With the recent economic troubles a learning organization is a must for a successful future.
The following nine points are an adapted from an old however very good, must buy book – Mitch McCrimmon’s – ‘Unleash the Entrepreneur Within’
Remembering that the only way to improve is to learn and the only proof of learning is a change in behavior, how can we create organizations that learn and more importantly change?
1. Budget, time, money and manpower to achieve both individual and organizational learning – ensure management and ALL employees see learning as a ‘real target’ and set up mechanisms to ensure accountability and to measure results. Many organizations seem to talk about being learning organizations however if it isn’t budgeted for, invested in and measured it is just a farce. Each manager needs to have learning and knowledge retention listed in their key responsibility areas and be assessed on their performance in this area at performance appraisal time.
2. Identify strategic learning areas for your business and where new products or product innovations are likely to yield the quickest and greatest payoff – invest most of you’re resources in these areas. It is also important to look at the long term learning issues that your organization needs to address.
3. Empower your work force to take risks in the market by decentralizing decision making – particularly encourage those in areas of key knowledge. As I have written in previous posts now is the time to wholeheartedly adopt transformational leadership practices in day to day operations and as a management policy.
Note: Many empowerment programs in Asian operations of international organizations run in to problems because of cultural attitudes (and beliefs) related to power and responsibility, be careful in implementing this option!
4. Set up a system of on job training, job rotation, provide incentives and support for personal development – initiate a PD (personal development) discussion process. PD discussions need to be taken seriously with personal targets set and behavior changes measured and rewarded.
The only way to improve is to learn and continuous learning is not a perhaps or maybe… today more than ever its an imperative!
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If you aren’t lucky enough to be working for a learning organization and need a change it may be time to update your resume so when you’ve finished the article take a look at the free blank resume form!
To continue…
5. Form learning partnerships with suppliers, distributors, and customers – set up feedback mechanisms such as focus groups, R&D joint ventures and customer survey mechanisms. Remember your organization can learn as much if not more from complaints as it can from compliments. Be sure that bad news is seen as an opportunity to improve and learn not only as a reason to discipline someone.
6. Have all positions applied for and include outsiders in our recruitment drive – only appoint the best in their field and avoid the all to familiar ‘best of a bad bunch’ in times of competence shortages. Promotion from within only should be a dead policy.
7. Benchmark your culture against other entrepreneurial firms – seek ways to understand key success factors for the market leaders in our field and study the oppositions’ successes. This is an area that seems to most difficult for many companies so a project team needs to address this as a serious and essential activity.
8. Set up a readily accessible knowledge bank and ‘experience’ network of mentors, gurus and experts in their field. Make sure the knowledge accumulated by expert staff doesn’t walk out the door with your retirees. With the “same old same old” mistakes made by bankers as evidenced by the recent meltdown shows that this industry particularly do not take learning and knowledge retention seriously.
9. Celebrate and recognize attempts to learn by employees who take a market risk and publicize within our organization by initiating fast real world feedback mechanisms. With today’s communication technology this is easier than ever however, someone still needs to initiate the action.
The nine steps for setting up a learning organization can at least give a good starting point for you to create a true learning organization however, it will take great effort and enormous commitment.
