Reflection – Learning Launch

Challenge

I was recently interning with a company in energy sector. Company carries a legacy of more than 100  years with itself. Overall development and care of the employees is the top most priority for the  company. There were multiple learning initiatives which helped employees to learn and grow. Most  of the learning initiatives we had were in the domain of classroom training/workshops and e-learning  modules. There was nothing specific, structured and formal in the space of peer to peer learning. So,  the challenge for me was to design the sustainable social learning / peer to peer learning framework  and lay down the implementation plan in 2 months. I will try to cover who all were the important  stakeholders involved in solving the problem at hand.

Selection

As there was no proper historical data available for this problem, hence design thinking came to be  very handy in solving the problem and develop a new concept of peer to peer learning at the company.  I have used learning launch tool to solve and come up with the solution as it involves experimenting  different ideas and prototype as mentioned in the IBM story.

Application

I started of with first understanding the concept of peer to peer learning and how it is used in  corporate. With the help of external benchmarking I could identify different initiatives used by some  renowned industries in the field of social learning. Then I conducted in depth interviews with  managers and supervisors to understand their level of understanding of the concept and how they  feel about participating in this initiative.

Post analysis of interviews, external benchmarking and in-depth secondary research, I realised that  for there should be one common platform for people to communicate and share their best practices.  This way we can give proper structure to the social learning. For this I experimented with one  enterprise networking platform and on boarded few managers onto it. I have developed multiple  templates for the members to share their views. After testing all the sample templates, I could select  best 2 templates that would be used by the members to share their views. This was member started  sharing their best practices which helped other members to learn for their peers. Most of these  templates were like creative posters which were designed after much iteration. Various online  engagement events were planned to build the traction on our networking group.

Insights

After the application of learning launch tool, I could come up with multiple ideas to drive the culture  of social learning at an organisation. Experimenting different ideas with same group of people helped  me understand what could work in this organisation. Finally, an online platform was developed where  employees could collaborate to solve their issues collectively. Whole foundation of our framework  depends upon element of trust and share. Employees were motivated to share their best practices in  the group so that other can learn from them

Approach

Future application of this tool should be for another set of specific audience. Next time I would like to  use learning launch tool for senior management employees and narrow down the social learning  approach for building effective and efficient leadership among the line managers. This approach will

help future young leaders to learn from industry stalwarts. This way a young and dynamic leadership  pipeline could be built in an organisation.

