Building a Learning Culture

Anxiety and uncertainty are common realities in the current climate. This is not helped by the often complex nature of decision-making, the range of uncertainties and the extensive scrutiny. This cannot be eliminated through procedures or training, so the question is: how do organisations, not just individuals, address anxiety and uncertainty?

Anxiety causes two reaction patterns in people. The first – our neurological reaction – is the ‘Fight/Flight/Freeze’ response, which in our pre-historic environments has allowed us to survive many threatening and changing situations. In today’s world however this can cause people to feel very stressed, trying to avoid situations (‘head-in-the-sand’ response) or wanting to face up to the perceived threat/change with anger and blame.

The other reaction pattern is much less intuitive and takes a real conscious effort to build up. It is the acknowledgement that anxiety and its neurological responses are a given in threatening or changing situations and allows a person to think/reflect on what unmet need the anxiety is trying to communicate, impacting on a person’s resilience levels and ability to problem-solve and learn.

From an individual perspective, it is vital, in order to survive major change in your personal life and at work, to be understanding and be respectful of these reaction patterns in both yourself and in others, particularly the first which is based on our deep-founded and undeniable ancestral inheritance.

At an organisational level, anxiety is translated into risk management practices. The first reaction pattern translates into two extremes. The Fight response is caused by concerns around litigation and often leads to overprotection, risk averse practices and a Compliance/Dependency Culture, as people feel over-protected or even totally controlled. The Flight/Freeze response is on the other hand translated into a total lack of risk management practices, Risk Denial or even total neglect, which in reality are more likely to attract blame and litigation as people feel undervalued, underprotected or even neglected.

To improve an organisations’ learning culture following major change, it is important to understand that the above two risk management practices lie at either end of the risk management continuum (see below and attached). The focus of any Risk Management policy and procedure (and any other policies, procedures and strategies), which takes into account the benefits of taking risks, needs to focus on the centre section of this continuum, encouraging problem-solving, learning (from mistakes) and creative activities, the basis of a Learning Culture.

Total Neglect/Risk Denial <——–/———————/——–> Risk Averse/Total Control

The link to our biological inheritance too explains why a Learning Culture is so difficult to achieve, as our natural responses (Fight/Flight/ Freeze) are a given and often kick in first. The biological, neurological and psychological elements that make an individual's responses have therefore a major impact on the culture within organisations. Perceiving organisations as machines rather than living, breathing structures will only put processes (including risk processes) before the people that can change the organisation's culture.