It was a privilege to be a guest on Carolyn Kiel's Beyond 6 Seconds podcast recently, and not just because it was a personal milestone (my 20th podcast!).  Experience showed me how truly different every conversation can be, even if the premise is to talk about about my favorite topic of company culture. Between her wonderful radio voice, curious mind, engaging questions and our easy rapport with one another, we talked well beyond our scheduled time. We covered so much territory that it necessitated a second bonus episode about Culture Your Culture's journey to publication. My hope is that our fun translates to your enjoyment as listeners. Give it a listen and let me know what you think!

I've always had a variety of people in my professional and social circles--it reflects my own diverse interests and experiences. Everyone is spread out geographically, but it would be one heck of a party if I had them all in one place to watch all the worlds colliding.  

That being said, every once in a while I am reminded of the limitations within my network, which in turn speaks to the challenges of  business norms in general.  When I asked on occasion whether I know someone that fits x, y, z, conditions, I usually have at least some tangential connection. Recently however, I could not find enough executive women of color in my circles for a special invitation-only gathering. I lamented this to a colleague and friend (also an executive woman of color now consultant), who said, "there aren't any." She really meant "there's not enough." So true, so true. There's much work to be done, but thankfully some organizations are trying. People need to know, and be motivated to do the same. 

This is why it was so wonderful to add my $.02 on this article in Fast Company, "These Companies are Making Sure More Women Get Promoted to Management," which showcases what's being done and provides for some starting points. I highly recommend you read the whole article and share it broadly. Here's a preview:

If you aren't familiar with MindTools, it is "one of the world’s most popular digital, on-demand career and management learning solutions, helping more than 24 million people each year." I have been a distant admirer for years (they've been online since 1996!) and recently had the opportunity to talk with them about Culture Your Culture and Design of Work Experience, which resulted in a great article and podcast. The latter resides in their members-only area, but thanks to their generosity you can listen right here.  

As you know, I joined the Consortium 4 Change (C4C) of the Business InSITE Group (BiG), an invitation-only network of thought leaders partnering together. That gives me access (and therefore you) to even more leadership development opportunities. Earlier this month I told you about inFRONT Leaders taking place April 16-18, 2019 in Manhattan Beach, California. The program is designed for any operating leader who can benefit from better understanding the future of work, unleashing their leadership potential and developing their own and their team’s innovative spirit. 
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I'm pleased to also share with you the BiG Coaching Differentiator, a whole network of expert coaches for your organizational needs. I shared my perspective on coaching programs previously in my post, "First Things First: Fundamentals for an Executive Coaching Program." Find out  10 compelling ways BiG brings significant value to coaching relationships and let me know if you are interested in either of these programs.

Culture Your Culture appeared on Small Biz Daily's Business Books for the Holidays List! I always felt the red on my book's cover was festive. 

Makes for a great Christmas gift or birthday, or anytime gift for that matter! Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season. I'll see you in the New Year!

Another version of this article originally appeared on Learnlight Insights.

As nice as it may sound, why would anyone want to have a learning culture? There are reasons that won’t suffice: HR needing a pet project, the company looking for good PR, or even an edict from above. All these lack meaningfulness for the ones who must carry it out—everyone else. 
 
“What for?” should be answered by combining vision, business objectives and the need for new capabilities when solutions are unknown and conditions are ever changing. It then becomes clear that the only way a company could succeed is to learn. Now that’s something people can get behind. 

In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge defines a learning organization as one “that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future.” While every company must grapple with what’s to come, the ones that learn have the ability to do much more. 
 
Besides that, to have a corporate learning culture means that learning is in the company’s DNA--not compartmentalized into a particular aspect of the culture, or within a certain department or functional area.  All learning organizations have a corporate learning culture, and all corporate learning cultures lead to learning organizations. 
 
What does a learning organization do? 
 
Published by The Leadership Quarterly, Gary Yukl describes the essential processes of a learning organization as: 

This goes far beyond training programs. This is why so many L&D departments follow the Center for Creative Leadership’s 70-20-10 guideline (on-the-job/relationships/training). For learning to occur on a large scale, culture--with its power to influence behavior, perceptions, and interactions--must drive it. 
 
As professors Victoria Marsick and Karen Watkins write in a forthcoming publication:

People look to their leaders when culture change is imminent. Employees want to know where leadership stands and how they will lead. Leaders’ responsibilities don’t end there. They must actually follow through in guiding the organization before, during, and after these changes. They do this by:
 
1. Setting the vision. As the decision makers of the organization, leaders initiate change by communicating the vision for the future. According to Jim Collins and Jerry Porras’ classic Harvard Business Review article, vision is made up of core ideology (values and purpose) and the envisioned future (a vivid description of Big Hairy Audacious Goals). Setting the vision happens while building the case for a corporate learning culture, but needs consistent reiteration and communication.  
 
2. Empowering employees through co-design. Leaders may have started the transformation towards a learning organization, but their people finish it. Forcing change from top-down has proven problematic time and again. Involving people as equal partners in co-designing a future they are expected to deliver shows greater promise for change adoption.

This is not about leaders bestowing an act of benevolence. It is about recognizing the limitations of one’s own perspective and utilizing talents and capabilities of the whole, à la Appreciative Inquiry’s Wholeness Principle, as described by the Center for Appreciative Inquiry: 

Using a co-design framework that emphasizes learning, such as Design of Work Experience in Culture Your Culture: Innovating Experiences @Work, will provide the guidance and discipline for productive co-design of the learning culture.   

3. Deploying resources.  Leadership must understand that sufficient access to necessary resources will set the conditions for success. Resources can come in the form of budgetary support, talent, technology, space (physical, virtual, or psychological), and their own time and attention. The organization must scale resources collectively identified (and thus properly vetted) during co-design.
 
4. Demonstrating leadership. An organization pursuing transformation requires visible and demonstrated leadership. True leadership doesn’t come from a job title. It is granted by people on a continuous basis. They want leaders who role model the changes and behaviors with consistency throughout the transformation and beyond. Doing so gives them the credibility to set expectations, recognize and reward success, and ensure accountability. Anything contradictory erodes trust.  

The job doesn’t end there. According to Yukl in the same Leadership Quarterly article, leaders can directly influence collective learning by: 

​Notice how much partnership, facilitation, and empowerment of others is embedded among these day-to-day behaviors.
 
5. Learning with Agility. It stands to reason that a learning organization requires leaders who learn, especially agile learners. Learning agility is about learning from experience with speed and flexibility, as evidenced by research from Columbia University’s Dr. Warner Burke that resulted in the Burke Learning Agility Inventory (BLAI). 
 
The capability reveals itself in enabling behaviors identified in the BLAI, such as: seeking feedback and information, performance and interpersonal risk taking, collaborating, experimenting, reflecting—and of course, speed and flexibility. As the most visible learners, leaders must demonstrate these behaviors to an observable degree everyday.
 
So if a corporate learning culture is truly desirable, leaders (and the HR and L&D professionals supporting them) should look to fulfill these five responsibilities—or, more boldly, obligations—to ensure that they play a pivotal role in creating learning organizations out of their companies. Combined with vision and culture, learning is unstoppable. 

"One good turn deserves another" as they say. That was true in this case. We had such a good time talking back in September that we decided to do it again in December. Being a radio show first and a podcast second, time allotments are limited. I was happy to return for another conversation on Sharon Kay's What's the 411?  Sharon is a generous and inquisitive host, and it was great to provide perspective on recent headlines related to GM's plant closures and the scandals plaguing the tech industry (especially Facebook at the moment). Check it out! 

Wow, it is every author's hope to be on anyone's reading list let alone a Best of 2018 list.  Thanks to eglobalis for including Culture Your Culture!