Can learning collaboratives help solve the Burnout Epidemic?

I was recently interviewed by Caitlin Donovan 🍳 for her fabulous burnout podcast called Fried. She really challenged me with her questions and asked how can we prevent burnout in our change agents? We know our leaders are burned out and isolated. We know our non profit CEOs burn out. We know our working mothers feel unfulfilled and exhausted. But yet we need these caregivers to lead us into a new era post Covid where caring for others matters. Even though they might be the victims of the system that has burned them out. Can we really ask the victims to stand up and give more?

While there is the challenge of passion leading to burnout, Jennifer Moss also writes about harmonious purpose, where your passion is not draining. Amelia Nagoski and Emily Nagoski write about doing activities with a group of people with a common goal as a way to reset your stress cycle. My therapist told me to find my tribe. Leaders like Amy Henderson founded a collaborative FamTech to support caregiving focused companies. Janice Johnson Dias supports Black girls as change makers through her collaborative summer camps. The ACT Report (https://actreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/The-ACT-Report.pdf) promises to bring together companies pledging to do more for DEI in technology.

WORKING TOGETHER TOWARDS A COMMON GOALS CAN PREVENT BURNOUT.

But how do we do this in a supportive and productive way?

LEARNING COLLABORATIVES.

They can be called by other names, peer network, action cohort. But the purpose is to provide support to a group of people while they experiment to find out what works for their situation. As a group they learn from each other’s successes and failures. It can be participants from within a company from different departments, or HR leaders from different companies who have not yet found the answer to retain their employee talent.

Learning Collaboratives have been important solutions for healthcare quality improvement projects for many years. And a recent study showed how such an experimental approach to workplace well-being can be highly effective (https://hbr.org/2020/06/what-leading-with-optimism-really-looks-like). It’s so important to understand that for complex problems such as burnout there is not a silver bullet that works for everyone, we have to learn what solutions work best, where and for whom. That way we create a menu of evidence-based options to choose from, tailored to your employee needs.

I also bring my expertise in behavior change science to Learning Collaboratives so that they have the tools to support learning and growth; purposeful Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles, data dashboards to support tracking and evaluation, coaching and open communication to support problem solving, and behavior change principles to support achievable but impactful goals.

Don’t know how to stem the Great Resignation? Afraid to measure burnout because you won’t know what to do to solve it? Frustrated that your investments in self care products for your employees have been ineffective? Worried to admit that your leaders don’t have all the answers? This is new territory for us all. Covid and post Covid has never occurred before. There isn’t a right answer. But there is a way to create a curious and flexible process to show you care about your employee’s mental health – try a LEARNING COLLABORATIVE.

LEARNING COLLABORATIVE OUTLINE

Co-design phase

             Core leaders establish buy in and shared ownership

             Create shared vision and design for success

             Review key collaborative learning processes

             Identify experts and support needs

                            Group facilitation, coaching

                            Intervention content, skills development

                            Data and Analytics

             Outline timeline

             Membership criteria and process

Collaborative learning phase

             Building trust

Shared values and expectations

                          Shared vision and goals

                            Communication & conflict resolution

                            Shared resources

             Group process

                            Social support

Peer empowerment

                            Accountability partners

                            Celebrating small wins

             Experimental process

                            Needs assessment

                            Intervention content and goals

                            Logic models for impact

                            Plan-Do-Study-Act Cycles, feedback loops

             Evaluation process

                            Metrics of success, key indicators

                            Qualitative and quantitative tools

                            Key data and analytics

Dissemination Phase

             Learning products e.g. learning toolkits, intervention guides, analytics

             Promotion of outcomes and process

Sustainability and scale