Building a Courageous and Agile Learning Culture & Organisation

We are delighted to announce that Investors in Learning are launching our new Mastermind programme for Leaders and aspiring leaders in any sector.

Part 1 is Creating a Courageous and Agile Learning Culture & Organisation - knowledge, research, benefits about the critical need to develop a Supportive and Resilient Learning Culture in todays fast changing unpredictable world.

Part 2 is Becoming a Learning Leader - Self-development to become the leader that will effectively and confidently build and lead a Culture of Learning and to develop the traits that are essential on that journey.

Creating a Courageous and Agile Learning Culture is the way we need to go in order to fully engage our people, and to ensure that we create the knowledge base around us that we all so critically need in this fast pace of change that we are all experiencing. I would go further to say that creating a Courageous and Agile Learning Culture is business critical in todays world. It is simple. Disengagement is a huge issue internationally and unless we create a culture of engagement where people feel valued, feel heard and can live their truth, we will ultimately lose that talent. Of course before we lose their talent we will be severely comprising on our productivity as we now know that engagement and productivity are completely linked. Study after study shows this. We need no more studies to prove what we already know. Now is time for action. Those that will not act will just suffer the same fate as those that either were unfortunate enough not to have been exposed to the lessons, or did not listen or reach out proactively to learn the lessons from others.

Humans are so good at NOT learning lessons. Every history book shows us that, and just by turning on the news where people talk incessantly about needing to finally learn the lessons. By not learning lessons we are also encouraging bad practise to take hold. Learning lessons means that we identify the lessons and then take corrective ACTIONS to correct those mistakes and make sure they do not happen again. We are actually not bad at identifying lessons, but where we fail again and again is with the reliable and consistent implementation of corrective actions. We so often do not actually change our behaviours or processes or take the actions to ensure that mistakes are not repeated. That is actually the harder part of the lessons learned journey, and that is why it so often is not completed until the old habits take hold again, the mistake is repeated and then we are back in that vicious cycle of not having done anything with those lessons that we identified. Identifying lessons is NOT enough. We need to act on them, then learn new lessons, act again and so on every single day. Only a supportive Learning Culture will facilitate that continuous learning and action to turn that vicious cycle into a virtuous one.

Why does this happen? We are patterning machines and our patterns can be so hard wired and lead to deeply ingrained habits. Only a Supportive Learning Culture that allows patterns to be loosened and re-evaluated will maximise the chances that lessons will not only be identified, but that corrective actions will actually be implemented and then monitored to ensure that the new learning is reliably implemented. Only then should we allow ourselves to say that a Lesson has actually been Learned.

So why is a Culture of Learning linked to having a knowledge base? Because without a Resilient Supportive Learning Culture where people feel safe to speak their truth, you will be curbing and repressing innovation, people will stay quiet where they see risks, where they have ideas and valuable learning and ideas will be lost. Silent learning is vital and important to a point, as that is where all ideas start. Every action starts with a thought, however in business and in life that thought is useless unless it is expressed and given space to be explored. Unless people feel free and are encouraged to speak their truth without fear of reprisal, a lot of thoughts will stay silent. In fact very sadly, after some time some people will stop having those thoughts altogether as they will numb themselves. We are creatures that are highly adaptive and we will often adapt to what we are expected to do. Unless people feel valued and the clear expectations are set that people should express themselves and that their thoughts and opinions are valued, people will usually stay silent. Where people are silent, that is not only opening the doors to risks becoming issues, health and safety issues not being addressed, but also it leads to bad practise going 'unnoticed', and then very sadly in many cases becoming the norm.

The fact is that ultimately the risk that is not discussed or expressed will ultimately become the issue and then will be have to be tackled anyway, but of course it will cost you far more money, time and emotional hardship, than if that had been explored at an earlier stage. So risk mitigation is vital, but only truly possible where people are encouraged to speak their truth, and people will only truly speak their truth if there are processes and values in place where this is encouraged. That is why a Supportive, Courageous and Agile Learning Culture is so critical.

Do you want to run your business relying on the bold minority to come forth when they see risks or have the next ideas that will significantly tweak or even revolutionise your processes or systems? Or do you want to ensure that people share their ideas and insights, mistakes are not repeated, that lessons are proactively learned? Surely we all want to ensure that we have intelligent human Continuous Improvement systems in place where lessons are identified and then corrective actions are meaningfully and reliably applied through embedded processes which ensure that people share their stories and their truths?

A Resilient Supportive and Courageous Learning Culture will create the environment that ensures that people speak up and share their ideas and thoughts with others; it will have processes in place that ensure that people share their truths with each other, record these and ensure that this knowledge is also accessible to others so that the learning can be intelligently shared with others who may need the insights today or in the future. It is highly inefficient to keep learning to ourselves when it could serve others in other parts of the organisation. We also know that issues often repeat themselves so why not share the learning with as many people as possible? Surely it is madness not to? "The definition of insanity is doing same thing again and again and expecting different results". We know who said that now famous saying. I wonder why Einstein's words are now quoted more and more? It is a sign of the times. We are not creating intentional learning systems which are the only sure way to ensure that we do not continually repeat that "insanity"!

A Resilient, Supportive and Courageous Learning Culture is that intentional learning system. It is a system that encourages expression. Please note that expression is the opposite of repression. Where humans are in any way repressed, learning is directly impacted. We cannot fully and openly learn as humans where there is also repression. It is very difficult, if not actually psychological and physiologically impossible, to be repressed and engaged at the same time. Encouraging expression is also allowing the true coming alive of the many individual unique strengths across your organisation, which in turn will also help people to become better thinkers. Clear and focused thinkers with a solution - focused and agile mindset are so critical to ensuring that we mitigate risks, are innovative and keep up with the very fast changing world around us.

Creating a strong and engaging Learning Culture is choosing the long game. It is a choice of lifestyle. It is also the only way to ensure that you are future proofing your organisation through engagement, boosting productivity, and getting the most out of your people. Brilliant thinking does not happen by default, it needs the right culture to flourish. The world is changing and people have a lot of choices of ways of making a living that was not there before the digital age. The digital self-education industry is projected to be the biggest growth industry of the next decade. So we need to do more not only to find good people in the first place, but also to engage them and give them a reason to share their valuable time with us in our organisations. We must never take our talent for granted. It is the cause of the downfall of so many organisations.

Our programme is the first step to understanding the true benefits of creating a Supportive, Resilient Learning Culture which will ensure that you are not only engaging your people, maximising productivity, but also that you are getting the best possible ROI from your people.

There is not just the ROI but a very real COI too. There is a Cost of Inaction, which we can see through many studies of business and organisational success. Don't be left behind in this fast changing world.

Continuous Learning and a culture that supports this is the only possible way to go that guarantees that you are doing everything to stay ahead of the curve, ensuring that essential and business critical knowledge does not get lost, that you keep your talent, grow your people to ensure they enjoy and are engaged in their work, whilst maximising productivity. Whats not to like?

Please contact us if you wish to learn more about our Building a Courageous and Agile Learning Culture Mastermind and we will send you more information. [email protected]

Also our new website will be launched very soon :) Thank you all for your valuable time and attention and I hope we can continue the conversation. If you wish to contact me directly, I would love to hear and learn with you. [email protected]