“Growth mindset for individuals means liberating our talents and unlocking our potential. For organisations that identify they have a know-it-all culture, growth mindset allows leaders and teams to shift from a culture of know-it-alls to a culture of learn-it-alls.”
Not my words, the words of Matthew Syed, the bestselling author of books such as “Rebel Ideas”, “Bounce” and “Black Box Thinking”.
His words resonated with me. How many individuals, teams or departments have you encountered that say they don’t need any help, they’ve got everything covered. Have they? Or do they have a closed mindset? Or perhaps a rather large ego. Maybe they think they know it all? Maybe they think that asking for or accepting help or support is a sign of weakness?
This also got me thinking about the Lean in Higher Education international community. Each year we come together for our annual international conference, excited at the opportunity of learning from the experiences, successes and failures of others. Lean HE colleagues from around the world, sharing experiences openly and freely. We then take this learning and apply it to our own work as we seek to improve the way we work both individually and collectively for the benefit of our respective organisations and the people that we work with. In my opinion, I believe the Lean in Higher Education community is a learn-it-all as well as a share-it-all community.
Which brings me to the 2021 conference. The conference this year will be fully online, which will be different for many of us who have been used to gathering in person over the years that the conference has been running.
However, yet again our community has risen to the challenge. We have received proposals to present at the conference from all over the world, from around 40 different organisations and from all three Lean HE Continental Divisions. The attendees registered for the conference so far also come from all across the world, including the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Norway, Egypt, Spain, Poland and Ireland.
The world may have changed, but we will gather together virtually in October 2021 to share with each other and learn from one another. We will Collaborate, Innovate and Celebrate. We will do so openly and with humility and we will leave the conference with new professional contacts and ideas about how we can improve ourselves and the work that we do. I’m so glad to part of a conference of learn-it-alls. If you’d like to be part of it too, you can register or find out more at the link below.
https://strath.eventsair.com/lean-he-annual-conference-2021
If you have any questions in relation to this blog, please get in touch.
