5 Indicators That Your Company Values Learning and Growth
What may be the single most important predictor of an organization’s long term survival is that organization’s ability to learn. In a world that is changing more rapidly today than at any previous time in human history, the consistent practice of learning is the only sustainable long-term strategy.
Products will come and go with increasing short life spans. Advantageous relationships will ebb and flow, as will every other competitive advance. But, the ability to change and grow will stimulate an organization to constant renewal. We will refocus our changing environmental demands.
That’s one of the key issues in Peter Senge’s book, The Fifth Discipline. In it, he identifies the benefits and practices of a “learning organization.” Unfortunately, the recommendations in Senge’s book are often outside of the reach of most small businesses.
Learning
By learning, I mean the ability to take in new information, formulate it into new ideas, and then put those ideas into existence. Learning, for adults on the job, always manifests as changed behavior. The individual, the team or group, and the organization as a whole has to do something different for learning to have taken place.
For an individual, learning means the consistently applied process of:
Exposing yourself to new ideas. And then, changing your behavior as a result.
It is not a one-time event, but rather a discipline that is maintained and applied FOREVER.
For example, I work a lot with sales people. When a salesperson develops a better question to ask in collecting information about a proposal, the issue isn’t the question, it’s the ability to continually develop better questions.
For an organization, which is made up of individuals, learning means the institutionalization of practices which result in innovative products, processes and practices. It’s not the new product which is the important element, it’s the ability to continually create new products.
This ability to continually change behavior, both organizationally as well as individually, is the single biggest indicator of long-term success.
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“The only sustainable effective response to a rapidly changing world is cultivating the ability to positively transform ourselves and our organizations.” ~ Dave Kahle
“Learning is the most valuable benefit we can offer employees, and our ability as a company to learn faster and better than competitors is our most valuable competitive resource.” ~ Douglas McKenna, Microsoft Corp.
The Real Problem
Most individuals don’t value learning, and most organizations have never given it serious thought. Here’s an example from my own work. In a random selection of 20 salespeople, only one in that group will have spent $25 of his/her own money on his own improvement in the last 12 months. The 5% who do invest in themselves are often the “superstars,” who have become that by relentless learning.
As a trainer and consultant, I’ve worked personally and contractually with over 500 different companies.
Only a handful had:
- Mention of learning in their value statements
- Strategic initiative dedicated to learning
- A budget for investing in the learning process
Clearly, learning is not on the top of their minds.
Self-Assessment
Here are five questions to determine the degree to which your organization values and promotes learning.
- To what degree is ‘learning’ mentioned in the company’s foundational documents? (it’s mission values and vision statements, it’s self-description on their webpage, etc. )
- To what degree does the organization reward or penalize new ideas, attempts to do things better, or risks that are taken, regardless of the outcomes?
- To what degree does everyone understand that continual personal and organizational improvement is expected and rewarded within the organization?
- How much money (expressed as a percentage of payroll) does the organization invest annually in learning experiences for it’s employees?
- To what degree are individuals who refuse to learn and change tolerated within the organization?
Practical Ideas
The process of transforming an organization into one which learns, consistently and relentlessly, deserves more thought than this article allows. However, here are three low-budget, immediately implemental practices that will kick-start the process and bring a rich return on investment.
Firstly, Promote the Idea
Announce, over and over in every situation, that the organization and every individual within it, needs to learn. Let that message become a mantra. Whenever possible, give examples, tell success stories...[Click Here To Read The Entire Article Online]
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