Learning Cultures Make Everything Better
Increase performance, enhance motivation, and improve outcomes
One of the most effective ways to improve performance and engagement within an organization is by developing a learning culture, where continuous improvement, curiosity, knowledge sharing, competence, autonomy, and relatedness are built into core values and daily practices. When an organization embraces a learning culture, it becomes better equipped to stay relevant, grow talent, inspire and innovate, remain resilient to turbulence, and maintain a stronger competitive advantage, among a number of other positive benefits.
Developing a learning culture in organizations is not easy, and requires a multifaceted approach founded on concrete learning practices like experimentation and information analysis. Leadership plays a crucial role by articulating a clear vision, modeling desired behaviors, and reinforcing learning, but also by openly addressing power dynamics within the organization that could demotivate or hinder learning. Creating a supportive environment that encourages psychological safety, openness to new ideas, and time for reflection is essential. Motivating employees to engage in a learning culture is fundamental; learning opportunities, resources, and recognition of learning achievements can be useful here. In this article, I’ll dive into some of the research about how to create a learning culture in your organization, and how to evaluate it for effectiveness.
Where To Begin
Leadership Commitment
As with most things in an organization, a learning culture begins with leadership commitment, because leaders create the visible and vital enabling and supporting structures for learning environments. Learning environments can include different types of learning, like ad hoc or impromptu learning opportunities; more formal learning sessions, like training courses; and informal training sessions like town halls, lunch-n-learns, or learning communities (forums and internal groups where employees can collaborate to solve challenges, discuss best practices, or share new knowledge) which create opportunities for “incidental” or peer-to-peer learning where employees can learn from one another’s experiences. Leaders can also support a learning and development function within the organization, and can formalize or encourage something like Google’s famous “20% time,” where, in addition to their regular projects, employees are encouraged to work on what they think will most benefit the company one day per week.
Informal learning is, of course, a much easier strategy to get off the ground than instituting something like Google’s 20% policy or funding an L&D team, but more formalized policies are worth the effort and can be accomplished with some formalized guidelines. For example, Google has a basic framework for its policy which can be easily emulated by leaders who want to implement it:
Clearly identify what you want to learn. The idea is to focus on a single topic on which to develop mastery rather than spread learning out amongst a number of areas.
Don’t squander your time. Even if the minimum outcome of your 20% time sounds valuable, it’s probably a good bet. (On my team, for example, I encourage my teammates to explore their interests even if it has only a small amount of applicability to the team’s processes or benefits the company. Over time, these small benefits grow - more on that in number 5.)
Be committed, but flexible. Sometimes, other priorities must take the place of personal learning. Commit to your learning objective, but understand that derailment is inevitable and acceptable, as long as you get back on track.
Make it fun! Learn in different modalities, like audiobooks, Masterclass episodes, or even reaching out to your developmental network for guidance, tutorials, or hands-on experience. Get out of your normal environment. Take a walk, go to the library, take a tour of an important location, go to a class.
Think long-term. The power of compounding is where the money is. Small steps taken now compound over time and create real, immense value.
Leaders may not be able to spin up an L&D team, but some of the strategies I’ve outlined above can be done with minimal investment and have tremendous returns.
Build Psychological Safety
I’ve written and spoken a lot about psychological safety (check out my Lecture Series, podcast, and blog for lots more), and there are many ways to build it in your organization. What it boils down to in the context of a learning culture is that an organization must live values of transparency and open communications so that voices can be heard (it doesn’t mean every opinion is accepted, but there must be forums where people can voice their opinions freely and without fear of retribution); where efficient and mature feedback loops and processes exist; and frameworks to support post-facto analysis of work to discuss successes and failures without blame. Check out this video for two methods you can start using to develop an environment of psychological safety on your team today.
One tactic I’ve used to develop psychological safety on my teams is the “failure party.” Recently, as I mentioned in the video I link above, my team and I normalized and celebrated our failures by sharing what went wrong in previous jobs or projects and the insights we gained. This turned out to be one of the best meetings we’ve ever had. The emphasis I was making in this meeting was that a focus of our teamwork isn’t just success, but learning, and it’s okay to fail as long as we learn.
Integrate Learning Into Processes
I’m a firm believer that performance assessments must include a focus on learning goals and team development in addition to numerical metrics and output. Output and measurements are important, but the factors that contribute to output - employee engagement, team design, alignment, collaborative problem-solving, skill development, team communication, leadership efficacy - are usually not assessed. Learning goals should be embedded into performance evaluations, project milestones, or team objectives.
One of the industries where this is most visible is in healthcare, where providers use training outcomes like certifications as key performance indicators for roles that require compliance to ensure the organization meets industry standards, but it can be done in less straightforward ways, too. Adobe shifted its performance review process to include “learning objectives,” encouraging employees to document skills or knowledge they’ve gained throughout the year, and GE aligns employee development programs with measurable outcomes like productivity improvements or reduced errors in manufacturing. Deloitte tracks participation in training programs and correlates it with project success rates, using data to highlight the value of learning investments, and Johnson & Johnson uses analytics to measure the impact of its leadership development programs on employee promotion and retention.
Some of the post-facto analysis I mentioned in the psychological safety section of this article can be used in similar ways. Team retrospectives or after-action reviews (I don’t like the use of the term post-mortem in my industry because we’re not saving lives, we’re saving PDFs) can be used to evaluate successes, failures, and learning opportunities, and the success of future projects can be correlated to aspects of previous after-action reviews to assess learning and measure progress.
The practice of embedding learning into processes can be improved further by aligning learning programs with the specific challenges and goals employees face in their roles, making them more effective. One of the most visible examples of this is LinkedIn Learning, where LinkedIn personalizes recommended courses based on employees’ job descriptions and career goals. Another extremely effective mechanism are leadership development programs tailored to leadership level (e.g., emerging leaders or senior executives) so employees learn skills directly relevant to their role. I’d like to note that I wrote “leadership development programs” for a reason: I strongly believe that leadership development should certainly include training courses, but it requires much more than that.
Herein lies a problem, though. Recently, I was asked to advise on some work that an internal employee group was doing at my company to improve employee engagement, and one of the strategies I suggested was training. I got a good point of feedback from another member of the group: Who has time for another meeting, much less a series of them? She’s right, of course. Even if you do have a break in the day, a training session on something completely unrelated to the other work you’re engaged in can be disruptive. This is where the power of creating mechanisms to embed learning into daily workflows can be a powerful solution. This way, employees can learn while they work, rather than interrupting their day.
In software development, engineers learn during code reviews, which are structured opportunities to exchange knowledge and improve their skills as part of their daily development tasks. This can, of course, be extrapolated to similar peer engagements for other technical roles. And the after-action reports I mentioned above can be similarly powerful mechanisms.
Purpose-built tools like Salesforce’s Trailhead can be integrated into employees’ workflows to train them on new features, best practices, and industry standards while they’re working. And micro-learning platforms like Axonify and SC Training provide bite-sized learning modules that employees can complete in minutes during their day, like between customer calls or meetings. L&D teams, or even other teams on their own, can create similar learning experiences for minimal task interruption and reduced context switching.
Feedback loops are crucial processes, too. After all, you can’t learn or improve if you don’t know what’s working and what isn’t. Regularly collect feedback via anonymous surveys or team discussions to assess the effectiveness of learning initiatives and reinforce a psychologically safe environment. This is particularly important while a learning initiative is happening. Regularly checking in with learners helps you make changes that can have profound effects on learning before it’s too late, i.e., after the initiative is over. Sending surveys after learning initiatives have completed is far too slow a loop. Spotify uses “squad health checks” to allow teams to provide feedback on in-progress or workflows in production, drastically shortening feedback loops. One-on-ones are also great time to solicit feedback and discuss personal growth and learning achievements.
Incentivize and Reward Learning
Encourage employees to share their knowledge by recognizing and rewarding their efforts. After all, learning is not always easy, and you may encounter resistance. Recognition and reward creates a culture of collaboration and can be a very strong motivator.
Organizations can create incentive programs to rewards employees for mentoring others, contributing valuable knowledge to internal knowledge bases, or even for the courage to present something at a company all hands. Some companies gamify learning (a very powerful technique) by creating leaderboards where employees can see who’s contributing the most to shared knowledge and recognize top performers with badges or other rewards. Another program I’ve experienced success with is one in which employees are given an account with a currency to “spend,” like “karma” or points. This currency can only be spent on others, not oneself, and can be used to buy real-life products, like gift cards, clothing, or accessories. Employees are encouraged to “spend” their currency on other employees for anything they see fit, from a quick assist on a task to get it wrapped before the weekend to helping save a multi-million dollar deal and everything in between. Kudos is one company that does this well.
Incentivizing learning is a key step to developing a strong learning culture, but it’s one that companies typically don’t focus enough time on.
Leverage Technology Where Possible
The emergence of generative AI is augmenting learning tools in incredible ways. In an upcoming article, I’ll write about how I use ChatGPT to help with key parts of the instructional design process.
Often, learning management systems are standalone infrastructure that employees are routed to for mandatory or ad hoc trainings. That’s necessary, sure, but so much more can be done. LMS can be integrated into workflows to provide on-the-job training and certification for employees, and leveraged in combination with some of the other strategies I described, like gamification, to create meaningful and engaging learning pathways. And, HR teams have a wealth of data about employee and company performance and career development. Existing generative AI tools can be leveraged to suggest training and learning programs based on these data, providing quasi-bespoke development paths for employees.
Overcoming Challenges
Resistance to Change
No surprise here: resistance to change is so common in every aspect of life that I’d wonder how you make it through your day in one piece if you don’t expect it when transforming organizational culture.
It can be difficult to address resistance to change without getting frustrated; after all, it seems so obvious to the people trying to enact change that it’s for the best, why can’t others just be positive and see it?! There are lots of reasons for that (here’s one I recently wrote about), but suffice to say that you’ll encounter resistance and you’ll need to change hearts and minds. One solution to this problem is to highlight the tangible benefits of change and offer small-scale trials to build confidence. Show how a micro-learning platform can improve sales outcomes, or how a team’s lunch-n-learn program increases its output. Show how a leader’s recent completion of a leadership program improved team communication practices and led to some of the team members’ promotions. There are a number of ways to show value, but it’ll take more than words to do it.
Lack of Resources
Time, money, people, patience. Resources are scarce, money should be funneled toward revenue-generating initiatives, and there’s no team to focus on learning and development. There are opportunities to create really powerful supporting structures that create meaningful organizational transformation. Scalable, cost-effective tools like free or low-cost online courses can fit the bill nicely. Informal learning environments like those I mentioned earlier (community learning, peer knowledge sharing, etc.) are really powerful because self-efficacy beliefs - or the judgments that people hold about their own capabilities to learn or perform - are enhanced by observing role models; experiencing peers share their own learning is a very effective way to enhance one’s own desire and belief in themselves to learn and share knowledge.
I encourage every organization to start an internal mentoring or coaching program, which combines so many of the benefits I’ve written about thus far. For resources on developing your own mentoring program, books by Laura Gail Lunsford and Kathy Kram are some of the best resources out there.
Inconsistent Leadership Support
And, again, we come to the importance of leadership. Lack of leadership support, as is the case for nearly every other endeavor that requires support, is the death knell for a learning program and, by extension, a learning culture. It’s like those videos of people playing tug-o-war with a tiger, and leadership is the tiger. It doesn’t matter how hard or long you fight, if leadership isn’t supporting you, you’re not going anywhere. The most effective way to support a learning culture is to formalize leadership accountability by tying bonuses or promotions to learning objectives. That’s the foundation on which all other initiatives can be built. Without accountability, learning objectives and programs will absolutely fail, and I’m willing to bet that you’ve seen that happen before, or might even be experiencing it now.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: behaviors modeled are behaviors emulated. Leaders should be emphasizing learning as a key takeaway of work, and encourage autonomy and experimentation.
Three Things You Can Do… Now!
I like to end my videos and writing with actionable steps you can take to start making a difference right now. In that spirit, here are three things you can do right now to start transforming the culture of your organization or team into one of learning.
Model Vulnerability and Openness
I could wax poetic about vulnerability and openness, and indeed I have in some of the links I’ve posted in this article and in my Lecture Series. In the context of a learning culture, leaders can start meetings by sharing something new they learned and how it impacted their thinking. This is easy, low-pressure, no-cost, and has huge returns. This can become a team practice, so everyone on the team has an opportunity to share. I’m constantly surprised by the things I’ve learned from my team and how my thinking has changed because of the knowledge.
Facilitate Dialogue and Reflection
Set up a team retrospectives to identify lessons from successes and failures. My formal team syncs are on Mondays and Fridays, and I include a “good, bad, and ugly” section, though I call it “what’s working, what’s not, and needs fixin’.” This shortens feedback loops tremendously and we’re able to resolve issues and make efficiencies super-fast. We also do more long retrospectives at the end of each quarter prior to writing our goals for the upcoming quarter so the lessons can inform us as we move forward. And, naturally, after there’s a catastrophe of some sort, we do detailed after-action reports (I call them BAARs: blameless after-action reports) to take away lessons and improvements for next time.
Crucially, all of the above are published in our company knowledge base for any and all to see and provide feedback on.
Cross-Functional Learning
In my organization at work, we have a local all hands for everyone in the organization; this is separate from the company all hands meetings. The feedback that I’ve heard consistently from leaders in my organization is that we really like it when we have guest presenters from other organizations sharing their knowledge, whether it’s a formal presentation or a Q&A. In your org, or on your team, you can invite a guest from another part of the organization to do a presentation on whatever it is they do. This type of cross-functional learning helps strengthen alignment across the company, and creates opportunities for the teams to expand their professional networks and potential career opportunities.
Closing Thoughts
Building a learning culture is both a strategic imperative and a genuine opportunity for organizations to thrive. Companies can drive resilience, innovation, and long-term success by empowering leaders and teams to embrace continuous improvement, creating psychologically safe environments for experimentation, and embedding learning into everyday workflows. Even when resources are limited, a little creativity and strong leadership accountability can go a long way toward making a culture of learning a reality. Ultimately, the investment in growth—on both individual and organizational levels—pays off in higher engagement, better performance, and a sustainable competitive edge.