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High-Impact Learning Culture
Book

High-Impact Learning Culture

The 40 Best Practices for Creating an Empowered Enterprise

David Mallon
Bersin & Associates, 2010

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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

David Mallon, principal analyst for Bersin & Associates, develops major industry studies on core learning and development issues. This comprehensive report covers the crucial importance of an organizational learning culture and explains 40 best practices and seven strategies firms can use to permeate their operations with learning. Bersin’s extensive library of research on corporate learning and talent management provides executives, learning officers and human resources professionals with many reports like this one. getAbstract recommends this data-driven report, with its specific, practical “actionable solutions” to HR and learning-and-development managers, and to CEOs and other executives who know performance and learning are flip sides of one coin.

Summary

Is Learning Part of Your Corporate Culture?

Leading companies value and encourage learning as an integral component of their corporate cultures. These firms create and sustain a learning culture – that is, a “collective set of organizational values, conventions, processes and practices” that continuously impels organizations and individuals to build “knowledge, competence and performance.” Leaders of high-performance firms consider such “strategic capability development” and information exchange to be absolutely necessary.

For example, Qualcomm uses a 52-week storytelling program to educate new employees about the company’s tradition of innovation. Throughout their first year, new hires receive weekly emails with stories explaining why the firm is special, how it operates and what drives its mission and values. These knowledge-sharing tales are pivotal to Qualcomm’s learning culture.

Such a culture creates – and relies on – trust. It empowers workers by building their capabilities and encouraging reflection and analysis. Leaders must constantly reinforce such learning. Because the most effective learning is informal, managers should use “stretch goals and stretch...

About the Author

David Mallon is a principal analyst for Bersin & Associates, a research and consulting firm, in Oakland, California. Mallon is a frequent presenter at ASTD and eLearning Guild events.

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