David Grebow, in a blog post titled Only Smart Companies Will Win, writes about the necessity of changing from a training culture to a learning culture. He writes:
As recently as eight or ten years ago, transforming your organization’s culture from a teacher-led training culture to a learning culture, driven by digital technology, may have been a matter of managerial preference. Today, it’s an absolute necessity.
Grebow highlights the fact that digital technology has provided people with many new ways to learn,
enhancing learning in our schools and homes. Students are using Web-based elearning programs, social
media, and mobile devices to conveniently and creatively learn in and out of school. Grebow contrasts that change with the much slower change that is going on in companies today. He describes the situation this way:
…relatively few leaders have fully grasped what enormous benefits there can be in transitioning their training culture to a learning culture and changing the way their employees learn. This is true despite evidence showing that significant value accrues to organizations that make the transformation from one culture to the other.
As long as organization leaders maintain a mindset that learning happens in a classroom by instructors conveying information to employees and that the locus of responsibility for learning lies with training departments, companies will not benefit from new learning technologies. They will fail to use these technologies to create a learning and performance support system that ensures learning leads to results. Smart companies focus on learning, not training, and, therefore, are more open to using whatever learning tool works best the situation and performance goals.
