A Big Mistake About Learning
My Work Is To Do My Work And To Improve My Work
Those familiar with Lean Thinking will probably already be aware of "Kaizen" - the continuous improvement philosophy - a strategy where employees at all levels of a company work together pro-actively to achieve regular, incremental improvements as part of their daily work.
"Kaizen" is a Japanese word that means "Improve for improvements' sake, endlessly". Organisations that embrace Kaizen assert and practice that "my work is to do my work and to improve my work".
Customers Expect And Demand Continuous Improvement
In Lean organisations, Kaizen is treated as both a mindset and a practice that drives continuous improvement as part of daily work, not infrequently as part of a planned continuous improvement initiative (which would actually be a contradiction of the term "continuous improvement").
These days, I don't believe anyone would disagree that "continuous improvement" is a normal and expected part of daily work. Our customers both expect and demand continuous improvement.
However, I don't believe that the same can be said about "continuous learning".
Thinking That Learning Is Not "Work" - A Big Mistake
Many do not see or treat learning as part of their normal daily work. It's instead treated as an infrequent, planned activity which is separate to work. This is the legacy of the "training mindset" that doesn't understand the difference between learning and training.
It's a big mistake to think that learning is not work!
It's also a big mistake to treat learning like training.
Continuous Improvement Requires Learning And Experimentation
It's a given that continuous improvement requires both learning and experimentation. Mistakes and failed experiments may occur along the way but these are accepted as they ultimately culminate in innovations and improvements.
This implies that learning and innovation are a part of normal daily work for those who practice continuous improvement.
It's no wonder that another Lean mantra is "out-learn the competition".
This also explains why organisations that don't practice continuous improvement as part of their daily work are always talking about it alongside the need to be more innovative and running planned initiatives to try and achieve both.
Failing To Treat Learning As Part Of Normal Work Has Consequences
Organisations that do not allow for and treat learning as a normal part of daily work will fail to achieve a learning culture. Continuous learning will not occur and such organisations will find themselves falling behind due to a lack of strategic knowledge and skills.
They will be dogged by endlessly trying to justify the time and cost of learning and the impact it will have on reduced utilisation levels and therefore the bottom line.
There is no way to win the economics argument when learning is treated like training i.e as an infrequent, planned and costed activity requiring a separate budget.
Putting Learning In Its Rightful Place
Continuous learning is not something new to us - we each do it every day, as part of our normal lives and our daily work.
Treating learning as part of our daily work means we don't need to adjust our utilisation levels to accommodate it - it's already baked in. We mostly don't need to plan for it, or allocate it a separate budget, although we may still choose to do so for situations like formal training, hack days, conferences etc.
We do however need to budget a greater level of "trust" and "freedom" (two of Capgemini's core values). Trust and freedom to allow for the social interactions, shadowing, coaching, mentoring, technical communities, lessons learned, knowledge sharing, appraisals, performance reviews, one-to-one meetings etc. that drive learning and build people so that they can achieve their full potential.
At Capgemini we say "People Matter, Results Count". In that order.
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Tim Simpson
28th June, 2019
#LifeAtCapgemini