A Culture of Non-Stop Innovation is a Culture of Non-Stop Learning.
19/02/11 10:38 Filed in:
leadership, innovation, creativity
I’d like to
pick up on our past discussions about cultures of
innovation. We’ve talked about what makes up a
culture of innovation, where it resides, why we need
more of it, what can kill it, and how to lead it.
Today I want to talk about how to teach it.
Since no two creative people and no two creative solutions are alike, how do you foster a shared understanding of the principles of creativity so that everyone has an opportunity to experiment, learn and grow?
In our culture of continually accelerating change, how you learn is vastly more important than what you learn.
While both matter, the ability to quickly absorb and adapt to new information, knowledge and insights is what will keep you from becoming a dinosaur... irrelevant and extinct.
The ability to acquire new knowledge quickly is the fundamental skill that underpins a culture of innovation.
According to Drucker, “Every enterprise is a teaching and learning institution. Training and development must be built into it at all levels – training and development that never stop.”
If you want to build and foster a culture of non-stop innovation, then you must build a culture of non-stop learning and training.
But what does this training look like?
According to our good friend Marty Neumeier, he calls this “branded training.”
It’s training that “bridges the gap between university knowledge and industry knowledge, and between industry knowledge and company knowledge.”
It teaches personal mastery and collaboration, so that “personal mastery can inform collaboration and so that collaboration can inform personal mastery."
This kind of ongoing training and learning is what builds and feeds a culture of innovation.
It identifies and builds the value of your internal brand.
It aligns each individual’s actions in your organization with the overall business strategy.
And, most importantly, it creates happy and loyal customers who are benefiting from this ongoing and rapidly adapting knowledge as it is applied by you to meet and exceed their needs.
If you want a culture of innovation, you must have people who never want to stop learning and who know how to share what they've learned.
Today I want to talk about how to teach it.
Since no two creative people and no two creative solutions are alike, how do you foster a shared understanding of the principles of creativity so that everyone has an opportunity to experiment, learn and grow?
In our culture of continually accelerating change, how you learn is vastly more important than what you learn.
While both matter, the ability to quickly absorb and adapt to new information, knowledge and insights is what will keep you from becoming a dinosaur... irrelevant and extinct.
The ability to acquire new knowledge quickly is the fundamental skill that underpins a culture of innovation.
According to Drucker, “Every enterprise is a teaching and learning institution. Training and development must be built into it at all levels – training and development that never stop.”
If you want to build and foster a culture of non-stop innovation, then you must build a culture of non-stop learning and training.
But what does this training look like?
According to our good friend Marty Neumeier, he calls this “branded training.”
It’s training that “bridges the gap between university knowledge and industry knowledge, and between industry knowledge and company knowledge.”
It teaches personal mastery and collaboration, so that “personal mastery can inform collaboration and so that collaboration can inform personal mastery."
This kind of ongoing training and learning is what builds and feeds a culture of innovation.
It identifies and builds the value of your internal brand.
It aligns each individual’s actions in your organization with the overall business strategy.
And, most importantly, it creates happy and loyal customers who are benefiting from this ongoing and rapidly adapting knowledge as it is applied by you to meet and exceed their needs.
If you want a culture of innovation, you must have people who never want to stop learning and who know how to share what they've learned.