Organizational Studying And Aggressive Benefit
There is an old saying that change is the only constant in business. If the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it is meant to remind us of the enduring truth of this saying and the fundamental need for businesses to keep learning. Companies can only cope with change by keeping pace and adapting to changing conditions. Today's knowledge does not help with tomorrow's challenges. Only organizations that value learning are going to survive, let alone thrive. However, most companies only briefly introduce the learning process.
Companies offer a lot of training, but organizational learning is more than training. Few organizations, however, are able to identify the “what, how, and why” of the best practices needed to stay one step ahead of change. With the disruptions of COVIID-19, the need to learn and adapt has never been greater.
In a recent conversation with Kantar's Mark Visser, he shared what companies need to do to unlock the only remaining barrier to entry into a digital age – a culture and commitment to organizational learning. Organizational learning is no longer about teaching skills that are known to be needed. It's about learning which skills are actually needed. This is especially true when companies look to the post-pandemic market where almost anything will be up for grabs.
In our discussion, Mark outlined several key principles for organizational learning, including when it's too late to learn, not waiting to be perfectly right before action, segmenting learning according to the type and needs of different learners, thinking ahead about trends Going beyond mere training Ask for high-level support and assistance and tie learning to goals. At the top of the list, however, is the overarching idea of course correction. This includes testing hypotheses and making immediate adjustments. This has been widely discussed as a corporate culture of experimentation, but it is more than that. It is a corporate obligation to view knowledge as contingent and always in need of improvement. Last but not least, the coronavirus pandemic brings this lesson home to businesses around the world.
Course correction takes place through an organizational process that Mark calls Impact Management. This means tying the knowledge transfer to certain behaviors that an organization wants to promote. The way to measure success against goals is to determine if the specific behaviors of interest have changed. This is what organizational learning is all about – identifying best practices and replicating them across the organization.
The COVID-19 outbreak has shown that best practices vary. They are different now just to survive and they will be different tomorrow to flourish. Organizational learning has never been more important than the key ingredient for competitive advantage and market success.
Contributing to Brand Strategy Insider By: Walker Smith, Chief Knowledge Officer, Brand & Marketing at Kantar
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