The price of success is thirty minutes per day . . . .the price of ignorance is organizational death within ninety days.

Do I have your attention? This is just like school, only in business you can't repeat a grade if you flunk it. The market is not that forgiving.

Is success really worth thirty minutes of diligent effort each and every day? You must decide. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about the success of the organization you work in, or your own career. This is not thirty additional minutes we're speaking about either, it's thirty minutes of concentration on doing something different, something new, something risky.

In the next three issues, starting with this one, I'm going to raise nine points for your consideration. They all relate to the need to learn. On the Andros website there's a short article that addresses the nature of the Learning Organization plus a Learning Model. You may want to go there.

Here are the first three pointsfor your consideration:

1. Some make it happen, some let it happen.

Making it happen means progress through deliberate intervention; letting it happen means using the ability to harness events. Either way, you need to make strategic choices – those that are linked to the organization's objectives. You must capitalize on collective as well as individual experience. Changes are an essential component in any dynamic, close-horizon organization. Leadership has to be a focusing process. Daily investments of relevant effort are the way of life.

2. Structures are limiting.

Structures will drag you down and slow up your sense of urgency. There are no rewards for time-outs, rehearsals, or analyses, so how can you 'grow what you know?' Learning is not training. Incentives are best shared if learning is to be a shared experience too.

Learn on the fly. Fly like the wild geese.

3. The Leadership Paradigm.

Learning correlates poorly with control, so leadership focus must be on enabling initiative and risk. The expectations of Leaders in a Learning Organization moves from 'dictate' to 'stimulate'. Since some control is necessary, where on the continuum between 'control' and 'direct' do you need to be? Followers have momentum and resist changes in direction, and control is security, so they will oppose you. True leadership is followership.

Enough to whet your whistle? Here's one more thought to keep you on the 'qui vive' until our next issue –

Learning is the time critical value of information, embedded through the attachment of personal value. What else would give it meaning? What else really matters to you right now? Think about it!