Question

2. What is the relationship between learning and continuous improvement? Identify at least two characteristics or traits that an organization’s leadership needs to posses to support a learning environment. Remember to include at least one citation.

Answer 1

Continuous learning improvement is considered crucial for an organization in order to attain receptiveness, flexibility and the capacity to adapt to rapidly changing environment. Learning brings about knowledge in an organization and links it with success for future. Continuous learning within an organization expands the ability to learn by upgrading skills of an individual regularly and increasing individual's knowledge in order to adapt to the changing environment and new developments at workplace.This would eventually increase productivity, employee satisfaction and would result in higher retention rates.

Continuous improvement refers to an ongoing effort to improve services, products or processes through incremental improvements. Continuous improvement plays a pivotal role in motivating and enabling the workers to share their knowledge and skills, optimize and meet new quality standards. Since the organizations have become more competitive, engaged and agile, adapting to the changing environment is very important to keep an organization at the top form by continuous learning and continuous improvement and to ensure sustained growth by comprehending and addressing new customer needs etc. For an organization to change, there must be a continuous learning with well integration of the ideas, values, rules and regulations associated with the change.

Traits that an organization's leadership needs to possess to support a learning environment include:

(i) Forward Thinking Leadership (Shared Vision)

The enthusiasm and dedication in an organization starts from the top of the hierarchy. Organizational leaders including managers, supervisors, and trainers must remain committed to the process and must possess a "shared vision". Leaders must encourage self-reflection, challenge assumptions and set an example for their followers and team members. They must build a system that allows corporate learners to make mistakes that builds a real-world experience. Then, they must discuss different approaches with the trami members so that they don't repeat the same mistakes in future.

(ii) Knowledge Sharing (Team Learning)

Collaboration and knowledge sharing is key in every learning organization. Leaders and each member of his group must be aware of the learning objectives and desired results, and then the leaders must work as a collective problem-solving team to achieve their goals. This characteristic allowe everyone to benefit from the expertise and skill sets of the leader. Moreover, it helps to deepen the employees' own comprehension by sharing information with their peers, as it involves active recall and reinforcement.