Learning at the top: leading companies come together to explore the future (page 1 of 3)

And although attending conferences is fun, you're hardly going to learn much and you're probably on the speaking platform anyway, so people will have come to learn from you. And keeping up with the latest ideas in magazines and journals is interesting, but when it comes to thought-leadership, really, a guru has to go it alone.

That is, until now.

Because a strategic consulting company called Tosca has come up with a brilliant way to keep its expert clients engaged and on the learning track. Tosca has brought together senior people, many of them in HR, from non-competing companies across the world, into consortia to explore themes that have been concerning them all and which they want to spend time thinking about. Together, they research future-focused HR topics in depth, sparking each others' thoughts and ideas, sharing tips and best practice and eventually bringing back some really good initiatives into their own companies.
This style of learning seemed to me to be so beneficial that I agreed to be one of the people who went to speak to them, and have been even more impressed at the process, the more I understand it.

They begin by describing why they're interested in the theme and what it will mean for their company if they can develop new and better processes and practices. They set their objectives, if you like (although the faint-hearted be warned: the outcomes are not always certain and the process not always transparent. That's the nature of exploration at this level; you're never quite sure what's going to come of it).

Once the theme is more clearly in focus, the member companies commission research, gather leading thinkers to talk to them about the theme, read all the latest papers on the topic and begin to formulate their own thinking. A major part of the learning consists in travelling around the world to be hosted by one of the members or to see for themselves what is happening in that region or industry.
Towards the end of the process, they begin to summarise their thinking and determine how it could impact upon their company's performance. The final outcomes are carefully assembled by Tosca into white papers, executive summaries and slide presentations for members to use in house with their own senior teams.

Of course it's not a new idea: think of it as evolving from the idea of an action learning set, or working like a Conference Board commission in the US, or a government select committee in the UK which investigates a particular topic and then reports back to the House of Commons.

But the advantages of working in this way are considerable. Unique learning takes place in a highly stimulating, supportive and experimental atmosphere, largely due to a combination of academic, expert contributions during work sessions and the practical experience of the participants. Sharing ideas and engaging with leading-edge experts provides insights that cannot be gained from published material. Members find that their understanding is challenged and changed by hearing the perspectives of other multi-nationals.
The consortium members work intensively in a series of meetings over 6-9 months and establish strong, lasting relationships. As a result, members continue to share information and use each other as sounding boards on a number of different issues. Getting a trusted perspective from respected individuals in a completely different industry has been a big bonus for all concerned. Finally, and very importantly, participants can have confidence in the robustness of the project findings because of the breadth of inputs.