Poor Learning Costs Money by Jolito Ortizo Padilla

At Grand Hyatt Hotel- Singapore on May 4,5,6, 2011.
Jolito Ortizo Padilla as a Resource Speaker

The key question in today's climate is not how much can we save on training but how much will it cost us if we stop learning. This is a business critical factor- not just to survive but to thrive , claims Jolito Ortizo Padilla.

Organizational learning is not one of those issues that Chief Executives tend to get excited about. It is often seen as an academic concept that one should nod sagely about before quietly ignoring. But if you stop for a moment and consider your organization's top five successes and failures, it will become pretty obvious that many of the component of success have to be learned , and many a failure could have been prevented or minimized by better organizational learning. Achieving more of the former , and avoiding the latter, is precisely what what Chief Executives do get excited about.

In some respects organizational learning is like individual learning but on a grander scale. It is about acquiring , storing and using the right knowledge to make the best decisions. It is about building and deploying the right skills to make those decisions. And it is about connecting people and ideas in ways that generate innovation, unleash talent and extend organizational capability.

Mechanisms and systems can be created to help embed this into organizational practice . Some organizations have a knowledge capture process when someone leaves a key position. They also have post-project reviews so that lessons can be captured and held ready for next time. But getting learning into the fabric of how you do business , into the culture, is a more complex challenge.

Interested in how that would work in my own organization, I set out to do some detailed qualitative research. What emerged was quite striking. Some of the most valuable learning was spread across the organization through informal conversations. These conversations were not just about passing on facts, they also expanded the learning, generating new ideas and possibilities. Structured communications, training and IT systems all had a part to play; but far and away the biggest factor was the propagation of knowledge by staff-through casual conversations, often over a coffee-and these were neither planned nor coordinated by the organization itself. It is cheap, fast,allows people to access the subtler aspects of learning and is inherently stimulating to the people involved. Unfortunately; on its own, it is not sufficiently reliable and robust for us to sit back and do nothing else.

In bigger organizations, especially those geographically distributed, it is not easy to know what, much less to access it informally. Yet, incredible knowledge, experience and hidden skills exist within every organization. A number of organizations use knowledge sharing tools to spread good practices across internal boundaries. Getting "the rest up to the standard of the best" has to be a prime business imperative. This is fairly universal issue. Undoubtedly; the character of how  you share knowledge may vary from culture to culture . I know from my own work in Singapore, China and Hongkong, for example that factors like deferring to authority play an important role. But I also know that the pragmatic desire to improve is also a potent force wherever you are in the world.

Understanding the psychological dimension of organizational learning is vital if you are to find effective ways to enable it to flourish. What you really need is to have a "CLUE":
  - Culture: a culture of curiosity, a spirit of collaborations and critical mass of people who can make connections;
  - Leadership: leaders that learn and share  learning; actively demonstrating that this is a strength and not a weaknesses;
 - Understanding: a shared understanding of the importance of learning , how best to share  it, recycle it and exploit it; and
 - Engagement: the energy , commitment and concern for others that embodies great employee engagement; going the extra mile in learning as well as performance.

It is not just the academic research that suggests these human factors need to be in place -experience at the front line of operations confirms it. Try this simple test; take a walk around your office or factory just listening and observing. Look to spot when learning is happening organically and when knowledge is being sought and shared.I bet that what  you will see and hear is human interaction.  And, even without being telepathic. I bet that you will pick up many of the factors shown above. I bet you won't spot a centrally contrived process or system. The more you can learn about what happens naturally, the more you can work with the energy and flow that already exist.

That said, really substantial organizational learning often needs a critical impetus and mechanisms to embed it in the organizational memory.

The consequence of learning ,or not learning , can have a profound effect on individuals, communities and the economy as well as organizations. In the current economic climate, most businesses are looking to access whatever resources they can in order to keep their foothold in the marketplace and survive. What is great about organizational learning is that it is often already there; latent , but ready to be harvested. And it is an asset that holds its value when times are good as well as when  they are tough. And I said: "Learning is the only sustainable source of competitive advantage.