Learning Isn't Enough
On the role culture plays in learning and transformation
I spend a lot of time thinking about the relationship between learning and culture. While many organizations treat them as two separate workstreams, the most forward-thinking, transformation-bound organizations are starting to understand that they are so deeply interwoven that you cannot meaningfully talk about one without talking about the other.
If we view learning as something that lives in a training resource or compliance module, I can understand why the link between learning and culture is hard to pinpoint (although a compliance training about sexual harassment does indeed have a connection to culture, so even then, but I digress….).
But if we see learning as the mechanism that fundamentally alters how people think, engage, make decisions, and broadly speaking, how they show up to work every day, we must also recognize that this cannot happen in a vacuum, nor does it merely come to be just because an organization has decided that this is what it wants. Fundamentally, whether or not learning happens is based almost entirely on the environment in which people are spending their days—which is to say that it happens, or doesn’t, based on culture.
The question then becomes: is our culture set up for the learning we so desperately want and need?
To further underscore what I mean, let’s consider what learning requires.
Learning requires a tolerance for imperfection.
Learning happens in the midst of trial and error. Thus, it requires that people are willing and able to try things that they might not get right the first time around. It requires a culture that allows for mistakes.
If we look at our organizational cultures, we need to be able to understand what our disposition towards imperfection is. Do we allow people to try out new things? Do we treat hiccups as data rather than character flaws? Have we created enough psychological safety that someone can raise their hand and say “I got this wrong and here’s what I learned” without fearing that they’ll lose credibility?
In many organizational contexts, these realities have not yet been codified. Instead, the reality is that people are very careful. Errors are torn apart rather than examined thoughtfully, and there’s a social cost of being wrong that’s high enough that most people decide, whether consciously or not, that being cautious is probably the better choice.
In these environments, what we often find is a group of people who have optimized their existence for self-protection rather than growth, and that is exactly why learning stalls.
Learning requires time.
The amount of time people have to learn is important, but just as important is the quality of the time. People need to be able to thoughtfully pause and assess what’s happening in their work.
The temptation is often to simply look at whether or not we’ve hit a particular goal, but just as important is a deeper analysis around how we’re working together and what we could do differently. Oftentimes, this kind of time is the first thing that disappears when an organization gets “busy.” The danger here is that busy is seen as productivity, when it’s really nothing more than motion and output without understanding.
Without time to pause—and not just a couple times a year, but as part of our regular workflows—people keep doing what they’ve been doing and getting what they’ve been getting. It might very well look like progress, but just think about all we’re leaving on the table because we didn’t stop enough to smell the roses.
Learning requires an intentional approach to delivering and receiving feedback.
I would argue that feedback is perhaps the most complicated issue to tackle when you’re talking about learning and culture. Feedback is a critical vehicle through which knowledge moves from one person to another. It is a source of learning and connection. Yet it is also the thing that often fails to land the way in which it was intended.
The art of giving and receiving feedback is one many of us are not well-versed in. It’s not that the feedback being given is wrong, per say, but that the way it’s delivered doesn’t account for the intricacies of the human being on the receiving end of it.
The nature of feedback is that it can be technically accurate yet practically useless, delivered without any consideration for the relationship (or lack thereof), the moment, the person’s capacity to hear it, or the way it will be absorbed, rejected, or defended against. Because of compromised—or altogether absent—conditions for feedback, these scenarios tend to result in feedback, regardless of the relevance of its content that produces defensiveness, not development.
We simply cannot separate the information from the relationship, nor can we separate the delivery from the culture in which it’s happening.
I don’t want to say that learning can’t happen in imperfect cultures. I’ve found that people are remarkably resourceful and tend to find ways to grow even in the most constricting, learning-averse environments.
But if we’re talking about longer-term organizational capability, this is not the way to get the results we’re looking for. There is a serious tax that employees (and organizations) pay when the organization does not value learning enough to address the cultural realities at play.
People shouldn’t be trying to learn despite their environment. They should be learning because of it. Otherwise, what we end up with is a lack of meaningful collaboration, an indisposition to trying new things, and the same patterns of behavior cycling on repeat.
Culture is not the backdrop against which learning happens, but the condition that determines whether learning, and ultimately, transformation, is possible at all.
Is your culture set up for learning? What have you found to be essential in creating a culture for learning? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Culture may influence learning, but it doesn't own it. Human beings have an inconvenient habit of learning anyway.