Learning and Growth are invariably linked to each other.
A human being continuously learns as he grows. Learning is at a rapid pace in the early stages of life when the person learns to communicate, express oneself before going through a structured learning program till mid-life, when he starts to earn. Learning is at a varied pace for different individuals. Typically, the earning prospects are linked to the nature, quality and amount one learns.
Persons who stop learning in their life reach a plateau and fail to keep pace with their rapidly changing external environment where newer skills are required to leverage the evolving tools and technologies. Their productivity levels fall and they end up become unemployable and unworthy. On other words, while experience can add value to ones life if properly leveraged, without continuous learning, it cannot take the human being to become more prosperous.
Organizations while they start with the collective learnings, experiences and expertise of their promoters, they encounter lot of experiences. They learn from their experiences, fine tune their strategies and continue to evolve by putting their learning into practice. As they continue to grow, they take more and more employees who need to be integrated into the culture of the organization and also ensure that everyone is working for the same vision with perfect harmony and in alignment with the rest of the organization.
An evolving organization has to undergo the following learning activities at different stages:
A) Learning as an Organization through own experiences to fine tune strategies,
B) Learning of the employees starting their careers to adapt themselves to the organization,
C) Learning of the employees in different levels and different functions as they undertake new areas of work and take up higher/different positions which involve acquiring functional skills, managerial skills etc.
D) Learning as an organization from listening to customer and user needs and their experiences with its products and services,
E) Learning as an organization to benchmark with the best in the world and continuously improve themselves and set new standards,
F) Learning of the employees to close skill gaps w.r.t their job profiles identified through performance appraisals, acquire new skills to master new technologies or the upgrades of the older versions through on the job training and also from internal and external workshops,
G) Targeted learning aimed to overcome problems that may arise out of the complexity resulting from the growth (For example, the interpersonal problems, ego clashes, politics, lack of team spirit etc., need to be continuously tackled.),
H) Learning as an organization to achieve the standards and certifications ( for example CMMi Level 5, ISO 27001 etc.) that will enable them to institutionalise the best practices and so on.
The external environment in changing rapidly and those organizations that are unable to keep pace with the change are getting extinct at an equal pace.
An Organization's learning is the collective learning of all the skills and knowledge of its employees and itself as an entity and this needs to be harnessed through effective knowledge management systems to be able to be leveraged effectively. Successful organizations, not only have excellent knowledge management systems but also have put in place rigorous systems of evaluation of their employees' learning through institutionalised approach to facilitation of learning process and testing of the wisdom gained, which goes into the employees' performance records.
As the world evolves and a number of brilliant minds work to continuously evolve new technologies and new methodologies, older approaches to work are getting outdated.
For example, Digital Marketing, Social Media, Mobile Applications, Customer/User Experience Management and Sustainable growth ( 3BL) are the buzzwords of the 21st century and those organizations that are unable to adapt themselves to these new trends in their respective fields will rapidly loose ground to their new born and nimble competitors and loose their ground to become extinct in no time.
Industry and Academia interactions, Executive and Management development programs by premier management institutions, workshops developed and conducted by world class training organizations, internal infrastructure and facilities developed by the organizations and programs by world class trainers in their respective fields to achieve excellence are some of the important sources of learning for the organizations and the individuals comprising the organizations to continuously improve and reinvent themselves.
While knowledge and skills are important, without the right attitude and good habits, employees cannot put them to good use. Hence successful organizations focus not only on ensuring that the knowledge and skills are acquired, but also ensure that the right attitude and habits are developed, nurtured, incentivised and harnessed. This will lead to all round excellence and their successful evolution into thriving entities.
For an excellent note on organizations as learning systems, one can refer to http://goo.gl/5hVam .
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