The Performance Improvement Blog

Imagine a Learning Culture

Imagine a company that, in the face of unprecedented change, is continually learning how to learn fast: managing tremendous amounts of information; creating new products and processes in response to global competition; using new apps to be more efficient and effective; and being responsive to learning preferences of a multi-generational and diverse workforce.

Imagine a company in which employees are hired because they are excited about learning and improving themselves. They have a history of taking responsibility for their own learning. They aren’t afraid to admit that they don’t know something and they willingly seek out the help they need to improve themselves and become high performers.

Imagine a company in which the message from the CEO to new employees is that learning and self-development are highly valued. Continuous learning is expected from senior leadership and everyone else in the organization. Incentives and public recognition reward those employees who seek out opportunities to enhance their competencies and increase their capability to contribute to the success of the organization.

Imagine a company in which critical information is easily accessible on a mobile device. Equipment operators can view safety information on their smart phones when and where they need the information. They can learn how to operate and maintain a machine from their tablets. Managers can download coaching advice prior to meeting with a direct report. Leaders can see a video on open book management just before discussing this approach with their teams.

Imagine a company in which managers meet every few weeks with their direct reports to discuss performance goals and learning goals. Employees report what they’ve been learning. Managers give employees constructive feedback and together they decide how to achieve goals. Managers provide opportunities for employees to practice newly acquired skills and put into practice what they've been learning.

Imagine a company in which team leaders ask for feedback on their leadership. They discuss their communication, delegation, coaching, team facilitation, and planning with team members. Team leaders are constantly improving the effectiveness of team meetings and modeling meeting management for team members. Together, they are learning how to facilitate and contribute to meetings that are engaging and productive.

Imagine a company in which project managers conduct an “after action review” at the completion of each project. Project team members discuss what happened, how it happened, the results of what happened, how that compares to what the project was intended to accomplish, what were the successes and failures, and what should be done differently in the future. Project managers and team members put this learning into practice on their next projects.

Imagine a company in which organization-wide strategic planning is seen as an opportunity for learning. Participants are asked to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the planning process. Leaders and managers use that feedback to improve the organization's strategic planning process and this new process is standardized in the organization.

Imagine what it would be like to work in an organization like this.

Performance Management and Alignment of Values

A number of large companies are confronting (willingly and unwillingly) the issues around their own performance management and making some hard choices to try to improve performance by changing workplace culture. They are faced with tradeoffs between what they aspire to be as an organization and what has evolved from the intended and unintended pressures they put on their employees.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos’ response to recent New York Times articles about work-life in the company, exposes a lack of alignment between the kind of organization that Bezos espouses and the organization that actually exists for many workers.

Brad Federman summarizes the charges against the Amazon culture in this way:

Shocking workloads, memorizing leadership principles, laminated cards describing the culture, quizzes on the culture and rewards for perfect scores, pushed to play devil’s advocate, late nights, sabotaging others careers, mechanisms to secretively provide feedback on other employees, significant turnover valued, high risk/high reward, attractive stock options, lack of concern for people with health issues or personal crisis, practiced use of counselling out, purposeful Darwinism, a.k.a Amazon.

Bezos, on the other hand, wrote in an email to his employees this week that he expects them to show empathy for the problems of their coworkers and “…hopefully, you’re having fun working with a bunch of brilliant teammates, helping invent the future, and laughing along the way.”  Apparently, Bezos thinks that Amazon is a happy, collaborative culture. This isn’t what many employees are reporting.

Zappos CEO Tony Hseih is adapting Holacracy to his organization in order to increase employee involvement and commitment. Theoretically, this structure is leaderless and depends on self-management. Zappos (owned by Amazon) also faces a cultural alignment challenge. I wrote about this in a previous post:

I do wonder about an apparent disconnect between the intention to create a company in which there are no managers and self-management and self-organization are highly valued, yet the decision to become that kind of company was decided by the CEO and is being enforced as if the company is still hierarchical and command and control. Zappo’s might aspire to be leaderless, but that will be very hard to achieve for a company in which the charismatic founder and inspirational leader is still around and the parent company is a much more traditional organization.  

Cultural change is a struggle, especially when espoused values do not align with values in use. Leaders can aspire to a humane, egalitarian workplace but if the incentives are elsewhere, employees will behave in response to the incentives. If managers are rewarded (pay, promotion, recognition, etc.) for the amount of work they do and the amount of time they spend at work, they will do all the things they need to do to look busy and productive. And they will expect the same of their direct reports. If managers are rewarded for treating their employees humanely and for involving them in decision-making, that’s what employees will do for each other. There must be alignment.

Some companies are working hard at alignment. Accenture is eliminating annual performance reviews and ranking of employees. Instead, managers are expected to provide ongoing feedback to their direct reports. CEO Pierre Nanterme became convinced that annual performance reviews and rankings were not improving performance. He believes that what improves performance is just-in-time feedback around everyday work activities. He wants employees to learn and grow and is trying to align the performance management system with those values.

Business leaders need to pay more attention to workplace culture. These days, the competition is fierce and the expectations of customers are high.  Espoused values need to be aligned with values in use if they are going to have a chance to achieve the level of productivity, creativity, and innovation needed to compete and succeed over the long term.

Mobile Learning How to Learn

Delivering information to employees via mobile devices appears to be the latest hot trend in employee learning and development. However, if this delivery method means simply reading classroom training documents on a Web site or downloading a file that is thick with facts and instructions, we will not enhance learning nor help employees contribute to the success of their organizations. Whether the information resides on a mobile device, is accessed by GPS (e.g., Adobe Captivate 8), or is automatically delivered via a beacon (e.g., KnowledgeStar™), the quality of the content and the way it is presented and supported are critical to learning and application.

RJ Jacquez makes the point that whatever the device, whether desktop, laptop, tablet, smart phone, or wearables, the content must be presented in an effective way. He writes, “…design flexible and device-agnostic learning that is accessible anytime, anywhere and on any screen.” I would add, “Pay attention to the learning preferences of employees.” This is just as important on a wearable device as it is in the classroom. Does an individual prefer reading text, listening to a podcast, watching a video, discussing with co-workers, practicing with feedback, or any of a myriad of other methods of learning?

Also, pay attention to the environment in which learning is intended to occur. Learning is heavily influenced by the situation. The device might be mobile but the circumstances for learning and performance are not. What are the physical demands? What are the psychological demands? What are the social demands? All of these situational demands affect learning.

The tendency is to get so caught up in the technology that we forget about the needs of learners in their particular situations. David Grebow and I have explained the need for more “pull” learning and less “push” learning, which, historically, has been the primary way in which employee training has been done. In the current work environment, employees need to be able to identify what they need to know when they need to know it and then have ready access to that knowledge and skills. In other words, they need to learn how to learn in an organization and on-the-job.

In many cases, it may be more important for training managers to help employees learn how to learn from mobile devices rather than push specific content. It’s not enough to make the information (compliance, safety, operation, planning, etc.) available. We need to teach learners how to “pull” what they need just-in-time, how to apply that knowledge to their jobs, and how to get feedback for continuous improvement.

Situated Learning: Essential for a Learning Culture

Recently, I had an experience that, for me, exemplifies the meaning of “situated learning”. I had the basement walls of my house painted including the room where the water heater is located. The next day I had no hot water. The electric pilot light on the water heater was not coming on. I didn’t know how to fix the problem so I turned to YouTube and found a video that explained what to do. With my iPad next to the water heater, I learned how to reset the little computer that regulates the pilot light and gas. Apparently, the fumes from the paint had activated a safety feature that turns off the pilot light.

I could have taken a course on Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning, but that would have been useless in my case. Without feeling the urgency of the problem and without being in the context of my water heater, I would not have remembered what to do about it. Learning in this case required all of the elements of the actual situation: the particular water heater; the basement environment; the pressure I (and my wife) felt to have hot water; and my limited knowledge about modern heating and cooling.

John Seely Brown, Allan Collins, and Paul Duguid labeled this kind of learning: “situated cognition”. They write:

People who use tools actively rather than just acquire them, by contrast, build an increasingly rich implicit understanding of the world in which they use the tools and of the tools themselves. The understanding, both of the world and of the tool, continually changes as a result of their interaction. Learning and acting are interestingly indistinct, learning being a continuous, life-long process resulting from acting in situations.

 Learning how to use a tool involves far more than can be accounted for in any set of explicit rules. The occasions and conditions for use arise directly out of the context of activities of each community that uses the tool, framed by the way members of that community see the world. The community and its viewpoint, quite as much as the tool itself, determine how a tool is used. Thus, carpenters and cabinet makers use chisels differently. Because tools and the way they are used reflect the particular accumulated insights of communities, it is not possible to use a tool appropriately without understanding the community or culture in which it is used.

We have the technology that can support situated learning in companies; that can merge learning and acting. We have technology that allows employees to learn when, where, and how they need to learn. One example of this technology is KnowledgeStar^TM

Let’s say you work at a refinery and you are responsible for reading the new DigitalFlow Flare Gas Meter. The company’s cost and safety goals depend on you recording accurate readings. You can attend the class that’s offered once per quarter or you can go to the meter and, using your smart phone, “talk” to it using the KnowledgeStar system. Instructions are automatically sent to you and you can “pull” the information you need from the cloud. You might ask to see a video model of someone reading the meter. You might ask for a checklist with a list of things critical for you to do. You might look up some tips for long term maintenance of the meter. You might discuss this event with someone knowledgeable in the company who can give you feedback regarding what you did and how well you did it. This is situated learning in an industrial environment.

I’ve written extensively about creating and sustaining a learning culture in organizations. Part of the mix of activities in that kind of culture must be intentional and guided situated learning. It’s not sufficient to simply require employees to attend a training program or put employees in the activity they need to perform and hope they learn from experience. Learners acquire most knowledge and skills best in the situation in which they must apply that learning and with feedback and reflection, preferably from an onsite work group where they can receive support and hear a variety of perspectives that challenge their own thinking about their work.