I must confess, I’ve had the good fortune of working/collaborating with several ‘thorough professionals’ in business, finance and technology and through these relationships, I have been a beneficiary of immense knowledge and continuous learning. The one thing that I learnt was “Always learn. All the time.”
We know, all good teachers never tell us to stop learning. Wouldn’t life be dull if we knew everything and we stopped learning – what would we aim for?
Similarly, the best organizations see learning as one of the most fundamental parts of the business.
Jeffrey K.Liker, in his book
"The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer" argues that Toyota completely believes in learning through standardization of best practices, rather than reinventing the wheel with each new project and each new manager.
An organization that stops learning, stops developing and eventually stops breathing. Why is it that the training budget is often the first victim when there are budget/cost cuts? In my view, the training budget should arguably be increased during times of uncertainty!
During troubled times, we often look to our employees to solve some basic business problems but, we will only achieve that if we invest in their development in the good times.
When employees are encouraged to develop they are likely to bring interesting things to the table – when we place them in a box with limitations on their learning we will get back a limited and predictable output. Investing in a person’s personal and/or professional development is a demonstrative, positive and measurable way of showing your employees they are valued.
Give everyone on your payroll a reward by allowing and encouraging them to take up every “relevant” training and development opportunity they can. It is more likely these people will add value to your organization than the people in the organization that do not encourage learning.
As an organization, if you want to grow, develop and change with times – invest in learning and encourage employees to be continuous learning machines.
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Sriram Kannan is a senior fin-tech and analytics consulting leader with almost 17 years of extensive and progressive experience in a suite of areas – BI, Analytics, EPM/BPM, Management controllership, Finance-technology, Risk & Compliance – with proven ability to manage large-scale, multi-discipline programs effectively and exceed expectations in the delivery of results. His educational qualifications are B.Com, FCCA(UK), FCIS(UK), FRSA(UK).