Lightweight Team Learning

Many organizations say they give team members and management time for learning and innovation on some cadence. For all the reasons you can imagine, few teams and managers actually do it. The common theme is there is no time left to learn this week/month/quarter/year… Soon, it’s years. And you’ve moved on to a new job with the same problem happening all over again. How about trying a lightweight approach as an experiment?

Like sunsets, learning is fleeting for busy tech and product teams.

On Friday morning (for example) of each week, say to your team,

“Anything that slowed us down this week, go get rid of it.”

Also, try “That thing you hated this week—what can you do to make it better?”

The manager will also make themselves available to help improve or fix (or escalate up to the level of access needed to work on the problem). It’s less formal and very focused. Talk with your team about the idea, and then put it into practice. Like going to the gym, you gotta give it a real effort to see the benefits and value.