Learning by experimenting. Four building blocks that help to start your own experiment

For five years, Kessels & Smit, The Learning Company designs and facilitates a leadership program for a retail organization. The program is strongly embedded in the workplace and enables participants to experience, reflect and experiment. Recently, Kessels & Smit conducted impact research to learn more about the impact participants were able to make in their work, during and after the leadership program.

The results show that the impact is high. Participants are more transparent in their communication, take feelings into account, and manage to make use of talent and expertise of themselves and others in ways that creates worthwhile results for the organization. In researching the impact of the program we uncovered four key elements relevant to implementing experiments in daily practice.

This paper presents these buildings blocks that enable the design of experiments in the workplace in order to continuously improve and innovate. As starting to do something small in a different way on a regular working day is the key to long-term change and development.