Strategic Learning

I saw a really good talk this week, at a London Funders meeting, about strategic learning. It was defined thus:

Strategic learning is the use of data and insights from a variety of information-gathering approaches—including evaluation—to inform decision making about strategy. 

It occurs when organizations or groups integrate data and evaluative thinking into their work, and then adapt their strategies in response to what they learn.

This is a fabulous definition. It encapsulates what's needed, what's done with it, and how you can tell you're doing it. I think the biggest risk is with the words being defined. Use of the word "strategic" risks making learning loftier and more exclusive than it needs to be.

Learning isn't reserved for the SMT; it's something that is at everybody's fingertips. If you look around your organisation and ask yourself who knows the beneficiary's needs best, it's more likely to be the front line than it is to be the SMT. The SMT has a number of responsibilities, but day-to-day operations with program beneficiaries isn't usually one of them. This makes them well placed to identify overall trends in their sector, upcoming organisational challenges, and opportunities. It doesn't make the SMT particularly well suited to make decisions about how to best serve program beneficiaries. Therefore, anything which helps the front line to learn, share that learning, and propagate those things throughout the organisation is to be embraced, while things which do the opposite are to be avoided.

Doesn't moving learning to the front line risk moving strategy out of the hands of the SMT and result in chaos? Realistically, no. Embracing learning as an organisation means changing the role of the SMT from that of decision-maker and policy-setter to that of enabler; from enforcement of a strategy to facilitation of thinking, learning, and experimentation. Learning and improvement become the strategy, and as beneficiary progress is the only true measure of progress, beneficiaries become the real heart of the organisation - not just in words and thoughts, but also in measurement (and what gets measured is what gets done).

In a system where learning is embraced, the SMT's primary responsibility is to help people figure out how to learn, how to interpret what they've learned, and how to continually find new ways to learn, grow, and challenge themselves, in service to program beneficiaries. When I ask myself which I'd rather have - one person responsible for strategy who is removed from day-to-day operations, or 50 people who know what impact the organisation's decisions are having on beneficiaries, the decision seems clear to me.

(This post is loosely linked to The Outsider's Experience)