Leadership guru Simon Sinek rakes
in the big bucks speaking to executives at Fortune 100 companies about one simple idea: Start
with Why. Simon makes a lot of money and appears to have his act together,
so I figure his advice is sound. Also, he is handsome (see below). Before I dive into a semester of exploring the
what and the how of Adult Learning, allow me to do what Simon says and start
with why.
Why does learning in the context
of work matter so much to me? Why have I chosen to focus my entire career in
this space? And why do I think it should matter to you, too?
1. Learning makes people happy. As much as
I care about business results and successful outcomes, my most gut-level
motivation will always be the people
who are doing the work that leads to business results. The average person
spends 90,000 hours at work over their lifetime, and I’d like people to enjoy
those 90,000 hours as much as possible.
In my own life, I hit a career dead
end after several years of providing client services in the non-profit sector.
I didn’t burn out because my clients were difficult, or because I was
overworked, or even because I was surrounded by depressing blue carpet in my
office building. I burned out because I
stopped learning.
Fast-forward 4 years to my present
day. I now work for a fast-paced, ever-changing corporation. I am often
stressed and stretched thin (that’s another blog post), but I am generally
happy as a clam because my brain gets
fired up for new challenges every day.
And I’m not alone. The need to
learn is a human phenomenon. The field of Positive Psychology points to the
concept of mastery – our natural human desire to learn and progress – as a key
factor in how happy we are.
3. Learning
produces better outcomes. If you are a person who cares about business outcomes
more than people, or if you just care about business outcomes a healthy amount,
then read on for good news. A recent
study from Bersin & Associates showed that companies with high-impact
learning functions average 3 times the revenue growth of their competition.
Bottom line? Learning contributes to the bottom line.
4. Learning
cultures unleash innovation. I see it time and time again in the leaders
and teams I encounter. Without permission to fail, there is no learning. When
someone is working in a culture that punishes failure and rewards perfection on
the first try, work products rarely go beyond “good enough”.
Here’s how this played out for me recently.
I built a brand new leadership development program for my organization this
year, and I got creative, building out a program that was pretty different than anything we’d done before. It felt
risky, and I wasn’t sure how much of it would actually work in practice, but I
was curious what we might learn from trying something out of the box. Our
leaders have been encouraging us to “test
and learn”, so I decided to take them up on it. And honestly, some
elements of my program have succeeded, and other elements have fallen flat.
Right now, I’m in the midst of making some pretty major changes to the program
based on my learnings.
I definitely have to quiet my inner critic
sometimes over my lack of a home run on the first try. What makes all the
difference is that my leaders and my team have been cheering me on for testing,
learning, and iterating. The end product will
be a home run, and because of the
learning culture on my team, I will be much more likely to innovate and take
risks in the future.
And did I mention that testing and learning
has been a ton of fun?
Does
your organization value learning and failure? How can you help build a learning
culture in your work context?
5. Learning
is cool. All the hipsters are doing it.
