From Learning to Impact: Turn Insight into Leadership Action

Have you ever considered that your passion for learning might actually be getting in the way of your impact? What if the next step isn’t learning more, but harvesting what you’ve already gathered? Welcome to the Chain of Learning, or the links of leadership and learning unite. This is your connection for actionable strategies and practices.

To help you build a people-centered learning culture, get results, and expand your impact so that you and your team can leave a lasting legacy. I’m your host and fellow learning enthusiast, Katie Anderson. Lately I’ve been reflecting on something that shows up both in my own work and again and again with the leaders in change practitioners.

I. We’re very good at adding, adding projects, adding ideas, adding initiatives, adding things to learn, explore, and improve. Great ideas are exciting. Reading books, taking classes, and listening to podcasts like this one feels productive. Doing more and learning more can look like progress, but we’re [00:01:00] not always good at bringing things and ideas to fruition.

Finishing what’s ready, embedding learning into practice, creating space by completing, not just accumulating. I’ve been noticing this tension in myself a lot lately. I’m a natural idea generator and a lifelong learner. I love planting seeds, new concepts, new work, new possibilities. And while that energy has fueled a lot of growth and opportunity for me, I’ve realized something important.

At some point, planting more seeds doesn’t create more impact. It creates congestion and that congestion can often turn into swirling and stress. Can you relate? I know I’ve been experiencing that a lot lately. I see the same pattern with my clients. Leaders launching initiative after initiative without saying no to something already in flight change.

Practitioners enthusiastic about learning, consuming more books, podcasts, and frameworks, yet not [00:02:00] putting that learning into sustained practice and developing habits around that knowledge. Learning is powerful. If you’re listening to this podcast, learning is probably one of your superpowers too. But there’s often this invisible trap that we can fall into when learning becomes something we keep collecting rather than something that changes how we actually show up and put into practice.

This reflection has led me to choose my word for 2026. Harvest for me. Harvest means gathering what has reached fruition, bringing forward what’s ready to be shared, used and carried to impact. It’s a fitting word to follow my 2025 word nurture, which was about tending to what had been planted. Now it’s time to bring some of those seeds to fruition.

And importantly the way I think about it, harvest is not just about doing more. It’s about completion. It’s about focus and release, finishing [00:03:00] what’s ready instead of endlessly refining, which I can get caught into selecting what’s ripe, rather than planting more and more seeds too soon, or before the soil is ready and letting go of over-holding so that learning can move forward into impact.

Because when learning is only about acquiring more knowledge or doing more, the temptation is to keep gathering when what we really need to do is to learn by doing and putting what we have learned into application to take what we already know, apply it, practice reflect on it, and let it change how we actually lead and live our lives.

And that’s what I wanna explore with you here in this episode, how we can move from gathering seeds of learning to bringing that learning to fruition through action. Through harvest. This reframe matters because learning new knowledge or skills alone doesn’t create change. Learning only becomes meaningful when it turns into different behaviors, different [00:04:00] decisions, and different outcomes.

Otherwise, learning stays theoretical. It feels productive to be gathering, learning, and acquiring knowledge, but it doesn’t actually move anything forward to fruition to impact. I recently talked about this on the podcast with Rose Heathcote, where we explored the execution gap between intent and action.

We might intend to lead differently, intend to develop. People intend to work upstream and create sustainable change, but without application and the doing. Learning never closes that gap. And over time, this disconnect between learning and application doesn’t just slow progress. It erodes confidence in the learning itself.

Any meaningful learning, whether it comes from a book, a course, a podcast, a workshop, or an immersive experience like my Japan leadership experience gives us new knowledge and perspective, but again, learning alone doesn’t create value. [00:05:00] Underneath real transformation is an essential value chain. Learning leads to behavior change, which leads to impact.

Learning gives us insight. Behavior is where insight gets tested and applied. And impact is what happens when those behaviors are practiced Over time, learning creates potential behavior is what activates that potential and creates impact. This is also where my framing of the concept that intention equals heart plus direction really comes to life for personal impact and closing the execution gap.

Heart is knowing why you care, your purpose, your values, and the impact you wanna have. Direction is how you align yourself through specific choices and behaviors to create that impact. Behavior is the bridge between the two. Without action. Intention stays aspirational, and this is why real transformation isn’t about just improving processes or implementing tools.

It’s about improving [00:06:00] ourselves first. That’s a deeper meaning of Kaizen, the discipline to change ourselves for the better. I explored this back in episode 18 where I talked about the real meaning of Kaizen, where kaizen isn’t something that we do to a process or do to other people. It’s the self-discipline, or if you look at the kanji symbols of the word kaizen, self whip, to change ourselves for the good.

It starts with how we show up as leaders and as humans, how we think, how we respond, and how we create the conditions for others to learn and grow. When we change our behaviors. Process improves. People grow. Culture shifts and impacts and results follow. I. When we as change leaders can clearly describe the value chain connection between learning to behavior, behavior, change to impact and results, we don’t just get better at improvement and at delivering results.

We get better at explaining the real value of transformation [00:07:00] to a people-centered learning organization. And this is the core influence capability in my Katalyst change leader model being a tactical, strategic aligner who can clearly connect behavior change to results, and articulate that value to your leaders.

If we go back to this concept that all learning is potential until it turns into impact, this helps with the core reframe that I want to focus on in this episode. How we move from the Chain of Learning to the chain of impact. Learning matters. Reflection matters, but learning isn’t complete until it shows up and how we lead and

how we behave and impact we make. So I wanna share four key practices to help you actionably take learning and to impact in your work and in your life. First. Make the learning itself concrete and specific. One of the biggest traps that we fall into when talking about what and how we’re learning is staying vague [00:08:00] or describing a learning experience rather than the learning outcome itself.

So we might say things like, wow, that workshop was so inspiring, or, I hear all the time, your Japan leadership experience was life changing and transformational, or, I learned so much from your book or podcast episode. These statements are great, and describe the experience of your learning, but not the learning itself.

The question I encourage myself when I’m hearing myself say these types of things, or my clients, is to reflect and ask what exactly did I learn? Of course, it’s great that they. Experience of the learning was fantastic, and of course, that’s what I aspire to do. As someone who teaches and trains and writes books and does podcasts, I want you to have a great experience, but more than anything, I want you to learn something and do something with it.

So again, ask yourself, what exactly did I learn? Not the feeling, not the inspiration, the specific understanding, insight, or learning point. [00:09:00] So the second thing, we need to do that when we want to take learning into action and to impact, we have to focus on specific observable behaviors, not traits that we want to develop.

We cannot practice traits, but we can practice behaviors. This is something I have been teaching for a long time in my coaching and leadership development workshops. I often hear leaders say, oh, I wanna be a better listener. But you can’t improve a trait. A trait is an adjective. It’s the outcome of a specific behavior or behaviors that would lead someone to describe you as a good listener or a good whatever.

Instead, I coach you and I ask you here to reframe your goal by getting more specific. For example, what behaviors would lead someone to experience you as a good listener? What would someone actually see you do differently? Or for another example. Instead of saying, I want my [00:10:00] team to trust me. Ask and reflect on what behaviors would lead your team to experience you as trustworthy.

What does a trustworthy person do? When you can articulate those behaviors, then you have real goals and an action plan to implement in practice. And then of course, comes honest reflection. How are you actually showing up today? That’s where you can see the gap between your intention, your target, and your current behavior.

As we know, the way to frame a problem is target, minus actual is the problem to solve or the gap to close, and now you have something concrete to focus on. What’s the target of how you want to behave? How do you show up today and what’s the gap? And then what are the behaviors you’re gonna practice each and every day to close that gap?

The third step is that once you identify the gap in behavior or knowledge that you wanna close, the next step is identifying what you expect to happen, the impact when you put the learning or new [00:11:00] behavior into practice. For example, when I take this action, what do I expect to happen? In other words, what is your hypothesis?

If I do this behavior consistently, I believe it will create this certain impact or outcome. This is scientific thinking in action. It’s plan, do, check, act, or plan, do study, adjust in action. The more you can frame learning as an experiment and your actions that you’re trying to implement as an experiment, the more you model and embed scientific thinking and learning in practice.

And it also gives you a chance to go back and say, did I actually do this thing? And if I did, did it have the impact that I expected? If not, why not? So this comes to the fourth point, which is reflect and adjust. As I talk about all the time, learning comes not just through doing, but through reflection.

It’s the study adjust part of the PDCA, the plan, do study, adjust cycle. Did I do this action? And it gives a chance to [00:12:00] reflect on, if not, why not? What got in the way and. If I did, what happened as a result? Was it what I expected? What did I learn? What will I adjust next time? And this study and adjust can be simple as a daily five minute reflection on I had a plan for the day, what it actually happened.

Did it go as I expected? What happened as a result? And what adjustments do I need to make? Set your intention and then take five minutes to reflect in what you’re gonna change tomorrow. Learning is cyclical. It’s an ongoing process, and it requires both reflection and action. We learn by doing, reflecting, adjusting, and doing again, and that’s where we get the accelerated improvement.

So this is where intention becomes real. Intention starts with heart, what you care about, your purpose and the impact you wanna have. But intention, without direction, without behaviors aligned in that [00:13:00] purpose and putting that into practice doesn’t go anywhere. Direction is where learning meets action.

It’s aligning what you do to why it matters. And then comes the most important part. You actually have to do it. And learn from it, learning from doing, and that’s the shift from learning, by acquiring to learning that creates impact. This way of working, getting specific about behaviors, framing, learning as a hypothesis, practicing reflecting and adjusting has been core to my work for a long time and core to what’s really helped me accelerate my impact as a parent, as a friend, as a coach, as a leader, as a consultant.

It’s foundational to how I teach a three problem solving thinking as applied to personal improvement, and it’s central to my work with leaders through my trusted advisor partnerships and learning experiences. And over the past year, I’ve been putting even more focus on how leaders turn learning into impact through my immersive Japan leadership [00:14:00] experience.

Going to Japan with me is powerful. Perspective shifting. It’s deeply human and is nearly all of the 150 global leaders who have joined me so far have to say it’s life changing and transformational. And of course, as I always say, I intend to create an incredible learning experience that’s fun and meaningful and and life changing and memorable.

But my deeper intention is that the Japan Leadership Experience Program is more than a great trip. It’s an impact accelerator. And this goes back to what I’ve been talking about here, that knowledge is only potential. Applied knowledge is power. So to help the leaders who have been participating in the Japan leadership experience with me, I’ve been intentionally strengthening this connection between learning and impact throughout the program before, during, and after the week in Japan.

On that final day in Japan, when we synthesize learning and look ahead in our post-trip follow-ups, I’ve been providing more structure to [00:15:00] help leaders create a clear action plan for when they return home, and the process for then reflecting on what they’re putting into place. I. On the last day of the program in Japan, I have a structure and questions to help support the leaders.

Reflect on questions like, what did you learn that was particularly meaningful for you? What new behaviors or habits does that learning point towards that you want to put into place? And then what impact do you expect these behaviors to have, both tangible and intangible, and if possible, starting to articulate the real value in dollar terms that that change is going to have in the organization in other ways.

What is the value train from the learning to behavior to impact that you expect? And just like we talked about here in this episode, I asked them to refine their action plans for specificity. So not having a vague goal like, oh, I wanna coach more, but something concrete and measurable, like in every problem [00:16:00] solving conversation, I’ll pause and ask at least three open-ended questions.

Another example, not saying, oh, I’m gonna spend more time at Gem, at the Gemba, the place that work happens. But say I’ll conduct a 10 minute daily gemba walk and document one problem or improvement opportunity each day that my team raises. Not saying something general like, oh, I’m gonna develop my people.

But say something concrete like, I’m going to hold one intentional coaching conversation, which each direct report every week focused on problem solving capability. These aren’t aspirational statements, they’re practices that you and the people who come to Japan with me can actually put in the place.

And then comes the hypothesis, and I ask them to do this and document it. When I do this, what do I expect to happen as a result? When you can get specific about the behavior you’re gonna apply and then actually apply it, that’s where the learning stops being a great experience and [00:17:00] really starts becoming impact.

Let me give you two examples of how this has played out in the clients that I do work with. One is Josef. A lean consultant already skilled in the technical tools and processes of continuous improvement in Lean, who has joined my Japan leadership experience, not just once, but twice, and as he shared back in episode 48, instead of deciding that he needed to focus on more lean tools and just, you know, do some more projects, he got very specific about the consulting and leadership behavior changes that he wanted to make when he returned to his clients and to his home country.

He wanted to pause instead of jumping to solutions and asking better questions with his clients, and he set up a hypothesis and tested it, and the impact was clear when he did this. When he paused and asked more questions, instead of being the expert with all the answers, clients took more ownership, problem solving, capability increased, and just a shift from being [00:18:00] seen as an expert for hire to a trusted partner.

That is an incredible impact. Another common shift that I see with the leaders and change practitioners I work with is realizing as I did that they need to Break the Telling Habit. They’ll reflect in workshops and coaching that, wow, I really default to giving answers even when I want my team to think and take responsibility for problem solving.

So I encourage them to not just say, oh, I wanna ask better questions. But to be specific about that, identifying how they’re gonna practice one simple behavior in specific situations. For example, I’m going to pause and ask a question instead of providing a solution in all of my one-on-one meetings and group sessions with my team.

And then I encourage them to set up a quick reflections process after each meeting or conversation and say, wow, did I actually do that? Did I pause and ask open-ended questions? When did I default to my [00:19:00] habits? When did I jump in? And then think about adjusting what can I do better next time or differently?

And over time, the impact clearly shows up when leaders can break their telling habit, more engagement, better problem framing, and less dependence on them for answers, it is clear they become a better leader through the practice of pausing through the practice of asking open-ended questions. So when we can practice the behavior, then it turns into impact.

So whenever you’re learning something, taking a course, reading a book, listening to a podcast like this one, pause, reflect, and ask yourself, how do I wanna lead differently as a result of what I’m learning here? What specifically am I going to do in practice? How will I practice it? How will I reflect and how will I keep learning through doing?

And constant reflection how I’m going to get a little bit better every day. There’s a bigger meta learning in here for [00:20:00] you too. One that directly affects your influence when you develop the skill of connecting, learning to behavior and behavior to results Your. Own impact is a change. Leader grows. You become not someone just passionate about improvement or lean or continuous improvement or your discipline of choice.

You can articulate impact in terms of business value. This is a core leadership competency for anyone leading, change, connecting, learning to performance, making impact visible and earning trust and influence through results, and enabling others to grow as well. And these are core influence capabilities in my Katalyst change leader model.

It’s about how you can clearly connect that value chain from behavior to results, how you can communicate it in words that are meaningful to leaders and how you can coach and grow others and yourself [00:21:00] to develop those skills. As I’ve been sitting with this word harvest that I introduced at the beginning of the podcast, I keep coming back to one final reflection.

When I think about harvest, I’m not thinking about individual output or personal abundance. I’m really thinking about harvest through a Japanese collective rice farming lens where cultivation and harvesting are communal and collaborative, grounded in shared conditions, timing and mutual support of sharing resources and helping each other actually bring the harvest to fruition.

Because Harvest doesn’t succeed alone. It succeeds together, and this is what it connects back to my concept of chain of learning. When we harvest our learning by turning insight into behavior and behavior into impact, we don’t just change ourselves for the good. We create the conditions that help others learn, [00:22:00] grow, and lead alongside of us.

And that’s really the true concept of a chain of learning how we’re all learners and leaders together, growing and learning through shared experience. And often we need partners to help us grow and learn through collaboration, coaching, feedback, and shared practice and learning opportunities. Harvest isn’t the end of the cycle.

By bringing work to completion and releasing what’s ready, the soil is rested and restored. Space is created for what will be nurtured next. So as I’ve been reflecting on the word harvest as my word for 2026, I’ll also leave you with a few questions to reflect on for yourself. What learning for you is ready to be harvested, not just held.

What behavior do you want to change for that learning to matter to become impact? And how might your harvesting create space for [00:23:00] future seeds to be planted and for others to grow as well? And if through your reflections you realize that you or your team could benefit from support, both in learning new skills and then turning that learning into real impact, I’d love to work with you.

This is the focus of the work that I do with change leaders, improvement teams and executives through my trusted advisor, partnerships, leadership retreats, and experiential learning programs, including immersive experiences like the Japan Leadership Experience where learning is intentionally designed to translate into action.

My intention is that this episode helps you harvest what’s ready so that your learning doesn’t just stay with you, but grows into impact through your behaviors and through your interactions with others in your Chain of Learning. Thanks for being a link in my Chain of Learning today. See you next time.

Have a great day.