Lens Insight
Inside Knowlens
Knowbyte
Product of the Month
Testimonial
Editor Note
Celebrate the vibrant world of visual learning this New Year as we focus on the challenges of creating a learning culture, a case featuring visual learning at the bottom of the pyramid within management schools. and more.
This month, we spotlight Smart Moves – our module on Business Acumen. Tailored for professionals across sales, operations, marketing, product management, and software development, this series is designed to sharpen business decision-making skills and drive impactful results
Creating a Learning Culture
Culture!! Learning!! Learning Culture!! Two words which embody the classic story of the 2 blind men and the elephant. Imagine describing the elephant as an animal with 1 trunk, 4 legs, 2 tusks etc. Imagine what the 2 blind men must be visualising if they have never seen an elephant before….a recipe for a new Jurassic Park style animal. Organizations are often like these blind men….unable to grasp or internalise what these words really mean.
Simply put, learning culture is nothing but the way learning and development is woven into company culture, talent development and more. In this piece, we will try to decode in simple practical terms what learning culture means in practice as seen through the lens of our clients.
Maturity Of Learning Culture
Lets take a step back and for a moment understand the different shades of organizations and learning culture as implemented in these organizations. Organizations come in all shapes and sizes in terms of maturity of Learning Culture. For simplicity we categorise organizations into 3 categories:
- Basic (Learning Infants)
- Intermediate (Learning Teens)
- Developed (Learning Adults)
Learning Infants
- Early stage of organization maturity – focussed on survival and business …
- No clear vision of the value or the business ROI of investments in learning
- Quite common in startups but examples of large companies also fall in this category surprisingly
- Lack of specialised training departments – human resources may double as L & D
- No LMS, quite often business people or SMEs teach business skills in the classroom or the classical “ learn on the job” model
- Focus on product or domain knowledge and less on application or soft skills training
- Lack of structure and budgets in the learning approach
Learning Teens
- Intermediate stage of organization maturity – strong business focus but organization structures in place
- Learning seen as useful as needs have been identified but not yet a fully organized process centric system in terms of people, process and technology
- Most mid sized and large companies fall in this bucket
- Specialised training departments are now in place
- Business buy in may be less widespread making it a challenging task for L & D to sell programs. Business alignment with L & D is not frictionless yet in terms of role and process alignment.
- LMS usually present, hybrid training models including classroom, e learning, some new age interventions like video, virtual reality but always tactical
- Budgets are a challenge for such organizations especially for new age interventions and often driven by the initiative of senior management or the L & D person
- Focus on product or domain knowledge and soft skills make their appearance as tactical programs
Learning Adults
- These are the mature organizations – with well set structures in terms of people, process, technology.
- These companies have senior management, average employee buy -in on the value of learning and there is a natural culture towards skill building across L & D
- Business and L & D are entirely in synch in terms of definition of learning needs and the ROI of learning.
- Usually populated by large organizations in specific industries with large specialised L & D teams – content creators, delivery people, variety of technology including LMS, new age means of learning like video, games and other specialised interventions.
- There is a structured process for budgeting and L & D teams can make their choices on the mode of implementation.
- Well rounded content across product, domain, soft skills and compliance which is aligned to business needs.
Moving up the Learning Culture Hill
In this section we look at some key drivers for moving up the learning culture hill?
Learning Infants -> Teens
- Start with some low cost interventions. These could be on basic product ppts and organizing these, a basic LMS
- Showcase efficacy of these interventions to management as well as the rank and file. Senior management push is critical in such organizations. These could be through surveys, output metrics etc.
- Pick your timing and interventions carefully….focus on shorter programs, programs with direct business impact will create greater buy-in
- Map budgets to organization growth
- Try one new age intervention at a time and see how it works…that may help the company leapfrog the learning culture hill straight onto the summit instead of “learning” the hard way
Learning Teens -> Adults
- At this stage, organizations are more complex and L& D needs to navigate complex business and organization requirements
- Solid training needs analysis may be useful and strong ROI measurement will help
- Push for greater budget towards 3-10 % of HR cost
- Creating success stories and creative communication of such successes across the rank and file of organization is crucial
- At a senior management level, resources needs to be invested – L & D teams, more specialisation within the L & D function.
- A-B testing of different initiatives needs to be experimented and it must be okay to occasionally fail, else the organization will fail to ‘learn’ and in the process evolve.
- Overall people, process and technology elements needs to be seamless integrated
Conclusion
The path to creating a true learning culture isn’t easy, but with proper strategy and commitment, organizations can transform their learning landscape and create sustainable competitive advantages.
Inside Knowlens
Management Schools: Below the Bottom of the Pyramid
Knowlens has typically been at the forefront of the bottom of pyramid with corporates..front line sales people, service personnel, first time managers etc. This time we thought we will share our below the pyramid experiences – in short colleges or management schools.
Gen Z Audiences
The power of visual learning has always been amplified with younger age profiles and Gen Z has been one of the most receptive audiences we have experienced. The classic “ catch your audience early” principle.
Program Identification
The first step was identification of the relevant course content for these audiences. For us these have been 2 flagship courses: one is Birth of a salesman on fundamentals of sales and The Final Countdown on fundamentals of interviews.
The key drivers for acceptance of these courses amongst college students were very clearly:
- Career Enhancement
- Domain knowledge
- Getting a dose of reality into the theoretical knowledge.
The Methodology
- The principal driver of college based learning is the classroom and the faculty driving the classroom
- We centred our learning design around the faculty
- The learning mix for Sales was hybrid:
- Theory based classroom learning
- Pre and post classroom viewing of the video course content
- Classroom discussions of the video course content
- Assessments to validate learning and understanding
- Similarly for the interview course we defined an interesting framework for students
- To watch the film
- Understand the various subtleties of interviews through multiple dimensions and then
- Practice interviews online and get feedback
Results
This process of adding value early on has been immensely satisfying for us at Knowlens.
- As of date we have covered nearly 10,000 students through these programs
- Some of the most gratifying feedback is from students who have written to us once they have joined their jobs and shared the usefulness of the programs.
Knowbyte
Companies using visual learning report 2.5x better employee information recall compared to traditional methods. Invest in visual training for lasting results!
Product of the Month: Smart Moves
Smart Moves : Our program on Business Acumen delves into various real-world scenarios, offering valuable insights across multiple industries. The selected cases highlight key concepts to strengthen business acumen, featuring roles such as product managers developing market-driven products, bank branch managers prioritizing customers, logistics managers managing partner relationships and looking at cost optimisation, and IT account managers handling contract renewals.
This series is tailored for professionals in sales, operations, marketing, product management, and software development, aiming to improve business decision-making. The framework focuses on understanding challenges, engaging stakeholders for insights, and acting on solutions that demonstrate the practical application of business acumen.
Testimonial
We at NGS Global recently undertook the Online POSH Module training from Knowlens, and it exceeded our expectations. The film-based learning approach, showcasing real-life scenarios, was impactful and engaging for our team. The module not only delivered relevant content but one could complete it at their own pace. From completing the training to undergoing assessments and obtaining certifications, the entire process was seamless. This innovative and practical approach was appreciated by our team members, and we highly recommend Knowlens for their expertise and professionalism in delivering such essential training modules.”
Soumitra Agarwal,
Managing Partner, NGS global