In working with executives, trainers should:
* Urge them to adopt policies that encourage and reward widespread and spontaneous learning.
* Introduce the idea of the learning organization into executive development courses. Discuss the importance of leading by example, and encourage executives to acknowledge ideas that come from the field or shop floor.
* Facilitate or promote learning laboratories in which executives experiment with business and system models that challenge their assumptions about how the business works and where the best ideas come from.
* Volunteer to serve as a learning consultant for every business problem that requires people to change what they do. Help executives draw upon the knowledge and expertise of front-line employees to solve problems rather than simply imposing a decision.
In working with middle managers, trainers should:
* Introduce ideas into the management development curriculum that will help them encourage learning at lower levels. Teach managers how to develop employees so that they can learn and act on their own. (A good resource is David Bradford and Allen Cohen's Managing for Excellence.)
* Teach them more listening and negotiating skills so that every interaction with other departments becomes an act of learning--even if they don't call it that.
* Volunteer to facilitate sessions with managers and their subordinates to draw out good ideas from everyone. Point out later to managers how much was learned and contributed.
* Sponsor cross-functional forums and workshops on current business issues. Again, call attention to how much each group learned from others.
In working with front-line teams and individuals, trainers should:
* Rewrite all training materials to focus on outcomes involving quality and customer satisfaction. These outcomes have the greatest chance of inspiring people to learn and innovate on behalf of the organization.
* Teach courses that emphasize versatility, listening, problem solving and risk taking to build up the skill base necessary for independent learning.
* Add application modules to existing courses so that learners get experience in immediate application and a chance to share what they learned.
* Insist that work units attend training as intact teams, so that they can plan, practice and reinforce the application of new skills.
* As part of each course, ask learners to continue to refine the ways they apply new skills and to pass on those applications to others in the organization.
* Commission cross-functional study teams to bring in information from outside the organization. Help them put on a workshop to share what they learned with other employees.
* Create forums for employee ideas. Sponsor people to make presentations at professional associations.
* Revise competency models, job descriptions and development plans to include items on learning and continuous improvement.
GOODBYE COURSE WARE?
Does all this mean that training should give up its traditional role of providing course ware for individuals? Should we become learning consultants rather than instructors?
The answer is, yes and no.
Yes, we should become learning consultants who are aware of the evolution of our craft and the organizations we serve. If we only provide courses and curricula to build established competencies in individual learners, we will be working on the trailing rather than the leading edge. We need to act as consultants to advance the art of learning at all levels in our organizations.
At the same time, the answer is no. Courseware is the primary "deliverable" of the training function; it justifies training's existence and provides it with a source of power.
Organizations need courses to maintain a competent work force. We can use courses to promote learning in the broader sense. For example, we can teach the communication and problem-solving skills that support learning. We can demand on-the-job learning applications. Whenever employees leave a course without being able to describe how they will build on what they've learned for the benefit of the organization, our courseware has failed.
Maybe the "learning organization" is a fad--or at least a metaphor--that will wear thin. Maybe we will never agree on its definition. But the underlying value of spontaneous, purposeful learning by everyone in the organization is worth promoting.
Naturally, our jobs will be easier if executives already endorse the concepts behind the learning organization. If they have not, we must teach them the benefits of doing so. Even if they are reluctant to go in this direction, we can succeed in many small ways--just as we have succeeded in introducing many other advances in our companies through patient encouragement. Have we not been an inventive bunch of organizational teachers in the past?
Tom Kramlinger is a senior design consultant with Wilson Learning Corp. in Eden Prairie, MN.
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Copyright Intertec Publishing Jul 1992