Learning- Photocredit: womennewsnetwork.net

“Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back” Chinese proverb

My baby daughter started kindergarten this year. Every day as I pick her up, I ask her the same invariable (and invariably repetitive to her) question: “Baby, what did you learn today?” And since she is her mother’s daughter, she started chiming right back at me, in her little inquisitively sarcastic voice: “Mommy, what did you learn at work today?”

You’d never think a 5 year-old, 2-foot nothing little person could make you question yourself, right along with the entire concept of workplace learning. Well think again…

New technologies are popping up faster than you can switch anti-aging creams. And not only is there an app for everything, there’s a better app for that app. With millenials redefining the workplace demographics and women ever more powerfully leaning in, out or sideways, work is definitely not what it used to be. Neither is workplace learning.

Instead of formal lined up rows in student classes, we now are tasked with learning everywhere, from all our experiences combined. Learning is now as mobile as your new (bigger) iPhone6, and it’s also right there, on demand anytime! And now more than ever, learning is measured, quantified and predicted in terms of results.

From how it impacts the sales cycle, to customer satisfaction rates and overall quality, it’s become even more obvious that learning and doing are close family. To learn and not do is now equated to not learning at all.

So whether it’s applying some e-learning principles, making use of some informal networking resources or proactively seeking to better yourself as a whole, are you really learning at work? And if you’re not, is it time to start asking yourself and your company why?

In the meantime, I have to prepare to answer my baby’s question this afternoon…

The Corporate Sis.