Workplace Learning Book Summary - Workplace Learning Book explained in key points

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Workplace Learning summary

Name: Workplace Learning
Rating: 4.5 (245 reviews)
Author: Nigel Paine

Nigel Paine

How to Build a Culture of Continuous Employee Development

4.5 (245 ratings)

21 mins

Brief summary

Workplace Learning by Nigel Paine explores the concept of continuous learning in the modern workplace. It presents practical tips and strategies for promoting a culture of learning, enhancing employee performance, and staying competitive in today's fast-paced business world.

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Talent Development New Work

Table of Contents

Workplace Learning
Summary of 5 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 5

What’s in it for me? An introduction to learning cultures.

Polling suggests that just one third of all employees are engaged at work. The rest? Unmotivated. Bored. Barely there. Struggling to find any meaning in the activity that takes up most of their day.

It’s a bleak picture, and for many of us it’s confirmed by first-hand experience of dysfunctional, poorly-run organizations, toxic workplace norms, and self-serving leaders. Learning, when it does occur, is often little more than an afterthought, dished up on a limited, need-to-know basis.

But, as the American poet TS Eliot once wrote, there is, at best, “only a limited value in the knowledge derived from experience.” He wrote those lines during the Second World War, when hope was in short supply. What he meant was that things can always get better, no matter how gloomy they look. If experience can “falsify,” it’s because it stops us remembering that.

This Blink, like the book on which it’s based, is convinced that workplaces can improve, whatever experience teaches us. As Nigel Paine sees it, they have to. We live in a world of dramatic social, political, and technological change. To navigate this environment, organizations will have to create workforces that want to learn and teams that are as agile as they are adaptable. And to do that, they will have to create a culture of learning in which people share ideas, knowledge, and solutions.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

What the brain can teach us about collaboration;
Why organizations should cherish the bringers of bad news; and
How companies as different as WD-40 and Microsoft foster learning.

Learning cultures build connections between individuals.

In 1995, Nigel Paine, the author, talked to Microsoft’s co-founder and CEO, Bill Gates, about how organizations harness the intelligence of employees.

Microsoft, Gates said, employs lots of very smart people. Thing is, though, smart people often think their view is the only one worth considering. It’s got to be, after all, since it’s the correct view! Put differently, they tend to view their smartness in a self-contained way. Everything important is in a kind of silo – their brains. That’s where they look for answers and solutions to problems.

But lots of smart people sitting in an office working on their own problems doesn’t make a company. And that’s where leaders come in. Gates’ role at Microsoft, he said, was to make sure that one plus one plus one added up to more than three. That the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. That knowledge wasn’t siloed away in individual heads, but shared around.

Years later, when Paine started working on his book, that thought bubbled back up to the surface of his mind. Gates, he realized, had distilled his view of workplace learning into a single idea. That idea is also at the heart of this Blink. It says that workplace learning is collective.

We’ll be exploring that idea at scale – mostly, we’ll be talking about large multinational organizations. But we can start with an analogy that illuminates collective learning at a smaller level: the brain.

There are, roughly, 100 billion neurons, or brain cells, inside your head. Each neuron can make 1,000 unique connections. Those connections are the seat of knowledge and intelligence. It’s the density of connections that drives cognition. Viewed at this microscopic level, “learning” is what happens when you build new connections. Billions of neurons on their own don’t cut it – it’s the synapses between them that make the difference.

Organizations, Paine thinks, work the same way. Individuals, like neurons, are wonderfully complex cells containing all kinds of potential. But organizational intelligence and knowledge emerges in the spaces between them. The know-how and smarts of each cell has to be activated, and that happens when individuals are connected to one another. When they share knowledge and communicate.

An organization which ensures that individuals are better connected and more willing to share, Paine concludes, is an organization with a functioning learning culture. For him, that’s what Gates was describing back in 1995, even if Microsoft's CEO didn’t use that term. And fostering that kind of culture is still the best way to build effective organizations today. As the Canadian scientist Donald Hebb famously put it, “cells that wire together, fire together.”

You can’t fix problems without honest communication.

Let’s pause for a second and look at things from a different angle. How does an organization that fails to foster a communicative, sharing-based learning culture work? The short answer: it doesn’t.

Let’s see why. We’ll take a hypothetical company, but you might recognize the kinds of problems that come up. Maybe you’ve even worked for a company that was run like this.

Micromanagers stifle initiative and sap motivation.

Every two years, Gallup cavasses around a million American workers to create a representative survey of people’s feelings about work. And every two years Gallup finds that half the workforce is disengaged. One in two people, in other words, is just there. Apart from the paycheck, they see their work as meaningless. A further 15 percent of workers actively resent their employer. That leaves just 35 percent who describe their work as engaging and rewarding.

If these numbers were smaller, it would be possible to chalk that dissatisfaction up to people having bad attitudes, or being lazy, or some other individual failing. But when two thirds of all employees feel the same way? Well, that’s an organizational problem.

Successful companies don’t punish mistakes – they learn from them.

Okay, now that we’ve learned how not to run an organization, let’s shift gears. What should you be doing to keep your company agile, motivated, and capable of rapid problem solving? Let’s take a look at how one of the world’s most successful companies does it.

WD-40 is a remarkable organization. For decades, it made just one product – the blue-and-yellow cans of industrial lubricant found in households, garages, and workshops the world over. More recently, it acquired some compatible brands like 3-in-One, a multipurpose oil. Fundamentally, though, not that much has changed. WD-40 found a winning strategy and stuck to it. The results speak for themselves. Since 1997, the year current CEO Garry Ridge took over, its market capitalization increased from $250 million to $4.5 billion. So what’s WD-40 secret?

Successful leaders don’t focus on answers – they ask the right questions.

In 2014, Microsoft appointed a new CEO – Satya Nadella. He was a surprise choice. There was no question that the former head of the company’s cloud services division was competent. But he’d flown under the radar. For many, he didn’t look like a leader. He wasn’t bold and brash; he listened more than he talked. That, though, was exactly what the organization needed.

Thing was, Microsoft was falling behind. In its heyday, it had been the largest company in the world by market capitalization. That honor now belonged to its competitor: Apple.

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What is Workplace Learning about?

Workplace Learning (2019) argues that learning and development professionals have to offer more than the usual array of courses and seminars. If you want to help your company compete in today’s fast-moving world, Nigel Paine believes, you have to start building the right kind of organizational culture. That culture rests on two pillars: open communication and knowledge sharing. For Paine, these are the foundation for the kind of constant, day-to-day learning organizations need.

Workplace Learning Review

Workplace Learning (2011) by Nigel Paine is a valuable resource for anyone interested in enhancing learning in the workplace. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It offers practical guidance on how to design and implement effective workplace learning programs that foster professional development and growth.
Supported by research and case studies, the book provides real-world examples that demonstrate the impact of workplace learning on organizational success.
With its insightful analysis of the changing dynamics of workplace learning, the book challenges conventional thinking and encourages innovation in learning strategies.

Who should read Workplace Learning?

Team leaders and managers
HR professionals
Anyone who wants to improve their workplace

About the Author

Nigel Paine is a business consultant and author based in London. A recognized expert in topics as varied as e-learning, leadership, and creativity, he regularly works with clients in Europe, the United States, Brazil, and Australia. Paine was formerly the head of training and development at the BBC and is currently an academic director and member of the international advisory board at the University of Pennsylvania. His previous books include The Learning Challenge.

Categories with Workplace Learning

Education Management & Leadership Corporate Culture

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