Analogous Learning: Discovering Commonalities in the Most Uncommon Places
What can an advertising executive learn from a vegetable farmer? What can a hospital administrator learn from a high tech start-up?
The answer is…more than you might expect!
I was recently reminded of the power of analogous learning as I accompanied a group of high potential business (city) people on an immersion experience to an organic, sustainable community farm. At first the business leaders seemed rightly skeptical about the value of spending a day with farmers. However, within one hour of beginning the experience, it became clear the many connections that they shared — managing interdependencies of resources, communicating across teams, maintaining customer focus, and creating environments where ideas are nurtured and things (read: products and services) thrive.
Analogous learning is, quite simply, learning from situations and people that are different from your own but share similar attributes. It entails exploring uncommon places for best practices, finding new ways of looking at the paradoxes of management and, most importantly, reinvigorating leaders. The boundaries of analogous learning are set only by the degree of one’s openness and curiosity.
Like weaving a calico quilt, analogous learning involves linking individuals from vastly different industries in deep conversations about their common pursuits around growth, innovation, change, operational excellence and, ultimately, leadership. I am consistently inspired by the quality of dialogue that occurs when thoughtful leaders from different industries and settings are put together. Unscripted and genuine, these conversations quite often reveal essential truths and insights around leading organizations and teams that are agnostic of industry, geography or market maturity.
How is your organization leveraging analogous learning in developing leaders?
Posted on: August 04, 2014