Learning as a team

[I]“Team learning is the process of aligning and developing the capability of a team to create the results its members truly desire.” – Peter Senge[/I]

In his book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Peter Senge stresses the importance of learning and growth in organizations. He believes that team learning is the fifth discipline, and it is just as critical in business as it is in sports, science, and the performing arts.

When people learn together, synergy occurs and the collective intelligence of the team exceeds the intelligence of the individuals in the team, which in turn creates an extraordinary capacity for coordinated actions.

Learning as a team isn’t as simple as putting staff together in a room and providing instruction. It requires people to “dialogue,” or to suspend assumptions and discover insights that would not be possible individually. Senge believes that teams are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations, and unless teams learn, the organization cannot learn.

Learning and growth as a team and an organization was recognized by Robert Kaplan and David Norton as a critical measure in their book, The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy Into Action. They believe that the ability to meet ambitious financial targets depends on the organizational capabilities for learning and growth, and that strategies for superior performance generally require significant investments in the people, systems, and processes that build organizational capabilities. What this means, then, is that there should be additional objectives and measures created – thus a more balanced scorecard. After all, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

Now this sounds good in theory, but in practice, training and learning program budgets are the first to be slashed when sales drop or there is talk of a recession. It takes a leap of faith for a business owner in the CNMI to make an “investment” in their people when it’s difficult to even meet payroll.

Accenture, a consulting firm, was going through a huge business change in a down economy, which caused them to temporarily lessen their commitment to provide quality training and development opportunities to their workforce. Prior to October 2000, the company was known as Anderson Consulting, but as part of a historic international arbitration decision, the company was required to severe all ties between Anderson Consulting.

In response to these changes Accenture’s Capability Development team leader, Donald Vanthournout, began a process to lead the company toward high performance through learning, knowledge management, and the transformation of its workforce. They were able to answer the question: “How can we best tap the collective intelligence of our people and engage them in their work?”

On a budget that was cut in half, Vanthournout and his team were able to link human capital investments to business benefits, align training with business strategy, and put into place the governance and leadership structures that would eventually increase their learning program’s chance for success, and create what the team characterized as “phenomenal” learning experiences.

What was the bottom line? As a result of working closely with senior management, each dollar that Accenture spent on learning was returned, plus an additional $3.25 in measurable value to its bottom line – in other words, a 325 percent Return on Investment.

Our point is this: many organizations are financially strapped as a result of the CNMI’s dwindling economy. Reducing your commitment to develop your staff will only exacerbate an already intolerable situation. It may take a leap of faith to proactively spend the time and money to develop your team of people, but the other alternative is to reactively play the waiting game and hope things get better in the foreseeable future.

Reactive or proactive? Stagnate or growing? Those organizations that continue to exhibit a learning disability in our economy will be lucky to survive. Those companies that adopt the learning mindset as a team will continually expand their capacity to create their ideal future. For learning organizations, it is not enough to just survive because their focus is on thriving. As you tap into the collective intelligence of your team, you will find solutions that your business can implement to produce better performance.

[I](Rik is a business instructor at NMC and Janel is a partner with BizResults, LLC (www.bizresults.org). They can be contacted at biz_results@yahoo.com.)[/I]