“In the UAE, we have been learning for 42 years and we are still learning and every day we learn something new” — His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice-President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, said in a recent declaration.
That one word “learning” is worthy of a pause to reflect. What is learning? How do we learn? What are the types of learning? Can an organisation learn? Indeed, can a nation learn?
Here is an incident that took place at a multinational — a young manager kept nagging senior management about a project idea that if implemented would bring substantial profits. The CEO was initially not supportive, but after a review approved the suggestion and allocated a $2 million budget.
Unfortunately, the project failed and the manager tendered his resignation. The CEO immediately rejected it, stating “We have neither lost nor failed; indeed we have just learnt a $2 million worth of lesson. We now know what not to do and the lessons learnt will help us develop a successful strategy going forward”.
Absent in practice
Jack Welch, the revered ex-CEO of General Electric, once said: “Learning is the only sustainable competitive advantage in any organisation”. Yet, learning as a topic is present in name but absent in practice at government organisations and corporates.
People often repeat the word but only few recognise and apply the lessons learnt from a successful — or failed — initiative.
Oxford Dictionary defines learning as “the acquisition of knowledge or skills through study, experience, or being taught”. There are four levels of learning: Individual, Team, Organisational and Governmental Learning.
The first is the building block for other levels of learning, as individuals are the ‘learning agents’ at any organisation. This level can occur via formal and informal methods such as training, social media, benchmarking, observation, coaching and mentoring. The second level occurs within team and departments and can take the form of cross-training, focus groups and brainstorming.
The third is organisational learning, which is learning through self-assessment, audit, customer feedback, employee suggestions, and when the organisations are pitching for a quality award. Companies like IBM, L.L. Bean, Xerox and Shell have achieved remarkable profits and high performance through investing in learning and development.
At the fourth level, governmental learning takes several forms through feedback on public policies, strategic benchmarking, and lifelong learning initiatives. Strategies for applying learning initiatives at each level may differ, but the common feature is to support by allocating sufficient resources, rewarding positive learning behaviour and a genuine commitment and involvement of the leadership.
Nation learning is an extension of governmental learning where a country seeks to learn and implement a political system, social initiative and economic policies that work best. Malaysia is a prime example.
Malaysia’s learning initiatives — such as benchmarking economic models, national education and training and knowledge economy support initiatives — helped transform itself from an agriculture-dependent country to a manufacturing and services dominated economy. The GDP per capita has tripled in the last two decades with less than 5 per cent of the population below the poverty line.
Learning is big business and for good reason, as it leads to business excellence. In the US, annual expenditure on organisational learning and development exceeds $210 billion. Companies have introduced a range of novel roles based on organisational learning practices such as ‘Chief Learning Officers’, ‘Chief Knowledge Officers’ and ‘Chief Innovation Officers’.
Successful private sector companies have understood not only the need to learn but also how to. It is now imperative the public sector and government organisations invest in learning. Deming, the godfather of the quality movement has said: “Learning is not compulsory neither is survival”. Let’s learn, and learn how to learn and cherish learning in all facets of our life.
— The writer is the director at the Emirates Centre for Organisational Learning.
