Subject: Building & Learning Organisation

Assignment Topics:
A. How would you re architect the Learning Organisation to drive Business Value?
B. Suggest Steps for building a learning organisation to improve work place performance

A. How would you re architect the Learning Organisation to drive Business Value?

Let us first define what a learning organisation is. A learning organisation is one that is
capable of creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, as well as modifying its
behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights. This definition begins with a simple truth:
new ideas are required for learning to occur.
Learning organisations and the people who work in them are constantly learning from
everything they do. They use their own and others' experience to improve their
performance. They learn from both their successes and their failures. Continuous learning is
ingrained in the DNA and infrastructure of the organisation. The CEO and senior
management advocate, drive, and model the value of continuous learning.
Being a learning organisation provides a competitive advantage, learning organisations
outperform their competitors in terms of brand equity, and they attract and retain the best
talent.
Importance of architect in a learning organisation
An architecture provides a comprehensive overview of the components of a learning
experience for a specific role over time. The business outcomes, learning themes, content
topics, learning duration, and modalities are all organised into a single visual flow by an
architecture. With this single visual, anyone involved — whether a sponsor, designer, or
stakeholder — can quickly see how the learning initiatives can take the learner from point A
to point B, C, and beyond.
How to re architect the learning organisation to drive business values?
A long-term learning architecture must be scalable and adaptable as the business changes.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses were dealing with successive waves of
workplace and workforce disruption. According to a 2019 PwC survey, 79 percent of chief
executive officers worldwide believe that "a lack of essential skills" is a threat to their
organization's growth. As 2020 forced entire employee populations online, a new set of
skills, requirements, and business challenges emerged for professionals in many
organisations. 
Thus, before re architecting the learning organisation, it must be aligned and optimized to
connect the links between learning, business strategy, and desired value.
Objective of re architecting the learning organisation

 Asses the usability of the existing system

 Its impact on the people and Organization
 Implement the desired changes as per organisational goal
 Sustain Organizational learning efforts
 Drive Business Value
 Selecting the right learning method
 Assessing the result of the learning plan
 Promote lifelong learning

Some of the focus areas to re architect the learning organisation are:

1. Organizational Strategy

Align learning to the business strategy and goals to address the needs of various stakeholder
groups while having a vision, purpose, value proposition, learning business plan, annual
budget, and quarterly priorities. Formulate a learning business plan and prepare annual
budget.

2. Organizational Capabilities

High-performing learning organizations optimize learning capabilities around strategic,

financial, and operational excellence, plus defined capabilities: business alignment,
organizational structure, process excellence, learning technologies, measurement and
evaluation, finance and planning, and forecasting and demand management. Thus
understand these capabilities and design the learning culture that can optimise the existing
capabilities.

3. People Competencies

Learning organisation need internal champions with both general and specialized
competencies, including business acumen, performance improvement, Instructional Design,
Project Management, change enablement, learning technologies, and training facilitation.
Thus, it is very important to understand the existing people competencies in the
organisation and how there competencies can be directed in the right manner to redesign
the learning organisation. Here the focus should also be in hiring right talent so that they
can enable learning organisation
4. Execution Methods

How the work gets done: Methodologies must be clearly defined and optimized over time to
produce consistent outcomes. Methods include how an organization delivers quality
assurance, social and informal learning, Instructional Design, program management, change
management, technical development, and training delivery. More than the content and
available information, execution of the learning culture is most important. Hence, it is
imperative to understand the existing methodologies used and strategies on what changes
can be instilled to meet the existing or future demand of learning organisation

5. Invest In New Technology

The rise of AI in learning and development has come at an extremely opportune time. As
new generations of learners, who value on-the-job learning opportunities, proliferate across
global workforces, organisations must make learning a core cultural component in order to
attract and retain quality talent. These generational shifts, combined with the growing need
to place smarter technologies at the heart of learning organisations' operations, mean
learning technology; and, AI will play a key role in connecting L&D to business value.

In the re architect of learning organisation, technology play a vital role. The digital evolution
allows them to focus attention and energy on rewarding and challenging tasks, such as
creative and strategic solutions. The Pandemic situation has been an eye opener fro many
organisation who were hesitant to embrace new technologies but due to covid situation as
most of the work was done virtually, it enforced organisation to adopt new technology for
learning, storing and dismantling information.

B. Suggest Steps for building a learning organisation to improve work place performance

Organizations that are learning are productive. Employees learn to implement efficient and
productive working methods as they gain knowledge. When they share the knowledge they
have gained, they tend to ensure that other employees are also productive. When the entire
team collaborates and works together, they capitalise on teamwork synergies and realise
efficiencies from scale and the economies of collaboration.

Indeed, the term “Reinventing the Wheel” is used to describe those organizations where
employees often do the same repetitive iterations of work without learning from past cycles
whereas in learning organizations, employees simply can refer to the learning and the
insights of others who have done similar work before and apply them accordingly to ensure
that each iteration or cycle of work does not reinvent the wheel.

Having said that, building learning organizations is not that easy in volatile and uncertain
times where ambiguity and complexity are the norm rather than the exception.
Indeed, the VUCA Paradigm so-called for its description of the external landscape as
Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous captures the difficulties and the challenges
faced by organizations to actualize a learning workplace.

Thus, this means that organizations necessarily have to invest in building organizational
learning wherein there is horizontal and vertical learning and more importantly, there is
sharing of knowledge across the board instead of hoarding it.

Steps to build a learning organisation to improve work place productivity:

1. Create a solid and supportive L&D Infrastructure:

Without a strong L&D infrastructure, an organisation cannot survive on shaky ground and
cannot grow into a successful learning organisation. Formal education has not vanished, and
it continues to play an important role in career development and professional networking.
Everyone must be aware of their responsibilities and have the tools necessary to train
employees. Above all, everyone in the group should be on the same page and feel like
they're a part of something bigger. This includes understanding the company's mission
statement, cultural identity, and L&D objectives. Training may take them away from their
jobs for a few days, but the end result is significantly increased productivity and satisfaction.

2. Develop Measurable Performance Criteria:

To achieve success, there must be a system in place to measure employee performance, as

well as clearly defined goals and characteristics. In order to cultivate a learning organisation
that aligns with employee learning objectives and helps improve workplace performance,
organisations must develop measurable performance criteria. For example, what metrics
will be tracked and how employee performance will be evaluated, among other things.

3. Promote and reward expertise.

The workforce of today is more specialised than ever before. High-impact learning
organisations mobilise these experts and implement programmes to promote and reward
even higher levels of expertise. Such knowledge should be rewarded. Allow engineers to
advance in their field; allow people time to study and improve their own skills; and publicise
and promote the success of experts. Such programmes communicate to the organisation
that "expertise is important" and that "we are willing to invest in your own skills."

4. Review successes and failures to learn from mistakes and make improvements

The best organizational learning (and individual learning) occurs right after you make a huge
mistake. These are the most important learning opportunities your company has. Take the
example of the military, the largest learning organization on the planet (they only do two
things: fight and train - and most of the time it's the latter). Whenever a maneuver is
completed, there is always an "after-action review." This is a formal process which forces
the team to socialize what worked, what didn't, and what processes will be changed to
improve the outcome next time.

If organisation builds a culture which gives people time to reflect, develop and share
expertise, stay close to customers, and learn from mistakes, it will keep competition away
and thrive in the face of huge market change. Some of the examples are companies
like Apple, IBM, and Google: build expertise and promote organizational learning, it will pay
off big time.

5. Celebrate Success:

The transition to a learning organization will happen slowly. Let people know they’re on the
right track by celebrating each success and marking each milestone. Being part of a learning
organization is an exciting opportunity. It can be very challenging too. With the right attitude
and good communication, a learning organization can offer an unprecedented chance to
gain new skills and develop career.

6. Provide learning for employees in innovative ways.

Move beyond traditional learning, and think about how to bring learning to people in
different ways with high frequency and low costs. The kinds of strategies that fit into this
category are limitless. Some examples include:

 Implementing “one-minute daily learning bite” videos with calls to action

 Weekly emails from leaders with management best practices encouraging learners
to try them out during the week
 Regular forums for employees to learn from each other

These kinds of strategies begin to embed learning as a daily practice and require minimal
administrative support.

7. Regular Feedback

In the best learning organizations, all employees or members constantly are involved in
feedback loops. This means they seek feedback from their colleagues on ideas they have or
actions they’ve taken. They routinely give feedback to others and also give “feedforward”
ideas and suggestions to their associates on a regular basis. This dynamic activity assures
that everyone is learning from everyone else all the time. Once a true learning organization
has been created, continuous learning must become a way of life: It is ingrained into the
organizational culture.
Despite of many obstacles in building learning organisation, there are many organisations
who have imbibed the culture of continuous learning and have been globally successful.
Examples include:

 General Electric: Its Crotonville learning centre drives continuous learning by

managers and other leaders, as they return to Crotonville to learn and teach at
critical transitions in their careers.
 Goldman Sachs: Its Pine Street learning centre provides essential learning to a large
segment of its managerial population on an ongoing basis.
 Pizza Hut: It constantly invents and implements new technology and by recognizing
the lifetime value of their customers, it treats them as long-term assets.
 Honeywell: By applying Six-Sigma approaches, quality is constantly improved, while
costs are simultaneously decreased.
 Microsoft: It successfully made the massive shift in mind set from desktop to
Internet when its marketplace changed.
 Johnson & Johnson: Driven by its famous credo, it constantly improves products and
invents new ones, always with the user at the centre of its focus.
 Apple: It perceives unrecognized marketplace needs and creates new products to fill
them.
 Toyota Motor Co.: It uses lean manufacturing and continuous improvement to make
small but never-ending improvements in products and processes.
 USA Today: It invented and kept reinventing publishing technology to move
information colourfully and electronically, as well as to manage distribution.

What all of these successful companies have in common is a solid foundation of basic
principles and values, as well as a commitment to continuous learning to keep them thinking
and acting ahead of the competition.

They are constantly creating markets, market approaches, products, and greater customer
value, and they never waste the market advantage they have worked so hard to gain by
allowing their competitors to think or act ahead of them or faster than they can.

It is safe to predict these companies' future success as long as they remain true learning
organisations.

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