January 25, 2025 • 27 mins
What if the key to unlocking AI’s potential in your business wasn’t just the technology—but how you prepare your team to use it?
In this episode of What’s the BUZZ?, host Andreas Welsch and Nico Bitzer, CEO and Co-Founder of Bots and People, explore how businesses can move beyond the AI hype and start seeing real, measurable outcomes.
Together, they take a deep dive into:
- Why simply buying AI tools isn’t enough—and how the real ROI lies in employee upskilling.
- How companies are using innovative training formats like social blended learning to engage employees and drive adoption.
- The critical steps leaders can take to align training with business goals and measure its impact effectively.
Hear about real-world examples, including a European telecom company that trained 5,000 employees in AI, leading to measurable time savings and productivity gains. Learn how to design training programs that don’t just teach employees how to use AI—but empower them to think critically, solve problems, and innovate in their roles.
Whether you’re a business leader, an L&D professional, or simply curious about bridging the gap between AI tools and business outcomes, this episode is packed with practical takeaways.
Ready to turn AI hype into action? Don’t miss this episode—tune in now to revolutionize your approach to AI in the workplace!
Questions or suggestions? Send me a Text Message.
***********
Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Andreas Welsch (00:00):
Welcome to What's the BUZZ?, where leaders
(00:02):
and hands on experts share howthey have turned hype into
outcome.
Today, we'll talk about creatingAI literacy and upscaling in
large enterprises.
And who better to talk about itthan someone who's actively
working on that?
Nico Bitzer.
Hey Nico, thank you so much forjoining me.
Nico Bitzer (00:16):
Thanks, Andreas, for the invitation.
Honored to be here.
It's a pleasure.
Andreas Welsch (00:22):
Hey, why don't you tell our audience a little
bit about yourself, who you areand what you do?
Nico Bitzer (00:25):
Yes.
My name is Nico.
I founded a company called Botsand People now around five years
ago.
I initially worked in managementconsulting for a couple of
years.
And there I was Yeah, prettyannoyed by all the repetitive
tasks that are going on in largeenterprises because people were
(00:47):
copying things from Excel andthe ERP systems and from the ERP
systems into Excel.
And I have a background ineducation.
Also a couple of years agoworked as a teacher and I
thought, Hey, why not educatingpeople on how they can make
their their lives easier withtechnology and with automation.
(01:10):
And this was the yeah, how theidea for bots and people was
born.
How can we bring technologytogether with people for them to
create more meaningful work andget rid of this copying over
Excel to ERP and ERP to Excelthing.
And now and that's also why I'mhere, I guess.
(01:30):
The whole AI.
topic has disrupted thisautomation game because you can
do such great things with it andcreate even more meaningful work
with this powerful tool.
Andreas Welsch (01:42):
I'm so excited to have you on the show and to
share what you are seeing, whatlarge enterprises are doing in
that space.
Should we play a little game tokick things off?
Nico Bitzer (01:52):
Let's play a game.
Andreas Welsch (01:54):
You'll see a sentence.
I'd like you to answer with thefirst thing that comes to mind,
and why.
And to make it more interesting,you'll only have 60 seconds for
your answer.
So, for those of you who arejoining us live, please feel
free to put your answer and whyin the chat as well.
It's always exciting to see whatpeople come up with.
So, are you ready for What's theBUZZ?
Nico Bitzer (02:14):
Ready.
Andreas Welsch (02:16):
Awesome.
So if AI were a, let's see, whatwould it be?
If it were a band, what would itbe?
Nico Bitzer (02:26):
If AI were a band, then it would be Metallica.
Just because it's disrupting theindustry as much as Metallica
has disrupted the music gameback in the days.
Andreas Welsch (02:41):
I like that.
And you know they're prettytimeless.
They've come and gone right withpopularity and also reinvented
themselves a couple of times.
So I love that part.
Now, let's jump into it to ourquestions that we talked about.
You know, much like thischanging where we're also seeing
the enterprise landscape change,the technology landscape change.
(03:03):
And I've seen, and you'veprobably seen that too, many
organizations are buying AIlicenses and they're expecting
their people all of a sudden tobe a lot more productive.
But then, you know, and itdoesn't quite work like that,
right?
That's not how we've learned touse Office or other tools.
There has been a learning periodand a learning curve.
(03:26):
What are you seeing?
What types of companies How docompanies and leaders invest in
AI literacy?
Who realizes that this isimportant?
And why do they think it'simportant?
Nico Bitzer (03:36):
Yeah, it's a very good question.
And for me, it's definitely theenterprise leaders that can
invest in the long termperspective and also want to
invest in the long termperspective.
Because in AI, you havedifferent sort of values you can
generate.
(03:57):
There's the obvious value, forexample, disrupting a whole
business model with AI or withGenerative AI, which is super
important for companies and theycan also calculate immediate
business cases on it, butthere's also all the value that
is with the employees bybecoming more efficient and by
(04:19):
using this wonderful technologyto utilize it to make their jobs
easier.
It cannot be measured rightaway, of course, and you won't
have after one or two weeks ahard return on invest
calculation, but there is wayson how you can calculate it in
(04:39):
the long run and the leadersthat invest know about this.
Andreas Welsch (04:44):
I think that's a great point, right?
First of all that encouragement,but also that it does take some
time for you to see the returnon on this.
Now for the trainings that, thatwe've led together for several
large organizations, I've alwaysbeen super excited.
Hey, there are people who wantto learn.
There are sometimes hundreds ofpeople that sign up for these
(05:07):
sessions that these companiesmake available.
And they do want to learn, howcan I use these tools?
How can I use Generative AI inmy line of work?
What is it good for?
The company policies that I needto be aware of, so I use it in
accordance with them.
So don't expose the company tosome risk.
I think there are many, manydifferent facets to it.
(05:29):
But what have you seen workreally, really well?
What kinds of formats do you seework well?
Nico Bitzer (05:37):
Yeah, there's different kinds of formats.
I can give a couple of examplesand then also we can connect to
the first question on how thisleads to the business case and
gave the leaders an argument onthe top level management to do
more of these kind of upskillinginitiatives.
And we've worked with a largetelecommunication company in
(05:58):
Germany.
They upskilled in just a coupleof months 5, 000 people in
Generative AI.
So it was a very basic promptingworkshop.
So for us, we are also a littlebit in a bubble.
Probably the people joining thissession are intrinsically very
interested in AI.
But in a large enterprises,there's around 50 percent that
(06:22):
haven't tapped into that spaceyet.
And I would say even only 5 to10 percent are in that space.
higher maturity level.
And for those people, so forthose that are at the beginner
level, we offered a three hourworkshop that was called a
Promptathon where they learnedthe basic prompting skills with
(06:45):
group work.
So they came together in smallgroups.
This allowed us also to make itinteractive, but still allow
over 100 people to join eachsession, making it a good a
business case also for thetelecommunication company.
And in the end the participantsof the workshop reported that
they are in average around twohours more efficient per week.
(07:10):
So they can save with the thingsthey learned in the workshop
around two hours per week, whichis then a great thing for the
leaders of this company toreport back to the senior
management.
Andreas Welsch (07:23):
That's awesome.
And you know, I just saw it theother day, adding Gemini to
their workspace products,Microsoft is adding CoPilot to
their M365 products.
Yes, increasing the price insome areas, but the idea is that
many, many more people will getaccess to these tools.
(07:43):
So I envision that there's alsoa much for these kinds of
trainings.
If organizations are asked topay for these, these AI
features, why not invest inteaching people and showing
people how to use them?
So I think that's, that's goingto be super exciting.
You know, how, how do you see AIand, and transformation leaders
(08:06):
actually getting people toparticipate in, in these
trainings, right?
It's one thing to realize, Hey,we have a need.
We should actually tell him howwe can use these tools.
But it's a whole different storyof getting them to make time.
Everybody's so busy in theirroles and in their daily lives
that cutting out an hour orcarving out two hours here or
(08:27):
there might actually seem like alot.
What have you seen works reallywell for those leaders in these
organizations to get people toparticipate?
Nico Bitzer (08:35):
Yeah, so the recipe is definitely kind of three
steps you have to consider as aleader to get this running.
And you're absolutely right,Andreas, that's if you plan the
nicest workshop, but no one'sgoing there, or if you plan the
nicest blended learning journey,but no one is participating, you
(08:55):
also won't get the outcome.
So communication is half of thework already and get these
interests.
and the bus up for Generative AIin an organization.
The first step of these three isto define a storyline.
So you don't want to just goahead and offer these workshops
(09:17):
without a why, without a storybehind it.
So think what might be the whythat motivates and interests
those people in the organizationto learn about a Generative AI.
Is it really?
that they're gonna save timeafterwards.
Maybe that's more a storylinethat appears for the top level
(09:41):
management, but for them, maybeit's nice to know that they can
enhance their work life balancethrough utilizing Generative AI,
that they can do moreinteresting stuff by getting the
more mundane tasks done by theAI.
This could be a nice story.
And if your company has a verystrong mission, for example, to
(10:02):
towards a green energy orsomething where you know that
people choose to work for thatcompany because of that mission
or vision.
This is also a nice anchor to goon why you're using Generative
AI and why you want people tolearn about it.
And then in the second step, youwould think of.
Sort of an impact analysis.
(10:23):
So what kind of target groupshave potential to use AI
technologies and what kind ofmessaging do they need to
participate at a learningformat?
For example, we have Now workingwith a large automotive company
with, a few 10,000 employees andthey want to upscale
(10:47):
particularly leaders.
So for leaders, you would use adifferent storyline to attract
them to a learning formats thenfor non leaders.
And then you think of acommunication roadmap, though,
it's not to, you know throw onemessage out into the intranet.
It should be a communicationplan, almost like you would be
(11:10):
in marketing.
You need to think of severalemails or several channels also
using the intranet.
using Teams groups can be veryinteresting.
Some companies we saw usingLinkedIn as an inside out
marketing tool.
So they even pay for ads toreach the target group within
(11:33):
their own company, which I founda super interesting thing.
So the creativity is endlesshere, but the most important
thing is to first define thestory, get the impact analysis
per target group done.
And then, you can set up thecommunication roadmap.
Andreas Welsch (11:50):
Now that sounds like a very thorough plan and
easy to remember things.
I love that as well.
Now folks, if you have questionsfor Nico about how to set up a
training program or when to anexternal provider, please feel
free to put them in the chat andwe'll pick them up in a minute
or two.
Now I'm curious, you've talkedabout, hey, things started with
(12:13):
robotic process automation, takeout the mundane work, do the
repetitive things with bot.
I have a person do the morecomplex things with AI.
How can I use these tools?
How can I prompt them?
How do they get good results?
And what does good actually looklike?
Now I see a new topic coming inwith agentic AI to some extent
(12:38):
that gets mixed with the, theRPA messaging from six, seven,
eight years ago, you know, havethe bots, have the agents do
more of the repetitive things.
What should organizations beaware of there?
Is this already coming as thenext wave where companies are
looking at this and want to gettheir, their people trained and
should they?
Nico Bitzer (12:57):
Yeah.
So in terms of if you, so firstfor me, I think the conversation
is not so much different for AIthan for RPA, then for workflow
automation, then for, in theend, these are all tools and
technologies, tools that getsharper, tools that get heavier,
(13:19):
and you can do more with it.
And that's why it gets morerelevant and talking about it is
more than it was back in thedays, because these tools are
much more accessible.
But in the end, it's tools.
And what the skills.
That are, that you need to use.
The tools are actually not howto use Gemini or how to use,
(13:43):
there how to use jet GPT or howto use your company's GPT.
It's more critical thinking crecreativity communication skills.
So even a prompt engineering,which I like to name different
when we, when we talk abouttraining people or people
(14:05):
learning about it, we wouldrather say how to talk to an AI,
which is communication skills inthe end and creativity and
experimenting with the tool, butalso to always think from your
job to be done.
So everyone in the organizationneeds to know what do I actually
want to do?
(14:25):
Cool.
What is my process to generatethat value?
And how can I utilize thetechnologies to reach that
outcome better, faster, oreasier?
Andreas Welsch (14:37):
I love that part, right?
It's not so much about thetechnology itself, but rather
how do you work with it?
How do you adopt it?
How do you bring people along?
And that's a great point.
Especially if, or as you know,new technology I see there's a
question from Joe in the chatgoing back to your earlier point
where you mentioned companiesshould anchor their, their
(14:58):
message in your green company.
Maybe you want to say, Hey,Generative AI helps us
accomplish them.
You have some, some otherexamples of what you've seen
work well, because I think, youknow, with Gen AI using a lot of
power, maybe there are otherexamples of values.
Nico Bitzer (15:16):
Yeah.
Could be not the best example,but there's people that work in
companies where they identify alot with the mission of that
company.
And what I wanted to say is thatwhenever you have such a strong
mission in a company, then youcan attach the Generative AI
story to that one.
(15:37):
Of course, with the green story,it could a bit contra, could be
a bit contra in indicating witha gen AI using a lot of energy.
Andreas Welsch (15:47):
Awesome.
Thanks for clarifying that.
Now we're just talking about AImoving so fast, right?
And it doesn't really matter ifit's RPA or workflow automation
or gen AI or genetic AI.
How often do you see companiesdoing these kinds of trainings
or how often should they do it?
They do that once a quarter,twice a year, once a year.
(16:11):
What recommendations would yougive them?
Nico Bitzer (16:14):
Yeah.
So there is here's also twoelements of it.
First is that the companies wework with usually have a lot of
employees.
So there's definitely a lot todo until you have touched with
your Generative AI initiative orwith your training initiative,
all the employees, but there's alot to do on that end.
(16:36):
Of course, and on the otherhand, if you break it down to an
individual employee, how oftenthat person should do such a
training, I think it's not a oneoff thing.
Of course, the workshopshouldn't be done, let's say 12
times a year, but it's rather ifsomeone has done a learning
journey or if someone has done aworkshop, then it's the mission
(17:01):
of the learning and developmentdepartment or also of us as bots
and people to create after thattraining an engaging environment
for the employee to furtherdevelop him or herself.
You can do that, for example,with one company now, we work
together, we do an AIapplication sprint.
(17:24):
Everything is about developingyour own use case with
Generative AI that goes a littlebit beyond simple prompting.
And then there's several cohortsthat we are doing.
And if you complete one of thecohorts, you engage in a
Microsoft Teams with otherpeople that complete this
(17:45):
training as well.
And then you engage in thatcommunity.
Andreas Welsch (17:49):
Great point.
Thanks for sharing that part.
You mentioned cohort.
Many different kinds ofapproaches to learning from in
person to online to microlearning cohort based.
What are you seeing works wellor when do people learn best?
When are they most engaged?
Nico Bitzer (18:09):
The best form of learning is called social
blended learning, in my opinion.
Social blended learning meansyou blend together different
learning formats to a cohortbased journey.
So you can have, for example, amicro learning to start.
Then you can have a live sessionwith your cohort.
(18:31):
Then you can get an assignment,you have another live session,
and in the end two microlearnings again.
That would be an example for ablended learning journey.
And the social blended learningmeans that you do it together
with colleagues on real worlduse cases.
So you don't, you know, learnsomething you cannot apply, but
you really take your own usecase that you can apply in your
(18:54):
own environment and you takethat to the learning process and
discuss it with the group in thelearning initiatives.
This would be a social blendedlearning and it's a little bit
of a let's say a bridge betweenthe old world, where everything
was very instructor led andpeople just got sit in
(19:17):
classrooms and get the knowledgetransferred, to their brains, to
a self learning environmentwhere people, are preferring to
get the knowledge by themselves.
Okay.
Intrinsic reading about a newtopic and also doing
self-learning, like e-learnings,watching videos, or being in a
(19:38):
session like we are right now.
The reality is that there ispeople that are already very
intrinsically motivated andlearn a lot by themselves, but
the majority of people stillneeds this push through a social
blended learning to get in touchwith the topics.
I believe in 10 to 20 years, wewill shift much more towards
(20:01):
this self learning initiativesand approaches.
Andreas Welsch (20:06):
Now, I've experienced this in corporate.
Maybe several of you who arelistening and watching are
experiencing that as well.
There are a lot of mandatorytrainings if you work for a
business that you need tocomplete.
You know, depending on the sizeof your company, it might be
around export controls, it mightbe around sales process, it
might be about softwaredevelopment processes, and
(20:26):
safety, security, new tools,what have you.
So, how are you seeing thissocial blended learning?
Improve retention of theknowledge, because with all the
previous ones that I mentioned,a lot of times it's, yeah,
let's, let's click them through,let's get through them quickly,
get the certificate.
Yes, I've done it.
Thank you.
And let me move on with my dailywork and job.
(20:48):
How could a social blendedlearning change the retention?
Nico Bitzer (20:51):
Yeah, it changed.
It changes a lot because you notonly get the knowledge, but you
also apply.
the knowledge, and that's a big,big difference.
There's a super interestingeffect when we do these social
planet learning journeys,engaging people in real world
use cases.
They usually feel in thebeginning a little bit
(21:13):
uncomfortable because they areused to just getting knowledge
in a session and to do a checkmark in the learning management
system.
So in the beginning they feel abit uncomfortable because it
feels a bit more like work, youknow, not like a seminar where
you drive and you get somecookies and a coffee and then
you drive home, but really doingsomething, but in the end the
(21:38):
feedback is always, Hey it feltit was more exhaustive than
normal trainings we are doing orother trainings we've done, but
we really got something out forour daily work.
And this is the, I think themain.
Task of learning and developmentand on offering such things.
It's not an employee benefit.
(21:58):
It's a necessary tool to getpeople into our current time,
basically, and not being leftbehind as a company.
Andreas Welsch (22:08):
That's an excellent point, right?
You might very well have theseambitions at the senior
leadership level, but when youpush it as a one way street,
kind of training instructor ledlectures, you might lose people
or you certainly lose people.
Nico Bitzer (22:22):
Yeah.
Andreas Welsch (22:22):
I'm also curious because I feel a lot of
organizations might feel thatpride, right?
We know how to do our trainings.
We know what our people need.
We're the experts in ourindustry and in our business.
We don't need any other help,right?
We, we have a greatinstructional designers, we have
subject matter experts in thebusiness that we can work with,
(22:43):
with an external provider.
What can external providersdeliver that goes beyond L&D
teams and instructionaldesigners that you might have in
the house?
Nico Bitzer (22:54):
Yeah, so we have seen companies setting this up
internally that took a couple ofmonths.
And with an external provider,you can actually start within
four to five weeks because youhave all the communication
materials, you have all theconcepts ready to go.
You also don't need to, do thevery exhaustive alignment
(23:19):
between the subject matterexperts and the learning and
development department.
Because in companies where theyare specialized on getting
people trained in a generativeAI like we are, we bring both
worlds together.
And then that's why we are veryfast in setting this up.
(23:42):
This is one major reason.
And then of course also you getthe outside in perspective
because sometimes you can be abit stuck with the internal view
on things.
And if there's a company from,with the outside perspective, I
can bring some fresh wind intothe game.
(24:02):
That's the second I think reallya good point why external
provider could be a way to go.
Andreas Welsch (24:10):
I've seen that as well in work that even if you
can have the experts It's adifferent weight if somebody
from the outside, you know, evenshares the same information,
right?
Nico Bitzer (24:21):
And actually, Andreas, I want to just adding
one point.
So these experts, the AI expertsin your company are probably at
the moment one of the mostimportant people in the whole
organization.
So should they not create valuefor the organization?
In their role as AI experts andbuild stuff brainstorm large
(24:47):
scale use cases, and go in aroom with your C-level and think
how to disrupt the businessmodel with AI instead of
training people to get moreefficient.
Andreas Welsch (24:58):
That's a very valid point as well.
So make sure you don't utilizeyour most precious resources
where it moves the businessforward.
And for learning anddevelopment, there are other
experts that can help you dothat, as well, upskill your
people.
Now, Nico, we're getting closeto the end of the show, and I
was wondering if you cansummarize the key three
takeaways for our audiencetoday.
Nico Bitzer (25:17):
Yeah.
The first key takeaway for meis, start with the why when you
go into rolling out suchlearning initiatives.
The second one is make it asocial blended learning and then
measure your impact to report apositive business case.
Andreas Welsch (25:39):
And I think on the last one, right, you can do
that with surveys.
You can ask people, how did youexperience the training?
How has your proficiencychanged?
You mentioned that the timesavings, I remember that was one
of the things we askedparticipants to.
So there are definitely ways tomake it tangible so you can show
that, that progress to yourstakeholders.
(26:00):
So that brings us to the end ofthe show.
Nico, thank you so much forjoining us and for sharing your
experience with us today.
It was great having you on theshow.
Nico Bitzer (26:09):
Thank you, Andreas.
An honor to be here.
Andreas Welsch (26:12):
And folks, for those of you in the audience,
see you next time for anotherepisode of What's the BUZZ?
Welcome to What's the BUZZ?, where leaders
(00:02):
and hands on experts share howthey have turned hype into
outcome.
Today, we'll talk about creatingAI literacy and upscaling in
large enterprises.
And who better to talk about itthan someone who's actively
working on that?
Nico Bitzer.
Hey Nico, thank you so much forjoining me.
Nico Bitzer (00:16):
Thanks, Andreas, for the invitation.
Honored to be here.
It's a pleasure.
Andreas Welsch (00:22):
Hey, why don't you tell our audience a little
bit about yourself, who you areand what you do?
Nico Bitzer (00:25):
Yes.
My name is Nico.
I founded a company called Botsand People now around five years
ago.
I initially worked in managementconsulting for a couple of
years.
And there I was Yeah, prettyannoyed by all the repetitive
tasks that are going on in largeenterprises because people were
(00:47):
copying things from Excel andthe ERP systems and from the ERP
systems into Excel.
And I have a background ineducation.
Also a couple of years agoworked as a teacher and I
thought, Hey, why not educatingpeople on how they can make
their their lives easier withtechnology and with automation.
(01:10):
And this was the yeah, how theidea for bots and people was
born.
How can we bring technologytogether with people for them to
create more meaningful work andget rid of this copying over
Excel to ERP and ERP to Excelthing.
And now and that's also why I'mhere, I guess.
(01:30):
The whole AI.
topic has disrupted thisautomation game because you can
do such great things with it andcreate even more meaningful work
with this powerful tool.
Andreas Welsch (01:42):
I'm so excited to have you on the show and to
share what you are seeing, whatlarge enterprises are doing in
that space.
Should we play a little game tokick things off?
Nico Bitzer (01:52):
Let's play a game.
Andreas Welsch (01:54):
You'll see a sentence.
I'd like you to answer with thefirst thing that comes to mind,
and why.
And to make it more interesting,you'll only have 60 seconds for
your answer.
So, for those of you who arejoining us live, please feel
free to put your answer and whyin the chat as well.
It's always exciting to see whatpeople come up with.
So, are you ready for What's theBUZZ?
Nico Bitzer (02:14):
Ready.
Andreas Welsch (02:16):
Awesome.
So if AI were a, let's see, whatwould it be?
If it were a band, what would itbe?
Nico Bitzer (02:26):
If AI were a band, then it would be Metallica.
Just because it's disrupting theindustry as much as Metallica
has disrupted the music gameback in the days.
Andreas Welsch (02:41):
I like that.
And you know they're prettytimeless.
They've come and gone right withpopularity and also reinvented
themselves a couple of times.
So I love that part.
Now, let's jump into it to ourquestions that we talked about.
You know, much like thischanging where we're also seeing
the enterprise landscape change,the technology landscape change.
(03:03):
And I've seen, and you'veprobably seen that too, many
organizations are buying AIlicenses and they're expecting
their people all of a sudden tobe a lot more productive.
But then, you know, and itdoesn't quite work like that,
right?
That's not how we've learned touse Office or other tools.
There has been a learning periodand a learning curve.
(03:26):
What are you seeing?
What types of companies How docompanies and leaders invest in
AI literacy?
Who realizes that this isimportant?
And why do they think it'simportant?
Nico Bitzer (03:36):
Yeah, it's a very good question.
And for me, it's definitely theenterprise leaders that can
invest in the long termperspective and also want to
invest in the long termperspective.
Because in AI, you havedifferent sort of values you can
generate.
(03:57):
There's the obvious value, forexample, disrupting a whole
business model with AI or withGenerative AI, which is super
important for companies and theycan also calculate immediate
business cases on it, butthere's also all the value that
is with the employees bybecoming more efficient and by
(04:19):
using this wonderful technologyto utilize it to make their jobs
easier.
It cannot be measured rightaway, of course, and you won't
have after one or two weeks ahard return on invest
calculation, but there is wayson how you can calculate it in
(04:39):
the long run and the leadersthat invest know about this.
Andreas Welsch (04:44):
I think that's a great point, right?
First of all that encouragement,but also that it does take some
time for you to see the returnon on this.
Now for the trainings that, thatwe've led together for several
large organizations, I've alwaysbeen super excited.
Hey, there are people who wantto learn.
There are sometimes hundreds ofpeople that sign up for these
(05:07):
sessions that these companiesmake available.
And they do want to learn, howcan I use these tools?
How can I use Generative AI inmy line of work?
What is it good for?
The company policies that I needto be aware of, so I use it in
accordance with them.
So don't expose the company tosome risk.
I think there are many, manydifferent facets to it.
(05:29):
But what have you seen workreally, really well?
What kinds of formats do you seework well?
Nico Bitzer (05:37):
Yeah, there's different kinds of formats.
I can give a couple of examplesand then also we can connect to
the first question on how thisleads to the business case and
gave the leaders an argument onthe top level management to do
more of these kind of upskillinginitiatives.
And we've worked with a largetelecommunication company in
(05:58):
Germany.
They upskilled in just a coupleof months 5, 000 people in
Generative AI.
So it was a very basic promptingworkshop.
So for us, we are also a littlebit in a bubble.
Probably the people joining thissession are intrinsically very
interested in AI.
But in a large enterprises,there's around 50 percent that
(06:22):
haven't tapped into that spaceyet.
And I would say even only 5 to10 percent are in that space.
higher maturity level.
And for those people, so forthose that are at the beginner
level, we offered a three hourworkshop that was called a
Promptathon where they learnedthe basic prompting skills with
(06:45):
group work.
So they came together in smallgroups.
This allowed us also to make itinteractive, but still allow
over 100 people to join eachsession, making it a good a
business case also for thetelecommunication company.
And in the end the participantsof the workshop reported that
they are in average around twohours more efficient per week.
(07:10):
So they can save with the thingsthey learned in the workshop
around two hours per week, whichis then a great thing for the
leaders of this company toreport back to the senior
management.
Andreas Welsch (07:23):
That's awesome.
And you know, I just saw it theother day, adding Gemini to
their workspace products,Microsoft is adding CoPilot to
their M365 products.
Yes, increasing the price insome areas, but the idea is that
many, many more people will getaccess to these tools.
(07:43):
So I envision that there's alsoa much for these kinds of
trainings.
If organizations are asked topay for these, these AI
features, why not invest inteaching people and showing
people how to use them?
So I think that's, that's goingto be super exciting.
You know, how, how do you see AIand, and transformation leaders
(08:06):
actually getting people toparticipate in, in these
trainings, right?
It's one thing to realize, Hey,we have a need.
We should actually tell him howwe can use these tools.
But it's a whole different storyof getting them to make time.
Everybody's so busy in theirroles and in their daily lives
that cutting out an hour orcarving out two hours here or
(08:27):
there might actually seem like alot.
What have you seen works reallywell for those leaders in these
organizations to get people toparticipate?
Nico Bitzer (08:35):
Yeah, so the recipe is definitely kind of three
steps you have to consider as aleader to get this running.
And you're absolutely right,Andreas, that's if you plan the
nicest workshop, but no one'sgoing there, or if you plan the
nicest blended learning journey,but no one is participating, you
(08:55):
also won't get the outcome.
So communication is half of thework already and get these
interests.
and the bus up for Generative AIin an organization.
The first step of these three isto define a storyline.
So you don't want to just goahead and offer these workshops
(09:17):
without a why, without a storybehind it.
So think what might be the whythat motivates and interests
those people in the organizationto learn about a Generative AI.
Is it really?
that they're gonna save timeafterwards.
Maybe that's more a storylinethat appears for the top level
(09:41):
management, but for them, maybeit's nice to know that they can
enhance their work life balancethrough utilizing Generative AI,
that they can do moreinteresting stuff by getting the
more mundane tasks done by theAI.
This could be a nice story.
And if your company has a verystrong mission, for example, to
(10:02):
towards a green energy orsomething where you know that
people choose to work for thatcompany because of that mission
or vision.
This is also a nice anchor to goon why you're using Generative
AI and why you want people tolearn about it.
And then in the second step, youwould think of.
Sort of an impact analysis.
(10:23):
So what kind of target groupshave potential to use AI
technologies and what kind ofmessaging do they need to
participate at a learningformat?
For example, we have Now workingwith a large automotive company
with, a few 10,000 employees andthey want to upscale
(10:47):
particularly leaders.
So for leaders, you would use adifferent storyline to attract
them to a learning formats thenfor non leaders.
And then you think of acommunication roadmap, though,
it's not to, you know throw onemessage out into the intranet.
It should be a communicationplan, almost like you would be
(11:10):
in marketing.
You need to think of severalemails or several channels also
using the intranet.
using Teams groups can be veryinteresting.
Some companies we saw usingLinkedIn as an inside out
marketing tool.
So they even pay for ads toreach the target group within
(11:33):
their own company, which I founda super interesting thing.
So the creativity is endlesshere, but the most important
thing is to first define thestory, get the impact analysis
per target group done.
And then, you can set up thecommunication roadmap.
Andreas Welsch (11:50):
Now that sounds like a very thorough plan and
easy to remember things.
I love that as well.
Now folks, if you have questionsfor Nico about how to set up a
training program or when to anexternal provider, please feel
free to put them in the chat andwe'll pick them up in a minute
or two.
Now I'm curious, you've talkedabout, hey, things started with
(12:13):
robotic process automation, takeout the mundane work, do the
repetitive things with bot.
I have a person do the morecomplex things with AI.
How can I use these tools?
How can I prompt them?
How do they get good results?
And what does good actually looklike?
Now I see a new topic coming inwith agentic AI to some extent
(12:38):
that gets mixed with the, theRPA messaging from six, seven,
eight years ago, you know, havethe bots, have the agents do
more of the repetitive things.
What should organizations beaware of there?
Is this already coming as thenext wave where companies are
looking at this and want to gettheir, their people trained and
should they?
Nico Bitzer (12:57):
Yeah.
So in terms of if you, so firstfor me, I think the conversation
is not so much different for AIthan for RPA, then for workflow
automation, then for, in theend, these are all tools and
technologies, tools that getsharper, tools that get heavier,
(13:19):
and you can do more with it.
And that's why it gets morerelevant and talking about it is
more than it was back in thedays, because these tools are
much more accessible.
But in the end, it's tools.
And what the skills.
That are, that you need to use.
The tools are actually not howto use Gemini or how to use,
(13:43):
there how to use jet GPT or howto use your company's GPT.
It's more critical thinking crecreativity communication skills.
So even a prompt engineering,which I like to name different
when we, when we talk abouttraining people or people
(14:05):
learning about it, we wouldrather say how to talk to an AI,
which is communication skills inthe end and creativity and
experimenting with the tool, butalso to always think from your
job to be done.
So everyone in the organizationneeds to know what do I actually
want to do?
(14:25):
Cool.
What is my process to generatethat value?
And how can I utilize thetechnologies to reach that
outcome better, faster, oreasier?
Andreas Welsch (14:37):
I love that part, right?
It's not so much about thetechnology itself, but rather
how do you work with it?
How do you adopt it?
How do you bring people along?
And that's a great point.
Especially if, or as you know,new technology I see there's a
question from Joe in the chatgoing back to your earlier point
where you mentioned companiesshould anchor their, their
(14:58):
message in your green company.
Maybe you want to say, Hey,Generative AI helps us
accomplish them.
You have some, some otherexamples of what you've seen
work well, because I think, youknow, with Gen AI using a lot of
power, maybe there are otherexamples of values.
Nico Bitzer (15:16):
Yeah.
Could be not the best example,but there's people that work in
companies where they identify alot with the mission of that
company.
And what I wanted to say is thatwhenever you have such a strong
mission in a company, then youcan attach the Generative AI
story to that one.
(15:37):
Of course, with the green story,it could a bit contra, could be
a bit contra in indicating witha gen AI using a lot of energy.
Andreas Welsch (15:47):
Awesome.
Thanks for clarifying that.
Now we're just talking about AImoving so fast, right?
And it doesn't really matter ifit's RPA or workflow automation
or gen AI or genetic AI.
How often do you see companiesdoing these kinds of trainings
or how often should they do it?
They do that once a quarter,twice a year, once a year.
(16:11):
What recommendations would yougive them?
Nico Bitzer (16:14):
Yeah.
So there is here's also twoelements of it.
First is that the companies wework with usually have a lot of
employees.
So there's definitely a lot todo until you have touched with
your Generative AI initiative orwith your training initiative,
all the employees, but there's alot to do on that end.
(16:36):
Of course, and on the otherhand, if you break it down to an
individual employee, how oftenthat person should do such a
training, I think it's not a oneoff thing.
Of course, the workshopshouldn't be done, let's say 12
times a year, but it's rather ifsomeone has done a learning
journey or if someone has done aworkshop, then it's the mission
(17:01):
of the learning and developmentdepartment or also of us as bots
and people to create after thattraining an engaging environment
for the employee to furtherdevelop him or herself.
You can do that, for example,with one company now, we work
together, we do an AIapplication sprint.
(17:24):
Everything is about developingyour own use case with
Generative AI that goes a littlebit beyond simple prompting.
And then there's several cohortsthat we are doing.
And if you complete one of thecohorts, you engage in a
Microsoft Teams with otherpeople that complete this
(17:45):
training as well.
And then you engage in thatcommunity.
Andreas Welsch (17:49):
Great point.
Thanks for sharing that part.
You mentioned cohort.
Many different kinds ofapproaches to learning from in
person to online to microlearning cohort based.
What are you seeing works wellor when do people learn best?
When are they most engaged?
Nico Bitzer (18:09):
The best form of learning is called social
blended learning, in my opinion.
Social blended learning meansyou blend together different
learning formats to a cohortbased journey.
So you can have, for example, amicro learning to start.
Then you can have a live sessionwith your cohort.
(18:31):
Then you can get an assignment,you have another live session,
and in the end two microlearnings again.
That would be an example for ablended learning journey.
And the social blended learningmeans that you do it together
with colleagues on real worlduse cases.
So you don't, you know, learnsomething you cannot apply, but
you really take your own usecase that you can apply in your
(18:54):
own environment and you takethat to the learning process and
discuss it with the group in thelearning initiatives.
This would be a social blendedlearning and it's a little bit
of a let's say a bridge betweenthe old world, where everything
was very instructor led andpeople just got sit in
(19:17):
classrooms and get the knowledgetransferred, to their brains, to
a self learning environmentwhere people, are preferring to
get the knowledge by themselves.
Okay.
Intrinsic reading about a newtopic and also doing
self-learning, like e-learnings,watching videos, or being in a
(19:38):
session like we are right now.
The reality is that there ispeople that are already very
intrinsically motivated andlearn a lot by themselves, but
the majority of people stillneeds this push through a social
blended learning to get in touchwith the topics.
I believe in 10 to 20 years, wewill shift much more towards
(20:01):
this self learning initiativesand approaches.
Andreas Welsch (20:06):
Now, I've experienced this in corporate.
Maybe several of you who arelistening and watching are
experiencing that as well.
There are a lot of mandatorytrainings if you work for a
business that you need tocomplete.
You know, depending on the sizeof your company, it might be
around export controls, it mightbe around sales process, it
might be about softwaredevelopment processes, and
(20:26):
safety, security, new tools,what have you.
So, how are you seeing thissocial blended learning?
Improve retention of theknowledge, because with all the
previous ones that I mentioned,a lot of times it's, yeah,
let's, let's click them through,let's get through them quickly,
get the certificate.
Yes, I've done it.
Thank you.
And let me move on with my dailywork and job.
(20:48):
How could a social blendedlearning change the retention?
Nico Bitzer (20:51):
Yeah, it changed.
It changes a lot because you notonly get the knowledge, but you
also apply.
the knowledge, and that's a big,big difference.
There's a super interestingeffect when we do these social
planet learning journeys,engaging people in real world
use cases.
They usually feel in thebeginning a little bit
(21:13):
uncomfortable because they areused to just getting knowledge
in a session and to do a checkmark in the learning management
system.
So in the beginning they feel abit uncomfortable because it
feels a bit more like work, youknow, not like a seminar where
you drive and you get somecookies and a coffee and then
you drive home, but really doingsomething, but in the end the
(21:38):
feedback is always, Hey it feltit was more exhaustive than
normal trainings we are doing orother trainings we've done, but
we really got something out forour daily work.
And this is the, I think themain.
Task of learning and developmentand on offering such things.
It's not an employee benefit.
(21:58):
It's a necessary tool to getpeople into our current time,
basically, and not being leftbehind as a company.
Andreas Welsch (22:08):
That's an excellent point, right?
You might very well have theseambitions at the senior
leadership level, but when youpush it as a one way street,
kind of training instructor ledlectures, you might lose people
or you certainly lose people.
Nico Bitzer (22:22):
Yeah.
Andreas Welsch (22:22):
I'm also curious because I feel a lot of
organizations might feel thatpride, right?
We know how to do our trainings.
We know what our people need.
We're the experts in ourindustry and in our business.
We don't need any other help,right?
We, we have a greatinstructional designers, we have
subject matter experts in thebusiness that we can work with,
(22:43):
with an external provider.
What can external providersdeliver that goes beyond L&D
teams and instructionaldesigners that you might have in
the house?
Nico Bitzer (22:54):
Yeah, so we have seen companies setting this up
internally that took a couple ofmonths.
And with an external provider,you can actually start within
four to five weeks because youhave all the communication
materials, you have all theconcepts ready to go.
You also don't need to, do thevery exhaustive alignment
(23:19):
between the subject matterexperts and the learning and
development department.
Because in companies where theyare specialized on getting
people trained in a generativeAI like we are, we bring both
worlds together.
And then that's why we are veryfast in setting this up.
(23:42):
This is one major reason.
And then of course also you getthe outside in perspective
because sometimes you can be abit stuck with the internal view
on things.
And if there's a company from,with the outside perspective, I
can bring some fresh wind intothe game.
(24:02):
That's the second I think reallya good point why external
provider could be a way to go.
Andreas Welsch (24:10):
I've seen that as well in work that even if you
can have the experts It's adifferent weight if somebody
from the outside, you know, evenshares the same information,
right?
Nico Bitzer (24:21):
And actually, Andreas, I want to just adding
one point.
So these experts, the AI expertsin your company are probably at
the moment one of the mostimportant people in the whole
organization.
So should they not create valuefor the organization?
In their role as AI experts andbuild stuff brainstorm large
(24:47):
scale use cases, and go in aroom with your C-level and think
how to disrupt the businessmodel with AI instead of
training people to get moreefficient.
Andreas Welsch (24:58):
That's a very valid point as well.
So make sure you don't utilizeyour most precious resources
where it moves the businessforward.
And for learning anddevelopment, there are other
experts that can help you dothat, as well, upskill your
people.
Now, Nico, we're getting closeto the end of the show, and I
was wondering if you cansummarize the key three
takeaways for our audiencetoday.
Nico Bitzer (25:17):
Yeah.
The first key takeaway for meis, start with the why when you
go into rolling out suchlearning initiatives.
The second one is make it asocial blended learning and then
measure your impact to report apositive business case.
Andreas Welsch (25:39):
And I think on the last one, right, you can do
that with surveys.
You can ask people, how did youexperience the training?
How has your proficiencychanged?
You mentioned that the timesavings, I remember that was one
of the things we askedparticipants to.
So there are definitely ways tomake it tangible so you can show
that, that progress to yourstakeholders.
(26:00):
So that brings us to the end ofthe show.
Nico, thank you so much forjoining us and for sharing your
experience with us today.
It was great having you on theshow.
Nico Bitzer (26:09):
Thank you, Andreas.
An honor to be here.
Andreas Welsch (26:12):
And folks, for those of you in the audience,
see you next time for anotherepisode of What's the BUZZ?
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