Organisation-wide learning is the practice of making sure a lesson learned in one team, line or site reaches every other part of the business that could use it, instead of staying in a silo. It depends on problems and fixes being recorded in one shared system, reviewed in connected tier meetings, and deliberately shared (yokoten) rather than left to chance.
As the improvement systems owner, you have a critical role to play in embedding organisation-wide learning.
You must ensure knowledge, learning, and improvement are not siloed. Individuals, teams, functions, - the entire hierarchy - must be connected. Enterprise-wide learning is an intrinsic component of any effective improvement framework.
All too often, opportunities for learning are left on the table or are ad hoc and sporadic. In non-lean organisations, barriers and roadblocks to learning can exist, inhibiting progress and impeding the ability to reach long-term shared goals.
However, with a robust daily management and communication structure in combination with visual exposure and problem-solving tools, these barriers can be removed and managed.
Peer-to-peer shared learning and internal knowledge management not only increase and elevate improvement capability but also enable us to move with greater velocity and focus towards our long-term shared goals together.
In this blog, we will explore the importance of organisation-wide learning in breaking down siloes and how it can be achieved through an effective improvement framework.
What We Mean by an Enterprise Learning Framework
When people hear "enterprise learning", they often think of a learning management system: courses, modules and completion records. That's part of learning and development, but it isn't what this article is about.
An enterprise learning framework, in the improvement sense, is the set of routines that turns everyday work into shared knowledge. A problem solved on one line becomes a standard on the others. A near miss at one site becomes a check at every site. It has a few parts:
- A shared record. Problems, countermeasures and results are captured in one place everyone can search, not in local spreadsheets.
- Connected reviews. Tier meetings at each level ask "where else does this apply?" so a fix travels sideways as well as up.
- Standards that change. Verified improvements update the standard work, so the learning sticks after the people who found it move on.
- Skills that keep pace. When a standard changes, the people who do the work are trained on it, and skill gaps are visible rather than discovered after an incident.
- Social learning. Peer-to-peer coaching, gemba walks across areas and short share-backs at tier meetings, because people learn most from colleagues doing similar work.
Formal training still matters. But continuous learning happens mostly on the job, every day, and a framework makes sure it doesn't stay in one corner of the business.
The Challenge of Breaking Down Siloes
In traditional organisations, siloes exist, dividing teams and departments and leading to a lack of collaboration and communication. This, in turn, can create barriers to learning and improvement. When information and knowledge are not shared across departments, the potential for improvement is limited, and inefficiencies and errors can persist.
This is where the improvement systems owner can play a crucial role in breaking down siloes and creating an enterprise-wide learning culture. By implementing a robust daily management and communication structure, barriers to learning can be identified and removed, and knowledge can be shared across teams, functions, and hierarchies.
The left of the above image illustrates traditional, top-down, departmental organisation hierarchies. Information regularly gets stuck within the individual functions; middle management gets overburdened with activity and ultimately becomes bottlenecks.
With a commitment to undertaking a Lean approach, the right tools to support it (and therefore 100% staff engagement), organisations can take the approach illustrated on the right.
Everyone in the organisation contributing information and activity to a shared hub in real-time with no loss in oversight and even more visibility than traditional approaches.
Visual Exposure and Problem-Solving Tools for Organisation-Wide Learning Every Day
One of the key ways to break down siloes is through visual management supported by accessible problem-solving tools. By making information visible to all stakeholders, teams can collaborate and work together towards common goals.
An effective improvement framework should include visual management tools such as tier boards, team activity lists, visual reports, scorecards etc. This allows teams to track progress and identify areas for improvement.
Lean tools such as the A3 problem-solving template can also be effective in breaking down siloes. By bringing teams together to solve problems and identify root causes, knowledge and information can be shared, leading to a greater understanding of the organisation as a whole.
The Importance of Internal Knowledge Management for Organisation-Wide Learning
Another key component of organisation-wide learning is peer-to-peer shared learning and internal knowledge management. By creating a culture of learning, improvement, and collaboration, teams can work together to share knowledge and improve processes.
An effective improvement framework should include regular training and skills development opportunities, both for individual team members and for teams as a whole. By investing in skills management, organisations can see where the skill gaps are and improve their overall capabilities. In an enterprise learning framework, this is where learning and development meets daily improvement: a changed standard creates a training need, and the skills matrix shows when it has been met.
Internal knowledge management systems can also be effective in breaking down siloes and promoting organisation-wide learning. By creating a centralised repository of knowledge and information, teams can access critical information and learn from past experiences.
We cannot understate how important it is to shape your systems and processes with a people-first mindset.
The Importance of PDCA Cycles and Daily Management
By nature, learning is incremental and doesn't necessarily tread a linear trajectory. So alongside formal training, following and reflecting on our daily process is just as important. You must strive for an embedded culture of iterative experimentation, with a scientific approach, and a commitment to routine.
With this in place, there is no doubt that key metrics in any area will improve over time.
To achieve the most consistent improvement, we need all stakeholders on board and contributing. This requires high levels of trust and your people need to be given the permission and resources to experiment.
This can be achieved by following a PDCA approach and checking in on the process every day. In combination with qualitative and quantitative data capture, and general observation, all tiers have visibility over actions.
This allows us to course correct, create best practice, and highlight good behaviour / results. All providing clarity of purpose and specific goals and outcomes against a backdrop of values and standards.
Frequently asked questions about organisation-wide learning
What stops learning spreading across an organisation?
Separate systems and lists per department, improvement work that is closed locally without being shared, and no forum where one area's fixes are seen by another. Each silo solves the same problems from scratch.
How do tier meetings help organisation-wide learning?
Tier 2 and Tier 3 meetings bring several areas together around the same boards, so a countermeasure verified on one line is seen by the leaders of the others and becomes an action for them to adopt or adapt.
What is the role of the improvement systems owner?
To make the learning loop visible and routine: one place where problems and fixes are recorded, a standard question in reviews about where else a fix applies, and tracking of who adopted what.
An Interconnected Framework for C.I. Without Siloes
We recognise the importance of eliminating barriers to improvement. Further to that, for improvement activity flow to be sustained (and to thrive) it must be supported by all adjacent processes and systems. None of them should be optimised or developed in isolation.
Tools like Leader Standard Work, standardised problem solving techniques, and a Tiered Daily Management system should work together to handle the full PDCA loop.
The graphic below showcases how we designed an interconnected platform that avoids disconnected 'Point Solutions' (digital or analog) that are barriers themselves to an optimised framework for continuous improvement.
Do you want to explore how to break down siloes through digital-aids to Lean tools? If you're an improvement leader in need, or a Consultant with clients in need, contact us for a demonstration of the TeamAssurance platform today.