According to the latest Benchmarking Foundation Evaluation Practices report, foundations are increasingly investing in internal staff who are focused on learning.
There is a lot of energy behind the idea of creating learning cultures, learning organizations, and learning practices that are going to make your organization more impactful. Becoming a learning organization is an illusive holy grail: everyone wants to be it but many struggle to point to real live examples.
This is not just a trend in philanthropy but increasingly it is permeating the entire nonprofit sector, particularly within those fields that have more exposure to continuous improvement methods such organizations in the education reform space.
We always like to remind our partners and collaborators not to lose the forest for the trees. Becoming a learning organization is not the destination itself. What organizations want to be able to do is reap the benefits of applying what they are learning to improve their work; that’s the promise of becoming a learning organization. This is why we like to start conversations about organizational learning by describing the ultimate goal and describing the desired changes in organizational culture, mindset, and processes to make strategic learning a reality. I find this classic article from Patrizi Associates and the Center for Evaluation Innovation to be very helpful in making the concept of strategic learning concrete.
My favorite takeaways about how strategic learning looks in practice include:
- Focusing on explicitly testing hypotheses as the way to do ‘strategy.’
- Shifting your mindset to embrace uncertainty; embracing different ways of knowing, knowledge and perspectives.
- Committing to consistent ways of reflecting, assessing what you are learning, and planning how to act on these insights.
Eyes Wide Open has withstood the test of time and it serves as a constant reminder to focus and continue to grow our own learning practice.