learning organization

  I hope you have plans to develop your people in 2011. And I hope they are actionable plans. I have yet to meet a company that over-trains or over-develops its people. I meeting plenty of companies that believe that they can’t afford it. To which I say: Baloney! Hogwash!

No matter what we do for a living, at some point we are all in the business of learning. Either we are on a learning curve ourselves. Or we are trying to influence others, whether through sales and marketing, or though managing, or through coaching. In any of these cases,

Do you think of yourself as a coach? When I ask this question, almost every single hand goes up. But what does that really mean? Do we have a process? Or do we confuse sharing our little bits of wisdom with coaching? To be an effective coach, you must combine

Another little gem from the internet is about learning. A lean thinker is all about learning. We recommend small steps, any step, every day. Sometimes you have to squeeze it in the cracks. That’s where grouting comes in. Grout fills in the cracks. How do you fill in the little

This week I’ll be blogging about various things I’ve found around the internet. Of course, the volume of content continues to increase. I sometimes wonder if the rate of increase of garbage outpaces the good stuff. But there is plenty of good stuff as well. I’m always on the lookout

NCIS has been one of the most popular shows on television for years now. I generally don’t like TV crime dramas, but my wife has gotten me a bit into this one over time. The lead character is Leroy Jethro Gibbs, played by Mark Harmon. Gibbs has a number of

Organizational design can be used to solve problems or enhance lean methods. I wrote on the relationship that HR can play with lean, and fitting in with organizational design, in Organizational Design and Role of HR in Lean. Certainly mental models are challenged within a lean journey and the organizational

Eric Ries, author of the StartupLessonsLearned.com blog, has been speaking and writing about lean startups. His particular focus is on software startups, and perhaps even more focused on those that are web-based and broadly distributed products. However, his thoughts on how to use lean principles such as experimentation, structure, and

Are you heading to a conference soon? We’re coming up on conference season for many organizations. I observe most people not getting their full value out of the process. I will share why at the end of this post. I have my own schedule. In April alone, I will be

Most organizations don’t spend time in reflection. It seems wasteful. But it’s vitally important in an organization trying to make progress. Without learning, courses aren’t corrected and lessons aren’t internalized. A favorite quote of mine by Soren Kierkegaard speaks to this point: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it