Learning in the Flow with LIVEsciences

No matter what industry you’re in, there are countless programs out there that will enhance the treasure trove of talent and skill that is already in your teams, and no self-respecting organization these days would be deficient in implementing regular L&D programs for their employees.

Leaders who want to keep their talent should also provide opportunities for professional growth. Whether it’s upskilling through training, challenging projects that allow the training wheels to come off, or simply mentoring and coaching — these growth opportunities benefit both employees and the company.

LIVEsciences as a self-organized company is no different. We all benefit when everyone in our team is evolving and developing new skills. The only thing that might be unique is that we don’t have managers to guide everyone through the process. What we do have is a role called Me, Myself and I which means, I am the CEO of my own development, and I will take care that I get impulses and insights on my development areas, understand what gives me energy and decide how I want to take care of my own development.

In the world of consultancy, it can be extremely challenging to find the time to not only attend courses, but to also to really dive deeper in the learning and bring it to practice. Josh Bersin coined a term called “learning in the flow of work,” a concept that deals with the issue of not having enough time to learn while at work, or worse, not being able to utilize and thus absorb content from the training.

Allow me to share with you just a few of the things we’ve come up with, that are both structural roles and meetings,and non-intrusive practices that allow us to apply learnings through self-reflection, sharing and real conversations.

Me, Myself & I

This role is a structural concept, which everyone who joins LIVEsciences gets assigned to from Day 1. It’s not only a tenet for learning and development, but it is also a basic foundation of our self-organized system. Everyone is empowered to drive, to ask question, to proactively steer conversations and to imagine possibilities. That also means from a development standpoint, I can decide what I need, but it’s up to me to create the learning space for myself in alignment with our strategic growth direction.

Learning through Various Communication Channels

Conversations are crucial to us. We make sure that we are intentional about learning in every conversation we find ourselves in, whether it’s synchronous via regular meetings, or asynchronous via our collaboration platform. A few examples include:

• 1:1s — This is part of our relationship and trust building practices, one where we can practice radical candor through feedback, but also just simply learning what the other person is up to and how we might support each other with a specific dilemma.
• Learn, Praise and Success — During our weekly meetings, we have a section where we share our personal reflection from the week and also have someone asking a powerful question to deepen our learnings for further reflection. This is not only a development opportunity, but also a way for us to nurture our psychological safety knowing that I have a small group of people that I can be more open and vulnerable with.
• Offsites and Retrospectives — Even though we are a fully remote team, we don’t take opportunities to work together for granted. We drop our pens for a full day monthly to spend time with each other, go deeper in some topics and even outwork and bring solutions to some of the tensions and problems we are sensing during this offsite. This is also a way to developing and growing together, to tackle of real organizational challenges through experimenting on our own system.
• Tension Meetings — It sounds like a tactical meeting but we see tensions as an opportunity for us to develop and evolve individually and as an organization. Some tensions may be relational and can raise awareness, while some others may be systemic and really teaches us more about the complexities of a growing and constantly evolving organization. This gives us first hand experience to the emotional journey of change that our clients also undergo, which also helps us to empathize and hold the space for them.
• #KnowledgeBase — We nurture a learning culture at LIVEsciences and we try to keep it simple, easy to contribute and discuss learnings on the fly. Our #knowledgebase is a slack channel, where we share and exchange information on emerging trends, insights that we’re seeing, basically information that’s in line with our work. It sounds too unstructured, but with a good search in the tool, it’s very easy to find things as they become more relevant.
• LVS Understands LVS: In LIVEsciences, because we’re working on different assignments, we come together every couple of weeks to share what we’ve learned from the different projects and how we’re executing them, needless to say, without disclosing sensitive information. We call these 20-minute sessions LIVEsciences Understands LIVEsciences. This is our way of not only creating awareness, but also sharing the knowledge through organization so we are aware of the experiences and what our team can potentially bring to the table for future opportunities. We also have a spin-off to this called LIVEsciences Understands Failure.

Measuring Outcomes

You often hear L&D programs being measured to be able to assess the return of the organization’s investment. Our LIVEline steers us differently in terms of choosing the appropriate yardstick for our development. We look at the outcomes and reflect on the anecdotal evidence of how our learnings are shaping the growth and development of each individual, and our system as a collective. This helps us to reflect and realign with our mission and ask ourselves constantly, “What is the impact we are making collectively?” and “How am I contributing and developing my sphere of influence as I evolve individually?”

Being a CEO of our own development is both a X and an Y. How we do it at LIVEsciences is just one of a plethora of ways you can imagine shaping your L&D initiatives — what’s important is that it should be aligned with your culture and appetite for learning. In our self-organized setup, the MM&I role is the game changer in setting this foundation. It can also mean something else for you.

While we continue to sense and respond to change, we would also love for others to experiment, find the right flow that works for your own learning culture to emerge. What truly matters is that we are all moving at a steady pace to unleash the potential of the amazing people within our organizations.

“I maintained my edge by always being a student; you will always have something new to learn.”

- Jackie Joyner Kersee

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.