Organizational Learning… It’s Not Just for Hotel Ballrooms Anymore

Truly exceptional organizations facilitate continuous learning and
transformation.  In order to bring about effective organizational change, individuals within an organization needs to be ready, willing, and able to work in new ways… over and over again!  That means that the individuals who make up the organization continuously learn and transform.

Organizational learning is tricky business these days.  People are busy.  Budgets are tight.  And adults are not really programmed to learn in the same ways that most of did when we were in school.

Adults at work learn in lots of different ways.  There is of course experiential learning that takes place every day through interactions, mentoring relationships, and on the job activity.  But there are also crafted learning experiences like training and workshops that are critical components of a continuous learning strategy.

Continually educating the workforce so they can work smarter, leaner and faster can be very expensive if we think about learning from our traditional viewpoints.  Everyone in a classroom.  Days away from the job.  The dreaded hotel conference or ball room.  These models can still work, but there are other options.  With geographically dispersed workforces, as well as ongoing demands of our jobs, looking at virtual options for learning only makes sense.

One concern that comes to mind when looking to virtual forms of learning is the loss of the benefits of interactions with a trainer and classmates.  With live virtual events (“live” meaning that the training takes place with a live teacher and classmates, “virtual” meaning that the group does not sit in the same physical room but shares an electronic or virtual room), the benefits of live training can be paired with the benefits of virtual training.

When facilitating organizational change, there is almost always the need to help people learn new ways of working.  Being creative about the way training is delivered (in one shot or broken up into small bits over time, in one location or from disparate locations) can reduce resistance to training and even improve the effectiveness of the learning.

If people in your organization need training to be effective at whatever change
you are trying to implement, think about how to best deliver that training so that you can meet the demands of the learners as well as the change.