

L&D Backstage: Turning Social Connection into a Strategic Capability: A Journey of Scaling Peer-to-Peer Learning
🛠️ L&D Backstage: Practical show & tell sessions. Present your projects step-by-step, showcasing both design and implementation. Real-world insights, straight to the point.
✨ Participation: Presentation + Q&A at the end
In this session, Deborah Madelaine will share what she has learned from designing and scaling Peer Circles at Mars: small groups of people who meet regularly to learn from and with each other.
We’ll explore why peer learning can be particularly powerful in complex organisations, and what it takes to scale in a complex matrixed organisation.
You can expect practical examples, lessons learned, things that didn’t work as expected, and some of the simple structures used to help people turn their colleagues’ experience into a source of learning.
! Note that this is still work in progress so come ready to engage in a dialogue and bring your own perspectives and ideas to the conversation!
You will leave with:
• A practical understanding of what makes peer learning different from facilitated training.
• Simple principles and structures for creating useful peer conversations where people learn from real experience.
• Lessons from designing and scaling Peer Circles inside a large global organisation.
Deborah Madelaine works as a Community and Culture Change Impact Leader at Mars, where she designs and scales social learning ecosystems that strengthen line manager capability, workforce connection, and organisational culture.
With 20+ years of experience, having worked across seven countries, she brings a global, human-centred perspective to building cultures where learning is powered by people.