Ten Years In, Always Learning

by Wendy Rosov

A decade ago, I founded Rosov Consulting with a vision to create a learning organization. I believed that for clients to learn from and use the information that my team and I would provide, we needed to model that. Today, to be successful in our work, everyone at Rosov needs to hone their expertise, build up learnings, and stay up-to-date in the evolving worlds of Jewish engagement and education, philanthropy, evaluation and research, and the work that goes into developing organizations’ visions, strategies, and goals.

Here’s how we continue to be a learning organization everyday:

• We prioritize learning for RC team members by sharing knowledge. This includes bringing in people from outside the firm to speak with the team about their area of expertise, while also having RC team members share their own areas of expertise with each other. These presentations, which occur at least twice a month, address anything from data analysis, to software, to project management, and more. And our Slack messaging platform includes a channel specifically for team members to share articles among ourselves about the Jewish world, evaluation, consulting, business strategies, social innovation, and any other topic that can inform our work.
• Every member of the RC team sets learning goals and has opportunities to work towards these goals throughout the year, including by attending professional development conferences. We also record and save professional development webinars so that anyone can access them to learn.
• Reflection is an integral part of the RC culture. We make time constantly to reflect on our work and what we are learning as a result of it. What can we do better? How might the work inform other client partner efforts? The Senior Leadership Team talks frequently about how we can be even more effective and efficient in our work. And in our quarterly reviews with team members and their supervisors, we reflect on where we are growing, succeeding, facing challenges, and more.
• Whenever a project concludes, we meet internally to debrief and to explore what worked well, what could be improved, and what can be applied to other projects. Our client satisfaction surveys also enable us to collect data and create space for clients to express their own perspectives on working with us.
• Each quarter we have a Quiet Day, during which we do not engage in client work. Because the RC team is spread out across the world, our work often occurs at all hours. So, the Quiet Day ensures we have time to catch up on any type of learning, including webinars, reading, internal knowledge sharing, and other modes.
• Our annual retreat, where we focus both on content and team building, reinforces and advances this culture of learning.

As we mark our tenth year in 2018, Rosov Consulting continues to grow and scale. This of course is exciting, and it also presents opportunities to always improve the RC team experience. How can we best onboard new team members and give them the support they need to excel from Day 1? Learning — and making intentional time for this learning — is a part of the culture that ultimately helps all team members perform at their best and, thus, best serve clients. We look forward to learning from and with you, our colleagues and clients in the field, in the days and years to come.