Lunch and Learn (L&L) is a great way to collaborate in an informal and relaxing atmosphere, engaging people from different organizational domains and layers. One of the big advantages of L&L is that people feel more comfortable to interact with on another on par, regardless of their organizational positioning and relationships (e.g. reporting). L&L can be also tailored for specific teams, groups, departments or senior management.
L&L, typically conducted by a facilitator (usually, an experienced multi-skilled and impartial to internal dynamics coach-trainer), and can be delivered in the form of a general overview, targeted/tailored mini-training, preliminary organizational assessment or a comprehensive Q&A.
Here are some recommended L&L topics for organizations that have gone down the path of agile/adaptive transformation:
- Organizational design and system dynamics
- Classic pitfalls and omissions in large-scale product development environments
- Values/norms, principles, practices
- Frameworks and processes
- Role, responsibilities, relationships
- Events, artifacts, Internal agreements
- Tooling, communication, interactions
- Location strategies, multi-site distribution
- Career paths, compensation, professional development
- Simplification of WBS (projects, programs, portfolios) towards customer-centric work (products)
Following lunch & learn session, an organization (department, group or team) may decide to either follow through with changes/improvements, by relying on its own internal capabilities or by further engaging with an expert-leader in any of the following capacities: further (in-depth) organizational assessment and/or tailored training and/or continuous coaching (with subsequent periodic reassessments).
Even in an initial Lunch & Learn session does not turn into a longer-term engagement, it should still be viewed as a great learning experience for both parties: an organization and coach-trainer. Feel free to reach out to Gene and request him facilitate a session for your organization.