What Learning Looks Like at Laudes Foundation

The Wide-Angle View on  Our Interconnected Challenges

The assessment brought together insights that had previously been scattered across different teams, learning processes  and conversations. As we compared perspectives, we gained a clearer understanding of the factors that help or hinder learning across the foundation and how many of these issues are connected. The process also highlighted practical opportunities for improvement, from reducing pace pressures on staff to creating more space for learning with partners.

What We Learned About Ourselves

What We Learned About Learning at Laudes

• The assessment highlighted particular strengths in ecosystem learning, where we use our convening role to connect partners, share knowledge, and support just transitions.
• Learning is embedded in many aspects of how we work. Colleagues consistently demonstrate curiosity, critical thinking, and a willingness to adapt despite competing demands.
• We have an opportunity to make learning more of a shared responsibility by further involving colleagues in evidence assessment, interpretation, and sense-making.
• We have invested in a range of learning foundations, including developmental evaluation, ongoing evidence generation, and regular opportunities for collective reflection.
• We can deepen our learning practice by engaging partners more intentionally in reflection, learning, and adaptation, and by creating more space to discuss challenges, setbacks and failures  as opportunities for growth.

Use this process to reflect on all of the Framework’s sub-components and establish a baseline for your foundation’s learning practice. Consider integrating the assessment into your learning team’s planning cycle so that the insights directly inform priorities and support for the year ahead. Then, after implementing new approaches and allowing time for change to take hold, revisit the self-assessment a year later to reflect on progress, identify new opportunities, and continue strengthening your learning practice.

Our Advice To You On Process

1. Don’t try to complete a baseline on all subcomponents in one sitting. Breaking it into three sessions created a good pace.
2. Don’t expect to land squarely in one level of maturity.
3. After a ‘first run’ with your MEL team, bring it to leadership with a strengths-based, coaching framing 
4. Align with other organizational activities (work planning, for example) 

At Laudes Foundation, we are addressing the defining challenges of our time, working at the intersection of climate change, nature loss and social inequality. We are driven by the belief that business, when guided by values, rules and incentives, can be powerful agents for positive change. Our approach combines the catalytic power of philanthropy to work with and through business and industry to advance system change. To learn more, visit laudesfoundation.org.