Shakil Awan on Building a 17000-Member Learning Community at Deutsche Telekom

Most companies invest millions in learning platforms - but the best learning communities are often built with zero budget and no permission.

In this episode of AI Made Simple: The Transformation Series, I'm joined by Shakil Awan - Squad Lead and Product Manager for LEX at Deutsche Telekom - who transformed a simple idea into a 17,000-member peer-to-peer learning community with over 6,500 sessions per year.

We discuss:

• Why self-organized communities fail without people given charge to lead them
• The counterintuitive reason LEX started with yoga sessions, not business topics
• What it actually takes to motivate employees to share knowledge voluntarily
• How to build learning culture when you have no budget, no project, and no management support

Connect with Shakil Awan:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shakilawan/
LEX: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8754712/?highlightedUpdateUrn=urn%3Ali%3AgroupPost%3A8754712-7422684981958688768&q=highlightedFeedForGroups

Connect with Valeriya:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valeriya-pilkevich
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aimadesimpletalks
Podcast: https://aimadesimple.buzzsprout.com/

Need help building AI capability in your organization? Book a call. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

How do you build a learning culture when there is no budget, no project, and no official permission to start? Welcome to AI Made Simple, the transformation series. I'm Valeria Blikevich and I talk with global leaders, innovators, and practitioners for shaping the future of work in the HFAI. In this episode, I'm joined by Shakila Vann, school lead and product manager for Lex Learning from Experts at Deutsche Telekom, where he transformed a simple idea into a 17,000 member peer-to-peer learning community with over 6,000 sessions per year. We talk about why self-organized communities often fail without people given charge to lead them, what it actually takes to motivate employees to share knowledge voluntarily, why Lex started with yoga sessions instead of business topics, and what leaders get wrong when building internal champions communities. Shaquille, welcome to the podcast. I'm very happy to have you here with us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Hello. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Before we dive into Lex and its success, you have a very, very interesting background. I'd love to start with you. You studied nutritional science. You spent many years in IT and product management, and later transitioned into learning and informal HR-led enablement. How does this journey fit together for you? And how did these different worlds shape the way you think about learning today?

SPEAKER_02 1:28

It's good that I did not put or send you the rest because you know there's a lot of years in the restaurant business missing, working full-time and part-time, working in a management position and as a simple employee. So, how does it all fit? To my humble understanding, everything belongs somehow together. And um, I read somewhere that you cannot not communicate. And I say you cannot not learn. So you're always learning, if you want to or not. So, so and um, and also I believe in that a lot of things you just don't learn in school, or you know, if you visit courses, you just learn it in your day-to-day work or a lot even in your private time.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Absolutely. For those listeners who don't know it yet, tell us more about Lex. So learning from experts. What is it actually, the initiative? And when I heard the number of hundreds of sessions being held every day, I was shocked. Tell us how it all works together and how did this idea come about?

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Yes, and not to scare people, it's not hundreds per day. It's it's actually we have had six and a half thousand last year and the year before that. But nevertheless, these are great numbers. You just have to imagine it's like 30 sessions in average per day. And um, what does it actually mean? That means that from morning to evening we offer peer-to-peer sessions organized by colleagues for colleagues, and um on various topics, as you have mentioned before. And now come to your question: how did it all start? It started actually as a small idea, and this was in 2017, and that time I was um at Deutsche Telekom in Telekom IT, and um in that year, new Telekom boss came, Telekom IT boss came, and I was explaining like he came and saw and said, We need to change something, and he introduced a great program, and um and you as the employee at that time we were about I think 10,000 in Germany, and all in all, and um you could actually really take part and help to shape the new IT. And they formed um various work streams. How do we work? What do we work? And very soon I was a member of the core team learning. Actually, I wanted to join the core team communication, but I was um put into learning. What I liked about this group, you know, we were 14 people out of five different countries working on topics, but on ourselves. Nobody came to us and said, you have to work on this or that topic. No, we were able to actually develop the topics that we wanted to work on. And my colleagues came up with great ideas like culture of learning, expert career, and so on and so forth. And I knew at that time that a lot of people struggled using the internet, which we are using at Deutsche Telekom. And at that Deutsche Telekom, we have a so-called social enterprise network. In simple words, I was explaining it like it's like Facebook at work. But you need to know how to use it. And I said, you know what, I'll just get a colleague. I know he's an expert, and he learned everything by himself, and he will teach us how to use it. And this is the start of learning from experts, shortly called Lex. A simple idea which was supposed to just have 14 people, became the largest learning and exchange community for years now within Deutsche Telekom with over 30,000 members, but you don't have to be a member to use Lex. So actually, our reach is much higher or wider than you can see in those numbers. This is well known throughout the world of Deutsche Telekom, and we do not only offer sessions, we have expert lists, we have chat rooms, there's a digital pin board. You can create a learning group, you can join existing learning groups, you can upload videos in our portal, which currently has over 2,000 videos. You can even find the lex session video of our CEO Tim Hutges and other board members. You can exchange books between each other and many more things. So it's not just about sessions, we try to offer much more, and this is all done mostly by volunteers around me.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

So it's community-driven learning, and I can imagine that many people meet privately as well. So you enable connections between people, and of course, in this kind of environment where you don't have to go to the workshop, but you actually are willing to go there because you like the topic or the expert, that's where I believe the learning thrives as well. When I work at the companies, and I believe that's something you touched as well, I see often that technology is not the biggest challenge, regardless of whether we talk about AI or whether we talk about internal Facebook, right? And I recently read this very nice analogy. They were talking about button courage or the courage to be the beginner again. So it's not the technology, it's the mindset. And from your experience building legs, what does it take to create this mindset and continuous learning culture?

SPEAKER_02 6:38

I think there is no unique recipe, but what it takes is a lot of courage. Because what you do is actually you enter a world, come with your idea, and then you'll find people who will say, Hey, we already have this. This is not new. And then they say, Why are you doing this? Who allowed this? Then people will just join you if there's budget. And lots of other things may come in your way. But you have to learn to use these challenges and then believe in your idea. And it won't be easy, I can tell you, I can even remember when I started. But um there was lots in the beginning, and we we just overcame those hurdles. I mentioned courage, but also I think the English word is diligence. It's like, you know, keep on working. Whatever you achieved yesterday was yesterday. Today's a new day, it's a new challenge. We mentioned, we talked about lots of sessions that we offered. Not all are organized by us, but we make sure that you can find them in our platform. So there's a lot of manual work which needs to be done, which needs to be organized. And we always talk about automization course. You know, when there are interfaces, it may work. But if you don't have those required interfaces and you have to do this manually, and you need to find people who are willing to do this. And so you need diligence and you also need curiosity. Look around, you know. When I come to the office, I just walk through the building to get inspired, to see people, to run into people, to see what's going on, um, go into the internet, go go on LinkedIn and find what colleagues have published recently, approach them, ask them to hold sessions. These are just a few things. And how did we start? You know, there was no project, there was no assignment, there was no budget, you know, there was no management support. There were no resources. I was I was by myself. And I found people who wanted to support, and we formed the first Lex team, and then we reorganized new people to join, and Lex is surrounded by great volunteers who help to keep this idea alive, and it gets bigger, and it's more and more to-do that we have to do every day, but it's a lot of fun also involved.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

So um you're talking about ownership, right? So you you have to you you have to own it. And I and I was reflecting as well about it. Who is responsible for upskilling or reskilling uh employees or organized in organizations, preparing the future workforce or preparing each of us for the future? And of course, the the company can provide you the learning, but that's up to each individual, that's up to each one of us to take ownership, to take our life in you know in our own hands and then learn these new skills and prove ourselves to be competitive and indispensable in the future. When I think about you, I always feel this sense of ownership or entrepreneurship. And I think we once also touched it at the at the frapper session that you are uh in essence an entrepreneur within the company. So it's about building something from scratch. And I think this is the mindset shift that everybody needs, regardless of the role or position or or the stages.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Indeed, indeed. You are an entrepreneur in your own company. And um, I mentioned that I have had um experiences in my work life where I was in similar positions before, and it's also where you take charge and you also don't wait for somebody to come and tell you what to do. You feel like you're doing the right thing, and you do it, and you do it also with passion. Yes, I forgot to mention passion. That's also a key ingredient. Yet you need lots of passion. And then I can tell you in my case, I always say it sometimes doesn't even feel like work, and you look at the clock and then you wish, I wish I could turn back the clock because I want to work more. So I hope no German worker council is listening in to this podcast. Yeah, but but um it helps. It helps when you get into the flow and um you just want to keep on dancing in your workplace.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

You also mentioned the senior leadership involvement at Lex. Uh, and Lex has remained a community-driven initiative, but leadership visibility mattered at key moments. So, can you tell maybe to the listeners as well who are facting about uh grassroots communities or maybe AI champions communities right now? It's a very hot topic in the organizations. Where should leaders step in and where should they intentionally step back?

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Let me start with a quote by one of my dear, he was not even a manager, he was one of the owners when I was in the restaurant business. And he always used to say, keep management out of operations. So the top management. And um, so what can I say? Of course, at some point you need leadership and they help you, and you need to know how to make them help you then in the right way. So I told you that we have had sessions with board members. We even have a new format since last year. It's called Leaders at Lex. We want to get leaders to come and offer sessions about any topic, and somehow they also function as door openers for their team members. So somebody could say then if my boss is holding a session, why can I not hold a session? Or maybe they feel inspired. On the other hand, you know, leaders can also sometimes help you to find budget if you require budget and um also support you with resources, officious resources. And last but not least, any community, in my humble opinion, you know, we always talk about self-organized and self-led and all this. And I don't really believe too much into this. You know, what you need is people who have been given charge to take care of something, because at a certain point, you know, it's not something like where you say, we just meet once a month in this room and then we do sketchnoting or this or that, you know. Um with a platform like this, with thousands of sessions per year and lots of other offers, you know, you need to have people really being allowed to work on these topics and if possible full-time, not just part-time, because if you want something to grow and then even sustain and um develop over time, then you need to have people. And this can only work if management is by your side.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

I also see it in my learning journeys that I'm doing for the companies that when leaders are in the room building, like building automations, building assistants, building agents with the teams, that's where I see that the motivation is the highest for the teams as well. And that's where they ask the most questions, that's where they implement a lot, that's where I know it's going to be a successful learning journey, which actually will increase adoption at the end. I believe strongly as well that leadership involvement is very important, not just communicating it, but actually doing it as well alongside others.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

What I see is that many employees they attend training, but they struggle to transfer the knowledge into the everyday work. And from thousands of training that you've observed in Lex community, what makes the training stick? So, what makes the learning stick? What from all of the sessions that you've seen, what are some practical tips, some of the methods that makes this learning transferable?

SPEAKER_02 13:39

Actually, it's a very easy answer. It's probably with any training. If you learn to um learn how to ride a bike, let me take my example. I learned I did my driver's license in the early 20s, so actually later than most of the people do it in Germany. And then I drove for probably five, six times, and then I stopped. There was no need. And then years later, I was asked to drive colleagues home when I was in the States. And um, yeah, they had, let's say, drank a beer or two too much, and they gave me the keys. And there was I. I tell you, they were awake. Yeah. Very, very quick. And and make a make a long story short. You need to be able to apply it. You learn it, and then you come back, and actually you get back into your own working environment, probably doing the same things like you've been doing over and over, and you just keep on doing it again the same way like you've been doing it before. But you know, when you learn something, there should be also a space and um time and tools, and also um you should have work where you can also apply it. You know, so if you learn how to use power automate, how to use automate automate certain working steps, but then you also need to have tasks which you're doing today where you could use it. So I think this is one of the biggest pain points. And sometimes you just look to the left and right, how are you doing it? What is he doing? And then you see people creating songs with AI or creating nice pictures, and you're like, hey, no, I don't want to create a song. I don't want to, you know, I don't need these pictures stuff. I need something else. You should be given time to find exactly where it can help you, be open-minded, and if it doesn't work out right away, it will come. Also have patience. And um AI for me is also still, you know, we have been talking about it for a couple of years now, but it's still fresh. It's it's still coming to us. And let's let's just learn, absorb, observe, and then start slowly using it.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

So giving yourself time, but also for the trainers and learning experts to make it as much hands-on as possible, right? Within the training, as much as possible, interactions and exercises and transfer tasks afterwards, so people can reflect on what they just heard and actually apply to their own work. Uh, very good advice. A question do you use any, like, are you experimenting maybe at Deutsche Telekom or at Lex with any AI-driven tools for learning for L and D?

SPEAKER_02 16:15

At Deutsche Telekom, we are using a lot of solutions. Let me just concentrate now on Lex. And I told you we're we're a team of volunteers, so we're trying out things, you know, with the large language models which we we can use to save time. We are about to create a Lex bot with the help of experts. So certain sessions can be found easier within our um platform, and we are very open-minded, and we are also at the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

Shaquille, what's one piece of advice, one piece of advice you would give to business leaders who genuinely want to move towards learn it all organizations, continuous learning culture, especially when continuous learning is no longer optional but a prerequisite for AI-driven work.

SPEAKER_02 17:00

Okay, one thing, believe in your experts. Sometimes we think the grass is greener on the other side of the company, and believe in the people you already have in the company. And it's sad to sometimes see that people who would like to open up and share things, and even if it's a not business-related thing, let them do it. Let them allow it. You will see how they will be inspired, you know, and be full of energy, and then maybe also come towards business-related things. And also not only just use these experts, but also find a way to give incentives to these colleagues. I wish that our experts would have something in their targets like where did I help my colleague today? Or, you know, when they offer learning sessions that and they do it, that it's also in their targets and they get rewarded for it. Plus, you know, we always talk about learning time. I wish there was something like an official learning time in our work life, um, like there's a lunch break. So something like, you know, we say, I don't know, every Friday between between 10 and 12, nobody will disturb you. This is the time you can use to learn.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Um, I recently saw this um very interesting meme on LinkedIn. Person of professional athletes and uh the typical employees. So professional athletes would have like 90% of their time is training and then 10% is performing, or even 5%. Whereas the employees 95% of performing, and then just 5% or 1% of training, like this one day a year where we all go to this person.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

This makes me mad when I see these things because you know we just don't we're not given the time to train, or we don't take the time. Even worse, we don't take the time to train. And then we do things sometimes, we're not even sure, we just do it for the sake of it, or somebody told us to do it, and then uh we don't even know if we did it right. We just need this training time, and let's call it learning hours, or maybe you should just call it training time and then say, look at the athletes. You know, they also get this time, why don't we get this time? Maybe not 90%, but we need to get this time and also we need to get time to think about what we're doing. This is also sometimes missing. It cannot be like, you know, when you're in the car driving towards work on the bus, or you know, when you know, or when you're like under the shower and you're like, hey, how should I have done this differently? No, this should be like this should be integrated in the daily working time.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Shakill, is there is anything else that you would like to share from what we haven't discussed before?

SPEAKER_02 19:34

Coming back to Lex, I mean, to the to the listeners and viewers, if you like to start something similar, inform a learning offer in your company, then you know the first advice I would like to give to you, start small, but start. Start, don't wait. Don't don't create a large project team, don't talk to too many people, don't don't ask everybody for if you're allowed to do this, just just do it. Just do it. And we when we started, we mostly had yoga and similar things in our session list. And for me, it's fine because it was in demand. And now people could come and say, Oh, this is not, you know, business relevant. And I would say, why not? You know, if people are healthy, they can probably get a job, you know. Look at the athletes. So, so and and um just start, and then the business topics will come naturally. They will come. This is what I can say.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Thank you. And uh, two quick closing questions. What's your favorite AI tool right now? Just one.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Um, ChatGPT. I'm using this a lot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

And uh one skill you believe will make everyone indispensable in the future.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

Be nice. Be a nice person. The rest you can learn.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

You can find Shakila Vaughn on LinkedIn and learn more about Lex and their open sessions for external guests. All links are in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, follow AI Made Simple, the transformation series, for more conversations with practitioners shaping how AI adoption actually happens inside organizations. Thanks for listening.