SDF’s Festival of Learning & Development 2026

Synopsis: Most organisational learning is still designed around instruction and content delivery, yet people do not change because they are taught, they change because of what they experience. As AI accelerates the creation, distribution, and personalisation of content, this gap between instruction and meaningful human experience becomes more important than ever.

This keynote explores what it means to move from instruction to transformational experience as the foundation of learning design. Drawing on real-world examples and practical approaches, it shows how well-designed experiences can shape attention, emotion, behaviour and performance in ways that content alone cannot.

It also examines the role of AI in this shift, not as a replacement for learning, but as a catalyst for rethinking how we design human-centred experiences that make a difference.

Synopsis: Higher education teams are operating in conditions of ongoing change: hybrid working, financial constraint, digital transformation and increasing complexity place sustained demands on how people work together. In this context, resilience is often addressed through individual learning or wellbeing activity. This session approaches resilience through the practical application of the Belbin Team Roles framework, focusing on how teams learn to work more effectively together.

The session supports the conference theme by offering L&D professionals a practical way to influence how resilience and performance are developed in organisations. Using the Belbin Team Roles framework, the session translates the idea of resilience into observable team behaviours: how teams think, make decisions, deliver work and maintain relationships when under pressure. Belbin provides a clear, accessible learning language that enables participants to move beyond abstract discussion and focus on how learning about team contribution leads to stronger performance in practice.

Integration is achieved through shared understanding rather than structural change. Within this session, participants explore how a common Belbin language helps teams align expectations, reduce misunderstanding and work more effectively across boundaries. From an L&D perspective, this creates opportunities to design development activity that connects individual learning with team effectiveness and organisational priorities.

The session aligns with the strand Leading Change and Breaking Down Silos by examining how teams typically respond to challenge and uncertainty, and what this means for learning interventions. Participants will look at common Belbin patterns that emerge under pressure — such as over emphasis on action, reduced space for ideas, or neglect of relationship focused contributions — and consider how targeted team learning can rebalance contribution. This approach supports teams to navigate change with greater confidence and shared ownership, without relying on additional resources or major restructuring.

Impact is achieved through practical application. The session models how Belbin can be embedded within existing L&D activity — such as team workshops, development programmes and reflective conversations — to support more resilient, adaptable teams. Participants will leave with concrete ideas for using Belbin language and tools to strengthen team learning, collaboration and performance, demonstrating clear value through improved ways of working rather than additional interventions.

Synopsis: The shape of our future organisations will be determined at the intersection of structure, community, and technology: as the physical footprint and span of the organisation evolves, and we seek to unlock greater collaboration and engagement from the people within them, we find that AI is pulling apart our notions of learning, expertise, identity, belonging, leadership, strategy, and change.

In a post-pandemic world, and radically connected through social collaborative technology, we find AI disaggregating and unbundling things that were historically fixed. To adapt is not simply a process of deploying a new technology or operating model within a legacy structure: rather it is a fundamental re-imagination of what an organisation is, and how it is effective.

Drawing on research across over 80 large and complex Organisations, Dr Julian Stodd will share ten ‘sketches’ of what our future organisations will look like: how we will learn and lead within them, how they will hold value, make decisions, and navigate complexity.

In this interactive session we will:

1. Explore diverse expressions of the reimagined organisation
2. Ask what these mean for leadership and learning
3. Consider what we stand to lose, or gain, through this change

Synopsis: Join this interactive café session to explore how coaching skills can be developed in HE roles. Using a case study, reflective questions, and journalling, you’ll discuss opportunities in your institution and leave with a clear next step. 

Facilitated by Andry McFarlane, an accredited coach and L&D expert with extensive experience in Higher Education L&D and OD.

Synopsis: This keynote is structured around a short, practice focused co creation and consultancy project exploring how higher education institutions are currently working with the Advance HE Framework for Leading in Higher Education (FLHE), and what would be most useful now to support effective, resource smart leadership development. The session is designed to ensure participants gain practical insight, usable ideas, and prompts they can take back to their own institutions.

The first focus of the keynote is developing insight into current sector priorities and challenges in working with the FLHE. The project begins with targeted conversations that explore how the FLHE is being used in practice, where it is supporting alignment and shared language, and where engagement feels difficult or constrained by competing demands. The keynote will share common themes emerging from these conversations, providing an evidence informed picture of what matters most to institutions now.

The second focus is prioritisation for impact. Rather than attempting to address everything raised, feedback from participating institutions is used to identify a small number of shared priorities to work on. This deliberate narrowing of focus models a resource smart approach to leadership development, demonstrating how institutions can make purposeful choices when working with the FLHE. The keynote will explore how these priorities were selected, what was left aside, and how this selective approach supports clarity and impact.

The third focus is on co designing and testing practical, light touch tools that work alongside the FLHE to collaboratively develop and refine draft resources aligned to the agreed priorities. The approach emphasises usability, adaptability, and low burden, ensuring outputs can complement existing leadership and organisational development activity rather than compete with it. The keynote will introduce these draft tools, illustrating how simple designs can enable meaningful engagement with the FLHE.

The end result of the project is the development of useful resources designed to support conversations, reflection, and alignment using the FLHE. Central to the keynote is ensuring participants leave with questions and prompts they can use to start similar conversations in their own institutions. The session concludes by inviting delegates to reflect on how listening, prioritisation, and co creation can help activate the FLHE in ways that are practical, sustainable, and impactful. These approaches reinforce the FLHE as a living framework that supports dialogue, decision making, and inclusive leadership practice across contexts.

Synopsis: As Higher Education continues to evolve in response to digital innovation, financial constraints, legislative changes, and shifting workforce expectations, the role of the learning and organisational development professional is also transforming. No longer confined to supporting individuals through change, L&OD practitioners must be positioned as strategic partners—helping to shape institutional direction, influencing decision-making, and enabling sustainable transformation. This short, focused workshop on change and transformation can play a vital role in supporting this shift.

Using The Story of Perkin as a metaphor, this workshop will create space for L&OD professionals to step back from operational demands and help them to develop a shared, strategic understanding of change, both the drivers and the pitfalls. By exploring contemporary models of organisational transformation, participants will strengthen their ability to interpret complex change environments and position their work within broader institutional priorities. This will help to move the conversation from “how do we implement change?” to “how do we shape the conditions for meaningful, lasting transformation and increase staff engagement in the process?”

The workshop will also provide practical tools that are immediately useful. These may include approaches to diagnosing readiness for change, identifying barriers to engagement, supporting leaders through periods of uncertainty, and designing interventions to help colleagues adapt.  The workshop will also explore how working across silos and sharing insights and experiences across the academic and professional services divide are vital to ensuring that transformational change is appropriate, sustainable and impactful.

The workshop will also provide anonymised insights from other universities and from research I have undertaken regarding change and transformation.

Synopsis: “A seat at the table” is the default aspiration across L&D, Leadership Development, and OD, and it’s the wrong one. Influence isn’t granted. It’s earned by building learning and performance solutions which senior stakeholders actually need and which measurably impact your organisation.

This session will argue that co-creation, not advocacy, is the route to organisational voice and impact, whichever of these functions you sit in.

Drawing on the 70:20:10 / performance-based learning methodology, Charles will show why many of today’s learning and performance solutions fail to deliver. He will explain how, when designed with key stakeholders, not for them, solutions produce outcomes that speak for themselves. He will explore the reasons why content-based development keeps these functions in a support role while experience-based design shifts capability, behaviour, and performance, and what “impact” means in practice: solutions measured against business outcomes, not completion rates or other learning-focused metrics.

The argument Charles will put forward is that professionals who co-create measurable and impactful solutions don’t need a seat. They’re already indispensable.

Synopsis: As artificial intelligence continues to reshape higher education, the real leadership challenge is not simply learning new tools, but understanding how work, roles, careers and professional identity are changing. This keynote will explore what human-centred leadership looks like in an AI and digital world, with a particular focus on professional services, academic development, organisational development, learning and development, and employability.

The session will challenge the idea that AI is here to replace people, instead arguing that AI changes where human value sits. Through live AI demonstrations, practical use cases and interactive reflection, participants will see where AI can sit within everyday university work, and more importantly, where human judgement, empathy, creativity, ethics and leadership still need to come in.

Using examples relevant to professional services and academic colleagues, the keynote will explore how AI can support tasks such as planning, communication, decision-making, student support, employability, career development and service improvement. It will also raise important questions around confidence, capability, inclusion, ethics and responsible use.

Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how to lead teams through AI-driven change, how to build confidence rather than fear, and how to identify practical opportunities where AI can enhance, not diminish, human expertise in universities and colleges.

Synopsis: ​​In the future of work, effective human collaboration will only increase in importance. To lead change or break down silos, you need to connect with people. Eszter Molnar Mills shares an evidence-informed approach which she has successfully used in C-suite and board development interventions to enable high collective performance at times of significant change. 

To influence decision-makers, integrate across organisational boundaries, to ensure development is impactful, and for truly human-centred leadership, you need to be communicating on the same level. That may sound simple, but we can all think of times when we are talking at cross-purposes, when other people don’t seem to be understanding the importance of what we are saying, or want to make decisions in a way that goes against your grain.

To ensure you are speaking the same language as your audience, and to attune yourself to their concerns and perspectives, Professor David Kantor’s model of Structural Dynamics provides a clear routemap.

Eszter will share briefly how the model works, and explain how she has worked with C-suites to understand how they can communicate more effectively with each other, and how they can identify and overcome unhelpful patterns that divide individuals and departments.

The session will focus on how SDF participants could use the model to improve communication flows, address the misconnections and misunderstandings that hinder effective performance, connect people and lead change.

Synopsis: Bringing together apparently disparate groupings of colleagues from across an institution can be a daunting challenge. Yet this is arguably critical to realising success in leading and implementing change, particularly of a transformational nature. 

This session therefore addresses directly the underlying challenges implicit in the theme of Leading Change & Breaking Down Silos.

We’ll use a workshop approach, facilitated by Paul Gentle, intended to immerse colleagues in the very processes they could use themselves in their institutions.

Synopsis: In order to lead, leaders need to be informed. But how to do this in an ever-changing AI environment? And how to confidently make the right decisions when it comes to AI adoption, when it’s unclear what the questions are? 

In this session we will guide leaders as to what the questions are that they need to be asking when it comes to AI adoption, through the use of an in-house designed AI skills development progression framework. 

The WorkSmart-AI Skills framework is developed specifically for Higher Education and covers all roles across institutions, be them professional service, academic or research. 

Most frameworks for AI adoption in higher education describe where an organisation sits on its institutional journey. What is missing is a practical map of how individual staff members progress in their own AI capability – from typing their first prompt into a chatbot, through to designing automated workflows that run without them. 

The WorkSmart-AI Skills framework fills this gap. It describes six levels of AI use, each building on the last, from basic conversational interaction through to full technical integration. Crucially the framework is not about understanding AI – it is about using it.

In this session we will guide participants through the various levels of the framework, citing work-based examples to help people directly relate to the guidance and be able to immediately use it back in their workplace, both for themselves and with their teams.

By the end of the session participants will have a deeper level of confidence in being able to support their teams to adopt AI, and a framework to be able to support them to do it effectively and sustainably.

Synopsis: Professional and academic development staff wait too long for permission to challenge and to influence. That wait costs them credibility and costs their institutions good ideas.

This is a working session. We start from the case for positive disruption, then you put it to work on your own role. You will take something you already do and reshape how you present it to senior leaders, moving from activity to value.

Expect a poll, plenty of chat, and time to think out loud. You will leave with a simple tool for building strategic voice and one first step to take.

Synopsis: Every L&D function is built, to some degree, on the assumption that we can identify what good looks like, extract the lessons, and help others replicate them. This session examines the limits of that assumption.

Drawing on stories from mathematics, history, arts and organisational science, the talk introduces the Actionable Insight Fallacy — the compounding error that occurs when we study only winners, then filter out the luck that made them. The antidote isn’t pessimism. It’s building organisational and individual capacity for luck: the conditions that determine whether unexpected opportunities can be acted upon.

Expect interaction. Expect to leave with at least one thing you can do differently.

Synopsis: In a world shaped by artificial intelligence, robotics, energy transition, biotechnology and accelerating social change, leaders, especially educators, face a challenge unlike any before. The issue is not simply how to respond to disruption, but how to create the conditions in which people and organisations can thrive within it. 

Drawing on more than three decades of experience in leadership, culture and organisational transformation, Clive Wilson explores why so many change initiatives struggle to deliver lasting results and what distinguishes organisations that adapt successfully from those that become trapped in reactive cycles. 

Combining practical insights, real-world experience and the PrimeFocus leadership framework, he shows how purpose, vision, engagement, structure, character, results, success and talent work together as an integrated system for purposeful change. “Purposeful Leadership in an age of disruption” offers a clear and hopeful perspective for leaders, educators, teams and organisations navigating uncertainty. At its heart lies a simple but powerful belief: leaders see a brighter future and consciously create the conditions in which it will happen.