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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

The New Business Imperative

28 July 2015 by Clark 7 Comments

Learning  is  the  new business imperative.  It is now an indisputable business reality: companies must become more nimble and agile. As things move faster, new processes arise, and the time to copy a new business approach drops, it becomes clear that continual innovation is the only way to not just survive, but thrive.  And this doesn’t, can’t, come from the status quo.

And if the answer isn’t known, as is inherent in situations like problem-solving, trouble-shooting, new product/service creation, and more, then this, too, is a form of  learning. But not the type addressed by training rooms or eLearning courses. They serve a role, but not this new one, this needed approach,  We need something new.

What we need are two things: effective collaboration and meta-learning. Innovation comes, we know, from collaboration.  Collaboration is the new  learning, where we bring complementary strengths to bear on a problem in a process structured to be optimally aligned with how our brains work.  And we need to create a culture and set of skills around continually  learning, which means understanding  learning  to learn, aka meta-learning.

Accelerating the development of these capabilities means doing things different and new. It means sowing the seeds by instigating a  learning  process that develops not only some specific needed capabilities, but also the meta-learning  and collaboration skills.  It means understanding, valuing, and explicitly developing the ability of people to learn alone and together. It means making it safe to share, to ‘work out loud’. And finally it means scaling up from small success to organizational transformation.

This is a doable, albeit challenging move, but it is critical to organizations that will excel.  Learning  is no longer a ‘nice to have’, or even an imperative, it is the only sustainable differentiator.  The question is: are you ready?  Are you making the new  learning  a strategic priority?

Comments

  1. Paul Signorelli says

    28 July 2015 at 3:35 PM

    Not surprisingly, we’re in agreement about the importance of collaboration, as was obvious from the exchanges we had last week face to face and in a few online environments. Deeply appreciative for the collaborative approach you took to extending a Learnlet conversation on engagement (http://blog.learnlets.com/?p=4401) into another conversation about the importance of designing experiences in learning (https://buildingcreativebridges.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/rethinking-digital-literacy-collaboration-experience-and-riding-digital-waves/). It reminds me that our work in any setting–including a blog–can be a magnificent part of extended conversations that draw in far more participants/colleagues than any of us might have originally expected to draw in. Furthermore, those extended conversations that continue across a variety of platforms (blogs, podcast discussions, tweet chats, and more) and over longer periods of times–“extended moments”–as people see comments days, weeks, months, or years after we originally posted then and then build upon them in ways that keep those conversations going are one of the most fascinating aspects of extended/lifelong learning that I’m seeing, as we briefly discussed during that T is for Training session last Friday (archived at http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-24719/TS-991761.mp3). Thanks for those and the latest thoughts; very inspiring and encouraging. (And yes, I continue to make learning a strategic priority in every setting I can.)

  2. Brendon L. Garrett says

    3 March 2016 at 11:01 AM

    I totally agree that learning is a very important part of collaboration because it allows those who have learned to be more confidence while providing services. Once the learning has gained the confidence necessary to educate others, the cycle of quality education continues. Once quality education continues, companies are able to provide greater services and products.

  3. Dale Proctor says

    17 January 2017 at 8:52 AM

    I couldn’t agree more…

  4. Alexandra Flanary says

    6 October 2017 at 5:54 AM

    I feel honored to work for a company that realizes these things and I agree very strongly with the concepts presented here. A learning culture is an adaptive culture, which is what we need to grow with the times.

  5. Victor Hugo Herrera says

    19 October 2017 at 7:07 AM

    I will start to make the difference today. I will be the role model my team could follow. Will you?

  6. Karen Jackson says

    11 June 2018 at 12:37 PM

    I think that this is an important task for employees to complete especially if they are involved in training.

  7. Clark says

    11 June 2018 at 2:08 PM

    Karen, I guess I think it’s not something for employees to ‘complete’ so much as it is a responsibility for L&D to bake into formal learning, evangelize, and facilitate development. It includes coaching by managers, modeling by leaders, and creating the associated culture. More transformational than just a ‘checklist’ thing.

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