<p>Almost every organization* [<b data-redactor-tag="b">whether it is business, political or governments</b>] works on <b data-redactor-tag="b">the principal of concealing mistakes and highlighting only the accomplishments</b> - As a result – <b data-redactor-tag="b">improvement becomes impossible</b> as we don't know/hide/ignore the mistakes. </p><p><b data-redactor-tag="b">Big breakthroughs* happens when</b> - what was hitherto-impossible meets with - what is desperately needed. </p><p>In this permanently <b data-redactor-tag="b">VUCA global environment</b> - the way we do business, the types of channels used in selling, marketing and buying, the buyer's-needs/preferences/ desires, the technology <b data-redactor-tag="b">is changing so fast that – the future of almost businesses has become kind of un-predictable</b>, at least for long-term. </p><p>In this environment <b data-redactor-tag="b">only those organizations as well as people would survive, succeed and grow –which becomes Intelligent</b>* Learning organizations/entities/ employees.</p><p>The <b data-redactor-tag="b">newer job-roles, functions and operations are redefining the education, competencies and skills that we need </b>to remain employed as well as unemployable – as the employable skills of today is already becoming obsolete.</p><p>We [hence forth the word we would be used to mean both the people as well as the organizations] – <b data-redactor-tag="b">have to continually expand, relearn, develop, adopt and grow - our capabilities, thinking-patterns and aspirations</b>.</p><p><b data-redactor-tag="b">Crating a learning organization is a huge transformation and would takes years through</b> the 100% commitment, dedication and focused action on consistent and persistent basis from the top leadership and all the leaders.</p><p>Like all my blogs – <b data-redactor-tag="b">all the *marked ones mean there is a separate Do-It-yourself article</b> on that topic in the Success Unlimited Mantra Blog Section.</p><p><b data-redactor-tag="b">Basic Qualities of Learning Organization </b></p> <ul><li>1.<b data-redactor-tag="b">Systems Thinking</b> - Identifying what in current process, thinking, culture, system, people and mind-set caused any mistake</li> <li>2.<b data-redactor-tag="b">Developing the capabilities-matrix</b> [the knowledge, the competencies, the attitudes, the soft and hard skills, the assumptions, the perceptions, the expertise and the exposure] <b data-redactor-tag="b">of each link</b> [i.e., the people] of the organizations – as Any organization's learning-ability and its position on the value-chain is directly proportional to its weakest link</li> <li>3.<b data-redactor-tag="b">Continuous Buy-in from each stake-holders</b> on why continuous learning is essential and non-negotiable AND what all of us need to learn*, unlearn* and relearn*</li> <li>4.<b data-redactor-tag="b">Involvement of Employees</b> to Build and Implement Shared Vision to finds meaning, direction, and reasons for existing as well as future</li> <li>5.<b data-redactor-tag="b">Collective Team Learning</b> through focused dialogues among the team members</li> <li>6.<b data-redactor-tag="b">Enhancing the 36 types of Intelligence*</b></li> <li>7.<b data-redactor-tag="b">Reinventing itself continually</b></li> <li>8.<b data-redactor-tag="b">Going for Disruptive* Innovation</b></li> <li>9.Being Unique*, Different and Standalone </li></ul> <p>The <b data-redactor-tag="b">Role and critical-contributions of the Leaders</b></p> <ul><li>1.Accept and Take complete responsibility and be fully accountable </li> <li>2.Clarify and reinforce within themselves as well as among the employees - why our organization exists and where we are planning to be in the future</li> <li>3.Story-telling* communication to create mental-pictures and exciting triggers in each individual</li> <li>4.Communicating your passion, belief and drive – through living it ourselves</li> <li>5.Focusing on continuous improvement, development, refinement and growth strategies – for employees, for customers, for vendors, for partners and other stakeholders - for products, for services, for newer-concepts </li> <li>6.Building consensus, involvement and ownership around this vision</li> <li>7.Being action-person by focusing on Implementation, Execution, Improvisation, Tracking, Monitoring and Course-Correcting till reach the milestones</li> <li>8.Welcoming and creating energies around the Changes that will accompany the newer Vision and Implementation</li> <li>9.Being a situational leader and creating a culture [just like few top global institutions where the head is on rotational bass] – to allow anyone whose competency is the best for a particular task at that moment</li> <li>10.Learning themselves continually AND sharing their learnings within the organization</li> <li>11.Fostering an environment to Empower* people</li> <li>12.Encouraging employees to go for intelligent risk-taking*</li> <li>13.Transparent sharing of information, challenges, threats, situations with employees to enable them make better decisions*</li> <li>14.Giving credit to others</li> <li>15.Encouraging disruptive* thinkers</li></ul> <p><b data-redactor-tag="b">44+ Tips to Create a Learning Organization - </b></p> <ul><li>1.Everyone in the organization must contribute</li> <li>2.Learning* Together - All the learning of individuals whether from attending a course, a workshop, a book mandatorily to be shared with the relevant groups<br> On a regular basis doing SWOT* with small as well as in large group of stakeholders for solutions, possibilities and future actions</li> <li>3.Create additional Alternative Sources for Learning</li> <li>4.Debrief, Dissect Every Project and Initiative – both the successful as well as the failed ones--Debrief what went right, what went wrong, and what you will do differently in the future</li> <li>5.De-briefing process has to only aim for shared understanding*, clarifications and future action – not blame</li> <li>6.Encouraging* the employees to share ideas without any inhibition - for improvement and on the solutions of the challenges faced by the organization</li> <li>7.Rewarding the employees for their suggestions and inputs</li> <li>8.Create an environment in which people feel safe to share the truth about what they think, feel and what happened</li> <li>9.Going for all-round development by including cross-functional assignments, challenging goals, meaningful responsibilities</li> <li>10.Making most of the employees interact with the customers* – to experience and learn first-hand their needs to help them to make better decisions for delighting the customer</li> <li>11.Finding ways to make the employees feel and realize naturally - that the leadership and the organization appreciates, recognizes and rewards their contribution, pain and position</li> <li>12.Let employees learn from vastly non-competing organizations of different fields – by partnering other businesses [like the student exchange programs – the schools and universities follow]</li> <li>13.Have a Learning-Meet Regularly Across Departments</li> <li>14.Always In-breed and grow talents in-house – through dynamic talent-pools</li> <li>15.Using Cross-Functional Teams To solve problems and to explore new opportunities </li> <li>16.Investing-in for upgrading skills and education for All Employees</li> <li>17.Creating a Mentoring* and Coaching* Culture by cascading it down from Top till the ground level</li> <li>18.Having strong succession pipe-line</li> <li>19.Being totally meritocratic*, impartial and fair - make the exceptional performers get into limelight</li> <li>20. Spend time with people thinking about and planning their next objective</li> <li>21.Form Study Groups – on common interest topics AND also to talk about New Trends, Ideas and Work</li> <li>22. Using the concept of Exclusivity</li> <li>23. Training* Yourself as well as the employees to focus both on Forecasting as well as Predicting - -A forecast is an attempt to get some quantitative information about the future. A prediction, however, is an understanding of certain predetermined consequences</li> <li>24. Encouraging the employees to be great observers* by spotting the emerging trends </li> <li>25. Creating a circular Hierarchy - That is breaking the conventional norm of two-dimensional authority and responsibilities — levels of authority that flow up and down and responsibility that flows right and left</li> <li>26. This can be accomplished by making every manager interact with five levels of management — two levels up, two levels down, and across at his own level. </li> <li>27.At the very bottom of the organization, the work groups should be small enough so every employee of the organization has the opportunity to serve on the board of his boss. </li> <li>28. The major roles of this circular Hierarchy </li> <li>I.Produces plans for the unit</li> <li>II.Establish policy/ process / procedures</li> <li>III.Coordinating the activity of the level below yours</li> <li>IV.Integration all these together </li> <li>V.Evaluating the performance of the manager whose board it is, and are responsible for helping him increase his effectiveness</li> <li>29. Finding ways to beat Resistance to change* - we as Humans by nature are slave to our comfort-zones* - anything that threatens we resist</li> <li>30. Never confuse a culture of learning is confused with training – most organizations are guilty of this</li> <li>31.Creating buy-in for the learning organizations starts from the Top-down – but in practice – the top tends to pass the buck to the middle and junior levels – AND – the organization goes nowhere</li> <li>32. When C-level executives set a benchmark by the way they conduct themselves and their activities, the pattern permeates downwards in the organization</li> <li>33. Encouraging innovation* and creativity*</li> <li>34. Empowering* your employees</li> <li>35. Using technology to accelerate learning and ensure accessibility of knowledge</li> <li>36. Involving people in important change initiatives </li> <li>37.Allowing the employees to experiment* and to make mistakes*</li> <li>38. Creating a 360-degree feedback* culture </li> <li>39. Hiring the best talent* that the industry got – they will pay back multifold than what you spend by paying top-salaries</li> <li>40. The create processes and cultures to retain your star-performers</li> <li>41.Enlist Key People Throughout the Organization- as internal champions for what could turn out to be a major organizational change effort</li> <li>42. Define Clear Objectives with End Results</li> <li>43. Make Time for Reflection – creating Continuous constructive, candid Two-Way Feedback culture</li> <li>44. Maximizing human resources with AI - Achieving Intelligence Maturity - This can be achieved through refining </li> <li>I.Analytical capabilities, Insight Creation Capabilities, Insight Deployment Capability, Insight Adoption Effectiveness </li> <li>II.Start by Recording the daily business interactions and the experiences your organization's consumers, supplier's, employee's and your other partner's</li> <li>III.This Raw data needs to be converted into rational easily understood information - for creating new insights as well as to spot the future-trends</li> <li>IV.Then we need to use Business-intelligence Tool-kit to generate insights for the business leaders to enable them make informed decisions and take effective actions</li> <li>V.After this decision-making* science has to be used to make data-driven decisions and take appropriate actions to influence changes at the user-experience* level</li></ul>