Are We Getting Better, or Just Getting Through? - Ep115

All right, so learning organization, let's start there.

When you say that, when you hear that, what does it mean to you?

So to me, it is any kind of organization.

So that's not necessarily education or schools, but it could be businesses, non-profits, any organization at all.

But to make it a learning organization, it is constantly changing and evolving based on what they have learned.

Yeah, and I think sometimes when we hear that constantly changing and evolving, you get the immediate gut reaction of, oh, that sounds exhausting that you're constantly changing.

But we're not talking about grandiose changes.

We're talking about constant tweaks and adjustments that you're...

I once had a superintendent that used to talk about his organization saying that they valued failing forward, that they're constantly reflecting on what did we try? What have we learned? What are some of the tweaks that we can make? In my mind, the antithesis to a learning organization is one that's stagnant.

And we hear things like, well, this is how we've always done things.

Yeah,

yeah.

How you've already done things may not be working at this point.

So how do you move from a static organization to one that is more dynamic and learning and growing consistently?

So to me, it's always about being in that cycle of reviewing your progress and determining what are some of the things that we have learned and then making adjustments according to what progress we have made and just constantly engaging in that cycle of learning.

And we often refer to it around three questions.

Yeah,

just a simple research.

Yeah, they come out of

teacher research, but it's what have we done? What have we learned from what we have worked toward? And then finally, what comes next? So those three simple questions allow us to engage consistently and intentionally, which is an important part of this, to reflect on, you know, what are the things that we have been able to accomplish? What have we learned through that? And what comes next?

Well, in my mind, if we are truly a learning organization, you're setting aside time for those conversations.

And like you said, intentionality, being really purposeful of when are we reflecting? How do we do that in our language? It may be something as simple as we have a success and being able to say, what did we do that we think led to that success? Because it's just going to help us continue to grow and learn and like you said, evolve.

Yeah.

So this always makes me think a little bit about what we do in the cycle of formative assessment in the classroom.

And that is about being able to set a task for our students, then determining who's got it and who doesn't have it.