Overview
Simply put – organizations that support learning along with a growth mindset for employees achieve far better results than those that don’t. Given the time to learn and improve employees not only thrive but contribute far more to the business in countless ways. This has the added bonus of increasing their value to the business for a big win-win. Creating a culture of learning and continually improving pays significant dividends well beyond individual performance, employee engagement, morale & retention.
In going deep with organizational learning, you not only allow but encourage time for employees to leverage various methods to learn and grow. Setting aside as much as 20% of time each sprint to learn and/or improve has been the gold standard and shown to gain a great deal more than the perceived costs.
As one of the Nimble Effects we find Organization Learning seeps into every corner of a thriving business from Nimble Business Planning to Nimble Governance to Nimble Risk. Here you ensure that learning is baked into everything that you do and not an afterthought or future impediment. Another way to look at is that you are either learning in order to do something, learning something along the way or learning from what has been done. Companies that embrace organizational learning will outperform those that don’t in many ways.
“An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” – Jack Welch
“Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.” – Brian Tracy
“Over the long run, superior performance depends on superior learning.” – Peter Senge
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” – John F. Kennedy
There are many ways to achieve organizational learning, but it clearly starts at the top with a commitment to the employees to support their learning and improvement. Doing so sparks that often-untapped potential to do a bit more. This also serves as inspiration to take ownership of how work is being done and to improve how it is done for the good of all. Fair to say that a learning organization will outperform one that focuses only on deliverables over the opportunity to learn and improve how value is delivered.
Organizational Learning options
| Opportunity | Description | Participants |
|---|---|---|
| (up to) 20% time | Dedicated time to learn or improve something | everyone |
| Office Hours | A regular and dynamic opportunity to learn from an expert | Typically, an expert and anyone that has a question or needs help. |
| Post-Mortem | One way to learn from an event to ensure you learn something from it | Everyone involved in the event |
| Lunch & Learn | Regular learning event typically driven by relevant topics | Typically a facilitator, presenter(s) and people interested in the topic agenda |
| NRM Dojo Jumpstarts | An immersive opportunity to learn by doing – very short duration with high return on investment | A facilitator and a team devoted to solving a problem |
| Value Stream Mapping | One popular method to fully comprehend how work is really done | A facilitator and the teams involved in doing the work |
| Flow Engineering | Expands on Value Stream Mapping for more comprehensive improvements | A facilitator and the teams involved in doing the work |
| User Story Mapping | A highly visual way to break down and sequence work needed to produce something | A Product Manager and the team doing the work |
| Growth Mindset | An empowering and liberating ability to embrace learning | Everyone |
| Retrospectives | Typically associated with Scrum – a means to reflect on how we work and seek ways to improve | The team doing the work during the most recent sprint |
| (Spotify style) Guild | A discipline-oriented group organized to elevate a skill or discipline | Anyone interested in a particular discipline |
| Lean Coffee | A regular opportunity to let the participants drive learning based on suggestions and voting | A facilitator and anyone wanting to seek or contribute to spreading wisdom |
| Community of Practice | A formalized group dedicated to advancing a skill or practice as a group | Anyone interested in the particular community area of focus |
| Feedback Loops | The voice of the customer from which we can learn something | Customers willing to share feedback and someone capable of aggregating and mining it |
| Data | Telemetry, surveys, or other data that when managed and mined provides powerful insights | Data scientists and feature teams |
| Pairing & Mobbing | A popular practice to improve quality and performance at the source | At least two capable participants able to contribute and learn from each other |
| Root Cause Analysis | One method to identify the true cause of a problem and work towards remediation to prevent recurrence | Everyone involved in an incident |
| Knowledge Base | A centralized repository of knowledge that could be used in various ways to ensure everyone has what they need and is on the same page. | Everyone involved can reference and contribute |
Organizational Learning Stats
| Organizational Learning Stats | Stats | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Employee retention as in employees are far more likely to stay with a company that encourages and supports continual learning | 76% | shrm.org |
| Limited learning opportunities as in employees cite limited time as a significant barrier to learning | 52% | olxd.org |
| Personalized learning paths as in employees express a desire for more personalized learning paths | 80% | olxd.org |
| Training costs per employee as in per participant is spent on training withing the US in | $774 | research.com |
| Training Effectiveness as in employee satisfaction with learning opportunities | 75% | shrm.org |
| Training Effectiveness as in employees need better training to be more effective in | 55% | shrm.org |
| Adoption of learning technologies as in use of Learning Management Systems (LMS) | 90% | research.com |
| Skill development as in organizations that prioritized career development outperform those that do not | 36% |
We have a dojo for that
We like the Dojo style of learning where a small group can be extracted from the normal daily grind with a mission to enable a new capability or attacking a technical debt problem. It is well known that learning by doing offers far greater retention and enthusiasm for application over other options.
We have created several NRM Dojo Jumpstarts for all of these options and with only a few hours a day for a week you can have a running start at tapping into new capabilities for a rapid return on investment.