Five Signs of a Successful Learning Culture
There was a study done with cardiac surgeons who perform operations at different hospitals. One would suspect that the quality of the surgery performed by the same surgeon would be similar regardless of where they performed the surgery, assuming they have similar tools and staff. In other words, a talented surgeon should successfully take their skills and use those talents successfully regardless of the hospital they work in.
However, the study showed the opposite. Using patient mortality as an outcome measure, experienced and highly trained cardiac surgeons did not deliver the same level of quality when they worked in different hospitals. Yet, these hospitals were very similar and did not substantially differ in their equipment or resources. What could explain this inconsistent performance? In the end, the study concluded that the environment or culture can have a large impact on how well we perform.
Environment and Culture Matter
It is a common situation to look at a successful performer within an organization and conclude that they can take those same skills and shine in a different environment, different team, different business unit. Sometimes they can and yet when it doesn’t work out, we may not explore how environmental factors did not support them in the same way.
The bottom line is creating the right culture matters, especially a safe one with a focus on learning, positioning top performers to thrive.
What are the success factors to creating a learning culture? What are the hallmarks of an environment that enables and empowers talented people to increase the value of their contributions? Below are five signs of a successful learning culture.
Consider your team and identify which areas, if improved, would create a stronger culture to enable more people to shine.
SIGN 1
Know the Why Behind the Moving Parts: Learners across a team or organization, do better when they understand the system as a whole, as well as each individual component that’s involved. They know the final outcome and why that outcome is important. This enables them to collaborate with others as they respect differing points of view.
For example, a large machine manufacturing organization began a multi-year transformation to increase the speed of decision making and promote collaboration across the many siloed departments. They redesigned their leadership meetings for the top three levels of the company to include one-on-one and small group discussions where people could better understand how each team worked, while identifying points of collaboration.
SIGN 2
Embrace Risk & Reflection: Cultivate self-reflection to challenge assumptions and beliefs. Be willing to test out new theories and approaches, learning from mistakes. The process of learning hinges on the ability to imperfectly practice, identify ways to improve, and then practice again.
A leading global information and analytics organization was redesigning their client services group to encourage more cross-selling and faster customer response. They brought together their client services team from across the world to practice common situations they would encounter — first, identifying how they would have responded and second, how they will respond differently in this new environment. A safe and open space was established where team members could skill practice and learn from each other.
SIGN 3
Individuals, not HR, Own Development: Too often, whenever development is mentioned it can become relegated to HR. Yet, each person owns and controls their own development. Each person can and should leverage developmental resources to stretch themselves. This might be in the form of a formal training, but more likely it will involve informal mentoring, best practice sharing, and pursuing new and challenging experiences.
One organization created Learning Labs as a best practice, where employees could come together sharing new insights and approaches. An IT analyst shared his pivot table expertise and found his own development and engagement soar as he became a sought-after expert internally helping other groups improve their analytics.
SIGN 4
Promote Forward Thinking Leaders: Hire and celebrate leaders who set an example of learning. They have a shared vision for openness to ideas, asking what people are learning, and fostering inter-dialogue within the team. Resist the temptation of promoting leaders who are good at the business side of their job, but are poor in managing and inspiring their people.
A respected senior leader in a large credit union frames his daily and weekly team calls around open-ended questions. He wants to hear his team’s thoughts and integrates his own ideas off of their comments. Together, his team creates a habit of finding solutions as they build on each other’s ideas, instead of dwelling on problems.
SIGN 5
Share Knowledge & Insights: Create informal and formal ways to share expertise. This can be through training, online knowledge depositories, team meetings, and project reviews. This enhances the team’s ability to collaboratively problem solve in clever, informed, and engaging ways.
A national restaurant chain that specializes in desserts encourages servers and cooks to post online, quick videos demonstrating a clever food preparation technique or serving approach. These videos are fun and short, accumulating hundreds of views on their company intranet site, as employees share their knowledge and insights.
Conclusion
The environment of where we work greatly impacts how we perform. Like the skilled surgeons, a great leader placed into a poor system or culture, may start making poor choices. Creating a learning culture elevates our performance, enabling success in the short and long-term. Build your team so that learning is championed and watch your employees shine!
Daniel Stewart is co-author of the award-winning book LEAD NOW! and president of Stewart Leadership, an international leadership, teaming, talent, and change management consulting, coaching, and training company, which has been building leaders for over 35 years. Follow Daniel on LinkedIn and twitter @daniel_leadnow.
