When planning for knowledge management organizational learning, there are a lot of things to take into consideration. Given that human nature very much plays an important deciding role in how organizational learning of any type must be strategic and conducted, it’s a bit of a shot in the dark in a lot of ways. As we’ve discussed before, there is no real definitive strategy that solves the problem in all cases, but in many ways, there are some basics upon which everyone can build sound strategies in any contingency.
3 Tips for Creating the Ideal Organizational Learning Environment
Standards of practices do not have to be lengthy or involved, just globally applicable and able to be built upon in some extended fashion. This is the case with knowledge management organizational learning as well. One of the most important key concepts is establishing the right environment for organizational learning from the start.
Humans are creatures of habit, and products of their environments. As such, environment will play an important influential role in how any process involving humanity should be planned and conducted. But, like planning for organizational learning as a whole, setting up an ideal environment isn’t an exact science either. So, are there some key points within this sub-group that’re also globally applicable and ergo basic standards?
Well sure, why not? Let’s take a look at three key points for setting up the right environment. These should be applicable to pretty much any scenario.
#1 – A sense of unity
First and foremost, a sense of unity is crucially important and this should be the primary mood and atmosphere of an organizational learning environment. Like with planning strategy, it’s important that the sense of self give way to the sense of the collective. However, this yielding of the self to the collective should not be through devaluing or losing the self, but rather the collective being adopted as a larger part of the self, not unlike an ideal family unit. The success and failure of others, and of the collective should feel like personal successes or failures as though they were one’s own. Establishing this form of unity is the first step to an ideal environment. It’s not easy, but it really makes a difference.
#2 – Low stress
Working life, heck adult life in general, is a stressful state of existence. As a result, there’s little room for further extraneous stress to be brought in. As such, establishing a low stress and low pressure environment for organizational learning is important for two reasons. First, that much more stress may just be the ruination of many already overworked individuals. They may”crack”. This is never pleasant nor is it desirable for any party involved. Second, the reduced stress and pressure will make the fear of failure reduce but the drive for success increase for the right reasons. People will strive for goals because they care about the goals, not because they feel pressured. Pressure is not conducive to learning.
#3 – Sense of purpose
A sense of purpose is important. This applies to all tiers of the organizational learning process from the organization on down to the individual Everyone should have personal goals along with team and organization goals. Everyone should feel they have a key role and a purpose in the grand scheme of things. A sense of purposelessness is disheartening and counterproductive. With everyone filling a role and serving a purpose, the entire process will flow much more smoothly.
These are three key points to establishing a proper environment for learning management organizational learning, and apply across the board. From these, we may build a basic standard at long last, for this task.