Unpacking What We Mean by “Learning Culture”
You have likely heard or read about the idea of a learning culture. If you heard about it from us, you may have seen the stars in our eyes as we talked about our earnest belief that shifting organizational cultures to center learning can transform the nonprofit landscape, leading to more engaged and fulfilled staff, stronger relationships across agencies, and ultimately, better outcomes for clients. Partnering with people who are doing the work of social change to support their learning is honestly the heart of Elevate. We wanted to share a little more about what we mean when we talk about a learning culture, why we think it is so important, and how organizations can foster a commitment to learning.
What is a learning culture?
When we talk about culture in general, we mean the explicit and implicit norms for behavior and appearance that folks are expected to conform to in a given space or with a given group of people. For example, typically it is understood that you do not swear in church, or you must raise your hand to be called on before speaking in most classrooms.
You are in a learning culture when everyone (especially leadership) has a commitment to do two things:
1. Continually reflect on how aligned their work is with their mission, the people they serve, and their broader ecosystem, and
2. Taking action to adapt what they are doing to become better aligned.
How we live out these commitments can show up in many different ways, and will be shaped by other values and norms already present in the culture.
On a program or organizational scale, this can look like collecting information about the folks you serve, their goals and strengths, and the challenges they face, then changing what you offer or how you do your work to best serve them. Your agency may have a regular data collection process to capture information about client experiences and meet regularly to review the results and plan next steps. In these meetings, staff know they can ask questions to understand the data, offer their interpretation, and throw out ideas for new or different ways to do things. They know the leadership team is willing to go back to the drawing board if it looks like things aren’t going well, and that their perspective will be listened to.
On a day to day individual scale, this can look like critically reflecting on your own practice - how you interact with clients, how you deliver training, whatever your work is - to identify lessons learned and ways you might improve. When you meet with your supervisor, you might discuss what you are noticing and ask for feedback or support, knowing that reflection and thoughtful adaptation is seen as growth by your leadership.
At all levels, this process can be supported by lots of different types of data, not just numbers you have to track for compliance or funding purposes. Your own insights, your colleagues' insights, feedback you got directly from clients, patterns in client behavior that you observe, information from outside sources about best practices - all of that and more is completely valid data to integrate into a learning process.
A good example of a recent reflection-action loop that Elevate went through was recognizing a growing need for facilitation, strategy, and data support for systems change initiatives in Nashville. We reviewed the information we had available to us about the need for this work and the ability of the market to support it. We assessed how this need aligned with our values and mission as a company. We saw that ultimately the work of systems change is very much rooted in collaborative learning, and decided to step out of our comfort zone of being an evaluation firm to expand in that area.
Why is a learning culture important?
Fundamentally, learning and adapting to your environment is necessary for agencies to survive as communities, the economy, and policies shift and change around them. In many organizations, the strategic level work of figuring out how to adapt is often limited to top leadership or the board. In a learning culture, agencies extend the invitation to inquiry and action to all staff and work to “make it normal” for staff to reflect and adapt and explore why we do things the way we do.
Many magical things can start to happen as this approach takes root. Staff will likely feel more engaged and fulfilled when they are able to honestly offer their insights and recommendations, or even have permission to experiment with new ways of doing things. Leadership will have access to many more perspectives and experiences to inform their decision making. Practices that aren’t really working for clients or staff will be identified much more quickly and often innovative alternatives will be generated by clients or staff themselves. Agency leadership will start talking to their partners about what they are learning, and invite other organizations into the big question of what system level conditions hold a problem in place.
We believe that if organizations in the social service system - from funders to government bodies to nonprofits - adopt a learning stance, we will collectively be able to truly transform the social service system. As more and more organizations in the system are willing and able to re-examine our models for services and for relating to the communities they serve and other organizations in their ecosystem, can we reimagine a social service ecosystem that helps everyone thrive.
Recognizing Constraints
We know that in the nonprofit context, adapting to your environment is easier said than done because most agencies have limitations imposed on them by funders or other regulatory bodies. We sometimes see in nonprofits a culture that focuses more heavily on accountability or compliance, which can shape their data and reporting systems to be all for external audiences rather than for internal learning. It is also just the nature of grant writing and reporting that agencies will always be incentivized to put forward their most polished, positive account of how things are going, limiting meaningful learning. We call this “doing the dance” - it’s what organizations do to navigate the murky waters between what is useful and meaningful and what will ensure that their organization has the resources it needs to continue its work.
There is a middle road though - both accountability and learning are critical to every social service organization, and that they can co-exist in the same culture. Accountability is necessary both for ethically managing investments and for keeping our eye on the prize of a just system that ensures quality of life for all people. Balancing accountability and learning may look like having an honest conversation with a funder if we are learning that the way we planned the program is not working and sharing the thoughtful adaptations we need to make, or similarly being honest that the outcomes we thought we would hit actually do not align with what our clients need to work on. Walking funders or grant officers through the analysis and thought work staff have done to arrive at the decision to make changes creates an opportunity for funders and agencies to reconsider if we are holding ourselves accountable to the right things.
Strategies to Start Where You Are
One of the simplest and most useful frameworks for thinking about moving towards a culture of learning is from David Garvin and Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School. They identify three key ingredients necessary to create a foundation for a learning culture to emerge. Despite its simplicity, it can often be tricky to implement in practice.
Create a supportive learning environment: We create a supportive learning environment when we communicate expectations or norms around what folks need to learn and then back those up with action. Typical norms that most people need to engage in learning include giving everyone the opportunity to contribute, staying curious and withholding judgement, and being mindful of power differences and group dynamics. Building trust and safety within a team is slow work and it can be counterproductive to try to rush it, so go at the pace your group tolerates. These ideas can apply at all levels of the organization where learning is a goal, from one on one supervision to all staff meetings.
Concrete learning practices and processes: This piece is about ensuring folks have access to the resources they need to participate in learning and have structured opportunities to reflect and engage in discussion. Start by understanding from staff what information would truly be helpful in their day to day jobs. Next, design accessible processes for them to access, digest, and reflect on that information. The possibilities are vast here, and may include setting up custom reports that are emailed to staff regularly, having staff meetings to review reports together, creating a physical data wall or dashboard in the work space. This is where evaluation processes really shine in supporting a learning culture. These processes also can apply to all levels of the organization where learning is a goal, from individual case managers reviewing data on clients to the organization’s board reviewing reports.
Leadership that reinforces learning: Leaders have tremendous influence over culture. When leaders acknowledge mistakes, ask why we are doing something the way we are doing it, listen to feedback from staff and clients, and change their behavior, everyone in the organization will assume that behavior is normal. Leaders have a responsibility to model the behavior they hope to see and to think critically about what incentives and disincentives are present in the organization for this behavior. Your boss can tell you all day that you are free to propose new ways of doing the work, but if you know that any deviation from the grant narrative that funds your work will risk your funding, you probably won’t. Leaders need to help staff navigate existing constraints rather than ignore them.
We hope that you'll examine your organization’s culture and understand how you might take steps towards adopting more of a learning stance. And of course, we’re here to help, when and if you’re ready to go on that journey.
Some resources that we use most often when thinking about learning culture include:
The Fifth Discipline and the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook both by Peter Senge
FSG’s Facilitating Intentional Group Learning guide, which focuses on activities you can do in groups
Blog by Jessica Gibbons-Benton