We want to make sure we are not just planning for the sake of planning during our quarterlies. How do we structure the opening of our quarterly session days to systematically move from concrete operational experiences to abstract concepts we can actually run experiments on in the next ninety days?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

We structure the opening of our quarterly session days to follow Kolb's Experiential Learning cycle, ensuring we systematically translate our past operational experiences into concrete plans for the next ninety days. We begin with a concrete experience by reviewing our performance over the past quarter. We look at our scorecard metrics, our Rock completion rates, and our overall progress. Next, we engage in reflective observation. We step back to discuss why we succeeded or failed, looking for the underlying patterns and discrepancies between our expectations and our actual results. Then, we move to abstract conceptualization. We draw conclusions from our reflections, updating our understanding of our market, our team, and our operations. We use these insights to refine our V/TO® and identify new opportunities. Finally, we enter the active experimentation phase. We write new quarterly Rocks that allow us to test our new ideas in the real world over the next ninety days. By moving through this continuous learning cycle during our sessions, we ensure that your team is constantly evolving and improving. This structured approach prevents you from repeating past mistakes and helps you build a more agile, high-performing organization.