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Many of the things we need to know to be
successful – to innovate, collaborate, solve problems, and identify new
opportunities – aren’t learned simply through schooling, training, or personal
experience. Especially for today’s knowledge-based work, much of what we need
to know we learn from others’ experiences, through what’s called vicarious
learning.
Organizations know this learning is
important, which is why they invest significant resources in handbooks,
protocols, formal mentoring programs, and knowledge management systems to share
employees’ experiences. Yet analyst estimates suggest that the companies in the
Fortune 500
still lose a combined $31.5 billion per year from
employees failing to share knowledge effectively. By trying to recreate the
wheel, repeating others’ mistakes, or wasting time searching for specialized
information or expertise, employees incur productivity costs and opportunity
costs for the organization. Because while formal systems might help
communicate established best practices (the what),
they often don’t explain how
an individual should apply them to their own work. As a manager for Bain &
Co. summarized in Nancy Dixon’s book Common
Knowledge,
this approach to knowledge management offers only “a picture of a cake without
giving out the recipe.”
As a result, employees rely on informal
learning practices, such as shadowing or observing senior colleagues to “watch
and learn” what they need to know. For instance, in a study of mobile phone
manufacturing lines in China, Harvard Business School’s Ethan Bernstein
discovered that line workers often showed “tips and tricks” that others could copy in
order to assemble phones more effectively than could be done using the official
methods. (They were especially more likely to share these informal lessons when
they weren’t worried about over-scrutiny from managers.)
While this informal (and intuitive) approach
can be effective, it is no longer reasonable to expect employees to simply
“watch and learn” in many workplaces. Organizations across a variety of
industries are moving away from work that is easily observed and replicated to
work that is more nuanced, specialized, and adaptive. More and more of today’s
work is knowledge-based and done by people who are geographically dispersed.
And success in this work requires being able to adapt knowledge to complex,
changing environments. Yet our approach to vicarious learning has not kept
pace; our ways of learning from others often assume that work is still
watchable and that unobtrusively imitating others is enough.
Coactive vicarious learning
My research has explored an alternative to
this “watch and learn” approach. Rather than one person shouldering the burden
of absorbing knowledge by passively observing others, I posit that people can
more effectively learn through collaborative, two-way interactions with others
at work. Through coactive vicarious
learning, the person learning and the person sharing knowledge work together to
construct an understanding of an experience, which better equips the learner to
apply it in their own work.
Instead of simply relying on visible results,
interactive conversation and questioning allows the learner to understand the
underlying reasons behind someone else’s actions, making it easier to adapt
what’s learned to a new situation or task. For example, one study found that pharmaceutical
development teams were better able to translate and learn from another team’s
past experience when they invited members of the other team — the “sharers” of
knowledge — to actively participate in their discussion and problem-solving
(vs. a “learner” team simply identifying the “sharer” team’s knowledge and then
trying to replicate it on their own).
Coactive vicarious learning breaks down the
one-way nature of observational learning, so both parties — not just the
observer — can benefit. The learner’s questions and reactions can lead the
sharer to rethink an assumption or understand an experience in a new way. It
can even prompt a role reversal, where the learner contributes unique experience
or knowledge that might help the sharer learn. In studies of MBA consulting
project teams, I’ve found that when individuals engage in this more reciprocal vicarious
learning, sharing past experiences and expertise with each other in turn (vs.
only an expert sharing with a novice), they consistently receive higher client
ratings on their performance.
Putting it into practice
While many teams probably engage in some
degree of interactive learning already, there are several key steps leaders can
take to help institutionalize coactive vicarious learning at work, so that
people don’t fall back solely on formal learning methods.
Leaders tend to place a disproportionate
emphasis on tools like training materials or knowledge portals partly because
they are easier to manage and control. It is less clear how to manage
amorphous, interactive learning processes; you can’t simply force coworkers to
interact and share experiences. However, more often than not, leaders simply
need to remove obstacles that discourage people from seeking or sharing
knowledge and learning vicariously. They can create a structure that allows
these interactions to take place organically by focusing on three steps:
Create a designated space for vicarious
learning. Our environments directly affect how we
interact. So it’s important to consider how physical space (or virtual space
for geographically dispersed teams) can facilitate vicarious learning. For
instance, it might be more difficult to have a reciprocal, two-way sharing of
experience in stuffy offices where one person is seated behind a big desk in
the “more powerful” chair. Creating a common space that individuals recognize
as the gathering place for sharing ideas and experiences lays the foundation
for these interactions to unfold.
For example, members of air medical transport
teams have to learn from each other’s experiences to know how to transport a
wide range of critically ill patients. In researching how they learn,
I found that a disproportionate number of informal learning interactions took
place in one physical space: near the helipad door. Despite having plenty of
office space, this 10×15 ft. area became the unofficial, mutually-agreed-upon
space for members to share and ask about prior experiences. (This space was a
frequent stop during every shift, since it was near the supply room for
restocking the aircraft.) Since everyone recognized this space was “in bounds”
for these conversations, team members showed they were willing to either share
or learn something simply by choosing to stand there.
Similarly, in pursuit of this type of
designated space, when Google was designing its new corporate campus, it set
out to encourage these learning conversations by planning for lots of small
kitchen spaces, because they had discovered that people liked to mingle in
these areas and share ideas.
License and endorse vicarious learning. Leaders
should be encouraging employees to seek and share experiences often. This gives
individuals license to seek out what they need to learn, without fear that
they’re being intrusive or bothersome — or that it will make them look bad.
People often hesitate to ask others for help or advice because it requires
admitting they don’t know something important. So instead they work in
isolation, redoing something that their colleagues may have already done or
making similar mistakes.
Leaders can license vicarious learning by
acknowledging and rewarding instances when people engage in interactive
learning and recycle (rather than reinvent) a “wheel.” For instance, managers
at Siemens implemented a system of
“points” for sharing knowledge and learning vicariously, similar to an airline
mileage reward program. Managers can also encourage an open-door environment
that welcomes employees to seek or share information — and helps dispel the
notion that such behavior is bothersome.
Plant starter seeds of vicarious learning. Beyond
creating the space and license for vicarious learning, leaders can encourage
greater learning by jump-starting the process. This means leading by example:
proactively sharing experiences with team members and setting aside time at the
beginning of meetings for people to discuss challenges and problem solve
together. Even one-off efforts, such as a team breakfast or “happy hour,” can
plant the seed for vicarious learning that can then grow into a more consistent
practice.
Vicarious learning interactions are not a
panacea for an organization’s learning challenges. But it is an effective piece
of the workplace learning portfolio, alongside formal efforts like training
programs, feedback sessions, and knowledge management systems, and informal practices
like mentoring and “trial-and-error” exercises. All of these approaches
reinforce each other and promote greater learning. In fact, sequencing
vicarious learning and experiential learning strategies together has been shown
to improve performance
compared to experiential learning alone, across a range of different tasks.
Whatever the sequence or strategy, this type
of learning is critical for many organizations, and leaders play an important
role in making it more systematic, frequent, and easier to deploy. Companies
are sitting on far more knowledge and expertise than they realize. Creating the
conditions that enable coactive vicarious learning is a central way to bring
out the best a team or organization has to offer. As Lew Platt, the former
chief executive of Hewlett-Packard (HP) famously lamented, “if only HP knew
what HP knows, we would be three times more productive.”
Source | https://hbr.org/2015/
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