The Two Big Benefits Of Learning By Sharing
Plus five business outcomes positively impacted by group-based learning.
In my previous letter, I shared why Learning by Sharing works. The reasons included:
mentoring
feedback
accountability
Journey vs Destination
Our Circle of Learning expanded to look like this.
Today I want to explore the benefits more deeply. Once you see the benefits of doing this, you not only gain a deeper understanding of why it works, but you fill up with the motivation to make it work (and I’ll share best practices for that in my next letter).
So let’s dive in, shall we?
The Two Big Benefits Of Learning By Sharing
The benefits can be grouped into two buckets: social capital and knowledge management.
Social Capital
How does a company of individuals achieve more than the sum of its parts?
Social capital.
I used to work at KPMG, a company with over 250,000 employees globally. I joined the Cape Town office as part of the class of 2006, a group of about 100 fresh-faced college grads, in the firm’s audit function. Within the first few weeks of joining we were sent to a beautiful offsite venue in a valley for a full week of intensive training and bonding. I met and got to know almost all 100 people that joined the firm with me, along with the managers who were training us and the executives who came to stay and speak with us.
When I went back to the office to work on clients, I went from being a lone ranger with a business degree to part of a network of specialists that I suddenly had access to. If I had a question at a client, I knew someone who could either answer it, or connect me with someone else who could.
Firms like KPMG repeat this process every year, increasing the surface area of connections each individual has with others in the firm. They simply wouldn’t survive without it.
Social capital is defined in the Oxford dictionary as:
"The networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively"
Social capital involves the effective functioning of social groups through:
interpersonal relationships,
a shared sense of identity,
a shared understanding,
shared norms,
shared values,
cooperation,
reciprocity,
trust.
Knowledge Management
Remember the Xerox story from my last letter about the machine repair teams coming up with a $100M database of best practices over breakfast?
That’s knowledge management.
Learning by sharing in groups helps to find, make explicit, transfer, and archive “expertise”. Expertise, after all, is that valuable, intangible, context-based knowledge that cannot easily be captured, codified, and stored.
At KPMG, we had sophisticated processes and templates that were developed over time through experience. We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel, because others had done that before us, and done a good job of documenting it.
Learning groups are therefore a rich source of useful information in the form of actual experiences, or best practices. They can help companies handle unstructured problems, share knowledge outside of functional boundaries and develop and maintain long-term “company memory”.
The challenge is to codify, document, and archive these best practices for later use, as Xerox and KPMG did (more on this in my next letter).
The Benefits As Business Outcomes
Social capital and knowledge management sure sound great as concepts. They helped make my job at KPMG easier. Learning by Sharing enabled me to:
Navigate a fast-moving economy inside a slow-moving traditional hierarchy.
Handle unstructured problems.
Share knowledge outside of my clients and even function.
Contribute to and maintain long-term “company memory”.
But how did this help KPMG?
I can think of five ways this appraoch to learning benefited the firm.
Decrease the learning curve of new employees
I quickly identified subject matter experts who could answer my questions or guide me to resources. I built face-to-face relationships with people managing me and running the firm, giving me the confidence to approach them when I had questions. I found mentors who continued to help me throughout my career there.
By talking to people, I constructed a bigger picture of how my day-to-day activities fit with the broader firm goals. And perhaps most underrated, I heard the stories of how others had approached challenges in the past. These anecdotes were not located in any firm archive and allowed me to develop some of the tacit knowledge my more senior colleagues had built up over time.
I got “wired” into the “company memory” through these group learning experiences more rapidly than if I was left on my own to learn both the technical and cultural aspects of my new role.
Respond more rapidly to customer needs and inquiries
A massive competitive advantage for a firm like KPMG is having a vast breadth and depth of expertise to call on. Thanks to Learning by Sharing, I witnessed time and time again how people knew the exact subject matter expert to bring in for a client challenge.
There was also a collection of assets we could use to respond to customer needs — presentations, previous proposals, marketing material — that had been created for similar projects.
Reduce rework and prevent “reinvention of the wheel”
Building on the last outcome, the ability to locate, access and apply existing intellectual capital to new situations significantly reduced costs for the firm. The costs of lost “company memory” include inefficiencies from rework, substandard performance, and time wasted trying to find resources.
The people who were really good at using and contributing to “company memory” developed reputations as subject matter experts who were willing to help others. There was a flywheel effect as these people became the obvious candidates for new employees to build relationships with to shorten their learning curves.
Spawn new ideas for products and services
Group learning gatherings were a fertile ground for new ideas. People brought such a diversity of perspectives, it was impossible to not see patterns and new connections that led to ideas for new approaches, products and services. KPMG accelerated this process by bringing in outside speakers for even more diversity.
I always felt comfortable sharing my ideas in these settings. These were safe learning environments to share challenges and half-baked ideas, debate the weak points and improve on them collectively.
Create a sense of belonging
I made a lot of friends through group learning experiences. I knew that if I had a roadblock or question, these friends would jump at helping me, as I would for them. It was my family of like-minded people who faced similar issues before. When you have this sense of “we’re in this together”, you’re motivated to show up everyday.
A company of motivated employees helping each other move forward has to be the ultimate competitive advantage.
In my next letter, we’ll learn how to effectively set up group-based learning.