Meaningful Ways For My Colleagues & Confidants To Support/Challenge My Learning

Being a professional in the field of learning and a self-professed life-long learner, it is no coincidence that learning plays a critical role in my day-to-day life. Whether it is improving a skill or acquiring a new good habit or just gaining new insights, I am always up for learning. I distinguish meaningful learning from mere acquisition of information/knowledge in the sense that learning results in change. This could be change in behavior, perspective, intention or action.

No matter how self-directed we are, there is only so much we can learn on our own. Our context, whether it is the workplace, family or society, contribute immensely to our learning because learning cannot take place in a vacuum. And I believe that the context provided by people around us contributes the most to what we learn. As captured in the infographic below, the top three ways that my colleagues and confidants can support and challenge my learning in meaningful ways are Feedback, Dialogue and Compassion. 

Feedback: And I am refering to constructive feedback here. My most important "aha" moments have been a result of the constructive feedback provided by colleagues and confidants who cared enough to observe something (behavior, action, words) and had valuable inputs to provide on how that something was either great and useful or could  be improved upon. Not only was this constructive feedback informative, but it was also though-provoking and many times has led me to challenge my assumptions and even bring about a transformation in me.

Dialogue: Another powerful way that some deep insights and learning has come my way is through engaging in dialog. This is a wonderful way of sharing perspectives, especially contrarian perspectives, and to really understand what the other point of view is and where it is coming from. Dialogue is the foundation of critical thinking because it brings to attention those perspectives that I may never have been able to get a peek into, had I not talked about it with that colleague or confidant. It literally provides "food for thought". Many times it has also been a way of affirming that I am not completely crazy and that my thoughts are coherent enough to make sense to someone other than me!

Compassion: This one may seem a little out of place; what's compassion got to do with learning in meaningful ways, right? For people who place a high value on success and cringe at failure, it is not easy to learn when we fail. We are already quite critical of ourselves for failing, so when the trusted colleague or confidant is also critical about something we failed to do or learn, it very becomes difficult to look at learning and/or failure positively. Here compassion is extremely critical to help people like me believe that it is okay to fail and that one can learn from failure. Compassion provides the encouragement we need to keep learning in spite of failure instead of giving up. It is also possible at times that for whatever reason, I may not be able to immediately grasp what my colleague or confidant is trying to communicate or "teach" and in times such as these, a little compassion will go a long way so that they don't give up on me, but more importantly, it will also ensure that I don't give up on myself!

Note: Images have been sourced from Google Images and have been used for educational purposes only.

“Getting it right!” a Top 5 List Describing “Best in Class" Learning Organizations

A Learning Organization, according to Peter Senge, is an organization "where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole (reality) together."  In a learning organization, "leaders are designers, stewards and teachers. They are responsible for building organizations where people continually expand their capabilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models." Whereas Organizational Learning as defined by Harvard Business School professor David Garvin, is the "process of creating, acquiring, interpreting, transferring, and retaining knowledge and using the new knowledge as a basis for responding to a changing environment."  Organizational learning is a process to ultimately become a Learning Organization.

The aspects that stood out to me in Senge's definition of the Learning Organization were:

• Getting the desired results 
• Nurturing new patterns of thinking
• Leadership involvement
• Continually learning to see the whole reality together
• Investment in learning (although this point is not very explicit above)

 Every year, the Association for Talent Development awards organizations that "get it" and are "best in class." This link provides information not only about the names of award winning organizations for 2014, but also lists attributes that make them best in class. Most of the attributes resonate really well with the five points listed above.

• Getting the desired results entails two aspects a) fulfilling individual goals b) achieving organization's strategic goals. This is possible only if there is alignment between individual goals and organizational goals, as well as between L&D objectives and activities and the business. As the article notes, best in class learning organizations "demonstrate enterprise-wide success as a result of employee learning and development" as well as "use the learning function as a strategic business tool to get results". This may takes various forms such as having robust talent development programs or building organizational capability by taking a systems approach to business needs and then training and developing talent to meet those business needs.

• Nurturing new patterns of thinking goes to the heart of having a "culture of learning." It involves first and foremost, allowing new ideas to flow in, critically analyzing them, and then adopting the best parts of those ideas as new patterns of thinking and "doing". This is a big deal! Most organizations are so stuck with "this is how we've always done things around here" approach that they don't even entertain new ideas, let alone adopt them. This is especially true of successful organizations. However, it is really important for organizations to let employees explore new ways of thinking and doing to bring in new ideas that will help the organization adapt to the ever changing external environment. This attitude will foster innovation and we all know how important innovation is to scoring competitive advantage in today's environment.

• Leadership involvement is crucial to any organizational initiative that hopes to see the light of the day. The idea of leaders being responsible for " building organizations where people continually expand their capabilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models" speaks to the role of leadership in creating the environment that provides opportunities for individual learning, team learning as well as systems thinking. It clarifies that leaders are not just relegated to the business and financial aspects, but involved in every aspect of learning and development.

• Continuous learning to "see the whole reality together" comprises two aspects, a) continuous learning b) systems thinking. The idea here is to look at things from a systems perspective as a team or an organization. This is the heart of team learning and using the skills of reflection, inquiry, and dialog for group problem solving and learning. It allows the organization/team to gain insights which would not have been possible individually.

• Investment in learning is a pre-requisite, and this does not have to be limited to monetary investment alone. The investment of time and effort, especially from leadership is equally valuable (one could argue that you can quantify time and effort investment and show a dollar figure), but the benefits derived from these investment certainly will be beyond tangible or quantifiable. When employees see their organization investing in their learning and development, in providing them opportunities to innovate, there is no limit to what an organization can achieve.

To the above five, I would add the following equally important practices that best in class learning organizations adopt:

• Integrating learning with performance: In today's global workplace, when technology has become all pervasive and we are collaborating with team members from different parts of the world, we cannot afford to draw a line saying this is where "learning" ends and "work" begins. Organizations cannot afford to separate learning from performance, simply because that distinction does not exist.

• Flawless execution: Many organizations and L&D functions are good when it comes to planning on paper, but falter during execution when faced with unanticipated challenges. Navigating these challenges and staying on course to make sure the initiative/s reap the desired outcome is absolutely essential to their success.

• Measuring the impact of learning initiatives: Finally, there has to be data to support that the initiatives have really been successful and effective. And measurement does not refer to surveys asking users if they liked the "training," rather, it involves measuring the impact of the initiative on business results, because that is ultimately the goal of learning. Measuring often, but appropriately will also gather data that will help quantify "success" and generate more stakeholder buy-in for future initiatives.

References for link & images:

https://www.td.org/Publications/Magazines/TD/TD-Archive/2014/10/BEST-Intro

https://freedomtwo.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/learning-org-1.jpg

http://sosleadership.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Executioncartoon.gif

https://beyondlean.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/dilbert-105395-strip.gif

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/DilbertData.gif

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwTfMKIkX03ev5bpgJoNiEQILfSqE8GmoJjLg8RHtj9VOboQ0WVcBr7Ljxnwj-vcxhjwweNzriTukBs8O4WDYBFaN4ovg1PzlJP0-SOYAUkeksRctxt_F2puH8xLCTyEzMo9DbYIFFFv-m/s1600/mistakes5.gif

Book: The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge

Learning Checklist for Fostering Meaningful Conversations in Teams

The Merriam-Webster¹ dictionary defines conversation as "an informal talk involving two people or a small group of people" and "an oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas."  The word "meaningful" as defined by Merriam-Webster ¹ dictionary is "having real importance or value." From a team perspective then, meaningful conversations would mean "an exchange of sentiments, ideas, observations, or opinions that have importance or value." Note that I have deliberately left out the word "oral" and you'll see why later in on. Since we are focusing on fostering meaningful conversations in teams from a learning perspective, it becomes inevitable to discuss team learning.

Image 1

According to Peter Senge, Team Learning2 is one of the five disciplines for building a Learning Organization and involves using the skills of reflection, inquiry, and dialog for group problem solving and learning. Senge stresses on an organization's and group's ability to reflect collectively. However, just reflecting is not enough, there has to be collective dialog, what he refers to as reflective conversations. He even goes on to distinguish between discussion and dialog. Discussion is suggestive of a back and forth of ideas, where "the subject of common interest may be analyzed an dissected from many points of view provided by those who take part." However, in a discussion there is a sustained emphasis on winning, where one person's views are partially or completely accepted by the group. While discussion is valuable to a team to gain varied perspectives, it does not serve the purpose of team learning as well as dialog, which is "a free flow of meaning between people," and allows for a larger pool of common meaning, which cannot be accessed individually." The various uses of dialog as noted by Senge are:

• Gain insights that would not have been achieved individually

• Access a larger pool of common meaning

• Explore complex difficult issues from many points of view

• To make individuals the observers of their own thinking as well as to observe the collective nature of thought

These collective insights and contexts are what make conversations meaningful for a team.

Image 2

Another great tool to foster team conversations is Appreciative Inquiry3, a model for organizational development and change developed by David Cooperrider, professor at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. Based on the assumption that "every organization has something that works right," Appreciative Inquiry focuses on discovering, understanding, and fostering innovations in social organizational arrangements such as teams and processes. Instead of negation, criticism and spiraling diagnosis, there is discover, dream, design and destiny. One can see why Appreciative Inquiry can help foster meaningful conversations in teams.

Image 3

Besides the above, of course mutual trust, respect, a positive environment and belief in individual and team potential will form the basis of meaningful conversations in teams.

References:

1 https://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/uploads/whatisai.pdf

2 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conversation

3 http://www.soapboxorations.com/ddigest/senge.htm

Images credits:

Image 1: http://gregorme.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/shutterstock_193983560.jp
Image 2: http://image.slidesharecdn.com/cmabrigopaarlnbwforum-131211230642-phpapp02/95/libraries-as-learning-organizations-25-638.jpg?cb=1386803368
Image 3: http://www.hr.ubc.ca/learning-development/files/AIdoc.gif

Why Organizations Are Approaching Learning All Wrong!

"The only sustainable competitive advantage is an organization's ability to learn faster than the competition." ~ Peter Senge. 

Learning is one of the most important attributes to gain competitive advantage, yet the most ignored in some organizations. These organizations really do approach learning all wrong. They confuse Training with Learning.  The fundamental difference between the two is that Training refers to a planned event, an external activity; while Learning is a basic human need, is on-going, internal and happens everyday. Both are not synonymous.

Difference Between Training & Learning

Many organizations equate conducting a few classroom sessions or making employees take a few online modules to organizational learning. This is a very limited view of training itself, let alone learning. Learning encompasses a much broader and complex concept. In this interesting interview of David Garvin and Amy Edmonson, Harvard Business School professors and coauthors of the HBR article Is Yours a Learning Organization? David defines organizational learning as "creating, acquiring, interpreting, transferring, and retaining knowledge and using the new knowledge as a basis for responding to a changing environment."¹ David makes two points, the first is what learning is, and the second is about what learning does.

Going by David’s first point, learning is a very broad and complex concept that encompasses various activities enabling employees to sustain and enhance their performance, train peers, improve processes, and learn new skills; it also enables organizations to perform well in the market and achieve their strategic goals. This definition of learning connects learning to performance. So you see how training can certainly fit into the scheme of things, and is really a cog in the wheel of organizational learning. David’s second point about what learning does in terms of enabling organizations to respond to the changing environment using new knowledge is what creates the competitive advantage.

If the organizational strategy is to gain competitive advantage, putting learning first should follow naturally as a business decision. However, when it comes to learning, most discussions focus on training events and questions such as "how much will this cost?" and "for how long with employees be away from their work?"  Organizations that focus solely on these questions lack strategy/vision for Learning. Smart organizations that use the Balanced Scorecard know that Learning and Growth is one of the leading indicators not only for intangibles such as internal processes and operations but also on tangible customer and financial metrics. They realize that like other business initiatives, learning needs to align with the vision, mission and culture of the organization.

When asked about core organization learning capabilities, Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, discusses three capabilities in this short_video. The first one is fostering a vision for learning. Each organization needs to crystallize its vision for what it wants to intentionally achieve through learning.

Once this vision is put into action, he stresses that it is important for the organization to have the capability to reflect collectively on what has worked and what hasn't and to have reflective conversations as groups/organization. This really goes to the heart of having a Learning Culture and giving employees the permission to make mistakes and learn from their mistakes. 

The third capability Senge stresses is systems thinking, where people from different parts of the organization, having different points of view come together to collectively see the complexity and interconnectedness between various moving parts in an organization.

The lack of systems thinking sometimes makes organizations fall into the trap of leading with technology instead of strategy. In a hurry to jump onto the Enterprise 2.0 bandwagon or striving to keep up with the latest technology, organizations hurriedly implement Web 2.0 tools only to realize that they did not really think through the planning, support, development and implementation. Employees suddenly find themselves bombarded with SharePoint, Yammer, Wikis, Blogs, Intranet and don't know what tool would best serve their immediate need.

The organization that just spent that hefty budget on implementing these tools is now stuck with either too many tools or tools that employees can't use or don't know how to use. So while Enterprise 2.0 can be a very productive concept, it needs to be dealt at the strategy level first than the technology level.

To summarize, the right way to approach organizational learning is to align learning with the organization's strategy, have a clear vision of what the organization will accomplish through learning, and integrate learning with performance. Finally, when implementing tools for learning and collaboration approach it systematically, not just technologically and remember to think through planning, support, development and implementation. By the way, here is a list of organizations that are doing it right!

¹ https://hbr.org/2008/02/harvard-business-ideacast-83-l/.
Disclaimer: All images have been sourced from Google images and have been used for educational purposes.