How can organizations embrace a culture of learning?

Finally, learning is not achieved if one does not have the boundaries of their business being defined and the ability to continuously push them. In a fail fast mode, one needs to understand where these boundaries are and how they can be pushed in a continuous manner so that new boundaries can be established safely without the entire business crashing.

So what should one do to develop / embrace a culture of learning?

If an organization is going to truly embrace a culture of learning there are several questions to go through in a methodical fashion.

Ask yourself:

1.  Where are you (in an absolute and relative scale)?

You should be measuring everything including change and rate of change. Measurement of metrics allows for awareness of current levels; change and the acceleration also help in understanding speed.   Ensure that this information is diffused through the organization in an open manner.  Develop adaptive measurement systems that allow you to highlight key facts.

2.  What do you know about everything?

Make and measure connections and associate changes across metrics and facts in a reasonable way.  Synthesize information for the business in a simpler way and increase the speed of absorption of new information through the organization.

3.  What boundaries can you push?

Learn through a hypothesis-driven approach to new problems and build logical theories to test based on connected facts to develop new knowledge.  Push multiple boundaries simultaneously to test new theories in inter-disciplinary domains. Once theories are validated, build a measurement system to ensure that changes are being tracked.