World Café: Building Innovation through the Learning Organization

1. World Café: Building Innovation through the Learning Organization Sarah Schmidt, Organizational Learning Manager CBODN 2014 Annual Conference May 2, 2014

2. Learning Organization: An organization where employees continually create, acquire, and transfer knowledge, helping the organization remain innovative, effective, and able to respond to change.

3. A framework for organizational learning

4. Supportive Learning Environment • Examples • Assess existing and required knowledge prior to commencing a project through Before Action Reviews. • Capture the lessons learned from past successes and failures, with the goal of improving future performance through regular After Action Reviews.

5. Leadership Reinforces Learning • Examples • Seek to improve leadership and communication skills through MSH Supervision Series and Mentoring. • Signal importance of active learning through Rewards and Recognition and Annual Performance Reviews.

6. Concrete Learning Process • Examples • Share technical expertise through MSH Technical Exchange Networks (TEN's). • Consume and contribute regularly to knowledge capital through MSH systems such as Institutional Memory, Friday Forward, One MSH Toolkits and the Intranet.

7. World Café • Three (3) progressive rounds of conversation with each round addressing one question and one building block. • At the end of each round, participants are invited to move to a different table • New building block discussed while linking and connecting ideas with previous conversation rounds. Paper on tables provided to create a visual memory of the conversation

8. Table hosts • Volunteers to act as table hosts and remain at the table during the 3 conversation rounds to:  • Welcomenewcomers • Share the main ideas, themes and questions • Encourage guests to link and connect ideas

9. A picture speaks a thousand words!