WHAT ARE WE LEARNING ?
ALIGN Practice: Integrate
When something does not go as planned in your organization, what is the first question typically asked?
“Who did this?”
or
“What happened, and what did we learn?”
The first question centers accountability. The second opens the door to curiosity and learning.
Does your organization expect perfection, or encourage innovation?
It is difficult to have both at the same time. Work needs a level of precision, consistency, and reliability. Getting there can require exploration, adaptation, and learning.
Whether or not innovation feels comfortable, customer needs, technology, and market conditions shift. Organizations will either respond proactively or reactively.
I have worked with people whose companies said they wanted innovative thinking or an entrepreneurial mindset, but it turned out they did not. Established companies entrenched in their practices may find innovation uncomfortable. The organization may have low bandwidth for risk, with little room in the budget or schedule for experiments to fall short. Sometimes the concern is that trying something new and having it be anything less than fully successful could be perceived as a misstep and damage the company’s reputation.
A culture that supports exploration and adaptation creates the conditions for people to test ideas, learn from missteps, and adjust in real time. There is no penalty when thoughtful attempts do not yield the desired result. Instead, the organization studies what happened, what was learned, and what needs to be adjusted.
What can be tested safely?
What needs close oversight?
Are we accomplishing what we set out to accomplish?
What are the known risks and how do we mitigate them?
What would tell us to pause, revise, or stop?
Naming the risks early, and identifying ways to mitigate them, helps the organization understand its tolerance for learning and adjustment.
Even with the best planning, things can go differently in the field. Examined carefully, less than successful attempts and outcomes can provide as much useful information as successful deployments.
In ALIGN℠, this is the practice of Integrate: translating priorities into daily work, where new approaches get tested, studied, and brought into how work actually gets done.
The work of Integrate helps make “What are we learning?” the mindset of the organization, not just the answer to a single question.
One of the statements in the ALIGNment Snapshot reads:
Our culture supports exploration and adaptation, making it safe to test ideas, learn from missteps, and adjust in real time.
The ALIGNment Snapshot is a ten-minute reflection tool that helps leaders see where strategy, culture, and execution are working together, and where closer attention is needed.