Learning programs only succeed when everyone buys in. Naysayers — perhaps a senior finance person or an employee with a bad attitude — can stymie such programs and need to be dealt with — the sooner the better.
A new Vice President, Learning Management System, or corporate subscription to an online university will not instantaneously bring about change. Building a learning culture requires curiosity and empowerment.
It also requires that everyone in the organization — from the CEO to the intern — understand that there is still something to learn — from the tactical to the strategic — and at different points in time, every employee has the opportunity to serve as teacher or student.
That every employee has something to teach, that is worthy of sharing, is why we created Cognota®. The Cognota platform allows for companies to capture the expertise of their company’s experts, develop courses based on that knowledge, and track that learning via assessments and implementation on the job.
A recent blogpost on Medium points out that the future of learning is from one another, not from a centralized department. ‘We’re all becoming micro-experts and should be rewarded and encouraged for teaching our peers,’ the blogger points out.
Karen Kocher, Chief Learning Officer of Cigna, is a popular speaker on the topic of organizations needing to transform themselves through learning. In an interview last year posted on YouTube, when asked about her biggest challenge as a CLO, Karen’s response was, ‘staying one step ahead of the business.’
My job is to make sure that we have talent that is capable of doing all that we need it to do in advance of the business, and in a lot of cases, even realizing that it’s necessary.
— Karen Kocher, CLO, Cigna
Like a lot of CLOs who align the goals of L&D with that of the overall business, only with qualified employees can an organization accomplish what it sets out to do. Employees who are incapable, incompetent, and perhaps even unaware, hold a business back from success.
And it all starts with building a training culture. You will become your employees’ most trusted ally, and highly sought after in the organization.
