The Learning Hive: An Overview

Envision a world in which your system is achieving equity at scale. Think backward — how would that system (i.e., organization, districts, school, team) look and function?

Your system might look something like a bee hive, which, like active, healthy schools and organizations, look and sound busy—even disorganized—to an outsider. But amidst this apparent disarray, bee colonies function as democratic and integrated communities in which each bee has a substantive role in decision-making that allows the collective to adapt and build a dynamic survival strategy in a changing environment

To do this, your system would design daily operations as ongoing opportunities for learning and improvement. A diverse array of actors would participate actively in the design, implementation, and improvement of strategy. At every turn, measurement would help transform daily practice into strategic learning. And the system’s democratic approach to knowledge management would allow each member of the system to contribute to the generation, capture, spread, and application of new learning.

Building this system would require you to be a “learner in chief,”¹Spear, S. J. (2009). The high-velocity edge: How market leaders leverage operational excellence to beat the competition (2nd ed.). McGraw Hill. both by orchestrating learning across the system and by actively participating in it, submitting your own leadership strategy and system design to the same scrutiny you apply to activities and processes of others. 

The Learning Hive is a book designed to help you build that system and become that leader. 

In the book you’ll find actionable recommendations, assessment tools, and case studies related to four evidence-based drivers of effective system design.