Are you inspiring a larger learning ecosystem?

Strategic leaders and their organizations don’t learn in a vacuum.

→ This is the final article in a 5-part series on building learning organizations. Read Part 1 here. Read Part 4 here.←

THINK ON IT: Are you inspiring a larger learning ecosystem? 

Let’s imagine for a moment that your business is the perfect learning machine.

You may not even need much imagination. It may be true. You may be conducting effective postmortems. Your people may be idea factories. And, as a leader, you’re not afraid to disrupt yourself.  

Yes, you’ve created a culture of learning. Those who work for you would have a hard time finding a greater return on their learning investment elsewhere.

But what about the larger ecosystem of people outside your organization? Your customers. Your suppliers. Your advisors. Are they learning alongside you? Do you inspire them to grow their learning culture?

Your organization may be in impeccable shape, but if your customers, your suppliers, and your advisors aren’t learning constantly, you’ll be limited by their limitations. Your ecosystem has to grow and adapt with you—or, to stay ahead of the game, you’ll need to find those that will. 

Do you have a strategy that helps your customers transform? Does your team know what deep thinking looks like? Do your suppliers have the margin they need to be innovative, or are they too reactive? 

Let’s face it. Creating a learning culture in your own business is difficult enough. It may be seemingly impossible to influence others to do so. 

But, what if you asked the question, What would it take for us to be a cultural role model to those who rely upon us and work with us? What kinds of learning behaviors would make our partners intrigued to know how we do it?

Imagine that. Wouldn’t that be grand?

Ok, now that you’ve imagined it, what steps can you take to make a part of it real?

Premium Members, read on to further prime your thinking about how to inspire a larger learning ecosystem. (Become a Premium Member. Paid subscribers get access to nearly 100 tools and how-tos on implementing strategic topics, including a 7-part series to help leaders build their own strategic capacity.)

“Create the culture of learning that you wish you’d had.” — Laura Vater

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