I knew it was important, but I was stuck.
A couple of years into leading my first social enterprise, The Otesha Project, my board, and staff were all pushing me to create a leadership succession plan. I was excited about creating space for new leadership in the organization – but the succession plan remained untouched on my to do list. I didn’t know how to move forward on it, so it was easier to fill my days with other seemingly urgent projects.
Finally a friend suggested I do something like a learning sprint. I didn’t have the framework we’ve since developed for SFC, but I spent some time mapping out what I knew and what I didn’t. I spoke to a number of founders who had left their organizations, and board members who had helped facilitate that transition. I managed to get my hands on a few key resources, and it didn’t take long for something that seemed daunting to become perfectly doable.
I found flow and excitement in the challenge. I was not only able to write a super strong succession plan, the things I learned actually changed the whole way I was working. My original knowledge gap was my bottleneck and once I addressed it my whole focus for the last 8 months with the organization shifted.
Most importantly the experience reinforced something I already knew.
That the one skill every changemaker needs is knowing what to do when we’re stuck.
That’s what a learning sprint is all about.
We’ve spent the past year learning about how to create the optimal environment to support changemakers in designing the training they need. We’ve put all that into this course. It includes not just the best practices of self-directed learning – like helping you get the most out of your learning interviews – but also the community elements that can help surface unexpected people and resources to learn from, and kick you into gear : )
Want a little help thinking about what skill you might focus on in a learning sprint? Check out our 3 minute video on how to identify your skill gap. It’s one of a whole host of videos, toolkits, and email templates that we’ve produced.
It’s time to get unstuck.
Enroll now and grab one of the few spots left that get a one on one learning sprint design session.
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