What have you tried to learn recently? A musical instrument? A new computer program? A dance step? Cross-country skiing, or inline skating?
And how did you approach the task of learning?
• Did you read about it first, or discuss it with experts?
• Did you watch or listen to others doing it?
• Did you carefully analyze their behavior, or did you fix a mental image of the skill in your mind?
• Did you hire a coach or attend a class?
• Or, did you just start doing it, learning from trial and error?
Each of these strategies represents different ways in which individuals prefer to learn a new skill. There is no one right way— just different ways that have preference, depending on individual life experiences, the way people process information in their brains, the specific circumstances of the learning, or the attitudes toward the skill. You can maximize learning by being aware of how your employees prefer to learn in a given situation and helping them to use a variety of strategies to facilitate their learning. In short, helping them learn how to learn.
Start by noticing how you learn best in different situations— the conditions, and why you learn best under those conditions. This means taking a mental step back from the learning process and analyzing what it is about the process that helps you learn and what the barriers are that prevent you from learning. Perhaps the best way for you to learn how to use new accounting software, for example, is by trial and error: you like to figure things out as you go along. In another situation such as giving performance feedback to someone you supervise, for example, you might prefer to role play the situation and have an experienced coach observe your interaction with the employee and evaluate your actions. Another manager might prefer to read about these skills first, or talk about them with colleagues, or see a video model of the skills that are needed. These are different methods of learning that need to be matched with the learner.
When you understand your own learning style, you can help others learn how to learn
• about themselves
• about how to interact effectively with others
• about the technical skills needed to do their jobs
• about the organization’s vision, mission, values, guiding principles, and strategic goals
• about their customers, clients, and stakeholders
• about business processes
• about the external environment
• about the future and how it will affect their activities
You can help yourself and show others how their individual behavior can unintentionally contribute to the organization’s problems. For example, senior managers who deny their own obvious responsibility for problems send a message to others that the organization does not value individual learning and improvement.
Small groups are often ineffective because they do not address internal dynamics or process issues; they are likely to repeat their failures and not improve on their weaknesses, thus they are not able to take full advantage of their strengths. This goes for the process of interacting and making decisions, as well as performing the actual task: some boards of directors of companies will meet monthly for years, going through the same agenda each time, never discussing strategic direction or leadership. Meanwhile, the company goes into deep debt, loses market share, and becomes unprofitable. Boards of directors may possess great power or status, but they face the same problems of any small-group if they do not learn how to learn together.
“We keep reinventing the wheel.”
“The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.”
“They are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”
Sound familiar? These are metaphors for an organization that is not learning to reach its potential. The organization, as a whole, needs to learn how to learn. Organizations must value and support generative learning. They do this by creating mechanisms and procedures for individuals and groups to share their knowledge with each other, and documenting and recording the experiences of people across the organization so that everyone’s knowledge and skills are accessible to the entire organization. Everyone in the organization must understand its purpose and develop a shared meaning of their work together—and reflect honestly together on what they have done and how effectively they have done it.