FOR a company to stay competitive, it must be willing to learn fast. You can’t stop learning and expect to be ahead of the game. The easy way to outperform your industry competitors is being able to learn.
Organisations, as author John Kotter points out, need to stay agile, and adaptable to changing market situations. Unfortunately, some organisations struggle to keep up with the speed of change as they cannot learn fast.
This article picks on some learning disabilities that companies have and how they can overcome them. Learning disabilities can hinder organisational growth, relevance, productivity and profitability. This article speaks to both profit-making and non-profit-making companies.
Lack of strategic clarity
Strategic ambiguity is a common problem with most companies. Some have a strategy, but it is not simple and understood to those that should help fulfil its goal. To some, there is no strategy and everything is built around activities that might at times help the company make money.
So, the company has no strategic clarity and it becomes hard or challenging to make decisions, allocate resources, and has key performance indicators or clear key result areas.
This makes it hard to measure performance. In simple terms, this leads to ambiguity or confusion in an organisation.
Dysfunctional teams
Teams are responsible for bringing results to any company. In some companies, teams never work synergistically, and that is a learning disability. If teams do not work together, it might lead to duplication of activities, poor communication, and missed targets. How do we cure this problem? Companies must have team-building workshops and activities.
‘Blame game’ culture
Teams want to take responsibility, resort to blaming others. Leaders who are stuck resort to blaming others. A “blame game” culture is a sign of learning disabilities.
Blaming leads to a toxic environment, which creates more problems such as conflicts, misunderstanding, frustration, lack of trust and accountability.
Lack of action synergy
In this instance, we have people working together but don’t know or care how their actions affect the other. This leads to poor communication, collaboration and teamwork.
Not learning from experience
When we fail to learn from our mistakes, we are bound to repeat the same mistake. To avoid this, we need time to reflect as boards or teams. Also, leaders must be willing to listen and demand feedback from employees.
When employees are not allowed to make decisions or freely say their opinion, they will be silent at the expense of an organisation.
Reactivity
Most companies are playing catch up. They are caught flat-footed by change and which makes them reactive and adjusting to the demands of change. This does not make the company proactive.
Lack of learning agility
The ability and agility to learn is the greatest gift any organisation can have. Learning agility is the ability to learn swiftly and adapt to new situations. When a company lacks learning agility, it can’t keep up with the pace of change.
Lack of research and development
Research and development is related to learning agility. Research helps us gather the information we need to move the company towards development.
Does your company have a department for research? When a company does not invest in research and development, it cannot innovate.
Silo mentality
A silo mentality is when departments or teams work independently of each other. This can lead to a lack of communication, duplication of effort and a lack of innovation.
When employees only focus on their own department or team, they may miss opportunities to collaborate and share knowledge with others.
No talent retention
Talent density determines the success of any company. A company that does not retain its top talent will see the best talent leave and serve others.
When a company does not invest in its workers, it cannot attract or retain the best talent in town.
Parting point
Learning disabilities in companies can be solved by training and development. Also, leaders must be trained to know learning disabilities and be quick to help others overcome them. Learning disabilities are built by company culture.
To break the cycle of learning disabilities, companies must be willing to change, break from their past, and accept and demand feedback from everyone.
