Step 1 in this “Leading to Inspire and Enable Learning” series addressed self-reflection and ensuring that you, as a leader, understand your own bias and readiness. Step 2 addressed creating a safe and accountable environment where open communication can take place and where organization members can embrace disagreement as a welcome process of learning. In this final step in the series, I would like to address the topic of leading by actively creating and leading opportunities that enable a learning organization.

Creating and Leading Learning Opportunities
The practice of creating and leading learning opportunities covers quite a wide range of leadership activities ranging from organization structure decisions to information technology and data decisions to management practices to even special events. One significant point about this topic is that I believe that once you start down the path of leading a learning organization, you find more ways to create opportunities for learning and also find those that work best in your organization. For the purpose of this blog, I am going to offer only a few starter ideas that cover the categories mentioned above.

Organization Structure
What type of organization structure works best for the learning organization? Is it highly hierarchical? Is it a flat organization? The more important questions to ask yourself relating to structure are:

  • Does our structure promote the sharing of information and knowledge  (meaning, the structure enables a natural sharing because of mutual interests, sense of “group” ownership, etc.)?
  • Does our structure promote BOTH short-term thinking and long-term thinking?
  • Regardless of where we want to be, is our “accepted” management practice today to simply evaluate information and make decisions above and then “manage down” with instructions, directives, goals, etc.?
  • Structure should be orchestrated so that there is a natural sharing of information and where organization members feel enough synergy and ownership with the teams where you can gain the maximum benefit from knowledge sharing and learning.

Let me give you an example. One company I worked for went through a period of time where the “centralization” of certain departments may have saved the company money, but likely cost them valuable future revenue that far exceeded any savings attained. The company leadership eliminated certain customer support roles that were dedicated to specific markets (meaning, these individuals were heavily invested in the markets they served), and replaced them with centralized support services where fewer individuals (saving some money) performed these specific support roles, but some covered multiple smaller markets, the individuals were remotely located, and the individuals changed more often due to different working conditions and pay. The company replaced “knowledge workers”, people invested in their teams and markets and who talked often with customers and had digested and learned much in the market, with a faceless department solution that saved money and likely retained little knowledge and certainly did not feel they belonged on any market specific teams.

Balance centralization (yes there are definite roles that should be centralized) with high value knowledge and learning opportunities that can be achieved through collaborative, integrated teams. Even with centralization, you can still look for opportunities to promote learning across the whole business, but keep in mind that individuals in central roles are easily lost in a feeling of “not belonging to any product or market group” and this lack of “belongingness” can demotivate and lead to “them vs. us” types of discussions.

Information Technology, Data, Information
How in the world does this relate? If a key force within a learning organization is the acquisition and interpretation of data, then any organization that does not readily make data and information available is likely not going to find themselves learning much.

As a leader, how much of your budget do you invest in the creation, acquisition, and/or development of information and data? Do you have all the market research you need? Do you have the market share data that you really need? Do you open the gates for information to flow through the organization easily? Do you make the common mistake of implementing IT application functionality to a point, but fail to truly think through the data you want OUT of the system in the form of dashboards, reports, etc.? What about customer feedback? Is this information shared and does it have an impact? What about social media activity reports and comments in social media?

You simply cannot have too much good information. I do qualify “good” because we all know that there are useless reports and useless data. However, taking the time to ask your organization what information they need, what is useful, what they can learn from … and asking yourself the same questions, may yield some new revelations for opportunities to learn together and discover previously “unknown” information.

Management Practices
On a regular basis, do your managers (a) actually interact with those they manage in a meaningful way and (b) ensure that their team has the time and environment to promote sharing with each other? That sounds like a simple question and likely would yield a positive “yes” answer from many managers. At the same time, the truthful response from many should be “no.”

You can model the right practice for managers. You likely meet often with managers about specific issues or projects, or to get input on how specific areas of your business are performing. Likewise, managers meet with specific groups or employees to go over forecasts, gain information on project progress, etc. Time also needs to be made to meet for the purpose of exploring what groups or individuals are thinking about, what ideas are surfacing for new opportunities, and to determine what questions you, your managers, and others should be asking about your business, Time has to be made, and given, to think creatively, not just to handle the “routine” types of management concerns.

Special Events
Various types of special events can be organized to promote learning, and these can have many forms. You can organize “best practice” sharing events, cross-functional sharing events, idea brainstorming events, or a number of other kinds of events that promote innovative and creative thinking as well as learning across the organization in terms of what others are thinking and doing.

The key here is that many great ideas flounder because they are ideas that need germination in an environment where others can add to the idea or hear a different idea that sparks something new. For example, if you organize an event to share best practices, you should encourage or even require groups, where it makes sense, to implement a few of the best practices that emerge as positive and effective. People will learn from these best practices and ultimately even improve on them as they are practiced across a wider spectrum within the organization.

My final point on special events is around the popular “town hall meeting” event. I know that many CEOs employ this practice as they travel to various offices within their organization. Frequently, this is just an automatic thing that happens because the CEO is going to be in the office and HR or the CEO believes it’s good to have that face time. However, more thought needs to be given to this critical opportunity in terms of how you want to lead an organization in learning.

If the only time a CEO engages in town hall meetings is to announce new plans, give people an update on financials, highlight pre-prepared spotlights on achievements of “stars” as a pep talk, motivation, or to convey that all is going well, then the CEO is missing out on some big opportunities. Yes, all of those things are good things and have their place, but here is a challenge: Plan a “town hall” tour to your offices with the following agenda:

  • Ask questions about what customers are sharing with them in terms of satisfaction with products, services, and customer support and communications from your company.
  • Ask questions about what competitors are saying and how they are positioning themselves against your company.
  • Ask some open-ended powerful questions that relate to how things are working within the company — systems, cross-function sharing.
  • Ask someone to share spontaneously about some actions, behaviors, or results they recently saw within the company that makes them proud to work at your company.
  • Ask them to proactively keep their eyes and ears open in the environment and to actively share ideas with each other and their managers — and share and example or examples where possible of how an idea has bubbled up before — in other words, demonstrate that their ideas will be heard and are important.
  • Ask second level questions .. draw out discussions.

Two caveats to this challenge – (1) you may communicate ahead of time on some of the types of questions you might ask because this will be new and people may not be expecting to talk, and (2) you should probably communicate in a positive way that you know there may be concerns about “benefits” (401k matching, health plan, etc.) but that this particular town hall is going to be about core business issues and you welcome those concerns directed through HR and want to hear them and address them (and then DO address them when HR brings them up – just in another way).

A true open town hall discussion may not be the answer on every visit, but having this type of meeting once a year, and really listening (demonstrating good listening skills, leading discussion, responding thoughtfully and without shutting people down, etc.) will lead other managers to be more open, create more opportunities for open discussions within the organization, and inspire trust.

Summary
You, as a leader, can demonstrate what it means to create and support opportunities for learning. You can work diligently with HR and other managers to structure the organization to maximize the knowledge, the cross-functional dependency, and overall customer facing experience to gain leverage in learning. You can ensure that your teams acquire and create the right information and constantly be aware that new information may surface that you need to gain access to and keep in front of your organization. Keep in mind that the way information has been presented to the organization is probably the result of various filters with good intentions on summarization or “what is important”; however, new trends and shifts in markets may only be detected at times through widespread sharing of data (by data I mean sometimes numbers, voice of the customer information, market research, emerging technology awareness, competitive data, etc.). You can create opportunities by modeling management practices or holding events that inspire sharing of ideas, best practices, and revealing the current pulse of the organization in terms of what works and what does not. How you ultimately do these things is up to you, but the important step is simply committing to creating more opportunity for learning.