There is a saying that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This is meant to highlight the importance of culture, and it couldn’t be closer to the truth. Culture is how an organization behaves, what it tolerates and what it celebrates. Culture is a representation of the people, beliefs and norms that an organization identifies with and projects to the world. It’s not easy to define but you know when you’ve got a good one.
At Project Brilliant, having a learning culture is paramount. According to Peter Senge’s book “The Fifth Discipline”, a learning organization is a group of people working together collectively to enhance their capacities to create results they really care about. We embrace this mindset at Project Brilliant and believe our learning and advancement allows us to be the very best for our clients.
We don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk. Project Brilliant makes significant investments to foster continuous learning among ourselves and our community. One example is our Project Brilliant Fridays. We do not do billable client work on Fridays. We dedicate 20% of our time each week to learn and share from and with each other. In doing so, we expand skills and knowledge across our team to further our coaching and training expertise. We also use this time to work together developing training and educational content to promote learning for our clients and the community.
In addition to Fridays, Project Brilliant supports and encourages each other to pursue learning opportunities on topics we are passionate about. Every year, team members select several training classes, cohorts, and certifications to help us continue our personal growth. The learning our team has had in the last few years is remarkable. Topics such as Agile Fluency, Leadership Agility, Large Scale Scrum (LeSS), Scrum@Scale, Clean Language, Competing Values Framework, and Path to Agility are just a few examples.
The other side to all that learning is sharing. We continually share our learnings too. We teach each other new techniques from conferences and trainings that we’ve attended. We share ideas from articles and videos that we’ve viewed. We have a book club where we can share insights every month. We often bring back what we’ve been doing at client sites to help each other learn. This continuous act of sharing builds strong bonds between us at Project Brilliant and contributes to our learning culture by helping each other improve and grow personally and professionally.
We recently extended our learning culture focus to the community with the launch of PB Labs. PB Labs is a full-day of Open Space dedicated to a specific theme. Each PB Labs event brings together Agile practitioners and other thought leaders from the local community. Similar to most Open Space events, people are passionate about sharing and learning with their peers. If you are interested in participating in a PB Labs event, please contact us.
Project Brilliant has made learning an ongoing priority. The investment and focus on learning has shaped our culture. Now learning and sharing is a part of our day to day. It’s been fulfilling to experience the impact that our learning has on our clients. Our eyes are now more open to see new possibilities for ourselves. This renews our commitment and motivates us to keep on learning.
Many consulting firms try to squeeze every last penny out of their clients. We intentionally grow OUR capabilities and expertise so we can pass them on to our clients. We truly want our clients to succeed. It is critical that we continually stay on the cutting edge in able to support those clients and help them meet and exceed their goals.
