Six reasons it pays to learn
There is, in fact, a robust, six-point business case for learning. It has
six connected elements. Interestingly, the case is the same for both
organizations and individuals although, obviously, the language you
might express it in would be different.1 Performance. You can increase productivity and improve quality
through learning, becoming faster and better. This applies equally
in a business and a personal context.
2 Being better than your rivals. In an age where human capital is all
important, learning may well be the only sustainable source of com-
petitive advantage, just as in the last two centuries buildings and
financial capital were critical. For a dot-com or a communications
company this is easy to see. But, even in more conventional manu-
facturing businesses, where knowledge of customer databases is
important, it is not difficult to see the importance of better infor-
mation. For an individual, it has always been the case that learning,
whether in the shape of qualifications or not, gives you the edge at
work.
3 Knowledge as one of the outcomes of learning. As US academic Warren
Bennis puts it: “The major challenge for leaders in the twenty-first
century will be how to release the brainpower of their organiza-
tions.” In practice, this involves understanding that many of the
things that individuals and organizations know remain at a tacit or
implicit level too often. If they are going to be of any use, they have
to become explicit and then be shared. So, for example, a team that
has just completed a very demanding project will have gained com-
petences in a range of areas, which, unless they are described and
shared, will be of no use to the rest of the business. Or, at an indi-
vidual level, you probably do not stop to think about how you drive
a car until you have to help a son or daughter learn. Then you need
to be able to explain your knowledge explicitly to be helpful in the
passenger seat.
There are at least three myths about knowledge management:
that it is a new phenomenon, that it is mainly about computer sys-184 Power Up Your Mind