Need to innovate faster? Embrace learning as a business imperative
By: Amy Marshall
Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Business Strategy, Talent Management, Learning And Development

Need to innovate faster? Embrace learning as a business imperative

“In times of change, learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” Eric Hoffer

Image by Joshua Sortino

By Amy Marshall

We were already at a time of rapid change in organizations — and then COVID-19 massively forced even more literally overnight. It has been awe-inspiring to see what speed in innovation and problem-solving is possible with a clear-unifying north star and a burning platform — even if it is survival. We learned a lot and workers have been forced to flex and stretch their skills in new and uncomfortable ways to meet demands.

We can come out of this crisis stronger than ever — more creative, more resilient, more human. But crisis is not without its costs, as workers have been forced to manage unprecedented levels of personal and professional stress. It has taken a human toll (see COVID-19 workplace stress from the CDC), and the only thing we know for sure is that constant change will continue to be rapid and persistent. We will need to continue to learn and innovate our way out of this crisis. How can we do this in an accelerated way, without burning our people out, and sustain it as we emerge from crisis mode into a more “steady state” of still constant change?

To drive innovation and embrace rapid change, learning, now more than ever, needs to be viewed and prioritized as a strategic business imperative. Organizations need to invest in continuous employee learning and building it into the organization’s DNA. Teams need to identify and advocate for their unique needs to achieve critical business priorities. And individuals need to embrace and proactively drive their own personalized learning needs to suit their current and future role requirements and professional goals.

What and why of innovation?

Innovation (as compared to invention, according to Webster’s), means a new idea, method, or device, a novelty or the introduction of something new. It can feel like an overused buzz word or too big to define or reserved only for a R&D group. But in high-performing organizations, it is an outcome attainable for any level employee, on any day. It can be as big as a new business model or a large-scale product development, or as seemingly small as a novel feature to add to a system or a new process to more effectively run key meetings.

With this ever-increasing rapid pace of change and disruption, new skills and novel ways of staying ahead of competition and meeting customer needs will only become more important. Only 60 of the companies from the 1955 Fortune 500 company list were still in business in 2017 (fewer than 12 %), indicating the rapid pace of change and need for re-invention. We’re at the 4th industrial revolution and increasing automation of repetitive, low-cognitive tasks will require people to rapidly develop higher level cognitive skills and digital skills to be employable.

The ability to embed continuous learning, at the organizational, team, and individual level (not just the skills and knowledge themselves, but the ability to continuously learn, and to do so rapidly), is needed.

1. Learning at the organizational level

Learning for innovation requires investment, but has tangible ROI. IBM’s Smarter Workforce Study in 2013 revealed that 84% of employees in the best performing organizations are receiving the training they need, a full 68% better than worst performing companies. Microsoft just announced a major investment highlighting the burning platform for digital skills (especially data analytics, cloud, and software development) countering the decline of employer-funded training in the early 2000’s and stagnation since 2008. There may be an economic downturn now, but as organizations emerge and talent mobility picks back up, employees whose organizations invested in their development will not just perform better, but will also be more loyal (LinkedIn 2018 Workplace Learning: 94% would stay longer if their company invested in their career).

Learning for innovation needs to be built into an organization’s operating model, with specific designs for learning outcomes. To be successful, any people-related strategies (including learning) should always be rooted in the business strategy to drive which capabilities are needed for the workforce. This should be translated into a learning strategy that guides design of the operating model — (the processes, technology, tools, people, skills, practices, accountabilities, rewards, and culture needed to execute on the learning strategy. Since business strategies must be agile to meet ever-changing business needs, the learning operating model will also require agility and feedback built in to enable fast response.

Source: Slalom

This may sound daunting to an organization early on in taking a more strategic approach to learning, but it is recommended that you apply agile, iterative concepts by starting small and experiment, keeping future scalability in mind. It is critical to unite HR with business functions in a strategic partnership. Too often learning is viewed as an extra expense or something for HR or individual leaders to worry about rather than a top priority investment of the organization (e.g. technology). For example, in helping a major global pharmaceutical establish a new learning organization, we discovered that the company level learning strategy was articulated at a level too high to address unique needs for the targeted business unit. In response, a strategy, processes, org structure, and agile plan was created based on their unique needs. Senior leadership set the business strategy, HR established the workforce capabilities, and we built the learning strategy and operating model within the business to be closer to the need.

As with any major initiative, learning and development can’t take a “set it and forget it” approach. To be a real asset and achieve full ROI, learning needs to be woven into the fabric of daily work life, with a structured change approach and accountability to make the processes and learning stick.

2. Learning at the team level

The 70/20/10 learning model is nearly universally accepted at organizations acknowledging that only 10% of learning happens through formal instructional learning, another 20% comes through learning from others, and the bulk, 70%, comes from learning on the job. But too few organizations invest their time and money in a balanced way across these components — often focusing on the 10% instruction and letting the other 90% happen organically, informally, and thus more slowly. Learning focused at a more mid-level such as a team (or critical roles) offers a unique opportunity to help accelerate on the job and learning through others. Teams are where individuals spend most of their working time, and where they have the safe space to learn, make mistakes, and admit where they need help. Innovation requires creativity and risk-taking and thus the space to make mistakes. It is critical to create the psychological safety for this to feel normalized and accepted within working teams, where employees see that leaders and experts at all levels are continuously learning.

Creating targeted programs at a team or role level can be a low investment and rapid spin up, as they can tap into existing knowledge within the organization. Examples include: establishing or revitalizing communities of practice, accelerating higher numbers of technology certification for business workers, creating targeted learning paths for teams shifting to adopt new skills and ways of working, day to day coaching of agile teams and leadership teams, or encouraging formalized mentorship and sponsorship programs for underrepresented groups. Sometimes these efforts are spun up as passion projects by ambitious and/or desperate managers who realize the need. Unfortunately, organic, individually driven initiatives may lack staying power if leaders get busy or change roles or companies. Putting in structure and accountability enables programs to get off the ground faster, be sustained longer, and more efficiently utilize the busy time of in-house experts. It also enables an opportunity to explicitly factor in diversity (of thought and experience), another focus most organizations are finally waking up to also, to ensure employees are learning from diverse perspectives and backgrounds.

For example, we supported an organization to prepare for major organizational changes including high levels of departures, role changes and new hires. There was a huge risk of losing tacit institutional knowledge retained in the heads of long-tenured employees. A program was designed to manage knowledge transfer and incorporated approaches to build and sustain a learning and knowledge-sharing culture in day to day ways of working. This risk is present today for organizations who are dependent on heavy furloughs and maneuvering uncertainty. Simple practices like building in after-action reviews or retrospectives, sharing of learning goals and programs to train and encourage on feedback-giving, and regularly sharing experiences helps foster daily learning.

3. Learning at the individual level

Ultimately it is the individual learner that must be in the driver’s seat of their own learning and drive for innovation in daily life. Research has shown the ability to continuously learn new skills (learning agility) is critical to business success and a key indicator of leadership potential. Learning agility is demonstrated in 9 different ways:

· Flexibility (open to new ideas)

· Speed (acting on ideas quickly)

· Experimenting (trying new behaviors)

· Performance Risk Taking (seeking new activities/roles)

· Interpersonal Risk Taking (discussing differences with others)

· Collaborating

· Information Gathering

· Feedback Seeking, and

· Reflecting

These behaviors should be encouraged by organizations but require proactivity and motivation by individuals, especially in leadership roles.

However, there is significant room for improvement to promote and foster learning agility in action, especially related to risk-taking: Korn Ferry’s research found that companies with highly agile executives have 25% higher profit margins than their peer group; and that learning agility is a top predictor of high potential, but only 15% of the global workforce are highly agile.

In this ever changing COVID and competitive world, the reality is, we need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Quoted in a 2011 talk, just before becoming CEO of IBM (the first woman), Ginni Rometty highlighted this importance of taking risks in order to grow. This is particularly true for women who are often socialized to be more risk-averse.

The shift in learning is increasingly to embrace personalized needs versus blanket learning solutions. Organizations can encourage fostering learning agility behaviors, and develop learning opportunities to tap into, but they will also need to drive individuals to find personal motivation to take action. Not just to take in new learning, but to apply that learning in action for deeper understanding and impact. Structured learning support in organizations can come in the form of self-directed learning, executive coaching, mentoring and sponsorship, and apprenticeship programs.

To put this into action, employees should set an explicit learning goal for themselves for this quarter, link it to broader goals that you find motivating, and find ways to make it stick (block time on your calendar for regular learning, identify specific next step action, and reach out to mentors and sponsors to discuss).

Wrapping it up

Notably there are complexities and costs to broader scale strategic learning support, but to remain competitive and drive more rapid innovation, organizations must think of learning more and more as a strategic business imperative. There are plenty of ways to start small. If your organization, team leaders, and yourself can embrace this, your organization will not only survive the crisis, they may innovate enough to help you thrive. If the pains of COVID have taught us anything, it is to seek out what really matters and what gives us fulfillment and meaning. An emphasis on continuous learning also has the ability to help us all seek out and perform work that we find meaningful and valuable to help us all reach for and realize our personal and organizational visions.