Management - Creating a Learning Culture

Nicolas BALLAZ

Creative Problem Solving

28/10/18

Creating a Learning Culture,

Introduction

The current competitive market and advancement in technology have forced organizations to seeks ways to consistently improve their performance to maintain their competitiveness in the market. As a result, most of the multinational cooperation have incorporated continuous improvement programs in a bid to gain a competitive edge. Despite the numerous attempts to implement the programs, the rate of failure is still since most firms fail to approach continuous improvement concept with the logic of instilling a commitment to learning. According to Stankard (184), companies who have been successful in solving problems, innovating and creating new products and re-engineering processes have one thing in common; the ability to approach the world from a new perspective and to act accordingly. In this context,  the paper addresses the idea of creating a continuous and effective learning culture in the organization to enable consistent organization improvement.  

Creative solutions

The major hindering factor in implementing a continuous learning culture has been the attempted to create an idealistic business approach. In this case, most firms have adopted utopian ideas thus restricting the business to a particular business path rather than leaving it open to new ideas. An ideal continuous improvement environment involves one where workers can improve and achieve what they desire, expand and come up with new ideas and combine their aspirations and thoughts while learning together. In this case, such an environment is possible if the organization can successfully factor in system thinking, mental models, team learning, personal mastery and shared vision within the organization's working environment. Besides, another approach involves companies implementing metaphors and organization redundancy to create a working environment that motivates workers to dialogue, practice focus thinking and come up with tacit ideas explicitly.

All the suggestions above are somewhat idealistic and lack proper layout and details on how to implement them. They are instead too abstract and do not explain the measurement procedures that will indicate when the company has been fully transformed to a learning organization; the point in time when concrete changes in the organizational behaviors are necessary and the policies and programs the organization should implement to set up a continuous and productive learning environment.  

Therefore, a proper approach that will enable the company to develop a continuous learning environment should factor in what it means to have a continuous learning culture, the management process involved in allowing, implementing and monitoring the learning process. Moreover, it should include measurement techniques that will enable the company to assess the learning progress so that there can be a maximum gain. As a result, the organization should implement a 3-M approach, that is Meaning, Management , and Measurement.

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The first M, Meaning, will ensure that everyone in the organization understands what continuous learning implies and its importance in the implementation of constant organizational improvement programs. This stage will mainly involve breaking down the continual learning process into bits that are actionable and easy to incorporate into the working environment. The second M, Management, will ensure there are proper and well-detailed guidelines providing operational advice on how best to implement a continuous learning culture. Lastly, the third M, Measurement, will ensure the progress of the policies, programs and knowledge gain is consistently measured to identify any challenges and implement practical solutions to improve the outcome of the learning activities continuously.

Implementation

Meaning

Understanding what the term continuous learning means it is key to implementing the concept within the organization. In this case, the appropriate definition of continuous learning should factor in creating, acquiring and sharing new insights and knowledge to modify organizational behavior. The description informs the workers about the importance of developing new knowledge that can either be from outside sources or through brainstorming and creativity. Moreover, it stresses out the fact that the acquired new know idea or expertise should be incorporated into the organizational behavior and applied to improve its performance.

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