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Business organizations can advance more productively toward achieving their missions by acting on five questions that make up a “learning loop,” suggests a new book by Partners Federal Credit Union CEO John Janclaes, a CUES member.
In Doing What Matters: How Leaders Help Individuals and Organizations Thrive, Janclaes describes a recursive process in which business leaders guide their teams to consider:
- What is going on? The team assesses current performance with both inside-out and outside-in views informed by qualitative and quantitative data.
- What really matters? To answer this question, focus on customer orientation, identifying stakeholders’ needs and examining the organization’s economic engines, or what drives financial performance.
- What are our options? By casting a wide net for ideas and staying open-minded about all available possibilities, the team is more likely to find the most effective solutions to optimize organizational potential.
- What are our plans? Systematic planning sets out aims, goals, strategies, tactics, and outcomes in a concrete document that details assignments, schedules, and the means of evaluating results.
- What did we learn? To keep the learning loop rolling, the team identifies and applies lessons learned to continually improve what it has put in place.
Janclaes says the learning loop draws on his quarter-century of leading $1.4 billion Partners FCU, Burbank, Calif., and working with other financial service providers.
“This book is intended as a contribution toward building a community for leaders, which is why book sale proceeds will go toward scholarships for leadership training,” he adds.
Janclaes is also developing The CEO Corner, an online forum where executives can find and contribute to podcasts, blogs, and other content on leadership challenges and solutions, including a downloadable version of the learning loop and other worksheets from Doing What Matters.
