Learning Comes First

Most companies focus heavily on leadership, but few focus on learnership

Mon, 05/06/2013 - 09:59

One of my favorite insights comes from Harvard’s David Garvin: “Learning will always remain something of an art, but even the best artists can improve their technique.” I like it because it quite subtly highlights two different yet intertwined activities, learning and training.

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Most companies engage in training. Few engage in real learning. Most companies focus heavily on leadership. Few focus on learnership. One path to leadership is innovation. And here’s the thing: Learning and innovation go hand in hand, but learning comes first. The difference between learning and training is often subtle, but worth exploring. The challenge is, where to start?

The Ohno Circle

Learning precedes innovation. Innovation is about problem solving. Problem solving requires thinking. Thinking is the softest skill known, so how do you train it?

Enter the infamous Ohno Circle, named for legendary Toyota production engineer, Taiichi Ohno. Although I never met him (he passed away just under a decade before I began working with big T), I became a student of his methods, one of which is highly relevant to this discussion.

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Comments

Because it's not only a question of improving one or more learning - or learnership - techniques: it's much more a question of learning the right things at the right time. I feel I've learned much more reading about Mankind's history than sweating over charts-full abstruse manuals. And I think that Mr. De Bono's "lateral thinking" is still an effective way to problem solving. I don't remember where I read it nor who wrote it, he  might have been a Chinese or a Japanese or a Redskin, I don't care: but the very first step on the road to learning, is to un-learn a lot of trash. Thank you.

Great topic and article. I was surprised after years in production and industrial engineering, including reading the ILO Geneva Text on 'Work Study', then Allan Mogensen whom Don Dewar of QCI International gave me in Red Bluff CA USA years ago that this; their questioning method was very powerful being asking Why against What, When, Where, Who and How. Lean (Krafnik, Sloan and MIT) and Six Sigma Programs (Motorola Trade and Service Mark registered name) have sub-optimised Ohno's Thinking and that Industrial Engineering, Work Simplification and Work Study by only applying the so called '5 Why's to the problem and hardly to the ranked causes in a basic or process Ishikawa Cause and Effect Diagram. The AIAG FMEA Text provides guidance to the Ohno Questioning, Learning and Thinking too in using the Process Flow Chart as the input to the PFMEA. Inherent in that text flowchart tool is the 5 W's and 1 H which Rudyard Kipling reminded us '"I have 6 honest serving men - who, what, when, where, why and how". If applied as the Text suggest, one can be prompted in a small way to the possible risks in the process. The article reminded my Allan Mogensen referencing Charles F Kettering VP R&D GM, where he talked bout resistance to change and defining problems - "a problem well defined is 50% solved". Good questions, listening and learning are indeed much better with your 'Learnership'. I guess it builds upon Adult Learning theories of Dr Malcolm Knowles et al. Ohno and Mr Toyoda when visiting Ford Motor Coy and referenced by JP Sullivan and Poulding in their Supplier Q Manual that US Managers are very good Vertically but compared to Japanese managers who are Cross-functionally as they question- I suppose this adds to Womack & Jones' "Learning to See" and in some ways one wonders how Ohno, Deming, Juran would too I guess if they are watching why we have to advise Managers and Leaders to Go to Gemba, do MBWA, and even as you remind us well in your article Matthew.

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