The Performance Improvement Blog

Do You Have a Learning Culture? (Part One)

The answer to this question is important because of the impact culture has on an organization.  I like this quote attributed to Peter Drucker, “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. You can have the most elegant strategic plan, but if your organization’s beliefs and assumptions, values and guiding principles, workplace symbols and artifacts, and company lore are not consistent with that plan, not much will happen.

Culture used to be considered a byproduct of organizational life. Today, many companies are being quite intentional about culture. So, how do you know what kind of culture you have and, if you want to create a learning culture, how do you know when you have one? Dharmesh Shah, Founder and CTO at HubSpot, gives us a way to think about this. He writes, “The true nature of your company – and its culture – is determined by how you instinctively react.”

Taking a cue from Shah, here are some espoused values (not necessarily values in use) and instinctive reactions that indicate either the presence or absence of a learning culture.

The espoused value says, “We want all employees to develop their skills and abilities.”

An executive assistant asks her boss for permission to attend a series of workshops on financial management that is being offered by the company. She explains that this would help her understand the company better, be more helpful to him, and strengthen her career portfolio. Is the executive’s first reaction to say, “I appreciate your ambition, but I need you here right now. We can look at arranging something in the future. And, besides, I don't have the budget for that.” Or, is the executive’s first reaction to say, “I appreciate your ambition. That would be useful knowledge for you to have. Thanks for bringing this request to my attention. Let’s talk about how we can make that happen as soon as possible.” Both reactions are reasonable, but one is indicative of a learning culture and the other is not.

The espoused value says, “We learn from our mistakes.”

A project team member reluctantly admits to the team leader that due to some unforeseen factors their project will not come in on-time and within budget. Is the team leader’s first reaction to say, “I’m very disappointed in our team. Why weren’t these problems anticipated? Why wasn’t I told about this sooner?” Or, is the team leader’s first reaction to say, “Let’s get the team together and review what happened. I want us to learn from this experience so that we can do a better job of reaching our goals in the future.” Both reactions are reasonable, but one is indicative of a learning culture and the other is not.

The espoused value says, “We share information and have open and honest lines of communication.”

The R&D department of a company has produced several prototypes of an exciting new product that has the potential to become a blockbuster for the company. Manufacturing helped with the prototype but has not learned enough about it yet to move it into production. The Marketing Department is telling potential customers about the new product and the Sales Department is taking orders and promising delivery. Is the CEO’s first reaction to say, “We have to fast-track this product with Manufacturing so that we can fill orders and keep customers happy.” Or, is the CEO’s first reaction to say, “Let’s get all of the departments heads together and find out what each of them needs to know from each other in order to make a successful launch of the new product.” Both reactions are reasonable, but one is indicative of a learning culture and the other is not.

How would people in your organization instintively react to these situations? What other situations would help you determine if you have a learning culture in your organization?

Key Elements of a Learning Culture

A “learning culture” is a community of workers continuously and collectively seeking performance improvement through new knowledge, new skills, and new applications of knowledge and skills to achieve the goals of the organization. A learning culture is a culture of inquiry; an environment in which employees feel safe asking tough questions about the purpose and quality of what they are doing for customers, themselves, and other stakeholders. In a learning culture, the pursuit of learning is woven into the fabric of organizational life.

This kind of culture puts a value on using a variety of learning methods, including workshops, seminars, online courses, DVDs or online video, games and simulations, coaching, mentoring, action-learning, job-rotation, internships, or any of a dozen other ways to structure learning experiences. The method used depends on what individuals, teams, and whole organizations need to learn.

In addition to these methods of learning and performance improvement, the following social elements are critical to a learning culture:

1. Building trust– We need to believe that we can rely on leaders to keep their word, that they will do the right thing, and that they will not do anything that is intentionally harmful to us and the organization.
2. Encouraging risk-taking - If we are going to create new businesses and meet the challenges of mature companies, we must continue to try things that could fail and then we must learn from those failures.
3. Communicating - Critical communication among leaders, between management and employees, and among departments/units, must be continuous.
4. Engaging stakeholders – We have to find out what managers want to know and why. Ask them for their thoughts about learning methods. Ask them to help pilot these methods to determine if the methods will produce the learning that is needed. Continue to keep them involved.
5. Allowing for feedback and reflection – We need an organizational routine of feedback from evaluative inquiry (surveys, interviews, group discussions, etc.) and reflection in which you consider the meaning of the data for learning and performance improvement.
6. Supporting social learning – We need to create opportunities for people to share information with each other and talk with others about what they have learned and how they intend to apply that learning and how the group can support them in doing so.

What else do you think is key to developing a learning culture in organizations?

Manager Engagement in Employee Learning: More Work or More Reward?

I was asked during my recent ASTD Webcast whether there’s data to show that managers, who are more involved in training and learning, ultimately receive more rewards and recognition than those who aren't. This is the what’s-in-it-for-me question that managers ask themselves when they are asked to do something in addition to their usual job.

While I’m not aware of research that ties training-involved managers with their own success in companies, I am aware of very successful companies who value highly the role of managers in training and learning and recognize and reward that involvement.

One of these companies is Zingerman’s Community of Businesses. The internationally famous deli and gourmet food retailer in Ann Arbor, Michigan that Inc. Magazine calls “the coolest small company in America,” applies the 5As Framework to manager involvement in the development of their employees. All managers are expected to: 1) provide context for training; 2) reinforce how training helps employee/trainee to be successful; and 3) help trainees put learning from training to good use. 

Google, recently named the second most valuable global brand and rated the “best company to work for” by Fortune four years in a row, is constantly learning from itself. Prasad Setty, head of POPS (people analytics), which is Google’s HR department, says:

We make thousands of people decisions every day—who we should hire, how much we should pay them, who we should promote, who we should let go of. What we try to do is bring the same level of rigor to people decisions that we do to engineering decisions. Our mission is to have all people decisions be informed by data.

Google has a culture in which people ask questions and learn from the answers. They set policy based on information that they gather about their own employees. For example, they asked themselves, “What are the characteristics of the highest performing managers?” They identified eight qualities that are now used to develop new managers and coach the lowest performing managers.

Zaxby’s, a franchisor of gourmet chicken restaurants with 20,000 employees and recently featured in an ASTD Best Webcast Series, has made training and development part of every manager’s job. Store-level managers have control of employee learning. And, because of this, store managers have embraced continuous learning for themselves and for their employees. Training and learning permeates the stores; it's not housed at the corporate office as is the case with many franchise organizations.  As a result, employee compliance with training has increased 300%, the new role (and an improved training program) saved millions of dollars for franchisees, and they believe they have produced better training and better managers.

Zingerman’s, Google, and Zaxby’s are great examples of the impact of manager involvement in training and learning. This isn’t proof that all managers who engage in employee learning will be recognized and rewarded in their organizations, but in organizations that value learning, managers are key to success. 

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