XBS Learns to Grow

We ended up with 1,000 people participating in Principle-Centered Leadership. I can see the results today. When the policy committee is considering a decision, you'll hear someone ask, "Will the people in our organization see this as a deposit or a withdrawal? Will it build trust or diminish trust?" On a personal level, people found it a moving experience. They wrote their own mission statements. It was an experience in self-discovery. I had spouses come up to me after their husbands or wives had been to a session and say, "This has changed my life because it changed our family."

Early on you picked three XBS facilities -- Seattle, Denver, and San Antonio -- as "learning laboratories." Why?

We wanted to find out what was viable and what wasn't. It gave us three little practice fields. We could try out different experiments with the attitude, "We're just playing with this right now."

As things worked in these three laboratories, the ideas spread. We'd hear from people in other offices, asking for the stuff.

What's an experiment you tried?

We did lots of things, some large, some small. For instance, we gave each of the learning centers $1,000 to use over the course of a year to improve their offices. We learned that people didn't want to spend that $1,000, but they did think creatively about how they could improve their centers. For example, in both Seattle and San Antonio they told us they needed new computers. We told them, you've got your $1,000, maybe that can pay for part of it. The next thing we knew, they had shiny new computers. It turned out, they'd gone to their customers and explained how new computers would improve the service they could provide -- and the customers got them the computers.

These are sales reps who'll do anything to avoid having to ask customers for something because they don't want to upset the relationship. But they showed the customers how a computer could help, and it was a no-brainer.

And they never did spend their $1,000.

Lots of companies need "big change fast." How did you create bigger ways for people to participate?

We staged a Worldwide Learning Conference in 1995, kind of a "learning Woodstock." Originally it was going to be just a typical kickoff for the new year -- the usual business conference where senior managers talk about their functional areas. Every company does them, and they're awful. There's always a speech about empowerment -- but everyone's forced to sit in meetings from 7 in the morning until 7 at night, having data dumped on them. It's like being held hostage.

We decided to do it completely differently. The vision was to create an event for a few days that would let people experience a learning organization -- what it feels like, and how much fun it can be.

How was it different?

Picture this: you walk into the hotel on the first day, and instead of the usual corporate meeting there's a huge ballroom with globes and stars and moons hanging from the ceiling, music from all over the world playing, life-size cardboard cutouts. It immediately says to people : This is different.

There was no individual recognition, no speeches by corporate officers. We had outside speakers, simulations, seminars. Then at the end of the first day, we opened Xpo, with more than two dozen booths displaying all the different kinds of XBS tools and applications. We even had a booth where we sold "learning clothes" -- items with our change strategy logo and graphics -- and we ended up selling $90,000 worth in just two days. We were afraid nobody would want to go to Xpo, that they'd just want to go play golf. We couldn't get them to leave!

The four-and-a-half days became a metaphor for forever: "Would you like to feel this way after every day of work? Let us help you! It can be this way all the time!"

Do you rely on big events all the time? Or have you found other approaches?

After the learning conference, we were struggling with what to do to spread these ideas. We needed to create a community within a community, an alliance of people who would share information laterally throughout the organization. So in May of 1995 we gathered 30 people in Chicago to help us think through how to do it. They helped create the idea of Camp Lur'ning. We wanted to make it fun, have it be like summer camp, with teepees, campers, and counselors. The first year we had 220 people and 30 counselors for four-and-a-half days. We created a place where people could get involved, and then they created the event.

Did Camp Lur'ning have any immediate results?

People who attended went back to their centers and held their own version of camp. From that initial group of 220 people who attended Camp Lur'ning, over 1,000 more people become involved in some sort of learning experience. This year, we did the second Camp Lur'ning and almost doubled the attendance. We went from 220 to 375, and we scaled up the kinds of sessions we offered and the guest speakers we brought in.