The Rituals and Cadences of Learning
CultivateMe operates on a trimester schedule. Every four months we take a week to connect and reflect on what happened over the past trimester. What worked? Where are we getting stuck? What might we try differently next trimester? We evaluate our culture, processes, and tools. And we establish our goals for the coming trimester and make sure we’re aligned to our “North Star” mission.
This is one of our learning rituals (week-long in-person off-site gathering). It happens at a certain cadence (every 4 months).
Learning at work happens in many ways. In this post I want to explore the cadences we use to think about learning, and the rituals that make the most sense at each of those cadences. These are rituals we use ourselves and help our clients implement in their teams.
Just a quick definition for the purposes of this post, I think of “learning” as => updating your mental model such that you change how you operate. In other words, if you’re not changing the way you operate, then you’re not really learning anything. This could mean changing the way you operate as an individual professional, or as a team, or as an entire organization. Generally speaking, the larger the cadence, the more extensive and permanent the update. The shorter the cadence, the more tentative and experimental the update.
Okay, here we go…
Daily Rituals
Write reflections. Throughout each and every day you notice things; you’re surprised. Perhaps a meeting went well because you tried a new agenda format or a difficult conversation went rather smoothly. Maybe you watched a colleague pull off an amazing presentation, or you suddenly feel anxiety about an upcoming deadline. So you write this down. You just capture your thoughts and notice what has your attention.
Save resources. In our hyper-connected, information economy you run across useful resources every day. Things that seem to promise new insight or might be useful in the future: a blog post on Medium, an article you found on Twitter, a YouTube video or podcast, a new book recommendation from a mentor, an online course. So you save it with a quick note about why you thought it was useful. Think of it like sharing a link with your future self.
”Aha” conversations. Sometimes a lightbulb goes off. We have some insight or notice a pattern that seems useful. Maybe it’s a new way to pitch our offerings, or a technique for writing user stories. When we learn something it’s just a natural human tendency to want to share it with others. This often takes the form of a quick phone or video call: “Hey, I think I’m on to something. Do you have 2 minutes to give me some feedback?” So we take a couple minutes to talk through the insight with each other. It helps us understand the insight better, and it energizes and synchronizes our teammates.
The above rituals are about articulating our insight. By writing them down or talking about them we force our intuitions into words. We believe in the old adage that “if you can’t explain it to someone else, then you don’t really understand it.” Taking a minute or two, throughout the day, to articulate what you’re noticing, helps you understand it more. It forces you to map your immediate experiences onto your mental models… or recognize when your mental models might need updating. These articulations also become a breadcrumb trail that indicate the larger development journey we are on.
Time commitment: 5–10 minutes a day.
Weekly Rituals
Write commits. While most of our daily rituals look back at our experience to make sense of it, a commit looks forward. A commit is a simple framework for getting better. You pick something to Focus on, (typically some tension you’re experiencing in your work), you come up with a simple plan of Action for the coming week, and you describe your Vision of the world after you take that action. We try to write one commit at the beginning of each week, and evaluate how we did on last week’s commit. When you pick something to focus on (and writing it down) you heighten your awareness of that issue throughout the week. You notice more and improve faster. You also turn ambiguous tension into concrete action, which energizes you.
Have commit meetings. Writing a commit alone can sometimes be challenging. Talking through that Focus-Action-Vision framework with a colleague helps to clarify your thinking: they help find your blind-spots and act as a sounding board. Having commit meetings also improves the psychological safety of your team, which is the single biggest predictor of effective teams.
Write meta-reflections. At the end of some weeks I’ll read through all my recent commits, reflections, and resources. I often notice a theme or pattern so I’ll write a reflection about that. Again, I’m updating my mental models based on a slightly larger data set. This often leads to the commit I want to make in the coming week.
Time commitment: 30–60 minutes a week.
Monthly
Monthly review. At the end of every month I look back at our performance as a team/company and reflect on what we achieved, what worked, where we got stuck, and what we might try differently in the coming month (notice a pattern here?) This works best when I place some limitations on my writing, usually about 100 words on each of the 7–8 main areas of our business (strategy, marketing, product, client delivery, etc) This is a solo activity, not a collaborative exercise. I share my written reflection with the rest of the team and we talk about it on our weekly call. Then we decide on the projects we want to tackle in the coming month. This is updating our mental model of current strategy and priorities.
Time commitment: 1 hour a month.
Project Retro. When we finish a project, say we shipped a new feature, or completed an SOW with a client, we have a retro conversation. We discuss (you guessed it) what worked, where we got stuck, and what we might try differently next time. Often some actions come out of this that involve updating our tools and systems in some minor way. But we also notice where we have strengths and gaps in our own skill set as professionals. So it’s as much a retro of our ways of working as it is of us as individuals. Ultimately we’re updating our mental model of how we manage projects.
Time commitment: about 2 hours a month (varies).
Journey Updates. We help our clients turn their jobs into journeys. This means every individual professional in the organization has an explicit development journey that they’re on at any given time, which is documented in our Iris platform. So at least once a month (though as often as every week) each person will look through their reflections, commits, and resources and add some to their journeys. It’s a way of crafting a narrative of their progress as they build new skills and master important activities for their role.
Time commitment: 30 minutes a month
Quarterly/Trimesterly
Journey Reviews & Iris Adjustments. A journey usually lasts a few months. So about every quarter individual professionals will close out their journey. This means they look back over all their commits and reflections around that journey and make note of how they’ve grown. The natural next step is to then change the mastery levels of certain rays in their iris to reflect their current mastery of their role. Typically they identify the journeys they want to go on next… some new skill they want to develop, or activity they want to master, or achievement they want to hit. This is updating the mental model of themselves as competent, effective professionals.
Time Commitment: 30 minutes per review
Performance Reviews. Hopefully it’s clear by now that talking and reflecting on one’s performance is a daily activity, not something that should just happen once a year. However, there is value in a formal ritual to mark the growth of an individual and make certain formal changes to title and compensation. A performance review takes a look at all the journeys a person has had in the past year, and overall changes in their iris. Managers and their teams talk through this growth, look at the requirements for “leveling up” and determine if any changes are warranted.
Time commitment: 60 minutes per review
CultivateUs / Day of Reflection. As I described at the beginning of this post, at CultivateMe we dedicate an entire week to reflecting on the past trimester. For our clients we help facilitate a similar set of individual and group reflections, such as reviewing individual journeys and updating irises (a way of showing someone’s mastery of a specific role). But we also help them reflect on how roles themselves have evolved and how they can update their ways of working as a team or an organization. This is also a great opportunity for individuals to present to the larger group on any topic they think others will find useful. This ritual is an update to the mental model of the “operating system” of the business, as well as a cultural reminder that learning is “the way we do things around here.”
Time commitment: 1 day to 1 week per quarter
Okay, now what?
Rituals and cadences aren’t anything special. They arise naturally, often without any intentional effort. They are, in many respects, the essence of your company culture.
What the rituals and cadences of learning at your organization? Take a few minutes to write down the ways you and your team learn on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis.
How’s that working out for you? Where’s the friction in those rituals right now? What’s working? Where are you getting stuck? And what might you try differently.
CultivateMe is a talent development agency for agencies. We help agencies establish a repeatable, scalable, and sustainable system for growing their people and winning the talent war. To get fresh ideas on how to improve learning at work, sign up for our newsletter.
