Harness collective intelligence
Grow together. One individual at a time and in every moment
When I graduated from college, I was the smartest person alive, or so I thought. It’s funny how little we actually know when we think we know it all. It took some time, but before too long, my view was flipped on its head.
We’ve gone through many evolutions over the years, but building a culture of lifelong learning with a growth mindset feels like the most important stage to date. It’s structured and fluid, routined and unpredictable. Maybe we aren’t doing it right, or the goalposts are constantly in motion.
I’m not going to pretend to be an expert in this area, but so far, this part of my 30-year career has been the most rewarding and engaging for me personally.
The mission for us is to be part of transformative change. If we enable every individual to grow, contribute, and feel valued, this will provide a sense of purpose and belief that what they do is meaningful. These factors will lead to higher performance, productivity, and retention, creating more value for everyone. But, for each individual, it develops clarity, confidence, joy, pride, and a sense of accomplishment. If we make people feel this way, we can feel good about the day.
We adopt a variety of routines, tools, and processes company-wide and individually as it suits to build an environment conducive to fostering a culture of lifelong learning.
The learnings your team has can be really innovative and result in massive improvements, but they are usually really small. Collectively, if we all share our learnings and compound those learnings through mass adoption, they will add up to massive change over time.
For this to work, everyone needs to have a natural desire to learn, have an open mind, and be supportive of others. If someone doesn’t believe in self-improvement and you want an environment of lifelong learning, they will need to find an employer that wants an employee that is not interested in learning or contributing to others.
It helps to have a shared goal of something that under normal circumstances could be seemingly impossible, but somehow, everyone believes that together if given enough time and everyone works together, it could actually happen.
Combine this with clear expectations and the right balance of autonomy and responsibility for your culture, each department, working team, and individual. It’s easier said than done, so don’t expect to implement and everything goes smoothly. This is all about embracing the journey and being in every moment; it’s not a race to the finish line.