How to Build a Learning Organization and What You are Doing Wrong with Ryan Sutton

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Online Marketing Made Easy. Today, we'll be breaking down how to build a learning organization and what you are doing wrong. To drop these value bombs, I brought Ryan Sutton into EO Fire Studios. Ryan has 25 years in tech and knows how to build a business that is serious about growth. And today, Foundation, we'll talk about learning and growth with your employees. We'll talk about what you might be doing wrong, how to operationalize learning, and so much more.

0:37And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Ryan and our sponsors. The Gold Digger Podcast, hosted by my good friend, Jenna Kuchar, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Gold Digger Podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, and so much more. A must-listen episode is one of Jenna's recents on everything you need to know about affiliate marketing. Listen to Gold Digger wherever you get your podcasts. Many EO Fire listeners have launched non-food franchises and Franbridge Consulting has guided them.

1:13Franbridge's founder and frequent EO Fire guest, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country and his service is free. Sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising at franbridgeconsulting.com. Ryan, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What is up, Fire Nation? Something I believe in is the advice that you should follow your passion or the cliche saying that if you do what you love, you'll never have to work a day in your life. I generally don't like that advice.

1:53I tend to think it's sort of a poor compass when deciding how you should plan out your career or even your personal interest in life. I think our passions can change over time. I think it's hard to know your passions when you haven't done something. And I think most people haven't done most things. And also, unless you're very privileged financially, you might not have the luxury of doing the things that you want to do, at least not all the time. I'd like to add to that because I've seen a lot of scenarios as well where people are so adamant about doing what they're passionate about and they do that.

2:26And then a lot of times what happens, you lose your passion for that thing because you're getting up every day and doing it and you're doing it for money and it becomes a job. So I've seen that happen, which is definitely an issue. And then the other side of the coin is a lot of times when you become really good at something and you're having great impact doing something, you can grow a passion for that thing. And like, I'm an example of that. Like I I've become a podcaster my whole life, but I'm like, this is a cool opportunity. I think it might be fun. I don't know if I'm passionate about it, but let me check it out.

3:00And then over time, as I became better at my craft, my passion grew for it. Now I'm very, very passionate about it. So passion can grow, Fire Nation. And also, if you're really passionate about something, maybe you don't want to turn into a job because you might lose that passion forever. And you may want to keep that as a little bit of a hobby and stay passionate about it for life. Now, we're talking today about building a learning organization and also, Fire Nation, what you are doing wrong. Now, Ryan, you can be a serious guy when you need to be. So share with Fire Nation what it means to be serious about both learning and growth when it comes to your employees.

3:42You know, I think most companies care about learning and growth with their employees, or they say they care about it or they should care about it if they don't. And I think it's really important because everybody sort of wins when you do this well. Employees win because virtually every employee is very interested in learning and development. The company benefits because if you do this well, you're going to end up with a competent team because they've spent so much time learning and growing. And even your clients benefit because clients prefer to work with companies when they're talking to people who are competent.

4:18If you ever had the experience of calling a company like maybe your ISP or a technical company and you get someone who's not competent, it's very frustrating. So that's why I say it's a win-win-win strategy. But there's a lot that goes into it. And so when I say it's important to be serious about learning and growth with your employees within your company, I'll talk about some of the things that to me would indicate that you're serious about it. First of all, there's various things that I think you kind of need to do to take this seriously. You need to allocate money for learning and growth. And I think a lot of companies do that.

4:58They purchase learning systems or they purchase ways for their people to learn. And that's a good start. The second thing, though, is, and this also comes at a financial cost, is you need to allocate time for your employees to actually do the learning. In my opinion, it's really not enough to provide all these learning materials and then kind of expect for your team to just go out and learn and grow. And granted, some employees will do that, but a lot of employees need a little bit more than that. And as a leader in your company, you can help them by giving them time, especially during business hours, to do that.

5:41I think you also need to have mentoring and coaching programs, which, again, comes at a cost. The next thing I would say, and this is probably one of the harder things, is you need to create a culture around learning and growth. Or another way to say that is you need to create a feedback culture. And I think this is hard because people kind of shy away from delivering feedback. And to be fair, a lot of people come from organizations where maybe they didn't give or receive a lot of feedback. And also just culturally, feedback is something that a lot of folks are not comfortable with. But I think it is a really important part of creating a learning organization.

6:25and it's something that you have to be pretty intentional about to do it well. You need to operationalize learning. So you have to go far beyond just giving people materials to learn, but you're going to need systems. You're going to need oversight, ideally some reporting, so that you have a way to measure the success of what you're doing. So there's a lot to it. But like I said, if you really want to be serious about it, Those are some of the things I would recommend and ways that you can gauge how well you're doing. Now, I want to be honest with Fire Nation. Every day, I do something wrong. I do something wrong.

7:02Sometimes Kate lets me know. Sometimes I let myself know. I mean, we're humans. We make mistakes. And that's okay, Fire Nation, as long as we are learning from those mistakes. But it's always best to avoid doing something wrong before we trod down that path and waste our time, our energy, our effort. So let's learn from others, Fire Nation, which is one of the reasons why we're here today. So Ryan, tell us, what is Fire Nation probably doing wrong right now? I think you made a good point there, John, when you said you do things wrong every day. And you're not alone in that. Everyone makes mistakes every day.

7:39It doesn't matter what your position is in the company, whether you're the CEO or an entry-level employee, everybody makes mistakes. And in terms of what I've seen, and a lot of companies do wrong, is they tend to cover up those mistakes. I'll give you an example. Let's say you're a leader in your company and you're leading a company-wide meeting. And let's just say you make a bunch of mistakes and the meeting doesn't go well. How many times have you seen the leader acknowledge that and say, I'm sorry, this didn't go well. Maybe I felt like I wasted your time. And here's what I'm going to do differently moving forward so that it's better for everyone.

8:23I think most people would really like to see that, but it's sort of uncommon to see that. And that kind of leads into creating a feedback culture. It's tough because you need to normalize feedback within your company. It's really hard to create a learning organization if you don't include feedback as part of that strategy. and to really get this to the next level you need to model feedback from the most senior people in your company if your ceo isn't doing this if your senior management team isn't doing this no one's going to do this so you need to create the type of culture where people are comfortable talking about their mistakes and it's not just talking but there's some analysis of the mistakes and there's a commitment to improvement.

9:16And ideally, you need systems to oversee that and also make it actionable. So that's one thing that I think a lot of companies could do better. And then the other thing, too, is I think a lot of companies could put a little, you know, maybe more effort into the learning process. Because when we say learning, that's a word that includes a lot of different things. And there's actually processes for learning. It's not just reading a book or watching a video series online, although that's oftentimes the first step. That's what I would call just the intake of new information. But there's really more components that go into learning if you want to do it well.

9:59So if the first step is taking in new information, I would say the second step is you need to have a way to apply that information. So that's ideally going to be on-the-job experience or some other form of real-world experience where you take that knowledge and you apply it. I would call that the second step. The third step is ideally you need feedback from a mentor or an expert or someone who really knows that material well so that they can observe what you're doing and tell you if you're doing it right or if you're doing it wrong. to use a bit of an analogy. It's like if you're learning how to swing a golf club and you watch a video on YouTube, you can't really say you've learned how to swing a golf club.

10:49You need to go out and you need to practice. And then ideally you have someone watching you and they can say, well, do this a little differently or do this. And then you try it again. And you do that until the mentor or the expert says, okay, you've got it. And then you can go on to learning the next thing. So there's, in summary, there's four steps. There's intaking the new information, there's getting the real world experience, there's having an expert observe and provide feedback, and then there's the iterative process of doing it again and again until they kind of sign off and say, okay, you're competent in this area.

11:25So there's sort of a lot that can go into learning and development, but I would recommend something similar to that to do it well. Fire Nation, I want you to ask yourself, are you creating a feedback culture within your team? And be honest with yourself. I mean, this is a learning moment. And I'm actually reading Elon Musk's new book by Walter Isaacson. It's fantastic. And one analogy that Elon talks about is, you know, if your hand's on the stove and it's a hot stove, you're going to take it off immediately. But if it's somebody else's hand on that stove, you're going to be a little slower to react if it's your job to remove it, which is why you always have to have your finger on the pulse.

12:03You always have to have that feedback culture. He always wants everybody in the same room together so they can talk with each other. They can always be on the same page and have that feedback culture immediately. And we have a lot more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Artificial intelligence has been a hot topic this year. Even if you're not using it, you've likely heard about the many benefits it can provide, like helping you save time, brainstorm ideas, and tackle your to-do list. But how do you put this into practice? If you find yourself spending hours each day on content creation, then I've got a tool that will help you do just that.

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15:09500 franchisor and a multi-brand franchisee himself, and he does more placements than any other in the country. Sign up for a free consultation call with John today or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranBridgeConsulting.com. That's FranBridgeConsulting.com. Now, Ryan, we're back and you did mention this briefly before the break, but I want to dive deeper on this topic now. You believe that we should operationalize learning. What does this mean? How do we do this? When I say operationalize learning, Essentially, what I mean is having systems and processes in place to make sure that you're achieving the outcomes and results that you want.

15:51Because if you just say, I want to give people learning materials and kind of hope that they learn and it turns out well, it may not turn well. So it's far better to treat it like you would other things in your business where you have solid systems, you have good oversight, and you have processes which everyone follows. So I'll cover a few of those things which we use and what I would recommend when it comes to operationalizing learning. Just like anything in your business, you kind of want to start by thinking about what are the results that you're looking for. For example, do you want the outcome to be a clear process for employee advancement?

16:31That would be the result of having a good learning culture. Or do you want the output to be a culture where feedback is normalized, where it's okay and normal for an employee to go to another employee and give them feedback without repercussions? Do you want a culture where making a mistake is okay as long as people learn from it? Those are all outcomes that you might want to have, but that's probably where I would start when it comes to creating the strategy for your business. Now, again, on the culture side, I said this before, but I want to reiterate it. You really do need your senior management team to adopt this if you want to make it part of your culture.

17:18And really, I think they need to do it better than anyone. So that's kind of part of culturally operationalizing it. But again, you need tools and systems to make this work. So, for example, what we use is we have a web form where whenever there's what I call a non-ideal outcome, someone goes to this web form and they fill it out and they say, here's what happened. And usually it's pretty obvious that that wasn't what we wanted to happen. We then have a process, a weekly process, where we look at every piece of feedback that was submitted from the prior week and we assign that to someone. So that's, again, operationalizing it because it happens every week and there's oversight of that.

18:06The next thing that you really need is what are you going to do when you have that situation where something non-ideal happened and you want to learn from it? Well, we assign it to someone and they think about it, but they really think about it using a specific model. The model that we use, we call it single and double loop analysis. and what that is is it's a specific way to analyze feedback. Single-looped analysis means when you're thinking about a non-ideal outcome, you're thinking about the external factors that resulted in that outcome or things that were not necessarily within your control and you're going to kind of document what those factors are and then you're going to think about what's called the double-loop factors or the things that were within your direct control and you're going to document what those factors were and importantly, how you would improve relative to those factors.

19:03And then part of the process is ensuring that these get completed. So there's reports and there's reminders that tell us if something wasn't completed. And then to make sure that all of this feels useful. Anytime there's feedback that we can learn from, it gets published to the entire company, which is a little bit strange for people who are new to our organization. When you learn that, okay, if I make a mistake, I'm going to have to analyze it. I'm going to have to acknowledge what I did wrong. And then that's going to go to every employee in the company. And that goes back to creating a culture where making mistakes are okay.

19:41But having the forms, having the oversight, ensuring that it goes out to everyone is part of operationalizing it. And then when it comes to the improvements that are a result of this analysis, that also needs to be operationalized. So for us, we have a biweekly process where we look at every improvement that resulted from feedback. Again, we assign it to someone, we set a deadline, which is going to be two weeks, and then we have oversight of that to ensure that it gets completed. And then lastly, I would say you want to create incentive structures for learning. So for us, we have a lot of bonuses that we give our employees when they learn new things or when they say get an industry standard certification.

20:30Employees get dedicated time to learn during the week, which is something that I don't think every company does, but I'd really recommend it, which is give people time during business hours, during the work week to focus on learning. Because, frankly, a lot of people don't want to do it on the weekends or after hours, and it does benefit you as a business leader or business owner. And then lastly, on the incentive structures, you want to have a really clear pathway for employees for how all of this learning benefits them. The way we do that is we create career roadmaps for every employee. And the roadmap is essentially everything they need to learn to get from their current role to the next role.

21:19and then you have to make sure that you're honest with that so that when they complete that learning path they actually do get promoted what we do is when someone completes their their learning pathway the day that they complete it they get a raise they oftentimes look at a new title and they get new responsibilities and that's kind of different from what some companies do which is what I call the do good work and sort of hope and pray model, where you don't really know how learning all this stuff is going to benefit you. You just sort of hope that you're going to get a promotion. You hope you're going to get more money.

21:56But as a business leader, you have the ability to make that extremely clear for employees. And then that becomes very motivating for them. So those are some of the things that we do and I would recommend doing to operationalize learning. Fire Nation, a lot of value bombs have been dropped. We've been educated today on building a learning organization about what we may or may not be doing wrong, operationalizing, learning. Of everything we talked about, Ryan, what is the one key takeaway that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our conversation today? Create a feedback culture, a culture where it's okay to make mistakes, where it's okay to talk about things that didn't happen the way you wanted it to.

22:44And if you do that really well, it's going to alleviate stress from making mistakes. And it's also going to benefit you as a company as you learn and get better as a result of this process. Ryan, if we want to learn more from you, connect with you, what is your call to action for Fire Nation today? Yeah, I'd be happy to talk to anyone about these ideas or give advice to other companies who are interested in implementing this. I'm not really a social media guy, but you can drop me an email. I'd be happy to talk to you. My email is ryan, R-Y-A-N, at kinetics, K-I-N-E-T-I-X, dot com, or you could check out our website, kinetics.com, to learn a little bit more about our culture.

23:30But yeah, drop me a line. I'd be happy to talk to anyone. Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, You've been hanging out with RS and JLD today, so keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Ryan in the search bar, and all the links to our conversation will pop right up. And Ryan, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Awesome. Thanks, John. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Ryan for sponsoring today's episode.

24:05and Fire Nation, over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment. I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com to order your copy and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. The Gold Digger Podcast, hosted by my good friend, Jenna Kuchar, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

24:54The Gold Digger Podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, and so much more. A must-listen episode is one of Jenna's recents on everything you need to know about affiliate marketing. Listen to Gold Digger wherever you get your podcasts. Many EO Fire listeners have launched non-food franchises, and Fran Bridge Consulting has guided them. Fran Bridge's founder and frequent EO Fire guest, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country, and his service is free. sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, non-food franchising at franbridgeconsulting.com.