Important aspects to consider when creating a learning organisation

Perpetual learning is a requisite for organisations to handle the fast changing and dynamic environment. David Garvin, author of ‘Building a Learning Organization’, defines the learning organization as “an organization skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring its knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.” On the other hand, learning can be defined as a “relatively permanent change in the behavior or attitude of a person over time”. The biggest challenges in creating a learning organisation are establishing a culture that supports and sustains learning and creating the learning dynamics and systems.

Some tactics that can be used in creating a learning organisation are given below:
1. Create a blame free environment
It is found that, it’s not that the culture of openness caused more errors; rather, when the fear of punishment was removed, people were more inclined to come forward and report mistakes, from which everyone could learn.
2. Consider the meetings, exploitative conversations prior to decision making as real work and not waste of time
3. Asking questions and encouraging questioning can promote individual, team and strategic learning. This overlooked especially when people are time-pressed.
4. Set up learning dynamics and systems to help employees to learn explicitly. In order to learn a new skill, people need time and chances to practice it. One off training would not suffice.
5. Encourage thinking time – let people sit back for a while and think. Do not consider as waste of time. Reflection is an important aspect of learning. Have built-in reflection time at work. The reflective process can also help circumvent future problems or mistakes. Research shows intersperse periods of reflection with direct action during working time can improve decision making, work efficiency and overall productivity.
6. Make adjustments to the reward systems – reward more for collaboration than individual achievement
7. Take a more biological approach to organisational learning than a mechanistic approach, as people are having unique learning styles. Have systems in place which accommodate differences in individual leaning dynamics.

Overall, creating a learning organisation requires clarity of thinking at the strategic level of management, asking the simple question, “For what purpose, we need a learning culture? When this question can be answered strategically, it becomes easier to send the message down the line.

The best way to know if you have developed a learning organisation is the increased intensity of energy in atmosphere which can be sensed in individual work space, meetings, discussions, forums and even lunch room chit chats; All can be pointing towards a quality of consciousness which reflects active and objective thinking. Quality of thinking of employees can be seen from their behaviours.

Therefore, it is recommended that managers who are in the process of creating a learning culture in the organization, create a list of evidence (behavioral) for both individual and group level which confirms that learning culture is taking its form. When this list is made available to all, it becomes easier for individuals to perceive what are the desired behaviors and start consciously working on them.