In his 1990 book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge defined and argued in favor of the “learning organization.”

I will not try to take you through even a brief summary of that influential book. However, I do encourage you to keep “learning organization” as a guiding phrase in the front of your mind.

Why? A business that pays attention to, provides opportunities for, and celebrates continuous learning, increases its levels of employee engagement. Automatically.

Consider Senge’s statement:

“…organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.”

Learning is an engagement.

Then think of this:

“When you ask people about what it is like being part of a great team, what is most striking is the meaningfulness of the experience. People talk about being part of something larger than themselves, of being connected, of being generative. It become quite clear that, for many, their experiences as part of truly great teams stand out as singular periods of life lived to the fullest. Some spend the rest of their lives looking for ways to recapture that spirit. ”

That pretty well describes the spirit of engagement.

Incorporate ‘learning organization’ into your business, esp. relevant to Employee Engagement.

In general, you want to

• Make receiving and sharing information about Employee Engagement of prime importance.
• Create opportunities centered on sharing information about Employee Engagement.
• Invite and listen to employees’ statements of what and how the want and need to learn.

Your and your people’s creative ways of encouraging and celebrating your business’s “learning organization” surpass the following suggestions. Yet, they may get you started:

• Panel Discussions. Hold regular panel discussions that allow employees to share and gain knowledge and information. Determine how often you can manage a 1-hour panel discussion (with lunch provided?). If monthly, for example, work with team members to set 12 topics or themes. Once you’ve done that, filling the panel and orchestrating each event will be a snap.
• Lunch-and-Learns. Take advantage of expertise among members of your team or department. Invite them to facilitate mini-workshops over brown bag lunches. Again, you may wish to lay out a list of topics and invite team members to step up. On the other hand, you may have two or three key employees to get the ball rolling and stimulate additional volunteers who are eager to present lunch-and-learns. NOTE: nothing says every lunch-and-learn has to be about business topics.
• Internal “trade shows”. A good way to stimulate cross-learning among teams or departments is to hold an in-house trade show. Each department creates its own booth or table, complete with visual displays, information packets, and brief presentations of its specific functions and responsibilities.

Now, what are your ideas to make learning an engagement-contributor to your business?

Tags: Employee Engagement, learning, Peter Senge