Focus On The People
Inspiration for this blog post:
The key to successful AI adoption: Focus on the people By Chris Duchesne
3 Surprising Reasons Why You Need to Rediscover Slow Growth by James Clear
We are in a really great era of human-centered data & technology approaches. Like this article by Chris Duchesne of Springboard - it is ostensibly about AI adoption, but it is truly applicable to all data & tech learning for people working in mission-driven organizations. Chris writes that “Traditional video-based/self-paced training doesn’t measure up…You need to take a more holistic boot camp-like approach” and goes on to explain that this approach has three qualities:
Learn as a team
Learn from people
Learn by doing
Enough said. This is not just a framework for learning AI. It is a framework for learning all data & technology, particularly for mission-driven folx. In a successful data & technology culture at a nonprofit, continuous learning as a team, from people, by doing is the standard. We go over this quite a bit in our workshop Learning & Development in Nonprofit Data & Tech with NTEN, where we apply the framework of adult learning principles to creating professional development plans in data & technology for nonprofit staff, teams, and entire organizations. But what we miss perhaps is the vulnerability and openness it takes to actually learn in these ways. We have to be willing to show up in front of our peers and admit that we don’t know it all, to stumble through the learning and make mistakes along the way, and to face those mistakes with resilience to learn and come back for more. James Clear argues that belief in one’s self is the skill that helps achieve goals the most, and that belief in self comes from experiencing small wins over time. This is not a quick fix - it is the long haul of slow growth.
Importantly, the outcome of this kind of successful data & tech culture is not the shiniest, bestest, most amazing technology. It is the technology that works for you. The technology that aligns with the people who are at the organization. There is always something more available - more automation, more AI, more power, more data, more analytics, more insights, more everything. But we can’t take these things on without the people to support it. In our Learn, Use, Love Program, we state explicitly that we won’t implement technology that can’t be owned and managed internally by staff OR through a long-term relationship with a person or organization that can manage it until the skills exist in-house. That means saying no to some technology. But it also means saying yes to spending time learning and growing, and considering the long-term plans for how to support data & technology across an organization. Learn, learn, learn. Apparently that is the name of the game for keeping up with data & technology for your organization. And it just gets better when we learn together, from people, by doing our work.
We add one more factor on top of the learning and using: love.
It can’t be defined exactly. It means something different in each person and situation. It means is that for all this learning and using to actually become habit and part of the organizational culture, we are going to have to cultivate positive relationships between people and data & technology. This takes time. This takes commitment. This takes people. The data & technology are not out here trying to cultivate their relationship with you! But we can do a lot to make the relationship work, and to find out what “love” means for us with our data & tech.
