Damon Lembi is CEO of LearnIt, a leading L&D organization helping business leaders throughout the world develop their teams.
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Prior to the pandemic, the demand for “upskilling” and “reskilling” your workforce was a hot topic. New technology such as artificial intelligence was changing the landscape, which created a need for employees to develop new skill sets that enabled them to adapt and work alongside computers. Covid-19 accelerated the urgency to reskill team members, many of whom were thrown into a hybrid work model and needed new skills to develop and support the many new products that have emerged out of the pandemic. How are organizations meant to keep up with the demand for these new skills?
Continuously trying to find employees who have "today’s skills" isn’t solving the root challenge. I believe to future-proof your organization, the key is learning agility, which I describe as an individual’s ability and passion to continually grow and develop.
We all need to be 'learn-it-alls.'
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shared that, after reading Mindset by Carol Dweck, he had a revelation to change his company culture from “know-it-alls” to a culture of team members who have a growth mindset. He wanted his team to become comfortable admitting they don’t know everything, to have a curiosity and to have an eagerness to learn. “Learn-it-alls” is how Nadella termed it.
Imagine throughout your organization, team members investing their time experimenting, being curious, sharing knowledge with one another, making mistakes and learning from them. In other words, imagine an organization of “learn-it-alls.” This is all possible (but not easy), and I like to refer to organizations like this as “learning factories.”
Creating a learning factory starts with creating a culture where learning is at the forefront and personal development is paramount.
Seven Ideas To Help Transform Your Organization In A Learning Factor
1. Start with leadership. To build a learning factory, a company must start with leadership. If employees see a bunch of mandatory classes scheduled for them to attend, book clubs to participate in, etc., and the leaders of the organization aren’t partaking, it doesn’t set the right example. If the leadership isn’t passionate about learning or can’t take the time to do so, then why should the rest of the organization?
2. Offer a variety of learning modalities. Not everyone learns the same way. Some team members learn by attending live classes, others prefer on-the-job coaching and some retain more when they're listening to podcasts on their morning walks. Having the awareness that everyone has unique learning styles and it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach is important to get buy-in for learning.
3. Create space and time for learning. I have seen several organizations use e-learning as a "guilt-free" solution for providing learning for their team. What I mean by this is the company purchases the learning licenses for team members and then expects them to find time during their busy schedule to take advantage of the licenses. Think about it: Who is going to go from one meeting to the next and, in between hectic deadlines, stop and watch a 45-minute video on emotional intelligence?
Companies need to invest not only financially but also in making sure to provide dedicated time and space for employees to consume and absorb the learning. E-learning isn’t the only modularity I am talking about here. One of the critical ways team members can learn is from one another. Set up peer-to-peer programs for team members and dedicated time for them to share articles, podcasts or other interesting learning opportunities with team members.
4. Broaden the subject areas. The lessons your team is learning shouldn’t always be work-related. If the goal is to build learning agility and get team members passionate about learning, make it interesting and fun. Let team members set up a book club (during work hours) on non-work-related topics. Or, perhaps they could schedule "Tuesday Trainings" and ask volunteers to lead a 45-minute, non-work-related training session on a YouTube video or podcast they recently loved. The goal here is to get people excited about learning, sharing and collaborating with others.
5. Create a psychologically safe space for being curious and being wrong. Learning is more than attending classes or talking about podcasts. It’s also about working in an environment where individuals at all levels feel safe to ask questions and are not made to feel stupid or as if they’re wasting others’ time. I love it when we have new hires join, and I know we are doing something right when, during our monthly all-hands meeting, they speak up, ask questions and even probe leadership on why something is the way it is. Letting people be curious without leadership getting defensive is key to developing the ideal learning factory culture.
6. Clarify the 'why' for your team. Just because you love to learn doesn’t mean everyone on your team feels the same way. You need to help your team members understand why it benefits them to be “learn-it-alls” and work at a “learning factory,” whether it’s about future financial opportunities, improving self-confidence or becoming more efficient at your job. What matters is individuals understand why it’s important to them.
7. Set up rewards and contests for learning. I have seen (and participated in) several creative and great ideas for rewarding team members for learning. Some suggestions are:
• Once the team reaches a collective learning goal, your company could agree to donate a certain amount of profits to a specific charity.
• Recognize top learners or team members who facilitate team trainings in company meetings.
• Divide the team into groups and set up a competitive contest around learning goals.
These are just a few ideas. The bottom line is there are a lot of ways to get creative and make learning engaging and fun.
I want to reiterate that skill-building is very important for the future of work, and the key is to inspire your team to get passionate about learning. A quote famously attributed to Gandhi says it best: “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
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