Challenges like post-Covid supply chain disruptions, staff shortages, unpredictable political tensions, an energy crisis, and not to forget an impending climate crisis, force organisations to change and adapt continuously. Becoming resilient, sustainable, and innovative requires that organizations have to learn.

Learning means that organisations respond to new information,

novel challenges, and setbacks, with the creation of new knowledge

that helps to make sense and thrive on change.

Learning is easier said than done – after all, it costs effort, time, focus, money, people, and means taking risks. On top of that, you may only reap the rewards much later. In her literature review, MORSE PhD candidate Melanie Feeney found that companies see the need for learning to become more sustainable, but differ in their motivation and approach. Some companies see learning as instrumental for maintaining the status quo, for fixing minor problems with existing structures. Others, however, engage in learning that changes how a problem is framed, along with the systems and behaviours used to respond to it. This second type is called ‘double-loop learning’, and it is a necessity for meeting future challenges that will have a profound impact on how organisations operate.

So how can organisations effectively engage in double-loop learning to foster resilience, sustainability, and innovation? Research on organisational and workplace learning offers five essential insights:

Learning is a verb, not a noun

Here on LinkedIn or in the corporate office, you often hear people talking about ‘learnings’, meaning bite-sized take-aways from a project, a meeting, or a network event. However, learning is more than this small-scale outcome – it is a complex process, behaviours that help individuals, teams, and organisations to create new knowledge (like asking questions, challenging decisions, experimenting) and processes that help make sense of and integrate new insights (like reflecting, intervisions, or creating new systems). Want to learn more about learning at the workplace? Get started with the book by SBE colleagues Piet van den Bossche and Mien Segers here.

Learning takes place anywhere and all the time

Many people think of learning as something that takes place in schools, universities, or during formal trainings. However, we all learn every day, often without noticing. When you are watching a colleague or overhear them address a problem, when you try something new to make your work life easier, when you watch a documentary or listen to a podcast that inspires you, when a colleague provides you with help and information, when your family member shares their war stories, or even when you are googling whether penguins have knees (they do), you are learning. This informal learning that takes place outside the classroom is less structured, but often more effective. It occurs when people feel the need to develop new knowledge, rather when they are being told. Read more on informal learning in SBE colleague’s Irina Nikolova’s paper here.

You cannot force anyone to learn

This brings us to the second insight – you cannot force individuals, teams, and especially organisations to learn. On the one hand, it is impossible to know what needs to be learned when the challenge is new, unstructured, and there is incomplete information. On the other, learning sticks when individuals, teams, and organisations are intrinsically motivated to create new knowledge. This means that the best bet is to create conditions that make learning easy, values, and fun. Read more on creating conditions for effective learning at work in this paper by SBE colleagues Samantha Crans, Simon Beausaert, and Mien Segers.  

Your organisation’s culture is the key to learning

Organisational learning research finds that an effective way of creating and sustaining conditions for double-loop learning within your organisation is to create an organisational learning culture. This culture encourages professionals to engage in learning behaviours, rewards these behaviours, and offers the necessary resources for learning. Such a learning culture can have a trickle-down effect, fostering learning at the individual and at the team level within an organisation. You can find out more about what a learning culture is and how it affects learning at other levels in this paper written with former student Lydia Nellen and SBE colleague Wim Gijselaers.

Leaders play a critical role in learning

So, who drives the creation of a learning culture? It is the leaders within an organisation. They are the ones who act as role models (consciously or unconsciously), who reward and reprimand, who can provide resources and share new knowledge across teams and hierarchical layers. This requires of leaders that they engage in learning behaviours themselves to set an example, that they avoid blaming colleagues who took a risk or made a mistake that can be learned from, and that they do not treat information as a source of individual, but as a source of shared power. These behaviours are especially important for young professionals who are learning the ropes of their field, and who become socialised into the organisation. Find out more about the crucial role of leader behaviour here in this paper published with SBE colleagues Wim Gijselaers and Roger Meuwissen.

“People don’t leave jobs; they leave toxic work cultures”

Dr. Amina Aitsi-Selmi

You may feel you have no room to deal with future challenges like resilience, sustainability, or innovation. You may currently struggle to retain and attract enough staff to get the work done today; maybe your organisation is part of ‘the great resignation’ post-COVID, maybe you are expanding or you are struggling to grow your business. Also in this current situation, a learning culture can be a critical asset. In a recently published study, Wim Gijselaers, Roger Meuwissen and I found that learning culture is critical for retaining professionals, especially those who find learning important themselves, the high potentials. Knowing how a professional perceived their learning culture and how much they value learning themselves allowed us to predict whether a professional was still with their firm. In fact, this information was enough to predict 40% - 50% of turnover behaviour five years later.

To get started on creating a learning culture today, no matter your position:

1.  Ask a question or admit something you do not know in front of others who may not feel safe to do so
2.  Find one moment today to praise the learning behaviour of a colleague, such as disagreeing respectfully, suggesting an out-of-the-box approach, or asking for help
3.  Identify a task you are doing today that could help you learn more and experiment with it (for example, ask your colleague about the most exciting thing they have discovered recently to start a meeting, or keep a list of things you want to know more about)