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The 8Levers workshop · Customer Education

Customer education. A roadmap you can act on.

For customer-facing learning functions delivering product training, certification, partner education, and customer success enablement.

One day, delivered in person. Part of the 8Levers workshop.

Framework: The Eight Levers of EdTech Transformation by Lori Niles-Hofmann

Participants spend the day with peers facing the same operational and strategic challenges in their function. Each attendee leaves with a documented diagnostic of their function compared to peers in the room, an action plan they can use to defend their function’s direction and budget, and a network of senior counterparts addressing the same challenges.

01 · The problem

Completions are counted. Value is argued.

Customer education is usually funded from a CRO or Customer Success budget, and that budget is defended against retention and expansion.

Course completions, certifications issued and content shipped are easy to count. What the budget holder wants is the line from those numbers to a renewal or an expansion, and that line is the harder case to make.

The function usually knows it has to change shape to make that case. What it is short of is a plan it can defend, built against its own situation rather than a borrowed one.

The day works through the diagnostic lever by lever, against your own function, and ends with decisions made and a roadmap you can take back to the budget holder.

02 · What it is and is not

Get your hands dirty.

The 8Levers Workshop is not a learning session, and there is nothing to certify. It is a working event. Over one day, you work through the diagnostic from The Eight Levers of EdTech Transformation and build, lever by lever, your own roadmap to a modern, AI-ready enablement function.

Expect to work hard. Against each lever, you establish where your organisation actually stands and define the specific work required next.

The diagnostic is structured around participants’ own functions and outputs, not around the framework as a methodology.

One day, delivered in person. There are no sales pitches (unless you ask for one during a break).

The shape of the day

  1. Welcome and overview

    The frame for the day and how the diagnostic works.

  2. Working sessions

    The diagnostic, lever by lever, against your own function.

  3. Synthesis and roadmap build

    The decisions from the working sessions, put together as one roadmap.

  4. Wrap-up

    Decisions captured, next steps, your roadmap in hand.

After spending a day at the 8Levers workshop, I found myself thinking back to when I first took on the Community and Academy project. I had very few resources and was learning and rebuilding things as I went. Looking back, if I had known Josh and Lori then, I would have brought them in from day one. I had the vision and was pushing the work forward, but having people with their experience beside me would have saved me weeks, helped me feel more confident in the journey, and probably helped my executives trust the direction much sooner.
Andrea ColucciHead of Education Services, Trellix

03 · Who it is for

Ready for drastic redesign.

This is for senior leaders of customer education: people who know the function needs to transform and are prepared for drastic redesign, not incremental tweaks. If aspirational slide decks about the future have left you no closer to getting a functional strategy aligned to the business, this day was built for you.

  • VPs of Customer Education

  • Heads of Learning Operations

  • Directors of Customer Training

  • Senior Customer Success leaders with a customer education remit

Typically CRO or Customer Success-led, with the budget defended against retention and expansion metrics.

04 · Before the day

Arrive with a running start.

This is a working session, so a little preparation goes a long way. Ahead of the day, you complete a short intake covering your operating model, data readiness, stakeholder position, and the single biggest challenge you are wrestling with right now. It calibrates the day to the room in front of us and gives you a running start.

Beyond that, come ready to talk candidly about where your function really stands, rather than a tidied-up version of it. The diagnostic works on your actual situation, so the more honest the starting picture, the more you leave with. If headline numbers are easy to reach, such as adoption, attrition, or time-to-value, bring them, but there is no deck to build and nothing to hand in.

05 · What you leave with

Decisions made, roadmap in hand.

You leave with decisions made and a roadmap to act on, built against your own situation rather than a hypothetical one.

  • A benchmark

    A lever-by-lever read on where you stand against a room of peers operating at your level: a documented diagnostic of your function compared to the peers in the room.

  • An action plan

    One you can use to defend your function’s direction and budget, built in the room against your own situation.

  • An hour, one-to-one

    In the weeks after the session, Lori or Josh spends an hour one-to-one with you to pressure-test the roadmap.

  • The book, and the room

    Every attendee takes home a copy of The Eight Levers of EdTech Transformation, and a network of senior counterparts addressing the same challenges.

Both sides of the table

Between us, we have sat on both sides of the table, which is exactly why this works. Every session is delivered by Josh or Lori, or both. We do not outsource delivery.

06 · Where the day goes deepest

All eight levers. Six of them anchored.

All eight capability areas are covered in every workshop. Anchor areas indicate the mandatory primary focus; remaining areas are addressed with focus determined by the diagnostic. For customer education the anchors are these six.

All eight levers, on the workshop page

Next steps

The quickest way in is a short conversation.

A short conversation about your function, the metrics your budget is defended against and who would need to be in the room is usually enough to tell whether this room is the right one.

Book a time with us

Led by Lori Niles-Hofmann and Josh Squires. About us