Overview
The Learning Hive
What does effective learning-leadership look like in action?
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 function like a hive, where a diverse array of actors participate actively in the design, implementation, and improvement of strategy, treating daily operations as ongoing opportunities for learning and improvement. 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.
Build a hive
Cultivate systems that draw in all system actors—those the system employs and those it serves—to engage in robust vision-setting, strategy development, and learning.
Swarm, innovate, pollinate
Democratize and streamline the generation, consolidation, capture, sharing, and application of knowledge to solve problems and innovate.
Harvest data to monitor and improve
Measure process and outcomes across the system to identify what works, for whom, under what conditions.
Lead the learning hive
Propel innovation, enable participatory decision-making and collaboration, and serve as learners in chief.
