What Have You Learned Lately System
Surface weak signals by mixing perspectives, requiring new insights, and sharing them
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 98%
McCann runs small dinners where roughly half the participants are new employees and the rest come from different areas of the company. Admission carries an obligation: each person must explain something new they have learned and why it could matter. This exposes senior leaders to behaviors and technologies outside their normal information channels, as happened when a recent graduate introduced him to Facebook. He later formalized the practice by appointing a creatively inclined trends team to scan continuously, publish discoveries with commentary, and distribute the resulting conversation throughout the company. The mechanism converts diverse personal observations into shared organizational intelligence while keeping executives close to weak signals that might otherwise remain invisible.
Origin
McCann's informal learning dinners first alerted him to Facebook while it still required an educational email address; he later formalized the practice with a trends team.
Core principles
- 01New employees notice things incumbents overlook
- 02Mixed perspectives produce richer signals
- 03Participants should bring evidence of something newly learned
- 04Young and unconventional voices can provide strategic insight
- 05Insights become valuable when shared beyond the original group
How to run it
- 1
Assemble a mixed table
Invite a manageable group containing new employees and people from several functions, levels, or generations.
Pro tip Favor participants with different information diets rather than only different job titles.
Watch out A table dominated by senior leaders may discourage unfamiliar or contradictory ideas.
- 2
Require a new learning
Ask every participant to arrive ready to describe something recently discovered, observed, or tested.
Pro tip Request both the signal and the source through which the participant encountered it.
Watch out Do not let status updates or familiar company issues replace genuinely new learning.
- 3
Interrogate significance
Discuss what is changing, why the signal may matter, and which customers or operations it could affect.
Pro tip Ask what would have to become true for the signal to matter at scale.
Watch out Avoid dismissing an idea merely because its current audience is small.
- 4
Investigate promising signals
Assign someone to examine the most consequential observations through firsthand use, customer conversations, or additional research.
Pro tip Let the person who introduced the signal participate in the investigation.
Watch out Do not confuse immediate adoption with investigation.
- 5
Create a trends team
Give a curious group explicit responsibility for continuous scanning and commentary.
Pro tip Select people who are eager for new knowledge and comfortable challenging assumptions.
Watch out A trends team isolated from operating groups may become an interesting but irrelevant newsletter.
- 6
Share the learning broadly
Publish findings in a common channel and invite employees or other knowledgeable community members to contribute.
Pro tip Include commentary explaining why each item could affect the organization.
Watch out Unfiltered volume can turn the channel into a fire hose that people stop reading.
In the wild
At one learning dinner, a recent Hofstra graduate described how she spent time on Facebook. Because McCann lacked an educational email address, he visited her desk the next day to see it firsthand and concluded that it would become important.
→ The company became involved with Facebook unusually early for a commercial organization.
McCann's creative employees posted emerging developments with commentary in a shared channel. After learning that only a few executives read it, he expanded access to the company's workforce, eventually attracting contributions informed by employees' children as well.
→ A small scouting activity became a broad, intergenerational research conversation.
Common mistakes
Inviting only established experts
Long-tenured experts may share the same blind spots, while new employees and younger observers encounter different behaviors.
Collecting links without interpretation
A signal becomes actionable only when someone explains why it matters and how it could affect the organization.
Creating an unread fire hose
Sharing everything without curation can overwhelm the audience and bury the most consequential developments.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for established companies that need continuous exposure to new customer behavior, technologies, and unconventional viewpoints.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when confidential material cannot safely be discussed across functions or with an extended community.
From the transcript
“I do these dinners all the time around the shop, call what have you learned lately? Dinners?”
“The idea is you're gonna come to dinner, but you're gonna have to sing for us, up us, what have you learned? Different? What's new?”
“I asked them to officially be our trends team.”
From the episode
Masters in Business: Founder and CEO Jim McCann (Audio)