Culture is like the air of a company. We might not think about it daily, we might not see it or be aware of it, but it makes the company’s life possible. Just like air is everywhere, culture spreads within a company. Just like air, it is taken in by every person at the company.
In the same way, breathing is a basic automatic process for our bodies, so it should have the company’s culture imprinted in every task that gets done there. But, unlike breathing, which we seem to start doing immediately and with no prior training, the company’s culture needs to be created.
Sure, you might think that all of this was already made and decided when a small group sat down to list the company’s values, but culture goes beyond having values that mean something.
Although they should be the center of every action and decision made at the company, the culture is all that and more. It is like the values made action, the beliefs made daily activities.
The company’s culture should be a reliable reflection of its identity. So, a good question to reflect on when developing what the culture of our company should look like is “Who are we?” or “Who do we want to be as a company?”
Becoming the company we dream to be requires work, reevaluation, and, most importantly, constant improvement. That is for sure, and if we want to improve, we need to learn.
There is no bettering ourselves without reviewing our experiences and the memory of what we did and now could be done differently to produce a new and more convenient outcome.
Not only that, but you can start promoting new knowledge by encouraging our employees to improve their skills and finding ways to make every experience a learning one.
Creating a company and working to build its culture demands us to learn and to let our company be one with learning. And it may sound paradoxical, but you can’t do one without the other…
We require a learning process to be able to create a culture and we need a culture of learning to do that too and making it all an indispensable loop to be had at the workplace. But what is this all about?
What Does Having A Culture Of Learning Mean?
When looking for a fixed guide on what an organization with a learning culture looked like, the results were endless. There might be quite as many definitions as attempts to make it happen. There are many theoretical definitions and more practical examples than one could review.
Each organization makes its own, so yours would not be the exception. Although everyone has a different concept, some things prevail in most organizations, and that is that they want a growth mindset, a cooperative team, and diplomatic relationships among their workers.
And who wouldn’t want that? It seems like the formula for a peaceful and prosperous work environment.
We can debate all day on what is required to say that a learning process has occurred. But when it comes to organizational learning, if we had to find a precise definition, we would take the one David A. Garvin exposed in his Harvard Business Review article, which goes like this: “A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.”
Implying a behavioral change in the learning process. This could lead to significant improvement in the way we measure culture and its impacts on the company and the general community. Conduct can be measured, and its results, too.
When you build a learning organization; it is not only about making a habit of learning, it is about creating the culture so it becomes a default setting of the company’s members. You are training them to become experts in finding and sharing solutions.
They can become a self-updating machine that develops and improves at a fast pace, and more… This type of organization is flexible in changing its behaviors in light of new knowledge. Yes, we can create effective processes that have worked fine for years but need to be updated.
A learning organization doesn’t roll with if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Because they believe that there is always room to improve and that change is required.
Change in behaviors, adapt to new challenges and face whatever comes their way. Those are the results of creating a solid learning culture in the workplace. It all becomes a virtuous cycle, where learning leads to improvement, and this one brings more lessons. It is a complex matter, just like most things that are worth the effort.
How Can You Build One?
There are a few things to look at when installing a learning culture that makes a transcendental impact on your company. You must ensure that your company has everything required for learning to become an ingrained part of every process.
Then, you can go on and create the learning-specific habits or implement the educational programs of your preference. Hence, it is essential to make sure the wheel keeps spinning so the investment stays as relevant and effective as day one.
You can imagine it as a process that requires three phases: one to prepare, one to do, and one to review and reinforce. Just like a gardener, you go through many stages, from the moment you decide to plant a seed to the moment you harvest its fruits.
It takes patience; even before you can see results, you must trust the process and keep going. Still, there are different components in every stage, so why don’t we break it down for you?
Prepare The Soil
To create a nurtured ground where a learning culture can be installed, we must have and foster certain things. Just like a gardener prepares the soil, we need to prepare our company’s environment for learning to happen and be effective, in other words so that it can blossom.
So, we can start by checking what my company needs to be a place where this culture can happen. Many factors can make it a suitable place for it. You can even start looking at it from a personal point of view, such as what I would need to be comfortable and safe enough to learn at the workplace. And many ideas will come to mind. Some of those factors that you can’t leave behind are:
Psychological Safety
This is a crucial element. If we want our teams to learn, they need to be in an environment where trust prevails and it is okay to express themselves and be heard. When it comes to psychological safety, it can be defined as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Meaning that there is no fear of experiencing negative consequences for being or expressing one’s self.
And see… “risk-taking, expressing one’s self.” Aren’t those just some unavoidable parts of a learning experience? Now imagine trying to give the message that we want you to learn but reacting negatively when someone shares an opinion on a project we might not fully agree with.
Everyone has felt, at least once, that fear of speaking up or sharing an idea with the manager. And that fear is incompatible with the culture we want to build.
Learning is a vulnerable process. When we learn something new, it is because we are doing something different. It is a process that involves not knowing, making mistakes, and taking the risk of making them.
So, making our workplace a place where vulnerability is treated with kindness needs to be a priority if we want our learning tree to blossom.
It’s not that we have to indulge in everything or that there are no consequences for people’s actions. It is about creating a safe space, where consequences are a natural and proportionate result of actions taken and mistakes are solved rather than punished.
Trust
Likewise, the previous point, a safe environment requires teams to build and rebuild their trust constantly. People need to trust that they will be caught if they fall and that their peers can provide them with knowledge.
Whether it is from academic preparation, experience, or having a different point of view, others should be trusted and valued as capable of teaching a lesson.
When we foster trust, we create groups that value each other and know their strengths and weaknesses well. The company should be trusted to be transparent with its clients and employees. They should trust that it will take care of them and that they are safe to explore and express.
Trust lies in three main pillars: authenticity, logic, and empathy. All of those need to be considered and promoted actively throughout the company. Here is a full article on that if you want to check it out.
Effective Communication
Having a good idea and being unable to express it is as effective as not having it at all. So, part of creating a place where great ideas can be put into action is making sure those ideas are being communicated properly.
You can create workshops about communication, assertiveness, and active listening. Put effort into bettering those skills in your employees, and it will pay off soon enough.
Leading by example is the way to go always. Excellent and effective communication needs to start from the top of the company and spread to every other part of it. This means that managers and supervisors ought to be great communicators. They need to excel at it, whether it is to explain the new project instructions or deliver feedback.
Consider that when sorting out the retraining priorities, we need to be open to feedback, as much as we need to be open to new ideas. Communication is not only about delivering information, it is about receiving it and comprehending it too.
We move fast, our ideas do too. We need to be able to have them on the table so that we can move with them and life can move with us.
Time And Space For Connection
People learn in many ways, and most of them require some interaction. Whether it is a conventional teacher-student-on-classroom interaction or an informal lesson learned by the watercooler, people need to connect to pass away and receive knowledge.
Nowadays, with remote work, we might feel a bit more isolated, like we can only count on ourselves, or like the only knowledge available for our use at a given time is the one we already possess or have nearby. And that doesn’t have to be the case.
At Freelance Latin America, we have freelancers working remotely from different countries. Some others work from home and don’t go to one of our offices often, but we work hard to create those spaces where they can connect.
For example, once a month we have a workshop with our HR department relating to a value or skill, we make group dynamics for the freelancers that are connecting through the virtual meeting and some games for the ones that are at the office.
Not only do we work together on the value that we selected, but it is also an opportunity for our freelancers to interact, just as in our Fitlance meetings with the fitness coach or the book club, and so on. Those places create chances for interaction and social learning to happen.
Planting The Seeds And Watering Them
Imagine that your team has all the external bases covered; you, as a company, provided the fertile ground for this culture of learning to be installed. Now, it is time to make it happen. Sure, creating the place is the first step, but staying there might be asking the universe to complete the task. And let me tell you something… You don’t want this to happen by chance when you can make it happen by choice.
So, staying with a good base and waiting for a learning culture to flourish spontaneously might not be the most active and practical choice. At least not when you can take action to improve the following factors at your company.
Develop Problem-solving Skills
Learning can be made up of a different set of skills. In the workplace, problem-solving is one of its most prominent forms. At any given time, we might face a new challenge, a change in the project, a client that wants something different, and so on.
The way we face those contingencies speaks about our capability to adapt and rewrite our ways. We learn by creating windows where we once saw only walls.
Every company might need a tailor-made guide to approach problems, but the basics that can’t be missed are:
1. Identifying not only the problem but also its source and probable consequences. Don’t be afraid to ask tough questions, like “What can be changed in the process to improve?” or “What went right on the rest of the project?”
2. Planning; creating strategies, real or hypothetical.
You can even take all your experiences to use for exercise.
3. Try them out; proving our hypothesis wrong is as nurturing as proving them right, so don’t get comfortable and take safe risks.
Allowing Experimentation
Innovation comes from experimentation. Just as we might have discovered new colors by mixing the playdough in preschool, we might find new paths by trying different things.
But no one will try to walk a different path in a place without room for such things unless they do so by accident. No one wants to allow costly mistakes in their company. It’s not about that; the point is to know safe limits within which you can explore options and try different things.
There might not be a margin that lets us experiment freely with every project. When we do find one, we should do as much with it as we can. And it doesn’t need to happen exclusively when the chance comes. Creating spaces where exploration is controlled so there is no damage is an incredible option. This could be used as group dynamics, too.
Experiments are when you encourage your teams to think outside the box and what to do with the box. Experimenting can be a way to develop new processes, try new ways, and update the protocols at the company.
Reviewing Sessions
The past is an excellent source of knowledge. It is like that extensive reference guide at the library or that educational movie at school. We are bound to learn from it, whether in our past or someone else’s.
A company that takes the time to make a review of their performances, without an accusatory point of view like Why didn’t you do better, but with a growth mindset of what can we learn from this to be better in the future, is a company that believes and professes a learning culture.
Making a habit of reviewing and evaluating past experiences is a certain way to promote learning. Bringing up previous successes and failures and asking ourselves the right questions could lead us to comprehend the situation and take the lessons that lie in it.
From our records and the company’s memory, we can find case studies that could become guidelines for other new experiences. Try making post-project reviews where you can asses what went right too, as well as what could have been different.
Providing Access To Educational Programs
When retraining is needed, there is no other path than looking for professional guidance. Whether you create a mentoring dynamic within your company, outsource the challenging task, or find some external consulting, we can’t stay static in an ongoing industry; nonetheless, stare at the horizon if competencies are required.
Sometimes, finding the best source of knowledge can be challenging, and you need to trust your provider deeply since you are putting part of your future progress in their hands and their capacitation.
We trust our sister company, Appoint Pros, for our learning needs. When there is a candidate with great potential that has difficulty, we trust Appoint Pros to find them the professional consultation they require to learn what they need.
From languages to marketing, they are the way to go when you want your company to attain the best service to improve and learn.
Make Sure The Process Is Repeated
We need to keep the wheel spinning. Ensure that there is always an opportunity to learn and that although it might not be the easiest path or the one that most people take, your company actively chooses to grow at any given chance, as well as create new chances to succeed.
Let’s have them flourish non-stop. This part of the process requires you to measure results and define your ways to make sure you have this culture.
Indeed there is a key role that your leaders play in making sure it happens, over and over again. They should be the ones who pay the most attention to the company to know when to adjust details.
Of course, after a thorough evaluation, it can be known where there is a need to make some changes. After all, it is about letting growth be the north of your compass.
Prioritizing a culture of learning has always been our intention as a company. That’s why we care about continuous improvement or independent learning. They cut through the core of our company and lead our culture.
We have walked the walk and confidently say that it has paid off. Leading a company to become one with learning leads to ending the day better than we started permanently. So, what are you waiting to plant the learning seed at your company?
See more articles by Laura Navarro.
