Business Management

You are a newly appointed manager of an organization that is identified in need to improve organizational learning to remain competitive in your market. The only problem is there is no established program and you haven't had any training on it. What can a new manager due to make a difference immediately? How can you create a climate of learning in your organization and why should we care?

One of the most powerful truths about the global economy is that in order to remain competitive and even survive, organizations must devote themselves to learning from ongoing operations. That's the only way you can maintain competitive advantage because the other businesses around you are studying you and your customers looking for ways they can take over your market share.. It's only by learning deliberately, carefully and thoroughly that we can continue to serve our customers and provide a valuable service. This translates directly to our ability to grow and thrive.

Here are some tips and mindsets that will guide you in developing a learning culture:

1. Make sure that you take the time and all work events to reflect on the lessons learned from what just happened. It's not enough to complete a task and then move onto the next one. You must build in time to consider deeply what we can learn and apply from this situation to others in the future. Reflection is the key but it takes time and training.

2. Treat failure is a natural part of the learning process. Failure is simply feedback and a learning opportunity. If you seek to play the blame game you will stifle any interest in learning and people will get into the self-preservation mode and that is a sign of approaching doom.

3. Make sure that you do not allow an elite group or a single point of view to dominate decision-making. The learning process requires multiple points of view and alternative strategies to be considered especially when you're dealing with uncertainty and complexity in your marketplace.

4.Go out of your way to create a climate of support of innocent openness so that your people feel safe about raising questions and offering new ideas.

5. Train your employees in conflict resolution and the mature expression of conflicting ideas in a constructive manner. You'll find this skill to be immensely valuable in all of your group problem-solving processes.

6. Deliberately use cross functional teams in order to get the benefit of different approaches and expertise by design. Given a chpoice, people will tend to form groups of like-minded individuals and that's no way to take advantage of your natural diversity.

Developing a learning culture is no small task, but it is absolutely essential if you want to continue to compete in the world market. It takes time and leadership and a commitment to seeing it through, but your time and effort will be amply rewarded. You can expect to see your people catch fire and begin contributing far beyond your initial expectations and their own. Good luck!