The advantages to organizational learning.

Organizational learning is how your company improves over time. Organizational learning doesn’t necessarily mean formal training. Instead, we can approach learning on an individual learning level as micro or macro.

Organizational training expert Josh Bersin suggests that micro-learning often takes less than ten minutes.?

You can usually find the answer through a quick search. For example, micro-learning could be to learn a useful keyboard shortcut or convert a file to a different format.

Macro-learning means dedicating hours or days to developing skills and learning something new.

There are many advantages to organizational learning. You can:

·???????? Increase productivity. For example, studies have shown that companies could increase productivity by implementing a social learning strategy that reduced learning time.

·???????? Reduce turnover and increase job satisfaction. Employees are also happier with their work and have increased motivation for transferring learning.

·???????? Maximize employee engagement. The learning culture leads to employee engagement.

·???????? Adapt to change. By continually learning and sharing knowledge within the company, it becomes easier to adapt to customer demand, market conditions, and unforeseen external factors.

·???????? Increase customer satisfaction. The organizational learning culture to satisfied employees, which lead to happy customers.

·???????? Improve skill levels. As learning becomes a natural part of the organizational culture, you can expect employees to learn and develop more than before, nurturing leadership skills and increasing personal responsibility.

·???????? Increase profitability.?The organizational learning culture has a direct impact on business performance.

·???????? Learn from past mistakes. As you evaluate results, make adjustments, and document new best practices, you avoid repeating the same mistakes as before.

According to HBR article on Knowledge management, you’ll need three things to adopt an organizational culture focused on learning: a supportive learning environment, concrete learning processes and practices, and leadership that reinforce learning.

?You’ll need to develop three things:

1. A Supportive Learning Environment

First of all, you need to create a safe environment for exploration:

·???????? Encourage new ideas.

·???????? Make space for the unexpected.

·???????? Expect (and handle) failure. ?

2. Concrete Learning Processes and Practices

Now it’s time to integrate learning into your everyday activities:

·???????? Create plans for learning.

·???????? Enable social learning.

·???????? Gather insights into everyday processes.

·???????? Add audits.

3. Leadership That Reinforces Learning

If learning is to become part of the culture, leaders need to lead the way — not just with words but with their actions.?

Unfortunately, a 2019 report by Deloitte shows that learning rarely is linked to promotions. Yes, it’s easy enough to pay lip service to the importance of learning.

However, if you want employees to take it seriously, you need to find a way to reward learning. For example, consider what value you currently place on knowledge and initiatives for promotions or salary increases.?

Start Creating a Learning Culture in Your Organization the Right Way

“We understand that the only competitive advantage the company of the future will have is its managers’ ability to learn faster than their competitors”.

These wise words come from a 1998 article in HBR written by Arie de Geus, who worked in Shell’s planning group.

Today’s business environment has been aptly described by the acronym VUCA – volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.? The speed of change is fast and getting faster.? Rapid change and disruptions are the norms. There are uncertainty and ambiguity around strategy and implementation.? Work is complex and needs cross-functional teams with diverse expertise.? The world has become flatter, and competition is global.

Kodak, Nokia, Blockbuster, etc., are just a few of the examples of companies who held on to their extremely successful business models just a little longer than they should have.? They tried to change, but it was too little too late.?

Most of the work done today is complex. It requires contributions from multiple team members with diverse expertise.? A learning organization can utilize the collective intelligence of these diverse teams.? It unlocks individual employees’ potential and aligns their efforts to learn, change, innovate, and grow.