The art of collective (learning)

Companies need many competencies in order to be and remain successful in their market. The systematic development and expansion of these competencies is associated with numerous learning processes - at the individual and organizational level. And this is always accompanied by processes of individual and organizational unlearning - whether because certain tasks are no longer performed, performed less frequently or performed differently than before.

In unlearning it is important to distinguish between desired and undesired unlearning processes. Everyone knows how quickly unlearning occurs who has ever attended a PC training course and a few weeks - or even just days - later wanted to do the same tasks again that they had apparently mastered in their sleep at the end of the course. Then you are often shocked to discover: "Oops, I don't even know how to do that anymore".

Similarly, if you haven't done a task you've actually mastered for a long time and then you want to do it again, you'll often realize, "I can't do it anymore. Then, too, one often realizes: "I can't do that anymore". Or at least: "I need more time for this and have to think harder."

Competencies emerge ... and disappear
Similar processes take place at the organisational level of companies. There, too, one notices time and again that competencies that were "excellent" in an organization (and therefore made it an attractive partner for its customers, for example) unintentionally disappear. For example, the CEO of a high-tech company complained to me some time ago: "I don't understand why almost all of our projects in the area of plant engineering fail today. Three or four years ago, we were still at the top of our game and the benchmark for our competitors. And today? Today you often get the impression that we were just playing with Lego bricks in the past". The causes of such developments - whether in the areas of project or innovation management, leadership or sales, customer orientation or service, or problem solving and strategy implementation in general - can be manifold. One central cause, however, is that many company leaders regard expenditure in the areas of training and further education as well as personnel and competence development as investments. From a business point of view, they are investments. However, they have a different character than investments in tangible assets.

Competence is not a credit item in the balance sheet
If a company buys machines or buildings because there is a corresponding need, then it can book these on the credit side. It can put a tick in the to-do list, so to speak, behind the job "purchase machines" or "buy office buildings", because the need is covered, at least for the time being.

It is different when a company trains employees, for example, in leadership, project management or active market development. Then the matter is not finished afterwards. Because the company has, so to speak, only lit a fire. In order for it to continue to blaze and develop the desired warmth, regular logs must be added, figuratively speaking - otherwise the fire is only a flash in the pan that will soon go out again - and all previous investments of time and money were in vain.

This re-laying of logs in the fire "personnel and competence development" is, among other things, from the following

Reason needed: In every large company, there is not only a certain job rotation, but also a permanent change of personnel. Employees come and go. Therefore, even if a company trains its employees intensively, for example in the areas of leadership or project management, it is not guaranteed that two or three years later all employees still have the same understanding (and know-how) of leadership and project management. Such an alignment, i.e. mental commitment, only remains if the company consistently trains all employees who take over a corresponding position or function.

Not the knowledge, the ability and doing decide
However, it is far more decisive that this alignment often does not occur and develop in everyday business life: In their personnel development, companies do not sufficiently take into account that knowledge does not mean ability and ability does not mean doing. In order for knowledge to turn into skills and for these in turn to turn into concrete action, regular reminding and systematic practice are necessary in the company's or work's everyday life.

The Toyota company has recognized this. This is why so-called Kata Coaching plays a central role in its personnel development; it aims to unlearn existing thinking and behavioural routines and to learn new ones. This is based on the insight that many procedures and processes in companies are a consequence of the habits that their members have acquired over the course of many years, sometimes even decades. They have been repeated so often that they are, so to speak, anchored in the DNA of the employees. Accordingly, they are performed as a matter of course when employees or parts of the organization are faced with certain tasks or challenges.

Such routines called habits of thought and behavior are not bad in themselves. On the contrary! They keep the business running. People and organizations need them to master their everyday life. Otherwise they would spend endless amounts of time and energy on everyday activities such as brushing their teeth. Or, in a business context, on such everyday tasks as procuring materials. Routines only become a problem when the associated way of solving tasks is changed,

• is no longer questioned and
• is maintained even if a different procedure would be necessary due to changes in the framework conditions.

Then the routines become a hindrance to the development of the person or organisation - which is why they have to be broken and replaced by new routines.

Breaking through thinking and behavioural routines
Routines, of whatever kind, are the result of a long process of continuous rehearsal and practice. In musical education, for example, when learning to play the piano, this constant practice is commonplace. The same is true in sports. Gymnasts train certain movements until they have internalized them. And then they turn to more difficult exercises, so that their athletic ability gradually increases. But not only this! By constantly practicing and reflecting on what can be done even better, (prospective) professional athletes and professional musicians increasingly acquire the competence to independently increase their performance - among other things, because they know which behavior is goal-oriented. They become coaches of their own person, so to speak.

It is precisely this conscious practice of routines that is the goal of Kata Coaching at Toyota. And one of the core tasks of Toyota managers is to support and accompany their employees as coaches in this process. This means that, for example, they do not give them the solution to new tasks. Rather, they guide their employees in their development - with the overriding goal that their employees themselves acquire the necessary competence. Or to put it another way: Managers try to gradually expand the comfort zone of their employees so that they gradually acquire the competence and the necessary self-confidence to tackle ever greater challenges on their own initiative.

Approaching the ideal image step by step
In order to systematically develop this competence in people, three things are necessary:

1. The person in question needs to know what overall goal she wants to achieve. She needs a vision of where she wants to go.
2. She needs to know what she should learn in order to achieve the goal she is aiming for - in other words, what her learning areas are. And:
3. She must know a way or a method to acquire the competence she still lacks.

Exactly these three elements can also be found in the Toyota Kata, i.e. the systematic procedure that Toyota has developed for building up and expanding new competencies and anchoring new routines in the minds of the employees and in the organisation. Above all this hovers Toyota's vision, called the North Star - the ideal image to which we aspire. From this, the so-called improvement kata is derived, with the help of which Toyota would like to achieve that the processes approach the ideal state. This is supported by the coaching kata, which Toyota uses to systematically develop the (problem-solving) competence of its employees - in many small steps and projects, all of which move in the direction of the ideal image.

Toyota has been practicing the described coaching and competence development process for decades - among other things, with the goal of further expanding the existing culture of continuous improvement and embedding it even more strongly in the DNA of the employees and the organization. Behind this is the realization that the need for change and learning in today's companies is often so great and complex that it is increasingly difficult to grasp and manage it top-down. Therefore, employees must develop in the direction of self-developers who recognize themselves,

• what needs to be done on the basis of the desired ideal state,
• where they still have a need for development and can satisfy this need themselves.

Managers are also role models for learning and unlearning
Building such a culture of focused individual and collective learning (and unlearning) requires a lot of time, patience and attention to detail; as well as top-down leaders who can

• also see themselves as coaches and learning companions for their employees and
• according to the maxim "'Go and see' instead of 'meet and mail'" are prepared to deal intensively with the employees and the (learning and development) processes in their organisation.

Managers must also regularly reflect on their actions. Otherwise, there is a danger that they will demand a high level of willingness to learn and change, for example, in dialogue with their employees, but that this demand will not be experienced in their own actions. Then their employee coaching does not bear fruit, because the following still applies: Managers have a role model function for their employees. This also applies to the willingness to learn and to change one's own attitudes and behaviour if necessary.