Here's an idea worth playing with

Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of here's an idea worth playing with with me, Rob Lambert. And in today's episode, we're gonna be diving into something that every leader, every manager, and every professional grapples with, and that's how to build a true learning culture in your organization. Not just training, not just courses, but real learning as a behavior that drives growth, performance, and engagement, and ultimately, the job develops people. We'll explore what it takes, why it works, and I will share a story about a mechanics course that actually fundamentally shifted the entire culture of an organization.

Now, as with these podcasts, I keep these short, sharp, to the point. There is an accompanying article about this that goes into a little bit more depth over on cultivatedmanagement.com. If you just search for learning culture or check out the show notes, you will find a much richer article. So let's get stuck in. So what is a learning culture?

Well, in short, it's an environment where learning is embedded into the very fabric of the work. Essentially, culture where people grow, they adapt, they improve, they learn, they get better, not just because they're forced to, but because it's expected, it's normal, it's encouraged, it's part of the culture. And culture, after all, is nothing but the sum, the group habits of everybody's behavior in the organization. So if you wanna build a learning culture, we need to focus on behaviors, not just on formal training. You see, knowing and doing are not the same thing.

I know loads of people who know a lot but never put it into action. So you're not gonna build a learning culture just through training. It has to change behaviors. So what follows are a number of different examples, six actually in total, of how you can do this. These are short, sharp, to the point.

Remember, this is just the riffs from the edges of learning communication and creativity, so I'm not gonna get into too much depth on this podcast. So the first thing is role modeling learning. I mean, leaders set the tone. If you're a manager, leader, you've got influence within the organization, your team, your colleagues, your peers, they watch you closely. If you talk about learning but you never do it yourself, then people won't take it seriously.

So you need to show them that it matters. And this means attending courses, reading books, trying new things, experimenting with new approaches, and you need to do this visibly. And you need to be visibly passionate about it. That's one of the 10 behaviors of effective employees, to be visibly passionate in a positive fashion. And you can grab that free ebook at cultivatormanagement.com/ten,ten, and in there are 10 other behaviors or nine other behaviors in this one.

So you need to let people see that you don't know all the answers, that you're not complete, that you're still growing, that you're still learning. I mean, after all, don't pretend that you know everything as a leader or manager because everybody can already see your flaws. They can see the gaps. They can see the bits that you're not so good at. And obviously, they can see your strengths.

So don't try and hide it. Show it. Role model it because it encourages the same behaviors in others. And that has a ripple effect across the organization as more and more people open their mind to not knowing all the answers and show that learning is just part of life. The next idea is you need to create time and space for learning.

You know, learning isn't something that happens in a rush or in an hour training session or an all day workshop. You know, people are juggling millions of tasks, so you need to find time to learn. It's not just time, it's space. We need this sort of broken out space where people can learn, reflect, experiment. Experimentation and creativity are all part of learning as well.

So this might mean leaving gaps in schedules. It's about looking at flow of work rather than capacity. When you fill the team's capacity, you leave no room for error, no room for creativity, and absolutely no room for learning. This might just be as simple as dedicating a Friday afternoon to learning or actually baking it into every single day. It might feel wasteful.

It might feel like you're not utilizing people as, you know, management gurus and consultants might say. But think about the benefits that come from people growing, people approaching things with new ways and getting smarter, better, quicker, and smoother at the delivery of the work that you're doing. Because if teams and people are overwhelmed with busy work, they simply won't have that mental bandwidth to learn, to innovate, and to create. The next idea is don't let those administrators take over. As a HR professional, I've seen this over and over again.

HR, particularly in big companies, rely on numbers. They rely on easily quantifiable numbers that somehow seem to represent learning. Now what they tend to do is represent training. So think about things like how many people attended the course, how many hours are people spending learning. I mean, that's much easier to do now with these learning management systems that are in every single organization.

But sitting training, taking in information is not the same as putting that into action. It's not the same as learning by doing the work. It's not the same as changing behaviors and becoming better at what it is that you're doing. You see, real learning shows up in those improved skills, better decisions, better relationships, smarter work, a sort of collective intelligence that grows and shifts as the organization morphs, and that represents itself in behaviors. It's so easy to fall back on these measures, but don't let those spreadsheets, those quotas, those easy to measure numbers replace genuine curiosity, genuine growth, and proper behavioral shifts.

Now, the next idea dovetails nicely into the one above, and it's don't expect a return on personal learning. Now, this is a wonderful little story. It's a true story. I joined an organization and the boss of that organization was a classic car fan. He even had a sort of sheltered car park area for anybody who drove convertibles and classic cars, so they could park them there so they didn't get wet and rusty and all the other stuff that happens to these old cars.

And I remember hearing the story of how the learning culture shifted. I was there just as it was sort of taking off. And what happened was somebody pulled up next to him in a car and it was, you know, giving out some smoke or it was burbling away in a wrong way or something. And he, the guy who owned it pulled up next to the the boss, the CEO. And the CEO said, well, why don't you go on a mechanics course and learn how to fix that?

And the guy openly said, I can't afford it. So what happened is the CEO went back into the business and he said, look, how much is a local mechanic course? And I think it was like a £100. Back then, we're talking, you know, quite a few years ago, my first, sort of serious job. And the HR team said, came back, did a bit of research and, you know, this £100 and he said, alright, well, what we're gonna do, we're gonna give everybody, every single person in the organization, no matter what level, no matter what role, we're gonna give them some personal learning money, a £100 a year, spend on whatever they want as long as it's not related to the job that they're doing.

Now this in itself is a wonderful humane and really positive thing to do, but what it did is it spurned a really positive learning culture. You know, some people did guitar lessons, some people joined gardening courses. I personally took Tai Chi lessons, was wonderful. The CEO didn't care about the productivity metrics in the business. He just wanted people to learn, to grow, to develop.

Now what happened was that initiative sparked an incredible culture because people brought that curiosity back into the workplace. So people started to share knowledge. We started to have these brown bag lunches where the business would provide lunch, we would do a little learning session where somebody would share something interesting, an idea that they thought was worth playing with. People brought in books. I mean, one guy spent his whole £100 on a whole load of books about personal development, so he brought them in and he stuck them in a sort of ramshackle library in one corner of the office.

HR realized that this was happening and pulled everything together into a sort of central library area. They bought settees, they bought more books. You know, the executives started inviting some of their executive level mates to do guest speakers. And all of this was kicked off essentially by a guy wanting to fix his car and do a 100 pound mechanic course. There was no expected return, but actually what it did was it drove a culture of innovation and learning.

And it reminded me that learning for its own sake really can transform behaviors, energy, and in this case, even the business itself. Now, we're closing in. This is the last one, and what it is is an idea of collective intelligence. You see, when individuals embrace learning as a sort of core behavior, The organization benefits collectively because people solve problems near the source. This is one of the key outcomes of encouraging people to be curious, to experiment, to try, to learn, to grow their knowledge, is they solve problems nearer the source.

No more escalating all the way up. Know, people are in the work trying to find ways to make it better. They tend to collaborate more effectively, and they bring their collective strengths together, and this is that collective intelligence. We wouldn't need to employ loads of people if one person could do all the work. So this collective intelligence of getting different skills, different insights, different experiences together brings you this collective intelligence that, you know, many organizations really strive for.

Now, leaders don't have to micromanage anything in this. If they get it right, people are just doing this by default as part of the culture. The team naturally works smarter. They learn. They innovate.

They create. And they come together with everybody's unique skills, experience, and lenses to solve the very problems that help organizations release agility, as in get smoother and quicker and faster at delivering on their business results, and hopefully as well, it cultivates a workplace that enriches the lives of everybody who works in it. So to wrap this out, I think this is an idea worth playing with. Well, actually, there's six ideas in this podcast. So building a learning culture is not about certificates.

It's not about training hours. It's not about spreadsheets. It's about behaviors. So leaders role model it. Teams are given space, time, and the encouragement to grow.

Learning becomes a habit. It's not an event. And when these things happen, this collective intelligence takes over. The business thrives. People solve problems near to where those problems are, and people enjoy the journey.

And that to me is all the hallmarks of a positive learning culture. So thanks for listening. If you want more insights into building high performing teams, learning focused teams, and teams and people that can communicate effectively, then why not head to cultivatedmanagement.com where there are hundreds and hundreds of articles, as well as books and free resources that will help you develop in your career. So with that, that's been an idea worth playing with, and I will speak to you in the next episode.