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We have often heard said in life, “Change is the only constant”. While true, not many of us take cognizance of this, especially in the context of business uncertainty. When thrust upon us, having no choice, we deal with it the best we can– may it be a big or a small change.
The tsunami of change across industries & the world that the pandemic has thrust at us has been unimaginable, making learning as we go along even more imperative.
So what does Learning in such uncertain times with the business uncertainty unfolding with each day entail?
Step out of your comfort zone experiment. Test out new ideas. Do not wait to perfect a thought, initiate and make continuous iteration & improvement a way of evolution to perfect it.
Be honest and transparent about what you know or do not know. Discover the unvarnished truth, if you are unable to raise difficult issues yourself applaud and encourage those who do.
Model real-time learning. Commit to a culture of rapid-cycle learning. To enable that create a central communication point more like a virtual war room, the kind you would expect to see in active military combat. This will help the collation of learnings across the organization, shortening individual learning paths, thus reducing time to adapt to change.
Put your learning to test. Run small experiments rather than big bets to rapidly test novel approaches. Practice, for real, the well-worn adage, “fail fast,” with rapid-cycle metrics and innovation adoption.
Conduct after-action debriefs. Pull out lessons from successes and failures with a military-style, after-action review. Constantly ask the team, “What can we learn from this?”.
If the experiment is a resounding success, work with the team on the next steps to scale it, keeping the reporting vigilance & constant improvements as part of the plan.
If not, course-correct based on disconfirming evidence. Shift the plan transparently sharing the relevant details with the team. Thus, enabling learning at a larger scale and allowing for in-flow of ideas.
