Learning is a business strategy - Cultivated Management Newsletter
Hi and welcome to this week's Cultivated Management newsletter. Hope you are doing well.
Learning should map to business plan and strategy
It may sound really obvious to state this but the learning paths and coaching plans people are on should always map to a business need.
Although it may sound obvious it's not always put in to place.
I remember at one of my first jobs after University, I had access to £2000 per year to spend on training. A whopping amount no doubt. Armed with this budget I could choose from a library of approved courses and seminars from a learning page on the Intranet until I'd spent my annual budget.
The problem was the courses were not relevant to what I was doing. There were lots of courses, but very few "soft skills" courses that were generic enough for me and the "hard skills" courses were all in technologies, approaches and methodologies that were not useful to my daily work.
So I spent my learning money on learning something I couldn't practically put in to place. Management didn't think that this mattered as some time in the future I would be able to use this information and learning. The problem is that if you don't use the information fairly soon after consuming it you're likely to forget how to apply it. "Knowledge is information in action" as some smart cookie once said.
I've seen this over and over as people sit courses, read books, watch videos, etc and then don't put that information to use to build knowledge.
That's not to say that the act & art of learning are wasted - never - learning is always useful and practical, but I now always ensure that learning of information becomes knowledge by putting it in to practice, for both me and my directs.
So if you're trying to create a learning culture then allow time for learning, but then allow time for people to action that information and gain true knowledge. And always make sure that the learning matches the needs of the individual and business.
Until next time
Rob..
P.S - I'm going to be sharing more random images like the one below. I draw these whilst explaining my ideas to people at work. This one represents the essence of this article. Find sources of information, ensure they are relevant to the business and then allow people the time to put this information in to action to create knowledge and understanding. My drawing skills are truly awful.