Human Success Summit Keynote

Thank you. I was going to do that. Wow. Just, just wow. Standing in front of all of you, 200 people from LMS365. It's completely unreal. Honestly, it's overwhelming. We first had the conversation about six months ago about can we get everybody together from around the world. Even though we're only 200 people, we're one of the most distributed companies that I've ever worked for all over the world. And the fact that you're all here in Portugal to celebrate each other and human success, it's amazing. Give it up for yourselves, please. Come on. And we've got some honored guests today. We've got our chairman of the board, Lars. Lars, come up here for a second. Come up here for a second. Give it up for Lars Dom. Score. Yeah. There you go. Hey. Isn't it wild to look out? Amazing. It's amazing. I just first took the chairman role. How many people were we? Yeah, 30 people.

Yeah.

Wild, right? It's amazing. I just want you to take it in, like, how far we've come. Thank you for. For being our chairman and everything that you do. Great to see you all, especially yesterday evening when you all come in to sense the motivation, the energy and everything. Just amazing. I think we are going to move a lot together. We are. We are. Thank you. Give it up. Alarms. Give it up for Lars. When I look out, what I see, I see 200 people who are smart, motivated and caring and dedicated, who give their all, who support each other, who created this magic moment that we're living in right now. It's amazing. It's truly, truly amazing. But have you ever stopped to think about how did you get to where you are today? I'm not talking about physically here in Portugal. I know that was planes, trains and automobiles, and lots of you had delays and flight changes and all kinds of stuff. But have you ever stopped to think about how you got to where you are today? Close your eyes for a second. All of you, close your eyes for a second and think about how did you get to where you are today? Because I see 200 successful people. Keep your eyes closed. Was it a teacher? A parent? A mom or dad? Was it a brother or a sister? Was it a mentor? Was it a colleague? Was it a boss? Was it some book you read? Was it a TV show that you saw? Was it somebody who maybe didn't treat you well and push you in the direction that you realized that you wanted your life to change? You can open your eyes again. Think about how you got to be to where you are today, it's really special. Like you're all successful people. I consider all of you very successful people. And I bet that, yes, part of that is your own hard work and your own brilliance. And maybe you're just born awesome. Many of you probably were. But it's also probably because many people along the way believed in you, took a chance on you, pushed you in the right direction, showed you the path so you can become better than what you were before. And that is really what human success is all about. This idea that together we can be much better. And if we have the right mindset, the right culture, the right tools, we can, of course, every single day, become a better version of yourselves. So today we're here to excite you and motivate you and inspire you about what this vision is all about. We want to give you the details of what we're talking about and how we're going to share with the world. We're going to have a lot of great speakers come up and share some of those details of that vision. But it's really about you leaving this morning, being inspired and wanting to participate in this movement that we're creating together called Human Success. So here's what we're going to cover. I'm going to start off by talking about the vision of where we're going. Then we're going to talk a little bit about the roadmap and how we're going to actually bring this to market and how we're going to price it and what happens next and so on. This is not the end of the journey. This is very much the beginning of the journey of what we're going to do over the next couple of quarters and over the next couple of years. So let me start by just thinking about what I just talked about. When I was six years old, my parents got divorced. And a couple of years later, When I was 10 years old, my mom, she remarried and she married a guy who was a computer programmer. And he taught me everything that I needed to know about computers. He was a great mentor to me and he kind of put me on the path of falling in love with what technology can do for us, the impact that it can have in our lives, both at work, but also certainly in the fun that you can have with technology. And it put me on this path. So when I was 21, as many of you know, I bought a one way ticket from Copenhagen, Denmark to California. I didn't have a job, I didn't have a place to stay. I'd Never been before. But I wanted to go and be part of the magic of making technology an even more integral part of our lives. And I ended up getting a job fairly quickly because everybody was hiring us at the height of the dot com era. So I was pretty excited. And I got hired as a programmer. I wasn't the best programmer in the world, but I could do enough to be dangerous. But I was hired actually to manage our website. And I was doing an okay job of it. But my boss, her name was Elise Simmerman, she saw something in me. She's like, you're okay with this programming stuff, but you're actually really much better at taking what the engineers are doing, the product people, and what the sales teams need, and condensing it into something that excites people when they come to our website. You should be in product marketing, she said. And I'm like, I have no idea what product marketing is. What is it? And for those of you who don't know, product marketing is really about storytelling. It's about messaging and positioning and evangelism and getting people excited about what you do. But she put me on a path that has really kind of had a direct line to where I am today. And she could see in me the potential and the passion that I had for storytelling, and she nurtured that in me. And again, when you think back in your life, you probably have many examples yourself where you've had those people in your life. And this is what I want everybody to experience. Because the truth is, we are living through an epidemic of unhappiness, of dissatisfaction. It doesn't really matter what statistic you look at. They all say the same thing. Then most people are not happy in their work. Whether you look at the Josh Burson data, you look at the McKinsey data, the Harvard Business Review, the Gallup data, they all say the same thing. Roughly 60%, up all the way, sometimes to 80%, that people are not happy. And when you dig deep and find out why they're not really happy is because they feel like they're not supported. They don't really know where they're going. They don't really have anybody in their life cheering for them, rooting for them. They don't have anybody in their lives who's like, pushing them in the right direction so they become a better version of themselves. They don't feel like there's opportunity. And so when you think of that, it's like, it's such a shame. Do you think that these people who are feeling this way are showing up every single day doing the best work of their lives. Are they bringing the energy and the magic to the companies every single day that they work for? I can guarantee you they're not. They're not. When you're in an environment that you don't feel supported, that you don't feel motivated by, you're not bringing your best self to work every day. And we also know that companies who have figured out how to solve this, how to actually bring out the best in people, how to create an environment that nurtures them, and given the right support and tools and so on, those employees are bringing better ideas, more innovative ideas to the organizations they work for every single day. Just think about our company. We're 200 people in every single department. We have a shitload of challenges, pardon my French. We do a lot of challenges and product and engineering and how we go to market and our marketing and finance, how we scale. We've got issues with our systems that we need to fix all kinds of things. And if you want to fix those things, you want every single person, every day to show up with ideas for how to make that happen. Innovation and creativity is not just for the realm of marketing people, it's for the realm of everyone. Everyone has innovative ideas that can solve the issues that we have and we have the data to prove that that happens. So it's such a shame that you have so many companies where this is not in existence yet. And at the same time, we also know that these companies who have figured it out, who are bringing out the best in people every day, guess what? They're also more successful. And you know what, it's kind of one of those dull moments when I see a study on, let's say BBC or any of these other new size that says 20 year study shows that happier employees do better work. I'm like, yeah, of course, everybody could have told you that, right? But that doesn't mean that companies know how to break that happen for their employees. Because of course there's a huge disconnect. And so it's really time to recognize a simple fact that if we want businesses to be more successful, we need the people who are working for those businesses to be more successful every single day, Giving them the tools, the motivation, the skills they need to be successful every single day. And you know what, the best leaders, they know this. If you ask any CEO, they would nod along. It's like again, it's like a dawn moment. Of course, yeah, we need to do this. One of my favorite CEOs of all time is Richard Branson, great entrepreneur. He created a number of companies that are around today. Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Records, Virgin Space, you know, Virgin Trains, you name it, Virgin Telco. Just always pushing the boundaries. And he said this, he said, clients do not come first, employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your clients. And it's such an overlooked fact from most companies that they would say this. They were not along, but then they go right back to doing what they've always done, which is, of course, chase profits, chase growth and all those kinds of things. And the best leaders know it's about creating an environment that really unlocks the potential of people, where people can learn and grow and succeed every single day. It's not an easy thing. It requires commitment and dedication and really like doing the hard work to make this happen. Because we're all individual. What we all want is different. So being able to understand that at a human level requires a lot of deep work to make that happen. And so the days of just chasing efficiency and growth and profitability, are they gone? No, of course they're not gone. They're still here. We're still, as a company, aiming to have an organization that's growing and that's efficient, that's profitable and so on. That's ultimately how you get the trust of employees and stakeholders and investors and so on. But these are all outcomes, outcomes of you or us together creating an environment where people are productive and happy and successful and feeling like they can do the best work of their lives. And so it's time really to recognize that we are in the middle of a people revolution. The old ways of doing things have got to change. I mentioned that basically 2/3 of people are unhappy. 70%, 60%, whatever it is, you know what it was last year, it's about the same. What was it the year before? About the same. Right. So it's obvious that a lot of the things that we are doing is not working. It's time for a change. It's time to revolutionize how we actually think about engaging and motivating people. So the first generation of HR was really around. Well, you know, can we ensure that everyone shows up on time, that they're getting paid, that they have the right benefits and all these kinds of things? Very administrative work. And you know what? Super important. This is not going to go away. It's of course important that you're getting paid on time, that you have the right benefits and support, you're getting the right training and so on. Very, very important. But companies started realizing, okay, it's not enough. The new generation of people coming into the workforce want something a little bit different. That led to the second generation that we've been witnessing for the last couple of decades, where we really kind of changed it to be much more around people and culture. Free pizza nights, kombucha and tap, kind of office as a playground and so on. And you know what? It's helped. It gives people a sense of belonging a little bit more and camaraderie and being able to show up to a place that actually doesn't suck the soul out of you, but actually helps you become a better version of yourself by creating an environment where at least there's some camaraderie and fun and you can laugh together versus sitting in a sterile environment. So it's not, this is bad, it's definitely helped. But is this enough to really unlock the full potential of people? No. We see that in the statistics. If this had worked, you wouldn't have two thirds of people being deeply unhappy with their lives or where they're going. It's time for a revolution. And we believe that the third iteration, what we need to do right now, is bring in this era of human success. And human success is all about creating an environment where people get on a path for success, whatever that means for you. Maybe you want a different job title, maybe you want to get promoted, maybe you want more responsibility, maybe you want to move to a different part of the organization, Maybe you want new skills or whatever it is. It's a very individual thing. But the future is about creating these moments for people who, when they need them, so they become a better version of themselves. Continuous learning, optimized performance, empowerment, coaching. All the things that maybe we take for granted because we are an environment that's been really good at this, but most people are just not. And we need to get this out to all the people in the world. This is what the human success platform is all about. This is the vision behind it. Of course, there's a lot of product we're going to bring to market. We're going to excite the market with our vision and the storytelling, what we do. But I want you to all know why this is worth fighting for, why you should wake up every day excited by this mission. Because it's not going to be easy. We're going to fail, we're going to screw up, it's going to be hard, it's going to be tension between us. All kinds of things usually go wrong. When you're scaling, like Henrik said, I've been through many scaling journeys myself, but this one here has been the epitome of my career because I am so focused personally on making sure that we create this next movement for around people to be successful. This is what the human success platform is all about. So the human success platform, if I had to distill it into a single vision, it's really about creating unparalleled learning, growth and engagement for every employee. And again, that means something different for every single person in here, but really have a couple of commonalities. It means that you feel supported, you feel excited, you feel like you're growing and learning, become a better version of yourself every single day. And this is what the core of human success is about. And the reason why this is so urgent right now is because when we think about the journey that an employee has to an organization, we've been spending too much time on the wrong things. We spend a lot of time upfront recruiting people, weeks, sometimes months, depending on the role that you're hiring for. And it's super important. Recruiting has been around for a long time, but it's not going to go away anytime soon. But when you think about it, it's kind of nuts that we're spending all our effort on the recruiting side and do so little when actually people are inside the company. What are we doing to motivate them, train them, upskill them, reskill them, Give them the right coaching and knowledge they need to be successful? As I've gone around the world and taken this on the road, I ask this question all the time. You know, Rasmus can attest to this because we've been kind of doing a little bit of roadshow to investors and partners and customers and so on. I ask, since you started and they like, how long have you been to this company? I've been here three years or seven years. Okay, what has the company done in the last year or two for you, for you to grow and learn new things? And they always kind of give you this blank look, like, I don't really know. And just think, what a shame you've hired these people who are so smart, because most people have really amazing capabilities and you do nothing to nurture them, to grow them, to develop them. What a shame. Somebody has to solve this. It's a very ambitious, audacious vision. But why shouldn't it be us? Because if you think about the time that people spend in a company, years, maybe even decades, we have a few in here who've Been with this company for over a decade, which is very impressive. Think about you becoming that better version every single day, every single week, every single month, and being in an environment that supports that. And if you're not, think about how soul sucking that can be for you and your life. So that's what we want to create. This is what human success is all about. And there's lots of things that go into human success, not like a platform. Our platform is going to solve all of that. It requires a change in mindset, a change in culture, a change in leadership, and change in the environment of how we actually think about working together. But you also do need the right tools, the right platform to make that happen. And of course, that's where we come in. And so this is what the human success platform is all about. How we activate human success in every single person is really around these three core areas. Performance, engagement, and of course, learning, which most of you know. And the three combined make up what we call the human success platform. On their own, they're extremely powerful. Having a platform that continues to push you in the right direction with the right learning is super important. Having a platform that you can measure yourself against so you're always tracking your goals and your OKRs, making sure you're on the right path, super important. And making sure you engage with the right people at the right time, it's also super important. And the reason why these are so important is, of course, they make you a better version of yourself every single day. This is what human success is all about. But together, they're even more powerful. And why? Because at the intersection of all these different things, you find something really, really interesting when you have an employee who is learning every single day, every single week, and deeply engaged in the work that they do. You know those team members who show up every day with excitement and conviction and energy and so on, like Erica, right, right there. Those are like the model team members that everybody points to and says, I want that person on my team. I want to work with that person. They're such a net positive. They're growing and learning every day, and they just bring such energy and conviction. Every day creates magical teamwork. And when you have an employee who is crushing their goals and just really doing well, and they're also learning for the future, moving new skills. You're optimizing outcomes today and also in the future. When I was working at LinkedIn, they also had a learning product. This is about in 2017, so. So a while back, we did a study that showed that within the next five years, 90%, 90% of all your skills are outdated. Not irrelevant, but outdated. And so if you're not continuously learning new skills or how to refresh your skills, you're going to be left behind. That's why the intersection of learning and performance means you're doing well today, but you're also doing well for the future. And think about, I think now in 2024, with the rise of AI and all kinds of things, that number is probably accelerated. Maybe your skills are outdated in the next three years. I think about how we did sales or marketing or how we developed product just five years ago. It seems a little antiquated to how we do it now. So things are developing very quickly. And then finally, at the intersections of performance and engagement, when you again, you have an employee who's kind of crushing it all the time and just doing really well against their goals and, and they're deeply engaged in the work they're doing and the team loves them and they're showing up every day with energy and excitement that drives future potential. Those are the kind of employees that I, as a leader, look at and go, wow, can we give them more responsibility? Can we put them into some bigger projects as they're just doing so well? And so it's so magical when all these things come together. When you have an employee who exhibits all of these different things, because if the lack of them also is really stark. If you have an employee who's learning a lot and engaged every day, but they're not performing, is that success? Of course not. You're never going to reach the goals that you have if they're not performing. What if you have an employee who is engaging and performing, but they're not learning for the future? Are they going to be relevant in the next couple of years? Are they not continuously staying fresh? Maybe not. They can be successful today, but are they going to be successful in the future? Who knows? And what if you have an employee who's performing well and learning a lot, but they're not really engaged? They don't really show up with the team, they don't really believe in the mission. The moment something better comes along, that employee is going to leave. So of course, the magic really happens when you have all of these three come together. And this is what the human success platform is about. Over time, we will probably add more to this, but this is what it's about today and for the next couple of years. So what does it allow you to do? It allows you to really create personalized Human paths for every single employee. So you can go in at some point and say, this is what I want out of my career, out of my journey. Can you help me get there? So, for example, I'd like to know that I'm on my path to crushing my goals and becoming a best in class marketeer. Show me the path to get there. This is what I'd like to learn. Or, for example, I'd like to get on a path for leading a customer success team. How am I doing? It should be able to tell you your performance. You should be able to see that and measure against yourself and the goals you have, but also your peers. And if I want to get there, what does my path look like? What skills do I need? What training do I need to have? Who should I go talk to in my company who might have the skills? It starts all coming together. Or maybe I never attended college, but I think many of the skills that I developed as a store assistant can be used in a sales role in our headquarters. I'd like to know what it takes to get there. Maybe somebody who's just straight out of college who's eager to really figure out the path to them in life. Or for example, somebody who might say, I'd like to better balance work and personal life. Show me how to optimize my time and focus. And we should be able to come back and say, here's how you do it, here's how you schedule a time. Here are the classes you should take, the courses you should take, the people who've mastered this based on the data and the knowledge that we have, and the more data and knowledge that we know about you, your organization, and how you optimize work, the better we can guide you on that path. That's why we're at the beginning of this journey, not at the end of it. To show you how this all comes together, I want to show you a quick video that the team put together. Oh, thank you. Oh, that's so nice.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hey, fantastic. Good. He's a good human. Kombucha. Kombucha. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it alcoholic? I want to show you a quick video that we put together that really illustrates what this is all about.

Meet Helen, your everyday go getter juggling tasks, racing between meetings and conquering the email avalanche. All to the rhythm of teams notifications humming in the background. Helen's moving fast, but is she moving forward? Helen's leadership team understands that staying ahead of the game means investing in employee growth and performance. They've embraced the LMS 365 Human Success Platform, the only talent development suite built for Microsoft 365 and Teams. This ensures that people and teams have the skills needed for peak performance by creating unparalleled learning, growth and engagement for every employee. How? Let's get back to Helen. She's a strong performer in marketing. Female. Fueled by the ambition to lead a team. She gets an invite to a one to one with her manager. But it's not your standard invite. Helen's organization has set up the meeting using built in AI powered templates with a best practice agenda to steer the conversation. Helen and her manager set learning and performance goals aligned with Helen's leadership aspirations and the company's strategy. Helen is automatically assigned learning courses that are aligned to her leadership goals. The human success platform facilitates weekly check ins where Helen reports on her progress and well being. AI steps in analyzing not just her words but also her performance against set goals. After a few check ins and 1 to ones, a revelation unfolds. Helen's public speaking skills need a boost? The solution. A suggested learning path and action plan guides her way. As Helen learns and applies new skills, her peers share real time feedback and kudos boosting Helen's confidence. At year end, a comprehensive reflection powered by AI and sentiment analysis is delivered to Helen. Here, Helen gets summarized feedback from check ins, learning milestones and goal achievement. Helen and her manager reflect together on how she navigated towards her goals. Swiftly developing her leadership and communication skills. Helen is on her path to success equipped with new levels of clarity, motivation and enthusiasm. This is human success powered by the LMS365 Human Success Platform, the only fully comprehensive talent development suite built into Microsoft 365 and Teams.

Love that. Love that. I love that video. So many people working on this video. Anya, Jenny, Reagan, Rebecca, a lot of people worked on but there's two people I want to call out. Nicholas, are you here? He's not here. Nicholas, our video guru put this together and it's amazing. Give it up for Nicholas. If you're watching this. Thank you. Thank you. You do magic. And second of all, do you know who the voice of this video was? Candace. Candace, stand up. Stand up. Candace provided the voice and through his video and it was awesome. The truth is first I recorded a version of it and it sucked and everybody told me it sucked. And then like who has a great voice? Candace has a great voice and she crushed it. How great is this? How great is this? Right? Great job Candace. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So this is what we're building. Isn't that exciting? This is what we're building. A platform that adapts to you, that knows all about you, that learns about you. This is a platform that's your best friend, a platform that learns what you need over time. The more you use it, the more to learn about what you need. And of course, you can start course correcting and calibrating with other peers in the industry and the people that you work with and so on. It's a platform that learns what you need. It's a platform that makes you better every single day. When you log into our platform, we want it to push you in the right direction so you become that better version of yourself, whatever that path might look like for you. It's a platform that's made for you, optimized for you, so you can realize your full potential. This is the human success platform. This is in the nutshell of what we're trying to build. Yes, there's a lot of details that go into that. You're going to hear all about that next. But I want you to have the vision and don't lose sight of what we're building. We're building a platform made for the people and the humans who are using this every single day. This is what we're going to do. Only from LMS365. We're the company to do that. So just to wrap up where we are, this is why we exist. This is our purpose, this is our mission to make humans more successful. And we need everyone in here to believe in that mission, to wake up wanting to fight for that mission, knowing that the world will be better if we achieve that mission. It's not going to be easy. As I said, it's a lot of things we have to get right. We're going to fail in a lot of things, but if we trust each other, support each other, we can make this happen.