#4 How to become a Learning Organization
For this issue of this newsletter, you are the hero. Because learning is better when it's collaborative!!!
Pre Intro: You can be part of peapaul.how
Hello and Welcome to issue number 4 of peapaul.how 😊
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🦄 This part it for YOU!🦄
I’m trying a collaborative approach to the newsletter. Today you receive this edition and what I would love to experiment is an issue 4.1 with your addition to the topic.
Yes, you!
If you want to be part of this little experiment, I let you answer this email with your favorite article, podcast, video, book on the topic OR (And it’s even better) your own opinion.
Then I’ll gather it up and next week, I’ll share everything that you all sent to the entire subscribers.
Do you want to play?
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I’m super excited to see what this will bring!!
Let’s go for the issue of today
You can directly listen to the podcast here:
Intro : Medieval Learning
As an intro, I want to share with you this wonderful article that is comparing the way we used to learn more than 500 years ago compared to today.
I really love this image that illustrates it all:
People used to learn through an apprenticeship which is way better than the classic study model for three reasons:
It’s easier to share the “how” rather than the pure abstract knowledge (I know a very cool newsletter called peapaul.how I think the how is for a reason 🤭)
Learning by doing and watching is more efficient than studying
We live in an ever-changing world so we don’t necessarily need the basics, most of the classic learning theories are wrong when talking about this.
You can find out more about this article here: Click here for this wonderful link about learning in medieval times
1/ What is a learning organization?
Why does it matter?
Let’s start with the problem:
(From Where Companies Go Wrong with Learning and Development)
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1 big reasons for that is that training “isn’t so much about learning useful job skills, but about people showing off” (Bryan Caplin) ⇒ People just want a promotion / L&D department want to exist, they want budget.
People learn at the wrong time (promotion, L&D agenda...) / The wrong things / and people forget stuff
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The theory says that there is 5 ways that define a learning organization: (Building a Learning Organization)
Systematic problem solving
Experimentation
Learning from past experiences
Learning from others-
Transferring knowledge
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Here are the main difference between a traditional and a learning organization
(From How To Build A Learning Organization The Right Way In 2021)
This is the theory, but how can you do it?
2/ How to become a learning organization?
Time for you to listen to the podcast of this edition with Gwendoline, Learning Experience Designer at Salesforce
Here you go to listen to the podcast !!!
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You are not Salesforce, but you are a small company, here are little things you can do that matter.
Here are 9 things that you can build In hours/days for your company and most of them for 0 budget
Not a single day without learning (in every interaction you learn stuff from people. When on slack your answer a question, try to teach something to the person that is asking)
Make sure the company has a written culture (Hence people can learn, memorize, learn from the past...)
Have an internal university where people chose what they want to learn and you deliver the training for them
Do company-wide learning events with internal talents (We did this at Fabernovel were for a full day, everyone stopped working and people were both teachers and students. About drawing, computer science, finance…)
Bring on inspiring people (I organized it at Choco but I did not invent it, Airbnb does Fireside Chat, and my favorite ever is Talks at Google where they record it all)
Push people to network, join Slack groups/community (This is where I learn the most today)
Foster your experts and let them create content (On top of the L&D team) + make sure it can also get them a promotion
Get a coach for everyone so people grow individually on top of growing collectively (CultureAmp does that)
Do some MVP learning projects and switch towards lean learning 1. Learning the core of what you need to learn 2. Applying it to real-world situations immediately 3. Receiving immediate feedback and refining your understanding 4. Repeating the cycle (Where Companies Go Wrong with Learning and Development)
I took these ideas from my personal experience, the podcast with Gwendoline, and this podcast with Pierre Monclos made by Worklife!
In the end, no matter what you do to build a learning organization, never forget to apply the 3M rule to make it efficient: Meaning / Management / Measurement
3/ Do you want more?
First, learning organization can have a strong impact on recruitment as Pierre said in his podcast. He also said that a lot of people applied to Unow because of the fact it’s a learning organization.
It also has an impact on retention. Most of the people I talk to every day say that they leave because they don’t learn enough. So make your people learn or watch your people leave.
Overall, it leads to better Innovation / Better management / Better problem solving / Better communication, and counting other reasons.
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2 more articles.
I really love this piece of content from Josh Comeau ⇒ I recommend you to read it. The name “How to learn stuff quickly” is self-explanatory.
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Another one that is truly brilliant is this one from Farnam street
I loved this quote: "If you read something and you don’t make time to think about what you’ve read, you won’t be able to use any of the wisdom you’ve been exposed to." ⇒ Just learning is not enough, you got to go deeper than this.
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Now I’m curious, what would you add to that? Any content (books, podcasts, videos, articles) you would add to the subject. Let’s make this newsletter collaborative‼️
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Peapauly yours.
Léo