Building a Learning Organization

Leadership is a journey, and one that often requires learning new things and things that you already know. In this episode, host Seth Dobbs wraps up the season by sharing a personal story about recovering from an injury, using it to illustrate six key leadership principles.First, Seth discusses the importance of facing reality or dealing with potentially worse consequencesSecond, the importance of going slow to go fast and the negative impact that can occur of trying to move too quickly before you’re preparedThird, realizing when you need to re-learn things that you think you already knowFourth, you can make excuses or you can make time, even for the trivial but importantFifth, get the support you needLast, be patient with yourself. Change takes time!

The healthiest organizations are learning organizations - ones that engage in continuous improvement both as individuals and as a team. This allows the organization to thrive in good times and to adapt and work effectively during challenging times.In this episode, Seth brings together concepts from the entire season to talk about:1. What a learning organization is and why it’s valuable2. How Principle Driven Leadership inherently helps build learning organizations3. How to put these concepts into practiceUltimately the focus is on how to create more leaders and build a durable organization.

Seth shares the story of Soren, a former director of corporate operations at a sports equipment retailer.Soren took a new job as VP of Operations at a small startup serving athletes with direct-to-consumer products and online services to help them grow. He provides his team with a playbook full of best practices that he learned over the years and emphasized the importance of adhering to them. Unfortunately, this reduced his team’s ability and drive to make decisions when unforeseen situations arose in Soren’s absence, jeopardizing their position against new competitors.Seth presents an enabling principle that emphasizes the core of Principle Driven Leadership - that leading through principles rather than practices is a more impactful way to lead.

Seth introduces the story of Hollis, a digital manager at an advertising agency.After a series of successful projects, Hollis was asked to take on the lead for a large new client running a back-to-school campaign. He had a strong team, and while there were some challenges along the way, the team was able to overcome them. However, at all-company meetings, Hollis took credit for the good work and would blame the team behind closed doors for the problems. This demoralized his team and led to a key departure.Seth reflects on an enabling principle that reminds us of how important it is for a leader to give space for others to succeed and grow, and how that helps build a durable organization.

Seth relays the story of Reyna, a software engineer who took a new job to work with Teagan because of how great Teagan’s organizational culture sounded.Over time, particularly when the project Reyna was working on started having problems, she learned that the culture was different than Teagan had described. There was a lot of fingerpointing and blaming when things went bad. She considered leaving but decided to confront Teagan.Seth describes culture as organizational muscle memory and is seen in how it reacts in the face of adversity. He then shares an enabling principle to help remind you that you as a leader are key to creating a great culture.

Seth tells the story of Margot, a newly promoted marketing manager at a consumer packaged food manufacturer.Margot was asked to lead the marketing effort in launching a new product in a new category. Margot assembled a strong team and started leading them like they were followers, meaning she told them what to do every step of the way. This eventually led to the departure of a key team member and to only mediocre success in the product launch.Seth talks about the importance of creating leaders, not followers, to help you realize your greatest aspirations.

A big challenge for any leader is sorting out the signal from all the noise of problems and potential problems in the organization. Effective leadership in large part stems from being able to prioritize and de-prioritize issues as they arise, so Seth offers a simple “return on effort” framework to help you analyze your situation.By evaluating the size of the impact and level of effort, you can categorize problems and opportunities into four key categories:De-prioritizeOpportunisticStrategizeHigh valueIn addition to the framework, Seth shares insights on how to move more work into High value, which is where you want to spend most of your efforts.

Seth describes the experiences of Tobias, an engagement lead for a temp agency who had a long running reliable client.Tobias had built a strong relationship with Erica, the hiring manager of a key client, that enabled him to rapidly place people on her team with minimal friction. Things changed after a merger at Erica’s company, but Tobias didn’t adapt. Instead he complained about what was happening at the client and just shrugged his shoulders as the negative impacts piled on.In light of this, Seth shares insight into how to embrace accountability in a way that ensures movement towards positive results while still allowing for mistakes to be made.

Seth recounts the story of Marquita, an engineer and avid cyclist who came up with a new design for a more efficient bicycle.Marquita pulled together a team of advisors to help her launch her product and business but was quickly bogged down with additional ideas, being told that she couldn’t launch a business without a full product line. Unfortunately, pursuing the additional suggestions led to her missing the opportunity to launch her initial idea.Seth provides a different way of approaching this kind of situation through an enabling principle that helps you see the power of creating forward motion through small wins.

Seth relates the experiences of Joaquin, a newly hired director of facilities at the North American headquarters of a global insurance company.Joaquin quickly settled in and soon started identifying problems in how some of the facility operations were run. He felt that he had seen these problems before and jumped right into solving them. Unfortunately, he did not have a complete understanding and implemented the solutions that did not actually fix anything.Seth provides an enabling principle to help prevent instant solution gratification and to remind you that time spent understanding a problem is central to resolving it.