Guest blog by Kiley Ingersoll, LEG’23
Over the course, there are so many ideas and take aways I learned. However, one of the most valuable was the relationships I gained with not only my Wyoming Business Council team members who also took the course, but with my group members. As we were working in our last group session, we talked about how important it was to the course that we had each other to lean on and much we felt like friends. This was something I never expected. The value, especially for a small town Wyoming girl, in learning about different cultures and meeting people from all over the world is immeasurable in many ways. It was wonderful to connect with my group and learn from them, hear their perspectives, and take interest in their lives. We celebrated children’s birthdays, met pets, and learned where others were headed on vacation. We also found commonalities, differences, and challenges we were all facing. The group allowed for us to check comprehension, laugh at our confusion, and help give feedback. Quickly, I learned they were there to lean on and bounce ideas off of even outside of the class hours. Our What’s App group will last far beyond the ten weeks. And I now how friends from Trinidad and Tobago, Dominican Republic, Lesotho, and Namibia. I feel like having this group has given me hope within my growth challenge and the feeling that we aren’t alone. This class has given me a group who understands the process and structure of the method who I can continue to utilize outside of the short time frame we studied together. Overall, while I feel the course was so effective in teaching the PDIA method and looking into my growth challenge, it is the relationships I have gained that truly make this course so valuable.
When looking at my specific growth challenge, I think the course has taught me to move one step at a time. Prior to the ten weeks, I had an idea for what the solution to my “problem” would be, but after going through the course, realize that I still need to really dig deep to understand my challenge. I believe the challenge does not follow the flow I anticipated. Data is needed. And many problems are merely symptoms of the larger, more ingrained problem. I really enjoyed the fishbone exercise in deconstructing problems. Each bone is it’s own area of study, and all contribute to the overall issue. I believe that the idea of iterating and iterating to find small areas you can tackle in an issue is an amazing tool to find progress, while not trying to fix the whole world. I believe I am closer to understanding my problem than I was ten weeks ago. I think the course gave me a place to start and a method to tackle my issue as well as a new way of thinking for the future when asked about projects and solutions in my region. I don’t think I am where I thought I would be at the end of the course, but I think that is part of the entire process.
I have already seen this process being used in my daily job in a variety of ways. Because the Wyoming Business Council has such a strong connection to the Growth Lab through our contract and many of us have taken the course, I hear the verbiage, process, and questions in several meetings held within staff. I think we will use it as a system change overall in our organization and as we work throughout Wyoming. One example of how this course flows into my regular business activity comes from a strategic planning session in a community. The participants talked about what they “wanted” to do, but could not come up with actionable items as to what “it” looked like for deliverables. We took a step back, asked what problem they are trying to solve, and started a fishbone to deconstruct their issue. They enjoyed it so much, we have two more sessions to work through their additional strategies before we look at small ways to tackle their plan. Because this is now the way we work at WBC, I think I will use this as a new way of thinking and it will become (hopefully) my default when I am looking at problems and challenges.
I really enjoyed the examples given of success stories and challenges in other parts of the world. As stated above, I really enjoyed my group. It was really fast way to think about a whole system change in thinking, and I am not sure I had time to digest all of the information, so access to refer back would be wonderful. I don’t know that I have specific questions, but want to thank you for all of the effort the entire team did to put on the program. I truly enjoyed it and see myself utilizing the learning for a long time to come.
This is a blog series written by the alumni of the Leading Economic Growth Executive Education Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. 72 Participants successfully completed this 10-week online course in May 2023. These are their learning journey stories.