13 Signs Your Organization Has a Healthy Learning Culture

From their thoughts we learn 13 Signs Your Organization Has A Healthy Learning Culture:

1. A Healthy Learning Culture’s Ideas Originate From Those Closest To The Customer: When you have office and field personnel, a critical mistake can be made.  Procedures and most ideas should originate from the field (those closest to the customer) and then be implemented by the office. The office (those farthest from the customer) should never dictate to the field what are best practices. Smart leaders know you gather information at one level (the field) and make decisions at another (the office). Sheree said, “We actually had our project team and some guests, as well, from other parts of the company, come and visit with us so we could tour them around the building.”
2. A Healthy Learning Culture Talks About Issues And Lessons Learned: Sheree continued, “talk about some issues and lessons learned.”
3. A Healthy Learning Culture Proactively Seeks Feedback: They don’t wait for issues to bubble up to the surface. Sheree added, “just get good feedback on what we’re seeing across the company.”
4. A Healthy Learning Culture Autopsies Success As Well As Failure: Leaders of healthy learning cultures understand the importance of learning from success as well as failure. This is because when you lose momentum, you know what is needed to get it back. Sheree noted the team was “also talking about wins and good things and good design.”
5. A Healthy Learning Culture Helps Ensure Future Success: Sheree concluded they do all of this “so we can share it across the board so people can use that for future projects.”
6. A Healthy Learning Culture Makes Continual Learning A Core Value: Greg said, “At Aspen, we have an ‘always learn’ culture.” They even gave their value a name.
7. A Healthy Learning Culture Is Made Up Of People Who Love Learning: The most successful organizations view failure completely differently than unsuccessful ones.  They view failure merely as a data point to be learned from. He added, “We just love to learn from the mistakes that we made and the wins that we’ve had.”
8. A Healthy Learning Culture Is Where People Feel Something Can Always Be Learned: This is the essence of continual learning. Greg noted, “And every project, there’s something that can be learned.” This is also a sign a great humility.
9. A Healthy Learning Culture Focuses On Continual Improvement: Greg continued, “there’s something that can be improved upon.”
10. A Healthy Learning Culture Is Made Up Of People Learning From Each Other: Humble leaders know you can learn something from anyone. Greg observed, “And so, especially with cross-functional teams and separate offices and separate studios, to bring folks together to see projects maybe they weren’t even a part of.”
11. A Healthy Learning Culture Recognizes You Can Get Too Close To A Problem And Miss Something: This is a lesson only elite leaders know. You can get too close to a problem or situation and not see the forest for the trees. Greg acknowledged, “And so, people so close to a project, people on a team that do a project, maybe miss some things. That they’re not asking all the right questions, they’re not learning all they could learn.”
12. People Challenge Each Other’s Ideas In A Healthy Learning Culture:  Iron sharpens iron. Greg began to sum up his thoughts, “So to bring others in and walk them through what we’ve done and let them get into our minds and challenge us on what we did and why we did it and what worked and what didn’t work.”
13. Working In A Healthy Learning Culture Is A Privilege: Greg spoke for the entire Aspen team when he closed his thoughts with “It’s just a great day of learning.”

It’s been a great day of learning for us as well. Thank you to the Aspen Group for showing us what a healthy learning culture looks like. What is one thing you learned from this wonderful organization you can implement to improve in this area?

This article originally appeared here and is used by permission.