The Performance Improvement Blog

Eight Leader Habits of a Learning Culture

Eight leader habits are essential to a learning culture. These are behaviors ingrained in the routines and rituals of organizations that are continually learning and learning how to learn. Leaders in these organizations do the following:

1. Send the message - Leaders communicate the importance of learning to the organization. This message is heard by employees starting in the hiring process and continuing throughout their tenure in the organization. This message is in the guiding principles of the business. Leaders say how they will support learning and how they will recognize and reward those employees who continually acquire new knowledge and new skills.  
2. Build trust - Employees will invest time and effort in learning if they trust their managers. 
   Learners need to believe that what they are learning is valued, that their managers will help them find opportunities to apply that learning on the job, and that their bosses will not block their development and advancement in the organization. Without this trust employees will not risk the change that comes with applying something new and with aspiring for advancement in the organization.
3. Encourage risk-taking – Organizations that seek new solutions to old problems, creativity and innovation in their operations and products, employees who “think outside the box” and    “walk the talk”, need to allow managers to make mistakes and learn from those experiences. This learning cannot be left to chance. At a minimum, mistakes (errors, failures, screw-ups, etc.) should be followed by a non-punitive conversation between manager and employee about what happened, what was learned, and what should be done to be successful in the future. Successes, should be examined in the same way: what happened, what can we learn, what should we continue doing. Sometimes we learn more from successes than from failures. In either case, it’s the risk-taking that results in learning.
4. Communicate clearly and often – Do not assume that in this age of email, cell phones, text messaging, and Web conferencing, people are getting the information they need. We need to be intentional about the kind and frequency of sharing. In a learning culture, people are continually sharing needed information with the people who need to know. Employees are hearing in a timely way from their bosses about what they need to learn and why they need to learn it. Goals of the organization are communicated to employees and linked to knowledge and skills that will help the organization achieve those goals. Functional units collaborate by sharing learning and best practices with each other. Managers and their direct reports frequently discuss what each needs to do to improve performance.
5. Engage stakeholders – Every stakeholder, whether managers, employees, customers, business partners, investors, vendors, and, in some cases, legislators and government agencies, has something to offer to the collective wisdom of the organization. We want to find out what they know and what they need to learn. This could be information about such things as how to improve individual performance, how to work more effectively as a team, how to plan and make decisions as an organization, how to help customers use products and services, and how to find out what is needed in the marketplace.
6. Allow for feedback and reflection – In a learning culture, employees examine what they do, compare that to what needs to be done, reflect on what they have learned, and make the      needed changes in the organization. The most important learning occurs in the conversations that employees have with their supervisors and co-workers, in the conversations that teams have about team development and effectiveness, and in whole organization experiences with problem-solving and planning. Learning occurs from the feedback and reflection around individual, team, and whole organization successes and failures.
7. Support social learning – In a learning culture, every aspect of the workplace supports continuous individual, team, and whole organization learning. It is a place where people are learning from each other and this is accepted practice. In this kind of culture, formal classroom training is probably the least effective. More effective, sustainable learning occurs in the normal course of doing the work. This informal learning is facilitated by coaching, mentoring, communities-of-practice, experiments, action-learning and any of a myriad of other methods including the various forms of social media. Although informal, social learning is not casual; in a learning culture it is very intentional and structured.
8. Manage time – In a learning culture, people realize that there is no better use of their time than to be learning or helping someone else learn.  They know that learning is critical to success, whether it’s a technician who needs to know how to install an armrest on a state of the art, ergonomic office chair, or an executive leadership team that needs to know how to do strategic planning. And people realize that facilitating learning doesn’t necessarily take much time. In some cases, a few minutes will do. Ken Blanchard suggested in his book One Minute Manager (first published 30 years ago) that managers can provide effective feedback by taking one minute for clarifying goals, one minute for giving praise, and one minute for re-directing behavior. Some situations will require much more than three minutes but, whatever the time, it is time well spent.

These are eight leader habits of a learning culture. These are good habits that you’ll want to promote and nurture in your organization.

Learning to Compete

The rate at which an organization learns may be the only sustainable competitive advantage. . . . If you are learning more rapidly than the competition, you can get ahead and stay ahead. (Garvin & Edmondson, 2008)

Every organization faces some kind of competition. Manufacturers compete for market share and for talent. Retail businesses compete for space and for customers. Hospitals compete for patients, staff, and government as well as private funding. Colleges and universities compete for faculty, students, and for funding. Government agencies compete for funding and talent.

This competition can come from global, virtual, and newly formed rivals. Airbnb is shaking up the hospitality industry. Uber is providing an alternative to taxis. Coursera is challenging popular notions about a college education. Health care providers from around the globe are attracting patients with lower cost surgeries and treatments. New competitors in every sector are cropping up daily.

Marcia L. Conner and James G. Clawson in their chapter in the book, Creating a Learning Culture, write this about competition and learning:

Today it seems that organizations need to be able to do more than just adapt: they must become agile in the face of constantly changing conditions. And if organizations are to respond intelligently, they must make learning a central part of their strategy for survival and growth. If they do not, the future looks more and more bleak; it will just be a matter of time. If, however, leaders and the people within the organization are learning all the time, faster than competitors, and applying the right strategies at the right times, the organization has hope. (p.326)

“Learning all the time” means making learning part of the culture of an organization. This means  that learning (using Schein’s definition of culture) is one of the underlying assumptions of the organization, that everyone is expected to continually develop their knowledge and skills, that learning is valued and expected at all levels of the organization, that learning is ingrained in the routines and rituals of employees. Asking questions and giving feedback is just what people do. Sharing successes and failures is done openly and without risk of disapproval. Employees tell stories that dramatize what they are learning. Action learning permeates all team activity. Performance reviews are focused on learning and capacity building. Managers encourage their direct reports to acquire new knowledge and skills and apply that learning in the organization.

These are signs of a learning culture. A learning culture isn’t a program; it’s all of these things and more. An organization that is creating and maintaining this kind of culture is ready to compete in the world today and in the future.

Using Measurement to Create a Learning Culture

Douglas K. Smith (author of The Wisdom of Teams) writes in the Forward to the book, Creating a Learning Culture: Strategy, Technology, and Practice:

Today, you cannot avoid human questions like these: What must I learn next? What do I need to be learning in order to be more productive? What does my organization need to be learning in order to compete more effectively? How can we learn best? How can we learn how to retain what we learn so we do not have to learn it again? What are we doing now that enhances our personal and organizational learning?

These are the questions that managers need to ask themselves on a regular basis. In order to answer these questions, they need to measure learning and the impact of learning on the organization. In one of the many excellent chapters in Creating a Learning Culture, titled Using measurement to foster culture and sustainable growth, the chapter’s authors (Laurie Bassi, Karen L. McGraw, and Dan McMurrer) make a strong case for measurement in a learning culture. They write:

The time has come to develop measurement systems that look beyond current earnings – systems that can assess an organization’s capacity to be productive and profitable, and measure how investments in learning create that capacity. Such metrics can allow organizations to be driven with the steering wheel rather than the rear-view mirror. They can provide sound, analytically responsible guidance for improving, rather than merely justifying, human-capital investments.

The one place I disagree with the authors is in a chapter footnote (3) where they write “…case study analysis is a notoriously poor methodology for identifying cause-and-effect relationships.” If by case study, they mean telling the story of what happened, I would argue that the only way to establish a causal relationship between learning and organizational outcomes is by telling the story. Large-scale correlational studies don’t do it. However, by describing what was learned, how it was applied, and what difference that made, we can provide evidence of a causal link. Of course, many other factors contribute to outcomes but at least with stories (i.e., substantiated narrative) we can make a compelling case for the contribution of learning to the success of the organization.

Can GM Learn From Its Mistakes?

“We failed these customers and we must face up to it and we must learn from it,” said Mary Barra, embattled CEO of GM, talking to Matt Lauer of NBC News. Barra seems to be intent on making the company acknowledge its mistakes (29 million vehicles recalled this year so far). Since she became CEO, GM has increased the number, size, and frequency of product recalls, including the faulty Chevy Cobalt ignition switches.

 

 

However, recognizing and admitting to mistakes is not the same as learning from mistakes. The question GM must ask itself is, “Does the organization know how to learn?” Do employees know how to use data to not only assess quality but to then reflect on the meaning of that information for the purpose of performance improvement? Do engineers know how to have a conversation that is more inquiry than advocacy? Will they truly listen to each other and use what they hear to continuously improve processes and products? Will managers share information with each other without fear of losing control or losing power?

Some might say, “GM is too big to change.” But large, global companies can change their cultures. Ford is an excellent example of this. As I wrote in a previous blog post, Ford CEO Alan Mulally led Ford through a culture change that was critical to going from billions of dollars in losses each year to billions of dollars in profit. As Joe Nocera describes it, Mulally brought honesty and openness to the Board room, broke down the departmental silos, kept a consistent focus on strategic goals, and held people accountable for contributing to the overall success of the company.

GM can do what Ford did but it will have to create a culture in which learning and change are valued. It’s not enough to have the right strategy. Companies also need the right culture. For GM to succeed and gain back the trust of its customers, it needs to truly learn from its past mistakes and apply that learning in a culture that rewards risk-taking and truth-telling.