Building a Learning Organization is a significant investment, not so much in money, as in the investment of time, human capital, honing skills, and energy. Like many initiatives in an organization, if the investment does not start at the top with the organization’s top executive, then the likelihood of success diminishes substantially. Today, I want to start a series of posts dedicated to the steps it takes for that key executive, along with the other senior executives in an organization, to learn to lead in a way that inspires and enables learning .. and a learning organization.
Step 1 in learning to lead a learning organization is for you as a leader to step back, look into the mirror, and reflect on your own leadership style, personality, any personal biases, and your own level of commitment to truly engaging the whole company in learning.
What is your style? As a leader, I had to come to terms with the fact that I preferred to lead intuitively at times in making decisions. While intuition can be extremely positive when one is very entrenched in the marketing and highly sensitive to the changes going on in that market and within the organization, this style can shut others out of the process or leave them wondering just how you made a decision. I learned that while I went from A to Z in my head, those I was leading really needed to hear A-B-C-D to Z, to fully participate in the process, have a chance to improve on the idea, and certainly to learn from the intuitive influences. I also truly needed to be challenged on my intuitions because they can be dangerous when a leader does not welcome and invite challenge and alternate possibilities in the decision process.
Reflect on your own style of leadership, how you invite others into the process of discussion and healthy debate, whether your actions open people up or shut them down, and whether you are enabling learning for those you manage or just asking them to go along for the ride you are orchestrating.
You should also reflect on any bias you might bring to your leadership position. A bias can be very subtle such as a “filter” that you continually use when examining information or situations. For example, you may find yourself using “our traditional business” filter to examine opportunities instead of being open to a new type of business where market need has surfaced (where would Apple be today if while they were cranking out computers their leadership has simply dismissed the idea of a device that plays music as a business opportunity!). Other types of filters might be a failure to challenge ideas rigorously with your staff, a tendency to prematurely commitment to the first course of action discovered, or a blind spot caused by
not always insisting on having all of the information necessary to make decisions. You will want to reflect on these things and guard against them going forward.
Finally, reflect on whether you are ready to commit to engaging the whole company in becoming a learning organization. Are you ready to learn more, commit to modeling learning behavior and actions, and prepared to be comfortable with having more people involved in strategy, creation of solutions, creation of new problems to address, and ultimately to ensure that every leader you manage share this vision with you? You are going to get more information directed back to you in this process. You are going to share more information in this process. You are going to need to be comfortable with insisting on getting the whole picture and raw information vs. distilled and crafted views of the organization from others.
As this series on leading the learning organization continues, I will be discussing key areas like setting the right tone and creating the right opportunities, a commitment to true dialogue (e.g., powerful questions, patience and listening, and responses that foster more dialogue), promoting the right rules of behavior, and your role in actually leading discussions.
Creating a learning organization starts with creating a teacher (chief executive) dedicated to promote learning vs. one just looking for a lecture audience (your “staff”) with little or no transfer of information and skills. Are you ready to be that leader?
