluate the strategy your team is building, rather than a finished strategy handed over.
Scoped using the Skills Calculation: cost to build, cost to hire, cost of inaction. Clear success criteria, a measurement plan, and the first concrete move after the workshop. Not a wishlist.
06 Who we are
We specialise in large-scale digital learning and skills-based transformations. As trusted advisers to Fortune 500 CLOs around the world, we help companies navigate the ambiguity of change. Workshops are facilitated by Lori or Josh depending on geography, so your facilitator has walked in a leader's shoes.
Cofounder, 8Levers
I am a senior EdTech & AI strategist with 25 years of experience spanning international banking, management consulting, and marketing.
With this history, I know the underbelly of EdTech. I have an unfiltered perspective on what’s possible…and what’s pragmatic.
I know how systems, silos, and shortcuts derail transformation, especially when people are treated as endpoints rather than widgets. My work builds value by aligning technology, processes, and human capability. I am currently in a budding relationship with Agentic AI.
Based in Toronto, Canada — with one foot in Europe.
Cofounder, 8Levers
25 years in the learning industry, with tours of duty including: SVP at Bongo, Director Enterprise at 360Learning, SVP Growth at Looop, COO at Docebo. I have helped build and sell some companies along the way.
Based on this experience, I know how the EdTech sizzle and sausage gets made because I've made it. The work I do now is helping organisations do it right.
In addition to my strategic experience, I consider myself a recovering academic with nine years under my belt. So, I have spent enough time in the research to spot when L&D repackages evidence that contradicts bold claims
Based in Spain - with one foot in North America.
The quickest way in is a short conversation about your function, the workstreams already running and who would need to be in the room.