Transforming organisational learning
To sustain excellence in a context of continual and often disruptive change, the ability of organisations to learn fast and well, adjusting appropriately their strategies and actions as they go, is essential. And yet many attempts to become ‘learning organisations’ are narrowly focused on reviewing task implementation and the technical dimensions of ‘lessons learned’.
Our approach to using the recent past to change the near future
Harthill’s Insight Learning methodology is designed to enable client organisations to learn quickly and effectively from a recent, or ongoing, experience of strategic and operational change, in order to successfully support transformational change in the future.
Insight Learning is an intensive inquiry process designed to provide feedback loops between intended and actual results. Insight Learning:
- Accelerates leadership, team and organisational self-awareness
- Drives effective strategic learning
- Makes available the data with which it is possible to correct operational inefficiencies fast
As participants in the process, Insight Learning will help you:
- Understand how ingrained patterns of thinking and behaviour limit effectiveness
- Become more robust when challenging the organisation’s strategic direction
- Develop a heightened and detailed awareness of what is working, what is not, and why
What does a Harthill Insight Learning Review involve?
Based on the ‘Learning Histories’ work developed at MIT by Roth and Kleiner in the 1980s, Insight Learning Reviews are a tried and tested method for building learning organisations. They have since been used extensively to support large and small-scale organisational learning in the corporate world, both globally and locally. For further reading click here.
Harthill has used the Insight Learning Review approach with several clients including Norwich Union Insurance, Norwich Union Life, Hewlett Packard Research Labs, Christian Salveson and the Local Government Leadership. If you would like more information please visit our Client stories area.
The Insight Learning Review approach:
- Captures the stories that key stakeholders tell about a change effort and reflects them back to the organisation in a way that captures the learning in the most critical places
- Presents the experiences of participants in a way that generalises the learning for the organisation as a whole and helps stakeholders move forward effectively
- Includes reports of actions and results and the underlying assumptions and reasoning in a way that allows for accelerated and rigorous review
- Includes the perspectives of a variety of stakeholders, including those who do not support the change effort, in a way that promotes fresh and valuable insights
- Tells the story in the words of the participants, promoting both the rigour and integrity of the story told
- Generates new conversations in the organisation that both foster shared systemic understanding and open up new possibilities for direct and immediate change
- Creates a network of skilled change agents capable of supporting required change.
Three levels of the Harthill Insight Learning Review
Harthill offers three distinct levels of Insight Learning for you to choose from depending on the scale and focus of learning required.
Strategic Learning Reviews
When their strategy has been in play for two or three years, many leadership teams value an in-depth, fact and event-based inquiry into their own leadership and strategic process and progress. Strategic Insight Learning Reviews take place over two days and are supported by in-depth data collection and research to generate insights that can correct or transform an organisation’s performance.
Full-scale Harthill Insight Learning Review
A full scale review is a multi-voiced, multi-perspective inquiry into how critical incidents and outcomes unfolded over time. Our approach fosters learning across an organisation, at operational, strategic and cultural levels, both in the moment of inquiry and as an outcome of it.
It can be completed in three to five months, depending on the required scope of the project. Typically it involves the active part-time engagement of six to eight internal staff, who would become part of the ‘research team’ alongside the Harthill Insight team.
Rapid-Focus Learning Reviews
When learnings are needed fast, Harthill offers a 1-day, large-group workshop that generates a rapid appreciation of the main drivers for strategic success and failure and supports the development of personal, team or larger stakeholder groupings.
For further information or an initial conversation, please contact Jane Allen
