In a previous post, I talked about a couple of instances where I worked with folks to let them ‘pick my brain’.  Those were about learning design in particular, but I’ve also worked with folks on strategy.  In these strategy sessions, things work a little differently.

So, in a typical strategy session, I prepare by looking at what they’ve done beforehand: any existing strategy documents. I also look at their current context, e.g. their business, market, customers, and products/services.  Finally, I look at their  stated goals. I also explore their stated needs, and see if there are some they may be missing. Then we get together.

I typically will spend an hour or so going over some principles, so we have a shared framework to discuss against.  Then we brainstorm possible actions.  We’ve prepped for this, circulating the space for topics, so people have had time to identify their individual ideas. We get them documented, diverging before converging.  This may be a relatively large group, with representative stakeholders, but not so large that it can’t be managed.

Then, typically, a smaller group will take those ideas and prioritize them. To be clear, it’s informed by the context and infrastructure, so that the steps don’t just go from easier to harder, but it’s also about choosing steps that are strategic in securing credibility, building capacity, and leveraging other initiatives.  At the end, however, the team I’m working with has both a general roadmap and a specific plan.

And I think this is good. They’ve gotten some new and valuable ways to think about strategy, and custom advice, all in a very short engagement.  Sometimes it’s happened under the rubric of a mobile strategy, sometime’s it’s more general, but it always open eyes.  In two particular instances, I recall that the outcomes they ended up focusing on most weren’t even on their radar when they started!

This is another instance of how folks can get high benefit from a small engagement.  Picking my brain can be valuable, but it’s not a fair engagement unless we make it mutually rewarding.  That’s not so hard to do, however.  Just so you know.

Last week included an interesting series of events and conversations.  There was a formal event on innovation in learning technology (that was  only partly  so), and a presentation by a colleague. I also had a couple of conversations, one with said colleague following his more formal event, and another with another colleague before the initial event. And from  that latter conversation came an interesting revelation.  The concept  was Organizational Effectiveness, and the question is the relevance to L&D.

Now my colleague in the conversation that preceded the innovation event is wise, with a broad experience across HR.  And I was mentioning that it was hard to see a real sense of urgency in L&D around the problems I can’t help but notice. So, for instance,  I see much elearning that doesn’t reflect serious design.  And similarly, I see too many L&D organizations not looking beyond the course as their responsibility.

My colleague’s  perspective was interesting. He opined that by and large, he saw the need for formal learning shrinking, and that more and more HR was focusing on providing self-learning resources instead of course.  While this doesn’t explain L&D complacency, it certainly would explain the lack of interest in investment in improvement. And while it should drive an interest in a broader performance ecosystem, that was seen as the responsibility from other areas.

In particularly, he talked about OD and OE.  Now, I’ve heard of Organizational Development, but have always seen it to be about change management (rightly or wrongly).  However, OE was new to me. He explained it was Organizational Effectiveness, and that intrigued me.  Effectiveness would certainly include the typical L&D role of learning, but also performance support.  It’s the ‘optimal execution’ side of my call for organizational success. If we remapped OD  to be about continual innovation, and OE to be about optimal execution, we could have a value footing.

Interestingly, I see that the areas covered as components (not the first four, but these:  Decision Making,  Change & Learning,  Group Effectiveness, &  Self-Organizing & Adaptive Systems) seem to be intrinsic to the work I think organizations need (and have been arguing for L&D to take on). The point is, it doesn’t have to be L&D (and given the lack of awareness and urgency, maybe it can’t be). Maybe I need to look more closely at OE (and hope that it’s not just another rebranding).

The focus seems to be on not-for-profits, and achieving outcomes, not redefining them, so perhaps it’s too limited, but somehow I’d like to get a framing that starts generating action.  It’s time to start looking at working smarter and organizational meta-learning, because it appears to me that the need and opportunity are huge.  What are the leverage points?  I welcome any pointers, feedback, ideas, etc.!

At a private event, I had a chance to hear Kaihan Krippendorff talk about thinking differently about innovation.  He used an 8P’s model as a framework to illustrate how to think differently.

He started by pointing out that the myth of entrepreneurial innovation is overblown, and that innovation comes from moving outside ‘business as usual’.

In an engaging way, he  used several examples for each of the Ps to show how companies succeeded by rethinking around this element (speaking too fast to capture them!).