Use It or Lose It: If You Don't Keep Learning, Your Company Falls Behind

By Todd Smart, with Sarah Eaton

My life is better when I continue to learn things.

Since completing my formal education, I've plunged headlong into a life filled with experiential learning.

Hands-on learning pushes me to work through to a solution, which, to me, is much more engaging than sitting in a lecture hall. It makes better connections, and a lesson learned through experience is a lesson learned forever.

Continuing to learn as a company makes for a better organization in the same way it makes for a better person. For an organization to constantly improve, education is a key piece.

How does a company continue to learn? It encourages its employees to continue to learn.

I'm not talking about sending your employees back to school to get their MBAs. A piece of paper may be required to climb the corporate ladder, but I don't think the education behind it is necessarily the best use for a person's time and money. There are other ways to get that information, if you set your company up as a continuous learning organization.

Here's how you do it:

1. Read a book a week*

   No matter what field your organization is in, there's a book out there for you.

   I met an investor several years ago who embraced the philosophy of personal continuous learning. He read a book a week — fifty books a year.

   His idea was that after two to three years on that kind of a reading schedule, it would be nearly impossible to not be very near the top of your field. If you can get that much exposure to new ideas and information, it's inevitable that you (and your employees) succeed.

   *My full work load doesn't leave me with the time or focus to do this, but if you can swing it, it works wonders.

2. Create a company book clubs

   On a quarterly or a monthly basis, everyone in a department chooses a book to read that applies (even in a tangential way) to his responsibilities. Each reader writes a one-page summary of the book and staples it to the book's flyleaf. Then have a pizza party in the conference room where everybody shares his summary and opinion.

   This way, everyone on the team gets introduced to new knowledge. For every book read, employees get exposure to five or six other books.

   We do this at BeTuitive, and we're starting to share our thoughts, opinions and summaries with you in the newsletter.

   This month you can read Susan's review of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, the best-selling book on proper punctuation. You can also go back and check out Sarah's review of Malcolm Gladwell's book about rapid cognition, Blink. (Check these out after reading this, of course.)

3. Subscribe to a book summary service

   Since the book-a-week schedule is hard for me to keep up, I've found a handy tool that does something similar. I subscribe to Soundview Executive Book Summaries. They create short (six- or seven-page) professional summaries of business books. I receive thirty of those summaries a year — on paper, on CD, and as MP3s. See the link at the end of this article.

4. Share periodicals internally

   Subscribe to one or more weekly or monthly publications that pertain to a department, and staple a sheet to the front of it with the names of the people in the department who would benefit from keeping up with the latest information in that area.

   Employees pass the publication from person to person; when they've finished skimming it, they initial next to their name on the front. They can also make a note of which article they found most compelling and why.

   This can work with e-publications as well as print publications.

5. Build a company library

   If you create book clubs and subscribe to trade magazines, you have the makings of your company library.

   New employees can spend a part of their first few weeks on board browsing the library, reading their co-workers' one-page book summaries and reading magazine articles that were spotlighted as the most relevant by their fellow employees.

6. Use your company's stories

   Take the example of StoryQuest. StoryQuest is a firm that uses the digital recording and audio documentary format to capture enterprise knowledge and deliver it into the field via CD, streaming audio and MP3. The end product is audio programming comprised of peer stories, strategies and tactics from the field.

   By recording the stories, StoryQuest provides a unique sales training tool as well as a way to orient new employees quickly and effectively.

   This is something that StoryQuest does at the most professional level, but you can also take its philosophy and apply it to your own situation. If you document what really happens in a company, you can avoid the disconnect that sometimes occurs between managers, new employees, and salespeople.

7. Knowledge management systems

   Knowledge management systems (software systems for managing and sharing information within organizations) work well for large companies, but they're worth it only when they're adopted and embraced by everyone, and when people are trained in-house on how to use them.

   Like with any large software implementation, if it isn't used to its full capacity, it can become a waste.

How to raise enthusiasm for continuing education

Those who run and work for a continuous learning organization must be nimble. They must be ready to be innovative.

Within the book club, it's important that each member gets to choose his own book to read. If someone is just reading a book because the boss said they had to, it's not the same.

They may react as if continuing to learn is an additional burden to their already full work load. People may also reject the idea out of hand because it's something that they see as an invasion of their personal time.

People need to understand what the benefits will be, and why it's being done. To sell the idea, you first must figure out what the long-term benefit will be for the organization, and for the employees as individuals. This will be different in every organization.

New information inevitably leads to more opportunities. It definitely leads to each employee becoming better at something he enjoys doing, which could lead to more responsibilities (and more enjoyable responsibilities) and promotion. Overall, more knowledge makes an individual more marketable.

In a continuous learning organization, everyone involved gets a greater understanding of your company's goals. If your vision for the company is articulated well, and everyone is encouraged to get behind that vision, you'll see employees seeking out education to help your company reach that goal.

Do you have an idea for perpetuating learning within your company?

Email me at Todd.Smart@betuitive.com with your idea, and I'll send you a $5 Starbucks card. Your ideas, along with your name and a link to your website, will be published in next month's newsletter.

Education is as education does. If you were interested in this article, you might also want to read Rich Karlgaard's perspective as it appeared in Forbes Magazine on the education we receive in school as opposed to the education we receive in the world.

PROBLEM: So many great business books. So little time. SOLUTION: Read Less. Learn More.
Subscribe to Soundview Executive Book Summaries!
Click to learn more!

Todd Smart is the President of BeTuitive Marketing. A "serial entrepreneur" — as described by Crain's Chicago Business — Todd has founded and been president of four successful businesses since the age of 22. In addition to Crain's, Todd has been featured and quoted in a number of publications, including Forbes, Success magazine, ePraire and a cover article of Inc. magazine. Todd is an entrepreneur who possesses a deep understanding of the complexities of nurturing a business and offering guidance on relationship building.

Sarah Eaton is the List Manager for BeTuitive Marketing. She monitors the impact of interactive marketing — particularly e-newsletters and blogs — on the acquisition, retention and growth of customers. At BeTuitive, she provides guidance to customers on the best ways to test and improve response rates. Check out her blog, BeTuitive: Actionable Results, for the latest strategies in e-marketing.

Copyright © 2005 BeTuitive Marketing

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