Mike Prokopeak

So often in our organizations and communities, we fall into a cycle of reaction. A problem happens, and we respond. We fight fires. We contend with emergencies. Researchers call this "tunneling": We don't see the big picture, and we don't think about the future, we just keep pushing forward from one crisis to the next. What if instead we could shift our energies upstream -- uncovering and addressing the source of those problems?

In this talk, Heath will reveal how some leaders have learned to spot problems in advance: There's a school district that can predict which students will drop out -- 4 years before graduation. There's an internet service company that can predict which customers are likely to cancel their subscriptions -- as early as two weeks after they sign up! When we shift from downstream response to upstream planning, it can cause miracles: One company eliminated 25 million customer support calls by asking, "How can we make sure our customers never need to call us?" And one nation in Europe has almost eliminated teenage substance abuse by asking, "How can we create a teenage culture that offers such compelling sober activities that teens simply don't feel like drinking or doing drugs?"

Heath will share the three forces that push us downstream, as well as the powerful levers we can use to start preventing problems before they happen.

The pandemic forced many into uncharted territory and fast adaptions. Darwin had nothing on the evolution organizations underwent, and the field of employee experience was no exception. While we lost normalcy, the experience created a greater need than ever to truly listen to employees and understand their needs in order to thrive in this uncertain environment. And this need created an opportunity to elevate the significance of employee listening to inform business decisions.

In her closing keynote address, Shawnté Holland shares the story of how her organization adapted its approach to employee listening and successfully accelerated its evolution toward an even higher value-add capability integral to workplace success.

Why do good teams kill great ideas? Safi Bahcall reveals a surprising new way of thinking about group behavior that challenges everything we thought we knew about nurturing radical breakthroughs. Drawing on the science of phase transitions, and using stories that range from James Bond to Steve Jobs, Safi shows why teams, companies, or any group with a mission will suddenly change from embracing wild new ideas to rigidly rejecting them.

Meticulously researched and undoubtedly fascinating, this talk offers fresh insights from a new kind of science—showing the three techniques that creatives, leaders, and visionaries can use to liberate the ideas trapped inside small and large companies everywhere.

How can we make complex ecosystems seem simple for teams in this next phase of work? 

In this panel discussion, we will share real-world examples of finding the tools that best fit your teams, options to address platform limitations and silo challenges, and employee-centric approaches to technology modernization to garner stronger outcomes in employee productivity and engagement.

In this closing keynote address, Susan Cummings, SVP of Northern Trust, will offer a framework to achieve collective innovation across digital teams, and discuss lessons learned in evolving the digital workplace of one of the largest banking institutions in the United States, and one of the oldest banks in continuous operation.

Northern Trust’s digital workplace is a complex ecosystem of business needs and opportunities coupled with geographic nuances that span culture, risk, compliance, privacy and security.  

Prior to 2020, the institution knew that 5-year roadmaps and end-state visions and projects were being replaced by agility and the need to keep pace with an evolving, re-imagined way of living and working.  The remote work experience in 2020 re-emphasized “persistent change” and required Northern Trust digital workplace leadership to enable an efficient and productive employee experience with speed, flexibility and innovation.

In this keynote address, Susan will share the levers to:

1. Create visibility and collective innovation across your digital teams

2. Leverage industry knowledge, best practices and experience to inform and grow your teams’ and organizations’ thinking

3. Enable governance aligned to business needs and priorities

In his opening keynote presentation, Josh Bersin, global industry analyst and dean of the Josh Bersin Academy, will share the priorities for creating a successful digital workplace experience. Bersin will cover topics such as how continuous learning should be factored into the employee experience, considerations for prioritizing work to be done, and the importance of multi-functional teams. He will also preview his company’s latest research findings on employee experience, the latest trends in supporting technologies, and how EX relates to employee engagement. 

With hiring projected to increase, and employees looking for career growth within their organizations, the significance of onboarding and career mobility has never been higher. In this discussion, panelists will share how their companies have built solid foundations for both new, and newly mobile, team members to succeed.  We’ll hear insights into managing onboarding remotely through today’s HR platforms, key methods to successfully engage employees in new roles, and how their organizations measure success. This panel will provide insights into a people-focused and effective approach to help create — and sustain — the momentum of an engaged workforce.

Karen leads Microsoft’s global talent and learning experiences efforts focused on identifying, co-creating and operationalizing the employee experience so all employees are empowered to do their best work. Her team uses community and social interaction to fuel continuous improvement, growth and change, resulting in employees who opt into talent and learning processes and programs because they believe in them as a means of addressing business objectives. As a global talent executive, leading the way in building experiences of the future, Karen will leave the attendees inspired to transform their practices and effectively recreate the new workplace.

The past year has led us to rethink fundamental assumptions—where to work, how to manage remote culture and collaboration, whether to reimagine our strategy and our products or services. Yet too many leaders and employees are reacting to events instead of proactively looking for opportunities to think again. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant has spent the past decade studying this problem at organizations ranging from the NBA to Pixar to NASA, and he finds that the very skills that make us good at thinking and learning can make us worse at rethinking and unlearning. Building on his new book, Think Again—which has been called “a must-read” by Bill and Melinda Gates and “brilliant” by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman—Adam examines how we can update our own opinions, open other people’s minds, and build a learning organization in which people know what they don’t know and are eager to improve on the status quo. His eye-opening evidence and entertaining delivery will leave you determined to never again say “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

From the roller coaster of the pandemic and stop-and-go plans for returning to the office, to the ever-constant advance of workplace technology, change is a constant, and transformation is necessary for survival.  However, the road to real change can be rocky.   

In this panel discussion, hear from several seasoned executives on the critical components to marrying today’s innovative technologies with smart management, for a future-forward, agile workplace.

Join our closing keynote speaker, Jaime Neely, Futurist and Chief Culture Officer - along with your peers, speakers and sponsor guests in The Lounge for virtual networking.  Discuss the day's sessions, ask questions, and make connections across industries -- and even across the globe.

How does it work?  Move your avatar around the networking space to meet people. To join a conversation, move closer. To leave it, move away. It’s that simple.

It’s not enough to simply have an L&D program in place. The best learning and development programs are invisible, adjusting seamlessly to the evolving wants of the learner, while meeting business needs in real time. Learning happens in an integrated fashion, as part of the way work gets done.

With the growing skills gap at work, many organizations have turned to high profile upskilling and reskilling initiatives to close it. Done right, they benefit both organizations and employees. Companies develop a more productive, more skilled and adaptable workforce. Employees get the skills they need to succeed in new and higher level roles. It’s win-win.

In this fireside chat, GE Healthcare executive Christopher Lind will share:

• The theory and practice of learning in the flow of work
• How adaptive learning is a game changer for skill development
• What needs to happen to make reskilling and upskilling a reality

Dan talks with Reworked editor Mike Prokopeak about how the pandemic reshaped our priorities at work and home and what we can do to rise above the day-to-day and make meaningful upstream changes that improve our results.

For more conversations like this, be sure to subscribe to our Get Reworked podcast here.

Safi talks with Reworked editor Mike Prokopeak about the application of his "loonshots" ideas in the real world. 

For more conversations like this, be sure to subscribe to our Get Reworked podcast here.

Reworked's Editor in Chief sat down with keynote speaker, Josh Bersin, before the event.  Join the conversation here.

What began (and continues) as an era of great disruption to the customer experience ushered in a phase of incredible innovation. Enterprises that were able to adapt, thrived. However, each innovation required adaptation from employees, and the rise of the importance of the digital employee experience. Now, more than ever, the quality of the workforce experience matters to productivity and engagement and optimization of collaboration tools sets up IT teams and leaders for the future. As the Chief Product Officer for the employee communications platform of choice for over 20% of Fortune 500 companies, Jed Brown knows how to design and innovate for the future of work. Join Jed as shares his vision for:

• How to build a unified engagement platform to get the most out of fewer systems
• The value of modernizing your intranet and take it from an employee pain point to agile endpoint
• Using data to drive employee action, and connect people to organizational knowledge, in the apps they use every day

Stay tuned followed Jed's presentation for a Q&A led by Mike Prokopeak, Editor in Chief at Reworked.

Join us for a compelling breakout presentation by Sinequa's Alana Cento, followed by live breakout groups facilitated by Sinequa and our editorial and research teams at Reworked.

Be camera ready and have your questions, challenges, successes and opinions handy for this facilitated, live discussion group with your peers!

"Making Knowledge Discoverable to Your Newly Distributed Workforce"

A key to successful digital workplace experience is ensuring information is easily accessible. But when it’s stored across different repositories, in all different formats, it has a ripple effect across the organization. Projects are delayed, issues take longer to solve, tasks are duplicated, people get frustrated, and expensive errors are made.

Too often companies lack a business strategy and practical design for their digital workplaces. Instead, they build technology part by part: clouds, content platforms, apps, and analytics. Next, they hope to transform processes using AI to augment human workers.

So, how can complex organizations bring critical knowledge to the forefront? How can IT leaders better use data to unlock those insights for the workforce? What is the value of a digital ecosystem?

In this collaborative session, Alana Cento, Product Marketing Manager at Sinequa, will highlight the impact of a complete enterprise search technology to support your intelligent workplace initiatives using examples from our most successful customers.

The World Economic Forum recently declared a “re-skilling emergency” as the world braces for more than one billion jobs being transformed by technology. Even before the global pandemic emerged, the concept of lifetime employment had dissipated, replaced by the expectation that employees must continuously refresh and learn new skills. But how? And which skills?

In this keynote, you will learn:

• Methods to address digital skill gaps in the workplace
• Approaches to holistic learning structures
• Ways to prioritize learning in the fast pace of today’s business environment

Join Reworked editorial team members, awards finalists and your peers for a casual wrap-up and "good bye" as we close our 2021 season.  Join us here to ask questions on how you can be involved next year, with expanded programming options and 2022 awards.

How does it work?  Move your avatar around the networking space to meet people. To join a conversation, move closer. To leave it, move away. It’s that simple.

Thank you, and we'll see you next year!