Creating environments that lead to better learning, curiosity and imagination
Written by Ali Uren Founder and Director of Kiikstart
We hear and experience many clients saying that they want to be known for creating a learning culture amongst their teams. Unfortunately, just saying it does not make it so.
When we start to delve deeper, really unpack and assess the process, systems and behaviour of the people leading these organisations we find little evidence of this.
So, if you are committed to wanting to create an environment that supports and expects ongoing learning and creativity, across all levels of the organisation, we would like to share some of our most useful insights.
So, what does this mean from a practical perspective?
Ask yourself if whether you are building the right talent and skills and putting investment and attention into the most relevant and impactful areas.
How much impact will the learning you invest you team in attending have in say three to five years time?
Consider the following talents and skills from the Future of Jobs report 2018 – World Economic Forum
2022 Skills Outlook notes the following as vital skills for future workforces.
Source: The 10 skills you need to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution – World Economic Forum
Critical thinking is assessing complex facts to form a judgement or opinion.
Complex problem solving is finding a practical solution to challenges, roadblocks to at times complex issues. This is an essential part of critical thinking.
Creativity is the level of distinctiveness, and unexpectedness in which the solution is delivered in terms of its style and manner.
These three areas are consistently identified as being of most value and relevance and are all instinctively linked together – you cannot fully develop one without being skilled in the other.
Ensure there is a plan for staff to trial and experiment new learnings and insights back into the workplace in real-time and without delay. Without this, the organisation leaves itself at risk of becoming a place of dis-engaged and frustrated staff who have no platform to really test this new-found knowledge.
Before investing in learning and development identify exactly how staff will be supported and personally responsible for implementing their skills across the organisation.
Do not wait until the yearly performance review to check in how valuable the learning was and where they have utilised it in their role over the past 12 months.
Regular follow up and real means of trialling the knowledge into the workplace is everything.
To be able to gain greater buy-in from staff and build on current capability, it is essential learning and development frameworks and resources are created in order to deliver the following:
Staff and Management would co-create the desired and expected outcomes together to ensure relevance and meaning – note this would apply to formal training, licences and tickets as well as expos, networking events and conferences.
A learning environment is one that respectfully challenges the status quo and looks for real solutions that are measurable.
It is vital opportunities are created for people to be able to think, gain new perspectives and then take action with this new learning.
It would be recommended that there are key quarterly and monthly check-ins with staff and teams. Shorter, high impact check-ins daily (10 minutes) and weekly (30 minutes) with the team. Remember the longer you leave a catch-up/check-in/review the longer you will need in to address what matters.
These meetings need to focus on key areas such as:
Team conversations and discussions would ultimately be scoped into evolving activation plans, where the leader facilitates the discussion but the whole team contributes. Additional focus within these activation plans would include:
Undertaking learning is actually just the beginning – it is the systems, processes and support that underpins this post learning that ultimately shapes long term benefit and outcomes.
Considering the key points in this blog: