How To Create A Learning Organisation

Arie de Geus, a business theorist writes “the ability to learn faster than your competitors may be your only sustainable competitive advantage”. 

For many organisations however, it is not just a question of how fast their people are able to learn but their ability and willingness to learn, and what they are willing to learn especially when it may involve letting go of being seen as ‘the expert’ and experimenting with new ways of being.

So how can those organisations up for the hard work of adapting and evolving in times of complexity and change support their people to learn?  

Not just learning fast but deep learning, and in a way that drives improved performance and business outcomes?

Create a Learning Environment

The research is clear. People learn best when they are in an environment that supports making mistakes. Where they can do the vulnerable work of learning without criticism or reproach but with helpful feedback, encouragement and support. 

This is built through regular, informal conversations about performance that focus on progress not perfect outcomes. Questions like:

• What did you learn?
• What parts did you find easier, or more challenging? Why?
• What might you do differently next time?
• How did you feel? What is lighting you up right now?
• What support do you need from me? The team? The organisation?

Practical questions that help to build reflection and emotional intelligence. Not questions that put people’s defence system up thereby shutting down the very parts of their brain most associated with learning!

Some businesses believe creating environments like this will be ‘too soft, too lenient’, fearing that standards will plummet if we get too focused on learning rather than success and outcomes. But in reality, that is just a polarity, a contradiction that needs to be managed.  

Managing polarities, like wanting to create a learning environment at the same time as wanting consistently high quality outcomes, requires that we work to ensure the benefits of a learning environment can be achieved (more learning, more insights, better knowledge sharing, increase adaptation) at the same time as managing for the possible downsides – less accuracy, more stuff ups, more ambiguity.

We can do this by:
• being clear at the outset about the learning objectives;
• giving clear feedback on progress throughout;
• focusing coaching style conversations on improving as opposed to assessing performance; and
* creating space to experiment before launching or ‘going to market’. 

Foster a ‘Learner Mindset’

Another critical element in creating a learning organisation is helping people to cultivate a willingness to learn and to tolerate the discomfort of continued learning (especially for those in senior roles).

We call this building the ‘learner mindset’.   

At the core of a learner mindset is a belief that that effort, even if feels uncomfortable, when focused in the right direction leads to higher achievement. This is sometimes also known as a growth mindset.

Erika Anderson in the HBR article Learning to Learn (March 2016) describes four key mental attributes that encourage a learner mindset:

* Aspiration: raising the desire to learn (by helping people to understand what the benefit will be – to themselves and their customers);

• Self-awareness: helping people to see where they need to develop or improve;

• Curiosity: developing a habit of asking ‘curious questions’ to build the learning muscle and pique interest in new subject matter/people; and

• Vulnerability: managing self talk to embrace being a beginner again.

Our approach at Holly Parry & Co is to work with our clients to better understand the mental models, values, belief systems and organisational practices that might be preventing the development of a learner mindset.

We then design a tailored coaching framework that can be used in formal and informal performance and career conversations across organisations to strengthen and reinforce a learner mindset, normalising the emotions that people experience when they learn something new, and provide a roadmap for integrating continuous development into on-the-job learning.

We also teach people the latest research in neuroscience which shows how we can reshape our brains and our behaviours to be more ‘growth orientated’ through the questions we ask, our mental habits, and what we pay attention to (for example, effort, progress, our intention).

We then work with our clients to design the habits, rituals, and organisational processes most conducive to building effective learners across the organisation.

Coaching For Critical Transition Points

Sometimes there can be intensely personal reasons for why learning new ways of doing things or operating can feel very challenging.

It might be a particularly tough time for you personally, for a variety of reasons. Or perhaps you’ve been promoted (or seeking promotion) into a new role and working with unrelenting feelings around being an imposter, or not capable enough or too different from your predecessor or those currently working at that level.

Or you might find yourself at a career transition, knowing that you need to change something about how you are operating but not quite sure where to begin.

Nick Petrie, whilst at the Centre for Creative Leadership, aptly describes this kind of deeper learning, or Vertical Development, as necessary when our ‘cup of knowledge’ is already full. Rather than add in more content (knowledge) to our cups, which can lead to even more confusion and overwhelm, what is needed at these critical transition points is instead to grow the size of our cups.

This kind of ‘deep, vertical learning’ is not about what we know – and learning or knowing more - but about how we are, how we are ‘showing up’ - learning a new way of being.

In these instances, working individually with a coach can be transformative. With the right fit, a skilled coach can create a safe space to examine previously untested beliefs, working through barriers to change and designing experiments to get you out of a place of ‘stuck-ness’ to greater possibility, creativity and potential.

We’d love to hear from you if you are keen to find out how to create a strong learning culture in your team or organisation, or if you are interested in that kind of one on one support through coaching.