Before you can become a high-performing org, you must become a rapid learning org.
5-minute read
As a Leadership Trainer at LifeLabs Learning, I spend my days at Silicon Valley’s most innovative and fast-paced companies. I’m fortunate enough to work with 50+ different companies each year, and no matter the size, funding round, or industry, I hear the same question from People Ops People: how do you create and sustain a real learning culture as you grow?
While this may seem like a complex undertaking, the good news is that there are a few simple steps you can take that make a big impact at scale:
Positive feedback doesn’t just mean giving people compliments. It means explicitly pointing out what people do well, when they do it. Saying “great job” isn’t specific and it isn’t replicable. Instead, try: “It was really helpful when you sent that goat video to client X because it showed them that you listen to their interests and value the relationship. Actions like that are what lead to increased client retention!” This shifts giving recognition into expressing value. At LifeLabs, we call specific, positive feedback diamonds - the rare gem that is extremely valuable!
Action:
The word “yet” implies that learning is never complete, and that we all have the power to grow. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck talks about the power of mindset - people’s (often implicit) beliefs about the malleability of ability - to influence achievement and our responses to failures.
One way to shift toward a growth mindset is to change the way we talk about our failures. Instead of saying “we aren’t very good at predicting inbound leads try, “we haven’t figured out how to predict our inbound leads yet.” This means that there is always room for opportunity and development, rather than assuming failures are fixed.
Action:
At LifeLabs, we interact with hundreds of companies and thousands of employees every year. We get to learn what works and what prevents success. When it comes to growth and development, we’ve seen one major theme.
For individual contributors, one of the biggest barriers to growth and development is not knowing what opportunities are available to them and how to access those opportunities. On the other side, managers complain that employees don’t know what they want and don’t proactively seek out opportunities. By co-owning development, both of these barriers can be broken down.
Action:
In learning cultures, failures are seen as opportunities. When something goes wrong, instead of assigning blame, extract the learning. The shift from “who allowed this to happen?” to “what could have caused this to happen (and what can we learn from it)?” means that the experience is valued as much as the end result - truly putting employee development at the center of company success.
Action:
Bonus: Share a retro template with your teams.
At LifeLabs, one of our values is “always be learning.” But we recognize that the value itself isn’t enough. We live it by providing ongoing learning opportunities so that learning becomes what we do every day vs just every once in a while.
For example, we offer weekly training, 1-1 coaching, peer observations, peer-to-peer learning channels, cross-functional task forces, a research depot, paid learning days, a lending library, and a Learning FUNd. The goal is to allow employees to feel ongoing growth and make increasingly more impactful contributions.
One of our Learning FUNd stipulations is that employees bring back what they’ve learned and teach it to the whole team. Here are some examples from this past year:
Action:
A strong learning culture will serve as the foundation for so many other organizational systems and goals. When people learn well and learn often, communication speeds up, performance keeps improving, change is easier to tackle, and people are excited to stick around longer. Before you can become a high-performing org, you must become a rapid learning org.