3 ways to implement a culture of learning in your company.
We all know that to compete in a largely global and open economy, the best investment is to have the best knowledge and move along with it. But in Asia, there was and still is a weird thought process of bosses wanting to be the most knowledgeable person in the room.
This post highlights what we do at Twofold & RRE (a strategy firm that Rushdy & I are a part of) to ensure our team is all on the same page with important things in our industry.
Here are 3 things you can do to ensure constant improvement at your organisation too.
1. Managing Discussion Time.
Work time is precious. Clients have limited attention spans and at both companies we ensure we contact and close deals during prime working working hours (930am to 4pm). Hence training and learning must happening before or after these hours.
We do Monday sessions where everyone is caught up with work. After that, everyone is expect to have an industry specific item or topic to talk about. These things are recorded in meeting minutes and disseminated. Thus everyone is held accountable for training the team.
2. Reading List
We love Slack. We use it to run our daily ops. We have a channel called the Reading List. Every time them discovers an interesting article, picture, book or reading form, it is usually dropped here. Team remembers are not obligated to read but we have seen over time that everyone does read and discussions follow.
The Reading List channel has no restrictions. Content can come from anywhere. It does not always have to relate to our industry rather has to have a point the user considers important.
I have personally learned new skills, facts about housing and the economy and even how to open a beer bottle with a spoon and tissue paper. That has served me well at many an event.
3. One on One sessions
This is the most important aspect of our company training time. These are 30 minute sessions that anyone can request of anyone in the company. The purpose is to educate the person about something that you feel could make their work better. We encourage there to be a skill or tool to be trained in the 30 mins too.
This means If I feel Michelle is not using Trello effectively, I will email her asking for a 30 min 1-1 session. She just has to find 30 mins and agree to it. Of course we use this to catch up with each other too. But the result has been amazing. The personalised time results in both persons getting better at a tool or at communication.
We got this from the pivot we are making at Twofold. On one On time works much better when trying to teach something. Both people are involved and will make the effort to give each other attention.
Conclusion
While it may seem that in allowing the above 3 measures, you employees might lose time for sales or slack off, we have found it to be very effective in both improving team knowledge as well as bonding. It of course involves trusting your employees with their time. Start there.