(gentle music)
Narrator: Collective learning is being powerfully enabled
by today's digital technologies,
which augment human intuition with important data
that leaders can share,
like how customers needs are changing.
The resulting learning within and between teams
can deliver valuable benefits for organizations.
But to reap those benefits,
organizations need leaders who can excel on two fronts,
creating the conditions conducive to collective learning,
but also removing common roadblocks to learning
that often arise as organizations grow.
-: This digital transformation revolution
is gonna change the way that we have leadership,
but it's not gonna completely erase intuition.
It's gonna enrich that intuition
with better data driven experiences.
You can now have tools that you may be able to provide
for your branch managers,
or for the people that are operating in your establishment
on a large organization.
They can understand better
where the customers are coming from,
they can understand better what are the cycles
that are driving your business,
what are the characteristics of the customers
that drive any of the purchasing decisions
that they're interested on trying to convert
more people on and so forth.
And that will allow them to experiment, to learn,
and hopefully also to input those lessons back into a system
so other people in a similar position will learn.
So the most important ability anybody needs to learn,
is the ability to learn.
(upbeat music)
Narrator: The best leaders know how to enable
collective learning in their teams.
A few simple but powerful tactics can help.
-: Not all learning happens in formal settings
like in courses and seminars.
One type of learning that I do like a lot,
is the one that happens when experienced people collaborate
with less experienced people in a task.
In that context, leadership emerge more naturally,
people are more inclined to listen and to understand
the ones that have been there before and to rely on them.
The transfer of knowledge is happening in a context
that is relevant, so therefore is more memorable.
As companies grow, sometimes they change in ways
in which learning becomes counterproductive.
[Pensive orchestration]
Narrator: Even with savvy leaders at the helm,
collective learning can run into some serious roadblocks
as a company grows.
That's because the interpersonal and team dynamics
that most influence learning change dramatically
as an enterprise expands.
How can you avoid the most common roadblocks
to collective learning in a growing company?
Start by understanding what they are and why they arise.
-: Sometimes as companies get bigger,
loyalty matters more than talent.
There are alliances,
there's people sometimes
that would not wanna share information.
And sometimes individuals or even groups of individuals
within a company start behaving in a way that is very useful
to them, for their career goals,
but very counterproductive for the organization.
So, to improve, it's important that companies
can use their mistakes as learning opportunities.
Now, to learn from your mistakes,
you need to be in an environment in which people can accept,
and recognize those mistakes.
But also, you have to be in an environment
in which once those mistakes are acknowledged and accepted,
the people can act in a way that is constructive.
Because a lot of the times if you're in an environment
that is too political or a little bit hostile,
if a mistake happens,
people can become too accountable to them,
and therefore, they're going to start hiding the mistakes
and if they hide the mistakes,
they're gonna be hiding the learning opportunities.
[Upbeat music]
Narrator: Growth can pose some obstacles
to collective learning.
But companies can still take action
to break those obstacles down.
Keeping employees with the right skills
and knowledge on board is a great first step.
But don't adopt a one size fits all strategy
for preventing brain drain.
The right strategy will depend a lot
on the industry you're in.
-: So to sustain knowledge in an organization,
it's really important to keep the people
that have that knowledge
and the teams that sustain that knowledge.
So, turnover of employees is really damaging,
there's never a general answer because
there's a lot of heterogeneity across industries.
So the winning strategy for copper mining
might not be the winning strategy
for software manufacturing.
For example, in a mining operation,
discipline is extremely important.
Reliability is important.
Abiding by safety procedures is extremely important.
Software manufacturing is quite different.
You don't care if the software manufacturer
or the software developer shows up at 9:00am,
or maybe at 10, or 11.
You care that they have the great idea
that he's gonna help that piece of code run faster
and be more scalable.
You care about them working with others.
You care also about them being creative,
and maybe coming up with new products
that you haven't thought about.
Narrator: So how can leaders unleash the power
of collective learning in their organizations?
Pair experienced people with less experienced ones
to tackle tasks, so they can learn from each other
in an informal natural setting.
Anticipate how collective learning can break down
as your company grows.
For example, if people stop sharing information,
or start caring more about their career
than the organization.
Help people learn from mistakes
and fine tune your company's culture
so people who have the most valuable knowledge
and skills stay on board.
(upbeat music)