GROW YOUR ORGANIZATION’S INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL BY CREATING LEARNING CULTURE

Digital revolution has made a shift in demand for human expertise. What you know has become less relevant than what you may learn. Asking the right questions is more critical than knowing the right answers. This applies to organizations too – learning culture is about originality, fluency of ideas and active learning.

Even though organizations need to focus on building a strong learning culture to drive business impact. In reality learning cultures are an aspiration rather than reality in most businesses. 

Learning culture supports an open mind-set, a quest for knowledge and shared learning that direct toward the mission and goals of the organization. Basically the same features that foster personal intellectual capital – an asset that is more valuable than ever. Organizations need to make an active decision to support learning culture and take steps toward it.

REWARD CONTINUOUS LEARNING

We are still rewarding results and performance. But when we are actually learning new things our performance is not at it’s peak. Organisations therefore need to encourage and reward independent informal learning and recognise the value of it – even though it doesn’t appear to generate direct results. If an organization is hoping for innovative ideas it particularly important to create a climate that nurtures critical thinking and sharing of ideas. It also means the courage to challenge authority and speaking up.

IS YOUR FEEDBACK MEANINGFUL AND CONSTRUCTIVE?

There is value in negative feedback – even if we wouldn’t want to acknowledge it. It is hard to improve on anything if you are unaware of your own limitations. Giving negative feedback isn’t easy so managers tend to give avoid it. But when you want to trigger curiosity you need to highlight the knowledge gap – making people aware of what they don’t know. Needles to say negative feedback must be provided in a constructive and delicate way. Another way to build self-awareness is to encourage and facilitate experiential learning. It highlights our default behaviours and heightens self-awareness.

INFLUENCE OTHERS BY EXAMPLE

What you routinely do has a strong influence on others’ behaviours. When you are curious others pick up your curiosity. Challenge yourself and let others see your challenge and learning curve. If you fail remember to analyze what you learned from the failure. This will encourage others to try think and act outside their box.

SHARED STORIES AS A TOOL FOR LEARNING

Even before we learned to read and write, we have learned from stories. Learning culture can be maintained by creating modern campfires that allure us to tell stories and share thoughts. Artistic workshops are one way to spark curiosity and sharing thoughts and knowledge.