Welch's 21 Steps to Management Greatness - 15
Create a Learning Culture
The idea of creating a business culture that has a free flow of information is a very desirable goal to reach for, and something we talk about quite a lot on managersrealm.
One of the things that encourages that to become a reality is to develop an organization that loves to learn.
Now forget about the college books and tests here, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the searching for knowledge here that can then be taken and applied to our businesses.
As Welch said, "The desire, and the ability, of an organization to continuously learn from any source, anywhere - and to rapidly convert this learning into action - is its ultimate competitive advantage."
The reason this is such a powerful motivator of communication across a business, is the excitement generated by people finding ideas from an almost infinite variety of sources and bringing that together and tossing it back and forth with their fellow workers.
Another way of putting it is our actions will be what determines whether we're a learning culture or not, not an announcement that we are. It's practicing the art of drawing people out and making them realize that the types of things they interact with daily can be a source of vital information for a company.
It's imputing value to what people have within them that is the underlying foundation of a learning organziation, which eventually leads to a business that has a constant flow of ideas traveling throughout the company.
A learning culture is nothing more than valuing what resides within our people and doing everything we can to draw it out.
Welch was an expert at doing this at all levels of General Electric (GE), another reason the company performed so well during his reign.
Other Jack Welch Resources:
Jack Welch's advice to MIT Sloan students
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