Leading at Light Speed is an essential new leadership book by Eric Douglas synthesizing best business practices into 10 Quantum Leaps that build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization.
The following article is about Learning Loops, a key concept revealed in Chapter 5, Accelerate the Pace of Change, of Leading at Light Speed.
Learning loops can be implemented anywhere in the organization to accelerate the pace of change. The CEO of the used car chain, CarMax, requires meetings that include all employees and shares the most up to date information. Then he asks: “How can we improve our performance? What is it that we may be doing that could be considered unnecessary, or stupid?” He makes sure to be a part of these sessions. He also makes sure that every individual idea is documented and receives the appropriate response.
Greg, the CEO of a global IT solutions company, wanted his company to begin moving more quickly to adapt to change. Due to my advice, he began to require all of his leaders to participate in weekly meetings in order to discuss performance. There were charts displaying the most recent information concerning change requests, budget, delivery times, and customer satisfaction. Each leader had to explain what he or she was doing to improve performance. The process was transparent and fair. And it got results! Managers could no longer cover up their inadequacies or blame anyone who wasn’t in the room. Why? Everyone was present!
Toyota and Honda pioneered this practice in the 1950s and 1960s by organizing people into teams and giving those teams the power to measure their performance and improve. The result was a “virtuous” circle of learning, innovation, and higher performance. This practice – what the Japanese call kaizen – has been put to use in a vast array of companies and sectors.
Learning loops can take many forms. In the Western US, there is a chain of auto parts stores that calculates the amount of customer service feedback of any kind. The idea? “It is our goal to encourage managers to discover new ways to gain feedback, in an effort to learn and progress,” stated CEO, Greg. “So long as that means they will be openly soliciting, that’s excellent. We need to be able to have that dialogue with our customers.”
A Tibetan proverb says, “To be uncertain is uncomfortable. certainty is foolishness.” Humans posses the ability to learn very quickly so long as they are provided with the information and are motivated to improve. It may be uncomfortable sometimes, but that focus on learning is what generates trust and builds a high-performing organization.
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